It was the mind, metaphysics, ideology, consciousness that was Mackandel’s tool in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti. … It was the same with Hyacinth. His army could rush the cannon of the French forces “without fear or care for the volleys,” shoving their arms into the cannons’ mouths. They knew, they believed that “if they were killed they would wake again in Africa.” On that final day of March 1792, 2,000 of them “died,” to a mere 100 of their opponents, but they were doubly blessed: they won the battle and even their dead were free. … They lived on their terms, they died on their terms, they obtained their freedom on their terms. Thus it was with obeahmen and obeahwomen, and papaloi. These were the terms that these African peasants and farmers had brought with them to their captivity. They were also the only terms in which their freedom could be acquired.

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making o…, loc. 865