From Bois Caiman to Bûche du Noël: Shapeshifting Trees on Hispaniola

This essay explores the role of wood in shapeshifter narratives in relation to the economic, social and cultural history of the forest on Hispaniola. Drawing upon oral narratives about shapeshifter trees and animals collected in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, I examine forest lore in Haiti, and its crosspollination from France, African and Amerindian sources, to trace the changing significance of trees in Haitian vodou. I am particularly interested in the semantics of the Piñon and the Mapou which are seen as having anthropomorphic qualities such as the ability to bleed, and are used in healing and magical practices, since sorcery can turn people into trees.  Drawing upon the research of eighteenth century naturalist Michel Etienne Decourtiliz, who visited Saint Domingue on the eve of the revolution and gathered ten volumes of botanical compendia largely from slaves, it seeks to chart the changing meaning of plants in relation to their increasing scarcity over time, as logging of fine woods such as ebony and mahogany eventually consumed the forests. I make the case that shapeshifting practices may be seen as a vernacular understanding of nature, yet that we must be attuned to local forms of knowledge in order to decipher it.