Romaine-la-Prophétesse

Romaine-la-Prophétesse (, "Romaine the Prophetess" ), born Romaine Rivière (A few references instead spell the birth name Romain Rivière, feminine forms sic.) (A few records instead describe Romaine as a griffe, only three-quarters black.)

By 1772, Romaine had migrated to the French-colonized side of the island, to the West Province of Saint-Domingue, and there acquired a small coffee plantation named Trou Coffy in a deep, narrow, crater-like valley in the mountains near Léogâne, likely in what is now Fondwa. Various notarial records show Romaine buying and selling land and slaves in the area around Léogâne and Grande Marre in the 1780s, and establish that they had become "a respectable coffee grower and trader" by that time.

Romaine met Marie Roze Adam, an enslaved creole (mulatta) woman, on the plantation of Rene Guindet, as Romaine repeatedly visited this plantation, possibly as a trading partner or employee. Between 1772 and 1777, Adam bore them three children. Romaine spent twelve years working to liberate Adam and their children from slavery, ultimately buying them from Guindet for 6,000 livres on August 10, 1785. Twelve days later, on August 22, Romaine married Adam, taking advantage of a clause in the Code Noir that freed slaves who married their owners; at the time, Adam was 43 years old, and of their three children, Louis-Marie was 11, Pierre-Marie was 9, and Marie-Jeanne was 7. At the time of the wedding, Romaine owned 40 carreaux of land (approximately 127 acres) and at least two slaves. Adam had at least one other daughter, Marie Louise, who was baptized a free woman in 1763 (at which time Adam had also been recorded as free), and who married a free black man in 1787, with Romaine listed as her stepfather. Over the course of the uprising, these forces took weapons and supplies from and burned plantations everywhere from Bainet, about 45 kilometers west of Jacmel, to Marigot (where free black insurgents built a fort), about 25 kilometers east of it. They injured or killed slave-owners and symbolically cut their whips, and told enslaved people that the king had freed them.

Soon after raids around Jacmel began, Tavet (who had become the mayor of that city) sent a delegation of forty men and several brigades of armed, mounted police (the maréchaussée) toward Trou Coffy to negotiate a peace treaty, though the group seems to have decided to try to attack Trou Coffy instead, and sent a request for assistance to Léogâne. In late 1791, with at least ten thousand (and by some estimates as many as thirteen thousand) followers, largely former slaves, Romaine besieged Jacmel and Léogâne. giving Romaine control of the government of that city. The treaty was "unprecedented not only in Saint-Domingue but also in the entire revolutionary Atlantic world" in putting a black leader in charge of one of a European colony's most important cities. The white royalist de Villards, who had been named to his post in November in a compromise between local whites and the free black confederacy, remained as mayor, but was subordinate to Romaine. but it had come to be opposed by a coalition of whites and conservative free blacks, Rey says that although some critics alleged "that the prophetess opportunistically feigned and exploited religious faith to fan the fires of violent fanaticism", the fact that all three of Romaine's children were named for the Virgin Mary suggests Romaine had been deeply Marian since long before the insurgency, during which Ouvière "exploit[ed] the prophetess' ardent Catholic piety" to gain Romaine's trust. Shortly after the insurgency began, Romaine professed to be a godchild of the Virgin Mary, and produced written messages supposedly from her calling for the overthrow of slavery.

A few contemporary and later accounts say that, like many Haitians, Romaine blended Catholicism with African folk practices and beliefs, and is seen by some writers as a Vodou priest. Carolyn Fick argues that "not one reference to this leader can be found that even vaguely suggests genuine African voodoo practices", Though Romaine was not born in the Kongo, many followers were, and Romaine's Marianism and religious practices were typical of the Kongolese.

Romaine prominently identified as a prophétesse (prophetess) rather than a prophète (male prophet), Romaine "transgressed conventional gender norms", being visibly feminine in demeanor and appearance, wearing ribbons and rosaries and dressing like a woman. At the same time as identifying as a prophetess, the insurgent leader also identified as either a godson or godchild of the Virgin Mary, Mary Grace Albanese and count Romaine-la-Prophétesse among the women who led the Haitian Revolution.

Romaine has been compared to Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, who professed to be the incarnation of a male Catholic saint, as both of their religious self-identifications "transcended gender".