As mentioned in the earlier section Slave Owner, the description given of Marie Laveau’s altar indicated she had a statue of St. Maroon. We can assume from this report that St. Maroon was a part of her spiritual court. St. Maroon is known among modern-day devotees as one of her favorite saints. Again, some people express confusion or doubt about the identity of St. Maroon, but in New Orleans Voudou and Laveau Voudou, such doubt does not exist. St. Maroon refers to Jean Saint Malo, aka Juan San Malò, a leader of a large system of Maroon colonies in the cypress swamps surrounding colonial New Orleans in the 1700s. The territory controlled by St Maroon is referred to as Ville Gaillarde and was comprised of the southeastern area between New Orleans and the eastern shore of Lake Borgne (Hall 1992, 212). He and his fellow Africans carved out niche communities in the swamps for runaway slaves with the help of local Native Americans. Jean Saint Malo is said to have buried his hatchet in the first cypress tree of Gaillard Island, saying, “Malheur au blanc qui passera ces bornes,” meaning, “Woe to the white who would pass this boundary” (Hall 1992, 213). The boundary was the Louisiana swamps.
Jean Saint Malo was ultimately executed on June 19, 1784, in front of the St. Louis Cathedral. He was denied a proper burial; instead, his body was left hanging to rot for days while his bones were picked and collected as treasured gris gris by practitioners. After his death, he was elevated quickly to sainthood due to his incredible deeds. The spirit of Jean Saint Malo was subsequently sought out by Voudouists and runaway slaves alike to provide protection and safe passage for slaves seeking freedom.
As slavery became a thing of the past, St. Maroon has become a more obscure saint and tends to stay on the altars of those old-school Voudous practicing on the down low. Some local New Orleans Voudou practitioners, such as the Divine Prince Ty Emmecca, however, have performed public rituals and poured libations in the French Quarter in his honor on his feast day. It would seem that we could use St. Maroon’s assistance when reparations are on the table and folks are embracing their heritage and reclaiming their historical narratives. He is still available and accessible to practitioners and devotees who may seek assistance for today’s emergent crisis of immigrants seeking asylum in this country, as well as those seeking to connect with ancestral spirits. St. Maroon’s feast day is June 19.

*Photo credit: Maroon men in Suriname, picture taken between 1910–1935 by Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of World Cultures, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7770860