... This chapter first documents the surge in Christian conversion among freedpeople amid their continued adherence to the African spiritual practice of obeah, and then explores the prevalence of nonmonogamous informal partnerships over Christian wedlock—both of which complicate any assumptions...

... working people employed a variety of legal and extralegal strategies to maintain livelihoods both within and without the sugar industry. Setting cane fires, practicing obeah, and committing petty theft—though deemed criminal by authorities and white elites—appear to have had more economic and political...