Renowned American witch doctor, Doctor John, also known as Bayou John and Jean Montaigne, was a free black man who owned slaves in pre-Civil War New Orleans.
A towering figure, Doctor John claimed to be a prince from Senegal, captured by Spaniards and taken to Cuba.
In Cuba, he became a skilled cook and persuaded his master to grant him freedom.
He then worked as a sailor, returning to Senegal, but found he no longer belonged there.
Back at sea, he eventually landed in New Orleans, where he found work as a cotton roller on the docks.
Realizing he had a special “power,” his employers promoted him to overseer.
Doctor John’s reputation grew, and he discovered he could earn money through his tricks and services.
He built a house on Bayou Road and acquired female slaves, marrying some of them in his own ceremonies, eventually boasting 15 wives and over 50 children.
New Orleanians gawked at him in public, as he rode in a carriage with horses as fine as any white man’s.
When riding horseback alone, he donned a flamboyant Spanish costume.
Later, he adopted a more austere black outfit with a white, frilly shirt and grew a beard.
Leaving the Voodoo meetings to the queens, Doctor John focused on fortune-telling, healing, and making gris-gris.
His house was filled with snakes, lizards, toads, scorpions, and human skulls stolen from graveyards.
Both blacks and whites sought his advice, love potions, and help with curses.
Many obeyed his commands out of fear of his secret knowledge.
However, most of his wisdom came from a vast network of black servants throughout the city.
He either bought or extracted information from them, giving him an edge when veiled white girls sought to know if their lovers were faithful.
One of Doctor John’s specialties was starting or stopping poltergeist phenomena, such as showers of rocks and stones on a victim’s home.
Policemen were baffled as rocks seemed to fall from nowhere.
Naturally, Doctor John could stop such harassment, for a fee. In one case, the slaves of Samuel Wilson paid $62 to stop a rock shower, but Wilson took Doctor John to court to get the money back.
A few days later, the rock showers resumed. Despite being illiterate, Doctor John supposedly amassed a fortune, even burying $150,000 on his property, according to local lore.
He never forgot his poorer neighbors, providing food to anyone in need. But by the end of his life, his poor business sense led to his financial ruin.
Distrusting banks, he believed that once he deposited money, he would never see it again.
His investments failed, and his wives and children continually left with parts of his assets. Others outright cheated him. Eventually, Doctor John hired a young black man to teach him to read and write, spending long hours learning to sign his name.
One day, a con artist tricked him into signing his name at the bottom of a long document, causing Doctor John to lose all his Bayou Road property.
He tried to regain his status, but younger individuals—mainly his protégée, Marie Laveau, and later her daughter—had taken over the voodoo business.
At 80, he was forced to live with children from his white wife, despite his disdain for mulattoes.
New Orleanians gossiped that Doctor John had been “fixed,” or cursed by spells greater than his own. He passed away in August 1885 at the age of 82, four years after the death of the first Marie Laveau.
