Romaine-la-Prophétesse (, Romaine the Prophetess), born Romaine Rivière around 1750 in Santo Domingo, was a free black coffee plantation owner and leader of an uprising early in the Haitian Revolution.
In 1791, in response to rising racial tensions in Saint-Domingue and to an armed group gathered at a nearby plantation, Romaine and followers burned that plantation and others throughout southern Haiti, freeing thousands of enslaved people. Romaine identified as a prophetess and dressed as a woman once the uprising began, and may have been transgender or genderfluid. Romaine briefly governed the two main cities in southern Haiti, Léogâne and Jacmel. In 1792, support for violent revolution waned among wealthier free blacks, while formerly-enslaved blacks deserted due to (or disregarded) the peace treaties Romaine had signed to gain control of Léogâne and Jacmel. White colonists, reinforced by France, pushed Romaine's forces back to their base at Trou Coffy and destroyed it, capturing Romaine's wife and daughter. Romaine escaped and continued to preach.
Life before 1791
Romaine Rivière was born around 1750 in Santo Domingo, the Spanish-controlled part of Hispaniola, as a free black person. Their parents' names are given in French records as Jean Rivière and Gabrielle Joseph. Notarial and parochial records describe Romaine as illiterate, or at least unable to make a signature, but Haitian historian Jean Fouchard offers evidence that Romaine was or became otherwise well-educated.
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.
Romaine came to be respected in the area, especially in the free black community, and between 1785 and 1791 became a godparent to nine people, while Adam became a godmother to four, connecting the couple to numerous other families. Romaine also served as a witness to at least one marriage, and was friends with three successive curates of the parish of Léogâne. These connections and alliances allowed Romaine to later quickly gather a number of supporters when inter-racial tensions in the colony rose to the point of open conflict in 1791.
1791-1792 uprising
In 1791, as tensions between white and black Haitians turned into the Haitian Revolution, Joseph-Marie Tavet, one of the region's richest and most powerful residents, gathered about a hundred armed men at his plantation near Romaine-la-Prophétesse's. Fearing "the mistreatment that the whites of the colony never ceased to mete out against the people of color" and feeling obliged to protect them, Romaine called on friends and community connections including free blacks and some poor whites (petits blancs) to gather with arms at Trou Coffy, significantly outnumbering Tavet's group.