He is one of the most consequential individuals in Caribbean history and no document has been produced that establishes his origin. The suggestion of an anglophone Caribbean birth rests on a reading of his name and has never been tested against a record. Because he was enslaved, the paperwork that would ordinarily answer this, if it ever existed, was made by people with no interest in his identity.
What would resolve this A plantation inventory, notarial act, baptismal entry or ship manifest naming him, from the archives of Saint-Domingue, Jamaica or the French colonial administration. Much of the relevant colonial notarial material survives in France and in Haiti and has not been searched systematically for this purpose.
OpenCaribbean archival history; Atlantic slave trade record linkage; onomasticsAlfred Metraux, Voodoo in Haiti