Discover · History · Ouidah, Benin
A forced walking ritual meant to erase an entire identity before the crossing. Memory, for its part, survived the attempt.
On the Slave Route, tradition reports that captives were forced to walk several times around a tree before continuing their march toward the ocean, a different number of turns depending on whether they were men or women. The slave traders' intent was clear: provoke a form of forgetting, erase every marker, culture and name.
The tree visible on the site today is a commemorative tree, planted to perpetuate the memory of the act and its intent, the original not having survived to our time. What the site documents has remained intact: an attempt at erasure that, more than two centuries later, failed. Vodun, Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé and Cuban Santería are living proof of that.
This is one of the most charged points on the entire memorial route of Ouidah. Our guides take whatever time is needed here, never less.
Visit duration
15 to 20 minutes, part of the Slave Route itinerary
Access
On the Slave Route.
Coordinates
6.3589, 2.0867
Our certified Vodun guides open the meaning behind every sacred site of Ouidah. What you will see, and what we will help you understand.