A preponderance of the ethnographies published by researchers working in Haiti during the 1930s and 1940s focus on the Vodou religion. Yet the fact that many Haitian popular ritual practices were officially prohibited by penal law, first as «sortilèges» and later as «pratiques superstitieuses», and, on this basis, subject to US Marine, Protestant missionary, Catholic Church, and Haitian state offensives during these same years, is not always well-acknowledged or documented in this ethnographic literature.