An Exhibition Has Uncomfortable Echoes Of The French Colonial 'Human Zoos'

On Monday 2 May 2011, Charles Forsdick and David Murphy reported in the UK Guardian, "France must acknowledge its colonial past: An exhibition of the cultures of France's overseas territories has uncomfortable echoes of colonial 'human zoos": In 1931, the surrealists declared "Do not go to the Colonial Exhibition", and called on the French to boycott that vast display of imperialist propaganda in the east of Paris. The Exposition coloniale of 1931 placed the various peoples of France's empire on display in one of the final and perhaps the most significant examples of "human zoos", those ethnic exhibitions that accompanied the imperial projects of the mid-to-late 19th century.

Eighty years later, a year-long celebration of France's overseas territories (la France d'outre-mer) includes a month-long Jardin en outre-mer – which opened on 8 April – at which spectators can "visit" the cultures of these far-flung corners of the republic. Inexplicably, this garden is located in the Jardin d'Acclimatation , a site inextricably connected to the phenomenon of the human zoo, which has led scholars and activists to declare "We will not go to the Jardin d'Acclimatation".

The lack of sensitivity on the part of the organisers is remarkable, for the Jardin d'acclimatation was the major French site for the exhibition of "savages", starting in 1877 with a group of Nubians. In 1892, an exhibition of Amerindians from Guyana resulted in the death of many of the "exhibited". In total, 34 groups of "savages" or "freaks" were shown in these ethnic exhibitions. The last such exhibit was from New Caledonia in 1931, and among those exhibited were members of the family of the World Cup-winning footballer Christian Karembeu, who relates the story in his recent book, Kanak.

The decision to make 2011 the "year of the outre-mers" was taken by Nicolas Sarkozy in response to the 2009 crisis which saw widespread social protests in Guadeloupe and other overseas territories. Some of the events planned as part of the celebrations indicate a sensitive and informed approach to the culture of overseas France. Unfortunately, though, the scandal surrounding the exhibition at the Jardin d'acclimatation constitutes yet another reminder of the spectral and often undetected presence of the colonial past in France.

In the many articles spawned by the recent introduction of legislation in France outlawing the wearing of the burqa or niqab, for instance, many commentators failed to recognise that the forcible removal of the veil inevitably triggers other historical precedents and associated memories, not least those of women violently unveiled during the Algerian war of independence in the name of a "civilising mission" that deployed the promise of emancipation as an alibi for the retention of colonial rule. To borrow Henry Rousso's term describing the Vichy period, colonialism truly is "a past that has not passed".

Controversial legislation in 2005 attempted state intervention in memorial practices, imposing most notably an obligation on educators to teach the "positive role of the French presence overseas". The "year of the outre-mers" provides further evidence of these history wars regarding the colonial past. Christiane Taubira, MP for French Guyana and sponsor of the 2001 Taubira law recognising the slave trade and slavery as "crimes against humanity", has protested against the exhibition, but in response the minister for overseas territories, Marie-Luce Penchard, answered that "2011 must not serve as an occasion to reinterpret history."

The collective that has come together to declare "We will not go to the Jardin d'acclimatation" argues, on the contrary, that it is dangerous to ignore the past. We are not asking for repentance or refusing to imagine the future. Rather we are convinced that the valorisation of the cultural diversity of the overseas territories must include the knowledge of this past. It is possible for the problematic past of the Jardin d'acclimatation to be transcended by the events planned by the organisers, but only if that past is first acknowledged and not simply ignored.

Pressure from the "We will not go" collective has led the minister, on the very eve of the opening of the Jardin en outre-mer, to invite members of the collective to produce a report on the phenomenon of the human zoo in order to foster greater public awareness of this dark phase of French history. This may be a victory of sorts, but the memory wars show no sign of abating. In France, there is still no museum of colonisation, nor of the worlds born of slavery and colonisation. All that Sarkozy promises as his cultural legacy is the first national museum of French history, due to open in 2015. To reassert national narratives of the past at a time when there is increasing recognition of the transnational nature of history and memory seems profoundly retrograde. It is evident that colonialism and its afterlives will play little, if any, role in Sarkozy's plans. (source: UK Guardian)

1931 - Visit to the Exposition Coloniale

Old St. Louis Hotel and Slave Market in New Orleans

On the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets in 1838, the St. Louis hotel opened. It was also called the City Exchange Hotel. Two years later it burned down but was quickly rebuilt. The main entrance to the hotel led into the exchange, a beautiful domed rotunda where every afternoon between noon and 3 p.m. the auctions were held. In this elegant hotel, the center of Creole society before the Civil War, was located perhaps the most infamous of the slave auction blocks. There was more than one.

Auction Block: Saint Louis Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana

In 1842, George Buckingham reported walking through the rotunda. The auctioneers, he said, were "endeavouring to drown every voice but his own. ... One was selling pictures and dwelling on their merits; another was disposing of some slaves. These consisted of an unhappy family who were all exposed to the hammer at the same time. Their good qualities were enumerated in English and in French, and their persons were carefully examined by intending purchasers, among whom they were ultimately disposed of, chiefly to Creole buyers; the husband at 750 dollars, the wife at 550, and the children at 220 each."

Slaves were sold on this spot at the old St. Louis hotel, which had also served as the state Capitol and the site of Carnival balls. The hotel was on St. Louis between Chartres and Royal streets. Damaged in a 1915 storm, it was demolished two years later.

Indeed, in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe imagined a New Orleans hotel rotunda as the place where Uncle Tom and his fellow slaves from the St. Clare plantation were sold.

In the antebellum years, Creole gentlemen drank in the hotel's bar and attended with their wives and daughters fabulous balls and concerts. One of the most spectacular events held in the hotel was in honor of the visiting Henry Clay. During the winter of 1842-43, the great statesman paid an official visit to New Orleans, and a dinner and ball was held. Six hundred people sat down to dinner at $100 dollars each. While they dined, they were entertained by the French Opera orchestra.

Rotunda, Old St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana

During Reconstruction, the hotel was used for a few years by the state Legislature. Then the hotel was renovated and given a new name: the Royal Hotel, but it soon became neglected and very run-down because visitors preferred the St. Charles Hotel. Writer John Galsworthy paid a visit to New Orleans in 1912. He and his friends were taken into the old hotel on a tour to view the rotunda and the slave auction block. Their guide was an old woman who reminisced: "Yes, suh. Here they all came -- 'twas the finest hotel -- before the war-time; old Southern families -- buyin' an' sellin' their property."

In 1915, the old closed-up building was a veritable haven for rats and a bubonic plague scare made way for the demolition of the hotel. In its place stands the Omni Royal Orleans hotel.

The luxurious Omni Royal Orleans hotel at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets stands on a site once home to a hotel rotunda that was the site of the city's most infamous slave-auction block.

The Constitution of the United States included a provision that abolished the international slave trade after 1808. This boosted domestic slave trafficking. Since there was a large demand for slaves in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia for the cultivation of sugar and cotton, slave traders went throughout the upper South to purchase slaves to be sold at auction in the lower South. Slaves from Virginia were especially desired for their training and intelligence and brought the highest prices.

Slaves in the upper South feared being sold into the lower South because of the harsh conditions and the hot climate. But hundreds of thousands of African Americans were forced to migrate South, tearing apart families. New Orleans became the center of the slave trade, especially after 1840, and the slave auction was one of the most cruel and inhumane practices of slavery.

Slave-trading firms kept "slave pens," where they held the people waiting to be sold or auctioned off. The rooms usually held fifty to 100 slaves, crowded together in unspeakable conditions before they were taken to one of the markets: the St. Louis Hotel, the St. Charles Hotel or the exchange on Esplanade Avenue.

Old St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans

Frederika Bremer, a Danish writer who visited one of the slave markets in the 1850s, described the black men and women, "silent and serious" standing against the walls. "I saw nothing especially repulsive in these places," wrote Bremer, "excepting the whole thing." (source: Best of New Orleans)

The Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Ghanaian Times article "Less-Known Participating Nations In The Slave Trade,"from 26 February, 2011, by Godwin Yirenkyi, discusses the history of the transatlantic slave trade:

Recently I asked a Chilean journalist after a tour of the Cape Coast Castle whether there are black people, that is, descendants of the many African slaves taken there during the period as is the case in other South American countries. She answered no, apart from occasional visitors, adding that Chile never took part in that abominable trade. I showed her references to the contrary that slaves were taken there and she was surprised.

This short introduction is one reason behind the multi-national initiative led by UNESCO for more research and education to break a long silence surrounding the sordid story of to pave way for total healing, reconciliation and peace.

For even though you will not find forts and castles (infamous for their use as stations for the trafficking of African captives for use as slaves in the Americas between the 15th-19th ) belonging to nations like France, Spain and the United States on the Ghanaian coast where most of these relics are found in Africa, historical records show that these nations, and others shown in this article were, nevertheless, active participants in the slave trade.

Though contemporary history say that the Portuguese were the first to discovering Ghana (the then Gold Coast in 1471, the French historians claim their travelers were the first to have arrived in 1383, having founded two short-lived settlements named Petit Paris and Petit Dieppe somewhere along the western coastline as well as built a lodge at Takoradi. They say that the French trade had ended by the time the Portuguese arrived but until 1872 when Britain formally colonized the Gold Coast, the French navy never stopped foraging frequently along the coast.

The bastion de France

Fort William at Anomabu, for example, started was originally a French trading post built by them in 1751 but was captured two years later by the British. In retaliation, according to Reindorf, the French bombarded Cape Coast Castle and seized it from the British, thus enabling them to gain access to the gold and slave trade. In 1779 they captured Fort Orange, Sekondi, from the British but left soon afterwards. The French are also believed to have established a small fort at Amoku, 10 kilometers east of Anomabu on land purchased for 450 ounces of gold. They stayed at Christiansborg for some years and probably built a trading station at Ada that lasted for some time. France became the fourth largest slave trading nation and Nantes, in the Bay of Biscay became the slave trade capital just as Liverpool won disrepute as England's slave trade capital.

Ghanaian sailors have a legend that the frequent storms in the bay are the result of the many slave corpses dumped in the place by the slave ships.

Slave Trade maps show that the French sent many slaves from East Africa to the Seycheles, Mauritius and Madagascar.

Bunce Island, Serra Leone

Until the late 1700s the Spaniards, who started the trans-Atlantic slave trade with the Portuguese and later became the main buyers of slaves in the Americas, obtained their supplies from other Europeans without coming to the West African mainland. By the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, signed between Spain and Portugal, the African coast was awarded to Portugal by the Pope. Hence the Spaniards who got the New World did not feature prominently in direct trading activities in West Africa except for their enclaves of Equatorial Guinea and Sao Thome. Early records, however, indicate that they traded for sometime at Arguin in modern Mauritania in the 15th century.

The nearest that Spain ever came to settling in the former Gold Coast was in 1756 when the Danes sent an agent, Prof. Moldenhauer, to Madrid to negotiate, unsuccessfully, the exchange of their fort at Ada on the Volta River for the Spanish Crab Island, also known as Bisque, in the West Indies. By 1830, the Spaniards were visiting the country during the governorship of Captain George Maclean, and one of the charges brought against the governor by his opponents during investigations into his activities was that he allowed Spanish slavers to buy provisions on the coast. In 1848, the British warship Kingfisher and an American cruiser Yorktown attacked the last slave trading station run by the Spaniards at Cess River, in Liberia, and freed 3,000 captives.

Elmina Castle

The activities of the Portuguese, after they were driven away from Elmina Castle by the Dutch in 1637 is also not well known since it was generally assumed that they were driven away completely from the country after they ceded the rest of their possessions to the Dutch in a treaty in 1641. The treaty stipulated that they should not trade here and that if they wanted to trade on the Lower Coast, that is at Fida (Ouidah) and Porto Novo, they should first drop anchor first at the Dutch fort and pay a large tariff. Records, however, show that the Danes bought Christiansborg from them in 1660 and built another small fort called Fort Xavier in 1679 in the area from where they were driven off in 1683. Around this period they were also said to have put up another less-known trading lodge along the Accra coast which they named Ft. Vicente. Between 1811 and 1816, Portuguese vessels frequented Accra looking for captives to buy. During the abolition period, a notorious Portuguese slave trader by name Don Jose Mora continued buying slaves in the Keta area till he finally moved to Little Popo and Grand Popo in modern Benin after the Danes tried to arrest him.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

The Portuguese stayed on in Guinea Bissau, Principe and Sao Thome where they had established large sugar plantations since the late 15th and 16th centuries. Sao Thome also served as an entreport for the slave trade to Europe and the Americas. Further down they held the monopoly in Angola where millions of captives were sent to Brazil from Fort San Miguel, and also along the East African coast where they operated from Mozambique, Zanzibar and Lamu Islands as well as Mombasa in Kenya. Their main legacy in Ghana today is the Elmina Castle, near Cape Coast. Linguists claim they also left a few words that have become part of the local Ghanaian vocabulary such as dash (gift), paano (bread), palava (meeting), fetish (idol) and sabola (onion). The word used for slave catching, panyarring was also believed to have come from the Portuguse word panyar, meaning catch.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

Due to the name change, people often forget that the Brandenburgs, who in 1683 built Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, and two other lodges at Akwida (1685) and Takrama (1687), were Germans. Brandenburg was the name of East Germany before it was united with neighboring provinces to become Germany. In the 17th cenury they took over a Spanish station at Arguin in Senegal and were also present at Whydah, Benin, for sometime. However, the full extent of German involvement in the slave trade in West Africa and the Americas is not known. At one time they tried to acquire a part of the Virgin Islands, but Togo and Cameroon were the main centers of their activities in West Africa.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

Virtually unknown among the European slave traders of West Africa were the Courlanders, a small Germanic nation (population 200,000) situated in the present Republic of Latvia in the Baltics. The Courlabders built a small fort on St. Andrews Island (James Island) in the Gambia in 1652 and colonized Tobago in the 17th century and established sugar, cotton and rum plantations wiith about 7,000 slaves. The British seized James Island in 1661.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

It is not known how far Brazil which received the largest number of slaves participated in slave buying since most documents of the slave trade were purposely burnt in that country. But one Brazillian slave trader called Cossar Corquila Lima was known to have established a large trading post at Vodza, near Keta. After his death in 1862, his domestic slave and agent who inherited him renamed himself Geraldo Lima, married his wives and continued with the trade, causing much trouble with the Adas and their Danish allies.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

West Africa was not the only place that suffered from the ravages of the slave trade. The huge Congo, for example, was owned by King Leopold II of tiny Belgium, who had no colonies in the New World yet sold thousands of slaves to the Americas and enslaved the natives at home in a manner far worse than what Arab slave traders were doing before the Belgians arrived.

According to the National Geographic (Sept. 1992) the greatest number of slaves taken to the Americas came from the Congo-Angola region while another report (March 1973) indicated that the Congo endured more than three centuries of slaving, losing hundreds of thousands of people to the labour-hungry New World. From Boma, 90km inland, the Flemish traders assembled the captives then moved them to Banana Island at the mouth of the Congo River their main slave port for shipment.

Simultaneously, the native population at home was brutally forced to collect ivory and rubber in what became known as the rubber atrocities, rigorously implemented by state agents long after the abolition of slavery. Belgium's Royal Museum of Central Africa has on display symbols of the shameful trade including shackles and collar rings that once bonded Congolese slaves. In the same museum can be seen life-size mannequins depicting Congolese slaves and Arab slave buyers.

Records indicate that American slavers in the 1700s took part directly in the buying of captives from Africa, which they called the Circuit trade as distinct from Triangular Slave Trade. The first American slavers dispatched by Boston merchants in 1644 included the Rainbow which took a number of captives to Barbados. Later they became more active and started using what became known as rum boats, which were smaller and faster than the European ones, to cross the Atlantic with cargoes of rum to intoxicate potential African slave traders, and then return to America via the West Indies to offload their captives and stock up with molasses to take home and make it into more rum. One hundred and fifteen gallons of rum bought a male captive and ninety-five for a female. Records indicate that about twenty rum boats were in service by 1758.

The Swedes played an active role in the slave trade within the brief 17 years that they spent in the Gold Coast. By 1638 they had founded a colony called New Sweden on the Christina River around present Wilmington in the Delaware River valley of the United States which they held till 1655 when it was abandoned owing to pressure by the Dutch who were staging a comeback after losing it previously to local Indians. In 1640 they constructed Fort Witsen at Takoradi then began another one at Anomabo. Ten years later the Swedish African Company led by Heinrich Caerlof constructed a short-lived lodge at Butre. In 1657 they made Carolusburg Castle, Cape Coast, their headquarters, before they lost it together with Christiansborg, Osu, to the Danes. They were not heard of again after they were driven off by the Danes shortly afterwards. In the West Indies they had one island, St. Barthelemy, for themselves from 1784-1877.

Sweden's eastern neighbour, Norway also took part in the slave trade jointly with Denmark of which it was then a part. That explains why a slave ship called the Fredensborg, named after an erstwhile fort at old-Ningo, near Tema, which was returning to its home port after discharging a cargo of slaves at St. Croix in the Caribbean sunk near the town of Arundel, Norway, in 1768. Dr. Paul Isert, a Danish surgeon who wrote extensively about the period stated how, for some inexplicable reason the climate seemed unsuitable for the Norwegians. When they arrive in this land, the surgeon wrote, even though they have never before in their lives been ill, they behave like a fresh-water fish that has been placed in salt water. They become misanthropic, fretful, and do not know why. First they complain of a headache, usually accompanied by vomiting; after 24 hours often follow convulsions, and the patient dies a man who had been perfectly healthy 48 hours earlier.

Another less-known aspect of the trans-Atlantic slave is the fact that besides the United States, Central America, the West Indies and Brazil which are often mentioned, several thousands slaves were also taken to Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay. Lima became a major redistribution center from where slaves, some brought directly from Africa around Cape Horn were sent into the interior of the continent never to be heard of again.

The atrocities of slavery were not limited to the black people of Africa. At the time of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the British, French and Australians were tricking and kidnapping thousands of Melanesian captives to work in the sugarcane fields of Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia and other Pacific colonies. Among the kidnappers, also known as the black birders was one Ross Lewin who often disguised himself as an Anglican bishop to trick islanders to come to his ship, while another called James Murray enticed villagers to paddle their canoes to his schooner with promises of trade in beads, pipes and tobacco and then took them by force and sold them.

(source: Ghanaian Times)

Working and Dying on the French Panama Canal Construction Project

Southern Explorations reports: It was exotic. It was exciting. It was lucrative. Young Frenchmen with a rosy view of destinations unknown, those with nothing better to do and those with nothing to lose, all signed on to France's next great adventure, the building of the Panama Canal. Even when word leaked back to France that one in five canal workers was dying, still they kept coming, young energetic Frenchmen, recent engineering graduates and workers, all in pursuit of the dream. Called gallant by their countrymen, the recruits kept arriving, swept away by a heady mix of patriotism, bravado and frontier excitement, presumably believing luck would spare them.

Though no accurate records exist, it is estimated that as many as 22,000 workers perished between 1881 when the project got underway and when it ended in defeat eight years later. Lucky were the few who drowned or died in a machinery accident. Most of the French workers, recruited primarily from the West Indies, succumbed to a much more excruciating fate, yellow fever or malaria.

A team of forty French engineers arrived first. They were joined by a team of about 200 workers from the immediate area, as well as Colombia (then called New Granada), Venezuela and Cuba, who began clearing the mostly rainforest vegetation to make way for the canal. By June, the number of technical personnel and workers had expanded four-fold. By the following year, the work force had doubled. By 1884, a third of the way into what was supposed to be a twelve-year project, the Canal employed a workforce of 19,000.

It didn't take long for new workers to size up the situation. Those who didn't immediately succumb to disease didn't stay long. Among the recruits was French painter Paul Gauguin who arrived with fellow-artist, Charles Laval. For Gauguin, working on the canal was part of a much larger dream, a quick way to finance his transition from the staid stockbroker profession to the uninhibited life of an artist. The two landed in Panama in April of 1887 at the start of the rainy season. Laval derived income through portrait commissions, while Gauguin began his stint as a laborer. He lasted only two weeks, just long enough to earn enough cash to build an art studio on nearby Isla Taboga and make plans for further adventures after his Panama tours were over. By June, the pair was off to their next destination, Martinique.

The punishing heat and humidity of Panama's long rainy seasons, exacerbated by the close living quarters of the workers, provided just the right conditions for annual epidemics of yellow fever and malaria. Six months into the initial season of work, the first wave of yellow fever hit. In 1883, 1,300 died of disease, ten percent of the work force. From then on, some 20% succumbed each year.

Yellow fever kills quickly after an agonizing few days of flu-like symptoms and a brief remission before the symptoms worsen, causing the sufferer to vomit blood before developing heart and central nervous problems prior to death. Malaria has similar symptoms that are milder but more lethal. The rising death toll gave the French canal project the nickname "White Man's Graveyard" (though many more people of color perished) and de Lesseps the moniker, "The Great Undertaker."

To deal with the outbreaks of illness, the French built two hospitals, one in the port city of Colon on the Caribbean side of the isthmus and one at Ancon near the Pacific. For those who survived the ordeal, a fifty-room “retreat” was established built on Isla Taboga where workers could rest and recuperate.

Although some French nationals are buried in the French Cemetery at Paraiso on the Pacific side of the canal, it is mostly the foreign workforce whose final resting place is here. After the opening of the canal, the cemetery was abandoned to make way for housing but has recently been restored. Each white cross represents a thousand men who gave their lives, not for a cause they necessarily embraced, but for a wage higher than they could earn in their native lands.

All five of the Southern Explorations Panama tours visit the Panama Canal. On visits of the capital, some Panama tours include a stop at the French Cemetery, a silent monument to the nameless who changed history. (Source Southern Explorations)

Branding and Burning Tortures

The Code Noir (The Black Code)

France's King Louis XIV

Edict of the King:

On the subject of the Policy regarding the Islands of French America

March 1685

Recorded at the sovereign Council of Saint Domingue, 6 May 1687.

Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre: to all those here present and to those to come, GREETINGS. In that we must also care for all people that Divine Providence has put under our tutelage, we have agreed to have the reports of the officers we have sent to our American islands studied in our presence. These reports inform us of their need for our authority and our justice in order to maintain the discipline of the Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith in the islands. Our authority is also required to settle issues dealing with the condition and quality of the slaves in said islands. We desire to settle these issues and inform them that, even though they reside infinitely far from our normal abode, we are always present for them, not only through the reach of our power but also by the promptness of our help toward their needs. For these reasons, and on the advice of our council and of our certain knowledge, absolute power and royal authority, we have declared, ruled, and ordered, and declare, rule, and order, that the following pleases us:

Article I. We desire and we expect that the Edict of 23 April 1615 of the late King, our most honored lord and father who remains glorious in our memory, be executed in our islands. This accomplished, we enjoin all of our officers to chase from our islands all the Jews who have established residence there. As with all declared enemies of Christianity, we command them to be gone within three months of the day of issuance of the present [order], at the risk of confiscation of their persons and their goods.

Article II. All slaves that shall be in our islands shall be baptized and instructed in the Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith. We enjoin the inhabitants who shall purchase newly-arrived Negroes to inform the Governor and Intendant of said islands of this fact within no more that eight days, or risk being fined an arbitrary amount. They shall give the necessary orders to have them instructed and baptized within a suitable amount of time.

Article III. We forbid any religion other than the Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith from being practiced in public. We desire that offenders be punished as rebels disobedient of our orders. We forbid any gathering to that end, which we declare to be conventicle, illegal, and seditious, and subject to the same punishment as would be applicable to the masters who permit it or accept it from their slaves.

Article IV. No persons assigned to positions of authority over Negroes shall be other than a member of the Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith, and the master who assigned these persons shall risk having said Negroes confiscated, and arbitrary punishment levied against the persons who accepted said position of authority.

***

Article XXXVIII.

The fugitive slave who has been on the run for one month from the day his master reported him to the police, shall have his ears cut off and shall be branded with a fleur de lys on one shoulder.

If he commits the same infraction for another month, again counting from the day he is reported, he shall have his hamstring cut and be branded with a fleur de lys on the other shoulder.

The third time, he shall be put to death.