The revolt begins on January 8 at…
January 1811 CE
The slaves strike and badly wound Manuel Andry, then kill his son Gilbert.
The rebellion gains momentum quickly.
The fifteen or so slaves at Andry's plantation, about thirty miles (fifty kilometers) upriver from New Orleans, join another eight slaves from the next-door plantation of the widows of Jacques and Georges Deslondes.
This is the home plantation of Charles Deslondes, a field laborer later described by one of the captured slaves as the "principal chief of the brigands."
Small groups of slaves join from every plantation the rebels passed.
Witnesses remark on their organized march.
Although they carry mostly pikes, hoes, axes, and few firearms, they march to drums while some carry flags.
From ten to twenty-five percent of any given plantation's slave population joins with them.
At the plantation of James Brown, Kook, one of the most active participants and key figures in the story of the uprising, joins the insurrection.
At the next plantation down, Kook attacks and kills François Trépagnier with an axe.
He is the second and last planter killed in the rebellion.
After the band of slaves passes the LaBranche plantation, they stop at the home of the local doctor.
Finding the doctor gone, Kook sets his house on fire.
Some planters will testify at the trials in parish courts that they had been warned by their slaves of the uprising.
Others regularly stay in New Orleans, where many have town houses, and trust their plantations to overseers to run.
Planters quickly cross the Mississippi River to escape the insurrection and to raise a militia.
As the slave party moves downriver, they pass larger plantations, from which many slaves join them.
Numerous slaves join the insurrection from the Meuillion plantation, the largest and wealthiest plantation on the German Coast.
The rebels lay waste to Meuillion's house.
They try to set it on fire, but a slave named Bazile fights the fire and saves the house.
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