Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division

Môle Saint Nicolas, a deep-water port on the tip of Haiti's northwestern peninsula, was Christopher Columbus's first landfall in Hispaniola. The site's proximity to Spanish Cuba led French buccaneers to establish an outpost there in the seventeenth century. During the Haitian Revolution, whites from the surrounding districts sought refuge in Le Môle while slaves and free blacks abandoned the city to join the insurgency. In 1803 approximately two thousand civilian refugees abandoned Le Môle for Cuba as the French military situation deteriorated. On December 4, 1803, Môle Saint Nicolas was the dramatic scene of the French colonial regime's final collapse, when General Jean-Jacques Dessalines forced the last of Napoleon's troops from the city.