"[2] Early sources identify him as coming from the Atlas Mountains which span the Maghreb,[3] but contemporary scholars such as Sylviane Diouf have speculated that he may have been from the modern day nations of Senegal, Mali, or Guinea.

[9] He became a charismatic guerrilla leader who united the different Maroon bands and created a network of secret organizations connected with slaves still on plantations.

After six years of planning and building up an organization of black slaves throughout Haiti to poison the French, he was burned at the stake in the center square of Port-au-Prince in front of everyone.

Various supernatural accounts of his execution, and of his escaping capture by the French authorities, are preserved in island folklore and widely depicted in paintings and popular art.

Both Mackandal's rebel conspiracy and his brutal killing are shown as influential on Babouk (based on Boukman), who helps to lead a 1791 slave revolt.

A fictionalized version of Mackandal also appears in Nalo Hopkinson's novel, The Salt Roads and in Mikelson Toussaint-Fils's novel, Bloody trails: the Messiah of the islands (in French, Les sentiers rouges: Le Messie des iles).

In Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods, a boy named Agasu is enslaved in Africa and brought to Haiti, where he eventually loses his arm and leads a rebellion against the European establishment.