His career began with the leadership of a slave militia formed by white planters in the Grand'Anse region, initially to combat uprisings by the local gens de couleur.
Kina became highly regarded by his British superiors as a practitioner of the irregular style of warfare common in the mountainous and densely forested interior of the colony.
Pierre Victor Malouet attempted to enlist Kina in an abortive scheme to kidnap the adolescent sons of Toussaint Louverture from a military boarding school in France.
On the night of December 5, 1800, Kina gathered around thirty armed men, most of them free colored members of Martinique's militia, and marched from Fort-Royal (now Fort-de-France) toward a natural strongpoint in the surrounding hills.
The group stopped at plantations and settlements along the way to recruit more men and protest the abuses suffered by free people of color and slaves by the local white population.