The Sakpata priesthood in the Kingdom of Dahomey was not simply a religious body. It controlled the response to epidemics in a society where epidemics decided how many people there were, it took possession of the property of those who died of the pox, and it commanded a following that owed obedience to it rather than to Abomey. That combination made it a rival power, and the kings treated it as one, alternately incorporating its cults into the royal system and moving to suppress its independence.
Under colonial rule the calculation changed again. Vaccination campaigns took the treatment of smallpox out of the priesthood's hands, and administrations wary of any organised body that could mobilise people restricted the cult in various ways. Neither the kingdom nor the colony ended it.
Sakpata is served today. Entry into his priesthood, as with other vodun, runs through initiation and a period of seclusion in a convent community, and what is taught there is not public. The atlas states that the institution exists and that its knowledge is closed, and does not attempt to describe its content.
The Atlantic diaspora carried him. In Brazil, Obaluaie and Omolu of the Candomble houses occupy the same ground of earth and disease and derive in part from this cult, and in the Cuban and Haitian traditions there are figures whose functions overlap with his. Smallpox was eradicated in the twentieth century. The vodun of the earth was not thereby retired, because the earth is still there.