I have no idea how it came about the earliest documentation of Haiti's Choucoune (the song, not he poem) is to be found in an American grade school songbook. It would be hard to imagine more age inappropriate subject matters. Ergo we get the hopelessly "cleaned-up" & sterilized version posted above.

Pure speculation on my part but, one suspects Melville & Frances Herskovits' nearly concurrent field work in Haiti and the Northwestern U. - Silver Burdett – McConathy connection had something to do with it.

See:
Herskovits, Melville & Frances, Life in a Haitian Valley, (New York: Octagon, 1937)

See also:
Lis Camille

And:
Herskovits, Melville & Frances, Trinidad Village, (Melville papers, Northwestern U, 1939) also (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976)