Maroons: Rebel Slaves in the Americas

Richard Price

The man who was to become the first scholarship has done much to dispel the myth of Mrican-American maroon arrived within a the docile slave. The extent of violent resistance decade of Columbus' landfall on the very first to enslavement has been documented rather slave ship to reach the Americas. One of the last fully- from the revolts in the slave factories of maroons to escape from slavery was still alive in West Mrica and mutinies during the Middle Pas­ Cuba only 15 years ago. The English word sage to the organized rebellions that began to "maroon" derives from Spanish cimarron- itself sweep most colonies within a decade after the based on an Arawakan (Taino) Indian root. arrival of the first slave ships. There is also a Cimarron originally referred to domestic cattle growing literature on the pervasiveness of vari­ that had taken to the hills in Hispaniola, and ous forms of "day-to-day" resistance -from sim­ soon after it was applied to American Indian ple malingering to subtle but systematic acts of slaves who had escaped from the Spaniards as sabotage. well. By the end of the 1530s, the word had Maroons and their communities can be seen taken on strong connotations of being "fierce," to hold a special significance for the study of "wild" and "unbroken," and was used primarily slave societies, for they were both the antithesis to refer to Mrican-American runaways. of all that slavery stood for, and at the same time For more than four centuries, the communi­ a widespread and embarrassingly visible part of ties formed by such escaped slaves dotted the these systems. The very nature of plantation slav­ fringes of plantation America, from Brazil to the ery engendered violence and resistance, and the southeastern United States, from Peru to the wilderness setting of early New World plantations American Southwest. Known variously as palen­ allowed marronage and the ubiquitous existence ques, quilombos, mocambos, cumbes, mambises, or of organized maroon communities. Throughout ladeiras, these new societies ranged from tiny Mro-America, such communities stood out as an bands that survived less than a year to powerful heroic challenge to white authority, and as living states encompassing thousands of members that proof of a slave consciousness that refused to be survived for generations and even centuries. limited by the whites' definition and manipula­ Today their descendants still form semi-indepen­ tion of it. dent enclaves in several parts of the hemisphere Within the first decade of most colonies' -for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, existence, the most brutal punishments had Jamaica, Colombia and Belize- fiercely proud already been inflicted on recaptured rebel slaves, of their maroon origins and, in some cases at and in many cases these were quickly written into least, faithful to unique cultural traditions that law. An early 18th-century visitor to Suriname were forged during the earliest days of Mrican­ reported that American history. if a slave runs away into the forest in order During the past several decades, historical to avoid work for a few weeks, upon his being captured his Achilles tendon is Richard Price 's most recent books include First-Time, win­ removed for the first offence, while for a ner of the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize of the American Folklore second offence ... his right leg is amputated Society, andAlabi's World, winner of the Albert] Beveridge in order to stop his running away; I myself Award of the American Historical Association. With Sally was a witness to slaves being punished Price he has written Mro-American Arts of the Suriname this way. Rain Forest, Two Evenings in Saramaka, Stedman's Surinam, and, most recently, Equatoria. And similar punishments for marronage -

62 MAROON CUlTURES This engraving from ca. 1786 depicts peace negotiations between Maroons and British soldiers on the Caribbean island of St. Vfncent in 1773. These Maroons were ancestors of the Garlfuna people who live today along the Atlantic coastline of Central America. Engraving from an original painting by Agostino Brunias; courtesy National Library of Jamaica

from being castrated to being slow­ ly roasted to death - are reported from different regions throughout the Americas. Marronage on the grand scale, with individual fugitives banding together to create independent communities of their own, struck directly at the foundations of the plantation system. It presented military and economic threats that often strained the colonies to their very limits. In a remarkable num­ ber of cases throughout the Ameri­ cas, whites were forced to appeal to their former slaves for a peace agreement. In their typical form, such treaties - which we know of from Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Hispaniola,Jamaica, Mexico and Suri­ but water and good soil are scarce. And in the name - offered maroon communities their free­ Guianas, seemingly impenetrable jungles provid­ dom, recognized their territorial integrity, and ed maroons a safe haven. made some provision for meeting their econom­ Many maroons throughout the hemisphere ic needs. In return, the treaties required developed extraordinary skills in guerrilla war­ maroons to end all hostilities toward the planta­ fare. To the bewilderment of their colonial ene­ tions, to return all future runaways, and, often, mies, whose rigid and conventional tactics were to aid the whites in hunting them down. Of learned on the open battlefields of Europe, course, many maroon societies never reached these highly adaptable and mobile warriors took this negotiating stage, having been crushed by maximum advantage of local environments. massive force of arms; and even when treaties They struck and withdrew with great rapidity, were proposed they were sometimes refused or making extensive use of ambushes to catch their quickly violated. Nevertheless, new maroon adversaries in crossfire. They fought only when communities seemed to appear almost as quickly and where they chose, relying on trustworthy as the old ones were exterminated, and they intelligence networks among non-maroons (both remained, from a colonial perspective, the slaves and white settlers), and often communicat­ "chronic plague" and "gangrene" of many plan­ ing military information by drums and horns. tation societies right up to final Emancipation. The initial maroons in any New World To be viable, maroon communities had to be colony hailed from a wide range of societies in inaccessible, and villages were typically located in West and Central Mrica; at the outset, they remote, inhospitable areas. In the southern shared neither language nor other major aspects United States, isolated swamps were a favorite of culture. Their collective task was nothing less setting. In jamaica, some of the most famous than to create new communities and institutions, maroon groups lived in "cockpit country," where via a process of integrating cultural elements deep canyons and limestone sinkholes abound drawn largely from a variety of Mrican societies.

MAROON CULTURES 63 Those scholars who have most closely examined stressing these isolated Mrican "retentions" may contemporary Maroon life agree that these soci­ neglect cultural continuities of a far more signifi­ eties are oft~n uncannily "Mrican" in feeling but cant kind. Roger Bastide divided Mro-American at the same time largely devoid of directly trans­ religions into those he considered "preserved" or planted systems. However "Mrican" in charac­ "canned" -like Brazilian candombli- and those ter, no maroon social, political, religious, or aes­ that he considered "alive" or "living" -like Hait­ thetic system can be reliably traced to a specific ian vaudou. The former, he argued, represent a Mrican ethnic group. They reveal rather their kind of "defense mechanism" or "cultural fos­ syncretistic composition: they were forged by silization," a fear that any small change may peoples bearing diverse Mrican, European and bring on the end; the latter are more secure of Amerindian cultures who met in the dynamic their future and freer to adapt to the changing setting of the New World. needs of their adherents. More generally, tena­ The political system of the great 17th-centu­ cious fidelity to "Mrican" forms can be shown to ry Brazilian maroon community of Palmares, for be in many cases an indication of a culture that example, which R.K. Kent has characterized as has finally lost touch with a meaningful part of an "Mrican" state, "did not derive from a particu­ its Mrican past. Certainly, one of the most strik­ lar central Mrican model, but from several." In ing features of West and Central Mrican cultural the development of the kinship system of the systems is their internal dynamism, their ability Ndjuka Maroons of Suriname, writes Andre to grow and change. The cultural uniqueness of Kobben, "undoubtedly their West-Mrican her­ the more developed maroon societies (e.g., itage played a part ... [and] the influence of the those in Suriname) rests firmly on their fidelity matrilineal Akan tribes is unmistakable, but so is to "Mrican" cultural principles at these deeper that of patrilineal tribes ... [and there are] signif­ levels -whether aesthetic, political, or domestic icant differences between the Akan and Ndjuka - rather than on the frequency of their isolated matrilineal systems." Historical research has "retentions" of form. revealed that the woodcarving of the Suriname Maroon groups had a rare freedom to devel­ Maroons, long considered "an Mrican art in the op and transform Mrican ideas from a variety of Americas" on the basis of many formal resem­ societies and to adapt them to changing circum­ blances, is (in the words ofjean Hurault) in fact stance. With their hard-earned freedom and a fundamentally new, Mrican-American art "for resilient creativity they have built systems that are whith it would be pointless to seek the origin at once meaningfully Mrican and among the most through direct transmission of any particular truly "alive" and culturally dynamic of Mrican­ Mrican style." And detailed historical investiga­ American cultures. tions- both in museums and in the field - of a range of cultural phenomena among the Sara­ Further Readings maka Maroons of Suriname have confirmed the continuing existence of dynamic, creative Mintz, Sidney W., and Richard Price. 1992. The Birth of African-American Culture. Boston: Beacon. processes that inspire these societies. Maroon cultures do possess a remarkable Price, Richard. 1979. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave number of direct and sometimes spectacular Communities in the Americas. Baltimore: Johns Hop­ continuities from particular Mrican peoples, kins University Press. ranging from military techniques for defense to ___. 1983. First-Time: The Historical Vision of an formulas for warding off sorcery. But these are Afro-American People. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins of the same type as those that can be found, University Press. albeit less frequently, in Mrican-American com­ ___. 1991. Alabi's World. Baltimore: Johns Hop­ munities throughout the hemisphere. And kins University Press.

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