Creativity and Resistance: Maroon Culture in the Americas
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MAROON CULTURES Creativity and Resistance: Maroon Culture in the Americas Kenneth Bilby and Diana Baird N'Diaye In 1739, more than 40 years before the Unit maroon escaped his captors and fled into the ed States won its war of independence with interior of the island of Hispaniola. No one can Britain, the British government, then among the say with certainty when the first maroon commu most powerful in the world, concluded two nity in the Americas was established, although peace treaties on the island ofJamaica. Those there exists a written document confirming that with whom the British treated were neither Euro by the early 1500s a settlement of escaped pean generals nor Native American chieftains. African slaves had already formed on Samana, an They were, rather, enslaved Africans who had island off the northeastern coast of Hispaniola managed to escape plantations and form new (Price 1979: 419). societies in the wilderness. For nearly a century, Over the next three and a half centuries, these escaped slaves had waged a devastating war hundreds more such maroon communities were against the colonists from their strongholds in to emerge throughout the Americas, as slaves the Jamaican hills. Unable to defeat them, the took their chances and broke away from the British were forced to propose treaties recogniz mines and plantations of the European coloniz ing the freedom that their former slaves had ers in a bid for freedom and independence. already seized, and granting them land and par Their exact numbers will never be known. The tial political autonomy. societies they created ranged in size from small The Jamaican treaties were not the first of bands of 10 or 20 people to powerful kingdoms their kind. Similar pacts had been made, for with thousands of members, such as Palmares in example, between colonial governments and Brazil, which spanned more than 1,000 square communities of escaped slaves in Hispaniola, miles. Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador during the No colony in the Western Hemisphere, no 16th century and in Mexico, Colombia and slaveholding area, was immune to the growth of Brazil during the 17th century. Yet other treaties such alternative maroon societies. Wherever were to follow the Jamaican ones, such as those large expanses of inaccessible and uninhabited made in Dutch Guiana during the 18th century. terrain permitted, as in the vast Guianese rain The story of the maroons - as those who forest or the mountainous Jamaican interior, fled from bondage and their descendants these communities proliferated. Even in the became known - does not begin with these British North American colonies, and later the colonial treaties, but goes back to the very earli United States, where unoccupied yet habitable est days of European settlement and slavery in spaces were not as plentiful, more than 50 the Americas. In 1502, a mere 10 years after maroon settlements are known to have come Columbus' first voyage, the first known African into being between 1672 and 1864. We have no way of estimating how many others may have escaped the notice of historians. "Creativity and Resistance: Maroon Culture in the Americas" has been made possible with the support of the governments of In many ways the maroon experience is Colombia, French Guiana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Guerrero, emblematic of broader processes that helped Mexico; Suriname Airways; Airjamaica ; the Texas Commis shape the Western Hemisphere. Not only were sion on the Arts and Texas Folklife Resources; Camille 0. and maroons in the forefront of resistance to slavery, William H. Cosby, Jr.; Inter-American Foundation; and the they were among the first pioneers to explore Smithsonian Educational Outreach Fund. and adapt to the more remote, unsettled spaces 54 MAROON CULTURES Brackettville t · ' • 00 ~ ~. ~ \ MEXICO t .\ UNITED ~.... \STATES Naci~ e nto de los Negros \...,, SURINAME eMalagana ~ Ditsribution of Maroon peoples '" K Kwinti lili] Ndjuka* Palenque de. San B as ilio ~ c:J Matawai lii\il Paramaka 1- El Saramaka* • Aluku* * Maroon peoples participating in the Festival • Maroon communities participating in the Festival in both American continents and the Caribbean. today are aware that such communities ever Maroons were among the first Americans in the existed. Few history books used in schools in the wake of 1492 to resist colonial domination, striv United States give attention to the societies and ing for independence, forging new cultures and cultures that maroons successfully built away identities, and developing solidarity out of diver from the plantations. It is thus particularly sity- processes which only later took place, on a appropriate in this Columbian Quincentenary much larger scale, in emerging nation-states. In year to celebrate the histories and cultures of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, maroons maroons, whose heritage of creativity and resis helped to launch the Haitian Revolution, which tance has been so much a part of the post gave birth to one of the first independent Columbian American landscape. republics in the Americas in 1804. Although there is a large and growing body Contemporary Maroons of scholarly writing about maroons based on Although many withstood military assaults solid archival research, relatively few people for years, most maroon communities were even tually destroyed by colonial troops, who usually outnumbered them and were much better Kenneth Bilby and Diana Baird N'Diaye are co-curators of armed. Mter the abolition of slavery, many the Maroon program at the Festival of American Folklife. maroon groups were assimilated into the larger Kenneth Bilby is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist societies that surrounded them. Of the hundreds who has done extensive research among both the Windward of such communities once spread across the Maroons ofjamaica and the Aluku Maroons ofFrench hemisphere, only a few still exist. Present-day Guiana. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from johns Maroon* peoples include the Saramaka, Ndjuka, Hopkins University. Diana Baird N'Diaye is an anthro Paramaka, Matawai and Kwinti of Suriname; the pologist on the staff of the Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies with research interests in the ethno-aes thetics of Africa and its Diaspora. For over 15 years she *The authors have chosen to spell "maroon" in lower case when it is used in its original descriptive sense, synonymous with 'escaped slave'. has designed and facilitated community-based cultural It is capitalized only when used generically to refer to contemporary research and presentation projects. peoples or ethnic groups. MAROON CULTURES 55 An Aluku woman in Asisi, French Guiana, bakes cassava cakes (baka kasaba). Maroons originally learned this method of food preparation from Native Americans. Photo by Diana Baird N'Diaye Aluku of French Guiana; the Palenqueros of years of struggle, their freedom was recognized Colombia; the Windward and Leeward Maroons by a j oin t treaty with the French and Dutch in of Jamaica; the Garffuna of the Atlantic coast of 1860. Central America; the Maroons of the Costa The South American country of Colombia is Chica region in Mexico; and the Seminole home to the contemporary Maroon community Maroons of Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico and the of Palen que de San Basilio, not far from the port Bahamas. of Cartagena, which was once at the center of Eight contemporary Maroon peoples from the Spanish slave trade. The Palenqueros are six different countries will participate in the Fes descended from slaves who escaped from Span tival in this Quincentenary year. Three of these ish plantations during the 17th century. Mter peoples come from the Amazon basin in north several failed attempts to eradicate them, the eastern South America. The ancestors of the colonial government and the ancestors of the Saramaka began escaping from Surinamese plan Palenqueros came to terms between 1713 and tations in the late 17th century; after fighting 1717. against the Dutch for nearly a century, they In the Caribbean island ofjamaica are some made a treaty with them in 1762. Today the Sara of the best known contemporary Maroon com maka live along the Suriname River in the interi munities. The Windward Maroons are based in or rainforest of Suriname. Their neighbors, the the villages of Moore Town, Scotts Hall and Ndjuka or Okanisi (Aukaners), inhabit the Charles Town in the eastern Blue Mountains. Tapanahony and Cottica rivers to the east. The They can trace their origins as a people back to ancestors of the Ndjuka, who began fleeing from 1655, when the British seized the island from the Dutch plantations in the early 18th century, Spanish, and a large number of slaves fled into made a treaty with the Dutch in 1760. Across the the hills. In later years these initial runaways Maroni and Lawa rivers in French Guiana live were joined by others from British plantations. the Aluku or Boni, whose forebears began leav The ancestors of the Leeward Maroons, whose ing the plantations shortly after the Ndjuka. In main contemporary settlement is Accompong in 1776-7 they crossed from Suriname into French the western Cockpit Country, began to escape Guiana, where they have lived ever since. Mter from plantations in the late 17th century. By the 56 MAROON CULTURES 1 730s, both groups posed such a threat to the adapt not only to the natural environment, but plantation system that the British colonial gov to one another's different ways of speaking, ernment had to sue for peace, concluding sepa working, praying, governing, staking claims, rate treaties with the two groups in 1739. making music, courting, marrying, giving birth, The Maroons of the Costa Chica area in the bequeathing and dying. Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca are In devising methods of subsistence, military descendants of slaves who began escaping in the strategies, systems of authority and shared lan late 16th century from Spanish cattle ranches guages, maroons typically selected from the full and estates along the Pacific coast.