Maroon (people)

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A Maroon (from the word marronage or American/Spanish cimarrón: "wild, savage, fugitive, runaway", lit. "living on mountaintops"; from Spanish cima: "top, summit") was a runaway slave in the West Indies, Central America, South America, or North America. Maroon populations are found from the Amazon River Basin to the American states of Florida and North Carolina.

Contents 1 Early History 2 Usage and other terms 3 Culture 4 Geographical distribution 4.1 North America 4.1.1 Florida 4.1.2 Nova Scotia 4.1.3 Mexico 4.2 Central America 4.2.1 Panama 4.2.2 Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua 4.3 Caribbean islands 4.3.1 Jamaica 4.3.2 Haïti 4.3.3 Others 4.4 South America 4.4.1 Suriname 4.4.2 Brazil 5 Notes 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Early History

In the New World, as early as the 1512, black slaves had escaped from Spanish and Portuguese owners and either joined indigenous peoples or eked out a living on their own.^[1] Sir Francis Drake enlisted several 'cimaroons' during his raids on the Spanish.^[2] As early as 1655 runaway slaves had formed their own communities in inland Jamaica.^[3]

[edit] Usage and other terms

The name Maroon is the British and French corruption of the Spanish 'cimarrones', meaning wild or untamed. While the word 'maroon' was used extensively for the escaped blacks in Jamaica, it was in use throughout the Caribbean. The French used the word 'marron' for any fugitive slave. In the Guianas escaped slaves were commonly known as Bush Negroes or Refugee Blacks.

In Spanish speaking areas, the villages were sometimes called palenques or quilombos, and the free blacks were called palenqueros.

[edit] Culture

Escaped slaves were frequently within the first generation of their arrival from Africa and often preserved their African languages and much of their culture. African traditions include such things as the use medicinal herbs together with special drums and dances when the herbs are administered to a sick person. Other African healing and 'magical' rites have survived through the centuries - see, for example, the accompanying photos of a medicine man and a protective charm from Suriname.

The jungles around the Caribbean Sea offered food, shelter, and isolation for the escaped slaves. Maroons survived by growing vegetables and hunting. They also originally raided plantations. During these attacks, the maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slavemasters, and invite other slaves to join their communities. Individual groups of Maroons often allied themselves with the local indigenous tribes and occasionally assimilated into these populations. Maroons played an important role in the histories of Brazil, Suriname, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica.

There is much variety among Maroon cultural groups because of differences in history, geography, African nationality, and the culture of indigenous people throughout the Western hemisphere.

Maroon settlements often possessed a clannish, outsider identity. They sometimes developed Creole languages by mixing European tongues with their original African languages. One such Maroon Creole language, in Suriname, is Saramaccan.

The Maroons created their own independent communities which in some cases have survived for centuries and until recently remained separate from mainstream society. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Maroon communities began to disappear as forests were razed, although some countries, such as Guyana and Suriname, still have large Maroon populations living in the forests. Recently, many Maroons have moved to cities and towns as the process of urbanization accelerates.

[edit] Geographical distribution

[edit] North America

[edit] Florida

The Black Seminoles, Maroons who allied with Seminole Indians in Florida, were by far the largest and most successful Maroon community in North America.

[edit] Nova Scotia

The Nova Scotian Maroons were originally Jamaican Maroons who were deported to Nova Scotia in 1796 because of their rebellion against the colonial government in Jamaica. Many of their descendants are the Krios of Sierra Leone-see the article Nova Scotian Maroons.

[edit] Mexico

See Gaspar Yanga, Afro-Latin, Black Mexican.

[edit] Central America

[edit] Panama

By 1570 the number of Maroons in Villano, near Nombre de Dios in the north of Panama exceeded 2,000.^[1] See Cimarron people (Panama), Bayano.

[edit] Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua

See Garifuna.

[edit] Caribbean islands

[edit] Jamaica

Main article: Jamaican Maroons

When the British invaded Jamaica in 1655 the Spanish colonists fled leaving a large number of Africans who they had enslaved. Rather than be re-enslaved by the British, they fled into the hilly, mountains regions of the island, joining those who had previously escaped from the Spanish to live with the Taínos. Over time, the Maroons came to control large areas of the Jamaican interior and they often moved down from the hills to raid the plantations.

They were highly organised and knew the country well. Because of this, additional run-away slaves joined them. The two main Maroon groups were the Trelawny Town or Leeward Maroons - at one time led by Cudjoe - and the Windward Maroons - led by Queen Nanny and later by Quao. The Maroons were skilled hunters and warriors and, hard as they tried, the British Army could not control or defeat them.

Maroons in Jamaica intermarried with Taíno and Miskito people from Central America, establishing independence in the back country as the island changed hands from the Spanish to the British in the 17th century. Originally Jamaican Maroons fought against slavery maintained their independence from the British. However in the treaty of 1738 they were also paid to return captured slaves and fight for the British in the case of an attack from the French or Spanish. Many of them were deported in 1796 to Nova Scotia and eventually to Sierra Leone.

Famous among Maroon rebels was Queen Nanny, also known as Granny Nanny, leader of the Jamaican Maroons in the 18th century. She is the only female listed among Jamaican national heroes, and has been immortalized in songs and legends. She was known for her exceptional leadership skills, which were particularly important in the First Maroon War in the early 1700s. For example, she planned guerrilla warfare that confused the British Empire. Her remains are buried at "Nanny Bump" in Moore Town, the main town of the Windward Maroons who are concentrated in and around the Rio Grande valley in the eastern parish of Portland.

To this day, the Maroons in Jamaica are to a large extent autonomous and separate from Jamaican culture. The isolation used to their advantage by their ancestors has today led to their communities being amongst the most inaccessible on the island. In their largest town, Accompong, in the parish of St. Elizabeth, the Leeward Maroons still possess a vibrant community of about 600. Tours of the village are offered to foreigners and a large festival is put on every January 6 to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty with the British after the Maroon War. ^[3][4]

A British governor signed a treaty promising the Maroons 2500 acres (10 km²) in two locations, because they presented a threat to the British. Also, some Maroons kept their freedom by agreeing to capture runaway slaves. They were paid two dollars for each slave returned.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Haïti

See Mawon.

[edit] Others

Similar Maroon communities emerged elsewhere in the Caribbean (St Vincent and Dominica for example), but none were seen as such a great threat to the British as the Jamaican Maroons.^[5] In Cuba, there were maroon communities in the mountains, where escaped slaves had joined refugee Taínos.^[6] Remnants of these communities remain to this day (2006) for example in Viñales.^[7]

[edit] South America

[edit] Suriname

The Boni Maroon Wars in Suriname by Wim S.M. Hoogbergen gives an overall picture of the interesting history of the Aluku or Boni in Surinam from their origins until 1860, using the archives of The Netherlands, France and Surinam. Presently they live along the Lawa River, the border river between Surinam and French Guiana, with about 2,000 people. They fled there after protracted warfare against the white planters and their colonial armies. Another author who wrote on the Boni-history is John Gabriel Stedman. Other Maroon tribes still found in Surinam are the Saramaka, the Paramakans, the Ndyuka or Aukan, the Kwinti and the Matawai.

By 1770 it was said that there were 5.000 or 6.000 Maroons. By 1863, at the abolition of slavery in Surinam, their number was about 10,000 (and 38,545 slaves). By 1972 the number of Maroons was 35,838, and in 2004 it was 72,553. That is 15% of the total Surinam population.

[edit] Brazil

One of the best-known quilombos was a Brazilian settlement/kingdom called Palmares (the Palm Nation) which was founded in the early 17th century by run-away slaves in the northeast of Brazil. At its height, it had a population of over 30,000 free people and was ruled by king Zumbi. Palmares lasted for almost 100 years as an independent nation until was eventually wiped out in 1694.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} "Sir Francis Drake Revived" in Voyages and Travels: Ancient and Modern. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14 paragraph 21
2. ^ "Sir Francis Drake Revived" in Voyages and Travels: Ancient and Modern. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14 paragraph 101
3. ^ ^{a b} Campbell, Mavis Christine (1988) The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal Bergin & Garvey, Granby, MA, ISBN 0-89789-148-1
4. ^ Edwards, Bryan (1796) "Observations on the disposition, character, manners, and habits of life, of the Maroon negroes of the island of Jamaica; |b an a detail of the origin, progress, and termination of the late war between those people and the white inhabitants." in Edwards, Bryan (1801) Historical Survey of the Island of Saint Domingo J. Stockdale, London, pp. 303-360;
5. ^ Edwards, Bryan (1801) Historical Survey of the Island of Saint Domingo J. Stockdale, London;
6. ^ Aimes, Hubert H. S. (1967) A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511 to 1868 Octagon Books, New York;
7. ^ "El Templo de los Cimarrones" Guerrillero:Pinar del Río in Spanish

[edit] References

• Daughters of the Dust, 1991, film by Julie Dash taking place in 1902 off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. It shows how, on an isolated island, a group of people manages to hold on to their Ibo customs and traditions. ISBN 0525941096
• Ganga Zumba, (1963), film by Carlos Diegues
• Quilombo, (1985), film by Carlos Diegues about Palmares, ASIN B0009WIE8E
• Hoogbergen, Wim S.M. Brill (1997) The Boni Maroon Wars in Suriname Academic Publishers, ISBN 90-04-09303-6
• Corzo, Gabino La Rosa (2003) Runaway Slave Settlements in Cuba: Resistance and Repression (translated by Mary Todd), University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, ISBN 0807828033
• De Granada, Germán (1970) Cimarronismo, palenques y Hablas “Criollas” en Hispanoamérica Instituto Caro y Cuero, Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia, OCLC 37821053 (in Spanish)
• van Velzen, H.U.E. Thoden and van Wetering, Wilhelmina (2004) In the Shadow of the Oracle: Religion as Politics in a Suriname Maroon Society Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois ISBN 1577663233
• Price, Richard (ed.) (1973) Maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the Americas Anchor Books, Garden City, N.Y., ISBN 0-385-06508-6
• Honychurch, Lennox (1995) The Dominica Story Macmillan, London, ISBN 0333627768 (Includes extensive chapters on the Maroons of Dominica)
• Thompson, Alvin O. (2006) Flight to freedom: African runaways and maroons in the Americas University of West Indies Press, Kingston, Jamaica, ISBN 9766401802
• Learning, Hugo Prosper (1995) Hidden Americans: Maroons of Virginia and the Carolinas Garland Publishing, New York, ISBN 0815315430
• Campbell, Mavis Christine (1988) The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796 : a history of resistance, collaboration & betrayal Bergin & Garvey, Granby, Mass., ISBN 0-89789-148-1

[edit] See also

• Gaspar Yanga
• Sranang Tongo
• Marie-Elena John
• Capoeira
• Zambo
• Black Seminoles
• Black Indians
• Afro-Latin American
• Maroon music
• Maroon music and teaching methods

[edit] External links

• Creativity and Resistance: Maroon Cultures in the Americas
• A good short history of the "Bush Negroes" of Suriname
• The Maroons, Hindustanis and others of Surinam