In 1690, a large number of Akan freedom fighters already living in the mountains launched an assault on the Sutton's Estate in Clarendon, central Jamaica, free between 300 and 400 enslaved people. They established a new town of Free black people in Jamaica, in the forested mountains of the island's interior, in the Cockpit Country.[2] Naquan, Cudjoe's father, was allegedly the one who orchestrated this rebellion. Naquan was succeeded by Cudjoe, the first leader of this group of Jamaican Maroons in western Jamaica.[3]
Cudjoe's Town
This town was eventually named after Cudjoe, who according to Maroon oral history is the son of Naquan. Cudjoe was the Maroon warrior who led them into battle during the First Maroon War in the 1730s.[4]
The Maroons of Cudjoe's Town, known as Leeward Maroons, fought the British colonial forces to a standstill in the 1730s, until Governor Edward Trelawny felt compelled to offer Cudjoe a peace treaty. After some initial suspicion, Cudjoe signed the treaty in 1739, reportedly at Petty River Bottom, near the present-day village of Flagstaff.[5] However, the Maroons of Accompong Town believe that the treaty was signed by Cudjoe in their Maroon town.
The Maroon town eventually became known to the colonial authorities as Trelawny Town.[6] The 1739 treaty initially only recognised the existence of Cudjoe's Town, which they called Trelawny Town, and failed to identify Accompong Town as another Maroon town that fell under Cudjoe's jurisdiction.[7]
Trelawny Town
Trelawny Town was located in the Saint James Parish, Jamaica, not Trelawny. The town and the parish were both named after Governor Trelawny. After the treaty of 1739, both the colonial authorities, generals and Maroons gradually stopped calling it Cudjoe's Town, and started to call it Trelawny Town. Trelawny Town's population grew from 276 in 1740 to 362 in 1770, to 594 in 1788.[8]
In 1758, a Trelawny Town captain named Furry built houses on the land belonging to a St James planter, and Governor Roger Hope Elletson forced Furry and his followers to vacate the land, and return to Trelawny Town, in return for financial compensation from the Jamaican Assembly. In 1770, Furry complained that he and his men never received the promised financial compensation, after which the Assembly eventually paid the outstanding £150. The length of these delays contributed to rising discontent in Trelawny Town.[9]
Leeward Maroons from Trelawny Town helped the colonial authorities to put down the rebellions of Tacky and Apongo between 1760-6, and were financially rewarded for their assistance.[10]
Second Maroon War
1801 aquatint of a maroon raid on the Dromilly estate, Jamaica, during the Second Maroon War of 1795–6.
Because of their population growth, in the second half of the eighteenth century, there were a number of land disputes between Trelawny Town and neighbouring planters. When the Assembly sided with the planters in these disputes, the tension that occurred as a result exploded in the form of the Second Maroon War of 1795–6.[11] When Trelawny Town was ruled by the white superintendents father-and-son team of John James and John Montague James, they were able to quell these disputes. However, when the Jamaican Assembly dismissed the James family, and appointed the inexperienced Thomas Craskell as superintendent, then Maroon colonel Montague James took control of Trelawny Town, and dismissed Craskell from his post.[12]
The Second Maroon War of 1795-6 was sparked when the magistrate of Montego Bay unwisely ordered that two Trelawny Town Maroons, one named Peter Campbell, be flogged by slaves for stealing two pigs. This action outraged the Maroons of Trelawny Town, and led to Montague James ousting Craskell, and renewing calls for more land, and the reinstatement of his friend, John James, as superintendent.[13] The casualties suffered by the colonial militias were higher than those suffered by the Maroons. In the first two weeks of the conflict, the Maroons of Trelawny Town had killed 65 British soldiers without any Maroon death reported. Throughout the entire conflict, one general complained that the colonial forces had killed less than 32 Maroons and their allies. Recent research shows that the colonial militias were only able to kill about 16 Trelawnys. The Maroon warriors also laid waste to a number of sugar estates in western Jamaica.[14]
Hundreds of runaway slaves secured their freedom by fighting alongside Trelawny Town. They formed independent communities first under Cuffee (Jamaica), and then at Me-no-Sen-You-no-Come.[15]
However, the Maroons of Trelawny Town were unable to maintain their guerrilla campaign during the drought months, and Colonel George Walpole employed a scorched-earth policy, backed up by the importation of hunting dogs. By 22 December Walpole was able to persuade Montague James and his Maroon lieutenants, including Major Jarrett, Charles Samuels and Andrew Smith, to come to terms.[16][17]
Walpole promised the Maroons that they would not be transported off the island if they laid down their arms, and the Trelawny Town warriors agreed to submit to terms. However, the governor, Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, exploited a loophole to reverse Walpole's promise, and he promptly arranged for the deportation of just under 600 Trelawny Town Maroons to Nova Scotia, where they became Black Nova Scotians.[18][19]
Trelawny Town in Exile
As many as 58 Trelawny Town Maroons avoided deportation to Nova Scotia, and they remained in Jamaica, some settling in Accompong Town, while others merged with the free black population. The Second Maroon War proved costly to the colonial authorities, and in an attempt to recoup their losses, the Jamaica Assembly auctioned off most of the 1,500 acres belonging to Trelawny Town.[20]
The Maroons were unhappy with the conditions of their exile in Nova Scotia, and they regularly petitioned the British government to be relocated to another colony. In 1800, the British government eventually agreed to transport the Trelawny Maroons to Sierra Leone, where they helped to suppress a rebellion by the Black Nova Scotians. As a reward, the Sierra Leone colonial authorities granted the Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone the best houses and land, which originally belonged to the Black Nova Scotians.[21]
After the Second Maroon War, the colonial authorities converted Trelawny Town into a military barracks, and renamed it Maroon Town, Jamaica. The Trelawny Maroons flourished in Sierra Leone at first, but their situation soon soured, and they submitted petitions to British government, asking for permission to return to Jamaica. These petitions were turned down.[22]
However, in 1831, another petition was presented by 224 Sierra Leone Maroons to the British government, and this time the Jamaican authorities relented. They responded by saying they would place no obstacle in the way of Maroons returning to Jamaica, but would not pay any passage or the purchase of lands in the island.[23]
The Returned Maroons of Flagstaff
After slavery was abolished in 1838, the Jamaican colonial authorities imported labourers from Sierra Leone, and among that number were a small number of Trelawny Town Maroons. These Returned Maroons established themselves in nearby Flagstaff, and their descendants are still there today.[24]
In 1839, the first Maroons made their way from Sierra Leone to Jamaica. Mary Brown and her family, which included her daughter Sarah McGale and a Spanish son-in-law, sold off their property in Sierra Leone, bought a schooner, and set sail for Jamaica. They were joined by two other Sierra Leone Maroons, Mary Ricketts and her daughter Jane Bryan. In 1841, this group found their way to Trelawny Town, now called Maroon Town, but which they still insisted on calling Cudjoe's Town.[25]
Brown, Ricketts and their families petitioned the Jamaican Assembly, pointing out they had used up all their resources in returning to their homeland, and requested financial assistance in purchasing the property of their ancestors. However, their request was ignored by the Jamaican Assembly, so Brown, Ricketts and their families settled on land near Maroon Town, contributing to the establishment of the village of Flagstaff. Their descendants, the Returned Maroons, still live there today.[26]
In 1841, the first ship to arrive in Sierra Leone looking for African workers was the Hector, and several Maroons were so desperate to leave Sierra Leone that they did not wait for the ship to dock, but rowed out to meet it in their canoes. In all, 64 Maroons left Sierra Leone for Jamaica on the Hector alone. Most Sierra Leone Maroons lived in Freetown, and between 1837 and 1844, Freetown's Maroon population shrank from 650 to 454, suggesting that about 200 made their way back to Jamaica.[27]
As many as one-third of the Maroons in Sierra Leone returned to Jamaica in the 1840s.[28] Among those who returned was Peter Campbell, whose flogging by the authorities of Montego Bay sparked the Second Maroon War.[29]
Some historians believe that the Returned Maroons were absorbed into existing Maroon towns. However, Returned Maroon oral historians describe how many of their ancestors landed at Lucea, Jamaica, working on the canefields of Westmoreland Parish, as well as Hampden and Long Pond in Trelawny, before eventually settling in Flagstaff. In the 1840s, Nancy Gardner Prince, an American traveller, met several of these Returned Maroons.[30][31][32]
In 1905, visitors to Maroon Town observed some Returned Maroons from nearby Flagstaff hunting wild hogs.[33][34]
However, the numbers of people identifying as Maroons in Sierra Leone continued to decline after the Returned Maroon migration to Jamaica. In 2011, representatives of Flagstaff travelled to Maroon Town, Sierra Leone to re-establish connections.[35][36]
Accompong is a historical Maroon village located in the hills of St. Elizabeth Parish on the island of Jamaica. It is located in Cockpit Country, where Jamaican Maroons and indigenous Taíno established a fortified stronghold in the hilly terrain in the 17th century. They defended it and maintained independence from the Spanish and then later the British, after the colony changed hands.
Queen Nanny, Granny Nanny, or Nanny of the Maroons ONH, was an early-18th-century freedom fighter and leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly-enslaved escapee slaves, the majority of them West African in descent, called the Windward Maroons, along with their children and families. At the beginning of the 18th century, under the leadership of Nanny, the Windward Maroons fought a guerrilla war lasting many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica, in what became known as the First Maroon War.
The First Maroon War was a conflict between the Jamaican Maroons and the colonial British authorities that started around 1728 and continued until the peace treaties of 1739 and 1740. It was led by Indigenous Nubian's born to the land who helped liberate Africans to set up communities in the mountains who were coming off of slave ships. The name "Maroon" was given to these Africans, and for many years they fought the British colonial Government of Jamaica for their freedom. The maroons were very skilled, particularly in guerrilla warfare. It was followed about half a century later by the Second Maroon War.
The Second Maroon War of 1795–1796 was an eight-month conflict between the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town, a Maroon settlement later renamed after Governor Edward Trelawny at the end of First Maroon War, located near Trelawny Parish, Jamaica in the St James Parish, and the British colonials who controlled the island. The Windward communities of Jamaican Maroons remained neutral during this rebellion and their treaty with the British still remains in force. Accompong Town, however, sided with the colonial militias, and fought against Trelawny Town.
Cockpit Country is an area in Trelawny and Saint Elizabeth, Saint James, Saint Ann, Manchester and the northern tip of Clarendon parishes, mostly within the west-central side, of Jamaica. The land is marked by lush, montane forests and steep-sided valleys and hollows, as deep as 120 metres (390 ft) in places, separated by conical hills and ridges.
Cattawood Springs is a place in Portland Parish, Jamaica located at latitude 18 04' 00", longitude 76 26' 00".
Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery in the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern parishes. Africans who were enslaved during Spanish rule over Jamaica (1493–1655) may have been the first to develop such refugee communities.
Major John Jarrett was a Jamaican Maroon leader of the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town in Jamaica. He was most likely named after a neighbouring planter with a similar surname.
The Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone were a group of just under 600 Jamaican Maroons from Cudjoe's Town, the largest of the five Jamaican maroon towns who were deported by the British authorities in Jamaica following the Second Maroon War in 1796, first to Nova Scotia. Four years later in 1800, they were transported to Sierra Leone.
Maroon Town is a settlement in Jamaica. It has a population of 3122 as of 2009.
Moore Town is a Maroon settlement located in the Blue Mountains and John Crow Mountains of Portland, Jamaica, accessible by road from Port Antonio. The easternmost Maroon town, Moore Town is located in the eastern end of the parish. Formerly known as New Nanny Town, Moore Town was founded in 1740 when the Peace Treaty was signed between the British colonial authorities and the Windward Maroons. This treaty allotted the Moore Town Maroons 1000 acres, but Moore Town only received 500. In 1781 the initial 500 acres was augmented with another 500 acres, taking their communal land up to 1,000 acres.
Cudjoe, Codjoe or Captain Cudjoe, sometimes spelled Cudjo – corresponding to the Akan day name Kojo, Codjoe or Kwadwo – was a Maroon leader in Jamaica during the time of Nanny of the Maroons. In Twi, Cudjoe or Kojo is the name given to a boy born on a Monday. He has been described as "the greatest of the Maroon leaders."
Major-General The Honourable George Walpole, was a British soldier and politician. He gained distinction after suppressing the Maroon insurrection in Jamaica in 1795. After entering Parliament in 1797, he served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1806 to 1807 in the Ministry of All the Talents headed by Lord Grenville.
Montague James was a Maroon leader of Cudjoe's Town in the last decade of eighteenth-century Jamaica. It is possible that Maroon colonel Montague James took his name from the white superintendent of Trelawny Town, John Montague James.
Cuffee was an escaped slave in Jamaica who led other runaway slaves to form a community of free black people in Jamaica in the island's forested interior, and they raided white plantation owners at the end of the eighteenth century. The name Cuffee is a variation of the Twi Akan name Kofi, which is the name given to a boy born on a Friday.
Charles Samuels was a maroon officer from Cudjoe's Town, and he was the brother of Captain Andrew Smith. Both officers reported to Colonel Montague James, the leader of Trelawny Town.
Andrew Smith was a Maroon officer from Cudjoe's Town. His brother, Charles Samuels, was also an officer from Trelawny Town, and both officers reported to Colonel Montague James.
Crawford's Town was one of the two main towns belonging to the Windward Maroons, who fought a guerrilla war of resistance against the British colonial forces of Jamaica during the First Maroon War of the 1730s.
Charles Town is one of four official towns of the Jamaican Maroons. It is located on Buff Bay River in Portland Parish.
Free black people in Jamaica fell into two categories. Some secured their freedom officially, and lived within the slave communities of the Colony of Jamaica. Others ran away from slavery, and formed independent communities in the forested mountains of the interior. This latter group included the Jamaican Maroons, and subsequent fugitives from the sugar and coffee plantations of coastal Jamaica.
References
↑ Bev Carey, The Maroon Story: The Authentic and Original History of the Maroons in the History of Jamaica 1490-1880 (Kingston, Jamaica: Agouti Press, 1997), pp. 413-423.
↑ C.V. Black, History of Jamaica (London: Collins, 1975), p. 84.
↑ Milton McFarlane, Cudjoe the Maroon (London: Allison & Busby, 1977), p. 24.
↑ Mavis Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796: a History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1988), pp. 88-118.
↑ Simon Schama, Rough Crossings (London: BBC Books, 2002), p. 382.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, 2020), pp. 17-18.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, 2020), p. 18.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", p. 18.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", pp. 18-19.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", p. 18.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, 2020), p. 21.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", pp. 13, 18, 21.
↑ Daniel Schafer, The Maroons of Jamaica: African slave rebels in the Caribbean, PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota (1974), p. 210.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", p. 21.
↑ Nancy Prince, A Narrative of the Life and Travels, of Mrs Nancy Prince (Boston: 1850), p. 54.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", p. 22.
↑ Frank Cundall, Historic Jamaica (London: West India Committee, 1915) Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, (2020), p. 335.
↑ Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", p. 22.
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