Maroons
and islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery, through flight or manumission, and lived in independent settlements, were referred to as maroons in English, and as cimarrones in Spanish America. The English word "maroon" likely derives from the Spanish word "cimarron".
Maroon communities were a threat to plantation societies. It was difficult for colonial authorities to eradicate Maroon communities, because they were often hidden in remote environments. Maroons also frequently utilized guerrilla warfare to defend their settlements. This created a constant state of conflict with authorities, where Maroons would sometimes be used as allies by enemies attacking a colony. Sometimes, Maroons would also function as trading partners with remote settlers or Natives.
Maroon settlements often created unique cultures, separate from greater society. Communities sometimes developed Creole languages by mixing European tongues with African languages, creating languages like Saramaccan in Suriname. On other occasions, Maroons would adopt creolized variations of a local European language as a common tongue.
Sometimes Maroons mixed with Indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as peoples like the Garifuna and the Mascogos.
Etymology
Maroon entered English around the 1590s, from the French adjective marron, meaning 'feral' or 'fugitive', possibly from the American Spanish word cimarrón, meaning 'wild, unruly' or 'runaway slave'. In the early 1570s, Sir Francis Drake's raids on the Spanish in Panama were aided by "Symerons", a likely misspelling of cimarrón. Linguist Leo Spitzer writes in the journal Language, "If there is a connection between Eng. maroon, Fr. marron, and Sp. cimarrón, Spain probably gave the word directly to England."Cuban philologist José Juan Arrom has traced the origins of the word maroon further than the Spanish cimarrón, used first in Hispaniola to refer to feral cattle, then to Indian slaves who escaped to the hills, and by the early 1530s to African slaves who did the same. He proposes that the American Spanish word derives ultimately from the Arawakan root word simarabo, construed as 'fugitive' by the Taíno people native to the island.
History
Colonial era
As early as 1512 New World African slaves escaped from Spanish captors and either joined Indigenous peoples or eked out a living on their own. When runaway slaves and Amerindians banded together and subsisted independently they were called "Maroons". On the Caribbean islands, they formed bands as well as armed camps.The earliest Maroon communities of the Americas formed in what is now the Dominican Republic, following the first slave rebellion on 26 December 1522, on the sugar plantations of Admiral Diego Columbus. A typical Maroon community in the early stages usually consisted of three types of people:
- Most of them were slaves who ran away directly after they got off the ships. They refused to surrender their freedom and often tried to find ways to go back to Africa.
- Some were slaves who had been working on plantations for a while. Those slaves were usually somewhat adjusted to the slave system but had been abused by the plantation owners – often with excessive brutality. Others ran away when they were being sold suddenly to a new owner.
- Some were skilled slaves with particularly strong opposition to the slave system.
By the 18th century many early Maroon communities had disappeared or were displaced from the smaller islands. Survival was always difficult, as the Maroons had to fight off attackers as well as grow food.
Relationship to colonial authorities
Marronage was a constant threat to New World slavocracies. Punishments for recaptured Maroons were severe, like removing the Achilles tendon, amputating a leg, castration, and being roasted to death. Maroon communities had to be inaccessible and located in inhospitable environments to be sustainable. For example, Maroon communities were established in remote swamps in the southern United States; in deep canyons with sinkholes but little water or fertile soil in Jamaica; and in the deep jungles of the Guianas. Maroon communities turned the severity of their environments to their advantage to hide and defend their communities. Disguised pathways, false trails, booby traps, underwater paths, quagmires and quicksand, and natural features were all used to conceal Maroon villages.Maroons utilised exemplary guerrilla warfare skills to fight their European enemies. Nanny, the famous Jamaican Maroon, used guerrilla warfare tactics that are also used today by many militaries around the world. European troops used strict and established strategies while Maroons attacked and retracted quickly, used ambush tactics, and fought when and where they wanted to. Even though colonial governments were in a state of conflict with the Maroon communities, individuals in the colonial system traded goods and services with them. Maroons also traded with isolated white settlers and Native American communities. Maroon communities played interest groups off of one another. At the same time, Maroon communities were also used as pawns when colonial powers clashed. Secrecy and loyalty of members were crucial to the survival of Maroon communities. To ensure this loyalty, Maroon communities used severe methods to protect against desertion and spies. New members were brought to communities by way of detours so they could not find their way back and served probationary periods, often as slaves. Crimes such as desertion and adultery were punishable by death.Maroon wars
Maroon communities emerged in many places in the Caribbean, but none were seen as such a great threat to the British as the Jamaican Maroons. Beginning in the late 17th century, Jamaican Maroons consistently fought British colonists, leading to the First Maroon War. In 1739 and 1740, the British governor of the Colony of Jamaica, Edward Trelawny, signed treaties promising the Jamaican Maroons in two locations, at Cudjoe's Town in western Jamaica and Crawford's Town in eastern Jamaica, to bring an end to the warfare between the communities. In exchange, they were to agree to capture other escaped slaves. They were initially paid a bounty of two dollars for each African returned. The treaties effectively freed the Maroons a century before the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which came into effect in 1838.The Second Maroon War of 1795–1796 was an eight-month conflict between the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town 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.
Modern era
Remnants of Maroon communities in the former Spanish Caribbean exist as of 2006, for example in Viñales, Cuba. To this day, the Jamaican Maroons are to a significant extent autonomous and separate from Jamaican society. The physical isolation used to their advantage by their ancestors has today led to their communities remaining among 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 6 January to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty with the British after the First Maroon War.The Ndyuka treaty remains important to relations between the Ndyuka and the modern Surinamese government, as it defines the territorial rights of the Maroons in the gold-rich inlands of Suriname.
Culture
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. Outside of the plantation system, Maroons were also freer to share, retain and adapt various African, European and Indigenous traditions and cultures, resulting in diverse Maroon identities. The Jamaican Maroons, for example, have been recorded using the Coromantee language for ceremonial purpose and retain certain herbal medicine practices similar to West African traditions.The jungles around the Caribbean offered food, shelter, and isolation for the escaped slaves. Maroons sustained themselves by growing vegetables and hunting. Their survival depended upon their cultures and their military abilities, using guerrilla tactics and heavily fortified dwellings involving traps and diversions. Some defined leaving the community as desertion and therefore punishable by death. They also originally raided plantations. During these attacks, the Maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slave masters, 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 important roles in the histories of Brazil, Suriname, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Jamaica.
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. At other times, the Maroons would adopt variations of a local European language as a common tongue, for members of the community frequently spoke a variety of mother tongues.
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 of them moved to cities and towns as the process of urbanization accelerates.