The Maroon culture of endurance.

• Author: Reidell, Heidi
• Position: History of Jamaica's runaway slaves

The History of Jamacia's runaway Maroons is as old as the history of slavery in the Americas. Maroons, from the Spanish "cimmaron", meaning wild or untamed, existed wherever slavery did. But only in Jamaica, where courage, cunning and audacious guerilla tactics couples with a forbidding terrain, did Maroons evade capture for nearly a century and force the enactment of a treaty which, like the Maroon culture, still exists after two hundred fifty years.

Columbus suggested to King Ferdinand in the first letter from his voyage of discovery, "I can bring slaves that are captured people, as many as are wanted." Disease and overwork killed many of the peaceable, indigenous Arawaks. Others hanged themselves, drank poisonous cassava juice, murdered and aborted their children rathen than be enslaved. A few, the first Maroons, escaped into the craggy hills.

When Penn and Venable's fleet of 38 ships with 8,000 men entered Kingston Harbor in 1665, African slavery had passed its first century. Jamaica's last Spanish official, a fifth generation Jamaican born Don Cristoval Arnaldo Ysasi, gathered slaves whose masters had fled, promised them clothes, money and freedom and hastily trained and armed them to harass the British while he gathered reinforcements from Cuba.

British Major General Sedgewick recognized the Marron threat in his first year in Jamaica. "Of the Blacks there are many who are like to prove thorns and pricks in our sides," he predicted. "They will be a great discouragement to the settling of a people here."

After two unsuccessful attempts by the Spanish to retake Jamaica, the British also promised freedom and money to the Maroons. A small group, led by Juan Lubola (Juan de Bolas) accepted and was trained as a black regiment.

The Maroons' alliance with the British dashed any remaining hopes Ysasi had of reclaiming his homeland. "This was very serious news," Ysasi reported. "All these negroes are very capable and experienced, not only as to the roads but as to all the mountains and most remote places, are hunters and handy for everything."

General Sedgewick was relieved to have some Maroons on his side. "The negroes are now become our bloodhounds, and they are in our behalf more violent and fierce against their fellows than we can possibly be." Recalcitrant Marrons proved Sedgewick's point by waylaying Lubola and hacking him to pieces. "As we grew secure, they grew bold and bloddy," Sedgewick lamented.

From their remote mountain retreats, the Maroons needed no Paul Revere to inform them the British were coming. Clad in highly visible, heavy European uniforms, lumbered with weapons and supplies, the soldiers marched noisily and single file to their doom. "Sick, lame and almost starved," they managed barely five miles per day.

The mournful note of the abeng, a cured cow horn instrument, and gombay drum signals relayed up the steep mountain passes, gave the rebels ample time to prepare their speciality: the ambush. Many a frightened soldier found to his horror that the small tree trembling in the distance was suddenly at his side with a cutlass at his throat. The Maroons had mystery, surprise and fear on their side, especially fear of the African practice of Obeah, an "Occult science" which...