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Maroon Communities and Fugitive Networks

The landed, self-governing societies formed in the Americas by people who freed themselves from slavery, the colonial laws written to destroy them, and the wider traffic of fugitives that used colonial harbours and ships, held strictly apart from the sea-facing pirate havens with which they are commonly confused.

Also writtenMaroons; Marronage; Cimarrones; Fugitive communities; Runaway communities

The maroon communities were landed societies formed by people who freed themselves from slavery, and not the pirate havens they are confused with. The maroons did not write; they are known through the laws made to destroy them.

What a maroon community was

A maroon community proper was landed and self-governing: people who had freed themselves from slavery, holding defensible interior country and standing towards a colonial government in war or in treaty. Jamaica, Suriname, Hispaniola, Panama and Brazil all had them, and Jamaica's begin in 1655. The Earl of Inchiquin wrote from Jamaica that on 29 July 1690 all the enslaved people on Mr Salter's estate in the mountains in the middle of the island, more than five hundred of them to six or seven whites, broke out into rebellion, forced the dwelling house, killed the caretaker and seized fifty fusees and other arms with quantities of ammunition. Two hundred afterwards came in, and what with killed and wounded he looked upon the rebellion as over. How many stayed free the despatch does not say; later accounts give more than two hundred, or three to four hundred. That rising stands behind the island's most durable maroon polity.1

A pirate haven was none of those things: seaborne, temporary, fed by shipping, indefensible except by flight. Nassau dispersed within about two years of Woodes Rogers and the pardon; the maroons of 1690 were treated with as a power forty-nine years later. The statutes of the plantation colonies set one legislature against both flights, though no period source ties the two together. Sir Nicholas Lawes, whose governorship saw the prosecution of Rackham, Bonny and Read, arranged in 1720 with the Miskito king Jeremy for men to hunt runaways and maroons.

The word

English maroon descends through French from the Spanish cimarron, an adjective for untamed livestock that was later applied to people; the noun in the fugitive sense dates from the 1660s. Seamen took it elsewhere. The General History of 1724 prints John Phillips's articles with the book's own gloss "another Marrooner [that is, Pyrate,]", and reports that the men tried with Stede Bonnet at Charles Town in 1718 pleaded "that they were taken off a Maroon Shore". In neither does the word mean a maroon community; abandonment as a punishment has its own record under marooning.2

The Jamaican statute book

Jamaica's act of 1702 for raising parties authorised "four standing Parties", each of "a Captain, fourteen White Men and five Armed Slaves", with "the Sum of five Pounds for every Rebellious Slave which they shall kill or take alive". A party was thus, by statute, one quarter enslaved men under arms. The act of 1717 provided that a person enslaved who had been a year in the island and then stayed absent "for the Space of Thirty Days" might be punished "by cutting off one of the Feet of such Slave". An act of 1736, outside the period, names the other route out, fining a ship's master a hundred pounds for employing an enslaved man aboard without hiring him from the owner or holding a certificate: the same waterfront the act's title also closes to soldiers and servants.3

Atkins in the mountains

John Atkins, the naval surgeon, wrote of Jamaica that hundreds had run to the mountains, where they "commit little Robberies upon the defenceless and nearest Plantations", and that the parties sent against them "have 5 l. a Head for every one killed, and their Ears are a sufficient Warrant, for the next Justice to pay it". The five pounds is in the act of 1702 as well; the ears are in Atkins alone. He added that "Our latest Advices from Jamaica" report the maroons to "have chose a King, daily increase" and to be suspected of supply from Cuba. His book is of 1735, and the phrase marks news current then rather than in the pirates' years.4

Of Barbados, which has no interior, he wrote that the enslaved there were "yet not dangerous, because no Mountains to fly to".

The alliance question

Isaac Curtis has argued that maroons, pirates and commoners were interconnected movements of masterless people. The concrete Caribbean instances he offers are seventeenth-century. No surviving document records a pirate company of these years provisioning at, recruiting from or sheltering in a maroon community.5

Suriname, October 1712

One reported link inside the period runs the other way about. In October 1712 the French corsair Jacques Cassard bombarded the town and Fort Zeelandia in Suriname and took a ransom put at 2.4 million livres. Planters are said to have sent enslaved people into the forest for safekeeping, and over seven hundred stayed free rather than return, forming the first substantial Surinamese maroon community. Cassard freed nobody: he sailed for profit under a commission, and part of his ransom is reported to have been paid in enslaved people.6

The peace, and what it cost

The First Maroon War is dated to about 1728 to 1740, so Cudjoe, Nanny and Quao were not contemporaries of Blackbeard. The acts that confirmed the peace set its price: Cudjoe's people were to hold fifteen hundred acres "situate and lying between Trelawney town and the cockpits", and in exchange to send runaways to the nearest chief magistrate, who was to pay "the sum of ten shillings" for each. The Windward articles are dated 23 June 1739 in the act, and 23 December 1739 by the National Library of Jamaica. Every pirate settlement was gone within a few years; the maroon towns were granted land.7

The colony's own running account is what we do not have. The Colonial Office correspondence for Jamaica between 1690 and 1725, where any dealing between pirate vessels and maroon towns would surface, has not been read for this page. Cassard's Suriname ransom, with the seven hundred who stayed free, comes from Marcel van der Linden's study of the Okanisi rather than from the colonial papers.

What the evidence does not settle

Pirates and maroon communities

  • Whether any document links a named pirate company to a maroon communityUnverified

Cuba and the maroons

  • Whether Cuba supplied the maroons with powder and arms

Cudjoe's articles date

  • The circulating 1738 date may be the Old Style year

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The Jamaican rising of 1690 that stands behind the island's most durable maroon community is reported in the contemporary record with details that differ from those usually given. The Earl of Inchiquin wrote from Jamaica on 31 August 1690 that on the 29th of July last all the negroes on Mr Salter's estate in the mountains in the middle of the island broke out into rebellion, to the number of more than five hundred, forced the dwelling house, killed the caretaker and seized fifty fusees and other arms with quantities of ammunition; that there were but six or seven whites in that plantation to five hundred negroes; and that after skirmishes and pursuit, and two hundred coming in, what with killed and wounded the rebellion was looked upon as over. The date of 31 July, the name Sutton, the parish of Clarendon, and the figures of more than two hundred or of three to four hundred left permanently free are not carried by the despatch. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Colonial state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 13, 1689-1692, ed. J W Fortescue (London, 1901), read on British History Online: no. 1,041, Earl of Inchiquin to Lords of Trade and Plantations, Jamaica, 31 August 1690, pp. 316-317: "On the 29th July last all the negroes on Mr. Salter's estate in the mountains in the middle of the Island broke out into rebellion, to the number of more than five hundred, forced the dwelling house, killed the caretaker and seized fifty fusees and other arms with quantities of ammunition"; "There were but six or seven whites in that plantation to five hundred negroes"; "Since my writing, two hundred negroes have come in altogether so that, what with killed and wounded, we look upon the rebellion as over"
  2. In Golden Age pirate usage the word maroon meant abandonment, or a pirate, rather than a self-freed community: the General History of 1724 prints John Phillips's articles with the book's own gloss "another Marrooner [that is, Pyrate,]" and records that the men tried with Stede Bonnet at Charles Town in 1718 pleaded "that they were taken off a Maroon Shore", and no verified period usage in that book refers to a maroon community. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates, second edition, London, printed for T. Warner, 1724
  3. A Jamaican act of 1702 authorised "four standing Parties", each of "a Captain, fourteen White Men and five Armed Slaves", with "the Sum of five Pounds for every Rebellious Slave which they shall kill or take alive", and a Jamaican act of 1717 provided that a person enslaved who had been "one whole Year in this Island" and then remained absent "for the Space of Thirty Days" might be punished "by cutting off one of the Feet of such Slave". Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Colonial statutes: An Act for the more effectual raising Parties, to pursue and destroy Rebellious and Runaway Slaves, Assembly of Jamaica, 1702; An Act for the more effectual punishing of Crimes committed by Slaves, Assembly of Jamaica, 1717, section V; both transcribed in Laws of Enslavement and Freedom, University of New Brunswick Libraries
  4. John Atkins wrote of Jamaica that "many hundreds of them have at different times run to the Mountains, where they associate and commit little Robberies upon the defenceless and nearest Plantations", that the parties sent against them "have 5 l. a Head for every one killed, and their Ears are a sufficient Warrant, for the next Justice to pay it", and that "Our latest Advices from Jamaica" reported the maroons to "have chose a King, daily increase" and to be suspected of supply with powder and arms from Cuba, a report his own phrase marks as news current at the time of writing and which cannot therefore be dated to his voyage of 1721 to 1723. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative: John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies; in His Majesty's ships, the Swallow and Weymouth, London, 1735; A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies
  5. No period document has been identified recording a pirate company of the years 1690 to 1725 provisioning at, recruiting from or sheltering in a maroon community, and the concrete Caribbean instances offered for the argument that maroons and pirates formed a common front of masterless people are seventeenth century. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative and modern scholarship: A General History of the Pyrates (1724); John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea (1735); the Jamaican session laws transcribed by the University of New Brunswick Libraries; Isaac Curtis, Masterless People: Maroons, Pirates, and Commoners, in The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples (2011)
  6. The French corsair Jacques Cassard attacked Suriname in October 1712 and left with a ransom stated at 2.4 million French livres, part of it paid in enslaved people, and more than seven hundred enslaved people whom planters had sent into the forest for safekeeping during the attack remained free rather than return, forming the first substantial Surinamese maroon community. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Modern scholarship: Marcel van der Linden, The Okanisi: A Surinamese Maroon Community, c.1712 to 2010, International Review of Social History 60, 3 (2015)
  7. The Jamaican act of 1739 confirming Cudjoe's articles granted his people "all the lands situate and lying between Trelawney town and the cockpits, to the amount of fifteen hundred acres", and obliged them to send runaways to the chief magistrate of the nearest parish, who was directed to pay "the sum of ten shillings" for each; the articles confirmed by the act of 1740 for the Windward maroons are dated 23 June 1739 in that act, while the National Library of Jamaica gives 23 December 1739, and the difference is unresolved. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Colonial statutes and a national library history note: The Jamaican acts of 1739 and 1740 confirming the articles executed with Cudjoe and with Quao, transcribed in Laws of Enslavement and Freedom, University of New Brunswick Libraries; National Library of Jamaica history note, The Jamaican Maroons