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‘A brave and loyal people’:
the role of the Maroons in the Morant Bay Rebellion
in 1865.
by Joy Lumsden MA (Cantab), PhD (UWI)
In the late 1730s the two groups of Maroons in Jamaica both signed treaties with the British authorities committing them to assist the Jamaican government in maintaining law and order, and the security of the island. They agreed to return runaway slaves, help to put down slave rebellions and defend the island against foreign invasion. In exchange the Jamaican government guaranteed the Maroons their freedom, possession of certain lands, and a special relationship with the government through White officials permanently resident in the Maroon towns. By and large both sides abided by the terms of these treaties, and even after the general emancipation of the slaves had changed the status of the Black population in general, the Maroons still believed that they had a special relationship with the British authorities. When the troubles broke out in St Thomas in October 1865, the Windward Maroons of the Maroon towns in the eastern parishes of the island rallied to the support of the colonial authorities apparently without any reservations.[1]
The actions and attitudes of the Maroons over more than a century, from 1738 to 1865, have caused much debate, often at a very emotional level, among certain sections of the public, and even on occasions within the academic community. The Maroons have often been identified as ‘freedom fighters’ on account of their struggles against the Colonial Government in Jamaica before the treaties of 1738/9. Their struggle at that period is seen as part of a wider Black struggle against White colonial oppression. However, the Maroons’ almost totally consistent fulfillment of their treaty obligations has made it difficult, if not impossible, for advocates of a ‘freedom fighter’ hypothesis to explain and justify Maroon actions during the greater part of their history. No events have been more unpalatable than the Maroon refusal to support the ‘rebels’ in St Thomas, and their enthusiastic co-operation with Government forces in the suppression of the ‘Rebellion’ and the capture of the leader, Paul Bogle.[2]
Some writers have already attempted to modify the ‘freedom fighter’ image of the Maroons, and there is need for further objective consideration of the actions and motives of the Maroons, both before and after the signing of the treaties. Without such a fresh approach, further discussion of the role of the Maroons will only involve re-iteration of previous debates about the ‘treachery’ and ‘perfidy’ of a group of people who have from another viewpoint been described as ‘a brave and loyal people’. Here an attempt will be made to review the involvement of the Maroons in the events of 1865, and to set that involvement, briefly, into the context of the whole history of the Maroons and their relationship to the British colonial system.[3]
There can be no doubt that during the 18th century the Maroons, starting with the leader of the Leeward Maroons in the First Maroon War, Cudjoe himself, enthusiastically carried out their treaty obligations. In the September of 1739, the year in which the treaties were signed, Cudjoe volunteered Maroon assistance against the Spaniards in the newly declared war between Britain and Spain. In 1742 he ruthlessly suppressed a threatened uprising of dissident Maroons, and slaves from a plantation near Trelawny Town; when the Governor pardoned men who had been handed over to the colonial courts and sentenced to death or transportation, Cudjoe demanded their return and authorized the carrying out of the sentences himself.[4]
Later in the 18th century the Maroons were involved in other operations in conjunction with the Jamaican government forces. They were involved in the suppression of Tacky’s rebellion in 1760 in St Mary, and the Windward Maroons seem to have played a significant role in this operation. The Maroons of Scotts Hall, Charles Town and Moore Town received ‘228l. 4s. 4½d.’ for their part in the suppression of this and other episodes of unrest in the eastern parishes. Rewards of freedom, annuities and silver badges were given to slaves who had also aided in putting down the rebellion. In the previous year two women, Sarah, a slave belonging to John Bell, and Mimba, a Maroon from Charles Town, were rewarded for killing a rebel slave leader called Ancouma, who had abducted them. Sarah received her freedom, and an annuity of 5l for life, and Mimba received 10l per annum for life. The Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica record these payments year after year, presumably until the women’s deaths. It was not only Maroons, or men, who took part in operations against rebellious slaves.
In 1779-80 the Maroons were called upon to help defend the island against possible French invasion, but their services were not needed since the French were defeated by Admiral Rodney. In December of that year Lewis Hallam petitioned the Assembly for money to pay for the repairs to the play-house in Kingston where the Maroons had been quartered, since ‘they pulled to pieces and destroyed many parts of the said house; also the machinery and necessary furniture belonging thereto.’ Other accounts of Maroon involvement in military operations of various sorts indicate the expense involved in keeping them in the field, and the payments for Maroon parties were a regular and substantial item in the Assembly’s annual accounts.[5]
The only occasion when the Maroons’ loyalty to their treaty obligations was called into doubt was at the time of the Second Maroon War in 1795. On this occasion the Trelawny Town Maroons, for what seemed to them good reasons, took up arms against the Jamaican government, but their neighbours from Accompong assisted government forces assiduously in the campaign against the rebels. The Windward Maroons were apparently much more ambivalent; the Scotts Hall people kept out of the conflict, while the Moore Town Maroons were rumoured to be inclined to support the rebels. The men from Charles Town having been summoned to active service, disappeared back home, and later had to make a rather humiliating gesture of submission and reassertion of their loyalty. They agreed to a declaration that their disobedience had been due to fear and not to any rebellious intentions! When matters had settled down after the disturbing events of 1795-6, the Maroons seem on the whole to have returned to their previous policy of full co-operation with the authorities. It is important to note that throughout there were Free Black and Coloured men, as well as slaves, involved in operations against runaways and rebels; the Maroons were not the only ones of their race who threw in their lot with the Jamaican colonial authorities.[6]
The next major operation in which the Maroons were involved was the suppression of the slave revolt in St James at Christmas 1831, known as the Baptist War. The leaders of the proposed uprising had tried to persuade the Accompong Maroons at least to refrain from opposing the slaves who were in revolt, even if they would not join them, but their emissary was turned over to the authorities. He and his guide were promptly tried, and executed. By December 31 Maroons were arming and offering their services to assist in putting down the uprising. In mid-January 1832 a contingent of 107 Windward Maroons arrived at Falmouth by sea from Port Antonio and were used ‘to scour the woods’ as part of the general mopping up operations. These men were from Moore Town and Charles Town, and were led by the White superintendent of Charles Town, Captain Fyfe. They were considered effective and enthusiastic fighters, and their use seemed a valuable opportunity of reinforcing their loyalty at a critical time. This would appear to be the last occasion on which the Maroons took part in any significant operations under the regime of slavery. The abolition of slavery in 1834, and the ending of the apprenticeship period in 1838 brought about a fundamental change in the relationships within Jamaican society, and, in theory at least, ended any special status that the Maroons had been given by their treaties with the British. The Maroons, however, did not readily accept such a change.
In 1842 the Jamaican Assembly passed an act, which was ratified by the British government, placing the Maroons on the same legal footing as all other British subjects in Jamaica. This act, the Maroon Lands Allotment Act, took away the distinctive features of the Maroons’ status. They no longer had special obligations in dealing with internal and external threats, generous reimbursement for their work on local roads would no longer be awarded, their corporate ownership of their lands was to end, and the special representatives of the government in the Maroon towns were to be withdrawn. The major benefit of the act was supposedly that the Maroons were no longer confined to their towns, but as this restriction had long been honoured more in the breach than the observance, the ‘benefit’ was of little importance. The main effect of the Act was to deprive the Maroons of their two main sources of income; from the parties to deal with internal unrest, and from road building and maintenance. It is hardly surprising that the Maroons refused to accept this Act, the terms of which had been settled without any consultation with them.
The Maroons at the time, and, to a large extent, ever since, have maintained that the 1842 Act could not abrogate their treaties of 1739. They resisted the instructions to divide their lands into individual plots, and they appear to have maintained friendly relationships with the White men who had been the government representatives in the towns. In no way were they prepared to accept that they had now become ordinary British subjects, like the rest of the White, Coloured and Black population, which included the newly-freed slaves. They still considered themselves to be a special people, with a distinctive relationship with the British authorities.
Little research seems to have been done on the Maroon communities in the immediate post-Emancipation period, and material is probably very limited. Working backwards from later attitudes, it seems reasonable to assume that the Maroons wished to continue to assert their special status in any way that remained open to them. In the past they had shown little inclination to join in with planned slave uprisings, and in their new ambiguous position they were perhaps even less likely to wish to throw in their lot with the newly emancipated population. Although their special role as a Black ‘gendarmerie’, as Richard Hart calls them, had been taken away, they still assumed that they would be called upon to fulfill that role, under their old commanders, if the need arose. The British may have thought that the old arrangements had been abrogated, but the Maroons certainly did not think so. The colonial authorities were to be very thankful for this stubborn loyalty of the Maroons, as the events of 1865 unrolled.
(I'm having to re-insert footnote numbers, which are non-existent
in this copy of the text!)
in this copy of the text!)
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The combination of sincere loyalty to sworn allegiances with the pursuit of narrow group self-interest is foreign to 20th century ideological interpretations and sensibilities, but it is the key to the actions of the Maroons and others like them. But for the Jamaican Maroons it was a way of viewing the world that had no future after 1865.
Notes: (not completely checked)
1. Mavis C Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796, (Massachusetts, 1988). Chapter 5 gives the texts of the treaties with both Leeward and Windward Maroons.
2. E Kofi Agorsah (editor), Maroon Heritage, (Kingston, 1994); with the exception of the chapter by Carey Robinson, there is virtually no reference to the military role of the Jamaican Maroons as auxiliaries to the colonial authorities after 1739; Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery, Vol 2, (Kingston, 1985)
3. W Adolphe Roberts, Jamaica; the Portrait of an Island, (New York, 1955), p66; Michael Craton, Testing the Chains, (Ithaca, 1982), chapters 5 and 6; Carey Robinson, ‘Maroons and Rebels (a Dilemma)’ in Maroon Heritage, op cit, pp 86-93.
4. Campbell, op cit, chapter 5; Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica Vol V pp 148-9;226-7; Vol VI p 235.
5. JAJ Vol VII p 203; 223(for payment to Maroon parties).
6. Campbell, op cit, pp 220, 239-40; JAJ Vol IX, pp 469, 476.
7. Richard Hart, The Slaves Who Abolished Slavery, Vol 2, (Kingston, 1985), pp 269-70, 288, 309-10, 313-4.
8. Barbara K Kopytoff, ‘The Maroons of Jamaica; an ethnohistorical study of incomplete polities, 1655-1905’, (unpublished dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1973), Chapter 13.
9. Hart, op cit, p 263.
10. Minutes of Evidence taken before the Jamaica Royal Commission, 1866, (London
1866) pp 153, 1008.
11. Ibid, 492; Kopytoff, op cit, pp 184-5.
12. Kopytoff, op cit, pp 65-70,105-9
13. Ibid, p 68; Joseph Williams, S J, The Maroons of Jamaica, (Boston, 1938) p 476 - this is in an appended treatise by I E Thompson, who is described on p 466 as ‘a lad from Kingston’s Technical School’ who lived in Moore Town while a bridge was being built there; Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 1031-3.
14. Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 523, 861, 991, 993, 1119.
15. Ibid, pp 924, 994, 1004, 1020, 1031.
16. Kopytoff, op cit, p324.
17. Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 25, 252, 265-6, 894, 1031.
18. Ibid, pp 476, 535, 1044-5.
19. Ibid, p 103
20. Ibid, p 25; Colonial Standard, Oct 23 1865 p 2.
21. Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 544, 684, 894, 994, 1004, 1114, 1125.
22. Ibid, pp 86, 684, 893-4.
23. Ibid, p 684, 894; CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 22 October 1865.
24. CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 22 October 1865.
25. Ibid.
26. CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 29 October; Fyfe to O’Connor, 25 October 1865.
27. CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 28 October, Fyfe to Eyre,31 October, Fyfe to Nelson, 2 November 1865; Colonial Standard, 7 November, p 2, 15 November, p 2.
28. CO 137/394 Fyfe to Eyre, 29 October, Eyre to Fyfe, 30 October, Fyfe to Eyre 3 November 1865; CO 137/396 Fyfe to Eyre, 21 December 1865; Colonial Standard, 10 November p 2, 15 November p 2, 16 November p 2, 9 December p 2, 12 December p 2, 15 December p 2, 19 December pp 2-3, 1865.
29. CO 137/394 Eyre to Fyfe, 26 October, Fyfe to Eyre, 29 October, Fyfe to Eyre, 31 October 1865; CO 137/ 395 Eyre to Cardwell 20 November 1865; Votes of the Assembly of Jamaica 1865-6, pp 72, 97, 113-4; John Prebble, The Highland Clearances, (London, 1963) Chapter 6, ‘Where are the Highlanders?’, pp 295-304.
30. CO 137/394 Cardwell to Eyre, 1 December 1865; CO 137/396 Eyre to Cardwell, Eyre to O’Connor, Fyfe to Eyre, McClintock to Hope, all 23 December, O’Connor to Eyre 24 December 1865; CO 137/397 McClintock to Admiralty, 8 November 1865.
31. Minutes of Evidence op cit, pp 893-901, evidence of Colonel Fyfe, pp 1028-31, evidence of Joseph Briscoe.
32. Ibid, pp 307-8, 311-3, 479-80, 492, 893-901, 903-4, 955, 960, 1028-31, 1135-43 (Returns relative to Punishments).
33. Colonial Standard, 15 November 1865 p 2; Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, (London, 1978), pp 284-5 and passim; Brian Bond (editor), Victorian Military Campaigns, (London, 1967), pp 190-1; Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria’s Little Wars, (London, 1973), pp 357-8, 361-2.
2. E Kofi Agorsah (editor), Maroon Heritage, (Kingston, 1994); with the exception of the chapter by Carey Robinson, there is virtually no reference to the military role of the Jamaican Maroons as auxiliaries to the colonial authorities after 1739; Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery, Vol 2, (Kingston, 1985)
3. W Adolphe Roberts, Jamaica; the Portrait of an Island, (New York, 1955), p66; Michael Craton, Testing the Chains, (Ithaca, 1982), chapters 5 and 6; Carey Robinson, ‘Maroons and Rebels (a Dilemma)’ in Maroon Heritage, op cit, pp 86-93.
4. Campbell, op cit, chapter 5; Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica Vol V pp 148-9;226-7; Vol VI p 235.
5. JAJ Vol VII p 203; 223(for payment to Maroon parties).
6. Campbell, op cit, pp 220, 239-40; JAJ Vol IX, pp 469, 476.
7. Richard Hart, The Slaves Who Abolished Slavery, Vol 2, (Kingston, 1985), pp 269-70, 288, 309-10, 313-4.
8. Barbara K Kopytoff, ‘The Maroons of Jamaica; an ethnohistorical study of incomplete polities, 1655-1905’, (unpublished dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1973), Chapter 13.
9. Hart, op cit, p 263.
10. Minutes of Evidence taken before the Jamaica Royal Commission, 1866, (London
1866) pp 153, 1008.
11. Ibid, 492; Kopytoff, op cit, pp 184-5.
12. Kopytoff, op cit, pp 65-70,105-9
13. Ibid, p 68; Joseph Williams, S J, The Maroons of Jamaica, (Boston, 1938) p 476 - this is in an appended treatise by I E Thompson, who is described on p 466 as ‘a lad from Kingston’s Technical School’ who lived in Moore Town while a bridge was being built there; Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 1031-3.
14. Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 523, 861, 991, 993, 1119.
15. Ibid, pp 924, 994, 1004, 1020, 1031.
16. Kopytoff, op cit, p324.
17. Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 25, 252, 265-6, 894, 1031.
18. Ibid, pp 476, 535, 1044-5.
19. Ibid, p 103
20. Ibid, p 25; Colonial Standard, Oct 23 1865 p 2.
21. Minutes of Evidence, op cit, pp 544, 684, 894, 994, 1004, 1114, 1125.
22. Ibid, pp 86, 684, 893-4.
23. Ibid, p 684, 894; CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 22 October 1865.
24. CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 22 October 1865.
25. Ibid.
26. CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 29 October; Fyfe to O’Connor, 25 October 1865.
27. CO 137/394, Fyfe to Eyre, 28 October, Fyfe to Eyre,31 October, Fyfe to Nelson, 2 November 1865; Colonial Standard, 7 November, p 2, 15 November, p 2.
28. CO 137/394 Fyfe to Eyre, 29 October, Eyre to Fyfe, 30 October, Fyfe to Eyre 3 November 1865; CO 137/396 Fyfe to Eyre, 21 December 1865; Colonial Standard, 10 November p 2, 15 November p 2, 16 November p 2, 9 December p 2, 12 December p 2, 15 December p 2, 19 December pp 2-3, 1865.
29. CO 137/394 Eyre to Fyfe, 26 October, Fyfe to Eyre, 29 October, Fyfe to Eyre, 31 October 1865; CO 137/ 395 Eyre to Cardwell 20 November 1865; Votes of the Assembly of Jamaica 1865-6, pp 72, 97, 113-4; John Prebble, The Highland Clearances, (London, 1963) Chapter 6, ‘Where are the Highlanders?’, pp 295-304.
30. CO 137/394 Cardwell to Eyre, 1 December 1865; CO 137/396 Eyre to Cardwell, Eyre to O’Connor, Fyfe to Eyre, McClintock to Hope, all 23 December, O’Connor to Eyre 24 December 1865; CO 137/397 McClintock to Admiralty, 8 November 1865.
31. Minutes of Evidence op cit, pp 893-901, evidence of Colonel Fyfe, pp 1028-31, evidence of Joseph Briscoe.
32. Ibid, pp 307-8, 311-3, 479-80, 492, 893-901, 903-4, 955, 960, 1028-31, 1135-43 (Returns relative to Punishments).
33. Colonial Standard, 15 November 1865 p 2; Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, (London, 1978), pp 284-5 and passim; Brian Bond (editor), Victorian Military Campaigns, (London, 1967), pp 190-1; Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria’s Little Wars, (London, 1973), pp 357-8, 361-2.