THE institutionalised description of Maroons as runaway slaves has been passed down from generation to generation for years, however, colonel of the Moore Town Maroons in Portland, Wallace Sterling, has rubbished this concept, arguing that Maroons are free people who resisted slavery.

Wallace explained to the Jamaica Observer North and East, during a tour of the John Crow mountain-located maroon settlement of Moore Town last Wednesday, that the word maroon is a “derogatory” term that was coined by the government of the day.

“If you look at how the word ‘maroon’ came about, you would recognise that it was a derogatory term which described the slaves who leave the plantation and did not return. Runaway slave is not necessarily a part of my vocabulary. You can call me anything you want to call me but what do I call myself? How do I look at myself? I did not see our foreparents as runaway slaves,” the maroon chief said.

According to him, maroons and their descendants did not belong to any plantation.

“Our foreparents did not belong to the plantation and in my humble way of thinking you run away from a place that you belong. Like a child leaves his or her home without the consent of the parents and did not return. That’s a runaway child. The slaves did not belong to the plantation. They were forcefully brought to the plantation. Why don’t we call them runaway Africans?” Wallace stressed.

He argued that Maroons were forcefully taken from their homes in Africa leaving families behind and only sought their freedom after years of abuse.

“When they got here and left the plantation, they left because they wanted to have freedom. So, it’s not like you’re running away from something that was good. People were enslaved and enslaved in the most brutal way. So our foreparents left; they went into the mountain and did all that they had to do to maintain that freedom,” he said.