The story of Jamaica’s black survivorship, accountability, and viability can ill-afford the injurious luxury of deliberate falsehoods or lost and/or impaired memory. The pathos of the Maroon’s struggle in our liberation from British slavery and colonialism has been, in my opinion, greatly exaggerated. The picture of their bravery and solidarity with our liberators was painted not by their deeds but by their British masters, at whose behest they captured and killed those who sought and fought for true freedom and dignity.

Indeed, the treaties of 1738-39 and the post-war playbook showed that the Maroons were more self-gratifying opportunists than liberators. Their pacification under the aegis of the said treaties strengthened rather than weakened the tentacles of slavery, and, even more critically, made them complicit and willing participants in the enforcement and prolongation of slavery on the island. The Maroon warrior queen Nanny is a highly revered national heroine because she rejected what her brother Cudjoe and Quaco rushed to embrace: the vile treaty demands that she joined the British in enforcing slavery on the island.

Let’s examine the factual basis of the above. Slavery was initiated in Jamaica by the Spanish settlers in the first decade of the 16th century with the enslavement of the indigenous Taino people, some of whom ran away to the hinterland and were later called “Maroons” by the Spaniards. Their decimation in numbers through death and defection to Maroon ranks forced the Spanish to introduce black slaves to Jamaica in or around 1517. Like the Taino before, some black slaves ran away from the Spanish estates and joined the Tainos as part of the Maroon community.

When the English ousted the Spanish in Jamaica in the 1660s those Maroons were already settled in certain villages. The basis of their struggles were to be left alone, to hunt and live freely in the regions they occupied, but not to liberate those remaining in slavery. They ventured outside their villages only to hunt for food, not to fight the enslavers, and were adept and largely successful in defending their villages. This was the status quo at the time of the first treaty in 1738.

Essentially, the treaties were said to extend land and autonomy to the Maroons in exchange for capturing runaway slaves and joining British planters and the militia in suppressing slave rebellions on the island. The Maroons, by and large, kept their side of the bargain, but, not surprisingly the British paid scant regard to their promised autonomy. They appointed white superintendents to oversee the affairs of Maroon towns; interfered in the selection of leaders, removing those they didn’t like; undertook the task of granting land to individual Maroons; dictated what crops could be grown; and while the maroon chiefs/elders had jurisdiction over minor disputes, all major offences were tried by the British.

Additionally, in an endeavour to expand the cultivation of sugar cane, the British encroached on and took back some of the land previously given to the Maroons in the 1738 treaty. This long list of grievances, which mocked the very idea of autonomy, came to a boil in 1795 following the British detention of two villagers accused of stealing pigs who were later subjected to whipping by the slaves in clear violation of the treaty. This led to the Second Maroon War in 1795-96 which the British won and deported in excess of 500 Maroons to the British Colony of Nova Scotia.

It is very clear that the British eroded all nuances of self-governance by the Maroons the eve before the ink of the treaties were dried. Autonomy was, therefore, by and large, an unfulfilled promise that the British never really meant to keep. On the other hand, the British made sure the Maroons kept their word to hunt and capture or even kill runaway slaves and, like hired mercenaries, join forces with the British to put down slave revolts. Hence, in 1761, the Maroons were pivotal in the capture and beheading of Tacky and the suppression of one of the largest slave revolts in the West Indies up to that point in time.

Likewise, it was the Maroons who hunted, captured, and handed over Sam Sharpe for hanging in 1831. They were mobilised in 1865, after Emancipation, to capture and hand over Paul Bogle for hanging. It is very tempting to think that were it not for the Maroons siding with the British in 1761 Jamaica would have been the first slave colony to win independence through revolt. That distinction belongs to Haiti and their successful resistance of 1791 to 1804 against their French enslavers.

One is not being ungenerous to say that it is a zombie idea to ask that we treat as heroic the moral and racial capitulation of the Maroons in 1738 and 1739. That is perfectly understandable. Not even the most pious and forgiving Christian celebrates Judas Iscariot. What Judas did to Christ, Cudjoe and successive leaders of both the Leeward and Windward Maroons did to our enslaved and those who led the fight against slavery and colonial oppression in Jamaica. Indeed, the conduct and treachery of the Jamaican Maroons are unexampled and without precedent in the pantheon of the struggle against slavery in the entire Caribbean. Their infamy expanded and extended the torture, brutality, and horrors of slavery and colonialism. Whatever accommodation reached by those treaties cannot be expected to bind sovereign Jamaica, a country forged in the fires of long struggles against white oppression and black betrayal.

Happily, there are no lingering ill feelings against our black brothers and sisters of the Maroon community. We are all equal inheritors of Jamaica. But it would be mighty helpful if someone take aside that dissonant soul from the Cockpit, and mercifully exorcise from his “imagination things that do not exist or things that should not bear on his mind”. In short, bring him to light, self-consciousness, truth, and the sacredness of our history at the hands of the wretched of this land. Maybe then he will awake to the insanity of his calls for autonomy and self-governance, his own central bank and currency and his own security forces for his little village in the hills.

Political party membership and the wider society of thinking people do injustice to the sacrifices of yesterday’s liberators, today’s aspirations, and tomorrow’s better future by remaining silent in the face of Maroon leader Richard Currie’s demand on the Jamaican State. There is no place that the State cannot go, save where prohibited. Neither law nor logic prevents or excuses the State from entering the Cockpit Country and elsewhere to make provision for the suffering of people following the passage of Hurricane Melissa. The State dare not fail these people, or itself. It dare not fail the spirits and legacies of our national heroes and other titans of our liberation.

I urge that our political leaders re-educate themselves on the history of this period. Care must be taken not to signal the erasure of truth by portraying that yesterday’s empty colonial promise of occupational licence to certain villages created politically autonomous regions beyond the reach of sovereign, independent Jamaica. They must speak with one voice and make unequivocally clear this issue is non-negotiable. It means, therefore, that what happened at a certain political event in September 2024 must never be repeated.

Cultural schizophrenia, caused by lost or impaired memory, if left unchecked can lead to great misunderstandings and even harmful consequences.

delfordgmorgan@gmail.com.

Chief Takyi

A bust depicting the image of Nanny of the Maroons

Delford Morgan