THE INTERBREED OF THE ARAWAKS(TAINOS) AND THE MAROONS OF  GHANA

The first settlers arrived on the island of Jamaica between 4000 and 1000 BC, venturing across the sea from South America. They were a part of the Arawak tribes known as Tainos, and lived in villages ruled by a single chief, either male or female, and a medicine man.

Multiple families lived in round houses called bohios, but the chief’s house was usually rectangular. The people slept in hammocks and traveled by canoe. In fact, the words hammock and canoe are derived from the Taino language, as are hurricane, tobacco and barbecue.

In Jamaica, the Tainos established an estimated 200 villages by the time Christopher Columbus set foot on the island in 1494 and numbered around 60,000 people. They thrived for thousands of years by cultivating corn, gathering local fruits, and catching fish and turtles for food.

The Spanish contact proved deadly for the native population. The Europeans enslaved the Taino natives and also gave them diseases like smallpox. As the natives succumbed to mistreatment and disease, the Spanish began to import African slaves to work the maize fields and do the other physical labor of the conquered island. Today, more than 70% of Jamaica’s populace are descended from African slaves. Tragically, descendants of the Tainos have all but disappeared.

Jamaican woman selling baskets

Maroons

In 1654, Oliver Cromwell of Britain decided to challenge the Spanish rule over the Caribbean islands and sent a fleet to battle the Conquistadors. In Hispaniola, the English suffered defeats in two battles, and decided to try again in Jamaica. The Spaniards in Jamaica eventually surrendered to the British fleet, and on their way off the island in defeat, they freed their African slaves. It is believed the Spanish settlers fled to Cuba, but what happened to the Africans?

The etymology of the word maroon offers some clues as to the fate of the freed slaves. The Spanish word cimarron is cited as the origin, and means wild and unruly. Fugitives and escaped slaves were called Maroons as early as the 1530s. The escapees fled to the hills, and specifically to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, where they joined with native Jamaican Tainos, eking out a living hunting and cultivating crops.

These combined communities gained strength and fought against the British settlers, eventually signing a peace treaty in the 1700s. Being freed by the treaty, the Maroons were known to surreptitiously free the slaves of the nearby plantations. Today, the Maroons occupy small settlements in the inaccessible regions of Jamaica and live apart from Jamaican society. Their largest village, Accompong, is a vibrant community of about 600 people.

An unusual religious movement developed in Jamaica in the 1930s. The Rastafari, or Rastafarianism, is both a religious and a social movement based on Christianity - but with the added belief that Ethiopia is the Promised Land and that Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia between 1930 and 1974, was “God incarnate.” The one god, Jah, is said to be a spirit that lives in each human being. They believe Jesus of Nazareth was a black African and a descendant of the house of David.

Rastafarians have social laws in addition to their religious beliefs: they eat a healthy, vegetarian diet; they do not cut their hair; they wear dreadlocks, and they smoke marijuana. During the religious ceremonial gatherings (called “groundings”), they smoke “spliffs,” fat cannabis cigars, pray together and sing hymns.

Music, specifically reggae rhythm, has been associated with Rastafarians since Bob Marley came on the popular music scene in the 1970s and introduced Rasta themes to a universal audience. His dreadlocks, brightly colored clothing, signature knit cap and use of marijuana came to be associated with Jamaica, and his influence cannot be overstated. Bob Marley is undeniably Jamaica’s favorite son, and the Rastafarians claim him as their own.

Approximately 600 AD or 650 AD by the Redware people, often associated with redware pottery.[1][2][3] By roughly 800 AD, a second wave of inhabitance occurred by the Arawak tribes, including the Tainos, prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494.[1] Early inhabitants of Jamaica named the land "Xaymaca", meaning "land of wood and water".[4] The Spanish enslaved the Arawak, who were ravaged further by diseases that the Spanish brought with them.[5] Early historians believe that by 1602, the Arawak-speaking Taino tribes were extinct. However, some of the Taino escaped into the forested mountains of the interior, where they mixed with runaway African slaves, and survived free from first Spanish, and then English, rule.[6][7][8]

The Spanish also transported hundreds of West African people to the island. However, the majority of Africans were brought into Jamaica by the English.

In 1655, the English invaded Jamaica, and defeated the Spanish. Some African enslaved people took advantage of the political turmoil and escaped to the island's interior mountains, forming independent communities which became known as the Maroons.[9] Meanwhile, on the coast, the English built the settlement of Port Royal, a base of operations where piracy flourished as so many European rebels had been rejected from their countries to serve sentences on the seas. Captain Henry Morgan, a Welsh plantation owner and privateer, raided settlements and shipping bases in Port Royal, earning him his reputation as one of the richest pirates in the Caribbean.

In the 18th century, sugar cane replaced piracy as British Jamaica's main source of income. The sugar industry was labour-intensive and the British brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved black Africans to the island. By 1850, the black & mulatto Jamaican population outnumbered the white population by a ratio of twenty to one. Enslaved Jamaicans mounted over a dozen major uprisings during the 18th century, including Tacky's Revolt in 1760. There were also periodic skirmishes between the British and the mountain communities of the Jamaican Maroons, culminating in the First Maroon War of the 1730s and the Second Maroon War of 1795–1796.

Queen Nanny, Granny Nanny or Nanny of the Maroons ONH (c. 1686 – c. 1733), was an 18th-century leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly enslaved Africans called the Windward Maroons.[1] In the early 18th century, under the leadership of Nanny, the Windward Maroons fought a guerrilla war over many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica in what became known as the First Maroon War.

Illustration of Nanny from the 500 Jamaican dollar banknote.Jamaica in 1717

Much of what is known about her comes from oral history, as little textual evidence exists. According to Maroon legend, Queen Nanny was born in what is today Ghana of the Ashanti people.[2] According to the oral tradition and at least one documentary source, she was never enslaved.[2] Although widely assumed that she arrived in Jamaica as a slave, how she arrived in Jamaica is not certain.

During the years of warfare, the British suffered significant losses in their encounters with the Windward Maroons of eastern Jamaica. Maroons attributed their success against the British to the successful use of supernatural powers by Nanny, but historians argue that the Maroon mastery of guerrilla warfare played a significant role in their success. Having failed to defeat them on the battle field, the British sued for peace, signing a treaty with them on 20 April 1740.[2] The treaty stopped the hostilities, provided for state sanctioned freedom for the Maroons, and granted 500 acres of land to Nanny and her followers. The village built on the land grant still stands and today is called Moore Town. It is also known as the New Nanny Town. Modern members of the Moore Town celebrate 20 April 1740 as a holiday.

In 1975, the government of Jamaica declared Nanny as their only female national hero celebrating her success as a leader, military tactician and strategist.[3] Her image is also on the Jamaican $500 note which is called a Nanny in Jamaican slang.

maroon community, a group of formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants who gained their freedom by fleeing chattel enslavement and running to the safety and cover of the remote mountains or the dense overgrown tropical terrains near the plantations. Many of the groups are found in the Caribbean and, in general, throughout the Americas. In Brazil, Jamaica, Haiti, Suriname (the former Dutch Guiana), Cuba, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent, Guyana, Dominica, Panama, Colombia, and Mexico and from the Amazon River Basin to the southern United States, primarily Florida and the Carolinas, there are well-known domiciles of the maroons.

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maroon community, a group of formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants who gained their freedom by fleeing chattel enslavement and running to the safety and cover of the remote mountains or the dense overgrown tropical terrains near the plantations. Many of the groups are found in the Caribbean and, in general, throughout the Americas. In Brazil, Jamaica, Haiti, Suriname (the former Dutch Guiana), Cuba, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent, Guyana, Dominica, Panama, Colombia, and Mexico and from the Amazon River Basin to the southern United States, primarily Florida and the Carolinas, there are well-known domiciles of the maroons.

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The word maroon, first recorded in English in 1666, is by varying accounts taken from the French word marron, which translates to “runaway black slave,” or the American/Spanish cimarrón, which means “wild runaway slave,” “the beast who cannot be tamed,” or “living on mountaintops.” The Spanish originally used the word in reference to their stray cattle. It is further believed that the word cimarrón is from cima or “summit.”

It is important to note that most Africans did not refer to themselves as “maroons.” They usually opted for liberatory, powerful names such as “Nyankipong Pickibu,” which means “Children of the Almighty” in Twi, a language widely spoken in Ghana, West Africa. The Jamaican maroons tend to prefer the monikers “Koromanti,” “Kromanti,” or “Yungkungkung” to denote their culture and history. This entry looks at the origins of maroon communities in Africa, their history of struggle and revolt in the New World, and their contemporary representation.

According to legend, the Koromanti name continues to ring in the maroon communities for one of two traditional reasons. The first is that it memorializes and pays tribute to one of their last visions of home, the West African coast of the same name that was traversed by the newly enslaved Africans en route to the ship that would transport them to the west. The alternative explanation is that the appellation represents the memory of the Koromanti clan, a subgroup of the Asante people of Ghana.

In 1717 the Koromanti are said to have famously rebelled against Asante paramountcy and killed their hallowed king, Osei Tutu I, whose body is said to have fallen into the river, never to be seen again. This inspired the Asante people to take a sacred oath that empowered them to rise up and put down the Koromanti uprising. Legend has it that the thwarted Kormantis were exiled and sold into slavery for their abomination. It is said that only their memory resides in Ghana. To this day, the Koromanti designation is commonly used by maroons to describe their rituals, languages, dances, and songs, which are sung to bury the dead and accompany healing rituals.

There are divergent accounts as to the earliest maroons, with some even indicating that the first maroon was a solitary African who escaped from the first slave ship to dock in the Americas in 1502, just 10 years after Columbus’s arrival. He is said to have escaped to the jungle-like interior of Hispaniola, or “Little Spain” in Spanish (present-day Haiti), blazing a trail that many of his African brethren and sisters would follow. Many reports, however, start the timeline at 1512, when a steady stream of enslaved Africans began escaping from Spanish and Portuguese slavers and “disappearing” into the hinterlands.

The maroons strategically teamed with indigenous peoples or survived from sheer will and have maintained a continuous presence in the Western Hemisphere. Faced with monumentally hostile conditions, they tactically established armed settlements because they were in constant danger of being recaptured or killed by European tyrants. Moreover, there was always the perpetual battle to physically sustain themselves because they were often left to forage for food, especially on the smaller islands of the Caribbean. To this, one must add the challenge of reproducing and multiplying their numbers.

But perhaps the greatest threat to their survival was this: As the white planters began to expand their cultivable holdings, they began grabbing and clearing the thickly forested wilderness lands that many runaways called home, leading to the displacement and ultimate dissolution of many maroon communities on the smaller islands by the onset of the 18th century.

On the larger islands, however, the maroons were able to hunt, grow crops, and, in a word, thrive. As increasing numbers of Africans escaped and joined their ranks, they took guerrilla warfare to new heights, burning and raiding plantations as well as poisoning slavers. Needless to say, they struck fear in the hearts of the white enslavers, causing the British and U.S. governments to pass dozens of acts against them and spend millions of pounds and dollars to conquer them. This was often for naught because the maroons were led by fearless warriors who would stop at nothing to throw off the insidious chains of chattel slavery.

Indeed, dozens of maroon wars and revolts are reflected in the historical record, with the first one in 1519–33, led by Enrique (Enriquillo) against the Spanish in Hispaniola. In Brazil the Africans set up settlements known as Quilombos. The most famous of such settlements was Quilombo dos Palmares, in the northeastern part of Brazil. It functioned successfully as an independent republic of the maroons in the 17th century, following an African pattern of social organization. At its apex, it was the home and refuge of some 20,000 African men, women, and children who had managed to escape the dreadful experience of plantation life. Its most famous and last leader was Zumbi dos Palmares, who was born in freedom in Quilombo dos Palmares.

It is the Jamaicans, however, who hold the distinction of waging the most slave rebellions in the west per capita. Historically, two major groups inhabited either side of the Caribbean island, the Windward Maroons of the East and the Leeward Maroons of the West. They were led by Queen Nanni (Nanny) and Kojo, respectively. Some accounts even indicate that Nanni and Kojo were siblings, whereas others discount that notion. Whatever the case, they no doubt shared a blood bond forged in the crucible of the Maroon Wars. Although they both fought valiantly and although the written history of the maroons is almost totally dominated by male figures, it is Queen Nanni who is arguably the most consequential military figure in Jamaican maroon history, in that she successfully united all the maroons of the island.

So monumental and superhuman were the accomplishments of the Obeah (folk magic) woman, Grande Nanni, that some even believe that she is more a mythical than a historical figure. Nonetheless, it is believed that Queen Nanni was born in present-day Ghana in the 1680s. The Akan Queen Mother was the religious, military, and cultural leader of the Windward Jamaican Maroons from around 1725 to 1740, during the acme of their amazing resistance against the British, who outnumbered them exponentially and, at that time, were the world’s greatest military power.

Queen Nanni, known as “The Mother of Us All,” was able to successfully evade capture for many years, even during the height of the British effort to exterminate her from 1730 to 1734. During this time, they raided and destroyed Nanni Town, the bunker town she had established at Jamaica’s highest vantage point, atop the Blue Mountains, with the Stony and Nanny Rivers flowing through it. The town was guarded by armed sentinels, who used the abeng, the side-blown horn that came to symbolize the Jamaican maroons, to communicate with the troops.

After 83 years of armed warfare, the Leeward Maroons, led by Captain Kojo, and the British entered into the Peace Treaty of 1739. The Windward Maroons signed the Land Grant of 1740, after which Queen Nanni founded New Nanni Town in 1740. It is believed that she died in the 1750s, and in 1976 she was named a National Hero of Jamaica. Even now, maroons continue to believe that Queen Nanni was sent by the Almighty God to lead the Jamaican people to freedom.

Kojo is equally celebrated among the Leeward Jamaican Maroons based in Accompong. Each year at 10 a.m. on his birthday, January 6, the maroons meet at the Kindah Tree to renew their traditional rites and to honour their ancestors. The Kindah Tree is said to be sacred and symbolic of family unity in the community. There they prepare unsalted pork and ritually make their way to the Peace Cave, the site where the treaty was signed.

Perhaps this rich tradition is what has made the Jamaican maroons the most widely known around the world, fueling the global love affair with Reggae music and Rastafarian culture. The Honorable Marcus Moziah Garvey, the father of black nationalism, and the renowned poet Claude McKay, a giant of the Harlem Renaissance era, both are direct Jamaican maroon descendants. Contemporaneously, there remain four viable Jamaican maroon communities: Moore Town (formerly New Nanni Town), Accompong, Scott’s Hall, and Charles Town.

Of course, this was not the end of the pitched battles of the maroons. Haiti was home to two of the largest such insurrections. One such was the six-year rebellion led by François Mackandal, a Guinean Vodun priest. Before being captured and publicly executed by the French in 1758, he and his army killed up to 6,000 white people during what the maroons consider his divinely inspired reign.

In fact, the creation of present-day Haiti (and the end of chattel enslavement on the island) was the result of another maroon uprising led by Boukman, another Vodun priest who, on August 14, 1791, is reported to have organized a traditional Vodun ceremony in Bois Caiman in the northern mountains of Hispaniola in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). During this ritual meeting—which was conducted under a rainy, overcast sky—the congregants commenced lamenting their treatment at the hands of the whites who continued to hunt them like animals. Their frustration and righteous indignation began to cascade like the rain from above. Legend has it that the spirit of the Lwa possessed a woman in the crowd, moving her to slit the throat of a pig and distribute its blood to all in attendance. At that time they are said to have made a blood pact to exterminate all the whites of the island colony.

A week later, on August 22, 1791, the northern maroons set their plan in motion and killed all whites whom they encountered, setting fire to many of the plantations on the island. Boukman would meet his demise when the French captured and beheaded him. In an effort to convince the Africans of their mortality, the French displayed his head on the square of Cap-Français (modern-day Cap-Haïtien), but by this time the die was cast. The maroons were undaunted. The Haitian Revolution was on.

Toussaint Louverture soon entered the historical stage. With his military and tactical genius—from 1791 until 1800—he pitted the French, Spanish, and British against each other. By 1801, his European opponents had been vanquished, and he held the reins of power, becoming the self-appointed governor of Saint-Domingue, Haiti. Alarmed to no end, Napoleon Bonaparte sent some 60,000 troops, armed to the teeth—with guns, cannons, dogs, and other sundry munitions—to the now autonomous French colony, which had drawn up its own constitution that abolished slaveholding.

The French acted in bad faith and arrested Toussaint during a meeting in June 1802, after which Dessalines became the new leader of the Revolution. Louverture was exiled to France, where he died in April 1803, within a year of reaching the frigid Alpine mountain city of Jura. However, his memory lives on, and the Haitian Revolution is arguably the most-compelling ground for belief in the otherworldly power of the maroons.

Many of the maroon communities are now extinct, but several continue to exist. Most notable are the Saramacca, the Surinamese maroons, who have singularly managed to remain politically and culturally viable and self-controlled from 1690 to the present. Some other celebrated maroon communities/leaders were Bayano of Panama, Yanga of Mexico, Benkos Bioho of Colombia, Boni of Suriname, and John Horse of the southern United States and Mexico.

It is widely believed that the maroon spirit has sustained African people’s willingness and ability to resist and revolt against all forms of oppression, then and now.