A big thanks to all recent donors who support the cultural identity of the Maroons
Maroon indigenous Original tribes in Canada
Maroons in Canada
The Maroons of Jamaica built free, independent communities in the island's interior from the mid-1600s, and defended that freedom for generations. After some 84 years of conflict, the first Maroon wars ended in a peace treaty with the British in 1738–1739, and in peace the Maroons became uneasy allies of the very planters they had fought.
In 1795 the Trelawny Town Maroons — one of Jamaica's five major Maroon communities — rose in what became the Second Maroon War. Led by Montague James, Leonard Parkinson and James Palmer, they held the Cockpit Country against government forces under General George Walpole, but they stood alone: the other Maroon communities did not join them, supplies ran low, sickness spread, and they were badly outnumbered. A truce was agreed on 21 December 1795, and by March 1796 the war was over.
Claiming the treaty terms had not been kept, Jamaica's government chose exile. Between 550 and 600 Maroon men, women and children sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving on 21 and 22 July 1796 aboard the Dover, Mary and Ann, with a £25,000 grant from Jamaica for their support. In Halifax they worked on the refortification of Citadel Hill, and were settled at Preston on land left by the Black Loyalists who had departed in 1792; a second Maroon community was later formed at Boydville, in the area remembered today as Maroon Hill. The Maroons also served as a militia company, worked the roads and farms, supplied the Halifax market, and in 1800 dug the foundation of Government House — always at equal pay beside the soldiers and labourers they worked with.
Nova Scotia's winters, unfamiliar food and pressure to abandon their own faith and customs made settlement hard. In April 1798 the Preston Maroons petitioned to leave. On 7 August 1800, 551 Maroons sailed from Halifax aboard HMS Asia for Freetown, Sierra Leone, arriving on 30 September 1800, where they named Trelawny Street in memory of home.
LEGACY — Tradition holds that not all of the Trelawny Town Maroons left Nova Scotia. An 1817 census of the Black community of Tracadie, in Guysborough County, named descendants of the Maroons — including McGregors. Their name endures in Maroon Hill, and their labour stands in the Halifax Citadel. In 2000, Nova Scotia's Department of Education introduced African-Canadian heritage into its high school program. The Maroons' deepest legacy is in African Nova Scotian identity itself — and the McGregor Clan has kept records of this history, which can also be found in the Canada Archives.
A Peek into Our World: McGregor Clan Sovereign Maroon Office Time capsule
