Considering the size of Jamaica, it seems strange to say that in the
fastnesses of its mountains there lived a body of men, just a handful of
them, who actually defied the British Government and all the arms they
could bring against them, not for a year or twenty years, but for close
on one hundred and forty years!
It seems incredible; but when I went to live at the Hyde I began to
believe it, once I had gone up to Maroon town I quite understood it, and
before I had left Jamaica, having spent three months at Kempshot, I saw
what an ideal country was this for guerilla warfare such as the
Maroons waged. The story of these black men is one that deserves to be
remembered and set down beside the tale of the Doones in Devonshire, or
the Highland Chiefs who held the glens of Scotland for the Stuart king.
The origin of the term “Maroon” is somewhat obscure. There are people
who say it is derived from a Spanish word meaning wild, and there are
others who declare that Maroons simply meant hog-hunters, for upon these
animals the free-booters lived.
Bryan Edwards says the Spaniards left 1500 slaves behind them. Bridges
is sure that every Spanish slave was killed or taken within eight years
of the conquest of the island. But this parson of the Church of England
is a gentleman whom the more we read him the less we like him. He was
a time-server and a sycophant on his own showing. His evident intention
was to please the planters, and though that in itself is not a crime,
it is certainly a sin, when a man undertakes to write a history, to look
only for the good on one side, and to be very sure of the evil on the
other. In the days of Bridges (he wrote in 1828), the island was divided
into planters and slaves, and the man who drank the planters' punch,
who was entertained in their houses, who laid himself out to be so
invited--“sucked up” as Australian school-boys used to say--was hardly
likely to consider the slaves anything but the dregs of humanity. It
flattered the vanity of the planters to think that within eight years of
the driving out of the Spaniards their slaves were subdued as well. It
is hardly likely they were. It seems to me that that little band of men,
hidden away among the cockpit country of St James and Trelawny, and in
the mountains of Portland and St Thomas, probably began with the
slaves left behind by the Spaniards, and were recruited by all the more
adventurous spirits who managed to escape from their loathed bondage.
For I do not believe that the black people, as some people say, were
happier as slaves. Rather do I agree with Burke who, in the great
debates on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, said: “That nothing made a
happy slave but a degraded man.”
The cockpit country of Jamaica is an amazing country still. I paid it a
visit by the courtesy of Mr Moralez, the father of the lovely girl
who owned the little canoe, and she came with me to show me points of
interest, for she had lived in Montego Bay all her life.
It was a glorious morning in December, and December mornings in Jamaica
are more likely to be delicious than a May morning in England or
Australia. There is something in the soft, cool air that no mere pen
can describe. Everywhere is green, dark green of pimento, light green
of akee or dogwood, vivid green of cane. Crushing in the sugar mills has
begun, and all is activity as you pass the works on the estates. On the
roads, marching along with loads on their heads, mostly of green banana
for it happened to be a Monday, were throngs of people, mostly women.
They tramp miles--old women, young women, boys, and little girls who
step out on sturdy little black legs and swing their short and scanty
frocks, and are smiling under a load that surprises me, for they
are proud that they, too, may join the throng of wage-earners, small
wage-earners when we compare results with other labourers in the outside
world, but still, slaves no longer, and earning money that is their very
own.
The road winds with hairpin curves up the steep hills. Sheer up on one
side, very often built up with stone on the other--there is rock in
plenty--and sheer down into the valley below. Soon we were on mountain
land, untouched by the hand of man, and crawling up one side of a
mountain we could look over to the breakneck mountain side across the
cockpit that lay between, for the cockpits mentioned so often in the
history of Jamaica are what we should call gullies in Australia, and
glens in Scotland. Precipitous holes are they, and far below us and far
above us we could see tree-ferns such as I have not seen since I left
Australia, and all the steep mountain sides are bound together with
undergrowth and creeper, growing so densely that I can quite well
believe a man who said you could progress only at the rate of a quarter
of a mile a day when you had to cut your way through. There are trees,
of course, wonderful trees, festooned with vines, but we could only see
them from a distance, the trees on the other side of the mountain; close
at hand we saw only the tangle of greenery growing round the trunks. And
the trees grow tall and straight in their struggle towards the light and
sunshine. There is mahogany, the lovely wood we all know--I pride myself
on my mahogany wardrobes; there is mahoe, nearly as fine; there is
bullet wood, hard as its name implies and too good for the sleepers into
which it is made, and wherever there is space enough for it, it looks
splendid standing out against the blue on some mountain spur, there is
the symmetrical broad leaf which is akin to what they call the almond,
though it is certainly not the almond of Italy. And again, close
at hand, there is maiden-hair and coral, and other ferns like a
conservatory grown wild, growing beside little springs of crystal clear
water that spurt out among the rocks; and there are creamy ginger lilies
turning their delicate faces to the light, and other lilies, gorgeous as
a tulip, red splashed with orange, true daughters of the sun. And always
is the feathery bamboo wildly luxuriant, growing as if this were its
original habitat, which it is not, and the innumerable creepers which
bind all these things growing riotously with the richness of life that
prevails in the tropics. Oh, a splendid land! But I do not wonder that
here for over a hundred years the Maroons were masters, and raided
down into the pens and estates that encroached on their grounds with
impunity. They say that the Maroons were not friendly with the slaves.
But that was not always true. Maroons and slaves were the same colour,
and that is a great bond--how great a bond we only realise when we have
left a land where everyone is white, and at length see in any one of
our own colour at least a potential friend. So I think it must have been
with the Maroons till the white men made of them slave-catchers, and
even then the unalterable tie must have sometimes held good.
I have lived in Trelawny and in Montego Bay, places close to the Maroon
Country, though twenty miles in Jamaica up steep acclivities, down
abrupt slopes, across mountain passes, is twenty times as far as it
would be in another land. But the Hyde was close to the cockpit country.
We went just a little way behind into the hills and we soon came to a
place where no wheeled vehicle could pass, where we must of necessity
walk along the bridle track cut in the side of the steep mountains that
rose up on either hand, though perhaps a very surefooted horse or mule
might have carried us in safety. And all the houses round about those
hills had loopholes in their walls.
“For the Maroons.”
The people have forgotten long ago the old-time fear; only when you
see a curious loophole in the lower masonry of a house, a house on
the hillside to which you mount by many winding stone steps--a fine
staircase in any land--and you ask what is that for, the dwellers say,
“The Maroons.” But sometimes it was for general defence, defence against
the picaroons that infested the seas, against the slaves who might rise
at any time. But round about Montego Bay and in the hills in Trelawny
close against the cockpit country those slots in the masonry were
certainly against the Maroons.
Dallas says that many of the slaves who rose at Suttons in Clarendon
made their way to the Maroons in the heart of the island, and after
that their numbers were occasionally recruited from among the plantation
negroes. They got provisions from the provision grounds, and the
settlers who lived a little back from the towns in places like Balaclava
(which was not Balaclava then), Ulster Springs, on the mountain sides
as at the Hyde, Catadupa, and quaintly named Lapland, were kept in a
perpetual state of alarm.
There was a time when I thought to be kept in a perpetual state of alarm
would make life impossible, and I wondered at pioneers who first crossed
Kentucky--“that dark and bloody ground,”--at the estate owners and
pen-keepers who dwelt among their discontented slaves in places where
the Maroons might easily raid; indeed I wonder still. But now, in a
measure I understand. During the war I lived not far from Woolwich
arsenal, that magnet for German airships. Were people there afraid?
Some of us were, I suppose, but the vast majority grew accustomed to the
alarms. So few people were killed even if they came every night, so
few houses were wrecked though the night sky was illuminated with
search-lights that we became inured to them. And so I suppose it was
with these people who lived on the borders of the Maroon Country. The
pens and estates close to the mountains were their homes. Here they must
live, and they hoped that the raiding Maroons would not come their way,
that their slaves would stand by them, and that they would be able to
beat them off if they did; that anyhow, if the worst came to the worst,
help would come to extricate them before the savages were able to work
their wicked will upon them.
Still, of course, the Maroons must have retarded the settlement of the
country as Dallas says they undoubtedly did.
“By degrees they became very formidable, and in their predatory
excursions greatly distressed the back settlers by plundering their
houses, destroying their cattle, and carrying off their slaves by
force.”
“At first,” says Dallas, “they contented themselves with isolated
cases of depredation, but growing bolder, became such a danger that the
colonists resolved to reduce them.”
“Isolated cases of depredation” are very hard on those isolated cases.
But when raids like this have been repeated twice or thrice, then even
the colonist who did not come into contact with the Maroons realised
that something must be done. The Maroons concentrated themselves under
Cudjoe, whom we read was “a bold, skilful, and enterprising man,” who,
on assuming the command, appointed his brothers Accompong and Johnny
leaders under him, and Cuffee and Quao subordinate captains. Many of
these negroes seem to have been Koromantyns, runaway slaves, whom Dallas
describes as “a people inured to war on the coast of Africa.” Ashantis
all I doubt not.
Cudjoe had a great reputation. From the Maroons in the Eastern Mountains
a body calling themselves Cottawoods broke away, and with their women
and children joined Cudjoe by the rugged, inaccessible mountain paths
and valleys, and Dallas tells of another body of black men who also cast
in their lot with him.
“These,” says he, “were distinct in every respect, their figure,
character, language, and country being different from those of the other
blacks. Their skin is of a deeper jet than that of any other negro,
their features resemble those of Europeans, their hair is of a long
and soft texture like a Mulatto's or Quadroon's; their form is more
delicate, and their stature rather lower than those of the people they
joined; they were much handsomer to a European eye, but seemed not to
have originally possessed such hardiness and strength of nerve as
the other people under Cudjoe; and although it is probable that the
intercourse with the latter had existed between seventy and eighty
years, and an intermixture of families had taken place, their original
character was easily traced in their descendants. They were called
Madagascars, but why I do not know, never having heard that any slaves
were brought from the island of Madagascar. They said that they ran away
from the settlements about Lacovia in the parish of St Elizabeth soon
after the planters had bought them. It does not appear that their
numbers were great, but they were remarkably prolific.”
Bridges says in much more grandiloquent language that a slave ship from
Madagascar with slaves that had Malay blood in their veins was wrecked
on the coast, and the slaves escaping joined the Maroons. But one thing
is clear, that the blood of a good many races ran in the veins of these
freebooters who held the heights for so long. It is quite possible there
was even a little admixture of white blood, but not very much, for one
thing was certain, they hated the whites--naturally.
At first it seems Cudjoe was only regarded as a leader of runaway
slaves; later, as his successes grew and settlement among the mountains
became more and more difficult on account of his depredations, they
decided he was a Maroon. Hidden in the inaccessible fastnesses of the
interior, the troops sent against him were foiled again and again. It
was rough on those soldiers dressed in the absurd fashions of the time
so unsuitable for the tropics, but once they got beyond the parade
ground, I doubt not they accommodated themselves to circumstances
lightly clad in shirt and breeches. There is in the Jamaican Institute a
fearsome erection of black felt and brass which says it is the headgear
of a militia regiment in the eighteenth century, and is kept there as
a monument to the unutterable folly of those who arranged for their
fighting forces in the tropics. If everything else was ordered on like
lines, it is not surprising that a foe who could take advantage of every
stick and stone and tree, could and did easily make all the discipline a
thing of naught.
At first the Maroons had only desired to plunder, but since
indiscriminate plunder could not be allowed in a community that was
striving to be civilised, and they found themselves driven farther and
farther into the woods and mountains by assailants who were probably
not very tender towards those who fell into their hands, they began
reprisals.
“Murder,” says Dallas, “attended all their successes; not only men but
women and children were sacrificed to their fury, and even people
of their own colour if unconnected with them. Over such as secretly
favoured them, while they apparently remained at peace on the
plantations they exercised a dominion... and made them subservient
to their designs. By these Cudjoe was always apprised in time of the
parties that were fitted out.”
I can imagine the planters talking at their tables, the house servants
waiting with unmoved or even sympathetic faces, and yet carrying the
news to the field labourers. That would be enough. At night one of them
would steal off to the mountains that are so near to every estate in
Jamaica. They might not even wait for the night. A strange black man
would not be noticeable and he might lie hidden in any hut. Knowing the
numbers that were coming against them, something of their plans, and
best of all knowing the country so thoroughly, it was an easy matter for
Cudjoe and his lieutenants, escaped slaves, or descendants of slaves as
they were, to circumvent the plans laid against them. Again and again
the white assailants were caught in ambush, were slain, and--worse still
for those who came after them--Cudjoe supplied his men with arms and
ammunition from what they left behind them. It was, as a matter of fact,
fairly easy for the Maroons to get arms and ammunition. The times were
such that of necessity every man went armed and must be able to get
ammunition easily.
“There was no restriction,” says Dallas, “in the sale of powder and
firearms, and there can be no doubt that Cudjoe had friends who made a
regular purchase of them under pretence of being hunters and fowlers for
their masters.... Nay, a Maroon himself might, carrying a few fowls, and
a basket of provisions on his head, pass unnoticed and unknown through
the immense crowd of negroes frequenting the markets in the large
towns.”
And these wild men, too, had learned, taught in a hard school, to be
careful. They never threw a shot away as the white men did. Every bullet
with them was bound to find its billet. The marksmanship of the Maroons
became proverbial. Oh, we can see easily enough how it was that Cudjoe
managed to protract the war for years.
Things were getting desperate, something must be done. They had not
nearly enough soldiers.... But in a country like Jamaica, where slave
risings were to be feared, whose coasts were harried by picaroons and
corsairs, which might even expect descents by the French and Spaniards,
there were the militia, and they raised easily enough independent
companies and rangers to cope with the difficulties that faced the
country. They even raised a body of negroes called Blackshot, favoured,
of course, above the rest of their race, a body of Mulattoes who might
perhaps reasonably be supposed to side with the whites, and also they
brought over from Central America a body of Mosquito Indians. Both the
Blackshot and the Mosquito Indians, wild or half wild men themselves,
proved of great assistance. They found out the provisions grounds of
Cudjoe and the Maroons, and many were the skirmishes as they drove the
freebooters back, back into the recesses of the mountains I went up that
sunny December morning; but it is on record that even when the Maroons
were defeated it was always the assailants who lost the more heavily.
But indeed, seeing the country now that is partly opened up, so that
you may stand on a well-made road and look down into the most desperate
cockpit, I know that it must have taken an amazing valour to have
penetrated at all in the old days.
“There are,” says Dallas, “parallel lines of cockpits, but as their
sides are often perpendicular from fifty to eighty feet” (looking down
with the jungle clear from the top I should have said they were deeper),
“a passage from one line to the other is scarcely found practicable to
any but a Maroon.... There are trees in the glens and the entrance
of the defiles is woody. In some water is found.” They were almost
impregnable those fastnesses. But out of these defiles the Maroons had
to come in search of provisions and the sharp-sighted guides, Mosquito
Indians and other black men on the white men's side, easily detected the
paths all converging on the same place. It might be a defile so narrow
that for half a mile men could only pass through in single file. The
Maroons knew as well as their assailants that these paths that led into
their impregnable defiles were tell-tale, and they made use of them.
Always they were informed of the approach of a body of militia and
soldiers. It was a fact hardly to be concealed, and in the dense
vegetation surrounding the entrance to the particular cockpit to be
attacked they established a line of marksmen, two sometimes if the width
of the ground admitted of it. They were well hidden by the roots of
trees, by the thick screen of greenery, by the rocks and stones. As soon
as the assailants, panting, breathless, fatigued from the terrible climb
that lay behind them, approached from their concealment they let fly a
volley, and if the forces, who did not lack courage, turned to fire
at the spot where they saw the smoke they received a volley in another
direction; prepared to charge that, they received a volley from the
mouth of the glen, and then the enemy having done all the damage they
could retired unhurt and triumphant in proportion as their assailants
were bitter and downhearted, for always they left some of their number
dead on the field and carried away wounded.
But the harrying nevertheless worried the Maroons. They had to find some
place where they could grow their provisions and keep their women
and children in safety, for it was not always possible to raid the
plantations exactly when they wanted once the white men were on guard.
Deeper and deeper into the mountains they retreated, but Cudjoe was a
man of judgment. Taking up his position in the cockpits on the borders
of St James and Trelawny, among some of the steepest, mountainous
country in Jamaica, he commanded the parishes of St James, Hanover,
Westmoreland, and St Elizabeth. He could thus obtain abundant supplies,
and with his brother Accompong in the mountains overlooking the Black
River, where even though there were more defenders for the plantations
there were still more abundant supplies to be had, he made his people
very excellent headquarters. At the bottom of the Petty River cockpit
they had a supply of water and ground whereon they could grow yams and
cassava and corn, so that they always had something to fall back upon
and they therefore could choose their own time for coming out. So great
a general was this poor runaway negro that in eight or ten years he
had united all the stray bands of wandering slaves and terrorised the
country-side.
“In their inroads,” says Dallas, “they exercised the most horrid
barbarities. The weak and defenceless whenever surprised by them fell
victims to their thirst for blood; and though some were more humane than
others, all paid implicit obedience to the command of a leader when that
was given to imbrue their hands in blood; murder once commenced no chief
ever had power to stay the hand of his meanest follower, and there is
hardly an instance of a prisoner being saved by them.” The Maroons have
been accused of torturing their prisoners, but Dallas is sure they were
so keen on killing that when they did take an unfortunate they were
only too eager to cut off his head with their cutlasses or machetes, and
doubtless many a wounded man was so despatched. We can hardly blame them
for showing no mercy. They were only untaught savages and assuredly no
mercy was ever shown them.
By 1739 the position of affairs was intolerable, and Governor Trelawny
was determined to rid the colony of the ever-present menace. A
considerable number of the soldiers and militia were collected and sent
up these heights to surround all the paths to the Maroon settlements.
And then, seeing there was little prospect of frightening the Maroons
into submission, it was decided to make peace and to range the enemy
on the side of the whites. For it must be remembered there were three
parties in Jamaica, all antagonistic, whites, slaves, and Maroons. This
idea was hailed with enthusiasm, as it seemed that the holding of the
Maroons within bounds was likely to be no easier as the years went on,
and their conquest was wellnigh impossible. In fact, they were better as
friends than as enemies. Whatever they had done was best forgotten, and
the Government declared themselves ready to cry quits.
The difficulty was to get within touch, and to make these people who
had been hunted and harried all their lives believe this extraordinary
thing. They could hardly be expected to realise the position, and it was
just as well they should not. For in the face of a slave population that
were as tinder beside the flame, failure would be fatal. The prestige of
the white man would be gone.
And for this same reason, whatever was done must be done quickly.
Colonels Guthrie and Sadler in command were instructed to move with what
despatch they might. But, though the Maroons were as weary of the war as
their opponents, it was difficult to get speech with Cudjoe and to make
him believe that peace was in the air when they did get speech with him.
For he was a cautious man, this negro leader.
When he saw the force brought against him he collected his men in a spot
most suitable for his mode of warfare, placing them upon ledges of rock
that rose almost perpendicularly to a great height surrounding a plain
which narrowed into a passage upon which the whole force could bring
their arms to bear. This passage contracted into a defile half a mile
long, and it would have been the simplest thing for the Maroons to cut
off a party entering it, for it was so narrow that party must march in
single file. For long afterwards it was known as Guthrie's defile.
In the dell behind, secured by other cockpits behind it again, were
collected the Maroon women and children, and on the open ground before
the defile the men had erected their huts, which were called Maroon
Town, or Cudjoe's Town, and in a moment they could have flown to the
rock ledges. And even if the town had been burnt it would not have been
a very grave loss, just a town of wattle and posts, such as they build
even now on the Gambia, with a grass or palm leaf thatch. And all
around were stationed men in the hills with horns made generally of
conch shells, and in those days a negro could say a good deal with a
horn, even as in Africa now he can send a message hundreds of miles by
tapping a tom-tom.
So Colonel Guthrie advanced towards this redoubtable hill stronghold,
seeing nothing but dense greenery and outcrops of rock, and hearing
all round him the sound of negro horns, now soft and low, welcoming,
beseeching, now loud and threatening, daring him to come farther, now
with a shrill wild clangour, warning those behind that the white man
was come in force. But he advanced very slowly, making all the signs he
could that he came in peace. On he came, on and on, and there must have
been some amongst his followers who feared lest he risked too much, and
some who, seeing he had got so far unmolested, would gladly have risked
all and made a dash for the huts, whose grey smoke they could see
streaming up in the clear morning air above the dense greenery.
But Colonel Guthrie held them all, and, stretching out his hand, he
called out that he came in peace, that he had come by the Governor's
orders to make them an offer of peace, and that the white people eagerly
desired it. If the Maroons had only known it, it was a great confession
of failure on the part of the arrogant whites. Back came the answer in
negro jargon that the Maroons too desired peace, and they begged that
the troops might be kept back. They had reverted to savagedom, these
people; the men were warriors and hunters, having from two to six wives,
who tilled the ground as well as bore the children. I can imagine what a
danger they must have been, set in the midst of a slave population; for
one thing, they were always ready to carry off the black women. And now
Colonel Guthrie had come to put an end to it all.
He shouted that he would send someone to them to show the confidence he
had in their sincerity, and to explain the terms of peace.
To this they agreed, and Dr Russell was elected for the purpose, and a
brave man he must have been.
“He advanced very confidently towards their huts,” says the historian,
“near which he was met by two Maroons, whom he informed of the purport
of his message and asked if either of them were Cudjoe.” They were not
Cudjoe, but they promised him if no one followed him he should see
the negro leader. The horns had ceased. All on that mountainside were
awaiting the great event. The two men called out in the Koromantyn
language, and upon all the surrounding rocks and ledges and fallen trees
appeared the warriors. Very like the Ashanti of to-day they probably
were with fierce dark faces, their wool brushed back above the sloping
forehead and gleaming white teeth, with necklaces of seeds or bones
or beads about their necks and machetes, and sometimes long muskets in
their hands. And the white messenger stood there and addressed them,
they were supposed to understand English and probably did understand the
gist of his speech. He said that Cudjoe was a brave and a good man, and
he was sure he would come down and show a disposition to live in peace
and friendliness with the white people.
The negro chief had driven them to woo him with soft words, and he did
not understand the greatness of his victory, or perhaps he would have
driven a harder bargain.
Several Maroons came forward, amongst them one whom it was easy to see
was their leader. And behold the great negro chief who had kept the
country at bay, for whose reduction regiments had been sent from
England, was a monstrous misshaped dwarf, humpbacked, with strongly
marked African features, “and a peculiar wildness in his manner.” He
was clad in rags. He had on the tattered remains of an old blue coat,
of which the skirts and the sleeves below the elbows were missing, round
his head was a dirty white cloth, so dirty it was difficult to realise
its original colour, a pair of loose drawers that did not reach the
knees covered his substantial short legs, and he wore a hat that was
only a crown, for the rim had long since gone. A bag of large slugs
and a cow's horn full of powder was slung on his right side, and on his
left, hung by a narrow leather strap under his arm, a sharp knife, or as
they called it then, a “mushet” or “couteau.” A miserable savage after
all was the great negro chief, and all his person was smeared with the
red earth of the cockpits. Neither he nor his followers had a shirt to
their names, though all had guns and cutlasses.
And the squat, dwarf-like chieftain who had held up the island was
nervous. Facing the white man, who looked down upon him, he shifted
uneasily as a negro would, and at last Russell offered to change hats
with him--a brave man indeed, but the island was in straits! Upon this
the Maroons came down armed, and Colonel Guthrie and the other white
men came forward unarmed, and Colonel Guthrie held out his hand. The
emotional African seized it and kissed it--he must have been a slave
once, he knew so well what the white men expected--and threw himself
on the ground, embracing Colonel Guthrie's knees, kissing his feet, and
asking his pardon. He was humble, penitent, abject, clearly he did not
understand the situation. And the rest of the Maroons, following the
example of their chieftain, prostrated themselves, and the long dreaded
black freebooters were won over to the side of the white people.
Then and there upon that mountain-side it was decreed that henceforward
all hostilities between the Maroons and the whites should cease “for
ever,” they said grandiloquently, that all the Maroons except those who
had joined during the past two years should live in a state of freedom
and liberty, that even the exceptions should have full pardon if they
were willing to return to their former masters, and even if they did not
wish to return, “they shall remain in subjection to Captain Cudjoe, and
in friendship with us.”
Oh, it was a glorious victory--for the Maroons!
They were to have all the lands round Trelawny Town and the cockpits,
with liberty to plant and dispose of their increase, and they might hunt
wherever they thought fit, provided they did not come within three
miles of “any penn, settlement, or crawle,” which seems to have been a
privilege they could easily take, whether the white people liked it or
not.
In their turn, they bound themselves to help put down any rebellion, or
to help against any foreign invasion, a white man was to live amongst
them, and they were to bring back runaway negroes. And finally, it was
required of them that Captain Cudjoe and his successors were to wait on
the Governor or Commander-in-Chief at least once a year.
And there was another Maroon victory, this time scored by the Windward
Maroons in the east of the colony. These were under Quao, and as
communication with Cudjoe's party was difficult, they knew nothing of
the peace that had been made. A party of soldiers was sent out against
them; these soldiers were new to the hills. For three days they wandered
through the densely wooded mountain-land, and then they came upon
the footsteps of men and dogs, saw the smoke of fires, and arrived
at seventy houses with a fire burning in each, and jerked hog still
broiling upon the coals.
It never occurred to them that such houses were of little value, easily
made, for the material lay all around, and that the woods abounded in
pigs. They were better used to the parade ground than to the woodland,
and they saw nothing strange or sinister in the fact that those in
flight had left a trail that even they could follow, and so they went on
blindly, till suddenly, as they were laboriously making their way down
to the sea, the Maroons fell upon their rear.
“The militia fled,” says Dallas, “and the baggage negroes to the number
of seventy threw down their loads and followed. The regulars took
shelter under the perpendicular projection of a mountain that overhung
the stream, whence they could hear the Maroons talking, though they
could see nothing of them. In this situation, almost hid from the enemy,
they remained four hours up to their waists in water, exposed to
the heat of a vertical sun and apprehensive of being taken alive and
tortured.”
They had fired at the smoke of the Maroon guns, and by this means got
rid of all their ammunition, but they were safe enough where they were
so long as the enemy did not come directly in front. At last, when a
shot was fired from that direction it seemed to them they must get away
at all costs, and they made a dash across the river which brought the
whole of the Maroon marksmen upon them. Their dead they abandoned,
which was right enough, but they abandoned their wounded also. Harassed,
fatigued, defeated men, they fled back to the quarters in St George's
they had left with such high hopes three days before.
And those who were left behind? The Maroons probably came down and
butchered them, but one man certainly told them of the peace made with
Cudjoe's Maroons in the west. It seemed to them hardly likely, but they
debated whether they should spare his life and send him to the Governor
an emissary, to say that they too would like to come in on the same
terms. Poor soldier of the eighteenth century, whose name even we do not
know. Quao and his leading men were rather in favour of sending him.
But the soldier's evil star was in the ascendant. There arose an Obeah
woman, and she declared that the powers of darkness demanded the life of
the white man who had fallen into their hands, and they struck off his
head with a machete.
Again the Government decided this was an enemy who were too strong for
them, and three months later Captain Adair went out with another party,
not to fight but to make peace. By the purest accident they captured
a horn-man, and him they told of the offer, dealing with him gently,
probably greatly to his surprise. And from him they heard how the
Maroons had discussed the news told by the luckless soldier. Since by
a miracle it was true, he agreed gladly to lead the soldiers to their
town, only impressing upon them how impossible it would be to take it
by force. Captain Adair gave himself up to the guidance of the horn-man.
And the story of Cudjoe and the Western Maroons was repeated, only
Captain Adair had not so great a difficulty in convincing the savage
warriors of his good intention. The massacred soldier had helped him
greatly there.
“After some parley they agreed to exchange a captain for the purposes of
settling preliminaries.”
That savage leader must have been an artist. There was a touch of true
drama in the way he staged the scene. No sooner had these things been
agreed upon than the Maroons, each with a stroke of his machete, cleared
more than an acre of light brushwood on the side of the mountain and so
exposed to the view of the soldiers the whole body of savage warriors
ranged on the slope in order of battle.
Standing thus, the two parties came to an agreement, and not till that
was done were the soldiers allowed to enter the town with their drums
beating.
The horn-man was right. It would have been wellnigh impossible to take
that town, for as they climbed up one steep hill and down another they
noted the holes dug to cover the defenders, and the crossed sticks for
resting the guns with which they had enfiladed every angle, that from
the steepness it was necessary to make in ascending.
But the white men by favour were in the town and they left there a
Lieutenant Thicknesse as a hostage, and he told afterwards that Quao's
children could not refrain from striking their pointed fingers at his
breast as they would have done knives, calling “Buckra! Buckra!” The
women, he says, wore by way of decoration necklaces of human teeth,
which they declared were white men's, and the jawbone of the unfortunate
who had brought the first intelligence of Cudjoe's peace adorned one
of their horns, a truly Ashanti way of making memorial of a slain
ambassador.
And thus the white men came to terms with the Maroons of the east as
they had done with those of the west, and the weary island breathed
freely and sighing, said at least they had disposed of one danger--and
so they had--for more than fifty years. That is to say, the white people
of Jamaica had adapted themselves to the thorn which was for ever in
their side.
The Maroons, they say, far excelled in strength and symmetry all the
other negroes in Jamaica. They were blacker, taller and handsomer. Once
they were at peace, the life of a Maroon was far from being unhappy,
even though white men lived among them nominally to rule them. Their
mountain homes were cool and healthy, fully ten or fifteen degrees of
temperature below that of Montego Bay or Falmouth, and the surroundings
were lovely.
From the mountain-side where we dwelt at the Hyde, we looked out over
wooded hill and valley, coconut palms cut the sky-line, in the deeper
hollows was the vivid green of sugar cane, and the bottoms between the
hills were pasture land whereon were mules and horses and cattle,
red and white. Always it was hill and dale, woodland and pasture, and
flamboyant trees made splashes of gorgeous colour, there were plumps
of dark green pimento trees like the myrtle groves wherein the gods of
ancient Greece held high revel, there were orange trees and lemon trees
with golden fruit and white blossoms that filled the air with fragrance;
by moonlight it was fairyland and with the dawn all along the valleys
and lowlands and in the clefts of the hills lay a fleecy, soft grey
mist, the softest, tenderest mist that refreshed the land and added
to its luxuriant fertility. And a little higher up, standing beneath a
symmetrical broad leaf or a giant cotton tree, it was possible to see
the blue Caribbean flecked with white waves or stilly reflecting the
cloudless blue sky above. A lovely land the Maroons had for themselves
for all time, and they loved it these long lithe warrior slaves with
the quick wild and fiery eyes. But savages they were, and it was to keep
some sort of check upon them that a white superintendent with helpers
was set to live amongst them. Principally it seemed he was there to see
that they did not maintain too friendly relations with the slaves from
the plantations. He was bound to reside in the town, from which he could
not be absent longer than a fortnight, and every three months he had
to make a return on oath to the Governor of the number residing in his
town, how many were able to bear arms, how many were fit for duty, the
number of women and children, their increase and decrease.
So the white people kept in touch with their former enemies.
And the principal job of those enemies was to bring in runaways. They
did that undoubtedly, and presently a law was passed allowing not only
the usual reward, but a little extra if the slave was brought in alive.
They might have dances among themselves, and provided the dance was in
the daytime with a small number of slaves. But the slaves were not to
gather in Maroon Town and they were not to hold slaves of their own.
And lest they should be a danger to the country no party in pursuit of
runaways was to consist of more than twelve men and was not to remain
out more than twenty days, and before they went out they had to be
provided with a written order from their superintendent. They were not
to be employed by any white person without a written agreement and they
were not to be whipped or otherwise ill-treated, and as they increased
fast they had the right to relinquish their rights as Maroons and to
live elsewhere in the island as free blacks.
Some of these laws had very little attention paid them. They kept slaves
and bought them, they wandered about the island apparently wherever they
chose, and many of them formed temporary connections with the women on
the plantations. And so slack were they in their search for runaways
that a large body of these emulated the Maroons themselves, and lived
for over twenty years in the heart of the mountains between the eastern
and the western Maroons.
The planters made no objections to their connections with their slaves,
for the children of such connections belonged to them and were likely
to have the strength and vigour of their fathers. But though the Maroons
left these children in bondage as carelessly as did the whites in like
case, still the connections thus formed must have broken away in a small
measure the bitterness that was supposed to exist between the Maroon and
the slave, and every child by his very vigour deepened the danger that
for ever threatened the planters.
However, it was peace between the planters and the black freebooters,
nominally at least for over fifty years. Doubtless there was much
friction and discontent, but things always quieted down, till in 1795
the smouldering fire broke into flames again.
The causes of the second Maroon war as given by Dallas and others point
to gross mismanagement on the part of someone, but we can hardly judge
now of the provocation on either side.
Anyhow, there was trouble with the superintendent, a white man whom the
Maroons liked and trusted, but who apparently was so slack he was away
from his post for weeks at a time, and the Government suspended him
and placed another man in his place. Then two Maroons, whom the Maroons
openly said they counted of little worth, stole some hogs, and were
apprehended and taken to Montego Bay and given thirty-nine lashes
by--and there lay the sting for the unconquered Maroons--a common slave
in the workhouse.
This was strongly resented and the Maroons threw out their new
superintendent, and we can imagine the excitement and dismay in
Montego Bay when the dismissed man came riding down the mountains. The
inhabitants doubtless looked with relief upon the grey stone walls of
the fort that overlooked the bay, and took care to have in order those
stout stone houses with walls over two feet thick. I have lived in one
of them. Those walls certainly would have been a protection against a
savage foe.
The militia were called out and moved forward into the woods. So small
is the island, so close they were, that Maroon Town can only have been
about seventeen miles from Montego Bay, even taking into account all the
hairpin-turns, and it was nothing like that as the crow flies.
It can hardly have been pleasant to have a band of bloodthirsty savages
so close, and here the sycophant Bridges, who for some reason does not
spare Lord Balcarres, the new Governor of the island, and blamed him
for the second Maroon war, becomes quite poetical on the subject of the
meeting of the militia with the enemy.
“The militia,” he says, “moved forward to the supposed scene of action
and were met in the woods by a Maroon of exquisite symmetry and noble
address, who descended the side of the mountain with the step of an
antelope, and giving a wild and graceful flourish to his lance presented
a letter requesting a conference with the chief magistrate of the
district and with certain other individuals whom it named. The proposal
was accepted and their terms heard.”
They wanted their superintendent back and they got him, and they had all
the children in their town baptized as an evidence of good faith; they
went further still, and when the authorities requested their leaders
to come in, they came in, thirty-nine of them, came in peace, and those
same authorities, who vowed all they desired was peace, promptly bound
the hands of all but old Montague the chief behind them, marched them
through the streets of the town with crowds of slaves jeering at them
and shut them up in Montego Bay jail. To be behind any walls must have
been hard; for these free mountaineers to be confined in an eighteenth
century jail in summer in the tropics must have been a purgatory for
which we can have no words. One of them put an end to his life by
tearing out his bowels. Yet so utterly blind were the authorities that
they took two of the men and sent them back to their own people “to
induce them to surrender!” It doubtless came as a surprise to the whites
that these two messengers instead of recommending instant surrender did
exactly the opposite. At any rate, “upon the report they made of the
reception and treatment of the thirty-seven, the Maroons, far from
following the others” (I am quoting Dallas) “immediately set fire to
both their towns.” When they surrendered in 1739, their numbers did not
exceed 600, but when the second war broke out they had increased to over
1400, and when we remember that they dwelt among impregnable mountains
and held the back settlers at their mercy, we can understand in a
measure the divided councils that led to the war. Many men thought
nothing was too bad for a Maroon, and it would be safer to extirpate
them. They would have treated them as we treat dangerous vermin, killed
them whenever and wherever they got the chance. We have only to read
Bridges thirty years later to know how some of the colonists thought of
the men with African blood in their veins.
“They had not been watched with that vigilance which African perfidy
requires,” says Bridges, speaking of the slaves in one place, and what
applied to the slaves applied still more to the Maroons. Everyone felt
they must be coerced. They were a danger to the country, and while I
sympathise with them very strongly, I think they were. Undoubtedly,
apart from any particular provocation, if Jamaica were to be held as a
slave country, these 1400 free black people dwelling in the heart of
her mountains had to be subdued at any cost. They were talking of the
Abolition of the Slave Trade in England, and doubtless the planters
feared the effect of such talk both upon their slaves and the Maroons,
should they come to hear of it.
“These insolent savages must be subdued,” said the colony with the
Governor at their head, and accordingly, unmindful of the lessons of
over fifty years ago, set out to subdue them by the old methods. But
there were roads up to Maroon Town now, roads made and kept open by the
Maroons themselves, roads winding and narrow, cut along the hillside
among the tropical greenery; the mango and easily-grown bamboo, the
beautiful ackee with its bright green leaves and brilliant red pods,
orange trees, the dark green coffee with its fragrant white flower, and
annotto with its clusters of ruby berries. But the soldiers noticed none
of these things. They went up and up, and they must have found it very
hard work in August.
Their leader, Colonel Sandford, knew little enough about bush fighting,
but he was joined by Mr Robertson, the Commanding Officer at Fort
Dalling and the owner of a pen in the neighbourhood, and he brought with
him a Trelawny Town Maroon named Thomas, who undertook to act as
guide to the white forces and faithfully carried out his pact. Colonel
Sandford got so far that he saw the Maroons on the heights between their
town and Schaw Castle, a pen in the mountains, and probably would have
been content with his success had he not received from Lord Balcarres an
order to take New Town. The way was a long defile between the mountains,
and just at the hour of sunset he entered it at the head of his
dragoons. The enemy let them get well into the defile, the column was
half its length, and when it had gone two-thirds of the way they let
off, all down the left of that column from one end to the other in the
darkening light, a tremendous volley of small arms, they themselves
being hidden from sight by trees and rocks. It was the old, old tactics
of Cudjoe that you would have thought the island men at least might have
expected. But in Cudjoe's day there had been no roads. Perhaps it was
that well-made road that deceived them.
There was only one thing to be done; they must reach the open spaces
round the town out of reach of these marksmen hidden behind the trees.
They quickened their pace, urged on by the cries of the wounded and
groans of the dying. Luckily, in the uncertain light the marksmanship
had not been very good, or I do not know how anyone could have escaped.
Then, just as they reached Old Town there was another shot, and Colonel
Sandford fell. He was dead. And the wildest panic ensued. At least
this is what Dallas says. There was but one thought uppermost in their
minds--to get away. Undoubtedly they could have held the town had there
been anyone whom they trusted to lead them, and undoubtedly they made no
such effort. There was no one whose orders they would obey. The darkness
gave them just the help they needed. In the murk and pouring rain they
squelched their way down the slippery mountain paths, sure that dragoons
were totally unfitted for mountain warfare, and so overjoyed at their
escape from a handful of savages that they fired off their muskets, made
a tremendous row, and generally misbehaved themselves. It is all very
well to think scorn of them now, but the densely-wooded mountains were
terrible, they had seen their leader fall and they were certainly both
by training and equipment totally unfitted to cope with savages on the
warpath.
That night there was a riotous scene. Lord Balcarres, we are told,
having slipped on a plank made slippery by the rain had “a contusion
over the eye,” if he hadn't been a lord and the Governor it would have
been a black eye, and it might well have been attributed to another
cause. But it did not add to his beauty, and the soldiers rushing into
the camp wild with delight at having escaped, made such an uproar that
only the Governor could cope with it. The night, indeed, was disgraceful
to both sides, for the Maroons, instead of following up their very great
success, retired to their town and recruited their spirits with such
copious draughts of rum as made them “frantic and desperate.” Sixty
of them by their own account lay in a state of insensibility till two
o'clock the next day, when with the assistance of the women and the less
intoxicated men they were removed to the cockpits of Petit River. Had
the troops gone up that morning, more than a fourth of the young Maroon
men must have fallen into their hands.
“It is much to be regretted,” says Dallas, who wrote within seven
years of the catastrophe, and at least must have known something of the
general talk, “that the panic by which the troops were hurried away to
headquarters prevented their occupying the site of the Old Town after
they were in possession of it, and might have maintained it without
resistance. The immediate encamping there would not only have saved the
lives of many who died of their wounds, or through fatigue, but would
have left on the minds of the Maroons an impression that even their
defiles were not to be depended on; whereas abandoning the town was
giving them a triumph and confirming their reliance on their position.”
In this disastrous affair there fell Colonel Sandford of the dragoons,
Colonel Gallimore of the militia, fifteen dragoons, thirteen militia,
eight volunteers and not a single Maroon. No wonder they celebrated a
victory. It is to the credit of the Maroons that none of the wounded
were taken and put to torture, but most died where they fell or crawled
into the woods and died for want of the help that was not forthcoming,
although they were within so short a distance of the town on the
seashore below, and close to so many pens and plantations. Colonel
Gallimore's body was never found, and though the Maroons yielded up
watches, knives, pencils, and other things from the dead and wounded,
nothing of his was ever forthcoming. So it is thought he must have been
wounded and crawling away, favoured by the coming darkness, have found
some retreat where he died for want of care. Dallas says he was a brave,
active man much beloved, but he was never seen again, and the dense
woodlands of the cockpits have never so far as I know yielded up their
secrets.
Things could not be left so. It was resolved to surround the scene
of action, and they called up reinforcements, 100 men from the 62nd
Regiment, a detachment of the 17th Light Dragoons and large bodies of
militia. The soldiers could and did get at the provision grounds and
destroy them, though all round they could hear the weird blowing of the
Maroon horns, mournful, threatening, even triumphant and defiant. They
were not beaten, they were not going to be beaten, said those horns.
“Wait till we get you!” and then the angry soldiers fired into the
gullies at random, and the mountains echoed and re-echoed to the noise
of the discharge, and the Maroons were not a penny the worse, for even
the destruction of their provision grounds did not worry them over much.
They knew where to get fresh supplies.
And it rained and rained and rained. In these mountains where it is lush
and green and the vegetation grows riotously, there is sometimes as much
as 30 inches of rain in a month. All the paths were slimy and slippery,
every overhanging branch held a heavy shower-bath, the men were soaked
to their skins again and again, laying the foundation as everyone
believed of all the deadly fevers with which the country was credited.
The only comfort they had was that things were a little disturbing to
the enemy too, for hidden in the bush the attacking party found various
trunks containing articles of linen and plate, the result of raids on
the plantations, and many of the dragoons up here in the rain furnished
themselves with chintz nightgowns. I like that last touch. Yet all the
time the Maroons were so close in the jungle they could hear the orders
given but did not attack, because they feared the white men were too
far in to run away and were in such numbers they, the Maroons, could not
escape if driven to bay.
But having conceded so much to the valour of the white men, they
did pretty much as they pleased, even passing the soldiers camped at
Vaughansfield at eleven o'clock one night and burning the buildings on
a pen only six miles away on the road to Montego Bay. There was
consternation in Montego Bay and thankfulness, that at least
headquarters was between the town and the dreaded enemy. The raid
quickened up the preparations, they dragged guns up the steep and
slippery defiles that converged upon the Old Town, found no Maroons
there, though round in the mountains the horns were calling defiance,
and they recovered the bodies of Colonel Sandford and eighteen of those
who had fallen with him.
Lord Balcarres grew tired of this unprofitable warfare and went back to
Montego Bay, and, extraordinary as it seems now, they put a price on the
heads of Palmer and Parkinson, the men who had been sent back to tell
the other Maroons what had happened to the thirty-seven men who had come
in, for they said these men had instigated the rebellion. But that these
two always denied. They always maintained that when the Maroons heard
what had happened to their messengers of peace, each man of his own
accord set fire to his house, determined to die rather than come in.
And so bitter were they, not unnaturally, that a captain of Accompong
Maroons, who had gone by a secret path to persuade them to surrender,
was promptly shot because they feared he knew too much about the
approaches to their strongholds.
The great mistake probably lay in bringing in soldiers who could know
nothing of the difficulties of the country. There must have been many
stalwart young men, in fact we know there were, who were expert hunters
and woodsmen and fully competent to deal with such an enemy. The
difficulty was the leader. Brave men were a drug in the market, a
clever leader almost impossible to find. Counsels were always divided. A
soldier fresh from Europe or from the parade ground clearly was not the
right man, but it always ended in a soldier being chosen.
When Lord Balcarres gave up a command which did not seem likely to cover
him with glory, he handed it over to Colonel Fitch, and General Reid
came and occupied the quarters at Vaughansfield with detachments of
militia from the St James, Hanover and Westmoreland regiments. They
marched and they counter-marched, and the militia quarrelled with the
regulars and they both consumed an immense amount of ammunition and
food, but came no nearer to getting those Maroons. And still it rained
and the militia grew sick of the fruitless job, declared they had
work on their plantations that must be attended to--the companies were
relieved every fortnight, and it grew more and more difficult to collect
men to take their place. And Colonel Fitch with the aid of slaves set
about the clearing of the country as well as he was able, but it was
a job that is not finished yet, so he only got a little done, and the
Maroons used to come into the hills above his quarters and call him, and
at last he responded to their call and they told him they only wanted a
free pardon and a promise that they should not be sent from the island.
This seemed to him reasonable enough and he promised to do what he could
for them, and allowed two of them to go on a safe conduct to visit their
friends imprisoned at Montego Bay.
It was a wrong move. The Governor, dreading lest the Maroons should raid
the little town, had had the prisoners moved to a vessel in the bay for
their better security, and the men returned reporting that they were in
a ship and were evidently going to be taken away. From that time no
more Maroons visited Colonel Fitch; they were prepared to die for their
freedom.
But in true barbaric fashion they saw to it that a goodly company should
attend them across the river. Colonel Fitch, preparatory to an assault,
set gangs of slaves to clear the ground with companies of militia to
guard them, and the Maroons laid an ambush and killed ten of the slaves
and six of the militia, so that I presume clearing away undergrowth
was popular neither with soldiers nor bondsmen. This certainly set the
slaves against the Maroons. The militia were already as hostile as was
possible.
I cannot say too often it was an awful country. There was a certain
Captain Lee who commanded an advance post set in the dense jungle and
fenced by high palisades, and he complained that from the hillsides
above the Maroons could shoot into it, and he asked Colonel Fitch to
move it. Accordingly Colonel Fitch, bent on seeing things for himself,
with Colonel Jackson and several other officers, and accompanied by two
Accompong Maroons went to inspect. The Accompongs did not like the job.
They declared the Maroons were too close, and pointed out where they had
thrown away the heads of wild cocos and eddoes, broad-leaved plants,
and the leaves were not yet withered. But the white men, with incredible
folly which perhaps does them credit, were unwilling to go back before
they had accomplished something, and, persuading Colonel Fitch to allow
them to go ahead, Colonel Jackson and one or two others went on, still
accompanied by the unwilling Accompongs, and followed slowly by the
Commanding Officer till they came to a place where the road forked. They
were descending now so steep a declivity that they could only go one at
a time, holding on by their hands. Then history repeated itself. There
was a tremendous volley of small arms, an officer named Brisset was seen
staggering among the bushes, both the Accompongs fell dead, and Colonel
Jackson ran back on ground lower than the path. We can see him stooping
low to escape possible shots, taking all advantage he could of the cover
till he came back to Colonel Fitch, seated on a fallen tree, his arm
supported by a projecting stump and his head resting on his hand. Once
more the Maroons had got the Commander-in-Chief. The blood was trickling
from the middle of his waistcoat, and the short red and brown striped
linen jacket which he wore stuck out behind “as if a rib had been
broken.” Such was Colonel Jackson's description. He was mortally
wounded. Jackson caught his hand.
“It is Jackson, your friend Jackson. Look at me,” and he drew out
a dagger, saying that he should not fall alive into the hands of the
Maroons and he would die with him rather than leave him. Remember, they
all feared torture. The dying man turned his face towards his friend (he
was at peace with all men now, even with the Maroons) and looked at him
kindly, though he was past speech, and then Jackson heard the cocking of
guns, click, click, click, one after another, horribly close, and called
to the soldiers to lie down, and tried to drag his friend down beside
him. But Fitch resisted, turning his head as if he too would have spoken
to the men, and so, though little harm was done to the men who had
obeyed the order promptly, their dying leader was shot again through the
forehead and there was no need for Jackson to consider his condition any
longer.
It was a great victory for the Maroons. Several of the party were killed
and many more wounded, among them the Captain Lee, who had come in
because his little palisaded fort was hardly tenable. Colonel Jackson
collected the men from Lee's post and took them all back to Colonel
Fitch's quarters, where one died the next morning and Captain Lee a day
or two later. Eight altogether were killed and seven wounded, but none
were more regretted than Colonel Fitch. We are told he was tall and
graceful, and a charming young man.
“He threw around his hut,” says Dallas, using the language of the time,
“a certain elegance that bespoke the gentleman. His private virtues
endeared him to his friends to whom his death was a deep wound.”
Great was the consternation in Jamaica, for riot was let loose in the
mountains. Seventy men were dead and twenty-three were wounded. Listen
to the tale of rapine. Brook's House was burnt; Schaw Castle was burnt;
Bandon was burnt; Shand's was burnt; Stephen and Bernard's House was
burnt; Kenmure was burnt and twelve negroes carried away. Darliston
trash-house was burnt; Catadupa, Lapland, and Mocha were burnt and two
negroes carried away. There is a little block-house of stone on Lapland
with loopholes in the walls, a most substantial place, but the roof has
not been on in the memory of anyone living, and I wondered very much
whether this was the Lapland that was burnt by the Maroons; and we
passed by Mocha, connected by an aerial rope railway on which were slung
cars that descended with bananas to the country below. All these steep
hillsides are flourishing fields of bananas now. Catadupa is lovely
as its name, and there are one or two cottages there in which winter
visitors may stay, revelling in a climate where the days are delightful,
the nights gorgeous, and the mornings and evenings divine.
Those freebooters did well. Not a man of them is known to have suffered.
No wonder the colony was roused to a simmer of excitement. I wonder--as
probably some of the colonists wondered--why the slaves did not rise
in a body, join these men of their own colour and make a bold bid for
freedom.
General Walpole was put in command, and he began entirely different
tactics. He taught his men to take cover as the Maroons did, so that
there are accounts of actions in which a great deal of powder was
expended and no man was killed on either side, and he began to clear
the country round the mountains, but as for trying to keep the Maroons
penned in he knew better. “It would have been just as feasible as to pen
pigeons in a meadow.” He employed working negroes under cover of strong
advanced parties to clear the heights that surrounded his camp,
the approaches to the Maroon defile, and an eminence near to his
headquarters, which almost looked into a cockpit. And always he kept the
soldiers on the move, harrying the Maroons successfully on the whole,
but once a sergeant and ten men took a wrong turning, a thing easy
enough to do in the mountains, and got into the Maroon defile, and
presently the men who were waiting for that sergeant to bring them some
more ammunition heard heavy firing, and not one man returned to tell the
tale.
And the soldiers kept clearing the country, and the Maroons kept
breaking out in unexpected places, and raiding “like wild creatures of
the forest, they found issues at every point.”
Still General Walpole had high hopes. The dry season would come with the
winter months, and where he knew there was a spring he could get at, he
mounted a howitzer and threw shells into the cockpit just beyond it. And
some of the springs go dry in the dry season, and it was not likely the
Maroons were thrifty and conserved water. Though the rains in the
mountains are plenteous in their season, I have myself seen the people
come miles from that cockpit country with kerosene tins upon their heads
to get water from the nearest spring which happened to be upon the Hyde.
They did object to General Walpole. “Dam dat little buckra,” said the
Maroons, “he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new fashion for
fight. Him fire him big ball a'ter we an' wen de big ball top de dam
sunting fire we agen. Come boys, make we go take farer an' see wha he
do den?”
And they did go farther and were driven out again. But the soldiers had
to be fed, and one day the Maroons surprised a convoy of provisions,
captured the ten soldiers guarding it, and cut off their heads, and
always they raided the negro provision grounds whether the slave owners
liked it or not, and kept themselves well supplied. The soldiers were
doing better, but the Maroons were still a thorn in their side, and the
war threatened to be long and prolonged, which was bad for the prestige
of the white people if nothing else. For nearly five months this body of
untrained negroes had defied the military force of the island.
The Governor called a council at Falmouth, a town on the north coast,
twenty miles from Montego Bay--a very despondent council--and it was
actually proposed, to the wrath of General Walpole, to send into the
woods some of the Maroon chiefs confined at Montego Bay, men who had
been confined in irons, as ambassadors to persuade the rebels to make
peace!
Falmouth is not a town that attracts me, though it has a fine situation
right at the sea-shore just beyond the mouth of the Martha Brae, and it
is reminiscent of the days of long ago. The houses without verandahs,
without even a creeper over their bare white walls, in streets without
the vestige of a tree, look hot with the tropical sun pouring down upon
them, but it was an important place in those times, for it has a
harbour into which quite big ships may come, and those houses to which
I objected are all mahogany floored with mahogany and mahoe panelling
against the walls, truly the houses of rich people. In the courthouse,
where probably they held this meeting, for it is one of the largest
houses in the town, the mahogany flooring is simply magnificent, and
kept with a shining polish that could not well be excelled in any great
house in London or New York, while from the ceiling hang most splendid
chandeliers of cut glass. They hold balls in that room occasionally, and
then they light those chandeliers, and all the thousand and one facets
of the cut glass reflect the light back on to the dark, highly polished
flooring, and the deep dark flooring reflects it back again, and the
girls of Trelawny and St James have as magnificent a setting for their
youth and beauty in this remote corner of the Empire as ever have girls
in London Town. And here, more than a hundred years ago, the Governor of
the colony and all the important men met to decide what they should do
with a party of banditti who only eighteen miles away were setting the
whole island at defiance.
Disaffected, unconquered, they formed a rallying point for every
discontented slave in the island. There lay the danger, the danger that
was with them always.
But no one had any proposition to make till a certain Mr Quarrell, who
had a plantation near to Bluefields, suggested that they should bring
dogs, the hunting dogs the Spaniards kept to run down their slaves, from
Cuba.
Curiously enough, a people who seem to have hesitated at no barbarity
where their slaves were concerned, hesitated over this matter. What
would the rest of the world think of them if they hunted men with dogs?
However, necessity knows no law, and finally it was agreed to send Mr
Quarrell to Cuba to get the dogs, and the men who could manage them.
The tale of the bringing of those dogs reads like an epic in itself. Mr
Quarrell embarked in the schooner _Mercury_, carrying twelve guns, and
the crew of the _Mercury_ consisted of four British seamen, one of
whom was made captain, twelve Curacoa negroes, and eighteen Spanish
renegadoes, and they appear to have been as nice a parcel of blackguards
as a man might well gather together in those times. Throughout the
voyage, the English who were on board found it necessary to keep
possession of the cabin and quarter-deck, and to keep all the arms under
their own charge. It was a long story of tribulation, but finally after
infinite difficulties, Quarrell shipped forty chasseurs and one hundred
and four dogs. They were big dogs, like powerful greyhounds, and I
suspect were something like the kangaroo dogs that were so common in
Australia when I was a child, greyhounds crossed with some other breed
to give them bulk and strength. The chasseur was armed only with a
machete, and the dogs were not supposed to tear the man they came up
with, but if he made no resistance to hold him and bark for assistance.
It would be no good resisting man and dog, for the steel of the machetes
was excellent, and they were about eighteen inches long, formidable
weapons. Dallas says these dogs and their keepers were employed in Cuba
for taking runaways and breaking up bodies of negroes collected for
hostile purposes, which is “sometimes occasioned,” he remarks quaintly,
“by the rigour exercised on the Spanish plantations.”
The _Mercury_ was a luckless ship. She ran ashore on a sandbank and
appeared likely to leave her bones there. They had shipped cattle to
feed the dogs, and on that dark night the dogs broke loose and seized
the cattle, and the bellowing of the cattle, the howling of the dogs,
the wild wail of the wind, the roaring of the waves as they washed over
the little ship, all combined to make pandemonium, and Quarrell must
have felt the Maroons' luck was holding. Even when they got her off and
arrived at Montego Bay their ill-luck pursued them, for from the little
fort on the hillside that was a haven of refuge to the townspeople there
came a volley of grape-shot, the officer in command having mistaken the
_Mercury_ for an enemy's privateer! Luckily, they don't appear to have
been good marksmen for no one was hurt, and the little ship came to
anchor with some American ships between her and the guns.
Amidst immense excitement the dogs and their guardians were landed. We
can imagine it. How the news flew from house to house, the Maroons were
to be hunted with these immense dogs with which the Spaniards never
failed to bring down their slaves. And the house slaves listened
round-eyed and passed on the news to the field labourers and the streets
of the town--those shamefully shadeless streets were thronged with
people half-fearing, half-comforted with the reflection that soon the
hills above the town would no longer be occupied by the savage Maroons.
And, indeed, one hundred and four great dogs, even though muzzled and
held by great rattling chains, ferociously making at every strange
object and dragging the chasseurs after them, must have made a
formidable array. Every door in the town was barred and the people
crowded to the windows, out of reach of the dogs who were to be their
salvation. And they were hurried up the mountains, paraded before the
General and--never used.
But it was time they came. The dry weather was now come, the canes
were very inflammable, it was difficult to defend some of the estates,
especially those in the beautiful and fertile Nassau Valley, down which
wanders the Black River, and it was reported that a large body of slaves
were preparing to join the victorious Maroons. And then up that mountain
path, the very same I dare say by which I went that December day, came
the chasseurs with the dogs tugging at their waists, and the General
held a review, a review at which the dogs grew so excited at the
discharge of the guns that they flew at the stocks of the fusils which
had been given to the chasseurs and tore them to pieces. The General
himself had to flee before their onrush to his chaise, and it was only
with difficulty they were restrained from tearing to pieces his horses.
After which we are a little surprised to hear he expressed himself
exceedingly pleased with the review. Perhaps it marks the desperateness
of the situation.
And what the white men knew in the morning before nightfall had been
carried into the mountains and the Maroons probably discussed this new
evil that had befallen them. There could be but one end if the white men
came against them with dogs--but one end. And doubtless General Walpole
and his officers judged from the effect it had on the negroes the
consternation that was inspired in the mountains, and they agreed that
now the simplest thing would be to make peace as Colonel Guthrie had
done fifty-six years before. In the end the whites must win, but the
blacks might set the country in a blaze and do many thousands of
pounds worth of damage before they were all taken. Therefore they would
compromise.
On the 14th December the dogs were landed at Montego Bay, and on the
18th Colonel Hull fell in with a party of Maroons under Johnson, and
Johnson was their best leader. It was difficult to get into conversation
with them, but the troops ceased firing and then the Maroon officers,
who had some inkling of the offer that was to be made, were seen
skipping about from rock to rock and Mr Werge of the 17th Light
Dragoons, who seems to have been a very capable young man, with a cool,
deliberate courage flung down his arms and stepping down the hill till
he was close under them, called out that it was peace and they had
better come down and shake hands upon it. Then Fowler the Maroon
advanced and took him by the hand, and at Mr Werge's suggestion--he was
as brave a young man as Dr Russell--they exchanged hats and jackets.
Relations once established, General Walpole came up and the Maroons
agreed that, on their knees they would beg His Majesty's pardon, that
they would go to the Old Town or Montego Bay or anywhere else the
Governor might appoint, and would settle on whatever lands might be
given them. They would give up all runaways. And General Walpole agreed
to a secret clause that they should not be sent off the island.
And, indeed, the Maroons were in a bad way. They were short of
provisions and measles had broken out among them, and their women and
children were almost famished.
The 1st of January 1796 was fixed for the day they should come in. But
they were very distrustful. It was difficult to make them understand
that no harm would be done them. Some few turned up, but practically
the New Year's Day passed unnoticed. They straggled in by slow degrees,
finding it exceedingly difficult to persuade themselves to abandon their
mountain fastnesses for the tender mercies of the white man, but as
a matter of fact all with the exception of the small parties out with
Palmer and Parkinson came in within a fortnight of the day appointed,
and the last were only out three months.
But the Assembly because of this laxness, felt they might break their
pledged word, and they banished the majority of the Maroons with
incredible foolishness, considering that the negro line is supposed to
be drawn at the 40th parallel of latitude, to Nova Scotia. Perhaps
they hoped to destroy them, root and branch. There, as was only to be
expected, they did not do well, and finally they were taken to Sierra
Leone, where I read they made valuable settlers and helped the colony
greatly. I was glad they did. And then I remembered that in Pree Town
I had met the most bumptious, the most aggressive, the most unpleasant
black men it has ever, except in Liberia, been my lot to come across,
and I felt my sympathies weaken.
Jamaica was not unmindful of these her children whom she hated. For
a small island she spent an enormous sum of money on their welfare.
£46,000 was expended in trying to colonise them comfortably, and this
was supplemented by the British Government.
General Walpole was bitterly angry. He had given his word, and the
country had broken it, and in his turn he declined to accept the sword
of honour which the Assembly voted him in honour of his bloodless
victory, and declined it in such terms that the Assembly considered the
letter a misrepresentation of their proceedings and ordered it to be
expunged from their minutes.
Not all of the Maroons were banished. Those who came in by the 1st of
January 1796 were allowed to stay if they so pleased, and they settled
about their old town and about Accompong, but their teeth were drawn.
They were no greater danger now than any of the other black people.
Less, in fact, for they had a certain contempt for the slaves, and
regarded themselves as on a par with the white men.
The people about Maroon Town now do not think of themselves as Maroons.
The day I went up, when we had gone as far as we could within a mile and
a half of the old Maroon Town, the people came crowding round, and they
looked much like the dark folks who lived lower down in the mountains.
One yellow man brought me a can full of green coffee berries.
“No, not for sale, for the lady to remember we's by.” I accepted the
gift, so graciously given, and I asked the giver's name.
“Heed,” said he, and I said I'd put him in a book, but I don't believe
he understood what I said. I felt in my pocket. I know of old the
African likes a return present, but I had forgotten my purse, and my
host settled the difficulty.
“Take him round to the Chinaman's shop,” he said to his driver, “and
give him a drink,” and my yellow friend, whom I thought must be grandson
to one of those long-dead soldiers, accepted the offer with a smile.