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BLACK REBELLION: FIVE SLAVE REVOLTS
From Travellers and Outlaws
Episodes In American History
By Thomas Wentworth Higginson
With An Appendix Of Authorities
[Transcriber's note: This text contains five chapters of T.W. Higgison's
'Travellers and Outlaws'. This collection is commonly referred to as
'Black Rebellion: five slave revolts'.]
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
The author would express his thanks to the proprietors and editors of the
_Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's Magazine_, and the _Century_, for their
permission to reprint such portions of this volume as were originally
published in those periodicals.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
CONTENTS.
THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA
THE MAROONS OF SURINAM
GABRIEL'S DEFEAT
DENMARK VESEY
NAT TURNER'S INSURRECTION
APPENDIX
THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA
The Maroons! it was a word of peril once; and terror spread along the
skirts of the blue mountains of Jamaica when some fresh foray of those
unconquered guerrillas swept down from the outlying plantations, startled
the Assembly from its order, Gen. Williamson from his billiards, and Lord
Balcarres from his diplomatic ease,--endangering, according to the
official statement, "public credit," "civil rights," and "the prosperity,
if not the very existence, of the country," until they were "persuaded to
make peace" at last. They were the Circassians of the New World, but they
were black, instead of white; and as the Circassians refused to be
transferred from the Sultan to the Czar, so the Maroons refused to be
transferred from Spanish dominion to English, and thus their revolt
began. The difference is, that while the white mountaineers numbered four
hundred thousand, and only defied Nicholas, the black mountaineers
numbered less than two thousand, and defied Cromwell; and while the
Circassians, after years of revolt, were at last subdued, the Maroons, on
the other hand, who rebelled in 1655, were never conquered, but only made
a compromise of allegiance, and exist as a separate race to-day.
When Admirals Penn and Venables landed in Jamaica, in 1655, there was not
a remnant left of the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards had found
there a century and a half before. Their pitiful tale is told only by
those caves, still known among the mountains, where thousands of human
skeletons strew the ground. In their place dwelt two foreign races,--an
effeminate, ignorant, indolent white community of fifteen hundred, with a
black slave population quite as large and infinitely more hardy and
energetic. The Spaniards were readily subdued by the English: the negroes
remained unsubdued. The slaveholders were banished from the island: the
slaves only exiled themselves to the mountains; thence the English could
not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers whom the English employed. And when
Jamaica subsided into a British colony, and peace was made with Spain,
and the children of Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were beginning to grow
rich by importing slaves for Roman-Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons still
held their own wild empire in the mountains, and, being sturdy heathens
every one, practised Obeah rites in approved pagan fashion.
The word Maroon is derived, according to one etymology, from the Spanish
word _Marrano_, a wild boar,--these fugitives being all boar-hunters;
according to another, from _Marony_, a river separating French and Dutch
Guiana, where a colony of them dwelt and still dwells; and by another
still, from _Cimarron_, a word meaning untamable, and used alike for apes
and runaway slaves. But whether these rebel marauders were regarded as
monkeys or men, they made themselves equally formidable. As early as
1663, the Governor and Council of Jamaica offered to each Maroon, who
should surrender, his freedom and twenty acres of land; but not one
accepted the terms. During forty years, forty-four Acts of Assembly were
passed in respect to them, and at least a quarter of a million pounds
sterling were expended in the warfare against them. In 1733, the force
employed in this service consisted of two regiments of regular troops,
and the whole militia of the island; but the Assembly said that "the
Maroons had within a few years greatly increased, notwithstanding all the
measures that had been concerted for their suppression," "to the great
terror of his Majesty's subjects," and "to the manifest weakening and
preventing the further increase of strength and inhabitants of the
island."
The special affair in progress, at the time of these statements, was
called Cudjoe's War. Cudjoe was a gentleman of extreme brevity and
blackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adorn
Dallas's History of the Maroons; but he was as formidable a guerrilla as
Marion. Under his leadership, the various bodies of fugitives were
consolidated into one force, and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, like
Schamyl, was religious as well as military head of his people; by Obeah
influence he established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves and
insurgents; no party could be sent forth, by the government, but he knew
it in time to lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the region
left unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition;
and as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot, and never
risked a battle, his forces naturally increased, while those of his
opponents were decimated. His men were never captured, and never took a
prisoner; it was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealing
with them, as Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased by
victory;" and the only men who could obtain the slightest advantage
against them were the imported Mosquito Indians, or the "Black Shot," a
company of Government negroes. For nine full years this particular war
continued unchecked, Gen. Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe by
night.
The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession of
the "Cockpits." Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as by
an earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling the
California cañons, or those similar fissures in various parts of the
Atlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, or
symbolically as purgatories. These Jamaica chasms vary from two hundred
yards to a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feet
high, and often absolutely inaccessible, while the passes at each end
admit but one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees can
grow; water flows within them; and they often communicate with one
another, forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired and
thirsty with climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file,
without seeing or hearing an enemy, up the steep and winding path they
traverse one "cockpit," then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired from
the dense and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, each
dropping its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction,
when a more murderous volley is poured from the other side; the heights
above flash with musketry, while the precipitous path by which they came
seems to close in fire behind them. By the time the troops have formed in
some attempt at military order, the woods around them are empty, and
their agile and noiseless foes have settled themselves into ambush again,
farther up the defile, ready for a second attack, if needed. But one is
usually sufficient; disordered, exhausted, bearing their wounded with
them, the soldiers retreat in panic, if permitted to escape at all, and
carry fresh dismay to the barracks, the plantations, and the Government
House.
It is not strange, then, that high military authorities, at that period,
should have pronounced the subjugation of the Maroons a thing more
difficult than to obtain a victory over any army in Europe. Moreover,
these people were fighting for their liberty, with which aim no form of
warfare seemed to them unjustifiable; and the description given by
Lafayette of the American Revolution was true of this one,--"the grandest
of causes, won by contests of sentinels and outposts." The utmost hope of
a British officer, ordered against the Maroons, was to lay waste a
provision-ground, or cut them off from water. But there was little
satisfaction in this: the wild-pine leaves and the grapevine-withes
supplied the rebels with water; and their plantation-grounds were the
wild pineapple and the plantain-groves, and the forests, where the wild
boars harbored, and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were
militiamen. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought
about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contracting
parties, Cudjoe and Gen. Williamson.
But how to execute a treaty between these wild Children of the Mist and
respectable diplomatic Englishmen? To establish any official relations
without the medium of a preliminary bullet, required some ingenuity of
manoeuvring. Cudjoe was willing, but inconveniently cautious: he would
not come halfway to meet any one; nothing would content him but an
interview in his own chosen cockpit. So he selected one of the most
difficult passes, posting in the forests a series of outlying parties, to
signal with their horns, one by one, the approach of the
plenipotentiaries, and then to retire on the main body. Through this line
of dangerous sentinels, therefore, Col. Guthrie and his handful of men
bravely advanced; horn after horn they heard sounded, but there was no
other human noise in the woods, and they had advanced till they saw the
smoke of the Maroon huts before they caught a glimpse of a human form.
A conversation was at last opened with the invisible rebels. On their
promise of safety, Dr. Russell advanced alone to treat with them; then
several Maroons appeared, and finally Cudjoe himself. The formidable
chief was not highly military in appearance, being short, fat,
humpbacked, dressed in a tattered blue coat without skirts or sleeves,
and an old felt hat without a rim. But if he had blazed with regimental
scarlet, he could not have been treated with more distinguished
consideration; indeed, in that case, "the exchange of hats" with which
Dr. Russell finally volunteered, in Maroon fashion, to ratify
negotiations, might have been a less severe test of good fellowship. This
fine stroke of diplomacy had its effect, however; the rebel captains
agreed to a formal interview with Col. Guthrie and Capt. Sadler, and a
treaty was at last executed with all due solemnity, under a large
cotton-tree at the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. This treaty recognized
the military rank of "Capt. Cudjoe," "Capt. Accompong," and the rest;
gave assurance that the Maroons should be "forever hereafter in a perfect
state of freedom and liberty;" ceded to them fifteen hundred acres of
land; and stipulated only that they should keep the peace, should harbor
no fugitive from justice or from slavery, and should allow two white
commissioners to remain among them, simply to represent the British
Government.
During the following year a separate treaty was made with another large
body of insurgents, called the Windward Maroons. This was not effected,
however, until after an unsuccessful military attempt, in which the
mountaineers gained a signal triumph. By artful devices,--a few fires
left burning with old women to watch them,--a few provision-grounds
exposed by clearing away the bushes,--they lured the troops far up among
the mountains, and then surprised them by an ambush. The militia all
fled, and the regulars took refuge under a large cliff in a stream, where
they remained four hours up to their waists in water, until finally they
forded the river, under full fire, with terrible loss. Three months after
this, however, the Maroons consented to an amicable interview, exchanging
hostages first. The position of the white hostage, at least, was not the
most agreeable; he complained that he was beset by the women and children
with indignant cries of "Buckra, Buckra," while the little boys pointed
their fingers at him as if stabbing him, and that with evident relish.
However, Capt. Quao, like Capt. Cudjoe, made a treaty at last; and hats
were interchanged, instead of hostages.
Independence being thus won and acknowledged, there was a suspension of
hostilities for some years. Among the wild mountains of Jamaica, the
Maroons dwelt in a savage freedom. So healthful and beautiful was the
situation of their chief town, that the English Government has erected
barracks there of late years, as being the most salubrious situation on
the island. They breathed an air ten degrees cooler than that inhaled by
the white population below; and they lived on a daintier diet, so that
the English epicures used to go up among them for good living. The
mountaineers caught the strange land-crabs, plodding in companies of
millions their sidelong path from mountain to ocean, and from ocean to
mountain again. They hunted the wild boars, and prepared the flesh by
salting and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious
"jerked hog" of buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry,
cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas, and papaws and
mameys, and avocados, and all luxurious West-Indian fruits; the very
weeds of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and in
their names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they looked
across these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland forests, and
over those again to the faint line of far-off beach, the fainter
ocean-horizon, and the illimitable sky.
They had senses like those of American Indians; tracked each other by the
smell of the smoke of fires in the air, and called to each other by
horns, using a special note to designate each of their comrades, and
distinguishing it beyond the range of ordinary hearing. They spoke
English diluted with Spanish and African words, and practised Obeah rites
quite undiluted with Christianity. Of course they associated largely with
the slaves, without any very precise regard to treaty stipulations;
sometimes brought in fugitives, and sometimes concealed them; left their
towns and settled on the planters lands when they preferred them: but
were quite orderly and luxuriously happy. During the formidable
insurrection of the Koromantyn slaves, in 1760, they played a dubious
part. When left to go on their own way, they did something towards
suppressing it; but when placed under the guns of the troops, and ordered
to fire on those of their own color, they threw themselves on the ground
without discharging a shot. Nevertheless, they gradually came up into
reputable standing; they grew more and more industrious and steady; and
after they had joined very heartily in resisting D'Estaing's threatened
invasion of the island in 1779, it became the fashion to speak of "our
faithful and affectionate Maroons."
In 1795, their position was as follows: Their numbers had not materially
increased, for many had strayed off and settled on the outskirts of
plantations; nor materially diminished, for many runaway slaves had
joined them; while there were also separate settlements of fugitives, who
had maintained their freedom for twenty years. The white superintendents
had lived with the Maroons in perfect harmony, without the slightest
official authority, but with a great deal of actual influence. But there
was an "irrepressible conflict" behind all this apparent peace, and the
slightest occasion might, at any moment, revive all the old terror. That
occasion was close at hand.
Capt. Cudjoe and Capt. Accompong, and the other founders of Maroon
independence, had passed away; and "Old Montagu" reigned in their stead,
in Trelawney Town. Old Montagu had all the pomp and circumstance of
Maroon majesty: he wore a laced red coat, and a hat superb with gold lace
and plumes; none but captains could sit in his presence; he was helped
first at meals, and no woman could eat beside him; he presided at
councils as magnificently as at table, though with less appetite; and
possessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or reverence of any human
being. The real power lay entirely with Major James, the white
superintendent, who had been brought up among the Maroons by his father
(and predecessor), and who was the idol of this wild race. In an evil
hour, the Government removed him, and put a certain unpopular Capt.
Craskell in his place; and as there happened to be, about the same time,
a great excitement concerning a hopeful pair of young Maroons, who had
been seized and publicly whipped on a charge of hog-stealing, their
kindred refused to allow the new superintendent to remain in the town. A
few attempts at negotiation only brought them to a higher pitch of wrath,
which ended in their despatching the following peculiar diplomatic note
to the Earl of Balcarres: "The Maroons wishes nothing else from the
country but battle, and they desires not to see Mr. Craskell up here at
all. So they are waiting every moment for the above on Monday. Mr. David
Schaw will see you on Sunday morning for an answer. They will wait till
Monday, nine o'clock, and if they don't come up, they will come down
themselves." Signed, "Col. Montagu and all the rest."
It turned out, at last, that only two or three of the Maroons were
concerned in this remarkable defiance; but meanwhile it had its effect.
Several ambassadors were sent among the insurgents, and were so favorably
impressed by their reception as to make up a subscription of money for
their hosts, on departing; only the "gallant Col. Gallimore," a Jamaica
Camillus, gave iron instead of gold, by throwing some bullets into the
contribution-box. And it was probably in accordance with his view of the
subject, that, when the Maroons sent ambassadors in return, they were at
once imprisoned, most injudiciously and unjustly; and when Old Montagu
himself and thirty-seven others, following, were seized and imprisoned
also, it is not strange that the Maroons, joined by many slaves, were
soon in open insurrection.
Martial law was instantly proclaimed throughout the island. The fighting
men among the insurgents were not, perhaps, more than five hundred;
against whom the Government could bring nearly fifteen hundred regular
troops and several thousand militiamen. Lord Balcarres himself took the
command, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly marched a large force
up to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march back again as expeditiously
as possible. In his very first attack, he was miserably defeated, and had
to fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of the troops, in which some
forty or fifty were killed,--including Col. Sandford, commanding the
regulars, and the bullet-loving Col. Gallimore, in command of the
militia,--while not a single Maroon was even wounded, so far as could be
ascertained.
After this a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops gradually
got possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut had
been burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season; and,
between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous.
Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods, heard all
their orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating through their
lines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations far below. The
only man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was Major James, the
superintendent just removed by Government; and his services were not
employed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion, however, he led a
volunteer party farther into the mountains than any of the assailants had
yet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself only, and by the smell
of the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very exhausting march, including a
climb of a hundred and fifty feet up the face of a precipice, he brought
them just within the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. "So far," said he,
pointing to the entrance, "you may pursue, but no farther; no force can
enter here; no white man except myself, or some soldier of the Maroon
establishment, has ever gone beyond this. With the greatest difficulty I
have penetrated four miles farther, and not ten Maroons have gone so far
as that. There are two other ways of getting into the defile, practicable
for the Maroons, but not for any one of you. In neither of them can I
ascend or descend with my arms, which must be handed to me, step by step,
as practised by the Maroons themselves. One of the ways lies to the
eastward, and the other to the westward; and they will take care to have
both guarded, if they suspect that I am with you; which, from the route
you have come to-day, they will. They now see you, and if you advance
fifty paces more, they will convince you of it." At this moment a Maroon
horn sounded the notes indicating his name; and, as he made no answer, a
voice was heard, inquiring if he were among them. "If he is," said the
voice, "let him go back, we do not wish to hurt him, but as for the rest
of you, come on and try battle if you choose." But the gentlemen did not
choose.
In September the House of Assembly met. Things were looking worse and
worse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had defied the
whole force of the island, and they were defending their liberty by
precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it. Half
a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides the
enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men from
their regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended," says an
eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island at
large seemed more like a garrison under the power of law-martial, than a
country of agriculture and commerce, of civil judicature, industry, and
prosperity." Hundreds of the militia had died of fatigue, large numbers
had been shot down, the most daring of the British officers had fallen;
while the insurgents had been invariably successful, and not one of them
was known to have been killed. Capt. Craskell, the banished
superintendent, gave it to the Assembly as his opinion, that the whole
slave population of the island was in sympathy with the Maroons, and
would soon be beyond control. More alarming still, there were rumors of
French emissaries behind the scenes; and though these were explained
away, the vague terror remained. Indeed, the lieutenant-governor
announced in his message that he had satisfactory evidence that the
French Convention was concerned in the revolt. A French prisoner, named
Murenson, had testified that the French agent at Philadelphia (Fauchet)
had secretly sent a hundred and fifty emissaries to the island, and
threatened to land fifteen hundred negroes. And though Murenson took it
all back at last, yet the Assembly was moved to make a new offer of three
hundred dollars for killing or taking a Trelawney Maroon, and a hundred
and fifty dollars for killing or taking any fugitive slave who had joined
them. They also voted five hundred pounds as a gratuity to the Accompong
tribe of Maroons, who had thus far kept out of the insurrection; and
various prizes and gratuities were also offered by the different
parishes, with the same object of self-protection.
The commander-in-chief being among the killed, Col. Walpole was promoted
in his stead, and brevetted as general, by way of incentive. He found a
people in despair, a soldiery thoroughly intimidated, and a treasury not
empty, but useless. But the new general had not served against the
Maroons for nothing, and was not ashamed to go to school to his
opponents. First, he waited for the dry season; then he directed all his
efforts towards cutting off his opponents from water, and, most effectual
move of all, he attacked each successive cockpit by dragging up a
howitzer, with immense labor, and throwing in shells. Shells were a
visitation not dreamed of in Maroon philosophy, and their quaint
compliments to their new opponent remain on record. "Damn dat little
buckra!" they said, "he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new
fashion for fight: him fire big ball arter you, and when big ball 'top,
de damn sunting [something] fire arter you again." With which Parthian
arrows of rhetoric the mountaineers retreated.
But this did not last long. The Maroons soon learned to keep out of the
way of the shells, and the island relapsed into terror again. It was
deliberately resolved at last, by a special council convoked for the
purpose, "to persuade the rebels to make peace." But as they had not as
yet shown themselves very accessible to softer influences, it was thought
best to combine as many arguments as possible, and a certain Col.
Quarrell had hit upon a wholly new one. His plan simply was, since men,
however well disciplined, had proved powerless against Maroons, to try a
Spanish fashion against them, and use dogs. The proposition was met, in
some quarters, with the strongest hostility. England, it was said, had
always denounced the Spaniards as brutal and dastardly for hunting down
the natives of that very soil with hounds; and should England now follow
the humiliating example? On the other side, there were plenty who eagerly
quoted all known instances of zoölogical warfare: all Oriental nations,
for instance, used elephants in war, and, no doubt, would gladly use
lions and tigers also, but for their extreme carnivorousness, and their
painful indifference to the distinction between friend and foe; why not,
then, use these dogs, comparatively innocent and gentle creatures? At any
rate, "something must be done;" the final argument always used, when a
bad or desperate project is to be made palatable. So it was voted at last
to send to Havana for an invoice of Spanish dogs, with their accompanying
chasseurs; and the efforts at persuading the Maroons were postponed till
the arrival of these additional persuasives. And when Col. Quarrell
finally set sail as commissioner to obtain the new allies, all scruples
of conscience vanished in the renewal of public courage and the chorus of
popular gratitude; a thing so desirable must be right; thrice they were
armed who knew their Quarrell just.
But after the parting notes of gratitude died away in the distance, the
commissioner began to discover that he was to have a hard time of it. He
sailed for Havana in a schooner manned with Spanish renegadoes, who
insisted on fighting every thing that came in their way,--first a Spanish
schooner, then a French one. He landed at Batabano, struck across the
mountains towards Havana, stopped at Besucal to call on the wealthy
Marquesa de San Felipe y San Jorge, grand patroness of dogs and
chasseurs, and finally was welcomed to Havana by Don Luis de las Casas,
who overlooked, for this occasion only, an injunction of his court
against admitting foreigners within his government; "the only accustomed
exception being," as Don Luis courteously assured him, "in favor of
foreign traders who came with new negroes." To be sure, the commissioner
had not brought any of these commodities; but then he had come to obtain
the means of capturing some, and so might pass for an irregular
practitioner of the privileged profession.
Accordingly, Don Guillermo Dawes Quarrell (so ran his passport) found no
difficulty in obtaining permission from the governor to buy as many dogs
as he desired. When, however, he carelessly hinted at the necessity of
taking, also, a few men who should have care of the dogs,--this being,
after all, the essential part of his expedition,--Don Luis de las Casas
put on instantly a double force of courtesy, and assured him of the
entire impossibility of recruiting a single Spaniard for English service.
Finally, however, he gave permission and passports for six chasseurs.
Under cover of this, the commissioner lost no time in enlisting forty; he
got them safe to Batabano; but at the last moment, learning the state of
affairs, they refused to embark on such very irregular authority. When he
had persuaded them, at length, the officer of the fort interposed
objections. This was not to be borne, so Don Guillermo bribed him and
silenced him; a dragoon was, however, sent to report to the governor; Don
Guillermo sent a messenger after him, and bribed him too; and thus at
length, after myriad rebuffs, and after being obliged to spend the last
evening at a puppet-show in which the principal figure was a burlesque on
his own personal peculiarities, the weary Don Guillermo, with his crew of
renegadoes, and his forty chasseurs and their one hundred and four
muzzled dogs, set sail for Jamaica.
These new allies were certainly something formidable, if we may trust the
pictures and descriptions in Dallas's History. The chasseur was a tall,
meagre, swarthy Spaniard or mulatto, lightly clad in cotton shirt and
drawers, with broad straw hat, and moccasins of raw-hide; his belt
sustaining his long, straight, flat sword or _machete_, like an iron bar
sharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashes
for his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a fierce
breed, crossed between hound and mastiff, never unmuzzled but for attack,
and accompanied by smaller dogs called _finders_. It is no wonder, when
these wild and powerful creatures were landed at Montego Bay, that terror
ran through the town, doors were everywhere closed, and windows crowded;
not a negro dared to stir; and the muzzled dogs, infuriated by
confinement on shipboard, filled the silent streets with their noisy
barking and the rattling of their chains.
How much would have come of all this in actual conflict, does not appear.
The Maroons had already been persuaded to make peace upon certain
conditions and guaranties,--a decision probably accelerated by the
terrible rumors of the bloodhounds, though they never saw them. It was
the declared opinion of the Assembly, confirmed by that of Gen. Walpole,
that "nothing could be clearer than that, if they had been off the
island, the rebels could not have been induced to surrender."
Nevertheless, a treaty was at last made, without the direct intervention
of the quadrupeds. Again commissioners went up among the mountains to
treat with negotiators at first invisible; again were hats and jackets
interchanged, not without coy reluctance on the part of the well-dressed
Englishmen; and a solemn agreement was effected. The most essential part
of the bargain was a guaranty of continued independence, demanded by the
suspicious Maroons. Gen. Walpole, however, promptly pledged himself that
no such unfair advantage should be taken of them as had occurred with the
hostages previously surrendered, who were placed in irons; nor should any
attempt be made to remove them from the island. It is painful to add,
that this promise was outrageously violated by the Colonial Government,
to the lasting grief of Gen. Walpole, on the ground that the Maroons had
violated the treaty by a slight want of punctuality in complying with its
terms, and by remissness in restoring the fugitive slaves who had taken
refuge among them. As many of the tribe as surrendered, therefore, were
at once placed in confinement, and ultimately shipped from Port Royal to
Halifax, to the number of six hundred, on the 6th of June, 1796. For the
credit of English honor, we rejoice to know that Gen. Walpole not merely
protested against this utter breach of faith, but indignantly declined
the sword of honor which the Assembly had voted him, in its gratitude,
and then retired from military service forever.
The remaining career of this portion of the Maroons is easily told. They
were first dreaded by the inhabitants of Halifax, then welcomed when
seen, and promptly set to work on the citadel, then in process of
reconstruction, where the "Maroon Bastion" still remains,--their only
visible memorial. Two commissioners had charge of them, one being the
redoubtable Col. Quarrell; and twenty-five thousand pounds were
appropriated for their temporary support. Of course they did not prosper;
pensioned colonists never do, for they are not compelled into habits of
industry. After their delicious life in the mountains of Jamaica, it
seemed rather monotonous to dwell upon that barren soil,--for theirs was
such that two previous colonies had deserted it,--and in a climate where
winter lasts seven months in the year. They had a schoolmaster, and he
was also a preacher; but they did not seem to appreciate that luxury of
civilization, utterly refusing, on grounds of conscience, to forsake
polygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to listen to the doctrinal
discourses of their pastor, who was an ardent Sandemanian. They smoked
their pipes during service time, and left Old Montagu, who still
survived, to lend a vicarious attention to the sermon. One discourse he
briefly reported as follows, very much to the point: "Massa parson say no
mus tief, no mus meddle wid somebody wife, no mus quarrel, mus set down
softly." So they sat down very softly, and showed an extreme
unwillingness to get up again. But, not being naturally an idle race,--at
least, in Jamaica the objection lay rather on the other side,--they soon
grew tired of this inaction. Distrustful of those about them, suspicious
of all attempts to scatter them among the community at large, frozen by
the climate, and constantly petitioning for removal to a milder one, they
finally wearied out all patience. A long dispute ensued between the
authorities of Nova Scotia and Jamaica, as to which was properly
responsible for their support; and thus the heroic race, that for a
century and a half had sustained themselves in freedom in Jamaica, were
reduced to the position of troublesome and impracticable paupers,
shuttlecocks between two selfish parishes. So passed their unfortunate
lives, until, in 1800, their reduced population was transported to Sierra
Leone, at a cost of six thousand pounds; since which they disappear from
history.
It was judged best not to interfere with those bodies of Maroons which
had kept aloof from the late outbreak, at the Accompong settlement, and
elsewhere. They continued to preserve a qualified independence, and
retain it even now. In 1835, two years after the abolition of slavery in
Jamaica, there were reported sixty families of Maroons as residing at
Accompong Town, eighty families at Moore Town, one hundred and ten
families at Charles Town, and twenty families at Scott Hall, making two
hundred and seventy families in all,--each station being, as of old,
under the charge of a superintendent. But there can be little doubt,
that, under the influences of freedom, they are rapidly intermingling
with the mass of colored population in Jamaica.
The story of the exiled Maroons attracted attention in high quarters, in
its time: the wrongs done to them were denounced in Parliament by
Sheridan, and mourned by Wilberforce; while the employment of bloodhounds
against them was vindicated by Dundas, and the whole conduct of the
Colonial Government defended, through thick and thin, by Bryan Edwards.
This thorough partisan even had the assurance to tell Mr. Wilberforce, in
Parliament, that he knew the Maroons, from personal knowledge, to be
cannibals, and that, if a missionary were sent among them in Nova Scotia,
they would immediately eat him; a charge so absurd that he did not
venture to repeat it in his History of the West Indies, though his
injustice to the Maroons is even there so glaring as to provoke the
indignation of the more moderate Dallas. But, in spite of Mr. Edwards,
the public indignation ran quite high in England, against the bloodhounds
and their employers, so that the home ministry found it necessary to send
a severe reproof to the Colonial Government. For a few years the tales of
the Maroons thus emerged from mere colonial annals, and found their way
into annual registers and parliamentary debates; but they have long since
vanished from popular memory. Their record still retains its interest,
however, as that of one of the heroic races of the world; and all the
more, because it is with their kindred that the American nation has to
deal, in solving one of the most momentous problems of its future career.
THE MAROONS OF SURINAM.
When that eccentric individual, Capt. John Gabriel Stedman, resigned his
commission in the English Navy, took the oath of abjuration, and was
appointed ensign in the Scots brigade employed for two centuries by
Holland, he little knew that "their High Mightinesses the States of the
United Provinces" would send him out, within a year, to the forests of
Guiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year 1773
would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading
through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet for
submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by an
insufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon by
mosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at by
those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen,"
the Maroons of Surinam.
Yet, as our young ensign sailed up the Surinam River, the world of tropic
beauty came upon him with enchantment. Dark, moist verdure was close
around him, rippling waters below; the tall trees of the jungle and the
low mangroves beneath were all hung with long vines and lianas, a maze of
cordage, like a fleet at anchor; lithe monkeys travelled ceaselessly up
and down these airy paths, in armies, bearing their young, like
knapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds, winged jewels, flew
from tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth
canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent
of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet
plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked
boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many
tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops
disembarked,--five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, all
arrayed in new uniforms and bearing orange-flowers in their caps, a
bridal wreath for beautiful Guiana,--it is no wonder that the Creole
ladies were in ecstasy; and the boyish recruits little foresaw the day,
when, reduced to a few dozens, barefooted and ragged as filibusters,
their last survivors would gladly re-embark from a country beside which
even Holland looked dry and even Scotland comfortable.
For over all that earthly paradise there brooded not alone its terrible
malaria, its days of fever and its nights of deadly chill, but the worse
shadows of oppression and of sin, which neither day nor night could
banish. The first object which met Stedman's eye, as he stepped on shore,
was the figure of a young girl stripped to receive two hundred lashes,
and chained to a hundred-pound weight. And the few first days gave a
glimpse into a state of society worthy of this exhibition,--men without
mercy, women without modesty, the black man a slave to the white man's
passions, and the white man a slave to his own. The later West-Indian
society in its worst forms is probably a mere dilution of the utter
profligacy of those early days. Greek or Roman decline produced nothing
more debilitating or destructive than the ordinary life of a Surinam
planter, and his one virtue of hospitality only led to more unbridled
excesses and completed the work of vice. No wonder that Stedman himself,
who, with all his peculiarities, was essentially simple and manly, soon
became disgusted, and made haste to get into the woods and cultivate the
society of the Maroons.
The rebels against whom this expedition was sent were not the original
Maroons of Surinam, but a later generation. The originals had long since
established their independence, and their leaders were flourishing their
honorary silver-mounted canes in the streets of Paramaribo. Fugitive
negroes had begun to establish themselves in the woods from the time when
the colony was finally ceded by the English to the Dutch, in 1674. The
first open outbreak occurred in 1726, when the plantations on the
Seramica River revolted; it was found impossible to subdue them, and the
government very imprudently resolved to make an example of eleven
captives, and thus terrify the rest of the rebels. They were tortured to
death, eight of the eleven being women: this drove the others to madness,
and plantation after plantation was visited with fire and sword. After a
long conflict, their chief, Adoe, was induced to make a treaty, in 1749.
The rebels promised to keep the peace, and in turn were promised freedom,
money, tools, clothes, and, finally, arms and ammunition.
But no permanent peace was ever made upon a barrel of gunpowder as a
basis; and, of course, an explosion followed this one. The colonists
naturally evaded the last item of the bargain; and the rebels, receiving
the gifts, and remarking the omission of the part of Hamlet, asked
contemptuously if the Europeans expected negroes to subsist on combs and
looking-glasses? New hostilities at once began; a new body of slaves on
the Ouca River revolted; the colonial government was changed in
consequence, and fresh troops shipped from Holland; and after four
different embassies had been sent into the woods, the rebels began to
listen to reason. The black generals, Capt. Araby and Capt. Boston,
agreed upon a truce for a year, during which the colonial government
might decide for peace or war, the Maroons declaring themselves
indifferent. Finally the government chose peace, delivered ammunition,
and made a treaty, in 1761; the white and black plenipotentiaries
exchanged English oaths and then negro oaths, each tasting a drop of the
other's blood during the latter ceremony, amid a volley of remarkable
incantations from the black _gadoman_ or priest. After some final
skirmishes, in which the rebels almost always triumphed, the treaty was
at length accepted by all the various villages of Maroons. Had they known
that at this very time five thousand slaves in Berbice were just rising
against their masters, and were looking to them for assistance, the
result might have been different; but this fact had not reached them, nor
had the rumors of insurrection in Brazil among negro and Indian slaves.
They consented, therefore, to the peace. "They write from Surinam," says
the "Annual Register" for Jan. 23, 1761, "that the Dutch governor,
finding himself unable to subdue the rebel negroes of that country by
force, hath wisely followed the example of Gov. Trelawney at Jamaica, and
concluded an amicable treaty with them; in consequence of which, all the
negroes of the woods are acknowledged to be free, and all that is passed
is buried in oblivion." So ended a war of thirty-six years; and in
Stedman's day the original three thousand Ouca and Seramica Maroons had
multiplied, almost incredibly, to fifteen thousand.
But for those slaves not sharing in this revolt it was not so easy to
"bury the whole past in oblivion." The Maroons had told some very plain
truths to the white ambassadors, and had frankly advised them, if they
wished for peace, to mend their own manners and treat their chattels
humanely. But the planters learned nothing by experience,--and, indeed,
the terrible narrations of Stedman were confirmed by those of Alexander,
so lately as 1831. Of course, therefore, in a colony comprising eighty
thousand blacks to four thousand whites, other revolts were stimulated by
the success of this one. They reached their highest point in 1772, when
an insurrection on the Cottica River, led by a negro named Baron, almost
gave the finishing blow to the colony; the only adequate protection being
found in a body of slaves liberated expressly for that purpose,--a
dangerous and humiliating precedent. "We have been obliged to set three
or four hundred of our stoutest negroes free to defend us," says an
honest letter from Surinam, in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772.
Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much upon
his numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in a
marshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundred
Dutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the
"black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he again
drew back into the forests, resuming his guerrilla warfare against the
plantations. Nothing could dislodge him; blood-hounds were proposed, but
the moisture of the country made them useless: and thus matters stood
when Stedman came sailing, amid orange-blossoms and music, up the winding
Surinam.
Our young officer went into the woods in the condition of Falstaff,
"heinously unprovided." Coming from the unbounded luxury of the
plantations, he found himself entering "the most horrid and impenetrable
forests, where no kind of refreshment was to be had,"--he being
provisioned only with salt pork and pease. After a wail of sorrow for
this inhuman neglect, he bursts into a gush of gratitude for the private
generosity which relieved his wants at the last moment by the following
list of supplies: "24 bottles best claret, 12 ditto Madeira, 12 ditto
porter, 12 ditto cider, 12 ditto rum, 2 large loaves white sugar, 2
gallons brandy, 6 bottles muscadel, 2 gallons lemon-juice, 2 gallons
ground coffee, 2 large Westphalia hams, 2 salted bullocks' tongues, 1
bottle Durham mustard, 6 dozen spermaceti candles." The hams and tongues
seem, indeed, rather a poor halfpennyworth to this intolerable deal of
sack; but this instance of Surinam privation in those days may open some
glimpse at the colonial standards of comfort. "From this specimen,"
moralizes our hero, "the reader will easily perceive, that, if some of
the inhabitants of Surinam show themselves the disgrace of the creation
by their cruelties and brutality, others, by their social feelings,
approve themselves an ornament to the human species. With this instance
of virtue and generosity I therefore conclude this chapter."
But the troops soon had to undergo worse troubles than those of the
commissariat. The rainy season had just set in. "As for the negroes,"
said Mr. Klynhaus, the last planter with whom they parted, "you may
depend on never seeing a soul of them, unless they attack you off guard;
but the climate, the climate, will murder you all." Bringing with them
constitutions already impaired by the fevers and dissipation of
Paramaribo, the poor boys began to perish long before they began to
fight. Wading in water all day, hanging their hammocks over water at
night, it seemed a moist existence, even compared with the climate of
England and the soil of Holland. It was a case of "Invent a shovel, and
be a magistrate," even more than Andrew Marvell found it in the United
Provinces. In fact, Raynal evidently thinks that nothing but Dutch
experience in hydraulics could ever have cultivated Surinam.