The Jamaican rebellions

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Haitian insurrections

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

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

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

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

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

Contemporary communities

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

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