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Africans in the Americas and islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery, through flight or manumission, and lived in independent settlements, were referred to as maroons in English, and as cimarrones in Spanish America. The English word "maroon" likely derives from the Spanish word " cimarron".
Maroon communities were a threat to plantation societies. It was difficult for colonial authorities to eradicate Maroon communities, because they were often hidden in remote environments. Maroons also frequently utilized guerrilla warfare to defend their settlements. This created a constant state of conflict with authorities, where Maroons would sometimes be used as allies by enemies attacking a colony. Sometimes, Maroons would also function as trading partners with remote settlers or Natives.
Maroon settlements often created unique cultures, separate from greater society. Communities sometimes developed by mixing European tongues with African languages, creating languages like Saramaccan in Suriname. On other occasions, Maroons would adopt creolized variations of a local European language as a common tongue. Sometimes Maroons mixed with Indigenous peoples, eventually ethnogenesis separate Creole peoples such as peoples like the Garifuna and the Mascogos.
Cuban Philology José Juan Arrom has traced the origins of the word maroon further than the Spanish cimarrón, used first in Hispaniola to refer to feral cattle, then to Indian slaves who escaped to the hills, and by the early 1530s to African slaves who did the same. He proposes that the American Spanish word derives ultimately from the Arawakan root word simarabo, construed as 'fugitive' by the Taíno people native to the island.José Juan Arrom (2000). 9780847703746, Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. . ISBN 9780847703746
The earliest Maroon communities of the Americas formed in what is now the Dominican Republic, following the first slave rebellion on 26 December 1522, on the sugar plantations of Admiral Diego Columbus. A typical Maroon community in the early stages usually consisted of three types of people:
By the 18th century many early Maroon communities had disappeared or were displaced from the smaller islands. Survival was always difficult, as the Maroons had to fight off attackers as well as grow food.
The Second Maroon War of 1795–1796 was an eight-month conflict between the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town and the British colonials who controlled the island. The Windward communities of Jamaican Maroons remained neutral during this rebellion, and their treaty with the British still remains in force. Accompong Town, however, sided with the colonial militias, and fought against Trelawny Town.Mavis Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1988), pp. 209–49.
The Ndyuka treaty remains important to relations between the Ndyuka and the modern Surinamese government, as it defines the territorial rights of the Maroons in the gold-rich inlands of Suriname. (2026). 9789460220401, KIT Publishers. ISBN 9789460220401
The jungles around the Caribbean offered food, shelter, and isolation for the escaped slaves. Maroons sustained themselves by growing vegetables and hunting. Their survival depended upon their cultures and their military abilities, using guerrilla tactics and heavily fortified dwellings involving traps and diversions. Some defined leaving the community as desertion and therefore punishable by death. They also originally raided plantations. During these attacks, the Maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slave masters, and invite other slaves to join their communities. Individual groups of Maroons often allied themselves with the local Indigenous tribes and occasionally assimilated into these populations. Maroons played important roles in the histories of Brazil, Suriname, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Jamaica.
Maroon settlements often possessed a clannish, outsider identity. They sometimes developed by mixing European tongues with their original African languages. One such Maroon creole language in Suriname is Saramaccan. At other times, the Maroons would adopt variations of a local European language (creolization) as a common tongue, for members of the community frequently spoke a variety of mother tongues.
The Maroons created their own independent communities, which in some cases have survived for centuries, and until recently remained separate from mainstream society. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Maroon communities began to disappear as forests were razed, although some countries, such as Guyana and Suriname, still have large Maroon populations living in the forests. Recently, many of them moved to cities and towns as the process of urbanization accelerates.
When representatives of the French East India Company landed on the island in 1715 they also had to face attacks by the Mauritian Maroons. Significant events were the 1724 assault on a military outpost in Savannah district, as well as the attack on a military barrack in 1732 at Poste de Flacq. Several deaths resulted from such attacks. Soon after his arrival in 1735, Mahé de La Bourdonnais assembled and equipped French militia groups made of both civilians and soldiers to fight against the Maroons. In 1739, Maroon leader Sans Souci was captured near Flacq District and was burnt alive by the French settlers. A few years later, a group of French settlers gave chase to Barbe Blanche, another Maroon leader, but lost track of him at Le Morne. Other Maroons included Diamamouve and Madame Françoise.
Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, 2020), p. 17.
Simon Schama, Rough Crossings (London: BBC Books, 2002), p. 382.
Mavis Campbell, Back to Africa: George Ross and the Maroons (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1993), p. 48.
The Sierra Leone Company had established the settlement of Freetown and the Colony of Sierra Leone in 1792 for the resettlement of the African Americans who arrived via Nova Scotia after they had been evacuated as freedmen from the United States after the American Revolutionary War.Siva, Michael (Winter 2021). "Why Did the Black Poor of London Not Support the Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme?". History Matters Journal. 1 (2): 25–47. Some Jamaican Maroons eventually returned to Jamaica, but most became part of the larger Sierra Leone Creole people and culture made up of freemen and liberated slaves who joined them in the first half-century of the colony.James Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870 (London: Longman, 1976), pp. 240-3.Michael Sivapragasam, "The Returned Maroons of Trelawny Town", Navigating Crosscurrents: Trans-linguality, Trans-culturality and Trans-identification in the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond, ed. by Nicholas Faraclas, etc (Curacao/Puerto Rico: University of Curacao, 2020), pp. 13, 18.
In the 1830s, palenques of Maroon communities thrived in western Cuba, in particular the areas surrounding San Diego de Nunez. The Office of the Capture of Maroons reported that between 1797 and 1846, there were thousands of runaways living in these palenques. However, the eastern mountains harboured the longer lasting palenques, in particular those of Moa and Maluala, where the Maroons thrived until the First War of Independence in 1868, when large numbers of Maroons joined the Cuban Liberation Army. There are 28 identified archaeological sites in the Viñales Valley related to runaway African slaves or Maroons of the early 19th century; the material evidence of their presence is found in caves of the region, where groups settled for various lengths of time. Oral tradition tells that Maroons took refuge on the slopes of the and in the caves; the Viñales Municipal Museum has archaeological exhibits that depict the life of runaway slaves, as deduced through archeological research. Cultural traditions reenacted during the Semana de la Cultura (Week of Culture) celebrate the town's founding in 1607.
In the French colony of Saint Lucia, Maroons and fugitive French Revolutionary Army soldiers formed the so-called , which comprised about 6,000 men who fought the First Brigand War against the British who had recently occupied the island. (2026). 9781469649634, University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469649634 Led by the French Commissioner, Gaspard Goyrand, they succeeded in taking back control of most of the island from the British, but on 26 May 1796, their forces defending the fort at Morne Fortune, about 2,000 men surrendered to a British division under the command of General John Moore. After the capitulation, over 2,500 French and Afro-Caribbean prisoners of war as well as ninety-nine women and children, were transported from St. Lucia to Portchester Castle. They were eventually sent to France in a prisoner exchange; some remained in Europe while others returned to France.
Maroons joined the natives in their wars against the Spanish and hid with the rebel chieftain Enriquillo in the Bahoruco Mountains. By the 1540s, Maroons controlled the interior portions of the island, although areas in the east, north, and western parts of the island were also to fall under Maroon control. Maroon bands would venture out throughout the island, usually in large groups, attacking villages they encountered, burning down plantations, killing and ransacking the Spaniards, and liberating the slaves. Roadways had become so open to attack, the Spaniards felt it was necessary to only navigate in groups. When Archdeacon Alonso de Castro toured Hispaniola in 1542, he estimated the Maroon population at 2,000–3,000 persons. In the 1570s, Sir Francis Drake enlisted several cimarrones during his raids on the Spanish. (2026). 9781438477862, State University of New York Press. ISBN 9781438477862 Dominican Maroons would be present throughout the island until the mid 17th century.
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, there were a large number of Maroons living in the Bahoruco mountains. In 1702, a French expedition against them killed three Maroons and captured 11, but over 30 evaded capture, and retreated further into the mountainous forests. Further expeditions were carried out against them with limited success, though they did succeed in capturing one of their leaders, Michel, in 1719. In subsequent expeditions, in 1728 and 1733, French forces captured 46 and 32 Maroons respectively. No matter how many detachments were sent against these Maroons, they continued to attract runaways. Expeditions in 1740, 1742, 1746, 1757 and 1761 had minor successes against these Maroons but failed to destroy their hideaways.
In 1776–1777, a joint French–Spanish expedition ventured into the Bahoruco Mountains, with the intention of destroying the Maroon settlements there. However, the Maroons had been alerted of their coming and had abandoned their villages and caves, retreating further into the mountainous forests where they could not be found. The detachment eventually returned, unsuccessful and having lost many soldiers to illness and desertion. In the years that followed, the Maroons attacked a number of settlements, including Fond-Parisien, for food, weapons, gunpowder and women. It was on one of these excursions that one of the Maroon leaders, Kebinda, who had been born in freedom in the mountains, was captured. He later died in captivity.
In 1782, de Saint-Larry decided to offer peace terms to one of the Maroon leaders, Santiago, granting them freedom in return for which they would hunt all further runaways and return them to their owners. Eventually, at the end of 1785, terms were agreed, and the more than 100 Maroons under Santiago's command stopped making incursions into French colonial territory.
Other slave resistance efforts against the French plantation system were more direct. One of the most influential Maroons was François Mackandal, a houngan or Haitian Vodou priest, who led a six-year rebellion against the white plantation owners in Haiti that preceded the Haitian Revolution. Mackandal led a movement to poison the drinking water of the plantation owners in the 1750s. Dutty Boukman declared war on the French plantation owners in 1791, setting off the Haitian Revolution. A statue called the Le Nègre Marron or the Nèg Mawon is an iconic bronze bust that was erected in the heart of Port-au-Prince to commemorate the role of Maroons in Haitian independence.
During the late 17th and 18th centuries, the British tried to capture the Maroons because they occasionally raided plantations and made expansion into the interior more difficult. By the 18th century, Nanny Town and other Jamaican Maroon villages began to fight for independent recognition. An increase in armed confrontations over decades led to the First Maroon War in the 1730s, but the British were unable to defeat the Maroons. They finally settled with the groups by treaty in 1739 and 1740, allowing them to have autonomy in their communities in exchange for agreeing to be called to military service with the colonists if needed. Certain Maroon factions became so formidable that they made treaties with local colonial authorities, sometimes negotiating their independence in exchange for helping to hunt down other slaves who escaped.
Due to tensions and repeated conflicts with Maroons from Trelawny Town, the Second Maroon War erupted in 1795. After the governor tricked the Trelawny Maroons into surrendering, the colonial government deported approximately 600 captive Maroons to Nova Scotia. Due to their difficulties and those of Black Loyalists settled at Nova Scotia and England after the American Revolution, Great Britain established a colony in Sierra Leone. It offered ethnic Africans a chance to set up their community there, beginning in 1792. Around 1800, several hundred Jamaican Maroons were transported to Freetown, the first settlement of Sierra Leone. In the 1840s, about 200 Trelawny Maroons returned to Jamaica, and settled in the village of Flagstaff in the parish of St James, not far from Trelawny Town, which is now named Maroon Town, Jamaica.
The only Leeward Maroon settlement that retained formal autonomy in Jamaica after the Second Maroon War was Accompong, in Saint Elizabeth Parish, whose people had abided by their 1739 treaty with the British. A Windward Maroon community is also located at Charles Town, Jamaica, on Buff Bay River in Portland Parish. Another is at Moore Town (formerly Nanny Town), also in the parish of Portland. In 2005, the music of the Moore Town Maroons was declared by UNESCO as a 'Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.' A fourth community is at Scott's Hall, Jamaica, in the parish of St Mary. Accompong's autonomy was ratified by the government of Jamaica when the island gained independence in 1962.
The government has tried to encourage the survival of the other Maroon settlements. The Jamaican government and the Maroon communities organised the annual International Maroon Conference, initially to be held at rotating communities around the island, but the conference has been held at Charles Town since 2009. Maroons from other Caribbean, Central, and South America nations are invited. In 2016, Accompong's colonel and a delegation traveled to the Ashanti Empire in Ghana to renew ties with the Akan people and Asante people of their ancestors. "Historical Meeting Between The Kingdom Of Ashanti And The Accompong Maroons In Jamaica", Modern Ghana, 2 May 2016
In 1648, the English bishop of Guatemala, Thomas Gage, reported active bands of Maroons numbering in the hundreds along these routes. The Miskito Sambu were a Maroon group who formed from slaves who revolted on a Portuguese ship around 1640, wrecking the vessel on the coast of Honduras-Nicaragua and escaping into the interior. They intermarried with the Indigenous people over the next half-century. They eventually rose to leadership of the Mosquito Coast and led extensive slave raids against Spanish-held territories in the first half of the 18th century.
The Garifuna people are descendants of Maroon communities that developed on the island of Saint Vincent. They were deported to the coast of Honduras in 1797.
Later these people, known as the Cimarrón, assisted Sir Francis Drake in fighting against the Spanish.
In 1609, Captain Pedro Gonzalo de Herrera lad an expedition against Yanga and his Maroons, but despite severe casualties on both sides, neither emerged the victor. Instead, Yanga negotiated with the Spanish colonists to establish a self-ruled Maroon settlement called San Lorenzo de los Negros (later renamed Yanga). Yanga secured recognition of the freedom of his Maroons, and his palenque was accorded the status of a free town. In return, Yanga was required to return any further runaways to the Spanish colonial authorities.
The Costa Chica of Guerrero and Costa Region include many hard-to-access areas that also provided refuge for slaves escaping Spanish ranches and estates on the Pacific coast. Evidence of these communities can be found in the Afro-Mexicans population of the region. Other Afro-Mexican communities descended from people who escaped slavery are found in Veracruz and in Northern Mexico; some of the later communities were populated by people who escaped slavery in the United States via the Southern Underground Railroad.
In 1612, the Portuguese tried in vain to take Palmares in an expedition that proved to be very costly. In 1640, a Dutch scouting mission found that the self-freed community of Palmares was spread over two settlements, with about 6,000 living in one location and another 5,000 in another. Dutch expeditions against Palmares in the 1640s were similarly unsuccessful. Between 1672 and 1694, Palmares withstood, on average, one Portuguese expedition nearly every year. After maintaining its independent existence for almost a hundred years, it was finally conquered by the Portuguese in 1694.
Of the 10 major quilombos in colonial Brazil, seven were destroyed within two years of being formed. Four fell in the state of Bahia in 1632, 1636, 1646 and 1796. The other three met the same fate in Rio in 1650, Parahyba in 1731, and Piumhy in 1758. One quilombo in Minas Gerais lasted from 1712–1719. Another, the "Carlota" of Mato Grosso, was wiped out after existing for 25 years, from 1770–1795. There were also a number of smaller quilombos. The first reported quilombo was in 1575 in Bahia. Another quilombo in Bahia was reported at the start of the 17th century. Between 1737 and 1787, a small quilombo thrived in the vicinity of São Paulo. The region of Campo Grande and São Francisco was often populated with quilombos. In 1741, Jean Ferreira organised an expedition against a quilombo, but many runaways escaped capture. In 1746, a subsequent expedition captured 120 members of the quilombo. In 1752, an expedition led by Pere Marcos was attacked by quilombo fighters, resulting in significant loss of life.
Quilombos continued to form in the 19th century. In 1810, a quilombo was discovered at Linhares in the state of São Paulo. A decade later, another was found in Minas. In 1828, another quilombo was discovered at Cahuca, near Recife, and a year later an expedition was mounted against yet another at Corcovado, near Rio de Janeiro. In 1855, the Maravilha quilombo in Amazonas was destroyed. Numerous descendants of Quilombo residents, or , continue to live in historic quilombo settlements post-emancipation. Their status as a "traditional people" was recognized in the 1988 Constitution of Brazil, although they continue to campaign for land rights and protections from violence.
In what is now the district of Popayán, the palenque of Castillo was successfully established by runaway slaves. In 1732, the Spanish authorities tried to secure peace terms with the Maroons of Castillo by inserting a clause requiring them to return runaways, but the rulers of Castillo rejected those terms. In 1745, the colonial authorities defeated Castillo, and over 200 African and Indian runaways surrendered.
At the start of the 17th century, the Maroon community of San Basilio de Palenque was founded, when Benkos Biohó led a group of about 30 runaways into the forests, and defeated attempts to subdue them. Biohó declared himself King Benkos, and his palenque of San Basilio attracted large numbers of runaways to join his community. His Maroons defeated the first expedition sent against them, killing their leader Juan Gomez. The Spanish arrived at terms with Biohó, but later they captured him in 1619, accused him of plotting against the Spanish, and had him hanged. But runaways continued to escape to freedom in San Basilio.
In 1696, the colonial authorities subdued another rebellion in San Basilio de Palenque, and again between 1713 and 1717. Eventually, the Spanish agreed to peace terms with the palenque of San Basilio, and in 1772, this community of Maroons was included within the Mahates district, as long they no longer accepted any further runaways. The San Basilio community, where the creole Palenquero language is spoken, is one of several that still exist along the Caribbean coast.
In the plantation colony of Suriname, which England ceded to the Netherlands in the Treaty of Breda (1667), escaped slaves revolted and started to build their villages from the end of the 17th century. As most of the plantations existed in the eastern part of the country, near the Commewijne River and Marowijne River, the marronage took place along the river borders and sometimes across the borders of French Guiana. By 1740, the Maroons had formed clans and felt strong enough to challenge the Dutch colonists, forcing them to sign peace treaties. On 10 October 1760, the Ndyuka were the first to sign a peace treaty, drafted by former Jamaican slave Adyáko Benti Basiton of Boston, offering them territorial autonomy in 1760. In the 1770s, the Aluku also desired a peace treaty, but the Society of Suriname started a war against them, resulting in a flight into French Guiana. The other tribes signed peace treaties with the Surinamese government, the Kwinti being the last in 1887. On 25 May 1891 the Aluku officially became French citizens.
After Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands, the old treaties with the Bushinengues were abrogated. By the 1980s the Bushinengues in Suriname had begun to fight for their land rights. Case of the Saramaka People v. Suriname, Judgment of November 28, 2007, Inter-American Court of Human Rights ( La Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos), accessed 21 May 2009. Between 1986 and 1992, the Surinamese Interior War was waged by the Jungle Commando, a guerrilla group fighting for the rights of the Maroon minority, against the military dictatorship of Dési Bouterse. In 2005, following a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Suriname government agreed to compensate survivors of the 1986 Moiwana village massacre, in which soldiers had slaughtered 39 unarmed Ndyuka people, mainly women and children. On 13 June 2020, Ronnie Brunswijk was elected Vice President of Suriname by acclamation in an uncontested election. He was inaugurated on 16 July as the first Maroon in Suriname to serve as vice president.
In modern-day Guyana, Dutch officials in 1744 conducted an expedition against encampments of at least 300 Maroons in the Northwest district of Essequibo. The Dutch nailed severed hands of Maroons killed in the expedition to posts in the colony as a warning to other slaves. In 1782, a French official in the region estimated there were more than 2,000 Maroons in the vicinity of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo.
The cumbe of Ocoyta was destroyed in 1771. A military expedition led by German de Aguilera destroyed the settlement, killing Guillermo, but only succeeded in capturing eight adults and two children. The rest of the runaways withdrew into the surrounding forests, where they remained at large. One of Guillermo's deputies, Ubaldo the Englishman, whose christened name was Jose Eduardo de la Luz Perera, was initially born a slave in London, sold to a ship captain, and took several trips before eventually being granted his freedom. He was one of a number of free black people who joined the community of Ocoyta. In 1772, he was captured by the Spanish authorities.
There were many cumbes in the interior of the colony. In 1810, when the War of Independence began, many members of these cumbes fought on the side of the rebels, and abandoned their villages.
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