Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1860-03-03
From the Atlantic Monthly.
THE MAR0oNS OF JAMAICA.

The Maroons 1t was word of peril once
and terror spread along the skirts Of the blue
noun tains of Jamaica, when some fresh foray Of
those unconquered guerrllas swept down upon the
outlying plantations, startled the Assembly from
its order General Williamson from his billiards,
and Lord Bacarres from his diplomatic ease,-
and endaugeriug according, to the official state.
ment, public credit civil rights and the pros
perty, if not the very existence Of the country,
until they we're persuaded to make peace at last.
They were the C;rcassians of the New World )
but they were black, instead of white and as
the Circassans refused to he transferred from the
Sultan to the Gear, 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 defed Nicholas,
the black Mountaineers numberd less than two
thousand and de6ed Cromwell and while the
Crcassans, after thirty years of revolt, seem now
at last su5dued, the Maroons, on the other hand,
who rebelled in 1865, were never conquered, but
only made compromise 0f allegiance, and exist
as separate race to-day.
When Admirals Penn and Venabes landed in
Jamaica, in 1856, there was not a remnant left Of
the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards
had found there a century and half before. Their
piful tale is told only by those caves, still known
among the mountains, where thousands of human
skeletons strew the ground. In their place dwell
two foreign races AN effeminate, ignorant, indol-
ent white community of fifteen hundred, With a
black slave population quite as large and infinite
y more hardy and energetic. The Spaniards
were readily subdued by the English, tho negroes
remained unsubdued the Shareholders we're ban.
shed from the island the slaves only baIished
themselves to the mountains thence the English
could not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers, whom
the English employed. And when Jamaica sub
sided into British colony, and peace was made
with Spain, and the children of Cromwells Puri-
tan soldiers we're beginning to grow rich by inn
porting slaves for Roman Catholic Spaniards, the
Maroons still hello their own wild empire in the
mountains. and, being sturdy beathens every one,
pracused obeah rites in approved pagan fashion.
The word Maroon is derived, according to one
etymology, from tho Spanish word MaTano, q
wild-boar,-t fugitives being all bOarhunsers,
according to another, from MdrOny, river sep
arating French and Dutch Guiana, where a colony
Of them dwelt aud still dwells and by another
still, from Cinlarron, 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 1868, the Governor and
Council of Jamaica offered to each Maroon, who
should surrender his freedom and twenty acres o
land but not one accepted the terms. Daring
forty years, forty-four acts of Assembly were pas
ssd in respect to them, aud at least quarter of
million pounds sterling we're expended in the war
fare against them. In 1893 the force employed
against them consisted of two regiments of regu
lar troops and the whole militia of the island and
the Assembly said that the Maroons had within
few years greatly increased, Notwithstanding oil
the measures that had been concerted for their
suppression to the great terror Of his Maesty't
subjects, and to the manifest weakening and pre-
venting the further increase of the strength and
inhabitants Of the island ...fL .r5.s.,.tr
The special affairs in progress, at the time Of
these statements, was called Cudjos's War. Cud-
Joe was gentleman Of extreme bTsVity and black
ness, whose full length portrait can hardly be said
to adorn DallAs's IIistory but be was as formda'