The weekly Anglo-African., 1860-02-04
From the Atlantic Monthly, for February
THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA.

The Maroons! it was 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 upon the outlaying planta-
tions, startled the Assembly from its order,
General Williamson from his billiards, and
Lord Balcarres from diplomatic ease,-en-
dangering, according to the official state
ment, "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 re-
fused to be transferred from Spanish do
minion to English, and thus their revolt
began. The difference is, that, while the
white mountaineers numbered four hun
dred thousand, and only defed Nicholas,
the black mountaineers numbered less than
two thousand, and defied Cromwell; and
while the Circassians, after thirty years of
revolt, seems now at last subdued, the Ma
rooms, on the other hand, who rebelled in
1865, were never conquered, but only
made compromise of allegiance, and ex-
list as separate race to-day.
When Admiral Penn and Venables land
ed in Jamaica, in 1855, there was not a
remnant left of the sixty thousand natives
whom the Spaniards had found there a
century and 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 places dwelt two foreign races--an
effeminate, ignorant, indolent white COM
munity of fifteen hundred, with black
slave population quite as large and infn-
itely more hardy and energetic. The
Spaniards were readily subdued by the
English--the negroes remained unsubdued /;
the shareholders were banished from the
island--the slaves only banished themsel-
yes to the mountains: thence the English
could not dislodge them, nor the bucca-
neers, whom the English employed And
when Jamaica subsided into British col
ony, 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 ap-
proved pagan fashion.
The word Maroon is derived, according
to one etymology, from the Spanish word
Marrano, wild boar--these fugitives be-
ing all enthusiastically TO another,
from Marony, river separating French
and Dutch Guiana, where colony of them
dwelt and still dwells; and by another
still, from Cinaarron, a word meaning un-
tamable, and used alike for apes and run
away slaves. But whether these rebel
marauders were regarded as monkeys OF
men, they made themselves equally for
midable. AS early as 1868, the Governor
and Council of Jamaica offered to each
Maroon, who should surrender, his freedom
and twenty acres of land; but not one ac-
cepted the terms. During forty years,
forty-four acts of Assembly were passed in
respect to them, and at least quarter of a