The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-10-28
TIE MAROONs Or JAMAICA.
Their Peculiar Status Under an
Ancient Treaty with England.


The Naroons of the Island of Jamaica.
who have been making themselves so trou-
biesome to the colonial government of late.
are a strange and remarkable people in
many ways. In the first place, ethnologi-
caIy they are the only class or caste ex-
rant in whose veins flows the blood of the
aboriginal race which gave its name,
Xaymaca Gland of Streams and
Woods'O, to the island. Secondly, they
are the only known descendants of the
few negro slaves-not more than 1000
whom the Spanish settlers left in the ISL
and when it was seized by the English,
under Penn and Venables, in 1855.
But this mixed origin, with the prob
ability of a trace of Spanish blood. is not
all that makes the Maroons remarkable.
Their history during the last 2iO years IS
unlike that of any other people in the
British West Indies, and their legal stat
us is probably unique in this hemisphere.
This peculiar legal status is just what
has brought about the trouble between
Mr. Salmon, the statutory freeholder OF
the land under dispute in St Mary's par
ish, on one side and on the other side a
band of MarOons, who, like their breth-
rem In the other Maroon settlements, are
and know themselves 10 be military ten
ants of the British crown in virtue of a
treaty ratified and signed just 100 years
ago. The duslIy disturbers of her Bri-
fannie majesty's peace may never have
heard of feudai tenure, or tief, or of sub
infeudation, but in all essentials their re
lation to Queen Victoria is identical with
the relation of William the Conqueror's
barons TO the "starkman."
1t came about very simply. From the
time when, on the expulsion of the Span
iards in 1866, the Spanish-negro slaves
took to the woods mixed with the scat
tered remnant of the aborigines, and made
the hunting of wild hogs their chief oc-
cupaton, until the year 1913, these Gin
arrones" wild mem had been terror and
a nuisance to the English settlers. Many
laws had been enacted especially for their
repression. Packs of hounds were to be
maintained by every vestry to hunt the
Maroons, as they had already begun TO
be called by an English corruption of their
Spanish name.
Between 1880 and 1888 one Cudjoe earn
ed lasting fame by the audacity and cum
ming with which he led his Maroons in
their Characteristic methods of bush fight
ing. The name of Cudjoe has been pre-
served to this day in the legend which
makes the hollow trunk of a certain gil
gantic cotton tree near Spanish Town
Cudjoe's council chamber AT last the
government of the island, acting for
George II, weary of perpetual murder
and robbery on the one hand and of la.
borious repressive operations on the other
sent two commissioners in the Kings
name TO the free and unsubdued, if defeat
ed, Maroons. These commissioners con
cluded with Capts. Cudjoe, Accompong
Johnny, Cuffee and Quaco, chiefs of the
Maroons, a treaty, by the terms of which
the latter were 10 have in perpetuity, free
of taxation, to themselves and their heirs.
certain lands specified. In return for these
emoluments and privileges the Maroons
were not only to keep the peace toward
King George II, his successors and their
lieges, but also were to kill, suppress or
destroy" all rebels against the British
crown in Jamaica and invaders of that
dominion. This was how the Maroon bar
ons swOre fealty in 1885, aff1xing their
marks TO the instrument as intelligently
no doubt, and as intelHgibly as any of their
predecessors did at Runnymede.
But if, as some of the recent DISPATCHES
from Jamaica have reported, the st. Ma
rvs Maroons boosted to Gov Hemmfng
that their race had never broken the trea-
ty of 1888, they spoke without adequate
warrant of history. 1t may be that the
particular settlement or sept have never
betrayed their ancestral pact Int Other
rising was provoked by the seizure. i'm
prlsonment and whipping of a Maroon in
TrelaWney parish. who had stolen a pig
1t was not the seizure nor the imprison-
ment, nor even the mere whipping that
the Maroon complained of but the shame
of being whipped by a common negro in the
presence OF common negro prisoners. Not
until several regiments of British trooDs
had been dsastrously engaged, losing many
of their men in repeated ambuscades, did
the government appreciate the necessity
of entirely different tactics in dealing with
the Maroon rebels. Bloodhounds We're i'm
ported from Cuba to hunt the wild men to
their lairs, and these, once tracked. were
either killed or deported to Nova Scotia.
where their descendants seem to have LOST
their race identity.
From 1895 until this year-over a. century
the remaining Maroons in Jamaica have
faithfully kept their pact, and the repre-
sentatiVes in Jamaica of George IFS heirs
have observed their side of the contract.
In the negro rising during the last decade
of slavery in Jamaica the Marocns did val
liable service in killing suppressing and
destroying" Thirty years later in 1865
there was a less really formidable rising
of negroes in one locality, but which,
somehow. seems to have occasioned more
commotion among the representatives. of
British power in Jamaica.
on this ccasion-the present writer
speaks from personal recollection-the
mere name of Maroon seemed to send a
thrill of terror through all those negroes
who, if only by the circumstance of in
habiling the disturbed district, were liable
to suspicion of completely in the Morant
Bay riots None Of the rioters nor any Of
their sympathizers ever made any pre-
tence of armed resistance when the mill
tary forces came on the scene. While
from soldiers they could at least run to
the bush and be hidden, from the Maroons
they had good reason TO believe that they
could no more escape than from "de Lard
Garramlghty."
Led by Col Alexander Gordon Fyfe. a
retired officer of the Ninety-second Cor
dom Highlanders, to whom they were de-
votedly attached, the Marcons swarrnad
into the parish of St. Thomas in the east
and all over it. Their weapons were not
of the most modern patterns, but their
knack OF wreathing themselves from head
to foot in club moss and broad-leavel
boughs. and their uncanny power of living
motionless for hours on the watch to xiii.