Cudjoe The Negro Chief And The Maroons Of Jamaica

When the English conquered the island of Jamaica and drove the Spaniards

out of it, they failed to conquer its sable inhabitants, negroes who had

been slaves to the Spaniards, but who now fought for and maintained their

freedom. Such were the Maroons, or mountain-dwelling fugitives of Jamaica,

whose story is well worth telling.



First we must say something about the history of this island, and how it

came nto English hands. It was long held by the Spaniards, being

discovered by Columbus in his second voyage, in 1494. In his last voyage

he had a dismal experience there. With his vessels battered and ready to

sink, after running through a severe wind storm, he put into the harbor of

Porto Bueno, in northern Jamaica. He afterwards left this for a small bay,

still known after him as Don Christopher's Cove, and here, attacked by the

warlike natives, and unable to put to sea, he was kept captive in his

shattered hulks for a whole year.



The Indians refused him food, and the tradition goes that he got this at

length by a skilful artifice. Knowing that a total eclipse of the moon

would soon take place, he sent word to the dusky chief that the lights in

the sky were under his control, and if they did not give him supplies he

would put out the light of the moon and never let it shine again on their

island. The Indians laughed with scorn at this threat, but when they saw

the moon gradually losing its light and fading into darkness, they fell

into a panic, and begged him to let it shine again, promising to bring him

all the food he wanted. At this the admiral feigned to relent, and after

retiring for a time to his cabin, came forth and told them that he would

consent to bring back the lost moonlight. After that the Indians saw that

the crew had abundance of food. The admiral and his crew were finally

rescued by an expedition sent from Hispaniola.



Jamaica, like Cuba and Hayti, has the honor of keeping its old Indian

name, signifying a land of springs, or of woods and waters. It is a land

of mountains also; if it had not been we would have had no story to tell,

for these mountains were the haunts and the strongholds of the Maroons.

The island was not settled till 1523, twenty years after the detention of

Columbus on its shores. Many years after that we find its Spanish settlers

oppressing all the English that fell into their hands. This was the case,

in fact, all through the West Indies, English seamen being put in the

stocks, sent to the galleys, or murdered outright.



It took the sturdy directness of Oliver Cromwell to put an end to these

outrages. He sent word to the Spanish minister that there must be a stop

put to the practices of the Inquisition and to the restriction of free

navigation in the West Indies. The minister replied, that to ask for these

two things was "to ask for his master's two eyes," and that no such thing

could be allowed. Cromwell's reply was to the point:



"I know of no title that the Spaniards hath but by force, which by the

same title may be repelled. And as to the first discovery--to me it seems

as little reason that the sailing of a Spanish ship upon the coast of

India should entitle the king of Spain to that country as the sailing of

an Indian or English ship upon the coast of Spain should entitle either

the Indians or the English to the dominion thereof. The Spaniards have

contravented the Treaty of 1630. War must needs be justifiable when peace

is not allowable."



This reply was certainly one marked by sound logic and good sense. It was

the rule of force, not of right, that lay behind all claims to dominion in

America, and this rule could be set aside by superior force. So Cromwell

sent out a great fleet under command of Admiral Penn,--father of William

Penn, the settler of Pennsylvania,--with a land force commanded by General

Venables. The first attempt was made upon Hispaniola. Failing here, the

fleet sailed to Jamaica, where the Spaniards surrendered on the 11th of

May, 1655. They tried to take it back again shortly before Cromwell's

death, but did not succeed, and Jamaica has remained an English island

from that day to this.



This is about all we need say by way of preface, except to remark that

many settlers were sent to Jamaica, and the island soon became well

peopled and prosperous, Port Royal, its principal harbor, coming to be the

liveliest city in the West Indies. It was known as the wickedest city as

well as the richest, and when an earthquake came in 1692, and Port Royal,

with the sandy slope on which it was built, slipped into the sea with all

its dwellings, warehouses and wealth, and numbers of its people, the

disaster was looked upon by many as a judgment from heaven. There is one

thing more worth mention, which is that Morgan, the buccaneer, whose deeds

of shameful cruelty at Panama we have described, became afterwards deputy

governor of Jamaica, as Sir Henry Morgan, which title was given him by

King Charles II. It is not easy to know why this was done, unless it be

true, as was then said, that Charles shared in the spoils of his bloody

deeds of piracy. However that be, Morgan, as governor, turned hotly upon

his former associates, and hunted down the buccaneers without mercy,

hanging and shooting all he could lay hands on, until he fairly put an end

to the trade which had made him rich.



Let us come now to the story of the Maroons, that nest of fugitives who

made things hot enough for the English in Jamaica for many years. When

Cromwell's soldiers took possession of Jamaica few or none of those

warlike Indians, who had given Columbus so much trouble, were left. In

their place were about two thousand negro slaves, and these fled to the

mountains, as the Indians had done before them. There they remained in

freedom, though the English did their best to coax them to come down and

enjoy the blessings of slavery again, and though they tried their utmost

to drive them down from the cliffs by means of soldiers and guns. In spite

of all the whites could do, the negroes, "Maroons," as they were called,

long preserved their liberty.



In 1663 the British, finding that they could not master the warlike

fugitives by force, offered them a full pardon, with liberty and twenty

acres of land apiece, if they would yield. But the negroes, who were

masters of the whole mountainous interior, where thousands could live in

plenty, chose to stay where they were and not to trust to the slippery

faith of the white man. And so it went on until after 1730, when the

depredations of the negroes upon the settlements became so annoying that

two regiments of British regulars and all the militia of the island were

sent into the mountains to put them down. As it proved, the negroes still

held their own, not one of them being taken prisoner, and very few of them

killed. They were decidedly masters of the situation.



At this time the chief of the Maroons, Cudjoe by name, was a dusky dwarf,

sable, ugly, and uncouth, but shrewd and wary, and fully capable of

discounting all the wiles of his enemies. No Christian he, but a full

Pagan, worshipping, with his followers, the African gods of Obeah, or the

deities of the wizards and sorcerers. His lurking-place, in the defiles of

the John Crow Mountains, was named Nanny Town, after his wife. Here two

mountain streams plunged over a rock nine hundred feet high into a

romantic gorge, where their waters met in a seething caldron called

"Nanny's Pot." Into this, as the negroes believed, the black witch Nanny

could, by her sorcery, cast the white soldiers who pursued them. As for

old Cudjoe himself, the English declared that he must be in league with

the devil, whom he resembled closely enough to be his brother. And they

were not without warrant for this belief, for he held his own against them

for nine long years, at the end of which the Maroons were more numerous

than at the beginning, since those who were killed were more than made up

by fresh accessions of runaway slaves.



It is certain that the British soldiers were no match for Cudjoe the

dwarf. Retreating warily before them, he drew them into many an ambush in

the wild defiles of the mountains, where they were cut down like sheep,

the waters of the "Pot" being often reddened with their blood. From many

of the expeditions sent against him only a few weary and wounded survivors

returned, and it became difficult to induce the soldiers to venture into

that den of death.



At length a British officer succeeded in dragging two mountain howitzers

up the cliffs to a position from which Nanny Town, the inaccessible Maroon

stronghold, could be shelled. When the shells, hurled from the distant

cannon, began to burst among them, the Maroons were at first so filled

with terror that some of them threw themselves over the cliffs, but the

bulk of them merely scattered and let the howitzers do their work among

empty walls.



Cudjoe was astonished at the bursting shells, but he was too old a bird to

be frightened. "Dis a new way de buckra man got to fight," he said. "He

fire big ball arter you, and den de big ball fire little ones arter you.

Dat's berry cunnin', but ole Cudjoe know somethin' better un dat."



Leading his men through the woods with the stealthy tread and noiseless

skill of the American Indians, the dwarf and his Maroons suddenly burst

upon the unwary soldiers from the rear while they were busy about their

guns, delivering a telling volley and then rushing upon them with blade

and axe. Few of the whites escaped this ferocious onset, and the

shell-delivering howitzers remained in Cudjoe's hands.



Despairing of conquering the forest-born Maroons by the arts of civilized

warfare, the British were driven to try a new method. In 1737 they brought

from the Mosquito coast a number of Indians, who were fully the equal of

the negroes in bush fighting. These were launched upon the track of the

Maroons and soon ran them down in their mountain fastnesses. From Nanny

Town the seat of war shifted to another quarter of the island, but at

length the Maroons, finding their new foes fully their match in their own

methods, consented to sign a treaty of peace with the whites, though only

on the terms that they should retain their full freedom.



The treaty was made in 1738 at Trelawney Town, the Maroons being

represented by Captains Cudjoe, Accompong, Johnny, Cuffee, and Quaco, and

a number of their followers, "who have been in a state of war and

hostility for several years past against our sovereign lord the king and

the inhabitants of this island."



By the terms of the treaty the Maroons were to retain their liberty

forever, to be granted a large tract of land in the mountains, and to

enjoy full freedom of trade with the whites. On their part they agreed to

keep peace with the whites, to return all runaway slaves who should come

among them, and to aid the whites in putting down the rebellion and in

fighting any foreign invader.



In 1760 their promise to aid the whites against local outbreaks was put to

the test when the fierce Koromantyn negroes broke out in rebellion and

committed fearful atrocities. A party of Maroons joined the whites and

seemed very zealous in their cause, ranging the woods and bringing in a

large number of ears, which they said they had cut from the heads of

rebels killed by them. It afterwards was found that the ears had been

obtained from the negroes who had been slain by the troops and left where

they fell.



The Maroons remained unmolested until 1795, not without outbreaks on their

part and depredations on the settlements. In the year named two of them

were caught stealing pigs, and were sent to the workhouse and given

thirty-nine lashes on the bare back. When set free they went home in a

fury, and told a pitiful tale of the disgrace they had suffered, being

whipped by the black driver of the workhouse in the presence of felon

slaves. The story roused the blood of all their fellows, who felt that

they had been outraged by this insult to two of their kindred, and a

revolt broke out that spread rapidly throughout the mountains.



The whites were in a quandary. To attempt to put down the rebels by force

of arms might lead to the sanguinary results of sixty years before. But it

was remembered that in the former war the use of dogs had proved very

advantageous, so agents were now sent to Cuba to purchase a pack of

bloodhounds. Thus the methods employed by the Spaniards against the

Indians two centuries before were once more brought into use. One hundred

hounds were bought and with them came forty Cuban huntsmen, mostly

mulattoes. As it proved, the very news of the coming of the hounds had the

desired effect, the Maroons being apparently much more afraid of these

ferocious dogs than of trained soldiers. At any rate, they immediately

sued for peace, and, as an old historian tells us, "It is pleasing to

observe that not a drop of blood was spilt after the dogs arrived in the

island." Peace was made within a week, and in the next year the chief

offenders were sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and put at work on the

fortifications. They were afterwards sent to Liberia.



From that time forward there was no trouble with the Maroons. Their

descendants still dwell in the island as a separate people. In 1865 there

was an outbreak among the free blacks, slavery having been abolished

thirty years before. The Maroons were called upon to help the troops put

down this revolt. They responded cheerfully and rendered useful aid in the

brief conflict. When it was over the black warriors were invited to

Kingston, the capital, where the whites of that city had their first sight

of the redoubtable Maroons. Black and brawny, they had the dignified

carriage of men who had always been free and independent, while some of

them wore with pride silver medals which their ancestors had been given

for former aid to the whites. Once a terror to Jamaica, the Maroons are

now among its most trusty inhabitants.