Maroons: The Ancestors They Don’t Want You to Know About

Some Africans self-emancipated after plotting for months and years. some peeped an opportunity and chose right there in the moment to get the tf on. some escaped the auction block, fresh off the boat. a good bit of em saved up and paid for “freedom papers.” 

It was illegal for black folk to leave without permission. So, unless you paid for your freedom or it was put in the will for you to be released, if you left without permission, you were a criminal. Those who fit that description were called maroons, which most written sources say come from the Spanish word ‘cimarrones’, which meant ‘mountaineers’ or ‘wild’ or ‘untamed.’ The maroons in Panama were actually called the Cimarrons. Makes sense. Maroons would often setup a camp or join a camp in areas that were hard to get to and even harder to live in. Most times that meant swamps or up in the hills, in the woods. In South America, they were called palenques, cumbes, and quilombos. 

It ain’t a whole lot of information on ’em because they were undocumented (or “illegal”), but often an agreement was made between the maroons and the local white folks in charge. As long as the maroons didn’t recruit or allow any other runaways into the camp, then they’d be left alone. And I read on Wikipedia, about the cimarrons in Panama, that they valued iron as much as the white folks valued gold. And that they had “well-defended settlements, sometimes numbering over sixty households.” 

Everywhere slavery existed, maroons did too. 

This list ain’t even half of the maroon communities that existed. Ain’t even a third of ‘em. But it’s some of the most documented ones.

Palenque de San Basilio – Colombia

Palenque was founded around 1603 by Benkos Biohó, a former African king from either the Democratic Republic of Congo or Angola, who was sold into slavery and escaped the slave port of Cartagena in 1599. He ran south, into the swamps, and eventually formed an army of others who’d escaped.

I visited in 2019 and, I ain’t no crybaby, but I boo-hooed cried there. Something in my spirit stirred up. I’ve yet to go to Africa, but it felt like Africa. It also felt like New Orleans and Savannah. It felt so familiar and the history didn’t feel hidden or faraway; it felt present. A lot of that has to do with the fact that they still live on that land. It’s still called Palenque de San Basilio (Palenque for short).

In 1691, Colombia’s colonizers (the Spanish), issued a Royal Decree officially freeing the Africans in San Basilio de Palenque from slavery. This made them the first free Africans in the Americas, and it made Palenque the first free settlement (on paper).

Moore Town – Jamaica

Around the same time that Palenque de San Basilio was established, Moore Town was too. By the 1700s, the maroons controlled much of eastern Jamaica, meaning they were constantly expanding. They formed their own military which was highly trained and organized, and would beat the British (Jamaica’s colonizers) every time they came messing with them.

Colonizers hated maroons for several reasons. One, it cost the colonizers money to bring them over from Africa. Now that they’d run away, that was lost profit. Two, they oftentimes went to go free other enslaved Africans (there’s power in numbers). Three, enslaved Africans knew who they were and where they were, so they would runaway to join other maroons. This meant that the colonizer was losing money and the maroons were getting bigger and stronger.

There were several maroon leaders, including Queen Nanny of the Maroons (from Ghana). Historians say she was able to beat the British due to her supernatural powers. Black folk are magical af, and some are more in tune with their magic than others. However, to only chuck it up to magic is offensive. Nanny was a warrior and a leader, a highly skilled one at that.

The British kept presenting the maroons with treaties. Nanny wasn’t with it, but she eventually agreed. Cudjoe, another maroon leader, signed the peace treaty with the British in 1739. The community split at this point. Some went with Quao, another maroon leader said to be Nanny’s brother too. Others went with Nanny. Once called Nanny Town, the village was later renamed Moore Town.

Africville – Canada

Halifax was founded in 1749 when enslaved Africans dug out roads and built the city. They lived north of the city in an area that became Africville. The area was made up of three distinct groups of black folk: 1) Some had been enslaved in Canada and either ran away, becoming maroons, or had been granted their freedom. 2) Some had fled the United States during and after the American Revolution War (as seen in the TV series, Book of Negroes). 3) And you had the Trelawny maroons from Jamaica.

By 1795, the British had broken their treaty with many of the maroons in Jamaica. They were tired of fighting ’em, so they got three ships to carry 543 maroons from Jamaica to Halifax in late June 1796. Unlike in other places around the world, the Canadian government figured they’d used the maroons to their benefit. They tried to work ’em (for ridiculously low wages) and they wanted to recruit ’em into the military.

It didn’t work out there for a couple reasons. One, they weren’t cool with working with that little bit of money. Two, the snow was brutal! So they went back and forth with the Nova Scotian government until they finally relented and sent them to Sierra Leone in West Africa. Many stayed behind in Africville, though.

The Great Dismal Swamp – North Carolina

I first learned about the Great Dismal Swamp, located between North Carolina and Virginia, with my DNA ancestral results, which suggested that some of my ancestors were likely a part of this maroon community. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

In the early 1600s, Native Americans fleeing colonizers took refuge in the Great Dismal Swamp. They were soon joined by enslaved Africans who’d also run away. From about 1680 to the Civil War, the swamp communities were dominated by black folk. And they had to deal with panthers, bears, venomous snakes, mosquitos, and more.

A descendant of the maroons who once lived in the Great Dismal Swamps, named Charlie, told the Smithsonian, “They risked everything to live in a more just and equitable way, and they were successful for ten generations. All labor was communal here. That’s how it would have been in an African village.”

They’d also raid nearby plantations for food, tools, and livestock, then disappear into the swamps. I’d imagine that’s another reason colonizers hated maroons.

Fort Mose – Florida

Florida’s colonizers, the Spanish, freed black folk who ran away from Carolina and Georgia in exchange for their loyalty and their conversion to Catholicism. The Spanish needed their skills in developing land and their skills in warfare. Native Americans were mixed in as well.

In 1738, the Spanish governor gave the maroons their own town, then called “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose,” about two miles north of St. Augustine, Florida. About 2.5 hours from Savannah. It’s now called Fort Mose (pronounced Moh-say) and is the first legally sanctioned free black town in the present-day United States.

Because it was sanctioned by the government, their history is documented on paper more than probably any other maroon community in this country. As a result, we know that “in 1759, the village consisted of 22 palm thatch huts which housed 37 men, 15 women, 7 boys and 8 girls. These villagers attended Mass in a wood church where their priest also lived. The people of Mose farmed the land and the men stood guard at the fort or patrolled the frontier” (University of Florida).

Of course, there were other maroon communities throughout Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina that were neither named nor government approved.

Bas du Fleuve – Louisiana

In the 1770s, maroons in Louisiana controlled the area called Bas du Fleuve, located in the swamps between the mouth of the Mississippi River and New Orleans. “More specifically, St. Malo had control of the areas of Chef Menteur, areas surrounding Lake Borgne, The Rigolets near Slidell, and parts of the land that we know today as the Westbank” (NoirNola).

Saint-Maló was their leader. His wife’s name was Cecilia. And more than 50 other black folk lived there with them. Some Native Americans too. When New Orleans was colonized, they used enslaved black folk to drain the swamps and cultivate the land. So these skills weren’t new to Africans in this area. Once they freed themselves, they used their skills towards building their new life.

Like other maroon communities around the world, those of Bas du Fleuve survived by hunting wildlife like snakes, raccoons, and alligators; gathering roots and herbs; and raiding nearby plantations when necessary.

By the late 1700’s, Spain gained control of Louisiana from France, and they were a lot less “laissez-faire” than the French. The Spanish used much of their military power to raid maroon communities like Bas du Fleuve and recapture the black folk living there.

Wherever Africans were enslaved in the world, there were maroons who escaped and lived in free independent settlements. They were living underground, essentially, very covert. So not much is known about these communities or the people who lived in ’em. What we do know about them is by word-of-mouth (aka oral history)–the same kinda stories I’m out here gathering.

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