Black Rebellion: Five Slave Revolts Part 1

Black Rebellion.

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA

The Maroons! it was a 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 from the outlying plantations, startled the a.s.sembly from its order, Gen. Williamson from his billiards, and Lord Balcarres from his diplomatic ease,--endangering, according to the official statement, "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 Circa.s.sians of the New World, but they were black, instead of white; and as the Circa.s.sians refused to be transferred from the Sultan to the Czar, so 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 defied Nicholas, the black mountaineers numbered less than two thousand, and defied Cromwell; and while the Circa.s.sians, after years of revolt, were at last subdued, the Maroons, on the other hand, who rebelled in 1655, were never conquered, but only made a compromise of allegiance, and exist as a separate race to-day.

When Admirals Penn and Venables landed in Jamaica, in 1655, there was not a remnant left of the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards had found there a century and a 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 place dwelt two foreign races,--an effeminate, ignorant, indolent white community of fifteen hundred, with a black slave population quite as large and infinitely more hardy and energetic. The Spaniards were readily subdued by the English: the negroes remained unsubdued. The slaveholders were banished from the island: the slaves only exiled themselves to the mountains; thence the English could not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers whom the English employed. And when Jamaica subsided into a British colony, 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 st.u.r.dy heathens every one, practised Obeah rites in approved pagan fas.h.i.+on.

The word Maroon is derived, according to one etymology, from the Spanish word _Marrano_, a wild boar,--these fugitives being all boar-hunters; according to another, from _Marony_, a river separating French and Dutch Guiana, where a colony of them dwelt and still dwells; and by another still, from _Cimarron_, 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 1663, the Governor and Council of Jamaica offered to each Maroon, who should surrender, his freedom and twenty acres of land; but not one accepted the terms. During forty years, forty-four Acts of a.s.sembly were pa.s.sed in respect to them, and at least a quarter of a million pounds sterling were expended in the warfare against them. In 1733, the force employed in this service consisted of two regiments of regular troops, and the whole militia of the island; but the a.s.sembly said that "the Maroons had within a few years greatly increased, notwithstanding all the measures that had been concerted for their suppression," "to the great terror of his Majesty's subjects," and "to the manifest weakening and preventing the further increase of strength and inhabitants of the island."

The special affair in progress, at the time of these statements, was called Cudjoe's War. Cudjoe was a gentleman of extreme brevity and blackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adorn Dallas's History of the Maroons; but he was as formidable a guerrilla as Marion. Under his leaders.h.i.+p, the various bodies of fugitives were consolidated into one force, and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, like Schamyl, was religious as well as military head of his people; by Obeah influence he established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves and insurgents; no party could be sent forth, by the government, but he knew it in time to lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the region left unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition; and as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot, and never risked a battle, his forces naturally increased, while those of his opponents were decimated. His men were never captured, and never took a prisoner; it was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealing with them, as Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased by victory;" and the only men who could obtain the slightest advantage against them were the imported Mosquito Indians, or the "Black Shot," a company of Government negroes. For nine full years this particular war continued unchecked, Gen. Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe by night.

The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession of the "c.o.c.kpits." Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as by an earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling the California canons, or those similar fissures in various parts of the Atlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, or symbolically as purgatories. These Jamaica chasms vary from two hundred yards to a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feet high, and often absolutely inaccessible, while the pa.s.ses at each end admit but one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees can grow; water flows within them; and they often communicate with one another, forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired and thirsty with climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file, without seeing or hearing an enemy, up the steep and winding path they traverse one "c.o.c.kpit," then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired from the dense and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, each dropping its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction, when a more murderous volley is poured from the other side; the heights above flash with musketry, while the precipitous path by which they came seems to close in fire behind them. By the time the troops have formed in some attempt at military order, the woods around them are empty, and their agile and noiseless foes have settled themselves into ambush again, farther up the defile, ready for a second attack, if needed. But one is usually sufficient; disordered, exhausted, bearing their wounded with them, the soldiers retreat in panic, if permitted to escape at all, and carry fresh dismay to the barracks, the plantations, and the Government House.

It is not strange, then, that high military authorities, at that period, should have p.r.o.nounced the subjugation of the Maroons a thing more difficult than to obtain a victory over any army in Europe. Moreover, these people were fighting for their liberty, with which aim no form of warfare seemed to them unjustifiable; and the description given by Lafayette of the American Revolution was true of this one,--"the grandest of causes, won by contests of sentinels and outposts." The utmost hope of a British officer, ordered against the Maroons, was to lay waste a provision-ground, or cut them off from water. But there was little satisfaction in this: the wild-pine leaves and the grapevine-withes supplied the rebels with water; and their plantation-grounds were the wild pineapple and the plantain-groves, and the forests, where the wild boars harbored, and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were militiamen. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contracting parties, Cudjoe and Gen. Williamson.

But how to execute a treaty between these wild Children of the Mist and respectable diplomatic Englishmen? To establish any official relations without the medium of a preliminary bullet, required some ingenuity of manoeuvring. Cudjoe was willing, but inconveniently cautious: he would not come halfway to meet any one; nothing would content him but an interview in his own chosen c.o.c.kpit. So he selected one of the most difficult pa.s.ses, posting in the forests a series of outlying parties, to signal with their horns, one by one, the approach of the plenipotentiaries, and then to retire on the main body. Through this line of dangerous sentinels, therefore, Col. Guthrie and his handful of men bravely advanced; horn after horn they heard sounded, but there was no other human noise in the woods, and they had advanced till they saw the smoke of the Maroon huts before they caught a glimpse of a human form.

A conversation was at last opened with the invisible rebels. On their promise of safety, Dr. Russell advanced alone to treat with them; then several Maroons appeared, and finally Cudjoe himself. The formidable chief was not highly military in appearance, being short, fat, humpbacked, dressed in a tattered blue coat without skirts or sleeves, and an old felt hat without a rim. But if he had blazed with regimental scarlet, he could not have been treated with more distinguished consideration; indeed, in that case, "the exchange of hats" with which Dr. Russell finally volunteered, in Maroon fas.h.i.+on, to ratify negotiations, might have been a less severe test of good fellows.h.i.+p. This fine stroke of diplomacy had its effect, however; the rebel captains agreed to a formal interview with Col. Guthrie and Capt. Sadler, and a treaty was at last executed with all due solemnity, under a large cotton-tree at the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. This treaty recognized the military rank of "Capt. Cudjoe," "Capt. Accompong," and the rest; gave a.s.surance that the Maroons should be "forever hereafter in a perfect state of freedom and liberty;" ceded to them fifteen hundred acres of land; and stipulated only that they should keep the peace, should harbor no fugitive from justice or from slavery, and should allow two white commissioners to remain among them, simply to represent the British Government.

During the following year a separate treaty was made with another large body of insurgents, called the Windward Maroons. This was not effected, however, until after an unsuccessful military attempt, in which the mountaineers gained a signal triumph. By artful devices,--a few fires left burning with old women to watch them,--a few provision-grounds exposed by clearing away the bushes,--they lured the troops far up among the mountains, and then surprised them by an ambush. The militia all fled, and the regulars took refuge under a large cliff in a stream, where they remained four hours up to their waists in water, until finally they forded the river, under full fire, with terrible loss. Three months after this, however, the Maroons consented to an amicable interview, exchanging hostages first. The position of the white hostage, at least, was not the most agreeable; he complained that he was beset by the women and children with indignant cries of "Buckra, Buckra," while the little boys pointed their fingers at him as if stabbing him, and that with evident relish.

However, Capt. Quao, like Capt. Cudjoe, made a treaty at last; and hats were interchanged, instead of hostages.

Independence being thus won and acknowledged, there was a suspension of hostilities for some years. Among the wild mountains of Jamaica, the Maroons dwelt in a savage freedom. So healthful and beautiful was the situation of their chief town, that the English Government has erected barracks there of late years, as being the most salubrious situation on the island. They breathed an air ten degrees cooler than that inhaled by the white population below; and they lived on a daintier diet, so that the English epicures used to go up among them for good living. The mountaineers caught the strange land-crabs, plodding in companies of millions their sidelong path from mountain to ocean, and from ocean to mountain again. They hunted the wild boars, and prepared the flesh by salting and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious "jerked hog" of buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry, cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas, and papaws and mameys, and avocados, and all luxurious West-Indian fruits; the very weeds of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and in their names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they looked across these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland forests, and over those again to the faint line of far-off beach, the fainter ocean-horizon, and the illimitable sky.

They had senses like those of American Indians; tracked each other by the smell of the smoke of fires in the air, and called to each other by horns, using a special note to designate each of their comrades, and distinguis.h.i.+ng it beyond the range of ordinary hearing. They spoke English diluted with Spanish and African words, and practised Obeah rites quite undiluted with Christianity. Of course they a.s.sociated largely with the slaves, without any very precise regard to treaty stipulations; sometimes brought in fugitives, and sometimes concealed them; left their towns and settled on the planters lands when they preferred them: but were quite orderly and luxuriously happy. During the formidable insurrection of the Koromantyn slaves, in 1760, they played a dubious part. When left to go on their own way, they did something towards suppressing it; but when placed under the guns of the troops, and ordered to fire on those of their own color, they threw themselves on the ground without discharging a shot. Nevertheless, they gradually came up into reputable standing; they grew more and more industrious and steady; and after they had joined very heartily in resisting D'Estaing's threatened invasion of the island in 1779, it became the fas.h.i.+on to speak of "our faithful and affectionate Maroons."

In 1795, their position was as follows: Their numbers had not materially increased, for many had strayed off and settled on the outskirts of plantations; nor materially diminished, for many runaway slaves had joined them; while there were also separate settlements of fugitives, who had maintained their freedom for twenty years. The white superintendents had lived with the Maroons in perfect harmony, without the slightest official authority, but with a great deal of actual influence. But there was an "irrepressible conflict" behind all this apparent peace, and the slightest occasion might, at any moment, revive all the old terror. That occasion was close at hand.

Capt. Cudjoe and Capt. Accompong, and the other founders of Maroon independence, had pa.s.sed away; and "Old Montagu" reigned in their stead, in Trelawney Town. Old Montagu had all the pomp and circ.u.mstance of Maroon majesty: he wore a laced red coat, and a hat superb with gold lace and plumes; none but captains could sit in his presence; he was helped first at meals, and no woman could eat beside him; he presided at councils as magnificently as at table, though with less appet.i.te; and possessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or reverence of any human being. The real power lay entirely with Major James, the white superintendent, who had been brought up among the Maroons by his father (and predecessor), and who was the idol of this wild race. In an evil hour, the Government removed him, and put a certain unpopular Capt.

Craskell in his place; and as there happened to be, about the same time, a great excitement concerning a hopeful pair of young Maroons, who had been seized and publicly whipped on a charge of hog-stealing, their kindred refused to allow the new superintendent to remain in the town. A few attempts at negotiation only brought them to a higher pitch of wrath, which ended in their despatching the following peculiar diplomatic note to the Earl of Balcarres: "The Maroons wishes nothing else from the country but battle, and they desires not to see Mr. Craskell up here at all. So they are waiting every moment for the above on Monday. Mr. David Schaw will see you on Sunday morning for an answer. They will wait till Monday, nine o'clock, and if they don't come up, they will come down themselves." Signed, "Col. Montagu and all the rest."

It turned out, at last, that only two or three of the Maroons were concerned in this remarkable defiance; but meanwhile it had its effect.

Several amba.s.sadors were sent among the insurgents, and were so favorably impressed by their reception as to make up a subscription of money for their hosts, on departing; only the "gallant Col. Gallimore," a Jamaica Camillus, gave iron instead of gold, by throwing some bullets into the contribution-box. And it was probably in accordance with his view of the subject, that, when the Maroons sent amba.s.sadors in return, they were at once imprisoned, most injudiciously and unjustly; and when Old Montagu himself and thirty-seven others, following, were seized and imprisoned also, it is not strange that the Maroons, joined by many slaves, were soon in open insurrection.

Martial law was instantly proclaimed throughout the island. The fighting men among the insurgents were not, perhaps, more than five hundred; against whom the Government could bring nearly fifteen hundred regular troops and several thousand militiamen. Lord Balcarres himself took the command, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly marched a large force up to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march back again as expeditiously as possible. In his very first attack, he was miserably defeated, and had to fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of the troops, in which some forty or fifty were killed,--including Col. Sandford, commanding the regulars, and the bullet-loving Col. Gallimore, in command of the militia,--while not a single Maroon was even wounded, so far as could be ascertained.

After this a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops gradually got possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut had been burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season; and, between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous.

Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods, heard all their orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating through their lines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations far below. The only man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was Major James, the superintendent just removed by Government; and his services were not employed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion, however, he led a volunteer party farther into the mountains than any of the a.s.sailants had yet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself only, and by the smell of the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very exhausting march, including a climb of a hundred and fifty feet up the face of a precipice, he brought them just within the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. "So far," said he, pointing to the entrance, "you may pursue, but no farther; no force can enter here; no white man except myself, or some soldier of the Maroon establishment, has ever gone beyond this. With the greatest difficulty I have penetrated four miles farther, and not ten Maroons have gone so far as that. There are two other ways of getting into the defile, practicable for the Maroons, but not for any one of you. In neither of them can I ascend or descend with my arms, which must be handed to me, step by step, as practised by the Maroons themselves. One of the ways lies to the eastward, and the other to the westward; and they will take care to have both guarded, if they suspect that I am with you; which, from the route you have come to-day, they will. They now see you, and if you advance fifty paces more, they will convince you of it." At this moment a Maroon horn sounded the notes indicating his name; and, as he made no answer, a voice was heard, inquiring if he were among them. "If he is," said the voice, "let him go back, we do not wish to hurt him, but as for the rest of you, come on and try battle if you choose." But the gentlemen did not choose.

In September the House of a.s.sembly met. Things were looking worse and worse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had defied the whole force of the island, and they were defending their liberty by precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it. Half a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides the enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men from their regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended," says an eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island at large seemed more like a garrison under the power of law-martial, than a country of agriculture and commerce, of civil judicature, industry, and prosperity." Hundreds of the militia had died of fatigue, large numbers had been shot down, the most daring of the British officers had fallen; while the insurgents had been invariably successful, and not one of them was known to have been killed. Capt. Craskell, the banished superintendent, gave it to the a.s.sembly as his opinion, that the whole slave population of the island was in sympathy with the Maroons, and would soon be beyond control. More alarming still, there were rumors of French emissaries behind the scenes; and though these were explained away, the vague terror remained. Indeed, the lieutenant-governor announced in his message that he had satisfactory evidence that the French Convention was concerned in the revolt. A French prisoner, named Murenson, had testified that the French agent at Philadelphia (Fauchet) had secretly sent a hundred and fifty emissaries to the island, and threatened to land fifteen hundred negroes. And though Murenson took it all back at last, yet the a.s.sembly was moved to make a new offer of three hundred dollars for killing or taking a Trelawney Maroon, and a hundred and fifty dollars for killing or taking any fugitive slave who had joined them. They also voted five hundred pounds as a gratuity to the Accompong tribe of Maroons, who had thus far kept out of the insurrection; and various prizes and gratuities were also offered by the different parishes, with the same object of self-protection.

The commander-in-chief being among the killed, Col. Walpole was promoted in his stead, and brevetted as general, by way of incentive. He found a people in despair, a soldiery thoroughly intimidated, and a treasury not empty, but useless. But the new general had not served against the Maroons for nothing, and was not ashamed to go to school to his opponents. First, he waited for the dry season; then he directed all his efforts towards cutting off his opponents from water, and, most effectual move of all, he attacked each successive c.o.c.kpit by dragging up a howitzer, with immense labor, and throwing in sh.e.l.ls. Sh.e.l.ls were a visitation not dreamed of in Maroon philosophy, and their quaint compliments to their new opponent remain on record. "d.a.m.n dat little buckra!" they said, "he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new fas.h.i.+on for fight: him fire big ball arter you, and when big ball 'top, de d.a.m.n sunting [something] fire arter you again." With which Parthian arrows of rhetoric the mountaineers retreated.

But this did not last long. The Maroons soon learned to keep out of the way of the sh.e.l.ls, and the island relapsed into terror again. It was deliberately resolved at last, by a special council convoked for the purpose, "to persuade the rebels to make peace." But as they had not as yet shown themselves very accessible to softer influences, it was thought best to combine as many arguments as possible, and a certain Col.

Quarrell had hit upon a wholly new one. His plan simply was, since men, however well disciplined, had proved powerless against Maroons, to try a Spanish fas.h.i.+on against them, and use dogs. The proposition was met, in some quarters, with the strongest hostility. England, it was said, had always denounced the Spaniards as brutal and dastardly for hunting down the natives of that very soil with hounds; and should England now follow the humiliating example? On the other side, there were plenty who eagerly quoted all known instances of zoological warfare: all Oriental nations, for instance, used elephants in war, and, no doubt, would gladly use lions and tigers also, but for their extreme carnivorousness, and their painful indifference to the distinction between friend and foe; why not, then, use these dogs, comparatively innocent and gentle creatures? At any rate, "something must be done;" the final argument always used, when a bad or desperate project is to be made palatable. So it was voted at last to send to Havana for an invoice of Spanish dogs, with their accompanying cha.s.seurs; and the efforts at persuading the Maroons were postponed till the arrival of these additional persuasives. And when Col. Quarrell finally set sail as commissioner to obtain the new allies, all scruples of conscience vanished in the renewal of public courage and the chorus of popular grat.i.tude; a thing so desirable must be right; thrice they were armed who knew their Quarrell just.

But after the parting notes of grat.i.tude died away in the distance, the commissioner began to discover that he was to have a hard time of it. He sailed for Havana in a schooner manned with Spanish renegadoes, who insisted on fighting every thing that came in their way,--first a Spanish schooner, then a French one. He landed at Batabano, struck across the mountains towards Havana, stopped at Besucal to call on the wealthy Marquesa de San Felipe y San Jorge, grand patroness of dogs and cha.s.seurs, and finally was welcomed to Havana by Don Luis de las Casas, who overlooked, for this occasion only, an injunction of his court against admitting foreigners within his government; "the only accustomed exception being," as Don Luis courteously a.s.sured him, "in favor of foreign traders who came with new negroes." To be sure, the commissioner had not brought any of these commodities; but then he had come to obtain the means of capturing some, and so might pa.s.s for an irregular pract.i.tioner of the privileged profession.

Accordingly, Don Guillermo Dawes Quarrell (so ran his pa.s.sport) found no difficulty in obtaining permission from the governor to buy as many dogs as he desired. When, however, he carelessly hinted at the necessity of taking, also, a few men who should have care of the dogs,--this being, after all, the essential part of his expedition,--Don Luis de las Casas put on instantly a double force of courtesy, and a.s.sured him of the entire impossibility of recruiting a single Spaniard for English service.

Finally, however, he gave permission and pa.s.sports for six cha.s.seurs.

Under cover of this, the commissioner lost no time in enlisting forty; he got them safe to Batabano; but at the last moment, learning the state of affairs, they refused to embark on such very irregular authority. When he had persuaded them, at length, the officer of the fort interposed objections. This was not to be borne, so Don Guillermo bribed him and silenced him; a dragoon was, however, sent to report to the governor; Don Guillermo sent a messenger after him, and bribed him too; and thus at length, after myriad rebuffs, and after being obliged to spend the last evening at a puppet-show in which the princ.i.p.al figure was a burlesque on his own personal peculiarities, the weary Don Guillermo, with his crew of renegadoes, and his forty cha.s.seurs and their one hundred and four muzzled dogs, set sail for Jamaica.

These new allies were certainly something formidable, if we may trust the pictures and descriptions in Dallas's History. The cha.s.seur was a tall, meagre, swarthy Spaniard or mulatto, lightly clad in cotton s.h.i.+rt and drawers, with broad straw hat, and moccasins of raw-hide; his belt sustaining his long, straight, flat sword or _machete_, like an iron bar sharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashes for his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a fierce breed, crossed between hound and mastiff, never unmuzzled but for attack, and accompanied by smaller dogs called _finders_. It is no wonder, when these wild and powerful creatures were landed at Montego Bay, that terror ran through the town, doors were everywhere closed, and windows crowded; not a negro dared to stir; and the muzzled dogs, infuriated by confinement on s.h.i.+pboard, filled the silent streets with their noisy barking and the rattling of their chains.

How much would have come of all this in actual conflict, does not appear.

The Maroons had already been persuaded to make peace upon certain conditions and guaranties,--a decision probably accelerated by the terrible rumors of the bloodhounds, though they never saw them. It was the declared opinion of the a.s.sembly, confirmed by that of Gen. Walpole, that "nothing could be clearer than that, if they had been off the island, the rebels could not have been induced to surrender."

Nevertheless, a treaty was at last made, without the direct intervention of the quadrupeds. Again commissioners went up among the mountains to treat with negotiators at first invisible; again were hats and jackets interchanged, not without coy reluctance on the part of the well-dressed Englishmen; and a solemn agreement was effected. The most essential part of the bargain was a guaranty of continued independence, demanded by the suspicious Maroons. Gen. Walpole, however, promptly pledged himself that no such unfair advantage should be taken of them as had occurred with the hostages previously surrendered, who were placed in irons; nor should any attempt be made to remove them from the island. It is painful to add, that this promise was outrageously violated by the Colonial Government, to the lasting grief of Gen. Walpole, on the ground that the Maroons had violated the treaty by a slight want of punctuality in complying with its terms, and by remissness in restoring the fugitive slaves who had taken refuge among them. As many of the tribe as surrendered, therefore, were at once placed in confinement, and ultimately s.h.i.+pped from Port Royal to Halifax, to the number of six hundred, on the 6th of June, 1796. For the credit of English honor, we rejoice to know that Gen. Walpole not merely protested against this utter breach of faith, but indignantly declined the sword of honor which the a.s.sembly had voted him, in its grat.i.tude, and then retired from military service forever.

The remaining career of this portion of the Maroons is easily told. They were first dreaded by the inhabitants of Halifax, then welcomed when seen, and promptly set to work on the citadel, then in process of reconstruction, where the "Maroon Bastion" still remains,--their only visible memorial. Two commissioners had charge of them, one being the redoubtable Col. Quarrell; and twenty-five thousand pounds were appropriated for their temporary support. Of course they did not prosper; pensioned colonists never do, for they are not compelled into habits of industry. After their delicious life in the mountains of Jamaica, it seemed rather monotonous to dwell upon that barren soil,--for theirs was such that two previous colonies had deserted it,--and in a climate where winter lasts seven months in the year. They had a schoolmaster, and he was also a preacher; but they did not seem to appreciate that luxury of civilization, utterly refusing, on grounds of conscience, to forsake polygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to listen to the doctrinal discourses of their pastor, who was an ardent Sandemanian. They smoked their pipes during service time, and left Old Montagu, who still survived, to lend a vicarious attention to the sermon. One discourse he briefly reported as follows, very much to the point: "Ma.s.sa parson say no mus tief, no mus meddle wid somebody wife, no mus quarrel, mus set down softly." So they sat down very softly, and showed an extreme unwillingness to get up again. But, not being naturally an idle race,--at least, in Jamaica the objection lay rather on the other side,--they soon grew tired of this inaction. Distrustful of those about them, suspicious of all attempts to scatter them among the community at large, frozen by the climate, and constantly pet.i.tioning for removal to a milder one, they finally wearied out all patience. A long dispute ensued between the authorities of Nova Scotia and Jamaica, as to which was properly responsible for their support; and thus the heroic race, that for a century and a half had sustained themselves in freedom in Jamaica, were reduced to the position of troublesome and impracticable paupers, shuttlec.o.c.ks between two selfish parishes. So pa.s.sed their unfortunate lives, until, in 1800, their reduced population was transported to Sierra Leone, at a cost of six thousand pounds; since which they disappear from history.

It was judged best not to interfere with those bodies of Maroons which had kept aloof from the late outbreak, at the Accompong settlement, and elsewhere. They continued to preserve a qualified independence, and retain it even now. In 1835, two years after the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, there were reported sixty families of Maroons as residing at Accompong Town, eighty families at Moore Town, one hundred and ten families at Charles Town, and twenty families at Scott Hall, making two hundred and seventy families in all,--each station being, as of old, under the charge of a superintendent. But there can be little doubt, that, under the influences of freedom, they are rapidly intermingling with the ma.s.s of colored population in Jamaica.

The story of the exiled Maroons attracted attention in high quarters, in its time: the wrongs done to them were denounced in Parliament by Sheridan, and mourned by Wilberforce; while the employment of bloodhounds against them was vindicated by Dundas, and the whole conduct of the Colonial Government defended, through thick and thin, by Bryan Edwards.

This thorough partisan even had the a.s.surance to tell Mr. Wilberforce, in Parliament, that he knew the Maroons, from personal knowledge, to be cannibals, and that, if a missionary were sent among them in Nova Scotia, they would immediately eat him; a charge so absurd that he did not venture to repeat it in his History of the West Indies, though his injustice to the Maroons is even there so glaring as to provoke the indignation of the more moderate Dallas. But, in spite of Mr. Edwards, the public indignation ran quite high in England, against the bloodhounds and their employers, so that the home ministry found it necessary to send a severe reproof to the Colonial Government. For a few years the tales of the Maroons thus emerged from mere colonial annals, and found their way into annual registers and parliamentary debates; but they have long since vanished from popular memory. Their record still retains its interest, however, as that of one of the heroic races of the world; and all the more, because it is with their kindred that the American nation has to deal, in solving one of the most momentous problems of its future career.

THE MAROONS OF SURINAM.

When that eccentric individual, Capt. John Gabriel Stedman, resigned his commission in the English Navy, took the oath of abjuration, and was appointed ensign in the Scots brigade employed for two centuries by Holland, he little knew that "their High Mightinesses the States of the United Provinces" would send him out, within a year, to the forests of Guiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year 1773 would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading through marshes and splas.h.i.+ng through lakes, exploring with his feet for submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by an insufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon by mosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at by those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen,"

the Maroons of Surinam.

Yet, as our young ensign sailed up the Surinam River, the world of tropic beauty came upon him with enchantment. Dark, moist verdure was close around him, rippling waters below; the tall trees of the jungle and the low mangroves beneath were all hung with long vines and lianas, a maze of cordage, like a fleet at anchor; lithe monkeys travelled ceaselessly up and down these airy paths, in armies, bearing their young, like knapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds, winged jewels, flew from tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth ca.n.a.l among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when the troops disembarked,--five hundred fine young men, the oldest not thirty, all arrayed in new uniforms and bearing orange-flowers in their caps, a bridal wreath for beautiful Guiana,--it is no wonder that the Creole ladies were in ecstasy; and the boyish recruits little foresaw the day, when, reduced to a few dozens, barefooted and ragged as filibusters, their last survivors would gladly re-embark from a country beside which even Holland looked dry and even Scotland comfortable.

For over all that earthly paradise there brooded not alone its terrible malaria, its days of fever and its nights of deadly chill, but the worse shadows of oppression and of sin, which neither day nor night could banish. The first object which met Stedman's eye, as he stepped on sh.o.r.e, was the figure of a young girl stripped to receive two hundred lashes, and chained to a hundred-pound weight. And the few first days gave a glimpse into a state of society worthy of this exhibition,--men without mercy, women without modesty, the black man a slave to the white man's pa.s.sions, and the white man a slave to his own. The later West-Indian society in its worst forms is probably a mere dilution of the utter profligacy of those early days. Greek or Roman decline produced nothing more debilitating or destructive than the ordinary life of a Surinam planter, and his one virtue of hospitality only led to more unbridled excesses and completed the work of vice. No wonder that Stedman himself, who, with all his peculiarities, was essentially simple and manly, soon became disgusted, and made haste to get into the woods and cultivate the society of the Maroons.

The rebels against whom this expedition was sent were not the original Maroons of Surinam, but a later generation. The originals had long since established their independence, and their leaders were flouris.h.i.+ng their honorary silver-mounted canes in the streets of Paramaribo. Fugitive negroes had begun to establish themselves in the woods from the time when the colony was finally ceded by the English to the Dutch, in 1674. The first open outbreak occurred in 1726, when the plantations on the Seramica River revolted; it was found impossible to subdue them, and the government very imprudently resolved to make an example of eleven captives, and thus terrify the rest of the rebels. They were tortured to death, eight of the eleven being women: this drove the others to madness, and plantation after plantation was visited with fire and sword. After a long conflict, their chief, Adoe, was induced to make a treaty, in 1749.

The rebels promised to keep the peace, and in turn were promised freedom, money, tools, clothes, and, finally, arms and ammunition.

But no permanent peace was ever made upon a barrel of gunpowder as a basis; and, of course, an explosion followed this one. The colonists naturally evaded the last item of the bargain; and the rebels, receiving the gifts, and remarking the omission of the part of Hamlet, asked contemptuously if the Europeans expected negroes to subsist on combs and looking-gla.s.ses? New hostilities at once began; a new body of slaves on the Ouca River revolted; the colonial government was changed in consequence, and fresh troops s.h.i.+pped from Holland; and after four different emba.s.sies had been sent into the woods, the rebels began to listen to reason. The black generals, Capt. Araby and Capt. Boston, agreed upon a truce for a year, during which the colonial government might decide for peace or war, the Maroons declaring themselves indifferent. Finally the government chose peace, delivered ammunition, and made a treaty, in 1761; the white and black plenipotentiaries exchanged English oaths and then negro oaths, each tasting a drop of the other's blood during the latter ceremony, amid a volley of remarkable incantations from the black _gadoman_ or priest. After some final skirmishes, in which the rebels almost always triumphed, the treaty was at length accepted by all the various villages of Maroons. Had they known that at this very time five thousand slaves in Berbice were just rising against their masters, and were looking to them for a.s.sistance, the result might have been different; but this fact had not reached them, nor had the rumors of insurrection in Brazil among negro and Indian slaves.

They consented, therefore, to the peace. "They write from Surinam," says the "Annual Register" for Jan. 23, 1761, "that the Dutch governor, finding himself unable to subdue the rebel negroes of that country by force, hath wisely followed the example of Gov. Trelawney at Jamaica, and concluded an amicable treaty with them; in consequence of which, all the negroes of the woods are acknowledged to be free, and all that is pa.s.sed is buried in oblivion." So ended a war of thirty-six years; and in Stedman's day the original three thousand Ouca and Seramica Maroons had multiplied, almost incredibly, to fifteen thousand.

But for those slaves not sharing in this revolt it was not so easy to "bury the whole past in oblivion." The Maroons had told some very plain truths to the white amba.s.sadors, and had frankly advised them, if they wished for peace, to mend their own manners and treat their chattels humanely. But the planters learned nothing by experience,--and, indeed, the terrible narrations of Stedman were confirmed by those of Alexander, so lately as 1831. Of course, therefore, in a colony comprising eighty thousand blacks to four thousand whites, other revolts were stimulated by the success of this one. They reached their highest point in 1772, when an insurrection on the Cottica River, led by a negro named Baron, almost gave the finis.h.i.+ng blow to the colony; the only adequate protection being found in a body of slaves liberated expressly for that purpose,--a dangerous and humiliating precedent. "We have been obliged to set three or four hundred of our stoutest negroes free to defend us," says an honest letter from Surinam, in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772.

Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much upon his numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in a marshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundred Dutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the "black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he again drew back into the forests, resuming his guerrilla warfare against the plantations. Nothing could dislodge him; blood-hounds were proposed, but the moisture of the country made them useless: and thus matters stood when Stedman came sailing, amid orange-blossoms and music, up the winding Surinam.

Our young officer went into the woods in the condition of Falstaff, "heinously unprovided." Coming from the unbounded luxury of the plantations, he found himself entering "the most horrid and impenetrable forests, where no kind of refreshment was to be had,"--he being provisioned only with salt pork and pease. After a wail of sorrow for this inhuman neglect, he bursts into a gush of grat.i.tude for the private generosity which relieved his wants at the last moment by the following list of supplies: "24 bottles best claret, 12 ditto Madeira, 12 ditto porter, 12 ditto cider, 12 ditto rum, 2 large loaves white sugar, 2 gallons brandy, 6 bottles muscadel, 2 gallons lemon-juice, 2 gallons ground coffee, 2 large Westphalia hams, 2 salted bullocks' tongues, 1 bottle Durham mustard, 6 dozen spermaceti candles." The hams and tongues seem, indeed, rather a poor halfpennyworth to this intolerable deal of sack; but this instance of Surinam privation in those days may open some glimpse at the colonial standards of comfort. "From this specimen,"

moralizes our hero, "the reader will easily perceive, that, if some of the inhabitants of Surinam show themselves the disgrace of the creation by their cruelties and brutality, others, by their social feelings, approve themselves an ornament to the human species. With this instance of virtue and generosity I therefore conclude this chapter."

But the troops soon had to undergo worse troubles than those of the commissariat. The rainy season had just set in. "As for the negroes,"

said Mr. Klynhaus, the last planter with whom they parted, "you may depend on never seeing a soul of them, unless they attack you off guard; but the climate, the climate, will murder you all." Bringing with them const.i.tutions already impaired by the fevers and dissipation of Paramaribo, the poor boys began to perish long before they began to fight. Wading in water all day, hanging their hammocks over water at night, it seemed a moist existence, even compared with the climate of England and the soil of Holland. It was a case of "Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate," even more than Andrew Marvell found it in the United Provinces. In fact, Raynal evidently thinks that nothing but Dutch experience in hydraulics could ever have cultivated Surinam.

The two gunboats which held one division of the expedition were merely old sugar-barges, roofed over with boards, and looking like coffins. They were pleasantly named the "Charon" and the "Cerberus," but Stedman thought that the "Sudden Death" and the "Wilful Murder" would have been t.i.tles more appropriate. The chief duty of the troops consisted in lying at anchor at the intersections of wooded streams, waiting for rebels who never came. It was dismal work, and the raw recruits were full of the same imaginary terrors which have haunted other heroes less severely tested: the monkeys never rattled the cocoa-nuts against the trees, but they all heard the axes of Maroon wood-choppers; and when a sentinel declared, one night, that he had seen a negro go down the river in a canoe, with his pipe lighted, the whole force was called to arms--against a firefly. In fact, the insect race brought by far the most substantial dangers. The rebels eluded the military, but the chigres, locusts, scorpions, and bush-spiders were ever ready to come half-way to meet them; likewise serpents and alligators proffered them the freedom of the forests, and exhibited a hospitality almost excessive. Snakes twenty feet long hung their seductive length from the trees; jaguars volunteered their society through almost impenetrable marshes; vampire bats perched by night with lulling endearments upon the toes of the soldiers. When Stedman describes himself as killing thirty-eight mosquitoes at one stroke, we must perhaps pardon something to the spirit of martyrdom. But when we add to these the other woes of his catalogue,--p.r.i.c.kly-heat, ringworm, putrid-fever, "the growling of Col. Fougeaud, dry sandy savannas, unfordable marshes, burning hot days, cold and damp nights, heavy rains, and short allowance,"--we can hardly wonder that three captains died in a month, and that in two months his detachment of forty-two was reduced to a miserable seven.