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This chapter discusses the ethnographic future of the Jamaican Maroons. No one can tell how many Kromanti language specialists remain in the Maroon communities in Jamaica. By the late 1970s, there were clear indications that very few among the younger generation were receiving serious training in the Kromanti tradition. Those interviewed for this book are no longer alive. This chapter suggests that the apparent waning of the Maroons' ancestral religion evidences the same kinds of damaging cultural contradictions, bred by colonialism, that linger on in other parts of Jamaica.

Unlike their African forebears, most American maroons in the antebellum period did not look for freedom in remote hinterland locations. Instead, they settled in the borderlands of farms or plantations—and they went to the woods to stay. If not caught by men or dogs, and depending on their health, survival skills, and their families’ and friends’ level of involvement, runaway slaves could live there for years. These “borderland maroons” have become the most invisible refugees from slavery, although their (white and black) contemporaries were well aware of their existence. As is true for most American maroons, their lives have remained partially unknown, but several individuals who later got out of the South, or had loved ones who went to the woods, described that experience in slave narratives such as autobiographies and memoirs. In addition, detailed and intimate information about their existence can be found in the recollections of the formerly enslaved men and women gathered by the Works Progress Administration. This chapter builds upon the previous two contributions by exploring the lives of “borderland maroons” in the antebellum South with a particular emphasis on the (slave family) networks that sustained them indefinitely as refugees from slavery.

This chapter maps the geographic and political contours of a water-saturated topography long associated with death, disease, and “blackness,” paying specific attention to swamps in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby and bayous in Kasi Lemons' Eve's Bayou. That both elements—land and water—co-exist, layer, and overlap to the point of being indistinguishable from one another engenders a theory of reading geographies, bodies, and texts as resisting hegemonic labeling and classification. In this way, marshes, swamps, and bayous—as well as those who inhabit these uncharted territories—are read as powerful sites of postcolonial resistance.

Writing from the cultural perspective of his native Ghana and Ga-Adangme roots, Isaac Nii Akrong looks into complex connections between aspects of Ghanaian culture and that of Jamaica. He discusses the Gome drum and dance of Ghana and its links (through Sierra Leone and Central Africa) to Jamaican Maroon square drums, as well as the Jamaican danced religion Kumina, with Congolese origins, but also influences from Maroons, whose roots include Ghana, and with similarities, he notes, to dance moves and musical practices of Ghana. Above all, Akrong recognizes in the Jamaican spirituality of Kumina an intensely African connection with the spiritual traditions of Ghana.

Cheryl Ryman offers an intensive view of the complexities and richness of Jamaican folkloric dance. She sets up a detailed context for her unusually complete description of the dances, giving insights into ways in which all dance cultures can be identified, the African aesthetics and spirituality that define Jamaican dance, and the way a dance event evolves, reflecting what happens in much of the Caribbean. Ryman's extensive descriptions of such traditions as Jonkonnu, Bruckin Party, Buru, Maypole, Mento, Kumina, the Nine Night dances, including dinki mini and guerre, Maroon Kromanti play nation dances, Etu, Hosay, and Rastafari greatly enhance knowledge of the complications of Jamaica's historic folkloric culture.

Focusing on the 1730s through the 1750s, chapter 2 considers the relationship between notions of hereditary blood status and the legal redefinition of whiteness and British racial identity in Jamaica. It shows how demographic crises and ongoing conflicts with the Maroons prompted Jamaican colonial authorities to turn to free blacks, Jews, and persons of mixed ancestry for compulsory assistance. While free blacks and men of mixed ancestry were required to offer military service, and Jews were burdened with extraordinary taxation, a select handful of men and women of mixed ancestry aided the colonial regime by assisting in the legal “whitening” of Jamaica.

By the late 1730s, the Jamaicans had grown weary of battling with the Maroons. The shortage of white militia and British regulars, along with the Maroons’ proficiency in guerrilla warfare and their knowledge of the terrain, led to high white casualties and heavy expenses. In the treaties of 1738-39, the Jamaicans granted autonomy to the Maroons. In return, the Maroons agreed to live in isolated reservations and serve as slave catchers for the whites. They would preserve white freedom and black slavery. But in July 1795, the turmoil by the Trelawney Town Maroons in the northern mountains caught the colony by surprise. The St. Domingue rebellion, just a day’s sail from Jamaica, created paranoia. The Jamaican elite did not worry unduly about a few hundred Maroons in the distant northwest village of Trelawney Town, far from the urban centers of Spanish Town and Kingston. Rather, the fear loomed that the uprising would “corrupt” the slaves who comprised 90 percent of the population. This chapter describes the exigencies that led the island to instigate war against the Maroons.

This chapter examines the forms of speech at work in the law. Using evidence from the laws of Barbados and Jamaica, it considers oath-taking and evidence-giving as particular forms of speech which bind utterances to those who enunciate them. The chapter establishes that both oath-taking and evidence-giving in court were part of the process of creating powerful white, male, free, propertied, and Protestant subjects – free-born Englishmen – whose word would be taken, and whose speech practices tied the British sugar islands into imperial and colonial legal structures. Yet, it also argues that there were many taking oaths on these islands, and that how they spoke undermined simple alignments of power, speech, and identity. The chapter examines West African forms of oath-taking (as in obeah) and evidence-giving, and their presence in a variety of quasi-legal practices among the enslaved; the need for the British to swear oaths with the Maroons in order to bring peace to Jamaica in 1739; the tellingly ambiguous position of Francis Williams, a free black slaveholder who could not have slave evidence heard against him; and how reforms to the rules on evidence were seen by slaveholders as threatening the whole basis of racialized slavery.

This chapter examines the knowledge of the living Maroons in Moore Town, Jamaica, during the 1970s. It discusses observations about the daily life of the Maroons and first contact with Kromantic language speakers. It suggests that the acquisition of knowledge about their craft is a gradual, incremental process of testing and evasion, an ongoing exercise in dodging stabs at information gathering and parrying with partial revelations even for the Maroons themselves. It also contends that the Maroons were often calculated, under extreme circumstances, to ensure the survival of those they had come to identify as their own.

This chapter examines how the Jamaican Maroons imagine themselves and their past. It suggests that it is important to acknowledge the historicity of a large number of Maroon oral traditions and contends that the Jamaican Maroon claims to a separate identity cannot be judged on the basis of how accurately they understand their past. It argues that regardless of how the Maroon oral narratives recount what really happened in any particular context, it is clear their oral culture is both culturally distinctive and historically deep.

This chapter examines the Jamaican Maroon's recollection of Africa. It suggests that even before the first prophets of Rastafari dreamt of repatriation, the Maroons wore the badge of their ancestry with a defiant sense of pride. Those living in the hills had kept alive the idea of Africa and the Maroons continued to provide Jamaica's masses with an alternative vision even after the abolition of slavery and despite the efforts of missionaries to stamp out any remaining vestige of African culture. This chapter provides the text and excerpts of some Maroon oral history narratives and sacred songs related to their recollection of their African roots.

This chapter examines the Jamaican Maroons' recollection of their captivity and marronage. It suggests that the Maroons never needed any help in recalling the ordeal of slavery because their very identity was predicated on a history of resistance to enslavement. Their struggles for liberation had actually helped them emerged as a people and their distinctive culture and ethnic label served as a constant reminder of the long and successful war their ancestors had waged against their British captors. This chapter illustrates its arguments with Maroon oral history narratives and the text of sacred songs related to their recollection of their captivity and marronage.

This chapter discusses the lingering memories of unprecedented violence and destruction suffered by Jamaican Maroons more than 250 years ago, particularly for those who were brought up in the ways of the “older heads”. Most Maroons know something of the risks and challenges facing those who first fled into a largely unfamiliar wilderness and they know of the survival foods on which the ancestors had to depend during lean times. This chapter looks at excerpts of some Maroon oral history narratives and texts from sacred songs related to their recollection of their experiences in extreme conditions.

This chapter examines the memorable persons, places, and deeds among the Jamaican Maroons. It suggests that who the Maroons are today certainly has much to do with the deeds of past generations and it looks at the traces these have left in contemporary Maroon expressive culture. It contends that those who continue to identify themselves as Katawud people express their feelings through the stories they tell and the songs they sing. This chapter then examines some Maroon oral history narratives and sacred songs related to their recollection of the prominent presences of influential people, particularly of Queen Nanny or Grand Nanny.

This chapter examines the notion that the Jamaican Maroons are special people. It suggests that for generations no other Jamaicans shared the glorious history of the Maroons in standing alone to seize their freedom from the British colonizers nearly a century before slavery was abolished in Jamaica. According to the Maroons today, the special knowledge, skills, and spiritual powers that brought the early fighters victory were bequeathed only to their descendants, and remain their exclusive property. This chapter looks at excerpts from Maroon oral history narratives and sacred songs related to their fight for freedom against the British.

This chapter examines the treaty between the Jamaican Maroons and the British colonizers. It discusses the difficulty for the colonial government to enter into diplomatic relations and negotiating a peace settlement with their former slaves for the cessation of hostilities. It suggests that the idea of making peace with those who had caused them tremendous suffering was equally distasteful for the Maroons.

This chapter examines the way the Jamaican Maroons fought for their freedom. It explains that for the Maroons, combat has always been as much a spiritual undertaking as a physical one. It discusses the so-called Kromanti Play, the sanctified space where Maroons “put drum a ring” and call upon their ancestors. This practice remains the ultimate proving ground and the stage upon which Maroon spiritual superiority is publicly tested again and again. This chapter looks at Maroon oral history narratives and sacred songs related to their fete-man or spirit warrior.

This chapter examines the indomitable nature of the Jamaican Maroons. It suggests that the stereotypical labels of Maroons being hot-headed, fiery, and fierce may border on caricature, they hint at an experiential reality. The chapter discusses the important role played by affect in the construction and transmission of Maroon identity. This chapter looks at Maroon oral history narratives and sacred songs related to indomitability.