60199616-flight-to-freedom-african-runaways-and-maroons-in-the-americas

Forms of Marronage
87
of deserters, above Nagos, Bambaras, Mandingos and others, which also
negates the view that Creoles were reluctant to decamp (Fouchard 1972, 438).
In Fouchard’s (ibid.) opinion, the numbers of various groups brought into
Haiti at different periods was the most influential factor in the ethnic contour
of flight.
Planter perception and preference had a lot to do with the alleged aggressiveness
or docility of particular ethnic groups. For instance, planters in the
British Caribbean liked Gold Coast (really Akan) workers because they were
said to be nobler in bearing, better workers and more faithful to those who
treated them well, but fierce and implacable enemies to those who mistreated
them. Although they were at the centre of most instances of revolt and marronage
in Jamaica, an initiative in the island’s legislature to ban their entry
into that colony failed to garner sufficient votes (Long 1774, 2:470). On the
other hand, Moreau de Saint-Méry, a contemporary writer, asserts that the
French purchased but did not think highly of Gold Coast workers (in French
terminology, those from the whole area from Dahomey to Nigeria): “The
Negroes of the Gold Coast are, in general, well made and intelligent; but
they are usually criticized for commonly being deceitful, artificial, dissimulating,
lazy, roguish, flattering, greedy, drunk, and lewd” (Stein 1988, 49). Some
British planters also disliked the Calabar peoples (of southeastern Nigeria),
deeming them intransigent (Donnan 1930–35, 1:108).
The Yoruba (called Lucumi in Cuba) were regarded in Cuba as
indomitable and commanded the greatest respect among the other ethnic
groups in the island (Ortiz 1975, 30–48). Strangely enough, the Cubans considered
the Mandinga among the most docile and trustworthy groups,
though they were deemed great rebels and fugitives in parts of Spanish
America during the early days of colonization (Hall 1971, 55; Franco 1973, 9).
They had a long tradition as great empire and state builders in West Africa,
dating back to centuries before the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade,
and had important warrior classes. The Brazilians developed the myth of
docile Angolans, although Palmares was fundamentally (not exclusively)
Angolan, and the Angolan word mocambo was used commonly for runaway
settlements in Brazil (Flory 1979, 123; Anderson 1996, 558).
African historians do not attribute a more martial spirit to the Akan peoples
than to any other group in West Africa, nor for that matter did the Akan
build more powerful empires than several other groups, including the Oyo
Yoruba, Kongolese and Bini, at their height at various times between the fif-