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

The Imperative of Freedom
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society. Whether in small or large slaveholding states, under plantation or
non-plantation regimes, a significant number of enslaved persons sought
freedom through flight. However, the problem of space to manoeuvre, if not
peculiar to, was at least exacerbated in small islands.
As the plantation system developed in places like St Kitts (St
Christopher), St John (part of the Danish and later US Virgin Islands) and
Barbados, the bush cover became more sparse, so Maroons had less space and
cover in which to hide. While this did not decrease the incidence of desertion,
because of the growth in the size of the enslaved population and the
increased rigours of the slavery system the deserters had to contrive other
means of maintaining their freedom. Some of them gravitated towards the
towns, passing themselves off as freed persons, and working for Whites, free
Coloureds and free Blacks who did not ask too many questions about their
legal status. Bridgetown, for a long time the main port city in the British
Caribbean, provided opportunities for runaways to ensconce themselves
among the free Black population (Mullin 1992, 38; Handler 2002, 2, 13). The
Free Gut and Water Gut areas in St Croix offered the same kind of protection,
forcing the colonial government to pass laws prohibiting enslaved persons
from living among freed persons who occupied these areas, though the
law was not rigorously enforced. Freedmen actually married fugitives, and in
one instance a person who harboured runaways declared that he had done
nothing wrong since it was common practice to do so (Donoghue 2002, 115,
154–55; Hall 1992, 126, 161).
In Guatemala, the shipbuilding activities of colonists on the Pacific coast
in the early seventeenth century greatly facilitated desertion (Lokken 2004b,
47). In the Danish West Indies, the islands’ proximity to the Spanish settlements
at Vieques, Culebra and Puerto Rico proved to be an attraction that
many enslaved persons could not resist, especially since they were assured
that the Spanish authorities would not send them back. In fact, in 1714
Governor Don Jan de Rivera offered several of them asylum and helped them
to establish the San Mateo de Cangrejos settlement there (Donoghue 2002,
82). The colonial authorities in the Danish West Indies, rebuffed in their
efforts to secure an extradition agreement with their counterparts in Puerto
Rico, adopted several measures to arrest the flow of maritime Maroons.
These measures included requiring all “canoe” or small-boat owners to register
their vessels with the appropriate department; prohibiting the building,
sale or other transfer of ownership of such vessels without official permis-