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

Establishment of Maroon Communities
125
ammunition, including six cannon, in the hands of a few Indians and more
than three hundred Blacks under a Black Maroon leader called Garçon, who
proved to be a thorn in the sides of the White settlers. The fort attracted a
growing number of fugitives, whose fields extended fifty miles upriver (Porter
1932, 330).
The United States therefore decided to transgress border protocols, just as
their British predecessors had done. In 1816, during a period of “friendly”
relations with Spain, they sent a considerable force, including gunboats, into
what was then Spanish territory, provoked the Maroons into a war and
destroyed the fort. In one encounter with the gunboats, the Maroons initially
had the upper hand, but their adversaries were eventually able to blow up the
fort’s magazine. About 270 men, women and children were killed in this
action, and another sixty-four were apprehended, most of them burned or
otherwise maimed for life. 12
Porter (1951, 278) sums up the activities of Andrew Jackson, leader of the
American forces in the Florida enterprise in early 1817, as “attacking and
destroying Indian and Negro villages, court-martialing and executing British
subjects, capturing Spanish forts and deposing their commander”, all of
which “revealed the impossibility of Spain’s resisting any serious demand by
the United States for the annexation of Florida”. Jackson actually expelled
the Spanish governor, established his own garrison in the area and claimed
the territory for the United States. Finally, on 19 February 1819 a treaty was
signed by which the Spanish agreed to cede the territory to the United States,
which formally annexed it in July 1821. Many of the Maroons relocated to the
Bahamas, where they established settlements at Nicholls Town, Mastic Point
and Red Bay ( Jordan and Litwack 1991, 187–88; Mulroy 1993, 14–15, 26). With
the cession of Florida, flight to Mexico became a much larger problem than
before, especially after that country became independent of Spain in 1821 and
abolished slavery in 1829.
The American assaults did not deter the other Maroons in the vicinity of
Florida. In fact, they began to make plans for reprisals, engaging in frequent
drills. Their numbers increased in the next two years by some four hundred
to six hundred deserters, who joined them in carrying out extensive raids on
American plantations in which many White people were killed and enslaved
persons were either abducted or, more likely, joined their ranks voluntarily.
These offensives and counter-offensives led to what is usually called the First
Seminole War (1817–18), which the Americans eventually won, though the