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

Establishment of Maroon Communities
127
stantially larger. The result of such bloodletting was that millions of acres
became available to White settlers ( Jordan and Litwack 1991, 227; see chapter
10). Eventually, beginning in 1850 a number of Seminole Maroons and
Indians trekked from Indian Territory, where they had been transferred,
across Texas and into Mexico. Other runaways joined them over the next few
years. The Mexican government recognized them as free persons and gave
them land in return for military assistance. On several occasions Texan and
other White and Indian slaveholders pursued them across the border in
determined but largely unsuccessful attempts to re-enslave them (Porter 1932,
349–50; Mulroy 1993, 58–89). 16
Mulroy (1993, 3) vividly captures the role of the Seminole Maroons in the
international shuttle game that was being played out in Florida, and later
Indian Territory, Texas and Mexico in the nineteenth century:
From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I,
to further group goals, the maroons fought for Spain and Britain against the
United States; for Mexico against Indian raiders and Texan filibusters; and for
the United States against Indian bands and border outlaws. Along the way, they
would engage American forces in the most expensive “Indian” war in the nation’s
history as allies of the Seminoles. Often pawns in bigger games, these maroons
adopted sophisticated border agendas and strategies of their own and struggled
bravely to secure their fate from the wishes and whims of others.
The role of these Maroons as military cohorts to various American and
European powers allowed them a considerable degree of freedom, including
owning property, carrying arms, and cultural autonomy (Mulroy 1993, 2–3;
Landers 1998, 357–78).
Population sizes of Maroon Communities
Figures that contemporary writers (several of whom were colonial administrators
and/or planters) recorded of actual runaways/Maroons, given either
as absolute numbers or relative to other segments of the colonial state’s population,
are notoriously unreliable. Modern writers believe that they were
usually inflated, but they give some indication of the climate of fear, sometimes
bordering on panic, which resulted from notions of great, marauding
hordes. In 1542 Archdeacon Alvaro de Castro of the Dominican Republic