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

Establishment of Maroon Communities 137
late seventeenth century, Maroons occupying the northern, central and
southern massifs harried Cartagena. Among the most famous palenques were
those of San Miguel, Matudere, Betancur, Santa Bárbara, and Norosí.
Military expeditions largely wiped those settlements out in the 1690s, but in
the first half of the following century new and equally militant groups succeeded
them, among them the much-feared Castillo palenque led by
Jerónimo (Borrego Plá 1973, 75–109; Escalante 1979, 76).
One method by which the governments tried to protect the colonists from
Maroon depredations was to establish forts and other military installations at
strategic points. The Suriname government built a cordon pad (military cordon)
between the Boni Maroons and the plantation areas to protect them
from what they regarded as a plague (Price and Price 1988, xxiv; Hoogbergen
1993, 181). In Venezuela in 1734, in response to the depredations of Andresote,
the government erected a fort at the mouth of the Yaracuy River, capable of
mounting eight to ten cannon (Brito Figueroa 1985, 210). In 1795 the
Demerara government built a line of military posts along the west coast to
improve security there (Thompson 1987, 145). Likewise, in Jamaica the government
increased the number of forts and barracks, and beefed up security
on the outlying plantations by deploying soldiers there. In that colony, and
no doubt elsewhere, individual planters considerably strengthened their
defences. Dallas (1803, 1:27) tells us that their houses were placed to command
the entrance to the main plantation works and slave quarters, and were
often constructed with flanks and loopholes to facilitate firing upon assailants
as they drew near. In most instances such fortifications proved ineffective or,
at best, only partially effective in restraining the Maroons.
In some instances the enslavers debated, inside and outside the governing
councils, the issue of establishing garrison communities to protect the White
population against Maroon attacks. This debate addressed several options,
including creating a corps of free Blacks and free Coloureds who would be
forced to live in designated areas in return for their freedom; granting certain
Maroons their freedom, relocating them to strategic areas, and employing
them as a surveillance corps; and bringing in poor Whites in significant
numbers and settling them as small farmers in similar areas (Stedman 1988;
Esteban Deive 1989; Campbell 1990; Pereira 1994).
The extensive attacks by Maroons on the highway between Nombre de
Dios and Panama in the mid-sixteenth century caused colonial officials to
consider creating a buffer community between the insurgents and the other