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

Military Expeditions and Judicial Terror
171
countenance, deliberately met their burning grasp! From that moment he
shewed himself capable of despising the severest pain. Not a feature was afterwards
disturbed, and he preserved a degree of composure implying absolute contempt
of torture and of death. (Pinckard 1806, 2:249–50)
Both symbolically and actually, the horrid stench that accompanied the
burning of human flesh pervaded Stabroek, the capital town, and so sickened
a number of persons that they lost their appetites for the rest of the day (ibid.,
250–51). It is possible that such punishments often backfired. On the one
hand, they may have intimidated some persons. On the other hand, they may
have hardened the resolve of many others and made them more determined
to avoid capture or, if that was not possible, to die fighting. Moreover, the
punishments would almost certainly have provoked hatred, and a desire for
revenge, among the relatives and friends of those punished. Wood (1975, 268)
put it succinctly, “[T]he harder the hammer fell, the more likely it was to create
further sparks.”
The discussion of punishments would be incomplete without noting that
many free and enslaved Blacks suffered, sometimes brutally so, through
unfounded allegations about their involvement in Maroon activities. In times
of crisis, such as intense Maroon assaults or major revolts, the authoritarian
state’s machinery of oppression indiscriminately cordoned off all Blacks,
treating them as though they were rebels and equally to be blamed for the
attacks. Many lost their freedom, while others either lost their lives by judicial
executions, suffered severe whippings, or were banished or sold overseas,
thus severing their long-established ties with friends and families (Hall 1971,
57–63; Reis 1993, 205–32). Even Maroon-hunting expeditions tended to treat
with suspicion all Blacks that they encountered, to harass them and sometimes
to apprehend them, much to the disgust of their overlords, who complained
to the colonial authorities about such high-handed action (La Rosa
Corzo 2003, 76; Boxer 1962, 170). But it was a problem that was not easily
resolved in the jittery climate of the times. Thus the activities of both
Maroons and Maroon-hunters, or rather the whiplash of the activities, at
times abridged the freedoms not only of the Whites but also of all groups
and classes within the society, though in different ways.
The “private tyranny”, as Jordan (1968, 108) refers to it, that the enslavers
legally exercised was supposed to be for the public good of both enslaved and
free people. It was bad enough when private tyranny took place, but when