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

178 Flight to Freedom
In a palm forest sixteen leagues northeast of Porto Calvo existed the mocambo of
the Zambi (a general or god of arms in their language), and five leagues farther
north that of Acainene [Arotirene] (this was the name of the king’s mother, who
lived in this fortified mocambo about twenty-five leagues northeast of Porto
Calvo, and which they called the Acainene Compound, since it was fortified by
a wall of earth and sticks).
To the east of these was the mocambo of the Wild Canes [Tabocas], and northeast
of this one that of Bambiabonga [Dambrangaga]. Eight leagues north of
Bambiabonga was the compound called Sucupira [Subupira]; six leagues northward
from this the Royal Compound of the Macaco, and five leagues to the
west of this the mocambo of Osenga. Nine leagues northwest of the town of
Serinhaem was the compound of Amaro, and twenty-five leagues northwest of
Alagôas the palm forest of Andolaquituxe [Adalaquituche], the Zambi’s brother.
(Conrad 1983, 369)
Bastide (1978, 85) – referring to the contemporary writer Caspar Barlaeus
(Gaspar Barleus), who compiled his information from the Lintz and Baro
expeditions – adds that the rural dwellers lived in huts thatched with capim
grass, while the king owned both a town house and a country house. He also
states that the palace seems to have been part of a complex of buildings in the
capital that housed certain judicial and military personnel. Gilberto Freyre
(1963, 39), in contrast, writes indiscriminately about Palmares as a place of
mean and contemptuous dwellings: a “republic of shacks”, and a capital “city
of straw shacks”.
Mucajubá, another mocambo in Brazil that endured for a long time, was
situated on the banks of a lake and nestled among dense foliage in a remote
area of the Amazon Valley. The settlement was said in 1856 to extend for two
to three leagues, comprising a number of villages widely separated spatially.
The British Consul, who wrote about its destruction in 1856, stated that it
contained some large houses and that its population was estimated at one
thousand to two thousand. It had large tracts of land under manioc cultivation
(Conrad 1983, 390–91).
Apparently more notable still, in terms of its natural defences, was the
Trombetas settlement, also in the Amazon Valley, in 1856. 4 Although we lack
specific details of the hazards of the journey to the mocambo or how it was
fortified, according to the British Consul, a captured Maroon reported that
such difficulties and dangers attended the journey that thirty-three out of
forty soldiers refused to follow their captain in search of the settlement. Up