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

Physical Organization of Maroon Communities
187
Contemporary sources on the expeditions against Palmares speak of similar
hazards and suffering: shortage of water; steep slopes; trees without fruits
to sustain the soldiers; innumerable thorn shrubs; soldiers being forced to
carry their weapons, powder, bullets, food, water and hammocks on their
backs because carriages were useless in the terrain – all of which resulted in
great suffering. The men were often forced to subsist for long periods on
herbs and roots. These adversities caused many to die of hunger, thirst and
sickness. A contemporary writer in Jamaica expressed the view that to dispatch
men who were unaccustomed to operating under such harsh conditions
was like cutting their throats (Campbell 1990, 66). Buckley (1998, 213),
writing generally of European soldiers unaccustomed to the environmental
conditions in the Caribbean, opines that it was an open grave for them.
Defence Systems
The Maroons improved whatever natural defences the terrain offered
through ingenuity and hard work. The variety and complexity of their habitats
were evidence of their innovative responses to the ecological and security
challenges that they faced. Wherever the topography was broadly similar, the
defence systems that they developed were also similar. In every place in which
large Maroon communities evolved there were forests, mountains or a combination
of both. In forest or bush terrain, the defence systems entailed a
combination of palisades, trenches or ditches, traps and stakes. The system of
defence was predicated not only on making it as difficult as possible for military
expeditions to breach the fortifications, but also to enable relatively quick
and easy escape.
The defence system that the Dutch encountered in the capital city of
Palmares in 1645 was very innovative. The western entrance, at which they
arrived first, consisted of two gates, each surrounded by a row of palisades
with thick crossbeams between them. Having demolished them, the invaders
encountered a ditch filled with sharp-pointed stakes. On the eastern side
were similar fortifications, and on the northern side was a swamp. On the
southern side were huge felled trees, criss-crossing each other. The land
behind the houses was studded with pointed stakes. A separate gate protected
the centre of the city, which was estimated at half a mile long and contained
a main street about six and a half feet wide, running from east to west