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Physical Organization of Maroon Communities
201
taken at face value. He must have discreetly admitted other Creoles into his
palenque, and other evidence suggests that at least a few African-born people
lived in the settlement. Moreover, he seems to have maintained at least limited
fraternal relations with Akan and other ethnic groups in other palenques.
A captured Maroon from the Matudere settlement testified that they had
developed a contingency plan, in the event of their settlement being
destroyed, to repair (along with those Blacks of the neighbouring farms who
wanted to join them) to the Sierra de Maria palenque. The crushing of the
San Miguel settlement also sent its scattered followers rushing to the neighbouring
palenques of Santa Bárbara and Quebrada del Cimarrón (Borrego
Plá 1973, 26–27, 79, 87, 105–8), in much the same way it later happened with
the Windward and Leeward Maroons.
In 1737, after their settlement in the hills around Córdoba, Mexico, was
routed, the Maroons led by José Pérez and José Tadeo sought refuge in the
Mazatiopan and Soyaltepec palenques (Naveda Chávez-Hita 1987, 135). The
Bumba, Maluala and some other nearby settlements in Cuba enjoyed fraternal
relations with each other. According to a captured Maroon informant in
1830, between Bumba and Maluala were three other settlements called
Rincon, Tibisial and La Palma, which the Maroons used as resting places on
their expeditions (Franco 1979, 46; La Rosa Corzo, 2003, 103–4, 127–28).
When, a few months later, the Whites attacked and destroyed Bumba, many
of the inhabitants found refuge in El Frijol (Moa) settlement (Franco 1979,
47). The Maroons in the Bahoruco mountain range in Hispaniola also seem
to have enjoyed similar fraternal relations.
As noted already, some Maroon communities preferred to live in peace
with the White inhabitants and engaged in warfare only when attacked. They
took in runaways who came to them, but did not raid plantations for either
people or goods. They engaged in trade rather than plunder. 21 According to
the viceroy of Mexico at the end of the sixteenth century, the Maroons of the
Pacific coast preferred to live in peaceful dialogue with the Indians who were
just “a rifle-shot away”. When the Spanish sent a force against them, they
simply retreated into less accessible areas, where they lived in harmony with
their neighbours during the next two centuries (Pereira 1994, 104). The
ranchers in the area often employed them to round up their cattle. The major
problem for the colonial authorities was that the Maroons, along with all
other groups in the area, were not easily amenable to the straitjacket of colonial
laws in this frontier society and defaulted, for instance, on payment of