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Physical Organization of Maroon Communities
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Spanish cruelty and treachery. They had attacked and robbed the plantations
to requite the wrongs done to them and to obtain material compensation for
their labour. He is alleged to have stated further that the Spaniards ought to
come and test their strength against his, and so they would not plead ignorance
of the route to his palenque, he was sending as a messenger a Spanish
soldier whom he had decided not to execute, so that the man could serve as a
guide and save them the job of searching for Yarga (cited in Pereira 1994,
99). 22
Taunting was an art that Maroons practised against their enemies, 23 obviously
to rattle them and give the Maroons a psychological advantage over
them. Such taunting occasionally drove their enemies into ambushes. One
notable instance of this occurred in 1761 in Haiti, when the Maroons defied
their attackers by dancing. The latter became infuriated and rushed into
ditches, the bottom of which had been filled with pointed stakes camouflaged
with lianas and creeping plants; about fourteen of them were wounded
(Moreau de Saint-Méry 1979, 136).
The passion for revenge was a powerful individual motive for Maroon
attacks on the slaveholders. Many Whites who had settled down to a comfortable
life lived in fear that they might not die in peace. Baron, a muchfeared
Suriname Maroon in the late eighteenth century, was treated badly by
his overlord and once whipped below the public gallows. From that time he
took to the forest, swearing vengeance against all Whites and declaring that
he would not rest until he had washed his hands in the tyrant’s blood
(Stedman 1988, 85). The Maroon Joli Coeur ( Jolicoeur), also of Suriname,
allegedly told his overlord why he was going to kill him: “[Y]ou O Tirant,
reccollect [sic] how you ravished my poor Mother, and flog’d my father for
coming to her assistance, recollect the shameful act was perpetrated in my
infant presence, recollect this then die by my hands, and next be damn’d.” He
then severed his former overlord’s head from his body with a hatchet (ibid.,
271). 24 It is also alleged that Boni put two of his subordinates to death simply
on suspicion that they had uttered a few positive words about Europeans
(ibid., 453). It is important to bear in mind that revenge, in turn, constituted
an important reason that some slaveholders joined Maroon-hunting expeditions
(ibid., 360).
Bravery was an essential element in being a successful Maroon and certainly
in being elected a leader (see chapter 7). The many hazards that
Maroons faced in striving to maintain their freedom, against both the forces