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Physical Organization of Maroon Communities
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feature of Asante military formation. Zips (1999, 55) suggests that since
many Maroons had already performed initiation rites in their homelands,
they would have been well acquainted with African techniques of warfare.
He also states that at least some Maroon communities began to train boys
and girls at an early age (ibid., 85). It is said that the Leeward Maroons were
trained in the use of the lance and other weapons based on similar practices
in Africa (Kopytoff 1976a, 88). Military training was also averred in the case
of Palmares (Hemming 1978, 355; Conrad 1983, 369; Kent 1979, 180). A document
sent to the Overseas Council in Portugal in the late seventeenth century
declared that the quilombo’s strong resistance was due to “military
practice made warlike in the discipline of their captain and general, Zumbi,
who made them very handy in use of all arms, of which they have many and
in great quantity – firearms, as well as swords, lances, and arrows” (Anderson
1996, 560). Subupira, one of the mocambos that constituted the vanguard of
the confederation’s defence, was the training centre, but details are not available
on the military exercises. This mocambo was apparently second in
importance to Macaco, the capital. It was fortified by a wood and stone battery,
and its defence was enhanced by trenches, pitfalls and caltrops (ibid.,
554–55). 25
Maroons who were recruited into the ranks of various colonial or national
armies 26 received the most extensive training. Outstanding examples are the
men recruited by the British to fight against the United States in Florida in
1812–14, those used by the Spanish government in Eastern Florida against
the United States, and those employed by the independent Mexican government
against both Native Americans and US forces. In all these cases they
were well armed, either through their own initiative or by being given
weapons by the recruiting governments. Two of several examples are worth
noting. The first was during the so-called War of Jenkins’ Ear, 1739–48,
between Britain and Spain (which phased into the War of the Austrian
Succession).The Spanish government gathered many American runaways
into an armed garrison near St Augustine, called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa
de Mose, which became a free settlement, with its own priest assigned by the
government. Some 200 of the 965 troops that comprised the garrison were
Blacks, who received the same pay and rations as the White soldiers. Among
the troops in the Spanish counter-assault on Georgia in 1742 was a regiment
of Blacks whose commanders were clothed in lace, bore the same rank as the
White officers and enjoyed all the privileges attached to their status. The