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208 Flight to Freedom
communities obtained firearms, gunpowder and bullets by purchasing them
through the extensive underground trade network (Bastide 1978, 87; Conrad
1983, 380), and also by seizing them when they raided the plantations. The
best-armed group of Maroons about whom we know were the Seminole
Maroons, in the second decade of the nineteenth century. They had once
been allies of the British who, on their departure, left them in possession of
the fort at Prospect Bluff, with all the arms stocked in it, including four
pieces of heavy artillery, six lighter ones, thousands of small arms and large
amounts of ammunition. Apparently, these Maroons and their Seminole
Indian allies were also customarily supplied with gunpowder, lead and other
military equipment by Alexander Arbuthnot, a Scottish trader operating
from the Bahamas (Porter 1951, 260, 266; see chapter 4). Belizean Maroons
must also have been well supplied with firearms, since enslaved persons there
were generally allowed to carry such weapons. They developed great facility
in their use, much to the chagrin of those enslavers who felt that the situation
had got out of control (Bolland 2003, 73–74).
The Matudere Maroons bought firearms in Cartagena through a Zambo
intermediary, and gunpowder from a White person (Borrego Plá 1973, 84–86).
The extant literature concerning the Leeward Maroons in the late seventeenth
century speaks about them having good arms and a lot of ammunition
(Patterson 1979, 258). A group of about two hundred Maroons in Peru in 1545
is said to have been equipped with huge quantities of Spanish arms (Bowser
1974, 188). The quilombolas (Maroons) led by Cris-Santo and Epiphano in
Maranhão, Brazil, in the mid-nineteenth century are also said to have been
well armed with a fair quantity of weapons and ammunition, which helped
them put up strong resistance against an expeditionary force (Conrad 1983,
387–88). Baron’s group in Suriname possessed an unspecified number of
swivel guns plundered from their enemies (Stedman 1988, 84). It is also quite
possible that the larger communities, such as those of Palmares, Bayamito
and Todos Tenemos, possessed a good many more firearms than the known
sources lead us to believe, but further research on this aspect is needed.
Maroons sometimes were clever enough to manufacture fake guns, out of
wood and other materials, with which they fooled plantation personnel. They
used coins, buttons and pebbles when lead bullets were in short supply,
though the substitutes were not nearly as lethal as real bullets. When short of
flints for their weapons, they sometimes used the shards of water cans
(Stedman 1988, 392, 409).