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

Physical Organization of Maroon Communities
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http://archeo.unige.ch/inagina/dogon.gb.html
Figure 24. Dogon blacksmiths (Mali, West Africa)
Given the importance of firearms, the Maroons no doubt spent much time
maintaining them, but firearms of that period (firelocks and flintlocks) were
prone to become defective and needed frequent repairs. Few Maroon communities
would have possessed the skill to repair them or the capacity to
make bullets, and probably none would have been able to make gunpowder.
The military deserters from Suriname apprehended by the insurgents in
Berbice in 1763 (see chapter 2) were put to repairing guns (how successfully
we do not know) (Thompson 1987, 166). The Maroons of the André settlement
in French Guiana repaired their guns and always kept them in good
condition for hunting and military purposes, but they often found themselves
critically short of gunpowder and bullets. Sometimes they had to substitute
tiny stones for bullets (Louis 1979, 315). Palmares had a wide range of artisans,
among whom blacksmiths, the masters of all artisans in Africa, 28 figured
prominently. The state made its own weapons, with the possible
exception of firearms, though it probably repaired them (Bastide 1978, 82, 86;
Kent 1979, 180; Hemming 1978, 355). In 1645 the Reijmbach expedition
observed four smithies in the capital (Anderson 1996, 551). In 1671 Governor
Fernando Coutinho opined that the quilombo possessed a blacksmith shop