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Maroon Government
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lence in these dual views – as Thoden van Velzen himself notes – unless we
read into the text that the Maroons regarded their leaders as enlightened or
benevolent despots. Maroon leaders were not angels, nor were they governing
that breed of being. Because they were human, they were subject to all
the frailties and failings associated with humanity. Thus, some rulers governed
with a heavy hand and sometimes in a brutal manner. Others may well
have been despots, but these do not seem to epitomize the majority of
Maroon leaders. One thing is certain, as Franklin Knight (1999, ix) observes:
“Maroon communities, especially in the formative stages, required extraordinary
leadership to combat the constant assaults by superior military forces
with superior military resources.”
Among the many despotic leaders that turn up frequently in contemporary
and sometimes modern literature are King Bayano of Panama, Lemba of
the Dominican Republic, Cudjoe (Kojo) and Cuffee (Kofi) of Jamaica,
Guillermo Rivas of Venezuela, Alonso de Illescas of Ecuador, and Boni of
Suriname. La Guardia (1977, 87–88) cites a contemporary source from the
mid-sixteenth century saying that King Bayano inspired such awe among his
followers that they feared and obeyed him implicitly. Strangely enough, the
same contemporary source informs us that in their bishop’s celebration of
their apparently Afro-Catholic Mass, he always reminded the palenqueros of
the need to revere their king, since he had to preserve and govern them justly
and defend them against the Spanish, who desired to destroy them. Esteban
Deive (1989, 50) states of Lemba, one of the famous Maroon leaders in the
Dominican Republic around the mid-sixteenth century, that his 140 followers
obeyed him blindly, 1 though implicit obedience might not necessarily
have meant that he was a despot. Patterson (1979, 261) repeats the common
assertions that Cudjoe could be ruthless and even brutal to his followers and
on occasion was needlessly selfish towards his own warriors, and that Cuffee,
the main negotiator of the Windward treaty with the British in 1739,
governed his people with an iron hand and shot all defectors and other
delinquents. 2
Some Maroon leaders, such as Illescas, Guillermo Rivas and Boni, developed
reputations in both contemporary and modern literature as bloodthirsty
and exceptionally cruel warriors. Illescas, the main leader of the Esmeraldas
Maroons, is depicted in contemporary historical records as a brutal, if
shrewd, ruler. 3 Among his many barbarities, he is said to have assassinated a
large group of Indians who had invited him to a banquet. He is also said to