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Maroon Government
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of a particular person. However, his authority generally had as much to do
with his personal influence as with the office that he occupied. Where the
Maroon system often appeared most draconian was in the summary execution
of convicted criminals; however, Maroon societies were operating in circumstances
that left little room for deviant or defiant behaviour that might
undermine the social fabric. It was the collectivity rather than the individual
that mattered most, and some leaders took decisions that would be viewed as
seriously flawed by present-day standards.
It appears that Cofre de Perote, the Leewards, the Windwards and the
groups led by Françisque Fabulé and Guillermo Rivas were somewhat like a
confederation of autonomous communities, though on a much smaller scale
than Palmares. It may, in fact, be that all large communities were divided into
sets of “villages” or combinations of villages and “towns”, depending on their
demographic and territorial size, and governed by consensus. The Windward
Maroons constituted a sort of confederation in which the (at least) six
autonomous settlements cooperated with each other, sharing military, agricultural
and other tasks (Campbell 1990, 25; Kopytoff 1975a, 89; Zips 1999,
58). 12 Patterson (1979, 260) says that each band of the Leeward and
Windward polities was divided into several settlements centred on a main
town or village. A Franciscan friar who had been sent among the Cofre de
Perote peoples (obviously at their request) to baptize the children, but who
also acted as a spy for the colonial state, reported after a month that he was
unable to determine the number of people that lived in the palenque, since
they were divided into several groups (Palmer 1976, 127). Françisque Fabulé
of Guadeloupe is said to have had as many as four hundred followers, divided
into groups of about thirty-five, but this is debated among scholars (Moitt
2001, 136). Guillermo Rivas operated generally from the Ocoyta cumbe but is
said to have founded other settlements in Chuspa and Aramina that were
also under his jurisdiction (García 1989, 67).
Maroons as Slaveholders
Another tension in the contemporary documents is the allegation that
Maroons abducted and enslaved large numbers of their own kind. Indeed,
the impression is given that they abducted far more males than females (see
chapter 2). This may well have been the case, and the analysis that follows
should not be read as rejecting the assertion. However, certain questions