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224 Flight to Freedom
arise, based upon the view that Maroons were no less (and no more) logical
than most other human beings. Given the grave shortage of women in
Maroon settlements, why did they not abduct more females than males The
women would have met a number of biological, economic and social needs
and would have helped, through their unique reproductive role, to swell the
size of the Maroon population. Economics was also a factor, since recent
studies have indicated that in a number of slave societies in the Americas the
women did most of the agricultural work (Beckles 1989b, 1999; Bush 1990;
Moitt 2001). 13
A logical response to the question posed above would probably be that the
men were needed, not as farming but as fighting hands. In that event, would
it not have been counterproductive to kidnap them and hold them in
bondage rather than encourage them to join the Maroon ranks voluntarily
Would such people have been committed to the Maroon cause If it is true
that enslaved males were abducted in large numbers, the result would certainly
have been a house divided against itself, a case of marronage within
marronage. However, as noted already, the records only rarely speak of any
major disunity within a given Maroon polity, and this usually had to do with
personality and leadership issues rather than revolt of the enslaved group
against the new slaveholders. We need to reconsider the question of the
large-scale abduction of enslaved persons (both males and females) from the
plantations, working around the extant records – which were compiled
largely by the slaveholding interests, most of whom might well have believed
that their “well-treated”, “docile” and “faithful” charges would never have
deserted them but must have been abducted by Maroons. 14 They might even
have been attempting consciously to “whiten” the record of their own conduct
and “blacken” that of the Maroons. It is also true that Maroons who
returned or were captured sometimes alleged that other Maroons had
abducted them, in order to prevent the colonial authorities or their overlords
from punishing them.
Perhaps we come closest to the truth, in the majority of instances, by
adopting the language of one Brazilian official in 1782, who noted that
Maroons had gone to the town of Macapá in hope of “inciting the slaves of
residents to follow them” (Santos Gomes 2002, 486). Maroons in that district
made it clear that they were not interested in forcing enslaved persons to join
their ranks and that they “would only go of their own free will” (ibid.). This
made perfectly good sense for reasons of both unity and security. Porter (1943,