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

Maroon Government
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ever saw, whose heads turned in such a manner that they fell to the ground.
. . . Had not, nor ever does drink rum. I could see and hear every thing, but
was exactly as if I were crazy.” 18
Stedman (1988, 521) wrote that both male and female religious leaders held
complete sway over their adherents, claiming to have powers of divination.
The female would whirl and dance around, and whatever she commanded to
be done was dutifully performed by those assembled; so the séances were very
dangerous because enslaved persons were often instructed to murder their
overlords and flee into the woods. He goes on to say that the Ndjuka and
Saramaka commonly performed these rituals, and that two White eyewitnesses
had declared to him that they had seen them performed. 19 The same
kind of control is often witnessed in Afro-Christian religions in other parts
of the Americas – for instance, Lucumi (Cuba), Shango (Trinidad),
Mucumba and Candomblé (Brazil), Vodun (Haiti) and Kumina ( Jamaica).
William Suttles (1971, 98) refers to African religions in the Americas during
slavery as being aggressive and imperialistic; Roger Bastide (1978, 81)
asserts that they became the common catalyst for war; while Gwendolyn
Midlo Hall (1971, 37) declares that they caused enslaved persons to become
rebellious. Campbell (1990, 3–4) goes the furthest when she asserts that
“More than any other single factor, African religious beliefs gave the unifying
force, the conspiratorial locus, the rallying point to mobilize, to motivate, to
inspire, and to design strategies: it gave the ideology, the mystique, and the
pertinacious courage and leadership to Maroon societies to confront the mercantilist
society with its awesome power. Maroon leaders were expected to be
imbued with knowledge bearing on the supernatural forces.”
The use of religion was evident in revolts and marronage in Haiti.
Makandal had the reputation of being able to transform himself into different
animals (Franco 1973, 26–27). Boukman carried out vodun rites on the
eve of the slave revolt in 1791 (Fouchard 1972, 358). 20 The religious dimension
is also evident in the name Ganga-Zumba, the king who ruled Palmares
from 1670 to 1680. According to Lockhart and Schwartz (1983, 221), his name
was derived from the term nganga a nzumbi, which was the title of the
Angolan priest who was responsible for the defence of the quilombos or
armed villages in that African country. In 1826 when the Urubu quilombolas,
along with free and enslaved people, planned to overthrow the White government
in Bahia, they grounded their plans in extensive rituals carried out
in secret. A search of some huts in the province’s capital revealed religious