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

Maroon Economy
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treaty that the colonial state struck with Juan de Bolas recognized the right
of each of his followers eighteen years and over to 30 acres, and later the colonial
government proposed a grant of 20 acres to each member of Juan de
Serras’s group (Campbell 1990, 24, 25). An eyewitness declared that in 1823
the Me No Sen You No Com community in Jamaica contained 200 acres (80
hectares) of fine provisions (Mullin 1992, 59). The Calunga palenque in Cuba
had a similar-sized field in cultivation in 1849 (La Rosa Corzo 2003, 155, 158,
180, 182, 204). In Dominica in 1814 the governor reported that his forces had
discovered provision grounds that were 300 acres (120 hectares) in size
(Craton 1982, 143). More amazing still, in 1733 a British officer estimated the
size of a Maroon field, cultivated mainly with plantains, at 640 acres (256
hectares) (Carey 1997, 177). Even allowing wide scope for exaggeration, the
acreage must have been substantial.
Stedman (1988, 404, 410) was surprised to find some baskets that the
Aluku Maroons had dropped in their flight, containing well-cleaned rice.
Shortly afterward, the members of his expedition came across the most beautiful
oblong field that he had ever seen, where the rice was already ripe
for harvest. In 1810 Charles Edmonstone, a Demerara militia captain,
came across fourteen Maroon houses filled with rice, besides several wellcultivated
rice fields at various stages of maturity. He estimated that the rice
was sufficient to feed seven hundred men for an entire year. In addition, he
found large fields planted with ground provisions (Thompson 1987, 143). His
observations are remarkable because, while the size of the Maroon population
in that colony was never accurately determined, we can be sure that no
single community contained more than one hundred souls. In 1846 an expedition
that came upon an unknown settlement in Cuba estimated its membership
at roughly thirty. What was extraordinary was the amount of food
that they were producing: some three hundred banana plants, twenty fields of
corn (mostly dry), twenty fields of “second harvest” rice, fields of taro in
“extraordinary abundance”, yams, sweet potatoes, peanuts, tobacco and fruit
(La Rosa Corzo 2003, 177). Since it is doubtful that the Maroons were cultivating
these provisions as cash crops, we must assume that they intended to
store the surplus for long-term use. Carrilho in 1677 stated explicitly that the
Palmarinos stored their surplus grain against “warfare and winter” (cited in
Kent 1979, 179). According to Armando Fortune, the Bayano Maroons in
Panama had houses, pits and silos full of every kind of food that they caught
or raised for their sustenance (La Guardia 1977, 86). Such activities were in