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256 Flight to Freedom
sea. They also manufactured various ceramic objects (Carneiro 1946, 8).
Maroons carried with them a wide range of manufacturing skills. It will be
recalled that, apart from a small quantity of food and clothing, very few
enslavers gave their charges any other material goods, household or otherwise.
Enslaved persons on the plantations therefore had to develop a material
culture built partly on the skills that they had brought with them from their
motherland and partly on borrowings from Indian and European culture. In
the slaveholding states Africans constituted the vast majority of artisans,
including blacksmiths, metalworkers, coopers, furniture makers, carpenters,
woodcarvers, bricklayers, masons and boat builders. The wide range of products,
largely of wood, that present-day Africans (and especially descendants
of Maroons in Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname) manufacture speaks to
the skills that their ancestors took with them to their secluded settlements.
Palmares is said to have had many artisans, including blacksmiths, masons,
carpenters, tinsmiths, weavers and potters. The tools and weapons that an
expeditionary force found in the Quilombo Grande (Bomba) and the
Quilombo do Gabriel in Brazil suggest that these communities also contained
a number of artisans. These consisted of two swords, two axes and two
scythes in the first quilombo, and a loaded hunting musket, axes, scythes,
hoes, a fishing net and some carpentry tools in the second one. There is also
evidence that the André Maroons of French Guiana, the Lemba Maroons of
the Dominican Republic and at least one group of Maroons in Suriname produced
a variety of iron implements. 22
Preliminary archaeological work carried out on a number of sites, including
Pilakikaha and Fort Mose (Florida), Culpepper Island (North Carolina),
Seaman’s Valley, Nanny Town and Accompong ( Jamaica), various caves near
Havana (Cuba), José Leta (Dominican Republic), and Ambrósio and
Palmares (Brazil), are improving our understanding of the material (and
social) culture of the Maroons. 23 The digs at José Leta (and a few other sites
in the Dominican Republic) revealed a wide range of artefacts, including
metal arrow and spear tips; copper-sheet plates of some technical refinement;
various iron objects including parts of knives, lances, tongs and pincers; other
metal objects of various sizes that were used as bracelets, fish hooks and so
on; slag, which confirmed that metalworking had taken place at the site; clay
pipes, some of which were incised; wooden mortars and pestles; wooden
ornamental combs; fragments of ceramic water pots, vases and other utensils
(some displaying Indian and European motifs); and ceramic bowls and plates