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

Negotiations and Treaties
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said that some colonists in the neighbourhood of Palmares paid tribute to the
Maroons in the form of tools, powder, lead, arms and other articles that they
requested, in exchange for being allowed to cultivate their plots peacefully.
Among those involved in this arrangement was Cristobal de Burgos, an
appellate judge (Carneiro 1946, 56–58; Flory 1979, 126). There is likewise a letter
by members of the provisional government of Bahia in 1763, reporting on
the destruction of the Buraco do Tatú mocambo by an expeditionary force,
which states that planters were forced to accommodate the Maroons because
they were afraid that they would be assassinated or their crops destroyed
(Conrad 1983, 380). The letter details the many kinds of assaults that the
Maroons had been accustomed to carry out against the planters and other
people. 23 These examples emphasize the degree of fear, frustration and feebleness
that some planters felt in face of Maroon depredations. They also
indicate the inability of the authoritarian state to ensure the safety of the
colonists – or, at least, the planters’ lack of faith in the state’s ability to do so.
Maroon Treaties
By far the most significant negotiations between the Maroons and the slaveholding
fraternity related to the recognition of Maroon communities as independent
or autonomous polities, and often the confirmation of Maroon
occupation rights to certain lands. Some negotiations also referred to Maroon
assistance in maintaining the security of the authoritarian state against internal
and/or external aggression. Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Jamaica,
Suriname, Essequibo, the Dominican Republic, Dominica, French Guiana
and the United States all signed treaties that included such terms. In this
section we shall deal with specific aspects of a few of the main treaties, and in
the next chapter undertake a general analysis of treaties.
Treaties between Maroons and slaveholding states were forged as early as
the mid-sixteenth century, if not before, with Maroon groups in the
Dominican Republic and Darien (in Panama). The two treaties made in 1580
with the Darien Maroons, though not as wide-ranging as the later Mexican
treaty with Yanga, recognized the freedom of Puerto Bello and Ballano, two
palenques near Nombre de Dios (La Guardia 1977, 94–97; Campbell 1990, 8).
These treaties contained several of the clauses found in later treaties.
However, the Darien treaties also contained an important clause not common
in the later treaties that the other colonial powers signed: the right of