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306 Flight to Freedom
agreement with the Spaniards in 1769 under which the latter recognized his
settlement as a free community on the usual terms, including the requirement
to return future runaways. 3
Role of the Clergy in Treaty-Making
The slaveholding states deputed clergymen, high military officers, senior civil
officials, former Maroons, enslaved persons, and relatives of Maroons to
mediate peace settlements with Maroon leaders. The role of the clergy, especially
in the Spanish and French jurisdictions, calls for further comment. The
intense religiosity of the Africans may have been one reason that the state
appointed clergymen. The colonial officials apparently reasoned that the
priests would enjoy greater immunity from attacks and at least be shown
some measure of respect. It appears, also, that on some occasions Maroons
approached priests, or priests seized the initiative, to discuss terms of disengagement.
One outstanding example, from Santiago de Cuba in the early
nineteenth century, was the negotiations with Ventura Sánchez (Coba),
leader of the Bumba Maroons (Franco 1979, 42). Another was the overtures
that Francisco de la Cueva Maldonado, archbishop of Santo Domingo, made
to the Bahoruco Maroons around the mid-seventeenth century (Esteban
Deive 1989, 84–85; Larrazábal Blanco 1998, 147). Such negotiations led some
Whites, at least in the French Caribbean, to accuse the Jesuits of collusion
with Maroons. According to Debien (1979, 118), “The important role the
clergy played in the surrender of Maroons, and the negotiations they carried
out in order to bring smaller bands back, led to the colonists’ accusation in
1791 that they were in connivance with the refractory Maroons, that they were
protecting them no matter what, that they were, indeed, ‘accomplices of the
rebels’.” 4 In the Dominican Republic, Peru and perhaps other Spanish territories,
many enslaved persons fled to convents and monasteries for asylum,
and it is said that the clergy sought to uphold their claims to freedom against
the authorities’ efforts to return them to slavery (Esteban Deive 1989, 40;
Bowser 1974, 168–71). 5
In Peru, for instance, the clergy were frequently at loggerheads with the
Audiencia and members of the plantocracy over their claim that enslaved
persons had the right to seek religious asylum in their monasteries. In the
1630s conflict arose between the secular and religious authorities over two