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Maroons and Revolutionary Struggle
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suggests that other enslaved persons vilified them for doing so. A group of
enslaved persons in Berbice in 1828 declared that while they had obtained
medals from the colonial government for assisting in the apprehension of
some Maroons eighteen years earlier, they were still cursed and ostracized by
other Blacks for their role as Maroon-catchers (Thompson 2002b, 234). 9
The bitterness between the Ndjuka and Aluku Maroons had to do not
only with the Ndjukas’ apprehension that the Alukus were trespassing on
their hunting and roaming grounds, but also with the Ndjuka policy of
returning at least some runaways to their overlords (Hoogbergen 1990). 10
Thoden van Velzen (1995, 127–28) writes that the Ndjukas raided new
Maroon settlements because they believed that the people in them had
moved too close to the “backwoods”, where they were trespassing on the territory
of “dangerous forest spirits” that they might unleash, to the hurt of the
Ndjukas. In a world of strong belief in elemental spirits capable of doing
great harm (or good), as was the case in Ndjuka and other polities, one can at
least understand the Ndjukas’ concerns, if not their actions.
The attitudes and actions of the Maroon leaders who signed treaties, and
sometimes at the same time signed away their birthright, were no different
from what has obtained historically among peoples of all races, ethnicities
and nations. It is true, as some writers remind us, that Maroon polities were
attempting to secure and maintain their freedom in difficult and sometimes
revolutionary circumstances; and that each polity was often the primary (and
sometimes the ultimate) framework of loyalty. Today, the nation-state is
the focal point of loyalty, and its welfare is considered paramount. People
defend it with their lives and are prepared to take preemptive measures
against other nations to ensure its integrity. It may therefore be argued
cogently that the foregoing observations provide a plausible explanation
of why certain Maroon communities acted in exclusionary and sometimes
hostile ways towards each other. However, to many scholars such an explanation
is unsatisfactory.
In attempting to explain, if not justify, Maroon decisions to sign treaties
involving the return of runaways, Zips (1999, 11–12) adopts the premise that
marronage was ideologically opposed to slavery, and that “this paradigmatic
assumption is not undermined by any evidence of breaks in solidarity, collaboration
with the oppressors, and treachery within the [Maroon] ranks”. Still,
this perspective does not make the problem disappear. Zips realizes this, and
so he poses the rhetorical question: “Shouldn’t the Maroons themselves have