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

Forms of Marronage
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per cent of them were under thirty-five years of age (Blassingame 1979, 202).
Lorenzo Greene’s (1944, 131) much smaller sample of New England runaways
broadly confirms Blassingame’s statement. Aguirre (1993, 248–49) found that,
of 121 Maroons reported for Lima between 1840 and 1846, 81 per cent of the
men and 93.7 per cent of the women were less than thirty years old; the average
age of the men was twenty-two years and of the women twenty-three
and a half. Writers do not seem to differ on the age range of the vast majority
of fugitives.
This is not surprising, since the data correspond roughly to the age cohort
of the people imported from Africa. Moreover, given the trials and tribulations
of the flight to freedom and life in the palenques, it was only the most
hardy and innovative of the enslaved population who were likely to survive.
Young people are also usually more ambitious, more enterprising and more
visionary of a brave new world than their elders.
Most writers agree that outside of special circumstances, such as internal
warfare or large-scale revolt, enslaved persons generally ran off in small
groups, and some of them sought to join large, settled entities. Geggus (1986,
126) tells us that 75 per cent of the deserters in Haiti in 1790 fled alone. A statistical
analysis of advertisements of runaways in South Carolina indicates
that just under half of them ran away in groups of two (Morgan 1986, 72).
Debien (1979, 107, 126), Hoogbergen (1993, 165, 177), Borrego Plá (1973, 25)
and Jordan (1968, 392) agree that most deserters fled in ones and twos, and
formed groups (or, presumably, joined existing ones). This appears to be accurate
statistically and logically. The contemporary records of plantation managers
and newspapers (the latter especially from the late eighteenth century)
are replete with instances of persons absconding in ones and twos and mention
few large-scale desertions. The small logwood settlements in Belize were
ideally suited for such small-scale desertion (Bolland 2002, 54–55). It was the
constant trickle, like water out of a leaking container, that best represents the
Maroon flow away from the plantation.
Desertion on a large scale would have required considerable planning,
good timing and extreme confidentiality to prevent betrayal or suspicion.
Though we cannot probe the minds of individual Maroons, their flight seems
to have been largely unplanned. We have, of course, the testimony of Esteban
Montejo, whose biography indicates clearly that he had made up his mind
long before to abscond. In this sense we can say that he planned his escape.
However, when the actual time came it was a rush of blood, a sudden urge