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

86 Flight to Freedom
the latter was viewed as trespassing on the Leewards’ territory (Campbell
1990, 24–25, 93, 158). In Suriname, runaways led by Amawi and Nelo attacked
the more peaceful Paramakas, who were under the protection of the more
powerful Ndjukas. Ndjuka tradition asserts that the Amawi and Nelo had
become bold enough to ambush Ndjukas on Wane Creek, a vital link connecting
the Maroni with the Cottica River. The result was Ndjuka retaliation
against Amawi and Nelo, decimating their numbers and killing their two
leaders (Thoden van Velzen 1995, 128).
One of the most striking features of insurrection in the anglophone
Caribbean is the dominant role of the Akan. This is said to have resulted
from the more warlike organization and spirit of their polities, especially the
Asante (Ashanti), 19 who built one of the largest and most respected empires
in the West African forest region. Akan, Ewe and related ethnic groups of
the Gold Coast sub-region have come down to us in popular literature as
Koromantin (Coromantees) because this was the main port of exit for various
hinterland peoples on their way to the Americas. They are believed to
have formed the most substantial element among the enslaved peoples of the
English-speaking and Dutch-speaking Caribbean because of the large number
of forts and factories that the British 20 and Dutch had on the Gold
Coast. It is therefore not surprising that Akan (or at any rate Gold Coast)
peoples played the major role in revolts and marronage in these colonies.
However, the degree of slave insurgency in other plantation states such as
Cuba, Haiti and Brazil, comprising Yoruba (southwestern Nigeria), Ndongo
(Angola), Ardras (Dahomey), Hausa (northern Nigeria) and a host of other
ethnic groups, severely undermines the thesis that the Akan were more warlike
than other African groups. In South Carolina, Africans from the Bight
of Biafra were more disposed to run away than those from the Gold Coast,
Senegambia and Angola (Morgan 1986, 62). Palmares, which existed for most
of the seventeenth century and constituted by far the largest Maroon polity
that ever existed in the Americas, consisted largely of Angolan peoples;
Congolese were also prominent, while Akan seem to have been largely
absent. In 1835, it was mainly the Hausa peoples who plotted the aborted
revolt in Bahia (Reis 1993). 21 Likewise, the Congos (called “Franc-Congos” in
Haiti) played the major role in servile resistance in Haiti in the late eighteenth
century, and constituted at least half the total number of runaways
advertised in the press. This finding refutes the myth about their docility.
The same source indicates that in that country Creoles stood fifth in the line