of using Indians to do the job for them. But, even tracked by forest-wise
Indians, some cimarrón,or maroon, communities managed to survive for
many years. One colony on the border between New Jersey and New York,
composed of a mixture of blacks, Indians, and whites, now known as the
Ramapo Mountain People, still exists. But maroon communities were, of
course, the exception, not the rule; and only a tiny portion of slaves man-
aged to escape to them.
Since a slave was valuable property, owners did what they could to pre-
vent slaves from escaping and created agencies to get fugitives back. The
New England Puritans set out as a principal objective in their Confed-
eration of New England apprehending both white and black runaways, and
this task was assigned throughout the colonies to the militias. Lieutenant
Governor Sir William Gooch of Virginia made this clear in a dispatch
to the Board of Trade in London in 1729. After describing a runaway
community that had been overwhelmed by an armed group of settlers, he
wrote:
Tho’ this attempt has happily been defeated, it ought nevertheless to
awaken us into some effectual measures for preventing the like hereafter,
it being certain that a very small number of Negroes once settled in those
Parts [the mountains on the frontier], would very soon be encreas’d by
the Accession of other Runaways and prove dangerous Neighbours to
our frontier Inhabitants. To prevent this and many other Mischiefs I am
training and exercising the Militia in the several counties as the best
means to deter our Slaves from endeavouring to make their Escape, and
to suppress them if they should.The role of the Indians in escapes by blacks varied from group to
group. Indians—such as the Yamassee and Lower Creeks in particular—
who were themselves still free and more or less out of reach often took in
and sheltered runaway blacks. But nearby Indian groups, particularly those
who had become dependent upon white society, frequently caught and
returned or killed black runaways. Recognizing that such “inner” Indians
could form a cordon along the frontier, the legislature in South Carolina
was anxious to encourage them. When they aided in putting down a black
Blacks in America 179