Spanish used the word in reference to their stray
cattle, with cattle being the root of the wordchat-
tel, which is of course the descriptor of the “pecu-
liar institution” called slavery in the Americas. It is
further believed that the wordcimarrónis from
cimaor “summit.”
It is important to note that most Africans did not
refer to themselves as Maroons. They usually opted
for liberatory, powerful names such as “Nyankipong
Pickibu,” which means “Children of the Almighty”
in Twi, a language widely spoken in Ghana, West
Africa. The Jamaican Maroons tend to prefer the
monikers “Koromanti,” “Kromanti,” or
“Yungkungkung” to denote their culture and history.
This entry looks at the origins of Maroon communi-
ties in Africa, their history of struggle and revolt in the
New World, and their contemporary representation.
African OriginsAccording to legend, the Koromanti name contin-
ues to ring in the Maroon communities for one of
two traditional reasons. The first is that it memo-
rializes and pays tribute to one of their last visions
of home, the West African coast of the same name
that was traversed by the newly enslaved Africans
en route to the ship that would transport them
to the West. The alternative explanation is that
the appellation represents the memory of the
Koromanti clan, a subgroup of the Asante people
of Ghana. (These two groups, along with the
Congo, are the three African ethnic groups that
comprise the Jamaican Maroons.)
In 1717, the Koromanti are said to have
famously rebelled against Asante paramountcy
and killed their hallowed King, Osei Tutu I, whose
body is said to have fallen into the river, never to
be seen again. This inspired the Asante people to
take a sacred oath that empowered them to rise up
and put down the Koromanti uprising. Legend has
it that the thwarted Kormantis were exiled and
sold into slavery for their abomination. It is said
that only their memory resides in Ghana. To this
day, the Koromanti designation is commonly used
by the Maroons to describe their rituals, lan-
guages, dances, and songs, which are sung to bury
the dead and accompany healing rituals.
There are divergent accounts as to the earliest
Maroons, with some even indicating that the first
Maroon was a solitary African who escaped from
the first slave ship to dock in the Americas in
1502, just 10 years after Columbus’s arrival. He is
said to have escaped to the jungle-like interior of
Hispaniola, or “Little Spain” in Spanish (present-
day Haiti), blazing a trail that many of his African
brethren and sisters would follow. Most reports,
however, start the timeline at 1512, when a steady
stream of enslaved Africans began escaping from
Spanish and Portuguese slavers and “disappear-
ing” into the hinterlands.A Continuing Struggle
The Maroons strategically teamed with indige-
nous peoples or survived from sheer will and have
maintained a continuous presence in the Western
hemisphere. Faced with monumentally hostile
conditions, they tactically established armed
settlements because they were in constant danger
of being recaptured or killed by European tyrants.
Moreover, there was always the perpetual battle
to physically sustain themselves because they were
often left to forage for food, especially on the
smaller islands of the Caribbean. To this, one
must add the challenge of reproducing and multi-
plying their numbers.
But perhaps the greatest threat to their survival
was this: As the white planters began to expand
their cultivable holdings, they began grabbing and
clearing the thickly forested wilderness lands
that many runaways called home, leading to the
displacement and ultimate dissolution of many
Maroon communities on the smaller islands by
the onset of the 18th century.
On the larger islands, however, the Maroons
were able to hunt, grow crops, and, in a word,
thrive. As increasing numbers of Africans
escaped and joined their ranks, they took guerrilla
warfare to new heights, burning and raiding
plantations as well as poisoning slavers.
Needless to say, they struck fear in the hearts of
the white enslavers, causing the British and U.S.
governments to pass dozens of acts against them
and spend millions of pounds and dollars to
conquer them. This was often for naught because
the Maroons were led by fearless warriors who
would stop at nothing to throw off the insidious
chains of chattel slavery.
Indeed, dozens of Maroon wars and revolts are
reflected in the historical record, with the first one406 Maroon Communities