ospam (Jerome Bibuld) wrote in message
...(to Randy Bauer):
I'm sure Scam Spam is not a "maroon". They were former slaves (and their
descendents) who escaped and, usually, joined the Indigenous American nations
in battling the slavocracy, although, sometimes, "maroon" communities were
not associated with Indigenous American nations. I've never heard the word
used to describe humans other than in those ways.

Dear Mr. Bibuld,

"In some respects, Toussaint L'Ouverture's rebellion against the French in
Saint Domingue can be seen as the most spectacular and successful of slave
rebellions which became a permanent feature of the Carribean once Africans
were imported to replace Arawaks in the sixteenth century. Runaway slaves,
called *Maroons*, were able to defend remote and inaccessible islands or
portions of islands and of the South American mainland against white attempts
to reclaim them. These rebellions were led by African warriors captured in
battle and sold by African potentates into the backbreaking work of the
canefields. As forests disappeared under the relentless progress of sugarcane
cultivation after 1700, Maroon bands survived only on the larger islands like
Cuba, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. So fierce was Maroon resistance on Jamaica
that in 1738 Governor Edward Trelawney was forced to recognise two Maroon
homelands on the island. A similar situation prevailed on Saint Domingue where
the French governor signed a treaty with a Maroon named Le Manuel, whom he
could not defeat, who had occupied the forested highlands between Saint Domingue
and Spanish Santo Domingo. But in general, slave rebellions, even spectacular
ones like that which controlled the Danish islands of Saint John for six months
in 1733 and the 1760 revolt in Jamaica which required a year and a half to
quell, while violent, were short lived."
--Douglas Porch (Wars of Empire, pp. 84-5)

The Danes were able to crush the 1733 Maroon uprising on Saint John only by
employing many 'loyal' freed slaves (who also might have been motivated by some
traditional African tribal enmities) as mercenaries, who were responding to
Danish promises of land and freedom as the reward for their 'loyal service'.
Some of the Maroon 'rebels' fought to the death; other Maroons (including entire
families) killed themselves rather than be returned to slavery. Eventually, the
remaining Maroons surrendered after the Danes had pledged to spare their lives;
in many cases, the Danes then did not honour that pledge.

Maroons also constituted a significant part of the fierce, protracted Seminole
armed resistance to the United States's invasions of the Seminoles' traditional
homeland in Florida. In 1837, the United States flagrantly violated its own
flag of truce in order to capture Osceola, the supreme Seminole leader, who
soon died in a United States Army prison. From what I have heard, some
Seminoles today still claim that the United States never was able to defeat
the Seminole Nation only by 'fair means' ultimately in their long wars.

'Treason begins in the heart before it appears in overt acts.'
--Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels)

--Nick