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Land, Law and Community Among the Accompong Maroons in Post-Emancipation Jamaica
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Transcript of Land, Law and Community Among the Accompong Maroons in Post-Emancipation Jamaica
Land, Law and Community Among the Accompong Maroons in Post-Emancipation
Jamaica
By
Michelle Thompson
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of History
New York University
January, 2012
Ada Ferrer
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© Michelle Thompson All Rights Reserved, 2012
iii
DEDICATION For my grandmother, Imogene Hill, a Mooretown Maroon who inspired me to
take this journey. I also dedicate this to my mother who related some of their
narratives to me; and for my son, James, that he may always remember his
connection to Jamaica’s Maroons.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
While working on this project, many people asked me what it was like
going back to school after having been in the workforce. I told them it felt like
I was on sabbatical and that is a tribute to each member of my committee. Ada
Ferrer, Michael Gomez, Sinclair Thomson, and Aisha Kahn, you have all
enriched my world beyond what I could have expected as a graduate student.
Jennifer Morgan I am appreciative that you agreed to take on my project at all.
I also want to thank James Robertson from University of the West
Indies, Mona whose voluminous knowledge of archives containing colonial
Jamaican sources is absolutely astounding and whose encouragement was
desperately needed and greatly appreciated. I must also acknowledge Kenneth
Bilby who also pointed me towards great sources and allowed me to pick his
brain when necessary. Many Accompong Maroons spent tens of hours with me
as I recorded interviews and poked around their community including Colonel
Peddie, Melville Courri, George Huggins, Bill Peddie, Harris Cawley, Carlton
Smith, James Chambers, Mark Wright, Hansel Charles (Rupee) Reid, and
Constantia Foster. Without your cooperation, there would be no dissertation
and I am forever in your debt.
Marsha Vassal, at the Jamaica National Archives in Spanish Town,
Jamaica has been invaluable with her unending patience and deep knowledge
of that archive. I must appreciate my dissertation group, particularly Anne
v
Eller, Frances Sullivan, and Kiron Johnson who provided unbelievable support
and encouragement thorugh this process. Michal worked with me at the most
difficult juncture of writing and her input was invaluable. Numerous people
have literally lent their shoulder to cry on while I wrote this work including
Tokumbo, Karen, Caryn, Chris, Nikki, Sonya, Moira and Rose. My deepest
love and gratitude goes to my mother and sister as their infectious excitement
about my project motivated me to keep going. Finally, no words can express
the gratitude and love I have for Fran and James as we have developed this
project as a family. Without them, it would have been impossible.
vi
ABSTRACT
Jamaican Maroons - slaves who ran away from plantations and their
descendants won their freedom after eighty-four years of warfare. That war ended in a
1739 treaty guaranteeing land to the communities. In return for their freedom, the
treaty required that the Maroons capture and return runaway slaves and quell slave
rebellions. After the British emancipated the slaves in 1838, the Jamaican government
rethought the role of the Maroon communities. Desperate for labor, the government
sought to dismantle and incorporate the Maroons communities into Jamaican society
by reconfiguring their communal lands to individual allotments that would require
individual Maroons to pay property taxes. It was hoped that Maroons would fail to
pay taxes; the land would revert to the state; and they would have to work on
plantations to support themselves. This dissertation examines this post-emancipation
agenda and the way it framed four disputes about Maroon lands and taxation from
1842 – 1905.
The Accompong Maroons engaged in resistance to these incursions on their
community by ignoring Jamaica’s legal land requirements that did not comport with
the terms of the treaty; by acquiring more land by adverse possession at a time when
the colonial state systematically disenfranchised freed Blacks of land; by threatening
warfare; and by preventing the government from surveying their lands, particularly if
the survey did not expand their land holdings in accordance with their original
understanding of the treaty. As government officials both in London and Jamaica
vii
sought to avoid warfare with the Maroon communities, they failed to eliminate the
Maroons, who today still reside in Jamaica on treaty granted lands.
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ABSTRACT vi LIST OF FIGURES xii
PROLOGUE 1 CHAPTER 1: THE 1655 – 1739 MAROON WARS AND LESSONS THE MAROONS LEARNED 5 Introduction 5 British Narratives about the War 8 Maroon Fighting Strategies 11 Science 13 The Treaty 19 Conclusion 28 CHAPTER 2: LAND, LABOR, AND RACE. ABROGATING THE 1739 MAROON TREATIES (1842 – 1856) 31 Introduction 31 The 1842 Land Allotment Act 33 Maroons as a Racially Distinct People? 36 “Equal” By Law 42 Challenges with Contextualizing the Land Allotment Act 49 Ridding the Maroons of “Innumerable Distinctions” 53
ix
Why Assimilating Maroons Meant Restructuring Land 56 Maroon Concerns about the Land Allotment Act 62 Conclusion 66 CHAPTER 3: THE COOK’S BOTTOM LAND DISPUTE, RESISTANCE, AND THE FALLOUT (1868 – 1905) 69 Introduction 69 The Shift to Crown Colony Government and its Implications 72 The Jamaican Government’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom 76 The Accompong’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom 81 Accompong Resistance to Relinquishing Cook’s Bottom 83 How to Manage the Maroons 88 Convincing the Accompong to Comply With the Land Allotment Act 90 The Accompong: a Taxing Challenge 94 Potential Resolution to the Cook’s Bottom Land Issue 97 Conclusion 107 CHAPTER 4: COLONEL ROWE’S TAX PETITIONS: TREATY BASED OBJECTIONS TO PAYING TAXES (1870 – 1883) 110 Introduction 110 Rule of Law and Taxation (Pre-1883) 110 Accompong Challenge to Taxes: The Treaty (1870) 114 Government Services for Taxes (1878 - 1879) 116 Forcing Tax Collection I (1882) 120 Use of Force for Tax Collection (1882) 121
x
Forcing Tax Revenue II (1882) 123 Accompong Silences About the Land Allotment Act 126 The Attempt to Remove Military Service As An Obstacle to Tax Collection
(1883) 129
Enforcing Tax Collections From the Accompong (1883) 132
Conclusion 137
CHAPTER 5 – THE FULLERSWOOD LAND DISPUTE: THE RISE OF INDIRECT RULE (1884 – 1899) 139 The Dunn’s Parcel of Fullerswood 140 Trespass at Fullerswood and the Rule of Law (Judicial Branch) 145 Diplomacy with the Accompong 148 A group of Accompong Maroons Threaten to Take Laconia
Mountain, Fall 1895 152
Fears of Rebellion Spread to London 153 Indirect Rule I 156 Schism Between the Police and the Rest of the Jamaican
Government 160 Indirect Rule II 166 Another Nod to the Rule of Law – Inheritance 171 One Final Demand for Fullerswood 174 Conclusion 179 CHAPTER 6: THE STRATHDON LAND CONFLICT (1895 – 1902) 182 Introduction 182
xi
Contested Trodance, 1895 183 How to Deal With the Accompong When They Trespass (1896) 185 Maroons Are Not Really Maroons 187 Role of Clergy 188 Accompong Claims Grow More Ambitious, 1900 193 Colonial Response 197 Conclusion 205 CONCLUSION 208 Sources, Temporality, and Interdisciplinarity 210 Resistance 215 Rule of Law 218 Must Power Be Part of the Hidden and Public Transcript? 222 WORKS CITED 263
xii
LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1 General Map of Jamaica 33 Fig. 2 1757 Map of Accompong 42 Fig. 3 Undated Map of the Accompong and Cook’s Bottom Area 88 Fig. 4 Fullerswood Park 169
1
Introduction
Maroons were enslaved men and women who ran away from plantations
throughout the Americas, and in some places, formed their own permanent
communities. They represented a regular threat to the institution of slavery. Centuries
after the end of slavery, Maroon communities continue to exist. Jamaica is home to
four modestly sized Maroon societies that live in its mountainous interior. Mooretown,
Scotts Hall, and Charlestown are located in the Blue Mountains in the northeast part of
the island. The largest community of approximately 600 inhabitants, the Accompong,
is based in the Cockpit Mountains in northwest Jamaica.1 The Accompong are the
most likely to be visited by tourists because they are located two hours south of the
tourist mecca Montego Bay. Every year on January 6, they hold a large public
commemoration of Cudjoe’s birthday. Cudjoe’s importance as the community’s
founding leader resonates well beyond Accompong, as hundreds of non-Maroons join
in this annual celebration.
All the Maroon communities live apart from Jamaica’s population, on land
won by their ancestors nearly 300 years ago. The entire community, as Maroons, owns
hundreds of acres; no individuals own any part of it. They look no different to the
naked eye than the Jamaicans surrounding their communities. Maroons grow some
crops to support their community including yams, bananas, and other foodstuffs.
1 The cockpits, visible in a flight over northwest Jamaica, are made of limestone and have narrow cylindrical depressions in the center caused by water that eroded the stone. The mountain range derives its name from this geological formation.
2
Chickens roam around the grounds and provide an important part of the community’s
ability to feed itself. Maroons eat cuisine that is typical Jamaican fare including rice
and peas and fricassee chicken. After a meal, they might drink Wray and Nephew
White rum,2 Red Stripe beer or beer from another local Jamaican brewery, a Dragon
lager. There are three Protestant churches in Accompong that are mostly attended by
Accompong’s women. Some residents are employed outside of Accompong
performing work ranging from schoolteachers and police officers, to contract
construction work in outlying areas. Some Maroons own businesses in Accompong,
including shops, bars, and guest houses where tourists can stay. The community
employs tour guides who take outsiders around the community showing sites such as
the ethnic burial grounds, and the place where Cudjoe and his council met to plan
military strategy during the Maroon Wars, the Kindah Tree. Yet, their history, and
their version of history, differentiates them from the rest of the population. In that
version, the land on which they live, how they won it and why they remain there as a
community are central.
When the British won Jamaica from Spain in 1655, Africans were already
living there, but there was no system of plantation slavery. As Jamaica was
transformed from a Spanish backwater to a British sugar colony, these Africans and
their descendants fled to Jamaica’s mountainous interior and formed independent
societies. As the British continued to import Africans to Jamaica, many of them,
determined to live life on their own terms, ran away and joined the already formed 2 Wray & Nephew is a company owned by the Appleton Estate, a sugar plantation devoted to making spirits located 45 minutes to one hour south of Accompong.
3
Maroon communities. In order to survive, they grew vegetables, hunted wild hogs, and
stole goods and slaves from nearby plantations to further develop their communities.
These are the societies that became known as Maroons. They posed an intolerable
threat to the institution of slavery and so the British declared war to eliminate the
Maroons. The British and Maroons fought for nearly eighty-five years, from 1655 –
1739, and when they could fight no more, agreed to a peace treaty. That treaty held
that the Maroons would remain free and could continue living in the mountainous
areas to support their communities. In return for freedom, the Maroons would be
required to suppress slave rebellions and return runaway slaves.3 The treaty converted
the Maroons into a quasi-military force designed to maintain the institution of slavery,
the government’s justification for allowing an isolated free Black community in the
midst of an island of masters and slaves.
When the British abolished slavery in 1838, they needed to develop a new role
for the Maroon communities. There were no more slaves to return to masters or slave
rebellions to squash. There was no longer an enslaved population from which Maroons
needed to be distinguished; all were legally free.
As everywhere in the aftermath of emancipation, who would labor on
plantations became the critical question. The formerly enslaved resisted working on
plantations, opting instead for peasant livelihoods and thereby creating a severe labor
3 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).
4
shortage. In this context, the Jamaican government unilaterally decided to eliminate
the Maroon communities, hoping this would force Maroons to become laborers on
plantations. In 1842, the Jamaican Assembly passed the Land Allotment Act intended
to assimilate the Maroons into the Black Jamaican community by changing their land
holdings. No longer would Maroons own their treaty-granted lands as a community,
but instead each individual would be entitled to five acres for their own use and they
would be required to pay taxes on those parcels. The Maroons, instead of having rights
and responsibilities delineated by a particular agreement, would have the same rights
and responsibilities as the Queen’s subjects.4 Authorities hoped there would not be
former slaves and former Maroons, but that both would become Black agricultural
laborers. Jamaica’s governmental agencies, including the Surveyor General, the
Collector General, and the police tried to enforce this law. There was support as well
from London, but the Privy Council and the Colonial Secretary’s Office were more
often concerned with maintaining peace with Maroons and avoiding another military
conflict, and so there was limited support for enforcement of the Land Allotment Act.
The main obstacle to enforcement of the Land Allotment Act came from the
Maroons themselves. They refused to sign up for individual parcels of land and
continued to live on treaty-granted land as a community, constantly ignoring the legal
dictates of the Jamaican government. In fact, the Maroons even managed to expand
4 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).
5
their land holdings. Through multiple means of resistance and their manipulation of
the law, the Maroons refused to become Jamaican.
The treaty embodies the Maroon’s historical relationship with Jamaica and for
centuries continued to make their existence possible. When the government tried to
change the community’s land holdings or prohibit them from acquiring more land,
Maroons turned to the treaty to limit what authorities could do. The late nineteenth
century land disputes with the Maroons are critical to understanding their longevity.
This work details the particular struggles between Accompong and the government to
keep Maroon land and communities intact.
At its core, this work is an exposition of the clash of two opposing historical
visions of Jamaica’s Maroons that were dealt with in disputes about land and taxation.
Colonial society was always concerned with Maroons situating themselves outside the
colonial vision of Blacks’ roles in society. Maroons refused to be enslaved while slave
societies existed, and at emancipation, they refused to be part of a landless peasantry
who worked on plantations. The Maroon vision once again potentially defined
freedom for the formerly enslaved outside the expectations of the colonial
government. Nevertheless, from 1842 – 1905, the Jamaican government sought to
deprive all the Maroon groups of their treaty granted lands so that they would join the
Black peasantry in working on plantations, enriching Jamaica’s planter class.
However, the Maroons insisted that the treaty remain the guide for the
relationship between the two groups. The Accompong resisted or ignored any action
taken by the Jamaican government that did not uphold the terms of the treaty as they
6
saw it. Therefore, they insisted that the government deliver on their understanding of
the treaty including land boundaries well outside the written agreement and their
insistence that they owed no tax burden under the treaty. As a result, the Accompong
expanded their land holdings by acquiring Cook’s Bottom and part of Strathdon for
the use of their community through adverse possession, a practice the colonial state
called squatting. They also succeeded in withholding tax payments from Jamaica, as
one sovereign had no obligation to pay another one.
Because the colonial government failed to use force, they could not require the
Maroons to comply with their legal strictures. By 1905, the Accompong failed to
comply with colonial expectations of their community and functioned as a community
in their traditional ways. Ultimately, this is a narrative about the dominance of the
British vision of Blacks’ role in post-emancipation society. However, the historical
relationship between the state and this community combined with the pre-established
legal boundaries both undermined the British’s determined viewpoint.
This study is one of the first studies of Maroons in post-emancipation society
independent of Jamaica’s 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion. It seeks to provide a glimpse of
the political, diplomatic, and legal challenges Maroons faced in the wake of slavery’s
demise, some of which mirrored the Black community surrounding them. As a result
of examining the land challenges between the Jamaican colonial state and the Maroons
during this time period, the totalizing post-emancipation agenda of creating laborers of
Blacks was clear.
7
Studying the Maroons in the post-emancipation era is significant; however, the
Accompong insist that the Maroon Wars are central to their history. Scholars must
examine these communities over a longer time period. The struggles they faced for
creating and maintaining community occurred long before emancipation. This study
requires seeing continuitiets across emancipation and slavery. Diana Paton makes this
argument in No Bond But the Law as she discussed the continuity of punishment
between slavery and emancipation because emancipation was “a moment of transition
but not a binary divide.”5 Stern makes similar arguments in encouraging scholars of
Latin America to use longer time frames for studying peasant political activity so that
moments of rupture do not become the sole standard of resistant activity.6
Indeed, attempts to capture Maroon labor long before emancipation were
revealed in legislation detailing how plantation owners should arrange work contracts
with Maroons should they choose to work on their plantations. Further, the colonial
state offered individual Maroons opportunities to leave behind these communities and
live as free Blacks working on plantations, another intention the Assembly enshrined
in legislation. Combining these efforts with the colonial state ensuring that the planter
owned slave plots never devolved to the enslaved and we see harbingers of the means
the state would use to capture Black labor. These actions reinforced the legal logic of
the colonial government, both during slavery and afterwards. In order to ensure their
5 Diana Paton, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamacan State Formation, 1780 - 1870 (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2004). 6 Steve Stern, "New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the Andean Experience," in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve Stern(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
8
availability for plantation work, “negroes” were never landholders. The problems of
labor and race were always intertwined and Maroons were, unwillingly, brought into
that dialogue as well. The need for labor on plantations reached beyond the formerly
enslaved and immigrants brought into Jamaica after slavery; Maroons, as “negroes,”
were also to be incorporated into post-emancipation society as laborers. Their
resistance to this structure made them a problem for the colonial state.
At emancipation the Maroons’ status as a buffer military force dissipated
because of their race. However, in addition to the Maroons insisting on using the
treaty in their dealings with the British, the Jamaican colonial government resorted to
the same document during the post-emancipation period when it asked them to act as a
buffer military force to quell the Morant Bay Rebellion and undermined any racial
arguments they made suggesting Maroons would be part of the “negroe” population.
Hence, we also see another continuity from slavery to emancipation.
The colonial state was not the only entity that persisted with entrenched beliefs
about the role of various groups in Jamaican society both before and after
emancipation. The Maroons insisted on the treaty as a never changing document, it
would be the sole basis for community decisions, not only during slavery, but also in
emancipation. While the historical preconditions that brought about the treaty were
completely upset by emancipation, the Maroon communities insisted that the colonial
state adhere to the treaty by recognizing their autonomy, still free to labor within their
community on community-held.
9
Finally, the Maroons posed a new definition of freedom. For the formerly
enslaved, this meant having a piece of land and being able to operate on their own as
subsistence farmers. The Maroons added a layer to what freedom was, and this
included being landholders without the influence of the colonial state beyond that
expressed in the treaty. Once again, the Maroons created a different definition of what
it meant to be Black in post-emancipation Jamaica.
The issue of continuities is not solely about the sorts of challenges Maroons
and the colonial state witnessed from slavery to emancipation, but also in the
development of colonial states in the Caribbean as well as on the African continent.
Specifically, Jamaica, like many of the African colonial possessions, used headmen to
accomplish political goals. It is not exceptional that such a political structure was
used: the challenges of the populations were the same on both sides of the Atlantic.
Great Britain sought to conform these rural populations to the rule of law and they
knew they would face too much resistance if they inserted British people to do that
work. Hence, the rural headmen were the perfect people to undertake the task;
however, they remained accountable to the populations from which they arose. For
headman responsible to the Accompong community, this mean they lost their local
political power if they did not carry out the wishes of the Accompong community.
One vexing problem in the study of the African Diaspora was how the
Maroons fit into this framework. Kelley and Patterson articulated the challenge by
saying “[n]either the fact of blackness nor shared experiences under racism nor the
historical process of their dispersal makes for community or even a common
10
identity.”7 The Maroons are a very real example of this, as historically, they have not
felt any kinship with the enslaved, up to 1838, or with “negroes” after 1838. The
historical circumstances under which these communities developed created such a
schism. Further, Maroons had never imagined any kind of community except the one
they had created for themselves. They defended their homeland and were successful in
doing so, a homeland recorded in their placemaking narratives about community
creation, the narratives about the Maroon Wars.
Ultimately, for the Maroons, both during slavery and after emancipation, racial
identity and solidarity could not be assumed, a critical part of Gilroy’s critique of the
Diaspora.8 The Maroons would never accept the colonial state’s characterization of
who they were. The state, on behalf of the planters' interests, tried to impose a
monolithic vision of the 'negroe,' certainly not a vision conscribed to Jamaica or even
just the British Caribbean. This is a vision rooted in continued access to 'negroe' labor.
As seen during slavery, the Maroons, as well as the formerly enslaved, resisted racial
characterizations that limited what it was to be 'full free.' Yet, while the formerly
enslaved and the Maroons both resisted these characterizations, it was the Maroon
Wars that prevented Maroons from identifying with them and undermined a common
diasporic sensibility between the two communities. Therefore, it is to a discussion of
the Maroon Wars that this work now turns.
7 Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. Kelley, "Unfininshed Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World," African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 18. 8 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
11
Chapter 1: The 1655 – 1739 Maroon Wars and Lessons the Maroons Learned
Introduction
Jamaica’s Maroon communities were established in the context of a war
against the British they fought to resist slavery. Both parties ended this war when they
agreed to a peace treaty in 1739. If not much is certain, both sides would attach
different meanings to the war and the treaty that ended it. Maroons remembered
wartime lessons in a series of narratives. The Maroons concluded that they were
forever linked with the British so that both sides permanently had to observe the terms
of the treaty. However, should the British breach this agreement, the Maroons believed
they had the resources and knowledge needed to take whatever corrective action might
be necessary to fix the breach and bring the British back to the treaty. Among
reactions they considered legitimate for that purpose was warfare.
By 1841, a total of 1,583 Maroons lived in Jamaica and only 436 of them lived
in Accompong. Not only were the Maroons geographically isolated, but also the poor
roads leading to their settlements reinforced their isolation.9 The people who visited
Maroons generally went to Mooretown, the largest eastern settlement. For observers
courageous enough to venture into Maroon country, given the challenging traveling
conditions, they would have noticed a diet that included crabs and jerked hog (what is
now called jerked pork). Further, they “[r]eared cattle and poultry, cultivated corn and
9 Lady Blake, "The Maroons of Jamaica," North American Review, November 1898, 564.
12
yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas and papaws [papaya] and mameys [a type of
apple] and avocados and all luxurious West Indian fruits . . .”10
By the turn of the century, their dwellings were described as having corrugated
tin roofs, a structure also observed in the 1930s.11 Some members of the Accompong
community still spoke Kromanti, the esoteric language of the Maroon communities.12
While the use of Kromanti was waning in Accompong, the practice of Christianity
was on the upsurge. The community experienced conflicts between the Christian
practitioners and the “traditionalists” that mirrored the challenges Alabi faced during
the eighteenth century in Richard Price’s book, Alabi’s World.13 The Maroons always
remained skeptical of outsiders as the photographer Harry Johnston thought the
Maroons to be “’insolent and disobliging, and inclined to levy blackmail on anyone
who passed through their villages and plantations and wished to photograph the
scenery.”14 These “insolent and disobliging” Maroons created and maintained their
own anecdotes about their community, unaffected by these outsiders.
These Maroon narratives created what James Scott has called a hidden
transcript, a “discourse – gesture, speech, practices – that is ordinarily excluded from
10 "The Maroons of Jamaica," Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics., February 1860. 11 Phil Robinson, "The Maroons of Jamaica," Harper's Weekly, October 29 1896. Images of dwellings can be seen in The British Council Royal Geographical Society, Photos and Phantasms: Harry Johnston's Photographs of the Caribbean (London: The British Council Royal Geographical Society, 1998). This is a collection of Harry Johnston’s photos taken in the Caribbean overall during the 1930s. 12 Archibald Cooper, "Discusses an Offer to Teach Cooper Kromanti, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. For a greater sense of what the Kromanti language is, see generally Kenneth Bilby, True-Born Maroons (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2006). 13 Archibald Cooper, "Describes Burning Down the Old-Timers House in Old Town, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica; Richard Price, Alabi's World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 127. 14 Society, 55.
13
the public transcript of subordinates by the exercise of power. The practice of
domination, then, creates the hidden transcript.”15 Scott also argues that the “hidden
transcript has no reality as pure thought; it exists only to the extent it is practiced,
articulated, enacted, and disseminated . . .”16 This chapter discusses both the context in
which these narratives arose and the conclusions Maroons drew from them, the
content of their hidden transcript. The British sources discuss that context, but while
revealing much about their struggles in this war, they say little about how the Maroons
fought the war.
The format of the Accompong oral histories is historical vignettes connected to
particular places in the community that both reveal the role of ancestors in the
community and clarify the role of community members. These vignettes are called
placemaking narratives.17 Maroons relate their oral history with placemaking
narratives about the War and these histories best capture their self-perception. Dates,
in traditional Western histories, function as bookmarks to ground historical analysis.
For the Maroons, “temporal considerations . . . are accorded secondary importance.”18
Instead, at each place, one learns what the event was; what the ancestors endured in
dealing with that particular event; and what that event means for the current
community members.19 The narratives often contain spectacular stories demonstrating
15 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 27. 16 Ibid., 119. 17 Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996). 18 Ibid., 31. 19 Ibid., 3 - 8; Jean Besson, "Sacred Sites, Shifting Histories: Narratives of Belonging, Land and Globalisation in the Cockpit Country, Jamaica," in Caribbean Narratives of Belonging: Fields of
14
superhuman feats. Ultimately, in the context of post-emancipation land struggles
between the Accompong Maroons and the Jamaican government, the placemaking
narratives provided context for why Maroons made particular land claims, claims that
date back to when the treaty was signed. The narratives also revealed what were
Maroon understandings of what they agreed to in 1739.
The Accompong Maroons’ placemaking narratives also reveal the use of what
Maroons call “Science;” herbal knowledge and intercession with the ancestors to
ensure that any evil spirits that could compromise the ability of the community to
survive are defeated. Placemaking narratives are central to the ways the community
memorialized the war and provides data about Maroon military victories against the
British.
I spent a total of one month between 2007 and 2008 in Accompong speaking
with Maroons who knew these placemaking narratives that drove their interpretation
of post-emancipation events. Nothing can be accomplished in the community without
first securing the approval of the Colonel. Indeed, the second time I was in
Accompong, researchers seeking to do DNA testing of the Accompong with the hopes
of determining their ethnic origins failed before they began because they did not
obtain the Colonel's approval and so the community refused to cooperate.
My first interviews were conducted with the Colonel and the community
historian, Melville Curri. Prior to Melville Curri, Man O' Rowe, a well-known
historian referred to by both Kenneth Bilby and Werner Zips, had this role, but he died Relations, Sites of Identity, ed. Jean Besson and Karen Fog Olwig(Oxford: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2005).
15
two years before I started doing my research.20 The other individuals I interviewed
included the Scientist, the herbalist (the only woman), tour guides, the Abeng player, a
former Colonel, and other members of the Colonel’s council. All of these individuals
were part of Accompong’s political leadership.
Why the community elects a given individual depends on the challenges the
community faces. Regardless of what is happening at any given point in time, the
Colonel should have sufficient knowledge of Maroon history so that they do not take
actions that would be contrary to the community's interests. The Colonel does not
serve his term in isolation; he has a Council of his choosing who advises him.21 As I
continued to ask for other people to interview, the recommendations would always
return to these names, the people who were most closely associated with the Colonel,
and most likely on his Council.
Each interview lasted between one and two hours. My questions were aimed at
determining why they considered themselves to be Maroons, what were the
boundaries of Accompong, and specific questions about the land conflicts discussed in
this work. I completed each interview by asking about the January 6 ceremonies
commemorating Cudjoe. These questions provided context about the value the
Accompong attached to their land and what were the boundaries of that land, both as
they thought about it historically and what that meant in the present period. Finally,
discussions about January 6 reinforced who were the ancestors most significant to the
20 Bilby; Werner Zips, Nanny's Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons' African Experience (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2011). 21 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008).
16
community. These interviews provided me with a sense of what was the Maroon
archive, and reflected how they created it: oral histories told from generation to
generation. Regardless of their oral transmission, the same sorts of narratives appear
across time. Archibald Cooper, a graduate student who conducted research among the
Accompong during the 1930s, recorded the same narratives I encountered. Further,
current scholars of the Accompong also recorded the same narratives, some collected
as far back as the 1970s.22
In contradistinction to this oral archive, the British presented two interrelated
blind spots in narrating the Maroon Wars. First, they did not understand how and why
the Maroons had such military successes against them; and second, they held a
fundamental disbelief that Maroons could succeed against the military only using
guerilla warfare tactics. Thus, Maroon oral histories generally, and placemaking
narratives in particular, fill in what is not understood by those whose writings
constructed the archive. Oral history thus offers a contrasting set of beliefs about what
is and is not possible. If those who construct the archive effectively say, “we do not
understand because we do not see what happened as doable in the first place,” one is
offered, by the archive, mostly data about why the event was impossible, unthinkable,
as opposed to how it was possible.23 Maroon narratives challenge not only that it was
possible, but also reveal how it was accomplished from the community’s perspective. 22 See generally Besson; Bilby; Zips. 23 Trouillot links unthinkability with hegemony in explaining silences concerning the Haitian Revolution: “white hegemony is natural and taken for granted; any alternative is still in the domain of the unthinkable.” Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 93. British military hegemony in the context of the Maroon Wars was also assumed and justified, if not in blatantly racial terms, cultural terms. Hence any military successes Maroons could experience were dismissed.
17
British archival preconceptions provide limited perspective on how Maroons saw
themselves winning against a foe that had outgunned and generally out resourced
them. Additionally, they offer perspective on how these perceptions continued in the
post-emancipation period. Ultimately, oral narratives and the placemaking narratives
within them helped create an intersecting archive through which one can better access
Maroon history.
British Narratives about the War
The First Maroon War is central to understanding how the Maroons built their
community and the lessons they learned. Jamaica’s governor during the Maroon Wars,
Robert Hunter, kept records of Jamaica’s military needs and the challenges faced as
they tried to fight both the Spanish and the Maroons. A few of Jamaica’s prominent
planters also wrote their versions of the wartime encounters with the Maroons, which
also provide information about the challenges the British experienced.24 Yet, beyond
descriptions of how Maroons ambushed British troops, we learn surprisingly little
about the Maroons. As the British narratives are reviewed, it becomes apparent that a
24 Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, from Their Origin to the Establishment of Their Chief Tribe at Sierra Leone, Including the Expedition to Cuba for the Purpose of Procuring Spanish Chasseurs and the State of the Island of Jamaica for the Last Ten Years with a Succinct History of the Island Previous to That Period, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Cass, 1803; reprint, 1968); Bryan Edwards, The Proceedings of the Governor and Assembly of Jamaica, in Regard to the Maroon Negroes: Published by Order of the Assembly. (Connecticut: Negro Universities Press, 1796; reprint, 1970); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, or General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of That Island: With Reflections on Its Situations, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government., 3 vols., vol. 2 (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1774; reprint, 1970); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, or General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of That Island: With Reflections on Its Situations, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government., 3 vols., vol. 1 (New York: Arno Press, 1774; reprint, 1972).
18
major unknown element regards how the Maroons fought; the British found
themselves engaged in guerilla warfare.
Governor Hunter conveyed the difficulties he faced as he tried to prosecute
two wars and ensure that there was enough money to cover Jamaica’s expenses:
“From my Speech Your Grace will please to Observe the State & Condition of this
Country, the Drought still Continues to that Degree the like was never known her; and
there is neither Trade nor money stirring; For short the Island is in a Deplorable
Condition . . .”25 He also included in the record reports from the soldiers describing
the sorts of ambushes they encountered. While trying to reach the Maroon Town, the
soldiers had to cross fords as well as mount each others’ backs to climb up high rocks
and pass their baggage and ammunition to each other. “Codg’d above, on either side
the River [the rebels] may destroy any number sent against them whilst they are
crossing these Fords, at most without being seen, which was the case of seeing the
Enemy method was to fire, then lie down, & load again, & so [they are] constantly
under cover . . .”26
The soldiers writing this entry provided us with a partial description of the
Maroons’ ambush technique in that they remained low to the ground, not visible to
their enemies, while they reloaded their arms and continued. Other soldiers reported
that the rebels “usually Insconce themselves within places of natural Defence, as
25 Robert Hunter, "Letter to the Duke of Newcastle Park, the Secretary of State, April 24, 1727," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 26 James Fountain Steven Cornwallis, Jon Holy, "Letter to Governor Robert Hunter Concerning Progress During the Maroon Wars, December 15, 1731," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
19
Trees, Rocks & of the latter of which there are abundance in the said Town . . .”27
Allen, one of the soldiers, and his colleagues described this technique as one of the
disadvantages that they faced when engaged in battle with them.
Planters such as Edward Long described the ambushes as guerilla warfare or
“bush fighting;” 28 however, these labels revealed little of how Maroons perceived
themselves and the claims they made about the Maroon Wars. How did the Maroons’
ambushes help them win the war? The answer to that question provides data about
how the Maroons built their community and how they survived. The question itself,
however, requires a departure from the written archival data about the Maroon Wars.
The oral narratives cannot be read for their “truth” value, but instead for what we learn
about the Accompong during the war and how they used their battle techniques to fuel
their political fight against the colonial government to keep their land and community
intact in post-emancipation Jamaica. The oral narratives reflect what the Accompong
believe about themselves.
Ambuscade, for example, did not mean the same thing to both sides, aside
from hiding and attacking the enemy. The British defined it as “[a] military disposition
consisting of troops concealed in a wood or other place, in order to surprise and fall
unexpectedly upon an enemy. The ambush is the entire strategic arrangement or trap;
but sometimes the postures, sometimes the place, sometimes the troops, are the
27 Christopher Allen and others, "Report to Military Officials, February 23, 1732," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 28 Long, 344.
20
prominent part of the idea.”29 However, for the Maroons, ambush was not merely a
strategy but included camouflage; something warriors wore by completely covering
themselves in foliage to remain unseen by the enemy. Ambush was not merely hiding,
but was being part of the foliage, including crawling inside tree trunks from which
they could fight.30
The British comprehended the extent to which Maroons were formidable foes,
in part, because of their reliance on ambush. The Maroons’ seeming ability to
disappear in plain sight reflected their ability to defeat any enemy coming their way.
They did not have the same level of material well-being (i.e. battle clothes) as the
British, but these accounts reflected that these comforts made the British vulnerable
while fighting because their supplies made noise and their uniforms did not blend into
the environment. For the Maroons, material comfort was not necessary to gain the
upper hand with an outsider; instead becoming part of your surroundings both built
and preserved the community because they could eliminate the enemy and then took
his personal effects which included weapons and other items of value to the
community.31
These records provided the wartime data that shed some light on how the
Maroons fought their British nemeses. However, given the exigencies the soldiers
29 http://www.oed.com, s.v. "Ambush, N." 30 Michelle Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). 31 Ultimately, the Accompong understand that if any significant military threat were posed to the Accompong community, they would rely on such techniques to defend themselves individually, and the community overall. The importance of ambush is seen to this very day. The Janaury 6 festivities, commemorating Cudjoe’s birthday, features a parade from Old Town (where the first-timers are buried) and Peace Cave (the site the Accompong attribute to the treaty signing) to the Kindah Tree (a common meeting place in Accompong) where community members dress in ambush.
21
faced in trying to emerge from these battles with their lives, the records do not provide
a full picture of how the Maroons fought this war.
Maroon Fighting Strategies
Using the placemaking process in the historical study of subaltern peoples
allows for more inclusive histories, providing the perspective of the subject peoples;
and the narratives expand and challenge the power of the archive. Michel-Rolph
Trouillot argues that power affects the archive by creating historical silences in four
ways: “the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact
assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of
narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the
final instance).”32
Ultimately, placemaking narratives create an intersecting archive that place
Maroon interpretations of events as a central element of historical analysis (indeed, the
Maroons discuss events that are grappled with in the British narratives). The narratives
provided details of events that are not present in the written archives because the
Maroons did not create those archives in the first place; they were, in the traditional
historical sense, deprived of the opportunity to create the archive and did not have the
power to define themselves through it.
A placemaking narrative that reflects the ability of Maroons to defeat any
enemy is one involving Peace Cave, an historic site in Accompong. The Maroons
thought the British formidable because they had guns. They did not have access to
32 Trouillot, 26. Emphasis is Trouillot’s.
22
ammunition to the same extent although they acquired a substantial cache by stealing
it from felled soldiers and on plantation raids.33 Today, on the route to Peace Cave,
one encounters a placard stating “this is the place where the British were defeated,”
framing the importance of the narrative about Peace Cave.34 The oral history begins
with Cudjoe, the head of the Maroon communities during the Maroon Wars, waiting in
the back of the cave. His lieutenants watched for British soldiers outside the cave. The
watchmen (related as being men and not women) sounded the abeng, a horn made
from a cow’s tusk, to notify Cudjoe that the British were coming and how many
soldiers he could expect. The narratives do not state why the British soldiers went into
the cave in the first place. However, Cudjoe had placed a rock in the cave and every
time a soldier stepped on the rock, it made a noise, so Cudjoe knew how many soldiers
were there. When all had arrived, he and some other Maroons shot all but one. This
was a critical ambush (in the British sense of the word) in the Maroon Wars. The one
person who was left alive was given the ears of the dead soldiers to take back to his
military command as a reminder of the power of their enemy.35
Ultimately, the narrative of Peace Cave demonstrated that community
members could withstand challenges they may face from outsiders. Further, the
Accompong understood the strategic ways by which outsiders are repelled. In this
33 Ebenezer Lambe, "A Journal of the Proceedings of the Parties Commanded by Edward Croswell and Ebenezer Lambe, February 27 - March 12, 1732," 1B/5/18/1, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 34 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008). 35 The story of Peace Cave was retold in the following interviews: Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008); Michelle Thompson, "Interview with George Huggins, the Accompong Maroon Goombay Drum Maker," (2008).
23
narrative ambush was critical to defeating outsiders. Hence, these skills cannot be lost;
without them, the community would be vulnerable.
Science
Science can be defined as communication with ancestors to intercede with
harmful acts either done to an individual or the community-at-large.36 This
communication with ancestors could involve using herbs, prayers, or dances. Its use is
far broader than the military realm; however, it too was used during the Maroon Wars.
British sources do not refer to Science at all, but instead to obeah.37 Ironically,
obeah lacks specific definition in these sources as it is generally referred to as
“witchcraft”, a “charm”, a “prejudice”, or a “superstition.”38 While these function as
descriptions of what the British thought they were seeing, it does not provide much in
the way of substantive description of what was the practice of obeah. Whatever it was,
the British found it so terrifying that its practice was outlawed in Jamaica.39
Meanwhile, Maroons vigorously denied that they practiced obeah, a denial that
persists to this day.40 The critical difference in the practice of Science, which Maroons
engaged in, and obeah, lies in intent. Maroons viewed Science as a protective force, in
36 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 37 For example, see Edwards, xxix. Dallas, 92 - 3. 38 The reference to witchcraft can be found in Edwards, xxix. The other references are in Dallas, 92 - 3. 39 The legislation concerning obeah cited here was passed after emancipation. However, the frequency of the legislation both before and after crown colony government suggests the level of fear attached to the practice of obeah. "An Act to Explain the Fourth Victoria, Chapter Forty-Two, and the Nineteenth Victoria, Chapter Thirty, and for the More Effectual Punishment of Obeah and Mylaism.," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1857); "The Obeah and Myalism Acts Amendment Law, 1892," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica 1892); "The Obeah and Myalism Acts Further Amendment Law, 1893," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1893); "The Obeah Law, 1898," in Law of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1898). 40 Bilby, 293; Bev Carey, The Maroon Story: The Authentic and Original History of the Maroons in the History of Jamaica. 1490 - 1880 (St. Andrew: Agouti Press, 1997; reprint, 2001). Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).
24
opposition to obeah, which is seen as an evil force.41 For example, one used Science to
protect individuals or the community from the harmful acts of duppies (ghosts).42
Sometimes, Science was used to protect individuals from evil spirits. Also, for
Maroons, the distinction between Science and obeah lay in who was a Maroon and
who was an outsider. Indeed, it was outsiders who could compromise a Maroon
through obeah, a spritual practice that requires a “bad mind” or criminal intent.43
Science was practiced by someone who was from the community, who would not use
it for ill purpose, and who could be trusted in the Maroon community.
Some of the greatest Scientists in Maroon oral histories were the first-time
Maroons, the ancestors who were called upon when using Science because they were
the people who both developed Maroon wartime strategy and won the war for the
Maroon communities. Grandy Nanny is credited as the founding member of the
Windward (Eastern) group of the Maroon communities; however, she is also regarded
warmly by the Accompong Maroons. Cudjoe is said to be Nanny’s brother and the
41 During the Accompong Tour, a visitor is brought to the Seal Grounds, which are to provide protection against evil spirits. It is also a place where one can receive spiritual guidance against evil things. This spiritual guidance is for the good of the community and therefore not characterized as obeah. Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008). A community Scientist, James Chambers, discusses Science as used by the first-timers, specifically arguing that they used it for the benefit of the community. , by Michelle Thompson, June 18, Interview with James Chambers, Accompong Scientist. Rupee Reid, the community abeng player argues that Science is used to fix problems in the community and not to bring harm. Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 42 Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 43 Bilby, 293. Bilby discusses the distinction between Maroon and outsider and how this is connected with using obeah or Science. However, Maroons are adamant about people who practice obeah having “bad mind” or ill intent. Ironically, in the Cooper Manuscript papers, this very conflation of terms, Science and obeah is present in Cooper’s summaries of the material, although the people he interviews make a clear distinction between the two and are actually afraid to be associated with obeah. Archibald Cooper, "Ba Will on Spiritual Power 1938," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica; Archibald Cooper, "Obeah and Foster, 1938," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).
25
head of the Western Maroons referred to in both British and Accompong sources.44
Accompong, one of Nanny’s and Cudjoe’s brothers, became the leader of the
Accompong Maroons. These Scientists are thought to protect the community and are
called upon whenever the community meets to decide something of consequence.45
Given the first-timers’ wartime role, community members calling upon them
are required to pay their respects. One of my interviews with a Scientist, James
Chambers, required that he pour rum libations to the first-timers described above.
Visitors to Peace Cave must bring rum that is also used for libations and left for the
ancestors as well. This was the case not only in recent visits with the Accompong, but
also in the 1930s, when anthropologist Archibald Cooper lived among the
Accompong. The events Cooper witnessed included calling upon the ancestors in
funerals and the digging of graves. At these events, the community wanted to ensure
that the first-timers were not angry with the community so that they could continue to
receive protection.46 Protecting others and the community, through the use of Science,
is one of those events that required the ancestors’ guidance and protection. Hence,
communication with them was required before performing any Scientific acts.
Maroons believe that Science, as a tool to make everything right in the
community, was often deployed during the Maroon Wars and was not reflected in the
British narratives about the war. One story the Accompong repeat about the Windward
44 , by Thompson; Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008). 45 Michelle Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008). 46Archibald Cooper, "Field Notes on Accompong Maroon Burials, 1938," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica.
26
groups of Maroons, is a tale about Grandy Nanny. During the war, when Nanny was in
battle, the British aimed many bullets at the Maroons. It is said that Nanny actually
caught the bullets in her back side and then fired them back at her British foes. The
Accompong argue that this was one of the events that contributed to British losses and
eventually convinced them to treat with the Maroons as they were both indefatigable
and undefeatable.47 Maroons believed that Science was a definitive factor in British
military defeats during the war. Given these narratives, it is not inconceivable that
when threatened, Maroons sought to use Science during land conflicts in the post-
emancipation period. The Maroons’ account of Nanny’s battlefield defenses is one
example of how Scientific techniques are employed for the good of the Maroon
community. This chapter now examines two narratives, one British and one Maroon
where Maroons conclude that the community founders used Science during the war.
The British often characterized the Maroons as thoughtless in their selection of
war victims. Here is one of many general accounts stating that Maroons killed without
concern for their victim: “[m]urder attended all their successes: not only men but
women and children were sacrificed to their fury, and even people of their own colour,
if unconnected with them.”48 Bryan Edwards also uses such generalities to discuss
alleged carnage committed by Maroons.49 These ways of describing Maroon atrocities
are not unlike the way atrocities connected to the Haitian Revolution were described.
47 My mother, as a child, spent a limited amount of time with relatives who lived in Mooretown, the largest Maroon group on the Eastern part of Jamaica and the community associated with Grandy Nanny. This narrative is the only one that she remembers and related to me as a young person. Bilby, 204 - 215. 48 Dallas, 34. 49 See generally Edwards.
27
As it concerned Haiti, Dubois argues that “[a]s narratives move a bit further from the
first-hand accounts and become chronicles and simultaneously charters for interpreting
and responding to the insurrection, they tend to repeat representations that focused on
atrocities.”50 In this case, these accounts did not even repeat actual events, but instead
general characterizations of the violence.
Given these descriptions of violence by the Maroons, Science contextualizes
the violence experienced during the Maroon Wars. The lack of detail on the murders
committed by Maroons raises the question of whether the details were too horrible to
describe. However, one graphic incident described by Bryan Edwards, a plantation
owner, is unusual in its detail. A British soldier who was a leader among the troops
was killed in battle. When his body was found, he was beheaded. Eventually, his head
was found in his bowels.51 But given the environment in eighteenth-century Jamaica,
where disease, malnutrition, overwork, violence, death, and warfare were a regular
part of the landscape; it would be difficult to consider most circumstances connected
with Maroon or British deaths to be horrific or unusual.52 Indeed, masters regularly
dismembered slaves’ bodies as a warning to living slaves. However, to make sense of
this soldier’s death, one should look to Maroon oral history.
The event described in the following Maroon narrative is thought to have
occurred sometime after the Accompong communities were formed. It both sheds light
50 Laurent Dubois, "Avenging America: The Politics of Violence in the Haitian Revolution," in The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 51 Edwards. 52 Vincent Brown, The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 4.
28
on a belief system that justifies beheading an enemy and demonstrates how Science
was used to solve the community’s problems. A problem arose when one of
Accompong’s brothers, Quankee, was killing the community’s male children. The
leaders, namely Accompong and Cudjoe, decided to solve the problem by beheading
Quankee. However, once they beheaded him, Quankee reattached his head to his body
and continued killing. Accompong and Cudjoe decided that using Science in
combination with beheading would preserve the community. After beheading
Quankee, they applied a concoction mixed with okra and other ingredients to his
headless body so that he could not reattach his head and continue living. The
community was saved from the threat that Quankee posed.53
This narrative reflects the fact that the Accompong were not troubled about
beheading their enemies: there is little doubt that this soldier met his demise at the
hands of the Maroons. However, it does not make sense to conclude that Maroons
regularly beheaded their enemies either: neither the British nor the Maroons provide
enough evidence to justify that beheading was a regular practice. Nevertheless, it does
suggest that it was perceived as a means of permanently incapacitating an enemy, even
one within the community, a Maroon. The incident with the soldier suggested that this
military leader had to be beheaded in order to ensure that he would not continue to
threaten the Maroon community. Perhaps for enemies who were not versed in the use
of Science, putting the head with the bowels would be protection enough. Ultimately,
this battle practice is something used beyond self-defense: it was used to rid the
53 , by Thompson.
29
community of grave harm that it faced. However, as the definition of Science implies,
the practice was consistent with the correction of problems within the community as
well.
The Treaty
One event connected to the war that included much description by both the
Maroons and the British is the signing of the treaty in 1739. The treaty is the most
important document to the Accompong community not only because it ended a long
and contentious war, but because it also was a legal recognition of the Maroon
community. Hence, the circumstances under which it was won were of critical
importance to the Maroons. This included the specifics under which the treaty was
agreed upon by the Maroons and the British. These details included both the place
where the treaty was concluded and the process by which the treaty was agreed to.
The details in the published treaty included the often quoted permanent peace
between the Maroons and the British; that the Maroons would hunt down and return
runaway slaves; and that they would receive a land grant of 1500 acres for the
community: “[t]hat they shall enjoy and possess for themselves and posterity for ever,
all the lands situate and lying between Trelawney town and the cockpits, to the amount
of fifteen hundred acres, bearing north-west from the said Trelawney Town . . .”54 The
54 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739), 176 - 7. This argument is signed with the Trelawney Maroons. The Accompong, as argued later, see themselves as part of this community and therefore beneficiaries of the treaty. However, the British passed legislation in 1758 incorporating the Accompong into the original treaties. "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot
30
boundaries of the Maroon communities, although written in the treaty, are a source of
controversy for the Accompong. In describing the boundaries, the Accompong believe
that they were from seaport to seaport, meaning from Black River in the Southwest
corner of Jamaica to Montego Bay (sometimes the original boundaries were related as
being as far east as Falmouth, see figure 1.), an area ten times larger than the 1500
acres described in the treaty.55 However, because Cudjoe did not read, the British
tricked him and significantly narrowed the boundaries.56 Those boundaries are often
now described as including the entire area of the Cockpit Mountains.57 The
Accompong started with a broader understanding of their boundaries and recently
decided to narrow the contested geographic area because they could not populate or
win back the original boundaries.58 Placemaking narratives provide the historical
context for the claims they made for a greater set of Maroon lands in the post-
emancipation period (1842 – 1905). In 1739 the Accompong understood their
boundaries as being much broader than memorialized in the treaty. This vignette
One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town, and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof.," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1758). 55 Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). This argument is also made by Jean Besson based on her interviews with the Accompong. Besson, 23; ibid. Finally, Bev Carey makes this argument stating “Another of the significant issues which continue to upset the Accompong Town Maroons is the area of land allocated to Cudjoe and his people. This is given as 1,500 acres in the published treaty . . . the area of land referred to in that draft was 15,000 acres . . . The Accompong Maroons therefore say that Britain owes them for that acreage which was stolen by perfidy and which neither they nor their ancestors have ever enjoyed for over two hundred and sixty years.” Carey, 337 - 8. 56 Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 57 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008); ibid.; Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 58 Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008).
31
reflects how place served as a way of recording Accompong Maroon history and
reflected the importance of the first Maroon War, the treaty, land, and the interactions
of community members with outsiders.
Figure 1: General map of Jamaica. The Cockpit Mountains are generally the province of the Accompong. Black River is significantly to the Southwest of the Cockpits and Montego Bay to the Northwest. Falmouth is between Montego Bay and Clark's Town to the north.59
The treaty also provided that a government appointed superintendent would
live among the community to help facilitate the relationship between the British and
the Maroon societies. Finally, the Maroons would fight enemies of Jamaica, as they
would form a permanent militia in service of the Crown.60
Other terms of the treaty were not factored into Maroon community lore. The
treaty limited the types of agriculture they could grow, for example, no sugar cane. It
59 "Map of Jamaica", World Books.com http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/caribb/jm.htm (accessed 22 December 2009). 60 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).
32
is obvious why this would be the case: the British government could not tolerate
internal competition for sugar because it proved so lucrative on international markets.
The Maroons were also responsible for punishing their own people, unless the
Maroons decided to use the death penalty as a method of punishment. This term, on its
face, does not seem significant; however, a breach of this condition on a plantation not
far away from the Trelawney Maroon community was the catalyst behind the Second
Maroon Wars.
Both the British and the Maroons also disagreed about where the treaty was
signed. Both versions point to places that have enormous importance to the Maroon
community. The British believed that the treaty was signed at Old Town, a locale that
the Accompong see as significant albeit not for the same reasons. First of all, Old
Town was the original location of Accompong; Accompong did not start where it is
today and outsiders do not know why the community moved.
The Accompong Maroons also saw Old Town as significant because it was
sacred ground. Accompong himself is buried there and the community marked his
grave with a stone slab.61 Further, after Accompong’s death, placemaking narratives
state that the four ancestors’ spirits, Accompong, Nanny, Quaco, and Cuffee spent
their time in four large cottonwood trees located there.62 Into the 1930s community
members practiced Science at Old Town because the ancestors’ ghosts were said to 61 Interviewed by author, Interview, by Garfield Rowe, June 16. Accompong, Jamaica. I saw his grave site with an Accompong tour guide, Bill Peddie. 62Quaco is a reference to one of the military and political leaders for the Maroons; however, he is rarely mentioned in Accompong oral histories. Cuffee is also referred to as Quankee and was the founder who is credited with killing the first–born boys in Accompong. Archibald Cooper, "Pacific Northwest Anthropological Society Annual Meeting, April, 1950," Conference Paper, Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008).
33
regularly appear there. A Christian community member burned down the ritual house
at Old Town to discontinue such practices within the community.63
Nevertheless, to the present day, on January 6, the day the Accompong set
aside to honor Accompong’s birthday, non-Maroons are prohibited from visiting Old
Town for fear that the ancestors would disapprove of outsiders participating in the
closed festivities at Old Town and, as a result, disrupt the celebration. However, in
spite of its great significance to the Accompong Maroons, as the original site of
Accompong, it is not credited as the place where the treaty was signed.
If we take the British account seriously, signing a treaty at Old Town would
reflect the diminishing military influence the British had at the end of the war. Yet, the
treaty was also signed at one of the least threatening places in Maroon territory, the
town center. Regardless of the specific location, signing the treaty in Accompong
territory reflects the treaty’s founding importance.
The Maroons remember that Peace Cave was where they finalized the treaty
with the British; a placard there states “[a]t this place was signed the peace treaty of
1739 between the British and the Maroons after the defeat of the British forces in
1739.”64 This difference in the locale of treaty signing suggests that the Maroons were
larger actors in the conclusion of the war than British sources commend. We know
that both sides were at the end of their military strength at the time the treaty was
proposed and negotiated. The British did not know that the Maroons were militarily
63 Cooper, "Pacific Northwest Anthropological Society Annual Meeting, April, 1950," Conference Paper, Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. 64 Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008).
34
weakened by the end of the war. The Maroons took advantage of this and the British
had to cede control over the location where the treaty was signed in order to secure the
peace. No matter which version is credible, the British signed the treaty in a place
where the Maroons were in control: not in an office in Spanish Town, Jamaica’s
capital at the time. Ultimately, this discrepancy about the locale of treaty signing,
contrary to what was explicitly written in the British record, reflected how little
control the British exerted over the situation. According to Maroon accounts, the
British were brought back to the place where they took a military defeat. This
underscores that the Maroons understood their strength as a community, even at the
worst of military junctures.
Another difference between the British and Maroon narratives is the issue of
whether Cudjoe prostrated himself to the British after signing the treaty. Robert
Dallas, a Jamaican merchant, describes the scene of signing the treaty this way:
“Colonel Guthrie advanced to him holding out his hand, which Cudjoe seized and
kissed. He then threw himself on the ground, embracing Guthrie’s legs, kissing his
feet, and asking his pardon . . . The rest of the Maroons, following the example of their
chief, prostrated themselves and expressed the most unbounded joy at the sincerity
shown on the side of the White people.”65 Maroons challenge this depiction as
unlikely.66 Additionally, it is challenged, in part, because it did not reflect the manner
in which Maroons solemnize agreements.
65 Dallas, 56. 66 Carey, 331.
35
The British refer generally to the solemnities followed when signing the treaty.
No specifics are offered about this process at all in the British sources, aside from the
reporting of Cudjoe’s prostrating himself to Colonel Guthrie. Contrary to the British
accounts, the Accompong oral narratives were rich in details about how the treaty was
solemnized. They state that after the war ended, the British and the Maroons entered
into a blood treaty. This required drawing blood from a British person and a Maroon,
letting the blood drip into a calabash, adding over proof rum, mixing this together and
drinking the mixture. There would no longer be war between the two because they
were “a united brother and friend.”67 The treaty was therefore signed in blood, forming
a blood covenant.68 This method of solemnizing agreements had a deep connection
with Ghanaian traditions about creating bonds with others and ending hostile
relationships. As a result, for the Accompong, the treaty represents an agreement
between the British and themselves that is perpetual: regardless of the change of
historical circumstances, the agreement must be maintained over time.
Because the British and the Maroons participated in a ceremony that would
forever connect the Accompong to the British with unchanging terms, ultimately, the
level of betrayal for the Accompong surrounding their actual boundaries was great.
67 Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 68 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). Kenneth Bilby, "Swearing by the Past, Swearing to the Future: Sacred Oaths, Alliances, and Treaties among the Guianese and Jamaican Maroons," Ethnohistory 44, no. 4 (1997). Also see Barbara Kopytoff, "Colonial Treaty as Sacred Charter of the Jamaican Maroons," Ethnohistory 26, no. 1 (1979). Kopytoff argues that the treaty between the British and the Maroons is a sacred document. Bilby’s article argues that oath taking ceremonies resembling Maroon practices described by them at the signing of the treaty were used in Akan statecraft throughout the history of Akan empire building. Ultimately, “Jamaican and Aluku oaths represent syncretic blends of specific features whose origins lie in several different parts of the African continent seems certain.” Bilby: 677. It is this ceremony that gives the Maroon lands its sacred nature.
36
The treaty contributes to another site through which Accompong history is told, not
only because it was signed at Peace Cave, but also because of disagreement about the
actual boundaries, a disagreement that resurfaces in the post-emancipation era
disputes.
A provocative question is how can the Accompong’s understandings about
their borders be absent in the treaty? It would seem that the treaty would suffice as
prima facie evidence of the intent of both sides. However, given the Maroon stance in
the post-emancipation period about their lands, this is not the case. Ultimately, this
contrary understanding about the terms of treaty-held land reflected the greater power
of the British in the mechanism of memorializing the intent of both parties. While the
process of memorializing the treaty reflected Maroon understandings of how to build a
perpetual peace with one’s enemies, the written contract between two sovereign
powers, a treaty, is the mechanism used by the British that requires great literacy to
understand its very terms. Maroons explicitly acknowledged the fact that Cudjoe could
not read: “Because Cudjoe wasn’t a reader. And when dat peace treaty was sign, being
as he couldn’t read, they just cut, dey went under dere skin, and sign de treaty and dey
both drink out of the same calabash with white proof rum and sign it.”69
Yet, there are two other explanations of why such varying explanations of the
treaty terms. It is possible that the Maroons and the “British” negotiated the terms
orally and that “these consultations presumably formed the real decision basis for the
69 Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).
37
Maroons.”70 The British simply used these negotiations to form the conceptual basis of
what would become the final written document. The British may also have put an
overly positive spin on the treaty terms during these oral negotiations so that there was
agreement, but the written terms would be much less generous than discussed.71
The Accompong imply that using the Maroon method of sealing an agreement,
mixing the blood of both sides with rum and drinking it from a calabash, was done by
the Maroons after the war because they were unable to read. Given this discrepancy in
power, it seems amazing that more disagreement about the terms of the treaty does not
exist. The only treaty term that the British and the Maroons regularly debate is that
over the amount of land, not any other terms (with the exception of who would punish
Maroons who committed crimes outside their villages; the issue that triggered the
Second Maroon War). Ultimately, the version that the British presented to Cudjoe for
his signature, according to the Accompong, seriously misstated the amount of land;
however, it was a problem that could not have been remedied given the inability of the
Maroons at that time to read. While the Maroons could use their military power to
require the British to negotiate and finalize the treaty on their land, the British could,
according to Maroon lore, use their power to misstate the agreement about the amount
of land the Maroons were entitled to in the treaty.
Nevertheless, today’s Maroons take a pragmatic stance about the boundaries of
their lands. In an interview with Colonel Peddie and the Accompong historian
Melville Courri, both men argued that the boundaries go “from Alexander Stanhope in 70 Zips, 194. 71 Ibid.
38
the East to Alexander Stanhope in the West.”72 On a period map, the borders of
Accompong abut lands owned by Alexander Stanhope. A former Colonel, Harris
Cawley, points to lands owned by Alexander Payton as well.73 The Accompong’s
willingness to accept the boundaries of their land in the current period does not mean
that they did not challenge these boundaries in the past so that the narrative about the
borders became crucial to understanding Maroon stances towards land in the period
following slavery.
Figure 2: 1757 Map of Accompong. The Southwest border of Accompong indicates that it was owned by a Mr. Stanhope.74
Conclusion
What is not clear in the British sources is that Maroons felt that they were well
equipped to go to war with any foe at any time to defend both their community and the
land. Not only were they well equipped to fight, they were certain they would defeat
72 Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008). 73 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). 74 William Wotla, "Accompong Town," (Kingston, Jamaica: National Library of Jamaica, 1757).
39
their enemy. Part of their confidence stemmed from their fighting strategies, one
example being the use of ambush. Another reason for such Maroon confidence was
the use of Science. Maroons believed Science had the ability to annihilate an enemy
with the purpose of bringing good things to the community at large and is what
Maroons believed helped defeat the British.
The British and the Maroons both have conflicting memories about where and
how the treaty between them was concluded. The British described a place called Old
Town as the place where the treaty was solemnized, a significant location because it
was the foundational place of the Accompong community. However, the Maroons
recall the place as Peace Cave, a location where the British took a significant military
defeat. Regardless of the location, the British came to the Maroons in their locale to
end the war and secure documentation of the War’s end.
The basis for any battle the Maroons would engage in during the post-
emancipation period is the 1739 treaty. They were willing to take up arms when they
perceived the British as breaching terms of the treaty because the British suffered a
major defeat at Peace Cave. They brought the British back there to formalize the treaty
and through ritual, bound both the British and the Maroons into perpetuity. Any
breach in this treaty was an attempt to sever this relationship and preventing this
severance was worth the fight.
Finally, Maroons argue that the treaty was breached even before the ink dried.
The British took advantage of Cudjoe and did not give him all of the land they to
which they were entitled. The very boundaries of Accompong were therefore suspect
40
because the boundaries should have been as far south as Black River and as far north
as Montego Bay or even Falmouth. These collective narratives reveal the
Accompong’s hidden transcripts, the concerns that drove them to acquire more land
and refuse to pay taxes.
The next chapter examines the historical circumstances leading up to the
British attempt to eradicate both the Accompong lands as well as the Accompong
community. In 1842, the Land Allotment Act was passed as the legislative vehicle to
start this process. It is to this Act this work now turns.
41
Chapter 2: Land, Labor, and Race. Abrogating the 1739 Maroon Treaties (1842 – 1856) Introduction
During the period of apprenticeship and emancipation in Jamaica (1834 – 38),
the Jamaican Assembly developed a goal for the Maroon communities: assimilating
them into the formerly enslaved population with the hope of capturing their labor so
that they would work on plantations. The Assembly had two objectives: abandoning
the 1739 treaties and forcing the Maroon communities to assimilate into the larger
population as part of the Crown’s subjects. These goals were attempted through
passage of the 1842 Land Allotment Act. The larger context for the Act was
appropriating Black labor by denying Blacks access to land during emancipation.
Plantation owners both during slavery and in post-emancipation Jamaica wanted the
Maroons to be part of the overall labor force. This chapter first reviews the Act’s
provisions and then discusses the historical conditions for passing it.
Before emancipation, for the better part of a century, Jamaican plantation
owners grappled with whether the Maroons were racially distinct (bearing different
physical characteristics or culturally dissimilar) from other people of African heritage.
Eventually, they decided that Maroons were not different, and so while the Maroons
could not be enslaved because of the treaty, they were regarded as a potential source
of labor. After emancipation, the British Crown, through the Colonial Secretary’s
Office (CSO), decided that the enslaved and Free Blacks were all equal under the law
and should enjoy the same legal standing. So for both groups, the legislature passed
42
laws (the emancipation law for the enslaved and the Land Allotment Act for the
Maroons) that appeared to grant Blacks the same level of participation in Jamaican
society, but in operation, denied them access to land. These laws became the public
transcript: “the self-portrait of dominant elites as they would have themselves seen . . .
It is designed to be impressive, to affirm and naturalize the power of dominant elites,
and to conceal or euphemize the dirty linen of their rule.”1 The self-portrait of the
Jamaican government was that they were improving the formerly enslaved “negroes”
so that they could handle the responsibilities of freedom. The government could use
schools and churches to teach the formerly enslaved to become industrious Christian
consumers who would continue to work on plantations, a goal that was at odds with a
land-holding peasantry.2
Colonial consensus that Maroons were the same race as former slaves justified
removing any “disabilities” the Maroons faced, namely the Maroons’ use of treaty-
granted community owned land that individuals could not buy and sell. Jamaica’s
Whites argued that the Maroons were, like the formerly enslaved, unprepared for a
free society because of their race, and they would have to assist them in a transition to
freedom. The Land Allotment Act was part of this scheme because it allowed the
government to start the process of including the Maroons as part of the peasantry by
reclaiming ownership of the communal Maroon lands and distributing lands as it saw
fit (not communally held). The colonial government retained the lands that had never
1 Scott, 8. 2 Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832 - 1938 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 192.
43
been allotted to members of the Maroon community because they believed the
Maroons had received enough land. The Assembly reasoned that if Maroons could
acquire and transfer land the way most people did under British common law, perhaps
they would sell their property, move to plantations and work on those plantations
instead.
Maroons, however, resisted assimilation into the former slave population by
insisting on their cultural and historical distinctiveness and refused to comply with the
Land Allotment Act. The passage of the Act marked the beginning, for the Maroons,
of a contested process in which the Maroons fought to keep both their land and
communities in place because the treaty could not guarantee them stability from
further governmental actions such as the Land Allotment Act. Additionally, keeping
the community intact required constant “battle” with the British (as the Maroons
referred to members of the Jamaican government and members of the Colonial
Secretary’s Office).
Liberalism and Land Ownership
One of the challenges the Maroons posed for the Jamaican government by
1842 concerning land was the Accompong insistence that the community owned it. As
a result, the Land Allotment Act ended up both restructuring Maroon land holdings to
individual ownership and justifying a government taking of Accompong land. Land
policy in the 19th century was guided by liberalism, a belief in the individual to make
decisions about themselves and how to dispose of their property in society.3 The
3 Ibid., 4.
44
Maroons posed a philosophical challenge to this societal vision because in a colony
where "the building block of society was no longer the family, the clan, [or] the tribe,"
they insisted that their community remained their unit of society, and this applied to
land ownership.4
During the eighteenth century, vibrant discussions occurred between leading
thinkers about the importance of individually held property to building a society that
expanded political participation; and that the market was the primary force to
determine everyone’s relationship to land. In her article “Eighteenth-century
Justifications of Private Property,” Ursula Vogel discusses Adam Smith’s and John
Stuart Mill’s concerns about land that was not individually held.5 Vogel argued that
Smith and Mill were most concerned that the family’s right to property would
inevitably subvert the individual’s freedom to alienate, capitalize, and exchange
resources in profitable enterprises.6 In the feudal period, those who owned land in this
restrictive fashion were the only people entitled to political participation due to the
fact that “land somehow stands in a special moral and political relation to the
community.”7 Ultimately, “[i]n order to vindicate exclusive private property as a
matter of right, it was necessary to refer to the world’s natural resources as a kind of
common fund upon which all persons have some claim. It was this assumption which
enabled liberals to condemn feudal landownership as an unwarranted privilege,
4 Ibid. 5 Ursula Vogel, "When the Earth Belonged to All: The Land Question in Eighteenth-Century Justifications of Private Property," Political Studies XXXVI, no. (1988). 6 Ibid., 104. 7 Ibid.
45
because it monopolized the ‘common fund’ and thus negated the maxim of equal
starting chances.”8 Under this market-driven approach, Maroons holding group land
interfered with the creation of a modern society where all could participate as political
beings.
The 1842 Land Allotment Act
The overall objective of the Land Allotment Act was to reconfigure the
Maroon communities’ landholdings. To accomplish this, the statute first removed the
land from Maroon control by returning its ownership, unilaterally, from the Maroons
to the British Crown.9 Further, the statute created a commission designed to divide up
the land, whereby each Maroon would receive two acres of land for his/her own use
while each child and grandchild received only one acre of land each. The statute drew
a sharp distinction between the original Maroons and their descendants, allowing the
colony to divest the descendants of the original treaty lands in part by allotting them
less land: “every maroon . . . shall be at liberty to apply to the commissioners . . . a
further quantity of one acre for each such child or grandchild.”10 Later in the post-
emancipation period, the Jamaican government often claimed that no more “real”
Maroons lived in Accompong.11
8 Ibid., 105. 9 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 10 Ibid. 11 Inspector General of Police, "March, 1906," 1B/576/333/CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. This letter simply acknowledges the receipt of documents referred to in the Gazette - “correspondence referring to the descendants of Maroons at Accompong.” This language reinforced the Jamaican government’s contention that the “real” Maroons no longer lived in Accompong.
46
The statute also detailed how Maroons were to secure their individual parcels
of land. Maroons were responsible for having the land surveyed, then each Maroon
would receive the land in fee simple (land that can be passed to heirs without any
restrictions). Each conveyance had to include a map of an area of land (plat) and
diagram, which would be available after the survey. If two Maroons were allotted the
same plot of land, the commissioners would resolve the dispute.12
Under the Land Allotment Act, while individual families held more land than
they had before, the community would no longer own the land; as a result, the
community was effectively disbanded. Individually held, land could be sold to people
who had no historical connection to the Maroon communities, an act that would
dissolve the communities.
The Land Allotment Act also eliminated the treaty-required superintendents
whose role was to ensure good relationships between the Maroon communities and the
government.13 The British created the superintendent position to minimally listen to
the Maroons so they would not declare war again.14 However, if the Maroons were to
assimilate into the general Black population, there would clearly be no need for
superintendents, because no Black sub-population would exist that needed pacifying.
It was also clear that the superintendents had formed close relationships with some in 12 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 13 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 14 Ibid.
47
the Maroon communities and functioned more like advocates on their behalf.15 These
relationships made it harder to merge the Maroon population into the general “negroe”
population, leading to the justification for the elimination of the superintendents’
positions. In order to phase them out, superintendents were to be paid £200 and each
one could use his homeu until 1 January 1843 so long as they assisted the
commissioners in allotting land to individual Maroons. If they failed to assist the
commissioners, they would forfeit their pay. These provisions were put in place to
ensure that the superintendents would implement the Act’s provisions and that
Maroons would comply with the policy decisions of the Jamaican Assembly and the
Crown.16
The Land Allotment Act further stated that after five years, if the lands
belonging to the Crown were not fully reallotted, the commissioners had the authority
to distribute it, particularly if the land proved to be insufficient for the Maroons living
there.17 These details left unanswered fundamental questions such as the role of
Maroons in a society without slavery; the reason why the Assembly decided to
reallocate Maroon lands in order to assimilate the Maroons into the rest of Jamaica
society; and the reason why the Assembly attempted to assimilate Maroons into the
greater Jamaican society. The answer to these questions reflects the relationship
understood by the Jamaican planters and their representatives in the Jamaican
15 Barbara Kopytoff, “The Maroons of Jamaica; an Ethnohistorical Study of Incomplete Polities, 1655 - 1905” (University of Pennsylvania, 1973), 226 - 7. 16 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 17 Ibid.
48
Assembly between land, access to “negroe” labor, and race, which applied to all
people of African descent, whether enslaved, free Black, or Maroon. These concerns
were in place well before emancipation as far back as the Second Maroon War.
Chapter one focused on the Accompong Maroons, because the First Maroon
War was central to the way the community perceived itself. This chapter takes a
slightly different focus as it applies to all of Jamaica’s Maroon groups, including the
Mooretown, Charlestown, Scotts Hall, Trelawney, and the Accompong Maroons, but
only from the British perspective. The Jamaican Assembly rarely viewed Maroon
policy, up until the 1860s, in terms of each separate Maroon community. As such, this
chapter works to dissect British (including planters, the Jamaican Assembly, and the
Colonial Secretary’s Office) intentions and policies, as well as their impact on the
Maroons. This shift in perspective serves to contextualize the Jamaican Assembly’s
policies toward Maroons during the post-emancipation period.
Maroons as a Racially Distinct People?
Among all the groups in Jamaica, the Maroons had a reputation as particularly
rebellious. Fighting two wars against the Maroons had proved exhausting for the
British settlers; the first ended with the 1739 peace treaty and the second war with the
Trelawney Maroons ended in 1795 after the government deported them to Nova
Scotia, Canada, and then to Sierra Leone. In the aftermath of the forced deportation of
the Trelawney Maroons, they were relieved both to have them off Jamaican soil and to
have peace with the remaining Maroons. After the Second Maroon War and into the
early nineteenth century, British settlers pondered these military foes they had to deal
49
with for over a century. Given the Maroons’ fighting spirit, they wondered, could they
be the same race as the seemingly docile slaves working on their plantations? Forty
years prior to emancipation, the British settlers turned to the language of race to
reconcile their understanding of the slave and Maroon populations.
Definitions of race differ by time period and prove rarely self-explanatory.
Race during the period between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries was
defined by type; that is, race was viewed as an unchanging biological construct.
People who were dark skinned were thought to be physically and psychologically
inferior to those with lighter skin. But typical understandings incorporated skin
coloring, height, and physiognomic facial characteristics, hair type, and intelligence,
which included culture, literature, religion, and morals.18 It was these descriptors, with
an emphasis on culture and religion that the British settlers used to determine that
Maroons and slaves were of the same race.
In 1739, when the Jamaican Assembly (with approval by the Crown’s Colonial
Secretary’s Office) and Maroons signed a treaty to end the First Maroon War, both
sides agreed that the Maroons constituted a community separate from the slaves. The
Jamaican government intentionally took this route in order to keep slaves from
interacting with this group of freed Blacks, so that the enslaved would not look to
these Blacks to learn rebelliousness in the pursuit of freedom. Therefore, in addition to
making sure that the Maroons were physically separated from the enslaved, the
18 Michael Banton, Racial Theories, Second ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; reprint, 1998), 72. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "Physiognomy, N."; Nicholas Hudson, "From "Nation" to "Race": The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought," Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 3 (1996).
50
Colonial government and the Crown also set the Maroons up as a force hostile to
escaping slaves. Indeed the treaty stipulated that the Maroons would capture and
return runaway slaves and act as a military force to suppress slave rebellions.19
Despite the legal distinction, the settlers already wondered whether any real
racial distinction between the two groups existed, focusing on cultural and religious
similarities. Writers during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
unanimously agreed that both slaves and Maroons developed in culturally similar
ways, and assessed the cultural status of both groups grimly as barbarous heathens.
These cultural factors even trumped perceived phenotypical differences.20 Jamaican
society’s concern about Maroon culture is best evidenced in musings about the Blacks
and Christianity. After the Maroons won their freedom, a debate raged about whether
or not to convert them to Christianity. Some writers believed that Maroons were
beyond the reach of Christianity and so should be allowed to remain heathens.
Edwards, a planter who wrote about the importance of Christianity for instilling truth 19 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 20 Certainly planters considered distinctions between the enslaved, particularly with concerns about who was most likely to provoke rebellion. However, the understanding of different ethnicities of Africans (a geographical designation from where slaves were purchased) was not to create different racial categories among Africans. Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998). This assumption was that slaves from all of these places were, overall, “Negroes” and they all shared traits common to “Negroes.” For example, Edward Long described “Negroes” as “barbarous,” “stupid,” and lazy and does not exempt any particular ethnicity from these overall characterizations. If people of African heritage, for Long, demonstrated any real intelligence, it was only because it was the sort of intelligence that would be applied to labor: “The Aradas are thought to excel all the rest in knowledge of agriculture, yet their skill is extremely incompetent.” Long, 401,386, 387, 404. Ultimately, except for this Maroon problem, planters did not even consider the possibility of different “races” among “Negroes.” Distinguishing characteristics between ethnicities were to evaluate “Negroe” labor, and nothing more.
51
and moral character in people, nevertheless held that some peoples were so barbaric
and “savage” they could not be helped by it. He associated the Maroons with this
group and argued that, “they are in general ignorant of our language, and all of them
attached to the gloomy superstitions of Africa (derived from their ancestors) with such
enthusiastic zeal and reverential ardour, as I think can only be eradicated with their
lives.”21 Edwards indirectly put forth a radical solution for “negroes” who were
unwilling to accept their lot as slaves: killing them as they inherently were beyond the
redemptive power of Christianity.
Notions of race also affected the discussion of whether it made sense to
convert slaves to Christianity. Edward Long, another planter, argued that Africans
were part of a “barbarous race,” “more brutal and savage than the wild beasts of the
forest.”22 Ultimately, it was the slaves’ “barbarous stupidity” that prevented them from
being converted.23 Long’s colorful language deserves closer examination. He
attributed the unchangeable trait of barbarism, as well as propensities toward brutality
and savagery to slaves. Because “Negroes” were unable to change, they would be
unable to understand Christianity.24 Ultimately, race, coded as immutable barbarism,
was being used as a cover for the real fear: that slaves would use Christianity to rebel
21 Edwards, xxxvi - xxxvii. 22 Long, 373. 23 Ibid., 428. 24 Ibid.; ibid.
52
against the institution of slavery.25 The Maroons, in his estimation, were no different
and also remained outside of the realm of Christianity.
Long wrote his observations prior to emancipation. Once the prospect of
emancipation drew near, the colonial government rethought its approach to ensuring
that slaves had access to Christianity. Indeed, in the late 1820s Benjamin Lucock
argued that the disposition of the “Negroe” actually recommended him for
Christianity. For Lucock, it was not whether the enslaved were the right “type” for
Christianity, but whether their culture, a changeable entity, would permit them to be
effective Christians. Hence, he wrote that they had a respect for the living; were able
to look up to their superiors; and had a “childlike ‘disposition to obedience.’”
Ultimately, “[t]his sentiment is still further and more unequivocally displayed in their
reverence for the ministers of religion . . . in the first place, it disposes them to receive
instruction, and even reproof and admonition in the most childlike simplicity; and then
it impels them to render any services in their power; and make endless little presents at
the expense of great self-deprivation in order to testify their respect for their spiritual
teachers.”26
Such optimism about the role of Christianity in West Indian societies was
shared across the Atlantic as Lord Glenelg, the Colonial Secretary, fashioned policy
on behalf of the Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO) for both the apprenticeship and the
25 See generally Emilia Viotti daCosta, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Shirley C. Gordon, God Almighty Make Me Free: Christianity in Preemancipation Jamaica (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 26 Benjamin Lucock, Jamaica: Enslaved and Free (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1846), 115 - 6.
53
post-emancipation period (1835 – 39). From London, the CSO ordered that to avoid
administrative duplication, the colonies should use the same religious structures that
existed prior to the ending of slavery in order to spread Christianity among the
formerly enslaved.27 Further, the CSO argued that it was religion that would guarantee
the success of the post-emancipation project.28 One prediction of the success of
Christianity among the former slaves would be that marriage rates would increase. The
CSO argued that “concubinage [w]as directly opposed to the spirit and precepts of
Christianity” and thus marriage would be critical to ensuring the “foundation of public
morals”29 among the formerly enslaved. Ultimately, Christianity was seen as a real
possibility for the former slaves, indeed a necessity to ensure that they would thrive in
the post-emancipation world. No longer were they perceived as being so barbaric that
they could not embrace the promise of Christianity.
While Maroons and the formerly enslaved were rarely discussed in the same
sentence unless it revolved around quelling rebellions, once slavery was abolished
similar notions about the groups developed. Both groups were initially dismissed as
unconvertible because of their inherent traits of barbarity. Yet the notion that the
ability to access Christianity was limited because of inherent racial characteristics
largely disappeared around emancipation. This conclusion helped to eliminate race as
27 Lord Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies &C., 25 November 1835, 1835," House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, London. 28 United Kingdom, In Explanation of the Measures Adopted by Her Majesty's Government for Giving Effect to the Act for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Colonies1838. Vol. V. 29 Ibid.
54
a basis for treating Maroons and former slaves differently in the post-emancipation
era.
Once emancipation became a certainty, the legal and societal ramifications for
differentiations based on race were apparent to the slaveholding class and the Crown,
with obvious implications for slaves and previously unexamined implications for the
Maroons. Ultimately, British settlers and the CSO no longer attempted to identify
differences in phenotype or cultural or religious backgrounds between the Maroons
and the slave population especially when these characteristics no longer served as a
bar to conversion to Christianity. Thus, any differences posited as existing between the
two groups were created solely by operation of law as a result of the treaty and
legislation passed by the Assembly.
“Equal” By Law
In the late 1820s and the early 1830s, the British Parliament debated the
specifics of emancipation. Parliament was torn between granting freedom for the
enslaved and the planters’ need for labor if they were going to continue to make
profits. Therefore, colonial officials argued that they had to place the former slaves
and White Jamaicans on the same footing in post-slavery societies. Glenelg directed
that during slavery, the public transcript, the legislation in effect, “established
innumerable distinctions of the most invidious nature in favour of Europeans and their
descendants, and to the prejudice of persons of African birth or origin.”30 However,
30 Lord Glenelg, "Circular Despatch - Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, November 6, 1837," Papers Relating to the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies, London. While
55
under his interpretation, the emancipation laws made sure that “[t]hese distinctions are
also abolished . . . Laws conceived in general terms, that is embracing free men of
every description, and therefore apparently equal, were yet passed with scarcely a
disguised reference to a state of society which no longer exists . . .” and created the
new public transcript.31
To the extent that Parliament intended that the emancipation laws guaranteed
equality before the law, this was also the stated goal of the Land Allotment Act. Lord
Glenelg communicated regularly with each of the British Caribbean colonies about
how to implement emancipation’s goals. He did not write explicitly about the
Maroons; however, his documents reveal much about what the British bureaucracy
thought about race and its impact on the Caribbean after slavery, particularly as it
applied to the use of land. The language he used in his dispatches mirrored some of the
issues and language used by other officials in documents pertaining to the Maroons,
specifically that the legislature needed to pass a “bill to relieve the maroons of this
island from certain disabilities imposed upon them by law . . .”32 It also mirrored
language used in the Jamaican bureaucracy’s notes concerning Maroon land conflicts
after the passing of the Land Allotment Act.
While the newly freed Blacks knew how to labor, they no longer desired to
work for others. The way former slaves could guarantee labor independence was by
Glenelg stated that eliminating distinctions between “Europeans” and “perons of African origin,” there was no intent to make sure both groups were equal before the law. 31 Ibid. 32 Jamaica Assembly, "Prayer to Read the Maroon Bill a Second Time," Jamaica Assembly (Spanish Town, Jamaica: 1840).
56
owning land. Planters believed that former slaves had an insatiable desire for land and
that broadening land ownership to include the formerly enslaved threatened the labor
pool. Hence, once former slaves finally earned their freedom in 1838, the Colonial
Secretary, in keeping with the planters’ interests, tried to deprive Blacks of access to
land, the “dirty linen” hidden by the public transcript.33 Therefore, in the post-
emancipation period, while the connection between race and slavery was theoretically
severed, race continued to define land ownership. As Derrick Bell puts it: “for a
complex of racial reasons, whites are not willing to alter traditional policies and
conduct which effectively deprive blacks of . . . rights and opportunities” and a law
that was neutral on its face reinforced the inequity intended in the post-emancipation
laws.34
To accomplish this, the CSO explicitly stated that their policy was to keep
Blacks on plantations, because access to land would not contribute their civilization.
Whether former slaves would secure private property was never an issue. Any
property held by private landowners would never be accessible to former slaves
because it was far too expensive. However, former slaves thought that they could
acquire Crown Lands, lands owned by the British Crown. Such land did not
necessarily have an owner who was present and using it. Peasants, the former slaves,
squatted on and claimed these Crown Lands as their own. Such extra-legal activity not 33 Thwarting the ability of former slaves to secure land for themselves in post-emancipation societies was not only the goal in Jamaica, as this occurred in many societies who abolished slavery later than Jamaica. See generally Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Scott. 34 Derrick Bell, Race, Racism, and Ameriacn Law (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1980; reprint, Second), 3.
57
only represented a breach of ownership laws, it also deprived the plantations of greatly
needed labor. Glenelg wrote: “The object is not to force the cultivation of the present
staples by depriving the Negroes of every other resource for subsistence, but merely to
condense and keep together the population in such a manner that it may always
contain a due proportion of labourers.”35 Overall, he argued that if laborers were
allowed to scatter after the apprenticeships onto virgin lands, then they would escape
the civilizing forces of government.36 Further, the CSO instructed the colonial
legislatures to take measures prohibiting squatting; to live on or use a piece of land
would require “a proprietary title,” proof that a particular person owned the property.37
Finally, the CSO wanted to ensure that Crown Lands were priced so that
purchase was prohibitive for peasants. Glenelg instructed the governors that they were,
to fix such a price upon all Crown lands as may place them out of the reach of persons without capital . . . it is possible, by fixing the price of fresh land so high as to place it above the reach of the poorest class of settlers, to keep the labour market in its most prosperous state from the beginning. This precaution, by ensuring a supply of labourers at the same time that it increases the value of the land, makes it more profitable to cultivate old land well than to purchase new.38
Glenelg’s guidance for interpreting the post-emancipation law points to the divide
between the law’s ideals (the public transcript, the “self-portrait of dominant elites”39)
and implementation. Specifically, while he explicitly exempts all “negroes” from land
acquisition, he encourages the colonies to follow the new laws because they had
35Lord Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 36Ibid. 37 Ibid., p. 10. 38 Ibid. 39 Scott, 8.
58
“established innumerable distinctions of the most invidious nature in favour of
Europeans and their descendants, and to the prejudice of persons of Africa birth or
origin.”40 Indeed, Glenelg’s insistence upon ensuring that “negroes” remain laborers
meant that the colonial officials implementing the emancipation laws did not function
as a “neutral, value-free arbiters, independent of and unaffected by social and
economic relations, political forces, and cultural phenomena.”41
It is important to note that these policies were intended to apply to former
slaves; Maroons defied these strictures. They were already freed Blacks because they
had previously fought and won a treaty guaranteeing peace and freedom. The treaty
stipulated that labor could not be required of the Maroons.42 Further complicating the
government’s access to Maroon labor was the treaty that guaranteed land to four
communities, all of which used that land to support themselves.43 However, the British
intended to extend the policy of land deprivation well beyond the former slaves. The
Land Allotment Act explicitly required that the government take back the lands
granted to the Maroon communities, distribute some of the land, and keep the land that
40 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch - Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, November 6, 1837," Papers Relating to the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies, London. 41 David Kairys, ed. The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 4. In this work, Kairys provides a critical legal critique of the law as value neutral and devoid of political agendas. The great source of “the law’s power: it enforces, reflects, constitutes, and legitimizes dominant social and power relations without a need for or the appearance of control from outside and by means of social actors who largely believe in their own neutrality and the myth of legal reasoning.” ibid., 5. 42 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 43 Ibid.
59
did not get distributed to the communities.44 Regardless of the Maroons’ legal status,
the British hoped they would become a part of the larger Black workforce, although
this is not revealed explicitly.
The planters’ intent regarding using Maroons’ labor can be culled by
examining their assessment of how Maroons worked on their treaty-provided lands.
One term of the treaty provided that the Jamaican governor hold a meeting with the
Maroons once a year, providing an opportunity for governmental officials and other
White visitors to observe the Maroons, sometimes on the Maroons’ terms.45 An
account of these visits indicates a sense of what Maroon life was like before
emancipation and includes information about the division of labor in the colonies.
These accounts must be read carefully, of course, they demonstrate an inability to
appreciate this community in a manner that would be expected during this period and
reveal how little the observers knew about Maroon life or culture.
The descriptions about work life in a Maroon colony, particularly as described
by Bryan Edwards, includes three critiques: that the Maroons were lazy; that only
Maroon women actually did any labor; and that visitors were expected to give food to
44 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 45 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).
60
Maroons upon arrival.46 Edwards remarked that the Maroons did little to cultivate food
in the Maroon villages and were not inclined toward “sober industry,” and; that they
had a “repugnance to the labour of tilling the earth.”47 He continued that Maroons
would rather steal yams, plantains, corn, and other vegetables from other plantations
than grow their own. Finally, he stated “the ground was always in a shocking state of
neglect and ruin.”48 Edwards concluded that the Maroons did not make up an
industrious workforce and proved to be lazy.
Edwards also commented extensively on gender divisions in agricultural labor
in the Maroon villages. Specifically, he discussed the way that land was cleared.
Women burned the trunks of trees until they fell over. Edwards remarked that there
was no other way for the Maroons to do this work and was concerned that women
were doing too much difficult work: women were not only clearing the land, but also
laborers “of the field” and “every other species of drudgery.”49 There is an irony in his
seeming solicitousness, since at this time, female slaves often did difficult work in the
fields. Women played a key part in helping to process sugar cane.50 Edward Long
making the same comments about the Eboe women stating that “[t]he Ebo men are
lazy, and averse to every laborious employment; the women performing almost all the
46 Bryan Edwards, An Historical Survey of the Island of Saint Domingo Together with an Account of the Maroon Negroes in the Island of Jamaica; and a History of the War in the West Indies in 1793 and 1794 (London: John Stockdale, 1801). 47 Ibid., 321. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Lucille Mathurin Mair, A Historical Study of Women in Jamaica: 1655 - 1844 (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2006), 198 - 200.
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work in their own country . . .”51 Judith Carney noted comments European observers
made on women’s labor asserting that African women were subjected to unbelievable
servitude as they processed rice along the Gambia River.52 Watching women work so
hard may have provided some example of what was possible for using Maroon labor
because the women already knew how to do agricultural work and could clear trees to
make land available for profitable crops.
Finally, Edwards remarked upon what was required of visitors when they
visited the Maroon villages. He wrote “[t]he visitors too were not only fleeced of their
money, but were likewise obliged to furnish the feast, it being indispensably
necessary, on such occasions, to send beforehand wine and provisions of all kinds . .
.”53 Edwards chose the loaded word “fleeced” to describe the welcome given by the
Maroons, thus supporting his claim that Maroons have a “repugnance to the labour of
tilling the earth.”54 Planters held dim views of slave laborers, often asserting their
slaves were lazy and would not work properly unless threatened by the whip. Edwards
is representative of other British viewers: visiting the Maroons reinforced their
already-held conclusions that Maroons were generally lazy, like the other Blacks, but
that, as the women were both familiar with agriculture and able to work hard, their
labor could be harnessed to the plantations’ benefit. The British had some hope that
51 Long, 403 - 4. 52 Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 26 - 7. 53 Edwards, 322. 54 Ibid., 321.
62
the Maroons would and could become part of a larger African-heritage workforce,
even before the end of slavery.
Challenges with Contextualizing the Land Allotment Act
From the British perspective, differential treatment of the Maroons based on a
peaceable settlement of the Wars and the treaty had come to an end: if Blacks and
Maroons were not separate people, there was no justification for treating them
differently. Maroons and former slaves were the same people and should be
recognized as such under the law.
Nevertheless, the reasons for rearranging Maroon land holdings were never
explicitly stated in the Land Allotment Act. Scarcely any legislative history for the Act
exists because no explicit sources explaining the Jamaica Assembly’s intentions have
survived. Instead, the provisions contained within the Act itself convey the goals of its
framers. Notwithstanding the paucity of sources connected to the Land Allotment Act,
a slight legislative history exists. Maroons initiated the legislative process by
appealing to the legislature to resolve longstanding problems connected with
restrictions on road travel and the colonial state’s handling of Maroon lands.55
Maroons did send in letters to the Assembly in the late 1830s, which were
placed in the legislative record. As recorded, the letters are not reflective of the ways
in which Maroons use language nor do they fully represent Maroon objectives; in fact,
it could be argued that the letters distort the Maroons’ intent. Typical letters from
Maroon communities that have survived are written in very simple English and often
55Carey, 409.
63
contain both spelling and grammatical errors, which reflect the Maroons’ lack of
access to a formal educational system.56
One example of Accompong Maroon writing is a request for more land to
support the community. In this letter, the Colonel (the title given to each Maroon
group’s political leader) presented the Maroons as very humble and respectfully
acknowledged the Colonial Secretary by correctly addressing him as “Your
Excellency.” He then directly stated what he expected from the Colonial Secretary’s
office – more land, because their lands had grown fallow:
We have been noticing advertisements concerning unpatented lands of this Island, and regret to note that there is none mentioned as in St Elizabeth, we therefore beg to call your attention to that piece which situates between Cooks Bottom Elderspring [now Elderslie?] and Accompong (Maroon Town), and which is chiefly accupied [sic] by wild animals, and ask you to be pleased to grant us the same felicity as in Portland and other parishes mentioned in your advertisement, as our progress has been retarded for the lack of good lands for cultivation, and by so doing we are sure it will be the means of stoping [sic] a lot of hameless [sic] and unemployed young men from going to Colon and other place who may become the backbone of our island for further generations.57
56While the Maroons attained freedom through the treaties, there was no commitment to helping them build their communities after slavery, including setting up an educational system for their children. The design of the treaties was to segregate them from slave populations so that they would not pose a threat to Jamaican plantation societies. Further, based on the way that Maroons educated each other, through the use of oral history about their communities, it is unclear that they would have accepted a British educational system after the treaty was signed. For an example of Maroon writing, see where Colonel Wright wrote “To His Excelency the Governor of this Island Sir Augustas W.L. Hemming. We the undersigned one, of her Majesty so Subject have the honour most respectfully to write to his Excelency Expressively and to explain to you that on the 16th May some of our men working on part of our back land which were unsurveyed was attacked by one Inspector twelve constable, one Bailiff, two rural policeman and some other civillious [sic] with them, with arms and for which I consider to be abridge of the peace.” Henry Ezekiel Wright, "Letter to Augustus Hemming About Attacks against Maroons, May 28, 1900," 1B/576/365/CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. In this sample, it is clear what the Colonel is concerned about and the language is not confusing. 57 Henry W. Rowe, "1905," 1B/576/333/CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
64
This particular request makes clear what ails the community: they needed more land to
support the community not only with foodstuffs, but also ensuring employment and
reflects a concrete request as opposed to an aspirational principle.
Before delving into the content of the Maroon requests as recorded by the
legislature, there are three important points to consider about their trustworthiness as
documents. The original, presumably handwritten petitions are absent from the
archives. Based on the correspondence sent by the Maroons in the post-emancipation
period, they did not submit petitions to anyone. In general, when Maroon groups made
requests of the government, they spoke through the Colonel, who would write a letter
to the applicable government agent, attaching his signature, along with those of the
members of his council.58
The language in these seemingly rewritten Maroon petitions tended to reflect
the Assembly’s legislative priorities and were not synchronized with what the
Maroons generally wanted for their communities. The same petition asserts the
following Maroon demands:
That amid the varied and important changes which have taken place in the colony, whereby the condition of the labouring population has been
58 Many of my assumptions about the Maroon political structure are based, in part, on the letters sent by Maroons to the Jamaican government, because the letters are signed by other people with military appellations in addition to the Colonel. A letter written by Colonel Wright concerning some Maroons who had been roughed up by law enforcement and surveyors, was also signed by Peter James Rowe, who held the title of “Major” and John Reid Foster, who held the title of “Captain.” Colonel Wright, "June 13, 1905," Letter, 1B/5/76/33/3 (CSO)2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. Further, a conversation with Alice Baldwin-Jones, at the time a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Columbia University, included a discussion of the political structure of the Accompong Maroons. She argued that the Colonel is elected and sets up a council of learned/wise Maroons familiar with the political workings of the community. Alice Baldwin-Jones, conversation, September 2007. Finally, while I conducted interviews in Accompong in 2008, it became clear to me that the people with whom I was allowed contact were all members of the Colonel’s council.
65
considerably improved, petitioners have remained a separate and distinct people, subject to the operation of peculiar and oppressive laws, and must continue to labour under these disabilities, unless the house will take measures to repeal the enactments of which they complain, and place them upon an equal footing with the other inhabitants of the colony.59
The only way the legislature could have accomplished putting the Maroons on “an
equal footing with the other inhabitants” was by repealing the treaty; a document that
the Maroons argue is unchangeable based on the way it was sealed. When both the
British and the Maroons combined blood, rum, and dirt in a calabash and drank that
mixture, it created a permanent bond between the parties that could never be broken, a
literal and symbolic seal for the 1739 treaty.60 Any legislative history implying that the
Maroons would agree to repeal statutes including the 1739 treaty would be
fundamentally at odds with the Maroons’ belief that the treaty was an enduring
document and therefore does not reflect the community’s priorities.
It also seems that the CSO, and by extension, the Assembly on the one hand,
and the Maroons, on the other, deployed the term “disabilities” in contrary ways. For
the Maroons, remaining a distinct and separate people was never considered a
disability. Rather, Maroons considered their separateness an advantage in that
remaining separate never compromised who they were as a people.61 However, the
Assembly, using the term as Glenelg had, perceived the continued functioning of the
Maroons as a legally distinct people to be a disability (for Jamaica), because they 59 Jamaica House of Assembly, "Petition of Certain Maroons of Mooretown," in Vote of Assembly (1840 - 41). 60 Bilby; Kopytoff; Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008); Thompson, "Interview with Rupee Reid, Accompong Abeng Player," (2008). 61“Viewing their communally held lands not only as a sacred inheritance from their ancestors, but also as a key to their survival as distinct peoples, they have staunchly resisted all efforts – whether by outsiders, or by Maroon defectors – to compromise the integrity of these territories.” Bilby, 350.
66
would not be assimilated into a larger community of Black workers. As a result, while
Jamaica’s Maroon groups tried to move their own agenda through the Assembly after
emancipation, they played into the CSO’s and Assembly’s policy priorities of treating
everyone (or at least all potential Black laborers) the same way under the law. At this
point the legislature enacted the Land Allotment Act.
Ridding the Maroons of “Innumerable Distinctions”
Glenelg’s concern with ridding people of “innumerable distinctions” was
extended to the Maroons with the Land Allotment Act. Its first step was abrogating the
1739 treaty with the intention of assimilating Maroons into general Jamaican society.
Ultimately, from the Jamaican Assembly’s point of view, these distinctions in land
ownership were clear “disabilities” for the Maroons and impeded Maroons from
functioning like other residents of the colony.62 The exact content of these
“disabilities,” as seen from the British perspective, were evident in the laws
overturned by the passing of the Land Allotment Act. Indeed, the Act begins by listing
the statutes it was designed to overturn.
The first two pieces of legislation listed in the Land Allotment Act for repeal
are the treaties themselves, which originally granted Maroons freedom from slavery
and a significant land grant to support the communities.63 The distinctions created by
62 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 63 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739); "An Act for Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel Robert Bennett,
67
the treaties for the Maroons are clear: (1) they would be one of the few Black
populations in Jamaica that were not enslaved; (2) they would be one of the only
Black populations that owned land granted by the British crown; (3) they would be
one of the only Black communities in Jamaica that would be required to serve a
military purpose, namely crushing any rebellions and returning runaway slaves. They
were also compelled to help defend Jamaica should a foreign power invade. Repealing
the treaties would enable the British to capture Maroon lands so that the Maroons
would have to labor for planters desperate for labor in the years following
emancipation.
Labor was the focal point of the second set of repealed statutes. The legislature
wanted to encourage and reinforce the Maroons’ role of both capturing runaway slaves
and stopping slave rebellions; this would be encouraged both by payment and by
providing the Maroons with arms if necessary.64 They also repealed legislation
stipulating that Maroons were to be paid and the terms of their work were to be
memorialized in a contract and signed by both parties.65 These laws originally sought
to maintain a strict division between the free Maroons and the slaves who worked on
and Quao the Commander of the Rebels, for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provision for Four White Persons to Reside at Crawford's Town and New Nanny Town, and for Granting Freedom to Two Negroes Who Were Guides to Colonel Bennett," in Acts of Assembly, Passed in the Island of Jamaica, From the Year 1681 to the Year 1769 inclusive (1740). 64 "An Act of Authorizing His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, or the Governor or Commander in Chief for the Time Being, to Employ the Maroon Negroes of Accompong Town, for the Internal Defence and Security of This Island," (Jamaica: Laws of Jamaica, 1798); Blake. 65 "An Act to Repeal "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to the Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes . . . Mentioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," (Jamaica: Laws of Jamaica, 1791).
68
the plantations closer to the coasts. Indeed plantation society heavily relied on such
distinctions between classes.66
However, due to post-emancipation labor shortages, the legislature reversed
the requirement that the descendants of the Trelawney Maroons had to stay away from
Jamaica, which suggests that the government had hopes with regard to that
population.67 They turned to the Trelawney Maroons as workers, revealing the
desperate need for additional workers once slave labor could not be ensured.68
Planters firmly believed that without the institution of slavery, they could no
longer profitably raise crops in the Caribbean, the crux of their opposition to
emancipating slaves. As they eventually acknowledged Great Britain’s move toward
emancipating the enslaved, they turned their legislative efforts to keeping former
slaves on their plantations for as long as possible. During emancipation, they therefore
lobbied the British Parliament to reimburse them for lost property, arguing that they
no longer could count the enslaved as one of their assets. Because Parliament was
forcing them to part with their property, they had to be reimbursed for it.69
Why Assimilating Maroons Meant Restructuring Land
66 See generally Kamau Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). 67 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842). 68 William James Gardner, A History of Jamaica: From Its Discovery by Christopher Columbus to the Present Time: Including an Account of Its Trade and Agriculture; Sketches of the Manners, Habits, and Customs of All Classes of Its Inhabitants; and a Narrative of the Progress of Religion and Education in the Island. (London: Elliot Stock, 1873), 412. 69 Holt.
69
In a nod to the concerns expressed by the Maroon communities and to ensure
that Maroon communities were functioning under the same laws as the former slaves,
the Land Allotment Act ostensibly eliminated provisions offensive to the Maroons.
However, it is clear that the concerns stated by Maroons were never seriously
considered, and that the objective of both the CSO and the Assembly was to eliminate
racial distinctions under the law for their own ends. They achieved this by taking the
land from Maroon ownership and returning it to the Crown. Only then would the
newly created commissioners redistribute these Crown lands to individual Maroons to
be owned individually. Finally, if the lands were not completely redistributed to
Maroons, the commissioners would decide what to do with the remaining land.
The British, in the case of the Maroons, were not interested in eliminating
communal land holding as a singular goal. Land interfered with the ability of
“negroes” to work on the plantations, so the legislature sought to separate them from
it. The first piece of legislation repealed by the Land Allotment Act was the 1791
legislation that encouraged Maroons to relinquish their share of communally-held
lands in a sovereign community in exchange for becoming a Jamaican free person of
color.70 The statute provided incentives for Maroons to leave their community and the
legal supports their community provided. In order to do this, Maroons had to report to
a court and gave up their share of Maroon lands in return for papers confirming the
70 "An Act to Repeal "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to the Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes . . . Mentioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," (Jamaica: Laws of Jamaica, 1791).
70
completion of this step. Maroons then had to move away from community lands and
sign up for the militia in their new location. This provision explicitly tried to
disaggregate the relationship between Maroons and their lands and communities, even
while Jamaica was a slave society, because, as the legislature envisioned it, for former
Maroons to support themselves, they would have to work on plantations. Also of note
in this particular legislation are the numerous provisions requiring proper payment and
acknowledgement of the labor relationship between the plantation owner and a
Maroon via contract. Maroons would be fully supported and have the force of the state
behind them if they were to work on the plantations. Further, the statute required that
Maroons would become part of the militia, thus filling another needed labor position.
The logic of the Land Allotment Act was as effective as it was clear: it would
be much harder to wrestle land away from an entire community than from individual
members of that community. But taking land away from the Maroons would be critical
if the planters were to conscript Maroon bodies to work on their plantations. So
although the reasons for removing Maroon control over their own land was couched in
terms of legal equality, it was the need for labor that was the primary motivation for
the passage of the legislation.
Even after the repeal of former Acts relevant to Maroons and the provisions
laid out in the Land Allotment Act, numerous amendments to the 1842 statute were
subsequently passed in the Assembly to rectify problems that arose after the fact.
Despite the fact that discussions of the other amendments proposed in 1840 are no
longer in the legislative record, they can be gleaned through the language in the 1850
71
amendment, where the goals of amendments from the intervening years were
enumerated. Only then were the objectives of the 1850 amendment themselves were
laid out. The first amendment was passed in 1844 and it extended the time during
which allotments could be made by two years, which indicates that Maroons were not
eager to sign up for individual allotments.
In 1847, the legislature extended the time to reallocate the land to individual
Maroons yet again. Some tension exists in the historical record about whether or not
the Maroons actually signed up for their allotments at all. Some Maroons received the
individual allotments, but the existence of multiple extensions in the timeframe of the
legislation points to the fact that many more resisted the provisions of the Land
Allotment Act.
The Act itself reinforced a two-part process for allocating the lands: (1)
allotment and (2) providing the individual with both title to the land and a legitimate
survey.71 So while some Maroons were willing to break with the tradition of
communal ownership, they were not keen on submitting to being surveyed. The
surveys, in fact, became a sticking point in the time period following the passing of the
Land Allotment Act. They viewed surveyors suspiciously, believing they were there to
take away the Maroons’ treaty-won land.72
71 "An Act to Extend the Period for Granting and Conveying to the Several Maroons in This Island the Respective Allotments Made to Them under the Acts of Fifth Victoria, Chapter Forty-Nine; Seventh Victoria, Chapter Thirty-Four; and Ninth Victoria, Chapter Twenty-Seven," in 31 - 2 (1850). 72 Surveying became such a sensitive process that even politics in Accompong could have dictated a Colonels’ removal because they were perceived as not taking a rigorous line against surveying. Maroons generally perceived surveyors as removing Maroon lands. Jameson Calder, "1897," 1B/576/365/CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
72
To address these issues, yet another amendment was passed in 1850 ordering
that as long as a plat and diagram73 were attached to each allotment, the
commissioners could grant the conveyances,74 indicating that Maroons regularly
disputed the surveyors’ conclusions, so much so that they refused to complete the
process. Finally, the last 1856 amendment generally extended the time period for
enforcing the Land Allotment Act, because it seemed that while allotments were
authorized, the grants and conveyances were again not executed: it attempted to
remedy the same problem seen in 1850. The only reason revealed in the legislative
history for why the grants and conveyances may not have been executed was because
no surveys were completed and therefore the “plats and diagrams” were not present
with the allotments.
No more amendments were made to the Land Allotment Act after 1856, nine
years before the Morant Bay Rebellion. The goal of eliminating the land distinctions
between the former slaves and Maroons had not been achieved. Although the
Assembly saw them as racially the same people, the Maroons continued to hold their
land corporately and still adhered to the terms of the treaties bringing the Maroon
Wars to an end. The legislative record is silent about why the Jamaican Assembly did
not force the Maroons to implement their goals.
73 Each allotment was expected to have a piece of land (plat) and a map of that land attached to it for both the individual’s and the colony’s future reference. 74 "An Act to Extend the Period for Granting and Conveying to the Several Maroons in This Island the Respective Allotments Made to Them under the Acts of Fifth Victoria, Chapter Forty-Nine; Seventh Victoria, Chapter Thirty-Four; and Ninth Victoria, Chapter Twenty-Seven," in 31 - 2 (1850).
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The Morant Bay Rebellion added a twist to assimilating the Maroons into the
Jamaican population. In 1865, Paul Bogle led a group Black peasants who were
disappointed with the process of freedom in a large rebellion in the Eastern part of
Jamaica. They sought better treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system; full
political participation in Jamaican society, including the opportunity to fully
participate in the legislature; and access to a better life, either with higher wages or
with increased access to land of their own. By the time the Morant Bay Rebellion
started, Governor Eyre saw some usefulness is keeping Maroons a separate body, even
without a definable racial distinction between them and the Blacks who rebelled. In an
act of historical irony, the Jamaican government relied upon the 1739 treaty to call up
the Eastern Maroons (generally the Mooretown Maroons) to end the rebellion. This
occurred despite the fact that the Jamaican government never did relinquish its goal of
assimilating the Maroons into the larger “negroe” population, as can be seen in the
land disputes that arose after the Morant Bay Rebellion.
Maroon Concerns about the Land Allotment Act
In light of this legislative history ending in 1856, one can only guess the
Maroons’ reaction to the new laws concerning their lands. Oral histories and the early
letters they wrote to petition the Jamaican Assembly provide some hints into their
states of mind at the time. Further, the fact that Maroons refused to take the detailed
measures to implement the Act speaks silent volumes.
Three fundamental conflicts arose between the Jamaican government and the
Maroons. But none of these are explicitly laid out in the historical record; indeed it
74
seems the two groups never discussed them. First and foremost were the contradictory
viewpoints about the permanence of the 1739 treaty. Second, they disagreed about
whether the Maroons were a separate people; while the Maroons would not argue that
they were racially distinct from former slaves, they used history and culture as factors
distinguishing them from Jamaica’s “negroes.” Finally, both the government and the
Maroons disagreed about the nature of land ownership: corporate ownership of land
became a sticking point between the parties.
While the planters and the Assembly concluded that there was no “racial” basis
for treating them differently, the Maroons became more convinced over time that they
were a distinct people from the formerly enslaved.75 Indeed, in the Maroon language,
Kromanti, all British (the Maroons make no distinctions between the British: they are
called that whether they are from the CSO, the Governor’s office, the Assembly, or the
planter class) and Jamaica’s other Blacks are called “obroni,” meaning outsider.76
There were three sources of tension between Maroons and the formerly
enslaved. First, the Second Maroon War highlighted the distinction between the
enslaved and Maroons, even as reflected in British narratives of the event. The Second
Maroon War was precipitated by an incident in which Black slaves whipped two
Trelawney Maroons for stealing hogs from a plantation. The Maroons were furious,
because the British allowed a non-Maroon to punish members of the Maroon
75Maroons still see themselves as separate from Jamaicans. 76Kenneth Bilby writes extensively about the obroni/Maroon distinction. “Maroons considered themselves (and to a large extent still do) a people apart; all others, categorized as obroni, were potential enemies.” Bilby, 291. The Accompong also refer to outsiders as a “biniquoi.” Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008).
75
community. From their perspective, they should not have been allowed to judge
Maroons because the treaty stipulated that Maroons judged their own people. The
legal basis for the difference between the Maroons and the enslaved was rooted in the
treaty. Using a slave to punish Maroons infuriated the Trelawney because it directly
contravened the treaty, which provided that any penalty short of capital punishment
was to be administered by Maroons only.77 Further, while the Accompong did not rise
to the defense of the Trelawney Maroons when they started a war against the British,
the Accompong claim that they and the Trelawney Maroons shared a common
lineage.78 Ultimately, one core difference between the Jamaican government and
Maroon perspectives is that the Maroons saw (and continue to see) themselves as a
separate people from the other Jamaicans of African heritage, such that the Maroons
would resist all attempts to assimilate into that larger population.79
The second primary historical difference between Maroons and the British was
the nature of the treaty and the enduring obligations embedded in it. It is somewhat
surprising that the British decided to unilaterally abandon the 1739 treaties with
Jamaica’s Maroon groups, despite the attitudes of racial and cultural superiority they
so clearly displayed. For the Maroons, breaking the treaty was simply not possible:
Cudjoe and John Guthrie, the treaty’s signatories, could not separate their blood.
77 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 78 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). 79 Bilby, 291.
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Hence, the attempt to redistribute lands won in the “blood treaty”80 and to try to equate
Maroons with other people of African heritage in Jamaica was felt as a betrayal they
could not have imagined.
Finally, the Maroons were seriously vexed by the government’s attempt not
only to reorder who owned the Maroons’ lands, but also to dissolve corporate land
ownership by that community. To this day, Maroon lands are not owned individually,
but held by the entire Maroon community as a unified body.81 The Maroons most
likely presumed that the treaty actually justified corporate land ownership: the British
gave the lands; the Maroons were responsible for determining how that land should be
handled. Any outsider making decisions about the distribution of Maroons lands
would be trammeling on their rights as an autonomous body, a concept enshrined in
the treaty. Hence, the Land Allotment Act reflects a gulf between British and Maroon
understandings of the nature of the treaty.
In Jamaica after slavery, the Maroon response to the Land Allotment Act
reflects the first in a series of resistant activities connected to both Maroon lands and
community. If the legislation had worked in the first place, there would be no need to
continue passing amendments for its implementation. Given the significant differences
in understanding over the role of land, the Maroons’ failure to comply with the law
became an act of resistance.
80 Ibid. 81Current maps still label Accompong as “Accompong Maroon Lands” which indicates that there is no individual ownership and that they are owned by the entire community. Further, Contancia Foster also stated that anyone could use Accompong lands, but that no individual person can own the land. Jamaica Land Valuation Agency, "Map Sheet 43d," (Kingston, Jamaica: 2008); Thompson, "Interview with Constantia Foster," (2008).
77
James C. Scott comments on the hidden transcript and the infrapolitics82 of
slave or peasant groups. He writes that these means of rebellion, “of disguising
ideological subordination are somewhat analogous to the patterns by which, in my
experience, peasants and slaves have disguised their efforts to thwart material
appropriation of their labor, their production, and their property: for example,
poaching, foot-dragging, pilfering, dissimulation, flight. Together, these forms of
insubordination might suitably be called the infrapolitics of the powerless.”83
Foot-dragging, for example, is emblematic as resistance because of its lack of
activity. It slows production so that the proprietor cannot extract as much profit from
workers or products. This suggests something about the power relationship between
the British Crown (with Jamaican inhabitants as its subjects) and the Maroons. The
power relationship between these two parties is defined by treaty. Treaties
memorialize a particular power relationship, that of equals, equal sovereign powers.
And indeed, when the Maroons ignored the Land Allotment Act, as a sovereign
power, they reasserted their status as equals.
Conclusion
Through the late eighteenth century, the CSO, Jamaican Assembly, and some
Jamaican planters grappled with whether the Maroons were actually a different race
from others of African heritage residing in Jamaica as slaves. Racial difference proved
82Scott defines infrapolitics as “an appropriate shorthand to convey the idea that we are dealing with an unobtrusive realm of political struggle . . . the circumspect struggle waged daily by subordinate groups is, like infrared rays, beyond the visible end of the spectrum. That it should be invisible, as we have seen, is in large part by design – a tactical choice born of a prudent awareness of the balance of power.” Scott, 183. 83 Ibid., xiii.
78
to be a critical question, because its legitimacy or its illegitimacy was at the center of
post-emancipation reform efforts, including labor and land, for both former slaves and
the Maroons. Ultimately, after concluding that legal distinctions could not exist within
the population in a post-emancipation world, the Jamaican Assembly and planters also
decided that there was in fact no discernible distinction between Maroons and other
Jamaicans of African heritage. Therefore, any distinctions between the two groups in
law also had to be abolished, pursuant to instructions from the CSO’s requirements.
As a result, the Jamaican Assembly, with the approval of the Crown, passed
the Land Allotment Act. This Act was designed to abrogate the former treaty and
some prior statutes concerning the Maroons, including allowing the descendants of the
Trelawney Maroons, the focus of the Second Maroon Wars, to return to Jamaica.
Further, it required that the Jamaican government actively reorganize Maroon lands by
returning their primary ownership to the Crown. The commissioners were required to
reallot Maroon lands in two acre allotments to individual Maroons and one acre
allotments to Maroon descendants. By eliminating Maroon corporate land holdings,
the Jamaican government hoped that Maroons would become part of the larger
“Negroe” population and thus invalidate distinctions between the two groups. This
would allow the British to marshal labor for the plantations that initially created and
sustained Jamaica’s wealth. Jamaica suffered from a labor shortage that both planters
and the government perceived to be aggravated by Blacks having access to land.
Therefore, the colonial government ordered that former slaves have their access to
land curtailed and impeded by creating necessary legislation for the transfer of land. It
79
also meant trying to eliminate Maroon corporate land holdings and requiring that only
individuals own land. Without land, the Maroons could not support themselves and
would have to turn to nearby plantations to support themselves.
However, while the Maroons had concerns about their condition in Jamaica,
they did not seek to have their land reallocated. Indeed, they saw anyone who was not
Maroon as an outsider and were content with that status quo. Their particular cultural
and historical legacy, which included the treaty, justified their position. As a result,
they decided, as a community, to ignore the Land Allotment Act and continue to
behave in ways that accorded with Maroon lands held communally. Ignoring
implementation of the Land Allotment Act was the first collective sign of resistance
by the Maroons since the Second Maroon War.
The ability of the Maroons to remain a separate people rooted to ancestral
lands would remain contested from emancipation until the early twentieth century.
Resistance to the Jamaican colonial government’s attempts to both eliminate Maroon
corporate land holdings and Maroon communities by forcing them to merge into the
larger community started when they ignored colonial law. The Accompong Maroons’
resistance to reworking their land became more active with subsequent challenges.
The following chapters detail the events that best reflect Maroon resistance to
reconfiguring their landholdings after 1842.
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Chapter 3: The Cook’s Bottom Land Dispute, Resistance, and the Fallout (1868 – 1905)
In the aftermath of slavery and a declining plantation workforce, in 1836, the
Colonial Secretary advocated policies depriving “negroes” of land so that they would
work on plantations. The Colonial Secretary argued that if there was enough land for
the peasant population to cultivate crops for their subsistence, that there would be “no
sufficient inducement to prefer the more toilsome existence of a regular labourer.”1 To
remedy this problem, “it will be necessary to prevent the occupation of any Crown
lands by persons not possessing a proprietary title to them; and to fix such a price
upon all Crown lands may place them out of the reach of persons without capital.”2
But what was the colonial government to do about the approximately 500 Maroons
who already had title to land and no incentive to work on plantations?
The 1739 treaty had given them differing legal standing from the colony’s
other Black residents. And, in addition to winning freedom well before emancipation,
the Maroons also won a land grant and self-government. The Land Allotment Act was
the government’s attempt to abrogate the treaty and change the Maroons’ particular
legal standing.
For the Jamaican colonial state, beginning in 1868, Cook’s Bottom, a stretch of
land owned by the Crown, presented an opportunity to ensure that the Maroons would
not acquire additional land. The Jamaican government hoped that Maroons who had
no “proprietary title” would be evicted from this portion of Crown lands so that they 1 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 2 Ibid.
81
too would become regular laborers. The Maroons then obtained land formerly
belonging to the Trelawney Maroon community directly to the north and west of
Accompong, and the Jamaican colonial government tried to avert its acquisition. It
faced two obstacles in trying to do so.
Figure 3. Undated map of the Accompong and Cook’s Bottom area.3 Cook’s Bottom is the expanse of land located to the north and west of Accompong Town. Judging from this map, the entire of Cook’s Bottom exceeded the acreage of Accompong which totaled 1200 acres.
First, they had called on the Maroons to quell the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion
based on the treaty, a move that underscored the legitimacy of treaty-based land
possessions. Second, the government was explicitly unwilling to use force to make the
Accompong comply with the Land Allotment Act and so it tried to implement the Act
3 "From a Plan by James Robertson, Containing Elderslea Est. & Ca.," (Kingston, Jamaica: National Library of Jamaica).
82
by allowing the Accompong to purchase Cook’s Bottom so long as they would do so
as individuals willing to pay taxes on their portion.4
The Accompong and the Jamaican government worked under differing
assumptions about the laws that would determine the role of Maroons in post-
emancipation Jamaican society. Whether the government looked to the treaty or the
Land Allotment Act had implications for Maroon land ownership and the scope of
Accompong lands. Both sides also grappled with whether the Accompong owned
Cook’s Bottom and the legal basis for such ownership. Yet, the colonial government
still sought to remove “disabilities” from the Accompong by encouraging them to
purchase Cook’s Bottom and pay taxes on it so they did not function as a separate
Black community.
By 1868, the year that the Cook’s Bottom land issue arose, the Jamaican
government aimed to isolate the Accompong on treaty-granted land despite the fact
that the Land Allotment Act was still on the books. Jamaica decided that its goal of
reallocating treaty-granted land from communal to individual ownership had failed,
dooming its attempt to capture Maroon labor.
The Maroons proceeded based on their hidden transcript about the treaty: that
the Accompong rightfully owned land from Falmouth to Black River.5 They resisted
the colonial regime’s drive to deprive Blacks of land by openly using Cook’s Bottom
for an extended period of time (actions that would justify ownership) in a manner that
4 Unidentified, "Report to the Colonial Secretary About the Accompong's Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 5 Colonel Rowe, "June 2, " Letter, 1/B/5/76/33/3 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
83
comported with their assumption that it was already theirs. Further, in keeping with
the treaty, the Accompong refused to pay taxes. The Colonial Secretary’s Office
directed the Jamaican government not only to refrain from using force, but to avoid
using legal proceedings that would antagonize the Maroon population, so the Jamaican
government had no means of enforcing the change in law.
The government’s attempt to sell the Accompong land that the Maroons
thought belonged to the community, prompted resistance which shifted from a simple
lack of compliance (the Accompong’s response to the Land Allotment Act) to
adversely possessing land, threatening warfare at arrest, and releasing Accompong
prisoners from the Jamaican prison system. The Maroons thereby rejected the Land
Allotment Act, which did not mean that they could declare themselves free from the
implications of that law, namely the dissolution of Jamaica’s Maroon communities
and return of their lands to the Crown. The Cook’s Bottom incident demonstrates an
overarching theme regarding Maroon communities: communities formed in resistance
could only be maintained through acts of resistance. While that initial form was
outright warfare, the Maroons would adapt to differing forms of resistance designed to
ensure that the communities, and the land connected to those communities, remained
as promised under the treaty. Ultimately, the Jamaican government would be stymied
by this persistent show of resistance to the reorganization of Maroons lands and to the
dismantling the Accompong community.
The Shift to Crown Colony Government and its Implications
84
Like many of the formerly enslaved across the Caribbean, between 1838 and
1865, Jamaican peasants were disappointed with the terms of their freedom.6 Indeed,
strikes had broken out across the colony, as Black workers demanded better wages and
better hours.7 Governor Sligo personally met with a number of planters with the hopes
of improving workers’ pay and work conditions, and he pressed the former slaves to
see if they would put aside their differences. However, the conditions for Jamaica’s
newly freed Blacks never improved enough so that they thought themselves fully free.
Since 1838, their access to land was limited,8 their wages had seen no significant
improvement, and they were still treated poorly in the criminal justice system.9 These
issues moved the formerly enslaved to demand that they be given “full freedom.”10
After using political channels to try to improve their lot and electing sympathetic
legislators such as William Gordon, meaningful legislative change was thwarted
because Black peasant interests held minority seats on the Assembly. As a result, in
1865, former slaves decided to rebel, an event known as the Morant Bay Rebellion.
From the perception of Jamaica’s Whites, this rebellion became a symbol of the Black
6 Cooper, Holt, and Scott; Walter Rodney, History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881 - 1905 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Mimi Sheller, Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Rebellion in Postemancipation Haiti and Jamaica (London: University Press of Florida, 2001). 7 "The Sligo Papers: An Official View," Jamaica Journal 17, no. 3 (1984); Swithin R. Wilmot, "Emancipation in Action: Workers and Wage Conflict in Jamaica 1838 - 1840," Jamaica Journal 19, no. 3 (1986). 8 Veront Satchell, "'Squatters of Freeholders?' The Case of Jamaican Peasants During the Mid-19th Century," The Journal of Caribbean History 23, no. 2 (1989); Veront Satchell, From Plots to Plantations: Land Transactions in Jamaica, 1866 - 1900 (Mona: University of the West Indies, 1990). Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 9 Gad Heuman, "The Killing Time": The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (London: Macmillan, 1994); Holt. 10 See generally Heuman; Holt; Sheller. Heuman, Holt, and Sheller thoroughly discuss the issues that led to the Morant Bay Rebellion.
85
peasant’s ability to riot and murder and demonstrated the futility and ineffectiveness
of the post-emancipation project of making former slaves into reliable contract
employees.11
Jamaica’s Maroons were also a part of the Morant Bay story because the
Eastern Maroon groups, notably Mooretown, Charlestown, and Scotts Hall, were
called upon to quell the rebellion. The Accompong, who lived much further west,
were also told to be available to help, particularly if the rebellion spread to the western
part of the island. In order to require the Maroons to help with Morant Bay, the
Jamaican government relied on the Maroons’ duties under treaty, even as it declared
the treaties null and void within twenty-three years of the passing of the Land
Allotment Act. The Maroons fulfilled their treaty obligations by helping quell the
rebellion. The Jamaican government unwittingly put itself in a bind: by relying on the
treaty as the basis for acquiring Maroon help with the Morant Bay Rebellion, they
reinforced its standing as the basis on which they dealt with Maroon communities and
as a result delegitimized the land-holding schemes envisioned in the Land Allotment
Act.
The Maroons’ focus was on keeping the gains they had won during the Maroon
Wars cemented by the treaty sealed with commingled blood.12 Those promises would
need to be kept by both sides. Hence, the Maroons saw their role in the Morant Bay
Rebellion as upholding the treaty. With the resolution of the Morant Bay Rebellion,
the Jamaican government understood that “[t]here are good reasons for believing that 11 Holt. 12 Bilby; Kopytoff.
86
since the events of October 1865 the Maroons of this island have labored under the
erroneous impression that they have reacquired the special privileges which they once
enjoyed.”13 Nevertheless, there was a significant reworking of Jamaica’s governing
apparatus in the wake of the rebellion, and that had an impact on the government’s
relationship with the Accompong.
In 1866, as a result of this rebellion, Crown Colony government was
established for Jamaica: a government with a nominated Council consisting of six
officials and three unofficial members and the abolition of the two hundred-year-old
House of Assembly.14 This new government could keep or dismiss laws on its books
at will, and its creation meant that if someone wanted to serve on the Legislative
Council, their interests would have to be aligned with the Crown itself. Ultimately,
this structure of government reinforced the power of Jamaica’s White population
throughout the island and actively discouraged Black political participation, as in the
minds of White Jamaicans, events such as the Morant Bay Rebellion were the direct
result of Black political participation.15 Whites continued to maintain political and
social authority by the government placing the “coercive levers of power . . . under
their control.”16 Whites still remained at the top of Jamaica’s social structure; only
Whites could, for example, hold top jobs in Governor Grant’s administration.17 While
this approach to governance would certainly have implications for Jamaica’s Maroons 13 Major Inspector General J. H. Prederville, "Letter to a Constabulary Office, 4 August, 1868," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 14 Heuman, 159. 15Ibid. 16Ibid. 17 Patrick Bryan, The Jamaican People, 1882 - 1902: Race, Class and Social Control (London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1991), 12.
87
because certain legal assumptions about the Maroons remained in place, including that
the Land Allotment Act would remain the basis of dealing with the Maroons.
The Jamaican Government’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom
In 1868, following the Morant Bay Rebellion and after the Crown had
established Crown Colony government, the Accompong Maroons sent a request to the
government to survey Accompong and hoped it would include Cook’s Bottom.
Thomas Harrison conducted the survey of these Crown Lands; however, he was aware
that the Accompong could make a claim for owning the Cook’s Bottom.18 The
Maroons had received good news: that the government’s assumption that they held
1,000 acres was faulty and that they actually owned 1,220 acres as a community, not
including Cook’s Bottom. Given that the Accompong sought to add Cook’s Bottom to
their land-holdings, they interfered with his survey when it was apparent that Cook’s
Bottom was not in the offing.19
In July 1869, Officer Prederville arrested two Maroons and charged them with
larceny. Maroons had planted vegetables on Cook’s Bottom and when they harvested
them from Crown lands, the government had accused them of larceny (taking someone
else’s property with the intent of depriving the owner of its use).20
The core of the Jamaican government’s and the Maroons’ contrary claims
concerning Cook’s Bottom depends on interpretations of what happened to treaty-
granted land after the Trelawney Maroons were deported. The government claimed
18 Government Surveyor Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 19 Ibid. 20 Law Dictionary, s.v. "Larceny."
88
that they were the rightful owners of Cook’s Bottom after the Trelawney Maroons
were deported, their land reverted to the Crown.21 Further, even if this was not the
case, the Accompong, according to the Jamaican laws, were actually recognized as a
Maroon community by statute and not part of the treaty-land grant: in 1758, the
Jamaica Assembly allotted 1000 acres to Colonel Accompong and his people and their
land grant had nothing to do with the treaty.22
Their 1500 acres of land was forfeited to the Crown, a portion was under 36 George III Cap 33 sold out to private parties and 400 acres was retained for the use of His Majesty’s troops. – This 400 acres was subsequently transferred to the local Government by 25 Victoria Cap 4 and is at present held under lease from the Government.23
Furthermore, even if the Accompong received the legacy of the Trelawney
Maroons, the Land Allotment Act was a significant intervening legal event concerning
all of Jamaica’s Maroons, because it abrogated the treaties and all prior laws dealing
with the Maroons. It ordered that the land be redistributed and that Maroons had the
“rights and privileges of all of the other Queen’s subjects.”24 Ultimately, for the
Jamaican government, even if the Accompong held treaty-granted land, the Land
21 Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary, 24 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 22 "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town, and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof.," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1758). 23 Archibald Cooper, "Conversation on New Year's Eve with Capt. Holliday, December, 31, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica; Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Surveyor General's Office, July 24, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. The Archibald Cooper conversation also highlights the long-held belief by the Accompong that they were the inheritors of the Trelawney Maroons. Both documents reinforce the notion that the Jamaican government had always believed that when the Trelawney rebelled again, they forfeited their rights to that treaty-granted land and it reverted to the Jamaican government. As a result, the Accompong could assert no ownership rights over that property. 24 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).
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Allotment Act changed the nature of all Maroon land holdings, the Trelawney and
Accompong Maroons included.
While the government denied any historical connection the Accompong had to
Cook’s Bottom, they were concerned that Maroons had won proper title to it through
adverse possession. Adverse possession is defined as “a method of acquiring complete
title to land as against all others, including the record owner, through certain acts over
an uninterrupted period of time, as prescribed by statute. It is usually prescribed that
such possession must be actual, visible, open, notorious, hostile, under claim of right,
definite, continuous, exclusive, etc.”25 The purpose of such requirements is to give
notice that the possession of a parcel of land is subordinate to the claim of others.
The Jamaican government presumed that Maroon use of all lands outside of
the treaty-granted lands was adversely possessed and that the Maroons had no legal
title. While they never directly used the term “adverse possession,” the way that they
discussed the use of lands bordering Accompong, Cook’s Bottom included, implied a
hostile usage that would be congruent with the term. The Jamaican government’s
argument that the Accompong were adversely possessing land that did not belong to
the community is made in two related ways: first by a discussion of what was disputed
and claimed by the Accompong, second by a discussion of the Accompong’s usage of
land.
One term government officials used to reveal what the Accompong claimed is
“disputed title.” British government officials evaluated the Jamaican government’s
25 Steven H. Gifis, "Adverse Possession," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).
90
attempts to diffuse the dispute about Cook’s Bottom and argued that the larceny
charge that Major Prederville brought against two Maroons did not help the situation.
In fact, the British admonished, if this was really an issue concerning disputed land
title, the matter would best be handled in civil, not criminal courts.26 The Colonial
Secretary’s Office acknowledged that the Accompong had a legitimate claim to
Cook’s Bottom without agreeing to it. The British then encouraged the Jamaican
government to sort out the underlying disagreement about land and not to use the
criminal process to further obscure this problem because “complainants on such cases
are constantly endeavouring to get such cases taken up on the criminal side & very
often succeed in this abusing the law.”27 The CSO advanced using the rule of law to
create solutions with the Accompong. The criminal courts were never the proper
framework for resolving land issues and the Jamaican government needed to adjust its
actions accordingly. Nevertheless, the British could acknowledge that there were
competing and incompatible claims based on disputed title for Cook’s Bottom by both
the Jamaican government and the Accompong.
The term “claim” is also one that the Jamaican government used to describe
this dispute term with a very specific meaning in the legal context: an “assertion of a
right to something” which could be money or property.28 Claim in this context does
not mean or imply actual possession or ownership: all the Jamaican government
26 Colonial Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Explains the Cso's Position Regarding How to Deal with the Accompong, " 1B57635 (CS0) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 27 Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica. 28 "Claim," in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; reprint, 2nd Edition); Steven H. Gifis, "Claim," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).
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conceded was that the Maroons are “asserting their rights” to Cook’s Bottom. The
Jamaican government made claims about the Cook’s Bottom land as well, namely that
it belongs to the Crown: “The Maroons also claimed a large tract of land to the West
and north of their own land which remains still unpatented and is the property of the
Crown . . .”29 As this sentence demonstrates, claims, in the legal realm, are inherently
hostile because while one party may make one claim, at least one other will make
contrary claims about a piece of property, be it real (land) or personal (thing) property.
After discussing claims and disputed titles as a way to describe the legal
challenges they faced concerning Cook’s Bottom, the Jamaican government then used
language that described the Accompong’s use of land, which further suggested that
they saw adverse possession as a way the Accompong were trying to gain legal title
over Cook’s Bottom. The first terms they used to describe the Accompong’s use of the
land were “occupation” and “possession.” Occupying land means taking possession of
it for personal use.30 The definition of possession is even stronger as it is defined as,
“dominion and control over property.”31 The Accompong signaled their control over
it, they did not hide their use of it regardless of whether someone else owned it, while
the government let the land go idle. The government observed some of these uses and
even explained why the Accompong might be doing this, arguing that both Cook’s
Bottom and Accompong were in “cockpit land,” which was clayey, poor, inaccessible,
29Kelley; Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. See also Alfred Cork, "Precis Re Accompong Maroon Land, May 26, 1894," 1B576333 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 30 "Occupy," in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 31 Steven H. Gifis, "Possession," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).
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and made the land very swampy. The Maroons consequently “scattered wildly to
obtain the detached cultivable places.”32 Hence, the Accompong had converted the
property to their own use to cultivate crops to support the community. They had done
this for an extended period of time, from the late 1860s through the 1890s, an
uninterrupted period of time in an open, hostile manner (in that they did not seek
permission from the Jamaican government to use these lands). While the government
never acknowledged that the Accompong had a claim of right to Cook’s Bottom, the
Accompong challenged that conclusion, based on their long history of using the land.
The government’s concern with the Maroons’ use and possession of the property
belied their concern about losing Cook’s Bottom through adverse possession.33
The government worried that the Accompong adversely possessing Cook’s
Bottom would undermine their ability to implement the Land Allotment Act. When
the statute declared that the Maroons would now be treated the same as all of the
Queen’s subjects, the government anticipated that the Maroons would have much less
land and own it individually rather than communally. However, the Colonial Secretary
warned the Governors of the challenges of adverse possession for “[i]n many cases
serious difficulties will occur in securing unsold lands for the future from the intrusion
32 Cork, "Precis Re Accompong Maroon Land, May 26, 1894," 1B576333 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 33 At this point, because of the Land Allotment Act, there are no lands that the Accompong technically own. However, the government would not argue that the Accompong adversely possessed their town, the history of the treaty makes that a false conclusion. However, their inability to force the Accompong to reallocate their lands is reflects that the government cannot walk away from the treaty as reflected by calling the Maroons to defend the island during the Morant Bay Rebellion.
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of usurpers and squatters.”34 The Jamaican government viewed the Accompong as a
“usurper and squatter.”
The Accompong’s Basis for Claiming Cook’s Bottom
The Accompong made two types of arguments for Cook’s Bottom: that the
written treaty had erroneously recorded their actual borders and one based on their true
relationship with the Trelawney Maroons. They developed, in contradiction with the
Jamaican government’s goals, a consistent objective of reclaiming treaty lands.
Accompong Maroon oral history argues that the very boundaries of Accompong were
suspect at the point the treaty was signed. They asserted that the British had agreed to
give them not 1,000 acres, as the Jamaican government insisted, but 10,000 acres of
land for their use. “The British” took advantage of Cudjoe because he could not read
and so the treaty that the government had memorialized in their laws records one-tenth
of the land to which the Accompong were entitled.35 If the Accompong had their full
complement of land, they would inhabit Jamaica from Falmouth in the Northwest of
the island down to Savanna-La-Mar on the southwest coast. Not only were the
boundaries of Accompong lands problematic, any legislative attempt to reallocate
those lands according to the Land Allotment Act was also suspect. As a result, the
Accompong and the other Maroon groups ignored the Act and kept their lands in
common. Once the British gave the Maroons their lands, it was up to the Maroons to
decide what to do with them, subject to any limitations placed on that land by the
34 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London. 35 Besson; Thompson, "Interview with Carlton Smith," (2008). See also Zips.
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treaty.36 This effort to acquire Cook’s Bottom was designed to restore the Maroon
understanding of their boundaries of their lands under the treaty and is their first act of
resistance in the post-emancipation period.
The Accompong also made their claim to Cook’s Bottom based on their
relationship to the Trelawney. Their description of this relationship contrasts with the
government’s and served to undermine a claim of adverse possession. The
Accompong claimed a close affinity with the Trelawney Maroons and their lands
based on the treaty, arguing that the Trelawney and the Accompong were the same
people. That Accompong and Cudjoe (of Trelawney) were brothers was evidence that
the communities started from the same blood.37 A close reading of the treaty supports
the Accompong’s viewpoint about their connection to the Trelawney Maroons. One
term of the treaty is that “Captain Cudjoe shall, during his life, be Chief Commander
in Trelawney town, after his decease the command to devolve on his brother Captain
Accompong; and in case of his decease, on his next brother Captain Johnny . . .”38 As a
36 Limitations were placed on how the Maroons could use their land including treaty stipulations that they were allowed to plant coffee, cocoa, ginger, tobacco, and cotton. The Maroons were permitted to breed cattle, hogs, goats, or any other stock. They had to live within the boundaries of the towns that were established by the treaty and they could not hunt within three miles of any settlement, crawl, or pen. "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739). 37 Thompson, "Interview of Harris Cawley," (2008). Harris Cawley was a former (and perhaps current) Colonel of the Accompong Maroons. Any Maroon political leader is expected to have great knowledge about Maroon oral history in order to serve in this position. 38 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).
95
result, because they are from the same community as explicitly acknowledged under
the treaty, they would also be entitled to the Trelawney’s treaty granted lands, Jamaica
never had the right to pull those lands from the Trelawney and make them, once again,
Crown Lands.39
Accompong Resistance to Relinquishing Cook’s Bottom
According to the Accompong, they actually owned Cook’s Bottom. Given the
lack of agreement between the Accompong and the Jamaican government concerning
the expanse of Accompong’s land, the Accompong requested the survey hoping that
the government would finally legitimize their expanded claim for land. When it
became clear to them that it would not confirm additional land for the community,
once started, they stopped the survey as a second form of resistance the Accompong
used during the dispute over Cook’s Bottom. Generally, the government had only seen
two forms of resistance from this community: outright warfare, which ended with the
treaty, and ignoring the legal actions the government was taking as it applied to their
land and community, namely the Land Allotment Act. Thwarting Harrison’s
completion of the survey broke with their silent resistance to the Land Allotment Act.
The record does not supply details about how specifically they prevented the survey
from continuing, but one can imagine Maroon political leaders requesting that Mr.
Harrison leave their community or Maroons taking his equipment to conduct the 39 Cooper wrote that “[t]he 1500 acres the Maroons claim they say they should have because they are part of the descendants of Capt. Cudjoe of Trelawney. The Government maintains that the 1500 Trelawney acres does not apply to Accompony [sic], that the Accompong Maroons got only 1000 acres and that even if the Accompong people might be considered heirs under the Trelawney Treaty, that treaty was later completely invalidated by the rebellion of the Trelawney Maroons.”Cooper, "Conversation on New Year's Eve with Capt. Holliday, December, 31, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica.
96
survey until he promised to leave; or other non-violent actions. Stopping the survey is
one example of what Robin D.G. Kelley calls the “margins of struggle.” He argues
that whether these struggles are “spontaneous battles with authority or social
movements thought to be inauthentic or unrepresentative of the ‘communities
interests,’ are really a fundamental part of the larger story waiting to be told.”40
Stopping the survey was one such spontaneous battle with the Jamaican government
that is part of the larger story of how the Accompong managed to ensure that their
land holdings and community would not be undermined. Individuals, no matter who
they represented, who failed to incorporate the larger boundaries of Accompong were
persona non grata. Controlling Cook’s Bottom by growing community foodstuffs was
a third act of resistance. Hence, the land the Accompong demanded was not perceived
as belonging to the government, but was instead stolen. The Accompong did not claim
adverse possession. Their defiant message was ultimately “get off of our lands.” Even
the Jamaican government had to concede that perhaps it would make more sense to
legalize the Accompong’s “illegal” possession of Crown Lands. Mr. Harrison
suggested this possibility in his letter to Mr. Mann saying “If it is deemed advisable to
extend the limits of their land, the only thing that can be done for them, is to make
lawful their present unlawful occupation of the Crown land.”41 This sentiment is
echoed by J.B. Mann, a police officer, stating that “[i]f it should be thought desirable
to renew the endeavours to legalize the holdings, and also to require these Maroons to
40 Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1996). 41 Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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pay taxes as the Maroons of other settlements do, I would suggest that the strict
boundaries of the Accompong settlement should not be adhered to, but that grants
should be given to those Maroons also who have settled on a part of the unpatented
land on the west and north.”42 Whether there was agreement between the Jamaican
government and the Accompong to do this is another issue; however, the Accompong
made a case for ensuring that Cook’s Bottom belonged to them in the long-term.
No matter the government’s aspirations for implementing the Land Allotment
Act, by 1868, all Jamaica’s Maroons still failed to comply with the Act or quietly
accept the government’s desire to limit further land acquisition. Colonel Mann, a
police officer, openly acknowledged that “[i]t seems however that none of the
Maroons have any title to the lands they occupy, as they have neglected to apply for
and obtain grants within the time limited by the 19th Vic: ch:25. That Act was the last
of a series of attempts made to put the holdings of the Maroons on a legal footing.”43
The challenge the government faced with the Accompong failing to abide by
the law came to a head in June 1868, when the Jamaican police force arrested two
Maroons for larceny. The government alleged that they grew vegetables on someone
else’s land and arrested them for taking vegetables from another’s property. By July
1868, the Accompong engaged in a fourth form of resistance and “rescued” the
arrested Maroons without permission or legal authority.44
42 J.B. Mann, "Letter to Dr. , December 19, 1868," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 43 Ibid. 44 Inspector General J.H. Prederville Major, "Letter to Hpad Quar Constabulary Office, 4 August, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Even before the arresting police officer took the prisoners from Accompong,
the Maroons had spontaneously organized in the face of the Jamaican government
arresting their own people. Inspector Wheatle, a police officer that dealt with the
Accompong, writes that “after apprehending Maria Ball and Alex Salmon [the two
Maroons charged with larceny] about 100 persons congregated on the Parade and that
Mr. Salmon and Thomas Cross [members of the Accompong community] refused to
allow the Police to take the prisoners out of the Township.”45 A subsequent letter
reveals that Maroons said that removing members of their community would result in
bloodshed, a threat that the Colonel, the political leader of the Accompong
community, supported.46
Trying to prevent the arrested Maroons from being removed from Accompong
cannot be seen independently of another act of resistance, namely, releasing the
Maroons in custody from jail. Both preventing arrest and releasing prisoners were a
direct challenge to the penal authority of the Jamaican government. The Accompong
felt comfortable with this action, because arresting and punishing Maroons by non-
Maroons was in direct contravention of the 1739 treaty between “the British” and the
Maroon communities. Specifically, the treaty states that “[t]hat Captain Cudjoe, during
his life, and the Captains succeeding him, shall have full power to inflect [sic] any
punishment they think proper for crimes committed by their men among themselves
45 Inspector Thomas K. Wheatle, "Letter Concerning Arresting the Maroons, July 6, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 46 Major Inspector General J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica; Inspector Thomas K. Wheatle, "Letter to Two Mile Wood Police Station, 4 July, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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(death only excepted) in which case, if the Captain thinks they deserve death, he shall
be obliged to bring them before any Justice of the Peace, who shall order proceedings
on their trial equal to those of other free negroes.”47 In releasing fellow community
members from jail, the Maroons not only snubbed the Jamaican government’s
authority, but also rejected the very rule of law the Jamaican government sought to
enact. With this action, the Maroons patently rejected the authority of the Land
Allotment Act in favor of the unchanging relationship between “the British” and the
Maroons as specifically detailed in the treaty, sealed by an exchange of blood. As
such, they asserted their authority as sovereigns throughout this exchange.
Ultimately, while the Jamaican government was determined to continue
enforcing the land regime imposed by the Land Allotment Act, the Accompong clearly
had another agenda that frustrated its implementation. The Cook’s Bottom incident
was one example of this alternate agenda. Resistance was a means of ensuring that the
Maroons’ agenda would be implemented, although the Accompong did not necessarily
win everything they thought they were entitled to.
How to Manage the Maroons
With the threat of bloodshed that accompanied the Maroon release of their
prisoners from jail came other concerns from the Jamaican Governor’s office. The
Governor was concerned about how the police force managed this issue with the
47 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).
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Maroons. Jamaican government correspondence with the police revealed a divide
between the police who saw the Maroons’ actions as criminal and the Governor, who
was more concerned about Jamaica’s internal security. “Memories” of the Maroon
Wars had not faded from the minds of the Queen’s officials nearly one hundred years
after the deportation of the Trelawney Maroons.
Both the police and the Governor’s office agreed that the Maroons misread
their rights, they were entitled only to what other British subjects received. However,
the gulf between the police and the Governor’s office became an issue of how to
reinforce the Maroons’ new position within the Jamaican colonial state. According to
the Governor’s office, the Maroons should have their rights explained to them in “a
kindly and considerate manner . . .”48 The representative from the Governor’s office
went on to write that this dispute arose from a confusion about title to property and
not, ultimately, a criminal case. He concluded that when officials resorted to the
criminal law system, that whatever came from that process “may . . . endanger the
peace of the country,”49 reminding the police force that their dealings with the
Maroons could threaten peace. Given the close proximity in time of the Second
Maroon Wars, the Governor was likely concerned about renewed war, hence, the
threat to Jamaica’s security. However, the Jamaican government would have to use
force to try implementing the new public transcript, the Land Allotment Act, and this
fear restricted their dealings with the Accompong.
48 Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, "July 11, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 49 Ibid.
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The Jamaican government also understood the risk the island faced if they
forced the Maroons to take actions that contravened the treaty. The letter argued that
the use of the criminal law process “very often succeed[ed] in abusing the law.”50
Finally, in a later letter concerning taxing Maroon lands, the Jamaican government
considered how its actions could pose a challenge in their relationship with the
Accompong. An employee wrote that “these lands [treaty granted lands] ought not to
be made liable to a tax by way of or on the cultivation of produce from them: at least it
would not be wise policy to attempt to enforce it as the amount to be derived would
not compensate for the irritation consequent thereon.”51 Yet a third correspondence
pointed to the fact that the Accompong “are a peculiarly sensitive and irritable people”
and noted their “ignorant and excitable temperament.”52 Given the proximity in time
both to the Morant Bay Rebellion and the Second Maroon Wars, the Jamaican
government’s institutional memory of the potential of Black peasant rebellion was
primary in their dealings with the Accompong and other Maroon groups. Preventing
rebellion was their central goal and actions that led to rebellion were to be
discouraged, including using the criminal process with Maroons and overreaching
with taxation policies.
Convincing the Accompong to Comply With the Land Allotment Act
Ultimately, the Maroons did not abide by Jamaica’s laws, the Land Allotment
Act was just the start because the Accompong also ran afoul of criminal laws.
50 Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica. 51 R.W. Smith, "Letter to Mr. French, May 30, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 52 D.T.T., "Minute in Government Files, November 29, 1870," 1B57635 (CS0)2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Nevertheless, the Jamaican government still embraced the Land Allotment Act and
hoped to eliminate the Maroon communities by allotting community lands to
individuals. J.H. Prederville, a police officer located nearby the Accompong
community, argued that by ensuring that the Accompong owned their land on an
individual basis (in accordance with the goal of the Land Allotment Act), they would
“be gradually weaned from communism of lands, become more amenable to the laws,
and finally lose the distinctive attributes of class to which they now cling to
pertinaciously.”53 They would finally become “negroes.”
In 1868, Prederville met with the Maroons and discussed the laws he was
concerned about stating that the Accompong needed “a proper understanding of the
necessity that exists of making some alteration in their present mode of managing their
lands, viz., all having an equal right to cultivate it how, and when, and where, and in
what manner they please, without fence, division, or boundary, or any description
whatever.”54 The Accompong had started by breaching the Land Allotment Act, yet
had no different rights from the rest of the Queen’s subject and so they could not be
“exempted from the ordinary process of the law.”55 When they wrongfully freed the
two arrested Maroons, they should have not have been given any deference,
particularly because the reason for their arrest, in his opinion, had nothing to do with
land and everything to do with the Maroons complying with the rule of law, a
53 J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid.
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conclusion at odds with the Colonial Secretary and one that was in line with police
treatment of all “negroes.”56
The government had another political issue with the Accompong, namely the
Maroon’s reliance on their internal political structure, and so the government
trivialized the political and military distinctions within the Accompong community.
Maroons were now merged into the larger population and did not need their own
military leaders. In 1868, in one of the first signs that the government was prepared to
deny the continuing existence of the Maroon communities, Prederville wrote about his
visit in Accompong:
I called on the Chief, “Colonel” Rowe they still preserve the military gradations of rank conceded to “Captain” Cudjoe and the rest of his officers by the articles of Pacification concluded with the Maroons in the year of 1739 and having informed him that I had a communication to make to them on the part of the Government, he immediately ordered a meeting of his people or tribe, and after “Major” Foster and “Captains” Wright and McLeod were introduced . . .”57
Two particular points stand out in this paragraph. One rarely sees military appellations
written between quotation marks. Secondly, three terms in the paragraph demand
closer examination: “Chief”, “people,” and “tribe.” Placing the military appellations
such as Colonel and Captain between quotes suggests that they are not really military
leaders, indeed, not even Captain Cudjoe could be regarded as a real military leader.
The British never thought that the Maroons were fighting a real war, they were
fighting a guerilla war in which they would not come out in the open and tackle their
56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. Italics are mine.
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British opponents.58 Hence, Captain Cudjoe who commanded his troops to fight a
guerilla war demonstrated so much cowardice that he could not really be a Captain. By
the 1870s, the Accompong were not fighting a war, and Prederville saw no need for
Maroon military leaders. Further, Mr. Prederville referred to the Accompong as
having a political leader called a “chief.” He calls them a “people” and suggests that
their primary point of political organization is a “tribe.” When Prederville refers to the
Accompong as a “tribe” he diminishes them as a sovereign people. Naming the
political leader of the Accompong a “Chief” also denies the leader military potency.
Ultimately, his letter suggested that there was no longer a separate political and
military entity living within Jamaica’s borders and so the need to recognize them
according to such appellations was no longer necessary. Because of the effect of the
Land Allotment Act, the Maroon communities were no longer worth being spoken of
as separate entities, Maroons were like other Blacks who were the Crown’s subjects.
As the challenges of settling Cook’s Bottom extended well beyond the initial
1868 incident, the government denied that Maroon communities existed and treated
them as historical artifacts. Thirty years later, in a government report sent to the
Colonial Secretary’s Office, an employee wrote that there were no Maroons at all.
Over time, they had “intermixed with, and are no different to, the ordinary population .
. . I have no doubt that in course of time these people will entirely lose, or forget their
claim to distinctiveness if it is not injudiciously kept alive.”59 The Land Allotment Act
58 See generally Edwards. 59 Unidentified, "Report to the Colonial Secretary About the Accompong's Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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justified the government’s decision to ignore the community and it hoped that the rule
of law would dictate the reality for all involved.
In addition to the political “rights and privileges” the Maroons had gained, the
Maroons were also entitled to receive government services, a means of increasing the
incentive for the Accompong to pay taxes. The government hoped they would pay
taxes if it provided passable roads, medical aid, a poor house for the indigent, and a
school. The Colonial Secretary asked the tax office whether money was allocated for
roads surrounding Accompong, and the tax office acknowledged that such an
allocation had never been made.60
However, the government’s provision of services was contingent upon the
Accompong paying taxes. The government insisted that, “they [the Maroons] became
liable in the enjoyment of those privileges [government services] to pay any new taxes
which the Queen & Government might impose on all classes without distinction”
pursuant to the Land Allotment Act.61 Like other Jamaican residents, the Maroons
“should therefore contribute to the Revenue of the Country by paying their taxes like
other people, when, of course, they would be entitled to participate in all the
advantages desirable from Governmental or parochial [sources].”62 Providing Maroons
with particular services served as concrete evidence that they were being treated like
all other Jamaicans and were a way of diminishing the Maroons perceived differences
60 Unidentified, "Letter from the Collector of Taxes Office, November 13, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 61 Unidentified, "Report About Jamaica's Maroons, " 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 62 Unidentified, "Report About the Scots Hall and Accompong Maroons Connected to Paying Taxes, December 2, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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between themselves and the rest of the colonial population. However, full success in
providing government services was not realized by the Jamaican government because
the Maroons never complied with paying taxes. However, such a strategy was doomed
to failure; the Accompong saw its whole existence as justified by its founding legal
document – the 1739 treaty and remained determined to pursue its own agenda.
The Accompong: a Taxing Challenge
The Jamaican government was in a conundrum: it wanted to enforce the rule of
law, and ensure that the Land Allotment Act had taken hold, but could not force the
Accompong to change their landholdings and ultimately become laborers. Facing a
kind of stalemate, the Jamaican government decided instead to use the Accompong’s
land as a means of capturing revenue. While the government thought this to be merely
one benefit of having the “rights and privileges of the Queen’s subjects,”63 the
Maroons challenged the notion that they should be taxed at all.
The Jamaican government had to devise a way to gain revenue from the
Maroon lands. The obvious starting point, for the government, was treaty-granted
lands. However, given that the government had already acknowledged the failure of
the Land Allotment Act as the Accompong refused to avail “themselves of the
opportunity of getting their allotments of land in fee, as was required by these laws . .
.” they had to find other ways of encouraging the Accompong to behave like the
63 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).
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“Queen’s subjects.”64 This contradiction was never resolved and reinforced the
Accompong claim to treaty-granted land. The government theoretically owned
Accompong land, but never took action to consolidate its ownership, so the
community remained. Maroons continued to keep their homes, plant agriculture
(regardless of the fallow state of the land acknowledged by both the government and
the Accompong), build schools, and keep their church in clear Accompong control. As
a result, the Jamaican government continued to treat the land as had been done by
custom and practice since long before the 1842 Land Allotment Act. They treated the
land, in other words, as treaty-granted land, and the Accompong remained as before
the Land Allotment Act, communal owners.
As the government reconsidered its policy about taxing the Accompong, it had
to find legal authority to justify taxing the Maroons. Ironically, the legal problem was
framed as whether there was legal authority to justify Maroons’ exemption from
taxation. Yet another irony was that the Land Allotment Act was the legal framework
used to make sense of the lack of a taxation scheme for the Maroons.
From a review of the several laws I do not find that the Maroon lands at Accompong or the beasts of the Maroons carrying commodities, were ever specially exempted from payment of taxes – and I am of opinion that if any such privileges were ever granted with the lands they have ceased by the reverting of the lands in the Crown.65
The Jamaican government consistently acknowledged a problematic past
concerning taxation. While there was no explicit legal authority stating that the
64 Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 65 J.R. Fgbe, "Rights and Privileges of the Marons, undated, " 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Maroons should not pay taxes, clearly by practice, they had not. However, with the
passing of the Act, the Accompong (as well as the other Maroon groups) became
“liable in the enjoyment of these privileges to pay any new taxes which the Queen &
Government might impose on all classes without distinction.”66 Another problem
presented itself to the government: the law that created responsibility for the Maroons
to pay taxes also took from the Maroon communities lands that would be a source of
taxable revenue from the Maroon communities. Hence, treaty lands should not have
been a source of revenue. The government decided they would leave Accompong
lands with the Accompong, no longer assume the Crown owned these, and seek the
land tax revenue. These contradictions point to weakness the government faced in
relying on the rule of law to restructure and assimilate Maroon communities into the
greater Jamaican population; the Maroons never recognized the authority of the new
laws over their lands and communities. The government’s agenda was thwarted before
it began.
The government’s agenda was thwarted in part because of resistance, and in
part, because the challenges that custom and practice posed in framing the rule of law,
i.e. the way parties interacted over the past, including the rights, privileges, and
responsibilities that parties acknowledged or failed to acknowledge with each other
create or destroy rights. In a sense, this was the challenge with squatters and adverse
possession in post-emancipation Jamaica. Once Black peasants, whether Maroons or
the formerly enslaved, made a claim based on practice or custom with regard to the 66 Unidentified, "Report About the Scots Hall and Accompong Maroons Connected to Paying Taxes, December 2, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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use of a particular parcel of land, they could change the law by forcing title to be
granted to them. The law of adverse possession simply formalized this customary
relationship. The challenge posed by custom thwarted the core proposition of
extracting land revenue from the Maroon communities.
As a result, the Jamaican government acknowledged the monumental failure of
realloting treaty-granted lands and their failure in collecting taxes from the Maroons
for those lands. Ultimately they acknowledged that because of custom, they could not
start collecting taxes on treaty-granted lands, affecting their reading of other sources of
law, namely the 1739 treaty.
Potential Resolution to the Cook’s Bottom Land Issue
By 1895, the government still had to resolve the Cook’s Bottom land dispute
with the Accompong. The government developed a two-part plan to do so. The first
part of the plan allowed the Accompong to use Cook’s Bottom, but they hoped that
over time, the Accompong would be amenable to the second part of the plan:
individual Maroons buying separate parcels of Cook’s Bottom and paying taxes on
those parcels. The first part of the plan, allowing the Accompong to use the land,
created more challenges than expected because the Accompong also trespassed on
other lands. By the 1890s, the government received complaints from residents near the
property about the Accompong crossing the boundaries of their land. The government
wondered aloud why this was a problem because
there was a tacit understanding that the maroons should be allowed to occupy these lands. It appears to me that this understanding dates back to the time when Mr. Harrison made his survey of Accompong and found the maroons outside of the limits
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of that place and occupying unpatented land. Such occupation must then, as subsequently, apparently have been recognized since nothing was done to disturb it, and in a private letter written by Mr. Harrison, he remarks that Sir John Grant gave the maroons permission to occupy the unpatented land to the North of Accompong.67 With this government land, the Accompong had enough to live on and support their
community and they should not have been using other peoples’ property.68
Ultimately, the government allowed the Accompong to use Crown Lands with
permission of the Jamaican government. The Accompong’s adverse possession claims
were no longer hostile. However, allowing use also provided little incentive to the
Accompong to acquire Cook’s Bottom in any other way, and permissible use proved
to be a favorable resolution for the Accompong themselves. They won the use that
they wanted and effectively controlled land that they thought was theirs in the first
place.
Additionally, Accompong use of the land compromised the government’s
objectives into the future. The government had now developed a custom of Maroon
land use and exclusive control over Cook’s Bottom, allowing the Accompong to reject
any terms for purchasing Cook’s Bottom and set an uncomfortable precedent for
expanding Accompong land holdings. As long as the Accompong could get either the
Crown or private land holders to permit use of the property at their discretion, they
effectively owned the parcels they used. This approach likely justified Accompong
trespasses on lands surrounding Cook’s Bottom in the 1890s.
67 Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, July 16, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 68 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary, May 28, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Nevertheless, the Jamaican government persisted in discussing the terms by
which they were going to collect taxes from Cook’s Bottom. The government
continued to emphasize to its employees that they would not tax the treaty-granted
lands or lands such as Cook’s Bottom that the Crown owned. “[T]axes should not be
collected herein on the unpatented land outside the 1220 acres as the Maroons have
been permitted to occupy it at will.”69 This two-pronged solution complied with the
requirements of the Land Allotment Act.
First, the Maroons would actually hold any land purchased in the future as
individuals rather than communally. The police officer who had dealt with the
Accompong when he arrested two community members for larceny first made this
recommendation, stating that “about six hundred acres of a better description of
Crown Lands on the west, be now allocated or sold to them for a nominal amount,
with a proviso that each allotment or separate tenure should be fenced in . . .”70 The
requirement that the Accompong eventually acquire the land in severalty was also
repeated again in the 1890s.71 Even the Scottish Presbytery, the Church that had built a
chapel in Accompong and often acted as an intermediary between the Jamaican
government and the Accompong community supported this plan stating that “a certain
69 Unidentified, "Taxation and Accompong Lands, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 70 J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 71 The Honorable Salmon, "Letter Suggesting the Accompong Buy Cooks Bottom, " 1B57635 CS0 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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number of acres should be allotted to every head of a family on payment of a certain
small security . . .”72
Second, the Accompong would have to live up to their “rights and
responsibilities of British subjects” because they would finally be paying taxes on
their new lots.73 But, the government did not want to stop there. Indeed, they hoped
that the power of taxation would extend beyond Maroon land holdings to their stock,
which included the “beasts of Maroons carrying commodities.”74
Tax revenues in Jamaica had started dropping precipitously since emancipation
because planters who owned slaves had provided a stream of revenue for the colonial
state.75 The loss of slaves meant a loss of labor for the sugar plantations as the
formerly enslaved sought to acquire their own plots of land and support their families
in that manner. Further, no other industry arose to replace the sugar industry until the
turn of the twentieth century, when the fruit export industry established a foothold.76
The Jamaican government was determined to wrangle whatever revenue it
could, not from the planters who were still politically powerful even after the rise of
Crown Colony government, but from the peasant class. Representatives on the
Legislative Council generally implemented head taxes, taxes for road repairs, duties
on domestically sold sugar and coffee, and duties on imported consumer goods, all
72 John Stuart, "Letter Detailing a Way Forward for Giving the Accompong More Land, April 8, 1881," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 73 Fgbe, "Rights and Privileges of the Marons, undated, " 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 74 Ibid.; Smith, "Letter to Mr. French, May 30, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 75 Holt, 202. 76 Ibid., 317.
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regressive taxes that disproportionately impacted the peasant class.77 Minutes from
Legislative Council meetings reflected that they consistently tried to implement many
other regressive tax measures, including abolishing the property tax (a tax that would
disproportionately affect planters because they owned so much acreage) and imposing
a housing tax that would count every building on a parcel of land, no matter how small
or insignificant the building.78 Reverend Henry Clarke, a man who had a close
connection to the Black peasant population, served on the Council and sought to shift
the taxation burden from the poor to those who could better afford it. He proposed
eliminating taxes on small houses; shifting responsibility for the land tax to wealthy
private landowners; or trying to abolish the House tax, the Holdings Tax, or the
Education Tax as those taxes had a disproportionate impact on the poor.79 Ultimately,
his motions were rejected, and Jamaica continued to collect less and less revenue.
Such regressive tax policies were not met with silence on the part of the peasants, even
before the Morant Bay Rebellion, there were riots because “sugar workers and small
settlers vexed at ‘the indiscreet and irregular’ procedures of the parish tax collector.”80
The Jamaican government did understand that the right and privilege to pay
taxes had to mean something in return, and so they were concerned that the
77 Ibid. 78When council members were considering these issues, they did not think of any “negroes” as landowners. “Negroes” were the people who paid the housing taxes, etc. Hence, abolishing property taxes was meant to benefit White Jamaicans without giving thought to other populations who could have been affected. Unidentified, Minutes from a Legislative Council Meeting Dated 23 October 18851885; Unidentified, Minutes from Meeting Dated 19 May 18991899. 79 Unidentified, Minutes from the Legislative Council Meeting; Unidentified, Minutes from the Legislative Concil Meeting Dated March 271896; Unidentified, Minutes from Legislative Concil Meeting Dated April 191898. 80 Holt, 205.
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Accompong received government services for their tax dollars. The specific forms of
taxation applicable to the Accompong included taxes on land (not treaty-granted
lands) and on stock. From the outset of the Cook’s Bottom land dispute, local
government officials, and the police had started noticing the relationship between the
roads leading to Accompong and the community’s insistence that they were exempt
from paying taxes. In a letter to the Constabulary, a police officer wrote that
Accompong is difficult to access because, in part, “the keeping this road in repair . . .
is left to the discretion of the Maroons themselves – they, in consideration of their
exemption from the payment of taxes, being looked to by the local authorities as the
proper parties to keep the road in good order: the result is that the road is sadly
neglected and the taxes, of course, remain unpaid.”81 As the government started trying
to resolve the Cook’s Bottom issue with the Accompong, it included in their
discussions the importance of paying taxes.82 In response, the Accompong noticed and
requested the services the government should have been providing. After meeting with
the government in 1870, the Accompong requested that they receive better roads,
medical aid, and schools.83 Concurrently, the government authorized employees to
start the process of assessing services being provided to Maroons, because their
requests were reasonable.
81 J. H. Prederville, "Letter to Headquarters Constabulary Office, 29 December, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 82 Smith, "Letter to Mr. French, May 30, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Report About the Scots Hall and Accompong Maroons Connected to Paying Taxes, December 2, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 83 Unidentified, "Exemption of Maroons from Taxes, 1870," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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The process of ascertaining Accompong community services proved to be
slow. In 1871, the Governor again pressed the parochial boards again to tell him
whether money had been granted to the Accompong to repair their roads, as the
Maroons were complaining that no one had fixed their roads since 1838, the year of
emancipation.84 In 1872, the Maroons made yet another request for a school to be built
in Accompong because they saw no movement on this project.85
The governor’s office asked for an accounting from both the St. Elizabeth
Municipal Board, the Board responsible for distributing medical aid for paupers, and
the Inspector of Schools to check the status of schools in Accompong.86 Pursuant to
these requests, it was clear that the local governments had never allocated any money
for Accompong Maroon services, including the school and the roads.87 By 1872,
significant progress had finally been made: the local governments announced to the
Governor’s office that grants had been made both for building schools in Accompong
and for paving roads.88 Yet later that year, the government could not state with
confidence that it had allocated money to provide these services. The roads still had
84 Unidentified, "Governor's Request to Mr. Salmon, January 7, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Letter to J.R. Mann, January 7, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 85 Robert James McLeod, "Letter to Sir John Peter Grant, April 11, 1872," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 86 Unidentified, "Letter to W.B. Salmon, " 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Letter to Mr. Savage, Esq., Inspector of Schools, January 7, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 87 John Savage, "Letter to the General Inspector's Office About When Grants Will Be Available, October 25, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Letter Concerning Road Grants to the Collector of Taxes Office, November 13, 1871," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 88 Letter from the Clerk of the Parochial Board to the Colonial Secretary's Office, "May 14, 1872," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; John Savage, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, April 29, 1872," 1B57635 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica; Unidentified, "Report About Jamaica's Maroons, " 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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not been repaired, no school had been built, and the record is silent concerning
whether poor aid or medical assistance was provided to the Accompong. Ultimately,
while the Jamaican government emphasized the importance of paying taxes in
exchange for services that it would provide to the Accompong, four years after the
land dispute concerning Cook’s Bottom, the government hoped that the Accompong
would buy Cook’s Bottom in individual parcels and pay taxes on those parcels. Yet,
the Jamaican government never provided a single service to the community.
The Accompong response to tax payments may explain why they received no
services: they argued with the Jamaican government that the treaty prevented the
government from taxing them at all. Generally, as the government summarized their
position, land “had been granted to them and their heirs forever free of all taxation,
with the condition also that their beasts used for carrying commodities should be free
of taxation.”89 Particularly important in this quote is the use of the word granted: only
one document could have granted the Maroons anything and that would have been the
1739 treaty to bring peace between the British and the Maroons. However, nowhere in
the treaty does it state that the Maroons were to have this land free of taxes. Since
1739, nothing in the historical record suggests that any Maroon groups were ever
taxed for their land or their stock, creating a customary legal expectation for the
Accompong (as well as the other Maroon groups); as the government ceded, custom
set a precedent that would be unwise to undo, “As it has been decided that the custom
89 Fgbe, "Rights and Privileges of the Marons, undated, " 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.Italics mine.
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under which they have been exempt from taxes on the lands they hold in common
shall not be interfered with . . .”90
Government sources also suggest that the Accompong claimed they did not
have to pay taxes, like other Jamaican citizens, as recompense for upholding their end
of the treaty. In addition to the land grant given by treaty, they argue that the stock and
land “also be free of tax in return for services rendered by them to the whites and to
the government in the two Maroon Wars and Rebellion of 1832.”91 The specific
services rendered in both Maroon Wars and the Rebellion of 1832 needs some
clarifying, particularly because with the Maroon Wars, one may not have considered
the Maroons as providing a “service” from the perspective of the Jamaican
government. The first service provided at the end of the First Maroon War was peace.
In exchange for perpetual freedom from slavery, at least one thousand acres of land,
meetings with the Governor, and putting down any slave rebellions and defending
Jamaica against her external enemies, there was peace between “the British” and the
Accompong.
The services the Accompong provided during the Second Maroon War were
failing to assist the Trelawney in their rebellion. Neither did, for that matter, any of
Jamaica’s Eastern Maroon groups, which explains why none of the other groups could
be deported from Jamaica. Finally, 1832 marks the year of the Christmas Rebellion
when slaves in northwest Jamaica just south of Montego Bay sought to secure the
90 J.B. Mann, "Letter Concerning Maroon Lands and Taxes, 1869," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 91 Esq. Mr. Burke, Crown Solicitor, "Letter to Col. J. R. Mann, R.E., January 7, 1871," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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freedom they thought the King had granted and the Jamaican government had
withheld. In addition to the militia, Jamaica had called upon the Maroons, pursuant to
their obligations in the treaty, to suppress the rebellion, and the Accompong assisted
the government. Ultimately, these other services reflected the seriousness with which
the Accompong viewed the treaty, and as they upheld their end of the bargain, they
expected the Jamaican government to uphold its own end by not taxing Maroons for
their land and stock.
However, the treaty reflects another issue suggesting that the power
relationship between any of the Maroon groups and the Jamaican government was
such that taxation was not really an option. Treaties are contracts between “states” or
certainly sovereign bodies to secure economic and political rights with each other;
they can negotiate and enforce the agreement amongst themselves. Both entities are
covered by their own laws and customs and, with the exception of the limits placed by
the treaty, their societies are governed by their internal legal structures.
While the treaty does not explicitly state that the Maroons were exempt from
taxation, neither did it explicitly provide the Jamaican government the right to tax the
Maroons. Ultimately, to the Accompong, one sovereign cannot tax another and,
therefore, “the British” had no right to tax them at all. This exemption from taxation
did not apply only to the Maroons at treaty signing, but also to their descendants,
“That they shall enjoy and possess for themselves and posterity for ever [my
emphasis], all the lands situate and lying between Trelawney town and the cockpits, to
the amount of fifteen hundred acres, bearing north-west from said Trelawney town . .
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.”92 The Accompong interpreted this perpetual land grant as a privilege that applied to
a person because of their lineage. This is a distinct argument from the Jamaican
government, which sought to include or exclude land from taxation based upon the
location of the land. If the land purchased by an individual was outside the treaty land
grant, it would be subjected to taxation. For the Accompong, if a Maroon purchased
the land, no matter where in Jamaica, the land parcel would be exempt from taxation.
The Accompong had enshrined in the treaty the notion that because they were
Maroons, they were exempt from taxation.
The Jamaican government took a different view on taxation of the Maroons’
lands and stock. First, the treaty said nothing explicit about exempting Maroons from
taxation. Second, the Land Allotment Act was the governing law, because it explicitly
superseded any treaty provisions, no matter if it was a unilateral action taken without
negotiation with the Maroon groups whose treaties were being abandoned. The Land
Allotment Act made the Maroons the same as all other Jamaicans and were entitled to
those rights and privileges in the Act, in this case paying taxes just like their fellow
Jamaicans.
This gulf between the Accompong and the Jamaican government ultimately
discouraged the Maroons from purchasing Cook’s Bottom. They rejected the
government’s stance that Maroons both own the land individually and pay taxes on
92 "An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Jamaica (1739).
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that land: “The result of enquiries made of the Director of Public Works was that he
considered it certain the Maroons would not take the land [Cook’s Bottom] in separate
lots even if offered them free, as in 1869, a very low price was fixed for the land but
no Maroon would take land to be held separately.”93 It took until 1894 before the
Jamaican government acknowledged this schism between themselves and the
Maroons. Further, even individually owned land tended to be used for the benefit of
the entire community and was expected to be defended by the entire community. By
the end of the conflict concerning Cook’s Bottom, the Accompong retained their
“innumerable distinctions” and were not one of Queen’s Subjects: they remained
distinct from Jamaica’s “negroes” by operation of law.
Conclusion
The dispute between the Accompong and the Jamaican government concerning
Cook’s Bottom extended over thirty years. The Jamaican government discussed
Cook’s Bottom and its implications well into the 1930s, still trying to lure the
Accompong to buy it.94 A full understanding of the tensions between the Jamaican
government and the Accompong connected to Cook’s Bottom are based in the rule of
law: disputes about which applicable law governed the parameters of the land dispute,
and whether the primary issue was adverse possession or taking control over land
already owned. The Maroons thought the treaty was the applicable rule of law, but the
Jamaican government thought that the Land Allotment Act was the appropriate
93 Cork, "Precis Re Accompong Maroon Land, May 26, 1894," 1B576333 (CSO) 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 94 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary, February 20, 1930," 1B57729 CSO 2 (1929), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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framework for dealing with the Accompong. Regardless of the letter of the law, the
government sought to make the Maroons just like the Black populace who would pay
taxes. The government saw Cook’s Bottom as a way for them to get something from
the Maroons. Taxes created a revenue stream for an island under great economic
distress and so the government tried to gain some of that revenue from the Maroons.
The Cook’s Bottom issue also reflected three important points about the
Accompong. We see that a community formed in resistance, namely warfare, would
have to maintain itself in resistance. It was because the Accompong resisted particular
governmental actions that they kept Cook’s Bottom including refusing to let the
surveyor complete the survey of Accompong which would have limited Accompong’s
borders contrary to their understanding of their borders at treaty signing. They also
interfered with the arrest of Accompong Maroons accused of larceny, and released
community members from prison because their arrest did not comply with the rule of
law dictated by the treaty. The Accompong never threatened outright warfare in trying
to win Cook’s Bottom, although their threats of bloodshed when a police officer tried
to take the accused to jail suggested that warfare was never taken off of the table as a
means of resolving this dispute.
Ultimately, we see that the Accompong were not averse to resisting when land
was at stake. Individual land ownership was seen as usurping their land because in
their communities, all their lands, whether treaty-given, or purchased outside the
boundaries of Accompong, were lands that would be usable by all community
members and functioned effectively as communal. The Accompong were concerned
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about the government usurping their lands because of the placemaking narrative about
Accompong’s boundaries. When the government tried to sell Cook’s Bottom to the
Accompong they saw it as another example of the government selling them lands that
already belonged to them. Further, taxing Maroon-owned lands was another example
of the Jamaican government trying to take their lands it was trying to extract revenue
from something it did not own.
Because of the solemnization process in signing the treaty the Accompong
perceived the treaty as an ever-enduring, unchanging document. Usurping the treaty
went to the core of the relationship between the Accompong and the Jamaican
government. A breach of this document was not even seen as possible and further
explains the Accompong’s pull to resist the Jamaican government’s land policies vis-
à-vis their community.
Within the last ten to fifteen years (i.e. 1995 – 2008), the Accompong have
again tussled with the Jamaican government about Cook’s Bottom. The government
wanted to use the Superintendent’s house in Cook’s Bottom as a base for the Jamaican
Park Service to tend the cockpits.95 The Accompong rejected their overtures yet again.
At the point when I conducted interviews among the Accompong, they seemed to have
been fully in charge of this property.96 The taxation issues raised in this chapter are
central in the next chapter as this work turns to examining Colonel Rowe’s tax
95 Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008). 96 Within this same period, a private Jamaican citizen squatted on the property and lived there – a possession that if left too long, would enable the citizen to make a claim for adversely possessing Cook’s Bottom. The Accompong evicted him from Cook’s Bottom as well. Ibid.
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petitions and the overlapping issues of Maroon taxation, the communal nature of
Accompong properties, and the nature of Accompong resistance from 1870 - 1883.
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Chapter 4: Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions: Treaty Based Objections to Paying Taxes (1870 – 1883)
Introduction
In 1870, Colonel Rowe, the Accompong’s political leader, sent a petition to the
colonial government challenging the propriety of their tax bill. He argued that the
Maroons had never paid taxes and that the 1739 treaty prohibited them from doing so.
The issues surrounding Colonel Rowe’s tax petitions center around the Accompong
insisting on their historical stance of not paying taxes and the colonial state trying to
force them to act like of the Queen’s subjects and pay them. Jamaica both offered the
Accompong community services and reprieve from military duty in return for their
paying taxes, and seized their stock. Yet the Accompong insisted that they were
exempt from taxes on real property and stock and failed to become Jamaicans.
The Accompong were determined to resist the efforts of the colonial state to
collect taxes. They rejected the government’s authority to enforce tax collection; they
released the captured stock and threatened to disturb the peace in the event the
government continued in this direction. Ultimately, the government was unwilling to
use force to compel the Accompong to comply with the Land Allotment Act, which
left them unable to fulfill their post-emancipation plans for this community. In
providing greater context about taxing the Maroons, this chapter will now discuss the
economic conditions in late nineteenth-century Jamaica that made taxation not only a
philosophical, but an economic issue.
Rule of Law and Taxation (Pre-1883)
125
The rule of law governed who paid taxes, and the Queen’s subjects could not
avoid tax obligations. But the application of that law revealed gaps between who was
to endure the impact of taxation. The tax system put a disproportionate burden on
former slaves to pay many sorts of taxes including housing and sales taxes.1 The
Jamaican government tried to narrow the gap of the tax burden between the formerly
enslaved and the Accompong and expand the group of “negroes.” However, as
discussed previously the Accompong relied on the treaty and remained outside the
political and economic conditions now dictated by the colonial government.
The government saw no other possibility outside of the rule of law for
organizing societies. In 1837, Lord Glenelg wrote:
The freedom to which I refer must of course, however, be that of men living in civil society, enjoying the franchises and performing the duty of citizens. Their privileges cannot be unconnected with restrictions against the abuse of them; for neither in Great Britain nor in any part of the civilized world can we point at any class of men who are not subjected to laws defining for the good of society the obligations of all its members to each other, and to the state collectively.2
Glenelg further confirms the civilizing mission that was in part the sentiment
of emancipation.3 He noted that after emancipation there was a “greater respect for the
laws” that allowed for more security and the increasing value of property.4 The
prevailing assumption was that people wanted nothing more than to be part of
civilized society where the rule of law defined the obligations of the state to the person 1 Legislative Council, "Meeting of the Legislative Council - 27th Day of March 1895, March 27, 1895," 1B/59/13, Kingston, Jamaica. 2 Lord Glenelg, "Copy of a Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to Teh Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., November 6, 1837," Papers for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Colonies, London. 3 Ibid. 4 Glenelg, "Circular Despatch Addressed by Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colonies, &C., January 30, 1836," Papers Relative to the Abolition of Slavery, London.
126
and the obligations of the person to the state. Under this framework, people would
perform the duty of citizens. Based on what Glenelg wrote to other West Indian
governors, the formerly enslaved had to perform the following duties: work
(preferably on a plantation), be good and upright Christians, abide by the rule of law,
and take their earned income and spend it in the colonial society by both purchasing
goods and paying taxes. This was the definition of a good “negroe.”5
It did not occur to Jamaican authorities that the Maroons would reject the Land
Allotment Act and reject becoming the Queen’s subjects. Maroons tended to accept
her authority over the treaty on behalf of the British; however, paying taxes was not
explicitly part of the blood covenant.6 They did not see themselves as breaking the rule
of law, but as upholding it.7 Undeterred, the Jamaican government sought to bring the
Accompong into the more complex political and economic vision of post-
emancipation society that challenged the ability of the Black peasantry to acquire land.
As stated by legal scholar Patricia Williams, “Blacks went from being owned by
others to having everything around them owned by others. In a civilization that values
private property above all else, this meant a devaluation of person, a removal of blacks
not just from the market but from the pseudo-spiritual circle of psychic and civic
communion.”8 While Williams speaks to the situation governing the formerly enslaved
in the U.S., the Maroons always presented a problem for the colonial state beyond the
5 Ibid. 6 Robt Jas. McLeod Henry Octavius Rowe, Joseph B. Foster, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave About the Arrest of Two Maroons and Seizing Their Mules, October, 1882," 1B/57/6/33/3 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Kingston. 7 Ibid. 8Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 71.
127
threat to the institution of slavery; the Maroons presented an alternative to slavery.
Maroons were not owned and by owning land they defied the colonial
conceptualization of how Blacks functioned in Jamaican society. The same problem
emerged after slavery. Maroons never functioned as subjects and eluded basic
obligations of the colonial state such as paying taxes. Maroons continued to present an
alternative to the post-emancipation vision of what it meant to be Black.
Philosophical positions about tax obligations aside, Jamaica experienced
economic challenges in the post-emancipation era because of a severe decline in
revenue connected with sugar production that continued into the 1880s. Not only did
peasants refuse to work on plantations, but the price of sugar also fell on the world
market so that planters could not command the profits they planned.9
Still the Jamaican Assembly maintained a regressive taxation system that
shifted the tax burden onto the peasantry.10 Indeed,
From 1867 into the 1930s, the Jamaican government would draw three-fourths of its revenue from customs duties, primarily on food and fees. Meanwhile, the taxes on exports declined by more than 14 percent between 1867 and 1881, while the public debt rose 61 percent to pay for immigration expenses and railway bonds incurred almost entirely for the benefit of the planters.11
The Legislative Council could garner much more money from the planters, but
retained Jamaica’s low tax rate so that Jamaica never increased its overall revenue.
Conversely, while the Accompong, would not contribute much in the way of taxes,
any revenue would have been helpful. The government needed all the Queen’s
9 Holt, 118 - 120. 10 Satchell. 11 Holt, 337.
128
subjects to pay taxes and the symbolism of the Accompong paying taxes was central
to ensuring that the island’s Black peasant population continued to pay theirs as well.12
Accompong Challenge to Taxes: The Treaty (1870)
In early 1870, Colonel Rowe, the leader of the Accompong, filed a petition
with the Jamaican government concerning the upcoming tax bill for the Accompong
community. The government acknowledged his petition and suggested that the
Accompong only owed taxes for the time period beginning in 1842 when the Land
Allotment Act, “gave the Maroons all the privileges of the rest of Her Majesty’s
subjects [and] they became liable in the enjoyment of their privileges to pay any new
taxes which the Queen’s gov. might impose on classes of Her Majesty’s subjects
without distinction.”13 The government offered to send an official to explain the tax
situation to the Colonel and to arrange for its collection. The language in the letter
stated that the law that gave “Maroons all the privileges of the rest of Her Majesty’s
subjects,” a direct reference to the Land Allotment Act, the legal justification for
taxing the Maroons.14
The Accompong responded arguing that the government’s explanation was
directly contrary to their interpretation of the treaty. Indeed the Accompong proposed
12J. Stuart, "Letter to the Colonial Secreatary's Office About Accompong Taxes, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. In this document, Rev. Stuart explicitly states “I do not consider that the maroons of Accompong are at this present able to pay taxes.” Government Surveyor Thomas Harrison, "Letter from Mr. Harrision to General Mann, April 2, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. This letter explicitly states that “[t]he numerous laws relating to the Maroons place them on the same footing as the rest of the population and all the Maroons throughout the Island have obeyed these laws except those at Accompong who have always refused to pay taxes . . .” 13Governor of Jamaica, "Letter from the Governor to the Accompong Maroons Concerning the Payment of Taxes, March 5, 1870," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 14 Ibid.
129
different terms: they insisted that the Jamaican government not simply unilaterally
change the terms of their treaty, but instead actually renegotiate the treaty. Mr.
Salmon, one of Jamaica’s tax collectors, went to Accompong to discuss the tax issues.
Colonel Rowe explained to Mr. Salmon that the township and land surrounding
Accompong had been given to the Accompong and their heirs free of taxation. The
reason they had such generous terms was because of the settlement of the Maroon
Wars, and the assistance the Maroons had provided in suppressing the 1831 Christmas
Wars. Maroons who lived on lands located outside of Accompong owed taxes on
those lands.15
The Accompong stated what they expected from the Jamaican colonial
government and how the government met or missed their expectations. They argued
that since emancipation (1838), they had not received any money for the upkeep of
their roads when before they were allowed £500 for this purpose; further, they had
never received any parochial (local) or medical aid. The Jamaican colonial
government had also failed to pay for any new schools or churches needed in the
community. Finally, the government had denied them their rifles “leaving them
entirely powerless in case of their assistance being required . . .”16 Therefore, if the
Jamaican government expected them to pay taxes, it would have to meet four
conditions: other Maroon groups would have to agree to pay taxes; the Accompong
15 W. B. Salmon, "Letter from the Collector of Taxes to the Acting Collector General Concerning the Accompong and Taxation, August 19, 1870," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 16Ibid. This particular statement begs the question of whether the government simply did not see providing the Accompong with rifles as a term of the treaty, or whether they were afraid of “exciting” the Maroons as a protective measure decided to keep them unarmed.
130
would no longer be required to serve in Jamaica’s military; they would get their share
of Parochial money and could send their sick and aged to the Poor House; and finally
that churches and schools would be supported by the government.17
One more point must be made about these terms. Once again, it is important to
note that the Accompong were proposing a renegotiation of the treaty. The first step in
such renegotiations would be an internal matter: that all Maroons would have to agree
to taxation.18 Further, the Accompong argued that they would exchange one term of
the treaty for another term: in order for them to exercise the “privilege” of taxation,
they would have to be relinquished from the other “privilege” of military service, an
insistence on not having the same “immunities and privileges” as all the Queen’s
subjects. The Accompong did not acknowledge the authority of the Land Allotment
Act over them; the only document governing the relationship between their
community and the colonial government would be the treaty. Hence, into the late
1870s, the Accompong framed the taxation issue as a renegotiation of the 1739 treaty.
Government Services for Taxes (1878 - 1879)
On the other hand, the Jamaican colonial government assumed that it was
finally using the Land Allotment Act with the Accompong community. However, the
application of the Land Allotment Act presented two problems. First, “[t]he non-
collection of taxes in previous years naturally helped to confirm the misperception of
17 Ibid. 18 The Colonels from all of the Maroon communities occasionally convened meetings with each other to grapple with the issues facing the communities. One historical example we see of their cooperation was during the Second Maroon War when the Trelawney Maroons decided to fight the Jamaican government; the other Maroon groups did not come to their aid. There was clearly a tacit agreement that they would not fight in this war that could only be achieved with discussion among the communities.
131
the Accompong Maroons that the free grant of land under the treaty of 1739 carried
with it exemption from taxes.”19 Second, the government realized that they had never
provided services to the Accompong in part because they had never paid taxes. Finally
following up on service requests connected to the Cook’s Bottom land dispute, in
1878, the Jamaican government, asked Mr. Kinnison, a minister who had previously
dealt with the Accompong community, to tell the Accompong that they were
providing the funds to build roads.20 The government’s decision to repair roads was
not without controversy. The surveyor, Thomas Harrison, had agreed with Rev.
Kinnison that the roads leading to Accompong were in terrible shape, but asserted that
this challenge could have been overcome if the Accompong were simply willing to
pay taxes.21
The Jamaican government decided it would provide the money to the
Accompong, but not pave the roads because the Office of the Director of Roads was
understaffed.22 It was recommended that the Parochial Road Commissioners should
supervise building the roads while Rev. Kinnison recommended that he employ the
Accompong to fix them.23 By June, the Jamaican government had decided to accept
19Unidentified, "Employee Note Concerning Accompong Maroon Payment of Taxes, June 1, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 20 EKS, "Note Requesting Communication Be Sent to Rev. Kinnison About Accompong Roads, August 28, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 21 Thomas Harrison, "Letter from Mr. Harrision to General Mann, April 2, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 22 J. Mann, "Letter to the Office of the Director of Roads and the Surveyor General, June 20, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 23Office of Dir. Rds & Surveyor General, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office Stating No Resources to Build Accompong Roads, June 20, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; John Kinnison, "Letter to the Governor's Office, June 10, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; J. Mann, "Letter Suggesting Parochial Road Commissioners Repair the Roads, June 20, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
132
Rev. Kinnison’s offer and have him supervise building the road.24 By 1879, the
Jamaican government issued the £100 to repair the Accompong’s roads and as a
condition of the Accompong receiving this money, they would have to make sure the
roads remained in good condition.25 The government hoped that the Accompong
would directly use this grant to repair the roads themselves, but as of late September,
they had not taken over the responsibility for repairing the road.26
The government’s decision to fund improvement of the roads leading to
Accompong marked a definitive shift from how such matters were handled under the
treaty to how they should be handled under the Land Allotment Act. Before
emancipation, the government hoped that the Accompong would comply with the
treaty and fund and carry out necessary road repairs. Now, the government agreed to
fund these services for the Accompong, including providing limited employment
opportunities for some of its members. The linchpin in this arrangement was receiving
tax revenue from the Accompong, an issue that could not be taken for granted.
The government also provided medical and poor relief for Maroons in its quest
to encourage the Accompong to pay taxes. Joseph Foster, an Accompong Maroon,
made a request for aid from the government in 1876. While the government thought he
was an appropriate person to receive aid, it never followed up on the request.27 Once
24 Unidentified, "Decision to Have Rev. Kinnison Supervise Building of the Accompong Road, June 24, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 25 Custos of St. Elizabeth, "Extract from Unofficial Role from Custos of St. Elizabeth, August 14, 1879," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 26 J. Stuart, "Letter to Acting Colonial Secretary Walker About the Maroons Repairing Their Roads, September 27, 1879," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 27 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to W.H. Coke Concerning Parochial Aid for Major Joseph Foster, June 22, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
133
again, in 1878, he requested medical aid from the government and forced the issue of
the law applicable to the Maroons. Most of the petition directly addressed the sorts of
injuries that prevented him from being “able to do any hard work,” but his opening
argument states that he deserved aid because he “was long serving the Crown was in
many Rebelion [sic] up to the late St. Thomas rebelion [sic] acting Captain under Col
Fife & now acting as major for Town.”28 Major Stone’s invocation of the Morant Bay
Rebellion that started in St. Thomas parish suggested two related bases on which he
was deserving of parochial aid: payment for services rendered and the treaty.
In Maroon communications with the Jamaican government, the Accompong
often argued that they had done something for the state, namely protected Jamaica’s
citizens from the Christmas Rebellion or the Morant Bay Rebellion, and had never
been paid for their services.29 This understanding that the Maroons should be paid for
services rendered is connected to the 1739 treaty and has statutory precedent.30 The
treaty states that the Maroons should be paid for returning runaway slaves and a later
statute reinforced this incentive and actually increased the amount Maroons should be
paid.31 So when a member of the Accompong community requested aid and invoked
28 Joseph B. Foster, "Letter to Governor Sir Anthony Musgrave, June 11, 1878," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 29 Mann, "Letter Concerning Maroon Lands and Taxes, 1869," 1B57635 CSO 2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 30 "An Act to Reap "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to Teh Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes Aforementioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1791). 31"An Act Confirming the Articles Executed by Colonel John Guthrie, Lieutenant Francis Sadler, and Cudjoe the Commander of the Rebels; for Paying Rewards for Taking up and Restoring Runaway Slaves, and Making Provisions for Four White Persons, Residing, or to Reside at Trelawney Town; and for Granting Freedom to Five Negroes Who Were Guides to Parties," in Acts of Assembly Passed in the
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his service in the Morant Bay Rebellion, he suggested that he was not adequately paid
for his service as required by the treaty. His request reinforced the treaty as the legal
document by which relationships between the Maroons and the government should be
governed. The government decided that he had a good claim and so they requested
that the St. Elizabeth parochial board provide relief for him.32 The government
undermined its quest to bolster the importance of the Land Allotment Act to the
Accompong community in this transaction because it never corrected Major Stone’s
rationale for receiving poor and medical aid. The government continued with its
understanding with the Accompong that it would provide services for taxes, but the
Accompong presumed that they were receiving poor and medical aid pursuant to the
treaty.
Forcing Tax Collection I (1882)
Now that the government had made a commitment to provide services to the
Accompong community, the Accompong still did not make a single tax payment to the
colonial government, much to the government’s consternation. The tax office stopped
trying to coax the Accompong to pay taxes, and instead decided to force the
Accompong to do so. On September 21, 1882, the Accompong Colonel’s council
wrote the government complaining about actions an employee took with the
community. Some Accompong Maroons hired their mules out to a man named Daniel, Island of Jamaica (1739). "An Act to Reap "an Act for the Better Order and Government of the Negroes Belonging to Teh Several Negroe-Towns and for Preventing Them from Purchasing of Slaves; and for Encouraging the Said Negroes to Go in Pursuit of Runaway Slaves; and for Other Purposes Aforementioned; and for Giving the Maroon Negroes Further Protection and Security; for Altering the Mode of Trial; and for Other Purposes," in The Laws of Jamaica (Jamaica: 1791). 32 Unknown, "Letter Stating to Referring a Request for Medical Aid to the Parochial Board, Unknown," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
135
a Maroon who lived nearby in the town of Elderslie. On September 15, the
constabulary seized two mules on Daniel’s property for failure of the Accompong
Maroons to pay taxes and refused to return the mules to the Maroons until they paid
£4.50.33
The Maroons asserted that no one within Accompong’s borders owed taxes
because the “’Treaty’ which stands now 142 years old shows that this Maroons are
free of all duty.”34 They also explained that the mules had belonged to some widows
who had large families and lived within the borders of Accompong. Women without
men to support their families deserved extra consideration by the government because
they had to support their families, implying that this was a role normally reserved for
men. Finally, the Council insisted that they would not breach the peace.35
The Colonel sent another letter about the issue to the Colonial Secretary’s
Office, in which he conceded that the Maroons had to pay the taxes, in contradiction to
the September 21, 1882 letter the Council sent. In this letter, the Colonel emphasized
the poverty of the Accompong community in addition to the fact that the community
was not interested in breaching the peace, although he says that the treatment being
issued by the government could cause a larger disturbance.36
The government turned inward to determine how to proceed. It concluded that
the Accompong were “entitled to the same but to no greater privileges than other
33 Henry O. Rowe, "Letter to H. Coke Concerning the Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/33/3 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36Robt Jas. McLeod Henry Octavius Rowe, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave Concerning Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
136
people” and then instructed others to refer the matter to the Acting Collector
General.37 The language concerning the “same rights and privileges” framed the tax
question through the lens of the Land Allotment Act. One employee directly sought
clarification of the Accompong’s letter: “What is meant of our treaty?”38 Indeed, the
treaty would potentially present the greatest challenge to taxation and undermined the
ability to enforce the Land Allotment Act. There was recognition with the government
that they needed to resolve this legal conflict.
Use of Force for Tax Collection (1882)
The Inspector General recommended that Inspector Wedderburn, the police
officer dealing with the Accompong, work with Reverend Stuart to encourage the
Maroons to pay their taxes immediately, that he bring readied police reinforcements,
and that more police to be available just in case.39 The Inspector General’s response
was consistent with the police’s usual reaction when members of the Black population,
for example, refused to be evicted from their lands. Veront Satchell, an historian of
land holding among the formerly enslaved, writes of the following:
At Bushy Park, St. Catharine, in 1867 the peasant-squatters who were being ejected not only resisted the legal owner, Louis Verley, but also the police. Between 70 and 80 persons were arrested and tried in the Circuit Court for riotous assembly and forcible trespass. A strong detachment, numbering 100 constables and three Inspectors, had to be drawn from St Andrew, St Catherine and St Thomas in 1871 to keep the peace at Bath, St Thomas, on account of alleged peasant-squatters on Mr Melville’s property, parading the streets of Bath
37Unidentified, "Note Concerning Accompong Maroon Taxation and the State of the Law, October 20, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 38Ibid. 39 EHB Hartrell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office Concerning Accompong Maroon Taxation, October 11, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; A. Wedderburn, "Letter to the Inspector General About the Acccompong Paying Taxes, October 17, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
137
armed with heavy sticks and using threatening language, on the day of the trial of the eviction case between themselves and Mr Melville, violence was averted because ‘the demonstration of power [had] struck terror in their [the squatters’] hearts and [had] stamped out most effectively all show of dissatisfaction and inclination for mischief.”40
Blacks displayed riotous behavior when it came to land, and he was prepared to handle
this effectively in the event the Accompong planned on rioting. The police, because of
their dealings with Blacks understood that force was the only means to evict them
from lands they did not own. They knew that it would take force to require the
Accompong to pay taxes. However, just because the police force determined that force
would be necessary to get the Maroons to comply with the Land Allotment Act does
not mean that the colonial government wanted to proceed along that path.
In fact, the colonial government disagreed with the police inspector’s
suggestion and decided to speak with the Maroons first. They enlisted Rev. Stuart’s
help with this task, but he was unavailable and so Inspector Wedderburn went to
Accompong himself and met with 150 – 200 Maroons for two hours “endeavouring to
persuade the Maroons to pay their taxes quietly . . .”41 The Accompong responded,
saying, “they would not pay any taxes as long as they had a drop of blood left.”42
Further, the Accompong did not acknowledge the Jamaican governor as having any
authority over them and that they would only submit to the authority of the “Kings and
Queens of England, who in former years signed treaties with them.”43 The Maroons
40 Satchell, 78. 41 Wedderburn, "Letter to the Inspector General About the Acccompong Paying Taxes, October 17, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid.
138
were explicit that the only rule of law they were prepared to acknowledge was the
treaty and under that document, taxes were not required.
Wedderburn had two concerns after his meeting: whether the treaty the
Accompong referred to existed and what it stated. He could not assume that the treaty
was rule of law. Secondly, he also understood that force would be necessary if they
were ever going to get the Accompong to pay taxes, arguing that “[s]hould the
government consider it necessary to compel the Maroons to pay taxes, I must ask that
strong reinforcement be sent to me, as the Maroons of this parish will no doubt be
joined by those of St. James, and the two combined would make a large body.”44 He
left the meeting convinced that the Accompong might use force if the colonial State
insisted that they pay their taxes, contrary to what the Colonel argued in his letter to
the Inspector and the Governor. Ultimately, he came away from the Accompong with
an understanding that they insisted the treaty was the controlling rule of law and were
prepared to do whatever they needed to do to keep the treaty in place.
Forcing Tax Revenue II (1882)
This initial confrontation between the Accompong and the Jamaican
government would not be the last. Later in October 1882, the Colonel wrote to the
Governor of Jamaica complaining about two men whose mules were seized yet again
and the men being placed in “Lock Up” for a day and night when they went to Black
River. He told the government that this action was “consider[ed] a breach of the Peace
44 Ibid.
139
that was concluded between us and the Whites years ago [original emphasis].”45 The
Colonel tried to peacefully settle this issue discussing this matter with both the
Inspector and the Collector of Taxes who would not release the mules on peaceful
terms. Left with no other choice, the Accompong went to the pasture where the mules
were being held and took them back. The Accompong insisted that they would not
breach the peace because “we consider ourself [sic] loyal subjects of our Crown’s
Queen.”46 Contrary to the actions of the Jamaican government, they were following
the dictates of the Crown as embodied by the treaty.
The Police arrested the two Maroons for disorderly conduct because they were
too drunk to be brought before a magistrate. They could not have their mules with
them while they were sobering up in prison.47 The arrested Maroons were not given a
trial; they exhibited remorse for their behavior and promised to the sitting Justice not
to be publicly inebriated in the future.48 Yet the Inspector did not return the mules
when the Maroons had finished their encounter with the criminal justice system,
suggesting that the Maroons’ public drunkenness was pretext for claiming back taxes
from the Accompong. The Inspector never addressed the fact that the tax challenges
may have fueled the second mule seizure. The Land Allotment Act could provide the
Jamaican government a justification for arresting the Maroons and seizing their stock;
however, such an action would be unthinkable under the treaty. Both mule seizures
45Henry Octavius Rowe, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave Concerning Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 46Ibid. 47 A. Wedderburn, "Letter to the Inspector General About Seizing Mules from the Accompong, October 18, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 48 Ibid.
140
reflected the legal tensions between the Accompong and the Jamaican government
about the source of law applicable to Maroon communities.
Meanwhile, the government, again, looked into the precedent of the Maroons
paying taxes. Although the Accompong had never paid taxes, Maroons in other
parishes were subject to the same order authorizing the police to seize unlicensed
stock if they failed to pay taxes.49 Nevertheless, even the officials involved in seizing
the Maroon’s stock started to question the wisdom of doing so because the
government could not determine who had ordered the Parochial Tax Collector to seize
the Maroon’s stock. The government was caught in a contradictory position, having no
precedent for seizing Maroon stock to pay taxes, but believing they had legal authority
to do so. The government decided not to resort to “extreme measures” to collect taxes,
which included using force. Instead, it again decided to have lawyers within the
colonial government determine whether there was a treaty; whether the government
recognized it; and determine the implications of that recognition for the Accompong’s
land.50
Ultimately, after the mule seizure of the mules from the Maroons, the issue of
the controlling law when dealing with the Maroons was brought into the open. The
only way in which the Maroons would, legally, be required to pay taxes was if the
Land Allotment Act had legitimacy, not only within the Jamaican community, but also
among the Maroons. However, based on the Accompong’s response to having to pay
49Unidentified, "Note Referring Tax Collections to the Acting Collector General, September 26, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 50HH Coke, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office Wondering If the Treaty Had to Be Considered, October 24, 1882," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2, Spanish Town, Jamaica.
141
taxes as the Queen’s subjects, the Land Allotment Act continued to have little saliency
and so the community turned to the treaty to justify their position. After members of
the Jamaican government listened to the Accompong’s reasons for not paying taxes,
the police and other employees of the Jamaican government were also forced to
evaluate whether the treaty still existed (technically, it did not because of the Land
Allotment Act, but practically, the government still contended with it), whether it was
a legitimate legal instrument, and to examine whether it had any authority over the
question of taxation. The government decided not to use force to compel the Maroons
to be like the Queen’s subjects surrounding them and pay taxes.
Accompong Silences About the Land Allotment Act
The Accompong implicitly argued that one sovereign had no authority to tax
another, the basis for not acknowledging the Land Allotment Act. The oral histories I
collected with the Accompong were silent about the Land Allotment Act and do not
recognize anything that would challenge their sovereignty.
Why would there be such a silence in the Accompong narratives? After all, if
the treaty were supreme, no harm would result by naming the Act. One explanation is
that the government never mentioned the act by name in dealings with the
Accompong. The Jamaican government consistently repeated in meetings with the
Maroons that they were to be treated like all of the Queen’s subjects, were subject to
taxation, and no longer entitled to communally owned land, for example. The
government never named the Act, just the consequences of the Act and that was
mirrored in the Accompong oral history.
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However, that explanation is lacking in that it does not embrace issues of
power embedded in historical silences. The challenge is that “not all silences are equal
. . . any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique
process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary
accordingly.”51 Therefore, it becomes critical to examine the context in which this
silence occurs in the Accompong narratives about land and its connection to the
Accompong community.
The Accompong may have had grave concerns about the state of their
community and whether it could survive without renewed warfare in light of the
government moving its agenda. The petition from Colonel Rowe about whether
Maroons should pay taxes occurred on the heels of the Cook’s Bottom land dispute.
The government already tried to ensure that Maroons acted like the rest of the island’s
Blacks by granting them permission to use Cook’s Bottom and denying them its
acquisition by adverse possession. The Maroons interpreted this as the government
robbing them of property they already owned.
Further, the Cook’s Bottom challenge had already pitted the Accompong
against the taxman. The Jamaican government tried to offer the community services in
return for their taxes but the Maroons had resisted this incursion on their sovereignty.
They must have asked themselves whether declaring war would be in the only way to
dissuade the government from implementing its plan.
The Maroons, in protesting the seizure of two mules from Daniel’s property,
51 Trouillot.
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simply argued that the treaty barred the government from collecting taxes from the
community and that “[w]e will not break the Peace & we trust that the public will not .
. .”52 While the Colonel and his Council did not say that they would breach the peace,
they implied that they would be willing to defend themselves. The government had
enough institutional memory of the Maroon Wars to take this statement seriously,
exactly the lesson the government should have taken from the Maroon Wars,
embodied in the placemaking narrative about Peace Cave. Knowing that the
community could display such force justified the Accompong ignoring Jamaican
legislative pronouncements and undermined the importance of remembering the Land
Allotment Act.
The silence connected with the Land Allotment Act presents another problem,
namely that they could be feigning silence about Land Allotment Act narratives.
Taking what other Maroons stated at face value, one might think this silence is not
only towards outsiders, but also within the community, a practice called dodging.53
This interpretation suggests members of the Colonel’s council, all people with whom I
met during my stays in Accompong, had intentionally declined sharing information
about the Land Allotment Act and the challenges it posed to the community. I had
come against an impenetrable wall of secrecy. Yet, there are also community members 52 Rowe, "Letter to H. Coke Concerning the Seizure of Accompong Mules, September 21, 1882," 1B/5/76/33/3 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 53Kenneth Bilby (an anthropologist who extensively studied Jamaica’s Maroon communities) defines dodging as “to evade and/or hide from (the term refers not just to skillful avoidance of invasive questions, but to any kind of calculated evasion or trickery, any act of ‘hiding.’ Whether for self-defense or personal gain)” Bilby, 477. Beyond this definition, Bilby describes the challenges that outsiders face when trying to get information from any of the Maroon groups which means that outsiders face “an unpenetrable wall of secrecy . . . [through] a complex set of strategies of evasion . . .” ibid., 369.
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who may not have known about these land conflicts and also met with dodging
themselves.
Some of the current sensitivity about the Jamaican government and land is
connected to the Jamaican government trying to mine the cockpits for bauxite, a move
the Accompong reject because the cockpits are sacred land: it is the terrain over which
they fought the Maroon Wars and established themselves as a community. As such,
the cockpits are treaty-granted land, which means only the Accompong community
has the authority to grant mining rights to it. Silence about the Land Allotment Act,
particularly to outsiders, could reflect that the Accompong clearly understand the
threat the Land Allotment Act posed to the community; they could have lost Maroon
land.
The Attempt to Remove Military Service As An Obstacle to Tax Collection (1883)
Rev. Stuart thought that the Jamaican government should not have wasted time
trying to collect taxes from the Accompong because they did not have the resources to
pay them. Accompong soil was not productive, and the Accompong could not grow
enough crops to sell and earn income to support themselves from the land.54 A
government employee, in response to Rev. Stuart’s efforts with the community,
openly wondered if the Accompong would change locations so that they could receive
better government services and then assimilate into the general population.55 He
suggested that the government could issue a proclamation excepting all of the Maroon
54 Stuart, "Letter to the Colonial Secreatary's Office About Accompong Taxes, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 55 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning the Possibility of Moving the Accompong, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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groups from military service.56
So the government seriously considered the option of moving the Accompong
to fertile land closer to other Jamaicans with the goal of providing better government
services. The government openly admitted that moving the Accompong away from
treaty land was designed to undermine the Accompong’s argument that they would not
have to pay taxes simply for the reason that they were Maroons.57 If they did not live
with Maroons, they would no longer see themselves as Maroons and would be merged
into the general population.58
Meanwhile, the Proclamation excepting the Maroons from military service had
been drafted in accordance with the terms of the Land Allotment Act.59 In addition to
stating that the Accompong did not have to provide any special services to the
military, the Proclamation also reiterated that they were “entitled to all the rights and
privileges and immunities of British subjects in as ample a manner as any other people
in this Island without distinction of race or color.”60
The Jamaican government drafted the Proclamation to comply with one of the
Accompong’s terms for paying taxes: that they no longer serve with the Jamaican
military when called. However, Governor Musgrave, who drafted it, engaged in
56 AM, "Note from Government Employee Discussing the Ease of Moving the Accompong, March 30, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 57 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to J. Stuart Concerning Moving the Accompong and Taxes, April 2, 1833," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 58 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to the Director of Public Works About Avaialable Land to Move the Accompong To, April 2, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 59Unidentified, "Employee Note Concerning the Draft Proclamation, April 2, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.This note sets the parameters of the Proclamation and the final terms. 60 HMH, "Employee Note Justifying the Proclamation with the Land Allotment Act, April 11, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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double speak, writing
it has been brought to my notice that notwithstanding the Acts above referred to, the Maroons of Accompong believe that they are liable to military service in a way that others of her Majesty’s Subjects in the Island are not; And whereas I deem it expedient that this belief should be removed; Now therefore I do hereby proclaim and declare that the Maroons never have been and are not now liable to perform military service, except such as might be required of any of her Majesty’s Subjects within the Island . . .”61
The Maroons had all of the privileges and immunities of British Subjects, but British
subjects had to serve in the military whenever the Crown dictated it. The Proclamation
did not mean that the Accompong no longer needed to serve in the military; it simply
meant that they would serve if and when Jamaicans served. The Accompong also
understood that nothing really changed with the issuance of the Proclamation because
they had all of the “privileges and immunities of British Subjects” and therefore saw
no need to pay taxes.
Double speak was only one problem the Jamaican government faced if they
thought the proclamation could bridge their differences with the Accompong. The
government’s demands were peculiar given the historical importance the Accompong
placed on the treaty. The Accompong had drawn in the Jamaican government to
renegotiate the treaty, tinkering with its terms so that both sides could live with the
document. Forcing the Jamaican government to renegotiate the terms of the treaty
undermined the force of the Land Allotment Act because they recognized the
importance of the treaty. The only way for the Jamaican government to proceed with
the Accompong population was by (1) rejecting the authority of the Land Allotment 61 Anthony Musgrave, "Proclamation Exempting Maroons from Military Service, April 16, 1883, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Act; (2) acknowledging the weight of the treaty as the document that governed their
relationship; and (3) mutually changing the terms of that agreement.
In its enthusiasm about merging the Maroon population in with the rest of the
Blacks, the Jamaican government failed to grapple with the weight the 1739 treaty
carried with the Accompong. While the Accompong beguiled the Jamaican
government into thinking that renegotiating the treaty was possible, they never
relinquished their belief that the treaty was a permanent, unchanging document to be
adhered to regardless of historical context.62 Hence, the Accompong’s insistence that
the treaty did not authorize the Accompong’s paying taxes and required them to
provide military assistance to the Jamaican government, if needed, was never
fundamentally shaken. Regardless of what the government attempted to negotiate,
they would never agree to terms that would upend their commitment to backing the
Jamaican government with military power or not agree to pay taxes to the Jamaican
government. Ultimately, the importance and power of the Land Allotment Act was
diminished in the negotiations about taxes between the government and the
Accompong because both parties were forced to contend with their interpretation of
the treaty and in its relevance to the Accompong population.
Enforcing Tax Collections From the Accompong (1883) 62The method on which the treaties were sworn to reflect yet anther placemaking narrative among the Accompong, that the British and Kojo cut their skin, mixed blood and rum in a calabash, and then agreed to the treaty. As the blood and rum could not be separated, neither could the connection between the British and the Maroons and the agreements made between the two parties. Bilby argues “[f]rom the Maroons’ perspective, the sacred basis of the treaties has remained unchanged, partly because oath-taking procedures similar to those used during the eighteenth century remain embedded in Maroon religion and social practice.” Bilby: 677. Kopytoff argued “the sacred character of The Treaties is evident in the Maroon belief that they can never be undone, that they are ‘blood treaties’ that cannot simply be altered by legal means.” Kopytoff: 59.
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When the Jamaican government sent the Proclamation to London for the Prime
Minister’s approval it admitted the political challenges it faced in Jamaica that pushed
them to try to collect taxes from the Maroons. Governor Musgrave stated that “I
should add that the question of their liability to pay taxes is not of financial importance
as the people are poor and few in number . . . the matter is rather one of principle as
there is some jealousy on the part of the other negroes at the supposed privileges of the
Maroons.”63 The issue of collecting taxes from the Maroons, he asserted, was because
the other “negroes” wanted to make sure that all “negroes” paid their taxes and could
not understand why the Maroon population would be exempt from that duty. The
Jamaican government developed a regressive taxation system so that the burden of tax
revenues fell on the portion of the population who did not own land or have significant
income.64 Politically, taxation was a key issue for both Jamaica’s Blacks and the
Maroons. We know that African-heritage Jamaicans made reduced taxes part of their
political project because the one representative the Crown appointed to advocate for
Jamaica’s Black population was a religious figure who consistently challenged
particular taxes as applied to Jamaica’s poor.65 The Accompong Maroons also
grappled with the tax challenges of their own, ensuring that the treaty-enshrined
protection from tax payments continued.
63Alexander Musgrave, "Letter to the Earl of Derby Concerning the Circumstances to Issue the Proclamation, April, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 64 Holt, 202. 65Council, "Meeting of the Legislative Council - 27th Day of March 1895, March 27, 1895," 1B/59/13, Kingston, Jamaica.
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By April 16, 1883, the Jamaican governor had signed the Proclamation.66 A
copy was sent to Rev. Stuart, whom the government relied upon to explain the
document and its implications to the Maroons, assuming his discussion would include
an explanation of the government’s stance on taxing their communities. The
government also continued to seek land suitable for relocating the Accompong with
the hope that they would be put “under civilizing and progressive influences,”67 a
policy also directed toward the Black peasantry. If the Accompong moved, they
would, like Jamaica’s Black peasants
Be allowed a place in ‘civilised’ society provided that they rejected their mental construction’ and their African religious world view . . . African religion or any other manifestation of non-European culture was the surest sign of barbarism. The noble savage was now pointed on the path of salvation and perfection of self by turning his back on his gods, and seeing God face to face.”68
The government had no doubt then, that after being Christianized, Maroons would
forsake their group lands, pay taxes, and work on plantations for the benefit of the
Crown.
The government remained tested by enforcing tax collection because the
Accompong were still determined not to pay. The frustration about collecting taxes
grew more palpable when some White Jamaicans insisted that the treaty should remain
the supreme document in dealing with the Maroons and thought that taxing the
Accompong under the treaty was unthinkable. In the midst of the government
66Musgrave, "Proclamation Exempting Maroons from Military Service, April 16, 1883, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 67Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning the Possibility of Moving the Accompong, March 28, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 68 Bryan, 280.
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determining incentives they should present to the Accompong to cajole them into
paying taxes, a White Jamaican named Stratchan wrote the government encouraging
them not to collect taxes at all. The writer argued that the Maroons were both loyal to
the Queen and necessary for Jamaica’s security and continued to encourage Jamaica to
use them as a buffer military force between the “negroes” and White Jamaicans.
Betraying his fear of the “negroes,” he argued that the Maroons’ neutrality “in case of
a rebellion be disadvantageous of the White population, and a serious blow to the
prosperity of the colony.”69 The Maroons had proven their loyalty to the Queen, but
furthermore, he pointed to the importance of the treaty.70 While there is no way to
ascertain the degree to which his opinions represented of White Jamaican society, the
Land Allotment Act was not regarded by some pocket of White Jamaicans as the rule
of law for Maroons. The government maintained that it was “always ready to receive
any member of the [Maroon] community,”71 including the “Captain.” The government
did not want White Jamaicans to take the Maroons seriously as seen by its placing the
title Captain in quotation marks.
Some White Jamaicans were still concerned that the Jamaican government had
every intention of going after the Maroons for taxes, whether they were in arrears, or
for newer taxes. Stratchan again requested that the government not tax the
Accompong’s lands because of the treaty. He further emphasized that the Maroons did
69 Stratchan, "Letter to General Gamble Concerning Not Taxing the Maroons, June 6, 1888," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Clarendon Parish. 70 Ibid. 71Unidentified, "Comments on Stratchan's Second Letter About the Accompong, July 6, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston.
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not want to “mingle” with the peasants, evidence that Maroons had no intention of
becoming “negroes“ as formulated by the Jamaican government.72
Yet, the government continued to examine the legal issues concerning past
taxes. Its continual seeking of legal opinions about the matter weakened their ability to
leverage the taxation power of the colonial state. It raised the underlying question of
whether taxing the Accompong community was legitimate at all. However, the legal
authority to tax was meaningless without enforcing tax collections. By June 1883, the
government recognized that if it did not enforce tax collection, it would demonstrate
how weak it really was.73
The Proclamation did not explicitly address the issue of taxes. It was designed
to remove a Maroon objection to paying taxes, military service. Because collecting
taxes could possibly require shedding blood, any decision to force the collection of
taxes from the Accompong would be a “grave mistake” and for such small amounts
would also make the government look weak.74 The government considered not
enforcing tax payment because it was occupied with identifying lands on which to
relocate the Accompong so that they would be settled with “the serene population
when they would like others of their race.”75 However, any attempt to relocate the
Accompong would have been perceived as overreach by the Accompong because of
the treaty. The treaty identified where the Maroon community was to be located, and 72 Stratchan, "Letter to the Hon. Noel Walker Requesting That the Government Not Force the Accompong to Pay Taxes, July 26, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Medina, Jamaica. 73 JSP, "Letter Questioning Whether the Jamaican Govenrment Will Enforce the Collection of Taxes, June 21, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 74Unidentified, "Letter Arguing That the Jamaican Government Should Not Enforce Tax Collections against the Accompong, August 16, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 75Ibid.
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that was not to change over time, no matter the condition of the soil.76
By September 1883, the British Prime Minister sent a letter directing the
Jamaican government not to collect taxes from the Maroons, but to try to move them
to other lands.77 The Jamaican government acceded and decided to talk to Rev. Stuart
to help the Accompong evaluate where they really saw their interests and to consider
the better possibility of moving to different territory.78 However, the government was
having little success finding a suitable parcel of land. The Prime Minister’s decision
unraveled the Land Allotment Act as the rule of law with the Maroon groups. London
was opposed to any actions that would agitate the Maroons, because they had a policy
of not disturbing Maroon communities.79 Finally, the tax policies of the Jamaican
government were further obstructed when they could not find a suitable piece of land
for the Accompong to move to. Hence, the objective of finding land located closer to
the Black population and forcing them to assimilate into their communities as a means
of collecting tax revenue also failed.
Conclusion
Ultimately, taxation failed as a way of merging the Accompong community
with the Black population. Seizing the Accompong’s land would have required an
unaffordable use of force both by the Jamaican government and from England.
Further, the Prime Minister’s office had a policy of not upsetting the Accompong, so
76 Brown, 120 - 121. 77 Earl of Derby, "Fullerswood, April, 1883," Letter, 1B/5/76/33/3 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 78 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Agreeing to Earl of Derby's Proposal, October 20, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica. 79 Secretary, "Letter from Cso to Prederville, July, 1868," Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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that the use of force to evict them from their property would have been untenable.
This tax dispute ended up reinforcing the legitimacy of the treaty and
weakening the power of the Land Allotment Act because not only was the Jamaican
government forced to try to renegotiate the treaty, but could not implement the
primary goal of the act; notably to try to get the Accompong to move, assimilate
themselves into the larger “negroe” population, and assume the “rights and privileges
of the Queen’s subjects” by accepting their tax burden.
In 1901, whether the Accompong paid taxes on their land and stock remained a
persistent issue: the Jamaican government was concerned that if someone had bought
land from Maroons in Scotts Hall they would owe back taxes.80 The government still
did not understand whether the Maroons were exempt from taxation. They argued that
tradition suggested that they were not. This conclusion stood contrary to what they had
had concluded earlier, that custom (tradition) had dictated that the Accompong and
other Maroon groups did not owe taxes for over 150 years and there would be no
basis, according to custom, for them to start paying taxes now. Ultimately, the
government pressed ahead with the tax question and the Maroons’ tax obligation.81
The Accompong still refused to pay.
80M. T. Thompson, "Letter to the Collector General's Office and Back Taxes on Maroon Lands, June 21, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica.This letter is bizarre is that Maroon land has never been for sale. The context in which this question arose was not discussed in the document; however, over time, it seems clear that no Maroon group had ever sold anyone property. 81 WBB, "Internal Government Note Fleshing out Whether an Outsider Buying Maroon Land Would Owe Taxes, June 25, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica.
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Chapter 5: The Fullerswood Land Dispute: the Rise of Indirect Rule (1884 – 1899)
The Fullerswood land dispute (1884 - 1899) features the challenges the
Accompong faced when they sought to occupy land that was both non-contiguous to
Accompong and privately owned. Using their placemaking narratives about
Accompong boundaries combined with an explicit narrative about lawful inheritance,
they justified storming onto Fullerswood’s private land holdings and demanded them
under the treaty.1 The Accompong also cut down trees for their own use as another
means of asserting control and dominion over Fullerswood.2
Eventually, the government charged the Maroons who were cutting down trees
with trespass. It was frustrated because the Accompong refused to help arrest Maroons
making incursions onto private property. Police and the colonial government both
agreed that the Maroons needed to be contained within their treaty-defined borders;
however, they disagreed about how to do this. The Colonial Office directed the
Jamaican government not use force to vacate the Maroons from Fullerswood. Instead,
it requested diplomatic reliance on headmen to enforce the borders and ensure
compliance with the law. The government selected headmen from the Maroon
Colonels who concurrently served both roles; however, these headmen held no sway
with the community so long as they disregarded the community’s bidding. At the same
1 James C. A. Brian, Captain Thomas Rowe, and Captain John R. Foster, "Letter to the Surveyor General's Office, 3 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica; Clerk Henry Ezekiel Wright and Colonel Isaac Miles, "Letter to Sir Augustus Hemming, March, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 2 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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time the government tried to discredit the Accompong community and subvert their
political structures. It tried to keep the Accompong within their borders. Most notably,
it did not try to dismantle the Accompong community. The Fullerswood land dispute
demonstrated how both the Accompong and the government selected legal
interpretations that best bolstered their objectives. Yet the Accompong did not succeed
in winning Fullerswood because it was not Crown land that lay idle, but rather the
private land Jamaican citizens who were not willing to cede.
The Dunn’s Parcel of Fullerswood
Fullerswood is located in Southwest Jamaica in St. Elizabeth parish, less than
five miles to the south and east of the Black River. Many Whites owned various
parcels that comprised Fullerswood. It incorporated several different uses including a
park, a private estate, pastures, and pen. It included homes, fields where animals could
roam, and also a forest-like topography where trees grew abundantly. In the eighteenth
century, the park, located close to the seacoast, included 2,113 acres and ponds.3
Further, the pastures also comprised many acres: the Fullerswood Pen alone had over
seventy acres and all of it was privately owned. Fullerswood was not Crown Land,
indeed it was privately owned, as represented on maps from the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (see figure 4).4
3 Some maps of Fullerswood date back to 1673. Fullerswood Park, "1673," St. E. 1062, Kingston, Jamaica. 4 Fullerswood Estate, "", St. E. 30, Kingston, Jamaica.
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Figure 4. Fullerswood Park.5
Fullerswood was a much more usable area of land than Cook’s Bottom,
described as rocky and clayey. Nevertheless, both white Jamaicans and the Jamaican
government feared the Accompong would claim Fullerswood based on the same
arguments that they posed for Cook’s Bottom, including that the Accompong could
legally possess land by adverse possession. Jamaica’s land laws supported in perverse
ways the Accompong’s acquisition of land by adverse possession.
Nevertheless, the Accompong’s desire to restore what they believed was their
full complement of land continued. On 12 March 1894, residents of the Fullerswood
area wrote to their Legislative Council representative that the Accompong Maroons
5 Fullerswood Park, "1673," St. E. 1062, Kingston, Jamaica.
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were claiming authority to cut down trees from Fullerswood because they were
entitled to use Crown Lands an argument for land acquisition that, if legitimate,
followed the Cook’s Bottom precedent.6 William, John, and James Dunn hoped that
their legislative representative, Mr. Farquharson, would both keep the Accompong
within the borders of “a certain portion of land which has been surveyed out and given
to them” and prevent them from taking “valuable lumber trees” and deforesting the
land. While they explicitly referred to how the Accompong used treaty lands and
perhaps Cook’s Bottom, the residents were concerned they would do the same with
Fullerswood. Further, the Dunns emphasized that the Accompong should be kept on
the lands to which they were entitled “by treaty.”7 They understood that the applicable
law was the treaty, an understanding that questioned the legitimacy of the Land
Allotment Act not only in the eyes of the Maroons, but also in the eyes of White
Jamaicans. Even White Jamaican society recognized that the Maroons would not cede
to assimilating with the Black peasantry anytime soon.
The Dunns worried that the Accompong had been trying to adversely possess
the land again: “[u]nder the cloak, as they apart, of instructions from some previous
Governor, or person in authority, to take charge and make use of unpatented and
Crown Lands.”8 Plainly put, the Accompong thought the Governor allowed them to
use Fullerswood. The Maroons, based on the resolution of Cook’s Bottom, assumed
that Fullerswood was also Crown Lands and available for their use by tacit agreement
6 William Dunn, John Dunn, and James Dunn, "Letter to the Honorable J.M. Farquharson, Member of the Legislative Council, 12 March, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.
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with the Government. More boldly, they assumed, strategically, that they rightfully
owned those lands because what belonged to the Jamaican government belonged to
them. Contrary to orders from the Colonial Office, Blacks continued to squat on land
with the intention of owning it for themselves. Ultimately, responses to the
Accompong’s incursions on Fullerswood came from the police, the Colonial
Secretary’s Office, the Surveyor General’s Office, and the Governor’s Office, all of
which had much more experience in dealing with Maroon populations than the
Assembly. Solutions for Jamaica’s White population vis-a-vis the Maroons were not
to be found politically through the Legislative Council, but in the government agencies
that historically dealt with the Maroons.
Less than one month later, Thomas Harrison, the surveyor who was involved
with the Cook’s Bottom incident, wrote that he was concerned that the Maroons would
continue to cause trouble. Mr. Harrison’s thoughts about Fullerswood were significant
as the government increasingly relied on people with expertise handling the Maroon
population. Harrison’s argument was radical. He asserted that there were no Maroons,
that the Maroons had no authority to protect government lands; and finally, that the
government owned no lands around the Fullerswood area, echoing his response to the
challenges at Cook’s Bottom.9 He wrote that “[t]here are no Maroons left, the people
who call themselves Maroons are the negroes who intermarried with the former
9Government Surveyor Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Thomas Gray, Esq., 9 April, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. Surveyor Harrison did not betray this line of thinking when he did the survey of Accompong that the community hoped would include Cook’s Bottom. The most critical statement that he made was “if it is deemed advisable to extend the limits of their land, the only thing that can be done for them is to make lawful their present occupation fo the Crown Land.” ibid.
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Maroons.”10 Mr. Harrison implied that their claims to Fullerswood were bogus by
concluding that “[t]hey are a bad lot & the neighbour should look sharp that they do
not trespass on their lands.”11 Further, he claimed that they had ceased to exist because
the Land Allotment Act had merged them with the “negroe” population. Finally,
Fullerswood was deemed not to be Crown land, because “the Govt. has no land in the
quarter.”12
Second, if the Accompong thought that they were protecting government
lands, “[t]hey [the Accompong] have no authority whatever to protect Govt Lands.”13
The Accompong had confused land use with protection: they could use Cook’s
Bottom, but they did not have the authority to protect it or any other government land.
Finally, Harrison stated explicitly that Sir John Grant, the former governor, had given
the Accompong permission to occupy Cook’s Bottom, the resolution to that land
claim. No government could give permission to occupy lands on Fullerswood because
there were no public lands. Granting permission to use Cook’s Bottom resolved that
adverse possession problem, but that solution was not available for Fullerswood.
Nevertheless, this did not mean that the Maroons could not try to claim
Fullerswood by adverse possession; public or private land ownership was not a barrier.
What distinguished the Accompong’s attempt to take Fullerswood from Cook’s
Bottom was that the private owners of the land complained and interrupted the
Accompong’s open and notorious use of Fullerswood. No adverse possession
10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.
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compromise was available because the owners of the parcels refused to cede their use
and ownership of it.
The Accompong felling trees, for example, was characteristic of making
claims to Fullerswood for themselves. With Fullerswood, the Dunns claimed that the
Accompong had defied their insistence to leave the land. Without the owner’s tacit or
explicit permission to use Fullerswood, the Accompong had no ability to claim
continuous use of the Dunn’s land: “they have within comparatively [sic] recent years
been entering on our Properties, destroying our valuable lumber trees, working and
using our Lands and defying us, using such threats of intimidation as to make our
lands of no value from fear of boding danger.”14 Nevertheless, the Accompong
continued to try to take Fullerswood, frustrating the government’s attempt to prevent
them from adversely possessing land.
Trespass at Fullerswood and the Rule of Law (Judicial Branch)
By April 1895, Robert Stone’s Accompong family and some supporters cut
down logwood in a different part of Fullerswood, a parcel of land not owned by the
Dunns. The Accompong claimed the property belonged to them because it was
assumed to be part of the overlooked treaty-owned land. Further, cutting logwood
established an open and notorious use of Fullerswood.15 This time, Mr. Salmon, a
member of the Legislative Council who owned this parcel of Fullerswood, turned to
the court system to keep the Accompong off of his land, thereby interrupting any
14 Dunn, Dunn, and Dunn, "Letter to the Honorable J.M. Farquharson, Member of the Legislative Council, 12 March, 1894," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 15 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
161
potential for the Accompong to make a claim to his part of Fullerswood by adverse
possession.
Mr. Salmon filed a claim for trespass, an unlawful entry on someone else’s
land with the threat of violence.16 Mr. Salmon had not given the Accompong
permission to come onto his land for any purpose including cutting down trees for
their own use. A court’s ruling on Salmon’s behalf would support the police force
taking any necessary action to keep the Accompong out and deny them the legal right
to use or possess Fullerswood after requesting an official injunction against the
Maroons.17
The police had permission to issue warrants for trespassers. Indeed, it was said,
“Robert Stone, with members of his family and some supporters [illegally] entered one
part of the outlying Fullerswood lands.”18 Three Maroons were arrested, brought
before a judge and reprimanded about the consequences they would face if they
continued to use Fullerswood.19 The court had many remedies at its disposal and
decided on issuing a reprimand.
The Second Maroon Wars provided a reason why the court was reluctant to do
more than reprimand the Accompong. It did not want to reignite conflicts with
Maroon groups. In 1795, when two Trelawney Maroons were presumed to have stolen
a pig from a neighboring plantation and were punished by both slaves and the
16 Steven H. Gifis, "Trespass," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984). 17 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.
162
plantation staff, Trelawney Maroons declared war. Under the Trelawney’s
interpretation of the treaty, no one from outside the community had authority to punish
any Maroon and that punishment violated the explicit terms of the treaty. The
consequences for outsiders punishing Maroons were too great.
Jamaican government employees and colonial officials were concerned that if
it tried this case, they would provoke another war, an outcome to avoid at all costs. J.
Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, requested a report on interactions with the
Maroons because he had received “intelligence from Kingston [that] an insurrection
has broken out among the Maroons of St. Elizabeth.”20 A letter sent to Jamaica’s
Governor Chamberlain not only described the specific facts connected with “a family
belonging to the Maroon settlement at Accompong in St. Elizabeth, to a part of a
property named Fullerswood in that Parish,” but also explicitly detailed a diplomatic
path out of this conundrum with the Accompong, namely that “it [would be] advisable
to send the Colonial Secretarys Office to point out to the people the gravity of the
offence they were alleged to have committed . . .”21 Direct confrontations between the
police and the Accompong could come too close to warfare and were discouraged.
The government could best avoid war with the Accompong if they adhered to the 1739
treaty and refrained from punishing Maroons in the government’s judicial system. The
government then reinforced the “disabilites” faced by the Maroons vis-à-vis the
formerly enslaved and undermined its own efforts to integrate Maroons into the island
20 J. Chamberlain, "Letter to the Government of Jamaica, 25 February, 1896," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 21 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable Chamberlain, 13 January, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
163
population. Hence, the power of the public transcript was diminished by one arm of
the Jamaican government and made the government’s attempt to apply the rule of law
to the Accompong incursions on land even more difficult.
Among those Maroons not simply reprimanded, more than one who were
supposed to face the judge did not obey the summons and were tried, convicted, and
fined in absence.22 During the five years of incursions on Fullerswood, this was the
only interaction with the courts that has survived in the archival record. The judicial
system failed to hold the Accompong accountable for trespassing on Fullerswood and
failed to stop the trespass. At this point, the government turned to diplomacy to
encourage the Accompong to cease and desist their efforts to take Fullerswood for the
community.
Diplomacy with the Accompong
On July 3, 1895, the Accompong made another claim on Fullerswood, this
time based not on access to Crown Lands, but instead, on Maroon history and their use
of the land. The Accompong asserted that they had long used the land to secure water
for the community. Like the farming claim they made for Cook’s Bottom, they hoped
that their use of Fullerswood would be ample evidence of why this parcel of
Fullerswood belonged to them.
Just in case, the Maroons were prepared to take a different part of Fullerswood,
owned by Mr. Salmon, by force. On July 31, 1895 twenty Accompong arrived
22 Ibid.
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carrying cutlasses to guarantee access to the land.23 The Maroons were willing to use
force because one claimed that his grandparent left him the title, a novel claim.24 That
the Accompong were willing to fight for land illuminates a hidden transcript that
delegitimized the rule of law. In the narratives connected to the First Maroon War, one
lesson was that Maroons knew how to fight and would do so to maintain that which
they were entitled. Hence, making sure that Fullerswood stayed within the community
became one instance where it made sense to act upon this hidden transcript and let the
Jamaican government know that they thought warfare was warranted to win
Fullerswood for the community.
At the same time the Accompong directly challenged the rule of law, they
concurrently gave it legitimacy by making arguments about legal norms for land usage
and claiming inheritance rights. By doing so, the Accompong indicated that they knew
the strongest arguments they would have for Fullerswood would be based in the
Jamaican legal system, thereby acknowledging Jamaica’s land-holding regime. The
Accompong believed their use was enough to give them ownership rights, based on
adverse possession. Of course, the owners of Fullerswood had interrupted the
continuous use, a standard requirement for making an adverse possession claim.25 The
Accompong’s assertion that a community member’s grandmother left them title to
23 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter from Jameson Calder to Constabulary Office, 31 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 24 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General, 19 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 25 As demonstrated in the remainder of the chapter, adverse possession, while the weakest argument the Accompong had for claiming Fullerswood, was consistently asserted by them to claim Fullerswood.
165
Fullerswood made the Jamaican government take pause before dismissing the
Accompong’s claim.
Colin Liddell, one of the government surveyors, checked the title and argued
that the title was clear for over one-hundred years and therefore, Mr. Salmon had legal
possession of the estate.26 As a result, the Accompong’s claims for land, under the
Jamaican legal system, were illegitimate, or not based on sources of law that justified
placing Fullerswood under their ownership.
Nevertheless, by August 17, 1895, the Accompong had once again entered and
claimed Fullerswood. This time, however, they entered Fullerswood without
threatening violence or disturbance, and provided another signal that they were
unprepared to relinquish their assertion that they legitimately owned Fullerswood.27
On August 19, the Jamaican government reiterated its position about the status of
Fullerswood and agreed that the title was clear and it was land excluded from the
treaty. Hence, not even the treaty, which theoretically had been delegitimized, could
justify the Accompong’s ownership of Fullerswood.
Still, the government realized that they would have difficulty in convincing the
Maroons to believe them, so they asked Reverend Stuart, an official with the Church
of Scotland, one of the churches working in Accompong, to explain to the Maroon
26 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter from Jameson Calder to the Inspector General, 19 August 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 27 Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General, 19 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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population the status of Fullerswood.28 Reverend Stuart understood that any future
incursions would be trespassing and that Maroons caught trespassing would be subject
to arrest, and the full force of the rule of law.29
On August 28, Reverend Lea, the Reverend assigned to Accompong
implemented the government’s suggestions and met with members of the leadership
council. During this meeting, the Maroons reiterated their arguments based on
inheritance and adverse possession.30 Subsequently, the Maroons spoke with Inspector
Calder, the police officer who was engaged in the criminal proceedings associated
with trespass on Fullerswood, who convinced them to hire a lawyer. The Accompong
were prepared to take the title to Inspector Calder, but Reverend Lea stopped them and
sent a letter clarifying the matter to the government. He characterized this matter as
one involving one or two Maroons so that the entire community should not be held
responsible for this challenge.31
Two questions arise with Reverend Lea’s involvement: First, why did the
Jamaican government decide to have the Reverend try to resolve this matter, and;
second, why did the Reverend not execute the will of the government. When the
Jamaican government decided to use the Church of Scotland to convince the
Accompong to back off their claims to Fullerswood, it chose a diplomatic route, 28 Unidentified, "Letter to the Inspector General of Police, 19 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Kingston. 29 Unidentified, "Letter to Mr. Stuart, 26 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 30 W. Scrivener Lea, "Letter to Mr. Stuart, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. Reverend Stuart had relinquished direct contact with the Maroons and assigned Reverend Lea to resolve the issue. 31 W. Scrivener Lea, "Letter to Retirement Manse, 28 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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meaning that the government refrained from direct meetings between the
Accompong’s political leaders and the Jamaican government’s political leaders.
Instead, they had an individual who could communicate their position and try to
massage the situation with the Accompong without upsetting the Accompong so much
that they would consider warfare. Given the recent examples of Maroons of going to
Fullerswood bearing cutlasses and longstanding Maroon histories of war and rebellion,
the Jamaican government feared that the Accompong would interpret a meeting with
one of its representatives as an act of provocation.32
Yet Reverend Lea did not accomplish all that the government hoped reporting
that he discouraged the Accompong from giving Inspector Calder the title once they
received it.33 He believed in the legitimacy of the Accompong’s land claim, contrary
to the Jamaican government and White settlers.34 Finally, Reverend Lea argued that
the entire Accompong community should not be held responsible for the incident
based on the actions of one or two Maroons.35 He closed his letter to Reverend Stuart
by saying “try to do your best for them.”36 Reverend Lea had no intention of pushing
the Accompong to adopt the government’s position.
Still, the Accompong had not secured any more of Fullerswood than they had
one year previously. The lack of progress left them undeterred. The diplomatic route
32 Dallas recounts a narrative where the government sought peace with the Windward Maroons (Mooretown/Charles Town/Scots Hall) after concluding a treaty with the Leeward group and how the first soldier sent to try to seek peace was massacred. Dallas, 71. 33 Lea, "Letter to Retirement Manse, 28 August, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid.
168
towards resolving the Fullerswood land conflict failed to bolster the government’s
position because Rev. Lea proved to be a flawed messenger. So convinced were the
Accompong of their legitimate ownership of Fullerswood that a mere two months
later, they reentered Fullerswood.
A group of Accompong Maroons Threaten to Take Laconia Mountain, Fall 1895
In fact, during fall of 1895, the Accompong made two more incursions onto
Fullerswood. On September 4, 1895, Major Stone led 25 – 30 Maroons there who
“intimated their intention of taking charge of that property . . . but . . . they did not
carry out their threat.”37 The police officer reporting on this incursion argued that “the
Maroons actually committed no trespass” probably because they were not threatening
violence.38 By October 1895, the Accompong cut down trees at Lacovia Mountain in
Fullerswood. The Police Inspector reported that fourteen Maroons came to make a
formal claim. He implored the Maroons to hire a lawyer and use the court system to
debate whether they had a legitimate claim to the land; however, they insisted on
simply felling trees. He referred to the fact that Mr. Salmon, the recorded owner of the
land, had already obtained an injunction from the Supreme Court and the Inspector
would post a notice about the injunction’s restraining them from cutting logwood from
37 Inpsector General of Police, "Letter from the Inspector General of Police to the Inspector General's Office, 4 September, 1895," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 38 Ibid. Also recall the definition of trespass, the entering on someone else’s property using violence threatening to take the land. Gifis, "Trespass," in Law Dictionary (New York: Barron's, 1984).
169
the property. He was concerned that the Accompong would insist on resisting the
law.39
When the Accompong brought 25 – 30 members of their community to
Fullerswood, they sought to restore their broader understanding of Accompong’s
borders. This placemaking narrative reinforced their belief that warfare might be
necessary to win the rest of the Accompong’s land and that they would fight to win it.
Warfare frightened not only Fullerswood’s private landholders of, but also the
government officials who dealt with them.
Whites living in Jamaica were concerned about the Maroon’s ability to skirt
Jamaica’s legal regime. The Maroons’ past willingness to go to war for what they
wanted and assumed they were entitled to was all the evidence needed of the
communities’ alleged lawlessness, particularly in the context of Fullerswood. White
concerns about the Maroons and the rule of law was communicated to London in no
uncertain terms. As a result, the Privy Council started monitoring this situation.
Fears of Rebellion Spread to London
The reports concerning Fullerswood sparked concern in London about the
Maroons’ activities. By early 1896, members of the Privy Council were nervous that
another rebellion had broken out among the Maroons. Joseph Chamberlain, the
Colonial Secretary, wrote Jamaica’s governor, Sir Henry Arthur Blake, to receive
assurances that things were alright with the Maroons because private citizens had been
39 J. B. Orrett, "Letter from J. B. Orrett to the Colonial Secretary's and the Surveyor General's Offices, 21 October, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
170
writing to the Privy Council about their concerns.40 The conflicts between the
Accompong and the Jamaican government and title-holding owners were no longer
confined within the island’s borders. Outside supervision, beyond the scope of the
Governor and the Legislative Council, was thought necessary to deflate this problem.
The Privy Council’s primary concern was preventing warfare. Mr.
Chamberlain disclosed “that according to intelligence from Kingston an insurrection
has broken out among the Maroons of St. Elizabeth” a conclusion warranted by the
number of cutlass bearing Maroons trying to retake Fullerswood.41 However, in that
the Privy Council was concerned about Maroon insurrections, this exchange was also
evidence that the pubic transcript was frayed outside Jamaica’s borders. These dust-
ups with the Accompong demonstrated that the colonial government lacked the power
to enforce laws designed to integrate the Maroons into the general island population.
This perception triggered the Governor’s quick response to Chamberlain’s letter. He
wrote “There has not been any change in the policy of the Government towards the
Maroons . . .” and that “there is no present prospect of trouble . . .”42 Further, “I do not
think they would render very effected service [meaning as an internal military force as
they had just referred to the Morant Bay Rebellion]; but the general population are
afraid of them, and while, so far as I can judge, there is no present prospect of trouble,
there is no doubt that the presence of the Maroons as a distinct body would if troubles
40 Chamberlain, "Letter to the Government of Jamaica, 25 February, 1896," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 41 Ibid. 42 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable J. Chamberlain M.P., 30 March, 1896," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
171
were impending act as a wholesome restraint.”43 If the Accompong were trespassing
on others’ lands, the issue could “always be settled by a survey,” and so “it would not
be advisable to take any steps at present in the . . . curtailing of their present
privileges.”44
With the encouragement of the Privy Council, the Jamaican government had
temporarily abandoned its project of making the Maroons ”negroes” as it would be
helpful if they acted as a “distinct body.” Land problems, Fullerswood included, could
be resolved by conducting a survey to determine Accompong borders. The Privy
Council and the Jamaican Government decided that the Jamaican government would
cease implementing their goal of assimilating the Maroon populations into the Black
Jamaican population: “I say leave the Maroons as they are and encourage them in the
idea that they are by tradition the friends of the Government & have special privileges
as such. At the same time their land should be distinctly defined & they should be
made to feel that the law will not permit them to interfere with any other.”45 No longer
would the Land Allotment Act function as a public transcript of the Jamaican
government’s approach with the Accompong, or any Maroon group because the Privy
Council had repudiated its use and so the treaty’s primacy could once again be
asserted.
43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 W.H.H.S., "Letter Circulating among the Privy Council, November 4, 1895," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), London.
172
The Governor’s office argued that Maroon activity had not jeopardized the
peace.46 Indeed, “a family of Maroons had claimed the property under a will alleged to
have been made by their grandparent. The owner applied to the Court and obtained an
injunction, which was served upon the trespassers who obeyed it at once. There was
no disturbance.”47 Another strategy was desperately needed by the Jamaican
government to quell these disturbances between the Accompong and the owners of
Fullerswood; a strategy that would also convince the Privy Council that they were
adhering to the treaty as the primary rule of law, but also give the government the
room needed to try to implement the Land Allotment Act at a later point regardless of
the Privy Council’s decision. In tandem with the British Empire’s goals of
implementing their rule upon the indigenous Africans in their newly acquired colonial
possessions and Africa, the Jamaican government turned to indirect rule.
Indirect Rule I
In mid-June of 1896, one of the Accompong, Henry Ezekiel Wright, wrote to
the Inspector of the Constabulary about a matter that concerned him, one not directly
connected with Fullerswood. Wright was concerned that the boys playing ball nearby
his home put his wife, who had a newborn, and their other young children at risk.
Wright implored the government to provide his family with protection against these
46 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, 1896," 1B57333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 47 Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable J. Chamberlain M.P., 30 March, 1896," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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young boys.48 In this letter, he complained that Pelis Rowe, the “headman” for
Accompong was not providing the necessary protection.
Wright’s complaint to the Jamaican government was the first Jamaican
reference to headmen. Headmen were associated with the African continent after
European powers partitioned it during the 1884 Berlin Conference. What could the
situation with the Accompong have in common with the African colonies? Indeed,
after the British took hold of their colonial possessions, they had faced the problem of
using different means of governing the countryside and the towns, because of
resistance to direct rule: “indirect rule became the mode of governing the countryside,
[and] towns were subject to direct rule.”49 Further, within urban and rural populations,
there was a “division between a racialized rights-bearing citizenry and an ethnicized
subject population.”50 As discussed in chapter two, after emancipation, the formerly
enslaved, the majority of Jamaica’s population, were seen through the lens of race.
The Maroon populations frustrated government officials because they refused to
conform with the Government’s racial categorization of their community and so they
resisted the civilizing mission of emancipation. Hence, the Maroons continued to exist
as an ethnic group amongst the majority Black population.
For the Accompong, the colonial experience became mediated through their
own population through the use of headmen, a position created by the government and
48 Henry Ezekiel Wright, "Letter from Colonel Wright to the Inspector of the Constabulary, 20 June, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 49 Mahmood Mamdani, "Historicizing Power and Responses to Power: Indirect Rule and Its Reform," Social Research 66, no. 3 (1999): 869. 50 Ibid., 867.
174
independent of Accompong’s political structure.51 Direct rule, Mamdani argues, was
set up by “creating a native elite that was granted a modicum of ‘civilized’ rights in
return for assimilating the culture of the colonizer.”52 In Jamaica, direct rule was not
so much targeted to an elite, but instead, was targeted towards the formerly enslaved.
Indeed, the work of trying to force the peasantry to become docile workers continued
well after the Morant Bay Rebellion, through a number of coercive means, only two of
them being the criminal justice and educational systems.53
While one component of indirect rule was that the ethnic minority had more
autonomy, this did not mean that direct rule was displaced. Indeed, the result of
indirect rule was that it “co-existed as two faces of power, direct rule a regime
guaranteeing rights to a racialized citizenry and indirect rule a regime enforcing
culture on an ethnicized peasantry.”54 The precise regime to be enforced on the
Maroon populations generally was the same one applied to Blacks, disenfranchising
them of wrongfully acquired lands. To do so, the Jamaican government reinforced its
understanding of the treaty: no mistakes existed and the Accompong would be limited
to their 1,500 acres and the remainder of claims for land would be illegal.
The government deemed this approach necessary because the Maroons refused
to listen to the government’s perspective on their land holdings.55 As seen in chapter 3
51 Ibid., 870. 52 Ibid., 862. 53 Bryan, xi. 54 Mamdani: 862. 55 The government’s position on Maroon land holdings was not a single position between 1842 and 1895. It tried to change their land holdings in accordance with the Land Allotment Act and limit families to five acres with the rest reverting to the government. However, we see, in connection with the Fullerswood land claims that the government, under pressure from the Privy Council, decided that they
175
regarding Cook’s Bottom, the surveyor, Thomas Harrison, stated that he could not
give them all of the land they claimed in connection with Cook’s Bottom, he wrote
that they “appear disappointed because I could not give them all the land they wanted
and I had great difficulty, on that account, to get any of them to work the last three or
four days of the survey and then they would only give half a day . . .”56 The
Accompong would not cede to his interpretation of their borders, and therefore the
rule of law.
The Accompong also refused to listen to the government through their
religious representatives. Reverend Lea explained, probably without enthusiasm, the
situation they faced concerning Fullerswood. Instead the Accompong insisted that they
had a right, through inheritance, to Fullerswood, and the government’s efforts to shift
the Accompong’s stance towards Fullerswood were unsuccessful.
In this context, the headmen that the government appointed faced many
challenges, because he had little credibility within the Accompong community. Pelis
Rowe, the headman who was ineffective from the perspective of the Colonel, was one
of the first headmen mentioned in the government’s records.57 Wright, in his letter
about the threats to the safety of his wife and children, wrote that “I beg that you will
would take the less ambitious approach of allowing the Maroons to stay on treaty-granted lands and instead try to prevent them from acquiring additional lands. 56 Thomas Harrison, "Letter to Colonel Mann, December 10, 1868," 1B57635 (CSO 2), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 57 Wright, Rowe, and Cawley are longstanding family names in the Accompong community and were often the people who assumed political leadership. Rowe was not the same person who had originally been charged with trespassing on Fullerswood, who was actually Thomas Rowe. Given the familial relationships in Accompong, Pelis and Thomas Rowe were most likely related, Rowe is one of the Accompong family names. Thompson, "Interview with Mark Wright, Accompong Maroon Tour Guide," (2008).
176
assist Headman Rowe and als [sic] teach him . . . to proform [sic] his duty upon these
people for my brother is acting Colonel . . .”58 The Accompong knew what role the
headmen were to serve in their community: they were to keep the community safe and
calm according to the Accompong’s standards, a job description at odds with the one
promoted by the Jamaican government whose project was to destabilize Maroon land
holdings. Secondly, based on the fact that Wright wrote in his letter that his brother
was Colonel, he expected a particular level of attention from Pelis Rowe because of
his status in the community. From his perspective, the Jamaican government simply
needed to do a better job teaching him how to discharge his role of Headman, such
training would be necessary because there were “no other spokesman . . . in
Accompong.”59 Therefore, he should act as an Accompong spokesperson to make sure
that the community benefited from having a headman.
While Fullerswood was not directly involved, the fact that there was a
headman is worth noting because of the government’s hope that, minimally, this
individual would resolve the Fullerswood land issues. The Accompong resisted this
message from government representatives and their Christian religious leader. The
Jamaican government changed the messenger once again.
Schism Between the Police and the Rest of the Jamaican Government
In December 1896, Inspector Pratt, the police officer involved with Colonel
Rowe’s tax petitions, was very concerned about the “threatening attitude” the
58 Wright, "Letter from Colonel Wright to the Inspector of the Constabulary, 20 June, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 59 Ibid.
177
Accompong were taking concerning Fullerswood. The Inspector General asked
Inspector Pratt to arrest Accompong community members who had defied the warrant,
and instead of going himself, he sent ten officers in his place. Sergeant Cambridge,
one of the police officers, encountered resistance with the Accompong preventing
their community members from being arrested and described to Inspector Pratt the
challenges he faced with the arrests.60 Sergeant Cambridge characterized the
Accompong as behaving lawlessly and Inspector Pratt wanted to ensure that he
avoided “encouraging others to behave in the same lawless manner, as I have little
doubt they will do, if they are led to suppose that the Law can be defied with
impunity.”61 Avoiding arrest was one example of ignoring the law and this behavior
had to be stopped as it could predicate further resistance. Pratt proposed entering
Accompong with ten men “in case of resistance.”62 He requested forty mostly armed
men from the Inspector General to make the arrests.63 This is the first reference to
using force, as Inspector Pratt did not believe any other method would convince the
Maroons to follow Jamaican law.
The Jamaican government preferred a peaceful solution involving the
headmen. It rejected his proposal because they thought it would only aggravate the
situation.64 They argued “Mr. Roxburgh [another police officer], who has recently
60 Unidentified, "Employee's Note Concerning Mr. Pratt's Not Arresting the Accompong Himself, " 1B576365 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 61 Acting Inspector Albert W. H. Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning the Use of Force to Effectuate Arrest, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
178
returned from Accompong thinks with me that if we wish to create a disturbance we
could not do better than adopt the Acting Inspector’s proposal.”65 The government
proposed using diplomacy to resolve the situation: “Mr. Pratt should keep touch &
work in harmony with Robert Wright (the “Colonel”) &, I the first instance at least,
should only take such measures to effect the arrest of these against whom warrants
have been issued as he would in the case of persons not resident in the so called
Maroon town.”66 It hoped that the Accompong’s political leader would participate in
arresting the Maroons who ran afoul of the law. Only if police officers worked in
tandem with Robert Wright would they have a chance of achieving a solution.
A challenge was that while the Jamaican government did not believe in the
legitimacy of the Accompong community, they expected the Colonel, Robert Wright,
to advance the government’s agenda of keeping the Accompong on their property and
preventing them from trying to acquire more land. Colonel, Wright’s title, appears in
quotation marks, an action that questioned his political legitimacy. The Jamaican
government did not question the legitimacy of the political process, but instead
whether Accompong, the town and community, were legitimate.
The government knew that the Accompong did not embrace the notion that
their community was illegitimate and might rebuff efforts at diplomacy. It then
recommended that Inspector Pratt take “a few men.”67 The priority had to be working
65 Unidentified, "Employee's Note Concerning Mr. Pratt's Not Arresting the Accompong Himself, " 1B576365 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 66 Ibid. 67 Unidentified, "Note from Government Employee Concerning Arresting Outstanding Maroons, 8 December, " 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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with Accompong leaders stating that he should “endeavour to affect these arrests
securing the assistance of the maroon headmen.”68 The government also critiqued
Pratt’s approach in effectuating arrests in the past: he had sent a constable to handle
the arrest which posed a threat to the peace and opened the possibility of resistance
that would earn the ire of London’s political officials. The government argued that if
he had handled the matter himself, there may not have been any resistance in the first
place.69 If more men were necessary, he could request them, but should first work with
the headmen.70 Using force should be a last resort.71
On November 27, 1896, T. Laurence Roxburgh, a police officer, went to
Accompong to determine why Thomas Rowe resisted arrest. Pelis Rowe, the
headman, led Mr. Roxburgh to Thomas Rowe’s home where many Maroons were
gathered and engaged in “high talking.”72 Thomas Rowe was not home and avoided
arrest. Pelis Rowe was prepared to advise Thomas Rowe to turn himself in; yet the
constables were not ready to take Thomas Rowe by force. The following day, Thomas
Rowe stated that he had done nothing at Fullerswood for which he could be punished.
Further, he had not received a summons so he did not appear in court. He was willing
68 Ibid. 69 Unidentified, "Note to Inspector Pratt Arguing That No Use of Force Is Appropriate to Arrest Maroons, 8 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 70 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter from the C.S.O. To the Inspector General of Police, 8 December 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 71 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to the Inspector General of Police, 14 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 72 “High talking” refers to talking trash, as would be said in U.S. colloquial parlance. Robin Kelley discussed the relevance of such speech in that while it generally was just talk, it could also increase tensions to the point of violence. Robin Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon, 1997). In this case, the Maroons were probably talking trash about the police inspector as he was trying to arrest Rowe.
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to surrender when he raised enough money to pay the government imposed fine.73 Mr.
Roxburgh’s report reinforced that only Maroons who sympathized with Thomas Rowe
and not the entire community were involved with trespassing on Fullerswood.
Thomas Rowe’s arrest presented another issue: the police had a precedent of
overstepping their bounds with the Accompong. Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions
presented such an example: the Accompong refused to pay taxes to the Ministry of
Taxation and so the government decided to seize their stock.74 In response, members
of the Accompong community decided to take the stock back from the government.
Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions caused great consternation in the government because
the seizure of Maroon stock, “indiscreet to say the least of it and the concluding words
of the letter to the Custos of the Parish & others on 6718/92, will show that the Govt.
did not authorize the seizure.”75 The government was concerned that this action would
cause a backlash from the community. Finally, his comments explicitly state that the
Government did not authorize the seizure, suggesting that the police acted on their
own and such independent action could easily take a wrong turn; governmental
approval for punitive actions was necessary. Hence, due to the poor resolution of
Colonel Rowe’s tax petitions, there was no proper example of handling the
Accompong.
73 T. Laurence Roxburgh, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary Concerning the Arrest of Maroons Connected to Fullerswood, 14 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 74 Acting Inspector Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 75 T.L.N., "Letter to the Hon. Colonial Secretary Concerning Resolving Fullerswood, 28 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Pelis Rowe had proven an unreliable headman and Inspector Prattt, in
response, kept insisting on hiring the current Colonel, Colonel Wright, to fill Rowe’s
place. On December 23, 1896, Pratt went to Accompong with Sergeant Cambridge
and three constables: he had used the smaller police force recommended by the
government and tried to work with both Colonel Wright and with Headman Rowe.76
Pratt wrote that he first tried to have a discussion with Colonel Wright about arresting
Thomas Rowe in the presence of “Captain” Anderson, “Lieutenant” Foster, and
“Sergeant Wright,” who was Colonel Wright’s brother, and they started arguing with
him about the case as soon as he appeared. Inspector Pratt then met with Colonel
Wright by himself who had agreed that “if he were paid by the Government he would
bring down both Rowe and Richard Foster to Black River . . .”77 Colonel Rowe wrote
to the government saying that he was unable to find Thomas Rowe, but “If I am paid
by Your Excellency I will bring down Thos Rowe and Richard Foster.”78 Pratt too
quickly agreed to this arrangement so the government responded that “[w]e cannot
enter upon any such arrangement with ‘Colonel’ Wright, we dont know what his price
is even . . .”79 The government’s squeamishness with Colonel Wright was further
76 Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 77 Ibid. 78 Robt. J. Wright, "Letter to the Governor of Jamaica Negotiating Terms on Which He Would Turn Rowe over to the Authorities, 21 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 79 Unidentified, "Employee's Note Concerning Mr. Pratt's Not Arresting the Accompong Himself, " 1B576365 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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inflamed when he claimed he could not find Thomas Rowe: what sort of political
leader would be unable to round up the members of such a small community.80
Accompong community members who accepted appointments as Headmen put
themselves at risk within the community because they were no longer trusted.
Inspector Pratt relied mostly on the recognized headman, Rural Headman Rowe;
however Rowe never provided much assistance in the matter. Indeed, Pratt reported
that Pelis Rowe put little effort in locating Thomas Rowe because “if he had attempted
to arrest Thomas Rowe and Richard Foster, that the other people would have killed
him, and that they gave him a severe beating for reporting that rum was sold in the
Town without a license.”81 Headmen who tried to implement the will of the Jamaican
government failed because they did not advance the will of the community, and Pelis
Rowe’s reporting illegal alcohol sales was one such example.
Ultimately, the Accompong Maroons avoided utlizing the Jamaican legal
system with Fullerswood or its related problems. The Accompong were unwilling to
go to jail for trespass as they sought solutions that avoided the criminal justice system,
evidenced in the difficulty the Jamaican government had in arresting, trying, and
punishing members of the community.
The Jamaican government, pressured from London, insisted that the police use
no force to resolve the challenges connected to Fullerswood. Yet, the police force was
willing to take actions that contradicted the dictates of the Privy Council, such as
80 Wright, "Letter to the Governor of Jamaica Negotiating Terms on Which He Would Turn Rowe over to the Authorities, 21 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 81 Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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trying to go to Accompong with forty officers. The police also tried to create alliances
with an unvetted Colonel to implement the will of the Jamaican government without
its permission. However, this was not the only schism seen at this point. Pelis Rowe,
the headman, did not cooperate in getting the government what it sought, which
challenged the effectiveness of indirect rule. Nevertheless, the Jamaican government
again made real efforts to assure that indirect rule worked.
Indirect Rule II
Colonels who became headmen lost their political role in Accompong because
they could not concurrently advance both the community’s and the government’s
interests. As a result, the Jamaican government lost its internal ally who could make
sure the community ceased their attempts to expand Accompong’s boundaries.
The government dismissed Pelis Rowe, the first rural headman, in November
1896. The Accompong had already removed Rowe as Colonel before the government
fired him. By February 19, 1897, Inspector Calder had no recommendation for Rowe’s
replacement, but hoped a new Headman would help secure “the arrest of the two
Maroons against whom warrants are issued.”82
The government warmed to appointing Colonel Wright because he “would be a
useful man & that his authority as Colonel would be increased by his apptmt. As the
Headman & the fact that he is also ‘Colonel.”83 So little regard did the Jamaican
government have for the political roles in the Accompong community that they
82 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General Concerning the Dismissal of Rural Headman Rowe, February 19, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 83 T.L.N., "Employee Note About Colonel Wright Being the Best Rural Headman, March 1, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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thought that being a Headman would have increased a Colonel’s influence within the
community. The government was tone deaf to the challenges that Colonels faced when
doing the government’s bidding. Indeed, being a headman actually diminished the
level of authority Colonels had in the community.
Pelis Rowe wrote to the Governor’s office about his dismissal on April 21,
1897; the letter provides more information about the scope of the position and why a
Maroon would accept a Headman appointment. The overarching issue he addressed
was not being paid although he worked for Inspector Pratt while suspended. Rowe
argued that he had been a Rural Headman for eight years and the geographical area he
was responsible for was large and included “Ireside as well as for other neighbouring
districts.”84 Accompong was a mere subset of his responsibilities, which suggests that
non-Maroons challenged the rule of law and the Headman was supposed to handle
these challenges as well. He asserted that he helped accomplish the government’s
objectives, arguing that he never saw Thomas Rowe and so could not arrest him and
second, because “Thomas Rowe paid his £3.3:4 Richard Foster is now in prison by
self delivery, all this was done through my influence.”85 What precisely Mr. Rowe did
to effectuate the paying of the fine or Foster’s time in prison was not stated, but Rowe
believed that he was central to this process.
Rowe detailed why he was Headman, “I am a maroon and suppose to serve the
Government when a call of riot is heard & when hard blows are given, but not to
84 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Henry A. Black About His Firing from the Rural Headman Post, April 21, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 85 Ibid.
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devote my time as a constable for nothing.”86 The treaty justified Rowe becoming a
headman, as that was the only document that would require Maroons to answer the
“call of riot.” This reason details why the Colonels could not succeed as headmen: the
treaty governed their actions.
Further, a government employee argued that “Rowe told me himself that he
was willing to arrest Thomas Rowe but that he dared not do so, because the family
would be ‘down on him.’ He was afraid of them.”87 Because of his social and political
proximity to the Accompong community he, did not have the political muscle to arrest
Rowe and bring him to justice. Given Rowe’s divided loyalties between the
Accompong Maroons and the Jamaican government, he was unable to restrict the
Maroons’ land acquisition activities and therefore too problematic to keep as Rural
Headman. Going forward, the Jamaican government had to be confident that the
recommended candidate would really try to implement the goals of the Jamaican
government: stopping the Accompong from trying to take lands outside of their treaty
lands. The surviving documents about Fullerswood do not discuss when Jamaica
started using headman or the process was for appointing them to implement the
government’s will. Nevertheless, Jamaica resorted to indirect rule to resolve the
Accompong land conflicts. By December 1896, there was evidence that a Headman
86 Ibid. 87 Unidentified, "Jamaican Government Employee Note About Rowe's Failure to Arrest Thomas Rowe, May 4, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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had run into political problems within the Accompong community for trying to
implement the will of the government.88
Jameson Calder, the Acting Inspector, approved of Colonel Wright’s
appointment as headman.89 While the government sneered at “Colonels,” it appointed
them as headman because they had already demonstrated political leadership and
viability within the community. The government rode on the coattails of Accompong’s
political structure to try to effect this change.
As evidence of Inspector Calder’s satisfaction with Headman, Colonel Wright,
Wright was voted out of office in one year later for advancing the government’s
agenda. The government again ordered the Surveyor General’s office to determine the
boundaries of Accompong.90 The Accompong community was concerned that this
survey would result in more land taken away from the community, and Calder
acknowledged that the survey “would entail the loss to many Maroons of land they
had squatted on and cultivated.”91 As a result, the Accompong planned to disrupt the
survey: “they intended to present the interference.”92 Wright’s report to Calder did not
provide specifics about the content of the interference. Ezekiel Wright cautioned the
community against taking this course of action. As a result, the Accompong branded
him as someone who was “on the side of the Crown,” and at a meeting, removed him
88 Pratt, "Letter to the Inspector General, 23 December, 1896," 1B576 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 89 W. Jameson Calder, "Letter from Calder to the Constabulary Office Concerning Political Changes in Accompong, 13 July, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Calder, "1897," 1B/576/365/CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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as Colonel.93 The community’s role, through warfare or other means, was to protect
Accompong land. The Accompong’s expansion into Fullerswood could not have been
the responsibility of only a family and supporters, but had to involve the entire
community. Herein lay the political consequences Wright faced when he tried to
prevent a survey that would not have included any part of Fullerswood. Such political
changes would not be effectuated through one family, but by an entire community.
Hence, Colonel Wright’s challenge went beyond trying to reason with an
Accompong family about land. He had the obligation of trying to stop the entire
Accompong community from upsetting the Jamaican government. Wright had also
tried to stop them from attempting to take possession of Fullerswood again. Still, the
government, perhaps in recognition of his actions, decided to keep him in place as the
rural headman, advising Wright to “keep [Calder] informed of [the Accompong’s]
movements and intentions.”94
The Jamaican government, in its attempts to make the Accompong stay within
their boundaries, used the Headman to do so. Generally, it selected an individual who
had been elected Colonel to fulfill this role because they understood that the Colonel
would already have great sway within the community and was likely to be able to
influence the direction the community took. Yet, at the same time the government
thought the Colonels would be most useful in terms of putting a local face on colonial
policies, they underestimated the political expectations the Accompong community
93 Ibid. 94 Calder, "Letter from Calder to the Constabulary Office Concerning Political Changes in Accompong, 13 July, 1897," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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placed on the Colonels, such that it was impossible for someone to retain the title of
Colonel and serve as a Headman without being looked at askance by the Accompong
community. Hence, two Headmen in this period were voted out as Colonels: Colonel
Rowe lost his office because he tried to encourage Thomas Rowe to surrender to
Jamaica’s police. Colonel Wright was voted out because he would allow the Jamaican
government to survey Accompong lands, an act that would have diminished
Accompong land holdings. As a result, Headman were unsuccessful in implementing
the will of the Jamaican government in the Accompong community, which meant that
the Accompong continued to skirt expectations that they would not acquire additional
land and stay within their boundaries as “negroes” should.
The Accompong still sought to move their agenda. Hence, while they had a
hidden transcript of expanding Accompong land, they also knew that they had to give
some nod to the public transcript and therefore, the community continued to try to
frame, in a political arena, their arguments for Accompong ownership of Fullerswood
in the language of Jamaica’s land laws.
Another Nod to the Rule of Law: Inheritance
By March 1898, the Accompong wrote the Jamaican government and staked
out a different claim for Fullerswood. There were several signatories, but the first one
was Henry Ezekiel Wright as Clerk for the Maroons, the same person who was both
Headman and a Colonel in the community. He worked with the new Colonel, Isaac
Miles, a name that had not previously appeared in Accompong documents. Once
Ezekiel Wright was voted out of office he renewed his commitment to the community
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and advanced the Accompong’s land interests and was rewarded with a position on the
Council. Curiously, Mr. Wright still held the title of Headman. So satisfied the
community was with him in his about face connected to the Jamaican government’s
positions about their lands that he was given the title of Clerk, a title not seen in other
documents connected with the Accompong.
The first claim the Accompong made about their land was that they were using
lands that were possessed by their forefathers, e.g. the land had been in the
Accompong community for generations.95 Earlier, the claim they made about “forth
Fathers” was that one of them had a grandparent who willed them the land, a means of
making a claim to land through the law of inheritance.96 When the Accompong used
the term “forthfathers,” they made two claims: that the Jamaican government valued
inheritance as a means of claiming land; the second claim being a way of inserting the
hidden transcript, namely that the Maroons forefathers (Cudjoe, Accompong, Nanny,
etc.) had won this land and Accompong was granted it by treaty.
In that the Accompong asserted that they were entitled to land bamboozled
from them in the written treaty, they made an argument that the treaty and the
agreements surrounding it were the proper basis of law in which to adjudge their
claims. It was the importance of the treaty that prompted them to write “we are all
Loyal Subject to the Crown . . .”97 According to the Jamaican government, the
Accompong’s refusal to pay taxes on lands that they owned and stay off lands that
95 Henry Ezekiel Wright and Isaac Miles, "Letter to Sir Augustus Hemming, March, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid.
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were outside of their purview was evidence of their disloyalty to the Crown. However,
for the Accompong, their determination to “keep up our Loyalty for our Queen and &
Country” reflected their willingness to abide by the treaty. Further, the Accompong
could have been making an argument that reflected their determination to keep the
peace, namely that they did not cause hostilities like the Trelawney had in the Second
Maroon Wars; the Trelawney had lands removed from them because they had failed to
be loyal to the Queen. Because they were determined to keep the peace as dictated by
the treaty, there would be no basis for the Jamaican government to take away the
privileges of land holding. Second, the Accompong continued to argue that their use of
Fullerswood justified their possession of it, their stock and cattle fed from that land.98
Feeding their stock at Fullerswood helped to make a claim for adverse possession.
On August 11, 1898, the Maroons again attempted to take possession of
Fullerswood. By the 15th, Inspector Calder asserted that there was little substance to
any Maroon threat and aside from one rogue community member, they would settle
the manner in court through civil action.99 He stated that he had “implicit confidence
in Rural Headman Wright, who was at one time Colonel of the Maroons, and I have
carefully instructed him to inform me if Foster succeeds in stirring up the others to
take any unlawful action with regard to Fullerswood.”100 Foster, whom Rural
Headman Wright was supposed to be watching, was one of two individuals on the
98 Ibid. 99 Jameson Calder, "Letter to the Inspector General Concerning the Sort of Threat Posed by the Accompong, 15 August, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 100 Ibid.
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Colonel’s council, who had authority to act on Fullerswood.101 Given the political
proximity between Rural Headman Wright and Foster, it was unlikely that the Rural
Headman, as Council Clerk, would betray his community members’ confidences,
especially because it was by putting the government’s interests ahead of the
community’s. Once again, indirect rule was doomed to fail with the Accompong
community, which also jeopardized the government’s ability to assert the rule of law
and the public transcript over the Accompong.
White Jamaicans found the Accompong’s incursions into Fullerswood so
frequent and threatening that they spread rumors of the Accompong’s next plans. They
doubted whether the Accompong would seek Fullerswood peacefully or do whatever it
took to win the properties. One final time the Accompong threatened war to take
another part of Fullerswood. While the Jamaican government did not use force to
persuade the Accompong to back off, they understood the Accompong were not
necessarily going to make good on its threat.
One Final Demand for Fullerswood
Four years after the Accompong Maroons started demanding Fullerswood,
once again on June 17, 1899, a White settler named J. R. Williams wrote a letter to
Mr. Purchase, the Inspector of Police in Savanna-La-Mar concerning the “Maroons”
intentions. The author also questioned the legitimacy of the Maroon population. While
some members of the general public took them seriously, others questioned whether
they existed. 101 Henry Ezekiel Wright and Isaac Miles, "Letter to Sir Augustus Hemming, March, 1898," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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A Maroon whose last name was Stone, went down to Fullerswood with his son
and other men. Stone, who led this demand for Fullerswood, “styles himself a
captain.”102 Regardless of what Mr. Williams thought about the legitimacy of the
Accompong community and their political structure, Mr. Stone invoked his title of
Captain so that his legitimacy in speaking for the Accompong community would not
be questioned. Williams stated that the Accompong Maroons went down to
Fullerswood demanding that if it was not distributed appropriately, there would be
bloodshed, which suggested that the Accompong were willing to claim Fullerswood as
a community because he was putting community resource on the line for warfare.
Mr. Williams found the Accompong’s threat of warfare troubling as he as he
considered unrest across Jamaica. He implied that many threats had been made (by
whom he did not specify) and so he thought that the Maroons’ threats should be taken
seriously.103 He was also concerned because they made a claim for his parcel.
Purchase wrote to the Acting Inspector General about his further investigations of the
Accompong’s activity surrounding Fullerswood. He determined that while some
Maroons talked about taking Mr. Williams’ property, they had not taken any further
action.104 In response to Mr. Williams’ complaint, Mr. Purchase had collected a
number of statements about the Maroons’ activities on his land and surrounding
properties which showed that: (1) Rural Headmen were used beyond Accompong to
102 J.R. Williams, "Letter to C.G. Parchar, Esq., Inspector of Police Concerning Accompong Threats to Take Fullerswood, 17 June, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 103 Ibid. 104 W. Purchase, "Letter from W. Purchase to the Acting Inspector General Concerning Accompng Activity on Fullerswood, June 30, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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keep the peace; (2) that while the Accompong were determined to expand their land
holdings, they wanted nothing beyond what they thought was included in the treaty;
and (3) they were not planning any larger rebellious activities with other “negroes” in
St. Elizabeth or neighbouring parishes.
A. B. Zouass, a property owner at Water Works in Fullerswood complained
that the Accompong demanded that his wife turn over the property because it was
theirs.105 He made his complaint directly to Samuel Murray, the “Rural Headman of
Poilco,”106 which suggests that Headmen were not there only to keep the Maroon
population within their boundaries, but also to keep the larger “negroe” population in
line. There was already another Headman assigned to deal with the Maroons,
incursions this Headman had not dealt directly with the Maroon community.
Ultimately, after Mrs. Zouass complained about the Accompong’s activities, he never
saw any more of them.
The next set of statements suggested that the Accompong’s rumored
determination to acquire land beyond Fullerswood was baseless. Indeed, George
Maxwell, a Justice of the Peace in Warrenton District, William Max Paulon of
Woodside District, Thomas Nelson Wittingham of Strewie Pen, and Robert McFarlane
at Barney Side Pen never saw the Accompong or were faced with threatening actions
105 W. Purchase, "Statement from A. B. Zouass, Esq., June 20, 1899," 1B5763365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 106 W. Purchase, "Statement from Samuel Murray, June 20, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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from them.107 The Accompong targeted Zouass because he owned (occupied from the
perspective of the Accompong) parcels that formed part of Fullerswood.
Mr. Purchase took statements from these men who confirmed that the
Accompong sought Zouass out because they wanted him to relinquish the parcel of
land he owned at Fullerswood. Philip Wright stated that in May 1899, a buggy passed
him and one of the passengers asked if Rollie Williams was in their buggy. Mr. Wright
did not answer the question and instead tried to identify who was speaking with him.
He stated that “another one said we are Accompong maroons & we are going to water
works,” a place at Fullerswood.108 Daniel Stewart also reported a similar interaction
with Accompong Maroons. After Stewart asked whether the Maroon wanted to see
Mr. Williams, the Maroons told him “no I don’t want him but the land he lives on in
Kew Park if he don’t quickly deliver it up to us it will cost a bloodshed, for it belongs
to us.”109
The underlying concern settlers had about the Maroons was that they were
planning rebellious activities across St. Elizabeth (the parish where Accompong is
located) and Westmoreland (the parish directly to the west of St. Elizabeth). Residents
were concerned that the Maroons were using the home of a Mr. Irving to plan a
rebellion but the worry was baseless. William Max Paulson said that “I know Paul
107 W. Purchase, "Statement from George Maxwell, June 21, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica; W. Purchase, "Statement from Thomas Nelson Wittingham, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica; W. Purchase, "Statement from William Max Paulson, June 21, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 108 W. Purchase, "Statement from Philip B. Wright, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spansh Town, Jamaica. 109 W. Purchase, "Statement from Daniel Stewart, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Irving at Belvedere Mountain I am quite certain the Maroons have had no meetings at
his house.”110
Daniel Irving, another witness the police interviewed, also discussed the
possibility of the Maroons engaging in rebellious activity and concluded that the
Maroons were going to see their attorney. He came home and found the Maroons,
including Mr. Stone at his home where they were staying on their journey. “They told
me that they was going to Savannalamar to see Lawyer Clarke for they was arrested in
Blk River for Fullerswood & they want to recover damages so they are going get an
advise . . .”111 On their way back to Accompong, they again stayed at Mr. Irving’s
home and when asked if they actually saw their attorney, they responded no, he was
not home.112 Given the consistent demands the Accompong made on settlers who lived
in Fullerswood, it would seem that they would have sought legal advice on securing
that land for themselves, indeed it was thought that they had sought this advice before.
Instead, the Maroons tried to seek counsel to get them out of the criminal legal
conundrum they found themselves in as they violated the injunctions issued against
them. Mr. Irving’s statement reinforced the fact that rebellion was not the primary goal
of the Accompong’s actions.
While rebellion was not the Accompong’s stated goal, it was curious that they
continued to threaten warfare to win it. The Accompong framed their demands “as
110 W. Purchase, "Statement from William Max Paulon, June 21, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 111 W. Purchase, "Statement of Daniel Irving, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 112 Purchase, "Letter from W. Purchase to the Acting Inspector General Concerning Accompng Activity on Fullerswood, June 30, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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give us the land or we will fight you for it,” which forced Fullerswood’s landholders
to question whether Maroons were trying to enlist the broader “negroe” population
with a rebellion. The prospect of Maroons going to war over land must have been a
substantial enough a threat on its own. Inspector George Mansell wrote on June 21,
1899 that two Maroons, notably Major and Captain Stone, were seen at New Park
District, in Westmoreland, holding meetings. As a result, he assigned a police officer
to follow the Accompong to “find out what these two men were doing in
Westmoreland . . .”113 and make sure the Accompong were not planning some sort of
mutiny.
On June 28, 1899, White settlers reported seeing members of the Accompong
practicing obeah not in Accompong or on Fullerswood, but in a different parish.
However, they argued that James Wright, an Accompong Maroon, would return to
New Park, Westmoreland.114 Whites feared obeah as they knew it could be deployed
for evil purposes, including rebellion. No other letters had reported such a sighting in
the Fullerswood case, so without additional detail about what the settlers were seeing
and correlating testimony or letters, such a sighting was treated as part of the rumor
mill. One concern was whether the Accompong were planning rebellious activities
with the other “negroes.” Ultimately, this last claim on Fullerswood did little to
threaten the public transcript, the rule of law concerning land, so that the police were
content to use their Rural Headman to monitor the situation.
113 Inspector George E. Mansell, "Letter to Secretary Cambridge Concerning the Potential of the Accompong to Mutiny, 21 June, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 114 Unidentified, "Note to Inspector Mansell About Maroons Practicing Obeah, 28 June, 1899," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town.
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Conclusion
Placemaking narratives had relevance in these disputes about Fullerswood as
they formed the content of the Accompong’s hidden transcript. Their motivations for
trying to acquire Fullerswood can be understood with the backdrop of the narrative
claiming that the community was being deprived of thousands of acres in their treaty.
Further, the Accompong believed that the only way to secure extra land, if all else
failed, was through warfare, and the community was willing to do so no matter
whether the property was owned by an individual or the entire community. However,
Fullerswood is located east of the Black River and extends beyond the boundaries
delineated in the oral history and so it is hard to escape the possibility that
Fullerswood was a chance for the Maroons to make a land grab for lands that were
more fertile.115 Yet, the Accompong were willing to use legal arguments beyond the
treaty to advance their position, including adverse possession and the laws of
inheritance.
The government had a much different agenda in handling Fullerswood. At the
insistence of the Privy Council and the Colonial Secretary, the Jamaican government
stopped enforcing the Land Allotment Act. It saw the possibility that Maroons could
function in post-emancipation society the same way they did during slavery: putting
down rebellions in the event the peasantry rose up. Through diplomacy and indirect
rule, the government sought to limit the amount of land the Accompong could claim
by squatting. Additionally, the land agenda applied to the Maroons was the same as 115 Roxburgh, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary Concerning the Arrest of Maroons Connected to Fullerswood, 14 December, 1896," 1B576365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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applied to the Black peasants: the Maroons would be more like the “negroes.”
Nevertheless, for the Privy Council in London, the primary concern was that no
Accompong Maroon rebellion occurred in Jamaica; the Privy Council wanted to
ensure that the Accompong abided by the terms of the treaty.
Further, one unique aspect of Fullerswood was the burgeoning interest in
indirect rule as demonstrated by the Jamaican government. Indirect rule was an
attempt to enforce the rule of law among a separate ethnic population both on the
African continent and in Jamaica. The government hoped that selecting Colonels for
the role of Rural Headmen would be sufficient to encourage the Accompong to
comply with the rule of law, meaning that they would stop trying to take Fullerswood
by any method, at a minimum, and comply with the terms of the Land Allotment Act
at its most optimistic. However, an unintended consequence was that Headman who
did what the Jamaican government wanted actually lost credibility within the
Accompong community and therefore were voted out as Colonel. Indeed, only the
Accompong’s agenda would suffice for any political leader.
Ultimately, the Accompong never expanded their land holdings to
Fullerswood. The Accompong were not making claims on idle Crown Lands, instead
the private landowners refused to cede their lands to them. At the same time, the
Jamaican government proved unsuccessful in stopping the Accompong from making
additional land claims (as the next chapter will demonstrate), or in reallocating their
treaty-granted lands as individually owned. Indeed, the treaty assumed just as much
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importance, given the Privy Council’s interests in this situation, as any laws passed by
the Jamaican legislature.
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Chapter 6: The Strathdon Land Conflict (1895 – 1902)
The Strathdon Land Conflict is the last post-emancipation land dispute
between the Accompong and the Jamaican government. The government still sought
to prevent the Accompong from acquiring new land. As Blacks, they were not to be
landholders, but a population providing plantation labor. The Jamaican government
and the Colonial Office had agreed during the Fullerswood land conflict to stop
enforcing the Land Allotment Act and instead pursue a narrower goal: eliminating
squatting and adverse possession as it did with the formerly enslaved. This would
uphold the treaty and maintain peaceful relationships with the Maroons as opposed to
the original plan of trying to disinvest them of treaty lands. Yet the Jamaican
government remained determined to eliminate differences between the Maroons and
the “negroe” population. Therefore, any new Maroon land acquisitions would be
subject to the conditions of the Land Allotment Act: that individual Maroons would
purchase and pay taxes on land outside Accompong. The new public transcript
eliminated the “disabilities” held by the Maroons.1 These limitations comported with
the racialized goal of making all Blacks laborers, the dirty linen of the Land Allotment
Act. Yet the Land Allotment Act contradicted the Colonial Office’s later directives.
Strathdon, a parcel of land the Accompong acquired, was the subject of
another land dispute from 1895 - 1902. Located to the south and west of Accompong,
they had long used it as a source for fresh water and had buried a community member
there. Unlike Fullerswood, Strathdon was not a land grab because the Accompong 1 The primary “disability” the Jamaican government was concerned with was the Accompong communal land holdings.
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were in legitimate possession of it because of adverse possession; Mr. Watson,
Strathdon’s owner, agreed to let them have it. Further, the Watsons missed tax
payments and lost their authority over the land. The government had to delegitimize
Accompong ownership of Strathdon at a time when “negroes” were not to possess
land, and surveyor Colin Liddell facilitated this process. The core of Liddell’s
proposed agreement with the Maroons was that if they failed to meet their tax burden,
the land would revert to the government the same way it had with the Watsons, and
individual landholders would be dispossessed of Strathdon. The government’s
unspoken objective was that they would be forced to support themselves on
plantations. Yet, their refusal to use force compromised their ability to make the
Accompong comply with the new rule of law.
The Accompong never agreed to this vision of their landholdings. They
operated on the basis of their hidden transcript, particularly the placemaking narrative
about their borders. Openly, the Accompong relied on the treaty to support their land
claims and their refusal to pay taxes. No matter the agreement Liddell pieced together,
so long as it diverged from the treaty, they Accompong would not comply.
Contested Trodance, 1895
The Accompong first wrote to the government asserting claims over Trodance2
in 1895, based on their history. Their first argument was that Trodance (Strathdon)
was the place where they could get clean drinking water, a claim that reflects their
2 Trodance is what the Accompong called this parcel, but the Jamaican government called it Strathdon.
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regular usage of the land.3 The Accompong further complained that Mr. Watson, a
private citizen, had tried to dislodge the Accompong from land their forefathers gave
them.4
The Accompong’s second argument was that they had buried Captain Levose
there, suggesting that his burial place is a placemaking narrative of some importance.
Captain Levose’s title indicates that he was part of the Colonel’s council, the group
who advises the Colonel and the community sees as having historical and political
power.5 Captain Levose had a special burial place like Cudjoe and Accompong who
were buried in Old Town, so he had status in the community; however, aside from
conjecture, written records reveal nothing about who he was.
The Accompong would not abandon Captain Levose’s burial place. Vince
Brown, author of The Reaper’s Garden, argues that the enslaved were concerned that
if they moved away from the dead, the spirits would become unsettled because they
were not near their community.6 The Accompong also held such beliefs: when the
government offered to move them to more fertile lands, such as one possible solution
to Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions, they refused to move. The Accompong did not want
to risk leaving Cudjoe and his brother Accompong in Old Town where their ghosts are
thought to make appearances in the cotton trees nearby.7
3 Brian, Thomas Rowe, and John R. Foster, "Letter to the Surveyor General's Office, 3 July, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 4 Ibid. 5The Council was created during the Maroon Wars so that Kojo could consult with other Maroons about fighting the Wars. Zips, 109 - 110. 6 Brown, 249. 7 This is one of the placemaking narratives related to me by Bill Peddie on a tour of Accompong. Thompson, "Interview with Bill Peddie," (2008). Zips also refers to the silk cotton trees inhabited by
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The government investigated the Accompong’s claim to possession of
Strathdon and learned that the Accompong had run their cattle on the property and had
done so “from time immemorial.”8 Mr. Watson’s father had “carelessly allowed the
Maroons to take possession” of Strathdon. Further, Mr. Watson, the son, owed back
taxes risking forfeiture.9 Mr. Watson faced two issues: he could not evict the
Accompong until he paid his back taxes on Strathdon, and he would have to prove that
the Accompong did not legitimately own the land by squatting, or in legal parlance,
adverse possession.10 It was this continuous, notorious, open, and undisturbed
possession of Strathdon by the Accompong that gave them a legitimate claim.
When Colin Liddell, the surveyor, first heard about Accompong’s claims
regarding Strathdon, his first response was that the Accompong never trespassed on
the land they did not think they owned.11 Liddell sought to determine which party’s
the first-timers. Zips, 117 - 119. Narratives about the cotton trees where the ancestors lived were also related to Archibald Cooper, a researcher of the Accompong Maroons where he describes the Old Town area where “[t]he outstanding feature of the place is four tremendous cotton trees which have gnarled roots which are particularly above ground. Under each of the four trees lives the ghost of one of the four siblings: Accompong, Nanny, Cuffee, and Quankee.” Archibald Cooper, "Ic, " Archibald Cooper Manuscripts, Accompong, Jamaica. 8 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. Adverse possession is defined as open, notorious, continuous possession of a parcel of land where if the owner did not object to using that land over a particular period of time, generally seven years under common law, then ownership and possession moves to the person who engaged in adverse possession. This is also called “squatting” in colonial records. Until a claimant can make a colorable claim to owning a parcel of land by adverse possession, they are using the land illegally by “trespassing.” 11 Liddell, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary's Office, July 16, 1895," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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claim was legitimate and resorted to adverse possession, an argument that could
potentially expand Accompong land holdings.12
How to Deal With the Accompong When They Trespass (1896)
When Watson, Jr. complained about the Accompong trespassing on his lands
to the Jamaican government, it took the opportunity to rethink the applicable law. The
government mused that because the Accompong had no legitimate claim to
Accompong, they must have been trespassing; the very same charge that would have
been leveled against the Black population trying to acquire land by squatting or
adverse possession. The government stated “it would really be much better to place it
within the power of private landowners to easily and effectually punish these Maroons
for trespass by imprisonment with the option of a fine.”13 Because the Land Allotment
Act put the Accompong on the same footing as all of the Queen’s subjects, they
should also be seen as trespassers when improperly using other peoples’ lands.
However, the government’s new approach produced two problems. First, that the elder
Watson yielded a portion of Strathdon to the Accompong community; second, the
Watsons owed back taxes that jeopardized their ownership. Hence, the Accompong,
through adverse possession, made a legitimate counterclaim for Strathdon.
The Jamaican government still hoped to deprive the Accompong of Strathdon
so their community did not move beyond the treaty-delineated boundaries and
12 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 13 Ibid.
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frustrate their ability to acquire land by adverse possession.14 In order to discourage
the Accompong from aggressive land acquisition, the government decided to stop
surveying their lands. It thought the surveys succeeded in keeping the Accompong
functioning separately from the Black population. However, the government once
again wondered whether the Accompong could be legitimately perceived as distinct
from the larger Black community.
Maroons Are Not Really Maroons
The government argued that most of “Maroon Town[’s],” residents were not
really Maroons because “[t]he present lot have very much intermixed with, and are no
different to, the ordinary population, except that they pay not taxes of any kind.”15 The
term “intermixed with” signals a racial designation because in the late nineteenth
century, people were thought to maintain racial distinctiveness by mating within their
racial group.16 The Accompong’s willingness to mate with “the ordinary population”
underscored the racial similarities between the communities and reinforced the
government’s earlier conclusion of no racial basis for legally treating the Maroons
differently than the rest of the Black population.
The Jamaican government also saw the Maroon’s fragile political organization
as reason to discount the existence of an Accompong community. The Colonel had
died and the community had not elected a replacement that signaled the lack of a
14Unidentified, "Letter to the Right Honorable J. Chamberlain M.P., 30 March, 1896," 1B576333 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 15 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 16 Banton, 85.
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political structure to reinforce the Accompong’s differences from ordinary
“Negroes.”17 In the absence of a Colonel, the Accompong had been relying more on
the government appointed headman.18 Further, the 1883 Proclamation declared that
the Maroons no longer had military obligations beyond any other member of the
British Empire rendering the community military designations meaningless to the
government.19
The Accompong’s racial mixing combined with faltering government provided
evidence to the Jamaican government that “in course of time these people will entirely
lose, or forget their claim to distinctiveness if it is not injudiciously kept alive.”20 The
Accompong talked about their treaty and insisted that they owed no taxes, but
ultimately, they were harmless, suggesting not only political weakness, but military
weakness as well.21 As a result, the government also had reason to ignore their
previous agreement with the Colonial Secretary’s Office to stop assimilating the
Accompong with the general population; they decided to reincorporate the goal of the
17 Unidentified, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Accompong Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 CSO (2) (1870 - 1895) Spanish Town, Jamaica. 18 Recall the discussion in chapter 5 about the role of headmen, that the Jamaican government used them in an attempt to both give the Accompong a guarantee of certain rights and also enforce a culture on an ethnicized peasantry. Ultimately, as applied to the Accompong, the headmen were to assist the Maroons in complying with the Land Allotment Act. In chapter 5 the headmen were selected from the community; however, the sources connected with Strathdon do not reveal who was serving in this capacity although based on the silence about who was the headman and the earlier experiences the government had with the Accompong in this position, this person was probably not from Accompong. Ibid. 19 Ibid. Further, for the precise terms of the treaty, see Musgrave, "Proclamation Exempting Maroons from Military Service, April 16, 1883, 1883," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. This Proclamation is the 1883 Proclamation discussed in Chapter 4 that the Governor passed with the hope that the Accompong would drop their petitions challenging whether they should pay taxes and hoping that they would start paying them. 20 Unidentified, "Report to the Colonial Secretary About the Accompong's Land Claims, 1895," 1B576333 (CSO) 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 21 Ibid.
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Land Allotment Act.22 The moment seemed ripe for the Accompong’s allies, the
Reverends Stuart and Lea, to help the government resolve the Strathdon land issues in
a way that would comply with the Land Allotment Act and pay taxes on it like the
Queen’s “negroe” subjects.
Role of Clergy
The Jamaican government turned to the clergy who had worked with the
Accompong community before to settle their claim for Strathdon in a way that would
not upset them.23 While the government considered the clergy critical in facilitating
discussion between the Accompong and the government, they had sometimes
advocated positions hostile to the interests of the Jamaican government. This time, the
Reverends suggested ways to resolve it that would advance the government’s agenda.
They argued that a meeting with Liddell and themselves would only cause the
Accompong to think too highly of themselves and so a letter cautioning the
Accompong from interfering with private property would be the most judicious course
of action.24
Lea recognized that the government had to legitimize the Accompong’s claim
to part of Strathdon because Watson, Sr. no longer wanted to claim it, a position that
seriously compromised Watson Jr.’s claim. Lea recommended that Strathdon be
advertised for forfeiture. If the Watsons could demonstrate that they legally owned
22 Unidentified, "Internal Govenrment Memo About Letter from Privy Council, March 13, 1896," 1B576333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 23 Colonial Secretary's Office, "Letter to the Rev. John Stuart, 19 August, 1895," Spanish Town, Jamaica. 24 John Stuart, "Letter to the Colonial Secretary Concerning the Accompong and Strathdon, September 6, 1895," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Balaclava.
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Strathdon, the Accompong should “submit to the law.” If not, the government should
sell the lots to the Accompong at easy terms.25 Lea’s proposal made his involvement
in these negotiations easier because he crafted a position that was potentially palatable
to the community, namely that they could expand their land holdings. Prior proposals
emphasized keeping the Maroons off other peoples’ lands, and tax payments,
proposals the Accompong rejected under any condition. The clergy, as they served
both the Accompong and the surrounding Jamaicans, sought the same thing for both
communities: land so they could live independently. When they argued for one
community to be able to acquire more land, they saw themselves as making that
argument for the other one as well. The Jamaican government and the clergy had a
point of agreement so it became easier for them to agree on policy objectives related to
the Accompong community.
Nevertheless, Lea still ensured that the interests of the Accompong were
addressed and warned the government that there was “a great deal too much written
and spoken to the disparagement of these Maroons.”26 He once again stressed that the
government should list Strathdon for foreclosure and the matter would be settled if
Mr. Watson paid back taxes. If not, the lands should be sold in lots with a preference
given to the Accompong.27
Lea also agreed with the government that it should own Strathdon temporarily,
although the Accompong already owned it. Uncharacteristically, Rev. Lea and the
25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.
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government proposed dispensing with Strathdon contrary to the Accompong’s
interests. The Accompong had two bases for a claim Strathdon: (1) that they had used
a water source on Strathdon; and (2) the Accompong ran their cattle there from “time
immemorial.” If the Accompong claimed Strathdon through adverse possession, the
title should have transferred immediately with the Crown effectuating this transfer.
Alternatively, the Reverends suggested a sale to collect back taxes the back taxes from
Watson, Jr. The government had newly succeeded in securing the clergy as an ally
depriving the Accompong of additional lands.
In September 1895, Liddell, the Crown Surveyor, who was pleased with the
Reverends’ suggestion, revamped their proposal. He was not concerned with
Accompong trespass on other lands; however, he was concerned with Mr. Watson’s
tax challenges. Liddell proposed that Strathdon be put up for forfeiture. If Mr. Watson
failed to pay his taxes, the land would be divided into lots for the Maroons “who have
already completely swallowed it up.”28 This part of the proposal comported with the
clergy’s recommendations. However, Liddell did not hide his irritation with the
Accompong who were not satisfied controlling Cook’s Bottom, 4,000 acres of Crown
Land. Ultimately, “if they held their land each man in fee instead of in Common as at
present and were taxed like other people” this would not happen.29 Liddell sought to
have the Maroons behave like the Queen’s subjects and pay taxes by shifting the tax
burden away from Mr. Watson to the Accompong who would satisfy Watson’s
28 Colin Liddell, "Leter to the Honourable Colonial Secretary About Disposition of Strathdon Vis-a-Vis the Accompong, September 13, 1895," 1B 576 333 CSO 2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 29 Ibid.
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outstanding tax bill. Liddell hoped that Rev. Stuart would ask the Accompong if they
were ready to have Strathdon subdivided and to start paying taxes on it, exactly the
conditions set for treaty land in the Land Allotment Act.30 Liddell was explicit that if
the Accompong did not uphold the terms of the Land Allotment Act applied in this
context, they would be trespassing on Crown Land. Without additional Crown Lands,
the Accompong could not support their communities and would have to join the non-
land owning population who worked on plantations.
However, how would the government enforce tax collection? Liddell’s
proposal did not expect that the State would bring force to bear, a peculiar stance
given that the Jamaican government was regularly willing to use force with the Black
peasantry in order to make sure they were working on plantations, as “free laborers”
should. The 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion marked the pinnacle of this use of force
against Black peasants. Land issues were part of the challenges that Black peasants
faced in their quest to define full freedom, freedom to define their lives away from the
plantations that had totally shaped their lives during slavery. The formerly enslaved
tried to maintain land in the face of the police deploying the use of force:
In the summer of 1859, for example, settlers on Florence Hall, an estate in Westmoreland, were charged with trespass, and police were sent out to eject them. When the settlers resisted, they were arrested and confined to the jail in Falmouth. Before they could be tried, however, a crowd of several hundred supporters broke them out of jail. In the ensuing melee, ten or twelve other prisoners were rescued from police custody as well, and the station house was
30 Ibid. Why owning land would prevent the Accompong from trespassing was not clear. Given that the Accompong were acting on a hidden transcript suggests that whether they owned particular parcels of land or not would not prevent them from trespassing on land that they thought was theirs.
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stoned. During this confrontation police fired into the crowd, killing two women instantly and wounding four or five others.31
Black peasants pressed the logically consistent claim that abandoned lands
should revert to the queen and then sold in the public domain to the people: the Black
peasants. However, the government was unwilling to abide by this perspective.32
Ultimately, the legislature consistently adopted positions that were hostile to the
interests of the peasantry and ultimately “eliminated effective legal remedies for small
freeholders and renters.”33 Black peasants could not “squat” and win land because they
never had a “legitimate” means of acquiring land if they had not bought it by the
1860s. Not only did the government resort to violence, but they also configured the
legal system to ensure that Black peasants could not hold onto land. Hence, it seems
that the Jamaican government could position itself to force the Accompong pay taxes
on any lot of land they owned.
Yet, in March 1898, the government had not completed its proceedings against
Mr. Watson for back taxes and acknowledged that the Accompong had been in
possession of it since Watson, Sr. was alive.34 It had initiated proceedings that were
still pending to reclaim back taxes. Ultimately, the Accompong did own the land by
adverse possession and “renders them liable to buy in substitution for him [Watson,
31 Holt, 267. 32 Ibid., 269. 33 Ibid., 277. 34 Surveyor General's Office, "Letter to the Honorable Colonial Secretary About Whether the Accompong Owe Back Taxes, March 19, 1898," 1B 576 365 CSO 2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica.
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Jr.] & does not free the land from its obligation,”35 they should pay the back taxes on
Strathdon if they acquired it.36
While Strathdon was bogged down with tax issues, the government still failed
to move beyond an internal discussion of the terms under which the Accompong could
use Strathdon. They also faced the problem of how to enforce any new agreement with
them considering that throughout all three land disputes they had been unable to
collect taxes from them.
Accompong Claims Grow More Ambitious, 1900
By November 1900, the issues concerning taxation and ownership of Strathdon
were still unresolved. The Accompong made the same treaty claims for the land they
called Trodance, it was the only source of good drinking water that they had.37 This
time, the Accompong made a novel treaty-based claim: that Juan De Bolas and other
Maroons “received plots of land on consideration of service given to the English.”38
De Bolas, in 1655, was one of the first to create a Maroon community and won this
land for them via treaty that predated other Accompong claims in the area.39 The
Accompong clearly believed that the 1663 treaty was a basis for their land claims.40
35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B 576 365 CSO 2 (1996 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 38 James A Brian Peter James Rowe, John Reid Foster, Wm. Anderson, Isaac Miles, James Wright, Thomas Rowe, Robert Watson, John Gillett, Isaac Peddie, George Gallier, Thos Collie, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Accompong. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.
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Even after De Bolas gained freedom for some of the Maroons, another group
remained in the mountains unimpressed by the treaty terms De Bolas had negotiated
with the British. De Bolas was made the Colonel of the Black Regiment and was
ordered to reduce the number of Maroons, an expedition that cost his life.41
Ultimately, according to British accounts of the Maroon Wars, a treaty with a Maroon
traitor was the basis of claiming Strathdon.42
Referring to De Bolas reflects that the Accompong unyieldingly insisted on
treaties as the basis of their land arrangements and provided them with another way of
reinforcing the significance of the treaty. The 1739 treaty was not only historic
because of the commingling of blood between the parties, but also because “the
British” never lived up to those initial terms that preceded the 1739 agreement,
including the broadest construction of their land holdings, a 2500 acre land grant.43
Further, in order to underscore the importance of treaties, the Accompong
discuss that land was given “in consideration of service given to the British,” a term
that has a very specific legal meaning and cements the importance of this treaty to the
41 Edwards, iv. It is important to remember Zips’ critique that the British often referred to Blacks as in submission when referring to a treaty because at that time, it was inconceivable that people of African heritage could be sovereigns. Zips, 194. This brings to mind Trouillot’s notion of “unthinkability.” “Negroe” sovereignty was unthinkable, so when treaties were negotiated with them, they were characterized as submissions to the government. Trouillot, 70 - 107. 42 Werner Zips challenges the British notion that De Bolas was necessarily a traitor to the Maroons. Lubolo, as Zips called him, had won 30 acres of land per capita, the first Maroon agreement. Zips acknowledges a relatively barren oral history concerning him in the Accompong history, and cedes that it was possible that another Maroon group killed him. Scholars such as Campbell and Robinson argue that Juan de Serras, another leader of Maroons in Jamaica’s interior, had killed him for betraying the fight for Black freedom. Zips argues that betraying Black freedom would not have been the motive; instead, the Maroons would have either killed him because (1) they wanted to send a message to other “rebels” to make sure they did not side with the British, or (2) send a message to the colonial power that they needed to improve the terms of the treaty. Zips, 52 - 54. 43 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Accompong.
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Accompong.44 Consideration is defined as “the inducement to a contract, something of
value given in return for a performance or a promise by another, for the purpose of
forming a contract; one element of a contract that is generally required to make the
agreement of the parties enforceable as a contract.”45 The item of value the De Bolas
led Maroons and the Accompong gave up was the promise of peace, no more warfare
against the British for their freedom. In exchange, the British had to deliver a promise,
the Accompong Maroons heard this as land for their community. By exchanging these
elements, there is consideration for an agreement between the Maroons and the
British.
Further, the Accompong argued that the governor would settle disputes
between the Accompong and others for their land, and how ashamed they are that “the
country people are gaining at us – saying it is good that the Governor is taking all their
[the Accompong’s] lands and now we all shall be alike.”46 The governor’s failure to
live up to his end of the treaty was shameful. The Accompong saw this issue alone as
a breach of the treaty and they understood what the objective of the Land Allotment
Act was, that the “negroe” populations “shall be alike.” The one way to make these
populations alike was to deprive the Accompong of their land to ensure that they
44 I do not think that the Accompong would use the term “in consideration” as a legal term; however, I am convinced that the Jamaican government would have read it as a legal term and so the government interpreted their letter in the context of the Jamaican legal system whether the Accompong planned on it being read that way or not. 45 Law Dictionary, s.v. "Consideration." However, earlier definitions of consideration could have been seen as “the promisee [giving] something in exchange for the promise that is either a detriment to the promisee or a benefit to the promisor.” Nevertheless, consideration in a contract is the glue that binds the parties together, and the reason it is such an important ingredient to any agreement. E. Allan Farnsworth, Contracts, Second ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990), 43. 46 Peter James Rowe, "Letter to Governor Olivier Concerning Ownership of Strathdon, November 6, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Accompong.
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worked on plantations. This statement points to the fissure between the Maroons and
the “negroes” on the one hand, and the Jamaican government and the “negroes” on the
other. Maroons had no intention of becoming part of the “negroe” community by
relinquishing their land through the dictates of the Land Allotment Act or paying
taxes. To do so would deprive the community of the land that was central to who they
were as reflected by the placemaking narratives. Without land and without those
historical narratives, the Accompong would cease being a separate people.
The Accompong’s statement also reflects the political challenges the Jamaican
government faced as they tried to make the communities the same. The Blacks were
well aware that the Maroon communities had one thing that they did not have, land.
Both the Blacks peasantry and the Jamaican government were well aware that it was
hard to justify one population being able to own land while systematically keeping the
other population from acquiring land by any means possible. So, in addition to trying
to satisfy the needs of the planters for labor, the government tried to appease the
Blacks by making sure that they knew that the government tried to get the Maroon
groups to cede their communal land. Requiring the Accompong to own the land as
individuals and pay taxes on those parcels was the only way in which the Jamaican
state could divest the Maroons of land ownership (presuming the Accompong would
default on their taxes).
So determined were the Accompong to keep their land that they closed the
letter reasserting their treaty based claim to Strathdon and threatened to go to another
nation to resolve this land dispute. The Accompong still upheld themselves to the
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treaty conditions and “still hold ourselves as defending soldiers to his land against
foreign intrusion.”47 They also refused to relinquish any claims they had to
Trodance.48
Colonial Response
Six days after the Accompong reasserted their treaty rights to Strathdon,
Liddell conferred with the Jamaican government concerning how to proceed. He
argued that the Accompong were only entitled to 1200 acres of land: this would equal
the 1000 acres granted to the Accompong by statute49 and the additional 200 acres
they won when Mr. Harrison, a prior surveyor, had surveyed Accompong.50 He
bemoaned the fact that the Accompong refused to stay within their boundaries, but
acknowledged that they extended their land holdings to Strathdon that contained a
total of 300 acres. While the Maroons have always had it in their possession and
rightfully owned it by adverse possession, they still had an obligation to pay taxes on
it. Taking the land by adverse possession “does not [absolve] them from paying taxes
on it any more than other people who steal land are absolved from paying taxes on the
land stolen.”51 Liddell reflected the opinion of the Jamaican government in that
47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof," (Jamaica: The Laws of Jamaica, 1758). 50 Colin Liddell, "Letter to the Honorable Colonial Secretary Concerning the Accompong and Strathdon, November 12, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 51 Ibid.
217
acquiring land by adverse possession was the same as stealing, a characterization he
applied to the Accompong and Strathdon.52
However, Liddell asserted, for the first time, that the Accompong actually
owed back taxes on Strathdon. Once the Accompong had become the only owners,
Liddell argued, they became liable for taxes. As a result, the Bailiff had the right to
take possession of Strathdon away from the Maroons (because they had not paid their
taxes). The appearance of the bailiff provoked a letter from the Accompong asserting
their treaty rights. As far as Liddell was concerned, if the Accompong wanted to keep
Strathdon, they needed to pay the taxes on it.53
The government agreed with Liddell’s position and concluded that the
Governor would let the Accompong keep Strathdon if they would commit to paying
taxes on the property.54 Yet they were still unsure about how much acreage Strathdon
contained and how much the Accompong actually held by adverse possession.55
Subsequently, a government employee met with Lea and summarized the Maroons’
claims as having 1500 treaty-granted acres that did not square with the government’s
understanding. The Trelawney Maroons were granted 1500 acres, the statutory grant
to the Accompong was only 1,000 acres.56
52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Unidentified, "Note About the Accompong's Ownership of Strathdon, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 55 Unidentified, "Note About the Number of Acres in Strathdon, 1900," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 56 Unidentified, "Employee Letter to the Colonial Secretary About Legal Land Grants to the Accompong, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. "An Act to Ascertain and Establish the Boundaries of Trelawney Town, and to Settle and Allot One Thousand Acres of Land for Accompong's Town and to Ascertain the Boundaries Thereof," (Jamaica: The Laws of Jamaica, 1758).
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By December 1901, Colin Liddell had reached an agreement with the
Accompong about their boundaries concerning Strathdon. He procured a signed
agreement with four terms: (1) that the Accompong would keep 1,220 acres based on
the 1868 survey with Mr. Harrison and the land would be resurveyed so the
boundaries were clear; (2) Maroons on Crown Lands outside of the 1,220 acres would
purchase that land in fee simple for no more than £1 per acre and if they did not want
to purchase it, give those Crown Lands back and return to Accompong; (3) Maroons
living outside of Accompong, would have to pay taxes on that land; and finally (4) the
Spring and burial place at Strathdon would not be sold to any buyers.57 Ultimately,
Liddell sought to bring resolution to this matter by effectively trying to craft a new
agreement with the Accompong about taxation, a document that could be seen as an
addendum to the treaty.
Nevertheless, agreements with the Accompong that wavered from the treaty
were notoriously difficult. Liddell immediately tried to follow up with this agreement.
When he met with the Accompong on December 17, 1901, the meeting was
“uproarious and disorderly” because there were several fights during the course of the
meeting.58 The following meeting in Retirement Church started with Rev. Lea
explaining the history of the Maroons and the treaties; and his explanation was greeted
with “growling.”59 But with Lea’s help, the Accompong were seemingly amenable to
57 Colin Liddell, "Agreement Concerning Strathdon, December 17, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Retirement, Jamaica. 58 Colin Liddell, "Report Concerning Meeting with the Accompong About Strathdon, December 19, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 59 Ibid.
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Liddell’s proposal. Ultimately, Liddell concluded that he put the agreement in writing
because he knew that the Maroons tended to have “convenient memories, and forget
or deny any agreement they may make verbally.”60 However, Liddell put far too much
emphasis on the importance of having this agreement in writing, agreements had to be
sealed by both sides drinking the rum and blood mixture from a calabash. Liddell’s
narrative about this “agreement” did not contain any such ceremony and was not seen
as a permanently binding agreement.61
Liddell and Lea sought greater community support for the agreement and
convened 60 to 70 Colonels and other officers for a meeting. Lea successfully
convinced eleven of the “principal men” to agree to the above terms and these men
signed the agreement.62 Indeed, Liddell states that Lea thought “he had never seen a
more orderly meeting in Maroon Town.”63
Liddell wanted the government to implement the agreement quickly so the
Accompong did not change their mind or receive contrary advice. Liddell also wanted
a bailiff to be available: the bailiff could order the police to come if the Accompong
disrupted the survey and the bailiff would assist with executing the writs for the
surrounding property. Ultimately, Liddell was concerned that the “’Colonel’” and the
“’Officers’” had no authority over the larger body of Maroons and while he had the
60 Ibid. 61 Bilby; Kopytoff; Zips, 75 - 6. Recall my earlier discussion in Chapter 4 about how treaties are formed among the Accompong – that the mixing of rum, blood from each party to an agreement, and soil between the two parties form a permanent agreement between them. 62 Liddell, "Report Concerning Meeting with the Accompong About Strathdon, December 19, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 63 Ibid.
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agreement of a portion of the community, “there may be others whom nothing will
satisfy.”64
Liddell’s stance about the political leaders in the Accompong community
presented him with a contradiction. In his report he puts the terms Colonel and
Officers in quotations, he did not believe in the legitimacy of the Accompong political
structure. These “Colonels” and “Officers” were allegedly politically weak and unable
to keep the community together because there were always other community members
who were disagreeable to changes in landholdings. Nevertheless, it was the
Accompong community and this structure that he had to rely on to gain the
Accompong’s agreement with his new proposal about individual land acquisition for
Strathdon. The proposal would be illegitimate in the community if the “Colonels and
“Officers” did not approve, ironically the same officials he sought to render
illegitimate in his report to government officials.
The Jamaican government consistently found itself in a dilemma during these
disputes. It worked under the assumption that there was no longer a Maroon
community: the Land Allotment Act had rid of them and forced them, theoretically, to
assimilate into the general population with the rest of the Jamaicans. However, as the
land disputes demonstrate, operation of law does not necessarily comport with the
situation on the ground. The Jamaican government and the Accompong Maroons
worked on two widely varying historical and legal assumptions about the Accompong
community. The Accompong did not agree to assimilate with Jamaicans. Historical
64 Ibid.
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circumstances created the Accompong community, the Maroon Wars and the treaty
that ended the wars. These specific circumstances were commemorated with an oral
history that was passed on to future generations. So long as true-born Maroons
inherited this oral history,65 the Jamaican government could not disrupt the growth and
strength of the Accompong community. The Jamaican government continued to work
with a community that law could not eliminate.
Liddell’s frustration with the community was evident when he accused the
Accompong community of having an improper reading of their history because their
historical interpretation was based solely on a treaty negotiated with the deported
Trelawney Maroons. As a result, the treaty could not apply to the Accompong
Maroons because the Trelawney lands “were forfeited and sold out to private parties . .
.”66 At the same time he discussed the treaty with the Accompong, they also asserted
that they did not owe any taxes and that “if they were not wanted any more they would
‘join another nation.’ Apart from such little amusing incidents they behaved
remarkably well.”67
By February 1902, Liddell finally got the opportunity to make good on the
agreement he negotiated. In order to implement it, he wanted to go to Accompong
65 Bilby defines a true-born Maroon as one who belongs in “this ethnic community of both shared ‘blood’ and shared secrets, begins early and continues throughout one’s life in a variety of contexts both formal and informal, ranging form Kromanti Play and Maroon council meetings to rum shop gatherings and chance encounters between fellow Maroons and non-Maroons visitors.” Bilby, 369. Zips takes a slightly different angle on who is a true-born Maroon, given that his research was among the Accompong community and not the Moore Town community Bilby was concerned with. Royal Maroons, in this context, are Maroons who “must be able to trace their ancestors back to the ‘Mother of the Maroons,’ Queen Nanny.” Zips, 118. 66 Liddell, "Report Concerning Meeting with the Accompong About Strathdon, December 19, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 67 Ibid.
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with police assistance; however, the government denied his request.68 When Liddell
went, the surveying went well; but, on the eighth day, it became much more difficult.
Liddell stated that “the Maroons got out of hand and a riot occurred.”69 He told them
that that it was a privilege to use unpatented lands and that the survey would make it
clear what part of the land was theirs and what was unpatented Crown Lands. They
seemed content with this explanation, but the more he started “running the lines,” the
more agitated the Maroons became and soon thereafter, he was surrounded by “a
howling excited mob of some 300 men and women.”70 Rev. Lea had to run
interference between Liddell and the Accompong so together they reminded the
Accompong of the agreement. The Accompong agreed to pay taxes on Strathdon,
assuming they acquired it as individuals, by August 1. If the taxes had not been paid,
he would return and take possession of that land.71
Liddell renegotiated an agreement with the Accompong, but it ran counter to
the terms detailed by the 1739 treaty. Therefore, the Accompong “rioted”72 during the
survey because they feared a governmental land grab, and, as a result, feared that
68 Governor General's Office, "Letter to the Surveyor General Concerning Following up with the Accompong About Strathdon, January 8, 1902," 1/B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1869 - 1902), Kingston, Jamaica. 69 Colin Liddell, "Letter Describing the Challenges Liddell Faced Surveying Accompong, February 4, 1902," Letter, 1B/5/76/36/5 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 70 Ibid. 71 Liddell, "Agreement Concerning Strathdon, December 17, 1901," 1B/5/76/3/65 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Retirement, Jamaica. 72 The Jamaican government records probably contain some distortion in characterizing the actions of the Accompong concerning their land. Rioting certainly implies a rather violent reaction to Liddell’s work, but violence is the context in which Whites perceived the Maroons. Zips argues that “the primary aim of the accounts flanking military operations [during the Maroon Wars] was to legitimise the physical elimination of the Maroons . . . all social and cultural aspects of the ‘rebels’ was correspondingly derogatory . . . the first Black freedom fighters of the diaspora were presented as savages close to wild animals.” Zips, 20. Well after the Maroon Wars were over in the post-emancipation era, this characterization of the Maroons was still firmly in place of in the minds of many White Jamaicans, particularly those who worked in the government.
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Liddell would not include Strathdon as part of the survey. No matter what the
agreement was, the Accompong never intended that there would be individual
ownership of Strathdon. It is in the process of finalizing the ownership of Strathdon
when the Accompong asserted their hidden transcript; they planned on reacquiring the
acres lost in the initial verbal blood treaty for the community. However, the
Accompong also relied on the treaty as a public transcript, because it guided
Accompong land grants and other land acquisitions. Based on the treaty, the
Accompong continued to believe that Strathdon was land to which they had been
initially entitled.
At this point Liddell complained to the government about the support it gave
him to settle Accompong’s boundaries. If he had received the police protection he had
sought, he would have been able to keep the peace and finish his job. Liddell wanted
the police to be there as a preventive measure to prevent the riot to which he was a
witness.73 He did not think that the Colonel and the other officers could control the
people and he also noted that the district constable was not even there to help because
he was off duty that day. Ultimately, if he could not receive police assistance for the
surveying, the government had to decide whether they were going to simply abandon
the lands to the Maroons who continually trespassed on those lands.74 The
government would have to use force to keep the Accompong off of non-treaty lands.
73 Liddell, "Letter Describing the Challenges Liddell Faced Surveying Accompong, February 4, 1902," Letter, 1B/5/76/36/5 CSO2 (1896 - 1902), Spanish Town, Jamaica. 74 Ibid.
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By mid-1902, the government was poised to bring the Strathdon land issues to
a close. The government granted a tax concession to the Accompong and
communicated that intent with their Surveyor and Collector Generals, namely that
they only had to pay taxes for 1901 – 1902 and that they would be forgiven for the
arrears if the Accompong paid the taxes by June 30.75 The Accompong had full
ownership of Strathdon and had succeeded in expanding their land holdings by the end
of this disagreement with the Jamaican government.
Conclusion
The Strathdon land conflict reflected entrenched positions on the part of the
Maroons and of the colonial state, even as both proved tried to employ new tactics to
further their positions. Maroon grievances were based on the disagreements about
treaty terms. Yet, the Accompong concurrently tried to expand the terms of the treaty
based on their hidden transcript of recovering land that had been swindled from them.
The Accompong’s mode of acquiring new land was adverse possession; although they
would say that they were enforcing what the treaty said their historical understanding
of the treaty.
The treaty, for the Accompong, had singular importance. As the basis of all of
their land claims, the treaty was a fraught document before the ink even dried.
Winning Strathdon was a step towards remedying the treaty the British broke when
they denied the Accompong the 10,000 acres to which they were entitled. While the
Accompong in these interactions focused on their use of water sources at Strathdon 75 Unidentified, "Notes from Government Employees About the Final Disposition of Strathdon/Ruthven - Forgiveness of Taxes in Arrears, April, 1902," 1B/5/76/3/33 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Kingston, Jamaica.
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and the fact that Captain Levose was buried there, his burial being yet another
placemaking narrative, these reasons masked their real agenda, reclaiming lost treaty
land for their community. No amendment to the treaty could persuade the Accompong
to purchase individual land holdings or to pay taxes. At the end of the Strathdon
dispute, the treaty still proved to be the sole way in which the Jamaican government
could deal with the Accompong community.
For the Jamaican government, the Land Allotment Act was the second and
most recent version of the public transcript. The government tried to use the way the
Accompong held land and the tax regime to force the Accompong to reconfigure itself
as a community. However, the government always had a fear of provoking another set
of Maroon Wars and as a result was unwilling to use force to make the Accompong
change their land holdings and pay taxes. In the Strathdon land conflict, this concern
overshadowed bringing in a police force when Liddell went to survey the land
pursuant to the more recent agreement about Strathdon. While the government saw
that the political circumstances in Accompong were fluid and that the Accompong
were actually forming relationships with people of African heritage who lived outside
the Maroon population, their refusal to use force undermined their ability to harness
the changing situation within the community. Hence, while the Accompong
themselves changed over time, the community’s relationship with the government
remained unchanged. Ultimately, the rule of law and the government’s fear of warfare
constrained what it could do. The government never divested the Accompong, or any
other Maroon group, of their treaty granted lands or lands acquired through adverse
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possession. Liddell was willing to take challenging positions with the Accompong and
so the Jamaican government was willing to have him deal with the community.
However, without the use of force, Jamaica had no way of even beginning to seek
conditions from the Accompong about community held lands.
The government’s memories of the Maroon Wars weighed upon them and held
as much meaning for them as the oral histories of winning that war held for the
Accompong. While the government did not seek this outcome, the treaty remained the
public transcript it had to deal with.76 The treaty as a public transcript was the basis,
between 1842, when the Land Allotment Act was passed, and 1905, for the
Accompong to expand their land holdings. The Accompong could advance their
hidden transcript and reacquire land the British promised beyond the borders written
in the treaty not only because of adverse possession, but also because of the
government’s concern over renewed warfare.
76 Given the continual assaults the Jamaican government has tried to make on the treaty, including the land disputes discussed in this work, as stated by Zips, the real historical significance for the Maroons concerning the treaty “lies in their diplomatic rebuff of the continuous attempts on the part of the colonial power to unilaterally nullify the provisions of the treaties.” Zips, 11.
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Conclusion
The 1840s, the period immediately following the abolition of slavery in the
British Caribbean, was the perfect point in time for the Jamaican government to
rearrange Maroon land holdings with the goal of merging the Maroons into the general
“negroe” population so that plantation owners could employ their labor. Why the
Jamaican government thought that the Maroons after so many years of not being under
the thumb of Jamaican planters would agree to this new arrangement is not clear. That
Jamaica needed labor though is apparent and this need blinded the government to the
difficulties that would likely await them in their effort to secure Maroon labor.
The vehicle for attempting to appropriate Maroon labor was the 1842 Land
Allotment Act, the new “public transcript.” This Act, unilaterally passed by the
Jamaican Assembly, officially repealed the 1739 and 1740 peace treaties with
Jamaica’s Maroons and all subsequent legislation pertinent to the Maroon
communities. The Act required that Maroons change ownership of their lands from
communal to individual landholdings.1 As a result, individual landholders would have
to pay taxes on their lots. The hope was that when the former Maroons defaulted on
their taxes, their lands would be seized by the government and put to more productive
use when sold to planters.
The Jamaican government’s approach to the Accompong fits in the overall
narrative of post-emancipation societies in which the colonial state played an active
1 "An Act to Repeal the Several Laws of This Island Relating to Maroons, and to Appoint Commissioners to Allot the Lands Belonging to the Several Maroon Townships and Settlements, and for Other Purposes.," in The Laws of Jamaica. Reign of Victoria 1837 to 1842. (1842).
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role, depriving land from the formerly enslaved either by disrupting the process of
adverse possession (squatting), or setting up legal barriers to land acquisition.2 While
the state and planters generally succeeded in their efforts in most post-emancipation
societies, the Jamaican government struggled to implement this policy against the
Accompong and other Maroon groups. Indeed, the treaty that generated Maroon lands,
considered an historical anachronism by the colonial state, remained fully intact.
This dissertation examined why the circumstances of post-emancipation
Jamaica could not undermine the Maroon communities. Using the Accompong as a
case study, I showed that Maroons were actually able to expand their land holdings.
The Jamaican government failed to get the Accompong to cede their communal land
holdings because it could not use force to require the Accompong to distribute the
communal treaty lands to individuals. The Jamaican government was unable to
enforce the new version of the rule of law, the Land Allotment Act.3
The Accompong never referred to the treaty as the “rule of law,” or even made
their claims in legal terms, yet they insisted that the Jamaican government follow the
unbreakable treaty as the rule of law, and adhere to the terms as delineated in the oral
version negotiated between the British and the Accompong.4 The government spoke of
2 Cooper, Holt, and Scott. For the specifics of the Jamaican case, see Holt; Satchell. 3 The one time when the colonial government could claim a military success against a Maroon group in the Second Maroon Wars reflects that they were won on the basis of deception, not military defeat as the Jamaican government promised the Trelawney Maroons that they would renegotiate the treaty and instead placed them on boats for deportation to Nova Scotia. The basis on which the Second Maroon Wars ended only reinforced to the Jamaican government that winning a military conflict against the Maroons was, at best, a very difficult proposition. 4 Zips argues that there was a perception problem in the final terms of the agreements between the Maroons and the governmental officials with whom they dealt. While Accompong oral history suggests one interpretation that the treaty had been altered after the fact, Zips, also posits that “it is conceivable
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Cooks Bottom (1868), Colonel Rowe’s Tax Petitions (1870), Fullerswood (1884), and
Strathdon (1895) in legal terms that reflected the government’s framework for
understanding such disputes, namely British land laws. The Accompong insisted that
the government follow their original understanding of the treaty that justified
expanding their land holdings from the 1500 stated acres to the 15,000 the government
deprived them of.5 The treaty also provided the Maroons communal and not individual
land grants and exempted them from paying land taxes. Further, the Accompong tried
to broaden their land possessions by asserting land ownership through “adverse
possession.” They continued to expand their land holdings by ignoring the Land
Allotment Act. While the Accompong never gained lands from Falmouth to Black
River, they pushed the borders of their usable land to the north where Cooks Bottom
was located, and to the southwest, the location of Strathdon.
Through the late 1900s, the treaty retained its importance, despite the
emancipation of the formerly enslaved. At the dawn of the 20th century, each of the
Maroon groups, but specifically the Accompong, were no more a part of the “negroe”
community than they ever were, and their treaty continued to set the terms by which
the Jamaican government dealt with them: the treaty remained the rule of law.
Sources, Temporality, and Interdisciplinarity
Werner Zips in his book Nanny’s Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons’
African Experience, makes the point that the primary documents kept by the Jamaican
that the Maroon chief was not familiar with the British unit of land measurement in 1739; on the other hand, the figure could have been altered after the fact.” Zips, 202. 5 This narrative is the Accompong’s hidden transcript – the agenda of land acquisition that was concealed from the Jamaican colonial government.
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government revealed an ideological function and purpose of portraying Maroons in a
particular way, namely savage, ungovernable, and dangerous people.6 One reason for
this portrayal was because the British had to justify the institution of slavery.
However, the British also were engaged in face saving: the notion that they would
have to negotiate a treaty with “inferiors” required ensuring that Jamaica’s political
actors, including the Colonial Secretary, the Governor, and members of the Jamaican
Assembly, knew that the Maroons were subservient to the British in agreeing to the
treaty; however the British had sought the peace treaty with the Maroons.7
In attempting to understand Maroon actions, it is critical to use placemaking
narratives to make sense of these mid-19th century disputes about Maroon lands. The
portrayal of the Maroons in the British sources fails to convey the Accompong
perspective and discussions regarding land disputes. This work was “animated by a
constant attentiveness to meaning . . . to the process of producing histories . . . to
relationships between the author and [her] historical subjects, or process of knowing . .
. and to problems of form and ‘catching experience whole.’”8 While the narratives I
collected and relied on do not speak directly to these particular land conflicts, they are
critical in interpreting the actions of the Maroons.
The Accompong believed that they, based on their tactics in the Maroon Wars,
could overcome any obstacle together as a community. They also believed that their
treaty won land grant was severely undermined and needed to be restored. The treaty
6 Zips, 26. 7 Ibid. 8 Price, xvi - xvii.
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was (and remains) the fundamental document that defines the community and its
dealings with the government. This includes the inability of the Jamaican government
to tax them; one sovereign cannot tax another without mutual agreement.9 It is these
conclusions drawn from the Maroon Wars and that form the basis of the Maroons’
hidden transcript that I bring to the fore to understand their actions. The archival
documents do little more than portray them as child-like non-tax paying thieves as far
as the Jamaican government was concerned.
The sources upon which I relied raise two interrelated issues concerning
temporality. First, can oral histories collected in the twenty first century provide a set
of motives explaining the Accompong’s actions concerning land acquisition? The
second question regarding the Accompong concerns how does the past always play a
role in the present. To answer the first question, while my familiarity with these
narratives came about fairly recently, I feel comfortable in relying on them to interpret
19th century actions in part because the same narratives were shared in the 1930s and
likely before. They are the definitive narratives for the creation of the Accompong
community that comprise a longstanding verbal archive of Accompong history.10 One
might think that these narratives would change over time; however, they demonstrate a
9 Zips argues, as I have in this work, “the land grant or the acknowledgement of territorial suzerainty constitutes the fundamental premise of their social existence and political autonomy. They understand their common ownership of land to be the backbone of their sovereignty. This is the main reason the Maroons see the peace treaty as the founding document of their ‘nation’ or the ‘sacred charter’ of their ‘state.’” Zips, 200. 10 Archibald Cooper, "Draft of a Paper, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. In this paper, Cooper recants the placemaking narratives about Peace Cave, Old Town, and the Kindah tree. Archibald Cooper, "Handwritten Notes About Quaco Killing Young Males in Accompong, Nanny Dodging the British Bullets, and Other Narratives, March 22, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica.
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stunning degree of stability. The Archibald Cooper papers housed in the University of
the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica provide evidence of this stability. Archibald
Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago in anthropology in the 1930s,
decided to study the Accompong Maroons by living with them. He collected a series
of the Accompong’s oral narratives and observed their customs during the late
1930s.11 The narratives he recorded matched those related to me during my visits to
Accompong and include the presence of the first-timers in the cottonwood tree in Old
Town; a place he says was called Ambush Cave, and later renamed Peace Cave, where
the Maroons ambushed the British and for the Accompong, was a place that forced the
end of the Maroon Wars. The narratives regarding Nanny catching bullets in her
buttocks; and the description of sealing of the treaty between the Jamaican
government and the Accompong Maroons also matched. It is not happenstance that
Cooper in the 1930s and myself and other scholars encountered the same narratives
about the creation of the Accompong community; these narratives reverberate because
they are the definitive community building narratives for the Accompong.12 As such,
they function as a stable, intersecting archive from which scholars can construct fuller
Accompong histories.
A second question related to temporality concerns the following: “The tie
between the relatively mundane present and the sacred past is concretely expressed
11Cooper, "Handwritten Notes About Quaco Killing Young Males in Accompong, Nanny Dodging the British Bullets, and Other Narratives, March 22, 1939," Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. 12 The scholars who reflect these narratives in their work include Jean Besson, Kenneth Bilby, and Werner Zips. See generally Besson; Bilby; Zips.
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also by certain landmarks which are associated with the wartime period.”13 As
embedded in the definition of placemaking narratives, history, for the Accompong, is
not just a place and an event, but also a series of lessons to be deduced from the events
and the place for the community. Those lessons are always applied to the present
situation: the true boundaries of Accompong, for example, according to the
Accompong community, were (and are still) part of what the Accompong dealt with
vis-à-vis the Jamaican government in post-emancipation Jamaica. History is lived and
is always to be made right. Therefore, the placemaking narrative enters as the
Accompong’s hidden transcript because the past is always a part of the present.
“Especially with regard to the Maroons, knowledge of the first-time constitutes
symbolic capital that can be brought into play with regard to both internal political
struggles and external relations to the Jamaican state. For that reason, analyses of the
past always also contain interpretations of the present and the future.”14
To complete this discussion about sources and why they are used the way they
are throughout this work, it is critical to address the interdisciplinary approach taken.
Above, I addressed the issue of making sense of the Accompong’s motives with
placemaking narratives and the importance of ethnography to this work. An historical
work relies heavily on archival documents to identify the land struggles between the
Accompong and the Jamaican state; Accompong oral histories do not reveal these
debates to outsiders. Making sense of the archival documents, both for what the
13 Archibald Cooper, "A Negro Village in Jamaica: Conflict, Integration & Acculturation, " Archibald Cooper Papers, Kingston, Jamaica. 14 Zips, 45.
234
Jamaican government was trying to achieve, and for the way the Accompong did the
things they did, had to incorporate other disciplinary frameworks. The documents
often include a discussion of the Accompong misusing land, but it is hard to
understand what that meant. Overrunning one’s land, or squatting as it is often called,
does not reflect the stakes without the specific legal definition of the problem. The
activities required to squat and the time period helped to define the stakes: that the
Accompong had used the land appropriately for such long periods of time that the
Jamaican government could generally not stop the Accompong from actually
acquiring it.
Finally, we also learn the terms of the law the Accompong were concerned
with and can understand what the stakes were in ensuring that the colonial state abided
by the treaty. While the Jamaican government tried to bring about change over time,
indeed it was the rule of law that frustrated that task. This history made little sense
without the law because the documents made little sense without the law.
Resistance
Forms of resistance examined in this work were much more pragmatic than I
had initially assumed and finely tuned to the circumstances in which the Accompong
found themselves. I anticipated that the Accompong would use a form of cultural
resistance, resistance that would handle the government’s play for Accompong land
with their religious and cultural beliefs, such as the use of Science. However, although
not surprising, the Accompong kept this part of themselves from being seen, which
raises the question of in what sort of resistance did the Accompong engage? For this
235
work, resistance began in 1842 when the Accompong simply ignored the steps the
colonial government had taken to enact the Land Allotment Act. Few, if any of the
Accompong, signed up for their individual allotments of land so that the land
remained communally held.
The Accompong consistently caused a ruckus when the government sent a
surveyor to ascertain the boundaries of their land. The Accompong were rightly
concerned that the surveys would purposefully misstate the amount of land held by the
community and that the surveys would be a tool in decreasing the amount of land they
held. Further, after these aborted surveys, the Accompong resisted by continuing to
use the land in question contrary to the ownership dictated by the colonial state.
Additionally, the Accompong released the stock belonging to them that had been
seized for failure to pay taxes.
The Accompong were not beyond making veiled or explicit threats of warfare
either, as seen with their insistence that Fullerswood belonged to the community. The
Accompong were not shy in asserting that they did not want to breach the peace;
however, the conclusion one can draw from this statement was that if the Jamaicans
breached the peace, they would be forced to take actions to restore it.
The Accompong also took political action to resist the agenda of the Jamaican
government. The government, in dealing with Fullerswood, decided to appoint
Colonels as headmen, expecting headman to implement the agenda set by the Land
Allotment Act. However, the Maroons mobilized their own political process, making
it clear to the Jamaican government that they were still a community, led by people of
236
their choosing. Therefore, the Accompong rejected Colonels as headmen who tried to
advance the government’s agenda so that an agenda of diminished Maroon land
holdings would not be able to take hold from within the community. The political
process is a way of registering discontent with another actor’s measures, a way of
resisting the implementation of another actor’s particular policies. The Accompong
certainly did this: when they voted out a particular Colonel, attempts to implement
individual land holdings connected with efforts to implement the colonial
government’s tax regime were hindered. Lastly, what was (and still is) unique about
the Accompong is that they used their own political process to register their discontent
about Jamaica’s insistence on discontinuing treaty granted community lands. It would
be resistant if the community decided to press Jamaican elected officials to back away
from their policy objectives vis-à-vis the Accompong. Instead, they not only rejected
the policy objective, but also the officials charged with bringing these policy
objectives to fruition, and decided that only the community could bring about change
they, as a community, believed in.
Finally, the Accompong fought and rioted when the government sent a
representative, either a government employee or members of the clergy, to try to
explain their land tenure and ownership in ways that did not comport with Accompong
historic understanding of the land. As a result, it became impossible for the
government to enforce any new “agreements” about Maroon land. Such outward,
physical demonstrations must have reinforced in the minds of governmental officials
that the possibility of warfare was real, that Maroons were in fighting form, a form of
237
resistance that was unaffordable to the government. These displays underscored the
resistant history the government had with the Maroons and thereby reinforced how
little appetite the government had to use all means at its disposal to advance their
agenda regarding Maroon land holdings.
The Accompong’s resistance to the colonial government’s reworking their land
holdings from 1842 - 1905 reflected a theme in the literature about slave resistance.
The enslaved utilized the forms of resistance that posed the least risk to their
communities. If all the enslaved could do was foot dragging, indeed, this was the form
of resistance they turned to. If they could engage in all out Revolution, they would do
that.15 If not, those resisting would use means that were just shy of that. While the
Jamaican government feared warfare with the Accompong, war was not the first way
the Accompong were going to make sure the government did not encroach on their
lands. The Accompong either did not think it would be necessary to declare all out war
or did not think it would have been a useful situation for whatever reasons. They knew
that all they needed to do was threaten this form of resistance because the Jamaican
government would not use force to counter their threat.
Naturally, examining resistance from sources compiled by the Jamaican
government can be an endeavor fraught with cues ripe for misinterpretation. Jamaican
governmental officials, from the time they had their first contact with Maroon
15 Genovese writes that “[i]f a people, over a protracted period, finds the odds against insurrection not merely long but virtually certain, then it will choose not to try.” Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 7. I would add, given the case of the Accompong that those who resist only choose the means that best handles the situation. If something short of all out warfare could accomplish what the Accompong wanted, then they would use that solution.
238
populations, often put the most hostile veneer on Maroon actions: they were perceived
as little more than “savages.” Certainly these perceptions of the Maroons did not shift
simply because they were in the post-emancipation era and so descriptions such as
rioting must be read with a grain of salt. Doubtless the Accompong showed their upset
with the government for trying to further manipulate their lands. Whether that
amounted to rioting, we do not know. Regardless of whether this is what the
Accompong did, it may have been one of the reasons why the Jamaican government
did not take stronger actions to force the Accompong to accept the government’s
definitions of their borders and to pay taxes.
Rule of Law
The challenges between the Accompong and the colonial Jamaican state
demonstrated that the law does not exist simply as a neutral tool to ensure that society
goes well. While the Jamaican government had no intent to neutrally apply the law to
any “negroe,” Maroons included, the treaty protected Maroons from discriminatory
applications of the law. Critical legal theorists argue that the law has particular
political goals that become apparent in the practice of law.16 The political intent
concerning the laws applied to all “negroes” at that time is apparent in the
correspondence from the Colonial Secretary discussing application of the laws
granting freedom to the formerly enslaved.17 Laws targeting “negroe” populations in
post-emancipation societies were designed to ensure that the formerly enslaved
16 See generally Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987); Kairys, ed; Williams. 17 Glenelg papers.
239
remained a captive workforce. Land ownership played a part in accomplishing this
goal, without land, peasants would have to support themselves by working for
someone else. Indeed, this situation infuriated the formerly enslaved and in Jamaica
and led to the 1862 Morant Bay Rebellion.
Members of the peasantry across the Caribbean engaged in such resistance as
well so that they could have control of their labor through land.18 While the Maroons
were not part of a singular community with the formerly enslaved, that agenda was
being foisted on them as well, the government sought to divest the Maroon
communities of land so that they would be forced to be part of the larger labor force.
The Jamaican government then tried to rid the Maroons of their lands by adding
conditions to further land acquisition, the Accompong were supposed to continue to
have access to both Cooks Bottom and Strathdon only if they decided not to hold the
land as a community and if the individual owners who were formerly Accompong paid
taxes on those lands.
The Accompong ignored the conditions and continued to use the land as they
had over time (growing produce and running cattle), and continued cultural uses of the
land that interfered with others using the land (burying Captain Levose on Strathdon).
Further, Jamaica’s White population had validated Accompong use of the land. For
instance, with the Watsons who owned Strathdon, Watson, Sr. had allowed the
Accompong to keep part of Strathdon for their cattle. In addition to their taxes being in
arrears, de facto Accompong ownership of Strathdon was the legal obstacle the
18See generally Cooper, Holt, and Scott.
240
Jamaican government kept encountering as they tried to divest the Accompong of
Strathdon. Hence, the law in practice undermined the rule of law.
Further, the Accompong could be successful with modest land acquisition
because of the type of force needed to enforce Jamaica’s land laws for Maroons as
opposed to the “negroe” population. The Black peasantry faced an armed police force
that drove them off lands where the state thought they had “squatted.” The peasantry
was not an independent armed body. However, the Maroons were a completely
different story. They were sovereign because of the treaty (although the Jamaican
government consistently tried to undermine their sovereign nature). As sovereigns,
military power would have to be brought to bear to enforce the law against them and
force them off of lands owned by adverse possession. Given the past military history
between the Maroons and the Jamaican government, the Jamaican government and its
supporters in London were unwilling to use that sort of power to enforce the law.
As a result, the rule of law, in practice, really did apply to the Maroons and
adverse possession could work. Law, in and of itself, could not change landholding
arrangements with the Accompong, in part because they did not regard Jamaican laws
about them as legitimate. Enforcement of the law is the key ingredient for any
government to implement its legal vision and it was this enforcement that was sorely
lacking with the Accompong.
The ability of the Jamaican government to tax the Accompong population was
also undermined so that taxation laws could not be applied to the Accompong. The
rule of law saw to it that the Black peasantry was taxed at higher rates than the planter
241
class because of Jamaica’s regressive taxation system. Both the rule of law and
practice were in sync as applied to the question of taxation. However, taxation was an
example where customary treatment of the Accompong created a separate law for this
community and ran against Jamaican law, although arguably, a policy of not taxing the
Accompong complied with the treaty. The government was determined to collect taxes
from the Accompong because of their land holdings, which according to the Land
Allotment Act should have been held individually. Nevertheless, after the treaty had
passed the Jamaican Assembly, the Jamaican government never collected taxes from
the Accompong for anything. This created both a practice of not collecting taxes from
the Maroons and customary law so that the Maroons could not be taxed: there was no
precedent for tax collection in spite of any law in place.
The treaty, by virtue of the sort of document a treaty is, also suggested that
there was no basis on which to tax the Accompong or any other Maroon group. There
was no explicit agreement for taxing the Accompong. The conduct of the Jamaican
government suggests that they did not see the Maroons as a sovereign people, indeed
the basis of passing a Land Allotment Act and amendments reinforced the
government’s perception that they were not sovereign. The Accompong used the
treaty to justify their stance of not being taxed by Jamaica. Again, the Jamaican
government, to enforce its newly developed taxation policy on the Accompong, would
have had to use military force to get the Accompong to comply, assuming that the use
of force would have been successful.
242
Ultimately, there were three bases on which the Accompong bypassed the
implementation of the rule of law on their communities as it concerned taxation: (1)
the custom between the colonial Jamaican state and the Maroons was one of no
taxation and this customary practice created law; (2) secondly, there was no explicit
agreement about taxation in the treaty and therefore no power in that document to tax
the Maroons; and (3) finally, the colonial Jamaican government was unwilling to use
the necessary military force to enforce the laws about taxation with the Maroons. The
government remembered how difficult it was fighting the Maroons and concluded that
it was not worth the expense, both in currency and in lives.
Must Power Be Part of the Hidden and Public Transcript?
James Scott’s thesis about public and private transcripts is compelling when
describing the relationship between the powerful and the less powerful, often in the
guise of the peasantry and landowners.19 In this examination of the Accompong
Maroons, power was at the center of the conflicts. Fundamentally because of the
historical way the Jamaican government and the Maroon communities built their
relationship, namely through warfare and then a treaty, the government was unable to
reconfigure its relationship to the Maroon communities because it was unwilling to
reengage in warfare, reflecting the powerlessness of the Jamaican government.
Nonetheless, both public and private transcripts were at play between these two
communities even as the Accompong did not see themselves as subordinates to the
Jamaican government. At one point, the Accompong argued that they were unwilling
19 Scott.
243
to deal with the Jamaican government about the treaty because they would only deal
with the Queen, someone who was truly their equal.20 The hidden transcript arose
because of the culture of secrecy that was and still is embedded in the Maroon
community. This secrecy is certainly evident in the placemaking narratives about the
Maroon Wars: the Accompong came to the conclusion that outsiders would harm them
and sell them out. Therefore, few things about the community would be revealed to
outsiders. The hidden transcript was created as a strategic matter, not because they
were not the social and military equals of the Jamaican government and their
counterparts in Britain.
20 Henry Octavius Rowe, "Letter to Anthony Musgrave About the Arrest of Two Maroons and Seizing Their Mules, October, 1882," 1B/57/6/33/3 CSO2 (1870 - 1895), Spanish Town, Kingston.
244
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