Should Tacky be elevated to National Hero status?

YESTERDAY WAS Heroes’ Day, a day set aside to honour and remember our men and women who carry the status of ‘National Hero/Heroine’. And for years, Derrick ‘Black X’ Robinson has been advocating for Tacky (originally Takyi) to officially join our venerable pantheon. He walked for miles to push his agenda, but what exactly did Tacky do for Robinson to be so determined?

At the time of the 1760 Easter Rebellion, which is also known as ‘Tacky’s War’ and ‘Tacky’s Rebellion’, he was an enslaved person on the Frontier Estate in St Mary. His leadership skills and physical prowess propelled him into the position of foreman. But deep down, he was not a happy camper, so he used his access to the other enslaved people at Frontier and Trinity Estate to plan a revolt.

On Easter Monday, 1760, just before dawn, he led a group of enslaved people to Port Maria, where Fort Haldane was established. There, the storekeeper was killed, barrels of gunpowder, muskets, cannon balls, and fishing net lead weights to use as bullets were taken. The biggest war waged against the colonisers since the signing of the peace treaties of 1738 and 1739 was about to begin.

The bunch went marauding through the plantations in the area, killing and maiming the surprised colonisers. By the break of day, it was an all-out rebellion as hundreds of other enslaved people joined Tacky and his followers. And at Ballard’s Valley Estate, they rejoiced as the colonisers cowered.

But with every story, there is an element of treachery, and in this case, it was manifested by an enslaved man at nearby Esher Estate. He snuck away to alert unsuspecting colonisers. The response was the assembling of 70 to 80 mounted militia, who, some sources say, were joined by the Scotts Hall Maroons, bound by the 1739 treaty. Yet the Scotts Hall Maroons did not sign any treaty with the colonisers.

The rioters did not depend only on their fighting skills, it is said, as they called up on men and women who they believed had spiritual powers to help them. These powers were regarded as obeah, and the colonisers were determined to prove that they didn’t work.

So they captured an obeahman, who was adorned with paraphernalia depicting his status. He was hanged at a spot where he served as a warning to the other rebels. Some were deterred by the gruesome sight and returned to their respective plantations.

However, Tacky and his committed followers kept up the fight, attacking properties and people. From April to September 1760 they employed guerilla war tactics that challenged the colonisers, who had a superior military force, including the local militia, loyal enslaved people, some Maroons, and soldiers from Spanish Town, St Catherine.

The element of treachery was once again to factor as it was said in some sources that the Maroons were also hot on Tacky’s heels and that it was in fact a sharpshooting Maroon named Davy who shot Tacky, whose head was removed and taken to Spanish Town for display. It is also said that his followers removed the head under the cover of night and took it away.

Yet another source says that Tacky disappeared behind what is now known as Tacky Falls in St Mary, and as such, inspired other uprisings. But what happened to his followers? One story goes that some committed suicide in a cave rather than allowing themselves to be recaptured. Those who survived were either executed or exiled to British Honduras (today’s Belize) to cut logwood.

While the death toll for the colonisers was about 60, approximately 400 enslaved people who participated were killed. But before Tacky was captured and brought to Jamaica, he himself was a trader in African people.

He was an Akan chief on the Gold Coast in what is now known as Ghana in West Africa. The Akan were a proud people, fierce warriors who were engaged in inter-tribal warfare, which involved the capturing and enslavement of people from opposing sides. Captured enemies were regularly sold and would depart the port of Koromantine to the West Indies.

People who left Africa through this port were called Cromanty/Koromantee/Kromanti/Karamanti, etc, in the Caribbean. Though they had a penchant for rebelliousness, they were favourites among the Jamaica planters “because of their hardiness and courage”.

In Encyclopedia of Jamaica Heritage, Olive Senior writes: “The slaves involved in the rebellion were virtually all Coromantees. The historian Bryan Edwards says that Tacky ‘was a Koromantyn Negro … who had been a chief in Guiney.’”

Now that he himself was captured and enslaved in Jamaica, he had to call upon his fighting spirit and military skills to free himself. He was free for the time he was waging war against the colonisers, but he was cut down, vanquished, or he simply vanished behind a waterfall.

Were his efforts in vain, and as such, do they make him worthy of becoming national hero? But the fundamental question is, should the former trader in Africans be elated to the status of Jamaican National Hero?