Two pigs, some lashes inspire a war and exile to Africa

AFTER YEARS of frustration, the British colonisers signed treaties of peace and friendship with the Maroons, in 1738 with the Leeward Maroons of western Jamaica, and the Windward Maroons of eastern Jamaica in 1739. The treaty in the west was signed by Captain Cudjoe at Cudjoe Town/Flagstaff in St James, and by Captain Quao who operated in the Blue and John Crow Mountains.

The Maroons were proud to be free, and fiercely guarded this freedom, which they fought long and hard for. Cudjoe Town/Flagstaff in St James came to be called Trelawny Town after Edward Trelawny, governor of Jamaica.

And in July 1795, 57 years after the signing of the treaty with Cudjoe, two Trelawny Town Maroons were convicted by magistrates in Montego Bay for stealing two pigs.

But, instead of allowing the Maroons to punish their own as stipulated by the treaty of peace and friendship, the magistrates allowed an enslaved prisoner to flog the two Maroons in the presence of other enslaved prisoners in the jailhouse. These prisoners had been captured and handed over to the authorities for punishment under the existing peace treaty.

For an enslaved person to flog a Maroon was the ultimate disrespect, but it was the humiliation that the convicted Maroons faced as they headed through the plantations on their way back to Flagstaff that was to light the flame that ignited the Second Maroon War. The authorities had violated one of the clauses of the treaty and had put a dent in the pride of the Maroons, and the youths were not going to let it go unpunished, just as the theft of the two pigs did not go unpunished.

They unleashed their fury upon the white settlers, killing, burning, pillaging without mercy. John Tharpe, the custos of Trelawny, led a deputation to Trelawny Town in an effort to calm the Maroons, but they could not be tamed.

The recently arrived governor, the Earl of Balcarres, a military man who had fought in the American War of Independence on the side of the British, was impatient with the Maroons, so he declared martial law.

He, his regular troops, and the militia set out from Spanish Town to Montego Bay. At Llandovery in St Ann, he met six Trelawny Town Maroon captains who were on their way to Spanish Town to present their grievances in person. He arrested them and sent orders for the Maroons to surrender or be destroyed. War was effectively declared on the Maroons, who turned up the heat themselves.

A force of about 5000 – including

regular troops, the militia, Miskito Indians, Accompong Town Maroons and Cuban hunting dogs, fought with runaway enslaved people and about 250 Trelawny Town Maroons who led the British into ambush. Three British officers, colonels Sandiford, Gallimore and Fitch, were among the 37 British casualties.

The Maroons eventually accepted an offer of surrender from General George Walpole on condition that they would not be executed if they accepted the offer. Walpole was over-ruled and the governor, his Council, and the Assembly claimed that the Maroons had broken the terms of the agreement regarding the treaty, and were to be deported as punishment.

But that was not the main reason. They simply could not contain the Maroons and had to get rid of them. A three-day deadline was set by the governor for the Maroons to turn themselves in from January 1, 1796. They told the Maroons that should they stop the fighting they would not be punished, and the Maroons believed them.

However, the story goes that, in February/March 1796, the Maroons were invited to ‘tea’ in Montego Bay in a massive structure. Unbeknownst to them it was a ship. When they were all inside the ship began to move with them; 598 Maroon men, women and children were off to Nova Scotia, which eventually became part of Canada, against their will. Walpole, for his role in this act of deception, was offered by the Assembly a £500 ceremonial sword, which he refused, and later resigned his army commission in protest.

In 1787, Britain founded the colony of Sierra Leone in West Africa for free black people. Many of them had fought for the British in the American War of Independence, at the end of which 3,000 were sent to Canada and settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Others were taken to British Caribbean colonies, and to London, England.

In that same year, British philanthropists, such as the abolitionist Granville Sharp, started to relocate the free, but poor black of London to Sierra Leone. The first shipment of 331 included 60 poor whites. The black settlers built a settlement and named it Freetown, which is now the capital of Sierra Leone. Other settlements were built.

From Nova Scotia, in 1800, some of the Maroons from Jamaica and many other black people were removed and repatriated to Sierra Leone. Some had requested their own removal because of the brutally cold climate, while others were taken to help suppress a revolt by settlers in 1799 against the poor treatment meted out to them by the Sierra Leone Company, which owned the land and managed the affairs of the colony.

The Jamaican Maroons eventually integrated with the other black people and eventually a Krio (Creole) society was established. It is a proud set of people, who embrace their Jamaican Maroon heritage, and who have made significant contributions to the development of Sierra Leone. Their Krio language is strikingly similar to Jamaica’s.

Some of them and their descendants returned to Jamaica after Emancipation in 1838, on their own volition, as the British government refused to give them the assistance that they had requested. Others came as indentured labourers doing the post-Emancipation era.