The Maroons, who inhabit the Cockpit Country as well as a town called Moore Town, near Port Antonio, on the north coast, are still known by that name, although there is practically nothing in their appearance to differentiate them from the rest of the black and coloured races. The word is derived from the Spanish marrano, signifying, “a young pig.” The hardy-looking mountaineers one sees from the carriage window of the train, clad in the very sketchiest of clothing, are the descendants of fierce and warlike slaves of mixed African and Indian blood who, on the conquest of Jamaica by the Cromwellian troops, escaped to the hills, and defied the new possessors of the island to conquer them.
There seems every reason to believe that when Columbus first discovered Jamaica it was thickly populated by the Arawaks.
Bartholomew de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, compares the aboriginal Indians to “ants on an ant-hill”; probably this referred to the inhabitants of the lowlands and savannahs on the coasts.
This Spanish prelate, who figured in history as the protector and advocate of the Indians, gave, however, his episcopal consent to the patent issued by Charles V., granting to the merchants of Genoa the monopoly of the slave trade with the Indies. A writer, noting the inconsistency of character in the man who, in order to preserve and protect one of the most interesting aboriginal races of the world, concurred in the subjugation and slavery of another, says of him: “While he contended for the liberty of the people born in one quarter of the globe, he laboured to enslave the inhabitants of another region, and in the warmth of his zeal to save the Americans from the yoke, pronounced it to be lawful and expedient to impose one still heavier upon the Africans.” Such are the extraordinary contradictions the page of history reveals to us. It is equally curious to read of a plantation with its complement of slaves in Barbadoes having been left to The Society in Great Britain for the Propagation of the Gospel, by a certain Colonel Codrington, which, says Bryan Edwards, “had to continue the disagreeable necessity of supporting slavery bequeathed to than, still more to occasionally purchase more slaves to keep up the stock.” It would scarcely be profitable or edifying, possibly, in these days, to search too closely as to how certain moneys left to charitable institutions were first obtained, but the idea of funds devoted to the lofty and elevating purposes of extending a knowledge of the Bible amongst the heathen coming from West Indian slave plantations, appears to me of unique interest.
The way in which the Spaniards treated the harmless and inoffensive Indians is well known, and has never been better described than by Charles Kingsley in “Westward Ho!” To the rough-and-ready sailor of the days of Queen Bess, to fight the Spaniard and to fight the devil were one and the same thing. Nor, so far as their character for cruelty goes, is the modern Spaniard one whit better than his ancestors. The writer of these pages spent a few weeks travelling in Spain, in the spring of 1902, and was impressed by the national bloodthirstiness, as exhibited in the great ardour and passionate enthusiasm displayed over everything connected with the peninsular pastime of bull-fighting. The callousness to suffering, and the innate love of cruelty, shown by the labouring classes and by the aristocracy of Spain, as when looking round the crowded amphitheatre to escape from the disgusting sights and sounds of the arena, one noted the expression of absorbed interest over every gory detail of the fight, were painfully apparent. Old women pawn their beds, and girls sell their tresses of hair, to be able, at least once a year, to attend a bull-fight. The Pope has expressed his abhorrence of it, whilst, it is well known, Queen Christina equally detests it; but such is the force of the national love of the sport, that any dynasty endeavouring to suppress it might count its days as numbered. It is no matter of surprise to read amongst the island chronicles that in Jamaica and the adjacent islands the Spaniards destroyed, within less than twenty years, more than 1,200,000 of the native Indians, when one rightly appreciates the devilry of the Spaniard. It was on account of the disappearance of these aborigines that African labour was first brought across the Atlantic, and owing to the gradual extermination of the Indians in Hispaniola, and in the Spanish-American possessions generally, slavery became a systematised traffic. Naturally these persons, who had so inhumanly treated the poor Arawaks—and they seem to have been a mild and gentle type of savage, very different from the Caribs, who were cannibals, and who confined their attentions to the eastern islands of the Caribbean Sea—could not be expected to treat the African with greater consideration. When one thinks of the blood-curdling stories of the atrocities committed by the subjects of the Spanish Crown, both on Indians and Africans alike, and then of the ferocity and native savagery of the negro in his reprisals—for when the blacks got the upper hand their uprisings against and massacres of their white masters are amongst the most horrible in the history of the world—one shudders at the thought of what, if they could speak, the mountain fastnesses, the waving cane-fields, could tell!
One of the punishments which existed among the Spaniards was, that a slave failing to fulfil the task assigned to him, was liable to be buried up to his neck, and to be left to be devoured by insects!
Historians have unanimously declared the Arawaks to have been a simple, quiet folk, neither ferocious nor treacherous, their government patriarchal and dignified. They smoked tobacco from a quaint sort of pipe, consisting of a straight tube branching off into two others, which they inserted up their nostrils. Why, indeed, so kindly and so superior a race should, in the foreknowledge of Providence, have been permitted to be superseded in this island by the unintelligent and degraded black of tropical Africa is an inscrutable problem to human ken. The Arawak was an enlightened savage. He mixed very little superstition with his theology. He believed in the existence of a Supreme Being, all-powerful and invisible, whom he worshipped under the name of Iocahuna; besides, he venerated a lower order of household and other gods. One reads that these people had peculiar ideas of the creation of the world, and I have already alluded to the veneration in which they held the cotton-tree as the throne of the Creator, also that they, in common with many aboriginal races, had traditions about a deluge. They believed in a future state of existence which, if it differed from the happy hunting-ground of the North-American Indian’s paradise, was to be a place of perfect happiness. To the limited faculties of the Arawak, that would be represented by sensual enjoyments more than anything else.
An anecdote, giving an idea of the estimation in which the Spaniards were held by the native Indians, is related by the Rev. J. B. Ellis: “A cacique or chief fled to Cuba, to escape his European tormentors, having in his possession a valuable casket of gold. When pursued by the Spaniards, he conceived the idea of propitiating the Spanish Deity. ‘Behold,’ he said, pointing to the golden box, ‘the God of the Europeans’; and summoning his friends and attendants, he held a mighty feast in honour of this deity, offering sacrifices, and singing and dancing around the precious box. Still the Spaniards approached in their pursuit; and Hatuey, the cacique, told his companions that they must be rid entirely of the God of the Spaniards before they could hope to be free from their persecuting presence. Accordingly, the golden casket was solemnly buried in the sea. Nevertheless, Hatuey was captured, and promptly condemned to be burned alive. While the necessary preparations for his execution were being made, a friar attempted to convert and baptise the unhappy cacique, enlarging much on the happiness of a future heaven. ‘In this heaven of yours,’ asked the condemned man, ‘are there any Spaniards?’ ‘Certainly,’ answered the friar, ‘but they are all good Spaniards.’ ‘The best of them are good for nothing,’ retorted Hatuey, ‘and I will not go where I am likely to meet one of that awful tribe.’”
Let us return to our Maroons, who retreated into the hills before the English conquerors of the island. In after years, runaway slaves and disaffected persons fled to them, thus making them, for over a century and a half, a formidable antagonist to the colonist in the lower-lying plains near the coast. From the mountain fastnesses they harassed the English soldiery. Those who carelessly rambled from camps, or from the protection of their companions, were mercilessly slaughtered with that refinement of cruelty, in most cases, which makes the annals of the history of this island written, as it were, in human blood. How they intimidated the peaceful dwellers by their incessant and bloody raids, their burnings, and their hideous slaughtering, it can do no good to describe. To be “marooned” was a fate too horrible to contemplate, even in those days when life was of not so much account as we estimate it to-day. Their dialect was a barbarous mixture of African and Spanish. They practised polygamy; the women did what labour was requisite, and Obeah-worship was the only religion they knew. They had been a thorn in the side of the English military occupation for many years. At last, in 1734, Captain Stoddart attacked them in the Blue Mountains so skilfully and so successfully that for a time they could do no more mischief in those parts; but the snake was only “scotched,” not exterminated. Again it raised its hydra-head, and in 1736, a formidable movement under a leader named Cudgoe had to be suppressed. After this there seems to have been a desultory guerilla warfare, the enemy never appearing in the open, but sneaking round the plantations; many whites were killed in this way. However, in 1738, Governor Trelawny made a treaty with them, assigning them certain lands to live in.
If I have depicted the mildness of character of the extinct Arawak, I will here mention what Bryan Edwards says of the West African black:—