Where the Twain Meet

by Mary Gaunt

The negro chief had driven them to woo him with soft words, and he did not understand the greatness of his victory, or perhaps he would have driven a harder bargain.

Several Maroons came forward, amongst them one whom it was easy to see was their leader. And behold the great negro chief who had kept the country at bay, for whose reduction regiments had been sent from England, was a monstrous misshaped dwarf, humpbacked, with strongly marked African features, “and a peculiar wildness in his manner.” He was clad in rags. He had on the tattered remains of an old blue coat, of which the skirts and the sleeves below the elbows were missing, round his head was a dirty white cloth, so dirty it was difficult to realise its original colour, a pair of loose drawers that did not reach the knees covered his substantial short legs, and he wore a hat that was only a crown, for the rim had long since gone. A bag of large slugs and a cow's horn full of powder was slung on his right side, and on his left, hung by a narrow leather strap under his arm, a sharp knife, or as they called it then, a “mushet” or “couteau.” A miserable savage after all was the great negro chief, and all his person was smeared with the red earth of the cockpits. Neither he nor his followers had a shirt to their names, though all had guns and cutlasses.

And the squat, dwarf-like chieftain who had held up the island was nervous. Facing the white man, who looked down upon him, he shifted uneasily as a negro would, and at last Russell offered to change hats with him—a brave man indeed, but the island was in straits! Upon this the Maroons came down armed, and Colonel Guthrie and the other white men came forward unarmed, and Colonel Guthrie held out his hand. The emotional African seized it and kissed it—he must have been a slave once, he knew so well what the white men expected—and threw himself on the ground, embracing Colonel Guthrie's knees, kissing his feet, and asking his pardon. He was humble, penitent, abject, clearly he did not understand the situation. And the rest of the Maroons, following the example of their chieftain, prostrated themselves, and the long dreaded black freebooters were won over to the side of the white people.

Then and there upon that mountain-side it was decreed that henceforward all hostilities between the Maroons and the whites should cease “for ever,” they said grandiloquently, that all the Maroons except those who had joined during the past two years should live in a state of freedom and liberty, that even the exceptions should have full pardon if they were willing to return to their former masters, and even if they did not wish to return, “they shall remain in subjection to Captain Cudjoe, and in friendship with us.”

Oh, it was a glorious victory—for the Maroons!

They were to have all the lands round Trelawny Town and the cockpits, with liberty to plant and dispose of their increase, and they might hunt wherever they thought fit, provided they did not come within three miles of “any penn, settlement, or crawle,” which seems to have been a privilege they could easily take, whether the white people liked it or not.

In their turn, they bound themselves to help put down any rebellion, or to help against any foreign invasion, a white man was to live amongst them, and they were to bring back runaway negroes. And finally, it was required of them that Captain Cudjoe and his successors were to wait on the Governor or Commander-in-Chief at least once a year.

And there was another Maroon victory, this time scored by the Windward Maroons in the east of the colony. These were under Quao, and as communication with Cudjoe's party was difficult, they knew nothing of the peace that had been made. A party of soldiers was sent out against them; these soldiers were new to the hills. For three days they wandered through the densely wooded mountain-land, and then they came upon the footsteps of men and dogs, saw the smoke of fires, and arrived at seventy houses with a fire burning in each, and jerked hog still broiling upon the coals.

It never occurred to them that such houses were of little value, easily made, for the material lay all around, and that the woods abounded in pigs. They were better used to the parade ground than to the woodland, and they saw nothing strange or sinister in the fact that those in flight had left a trail that even they could follow, and so they went on blindly, till suddenly, as they were laboriously making their way down to the sea, the Maroons fell upon their rear.

“The militia fled,” says Dallas, “and the baggage negroes to the number of seventy threw down their loads and followed. The regulars took shelter under the perpendicular projection of a mountain that overhung the stream, whence they could hear the Maroons talking, though they could see nothing of them. In this situation, almost hid from the enemy, they remained four hours up to their waists in water, exposed to the heat of a vertical sun and apprehensive of being taken alive and tortured.”