Captain Cudjoe DAUNTLESS MAROON CHIEF OF JAMAICA NOTHING IS FURTHER from the truth than the popular belief that the African in the New World was in love with slavery and submitted calmly to it. The fact is that he rebelled against it from the United States to Argentina times without number. This is especially true of Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Surinam, the Virgin Islands, Brazil, and Venezuela. Among the most valiant of these Negro rebels were the Maroon Negroes of Jamaica, West Indies. For 140 years they defied the white slaveholders and finally forced them to seek a treaty of peace. The greatest of the Maroon leaders of this island was Cudjoe, an illiterate, ragged, barefooted, undersized, and unshapely Coromantee. Of seemingly inexhaustible energies, Cudjoe possessed all the qualities of a born commander. He defeated the British in every encounter, and had he been able to get arms and ammunition, he would doubtless have done to them what Dessalines did to the French in Haiti, that is, drive them from the island. The slaveholders seemed powerless against his attacks. Before planning a raid on their plantations, he had his spies mingle freely with the slaves in the markets and on the plantations, learning when to strike and where, then sallying out by night and even by day, he attacked with such deadly thoroughness that he left in his wake burnt mansions and cane fields and the bodies of the whites and their faithful slaves. With the arms and ammunition thus obtained, he staged other raids. By 1730 he had grown so strong that some of the old English settlers thought it best to abandon their plantations and return home. It was commonly said, General Williamson the British Commander rules Jamaica by day and Captain Cudjoe by night. At last the government decided to make a supreme effort to capture him. It built forts and outposts near the Maroon settlements and brought in hundreds of Central American Indians to track down the rebels. At the same time a force of 1,000 soldiers, white and black, under Captain Lemelia, was sent against Cudjoe. But Cudjoe was equal to the occasion. Sending one of his spies to tell the British that he would be found at a certain distant spot, he marched stealthily down the mountains to meet the enemy and took up a position overlooking a deep pass through which the foe had to come. Dividing his force into four parts, he stationed one of each high up on the extremities of both sides of the pass. Captain Lemelia, believing Cudjoe to be many miles away, came on with relaxed vigilance. Tired from dragging the cannon uphill, his soldiers straggled into the pass. Cudjoe, waiting until the narrow pass was filled with men, signaled to his own men at the entrance to fire. A hundred British fell, struck in the back. When the others turned in the direction of the fire, Cudjoes men at the other end again struck the enemy in the rear until the shooting from all sides of the rocks became general. This crisscross fire coming from everywhere so demoralized the foe that abandoning guns and supplies, they fled down the mountains. Cudjoe during the next four years continued his victories but the superior arms of the slaveholders began to tell at last. They attacked one of his camps on a high mountain and killed nearly everyone. This made him decide to move to another part of the island and take his women and children with him. To screen this bold move, he left men around the old camp to blow horns and discharge guns to make the enemy think he was still there. So successful was he that it was not until months later when he had staged a great raid on the part of the island to which he had gone that the truth was known. For another four years the tornado that was Cudjoe raged, leaving slaughter and destruction in his wake. Once more the government, in desperation, planned an expedition against him. Every able-bodied man on the island was pressed into service, but when the expedition was about to start, someone asked who would protect the women and children if all the men went off. What would happen if the slaves seized the occasion to revolt? The Jamaican slave could not be trusted. As for the faithful slaves, the Maroons hated them even more than they did the whites, and they were likely to be struck down by some unseen hand at any time. Faced with this dilemma, the governor, Sir Edward Trelawney, decided there was but one course: to seek a treaty of peace with Cudjoe. He sent Colonel Guthrie with a mission to offer Cudjoe independence and a tract of land. R. C. Dallas, a British commander, describes the meeting thus: Colonel Guthrie advanced unmolested with his troops through situations in which the Maroons might have greatly annoyed him even with the large force he then had under him. Making, however, the best disposition of his troops that the nature of the ground would permit, he marched on with confidence, and judging of the distance he was from the Maroons by the sound of their horns, he continued advancing till he thought he could make them hear his voice that he was come by the governors orders to make them an offer of peace which the white people sincerely desired. An answer was returned declaring that the Maroons wished the same and requesting that the troops might be kept back. Several Maroons now descended, and among them it was difficult to discover the chief himself. Cudjoe was rather a short man, uncommonly stout, with very strong African features and a peculiar wildness in his manners. He had a very large lump of flesh upon his back which was partly covered by the tattered remains of an old blue coat of which the skirts and sleeves below the elbow were wanting... Around his head was tied a scanty piece of white cloth so very dirty that its original color might have been doubted. He wore no shirt. and his clothes, such as they were, as well as the part of his skin that was exposed, were covered with the red dirt resembling ochre. He had on a pair of loose drawers that did not reach to his knees and a small round hat with the rims pared so close to the crown that it might have been taken for a calabash. Such was the chief, and his men were as ragged and as dirty as himself: all were armed with guns and cutlasses. Cudjoe constantly cast his eyes toward the troops under Colonel Guthrie. He appeared very suspicious and asked Dr. Russell man questions before he ventured within reach. At last, Dr. Russell offered to change hats with him as a token of friendship, to which he consented and was beginning to converse more freely when Colonel Guthrie called aloud to him, assuring him of a faithful compliance with whatever Dr. Russell promised. He said that he wished to come unarmed to hint with a few of the principal gentlemen of the island, who should witness the oath he would solemnly make to them of peace on his part with liberty and security to the Maroons on their acceding to it. And so peace was made. Cudjoe and his men were given a large grant of land free from all taxation in perpetuity, and permission to hunt anywhere on the island, except within three miles of a white settlement.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 04:06:23 +0000
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