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Maroon Emancipationists: Dominica's Africans and Igbos in the Age of
Revolution, 1763–1814
Article in Journal of Caribbean History · January 2019
DOI: 10.1353/jch.2019.0007
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Maroon Emancipationists: Dominica's Africans and Igbos in
the Age of Revolution, 1763–1814
Neil C. Vaz
Journal of Caribbean History, Volume 53, Number 1, 2019, pp. 27-59 (Article)
Published by University of the West Indies Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jch.2019.0007
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/732079
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Maroon Emancipationists
Dominica’s Africans and Igbos in the
Age of Revolution, 1763–1814
NEIL C. VAZ
Abstract
In the 1760s, a maroon community developed in the island of Dominica’s
interior. They sustained themselves independently for more than fifty years.
These maroons, however, were universal emancipationists – a nation that
attempted to destroy all traces of slavery in their midst. Furthermore, though
their existence ran concurrent with the French Revolution, these maroons, for
the most part, avoided integration with that movement. They preserved their
own independent philosophies, not rooted in European thought, but African,
more particularly, Igbo philosophy. The philosophy of Dominica’s maroons was
the reason for their endured successes, but was also the leading factor
contributing to their eventual demise.
Recent works such as Gelien Matthews’ Caribbean Slave Revolts and the
British Abolitionist Movement, Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause, and
others, have illustrated the agency of Africans participating in their own
fight for freedom. In addition to the narratives on Africans throughout
the Americas contributing to the demise of legal enslavement, maroon
resistance has also received much more attention in recent years.
However, very little attention has been given to the case of Dominica,
an island located in the Lesser Antilles south of Guadeloupe and north
of Martinique. Unlike the much larger maroon societies of Jamaica, Suriname, or even Brazil, Dominica’s maroon community has often been
overlooked, especially in the context of the greater African Diaspora and
Atlantic World. Richard Price’s edited volume Maroon Societies: Rebel
Slave Communities in the Americas is an early staple on the history of these
larger maroon communities including the United States of America,
Jamaica, the Guianas, Brazil, as well as French and Spanish America.1
Alvin O. Thompson’s piece Flight to Freedom: African Runaways and
Maroons in the Americas, takes a comprehensive look at maroons throughout the diaspora, but like Price’s work, makes minimal reference to DomThe Journal of Caribbean History 53, 1 (2019): 27–59
27
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Neil C. Vaz
inica.2 Other important works on maroons include Mavis Campbell’s The
Maroons of Jamaica, 1655–1796, which describes the three different phases
of marronage in Jamaica, including: the resistance to enslavement, treaty
and compromise, and ultimately the maroon defence of the institution
of slavery.3 Ruma Chopra’s Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and
Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone touches on the survival
and many phases of Jamaica’s maroon existence through time and space,
ultimately ending up in Sierra Leone, as well as the many positions the
maroons took on the issue of slavery.4 Also, the Brazil maroon (quilombo)
confederation of communities called Palmares received attention more
recently with Glenn Cheney’s Quilombo dos Palmares: Brazil’s Lost Nation
of Fugitive Slaves, illustrating the communal nature and the “viable alternative” that the quilombo served for those living under the colonial
system, not only for Africans escaping enslavement but for women,
natives, and poor whites.5
Though Dominica’s official maroon community, known as the Neg
Mawon, was considered much smaller than the abovementioned communities, the divide between the African self-emancipators and their
enslaved African counterparts was blurred because of the clandestine
alliance between those on the plantations and those in the woods, making
colonial estimates inaccurate. In addition, the Neg Mawon persisted in
the woods of Dominica, outlasting their Saint Vincent and Jamaican counterparts by twenty years. Despite these facts, Dominica’s maroons have
been underrepresented in the historiography. Though, recently,
Dominican historian Lennox Honychurch wrote In the Forests of Freedom,
he fails to effectively connect Dominica’s maroon movement to the
greater African Diaspora, thereby overlooking some of the nuances in
Dominica’s maroon narrative.6 Nevertheless, the case of Dominica’s
maroon community is very important to the historiography of African
resistance to enslavement for three major reasons: (1) Despite what has
been said about the self-interested nature of maroon communities
throughout the Americas, the maroon community in Dominica in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was a nation of “Universal
Emancipationists”. It was a nation that attempted to rid all traces of
slavery in their midst while forming a covert, and then later, an overt
alliance with the enslaved on plantations; (2) their revolutionary activities
and philosophies on Universal Emancipation during the so-called Age of
Revolution avoided integration with the French cause, and were not
rooted in European thought, enlightenment and revolutions, but were
grounded in African philosophies, more particularly Igbo; and (3) their
Maroon Emancipationists
29
philosophy was the reason for their success in their revolution, but was
also used against them by their British colonial enemies to their demise.
In the early part of the eighteenth century, and before, Great Britain,
France, and Spain all made claims to Dominica prior to the Treaty of
Paris after the Seven Years’ War in 1763. It was then that the island
became officially British.7 Prior to the acquisition of Dominica by the
British, according to shipping records, the island imported no slaves from
the African continent.8 The small number of enslaved individuals, mostly
held by the French, arrived by way of transshipment. In 1763, Dominica
had only 1,718 whites and 5,872 enslaved Africans, which was a ratio of
1 to 3.9 By the year 1772, the white population decreased to 1,212 and
the enslaved population increased to 14,214, a ratio of 1 to 14.10 Though
the island was officially governed by the British and contained a
significant population of British planters, there was still a large presence
of French planters on the island. This triadic relationship between French,
British, and Africans was a recipe for conflict and alliances during the
wars between Britain and France, and the French Revolution from the
1770s to the 1810s. This may partly explain the uprisings throughout the
Lesser Antilles. However, contrary to what may be surmised by the
demographic make-up of Dominica, there were other factors such as
topography and geography that converted Dominica into a hub for a formidable maroon community.
Dominica is a very mountainous island with natural features
conducive to absconding. The rainforests comprised two-thirds of the
entire island, which is 29 miles in length and 16 miles in width.11 Thomas
Atwood, a judge and author in Dominica at that time, noted that “[t]he
rivers and rivulets are plentifully stocked with excellent fish; the principal
of which are, mullets, crocoes, pike, eels, suck-fish, and cray-fish . . .”12
The tradition of runaway slaves dates as far back as 1580 when many of
the Spanish settlers from Puerto Rico, who were held captive by the
Caribs in Dominica, would escape into the mountainous interior.13 In
addition, Dominica is also part of an archipelago of islands, known as
the Lesser Antilles, with neighbouring islands only a canoe ride away.
Not only did those who were held captive on the island escape into the
woods, but it was common for those who were held captive on neighbouring islands to also escape into Dominica’s interior until the abolition
of slavery in the respective neighbouring islands.14 There was evidence
that this trend, at times, worked in the reverse with some of the enslaved
from Dominica, according to Martinique’s Governor Bouille, escaping to
Martinique in 1777.15 In fact, a great deal of evidence points towards a
30
Neil C. Vaz
considerable maritime maroon network.16 Maroon Chief Pharcelle of
Dominica was frequently spotted travelling back and forth between
islands.17
Not only did the terrain of the island make it a preferred location to
establish a runaway community, but the landscape was also one of the
reasons the neighbouring British islands used Dominica as a dump-land
for rebellious slaves. When Dominica, Tobago, Grenada, and Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines were all ceded to the British by the French
in 1763, the islands fell under one government called the Southern Caribbee. There was no formal British colonial government in Dominica
until 1770.18 There were a number of insurrections and maroon communities throughout the Antilles including Grenada, Carriacou, Montserrat, and Tobago, between the years 1763 and 1771, as a result of the
sudden spike in the importation of Africans to the British West Indies.19
In fact, though Dominica and Saint Vincent would later become the primary locations of African maroon resistance in the Ceded Islands, in the
initial years of British acquisition, those islands were the quietest.
Dominica had a small detachment of troops, while Saint Vincent did not
have a detachment at all.20 The rebels who had not been executed from
Grenada, Carriacou, Montserrat, and Tobago, were banished from their
respective islands. For example, in Montserrat in 1768, a failed conspiracy
to revolt resulted in the island’s Vice Admiral Pye writing that “[n]ine of
the ringleaders, have been executed & upward of thirty of the
conspirators are in confinement, to be sent off the island the first opportunity.”21 With a combination of the maritime maroons seeking refuge
in Dominica, and the neighbouring colonies dumping their rebellious
slaves on the island, Dominica’s rebellious African population grew. By
1768, it was clear through discussions among proprietors in Barbados
that they wanted “to ship off and sell Runaway or Criminal Slaves . . .”22
One year later a bill was proposed by Dominicans to the Southern
Caribbee government entitled “An Act to prevent the Importation of
Slaves in who have been convicted or known to have been guilty of Murder or attempt of murder or poison, insurrection or other Capital
Offences.”23 The Preamble of the 1769 Act states:
Whereas many evils have already happened and still continue to happen to
Numbers of the Inhabitants of this Island, by being put in great danger of their
lives and properties from being attacked in their Houses as well as on the
Highways by Gangs of runaway Negroes, headed and encouraged by other Slaves
imported from Neighbouring islands, who were there convicted, or known to
have been guilty of Crimes which through Lenity or having been secured by their
Maroon Emancipationists
31
Owner or others have escaped punishment And whereas if an immediate stop is
not put to such evils by preventing the importation of such Offenders into this
island the inhabitants will still remain under great terror and apprehension and
may in the end be attended with fatal consequences to their Lives and properties
as well as the means of retarding the settlement of this Infant Colony.24
In 1763, after the British acquired the Ceded Islands – Dominica, Grenada, Tobago, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – the importation
of Africans increased into the Caribbean. Whereas the French took many
of their captives from the Bight of Benin ports off the coast of present
day Benin and western Nigeria, and the Portuguese received the majority
of their captives from the West Central African ports of Luanda and
Benguela, the British received a great portion of their captives from the
Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and the Bight of Biafra (present-day
southeast Nigeria). Though there was always a mixture of ethnicities
entering the various colonies throughout the transatlantic slave trade,
there were clustered cultural groups that contributed greatly to the foundations of particular slave societies. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade Database, Voyages, 6.1 per cent of the Africans who disembarked
at Dominica arrived from the Senegambia region, 4.3 per cent were from
Sierra Leone, 9.3 per cent from the Windward Coast, 2.8 per cent from
the Gold Coast, 1.7 per cent from the Bight of Benin, 5.7 per cent from
West Central Africa, and 12.8 per cent are listed as other/unknown. On
the other hand, an outstanding 57 per cent of all Africans imported
directly from Africa into Dominican ports arrived from the Bight of
Biafra. Of this 57 per cent, 86 per cent passed through three ports only:
Bonny, Calabar, and New Calabar.25 This meant that 49 per cent of all
Africans who were transported to Dominica directly from the African
continent passed through three ports only. And more specifically, 26 per
cent of all imported to Dominica passed through the port of Bonny.
Bonny, Calabar, and New Calabar were directly connected with the Aro
merchant class who procured their captives primarily from Igboland and
their Ibibio neighbours.26
Whereas much of West and West Central Africa’s transformed
societies experienced an increase in violence as a result of the
procurement of the enslaved, the slave traders in and around Igboland
obtained their Igbo captives through subtler methods. The European
traders established connections with the Niger Delta states of Elem Kalabari, Bonny, Nembe, and the Okrika states.27 The Aro merchants of the
hinterland engaged in the social engineering of several Igbo communities
throughout Igboland by aligning themselves with traditional institutions.28
32
Neil C. Vaz
The oracle of the Igbo communities was one example of a traditional
member of an institution who was compromised by the Aro merchants
at the expense of the Igbo communities.29 It was this system that the
British merchants in the Niger Delta ports exploited, especially between
1730 and the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807.30
In addition to the transatlantic shipping records indicating an Igbo
influx of captives, the planters’ records of 1816 show that the vast
majority of captives on plantations were listed as Eboe, Ibbo, Ibo, Moko,
Mocco, or Moco.31 Mocco was a name used for Ibibio peoples.32 Dominica
also served as an entrepôt for transshipments of African captives throughout the Caribbean. Many of the captives who were transported to Dominica did not remain on the island for very long.33 Dominica’s sugar
industry was not as developed as some of the other British Caribbean
islands in the late eighteenth century. Consequently, Igbo captives, stationed in Dominica, waiting to be transported to their next location,
wasted no time before making their escape. Greg O’Malley gives an
account in his book, Final Passages, of an Igbo man held captive who
escaped from the slave ship Enterprize while waiting to be transshipped
from Dominica.34
In order to understand the Neg Mawon of Dominica, it is essential to
understand the Igbo people. For decades, many planters avoided
acquiring captives from the Bight of Biafra region for several reasons.
For one, the shores of the Bight of Biafra were very treacherous, which
discouraged the Europeans from building fortresses there. Also, the death
rates on slave ships were much higher there than in the other regions.
The Bight of Biafra’s average death rate in the middle passage was 18.3
per cent, while other regions averaged 10 per cent. Lastly, more female
captives were taken from this region than from the other regions of West
Africa.35 This may have resulted from the fact that many in this region
were not procured through warfare as in other regions. It was not until
the period between the 1730s and 40s that slave trading from the Bight
of Biafra region began to drastically increase.
Although some planters’ records may be conflicting in terms of the
stereotypes of the various African ethnicities, it was “a truism in the historical literature that Igbo, especially the males were not at all appreciated
in the Americas, mainly because of their propensity to run away and/or
commit suicide”.36 This is another reason why merchants avoided the
Bight of Biafra region when procuring slaves. The high death rate on
slave ships from this region may partly be attributed to suicides of the
Igbo captives. The Igbo captives were typically characterized as being a
Maroon Emancipationists
33
“despondent” group of slaves.37 In Sir Henry Hesketh Joudou Bell’s 1889
book on “witchcraft” entitled Obeah: Witchcraft in the West Indies, he
described the Igbo, contrasting them with the “Koromantyn” and the
“Joloffa and Foolah negroes”, stating that they were “pusillanimous, and
presented a more degraded type of negro”.38 However, this characteristic
of the Igbo as a low grade “slave” because of their predisposition to suicide
is not necessarily a testament to despondency, but more a testament to
their pride and spirit. The Igbo were known as “flying Africans”. These
are Africans that believed that after death their souls had the ability to
transmigrate to the African continent to live as spirits amongst their families, eventually to be reincarnated.39 There are many cases throughout
the Americas which attest to this notion of Igbo mass transmigration.
There is the case of “The Igbo Landing”, when a large group of Igbos
walked singing into Dunbar Creek near the coast of Georgia.40 In nineteenth-century Cuba, the entire plantation of enslaved Igbos hanged
themselves simultaneously.41
Despite being known for suicide in America, the Igbo in Africa considered suicide the lowest act that one could do to oneself. In Igboland,
those who committed suicide would be thrown into the forest or the evil
“bush”, as it was called.42 While this fact may seem like a contradiction
between the Igbo in the Americas and the Igbo in Africa, this was actually
a testament to the iniquities of plantation life in the British West Indies.
Not only were the Africans escaping to the forests in the sphere of the
evil spirits, but they also committed suicide. In their homeland, the evil
spirits could be found in the woods. On the other hand, in Dominica,
the evil was found on the coastal areas, and it manifested itself with
white skin, whips, sugar, and plantations. In other words, the process of
escaping evil was inverted in Dominica.
Spiritual priests known as Dibia or Obia, who could communicate
with the spirits and had a knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs, were
respected as doctors in the Igbo community.43 The word Obeah, a form
of herbalism and spiritism found throughout the British West Indies, has
its origins in Obia. In Igboland, these spiritual priests had immunity to
the evil spirits when in the woods. In fact, this immunity usually allowed
the priest to explore the woods in search of remedies to combat evil in
the same way that vaccines inject the virus into the body in order to form
an immunity to it.44 The abundance of water in the woods also had a
special significance for the Igbo, as well as other Africans like the
Bakongo. For the Igbo:
34
Neil C. Vaz
Rivers, streams, lakes, and rain had life-sustaining qualities, and symbolized
purity, cleanliness, coolness, and freshness, fertility, and longevity. The water
spirits were important deities. With water, the Igbo washed away evil and
uncleanliness. Important cleansing rituals were performed near, or in, rivers and
streams.45
With Dominica’s 365 rivers and streams, the woods were of extreme
spiritual significance for the Africans. For the Bakongo, the ancestors
dwelled beneath the water in a place known as the Kalunga.46
In addition to the transmigration and marronage characteristics of the
Igbo, these Africans had an egalitarian democratic society in their homeland. The Igbo came from what has been termed by Ifi Amadiume as an
“anti-state society”. This is not to be confused with a stateless society;
the latter implies a lack of achieving something and the former indicates
a conscious rejection.47 Toyin Falola writes, “[t]he Igbo characteristic
decentralized society seems to have been a deliberate departure from the
earlier tradition of Nri; monarchical institutions in such outlying cities
as Asaba, Onitsha, and Aboh probably arose through the influence of the
Kingdoms of Igala and Benin.”48 The Igbo are from an acephalous society,
having no leader or chief and where the common people govern themselves. They did not believe in ruling others, nor did they believe in being
ruled. In addition, according to Gloria Chuku, not only did the Igbo avoid
being dominated by external forces, but “gender complementarity was
the norm; men and women, boys and girls played diverse but important
roles for the sustenance of their families, lineages, and society.”49
In pre-colonial Igbo communities, a person’s worth had more to do
with their achievements than their biological make-up, and in many of
the communities, for every male political society, there was a female
society for checks and balances.50 Their philosophies and ideals were not
rooted in Western thought. When the Igbo were enslaved in Dominica,
they brought with them their own understanding of freedom. Other African nations amongst the Igbo consisted of the Ibibio, the Manding, the
Bakongo, the Akan, to name a few. They found similarities amongst
themselves in their philosophies and coalesced to form the Neg Mawon
pan-African nation in the interior of Dominica. Chattel slavery or any
other form of absolutism was not practised in many of the regions of
West and West Central Africa. In the Kongo Kingdom, for instance, the
society was very democratic, according to Laurent Dubois.51 Expert historian on the Kongo, John Thornton, states, “the nobles were not
concerned with local autonomy at all.”52 It was in Dominica where those
retaining names with African influence – such as Balla, Goree Greg,
Maroon Emancipationists
35
Mubaya, Congo Ray, Zombie, Moco George, Juba, Quashie, Vielle Ebo
and Jacko, as well as others such as Pangloss, Grubois, and Pharcelle –
played a major role in the development and sustenance of the Neg Mawon
nation.
An African Nation Is Born
By the 1770s the Dominican maroon community had become a
formidable African entity that was the cause of alarm for the planters of
the island. According to the colonial officials, the maroons in the interior
had established themselves into a confederation of villages, with chiefs
and sub-chiefs.53 Later, the Lieutenant Governor of Dominica, George
Ainslie, would describe the maroons as an “imperium in imperio”,
meaning a state within a state.54 Atwood wrote of the maroons in the
forest:
There they secreted themselves for a number of years, formed companies under
different chiefs, built good houses, and planted gardens in the woods, where they
raised poultry, hogs, and other small stock, which, with what the sea, rivers, and
woods afforded, and what they got the negros they had intercourse with on the
plantations, they lived very comfortably, and were seldom disturbed in their
haunts.55
The maroons in Dominica were being described as a de facto nation by
their contemporaries. The colonial government’s estimates show that the
maroon population never fell under sixty and never exceeded eight hundred between the years 1763 and 1814.56 However, these numbers
recorded by the colonial administration did not take into account the
number of plantation Africans who were secretly in unison with the
maroons and those who travelled back and forth between islands.
This community also practised polygyny. Chiefs such as Pharcelle
and Grubois had multiple wives.57 Pharcelle’s camp was located in the
mountain of Morne Diablatins between the parishes of Saint Andrew
and Saint Joseph at the head of the Toulaman River. Grubois’ residence
was in the heights of Saint David. Balla and Congo Ray’s residences were
located in the centre of the island in the heights between Saint David
and Saint Paul. The residence of Pangloss, and later Elephant, was
between Saint Patrick and Saint George at Morne Anglais. Not to be forgotten was Jacko, who by 1814, had the longest tenure in the woods. His
residence was at the centre of the island at the head of the Layou River,
between the parishes of Saint Paul and Saint David. The residences were
built high on top of mountains and were surrounded by pits, pickets,
36
Neil C. Vaz
Modified map of Dominica. (Map created by Trent Tomengo.)
and pikes, which were all used as traps for anyone who decided to
trespass.58 These maroons constructed a safe, defensive habitat to guard
themselves against enslavement and in an attempt to recreate what they
once had in Africa – a community. This free society by no means exemplified any effort by them to integrate into the modern Western society.
By 1773 there was an Act for “suppressing of Runaway Slaves”.59 The
Maroon Emancipationists
37
Act was an attempt to deter marronage by declaring that those who
absented themselves from “their owner, renter, or employer’s service at
several times within the space of two years Amounting in all to six
months . . .” would be “adjudged Guilty of Felony and shall suffer Death
. . .”60 The punishment of death did not curb maroon activity in Dominica,
which may be related to the notion of the Igbo nation’s lack of fear of
physical death when pitted against the horrors of chattel slavery. The
Neg Mawon nation was still in the insipient stage of development in the
1770s. However, throughout the rest of their existence, until the community was destroyed in 1814, the Africans proved that they were their
brothers’ keepers. Uncompromising universal emancipation was the goal,
and the Negs Mawons were the main players, with the warring British
and French vying for the assistance of this African nation.
The Nation Is Armed
In the late 1770s, the war between the North American colonies and
Great Britain spilled over into the Caribbean colonies. When France
joined the war to assist the North American colonists, troops landed in
the Ceded Islands in an attempt to take back what they once considered
theirs. In 1778, Dominica was invaded, and the new colonial governor,
Marie-Charles du Chilleau, took over. The new governor spent years in
the French army and was sought out by Martinique’s governor. However,
chaos loomed throughout the Caribbean between Britain and France,
with both sides seeking assistance wherever they could. In Dominica, as
in the other Ceded Islands, the British were known for their draconian
and expansive form of slavery. The Africans and the French had a
common enemy in the British residents of Dominica. A number of codes
were enacted by Du Chilleau to ensure that there would not be an insurrection among the British inhabitants of the island. For example, Du Chilleau’s new codes forbade “the assembling together of the English inhabitants more than two in a place”.61 Du Chilleau also disarmed the British
inhabitants and armed the maroons to help defend the island against an
invasion or an internal uprising.62 This however, did not mean that Du
Chilleau favoured the African people. This was survival. In fact, Du Chilleau would later go on to govern Saint-Domingue in the late 1780s, a
colony that had arguably one of the most repressive slave systems.63
Saint-Domingue was the largest sugar producing colony, and at the time
of Du Chilleau’s governance in Saint-Domingue the colony was importing
30,000 Africans yearly.64
38
Neil C. Vaz
During the French occupation of the island, a number of notable
captives escaped their respective plantations. Among them were Chief
Grubois, Liverpool, Stephan and Augustine.
Whereas the documented enslaved population, from the British acquisition in 1763 to 1772, continuously increased, growing by as many as
8,342, the enslaved population between 1772 and 1780 decreased by
1,501.65 This is likely an indication of the halt in importations, as well as
marronage. The hurricanes of 1779 and 1780 also led to marronage.
According to Alex Stewart, “two dreadful hurricanes in 1779 and 1780
. . . consumed the town of Roseau . . . [and] added to the Rebellion of
our Slaves . . .” 66
With the increase in marronage, as well as the maroons having
received arms, the African nation in the interior of the island, during the
era of French occupation, became emboldened in a way that it had not
been before. There was an increasing number of reports on the violence
that the maroons were creating during that time. For example, the
maroons seized ground provisions and other foodstuff from the British
planters. Later, they burnt buildings, killed, and took cattle. Not only
did the maroons loot during the night, but they also seized goods during
the day. The French administration in Dominica did nothing to protect
the British inhabitants and the maroons went as far as committing a murder on the plantation of a Mr Grahame. According to Atwood, Du
Chilleau stated that, “if they dared attempt any thing against those people
he would imprison them, or send them off the island.”67
The Treaty of Paris, in 1783, retroceded Dominica to Great Britain.
Though the British were back in official control of the island, and the
French inhabitants remained an underclass, the Africans did not yield
from their intention of taking over the entire island and creating an independent nation for themselves – something that the thirteen British North
American colonies had achieved that year. The difference, however, as
the evidence demonstrates, is that the Neg Mawon revolutionary
movement was concerned with universal freedom and the abolition of
slavery, while the North American revolutionary movement was
primarily concerned with the freedom to own slaves.68
Oku, Obeah, and Extirpation
After the French government was ejected from Dominica in 1783, there
was no reported action taken by the maroons against the planters for
about one year. By 1784, however, the importation of Africans had
Maroon Emancipationists
39
resumed under the British colonial government. Between 10 January
1784 and 10 January 1785, some 5,000 Africans were transported to Dominica directly from Africa. An additional 171 “Negroes” were transshipped
from various British West Indian islands.69 These recently arrived individuals, it is believed, contributed to the growth and strength of the Neg
Mawon. The period between 1784 and 1786 was characterized as the
First Maroon War. Later, in the second decade of the nineteenth century,
there would later be another that would be generically known as the Second Maroon War. These terms, however, can at times become
problematic, as the maroons and the colonial government were arguably
at a constant state of terror and war with one another, though there were
times when the intensity dwindled. In the early days of the First Maroon
War in 1785 it was estimated that there were three hundred maroons.70
A report three weeks later indicated that the number increased to “500
negroes in the woods . . .”71 It is likely that the maroon population grew
during the conflict.
The maroon attacks on plantations resumed with the intimidation of
planters. In August of 1784, thirty maroons descended on the plantation
of a Daniel Ross. The planter described them as acting in a “highly
insolent and threatening” manner. The following month, the maroons
began plundering plantations and started killing planters. These incidents
aroused concerns at the House of Assembly meeting that September,
leading to requests for immediate “suppression of the runaways”.72 Later
that month, in the northeast side of the island in the parish of Saint
Andrew, the maroons raided more plantations. They brandished guns,
firing at anyone who stood in their way, including enslaved Africans.73
In October, the maroons murdered a Frenchman by the name of
Monsieur Generaud, who had gone into the woods to hunt game.74 As a
result of his presence in the woods with a rifle, the maroons may have
believed that he was there to hunt them. William Stuart, of the Rosalie
Estate on the southeast side of the island, sent the manager of his
plantation along with “another white man and several stout Negroes
armed” to assist in pursuing the killers of Generaud.75
In December, the attacks by the maroons continued. These attacks
were in and around Caulihaut and forced many planters to abandon their
plantations.76 Also, in December, the House of Assembly introduced a
“militia” bill. Some legislatures questioned the possibility of turning
the maroons into a defensive force for the island in exchange for their
freedom, de jure. This idea never manifested itself because it
was believed that “expenses attending their security, their clothing and
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Neil C. Vaz
maintenance, would more than counterbalance the advantage that the
public would derive from their services . . .”.77 Eventually, by March, the
“Militia Act” was passed. However, not much came out of it. There was
no physical body of troops to effectively combat the maroons and their
depredations on plantations and planters.78 The Africans in the woods
continued plundering. In the summer of 1785, it was speculated that
the enslaved on the plantations were in “correspondence with the
runaways”.79
In the summer of 1785, there were some maroons who had become
notorious, to the colonial government, for their military expertise and
leadership amongst the community. Some were of African origin. There
was Chief Balla, also known as General Balla, who was said to have been
a prince in Africa and “a native of Guiney”.80 Balla is a Manding name
meaning Musa or Moses.81 Most Mandinka were either Muslim or were
influenced by Muslims. However, being a Muslim did not prevent Balla
from spiritually connecting with the traditional belief systems amongst
the Igbo and other Africans of Dominica. As Sylvaine Diouf argues in
her book Servants of Allah, François Makandal, a revolutionary African
in Saint-Domingue in the 1750s, was most likely born in “Guinea” and a
Mandinka Muslim. He led the largest poison network amongst Ewe-FonAja Africans from the Bight of Benin. There was also Dutty Boukman in
Saint-Domingue, who was said that have been a Muslim, hence his name
“Book” man, or man of the Koran. He led the opening Vodun ceremony
to the Haitian Revolution.82 Despite the fact that Makandal and Boukman
were a minority amongst the ethnic make-up of their country in their
respective eras, they nevertheless found similarities in their basic spiritual
systems and in their struggles. Balla was no different amongst the Igbo.
He was an obeah practitioner, who carried around an obeah charm with
him.83 Balla arrived in Dominica in the 1760s and had immediately
escaped into the woods upon his arrival.84 He stated that his goal was to
“extirpate” what he referred to as the “British dogs” from the island.85
In addition to Balla and leadership position amongst the maroons,
Congo Ray was another African who was discussed in colonial reports.
However, that none of the chiefs’ names denotes an Igbo origin does not
negate the idea of an Igbo majority. This is in keeping with the fact that
most Igbo did not believe in chiefdoms or ruling others. Congo Ray and
Balla were from more hierarchical societies where social stratification
was more pronounced. Nevertheless, these various African nations, with
an Igbo foundation of federated villages, turned towards the idea of total
extirpation of the British from the island. For the Igbo, fire was known
Maroon Emancipationists
41
as oku, and represented “the most dreaded spirits”.86 For the remainder
of 1785, when the maroons raided plantations of guns, booty, and other
goods in their preparation for war, they dispensed oku throughout the
island’s estates. Though they spread oku on British and French planters
alike, at times the maroons spared some Frenchmen.87 The maroons practised ambush tactics against the planters throughout the island, on
occasion surprising them with as much as fifty or sixty maroons
descending on plantations at once.88 As a result, white men were dying
throughout the island.
By November, the colonial government was finally able to acquire
enough funds to organize a militia, necessary for the quelling of the Africans. The Thirtieth Regiment, comprised vanquished British soldiers who
had fought in America’s War of Independence, volunteers, enslaved
blacks, and Free People of Colour.89 December of 1785 marked a new
escalation in the war. Up to this point, the maroons had been attacking
the planters, without relent, for almost one year and a half. Finally, the
colonial government received the men to combat the maroons. General
Balla became a target. He was said to have had around two hundred
troops, which he used to ambush plantations. That December, the
maroons, led by Congo Ray and Balla, killed a Mr Gamble, chopped off
a lock of his hair to use for their obeah charm, and set fire to his entire
plantation.90
By January, the colonial troops began to make gains. One of Balla’s
many residences was discovered and Captain John Marshall was able to
kidnap five maroon children from the camp. Captain Marshall, upon
seeing Balla’s obeah apparatus, seized the charm. As he understood it,
the charm being in his possession might take spiritual confidence away
from Balla, because the “Obeah, or charm, which as he would persuade
his followers, was to promote his constant success”. The charm consisted
of skin from Mr Gamble’s head and a lock of his hair.91 Even if the
colonial officials did not believe in the metaphysics of the African revolutionaries, they believed that the Africans lost confidence without their
obeah charms. It was later reported that “Mr. Richardson, and his party
have, however, baffled the power of his (Balla) incantations, and the spell
being broken, Mr. Balla’s fortune seems rather on the decline.”92 This
was one occasion, which set a precedent, where the colonial government
had heeded to the beliefs of the Africans in order to overcome their successes in battle.
In February, many of the maroon camps and residences were
destroyed. Congo Ray and Balla were on the run. According to Captain
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Marshall, he and the Legion “fell in with Congoree and his Company”
and “they consisted of himself and four more negroes”. It was reported
by colonial officials in the Royal Gazette that “one of them we have taken,
the rest escaped by throwing themselves down a precipice”.93 These “flying” Africans preferred transmigration over capture. Congo Ray escaped
capture. By March 1786, Balla was finally tracked down. He tried to
resist, but was shot in the groin.94 Repeatedly he told his captors to cut
off his head, because “he still would not die”.95 Balla, like the Igbo,
believed that he would metaphysically live forever. The only concerns
that Balla had before he was executed were for his son and his “obeah
apparatus”.96 After Balla was executed, many of the maroons were captured. It was estimated that up to one hundred and fifty maroons were
captured or banished, had fled to a neighbouring island, or physically
perished by “flying” or in warfare.97 The maroons, however, did not
remain quiet for long. Some estimates say that the numbers after the
First Maroon War had shrunk to about sixty maroons.98 Nevertheless,
the maroons were resilient. The more the colonial government continued
to import Africans into the island, the more the maroon community
increased its population size. From mid to late 1780s, the maroon population had reinvigorated. This happened just in time for conflicts that
would later spread across the Atlantic World.
Neg Mawon’s Rejection of the French Revolution
After General Balla was executed, and the several maroons were driven
off Dominica, the colonial government sought to rectify the rebelliousness
of the Africans by introducing an Amelioration Act in 1788 to assuage
the conditions of slavery.99 Many of the enslaved peoples on the
plantations later misinterpreted the Act and were under the impression
that they were going to be given “THREE DAYS in the WEEK” for themselves. In 1799, Speaker of the House Thomas Beech would blame the
insurrection of 1791 on the Legislature.100 Furthermore, when the
enslaved on the plantations learnt that the three days off was only a
rumour, they began to go on strike. By 1790, many of the enslaved were
on strike in the southeast side of Dominica. The maroon community in
the woods, which had maintained correspondence with the plantations,
seized the opportunity to form an alliance with the disenchanted
plantation Africans. The maroons had grown in number in the late 1780s
as a result of some devastating hurricanes in 1787.101 They saw the dis-
Maroon Emancipationists
43
heartenment of their enslaved plantation brethren as a perfect
opportunity to unite.
The year 1789 also marked the beginning of the French Revolution.
Revolutionary fervour spread throughout the Caribbean and the Declaration of the Rights of Man was adding to the already revolutionary spirit
throughout the West Indies. Martinique, the French colony to the south
of Dominica, experienced growing tension between the Gens de Couleur
(people of colour), Petits Blancs (poor whites), and Grands Blancs (rich
whites). Violence erupted in September of 1789. The Gens de Couleur had
typically been allies with the Royalists and were pitted against the
enslaved and the poor whites. They were used to capture runaway slaves.
However, some of the Gens de Couleur took heed of the revolutionary
ideals of France and were divided between pro-Royalists and antiRoyalists.102 Many of these anti-Royalist and pro-French Revolutionary
people of colour arrived on the shores of Dominica when violence broke
out in Martinique.103
Meanwhile, in the forests of Dominica, Chief Pharcelle had started
to make connections with the enslaved plantation Africans. In December
1790, many of the enslaved refused to work and some even absconded.104
The disorganization of the strike changed, however, on New Year’s night,
1 January 1791, when Pharcelle devised a plan for the protesting enslaved
and the maroons.105 Pharcelle established a set of chiefs and sub-chiefs
throughout the parish of Saint Patrick. He spread the word that “the
Negroes must not trust to the white people giving them three days” and
that the whites would only make them work more during the rest of the
week.106 Pharcelle and his men persuaded the enslaved by offering them
gifts. The plan that Pharcelle put forth was for the “Negroes . . . to rise”
and that they were going to fight “for their full liberty”, and that they
“were not satisfied in having the three days that were talked . . . “.107 By
9 January the plan was genocide. On the Rosalie Estate, a rebel slave by
the name of Edward spread the word that Pharcelle’s plan was to kill
“all the white people”.108
By mid-January there was an increase in communication between the
plantations and the maroons. There was no record of any people of
colour, or mulattoes having any involvement up to this point in the conspiracy. The liaison between the woods and the plantations was via the
plantation African, Edward. Information that was given to Edward by
the maroons was spread throughout the plantations in the southeast to
the sub-chiefs. One sub-chief, Paul from the La Ronde plantation, was
sent to Charles Bertrand’s plantation with a helper to meet Edward. They
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Neil C. Vaz
were to “take twenty-four muskets, as the battle was to begin on the
Monday” 17 January.109 However, Paul would not go without Jean Louis
Polinaire, a “mulatto” from Martinique. This is the earliest date that Polinaire is ever mentioned in the records.
At the Sunday meeting of 16 January, both Polinaire and Pharcelle
were present. The plan was for Pharcelle and maroon chief Pangloss to
take five hundred muskets to the conspirators during the revolt.110 After
this Sunday meeting – the first evidence, according to the many
testimonies, that mention Polinaire and Pharcelle in the same space –
Pharcelle would henceforth become a non-participant in the conspiracy.
Maroons Pharcelle and Pangloss were not present during the planned
delivery of the 500 muskets to the rebels. In addition, Polinaire went from
being a recent participant in the conspiracy to being at the head of it.
The question is raised as to what happened in this meeting that
removed Pharcelle from the conspiracy, and propelled Polinaire to a position of leadership. It is not certain what caused this change, one can only
speculate what transpired in the meeting between the maroons, the
mulattoes, and the enslaved. One factor that needs to be taken into consideration is that Pharcelle was a maroon who resided in the woods for
a very long time. He was described as “black”, and he was probably African.111 If Pharcelle himself was not African, he lived in the woods with
many who were born in Africa and had perpetuated the African way of
life. Polinaire, on the other hand, was a “Mulatto” of French background,
who was from Martinique, the land where people of his ilk were often
employed to capture “runaway slaves”. Polinaire was influenced by the
French Revolution and brought the ideals of the revolution with him to
Dominica. However, Polinaire was a Western man, who was influenced
by Western ideals. He was not an African. The basis of the two men’s
philosophies had their origins rooted in different places. And although
they both wanted freedom for black people, what would come after that
freedom may have been what led to their disagreement. The split
between the maroons and the rest of the conspirators seemed to be a
decision on the part of the maroons rather than the enslaved and the
mulattoes.
The African plantation conspirators and Polinaire would go on to lose
their battles with Dominica’s colonial troops by the beginning of
February. Polinaire and many of the other rebels were captured. Chief
Pangloss and his camp were hunted down, but they took “flight” off a
precipice rather than be captured.112 The maroons’ objection to integrating
their revolutionary movement with the French Revolutionary movement
Maroon Emancipationists
45
of the 1790s was again exemplified later in the decade when the French
Revolutionary Republicans began their attempts at increasing their communication, in hopes for an alliance during this tumultuous time in the
Atlantic World. Three events, however, completely changed the dynamics
of the relationship between Dominica’s colonial government and
Pharcelle, the most notorious maroon. One event was the outbreak of
the Haitian Revolution in 1791. The other was the declaration of war
between France and Britain in February of 1793. Lastly, there was
France’s abolition of slavery in February of 1794 in the French West
Indies, initially brought about as a strategic ploy after the Africans in
Saint-Domingue/Haiti revolted.
Warring Europeans Vie for African Alliances
After the Haitian Revolution began in August of 1791, planters all over
the colonial world feared that their enslaved might revolt in the same
manner. Dominica’s colonial government was no different. In November,
Governor John Orde wrote, “[o]ur accounts from St. Domingo continue
to be of the most alarming nature”.113 In the following month, after the
rebellion had expanded and showed no signs of halting, the governor
wrote:
As from the unhappy disturbance which prevail amongst the slaves in St.
Domingo and Martinico and which it is but too possible may soon extend to the
other Foreign islands in our Neighbourhood, it is more than likely a number of
vagrant and disorderly persons and slaves may pass over here, and as it is of the
utmost importance that the Laws should be put in force against all such, and that
all slaves of the above description should immediately be secured and prevented
from improper communication with the Negroes in this island.114
In February of 1793, Britain and France were at war. Within a month
the enslaved started to flee Dominica’s plantations by the dozen. This
went on for months. The security at the time diminished so that the colonial government on 27 March 1793, began discussing the possibility of
granting Pharcelle his freedom in exchange for defending the island
against internal and external threats. Pharcelle was the one who had put
the offer on the table. There is uncertainty as to why Pharcelle, who had
proven himself to be so uncompromising in the past, had suddenly
decided to propose an alliance with the colonial government.115 Nevertheless, he may have seen the vulnerability of the government and
decided that this was the perfect time to negotiate deals with the warring
Europeans.
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Neil C. Vaz
By August of 1793, Léger Félicité Sonthonax, who served as
Republican commissioner in Saint-Domingue, was forced to extend the
rights of freedom to the enslaved as a strategic ploy to save the colony
for the French, against the British and the Spanish.116 This act of emancipation converted many formerly enslaved Africans into allies of the
French. This abolition was later extended to all of the French West Indies
by February 1794. This reform was embraced by many throughout the
Atlantic World. However, there were those who were completely
opposed to the idea of free Africans living in the midst of their slave colonies. After the emancipation was announced, the British invaded three
French islands: Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint Lucia by the spring
of that year.117 As a result of these invasions of the French islands by the
British, dozens of the mulatto French Republican colonists fled to Dominica. These French mulattoes started communicating with Pharcelle and
even referred to him as their “General”.118 More than sixty of them were
spotted in the woods who recognized Pharcelle’s leadership, and were
armed with a multitude of weapons.119 Pharcelle’s relationship with
mulattoes in the 1791 conspiracy and his relationship with the French
Mulattoes in 1794 may seem like a contradiction. However, there are
two major differences. For one, in 1791 Polinaire had been propelled to
the head of the movement that Pharcelle started. Also, the French, in
1791 had not yet addressed the issue of slavery. By 1794, however, Pharcelle was referred to as “General” by the French mulattoes. In that same
year, the French demonstrated a truer commitment to the cause of universal emancipation, by declaring all people free throughout the French
world. Of note is that the French Republicans’ escaped to Dominica,
which was a British island, de jure. However, that the French
Republicans fled to Dominica speaks volumes to the fact that there were
parts of the island that the British had no control over, and where the
Africans were in control, de facto.
In late 1794, the British Colonial Government discovered a letter
written by French Republicans to Pharcelle encouraging him to join their
revolutionary cause. The letter stated that it was the “Republique” who
“abolished slavery in all the colonies” and gave “Compliments to all the
citizens” in Pharcelle’s camp.120 The letter was presented to the House
of Assembly on 9 October 1794. Six days later the government proposed
an offer to “grant” Pharcelle his freedom in exchange for service to the
British colonial government.121 Two months later, Pharcelle was invited
to the House and the deal was made. The proposal by the British colonial
government in Dominica compelled Pharcelle to switch allegiance. By
Maroon Emancipationists
47
December 1794, the ties between Pharcelle and the French Republicans
were severed. Pharcelle, his two wives, and twelve others were granted
their freedom. These fifteen individuals were to serve the British colonial
government and defend the colony from internal and external threats.122
In spite of this, the vast majority of the maroons remained in the woods
uncompromised. Pharcelle’s group comprised only fifteen of the
hundreds of maroons who refused to join causes they did not believe in.
In 1795 Victor Hugues, a radical French Revolutionary Republican
and governor in the French West Indies, made his rounds from island to
island throughout the Caribbean attempting to assist the enslaved in their
fight against their British enslavers.123 Hugues and his Republican commissioners travelled to various islands including Grenada and Saint Vincent, galvanizing the enslaved Africans and the people of colour against
the British ruling class. Nonetheless, when the French commissioners
landed in Dominica in an attempt to galvanize the maroons and the
enslaved there, some of the enslaved joined, but the maroons did not.
The revolt, therefore, was unsuccessful.124 The decision of the maroons
not to join Hugues in his cause was not without good reason. According
to Laurent Dubois, Hugues “developed new forms of governance that
combined antiracist and emancipatory agenda with the forms of labor
coercion and racial exclusion”. Hugues believed that “slaves were
incapable of being full citizens . . .”.125 This was not the type of society
the Igbo-influenced Africans desired to live in. They believed in egalitarianism, democracy, and freedom; a form that was born in Africa.
By the late 1790s, according to colonial records, Pharcelle appeared
to be duplicitous in his intentions to protect the colonial government
from internal and external threats. With the institution of the West India
Regiment in the second half of the 1790s, Pharcelle became dispensable
to the colonial government and was replaced with the predominantly
African imported troops of the West India Regiment.126 In 1800, Pharcelle
was banished from the island after the British colonial government began
to import the West India Regiment from Africa for the purpose of quelling
all rebellions and revolutions throughout various colonies.127 After the
end of the French Revolution and the quelling of most of the slave insurrections throughout the Caribbean, the maroons of Dominica reconnected
with the Africans on plantations. This alliance between the maroons and
the plantation Africans in the nineteenth century proved to be a force to
be reckoned with.
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Neil C. Vaz
Maroon–Plantation Alliance of Africans
The Africans in the interior of Dominica rejected any alliance with the
Europeans. However, they would increasingly make greater efforts at
allying themselves with those enslaved on the plantations. In the early
nineteenth century, the colony of Dominica, which was once a major
exporter of enslaved, began to retain their captives because of the
abolition law that would take effect in 1807. Re-exports in the 1770s and
80s from Dominica were approximately 50 to 80 per cent.128 However,
in the last few years of the transatlantic slave trade the number of exports
dwindled significantly. In 1803, there were only six per cent re-exports,
in 1804, less than one per cent, and in 1805, re-exports were seventeen
per cent.129 Also, of importance, of the 6,633 African captives imported
into Dominica between the years 1800 and 1807, 75 per cent of them
passed through two ports only: Bonny and New Calabar.130 In addition,
since this was the era of retaining the enslaved on the colony, many of
the Africans arriving in Dominica at the time were Igbo. Many of whom
were not being re-exported.
Furthermore, a number of natural disasters contributed to the rise in
marronage in Dominica in the nineteenth century. On 10 September
1806, “a most dreadful hurricane” crashed into the island and caused a
great deal of damage. Additionally, an earthquake followed that same
month. A Dominican colonial official noted that, as a result of the natural
disaster, many of the Africans left and others “have contracted from it
incurable diseases”.131 A great number of enslaved fled the plantation on
the basis of pure survival as there was no food on the plantations. In
1804, the colonial government had estimated that there were approximately two hundred maroons in Dominica.132 By 1811, that number rose
to four hundred.133
The enslaved who remained on their plantations developed a secret
trading network with the maroons. The plantation Africans and the
maroon Africans traded items such as “salt provisions, clothes, arms, and
ammunition” to the extent that the Africans on the plantations almost
“totally neglected the cultivation of their provision grounds on the
estates”.134 The maroons, being in the interior of the island were less
affected by the disastrous hurricanes that had swept through Dominica.
The coastal areas received the most wind, mudslides, and flooding. As a
result, plantation Africans turned to the maroons to assist them with
food. The plantation Africans had access to guns, salt, gunpowder, and
goods that the maroons could not produce in the woods. It was a perfect
Maroon Emancipationists
49
trade that benefited both sides. The relationship blossomed to the point
that there was no definitive divide between the plantation Africans and
the maroon Africans. The maroon Africans, who had been working tirelessly to rid the island of the slaveholding Europeans, were establishing
a surreptitious network to once and for all overthrow the plantation
system in Dominica.
In 1812, the Africans began deserting their plantations in large
numbers. John Laidlaw of Dominica wrote that, “[i]n the beginning of
1812 a great majority” of his “Negroes belonging to Woodbridge Hill
Estate retired into the woods for some weeks . . . and several never
returned” and that “upwards of sixty Negroes belonging to Castle Bruce
behaved in the same manner and did not return to their duty until compelled by a Strong Armed Force . . . after several weeks absence.”135
Planter John Greenway stated that since 1810 “the Negroes . . . forming
an intercourse with the Maroon Negroes have frequently absented themselves some for years and afterwards returned to the Estate of their own
accord.” He continued by saying that no matter what punishment he
gave them, “they still persevered in their association with the maroons.”136
By July of 1812, it was estimated that the maroon population increased
to “upward of eight hundred”.137
Some of the notable maroons during this time were Chief Jacko, Elephant, the two Quashies, Apollo, Vielle Ebo, and others.138 By 1813, the
maroons had virtually lost all regard for the white man’s laws. Maroons
were often spotted on plantations, the “enslaved” were often seen in the
woods. The division between the plantation and the woods had become
blurred. Both maroon and enslaved were openly defying the British colonial order in Dominica. Many threatened death to those who stood in
their way. However, by the spring of 1813, Governor George Ainslie was
introduced to the island to take over the governorship. He was a no-nonsense man and he immediately issued a formal proclamation of an
“unconditional pardon on 10 May 1813” for the enslaved who returned
to their respective plantations. Those who did not would suffer the most
severe punishment.139 There is no evidence of the revolutionary activity
ceasing in the initial months following the proclamation. In the months
of July and August of that year, the island experienced another
devastating hurricane, and a disastrous storm. In October, Ainslie issued
another proclamation. Many women and children surrendered
themselves during the period between the first hurricane and the October
proclamation. Historians like Michael Craton and Lennox Honychurch
have asserted that the storms of 1813 led to the demise of the maroons,
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Neil C. Vaz
because it devastated their provision grounds, exposed their hideouts,
and violently destroyed their communities and livelihoods.140 However,
devastating hurricanes have never compelled maroons to return to
plantations. In fact, it has always worked in reverse, leading to more
marronage.
By late 1813, the maroons remained free in the woods, with many
still escaping. There was a Pierre from the Mt Eolus Estate in Saint John’s
Parish, who, in November, was asked to seek out other plantation “runaways”, but ended up assisting them in furthering their escape.141 Also,
in January 1814, approximately twenty enslaved Africans escaped their
plantation after complaining to Governor Ainslie about the mistreatment
of one of their fellow enslaved. Early that year a Peter, who was sent to
find twenty escapees, took the authorities on a wild goose hunt.142 When
Peter was discovered to have been at the head of the conspirators on that
plantation all along, he was sentenced to execution by hanging. Before
Peter was executed he stated that, “nothing but his head would come in
and his body left in the woods.”143 This was a warning to the British colonial officials, that like Balla and others who had come before him, they
could kill his body, but they could not kill his soul. Peter’s words on that
15 January 1814 may have flustered Ainslie and the colonial officials.
Simple executions did not deter the maroons from fighting. The Act that
was implemented in the early 1770s to deter Africans from fleeing their
plantations was unsuccessful with a group of people who, in the eyes of
the planters, were prone to suicide, and were willing to, in order to live
as a free people, die fighting for their freedom. The day after Peter’s
execution, Ainslie issued another proclamation. He would later change
his policies stating, in a letter after the Second Maroon War, that he:
Ordered the bodies on some occasions to be taken from the Gibbet, after it had
hung an hour, the head to be cut off & the body burned on the beach, because
the Negroes of several especially the Ebos, Mandingos & [?] that after death unless
the body is cut to pieces or burned they return to their own country . . .144
Charles, who was a runaway from Mr Bourgeau’s plantation claimed
that Chief Jacko threatened to not only “kill him”, but to “cut him to
pieces” as punishment.145 From February until May of 1814, Ainslie had
eleven bodies of conspirators burnt after execution including Vielle Ebo,
an Igbo obia priestess, Victor, Rebecca, Zabeth, Mills, and others.146 The
Africans believed that when their bodies were destroyed, mutilated, or
burnt after death, their souls were also burnt and, thus, unable to transmigrate.147 Ainslie took heed of this philosophy, and like the colonial offi-
Maroon Emancipationists
51
cials who stole Balla’s obeah charm, acted accordingly. Only two weeks
after the final implementation of the burning executions, in June, one of
the planters wrote:
Since the declaration of Martial Law and the subsequent measures of Governor
Ainslie that they [the enslaved] are reduced to complete order and subjection and
that he can now without any dread of their absconding themselves inflict the
necessary punishments on any of them.148
The maroon chiefs were captured and killed throughout the rest of the
year, and by December the Neg Mawon community had finally been
destroyed. Governor Ainslie’s policy of body mutilations seemed to have
been effective. The Igbo, Mandinka, and other Africans were deterred
from sacrificing their bodies for freedom.
Conclusion
The Africans who comprised the Neg Mawon nation in Dominica lived,
fought, and thrived in the forests of Dominica for fifty years. They were
a coalition of Africans who had been imported into the West Indies for
enslavement. However, these people did not accept the plight that was
imposed upon them by their European counterparts. Many of these individuals were Igbo, who believed in egalitarian-acephalous societies
without tyranny and stratification. The British plantations were the antithesis of this lifestyle. These Igbo, were typically stereotyped as being
predisposed to running away from enslavement, as well as excessive suicides. Both of these characteristics produced a very rebellious colony,
whose main source of African imports were derived from Igboland.
The Africans held closely on to their obeah and transmigration through
flight, as well as the sheer desire to establish and replicate an African
society in the mountains of Dominica. And though the French were, in
many cases, seeking an ally in the Neg Mawon, the Africans preferred
their own version of organic freedom over the idea of integrating their
movement into ideals that were foreign to them. They were an anti-state
people, many of whom could not be compromised, bought, or persuaded.
Furthermore, the decision to maintain absolute freedom was not to be
shunned. The Haitians attempted integration by creating a recognized
modern state, but recognition was brought about with stipulations of taxations and reparations to be paid to France. There were divisions in Haiti
between the people who created the lakou system – virtually a maroon
society within the modern state – and the participating citizens of the
52
Neil C. Vaz
state. Dominica’s maroons spent their fifty years attempting to keep their
revolution pure, African, and free. Nevertheless, it took an understanding
of the philosophies of the Africans, by the British colonial government,
in order to physically defeat the maroons in warfare.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
Price, Maroon Societies, 9.
Thompson, Flight to Freedom.
Campbell, Maroons of Jamaica.
Chopra, Almost Home.
Cheney, Quilombos dos Palmares.
Honeychurch, In the Forests of Freedom.
Atwood, 2.
“The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: Voyages”.
Cracknell, 68.
Colonial Office (CO) 7/13, Dominica Census, 1772, 1780, 1788.
Atwood, 21, 5.
Ibid., 65.
Thornton, Africa and the Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 289.
CO 71/9, Governor Orde to Lord Sydney; CO 71/10, Orde to Sydney, 16
April 1786; CO 71/57–CO 71/60.
211MIOM/59. FR ANOM COL C8A 76 FO 140, Governor Shirley to Governor
Bouille.
Hall, Slave Society, 127–30.
CO 71/9, Alex Ross to Orde, 18 January 1791.
CO 101/2, Hillsborough to The Earl of Shelburne, 2 February 1768.
CO 101/2, Melville to the Lord Commissioner for Trade and Plantations,
13 September 1765 and 16 January 1767; CO 101/4, Melville to the Earl of
Hillsborough, 16 December 1770 and 3 December 1770.
CO 101/1 Rufane to the Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, 2 May
1763.
CO 152/48, Vice Admiral Pye to Mr Stephan, 16 May 1768.
Deed Book XI, Hillary Rowe Jurr to Barbados, 20 September 1768.
CO 73/1, The Council and Assembly to the Southern Caribbee Islands of
Grenada, the Grenadines, Dominica, Saint Vincent, and Tobago, 29 June
1769.
CO 73/1, The Council and Assembly to the Southern Caribbee Islands of
Grenada, the Grenadines, Dominica, Saint Vincent, and Tobago, 29 June
1769.
“Voyages”.
Lovejoy, 85.
Alogoa, 372.
Maroon Emancipationists
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
53
Nwokeji, 2.
Lovejoy, 85.
“Voyages”.
Office of Registry of Colonial Slaves and Slave Compensation Commission:
Records.
Chambers, “Tracing Igbo into the African Diaspora”, 59.
O’Malley, 373.
Ibid.
Nwokeji, 22.
Hall, G., “The Igbo”.
Williams, 38.
Bell, 150.
Walker, 23–24.
McDaniel, 32.
Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 255.
Green, “The Dirt”.
Chambers, Murder at Montpelier, 62.
Green, “The Dirt”.
Ohadike, xxxiv.
Thompson, Flight to Freedom, 109.
Amadiume, 16.
Falola.
Chuku, 46.
Ibid., 46–48
Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 108–9.
Thornton, The Kingdom, 42.
Public Advertiser (London, England), 6 February 1786.
CO 71/49, Governor Ainslie to Bathurst, 21 March 1814.
Atwood, 227.
CO 71/10, Orde to Sydney, 13 June 1786; CO 71/49 “List of Maroons Killed
& Pardoned . . .”, 18 October 1814.
CO 71/32, Minutes at Privy Council, 22 February 1800; CO 71/29,
Memorandum in the Council Chamber, 9 December 1794.
CO 71/10, Garret to Orde, 22 March 1786.
Book of Acts 1772–1778, “An Act for Suppressing Slaves . . .”, 24 August
1773; Also in CO 73/6, “An Act for Suppressing Runaways Slaves . . .”, 23
August 1773.
Ibid.
Atwood, 147.
Ibid.
Du Chilleau, Correspondance.
“Voyages”.
CO 71/13, Dominica’s Census, 1772, 1780, 1788.
CO 71/10, The Humble Address and Petition of the Council of Assembly
by Alex Stewart, 1786.
54
Neil C. Vaz
67.
68.
69.
Atwood, 228–30.
Horne, 22.
CO 71/9, “Ports of Roseau, Dominica. An Account of Goods Imported into
the Island . . .”, 10 January 1784 to 10 January 1785.
Public Advertiser (London, England), 6 February 1786.
Pennsylvania Packet (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 28 February 1786.
CO 71/9, 20 September 1784.
Public Advertiser, 6 February 1786; CO 71/9, Letter from an Assembly
Meeting, 27 September 1784.
CO 71/9, Letter from John Trotter, 20 October 1784.
Ibid.
Public Advertiser, 6 February 1786.
CO 71/9, Letter to Governor Orde, 2 June 1785.
Public Advertiser, 6 February 1786.
CO 71/9, The Council, 24 August 1785.
Public Advertiser, 21 February 1786.
“The Mandinka-English Dictionary”.
Diouf, 146.
Royal Gazette (Bermuda), 18 March 1786.
Public Advertiser, 21 February 1786.
Public Advertiser, 6 February 1786.
Ohadike, xxxiv.
Public Advertiser, 6 February 1786.
Ibid.
Public Advertiser, 7 February 1786.
Pennsylvania Packet, 28 February 1786.
Royal Gazette, 18 March 1786.
Ibid.
Royal Gazette, Captain John Marshall’s account, 25 March 1786.
Pennsylvania Packet, An Account by John Egan, 17 June 1786.
CO 71/10, Orde to Sydney, 16 April 1786.
Ibid.
Atwood, 250–1.
CO 71/10, Orde to Sydney, 13 June 1786.
CO 71/31, Minutes of the House of Assembly Meeting by Thomas Beech,
18 July 1799.
CO 71/31, Minutes of the House of Assembly Meeting by Thomas Beech,
18 July 1799; CO 71/10, Orde to Sydney, 16 April 1786; CO 71/15, Minutes
at a Privy Council Meeting, 22 February 1788.
CO 71/12, Letter, September 1787.
Craton, 180.
CO 71/17, Visc. De Demas to Lt. Governor Bruce and the response, 15 June
1790 and 16 June 1790.
Craton, 225.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
Maroon Emancipationists
55
105. CO 71/19, Examination of Charles the Driver, Jack Sailor, New Tim, John
Baptiste, 18 January 1791.
106. CO 71/9, Examination of New Tim, 18 January 1791.
107. CO 71/9, Examination of Charles the Driver, 18 January 1791.
108. CO 71/9, Examination of New Tim, 18 January 1791.
109. CO 71/20, Examination of Polinaire, 7 February 1791.
110. Ibid.
111. CO 71/27, Minutes at the House of Assembly Meeting, 15 October 1794.
112. CO 71/20, Letter from Gray, 16 February 1791.
113. CO 71/21, Orde to Henry Dundas, 7 November 1791.
114. CO 71/22, Orde to the Government House, 21 December 1791.
115. CO 71/24, Minutes at a Meeting of His Majesty’s Privy Council, 27 March
1793.
116. Dubois, Avengers, 162–3.
117. Lehning, 79.
118. CO 71/26, John Trotter to Bruce, 27 May 1794.
119. Ibid.
120. CO 71/27, Joseph Durand to Pharcelle, 9 October 1794.
121. CO 71/27, Minutes from the House of Assembly Meeting, 15 October 1794.
122. CO 71/29, Memorandum in the Council Chamber, 9 December 1794.
123. Gott, 110.
124. Craton, 212–3.
125. Dubois, “The Price of Liberty”, 364, 367.
126. Buckley, viii.
127. CO 73/2 (An Act for banishing a Sundry of Runaways . . .) 9 December
1800.
128. Carrington, 196.
129. Ibid.
130. “Voyages”.
131. CO 71/41, George Metcalf to Lord Castlereagh, 17 June 1807.
132. CO 71/38, “Account of Negroes Imported and Exported from 1788 to
December 1804, 27 December 1804.
133. CO 71/46, Letter to Earl of Lavenport, 5 February 1811.
134. CO 71/50, A deposition “Before the Honorable Archibald Globster Chief
Judge . . .”, 12 October 1814.
135. CO 71/50, John Laidlaw to Ainslie, 20 June 1814.
136. CO 71/49, Deposition of Alexander Robinson, 7 June 1814.
137. CO 71/49, Bruce to the Government House, 10 July 1812.
138. CO 71/50, “An Account of Slaves tried by courts . . .”, 24 August 1815.
139. CO 71/49, Proclamation by Governor Ainslie, 10 May 1813.
140. Honychurch, Negre Mawon, 226.
141. Pattullo, 59.
142. Ibid.
143. Ibid., 49.
56
Neil C. Vaz
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
CO 71/50, Letter from Ainslie, 5 September 1815.
Pattullo, 62.
CO 71/50, “An Account of Slaves tried . . .”, 24 August 1815.
Obi, 139.
CO 71/49, Deposition of John Charrurier, 7 June 1814.
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