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112-811: On the Island of Jamaica, the Maroon Council is the executive body with administrative powers and obligations for the Maroon communities. Maroon Council members are appointed by the Colonel-in-Chief (Colonel), while the Colonel is officially elected by the community as the Head of Government . Each Maroon Community ( Accompong , Nanny Town , Charles Town, Trelawny Town, and Scotts Hall) has its own independent Maroon Council with legislative authority. This Jamaica -related article

224-511: A palenque near Jaruco was an Indian from the Yucatán . In the 1810s, Ventura Sanchez, also known as Coba, was in charge of a palenque of several hundred maroons in the mountains not far from Santiago de Cuba . Sanchez was tricked into going to Santiago de Cuba, where he committed suicide rather than be captured and returned to slavery. The leadership of the palenque then passed to Manuel Grinan, also known as Gallo. The palenque of Bumba

336-687: A knighthood in 1581 which he received aboard his galleon the Golden Hind . Drake's circumnavigation inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish and in 1585, the Anglo-Spanish War began. Drake was in command of an expedition to the Americas that attacked Spanish shipping and ports. When Philip II sent the Spanish Armada to England in 1588 as a precursor to its invasion, Drake was second-in-command of

448-641: A pirate , known to them as El Draque ("The Dragon" in old Spanish). He died of dysentery after his failed assault on Panama in January 1596. Francis Drake was born at Crowndale Farm in Tavistock, Devon , England. His birth date is not formally recorded – such writers as E. F. Benson have claimed that he was born while the Six Articles of 1539 were in force, but British naval historian Julian Corbett , writing of William Camden 's account, on which this information

560-626: A prisoner exchange ; some remained in Europe while others returned to France. American marronage began in Spain's colony on the island of Hispaniola . Governor Nicolás de Ovando was already complaining of escaped slaves and their interactions with the Taíno Indians by 1503. The first slave rebellion occurred in Hispaniola on the sugar plantations owned by Admiral Diego Columbus , on 26 December 1522, and

672-456: A 1591 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts . On one side of the pendant is a state portrait of Elizabeth by the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard , on the other a sardonyx cameo of double portrait busts, a regal woman and an African male. The Drake Jewel is a rare documented survivor among sixteenth-century jewels; it is conserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum , London. Queen Elizabeth awarded Drake

784-497: A discreet site at which the crew could prepare for the journey back to England. The northernmost extent of this leg of the expedition has been the subject of much scholarly debate, but most sources agree that Drake reached a latitude of at least 48° north before turning back and heading south. On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at what is now South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon , and then sailed southward. On 17 June, Drake and his crew found

896-975: A few occasions, they also joined the Taíno settlements, who had escaped the Spanish in the 17th century. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, there were a large number of maroons living in the Bahoruco mountains . In 1702, a French expedition against them killed three maroons and captured 11, but over 30 evaded capture, and retreated further into the mountainous forests. Further expeditions were carried out against them with limited success, though they did succeed in capturing one of their leaders, Michel, in 1719. In subsequent expeditions, in 1728 and 1733, French forces captured 46 and 32 maroons respectively. No matter how many detachments were sent against these maroons, they continued to attract runaways. Expeditions in 1740, 1742, 1746, 1757 and 1761 had minor successes against these maroons, but failed to destroy their hideaways. In 1776–1777,

1008-483: A fortune in gold. (An account of this may have given rise to subsequent stories of pirates and buried treasure). Badly wounded, Le Testu was captured and beheaded. The small band of adventurers dragged as much gold and silver as they could carry back across some 18 miles (29 km) of jungle-covered mountains to where they had left the raiding boats. When they got to the coast, the boats were gone. Drake and his men, downhearted, exhausted and hungry, had nowhere to go and

1120-493: A joint French–Spanish expedition ventured into the border regions of the Bahoruco mountains, with the intention of destroying the maroon settlements there. However, the maroons had been alerted of their coming, and had abandoned their villages and caves, retreating further into the mountainous forests where they could not be found. The detachment eventually returned, unsuccessful and having lost many soldiers to illness and desertion. In

1232-617: A knighthood aboard Golden Hind in Deptford on 4 April 1581; the dubbing being performed by a French diplomat, Monsieur de Marchaumont, who was negotiating for Elizabeth to marry the King of France's brother, Francis, Duke of Anjou . By getting the French diplomat involved in the knighting, Elizabeth was gaining the implicit political support of the French for Drake's actions. During the Victorian era, in

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1344-463: A likely misspelling of cimarrón . The linguist Leo Spitzer , writing in the journal Language , says, "If there is a connection between Eng. maroon , Fr. marron , and Sp. cimarrón , Spain (or Spanish America) probably gave the word directly to England (or English America)." Alternatively, the Cuban philologist José Juan Arrom has traced the origins of the word maroon further than

1456-402: A more general sense of being abandoned without resources, entered English around the 1590s, from the French adjective marron , meaning 'feral' or 'fugitive'. Despite the same spelling, the meaning of 'reddish brown' for maroon did not appear until the late 1700s, perhaps influenced by the idea of maroon peoples. The American Spanish word cimarrón is also often given as the source of

1568-476: A protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California. While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion . To document and assert his claim, Drake posted an engraved plate of brass to claim sovereignty for Elizabeth and every successive English monarch. After erecting a fort and tents ashore, the crew laboured for several weeks as they prepared for

1680-672: A quoit of Spanish gold from his clothes and said, "Our voyage is made." By the second week of August 1573, he had returned to Plymouth. It was during this expedition that on 11 February Drake and his lieutenant John Oxenham climbed a high tree in the central mountains of the Isthmus of Panama and thus became the first Englishmen to see the Pacific Ocean , mirroring the achievement of the Spaniard Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513. The Cimarróns had cut steps into its trunk, on which Drake and

1792-434: A short time later, and gave each one gifts appropriate to their rank, as well as a letter of safe conduct . Drake continued north, raiding more Spanish settlements and ships as he went. His last stop in this phase of the voyage was in the town of Guatulco, where he and his crew stayed from 13 to 16 April, looting provisions and other materials. From here, Drake began to consider how best to return to England. One possibility

1904-604: A sixth ship, Mary (formerly Santa María ), a Portuguese merchant ship that had been captured off the coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands . He also kidnapped its captain, Nuno da Silva , a man with considerable experience navigating in South American waters. Drake's fleet suffered great attrition; he scuttled both Christopher and the flyboat Swan due to loss of men on the Atlantic crossing. He made landfall at

2016-459: A small share of the profits. Based on this association, scholar Kris Lane lists Drake as one of the first English slave traders. The Spanish and Portuguese were aggrieved that the English had entered into the slave trade and were selling slaves to their colonies despite being forbidden from doing so. Queen Elizabeth I, under pressure to avoid an armed conflict, forbade Hawkins from going to sea for

2128-430: A spirit of nationalism, the story was promoted that Elizabeth I had done the knighting. After receiving his knighthood Drake unilaterally adopted the coat of arms of the ancient Devon family of Drake of Ash, to whom he claimed a distant but unspecified kinship. The right to use the arms was disputed in court so Queen Elizabeth awarded Drake his own coat of arms. Drake's heraldic achievement and coat of arms contains

2240-682: A third slave voyage. In response, he set up a slave voyage with a relative, John Lovell , in command in 1566. Drake accompanied Lovell on this voyage. The voyage was unsuccessful, as more than 90 enslaved Africans were released without payment. In 1567, Drake accompanied Hawkins on their next and last joint voyage. The crew attempted to capture slaves around Cape Verde , but failed. Hawkins allied himself with two local kings in Sierra Leone who asked for help against their enemies in exchange for half of any captives they took. Attacking from both sides, they took several hundred prisoners, though Kelsey says

2352-525: A trial in England. The main pieces of evidence against Doughty were the testimony of the ship's carpenter, Edward Bright, who after the trial was promoted to master of the ship Marigold , and Doughty's admission of telling Lord Burghley , a vocal opponent of agitating the Spanish, of the intent of the voyage. Drake consented to his request of Communion and dined with him, of which Francis Fletcher had this account: And after this holy repast, they dined also at

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2464-572: Is Saramaccan . At other times, the maroons would adopt variations of a local European language ( creolization ) as a common tongue, for members of the community frequently spoke a variety of mother tongues. The maroons created their own independent communities, which in some cases have survived for centuries, and until recently remained separate from mainstream society. In the 19th and 20th centuries, maroon communities began to disappear as forests were razed, although some countries, such as Guyana and Suriname, still have large maroon populations living in

2576-588: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Maroon (people) Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas and Islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery , through flight or manumission , and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with Indigenous peoples , eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos . Maroon , which can have

2688-528: Is based, writes that "As a slip of memory, too, we must put down his difficult assertion that Edmund Drake was driven from Devonshire during a persecution under the Six Articles Act of 1539 ." His birth date is estimated from the wording of texts in contemporary sources such as: "Drake was two and twenty when he obtained the command of the Judith " (1566). This would date his birth to 1544. A date of c. 1540

2800-806: Is some anecdotal evidence to support Drake serving as a common seaman on the first two voyages, and good evidence of his presence for the last two of four slaving voyages made by Hawkins' ships between 1562 and 1569. In 1562, Hawkins sailed to the coast of the Sierra Leone, seized Portuguese slave ships, and sold the Africans in the Spanish Indies. It was highly profitable, so for his second slave voyage in 1564, Hawkins gained Queen Elizabeth I's support. She lent him one of her ships, Jesus of Lübeck , which served as his flagship. Hawkins attacked an African native town and sold many of its inhabitants in Spanish ports on

2912-519: Is suggested from two portraits: one a miniature , painted by Nicholas Hilliard in 1581, when he was allegedly 42, which would place his birth c. 1539, while the other, painted in 1594 when he was said to be 52, would give a birth year of c. 1541. He was the eldest of the twelve sons of Edmund Drake (1518–1585), a Protestant farmer, and his wife, Mary Mylwaye. The first son was said to have been named after his godfather , Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford . Due to religious persecution during

3024-495: The Colony of Jamaica , Edward Trelawny , signed treaties promising them 2,500 acres (1,012 ha) in two locations, at Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town) in western Jamaica and Crawford's Town in eastern Jamaica, to bring an end to the warfare between the communities. In exchange, they were to agree to capture other escaped slaves. They were initially paid a bounty of two dollars for each African returned. The treaties effectively freed

3136-655: The Haitian Revolution . A statue called the Le Nègre Marron or the Nèg Mawon is an iconic bronze bust that was erected in the heart of Port-au-Prince to commemorate the role of maroons in Haitian independence. People who escaped from slavery during the Spanish occupation of the island of Jamaica fled to the interior and joined the Taíno living there, forming refugee communities. Later, many of them gained freedom during

3248-621: The Isthmus of Panama , known to the Spanish as part of Tierra Firme and to the English as part of the Spanish Main . This was the point at which the silver and gold treasure of Peru had to be brought ashore and transported overland to the Caribbean Sea , where galleons from Spain would take it aboard at the town of Nombre de Dios . Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572, with a crew of 73 men in two small vessels, Pascha (70 tons) and Swan (25 tons), to capture Nombre de Dios. Drake's first raid

3360-613: The Marronage ( lit.   ' running away ' ) took place along the river borders and sometimes across the borders of French Guiana . By 1740, the maroons had formed clans and felt strong enough to challenge the Dutch colonists, forcing them to sign peace treaties. On October 10, 1760, the Ndyuka signed such a treaty, drafted by Adyáko Benti Basiton of Boston , a formerly enslaved African from Jamaica who had learned to read and write and knew about

3472-545: The New World , as early as 1512, African slaves escaped from Spanish captors and either joined indigenous peoples or eked out a living on their own. The first slave rebellion occurred in present day Dominican Republic on the sugar plantations owned by Admiral Diego Columbus , on 26 December 1522, and was brutally crushed by the Admiral. The first maroon communities of the Americas were established following this revolt, as many of

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3584-661: The Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549, the Drake family fled from Devon to Kent . There Drake's father obtained an appointment to minister to the men in the King's Navy. He was ordained deacon and was made vicar of Upchurch Church on the Medway . At an early age, Drake was placed into the household of a relative, sea-captain William Hawkins of Plymouth, and began his seagoing training as an apprentice on Hawkins' boats. By 18, he

3696-768: The Semana de la Cultura (Week of Culture) celebrate the town's founding in 1607. Similar maroon communities developed on islands across the Caribbean, such as those of the Garifuna people on Saint Vincent . Many of the Garifuna were deported to the American mainland, where some eventually settled along the Mosquito Coast or in Belize . From their original landing place in Roatan Island off

3808-613: The Viñales Valley related to runaway African slaves or maroons of the early 19th century; the material evidence of their presence is found in caves of the region, where groups settled for various lengths of time. Oral tradition tells that maroons took refuge on the slopes of the mogotes and in the caves; the Viñales Municipal Museum has archaeological exhibits that depict the life of runaway slaves, as deduced through archeological research. Cultural traditions reenacted during

3920-614: The southern United States ; in deep canyons with sinkholes but little water or fertile soil in Jamaica; and in deep jungles of the Guianas . Maroon communities turned the severity of their environments to their advantage to hide and defend their communities. Disguised pathways, false trails, booby traps, underwater paths, quagmires and quicksand, and natural features were all used to conceal maroon villages. Maroons utilised exemplary guerrilla warfare skills to fight their European enemies. Nanny ,

4032-617: The 1790s, about 600 Jamaican Maroons were deported to British settlements in Nova Scotia , where American slaves who had escaped from the United States were also resettled. Being unhappy with conditions, in 1800, a majority emigrated to Freetown, West Africa where they identified as the Sierra Leone Creoles . In Cuba , escaped slaves joined refugee Taínos in the mountains to form maroon communities. In 1538, runaways helped

4144-542: The 18th century, Nanny Town and other Jamaican maroon villages began to fight for independent recognition. When runaway slaves and Amerindians banded together and subsisted independently they were called "maroons". On the Caribbean islands , they formed bands and on some islands, armed camps. Maroon communities faced great odds against their surviving the attacks by hostile colonists, obtaining food for subsistence living, as well as reproducing and increasing their numbers. As

4256-461: The 200 defenders and several hundred more men, women and children of Clan MacDonnell. Meanwhile, Drake was given the task of preventing any Gaelic Irish or Scottish reinforcements reaching the island. Therefore, the remaining leader of the Gaelic defence against English power, Sorley Boy MacDonnell , was forced to stay on the mainland. Essex wrote in his letter to Queen Elizabeth's secretary that following

4368-590: The Capture of Maroons reported that between 1797 and 1846, there were thousands of runaways living in these palenques . However, the eastern mountains harboured the longer lasting palenques , in particular those of Moa and Maluala, where the maroons thrived until the First War of Independence in 1868, when large numbers of maroons joined the Cuban Liberation Army. There are 28 identified archaeological sites in

4480-447: The Caribbean mainland, making another large profit for himself, the Queen and the consortium of investors from her court. Sources vary on the dates and the age of Drake at the time; Harry Kelsey says he was twenty years old, "[a]ccording to Howes" (in reference to the English chronicler Edmund Howes writing in 1615). Drake was not a member of that consortium, but the crew would have received

4592-524: The Cimarrón leader Pedro ascended to a platform at the top of the giant tree, where they were joined by Oxenham. The Englishmen vowed when they saw the Pacific Ocean that one day they would sail its waters – which Drake would do years later as part of his circumnavigation of the world. When Drake returned to Plymouth after the raids, the government signed a temporary truce with King Philip II of Spain and so

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4704-467: The Dutch settlers' Fort Frederick Hendryk ( Vieux Grand Port ) in an attempt to take over control of the island. They were all caught and decapitated. In February 1706 another revolt was organised by the remaining maroons as well as disgruntled slaves. When the Dutch abandoned Dutch Mauritius in 1710 the maroons stayed behind. When representatives of the French East India Company landed on

4816-522: The Earth, and his was the second such voyage arriving with at least one ship intact, after Elcano 's in 1520. Queen Elizabeth declared that all written accounts of Drake's voyages were to become the queen's secrets of the Realm, and Drake and the other participants of his voyages on the pain of death sworn to their secrecy; she intended to keep Drake's activities hidden from the eyes of rival Spain. Drake presented

4928-628: The English Nation of 1589) along the Chilean coast. In the Magellan Strait Francis and his men engaged in skirmishes with local indigenous people, becoming the first Europeans to kill indigenous peoples in southern Patagonia. During their stay in the strait, crew members discovered that an infusion made of the bark of Drimys winteri could be used as remedy against scurvy . Captain Wynter ordered

5040-458: The English fleet that fought against and repulsed the Spanish fleet. A year later he led the English Armada in a failed attempt to destroy the remaining Spanish fleet. Drake was a member of parliament (MP) for three constituencies: Camelford in 1581, Bossiney in 1584, and Plymouth in 1593. Drake's exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him

5152-603: The English word maroon , used to describe the runaway slave communities in Florida, in the Great Dismal Swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina, on colonial islands of the Caribbean, and in other parts of the New World . Linguist Lyle Campbell says the Spanish word cimarrón means 'wild, unruly' or 'runaway slave'. In the early 1570s, Sir Francis Drake 's raids on the Spanish in Panama were aided by " Symerons ,"

5264-608: The French colony of Saint Lucia , maroons and fugitive French Revolutionary Army soldiers formed the so-called [Armée Française dans les bois] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |translation= ( help ) , which comprised about 6,000 men who fought the First Brigand War against the British who had recently occupied the island. Led by the French Commissioner, Gaspard Goyrand, they succeeded in taking back control of most of

5376-453: The French to sack the city of Havana . In 1731, slaves rose up in revolt at the Cobre mines, and set up an independent community at Sierra del Cobre, which existed untroubled until 1781, when the self-freed population had increased to over 1,000. In 1781, the Spanish colonial authorities agreed to recognise the freedom of the people of this community. In 1797, one of the captured leaders of

5488-578: The Jamaican treaty. Remnants of Maroon communities in the former Spanish Caribbean remain as of 2006, for example in Viñales , Cuba, and Adjuntas , Puerto Rico. To this day, the Jamaican Maroons are to a significant extent autonomous and separate from Jamaican society. The physical isolation used to their advantage by their ancestors has today led to their communities remaining among the most inaccessible on

5600-425: The Maroons a century before the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 , which came into effect in 1838. In the plantation colony of Suriname , which England ceded to the Netherlands in the Treaty of Breda (1667) , escaped slaves revolted and started to build their villages from the end of the 17th century. As most of the plantations existed in the eastern part of the country, near the Commewijne River and Marowijne River ,

5712-448: The Moluccas and Spice Islands from there. At this time Diego died from wounds he had sustained earlier in the voyage; Golden Hind later became caught on a reef and was almost lost. Afterwards, the sailors waited three days for convenient tides and had dumped cargo. Befriending Sultan Babullah of Ternate in the Moluccas, Drake and his men became involved in some intrigues with the Portuguese there. He made multiple stops on his way toward

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5824-438: The Ndyuka and the modern Surinamese government, as it defines the territorial rights of the Maroons in the gold -rich inlands of Suriname. Slaves escaped frequently within the first generation of their arrival from Africa and often preserved their African languages and much of their culture and religion . African traditions included such things as the use of certain medicinal herbs together with special drums and dances when

5936-406: The Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports and pillaging towns. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake used their more accurate charts to inform his navigation. Before reaching the coast of Peru , Drake visited Mocha Island off the coast of what is now Chile, where he and his manservant Diego were seriously injured by hostile Mapuche who shot them with arrows. Later he sacked

6048-463: The Pacific coast, heading south-west to catch the winds that would carry his ship across the Pacific, and a few months later reached the Moluccas , a group of islands in the western Pacific, in eastern modern-day Indonesia . Harry Kelsey maintains, against scholarly consensus, that because of the contrary prevailing winds and currents, it is much more probable that Drake careened his ship on the shore of Magdalena Bay in Lower California , and sailed to

6160-474: The Pacific, making for the East Indies , and from there return to England by completing a circumnavigation of the world. In May, Drake's two ships passed the Baja California peninsula and continued north. Prior to Drake's voyage, the western coast of North America had only been partially explored in 1542 by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo who sailed for Spain. So, intending to avoid further conflict with Spain, Drake navigated north-west of Spanish presence and sought

6272-402: The Spaniards, and liberate the slaves. Roadways had become so open to attack, the Spaniards felt it was necessary to only navigate in groups. Dominican maroons would be present throughout the island until the mid 17th century. Sir Francis Drake enlisted several cimarrones during his raids on the Spanish. As early as 1655, escaped Africans had formed communities in inland Jamaica , and by

6384-403: The Spanish cimarrón , used first in Hispaniola to refer to feral cattle, then to Indian slaves who escaped to the hills, and by the early 1530s to African slaves who did the same. He proposes that the American Spanish word derives ultimately from the Arawakan root word simarabo , construed as 'fugitive', in the Arawakan language spoken by the Taíno people native to the island. In

6496-609: The Spanish is said to have started with the battle and its aftermath. The voyage of 1567–1569 was Drake's last association with slaving. In total, approximately 1,200 Africans were enslaved on these four voyages, and an estimated three times as many Africans were killed (based on the contemporaneous accounts of slavers). On the issue of slaving, scholar John Sugden writes that "Drake was in his twenties and did not question what his elders accepted", but must share some culpability for his participation. In 1572, Drake embarked on his first major independent enterprise. He planned an attack on

6608-468: The Spanish were not far behind. At this point, Drake rallied his men, buried the treasure on the beach, and built a raft to sail in a heavy swell with four men twelve miles along the coast to where they had left two pinnaces . When Drake finally reached them, his men were alarmed at his bedraggled appearance. Fearing the worst, they asked him how the raid had gone. Drake could not resist a joke and teased them by looking downhearted. Then he laughed, pulled

6720-507: The attack Sorley Boy "was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself and saying that he there lost all that he ever had." Following the success of the Panama isthmus raid, Drake's so-called "Famous Voyage" – an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas – was organized and financed by a private syndicate that included Francis Walsingham , Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester , John Hawkins, Christopher Hatton , and Drake himself. Drake acted on

6832-423: The barque to Drake. In 1562, the West African slave trade was a duopoly dominated by the Portuguese and the Spanish. Sir John Hawkins devised a plan to break into that trade, and enlisted the aid of colleagues and family to finance his first slave voyage. Drake was not part of that group of financiers, though his presence as one of hundreds of seamen on Hawkins's first two slaving voyages has been assumed. There

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6944-448: The circumnavigating voyage ahead by careening their ship, Golden Hind , to effectively clean and repair the hull. Drake had friendly interactions with the Coast Miwok and explored the surrounding land by foot. When his ship was ready for the return voyage, Drake and the crew left New Albion on 23 July and paused the journey the next day when anchoring the ship at the Farallon Islands where they hunted sea lions or seals. Drake left

7056-400: The coast of Honduras , the maroons moved to Trujillo . Gradually groups migrated south into the Miskito Kingdom and north into Belize. In Dominica , escaped slaves joined indigenous Kalinago in the island's densely forested interior to create maroon communities, which were constantly in conflict with the British colonial authorities throughout the period of formal chattel slavery. In

7168-413: The coastal plantations of Ponce . Maroon communities emerged in many places in the Caribbean ( St Vincent and Dominica , for example), but none were seen as such a great threat to the British as the Jamaican Maroons . Beginning in the late 17th century, Jamaican Maroons consistently fought British colonists, leading to the First Maroon War (1728–1740). In 1739 and 1740, the British governor of

7280-620: The collection of great amounts of bark – hence the scientific name. Historian Mateo Martinic , who examined records of Drake's travels, credits him with the discovery of the "southern end of the Americas and the oceanic space south of it". The first report of his discovery of an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego was written after the 1618 publication of the voyage of Willem Schouten and Jacob le Maire around Cape Horn in 1616. Drake pushed onwards in his lone flagship, now renamed Golden Hind in honour of Sir Christopher Hatton (after his coat of arms ). Golden Hind sailed north along

7392-751: The colonial system traded goods and services with them. Maroons also traded with isolated white settlers and Native American communities. Maroon communities played interest groups off of one another. At the same time, maroon communities were also used as pawns when colonial powers clashed. Absolute secrecy and loyalty of members were crucial to the survival of maroon communities. To ensure this loyalty, maroon communities used severe methods to protect against desertion and spies. New members were brought to communities by way of detours so they could not find their way back and served probationary periods, often as slaves. Crimes such as desertion and adultery were punishable by death. Under governor Adriaan van der Stel in 1642,

7504-429: The community as desertion and therefore punishable by death. They also originally raided plantations. During these attacks, the maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slavemasters, and invite other slaves to join their communities. Individual groups of maroons often allied themselves with the local indigenous tribes and occasionally assimilated into these populations. Maroons played an important role in

7616-415: The confusion surrounding the 1655 English Invasion of Jamaica . Some refugee slaves continued to join them through the decades until the abolition of slavery in 1838, but in the main, after the signing of the treaties of 1739 and 1740, the Maroons hunted runaway slaves in return for payment from the British colonial authorities. Francis Drake Sir Francis Drake ( c. 1540 – 28 January 1596)

7728-505: The crew of Minion in panic and fear cut the lines securing them to Jesus . Hawkins was among those who jumped from the flagship's bulwarks to Minion' s decks. Drake, by this time the captain of Judith , fled leaving Hawkins behind. Hawkins escaped on Minion and limped back to England with dozens of his men dying along the way, and arriving with a crew of just 15. Hundreds of English seamen were abandoned. After arriving back in England, Hawkins accused Drake of desertion and of stealing

7840-494: The early Dutch settlers of the Dutch East India Company brought 105 slaves from Madagascar and parts of Asia to work for them in Dutch Mauritius . However, 52 of these first slaves, including women, escaped in the wilderness of Dutch Mauritius . Only 18 of these escapees were caught. On 18 June 1695, a gang of maroons of Indonesian and Chinese origins, including Aaron d'Amboine, Antoni (Bamboes) and Paul de Batavia, as well as female escapees Anna du Bengale and Espérance, set fire to

7952-430: The end of 1785, terms were agreed, and the more than 100 maroons under Santiago's command stopped making incursions into French colonial territory. Other slave resistance efforts against the French plantation system were more direct. The maroon leader Mackandal led a movement to poison the drinking water of the plantation owners in the 1750s. Boukman declared war on the French plantation owners in 1791, setting off

8064-404: The famous Jamaican maroon, used guerrilla warfare tactics that are also used today by many militaries around the world. European troops used strict and established strategies while maroons attacked and retracted quickly, used ambush tactics, and fought when and where they wanted to. Even though colonial governments were in a perpetual state of conflict with the maroon communities, individuals in

8176-703: The fight against the Spanish Armada as a vice-admiral . At an early age, Drake was placed into the household of a relative, William Hawkins , a prominent sea captain in Plymouth . In 1572, he set sail on his first independent mission , privateering along the Spanish Main . Drake's circumnavigation began on 15 December 1577. He crossed the Pacific Ocean, until then an area of exclusive Spanish interest, and laid claim to New Albion , plundering coastal towns and ships for treasure and supplies as he went. He arrived back in England on 26 September 1580. Elizabeth I awarded Drake

8288-631: The forests. Recently, many of them moved to cities and towns as the process of urbanization accelerates. A typical maroon community in the early stage usually consists of three types of people. Maroonage was a constant threat to New World slavocracies . Punishments for recaptured maroons were severe, like removing the Achilles tendon , amputating a leg, castration , and being roasted to death. Maroon communities had to be inaccessible and located in inhospitable environments to be sustainable. For example, maroon communities were established in remote swamps in

8400-472: The gloomy bay of Puerto San Julián , in what is now Argentina . Ferdinand Magellan had called there half a century earlier, where he put to death some mutineers. Drake's men saw weathered and bleached skeletons on the Spanish gibbets . Following Magellan's example, Drake tried and executed his own "mutineer" Thomas Doughty . The crew discovered that Mary had rotting timbers, so they put the vessel ashore, stripped it, and abandoned it. Drake decided to remain

8512-476: The herbs are administered to a sick person. Other African healing traditions and rites have survived through the centuries. The jungles around the Caribbean Sea offered food, shelter, and isolation for the escaped slaves. Maroons sustained themselves by growing vegetables and hunting. Their survival depended upon their cultures, and their military abilities, using guerrilla tactics and heavily fortified dwellings involving traps and diversions. Some defined leaving

8624-640: The histories of Brazil , Suriname , Puerto Rico , Haiti , Dominican Republic , Cuba , and Jamaica . There is much variety among maroon cultural groups because of differences in history, geography, African nationality, and the culture of indigenous people throughout the Western Hemisphere . Maroon settlements often possessed a clannish, outsider identity. They sometimes developed Creole languages by mixing European tongues with their original African languages. One such maroon creole language , in Suriname,

8736-410: The island from the British, but on 26 May 1796, their forces defending the fort at Morne Fortune , about 2,000 men surrendered to a British division under the command of General John Moore. After the capitulation, over 2,500 French and Afro-Caribbean prisoners of war as well as ninety-nine women and children, were transported from St. Lucia to Portchester Castle . They were eventually sent to France in

8848-531: The island in 1715 they also had to face attacks by the Mauritian maroons. Significant events were the 1724 assault on a military outpost in Savannah district, as well as the attack on a military barrack in 1732 at Poste de Flacq. Several deaths resulted from such attacks. Soon after his arrival in 1735, Mahé de La Bourdonnais assembled and equipped French militia groups made of both civilians and soldiers to fight against

8960-517: The island. In their largest town, Accompong , in the parish of St Elizabeth , the Leeward Maroons still possess a vibrant community of about 600. Tours of the village are offered to foreigners and a large festival is put on every January 6 to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty with the British after the First Maroon War. The Ndyuka treaty remains important to relations between

9072-403: The kings kept "the larger share of slaves and dared Hawkins to do anything about it". Events worsened for the fleet as it faced storms, Spanish hostility, armed conflict, and finally a hurricane that separated one ship from the rest, and it had to find its own way home. The remaining ships were forced into the port of San Juan de Ulúa near Vera Cruz so they could make repairs. Soon afterward

9184-399: The maroons. In 1739, maroon leader Sans Souci was captured near Flacq and was burnt alive by the French settlers. A few years later, a group of French settlers gave chase to Barbe Blanche, another maroon leader, but lost track of him at Le Morne . Other maroons included Diamamouve and Madame Françoise. The most important maroons on Réunion were Cimendef, Cotte, Dimitile and Maffate. In

9296-417: The motto, Sic Parvis Magna , which means: "Great achievements from small beginnings". A hand coming out of the clouds is labelled Auxilio Divino , which means "By divine aid". Drake first became a member of parliament for the last session of the 4th Parliament of Elizabeth I , on 16 January 1581, for the constituency of Camelford . He did not actively participate at this point, and on 17 February 1581 he

9408-465: The mule trains that transported gold, silver and trade goods from Panama City. One of these men was Diego, who later became a free man after years of service under Drake. Among Drake's adventures along the Spanish Main, his capture of the Spanish silver train at Nombre de Dios on 1 April 1573 made him rich and famous. Near Cabo de Cativas he encountered a French privateer, Guillaume Le Testu , who

9520-470: The newly appointed viceroy of New Spain, Martín Enríquez de Almanza , arrived with a fleet of ships. While still negotiating to resupply and repair, Hawkins' ships were attacked by the Spanish ships in what became known as the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa . The battle ended in an English defeat with all but two of the English ships lost. The Spanish launched a fireship against Hawkins' flagship Jesus of Lübeck , and

9632-407: The plan authored by Sir Richard Grenville , who in 1574 had received a royal patent for that purpose; just a year later this patent had been rescinded after Elizabeth I learned of Grenville's intentions against the Spanish. Elizabeth likely invested in Drake's voyage to South America in 1577, but never issued him a formal commission. This would be the first circumnavigation in 58 years . Diego

9744-406: The planters began to fear a massive revolt of the black slaves. The early maroon communities were usually displaced. By 1700, maroons had disappeared from the smaller islands. Survival was always difficult, as the maroons had to fight off attackers as well as grow food. One of the most influential maroons was François Mackandal , a houngan or voodoo priest, who led a six-year rebellion against

9856-473: The planters took over more land for crops, the maroons began to lose ground on the small islands. Only on some of the larger islands were organised maroon communities able to thrive by growing crops and hunting. Here they grew in number as more slaves escaped from plantations and joined their bands. Seeking to separate themselves from colonisers, the maroons gained in power amid increasing hostilities. They raided and pillaged plantations and harassed planters until

9968-536: The port of Valparaíso further north in Chile, where he also captured a ship full of Chilean wine . Near Lima , Drake captured a Spanish ship with 25,000  pesos of Peruvian gold, amounting in value to 37,000  ducats of Spanish money (about £7m by modern standards). Drake also discovered news of another ship, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción , which was sailing west towards Manila . It would come to be called Cacafuego . Drake gave chase and eventually captured

10080-458: The queen with a jewel token commemorating the circumnavigation. Taken as a prize off the Pacific coast of Mexico, it was made of enamelled gold and bore an African diamond and a ship with an ebony hull. To show her gratitude the queen gave him the Drake Jewel , a valuable pendant surrounded by diamonds, rubies and pearls. It was an unusual gift to bestow upon a commoner, and one that Drake wore in

10192-471: The same table together, as cheerfully, in sobriety, as ever in their lives they had done aforetime, each cheering up the other, and taking their leave, by drinking each to other, as if some journey only had been in hand. Drake had Thomas Doughty beheaded on 2 July 1578. In January 1580, when Drake became stranded upon a reef off the Celebes Sea, the ship's chaplain, Francis Fletcher, in a sermon suggested that

10304-579: The slaves were able to escape. This was also to give rise to a wave of Dominican maroons who went on to lead the first maroon activities of the Americas. Sebastián Lemba , born in Africa, successfully rebelled against the Spaniards in 1532, and banded together with other Africans in his 15-year struggle against the Spanish colonists. Lemba was eventually joined by other maroons such as Juan Vaquero, Diego del Guzmán, Fernando Montoro, Juan Criollo and Diego del Campo in

10416-474: The strait and caused another, Elizabeth , captained by John Wynter , to return to England, leaving only Pelican . After this passage, Pelican was pushed south and discovered an island that Drake called Elizabeth Island . Drake, like navigators before him, probably reached a latitude of 55°S (according to astronomical data quoted in Richard Hakluyt 's The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of

10528-490: The struggle against slavery. As the maroons threatened Spanish commerce and trade, Spanish officials began to fear a maroon takeover of the island. By the 1540s, maroons had already controlled the interior portions of the island, although areas in the east, north, and western parts of the island were also to fall under maroon control. Maroon bands would venture out throughout the island, usually in large groups, attack villages they encountered, burn down plantations, kill and ransack

10640-481: The tip of Africa, eventually rounded the Cape of Good Hope , and reached Sierra Leone by 22 July 1580. On 26 September 1580, Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth with Drake and 59 remaining crew aboard, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasures. The queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year. Drake was hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate

10752-487: The trail, to within a mile of the city while the Cimarróns performed reconnaissance. The next morning, 1 April, they surprised the mule convoy and seized more than 200,000 pesos' worth of treasure. After their attack on the richly laden mule train, Drake and his party found that they had captured around 20 tons of silver and gold. They buried much of the treasure, as it was too much for their party to carry, and made off with

10864-447: The treasure ship, which proved his most profitable capture. Aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepción , Drake found 36 kilograms (80 lb) of gold, a golden crucifix , jewels , 13 chests of silver reals and 26,000 kilograms (26 long tons) of silver. Drake was naturally pleased at his good luck in capturing the galleon, and he showed it by dining with the captured ship's officers and gentleman passengers. He offloaded his captives

10976-432: The treasure they had accumulated. Drake denied both accusations asserting he had distributed all profits among the crew and that he had believed Hawkins was lost when he left. The bitter end of the fourth voyage turned Drake's life in a different direction: thereafter he would not pursue trading and slaving but would, instead, dedicate himself to attacking Spanish possessions wherever he found them. Drake's hostility towards

11088-489: The white plantation owners in Haiti that preceded the Haitian Revolution . In Cuba , there were maroon communities in the mountains, where African refugees had escaped the brutality of slavery and joined Taínos . Before roads were built into the mountains of Puerto Rico , heavy brush kept many escaped maroons hidden in the southwestern hills where many also intermarried with the natives. Escaped slaves sought refuge away from

11200-516: The winter in San Julián before attempting the Strait of Magellan . On his voyage to interfere with Spanish treasure fleets, Drake had several quarrels with his co-commander Thomas Doughty and on 3 June 1578, accused him of witchcraft and charged him with mutiny and treason in a shipboard trial. Drake claimed to have a (never presented) commission from the Queen to carry out such acts and denied Doughty

11312-534: The woes of the voyage were connected to the unjust demise of Doughty, Drake chained the clergyman to a hatch cover and pronounced him excommunicated. The three remaining ships of his convoy departed for the Magellan Strait at the southern tip of South America. A few weeks later in September 1578 Drake made it to the Pacific, but violent storms destroyed one of the three ships, Marigold (captained by John Thomas) in

11424-523: The years that followed, the maroons attacked a number of settlements, including Fond-Parisien, for food, weapons, gunpowder and women. It was on one of these excursions that one of the maroon leaders, Kebinda, who had been born in freedom in the mountains, was captured. He later died in captivity. In 1782, de Saint-Larry decided to offer peace terms to one of the maroon leaders, Santiago, granting them freedom in return for which they would hunt all further runaways and return them to their owners. Eventually, at

11536-590: Was a purser , according to the English chronicler Edmund Howes , and in the 1550s, Drake's father found the young man a position with the owner and master of a small barque , one of the small traders plying between the Medway River and the Dutch coast. Drake likely engaged in commerce along the coast of England, the Low Countries and France. The ship's master was so satisfied with the young Drake's conduct that, being unmarried and childless at his death, he bequeathed

11648-406: Was an English explorer and privateer best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580. This was the first English circumnavigation, and second circumnavigation overall. He is also known for participating in the early English slaving voyages of his cousin, Sir John Hawkins , and John Lovell . Having started as a simple seaman, in 1588 he was part of

11760-946: Was brutally crushed by the Admiral. Maroons joined the natives in their wars against the Spanish and hid with the rebel chieftain Enriquillo in the Bahoruco Mountains . When Archdeacon Alonso de Castro toured Hispaniola in 1542, he estimated the maroon population at 2,000–3,000 persons. The French encountered many forms of slave resistance during the 17th and 18th centuries, in Saint Domingue , which later came to be called Haiti . Formerly enslaved Africans who fled to remote mountainous areas were called marron ( French ) or mawon ( Haitian Creole ), meaning 'escaped slave'. The maroons formed close-knit communities that practised small-scale agriculture and hunting. They were known to return to plantations to free family members and friends. On

11872-557: Was granted leave of absence "for certain his necessary business in the service of Her Majesty". Drake became the Mayor of Plymouth in September 1581. During his tenure, he installed a compass in the town's Hoe , and passed a law regulating the local pilchard trade. During his term as lord mayor, Drake contracted to construct a leat , or canal, to bring water from the River Meavy , and to build six new gristmills on it from which he derived

11984-517: Was in command of the 80-ton warship Havre , and joined forces with him in a combined fleet. Drake had determined to intercept the mule train at the Campos River, two leagues from Nombre de Dios, and instructed the captains of his pinnaces to meet them at the Francisca River on 3 April to carry them off after the raid. The combined English and French raiding parties marched through the forest towards

12096-454: Was late in July 1572. Drake captured Nombre de Dios, but he was badly wounded when the Spanish arrived from Panama, and his forces had to retreat without the gold, silver, pearls and jewels stored in the royal treasury. Rather than sacking Nombre de Dios again, Drake raided Spanish galleons along the coast and with his Cimarrón (African slaves who had escaped from their Spanish owners) allies looted

12208-648: Was once again employed under Drake; his fluency in Spanish and English would make him a useful interpreter when Spaniards or Spanish-speaking Portuguese were captured. He was employed as Drake's servant and was paid wages like the rest of the crew. Drake and the fleet set out from Plymouth on 15 November 1577, but bad weather threatened him and his fleet. They were forced to take refuge in Falmouth, Cornwall , from where they returned to Plymouth for repair. After this major setback, Drake set sail again on 13 December aboard Pelican with four other ships and 164 men. He soon added

12320-447: Was so well organised that they even sent maroons in small boats to Jamaica and Santo Domingo to trade. In 1830, the Spanish colonial authorities carried out military expeditions against the palenques of Bumba and Maluala. Antonio de Leon eventually succeeded in destroying the palenque of Bumba. In the 1830s, palenques of maroon communities thrived in western Cuba, in particular the areas surrounding San Diego de Nunez. The Office of

12432-521: Was to sail back south, along the Spanish coast, and return to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Magellan (or possibly Cape Horn); this route was ruled out, however, to avoid the dangerous weather near the strait and presumed Spanish resistance all along the coast. This left two possible routes – continue north up the American coast, and return to the Atlantic by the rumored Strait of Anián ; or, sail across

12544-566: Was unable to acknowledge Drake's accomplishment officially. Drake was considered a hero in England and a pirate in Spain for his raids. Drake was present at the 1575 Rathlin Island massacre in Ireland. Sir John Norris (or Norreys ) and Drake, acting on the instructions of Sir Henry Sidney and the Earl of Essex , Robert Devereux, laid siege to Rathlin Castle . Despite its surrender, Norris' troops killed all

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