Black Rebellion | Page 8

utterly refusing, on grounds of conscience, to
forsake polygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to listen to the
doctrinal discourses of their pastor, who was an ardent Sandemanian.
They smoked their pipes during service time, and left Old Montagu,
who still survived, to lend a vicarious attention to the sermon. One
discourse he briefly reported as follows, very much to the point:
"Massa parson say no mus tief, no mus meddle wid somebody wife, no
mus quarrel, mus set down softly." So they sat down very softly, and
showed an extreme unwillingness to get up again. But, not being
naturally an idle race,--at least, in Jamaica the objection lay rather on
the other side,--they soon grew tired of this inaction. Distrustful of
those about them, suspicious of all attempts to scatter them among the
community at large, frozen by the climate, and constantly petitioning

for removal to a milder one, they finally wearied out all patience. A
long dispute ensued between the authorities of Nova Scotia and
Jamaica, as to which was properly responsible for their support; and
thus the heroic race, that for a century and a half had sustained
themselves in freedom in Jamaica, were reduced to the position of
troublesome and impracticable paupers, shuttlecocks between two
selfish parishes. So passed their unfortunate lives, until, in 1800, their
reduced population was transported to Sierra Leone, at a cost of six
thousand pounds; since which they disappear from history.
It was judged best not to interfere with those bodies of Maroons which
had kept aloof from the late outbreak, at the Accompong settlement,
and elsewhere. They continued to preserve a qualified independence,
and retain it even now. In 1835, two years after the abolition of slavery
in Jamaica, there were reported sixty families of Maroons as residing at
Accompong Town, eighty families at Moore Town, one hundred and
ten families at Charles Town, and twenty families at Scott Hall, making
two hundred and seventy families in all,--each station being, as of old,
under the charge of a superintendent. But there can be little doubt, that,
under the influences of freedom, they are rapidly intermingling with the
mass of colored population in Jamaica.
The story of the exiled Maroons attracted attention in high quarters, in
its time: the wrongs done to them were denounced in Parliament by
Sheridan, and mourned by Wilberforce; while the employment of
bloodhounds against them was vindicated by Dundas, and the whole
conduct of the Colonial Government defended, through thick and thin,
by Bryan Edwards. This thorough partisan even had the assurance to
tell Mr. Wilberforce, in Parliament, that he knew the Maroons, from
personal knowledge, to be cannibals, and that, if a missionary were sent
among them in Nova Scotia, they would immediately eat him; a charge
so absurd that he did not venture to repeat it in his History of the West
Indies, though his injustice to the Maroons is even there so glaring as to
provoke the indignation of the more moderate Dallas. But, in spite of
Mr. Edwards, the public indignation ran quite high in England, against
the bloodhounds and their employers, so that the home ministry found
it necessary to send a severe reproof to the Colonial Government. For a
few years the tales of the Maroons thus emerged from mere colonial
annals, and found their way into annual registers and parliamentary

debates; but they have long since vanished from popular memory.
Their record still retains its interest, however, as that of one of the
heroic races of the world; and all the more, because it is with their
kindred that the American nation has to deal, in solving one of the most
momentous problems of its future career.

THE MAROONS OF SURINAM.
When that eccentric individual, Capt. John Gabriel Stedman, resigned
his commission in the English Navy, took the oath of abjuration, and
was appointed ensign in the Scots brigade employed for two centuries
by Holland, he little knew that "their High Mightinesses the States of
the United Provinces" would send him out, within a year, to the forests
of Guiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year
1773 would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country,
wading through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with
his feet for submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and
commanded by an insufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and
fed upon by mosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and
shot at by those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for,
never seen," the Maroons of Surinam.
Yet, as our young ensign sailed up the Surinam River, the world of
tropic beauty came upon him with enchantment. Dark, moist verdure
was close around him, rippling waters below; the tall trees of the jungle
and the low mangroves