Every Day Is Special: Maroons

Showing posts with label Maroons. Show all posts

January 6 – Maroon Day in Jamaica

Posted on January 6, 2018

Did you know that Africans brought to Jamaica as slaves, and enslaved Jamaicans with African ancestors, sometimes escaped and fled to the interior mountains of the island. So many people escaped from slavery that refugee communities sprang up.

These people were called Maroons.

First Spanish and later English people enslaved Africans in order to create sugar cane plantations on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. But so many revolts among the enslaved people occurred, sometimes helped by Maroons, that sugar cane production became less and less profitable.

There were even Maroon Wars. The British government would send troops into the interior to recapture the Maroons - or at least control them - but the Maroons were able to fight them off. The British government ended up making treaties with the Maroons, granting them land and promising to respect their independence.

I think that the fact that around 600 Maroons were deported to a British colony in chilly Nova Scotia, and later more Maroons were deported to Freetown in Sierra Leone, Africa, means that the British broke their own treaty! Don't get me wrong - these Maroons remained free in Nova Scotia and in Africa - but a powerful government deporting people is NOT respecting the independence of those people.

The British ended up finally stopping the revolts by abolishing slavery in 1834.

Some Jamaicans identify with their Maroon heritage.

Captain Cudjoe

These days, some Jamaicans emphasize the importance of celebrating Maroons, including important individual Maroons like Captain Cudjoe and Queen Nanny, even though this isn't on the list of Jamaica's public or bank holidays. The reason Maroon Day is celebrated on January 6 is because it's supposed to be Cudjoe's birthday. BUT I also read that Cudjoe Day is celebrated on the first Monday of January - which this year was January 1. AND I also couldn't spot any indication that anyone knows what day Cudjoe was born - even his birth YEAR is given as "circa" - which means that we don't know exactly what year he was born, we just know that it was around 1690.

Queen Nanny is one of Jamaica's heroes...
As you can see from the fact that her likeness is on
the nation's currency!

Also on this date:

Anniversary of New Mexico's statehood

Mathematician Jacob Bernoulli's birthday

Archeologist Heinrich Schliemann's birthday

Birthday of French heroine Joan of Arc

Communications Inventions Day

Three Kings Day / Epiphany / Twelfth Night

Anniversary of opening of first Montessori school

National Technology Day

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

February holidays
February birthdays
Historical anniversaries in February

November 20 – National Day of Black Consciousness

Posted on November 20, 2016

Have you heard of Zumbi, King of the Quilombo dos Palmares?

Back in the late 1600s, Portuguese colonizers in Brazil had been enslaving African people for more than a century. But some African slaves had managed to escape from their bondage and got together in free settlements. These fugitives-from-the-law are also refugees-from-slavery, and they were called Maroons; the settlements they created were called quilombos.

The members of quilombos did several things to resist slavery:

They returned secretly to plantations and urged fellow former Africans to flee and join the quilombos.

They sabotaged the plantations.

They sometimes captured and brought to the quilombos enslaved people who didn't choose to join them; the people who were brought by force continued to be viewed as slaves until they were able to bring another member to the settlement, at which point they were considered free.

They tried to seize power from the Portuguese.

The area of Brazil that was called Quilombo dos Palmares was a region roughly the size of Portugal; at its height, there were about 30,000 people living there. However, they did not live in peace. The Portuguese settlers repeatedly attacked Palmares.

Zumbi was born free in Palmares in 1655. He was likely related to Kongo nobility. When he was about six years old, he was captured by some Portuguese people and given as a slave to a missionary. While living with the Portuguese, Zumbi learned Portuguese and Latin, and he learned about the Catholic religion. But when he was a teenager, he escaped and returned to his birthplace.

Zumbi became known as a strong, smart young man, someone who could come up with effective military strategies. He became king of Palmares.

Fifteen years after Zumbi became king, the Portuguese mounted a big-time attack on Palmares, and using artillery guns (cannons) the Portuguese were able to destroy the settlement. Zumbi was wounded in one leg but managed to escape capture. He continued the rebellion against the Portuguese for two years. He was betrayed by one of his former quilombo members, and on this date in 1695 he was captured and beheaded on the spot.

The Portuguese showed off Zumbi's head as a warning to other Maroons and Brazilians of African descent. Remnants of quilombo members continued to resist the Portuguese for another century! But Zumbi was the last of their kings.

Now Zumbi is seen as a national hero, a freedom fighter, a symbol of freedom and of the fight against slavery.

African cultural influences have been huge in Brazil. About 7% of today's Brazilians considers themselves black, and about 43% consider themselves “pardo,” brown, which is a multi-racial group. Together, the two groups are about half of all Brazilians.

African-Brazilian culture includes cuisine, music, dance, religion, and other traditions. Today is a great day to celebrate these influences.