US Maroon Settlements
Junious Ricardo Stanton
“Wherever Africans were enslaved in the world, there were runaways who escaped permanently and lived in free independent settlements. These people and their descendants are known as “maroons.” The term probably comes from the Spanish cimarrón, meaning feral livestock, fugitive slave or something wild and defiant. Marronage, the process of extricating oneself from slavery, took place all over Latin America and the Caribbean, in the slave islands of the Indian Ocean, in Angola and other parts of Africa. But until recently, the idea that maroons also existed in North America has been rejected by most historians.” Deep In The Swamps, Archeologists Are finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom by Richard Grant
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dee... We have been sharing how resilient and resourceful our African ancestors were as they grappled with enslavement and juxtaposing bondage with their desires for freedom. We’ve shared how they made their way north, to the territories, to Mexico and Florida. As little known as this history is, even less is known about the independent self-sustaining Maroon communities in the US. I discovered one in the Southeast Virginia, North Carolina border area. I have interest in this area because my father’s people are from Southampton County in Virginia where Nat Turner had his rebellion. My family lived on the other side of the county near Tucker Swamp.
Part of Nat Turner’s story is that when the white militia assembled and rallied against him and overpowered his forces, Turner fled into the woods and hid for a month or so. He was captured when he ventured out of hiding. There are a lot of wetlands in that area in Virginia and North Carolina.
One massive tract is called the Great Dismal Swamp. “On the border of Virginia and North Carolina stretches a great, dismal swamp. The Great Dismal Swamp, actually — that’s the name British colonists gave it centuries ago. The swamp covers about 190 square miles today, but at its peak, before parts of it were drained and developed, it was around ten times bigger, spanning roughly 2,000 square miles of Virginia and North Carolina. And it’s understandable why people called the swamp ‘dismal.’ Temperatures can reach over 100 degrees. It’s humid and soggy, filled with thorns and thickets, teeming with all sorts of dangerous and unpleasant wildlife. The panthers that used to live there are now gone, but even today there are black bears, poisonous snakes, and swarms of yellow flies and mosquitoes.
Unlike other runaways, some of whom headed to northern cities, maroons lived in the wilderness, often in difficult-to-reach places. They were determined to build their own self-ruled communities, with landscape and the forces of nature serving as a buffer between their new lives and the society that enslaved them. Over centuries, the swamp became home to thousands of self-sufficient maroons, and it also served as a stopping point for others who were fleeing North on the Underground Railroad. Maroon communities formed on little plots of high ground — islands of relatively dry earth that might cover twenty acres or more. Such islands could each house a few dozen maroons. And based on archaeological evidence, it appears that the maroons built elevated cabins that they lifted above the moist ground using wooden posts. They most likely cultivated rice and grain fields and participated in trade and cooperation with maroon communities on neighboring islands, but it’s hard to say for certain.” The Great Dismal Swamp
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/gre... The swampland provided a long history of refuge and sanctuary for enslaved Africans escaping the ravages of bondage. The environment was harsh but that also served as protection, few slave catchers would venture into the vast swamps. “From the 1760s until the Civil War, runaway slave ads in the Virginia and North Carolina newspapers often mentioned the Dismal Swamp as the likely destination, and there was persistent talk of permanent maroon settlements in the morass. British traveler J.F.D. Smyth, writing in 1784, gleaned this description: “Runaway negroes have resided in these places for twelve, twenty, or thirty years and upwards, subsisting themselves in the swamp upon corn, hogs, and fowls....[On higher ground] they have erected habitations, and cleared small fields around them.” Deep In The Swamps, Archeologists Are finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom by Richard Grant
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dee... Our ancestors created self sufficient sustaining settlements within the Dismal Swamp. They grew their own food, fished, hunted and fortified their areas to protect themselves from the intruders. The history of the Dismal Swamp Maroons is not well known because they left no written records of their settlements and whites are reticent to tell our stories of resistance against their slave system. Nevertheless whites knew of them but most were reluctant to enter or chase escaping Blacks into the area. “While it is unclear exactly how many maroons inhabited the Dismal Swamp during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, runaway slave advertisements, travel accounts, published personal narratives, and contemporary newspaper and magazine articles all suggest that individual runaways consistently sought freedom in the Great Dismal beginning in the latter portion of the eighteenth century until the Civil War. Although recent scholarly interest in the Dismal Swamp focuses on the commercial enterprises it once engendered, the history of the swamp’s main occupants and workers— African Americans—remains relatively unexplored. Even less known are the identities and everyday lives of maroons who worked and lived in the swamp alongside free and slave laborers.” Between Slavery and Freedom: African Americans in the Great Dismal Swamp 1776-1863 Edward Downing Maris-Wolf College of William & Mary - Arts & Science
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewconten... More of our ancestral history is coming to light. We owe it to ourselves to familiarize ourselves with it, study it and embrace it.
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Posted By: Junious Stanton
Friday, February 26th 2021 at 10:53AM
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