Jamaica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 220

barracks and forts on the edges of their territory and organized a military expedition against them with
the purpose of wiping them out for good. Such was the skill of the Maroons, however, in guerrilla war-
fare and in exploiting their knowledge of the Maroon mountains, that the government forces, in spite of
the employment of Blackshot troops and of two hundred Mosquito Indians specially brought to the island
by sloop from the coasts of Nicaragua, met with reverse after reverse. They narrowly escaped annihil-
ation, and in the end were forced to withdraw with heavy losses. There was nothing for it but to come
to terms with them. Dallas describes in detail how the enemies met. The Redcoats halted at the foot of
the Maroon mountains, and a Doctor Russel was sent forward to parley. He shouted an offer of peace
towards the wooded slopes, knowing that hundreds of invisible Maroons were hiding, with their mus-
kets cocked, under the leaves of the overhanging ledges. Two wary Negroes emerged, and when they
were sure of the peaceful intentions of the enemy, called back to their leader in the Koromantee tongue.
The undergrowth became alive with black warriors, and the doctor and old Cudjoe, the Maroon chief,
advanced towards each other. Dr. Russel held out his hand in friendship, and Old Cudjoe seized it and
kissed it. As a further sign of concord, they exchanged hats. A faded etching on the frontispiece of Dal-
las's book commemorates the incident: under an indeterminate tropical tree, Old Cudjoe, a short, stout
Negro with a wild aspect and a hump, dressed in campaigning rags and armed with a musket, a powder
horn, a pouch of slugs and a cutlass, has already put on the Doctor's cocked hat with its enormous cock-
ade. The Doctor, in a modish full-tailed coat, white breeches, stockings, and buckled pumps, a rapier at
his side and the curls of his wig impeccably powdered, is reaching forward for the hat in Cudjoe's hand,
which looks like a battered pudding-basin…. Cudjoe called up his chief followers, the Captains Accom-
pong, Johnny, Cuffee and Quacko. Colonel Guthrie approached with his staff, and a general embracing
and exchange of hats took place between the Maroon and the British officers. A treaty was signed under
a cotton tree in Trelawny Town: 'Whereas peace and friendship among mankind, and the preventing the
effusion of blood,' it ran, 'is agreeable to God, consonant to reason, and desired by every good man, and
whereas His Majesty George the Second, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland and of Jamaica, Lord,
Defender of the Faith, etc., has by his letters patent … granted full power and authority to John Guthrie
and Francis Sadler, esquires, to negotiate and finally conclude a treaty of peace and friendship with the
aforesaid Captain Cudjoe and the rest of his captains, adherents and others of his men, we….' The terms
were that all hostilities should cease for ever. The Maroons were granted their freedom and the fifteen
hundred acres [4] lying between Trelawny Town and the Cockpit Country were ceded to them and their
posterity in perpetuity. All runaways must be sent back, and the Maroons swore to be allies of the King
in the case of internal rebellion or invasion from without. The succession to the chieftainship was laid
down. The administration of justice, except for cases involving the death penalty, was left in the hands of
the Maroon leader, and a white representative or adviser—a sort of ambassador—was to reside perman-
ently in the Maroon capitals of Trelawny (or Maroon Town, of which several are dotted about the island)
and Accompong. Harmony was general. The whole affair was a great triumph for the Maroons. It was
virtually the creation of a vassal, almost a sovereign state, within the colony.
All went well for nearly seventy years, and the contract was punctiliously held on both sides. But in
1795 the Trelawny Maroons worked themselves into a state of faction over two issues: the replacement
of their resident white representative (who had become a great favourite of the Maroons; a cheerful, hard-
drinking swash-buckling fellow called James) by a sober-minded and unsympathetic successor; and the
public flogging of two delinquent Maroons in Montego Bay at the hand of a slave of the Magistracy. All
attempts at conciliation failed, a deputation of Maroon leaders were arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned