Page 8 - The Maroon- Patricia Reid

My dear mother once said to me when I was about 10 years old that, “... the truth does not need any help!” The clause

in the two Maroon peace treaties of 1739 and 1741, respectively, required a maximum of four white overseers to live

among the Maroons, but did not seem to ring alarm bells. Instead, it was ecstatically accepted by the Maroons how

seriously they were appreciated by the white plantocratic government and its people. Perhaps the Maroons never saw

that with all their unqualified cooporation with the slave system, the plantocracy did not really trust them and saw

them as mere pawns in a game of optimising advantages by the white slave masters.

The unfolding of time underlines the extent of Maroon trickery by their British “partners” to the peace treaty. And the

plot thickens as readers shall see. Under the 1739 and 1741 peace treaties with the British-controlled Government, the

Maroons were given large swathe, of mountainous, poor-quality lands as an inhertance in perpetuity — the corollary

of which was a gift of poverty in perpetuity. Even the rainfall in the Cockpit areas liberated phosphorous, calcium and

other minerals from the limestone rocks which flowed down to fertilise the alluvium plains below owned by the

British planters. The source of every river in Jamaica can be traced back to Maroon lands in the mountainous

backbone across the country.