Page 9 - The Maroon- Patricia Reid

While the Maroons' large acreages of land were ideal to fight guerilla or bush warfare, when hostilities

ceased and the economic race for sugar production and sale began, the Maroons discovered they could not

compete; therefore, they became permanently and acutely marginalized.

Today the Maroons are languishing in a “lack of economic well-being” while clutching on to the thoughts

of a valiant past for comfort and clinging close to virtually useless non-productive lands as evidentiary

assurance of days long ago when the glory of freedom and independence seemed to have been within their

grasp. At least, back then that is what the Maroons would have thought as the passage of time consolidated

their defence mechanism of denial, in which they rigorously crushed, for a fee from the white planters,

every attempt by non-Maroons in their fight also for their freedom.

The Maroons put down the Coromante Tacky Rebellion 1760 in the parish of St Mary. The shot and killed

Tacky, beheaded him, pulled out his heart and entrails which they roasted in a ceremonial feast and ate.

They walked with Tacky's head from St Mary through various communities blowing the Abeng and the

Fiffe all the way to Spanish Town to collect reward money from the British governor.