Black people -- Jamaica; Jamaica; Slavery -- Jamaica
By noon he had collected 130 men, “white men and trusty blacks.” We do
not know the proportion of white men to “trusty blacks,” but we do know
that the white men were all imbued with the same awful fear, the fear
lest all the Koromantyns in the island, and there were thousands of
them, should revolt. These men Bayley led in pursuit of the rebels.
The wasteful savages had dissipated the advantage they had gained. They
might have held the whole colony up to ransom, but instead they were
actually found at Haywood Hall roasting an ox by the flames of the
buildings they had set on fire.
I should like to know more precise details, but Edwards only says the
whites attacked them with great fury, killed eight or nine on the spot,
took several prisoners and drove the rest into the woods. Here, of
course, sustenance could not be found for so large a party all at once,
and they were obliged to act wholly on the defensive. The ruling class
when they were thoroughly aroused had this in their favour, they had
some sort of discipline, the blacks had none. Sullenly enough they had
retired to the woods, and there Tacky the chief who had instituted the
revolt was killed by one of the parties which constantly harried the
wretched fugitives, and before long some died, some made good in the
recesses of the mountains and the rest were taken.
But before they were conquered the revolt had spread across the island
to Westmoreland.
“In St Mary,” writes Bridges, “they were repulsed, broken and
disheartened. In Westmoreland they were flushed with early victory;
murderous success crowned their first efforts; they beat off the
militia, increased their ranks to a thousand effective men, and after
a tedious struggle they could be subdued only by the exertions of a
regiment of regulars, the militia of the neighbouring parish and the
Maroons of the interior. The most cruel excesses that ever stained the
pages of history, marked the progress of these rebels; and the details
which would elucidate barbarity scarcely human, almost chills the warm
hope of civilisation ever reaching the bosoms in which ferocity is so
innate.”
Edwards takes some trouble to show us what the civilisation of the times
meant and what might be hoped from it. It was better to die than
be taken, for there was little to choose between black and white in
fiendish cruelty. The white gentleman ran the ignorant savage close.
“It was thought necessary,” says Edwards, “to make a few examples of
some of the most guilty. Of three who were clearly proved to have been
concerned in the murders at Ballard's Valley, one was condemned to be
burnt and the other two to be hung up alive in irons and left to perish
in that dreadful situation.”
There is in the Jamaican Institute a set of the irons used for such
a sentence. When found, they had the bones of a skeleton in them, the
skeleton of a woman!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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