Black people -- Jamaica; Jamaica; Slavery -- Jamaica
And those who were left behind? The Maroons probably came down and
butchered them, but one man certainly told them of the peace made with
Cudjoe's Maroons in the west. It seemed to them hardly likely, but they
debated whether they should spare his life and send him to the Governor
an emissary, to say that they too would like to come in on the same
terms. Poor soldier of the eighteenth century, whose name even we do not
know. Quao and his leading men were rather in favour of sending him.
But the soldier's evil star was in the ascendant. There arose an Obeah
woman, and she declared that the powers of darkness demanded the life of
the white man who had fallen into their hands, and they struck off his
head with a machete.
Again the Government decided this was an enemy who were too strong for
them, and three months later Captain Adair went out with another party,
not to fight but to make peace. By the purest accident they captured
a horn-man, and him they told of the offer, dealing with him gently,
probably greatly to his surprise. And from him they heard how the
Maroons had discussed the news told by the luckless soldier. Since by
a miracle it was true, he agreed gladly to lead the soldiers to their
town, only impressing upon them how impossible it would be to take it
by force. Captain Adair gave himself up to the guidance of the horn-man.
And the story of Cudjoe and the Western Maroons was repeated, only
Captain Adair had not so great a difficulty in convincing the savage
warriors of his good intention. The massacred soldier had helped him
greatly there.
“After some parley they agreed to exchange a captain for the purposes of
settling preliminaries.”
That savage leader must have been an artist. There was a touch of true
drama in the way he staged the scene. No sooner had these things been
agreed upon than the Maroons, each with a stroke of his machete, cleared
more than an acre of light brushwood on the side of the mountain and so
exposed to the view of the soldiers the whole body of savage warriors
ranged on the slope in order of battle.
Standing thus, the two parties came to an agreement, and not till that
was done were the soldiers allowed to enter the town with their drums
beating.
The horn-man was right. It would have been wellnigh impossible to take
that town, for as they climbed up one steep hill and down another they
noted the holes dug to cover the defenders, and the crossed sticks for
resting the guns with which they had enfiladed every angle, that from
the steepness it was necessary to make in ascending.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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