Accompong Maroon Land rights in Jamaica

[ajaguna]

The Accompong Maroon Peasantry

Accompong Town is situated in northern St. Elizabeth, in the deep-forested southern area of the precipitous karst Cockpit Country Mountains that straddle the adjoining parishes of St. Elizabeth, Trelawny, and St. James. The village, which has a voting population of around 3,000 persons (many of whom are dispersed in Bradford and London, England), is the only surviving community of the Jamaican Leeward Maroon polity. The Leeward polity was consolidated over two hundred and fifty years ago, after Jamaica’s First Maroon War (1725-39), by the treaty in 1739 between the maroon leader Colonel Cudjoe and the British colonial government which was forced to sue for peace.

The Leeward treaty granted the maroons their freedom and 1,500 acres of common land, which they had already appropriated through squatting and guerilla warfare. By the time of the treaty, two maroon villages had been established in the Cockpits: Cudjoe’s Town in St. James and Accompong Town in St. Elizabeth. The maroons of Cudjoe’s Town were subsequently betrayed, disbanded, and deported to Nova Scotia by the colonial regime after Jamaica’s Second Maroon War (1795-96). Subsequent external attempts to nullify the treaty and individualise the Leeward Maroon commons have persisted to the present time. The Accompong maroons have firmly resisted these attempts to undermine their maroon society and common land. This resistance has been reflected in the land disputes with the colonial and post-colonial state, documented by Kopytoff (1979) up to the 1970s; and in the contentions over legal boundaries and taxation throughout the period of my fieldwork in this community, from 1979 to 1999. In the 1990s there have also been attempts by the Jamaican state to impose individual alienable titles to Accompong’s bauxite-rich inalienable common land.

From the colonial viewpoint, the treaty ceded land rights to a marginal wilderness reservation designed to confine the rebel slaves. However, from the maroon perspective this legal document became a sacred charter of corporate identity reflected in the commons (Kopytoff 1979). My fieldwork has uncovered a still-evolving process of folk law transforming this marginal reservation into a symbolic landscape, which is preserving the maroon polity in the face of threat and change (see also Besson 1997).

Modern maroons classify the commons into three concentric zones (Besson 1997; compare Barker and Spence 1988), deriving from their ethnohistory. The deep forest was traditionally the scene of warfare with the colonial plantation-military regime. There too the warrior-maroons hunted wild hogs and gathered cocoon-beans. The forest now forms an outer boundary zone segregating the maroon society from the surrounding plantations and bauxite mines, and from the Jamaican state. Contemporary maroons collect sacred medicines and fell timber here. The cultivation of provision-grounds, carved out of the forest, was combined with hunting and gathering in the rebel-slave economy and was a focus of destruction by the colonial regime. The warrior maroons also raised livestock, raided from plantations. Today provision-grounds, land cash-cropped in bananas, and pasture form an intermediate zone. At the heart of the commons is the inner residential area, with its village yards and cross-roads. House-yards are not only residential sites, but are also the nuclei of the maroon economy. Here food-forests are cultivated, small livestock raised, and fruit trees grown. This inner residential zone most fully incorporates the Leeward Maroon polity, which has an elected Colonel, a Maroon Council, an Abeng-Blower (who blows the sacred cow-horn that was used to communicate in guerilla warfare) and a Secretary-of-State.

All Leeward Maroons have the inalienable right to use the commons. These usufructuary rights are allocated by the Colonel and his Council, who also address internal disputes. However, within this wider context of common land, unrestricted cognatic descent groups are today being consolidated in relation to the customary transmission of house-yards and provision-grounds. These overlapping landholding kin groups claim descent from the ‘First-Time’ Maroon heroes and heroines, especially Colonel Cudjoe and his reputed sister Nanny, who fought the War and won the Peace.

Maroon land rites reflect these themes and focus on interment in the commons. Six burial patterns can be identified, charting the landscape as sacred space (Besson 1997). The first pattern typifies the Kindah Grove at the edge of the residential zone. Oral history states that ancestral Congo and Coromantee burial grounds are situated here. This oral tradition is reinforced by a written history of African ethnicities among the early rebel slaves (Kopytoff 1976), and by the ancient cairns and boulders engrossed in bush and encompassing the grove. Within the Kindah Grove itself is a small area of grassland and jutting limestone rocks surrounding the sacred ‘Kindah Tree’, representing in microcosm the karst topography of the Cockpit Country. The Kindah Tree, a fruitful mango tree, is rooted in myth and ethnohistory. It is said to be the place where the two rebel ‘tribes’ of Congos and Coromantees met to forge alliance through inter-marriage, in opposition to the plantation-military regime. Here, each year on or around the 6th of January, is held the ‘Myal Dance’ and feast, a ritual reaching back to Africa, slavery, and marronage. Myalism was the first creole spirit-possession cult forged by the Jamaican slaves from African cosmologies; and the Myal Dance, with its death and resurrection theme, was initially performed to protect the plantation-slave communities (Patterson 1973: 185-95; Schuler 1980; Besson 1995c).

In Accompong today, the Myal Dance is said to commemorate both Cudjoe’s birthday and the ending of the War. It is also believed to protect and re-create the contemporary community, through the possession of living females by the spirits of the male warrior-maroons. This spirit possession is enacted by maroon women directly beneath the Kindah Tree, accompanied by drummers and by the Abeng-Blower, who are male. This ritual symbolizes the central role of scarce, but precious, women in reproducing the historic maroon polity. The fruitful Kindah Tree itself, with its sign proclaiming “We are Family”, symbolizes the common kinship of the corporate creole community on its common land. This shared kinship is based on overlapping cognatic descent groups, interlocking bilateral kinship networks, and tendencies towards endogamy and cousin-conjugality.[8] In the 1990s the Myal Dance has become a tourist attraction and a symbol of Jamaican nationhood, forged through a history of conflict and alliance. This, too, is now ritually enacted at the Kindah Grove, which is visited by tourists and by invited ministers of the Jamaican state with their armed body-guards.

Beyond the Kindah Grove is the reputed resting place of Colonel Cudjoe’s ‘brothers’ and lieutenants: Quaco, Cuffee, Johnny and Accompong; the latter being the founder of the Accompong Town community. This second burial ground is, like the graves at Kindah, marked by cairns and boulders. However unlike the Kindah graves, which are overgrown by bush and absorbed into the wilderness, the lieutenants’ graves (which are surrounded by provision-grounds and pasture) are weeded for the Myal Dance. At this time the maroons make a ritual journey from Kindah through this second grove. Non-maroons are not allowed to make this pilgrimage.

Some distance on, in the intermediate zone, is ‘Old Town’: the third and most sacred burial place. Old Town is located where a cockpit-valley adjoins a jutting cockpit-mountain covered profusely with cocoon-vines, which oral history states provided both camouflage and food during the First Maroon War. Modern maroons say that Old Town was Colonel Cudjoe’s military camp, the mountain being his look-out to miles around, and that Cudjoe himself is buried in the valley here in a stone-marked grave. Nanny, the ritual heroine of the Windward Maroon polity in the eastern mountains of Jamaica,[9] who is claimed by Leeward Maroons to have been Cudjoe’s sister, is likewise said to be buried here. These reputed graves are weeded for the pilgrimage and an altar is erected for a sacrificial meal.

Even further on, into the forest, is the Peace Cave, which is said to be the scene of the successful maroon ambush of British soldiers that won the War, and the site of the signing of the treaty between Colonel Cudjoe and the colonial regime. The ritual transit from Kindah to the Peace Cave is marked by intercessions and libations to the warrior-heroes; and a rum-bottle, annually replenished, is placed for Cudjoe’s spirit inside the cave. The graves of defeated British soldiers, and maroons who fell in war, are said to be scattered all around at this fourth sacred burial ground. On their return from the Peace Cave, through Old Town and the lieutenants’ graves, the maroons reconvene at Kindah to greet their non-maroon guests armed with sticks and battle-camouflaged in cocoon-vines.

This symbolic journey through sacred space and back in time is continued by a fifth burial ground within Accompong Town itself. This is the cemetery of the Presbyterian (now United) church, which was established in the maroon society in the late nineteenth century (Kopytoff 1987: 473; Besson 1997). More recent ancestresses and ancestors are interred in this burial place, which symbolizes the transformation from marronage and African ethnic groups to a creole maroon community. The village cemetery is a symbol of this corporate community and its common land. This mode of burial is still on-going, reinforced by both Christian and Myal mortuary ritual.

However, during the period of my fieldwork, a sixth interment pattern has been emerging. This is burial in house-yards in modern concrete tombs. This represents the nascent concretization of the evolving cognatic descent groups, and is reinforced by Afro-Christian mortuary ritual and migrant remittances. This emerging yard-burial pattern is long-established in the Jamaican non-maroon communities that originated in the proto-peasant adaptation and the post-emancipation flight from the estates, such as Trelawny’s free villages. Yard burial, rooted in folk law, also typifies Accompong’s neighbouring Aberdeen community, which originated in both the maroon and proto-peasant pasts.



http://www.jlp.bham.ac.uk/volumes/43/besson-art.htm

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

Yei yE abakOsEm a EyE titire pa ara. Na mennim pii fa Accompong ho. Meda ase. EdeEn na EyE wo sE EsE sE yEsua afiri abakOsEm yi mu?

This is very important history. I didn't know very much about Accompong. Meda ase. What do you think that we must learn from this history?

Obadele

[ajaguna]

Indeed it is important history. The lessons are many. One that I am still learning is that this is living history. Often When I think of maroons, especially in Jamaica I think of a historical example of Afrikan resistance that very well could have defeated abrofo on that island but that ultimately failed because they were tricked into making treaties. It makes me think of squandered opportunities. It saddens me to think it about it. There is another aspect that I don't often think about and that is that much of that spirit of resistance was passed down and is continuing. Of course the Afrikans no longer pose the threat that their nananom posed...and they have not given up. This article for me was an example of how the Afrikans are continuing to resist. I really feel the part about them reenacting the war scenarios and victories. I also appreciate the piece about the Congo and Coromantee (Akan) Afrikans uniting to build and fight. There is much to be learned from these examples.

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

Originally Posted by ajaguna

Indeed it is important history. The lessons are many. One that I am still learning is that this is living history. Often When I think of maroons, especially in Jamaica I think of a historical example of Afrikan resistance that very well could have defeated abrofo on that island but that ultimately failed because they were tricked into making treaties. It makes me think of squandered opportunities. It saddens me to think it about it. There is another aspect that I don't often think about and that is that much of that spirit of resistance was passed down and is continuing. Of course the Afrikans no longer pose the threat that their nananom posed...and they have not given up. This article for me was an example of how the Afrikans are continuing to resist. I really feel the part about them reenacting the war scenarios and victories. I also appreciate the piece about the Congo and Coromantee (Akan) Afrikans uniting to build and fight. There is much to be learned from these examples.

Aane o, nne¢ma pii w¡ h¡ a y¢b¢tumi asua. S¢nea Kongofo¡ ne Kor¡mantefo¡ si kaa w¡n ho b¡m na ¢kyer¢ y¢n nkab¡m pa ho mfaso¡.

S¢de¢ y¢ahunu no, Abibifo¡ ne bor¡fo¡ nk¡mm¡die ber¢ atwa mu koraa. S¢de¢ Baba Æmôwálé kae¢ nso, ¢hia s¢ y¢ka as¢m bi kyer¢ w¡n w¡ kasa a w¡te ase¢ bi mu!

Obadele Kwame