Maroon Culture, Maroon Language

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Maroon Culture, Maroon Language

• Nicole Scott

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Aims

• To discuss the impact of separation on culture
  and language
• To ascertain why maroon communities adopted
  Creole Languages.

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Issues to be considered

• - What is marronage? Who is involved in the
  process (marronage of salt water slaves vs.
  acculturated slaves and Creole slaves
• - Rate of marronage and nature of marronage
  (petit Marronage vs. grand Marronage)
• - Extent of contacts between maroon communities
  and plantations
• - Ethnic and linguistic homogeneity within the
  maroon population

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Issues to be considered contd

• Extent of contacts between maroon communities
  and plantations.
• Ethnic and linguistic homogeneity within the
  maroon population

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Issues to be considered cont

• Stability of maroon communities (related to
  efforts made by colonial administration to hunt
  down maroons, in turn related to the resources
  which planters were willing or forced to commit
  to these efforts)

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What is the impact of separation on language and
culture?

• To discuss we need to become aware of the history
  of the maroons.

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History of the Maroons

• Maroons formed one of the oldest free black
  societies in the new world.
• How?

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History of the Maroons

• Africans were brought to the Caribbean under
  different European authorities to work on sugar
  plantations.
• Maroon communities were formed by runaways from
  the plantations.

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History of the Maroons contd

• The new societies were -
• tiny bands that survived less than a year
• powerful states encompassing thousands of
  members. These larger communities survived for
  generations and even into the twenty first
  century.

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History of the Maroons contd

• The English word maroon like the French
  marron comes from the Spanish word Cimarron

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History of the Maroons contd

• Maroons are characterized by their history of
  resistance.
• Revolts in slave factories of West Africa.
• Mutinies during the middle passage
• Organized rebellions
• Day to day resistance subtle but systematic
  acts of sabotage.

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History of the Maroons contd

• Wilderness setting of early New World Plantations
  made marronage and the existence of organized
  maroon communities an ever-present reality

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History of the Maroons contd

• Today their descendants form semi-independent
  enclaves in several parts of the Caribbean.
• They remain proud of their maroon origins
• They remain faithful to unique cultural traditions

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History of the Maroons contd

• Marronage two types
• Petit marronage repetitive or periodic truancy
  with temporary goals such as visiting a relative
  or lover on a neighbouring plantation.
• Grand marronage individual fugitives banding
  together to create independent communities of
  their own.

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History of Maroons contd

• Grand marronage was a chronic plague in the
  plantations. It posed military threats and
  economic threats.
• Harsh penalties were often imposed

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History of Maroons contd

• If a slave runs away into the forest in order to
  avoid work for a few weeks, upon his being
  captured his Achilles tendon is removed for the
  first offence, while for a second offencehis
  right leg is amputated in order to stop his
  running away I myself am a witness to slaves
  being punished in this way 18th cent. visitor
  to Suriname
• Castration, slowly roasted to death etc.

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History of the Maroons contd

• To be viable maroon communities had to be almost
  inaccessible.
• Villages typically located in inhospitable out-
  of -the- way areas.
• Jamaica Cockpit Country (deep canyons,
  limestone sinkholes, water and good soil scarce
• Guianas - impenetrable jungles

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History contd

• Locales often inhospitable for troops and
  original runaways.
• the harsh natural environments of early
  communities at first presented terrifying
  obstacles and it was only with a great deal of
  suffering and by bringing to bear the full range
  of their collective cultural experience and
  creativity that adaptation was finally achieved.

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History contd

• Alienation
• Lack of adequate resources
• Few tools (hoes, axes, guns)

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History contd

• Some maroon communities in the Caribbean
• Cuba
• Hispaniola
• French Guyana
• Suriname - Saramacca / Bush Negros
• Jamaica Leeward and Windward
• Leeward (Trelawny Town, Accompong)
• Windward (Scotts Hall, Charles Town, Nanny Town,
  Moore Town and adjacent villages)

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History contd

• Economic adaptation They succeeded in
• Horticulture
• Manoic (cassava)
• Yams
• Sweet potatoes (other root crops)
• Bananas
• Plantains
• Dry rice
• Maize, ground nuts, squash, beans, sugar cane,
  vegetables, tobacco cotton.

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History contd

• Hunting
• Fishing
• Some areas did not achieve this degree of
  economic independence or were uninterested in
  seeking instead they lived directly off
  plantation society

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History contd

• Maroons remained unable to manufacture certain
  essential items (guns, tools, pots cloth). This
  kept these societies unavoidably dependent on the
  very plantation societies from which they were
  trying to isolate themselves.
• Internal organization assured absolute loyalty
  of its members. (Loyalty, women etc)
• E.g. desertion punishable by death.

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History contd

• The least acculturated slaves were among those
  most prone to marronage (escaped within the first
  hour/days of arrival in groups).
• An unusually high proportion of Creoles and
  highly acculturated African-born slaves ran off.

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History contd

• Typical community composed of
• Africans (literally just off the ship middle
  aged men). Highly acculturated Africans.
• Unskilled plantation slaves born in Africa but
  who lived for years on the plantation bulk of
  the maroon community embittered slaves.
• Creoles strong ideological commitments against
  the system of slavery

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History contd

• Contributions to culture and language was from
  newly arrived Africans, who represented a variety
  of languages and cultures, as well as by long
  term African born slaves and Creoles with a wide
  range of individual adjustments to slavery,
  orientations to reality and ways of handling
  problems.

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History contd

• They shared however a recently forged
  Afro-American culture and a strong ideological
  commitment to things which were African.
• Environment alien and hostile but the maroons
  were equipped to deal with the alienation and
  hostility. Africans in the Caribbean who at first
  often shared little more than a common continent
  of origin and the experience of enslavement
  developed distinctly Afro-American ways with life
  from the very beginning.

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History contd

• Maroons drew on their diverse African heritages
  in building their cultures. Unlike other
  Afro-Americans who were unable to pass on
  integrated patterns of traditional culture,
  maroons could and did look to Africa for
  deep-level organizational principles relating to
  cultural realms e.g. naming children, systems of
  justice

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History contd

• Practices from different areas were incorporated
  more or less harmoniously into new developing
  systems in the Caribbean.
• Maroon cultures contain a number of direct
  continuities from particular tribes e.g. military
  techniques, recipes for warding off sorcery
  (usually found throughout the Caribbean)

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History contd

• Physical isolation
• Marronage created a context in which Africans
  communicated largely with Africans.
• Isolation encouraged the development of a
  distinct culture and language(s).
• Similarity in purpose survival outside of the
  jurisdiction of Europeansencouraged linguistic
  similarity

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A look at Jamaica

• The Jamaican Maroons
• Focus on Moore Town
• There are a number of complex linguistic
  phenomena closely tied to the ceremonial sphere
  in the community.
• Basis of linguistic complexity - Kromanti
  ceremonies center around the possession of
  participants by ancestral spirits.
• Ancestors have their own form of speech,
  different from that of living maroons.

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A Look at Jamaica

• Kromanti Play must involve only the language of
  the living but that of the dead as well.
• Language of the living, normal discourse
  Jamaican Creole
• Language of ancestors form of Jamaican Creole
  but sharply different from the most basilectal
  form of JC. Unintelligible to non maroons and
  those unfamiliar with Kromanti Play

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A Look at Moore Town contd

• Living speak to each other during Kromanti play
  in JC
• Address those in possession deep talk (so
  visiting ancestors will understand)
• Possessed addressing unpossessed or possessed use
  MSL
• Kromanti used to communicated with the earliest
  ancestors, many of whom were born in Africa.

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• Characteristics of Deep Language
• Vowel Epithesis e.g. waka walk
• Liquids e.g. pre place
• Metathesis of Liquids
• Vowel nasalization e.g. grafa grandfather
• Na verb to be, locative preposition
• Verbal markers
• Interrogatives and personal pronouns

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Conclusion

• With a rare freedom to extrapolate African ideas
  and adapt them to changing circumstances, maroon
  groups include, what are in many respects both
  the most meaningful African and the most truly
  alive of all Afro-American cultures.