Maroons

Maroons, the name (derived from the Span. cimarron, from cima, 'a mountain top') given in Jamaica and Guiana to fugitive negro slaves. When the British conquered Jamaica from the Spaniards in 1655, numbers of slaves took refuge in the uplands. They and their descendants, called Maroons, maintained a constant warfare with the colonists for 140 years; but in 1795 they were subdued, and a portion of them removed to Nova Scotia, and afterwards to Sierra Leone. The remnant fraternised with their manumitted brethren in 1834-35. The Maroons of Guiana, who are generally called Bush Negroes, about 4000 altogether, form a number of independent communities. See Dallas, History of the Maroons (1803).