Laura Tanna
DO YOU know of the blood oath, African and English cutting
their skins, their blood mixing with rum, to be sucked to seal the blood covenant
at the signing of the Maroon Treaty of 1739?
In a book that requires two bookmarks, one for the text and another for the fascinating footnotes, Kenneth Bilby underscores the authenticity of Jamaican Maroon oral tradition with the footnote: "Both the French and Dutch colonial documents corroborate the Guianese Maroon versions, clearly describing the blood oaths the European negotiators were required to take in order to conclude peace with the ancestors of the Aluku, Ndyuka, and Saramaka Maroons. [p. 460]. Did you know that in 1841, over 40 years after the Trelawny Town Maroons were tricked and shipped off, to Canada and then to Africa, that some returned to Trelawny? What stories they must have told!
Anyone who truly cares about Jamaican culture and history must read True-Born Maroons. Ken Bilby takes us into the Katawud Nation, admitting that "listening to their stories was a life-changing experience." Three decades of personal interaction with Maroons, wise in the ways of their world, Maroons who decided to share their knowledge with him, allows Bilby to sensitively, and selectively, open to us knowledge enshrouded in secrecy. Apprenticed to fete-men, slowly allowed into the ways of Kromanti play, Bilby underwent numerous rites of swearing, to various spirits, so that as a non-Maroon or obroni he could learn from their ancestral wisdom, to study the cultural memory of what it is to be a true-born Maroon.
REVEALING ENOUGH
Kenneth Bilby poses with Colonel C.L.G. Harris, leader of the Moore Town Maroons, in Portland (1978). - CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
After years of unease as to how to deal with the question of secrecy, Bilby feels comfortable with the final result in terms of the trust bestowed upon him. "For one thing," he notes, "not everything made it into the book - there's a great deal that I chose not to reveal - and there's a huge amount that I was never taught by those I worked with. I see the book as being in the Maroon tradition of revealing enough to achieve certain goals, but never revealing too much (though it goes farther than previously published works in this regard.)"
Sydney McDonald of Moore Town, after telling a narrative about a Maroon and a powerful obeah man of 'other side people', those Africans not Maroons, said in 1978: "This is knowledge just like a book, knowledge you getting from de older head, to show de light inna de world, that who to come, you can tell dem what pass." [p. 304]
The book's power lies in Bilby's style of briefly, articulately analysing Maroon narrative subjects of mythic and historic dimension, then incorporating or cross-referencing that with past and contemporary written scholarship [fully crediting all others], plus archival sources, to give us a breadth of knowledge that is viscerally satisfying. Using field notes and recordings decades earlier, by Helen Roberts, Frederic Cassidy, David DeCamp, Barbara Kopytoff as well as his own, Bilby and Maroon tellers take us into the world of 'Two Sister Pickni' representing the complex history of how the Maroons parted ways with other Africans, unwilling or unable to endure the terrible fight for survival in the mountain forests.
Bilby takes us into 'The Abandoned Child' narratives, sacrificing one's own babies for the group's survival, narratives on medicinal herbs, plants [heart of palm-food without telltale smoke], settlements by rivers, to avoid death at the hands of the most powerful military might in the world, what Bilby refers to as "an enemy that wanted nothing more than their total annihilation".
Neither Bilby nor the Maroon tellers romanticise the grit and exhaustion of guerrilla warfare, living on the run, in the words of Johnny Minott
"Dem kill Englishman too, but, you know, de Englishman is down on dem - clothes tearing off, food going out. And dem decide now to return back" [to slavery] [p. 248].
'CHOSEN PEOPLE'
This accumulated delineation of hardships graphically, powerfully brings out Maroon history with the four "generals", born in Africa, who fought with Nanny until starvation made even Nanny consider giving up. Then the sense of being 'chosen people' after the miracle of the one pumpkin seed which feeds the multitude. Carefully, Bilby ensures that respect for Yangipong and the Bigi Pripri, the Supreme Being and the spirits of the Maroon ancestors, lies at the heart of this book.
One of the most readable chapters deals with Three-Finger Jack's capture by a Maroon, and the fascinating description of Jack's obi [p. 311]. Certainly this book contains the most reasoned and comprehensive presentation of history surrounding the Maroon's blood covenant to maintain the freedom for which they fought the British, at their extreme peril, and their reasons for not siding with Bogle during the tragic Morant Bay Rebellion. Even the two most contentious subjects between Maroons and the Jamaican Government, i.e., taxation and land rights are examined.
A CLOSED SOCIETY
'The Treacherous Feast' narra-tives, about British behaviour under Governor Balcarres, when all 600 Trelawny Town Maroons were lured to a feast in 1796 and shipped to Nova Scotia, then to Sierra Leone, truly gives one insight into why Maroons are what Bilby characterises as "a closed society, an ethnic community of both shared 'blood' and shared secrets and among the most important members of this closed society are the spirits of the ancestors" [p. 369].
Again, Bilby's footnote [p. 427] on the talking anvil in Oshogbo, Nigeria, buttresses the veracity of the 'Windward Maroons' oral history explaining how they barely survived the same fate as those in Trelawny.
True-Born Maroons is a must-have for every library and a must-read so that Jamaicans can learn the contradictions of their complex, multifaceted heritage from the lips of their fellow Jamaicans, with resonance from scholars of many nations who hold their culture in high esteem.
