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“An expedition against one maroon group in a swamp on the Savannah River in 1765 encountered a lookout post set up on a scaffold, on which one black was ‘hoisting Colours’ and another was ‘Beating a Drum’ to warn the members of the community—who escaped before the expedition could reach them. John Thornton found that during the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, rebels danced the Angolan nsanga war dance before battle. Maroons may have also practiced the related unarmed arts that were considered essential to war preparation, a theory that is supported by examples of martial arts use by maroons throughout the Americas. For example, the Colombian maroon groups called palenques all had their own martial art styles; and in Brazil, if martial arts styles were not always present in maroon groups, capoeiras at times helped defend captured maroons.”

-T.J. Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art in the Atlantic World