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During the 18th century, Anglos and paid Indians attempted to suppress the communities in Jamaica and their leaders General Cudjoe and Granny Nanny (Nanny has been compared to Nzinga, the Angolan female warrior who resisted Portuguese rule). For 40 years the British colonists and the Jamaican Maroons battled, and when both sides grew weary they sought peace. In 1738, the Maroon chiefs and the English Assembly ratified a treaty called the “articles of pacification,” which granted freedom to approximately 1,600 men, women, and children. The treaty granted 2,600 acres of land to the Maroons of Trelawny Town, Accompong Town, Crawford Town, and Nanny Town, and their “posterity in perpetuity.” The treaty also included a premium paid to the Maroons for capturing other fugitive slaves and precluded them from harboring new Maroons.
Most Maroon communities were short-lived; however, some lasted for generations, like the free Black communities in Jamaica and Spanish Florida, where the Black Seminoles and Maroons were free under the Spanish Crown. They owned their land and were considered citizens. These communities were comprised of generational families whose members were born in the forests and had never experienced the ills of plantation life. Through the collective cultural knowledge and experiences of Africans and Seminoles they were able to adapt to the harsh environment of the swamps and forests. Many male and female Maroons intermarried with Seminoles. However, there were incidents when entire fugitive families absconded from Georgia or South Carolina.
-Charlotte E. Forté-Parnell, Maroon and Outlier Communities from The Sage Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America
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