The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

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"I, the medicine-man, whose ear
All that spirits hear can hear,--
I, whose eyes are wide to see
All the things that are to be,--

"Well I knew the dreadful signs
In the whispers of the pines,
In the river roaring loud,
In the mutter of the cloud.

"At the breaking of the day,
From the grave I passed away;
Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,
But my heart was hot and mad.

"There is rust on Squando's knife
From the warm red springs of life;
On the funeral hemlock-trees
Many a scalp the totem sees.

"Blood for blood! But evermore
Squando's heart is sad and sore;
And his poor squaw waits at home
For the feet that never come!

"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!
Squando speaks, who laughs at fear:
Take the captives he has ta'en;
Let the land have peace again!"

As the words died on his tongue,
Wide apart his warriors swung;
Parted, at the sign he gave,
Right and left, like Egypt's wave.

And, like Israel passing free
Through the prophet-charmed sea,
Captive mother, wife, and child
Through the dusky terror filed.

One alone, a little maid,
Middleway her steps delayed,
Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,
Round about from red to white.

Then his hand the Indian laid
On the little maiden's head,
Lightly from her forehead fair
Smoothing back her yellow hair.

"Gift or favor ask I none;
What I have is all my own:
Never yet the birds have sung,
'Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'

"Yet, for her who waits at home
For the dead who cannot come,
Let the little Gold-hair be
In the place of Menewee!

"Mishanock, my little star!
Come to Saco's pines afar!
Where the sad one waits at home,
Wequashim, my moonlight, come!"

"What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a child
Christian-born to heathens wild?
As God lives, from Satan's hand
I will pluck her as a brand!"

"Hear me, white man!" Squando cried,
"Let the little one decide.
Wequashim, my moonlight, say,
Wilt thou go with me, or stay?"

Slowly, sadly, half-afraid,
Half-regretfully, the maid
Owned the ties of blood and race,
Turned from Squando's pleading face.

Not a word the Indian spoke,
But his wampum chain he broke,
And the beaded wonder hung
On that neck so fair and young.

Silence-shod, as phantoms seem
In the marches of a dream,
Single-filed, the grim array
Through the pine-trees wound away.

Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,
Through her tears the young child gazed.
"God preserve her!" Waldron said;
"Satan hath bewitched the maid!"

* * * * *

Years went and came. At close of day
Singing came a child from play,
Tossing from her loose-locked head
Gold in sunshine, brown in shade.

Pride was in the mother's look,
But her head she gravely shook,
And with lips that fondly smiled
Feigned to chide her truant child.

Unabashed the maid began:
"Up and down the brook I ran,
Where, beneath the bank so steep,
Lie the spotted trout asleep.

"'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,
After me I heard him call,
And the cat-bird on the tree
Tried his best to mimic me.

"Where the hemlocks grew so dark,
That I stopped to look and hark,
On a log, with feather-hat,
By the path, an Indian sat.

"Then I cried, and ran away;
But he called and bade me stay;
And his voice was good and mild
As my mother's to her child.

"And he took my wampum chain,
Looked and looked it o'er again;
Gave me berries, and, beside,
On my neck a plaything tied."

Straight the mother stooped to see
What the Indian's gift might be.
On the braid of wampum hung,
Lo! a cross of silver swung.

Well she knew its graven sign,
Squando's bird and totem pine;
And, a mirage of the brain,
Flowed her childhood back again.

Flashed the roof the sunshine through,
Into space the walls outgrew,
On the Indian's wigwam mat
Blossom-crowned again she sat.

Cool she felt the west wind blow,
In her ear the pines sang low,
And, like links from out a chain,
Dropped the years of care and pain.

From the outward toil and din,
From the griefs that gnaw within,
To the freedom of the woods
Called the birds and winds and floods.

Well, O painful minister,
Watch thy flock, but blame not her,
If her ear grew sharp to hear
All their voices whispering near.

Blame her not, as to her soul
All the desert's glamour stole,
That a tear for childhood's loss
Dropped upon the Indian's cross.

When, that night, the Book was read,
And she bowed her widowed head,
And a prayer for each loved name
Rose like incense from a flame,

To the listening ear of Heaven,
Lo! another name was given:
"Father! give the Indian rest!
Bless him! for his love has blest!"

THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA.

The Maroons! it was a word of peril once; and terror spread along the
skirts of the blue mountains of Jamaica, when some fresh foray of those
unconquered guerrillas swept down upon the outlying plantations,
startled the Assembly from its order, General Williamson from his
billiards, and Lord Balcarres from his diplomatic ease,--endangering,
according to the official statement, "public credit," "civil rights,"
and "the prosperity, if not the very existence of the country," until
they were "persuaded to make peace" at last. They were the Circassians
of the New World; but they were black, instead of white; and as the
Circassians refused to be transferred from the Sultan to the Czar, so
the Maroons refused to be transferred from Spanish dominion to English,
and thus their revolt began. The difference is, that, while the white
mountaineers numbered four hundred thousand, and only defied Nicholas,
the black mountaineers numbered less than two thousand, and defied
Cromwell; and while the Circassians, after thirty years of revolt, seem
now at last subdued, the Maroons, on the other hand, who rebelled in
1655, were never conquered, but only made a compromise of allegiance,
and exist as a separate race to-day.

When Admirals Penn and Venables landed in Jamaica, in 1655, there was
not a remnant left of the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards had
found there a century and a half before. Their pitiful tale is told only
by those caves, still known among the mountains, where thousands of
human skeletons strew the ground. In their place dwelt two foreign
races,--an effeminate, ignorant, indolent white community of fifteen
hundred, with a black slave population quite as large and infinitely
more hardy and energetic. The Spaniards were readily subdued by the
English,--the negroes remained unsubdued; the slaveholders were banished
from the island,--the slaves only banished themselves to the mountains:
thence the English could not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers, whom the
English employed. And when Jamaica subsided into a British colony, and
peace was made with Spain, and the children of Cromwell's Puritan
soldiers were beginning to grow rich by importing slaves for Roman
Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons still held their own wild empire in the
mountains, and, being sturdy heathens every one, practised Obeah rites
in approved pagan fashion.

The word Maroon is derived, according to one etymology, from the
Spanish word _Marrano_, a wild-boar,--these fugitives being all
boar-hunters,--according to another, from _Marony_, a river separating
French and Dutch Guiana, where a colony of them dwelt and still dwells;
and by another still, from _Cimarron_, a word meaning untamable, and
used alike for apes and runaway slaves. But whether these
rebel-marauders were regarded as monkeys or men, they made themselves
equally formidable. As early as 1663, the Governor and Council of
Jamaica offered to each Maroon, who should surrender, his freedom and
twenty acres of land; but not one accepted the terms. During forty
years, forty-four acts of Assembly were passed in respect to them, and
at least a quarter of a million pounds sterling were expended in the
warfare against them. In 1733, the force employed against them consisted
of two regiments of regular troops and the whole militia of the island,
and the Assembly said that "the Maroons had within a few years greatly
increased, notwithstanding all the measures that had been concerted for
their suppression," "to the great terror of his Majesty's subjects," and
"to the manifest weakening and preventing the further increase of the
strength and inhabitants of the island."

The special affair in progress, at the time of these statements, was
called Cudjoe's War. Cudjoe was a gentleman of extreme brevity and
blackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adorn
Dallas's History; but he was as formidable a guerrilla as Marion. Under
his leadership, the various bodies of fugitives were consolidated into
one force and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, like Schamyl, was religious
as well as military head of his people; by Obeah influence he
established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves and insurgents; no
party could be sent forth by the government but he knew it in time to
lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the region left
unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition; and
as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot and never risked a
battle, his forces naturally increased while those of his opponents were
decimated. His men were never captured, and never took a prisoner; it
was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealing with them, as
Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased by victory"; and
the only men who could obtain the slightest advantage against them were
the imported Mosquito Indians, or the "Black Shot," a company of
government negroes. For nine full years this particular war continued
unchecked, General Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe by night.

The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession
of the "Cockpits." Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as
by an earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling the
California canons, or those similar fissures in various parts of the
Atlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, or
symbolically as purgatories. These chasms vary from two hundred yards to
a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feet high, and
often absolutely inaccessible, while the passes at each end admit but
one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees can grow;
water flows within them; and they often communicate with one another,
forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired and thirsty with
climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file, without seeing or
hearing an enemy; up the steep and winding path they traverse one
"cockpit," then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired from the dense
and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, each dropping
its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction, when a more
murderous volley is poured from the other side; the heights above flash
with musketry, while the precipitous path by which they came seems to
close in fire behind them. By the time the troops have formed in some
attempt at military order, the woods around them are empty, and their
agile and noiseless foes have settled themselves into ambush again,
farther up the defile, ready for a second attack, if needed. But one is
usually sufficient;--disordered, exhausted, bearing their wounded with
them, the soldiers retreat in panic, if permitted to escape at all, and
carry fresh dismay to the barracks, the plantations, and the Government
House.

It is not strange, then, that high military authorities, at that period,
should have pronounced the subjugation of the Maroons a thing more
difficult than to obtain a victory over any army in Europe. Moreover,
these people were fighting for their liberty, with which aim no form of
warfare could be unjustifiable; and the description given by Lafayette
of the American Revolution was true of this one,--"the grandest of
causes, won by contests of sentinels and outposts." The utmost hope of a
British officer, ordered against the Maroons, was to lay waste a
provision-ground or cut them off from water. But there was little
satisfaction in this; the wild pine-leaves and the grapevine-withes
supplied the rebels with water, and their plantation-grounds were the
wild pine-apple and the plantain groves, and the forests, where the
wild-boars harbored and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they
were militia-men. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have
brought about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high
contracting parties, Cudjoe and General Williamson.

But how to execute a treaty between these wild Children of the Mist and
respectable diplomatic Englishmen? To establish any official relations
without the medium of a preliminary bullet required some ingenuity of
manoeuvring. Cudjoe was willing, but inconveniently cautious; he would
not come half-way to meet any one; nothing would content him but an
interview in his own chosen cockpit. So he selected one of the most
difficult passes, posting in the forests a series of outlying parties,
to signal with their horns, one by one, the approach of the
plenipotentiaries, and then to retire on the main body. Through this
line of perilous signals, therefore, Colonel Guthrie and his handful of
men bravely advanced; horn after horn they heard sounded, but there was
no other human noise in the woods, and they had advanced till they saw
the smoke of the Maroon huts before they caught a glimpse of a human
form.

A conversation was at last opened with the invisible rebels. On their
promise of safety, Dr. Russell advanced alone to treat with them, then
several Maroons appeared, and finally Cudjoe himself. The formidable
chief was not highly military in appearance, being short, fat,
humpbacked, dressed in a tattered blue coat without skirts or sleeves,
and an old felt hat without a rim. But if he had blazed with regimental
scarlet, he could not have been treated with more distinguished
consideration; indeed, in that case, "the exchange of hats" with which
Dr. Russell finally volunteered, in Maroon fashion, to ratify
negotiations, would have been a less severe test of good fellowship.
This fine stroke of diplomacy had its effect, therefore; the rebel
captains agreed to a formal interview with Colonel Guthrie and Captain
Sadler, and a treaty was at last executed with all due solemnity, under
a large cotton-tree at the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. This treaty
recognized the military rank of Captain Cudjoe, Captain Accompong, and
the rest; gave assurance that the Maroons should be "forever hereafter
in a perfect state of freedom and liberty"; ceded to them fifteen
hundred acres of land; and stipulated only that they should keep the
peace, should harbor no fugitive from justice or from slavery, and
should allow two white commissioners to remain among them, simply to
represent the British government.

During the following year a separate treaty was made with another large
body of insurgents, called the Windward Maroons. This was not effected,
however, until after an unsuccessful military attempt, in which the
mountaineers gained a signal triumph. By artful devices,--a few fires
left burning, with old women to watch them,--a few provision-grounds
exposed by clearing away the bushes,--they lured the troops far up among
the mountains, and then surprised them by an ambush. The militia all
fled, and the regulars took refuge under a large cliff in a stream,
where they remained four hours up to their waists in water, until
finally they forded the river, under full fire, with terrible loss.
Three months after this, however, the Maroons consented to an amicable
interview, exchanging hostages first. The position of the white hostage,
at least, was not the most agreeable; he complained that he was beset by
the women and children, with indignant cries of "Buckra, Buckra," while
the little boys pointed their fingers at him as if stabbing him, and
that with evident relish. However, Captain Quao, like Captain Cudjoe,
made a treaty at last, and hats were interchanged instead of hostages.

Independence being thus won and acknowledged, there was a suspension of
hostilities for some years. Among the wild mountains of Jamaica, the
Maroons dwelt in a savage freedom. So healthful and beautiful was the
situation of their chief town, that the English government has erected
barracks there of late years, as being the most salubrious situation on
the island. They breathed an air ten degrees cooler than that inhaled by
the white population below, and they lived on a daintier diet, so that
the English epicures used to go up among them for good living. The
mountaineers caught the strange land-crabs, plodding in companies of
millions their sidelong path from mountain to ocean, and from ocean to
mountain again. They hunted the wild-boars, and prepared the flesh by
salting and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious
"jerked hog" of Buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry,
cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas and papaws and
mameys and avocados and all luxurious West Indian fruits; the very weeds
of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and in
their names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they
looked across these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland
forests, and over those again to the faint line of far-off beach, the
fainter ocean-horizon, and the illimitable sky.

They had senses like those of our Indians, tracked each other by the
smell of the smoke of fires in the air, and called to each other by
horns, using a special note to designate each of their comrades, and
distinguishing it beyond the range of ordinary hearing. They spoke
English diluted with Spanish and African words, and practised Obeah
rites quite undiluted with Christianity. Of course they associated
largely with the slaves, without any very precise regard to treaty
stipulations; sometimes brought in fugitives, and sometimes concealed
them; left their towns and settled on the planters' lands, when they
preferred them, but were quite orderly and luxuriously happy. During the
formidable insurrection of the Koromantyn slaves, in 1760, they played a
dubious part: when left to go on their own way, they did something
towards suppressing it,--but when placed under the guns of the troops
and ordered to fire on those of their own color, they threw themselves
on the ground without discharging a shot. Nevertheless, they gradually
came up into rather reputable standing; they grew more and more
industrious and steady; and after they had joined very heartily in
resisting D'Estaing's threatened invasion of the island in 1779, it
became the fashion to speak of "our faithful and affectionate Maroons."

In 1795, their position was as follows:--Their numbers had not
materially increased, for many had strayed off and settled on the
outskirts of plantations,--nor materially diminished, for many runaway
slaves had joined them,--while there were also separate settlements of
fugitives, who had maintained their freedom for twenty years. The white
superintendents had lived with the Maroons in perfect harmony, without
the slightest official authority, but with a great deal of actual
influence. But there was an "irrepressible conflict" behind all this
apparent peace, and the slightest occasion might at any moment revive
all the Old terror. That occasion was close at hand.

Captain Cudjoe and Captain Accompong and the other founders of Maroon
independence had passed away, and "Old Montagu" reigned in their stead,
in Trelawney Town. Old Montagu had all the pomp and circumstance of
Maroon majesty; he wore a laced red coat, and a hat superb with
gold-lace and plumes; none but captains could sit in his presence; he
was helped first at meals, and no woman could eat beside him; he
presided at councils as magnificently as at table, though with less
appetite;--and possessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or
reverence of any human being. The real power lay entirely with Major
James, the white superintendent, who had been brought up among the
Maroons by his father (and predecessor), and who was the idol of this
wild race. In an evil hour, the government removed him, and put a
certain unpopular Captain Craskell in his place; and as there happened
to be, about the same time, a great excitement concerning a hopeful pair
of young Maroons who had been seized and publicly whipped, on a charge
of hog-stealing, their kindred refused to allow the new superintendent
to remain in the town. A few attempts at negotiation only brought them
to a higher pitch of wrath, which ended in their despatching the
following remarkable diplomatic note to the Earl of Balcarres:--"The
Maroons wishes nothing else from the country but battle, and they
desires not to see Mr. Craskell up here at all. So they are waiting
every moment for the above on Monday. Mr. David Schaw will see you on
Sunday morning for an answer. They will wait till Monday, nine o'clock,
and if they don't come up, they will come down themselves." Signed,
"Colonel Montagu and all the rest."

It turned out, at last, that only two or three of the Maroons were
concerned in this remarkable defiance; but meanwhile it had its effect.
Several ambassadors were sent among the insurgents, and were so
favorably impressed by their reception as to make up a subscription of
money for their hosts, on departing; only the "gallant Colonel
Gallimore," a Jamaica Camillus, gave iron instead of gold, by throwing
some bullets into the contribution-box. And it was probably in
accordance with his view of the subject, that, when the Maroons sent
ambassadors in return, they were at once imprisoned, most injudiciously
and unjustly; and when Old Montagu himself and thirty-seven others,
following, were seized and imprisoned also, it is not strange that the
Maroons, joined by many slaves, were soon in open insurrection.

Martial law was instantly proclaimed throughout the island. The
fighting-men among the insurgents were not, perhaps, more than five
hundred; against whom the government could bring nearly fifteen hundred
regular troops and several thousand militia-men. Lord Balcarres himself
took the command, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly marched a
large force up to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march back again as
expeditiously as possible. In his very first attack, he was miserably
defeated, and had to fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of the
troops, in which some forty or fifty were killed,--including Colonel
Sandford, commanding the regulars, and the bullet-loving Colonel
Gallimore, in command of the militia,--while not a single Maroon was
even wounded, so far as could be ascertained.

After this a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops gradually
got possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut had
been burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season, and,
between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous.
Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods, heard all
their orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating through their
lines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations, far below. The
only man who could cope with their peculiar tactics was Major James, the
superintendent just removed by government,--and his services were not
employed, as he was not trusted. On one occasion, however, he led a
volunteer party farther into the mountains than any of the assailants
had yet penetrated, guided by tracks known to himself only, and by the
smell of the smoke of Maroon fires. After a very exhausting march,
including a climb of a hundred and fifty feet up the face of a
precipice, he brought them just within the entrance of Guthrie's Defile.
"So far," said he, pointing to the entrance, "you may pursue, but no
farther; no force can enter here; no white man except myself, or some
soldier of the Maroon establishment, has ever gone beyond this. With the
greatest difficulty I have penetrated four miles farther, and not ten
Maroons have gone so far as that. There are two other ways of getting
into the defile, practicable for the Maroons, but not for any one of
you. In neither of them can I ascend or descend with my arms, which must
be handed to me, step by step, as practised by the Maroons themselves.
One of the ways lies to the eastward, and the other to the westward; and
they will take care to have both guarded, if they suspect that I am with
you; which, from the route you have come to-day, they will. They now see
you, and if you advance fifty paces more, they will convince you of it."
At this moment a Maroon horn sounded the notes indicating his name, and,
as he made no answer, a voice was heard, inquiring if he were among
them. "If he is," said the voice, "let him go back, we do not wish to
hurt him; but as for the rest of you, come on and try battle, if you
choose." But the gentlemen did not choose.

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