Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons

Images

The hierarchical plantation world is clearly rendered in this anonymous painting showing the Big House at the top and the slave quarters below. Wooded borderlands—maroons’ places of refuge—surround the property. American School. The Plantation. ca. 1825. Oil on wood, 19 1/8x29½ in. Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1963 (63.201.3). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, New York. Green Hill, Campbell County, Virginia. In “Upper Town” stood the mansion and outbuildings and in “Lower Town,” the slave quarters. As in many estates, woods bordered the plantation on almost all sides. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS VA,16-LONI.V,1-1. View of Upper Town. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS VA,16-LONI.V,1-12. Cabin in Lower Town. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS VA,16-LONI.V,1K-1. To get to the kitchen and the smoke house, where they could find food, maroons had to come dangerously close to the Big House, as evidenced in this map of the Hermitage Plantation in Chatham County, Georgia. On some plantations, rows of trees hiding them from view offered some privacy to the slave quarters, an arrangement that enabled maroons to visit their loved ones undetected. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS GA,26-SAV.V,1. Slave cabins on the Hermitage Plantation. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division. Because of the proximity of the cabins, neighbors were generally aware of the maroon activity taking place nightly in the quarters. Their active and tacit solidarity was central to the maroons’ survival. “Slave Quarters, South Carolina,” by photographer Clifton Johnson. The Pageant of America Collection—Toilers of Land and Sea. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building /Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. The plantation borderlands were spaces of freedom that provided enslaved people autonomy, mobility, enterprise, and a sense of physical security. To maroons, they offered a refuge close to family and friends. But, as the presence in this painting of the owners (right) and the overseer (left) shows, the borderlands were also a contested terrain that slavers strove to control and frequently invaded. A Plantation Burial. The Historic New Orleans Collection. 1960.46. This reproduction of a 1798 Spanish map of the plantations around New Orleans shows the numerous cypress swamps—inhabited by maroons—that covered the territory and surrounded the properties. Plan of the City of New Orleans and adjacent plantations /compiled in accordance with the Ordinance of the Illustrious Ministry and Royal Charter, December 24, 1798. Carlos Trudeau. Copy April 1875 by Alexander Debrunner. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. The maroon landscape was made up of the plantation grounds, their borderlands, and farther away from the seat of white power, the hinterland. Visible on this hand-drawn map are the plantations, their wooded borderlands, and the various waterways, rivers, creeks, and ponds that led to the hinterland of woods, swamps, hills, and more swamps that offered refuge to maroon settlements. Scrapbook Page, Map of Harrison’s Landing, James River, Virginia, by Robert Knox Sneden. The Virginia Historical Society (1994.80.179.B). Photograph from the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. The development of the domestic slave trade in the nineteenth century gave an impetus to marronage with people sold to the Deep South going back to live in secret at the borderlands of their former plantations. Frank Holl, Gang of Slaves Journeying to Be Sold in a Southern Market. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture /Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division. Trees were one of the borderland maroons’ shelters. “Living in a Hollow Tree,” in William Still, The Underground Railroad, 1872. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture / Manuscripts , Archives and Rare Books Division. Some borderland maroons lived in natural caverns and caves. The caves they dug six feet below ground were an expression of their fierce independence. These maroons demonstrated an uncommon resolve to remain free as they were...