The 1739 treaty calls the Maroons "Negroes" and makes them catch runaways (Trelawny Town, Jamaica, dated "March the first, 1738," i.e., 1739 in today's calendar)

SUMMARYThe 1739 treaty calls the Maroons "Negroes" and makes them catch runaways (Trelawny Town, Jamaica, dated "March the first, 1738," i.e., 1739 in today's calendar) [Connections: Latin America & Caribbean, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDThe "Articles of Pacification with the Maroons of Trelawney Town" (transcription credited to the Kress Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School) name "Captain Cudjoe, Captain Acompong, Captain Johnny, Captain Cuffee, and Captain Quaco, and several other Negroes, their dependents and adherents." The second article grants them "a perfect state of freedom and liberty"; the third grants land "to the amount of fifteen hundred acres"; the ninth requires that runaways "shall immediately be sent back"; the fourteenth places "two white men, to be nominated by his Excellency" to "constantly live and reside with Captain Cudjoe." Wikipedia adds that in 1796, after the Second Maroon War, Governor Balcarres deported the Trelawny Maroons to Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone despite General Walpole's promise they "would not be deported."

PATTERNThe British treaty writes the nation as "Negroes" only. Whether any Taíno ancestry was in these communities is not something the treaty would record

LENS (WW9)The treaty that freed them also named them, and the name was the colonizer's

OPENTaíno participation in Maroon origins is claimed by Moore Town Maroons and recorded by Wikipedia's Taíno article, but the Jamaican Maroons article says only "possibly Indigenous people as well." Needs deep research in Spanish-era Jamaican records

SOURCETreaty transcription, Harvard Berkman Center; Wikipedia, "Jamaican Maroons".