Africanisms in the Caribbean Region: African Descendants’ Resistance to Enslavement and Subjugation in Post-Emancipation

The Caribbean Region: The Haitian Revolution of 1804

The Caribbean region and Latin America have an armed revolutionary tradition. The first major revolution in Saint Domingue occurred between 1791 and 1804 wherein enslaved Africans militarily defeated their European enslavers and formed their own independent nation in 1804. Haiti was unique as it was the first Caribbean colony to achieve this valued objective.

In the early history of the enslavement period, different waves of Africans were brought to Saint Domingue. The early groups were from the Bight of Benin, which included at that time, parts of Dahomey, Togo, Ghana, Amina, today Nigeria, and Volta (Burkina Faso). These Africans considered themselves to be of different nations. It was during the second half of the 1700s that the French colonizers started bringing in the Congolese in large numbers every year to Saint Domingue. The Congolese also included people from Angola as well as from parts of Mozambique (Madhere, personal communication, July 20, 2022). One argument is that the destabilization of the Kingdom of Congo facilitated the excess shipment of Congolese men and women to the French and British colonies, and particularly to Saint Domingue. Enslaved Africans from Senegambia and St. Helena were shipped to Saint Domingue (Davis, 2016). More males than females were extracted from Africa’s population and transported to Saint Domingue and to Jamaica.

The Congo region experienced civil wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. Hence, the military expertise of the Congolese people. The Congolese were more homogenous culturally than previous African groups shipped to Saint Domingue. This homogeneity and their large numbers allowed them to better prepare for their collective uprising (Madhere, personal communication, August 10, 2022). Davis (2016) provides convincing evidence that most enslaved Africans who revolted in 1791 in Saint Domingue were of Congolese origin. In Haiti, the language was Congo, and there are reports that the Creole leaders of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 declared that their followers had difficulty to make out two words of French (Thornton, 1998; Warner-Lewis, 2003). The military experience of the 18th-century Dahomey populations, especially the Araras, played a leading role in the Haitian revolution. According to Gomez (2020), by 1789, Saint Domingue had about half a million Africans of which two-thirds were African born. He also contended that Haiti and Jamaica experienced absentee ownership of the plantations. The owners’ interests were addressed by agents or managers. Some owners never saw Haiti and Jamaica. The other crucial factor was that Africans disproportionately outnumbered the white colonialists. These two factors were implicated in the successful Africans’ revolts in Haiti and Jamaica.

Traditional African Spirituality (Vodun) and the Haitian Revolution

Davis (2016) wrote that the prerevolutionary Vodun chants in Saint Domingue were recorded in Kikongo. In the Vodun ceremonies there was dancing, singing, drumming, costumes, and the spiritual entity called Loas. According to Davis (2016), there is a particular grouping of Vodou lwa (spirits) known as Petro (or Petwo), and are sometimes referred to as Lemba, after a Congo healing group in the north, and in the mountains in the west. The use of Kongolese terms such as adjipopo and makakari to describe maleficent charms used in Vodou reveals the presence of various West Central African languages, thereby highlighting the strong Congolese presence in Haitian Vodun.

There has historically been some ambivalence toward Vodou (or Vodun) prior to the start of the Haitian revolution. Vodou, an African spiritual worldview, was antithetical to the Christian doctrine, and thus could not be tolerated by the colonialists. Similarly, Vodun was negatively viewed and conceived of as an evil worldview by the Whites, Creole, and many enslaved Africans. On the other hand, Vodun was perceived as a strong spiritual force among other enslaved Africans, and it could not be controlled by the established powers. Many of the earlier rebel leaders such as Francois Makanda (later called Makandal) were Maroon leaders. Makanda (Makandal) was born in West Africa and captured at 12 years old and was shipped to Saint Domingue. Makanda was described as an eloquent speaker with extensive knowledge of the medicinal properties of the ecological system and knew well how to use natural products such as herbs and plants to harm his enemies (Gomez, 2020). He claimed openly to be endowed with Vodou knowledge and power that would allow he and his followers to poison the wells and livestock of the plantations and thus destroy the colonialists and thereby destroying slavery. Makanda was captured by the colonialists in early 1758. He was burnt at the stake in a public square. His early involvement in the struggle against slavery impacted the development of Maroon communities and energized collective movements in Haiti and elsewhere to destroy slavery (Gomez, 2020; Madhere, personal communication, March 16, 2023).

Enslaved Africans in Saint Domingue routinely fled to the mountains or forests and lived secret lives. In the late 1700s, in Le Cap, the Northern region of Haiti, for months, in the late nights, Boukman, a leader and Vodou priest, who had practiced the religion of his ancestors of Dahomey and the Priestess or Manbo Cecile Fatiman, and enslaved African women and men, gathered in the forests to plan their rebellion against their French enslavers. They engaged in a Vodun ceremony. They sacrificed animals and took oaths in a series of meetings. In traditional African societies, the sacrifice during Vodun ceremonies was to satisfy the deities to meet the devotees’ spiritual and material needs (Montgomery, 2016).

In 1791, it was reported that Boukman in performing a vodun ceremony chanted this prayer to Vodun: “good god who made the sun to shine above us, who rouses the waves and makes the storm, who watches us though hidden in the clouds. Who knows all that the white man does. The god of the white man inspires him to crime, our god leads us to do good. Our god demands vengeance, he will direct our arms and help us. Throw away the symbol of the white god of the whites who has caused us so many tears. Good god, give us the liberty which is in our hearts” (Parkinson, 1978, p. 39).

On August 14, 1791, Boukman, Toussaint Louverture, among other leaders were prepared to kill their enslavers and to burn their properties. These plans were shelved due to the failure of the enslaved African field hands in Le Cap to execute the plans, even though there were purported to be 10,000 enslaved Africans and only 3,400 Whites (Parkinson, 1978). There was a major uprising of Africans in Le Cap on August 22, 1791. The African masses were led by Jean Francois Papillon, Georges Biassou, Boukman, Toussaint, and Jeannot. The entire 2,000 miles of French territory shook to the rhythm of hundreds of drums and by the calling on Ogun the god of war. The Africans torched the sugar and coffee plantations and everything that could burn and killed encountered enslavers. Enslaved Africans deserted the plantations and joined this rebellion. Others stopped working on the plantations.

The military strategies exercised by the African leaders and their armies allowed them to successfully capture the city of Le Cap. The enslaved Africans in the Northeast of Saint Domingue also in August 1791 fought valiantly against the enslavers. Boukman was killed in battle against the French. He was decapitated by the French enslavers and impaled on a spike for public viewing to put fear in the hearts of the enslaved. These brutal techniques were routinely used by the European enslavers against those Africans who rebelled. The valiant African fighters’ aim was to create a political structure like the independent political systems of their earlier existence in Africa. As the rebellion amplified and the leaders began organizing a more structured fighting force under Louverture, the leaders placed more military emphasis on strategies than on spirituality. The role of Vodun seemed to diminish for almost 10 years during these early years of the rebellion against enslavement (Madhere, personal communication, March 16, 2023).

Toussaint Louverture succeeded Boukman as the military leader. Toussaint was from a royal family of Dahomey. He was the second son of the King Goau-Guinou, of Dahomey, and was of Arara heritage. He was a formidable human being, who was a disciplined, courageous, tactical, and brilliant military leader who relied on guerilla warfare and the indominable spirit of his military forces to defeat the French, the Spanish, and the British. He got the name Louverture (the opener), like Legba, and the title General Governor of Saint Domingue for life. In Vodun there is a prayer to Legba, the guardian of the crossroads and all barriers, and who opens the gates. Toussaint was uncompromising in his mission for the complete abolition of slavery and for the freedom of his people forever. His aim was for liberty and equality to reign in Saint Domingue (Parkinson, 1978).

Second in command was Jacques Jean Dessalines. A warrior Dahomey woman was reported to have trained Dessalines. He was a courageous, militant, and tactical fighter. He had an unwavering commitment for an independent and black controlled Haiti. He is reported to have said: “Take courage. The Whites from France cannot hold out against us here in Saint Domingue. If Dessalines surrenders to them a hundred times, he will betray them a hundred times. We will harass them and beat them; we will burn the harvest and take to the hills. They will be forced to leave. Then I will make you independent. There will be no more Whites among us.” Dessalines and his resistance army defeat of French General Charles Leclerc is said to have been an important turning point in the Haitian war of independence. Henrin Christophe was another brave and outstanding leader of the Haitian Revolution. According to Thornton (1998), in 1790, 60% of enslaved Africans in St. Domingue were African born.

In February 1793, France proclaimed an end to slavery. Despite France’s declaration there was the concern among the African military leaders and the African masses that France planned to reestablish slavery. The fearless military leaders during this historic period were Toussaint, Dessalines, and Christophe, along with a well-trained, experienced, and very disciplined army. The leaders with their armies waged a mighty war against the British and French. The enslaved Africans throughout the country fought even harder to defeat the French and the British and to chase them from the land. The French captured Toussaint in June 1802 and transported him to Fort De Joux in France, where he died on April 7, 1803. Dessalines become the leader of the Haitian Revolution and valiantly defeated the French army in 1803. Dessalines knew that victory could be possible only through guerilla warfare. This required the active participation of the local Maroons who had kept alive more of the African traditions, including Vodun. Thus, emerged in the leadership of the revolutionary movement, a new cadre of people, among them Petit-Noel, Sansouci and Derans who held Vodou in high esteem. Dessalines had among his most trusted advisors an older woman known as Grann Gitonn, who was a Manbo or Vodou Priestess (S. Madhere, personal communication, March 16, 2023). Hence, Vodun played a significant role in the Haitian Revolution.

On January 1, 1804, Dessalines officially proclaimed Saint Domingue’s independence. He renamed this country “Haiti,” a name used by the island’s aboriginal inhabitants. With the 1805 Haitian Constitution, Dessalines permanently abolished slavery. This constitution also offered freedom to enslaved Africans who arrived in Haiti. Dessalines was assassinated on October 17,1806. After Dessalines’ assassination, most of the nationalist stalwarts who took control of the country began a systematic repression of Vodun (Madhere, personal communication, March 16, 2023).

Vodun still remains a sustaining feature of agency and resistance among Haiti’s peasantry and working class in response to internal enemies and foreign intrusions in Haiti. Papa Legba of Haiti became a prominent figure in Haitian Vodou as it was a West African and not a Catholic symbol. Legba was a god of the crossroads and keeper of the gates (Gomez, 2020). Legba’s position was between the axis of the world of humans and gods. Legba stands at the crossroads where he addresses human and divine needs. Legba is endowed with omniscience and ubiquity (Donkor, 1997). Legba is a central spiritual force that was essential to Haitians’ resistance during enslavement and in the post-emancipation culture.

The Legba is representative of the choices that Haitians make at the crossroads between freedom and independence or enslavement and dependency. Kafou is a new world Haitian creole creation. Kafou is the divinity that stands at every major crossroads in life. Kafou is depicted as a vigorous man in the prime of his life. While Kafou is not as old as Legba, Kafou is mature enough to know firsthand about major life challenges. Sometimes when Haitians are in a bind, they will appeal to Kafou to assist them in making the correct decisions. Some of these decisions may have to do with life and death concerns (Madhere, personal communication, August 9, 2022).

Kafou is depicted as holding his powerful arms straight out on either side of his muscular frame, forming the figure of the cross (or crossroads). Kafou then is between the kingdom of life and death, with Legba at the gate. Others argue that Legba is linked to Kafou whose other hand holds firmly onto Ghede, who is the God of the Dead and Lord of the Underworld and is an intermediary between the living and the dead. Ghede has infinite wisdom and has amassed all the knowledge of the dead. Haitians created Kafou to also inform humans on how to manage sexuality (Madhere, personal communication, August 10, 2022). Marshall (2010) indicated that Kafou is conceived of “as a new phallic and vigorous figure to personify their longing for a revitalized existence” (p. 188).

According to Marshall (2010), the African deity Eshu plays a central role in Yoruba Vodou religious practices. This deity is thought to serve as a messenger among the gods. Eshu’s role is to take the sacrifices and prayers of humans to the loa or spirits. As a deity of the crossroads, Eshu opens pathways between humans and the spiritual realm. Eshu can also be transformed into a female. Eshu continued to be a prominent figure in the cultural and religious practices of Africans in the Americas and functioned as a figure of resistance during and after the chattel enslavement era.

The Caribbean Region: A Focus on Jamaica

Alleyne (1988) indicated that Africans were transported by the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the British to Jamaica during the periods 1498 to 1655; from 1670 to 1808, and from 1841 to 1865 because of these European enslavers’ total dependence on enslaved Africans’ labor on the expanding Jamaican sugar plantations. Sierra Leone accounted for about 6%, Senegambia 6%, and South East Africa, 4.3% of Africans transported to Jamaica (Gomez, 2020). Sherlock and Bennett (1998) wrote that the African names around the Caribbean were Ashanti and Coromantees from the coast of Guinea.

According to Schuler (1970), several African nations came to the Caribbean during the early 18th century, some of the most frequently encountered were the Kormantines, Minas, Delminas, which were the names by which various Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana were known. Marshall (2010) observed that the term Akan denotes a West Africa ethnolinguistic group comprising of the Akuapem, Akyem, Baule, Asante, Brong, and Fante people, among other ethnic groups of similar culture. The Akan people were purchased mainly from the English, Dutch, and Danes.

Chambers (2008) indicated that the Igbo diaspora originated in the Nigerian hinterland of the Calabar coast that experienced 1.4 million people who were extracted in the period from 1700 and 1809 during the Atlantic slave trade. About half or some 750,000, Igbos who were shipped by the British were taken to the Anglophone Caribbean. Schuler (1970) wrote that the Ibo people were shipped from the Niger Delta region, mainly through the ports of Bonny and Calabar and were sometimes called Calabars.

Igbo-speaking Africans taken to the diaspora embraced a collective identity derived from their inherent sense of community. In Indigenous Igbo society nothing happened by chance; there was an emphasis on individual drive and success. Hence, leaving anything to chance was dangerous. Sacrifice was the principal way that people in traditional Igboland attempted to create order out of the events of their individual and collective lives (Chambers, 2008).

The British arrived in Jamaica in 1655. Gomez (2020) asserted that they were attracted to the abundant arable land for large scale agricultural production. As previously noted, absentee ownership was prevalent in Jamaica. The overseers and managers inflicted cruelties on enslaved Africans in Jamaica and Haiti, which are well documented (Parkinson, 1978; Warner-Lewis, 2003). By 1734, African descendants made up 90% of Jamaica’s population (Gomez, 2020).

Africans in the Caribbean region and in Latin America had various ways of resisting slavery and oppression including, but not limited to, work slowdowns, breaking of tools, poisoning enslavers, suicides, and escape and revolt. Revolts and runaways allowed for several heroes in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, including Captain Lemba in the Dominican Republic, Yanga in Mexico, King Zumbi in Brazil, King Benkos in Columbia, Queen Nanny, and Captain Cudjoe in Jamaica, among other courageous and committed African men and women. It is essential to emphasize that the Haitian Revolution influenced subsequent rebellions in the Caribbean and in Latin American (Kerr-Ritchie, 2013).

Sherlock and Bennett (1998) wrote that Africa is present throughout Jamaica, as African descendants have been in Jamaica for five centuries. Africa reveals herself in the majority population of African Jamaicans’ body language, oral communications, in their crafts, customs, in their attitudes, and in their expressiveness. Chambers (2008) wrote that in post 1750 Jamaica, Igbos, who were the majority African group in Jamaica, impacted on existing institutions and ancestral memories to forge connections amongst and between each other and to make sense of their new contexts. Warner-Lewis (2003) wrote that around 1750, approximately 40% of Africans in Jamaica spoke Coromantee (Akan or Twi) as their primary language. Whites were called buckra. African customs, religious beliefs, languages, and other types of cultural survival tended to be strong during the 18th century in areas with high percentages of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean region. Warner-Lewis (2003) wrote that enslaved Africans of different regions of Africa during the enslavement era “acknowledged their common heritage in order to consolidate political, trade, security, and labor alliances” (p. 38).

Sherlock and Bennett (1998) contended that the major African groups who shaped Jamaican history in the 18th century were the Akan speaking people, the Fon people of the then Dahomey, the Yoruba from the forested region of the Efik-speaking people from the delta of the Niger, and the Calabar River. Many of these Africans came from the region of modern Ghana, Nigeria, and Benin, between 1660 and 1775, and they were knowledgeable about the techniques and rules of large-scale tribal warfare (Johnson, 2007).

In 1772, Olaudah Equiano went to Nevis and Jamaica. He wrote that “the worst possible forms of slavery were to be found in the West Indies.” He further indicated that “the many enslaved Africans in Jamaica knew from their previous experiences that black was not equivalent to being enslaved, and non-Creole black Africans often led the frequent West Indian slave revolts. Freedom for them was a memory of the recent past rather than at best a dream of the distant future.” Equiano wrote of being surprised to see “the number of Africans, who were assembled on Sundays. Here each nation of Africa meets and dance of their own country. They still retain most of their native customs: they bury their dead, and put victuals, pipes, and tobacco, and other things in the grave with the corpse, in the same manner as in Africa” (Carretta, 2005, p. 14). Schuler (1970) concurred that during the 18th century it was normative for Africans in Jamaica to revolt.

Maroons’ Insurrections Against the British Enslavers

The West Indies and parts of South America had isolated places in the back country, in the mountains, forests, and swamp, where large numbers of enslaved Africans could live free from white restraint. The word Maroon is from the Spanish, Cimarron, the name was originally given to domestic cattle that had gone to the hills of Hispaniola. It was also given to Indians who had escaped from the lowlands, and by the 1530s it referred to African runaways (Sherlock and Bennett (1998). Kars (2016) wrote that Maroon encampments were symbols of hope to the enslaved and a threat to slave discipline. The raids of these runaways posed danger to isolated plantations. Years of intermittent warfare against the Maroons in Jamaica in the early 18th century drove them into the island’s impregnable Cockpit country. In Jamaica, most enslaved people were Akan Maroons (Sherlock & Bennett, 1998).

Africans exported to the Americas in the period 1673 to 1690 engaged in a series of uprising. In July 1690, in Jamaica, a group of 400 enslaved Africans, most of whom came from the Gold Coast, rebelled on a plantation, destroyed the estate, repelled an attack by British troops and then joined the Leeward Maroons in the mountains (Sherlock & Bennett, 1998). The Maroons of the 1680s and 1690s had grown into two formidable bands, the Leeward Maroons who were in the central mountains and the Windward Maroons in the northeastern mountains. Each band was further divided by the leaders into several settlements that were in a main town or village (Patterson, 1996). Cudjoe was elected leader by the Blue Mountain Leeward Maroons. Under Cudjoe’s leadership, the Leeward Maroons began to pursue a more systematic and connected system of guerilla warfare. In their frequent skirmishes with the troops sent against them, the Maroons acquired the art of attack and defense. The Maroons had the advantage against their enemies due to their difficult and hardly accessible fastness in the interior of the island. The Maroons’ victories against the enslavers’ military attacks encouraged significant numbers of enslaved Africans to join the Maroons.

Cudjoe appointed captains from among his best followers; they included Accompong and Johnny his brothers, and Quao and Cuffee. Each was charged to create military armies. They were responsible also to provide the community with goods and to track down wild hogs. Thornton (1998) indicated that the Leeward Maroons under Cudjoe’s leadership was formed as a centralized state, and that Cudjoe was autocratic. Cudjoe was also described as an Akan or Coromatee or Kromanti. He and his rebels freed enslaved Africans, plundered sugar and coffee plantations, killed their enemies, and absconded with guns and ammunitions from the many raided plantations over many years.

In contrast, the Windward Maroons created a looser federation and were well organized. These rebels were also identified as Coromantee. Nanny Town was under the command of the guerilla leader Queen Nanny, an Ashanti woman, and who fought the British colonialists from 1728 to 1734. Queen Nanny was a rebel elder and tactician with a powerful personality, and who possessed deep cultural knowledge of traditional African spirituality and knowledge systems. She was known as an obeah priestess with strong spiritual powers, which informed her influential oaths of loyalty and secrecy that motivated her followers to be courageous in their military wars against their British enemies (Barima, 2016). The British colonialists feared and hated Nanny. According to Sherlock and Bennett (1998), Nanny survived until the end of the first Maroon War in 1740. Nanny Town was named in her honor. Cuffee was also a leader of the Windward Maroons. Quao and Kishee were also in leadership positions with Cuffee. According to Patterson (1996), Cuffee was as skilled and tactical in his military maneuvers as Cudjoe. Cuffee’s leadership style was one of firmness to ensure discipline among his military men and women.

The first war of the Maroons against the British began in 1722. This war predated the Bernice Rebellion of 1763, as well as the Suriname Bush Negro Movement of the 1730s and 1750s. It is important to underscore that during this war, the Windward and Leeward Maroon communities fought cooperatively to be free. They developed a sophisticated intelligence system that involved enslaved Africans on the plantations who provided them with details on the plans and movements of the whites. Cudjoe, as well as Cuffee, and their armies frequently defeated their assailants and provided their fighting people with arms and ammunitions from their incursions against the British colonialists (Patterson, 1996).

Alleyne (1988) indicated that the Maroons believed that Accompong was God of Heaven, creator of all things, and the deity of goodness. They neither worshiped nor offered sacrifices to him. The early Maroons in their plantation wars were West and Central African healers, herbalists, spiritualists, and musicians who valiantly fought to attain freedom. They used their knowledge of poisoned fire-hardened spikes that were concealed under dry leaves to kill their enemies. Similar techniques were used in Haiti (Warner-Lewis, 2003).

In 1739, British Colonel Guthrie met with Cudjoe to discuss the treaty. Cudjoe bowed down at the Colonel’s feet asking for forgiveness. There are several reports that Cudjoe was supplicant to the British colonialists regarding the terms of this treaty. These terms included the Leeward Maroons’ freedom being recognized and some degree of economic freedom. These Maroons were forbidden to admit any new runaways into the 1,500 acre of land that was granted to them. Cudjoe assured the British colonialists that two white men would be allowed to live among the Maroons for surveillance purposes. Cudjoe agreed that a road would be built linking his settlement to coastal plantations. He agreed to fight Britain’s enemies, and to kill those who revolted against the British. He agreed to return escaped Africans to their slaveholders, and to receive compensation from the British for his efforts (Gomez, 2020; Patterson, 1996). There were those Leeward Maroons and enslaved Africans who were outraged by the terms of this treaty that would thwart the continued fight for their collective freedom. These disgruntled Maroons and the enslaved Africans engaged in military actions against the colonialists (Patterson, 1996).

The Windward rebels persistently harassed and killed the white colonialists, and burnt several plantations and other properties. They consistently outmaneuvered the whites who attacked or attempted to capture them. It was normative for these Maroons to ambush white soldiers. Enslaved African Jamaicans rose in rebellion throughout the country to join the two Maroon groups or to form their own guerilla groups (Patterson, 1996).

In 1739, a British Colonel met with the leadership of the Windward Maroons to negotiate a treaty. Cuffee, Quan, Queen Nanny, and the other leaders were suspicious of the British. They had trained their children to behave likewise. Their women wore necklaces, wrist and ankle bracelets strung with the teeth of white men (Patterson, 1996). The British colonialists offered the Windward Maroons independence and several of the provisions offered to the Leeward Maroons, including being given 500 acres of land. While these leaders signed the treaty, the Windward Maroons refused to accept certain provisions of the treaty including the protection of British interests and they refused to thwart the quest for freedom by enslaved Africans.

The Special Role of African Women in the Resistance to Enslavement and Subjugation

As previously discussed, women were central in the collective quest for freedom and emancipation in Haiti and Jamaica. African women were revered among the Igbo, the Fon-Ewe, among other African groups. Gomez (2020) wrote that in Fon-Ewe spirituality, Mawa-Lisa was the riverain goddess. He asserted that Mawa-Lisa is “a composite of female and male characteristic representing the Fon-Ewe ideal” (p. 73).

In Dahomey’s history, and in the history of Nigeria, the Congo, and in other African countries’ history, there is evidence of female hunters and soldiers comprised of women and men, and women were adept in ambush warfare (Johnson, 2007). One military ritual from Central Africa was for men going to battle being required to pass between women’s legs to show courage. The women assured the men of their safety and victory in military incursions. Women accompanied the male warriors while encouraging them verbally. Women used their knives to end the lives of wounded enemies (Warner-Lewis, 2003). These beliefs in male and female complementarity informed the resistance movements against enslavement in Haiti and Jamaica. Maroon African women and enslaved African women fought valiantly alongside men in the quest for their collective freedom from white tyranny. The Maroons were never completely conquered.

Other Revolutionary Leaders of Jamaica

Several revolutionary Africans in Jamaica were inspired by the successes of the Windward and Leeward Maroons. A distinctive feature of these men and women was their reliance on obeah in their military actions. The earliest evidence of the use of Obeah in the Caribbean is traced to 1,760 in the British West Indies (Paton, 2015).

Tacky, was an Akan Coromanti man from West Africa who was said to have been a chieftain (Edwards, 1996). He was credited for popularizing Obeah. Tacky had spiritual knowledge and spiritual powers. He believed that he was protected from harm. Tacky’s military attributes and his strong commitment to traditional African spirituality promoted solidarity among enslaved Africans. Tacky in the years 1760 to 1761, along with Abena, an Akan Queen Mother, used Obeah in their military science projects. His rebellion involved well over a thousand enslaved Africans for a period of more than a year (Gomez, 2020; Kars, 2016). About 60 whites were killed. Tacky instructed the enslaved African masses to destroy buildings and to set fire to plantations. Gunpowder and firearms were taken from the plundered plantations. Tacky’s aim was the creation of a separate Black nation. Gomez (2020) wrote that Tacky was captured and executed by the Maroons under British commanders. Tacky’s head was severed and displayed on a pole in a public space (Edwards, 1996).

The British colonialists instituted the punitive Anti-Obeah Law of 1760 in response to Tacky’s rebellion. This law was to eradicate Obeah by giving death sentences to enslaved Africans who were Obeah practitioners. Any contact with Obeah or with Obeah practitioners resulted in floggings and prison sentences. There were also the expulsions from the island of those Africans who were deemed by the British authorities to be Obeah practitioners. An aim of the colonialists was to prevent assemblies of enslaved Africans to plan rebellions (Paton, 2015).

Paul Bogle was a preacher in Morant Bay, Jamaica. Bogle knew Obeah’s war rituals. This knowledge was evident in Bogle’s use of rum and gunpowder rituals to ensure successful revolts (Barima, 2016). Bogle was knowledgeable about the Kikongo language. Bogle was deeply offended by the psychopathic treatment of African Jamaicans by the British authorities, and by the deep poverty and disenfranchisement of his people. Prior to the insurrection, Bogle and his followers took solemn baths, and they were purported to have repeated this pledge then “to cleave to the black and leave the white.” This pledge was to promote solidarity among group members.

Paul Bogle was reported to have said to his followers: “It is time for us to help ourselves, skin for skin. The iron bar is now broken in this parish. War is at us, my black skin. War is at hand” (Sherlock & Bennett, 1998, p. 4). Bogle and hundreds of his followers engaged in the successful Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865, which led to the deaths of British colonialists and to the destruction of their courthouse and other buildings. Bogle’s rebellion spread across the island. In response, the British government indiscriminately killed many of the poorly armed rebels. Gordon was arrested and he was hanged by the British authorities on October 23, 1865.

There was also Guinea Jack who led the 1823 Boxing Day Conspiracy. He was born in Africa. According to Barima (2016), Guinea Jack was committed to African traditional spirituality. He was a healer, diviner, and possessed prophetic attributes. Guinea Jack also relied on the potency of herbal treatment, which was used on all rebels under his leadership. He sacrificed a fowl and relied on Obeah and gave ritual baths to the rebels in preparation for war that was under the guidance of the gods and ancestors. He and his co-conspirators and other revolutionaries took the oath of conviction, courage, and commitment to kill the plantation owners and to burn the colonialists’ properties (Sherlock & Bennett, 1998). Guinea Jack was executed by the British in April 1824. His uprising impacted future insurrections.

Sam Sharpe who was the leader of the 1831 to 1832 Baptist/Christmas rebellion. Sharpe instructed his large followers to withdraw their labor from the plantations. The African masses burnt the properties and plantations. They fought with cutlases, and other crude weapons. Fourteen whites were killed. While waiting to be hanged on May 23, 1832, Sharpe was reported to have said: “freedom was a right for which those who wished to be free had to be prepared to die, that freedom was not an end, a static condition, but a never-ending process of preserving and enlarging the gains that had been won” (Sherlock & Bennett, 1998, p. 6). Undoubtedly, these brave and revolutionary men and women contributed to Jamaica’s emancipation in 1833.

Conclusion

It is evident from the testimony of history explored in this article, as Dr. Clarke (1972) advised, “a small number of human agents in a human drama can conceivably do something that has not taken place before, something astonishing to inform observers” (p. 124). This was the case for the male and female heroic warriors against their enslavement in the discussed countries (Washington, 2006). Maroon communities in Jamaica, Haiti, Suriname, and in other islands have historically served as custodians of African culture. For centuries of racial oppression Africans and their descendants have militarily challenged their enemies from the enslavement era through the colonial and apartheid historical periods. Their indominable spirit of resistance allowed them, to some degree, to manage their national affairs. The resistance to foreign and hostile intrusions can be seem in the numerous ways African descendants perpetuate their traditional spiritual rituals including Vodun, Convince, Santeria, Obeah, Pocomania, Kumina, the Kromanti Dance, the use of the bati drums of Cuba, the Jamaican abeng or cow horn, call and response, the Africanity of Rastafarianism, the Junkanoo parades, which are purported to have Kongo and Mande influences and to be strongly promoted by the Igbo, among other African-derived cultural expressions that are spiritually and politically empowering (Turner, 2015), among other palpable modes of resistance to hegemonial Eurocentricity. Haiti provided one of the most important models of collective self-determination to outwit and to defeat the white colonialists in 1804. Hence, the necessity for each generation of people of African descent to stand at the crossroads and follow the triumphant path constructed by the ancestors, some named in this article, and many were unnamed. These formidable, courageous, committed, strategic, and wise ancestors were prepared to accept any consequences for the freedom and independence of the African masses.