"Untold Stories: The Maroon Across the Seas"

 by Tishe Osunlana

The end of the American Revolution introduced the black Loyalists to Nova Scotia, but after wars against the British in Jamaica, the Maroons were deported to the cold island as well. The origins of the Maroons date back to the late 1400s when groups of African slaves owned by the Spanish fled to the mountainous interior of Jamaica. Together with the Tainos native to the land, they created a tight-knit community.

However, once the English won Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655, they had new sovereigns and new problems.

For the next century and a half, they waged war against the English, fighting for independence. By 1795, the Jamaican government wanted to get rid of the Maroons and decided to deport them to Halifax, in Canada. Three British ships came, and 543 Maroons, regardless of age or gender, were brought to Canada.

This was a particularly cruel sentence as the extreme weather in Nova Scotia would be nothing like the Maroons had experienced, and adjusting was difficult. Luckily, the Duke of Kent, Commander-in-Chief (Queen Victoria’s future father), was impressed by their military skills and encouraged them to enlist in militia units. Sir Wentworth also acquired a grant from the Jamaican government to help them settle on a portion of the island. The Maroons, however, rejected the notion of low-paid labour, and few became farmers. This led to them wondering if they could settle in Nova Scotia.

The harsh winters of 1796-98 proved to the Maroons that life on the island was not for them. Sir Wentworth was originally a staunch supporter of the Maroons as he saw them as skilled colonizers, but as they were not supporting themselves in the ways that were suggested, he easily resolved to expel them. He, with a majority of the Maroons, set up a plan to have them sent to Sierra Leone in Africa.

Although a few remained and integrated into the community, leaving behind descendants in the Preston Area of Halifax County.

For the Nova Scotian Maroons in Sierra Leone, they sadly still found troubles in their new home and found themselves disliking all the other settlers, such as the Liberated Africans and White Nova Scotians. After a series of conflicts the Maroons had with other ethnic groups in the area, some returned to Jamaica (when it was legalized), and when Jamaican plantation owners needed paid workers after the abolition of slavery, ships would be sent to the coast offering a job; at this point, many willingly left after feeling unsafe in the colony.

In total, a third of the Maroon population in Sierra Leone returned to Jamaica, many working paid jobs on sugar plantations. But the people that stayed became mixed into an all-encompassing identity of the Sierra Leone Creole people, descendants of all Africans who came to Sierra Leone.