Maroons
Origins / Location : Jamaica, Cuba, Canada, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico , Venezuela, The Guianas, Colombia, Brazil
Names : French adjective marron, meaning 'feral' or 'fugitive'. Spanish word cimarrón meaning 'wild, unruly' or 'runaway slave'.
Languages : Saramaccan, Arabic, French, Spanish, English, Jamaican Maroon language/Maroon Spirit language/Kromanti,/Jamaican Maroon Creole/Deep patwa
Religion : Kumfu, Akan , Myal, Obeah, Koromanti
Samaraka dancer
An elder of the Santi Ground community, Saramaka, and another member of the community
a woman who is supposed to be possessed by a snake's spirit (which is rather serious) is the center of elaborate rituals involving offerings and the herbal bath shown on the photo during the day and (wild) dancing during the night. The village Santigron in Suriname (along the Saramacca river yet not far from Paramaribo) is one of Surinames Maroon villages, i.e. villages of descendants of 18th Century run-away slaves. Unlike in Brazil or Jamaica, some 20,000 Maroons are still living in Suriname 's rain-forest having retained their most original and traditional Afro-American culture.
Saramaccan of Suriname
Maroon village, Suriname River, 1955
Maroon men in Suriname, picture taken between 1910 and 1935
Saramaccan marriage/wedding
Saramaccan washing and bathing in a rive at Drepada, a small Saramaccan village located close to Brokopondo,Suriname.
Saramaka man, photo c.1910, from Sir Harry H. Johnson's The Negro in the New World Saramaka, Saamaka or Saramacca are one of six Maroon peoples (formerly called "Bush Negroes") in the Republic of Suriname and one of the Maroon peoples in French Guiana.
Portrait of a Maroon woman in front of her hut, dressed in Pangi. Image Source: Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of World Cultures
People participating in a recent activity in the Asafu Yard at Charles Town, Portland, where Viva Zumbi, a clash of Jamaican and Brazilian Maroon cultural forms to celebrate the Brazilian Maroon hero Zumbi dos Palmeres
A Maroon elder outside her house in Accompong, Jamaica. Photo by Val Lyons
The Ndyuka people ( one of the Maroon peoples living in Suriname and French Guiana ). - Taken in Suriname during 1919. - Blaer, Captain Johann. Personal diary. Dutch Cpt. Blaer led an expedition from Pernambuco to supress Palmares (1645).
Ndyuka man bringing the body of a child before a shaman. Suriname, 1955