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All roads lead to Accompong

On Friday, January 6, the Trelawny Town Maroons of the Sovereign State of Accompong in St Elizabeth will celebrate the signing of the treaty of peace and friendship between Captain Cudjoe and the British. The event is also set to be part of Jamaica's 50th year of Independence celebrations.

The procession to the Peace Cave at Old Town to feed the ancestors in 2010.

Long before Jamaica gained political Independence on August 6, 1962, the Leeward Maroons of Trelawny Town, St James, and Accompong Town, St Elizabeth, had gained theirs in the late 1730s. This was after years of strategic warfare against the British militia in the Cockpit Country of western Jamaica.

EGG CARTONS

From the air, the Cockpit Country looks like a huge and expansive overturned egg carton. Thousands of gullies or cockpits are surrounded by massive limestone hills, some rising to great heights, giving the area that extends between St James, Trelawny and St Elizabeth the classic hill-and-gully topography.

The hills are covered with a variety of trees that are firmly anchored by their roots that go through holes and fissures in the jagged limestone rocks. Captain Cudjoe and his men knew the geography of the area very well and used it to surprise and ambush the British militia, wearing down their resolve.

"The Maroons, whenever they expected an attack, disposed of themselves on the ledges of the rocks on both sides. Sometimes they ... lay covered by the underwood, and behind rocks and the roots of trees, waiting in silent ambush for their pursuers, of whose approach they had always had from their out-scouts," writes R.C. Dallas in The History of the Maroons (1803).

Because of the transient nature of the war, Cudjoe, his brothers, and the other fighters, some of whom had joined him from Clarendon and Portland, then known as St George's, were always on the go in the Cockpit Country. He constantly evaded the British, until he finally settled at a place in Trelawny Town, St James, named for Governor Edward Trelawny.

In a huge fortified cockpit, Captain Cudjoe settled with his troops, in the place soon to be called Cudjoe Town or Maroon Town. He also strengthened the troops placed under his brother, Accompong, and settled them in the northern hills of St Elizabeth. This is now Accompong Town.

TREATY OF PEACE

Maroons and visitors to Accompong Town, St Elizabeth, sing and dance under the Kinda Tree

Having come to the realisation that their strategies were no match for the Maroons', the British government, headed by King George II, gave "full power" and "authority" to Colonel John Guthrie and Captain Francis Saddler to negotiate and conclude a treaty of peace and friendship between Captain Cudjoe and his indefatigable men. The treaty was concluded on March 1, 1738 and consists of 15 articles.

The third one says, "That they shall enjoy and possess, for themselves and posterity forever, all the lands situated and lying between Trelawny Town and the Cockpits, to the amount of fifteen hundred acres, bearing northwest from the said Trelawny Town." Though the celebrations are observed in Accompong Town on January 6, said to be Cudjoe's birthday, some authoritative sources are saying that the treaty was actually signed in Cudjoe Town under a big cotton tree known subsequently as Cudjoe Tree, and not in the Peace Cave at Accompong.

The area is now officially known as the Sovereign State of Accompong and has its own constitution. It is a "state-within-a-state" led by a colonel who cannot act on certain matters without the consent or approval of the full Maroon Council. The constitution's preamble says, inter alia, "The colonel shall not have the sole power and or authority to enter any agreement on behalf of the Trelawney Town Maroons of the Sovereign State of Accmpong without the consent of the full council." The present colonel is Ferron Williams.

Wild hogs were a staple in the diets of escaped enslaved Africans, but this modern-day one looks just too good to be eaten.

Accompong Town is an integral part of Jamaica's history and heritage and is steeped in mystery and mystique, and that's why it is a must-go for many Jamaicans. It is heavily featured in the Roy T. Anderson's Maroon documentaryAKWANTU: The Journey, which make its Caribbean premiere on Sunday, June 17 at the Institute of Jamaica, downtown Kingston.

The town, which has been losing some of its authentic Maroon features, has a museum chock-full of artefacts, a monument erected in memory of Captain Cudjoe, the Kinda Tree, under which the cooking of and feasting on unsalted meat take place during the celebrations, centuries-old Maroon graves, and the Peace Cave at Old Town, which was used in the war against the British.

January 6 assumes a festive aura every year in Accompong Town, and this year promises to be no less. The food, the rituals, the music, indigenous and modern, the drumming, and the shopping all shout, Christmas in January!

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