Queen Nanny of the Maroons

Today we have another story of a powerful black Queen defeating colonialism: Queen Nanny aka Granny Nanny or Nanny or Nanny of the Maroons (c. 1686 – c. 1733), was an 18th-century leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly enslaved Africans called the Windward Maroons. In the early 18th century, under the leadership of Nanny, the Windward Maroons fought a guerrilla war over many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica in what became known as the First Maroon War.

Much of what is known about her comes from oral history, as little textual evidence exists. According to Maroon legend, Nanny was born into the Akan people about 1686, in what is now Ghana, West Africa. There are several versions of her early story and how she came to be in Jamaica. In one version, she came as a free woman who may have even had her own slaves. Another version of her story tells that she was of royal African blood and came to Jamaica as a free woman. In another, she came to Jamaica as a slave herself but then escaped by jumping off a ship while it was offshore. However, most oral traditions about her arrival in Jamaica maintain that she was always free and was never a slave. She may have been married to a Maroon man named Adou, but had no known children who survived.

The Maroons are descendants of West Africans, mainly people from the Akan. Known as Coromantie or Koromantee, they were renowned as ferocious fighters. As with Nanny, the origin of at least half of the enslaved African people in Jamaica during the early English colonisation of the island is uncertain.

After being brought to Jamaica in the course of the Transatlantic slave trade, many enslaved Africans fled from the oppressive conditions of plantations and formed their own communities “free communities” in the rugged hills of the island. People who escaped from slavery joined these “Maroons” communities in the mountains. Until the 1650s, enslaved Africans escaped Spanish rule and intermarried with the native islanders, the Taino or Arawak people, in their communities. 

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In 1655, following the Invasion of Jamaica, the English captured Jamaica from the Spaniards, but many Spanish slaves became free under Spanish Maroon leaders such as Juan de Bolas and Juan de Serras. The Spanish left, freeing their slaves in the process, many of whom joined the Windward Maroon communities. These formerly enslaved people, with their ranks enhanced with escaped and liberated slaves, became the core of the Windward Maroons. They staged a prolonged fight against English subjugation and enslavement. Later in the 17th century, more slaves escaped joining the two main bands of Windward and Leeward Maroons. By the early 18th century, these Maroon groups had become towns, headed respectively by Nanny, who shared the leadership of the eastern Maroons with Quao, and Captain Cudjoe and Accompong in the west. The Windward Maroons fought the British on the east side of the island from their villages in the Blue Mountains of Portland.

By 1720, Nanny and Quao, sometimes called her brother, settled and controlled an area in the Blue Mountains. It was later given the name Nanny Town, and it had a strategic location overlooking Stony River via a 900-foot (270 m) ridge, making a surprise attack by the British very difficult. The community was self-sufficient – raising and hunting animals and growing their own crops. Maroons at Nanny Town survived by sending traders to the nearby market towns to exchange food for weapons and cloth. It was organized very much like a typical Asante society.

From 1655 until they signed peace treaties in 1739/40, these Maroons led most of the slave rebellions in Jamaica, helping to free many enslaved people from the plantations. They also damaged and raided the plantations, destroying the land and seizing food and weapons, at further cost to their owners. Nanny was highly successful at organizing these raids – in 30 years, she was said to have saved over a thousand people and seen them resettled in her Maroon community. 

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Nanny became a folk hero among the Maroons and those who remained in slavery. While the British captured Nanny Town on more than one occasion, they were unable to hold on to it as over a decade the Maroon’s guerrilla attacks succeeding in besting the British.  

Between 1728 and 1734, during the First Maroon War, Nanny Town and other Maroon settlements were frequently attacked by British forces. They wanted to stop the raids and believed that the Maroons prevented settlement of the interior. In 1734, a Captain Stoddart attacked the remnants of Nanny Town, "situated on one of the highest mountains in the island", via "the only path" available: "He found it steep, rocky, and difficult, and not wide enough to admit the passage of two persons abreast."

In addition to the use of the ravine, resembling what Jamaicans call a "cockpit", the Maroons also used decoys to trick the British into ambushes. A few Maroons would run out into view of the British and then run in the direction of fellow Maroons who were hidden and would attack. After falling into these ambushes several times, the British retaliated. According to planter Bryan Edwards, who wrote his narrative half a century later, Captain Stoddart discovered the Maroons sleeping in their huts and "fired upon them so briskly, that many were slain in their habitations". However, recent evidence shows that the number of Windward Maroons killed by Stoddart in his attack on Nanny Town was in single digits. 

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The Windward Maroons' success against a much superior and better armed enemy was a testament to the great skill their leader, Nanny, possessed. One of their advantages over the British was their long-distance communications capability. They pioneered the use of a cow horn called an abeng. This horn with a hole drilled in one end was used for long range communications. Its signal allowed Maroon lookouts to communicate over great distances, and flummoxed the British who had no similar technology.  

Nanny's troops were also masters of camouflage. The soldiers were so proficient at disguising their location that the British soldiers returned with tales of trees coming alive and cutting off heads. Besides the physical aspects of camouflage, the Maroons perfected slowing their breathing so as not to reveal their presence to someone in their vicinity. The maroons also developed ways of creating silent fires that were not readily visible.

The Windward Maroons were innovators in guerrilla warfare. They used surprise, knowledge of the terrain, and cleverly chosen positions in their fight against the British. Their village was located in rugged territory with only one way in. That one way in was a narrow path that was only wide enough for one person. Soldiers trying to attack arrayed in a single file were easily ambushed. To heighten the enemy's fear, Nanny's forces never killed the entire attacking force – they always made sure some survived to tell the horrific tale. 

Eventually, Britain decided they could never defeat the Macaroons and could at best make a treaty of peace with them. In 1739, the British signed a treaty with Cudjoe in 1739, enabling them to offer a less favourable treaty to the Windward Maroons. In 1740, there was a separate land grant signed with Nanny and the Maroons of Nanny Town, which granted "Nanny and the people now residing with her and their heirs ... a certain parcel of Land containing five hundred acres in the parish of Portland ...". This land patent consisted of 500 acres of land granted by the government to the Maroons of New Nanny Town under a separate 1740 document ending the First Maroon War. The rebuilt Nanny Town, later called Moore Town was established on that location. In 1781, the Assembly agreed to purchase another additional 500 acres from neighbouring planter Charles Douglas to increase Moore Town's communal land to 1,000 acres.

In signing treaties with the Maroons, the British not only made a truce with a troublesome foe but also enlisted that foe in capturing the runaways who they had once made their mission to save. Eventually, there were five Maroon towns in the 18th century, including Nanny Town living under their own chiefs with a British supervisor in each town. In exchange, they agreed not to harbour new runaway slaves, but to help catch them for bounties. The Maroons were also expected to fight for the British in the case of an attack from the French or Spanish.

By 1760, New Nanny Town had been renamed Moore Town, after the governor Sir Henry Moore, 1st Baronet, during Tacky's War, which the Maroons helped to suppress.  By 1760, Moore Town, was under the command of a white superintendent named Charles Swigle. It is possible that Nanny had already died by this time. While this may seem like a betrayal of their principals, the people of New Nanny Town saw this treaty as a win in that it ended the war and granted them legal rights over the land. Thus, its current residents still celebrate the day it was signed as a national holiday. 

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Many in her community attributed Nanny's leadership skills to her Obeah powers. Obeah is an African-derived religion that is still practised in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries. It is associated with both good and bad magic, charms, luck, and with mysticism in general. In some Caribbean nations, aspects of Obeah have survived through synthesis with Christian symbolism and practice introduced by European colonials.

Some claim that Queen Nanny lived to be an old woman, dying of natural causes in the 1760s. The exact date of her death remains a mystery. Part of the confusion is that "Nanny" is an honorific title, and many high-ranking women were called that in Maroon Town. However, the Maroons are adamant that there was only one "Queen Nanny."

In 1975, the government of Jamaica declared Nanny as their only female national hero celebrating her success as a leader, military tactician and strategist. Her image is also on the Jamaican $500 note which is called a Nanny in Jamaican slang.

According to Maroon oral history, Nanny's success in defending her people against overwhelming British forces was often attributed to her mysterious supernatural powers – including the ability to catch bullets and redirect them back at the people who shot at her. Another Maroon legend claims that if any straight haired, white man, goes to the original Nanny Town, he is immediately struck dead (shall we send Donald Trump at put that to the test?).  While she may well have had extra powers, this also sounds like an attempt to undermine the possibility that a woman could prove such an effective military leader. As discussed above, under Nanny’s command, her people perfected the art of guerrilla warfare and had many tactics for seeing off the British – meaning there was little need for them to use magic to secure a victory! Either way, being a powerful black woman who defeated a global empire is a superpower in itself!