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By Root 3071 0

remedy the situation promptly,” the governors of Nombre de Dios claimed a month after the attack. The court, justifiably fearful of being cheated, dragged its feet. While colonial officials dithered, sometimes trying to negotiate with Afro-Indian communities, sometimes seeking to raze them, maroons continued to steal cattle, free slaves, and kill Spaniards. Some of the dead Spaniards were priests; in their hatred of Catholic Spain, the maroons had happily let Drake convert them to Protestantism. (No evidence exists that they actually changed their previous religious practice.) Even when the two sides finally committed to negotiating, their mutual suspicion and hostility made progress agonizingly slow.

All the while, English, French, and Dutch pirates were coming to the isthmus, asking the maroons to help them as they had helped Drake. Most didn’t get any assistance—the maroons seem to have acquired a low opinion of European competence. Nonetheless, Spanish fears of a maroon-pirate alliance continued to grow, reaching a kind of frenzy in 1578 and 1579, as the now-infamous Drake sailed up the Pacific coast of South America on another voyage, wrecking Spanish possessions along the way. Colonial officials approached Domingo Congo, leader of the regrouped maroons in Bayano’s territory, with a deal: if his maroons promised to be loyal to the king, they would be given good farmland, cattle, and pigs, tilling and harvesting equipment, a year’s worth of maize seed, and—most important—their liberty. As lagniappe, the colonists promised to exempt them from the taxes paid by Spanish residents. The terms were attractive, but Domingo Congo hesitated to accept—every maroon knew what had happened to Bayano when he negotiated with Spaniards. The colonists, for their part, were leery of rewarding people whom they viewed as thieves, murderers, and stolen property. Despite their distaste, though, they issued similar offers to the scatter of runaway groups in the hills outside Panamá town and the bigger, more centralized maroon “kingdom” near the planned location of Portobelo.

Portobelo’s “king” put his mark on the treaty on September 15, 1579. The action delighted Felipe II, king of Spain. Four months later, when Domingo Congo’s maroons in Bayano hadn’t followed suit, the king urged the colonial government to close the deal:

Because of the great importance of subduing the maroon blacks for the peace and quiet of these lands, we took great contentment in learning from your letter of the good state you have reached with them in Portobelo and we expect that their example can make those of Bayano understand the great favor that they will have from pardoning their crimes and the safe places they will live in and the other benefits that will follow the capitulation that you will send to our Council of the Indies.

“Capitulation”? From today’s perspective, the king’s choice of words is amazing. The Spanish government described giving the maroons almost everything they wanted in exchange for ending a notional alliance with foreign pirates as a surrender—by the maroons. True, the maroons did not get to return to their African homes. But that would have been next to impossible; even had the colonists not reenslaved the maroons once they were confined on a ship, they wouldn’t have known where to return them. Moreover, many maroons by this point had wives from other parts of Africa and the Americas. For better and worse, the isthmus had become their home. By “capitulating,” they won the lasting, if uneasy, freedom to live as they wished, tax-free, in their own communities.

Two years later, Domingo Congo signed the treaty, as did the maroons outside Panamá. These agreements did not stop future escapes, as Tardieu, the University of La Réunion historian, has noted. Indeed, runaways continued to disappear into the forest until the end of the slave trade. Many escapees filtered into free maroon villages. By 1819, when the isthmus won its freedom from Spain, these communities’ origin had been almost forgotten. Maroons had won the highest kind of liberty