Jamaican Maroon Foodways

Community

⚠ PEOPLE WHO WON A TREATY, NOT A FOLKLORE CATEGORY. Africans who escaped Spanish and English plantations established free communities in the COCKPIT COUNTRY and the Blue Mountains, fought the British to a standstill in the First Maroon War, and signed treaties in 1739 recognising their land and autonomy. ACCOMPONG in St Elizabeth, MOORE TOWN, Charles Town and Scott’s Hall in the east. Their foodways: the jerk complex; forest hunting, especially wild hog; ground provisions and the yam; corn; smoking and drying as the preservation a fugitive community needs; and the ABENG, the cow-horn signal. ⚠ THE MAROON HERITAGE OF MOORE TOWN is inscribed on the UNESCO intangible heritage list. Accompong’s 6 January treaty celebration has its own food. ⚠ CEREMONIAL AND KROMANTI PRACTICE IS NOT RECORDED HERE.

What is recorded

Jamaican Maroons fought the British to a standstill in the First Maroon War and signed treaties in 1739 recognising their land and autonomy. Accompong, Moore Town, Charles Town and Scott’s Hall persist as Maroon communities. The Maroon heritage of Moore Town is inscribed on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. Kromanti and ceremonial practice is not recorded in this system. documented

The First Maroon War ends in treaties recognising Jamaican Maroon land and autonomy. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

related to Surinamese Maroon Foodways documented

Two Maroon societies that won treaties by war — Jamaica 1739, Suriname the 1760s. ⚠ Related histories, separate peoples, separate foodways.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

originates from Jerk documented

⚠ Jerk is recorded as Maroon in origin — a fugitive community’s preservation and low-smoke cooking — with Taíno barbacoa smoking as a probable component.