Content uploaded by Jada Benn Torres
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Jada Benn Torres on Mar 26, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rclc20
Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean
Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-
américaines et caraïbes
ISSN: 0826-3663 (Print) 2333-1461 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rclc20
Investigating the “Taíno” ancestry of the Jamaican
Maroons: a new genetic (DNA), historical, and
multidisciplinary analysis and case study of the
Accompong Town Maroons
Harcourt Fuller & Jada Benn Torres
To cite this article: Harcourt Fuller & Jada Benn Torres (2018) Investigating the “Taíno” ancestry
of the Jamaican Maroons: a new genetic (DNA), historical, and multidisciplinary analysis and case
study of the Accompong Town Maroons, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean
Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes, 43:1, 47-78, DOI:
10.1080/08263663.2018.1426227
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.2018.1426227
Published online: 16 Feb 2018.
Submit your article to this journal
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Investigating the “Taíno”ancestry of the Jamaican Maroons:
a new genetic (DNA), historical, and multidisciplinary
analysis and case study of the Accompong Town Maroons
Harcourt Fuller
a
and Jada Benn Torres
b
a
Department of History, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA;
b
Department of Anthropology,
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
ABSTRACT
While scholars like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., have popularized the use of
genetic data (DNA) as a source of African American history and ances-
try, similar studies are lacking for other peoples of African descent. The
current study is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research project
undertaken by a historian of Africa and the African diaspora in the
Americas and a genetic anthropologist. Methodologically, we incorpo-
rate traditional sources of historical inquiry, as well as oral history and
genetic data (mitochondrial, Y chromosome, and autosomal DNA), to
investigate and suggest answers to the following question in popular
and scholarly debates about the ethnogenesis of the Jamaican
Maroons: to what extent did the indigenous Taínos form part of their
early history? Taking the Maroon community of Accompong Town as a
case study, we use a novel approach that reconsiders and disrupts
mainstream scholarly discourses on Maroon ethnogenesis in Jamaica
and, by extension, the larger circum-Caribbean world.
RÉSUMÉ
Alors que des chercheurs tels qu’Henry Louis Gates Jr. ont
popularisé l’utilisation des donnéées génétiques (ADN) comme
source dans l’étude de l’histoire et de l’ascendance des Afro-
Américains, d’autres peuples d’origine africaine n’ont pas fait l’ob-
jet d’une recherche similaire. Ce travail est un projet de recherche
interdisciplinaire issu de la collaboration entre un historien
spécialiste de l’Afrique et de la diaspora africaine aux Amériques
et un anthropologue génétique. Sur le plan méthodologique, nous
intégrons non seulement des sources traditionnelles de la
recherche en histoire, mais utilisons également l’histoire orale et
les données génétiques (ADN mitochondrial, chromosomique Y et
autosomal) afin de proposer des éléments de réponse é une
question qui se trouve au cœur des débats universitaires et publics
sur l’ethnogenése des esclaves marrons jamaïcains : jusqu’é quel
point les indigénes Tainos font-ils partie de leur histoire ? A travers
une étude de cas de la communauté marron d’Accompong Town,
nous utilisons une approche originale qui réexamine et perturbe
les courants dominants de pensée portant sur l’ethnogenése des
esclaves marrons en Jamaïque, et par extension sur le monde
antillais en général.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 23 February 2017
Accepted 6 December 2017
KEYWORDS
Jamaican Maroons;
Accompong Town Maroons;
Maroon ethnogenesis;
Amerindian; Taíno; mtDNA;
Y chromosome; autosomal
markers; genetic ancestry
CONTACT Jada Benn Torres j.benntor@vanderbilt.edu Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University,
Garland Hall 013, VU Station B #356050, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES, 2018
VOL. 43, NO. 1, 47–78
https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.2018.1426227
© 2018 CALACS
Introduction
Located roughly 90 miles south of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea, Jamaica is currently the
most heavily populated Anglophone Caribbean island, with a population estimated at
2.9 million people. As of 26 December 2017, the CIA World Factbook (2017) website
records that the island-nation is predominantly inhabited by peoples of African descent,
being comprised of 92.1% black, 6.1% mixed, 0.8% East Indian, 0.4% other, and 0.7%
unspecified ethnicity. The last two miscellaneous categories underpin a longstanding
and growing debate among scholars as well as the Jamaican public regarding whether or
not indigenous Taínos have persisted in the Jamaican population, especially from the
time of the British conquest of the island in the mid-seventeenth century to present.
Today, some Jamaicans claim that they are descendants of the original inhabitants, and
thus, in their popular imagination and “memory”, maintain that the Taínos are not
extinct. This notion of Taíno ethnogenesis is particularly prevalent among the Maroons.
For example, Paul H. Williams, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies-Mona,
who frequently contributes articles on the Jamaican Maroons and the Taínos to The
Gleaner newspaper, published a series of articles entitled “I Am Not Extinct”in that
paper (Williams 2014a,2014b). In these articles, he reported the story of Dr Erica
Neeganagwedgin, a self-identified Jamaican Taíno who was born in a coastal commu-
nity in the parish of St Elizabeth in western Jamaica (see Neeganagwedgin 2015). As
Williams (2014a) notes, “The hills, valleys, and plains of south Manchester [parish] and
St Elizabeth Manchester [parish] have long been known as Taíno territories”.
Many of the Jamaican Maroons, who some scholars have recognized as having
indigenous American ancestry, have also long argued and still maintain that their
original ancestors were not African, but indigenous Arawak Indians/Taínos (see,
for example, Williams 1938, 379). For example, the theme of the Sixth Charles
Town International Maroon Conference, which was held in the Windward Maroon
settlement of Charles Town in the parish of Portland in eastern Jamaica (see
Figure 1) in 2014, was “Maroons, Indigenous Peoples, and Indigeneity”.The
Figure 1. Map showing former and present-day Maroon settlements.
Source: Adapted from Bilby (1992, 2).
48 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
“Taíno Day”panels featured scholarly and cultural presentations by academics and
other people who self-identified as Taínos from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the
Dominican Republic, the United States, and other countries in the region (see
Williams 2014b,2014c). This association with self-identified Taínos underscores
the popular belief by many Jamaicans, including Maroons, that the Taínos were
the first Maroons. As Paul Williams (2014d, 13) asserts:
There was interbreeding between the Taínos and the Africans in the interior, and, as such,
the Taíno genes survived through this interbreeding, and the descendants of such unions
have survived until today. This survival theory has much credibility since the Taínos are to
be found on other Caribbean islands such as Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.
Not everyone shares this notion of Taíno persistence in Jamaica, however. In an article
entitled “Wackos are not Extinct”, Jamaican attorney-at-law Daniel Thwaites –a
columnist for The Gleaner –strongly criticized Paul Williams’report on people who
claimed Jamaican Taíno ancestry. In his cynical and insult-laden rebuttal, Thwaites
sarcastically dismissed Williams’articles as being filled with “ethnic anxiety”and
“sentimental declaration”. He ridiculed them as being “emotionally laden”and that
“The proof of Taíno ethnicity was family lore, daydreams and ‘blood memories’”.
Without masking his disdain for the arguments made in the articles, and those making
them, Thwaites (2014) remarked:
I trust the health ministry is aware of this ChikunTaino [a play on words based on the
chikungunya outbreak in Jamaica at the time] outbreak, especially since I think it warrants
referral to Ward 21 [a mental health facility . . .] The Taíno [. . .] were wiped out by
European diseases and savagery, and any survivors interbred with incoming Europeans
and Africans and ceased to exist as a discrete and identifiable group [. . .] Are the histories
wrong about the Jamaican Taíno extinction? I don’t think so. I’ve come to doubt many
things taught as history, but this isn’t one of them [. . .] Mind you, when DNA testing
becomes sophisticated or widespread enough, I expect scientists will find Taíno genes
represented in the population [. . .] But after 500 years of intermingling, it’s an epic
imaginative leap to call oneself ‘Native’[. . .] more troubling are the countless people
who have been perplexed and deformed by racism, so they invent imaginary ancestors
of a desired ethnicity. When I hear these things, I think, “You Ar-a-wak-job!”[. . .] And
that’s what’s disturbing about this Taíno resurrection. I sense it stems from some racial
screweduppedness [. . .] a genetic test can be had for US$99. Dr Needabrainjob [a deroga-
tory play on words on Erica Neeganagwedgin’s last name] should present one before we
gather around the communal campfire, sing some Taíno version of kumbaya, and burn all
the history books.
Despite Thwaites’s skepticism, this notion that the Maroons have Taíno ancestry has
also been suggested and popularized in documentary programs such as the BBC’s
genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? One episode featured former Welsh
sprinter and hurdler Colin Jackson, who is of Jamaican descent. Jackson had his DNA
sampled for the show, which revealed that his ancestry is 55% African, 38% European,
and 7% “Native American”. After showing Jackson’s surprise about the percentage of
his “Native American”descent, the narrator asserts that “it’s probable that Colin’s
Native American DNA comes from Jamaica’s original inhabitants –the Taínos –
Amerindians descended from South and Central American tribes”. To gather further
information “about his new-found ancestors”, Colin visits the Taíno museum, which
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 49
displays information about their way of life and “physical attributes”, including their
“Mongoloid features –stocky, medium height, with black, coarse [. . .] hair, and light-
brown complexion [. . .] a staple food was cassava”. Upon reading that description,
Colin gleefully states: “there’s lots of things there that relate to me. The Mongoloid
features, for one. I always wondered where I got these eyes from [pointing to the shape
of his eyes]. Now, they possibly could have come from there, from my Native American
look [. . .] and I love cassava”. He later visits a local expert, who explains that Colin’s
presumed Taíno heritage was derived from the Maroon ancestry of his Jamaican father.
Later in the show, Jackson visits the Windward Maroon settlement of Moore Town in
Portland (see Figure 1), where he converses with Maroon Colonel (Chief) Wallace
Sterling, who concurs that Taínos continue to live among present-day Jamaicans and
their descendants in the diaspora, through their DNA passed on during their early-
modern period interactions with formerly enslaved Africans who escaped into the
mountains.
1
These arguments highlight a number of issues relating to how individuals and
societies as a whole identify, imagine, and attempt to reconcile the history and ethno-
genesis of the early American civilizations which came into contact with Europeans and
Africans in the New World. Embedded within these paradigms are longstanding
antagonisms between oral history, colonial writings, and contemporary scientific evi-
dence. In light of these deep divisions and debates in the public sphere (and in
academia, as we shall soon see) about whether or not the Jamaican Taínos are extinct
or extant, and the likelihood (or not) that they made genetic contributions to Maroons,
to what extent does the scholarly literature confirm, complicate, or negate either side of
these assertions? As Thwaites has urged, is DNA analysis (alone) a panacea for this
popular and scholarly debate regarding the indigenous American ancestry of peoples of
African descent in the New World, or does it have to be deployed in conjunction with
other, more traditional methodologies?
In the current interdisciplinary, collaborative study, we incorporate both traditional
modes of inquiry –such as primary documents and the secondary sources, literature on
historical archeology, as well as oral history –and newer methodologies –incorporating
genetic (DNA) data and analysis –to investigate the extent to which definitive answers
can be given about whether or not the Taínos or other indigenous groups from the
Americas or elsewhere formed part of the biogeographic origins of the Accompong Town
Maroon community. In a previous study, Madrilejo, Lombard, and Benn Torres (2015)
considered the maternal ancestries of this community through the use of mitochondrial
DNA. This work found that the vast majority of participants carried mitochondrial
lineages commonly found in Africa and throughout the African diaspora. The only
non-African mitochondrial lineage observed in the Accompong Maroon sample was a
lineage that is indigenous to the Americas. Furthermore, neither of the individuals
carrying indigenous American genetic lineages indicated any recent immigration from
outside of the Maroon community back to their grandparents’generation. The combina-
tion of the genealogical interview and genetic data suggests that both African and
indigenous American women were foundational to the contemporary community. The
presence of indigenous American mitochondrial lineages in modern-day Maroon popu-
lations supports long-held narratives by Maroon oral historians, as well as some scholars,
50 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
indicating that there were familial relationships between African and indigenous
American peoples (Carey 1997, 656).
The current paper extends that work with the consideration of two additional sets of
genetic markers from Y chromosome and autosomal DNA. After providing a brief
overview of the history of Marronage in the Americas generally and in Jamaica
specifically, we outline how the methodology of genetic ancestry may be applied to
reinterpret the Maroon past, interrogate the historiographical and archeological litera-
ture regarding the possible populations which contributed to our findings of indigenous
American ancestry among the Maroons, and finally render an assessment of how the
convergence of these sources may provide more conclusive answers to the central
question regarding the indigenous ethnogenesis of the Accompong Town Maroons,
within a broader Caribbean context.
While we will show how the integration of genetic data with historical and other
sources can be a useful tool for interrogating the Maroon past, we are also mindful of
and have taken into account the limitations and implications of incorporating genetics
into this analysis, as is evident from previous research on populations (such as African
Americans) that have incorporated this methodology (see, for example, Bolnick,
Fullwiley, and Duster et al. 2007; Duster 1999; Duster 2010; Nixon 2007; Royal et al.
2010). Further, we understand the potential cultural, political, and economic implica-
tions of our findings on Maroon communities. Nonetheless, we contend that our novel,
comprehensive, and nuanced assessment of Jamaican Maroon ethnogenesis does not
undermine Maroon traditions, beliefs, or sense of identity. Rather, our research adds yet
another strand to what is already a complex historical and cultural Maroon mosaic,
forged over centuries in the Jamaican hinterland. Moreover, our findings are not
contradictory to the long-held claims that Maroons stake over their traditional forms
of governance, land rights, and the economic benefits that they seek to pursue from the
sustainable use of these traditional territories for the preservation, development, and
continuation of their way of life. These claims are not based on the existence or lack of
indigenous ancestry, but the long struggle of Maroons to gain and maintain their
freedom from the colonial state and domination by the nation-state that succeeded it.
Colonialism, slavery, and marronage in Jamaica
For as long as there has been slavery in the Americas, enslaved peoples resisted in
various forms, one of which included removing themselves from the plantations to
establish sovereign societies in the most inaccessible parts of the New World. Such
enclaves were established in slave-holding territories such as Brazil, Barbados, Central
America, Colombia, Cuba, French Guiana, Dominica, Ecuador, Hispaniola, Jamaica,
Mexico, Peru, Surinam, and the United States. Since the publication of seminal books
such as Richard Price’s edited volume Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the
Americas (1973, and subsequent editions), the historiography on marronage has grown
substantially (for other general overviews and references, see Beatty-Medina 2017; Bilby
and N’Diaye 1992; Florentino and Amantino 2011; Heuman 1986; Hoogbergen 1995;
Kars 2016; Thompson 2006). Colonialism in Jamaica, specifically, began in 1494 with
the arrival of Columbus and the subsequent annexation of the island with support from
the Spanish Crown. Within 10 years, Spanish colonists and their enslaved Africans
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 51
would arrive to exploit Jamaica’s natural resources. Concurrent with the arrival of
enslaved peoples was the emergence of communities of self-liberated Africans later
known as Maroons (Knight 1990, 304, 1978, 287). The arrival of African and European
peoples, as well as the development of Maroon communities, marked the beginning of a
new era for the Caribbean, in which the landscape and indigenous populations were
forever altered.
Explanations of the etymology of the term “Maroon”vary widely. Some scholars
(Mann 2011, 331) claim an indigenous American origin for the term, yet the indigenous
meaning and specific language of the progenitor word varies from source to source.
Similar uncertainty surrounds the possible European roots of “Maroon”, although
scholarly consensus points to a disambiguation of the Spanish term “cimarrón”as the
likely origin. The word “cimarrón”was used to describe feral livestock or other
creatures living in remote areas. Regardless of its origin, by the sixteenth century the
word “Maroon”was used to describe individuals who refused to be enslaved and
consequently freed themselves by escaping and, in many cases, fighting back against
institutionalized slavery (Price 1996, 445). Other terms, such as “rebellious negroes”and
“negroes in rebellion”, were also used during the period.
Spain’s acquisition of colonies in the Caribbean (see Andrews 1978; Wheat 2016)
would also prove consequential to Atlantic World history in a variety of ways. In 1509,
Juan de Esquivel colonized Jamaica on behalf of Christopher Columbus, with the first
few enslaved Africans arriving in 1517 (Padrón 2003, 153; Saco 1879, 73). During the
period of the Iberian Union, during which the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns were
united (1580–1640), Portuguese slave ships provided captive Africans to their Spanish
domains. This arrangement resulted in a majority of enslaved Africans coming to
Spanish America (including Spanish Jamaica) from Portuguese outposts in Kongo
and Angola, West Central Africa. As Wheat (2016, 80) states, “By around 1620,
Angola had become the Spanish Americas’most important source of enslaved sub-
Saharan Africans –a role it would retain until the Iberian Union came to an end in
1640”. The work of Heywood and Thornton (2007) sheds further light on the signifi-
cance of Central African populations on Atlantic World history. Almost as soon as
Spanish colonists introduced enslaved Africans to the island, some of the captives began
to escape and form new Maroon groups or joined established ones.
2
By 1655, the British
wrested control of Jamaica from Spain (see Wright 1923), ushering in plantation
agriculture on a grander scale and importing large numbers of enslaved Africans to
labor in this endeavor (Delle, Hauser, and Armstrong 2011, 332; Kopytoff1978, 287).
As detailed by Newman et al. (2013), the British imported enslaved peoples from across
the West African region, but the Gold Coast (Ghana) and Bight of Biafra likely
provided the greatest number of enslaved Africans who labored on Jamaican planta-
tions during this period. With regard to Maroon communities, according to Kopytoff,
there were two principal Jamaican Maroon polities that emerged at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. The Leeward Maroons resided in the west-central region of the
island, and the Windward Maroons resided in the eastern regions. Prior to the
emergence of these two polities, there were several smaller communities within the
interior of the island as a result of marronage from Spanish plantations. With the
English annexation of Jamaica, these Spanish Maroons were eventually incorporated
into the Windward Maroon communities (Kopytoff1978, 287).
52 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
Throughout the eighteenth century, Maroon numbers began to swell, and their
communities became more powerful and better organized. British attempts to recapture
and enslave Maroon communities led to the First and Second Maroon Wars, approxi-
mately 1655–1740 and 1795–1796, respectively. These conflicts were characterized by
the effective use of guerilla warfare tactics by the Maroons. This fierce resistance
ultimately led to British acquiescence and peace treaties with the two major Maroon
groups (Leeward and Windward) in 1738–1739. The effects of the treaties were to
preserve the autonomy of these Maroon communities, stop the influx of enslaved
peoples into these strongholds, and to station small groups of British officers amongst
the Maroons. In addition, Maroons were required to assist militarily in quelling slave
revolts and return any enslaved fugitives to the British authorities (Carey 1997, 656;
Kopytoff1976a,1976b; Paterson 1970). In this regard, the Maroons remained in a semi-
autonomous political state until slavery was abolished in Jamaica beginning in 1834 and
beyond 1962, when the island gained its independence as a member of the (British)
Commonwealth.
3
The would-be Maroons who took refuge in the mountainous hinterland of the
island were not an ethnically homogenous group. Spanish Jamaica was a stratified
society with the Spanish at the apex. However, it also included “natives”,enslaved
Africans, “free blacks”, mulattoes, and “creole Africans”(those born on the island),
many of whom served together in the colonial military forces (Padrón 2003, 129,
156–7). Likewise, those who had escaped into the mountains before and after the
British invasion of 1655 would have most likely been an ethnic mixture of the
various groups, which comprised the populations of people of color, including
Africans, possibly Taínos, as well as those of mixed or mestizo ancestry. According
to Kopytoff, although West Africans and their descendants in Jamaica constituted
the majority of the Maroon population in the English period, there were three
other minor demographic sources of which the Maroon groups were made up.
These included one group that she defines as being of “American Indian stock”,
which she further subdivides into two specific groups: namely, the “Arawaks”and
the “Moskito Indians”. A second group came from Madagascar and the third from
Europe (Kopytoff1973, 18, 19, 20). To what extent can the most recent meth-
odologies incorporating genetic analysis help us in corroborating Kopytoff’s
findings?
Using genetic (DNA) analysis in humanities and social sciences research
Early twentieth-century anthropologists and medical scientists were the first to adopt
methods from the field that would become known as molecular genetics and apply
them to questions related to human diversity (Mielke and Crawford 1980-84; Marks
2002, 131). Initially relying upon classical genetic markers such as proteins found in
blood and then eventually actual DNA sequences, researchers learned that genetic
variation in contemporary populations reflected both distant and more recent events
in human history (Jobling, Hurles, and Tyler-Smith 2004, 51). More recently, scholars
are also increasingly using genetic research to interrogate biogeographic ancestry
4
as it
relates to questions of ethnogenesis, ethno-national identity formation, and creolization
of peoples in Africa and the African diaspora, including Latin America and the
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 53
Caribbean (Benn Torres et al. 2008; Benn Torres, Stone, and Kittles 2013; Deason et al.
2012; Fendt 2012; Gaieski et al. 2011; Gomez, Hirbo, and Tishkoff2014; Mendizabal
et al. 2008; Price et al. 2017; Ruiz-Linares et al. 2014; Simms 2010; Stefflova et al. 2011;
Tishkoffet al. 2009).
Regarding Jamaican Maroons, genetic data provide scholars and local communities
with alternative perspectives on the colonial experiences and demographic impacts of
African people in the Americas. Furthermore, genetic data can be informative about the
geographic origins of Maroon ancestors and the roles that each sex played in forming
the emerging community, given the social and political structures of the colonial era.
Through the systematic examination of maternally, paternally, and bi-parentally inher-
ited genetic markers, these data can provide more information about the female, male,
and general aspects of Maroon history, respectively.
Maternal histories may be examined through analyses of mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA). MtDNA is found outside of the nucleus and is located within organelles
known as mitochondria. MtDNA is generally inherited unchanged from the mother to
all offspring, and only females pass their mtDNA onto subsequent generations. Because
mtDNA does not exchange genetic material with other regions of the genome, it is
useful for studying only the maternal line of an individual (Relethford 2004, 29).
Alternatively, the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome (NRY) is useful for
understanding more about paternal ancestry. Similar to mtDNA, the NRY is passed
generally unchanged from father to son and only men pass it to their male offspring.
This particular inheritance pattern makes it useful for exploring the paternal linage of
an individual (Jobling and Tyler-Smith 2003). Furthermore, both mtDNA and NRY
have specific genetic markers that may be grouped into genetic families known as
macrohaplogroups (van Oven and Kayser 2009). The broad categorization into macro-
haplogroups can be deconstructed into smaller groups of related lineages known as
haplogroups. These haplogroups contain a variety of related sub-lineages, designated by
alpha-numeric designations. For example, Macrohaplogroup L consists of seven differ-
ent haplogroups: L0, L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, and L6. Haplogroup L2, for example, contains
five recognized sub-lineages: L2a, L2b, L2c, L2d, and L2e. Each of these sub-lineages can
be further categorized based on their unique haplotypes, e.g. L2a1, L2a2. . . L2a5.
5
Haplogroups tend to be common in localized regions of the world and infrequent in
other regions of the world (Wilson et al. 2010). For example, mtDNA lineages that
belong to an L-type haplogroup are most common among African populations.
Consequently, identifying which mtDNA or NRY haplogroup an individual belongs
to is useful for estimating ancestry from a particular geographic region (Jobling, Hurles,
and Tyler-Smith 2004, xx). Unlike mtDNA or NRY, bi-parentally inherited DNA comes
from both sides of the family and is suitable for gaining a more complete picture of an
individual’s ancestry (Johnston and Thomas 2003). In the current study, both uni- and
bi-parentally inherited DNA were considered in our examination of the bio-geographic
origins the Accompong Town Maroon community.
Genetics as methodology and source for Accompong Town Maroon history
The Accompong Town Maroon settlement is located in the Cockpit Mountains of St
Elizabeth (see Figure 1). Historically, both official and unofficial entities have collected
54 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
sporadic (and often inadequate) demographic data on Maroon villages. Within the last
two decades, three different organizations have estimated the population of Accompong
to consist of 576 individuals (representing 168 households), 788 persons (with 202
households, 67% of which is headed by males), and between 800 and 1,000 residents
(approximately 145 households; see Projects Abroad, 2017; SDC 2009; World Bank
2000-2001). As shown in Table 1, the Jamaica Social Development Commission (SDC)
also provides additional demographic information on Accompong, for 2009.
A previous study carried out by Madrilejo, Lombard, and Benn Torres of Maroon
ancestry included analysis of the maternal lineages via mitochondrial DNA from 50
adult individuals in the Accompong Town community (Madrilejo, Lombard and Benn
Torres 2015, 437). In the current study, we employed the same samples but genotyped
17 small segments of repetitive DNA known as short tandem repeats or STRs on the
NRY.
6
A total of 31 men were included in this analysis, though this total fell to 25 men
when combining the data for those with shared recent relatives.
7
Genotyping of the Y
chromosome STRs was done using the AmpFℓSTR®Y-filer™kit (Applied Biosystems)
in accordance with manufacturer instructions. The resulting haplotypes were run in a
haplogroup-predicting program in order to indicate possible haplogroup designations
(Athey 2006). The predicted haplogroup designations were then confirmed by genotyp-
ing the appropriate haplogroup diagnostic markers (Y Chromosome Consortium 2002).
Haplogroup frequencies were then calculated by hand.
A subset of 26 samples from both males and females were genotyped at 17 bi-parentally
inherited autosomal markers. These 17 loci, also STRs, were genotyped using the
AmpFℓSTR®Identifiler Kit in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions (Applied
Biosystems). These data were used to estimate admixture components. As used in the current
study, admixture describes the amount of ancestry from three putative parental populations:
namely, Africans, Europeans, and East Asians. Data from East Asians were used as a
comparative population because data from Native American populations were not available
forthesegeneticmarkersintheliterature.For the purposes of this analysis, East Asian
populations can serve as a proxy for Native American populations due to genetic similarities
as a result of shared ancestry between East Asian and Native American populations. The gene
identity method as implemented in the statistical program, ADMIX95, was used to estimate
the proportion of ancestry deriving from these parental groups (Chakraborty 1975).
Comparative allele frequency data for each putative parental population was available for
only 13 of the 17 STRs and was obtained from the ALFRED database (Rajeevan et al. 2011).
Finally, in addition to estimating admixture components, we also checked each sample for
association with a major continental group using the data from the 17 autosomal markers.
This was done using an online database, PopAffiliator, designed for use in the forensic genetic
community (Pereira et al. 2010). PopAffiliator accesses the probability of affiliation of a
Table 1. Age and sex distribution of the Accompong population.
Age cohort Male (%) Female (%) Average (%)
0–14 25.0 21.6 23.3
15–24 18.0 16.0 17
25–29 39.1 37.8 38.45
30–64 3.8 4.9 4.35
65+ 14.1 19.8 16.95
TOTAL 100 100.1 100.05
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 55
genetic sample with a major continental group deriving from Africa, Europe, and Asia. While
both admixture estimates and population affiliation provide some information about the
biogeographical ancestry of the Accompong Maroons, they are indicative of different aspects
of genetic ancestry. Admixture estimates are indicative of the proportion of ancestry from
putative parental populations while population affiliation is indicative of general similarities
between a sample and a continental grouping.
Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA indicated that Accompong Town Maroons have
primarily African matrilines represented by haplogroups L1, L2, and L3. Mitochondrial
haplogroups L1, L2, and L3 are found in the highest frequencies across the African
continent and each haplogroup contains many sub-lineages, designated by an alphanu-
meric name that follows the primary haplogroup name (Salas et al. 2002). MtDNA
haplogroup L2a (specifically the L2a1 lineage) was the most frequently observed lineage
among the Accompong community. This haplogroup belongs to a lineage that is ubiqui-
tous across Africa and very common among populations of African descent throughout the
Americas (Salas et al. 2004). In addition, mtDNA haplogroup L2a was also the most
frequently observed haplogroup among a sample of 400 Jamaicans from the general
population as well as comparative African populations from the Gold Coast and the
Bight of Benin (Deason et al. 2012, 24). The African geographic origin of haplogroup L2a
is difficult to ascertain because of the wide distribution of this haplogroup across the
continent; however, it is believed to have emerged about 87–89,000 years ago (Rito et al.
2013;Soaresetal.2009). The presence of haplogroup L2a in Accompong Maroons is
indicative of shared ancestry with both the general Jamaican population and West African
populations. This is not surprising, given that Maroon populations in Jamaica are a subset
of people who escaped from the plantations to settle in the mountains. Therefore, it follows
that they share the same biogeographic origins in Africa.
Among the Accompong community, the only maternal lineages not from African
peoples came from indigenous American women, as indicated by the presence of
haplogroup B2 (Madrilejo, Lombard, and Benn Torres 2015). While the geographic
origin of haplogroup B2 is unclear, it is estimated to be around 21,000 years old and is
distributed throughout North, Central, and South America (Achilli et al. 2008; Kumar
et al. 2011, 293). Furthermore, haplogroup B2 has been observed throughout the
Greater Antilles but has yet to be observed within the Lesser Antilles (Marcheco-
Teruel et al. 2014; Tajima et al. 2004; Vilar et al. 2014). The presence of haplogroup
B2 within Jamaica is consistent with what has been observed within the region. In the
study that considered 400 individuals from the general Jamaican populace, Deason and
colleagues (2012) observed two individuals with indigenous American mitochondrial
ancestry. One individual belonged to mitochondrial haplogroup A2 and the other
Table 2. Y chromosome haplogroups observed in male Accompong
Town Maroon participants listed by continent of origin.
Y haplogroup % (n)
African
E1b1a 76.0 (19)
R1b2-V88 8.0 (2)
Eurasian
R1b-P297 12.0 (3)
Q1a 4.0 (1)
56 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
belonged to haplogroup B4, though the authors suggest that, with the appropriate
genotyping, the latter haplogroup would more properly fall into a sub-lineage of B4:
namely, haplogroup B2. The presence of B2 among the Accompong Town Maroons
specifically suggests that, in addition to African women, indigenous American women
were also genetic founders of the contemporary Accompong community.
Paternal genetic ancestry of contemporary Accompong Maroons, revealed by the
NRY genetic markers, parallel the findings along the matrilines, in that the Accompong
Town Maroons have primarily African genetic paternal ancestry. However, unlike the
maternal lineages, there was no indication of indigenous paternal ancestry. Instead, the
paternal lineage illustrates contributions from Eurasian populations with nearly a third
of men in the sample having a Y chromosome of Eurasian origin, indicated by
haplogroups R1b-P297 and Q1a*, as shown in Table 2 (Myres et al. 2010).
Y chromosome haplogroup R1b-P297 is most common throughout Eurasia and
specifically in western Europe, while haplogroup Q1a* descends from lineages that
originated in Central Asia and are most frequently found among men in northern
Asia (Myres et al. 2010;Malyarchuketal.2011).Thepresenceofthesehap-
logroups within the Accompong sample group suggests limited genetic exchange
from Eurasian populations into the community. In addition to these Eurasian Y
chromosome lineages, another haplogroup, R1b2-V88, was also found among the
Accompong Maroons. R1b2-V88 is characteristic of Afro-Asiatic and Chadic
speakers in the northern and central Sahel region of Africa, respectively. The
highest concentrations of R1b2-V88 carriers are among peoples in northern
Cameroon, northern Nigeria, Chad, and Niger (Cruciani et al. 2010). Overall, Y
chromosome haplogroup R1b2-V88 is rare throughout the African continent.
When it is present, upwards of 95% of the population carry this lineage. The
presence of R1b2-V88 among the Accompong Town Maroons suggests that some
of the African ancestry found in the contemporary community was derived
specifically from peoples in northern Cameroon, northern Nigeria, Chad, or
Niger. Furthermore, this finding is consistent with previous work indicating that
haplogroup R1b2-V88 is also found among the general Jamaican population
(Simms et al. 2012).
The results of the autosomal analyses were complementary to the uniparental data in
that they highlighted the dominance of African ancestry within the Accompong Town
Maroon community, though ancestry beyond Africa was also apparent. Based upon the
data from 13 autosomal loci, the average admixture estimate indicates that, while
Accompong Town Maroon ancestry principally derives from Africa (see Table 3),
both European and East Asian populations provided some genetic influx to the
community.
The admixture estimates from European and East Asian populations were 13%
and 9%, respectively, and were derived using the Gene identity approach
Table 3. Population average admixture (m) estimate
a
based on 13 autosomal markers. R
2
= 0.884265.
Sub-Saharan Africa East Asia Europe
m 0.7806 0.0916 0.1278
Standard error 0.1387 0.1261 0.1881
a
derived using Gene identity approach (Chakraborty 1985).
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 57
(Chakraborty 1985). We acknowledge, however, that given the small sample size of
the Accompong Town community and corresponding standard errors of the
admixture estimates, our assertions based on this particular analysis warrant
additional sampling and testing. Nonetheless, the European admixture in the
Accompong Town Maroon sample is comparable to that observed in the general
Jamaican populace, in which estimates range from 10 to 16%, according to several
previous studies (Benn Torres, Stone, and Kittles 2013; Benn-Torres et al. 2008;
Simms et al. 2010). The similar ancestry between Accompong Town Maroons and
the general Jamaican populace reflects the common West African ancestry between
the two groups. Additionally, exogamous marriage to non-Maroons may also bear
some responsibility in making the ancestry estimates similar between Accompong
Town Maroons and the greater Jamaican population (Dunham 1946,81).
The East Asian admixture among the Accompong sample, however, is higher
than the 6% East Asian admixture observed in the general population (Simms
et al. 2010). This is especially notable considering that the sample size in the study
based on the general populace was over four times as large as the sample size from
Accompong: 111 versus 26 participants, respectively. The East Asian ancestry
among the Accompong Town Maroon sample may reflect the post-emancipation
influx of East Asian peoples into Jamaica and, by extension, into this Maroon
community (Bryan 2004, 25). However, this does not explain why the East Asian
component is higher among Accompong Maroons relative to the general popula-
tion. While additional samples and high-resolution genotyping would be useful in
more fully addressing this issue, as indigenous American populations descend
from subsets of East Asian peoples, the East Asian ancestral component observed
in the Accompong Town Maroons may possibly reflect ancestry from indigenous
American populations.
The predominance of African ancestry in conjunction with lower levels of non-
African continental ancestry among the Accompong Town Maroons was also
evident in the analyses using PopAfflilator. Nearly 77% of the Accompong
Maroon samples had the highest affiliation probability with African populations,
while 19% of the Maroon samples had the highest affiliation probability with
European populations, and only 3%, or one individual, had the highest affiliation
probability with Asian populations. The Asian ancestry detected in both the
admixture estimates and population affiliation analysis is supported by partici-
pants’responses to the genealogical interview. However, given that indigenous
ancestry was found along the maternal genetic lineages and that there is an East
Asian origin of indigenous American populations, it is plausible that what is
termed East Asian ancestry may also include partial ancestry from indigenous
American peoples. Though the genetic data are compatible with Maroon biogeo-
graphical ancestry from Africa and, to a lesser extent, the Americas, Asia, and
Europe, it is worthwhile examining the historical, ethnographic, and archaeological
literature on indigenous American and other non-West African groups of people
who were present in colonial Jamaica during the formative decades of Maroon
ethnogenesis, to help elucidate the meaning of the genetic data, and to draw firmer
conclusions.
58 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
Taíno and other possible sources of the Amerindian ancestry of the
Jamaican Maroons
Between 300–100 BCE, Jamaica’sfirst human inhabitants –the Arawak language-
speaking people whose descendants would go on to be commonly referred to as
Taínos –began their migration out of the Amazon-Orinoco region of the South
American continental mainland. They made their way eventually to their new homes
in the northern Caribbean islands, including Jamaica, between the seventh and ninth
centuries CE. Over the centuries, they may have had contact and intermingled with
other Amerindian groups in Central and North America, including the Maya (Atkinson
2006, 215; Senior 2003, 474, 475). According to Allsworth-Jones (2008, 61), there are
over 270 archaeological excavation sites across Jamaica that provide a general under-
standing of the indigenous communities present on the island prior to the arrival of
Europeans. The Taíno of Jamaica took advantage of the many floral and faunal
resources available to them, and likely introduced useful plant species to the island
during the settlement period. In fact, evidence suggests that the introduction of non-
native plant species and the development of land for agriculture by the Taíno produced
an anthropomorphic landscape in Jamaica, long before the arrival of Europeans
(Santos, Gardner, and Allsworth-Jones 2013).
Like other Taíno groups, indigenous Jamaicans established a settled agricultural
society, cultivating cassava as a staple food alongside various other crops. In addition,
intensive fishing allowed for utilization of the abundant marine protein sources, from
small fish to sea turtles that existed just offshore (Santos, Gardner, and Allsworth-Jones
Figure 2. Jamaican Coat of Arms, showing the indigenous Taínos and national motto. Reproduced
courtesy of Jamaica Information Service. http://jis.gov.jm/symbols/jamaican-coat-of-arms/.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 59
2013). The several styles of pottery found throughout Jamaica demonstrate that its
inhabitants not only had the capability to produce significant amounts of this material,
but also may have engaged in material and cultural exchanges with other Caribbean
islands (Hopper 2008; Santos, Gardner, and Allsworth-Jones 2013). Today, there are
remnants of the existence of the island’sfirst people, as evidenced by official narratives
of Jamaican history, place names, foods, and certain cultural items (Higman and
Hudson 2009, 319). Moreover, the government of Jamaica promotes a narrative of
national origin which emphasizes descent from various ethnicities. This is enshrined in
the country’s national motto, “Out of Many One People”, which is “based on the
population’s multiracial roots. The motto is represented on the Coat of Arms, showing
a male and female member of the Taíno tribe”(OPM 2017), as depicted in Figure 2.
Furthermore, although it may have been a design coincidence, the Taíno-Maroon
connection is also implied by the juxtaposition of the likeness of Jamaica’s only
National Heroine, Nanny of the Maroons (c. 1685–1755), the African-born leader of
the Windward Maroons, and the Coat of Arms with the iconography of the Taínos, on
the country’s $500 bill (see Figure 3).
However, the major inconsistency in the literature on Maroon ethnogenesis in
Jamaica is whether or not there was gene exchange from the Taínos to the Maroons.
In other words, did the Maroons and Jamaica’s indigenous inhabitants live contempor-
aneously and/or intermingle? As Madrilejo, Lombard, and Benn Torres (2015, 432)
have noted, “There are discrepancies regarding [. . .] Maroon ancestry[,] with some
scholars noting ancestry from both Africans and Taínos, Jamaica’s indigenous popula-
tion, while other scholars only acknowledge African ancestry”. Although she admits
that the evidence to support this is inconclusive, Kopytoff(1973, 18) states that “there is
a remote possibility that some of the native Arawak Indians [Taínos] remained in the
island and eventually mingled with the Negroes”. Other scholars agree with Kopytoff,
suggesting that, while many indigenous Caribbean peoples died as a result of European
colonization, some survived in the hinterlands of the island and possibly allied with
self-liberated Africans in what became known as Maroon communities (Agorsah 1994,
230; Ragosta 2011; Wilson 1997, 253). Winks (1971, 78) has also speculated that “The
Maroons were descendants of Negro slaves (and perhaps of Arawak women) who had
escaped from the Spanish before the British conquest of Jamaica”. Maroon scholar Bev
Figure 3. Jamaican $500 bill, showing Nanny of the Maroons, overlooking Coat of Arms with Taínos.
Reproduced courtesy of Bank of Jamaica. https://www.banknotes.com/JM77.JPG.
60 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
Carey is perhaps the most ardent proponent of the argument that the Taínos were the
first Maroons, and that they also coexisted and intermingled with escaped African
slaves in the mountains to develop Maroon culture and society (see especially chapters
1–7 in Part 1 of Carey 1997).
However, many writers and scholars from as early as the eighteenth century to the
present have dismissed this foundational Maroon ethno-genetic “creation”story of their
beginnings as a nation of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry. In stark contrast to
Kopytoffand Carey, for example, Mavis Campbell (1990, 9) laments that “A most
stubborn misconception, held even by some Maroons and other Jamaicans today, is that
the Maroons are the descendants of the Arawak Indians [Taínos. . .] As for the Arawak
presence, we have no evidence that any had survived by the time of the British
occupation [of Jamaican in 1655]”. Surprisingly, Campbell relies on evidence for the
extinction of the Taínos before the British seized the island, from the written works of
colonial planter-historians such as Edwards, and Dallas, both of whom she acknowl-
edges as being biased, ethnocentric, and having compromised economic interests (see
Campbell 1990, 9). Edwards ([1794] 2015, 1:142) wrote that
it pleased the Almighty, for reasons inscrutable to finite wisdom, to permit the total
destruction of this devoted people; who, to the number of 60,000, on the most moderate
estimate, were at length wholly cut offand exterminated by the Spaniards, not a single
descendant of either sex, being alive when the English took the island in 1655, nor, I
believe for a century before.
The chronicle of exactly what happened to the indigenous Jamaican people during the
European incursions of the early modern period remains an open topic of debate. The
numerical estimates for the size of the Jamaican indigenous population when Columbus
and the conquistadors arrived in Jamaica in 1493 run from the more credible figure of 60,000
people to other data, which suggests that the island may have been capable of supporting
several million individuals prior to European contact. However, the sources are largely in
agreement that this population was decimated within only three decades or so after the
Spanish started settling the island, due to the harsh working conditions in Spanish mines
and on plantations, enslavement, mistreatment, Old World diseases, and even genocide
(Atkinson 2006, 215; Cameron, Kelton, and Swedlund 2015; Denevan ([1976] 1992), 41;
Guerra 1993;Jacobs1974; Keegan 1996;Padrón2003,31,147–148, 152; Senior 2003, 473;
Watlington 2009). Denevan ([1976] 1992, 41) writes that “the large native population of
Jamaica was gone by this time [1540] and that of other islands nearly so”. According to Dallas,
the 60,000 members of the “Indian race [Taínos]”were precipitously driven to extinction
under the Spanish, as “not a single descendant existed in 1655, when [General Robert]
Venables and [Commander William] Penn landed on the island”(1803, 1: xxviii). It is true
that, under Spanish rule, the Taíno population was rapidly decimated. A Spanish colonial
census of 1611, for example, reported the presence of only 74 indigenous individuals in
Jamaica (Campbell 1990,9).Campbell(1990,9–10) further agrees with Dallas’(1803, 1: xxvii–
xxviii) speculation that, while this group of “Arawaks”may have escaped from Spanish
enslavement on the coastal plantations by taking refuge in the mountains, all of them may
have ultimately succumbed to the harsh conditions of life in the hinterland, and that their
remains were reported to have been discovered in a cave some years later, effectively signifying
the demise of indigenous existence in Jamaica.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 61
Dallas was referring to Spanish Governor Don Fernando Melgarejo de Córdoba’s
dispatch of an expeditionary force in 1601 to seek out and subjugate the bands of
“Indians”who had established sovereign strongholds in the Sierra de Bastida or Blue
Mountains; an area which the Spanish and later British enslaved Africans would
eventually call home (see Padrón 2003, 77, 152; Kopytoff1973, 19). This proves that
the “rebellious Indians”didinfacttakeuprefugeinthemountains,whichwould
complicate census records that purported to know the exact numbers, whereabouts,
and disposition of Taínos on the island. While scholars cite a lack of written
documentary evidence that would indicatewhetherornottheindigenous
Jamaicans comingled with these Africans and their descendants in the Blue
Mountains, Padrón (2003, 152) queries:
It would be interesting to find out if these [the Taínos marooned in the Blue
Mountains, against which, in 1601, the Melgarejo government had sent a party to
try and subdue] were the only remaining indigenous people in the island. Certainly,
the Spaniards had not settled all areas of the island with the same thoroughness.
In addition to the Taínos, however, there are other possible sources that could account
for the indigenous American ancestry of the Accompong Town Maroons, which our
DNA analysis has uncovered. This includes the Miskito.
The Miskito (also variously spelled Miskitu, Muskito, or Moskito in the literature)
Kingdom, which was located on the Miskito Shore of Central America (which includes
parts of modern-day Honduras and Nicaragua), was comprised of two sets of groups:
one of Amerindian ancestry and the other of mixed African and Amerindian descent.
The former, which mainly inhabited the southern part of Nicaragua, has been referred
to as “Tawira Miskitu”or straight-haired Miskito, while the latter are referred to as
“Miskito Sambu”or “Mosquitos Zambos”. Although there are varying accounts of the
dates and circumstances, the Miskito Sambu formed in the mid-seventeenth century
when slaves captured the slave ship that was carrying them to “Tierra Firme”, wrecking
it on the Caribbean-Atlantic coast on the border of Honduras and Nicaragua. The
English commissioned Moskito mercenaries, both as a stand-alone force and part of a
multi-ethnic company made up of whites and blacks to assist them in their quest to
conquer their adversaries. From the 1690s through to the late 1780s, the Miskito Sambu
became hired hands, armed and supported by English traders, with whom some of
them also intermingled. In addition to permitting the British to establish plantations
with African slaves on the Miskito Coast, they also spearheaded regular raids (mainly
on Maya groups) in the interior of Central America and captured thousands of
indigenous people, whom they sold to Jamaican slave dealers, in addition to hunting
down Maroons in Jamaica prior to the signing of the treaties. The Miskito Kingdom
was led by the Miskitos Zambos, the hierarchy of which was organized under leaders
who held the title of “king”(see Helms 1983; Kopytoff1973, 19; Offen 2002, 337–43;
Olien 1983; Thornton 2017).
There are indications of some specific numbers of Miskitos brought to Jamaica in the
literature. In 1709, for example, Miskito slave raiders sent a shipment of 30 “Indians”to
their British clients in Jamaica. In 1720, 50 Miskito fighters and their commanding
officers were paid to engage the Maroons in battle in the mountains for a period of
six months; however, this campaign ended in failure and they all chose to return to
62 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
Honduras (Campbell 1990, 37, 54, 99–100; Gallay 2002, 300; Wright 1970, 20). The
following extended quote from Uring (1726, 235–6) provides vivid details of the nature
and course of the Miskito-English alliance against the Maroons in the early eighteenth
century.
The Inhabitants of Jamaica had a Project of inviting the Muscheto People to live there, and
assigning ’em certain Lands as their own Possessions, and they should have and enjoy all
the Liberties of Englishmen; but whether that Project was brought to Perfection, or that the
People of the Muschetos did not like to quit their own Country, I am unacquainted; but
certain it is, they are still there. About Four or Five Years since, the Government of
Jamaica made a Law, for inviting several Hundreds of ’em to that Island, in order to take
or destroy the run-away Negroes, which did much Mischief to the Out-Plantations, and
accordingly Sloops were sent to invite them; and there went to Jamaica about Two
Hundred, which were formed into Companies, under Officers of their own Nation, and
were paid Forty Shillings per Month, and every Man Shoes. They staid at that Island
several Months, and performed the Service they were employed in very well and were sent
Home again well pleased. I being then at Jamaica, we had the Story of them as follows:
When they were out in Search of the Run-away Negroes, and having some White Men for
their Guides who knew the Country, one of ’em seeing a wild Hog, shot it; at which the
Muscheto Indians were much displeased, telling them, that was not the Way to surprize the
Negroes, for if there were any within hearing of that Gun, they would immediately fly, and
they should not be able to take any of ’em; and they told ’em, if they wanted any
Provisions, they would kill some with their Launces, or Bows and Arrows, which made
no Noise.
This campaign and desire to suppress the Maroons would continue right up to the
signing of the treaties of peace between them and the English. As Long (1774, 2: 343)
writes, “About the year 1738, the assembly resolved on taking two hundred of the
Mosquito Indians into their pay, to hasten the suppression of the Marons [sic]”.
8
However, the signing of the peace treaties did not end the introduction of Miskito
into British colonial Jamaica. On the contrary, as Offen (2015,54–5) concludes:
Jamaican merchants purchased the vast majority of all captives taken by the Mosquito.
Surprisingly, Jamaican historiography does not reflect the probability that, on average,
around 100 Amerindian captives came to or moved through the island annually over the
century spanning 1670 to 1770.
This would mean that thousands of Amerindian captives would have been sent to
Jamaica over this long time period. Other populations that may have contributed to the
Maroon genepool arrived in Jamaica in much smaller numbers.
Largely between 1675 and 1690, the English also brought a very small number of
African slaves of Malaysian descent from the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. They
contributed minimally to Maroon communities, notably among one of the Leeward
Maroon bands under Kojo’s leadership (Curtin 1969, 125, 144; Dallas 1803, 1: 31, 32,
33; Kopytoff1973, 19, 20; Mannix and Cowley 1963, 67).
9
These former Madagascan
slaves joined Kojo’s group after running away from plantations around Lacovia in St
Elizabeth, most likely in the early–mid 1700s when Kojo was at the height of his
notoriety, although, as Dallas (1803, 1: 32) speculates, “it is probable that the inter-
course [between the Madagascans and the other Maroons under Kojo’s command . . .]
had existed between seventy and eighty years [prior], and an intermixture of families
had taken place”.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 63
In addition to the Taínos, Miskitos, and Madagascan Malayans, we may add a fourth
(but not final, as we shall see shortly) group of indigenous peoples who may have
contributed to the extra-West African ethnogenesis of the Jamaican Maroons, including
those of Accompong Town. The Assembly also proposed resolutions to hire Native
Americans from the English American colonies, such as Chickasaws from Carolina and
Georgia, but, as Wright (1970) maintains, “no Act to this effect was passed”. In the early
modern period, however, the various alliances made between the European powers and
their Native American counterparts, which took advantage of both the intense rivalries
and competition among the former as well as preexisting fissures and warfare among
the latter, also produced thousands of slaves which were exported to the European
colonies in the Caribbean. The English settlers of Charles Town (Charleston), South
Carolina, in particular, initially purchased slave captives taken in wars that were fought
by their Native American collaborators (such as the Chickasaw) and shipped them to
their Caribbean colonies; chiefly to Barbados, secondarily to Jamaica, and other islands
such as Antigua, Bermuda, and Saint Christopher (see Galley 2002, 294–301; Klein and
Vinson 2007,17–21; Thornton 2012, 309–11). Moreover, as Jaynes has noted:
Many of the early slaves in North America were Native Americans, mostly Algonquians of
coastal Virginia and North Carolina. From the early 1600s to the 1680s, English settlers
often kidnapped Native American women and children in the coastal areas of North
Carolina and Virginia, enslaved them, and either kept or sold them. This Native
American slave trade involved a number of colonies, including Virginia, Carolina,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and the Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Barbados, St. Kitts,
and Nevis. From 1680 to 1715, the English sold thousands of Native Americans into
slavery. By 1720, however, most colonies in North America had abandoned the use of
Native Americans as slaves and adopted African slavery instead. (Jaynes 2005, 2: 589. See
also Galley 2002, 311–4)
Newell (2015, 14, 50, 175) also notes that the English colonial government and
individual traders also shipped “hundreds of New England Indians”to plantations
in Jamaica, the Azores, Barbados, Bermuda, Providence Island, possibly Madagascar,
among other destinations. Newell (2015, 180), in fact, describes Jamaica as “the main
entrepôt for the Caribbean slave trade in general and the Indian slave trade in
particular [. . . it remained] a likely endpoint for the New England Indians”in the
seventeenth century. However, given the “scanty”and “anecdotal”documentation on
the Native American slave trade to the Caribbean, as Gallay (2002,295,296)laments,
there is no specific indication in the literature as to exactly which of these groups
were shipped to Jamaica, how many, where in Jamaica these slaves were sent, who
bought them, whether or not they remained permanently in Jamaica, the extent to
which they might have intermingled with Africans, including the Maroons in the
mountains, and other pertinent information that would be useful to this study of
Maroon ethnogenesis. However, Gallay mentions that 1,000–2,000 Tuscarora and
their allies in North Carolina were among the Native American peoples who were
enslaved –some of whom were sold in the West Indies –during the British slave
trade in around 1670–1715. Galley further estimates that the total number of south-
ern Amerindians captured and sold into slavery by the British and their Native
American allies numbered 30,000–50,000 individuals during this period. These
victims, some of whom were also perpetrators of slave raiding at one point or
64 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
another, included the Arkansas, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Guale,
Mocama, Petit Nations of the lower Mississippi Valley, Piedmont, Savannah,
Taensa, Tunica, and Westo (Galley 2002, 298, 299).
In addition to the Taínos, Miskitos, Malagasies, and Native Americans (mainly from
South Carolina), the fifth and final group that may explain the “Native American”
component of the Accompong Maroon’s DNA strain are Asians, specifically Chinese
and Indian. The Chinese were initially brought to Jamaica in 1854 as indentured
contractors to labor on sugar estates, with the majority of the group arriving in the
early–mid twentieth century as free immigrants. Commonly referred to as “East
Indians”in the Caribbean, people from the Indian subcontinent, like the Chinese,
were also brought to Jamaica in the nineteenth century as indentured workers on
sugar and other plantations. The first wave of these immigrants arrived in Jamaica
from 1845 until the early 1920s. Many of the parishes in which they settled are home to
the major Maroon groups in Jamaica (Senior 2003, 107, 243). In the early decades, these
groups remained largely insular, until population, political, and cultural forces caused
them to increasingly integrate within the larger Jamaican society.
Additional evidence from historical archaeology
Given the amalgam of groups that could possibly explain our DNA findings, it is
necessary to utilize other sources of information about the Maroon past in our
investigation of the indigenous American ancestry in the DNA of the Accompong
Town Maroons. This includes the findings of archeological reconnaissance, surveys,
and both minor and major excavation expeditions to Maroon archeological sites in
Jamaica, which occurred in the late 1960s, the early 1970s, and the early 1990s. They
have uncovered artifacts which are housed in the Department of History and
Archeology at the University of the West Indies-Mona, the Jamaica National Heritage
Trust (JNHT), and other repositories. The main scholar of Maroon archaeology in
Jamaica is the archaeologist and cultural anthropologist KofiAgorsah, who has
Figure 4. Pieces of Taíno earthenware found at Maroon archeological site of Old Nanny Town
(JNHT).
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 65
pioneered the excavation and ethnographic study of Maroon archaeological sites there,
as well as in Surinam and other places in the Americas and West Africa. In addition to
providing valuable information to the public about Maroon archaeology on his website,
the Maroon Heritage Research Project (see www.kormantse.com), Agorsah has also
published widely on the topic, building on the works of earlier researchers (see Agorsah
1990;1992;1993a;1993b; Agorsah 1994;2013; Bonner 1974; Teulon 1967).
In his groundbreaking edited volume Maroon Heritage: Archaeological Ethnographic
and Historical Perspectives, Agorsah (1994, 163–87) details the methods and findings of
archaeological material unearthed from excavations conducted in the early 1990s at Old
Nanny Town (Nanny Town) in the Blue Mountains and Old Accompong Town (Old
Town) in the Cockpit country. At Old Nanny Town, the artifacts found at the deepest
levels of the digs included local highly-fired earthenware (see Figure 4), terracotta
figurines, stone tools, flint stone fragments, and shell artifacts, believed to be
“Amerindian-Arawak”in origin. At the higher levels and on the surface, Agorsah’s
archaeological team unearthed imported ceramics including: Bellarmine jars; tin-glaze
and delftware; glass bottles used to store wine and other alcoholic and beverages as well
as medicines; objects made of metal such as an assortment of weapons and tools
including musket balls, fragments of gun barrels, spearheads, knives, nails, door hinges,
and lead; household and social items such as crockery, smoking pipe stems, and bowls
made from different colored clays; fashion artifacts such as buttons, stone, and glass
beads; and currency items such as pieces of eight Spanish coins. They also found
grinding stones on the upper surface levels at Old Nanny Town (Agorsah 1994,
177–81).
While some of the aforementioned British and Maroon (African) artifacts were
identified in Old Accompong Town, Agorsah did not unearth any items directly
associated with or attributed to the Taínos. However, he reported finding “local earth-
enware”at Old Accompong Town, arguing that, although “No specific period has been
assigned to the excavation material [, . . .] many of the artifacts point to the late
seventeenth/early eighteenth century, although occupation of the area could have
been much earlier”(Agorsah 2007, 344). Given that Old Accompong Town has received
significantly less attention as an archaeological zone than Old Nanny Town, presum-
ably, when major digs are conducted at the former, the expectation is that Amerindian
(Taíno) objects may also be found.
Conclusion
The findings of this study reinforce the notion that some Accompong Town Maroon
genetic ancestry extends beyond Africa, to include European, East Asian, and indigen-
ous American ancestors. These genetic data also provide some insight into the roles of
both European and indigenous American peoples in shaping the contemporary
Accompong Town Maroon community. Based upon the current genetic data, asym-
metric genetic contributions from non-African parental populations characterize the
Accompong Town Maroon community. Both the autosomal and NRY data indicate the
presence of non-African ancestry, despite the often hostile relationship between British
colonists and Maroons and the purposeful isolation of Maroon communities away from
British settlements. European females, unlike African and indigenous American
66 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
women, do not appear to have been involved in shaping the genetic variation of the
contemporary Accompong Town Maroon community. The lack of European maternal
ancestry likely reflects the social strictures dictating female mate choices throughout
and after the formation of the Accompong Town Maroon community. This is in
contrast to European males, who socially were not restricted in choosing sexual
partners and whose presence in the Maroon communities likely goes back to the
Spanish period in the first instance, as well as those documented in the treaties of
1738–1739, which mandated that British army officers were to be stationed in the
Maroon communities (Kopytoff1976a).
Although Maroon communities in many parts of the Americas had significant,
documented interrelations with Amerindian peoples (both advantageous and adversar-
ial), scholars have debated the role of indigenous American peoples in the formation of
Jamaican Maroon communities. While some scholars suggest intermarriage between
indigenous American and African peoples, others proclaim that indigenous Americans
were effectively extinct in Jamaica by the time of Maroon emergence (Carey 1997, 656;
Campbell 1990, 296). The mitochondrial data specifically refute extinction and support
the idea that indigenous American women indeed shared some formative role in the
emergence of the Accompong Maroon community. The autosomal data are also
suggestive of partial ancestry from indigenous Americans. With regard to the biological
history of men in the region, Y chromosome lineages specific to the Americas tend to
be very rarely found in the Antilles and were not detected in Accompong Maroons
(Mendizabal et al. 2008). The general pattern of the presence of indigenous American
maternal lineages and the lack of indigenous American paternal lineages is concordant
with colonial histories in which indigenous men were killed or otherwise systematically
excluded from contributing to future generations, while women were absorbed or
assimilated into colonial society involuntarily or voluntarily via marriage and other
forms of social relationships (Cameron, Kelton and Swedlund 2015).
Nonetheless, the circumstances that led to the introduction of non-African ancestry
into the Accompong community is beyond what genetic data can reveal. In this case,
DNA is simply a testament to genetic exchange between African and non-African
peoples. Accordingly, the appropriate historical, political, and social contexts are critical
in understanding how and why these populations encountered each other. Recognizing
the genetic legacies of Accompong Maroon ancestors provides a clearer understanding
of historically relevant social structures as well as helping to more thoroughly compre-
hend the processes of ethnogenesis as it occurred in the Americas. The current study
presents a better understanding of Accompong Maroon ancestry as the genetic data
evidence the juxtaposition of semi-isolation and, simultaneously, the permeability of
barriers that marked the Accompong community. Ethnohistorical sources suggest that
while the Maroons historically, physically, and culturally isolated themselves from other
Jamaicans, there was also a long history of movement into and out of the community,
including accepting runaway slaves from nearby plantations or absorbing other Maroon
communities (Sheridan 1985). Thus, the genetic ancestry of Accompong Maroons
proves to be more diverse than other scholars have previously posited and therefore
supports a history of greater interaction with other Jamaican populations than may
have been expected, given the geographic isolation of the community.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 67
Beyond genetic data, archaeological findings also lend credence to the coexistence
between indigenous American and African peoples in early modern Jamaica. For
example, archeological artifacts recovered in Old Nanny Town, the remote, early
eighteenth-century stronghold of Queen Nanny –who Maroon oral history maintains
was the sister of the main Leeward Maroon leaders Kojo and Accompong (after whom
Accompong Town was named) –point to the contemporaneous coexistence between
African and indigenous American peoples in that location (Agorsah 1994, 230). These
artifacts suggest that the individuals who produced them had some familiarity with
both African and indigenous American cultures. Furthermore, the ethnobotanist
Summer Ragosta (2011, 365) argues that Maroons in Jamaica possessed knowledge of
the medicinal use of various Caribbean flora, presumably knowledge that would have
originally come from indigenous culture.
Furthermore, as Kopytoff(1973, 19) concludes:
Some of the Indians may have defected and mingled with the Negroes in the woods, and
some runaway slaves may have been part Amerindian through earlier unions between
slaves and Indians. The Amerindian contribution to the Maroon stock was doubtless very
small, but there may have been some. Their cultural contribution appears at present to be
negligible, even if some Arawaks may have survived in the woods and imparted some of
their skills to new Maroons.
The demographic data on the Taínos from Spanish and British sources from the period
must also be problematized. The British, and to a lesser extent the Spanish before them,
were relegated to their coastal plantations and the periphery of the mountains, and
prevented from venturing deep into the forests (with a few exceptions, such as when
Nanny Town was captured and held briefly in the 1730s and during the expeditions to
meet with Kojo in the west and Quao in the east to negotiate the treaties) due to the
natural and human dangers that lurked therein. It is therefore highly probable that they
were simply wrong about the nonexistence or extinction of the Taínos or other
indigenous peoples in the mountains, concluding that they were extinct. As Senior
(2003, 474) argues, “Given the ruggedness of the terrain of the Greater [. . . Antilles] and
the difficulty of communications, it is easy to believe that the Taínos contributed to a
‘maroon’element in Jamaica and the other islands for a long time after their official
extinction”. Agorsah (1994, 182) concurs with this assessment by concluding that:
Association between [archaeological] material [. . . found] at Nanny Town [. . .] points to
the suggestion that a few (even if a few scores) of the ‘Arawaks’who may have escaped into
the inaccessible parts of the Blue Mountains and similar places, were still around [. . .] at
the time the English drove the Spanish from the island. Although attempts to provide
population figures for the prehistoric groups as well as for Maroons have been made, there
is no indication of the areas covered by the counting. It is not known whether the
inaccessible areas of the Blue Mountains were also covered, as there is no record that
indicates that any person or person visited the Blue Mountains to take a census [. . .] It
appears from the evidence from Nanny Town, that prehistoric groups in hideouts on the
island may have been gradually absorbed into the groups who later joined them.
While the extent to which the Leeward and Windward Maroon bands were able to have
direct contact with each other, and therefore intermingle, is debated in the literature,
the geography of Jamaica’s interior would not have necessarily been a barrier to such
68 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
interactions. Ainsley Henriques (2014), chairman of the Jamaica National Heritage
Trust, asserts that:
There are [. . .] trails oriented east to west that linked Maroon communities of the east with
those in the west. These trails ran along the ridges of the Blue Mountains (in the east),
joining up with other trails in western mountain ranges. These trails may have originated
as the same trails their Taíno forebears [sic] used. Some of these trails are still in use.
Unlike the Taínos, the Miskitos and the Maroons would have been too antagonistic
against each other to form any alliances, whether loose or close. Campbell (1990,9)
dismisses the notion that the Miskito Indians could have intermingled with the
Maroons, given that:
The Miskito Indians were in fact used by the British as ‘mercenaries’to fight the Maroons
on different occasions, but there is no evidence to show that there was ever any friendly
relationship between these two groups. On the contrary, the evidence showed these
Indians devoutly loyal to the British and by the eighteenth century they actually ceded
their sovereignty to Britain, by having their monarchs approved of and crowned in Jamaica
by the governor [. . .] It does not seem likely that these Indians would have wished to join
any enemy of Britain –not the Spaniards, whom they despised, not the Maroons, who
would be deemed troublesome to their friends.
Furthermore, mercenary work is traditionally male-oriented employ. The indigenous
genetic ancestry found among Accompong Maroons was only detected along maternal
lineages, indicating that indigenous women introduced those genetic lineages into the
Accompong community. Because women were not likely to have been Miskito mercen-
aries, Miskito peoples are unlikely to have been the source of indigenous ancestry
among Accompong Maroons. Moreover, there is not enough evidence on the other
Amerindian groups that were sold as slaves to Jamaica from the southern part of the
United States, which would give us information to make an assessment of the extent to
which they could have intermingled with the Maroons, and therefore explain the
origins of our DNA findings.
Taken in tandem, therefore, the historical, ethnographic, archaeological, geographic,
oral history, and genetic evidence suggests that indigenous Americans, quite possibly
the Taínos, were present in the Jamaican hinterland before and after the British
conquest of the island in 1655, and that there were likely interactions between them
and the African Maroons. While the archaeological evidence of an indigenous presence
in the Blue Mountains is conclusive, but not yet sufficient for Accompong Town and
other Leeward Maroon communities due to the lack of adequate excavations to date, it
is likely that such communities existed given the proximity of coastal Taíno commu-
nities to the mountains in western Jamaica. When we combine the aforementioned
sources with the genetic data, our conclusion is therefore that the most probable source
of the non-African ancestry found within the Accompong Town Maroon population is
indigenous to the Caribbean and potentially from Taíno ancestors.
Further research is needed to more fully address the question of Maroon ethnogenesis by
collecting more DNA samples not only from Accompong Town but also the other four major
Maroon communities across Jamaica, as well as in the Maroon diaspora.
10
Moreover, newly
collected DNA samples should undergo higher-resolution analysis, including full sequencing
ofthemitochondrialgenomesaswellassamplingacrosstheentiregenomeusingancestry
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 69
informative markers to infer more about the biogeographical origins of Maroon communities.
We have already begun this task, in earnest. In our current historical and genetic research
project on the Windward Jamaican Maroons in Moore Town, which also included oral history
interviews with Maroon elders, participants asserted their ancestral intermingling with Taínos
in the Blue and John Crow Mountains, and even pointed to current phenotypical attributes of
some members of the community (hair texture that is strait with a loose curl, and tawny skin
tone in particular) as being “Indian”, by which they meant Taíno in origin. Collecting more
DNA samples from additional Jamaican Maroon groups will enable us to make more
thorough, nuanced, and conclusive arguments than previously postulated, not only about
the ethnic makeup of the Maroons, and whether or not the Taínos were the first Maroons, but
also reconstruct the formative period of Marronage, ethno-national identity formation, and
creolization in early communities of free peoples in the Americas.
Notes
1. See Season 3, Episode 3, “Colin Jackson”, aired 20 September 2006. Like this BBC
program, the film projects of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., such as his PBS series “African
American Lives”,“Faces of America”, and “Finding Your Roots”, in addition to his related
books (Gates 2007,2009,2010,2014), have brought more public attention to the ways in
which DNA research, when combined with solid historical methodologies, is increasingly
becoming salient as a tool to interrogate the history and legacy of slavery, in bio-
geographical, cultural, political, and economic contexts.
2. The Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Spain has digitized a significant volume of
archival documents on early Spanish Jamaica, which is available through the online
PARES (El Portal de Archivos Españoles) portal, at http://pares.mcu.es/
3. Today, Maroons maintain some level of self-governance, which include having their own
traditional leader (with the title of “Colonel”), a Council of Elders (and, increasingly, with
youth members), communally held lands, the authority to settle minor civil and criminal cases
themselves, and non-payment of some taxes that other Jamaicans are required to pay (Baldwin-
Jones 2011, 396). For important works on contemporary Jamaican Maroon traditions, beliefs,
and culture, see the many works of scholars such as Kenneth Bilby, including his book True Born
Maroons (2008), which focuses on the Windward Maroons of Moore Town.
4. Biogeographic ancestry describes the use of genetic data to identify geographic regions of
origin. Throughout history, humans tended to pick mates from surrounding locales. As a
result, individuals that shared geographic regions also tended to be genetically similar to
each other within the region. To estimate biogeographic ancestry, genetic markers known
as ancestry informative markers (AIMs) are compared between the sample or population
in question and putative parental populations. AIMs exhibit frequency differentials across
global groups, in which the frequency differentials are the result of the relationship
between geography and genetics. The statistical comparisons using AIMs provides the
estimate of biogeographic ancestry.
5. See http://www.phylotree.org
6. A short tandem repeat is a small segment of DNA, that consists of tandemly placed
repetitive units comprised of two to six base pairs.
7. Prior to sample collection, appropriate institutional and local ethics review (commonly
referred to as IRB or “human subjects protocols”) were obtained. Additionally, each partici-
pant provided written informed consent prior to study participation. Upon enrollment in the
study, each participant provided a buccal swab and full genealogical history, including the
birthplace and affiliations of parents and grandparents on both sides of the family.
70 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
8. However, Wright casts doubt that this specific contingent of Moskitos were ever commis-
sioned to travel to Jamaica to fight the Maroons, arguing that, “In the contemporary
records there seems to be no trace of this transaction”(see Wright 1970).
9. As of 19 November 2015, the CIA World Factbook (2015)reported that Madagascans of
Malaysian descent include Malayo-Indonesians (Merina and Betsileo) and Cotiers (of
mixed African, Malayo-Indonesian, and Arab ancestry, such as the Betsimisaraka,
Tsimihety, Antaisaka, and Sakalava).
10. Similar to other Jamaican and Caribbean immigrants in the post-World War II period,
Jamaican Maroons migrated to Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, in many
cases maintaining familial ties and marriage patterns similar to their island homeland.
This would make conducting genetic research among these migrants the same as if they
were in their Maroon territories in Jamaica.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the local research assistants and the study participants for their
interest in our work, and the overall generosity shown by the people of Accompong Town.
Without their support none of this work would be possible. A special thanks to Gabriel Torres
for his invaluable advice and commentary during the construction of this manuscript, and to Dr.
Yohann Brultey for the French translation of the abstract.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This research was generously supported by the Annual Pilot Fund for Social Science Research, a
Large Social Sciences Research grant, and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity program,
underwritten by The Institute for the Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters,
University of Notre Dame. It was also supported by a Research Initiation Grant from Georgia
State University.
Notes on contributors
Harcourt Fuller, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Georgia State
University.
Jada Benn Torres, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at
Vanderbilt University.
References
Achilli, A., U. A. Perego, C. M. Bravi, M. D. Coble, S. R. Qing-Peng Kong, A. S. Woodward, A.
Torroni, and H.-J. Bandelt. 2008.“The Phylogeny of the Four Pan-American MtDNA
Haplogroups: Implications for Evolutionary and Disease Studies.”PLoS ONE 3 (3): e1764.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001764.
Agorsah, E. K. 1990.“Archaeology of Maroon Heritage in Jamaica.”Archaeology Jamaica –the
Newsletter of The Archaeological Society of Jamaica 2: 14–19.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 71
Agorsah, E. K. 1992.“Archaeology and Maroon Heritage in Jamaica.”Jamaica Journal 22 (1): 2–
9.
Agorsah, E. K. 1993a.“An Objective Chronological Scheme for Caribbean History and
Archaeology.”Social and Economic Studies 42 (1): 119–148.
Agorsah, E. K. 1993b.“Archaeology and Resistance History in the Caribbean.”in “Papers in
Honour of Merrick Posnansky.”African Archaeological Review 11: 175–195.
Agorsah, E. K., ed. 1994.Maroon Heritage: Archaeological Ethnographic and Historical
Perspectives. Kingston: Canoe Press, University of the West Indies.
Agorsah, E. K. 2007.“Scars of Brutality: Archaeology of the Maroons in the Caribbean.”In
Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by A. Ogundiran and T.
Falola, 332–354. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Agorsah, E. K. 2013.“Transcending Oppression: Contributions of Maroon Heritage to Freedom
in World History.”In the Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology, edited by W. F.
Keegan, C. L. Hofman, and R. R. Ramos, 542–556. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:.
Allsworth-Jones, P. 2008.Pre-Columbian Jamaica. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Andrews, K. R. 1978.The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 1530-1630. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Athey, T. Whit. 2006. “Haplogroup Prediction from Y-STR Values using a Bayesian-Allele-
Frequency Approach.”Journal of Genetic Genealogy 2: 34–39.
Atkinson, L.-G., ed. 2006.The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino.
Kingston: University of the West Indies Press.
Baldwin-Jones, A. E. 2011.“The Jamaican Marronage, a Social Pseudomorph: The Case of the
Accompong Maroons.”PhD diss., Columbia University.
Beatty-Medina, C. 2017.“Maroon Societies in Latin America.”Oxford Bibliographies.
doi:10.1093/OBO/9780199766581-0122.
Benn Torres, J., C. Bonilla, C. M. Robbins, L. Waterman, T. Y. Moses, W. Hernandez, E. R.
Santos, et al. 2008.“Admixture and Population Stratification in African Caribbean
Populations.”Annals of Human Genetics 72 (1): 90–98.
Benn Torres, J., A. C. Stone, and R. Kittles. 2013.“An Anthropological Genetic Perspective on
Creolization in the Anglophone Caribbean.”American Journal of Physical Anthropology 151
(1): 135–143. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22261.
Bilby, K. prod. 1992.Drums of Defiance: Maroon Music from the Earliest Free Black
Communities of Jamaica. CD and liner notes. Washington, DC: Smithsonian/Folkways
Recordings SF 40412.
Bilby, K. 2008.True-Born Maroons. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Bilby, K., and D. Baird N’Diaye. 1992. “Creativity and Resistance: Maroon Culture in the
Americas.”In Festival of American Folklife, edited by P. Seitel, 54–80. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution.
Bolnick, Deborah A., Duana Fullwiley, Troy Duster, Richard S. Cooper, Joan H. Fujimura,
Jonathan Kahn, Jay S. Kaufman, et al. 2007.“The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry
Testing.”Science 318 October 18 399–400. doi:10.1126/science.1150098.
Bonner, T. 1974.““Blue Mountains Expedition: Exploratory Excavations at Nanny Town by the
Scientific Exploration Society, December 1973 to January 1974.”Jamaica Journal 8 (2 and 3):
46–50.
Bryan, P. 2004.“The Settlement of the Chinese in Jamaica: 1854 - C.1970.”Caribbean Quarterly
50 (2, June 1): 15–25. doi:10.1080/00086495.2004.11672230.
Cameron, C. M., P. Kelton, and C. S. Alan, eds. 2015.Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in
North America. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Campbell, M. C. 1990.The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration
and Betrayal. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Carey, B. 1997.The Maroon Story: The Authentic and Original History of the Maroons in the
History of Jamaica, 1490 –1880. St. Andrew, Jamaica: Agouti Press - A Maroon Publishing
House.
72 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
Chakraborty, R. 1975.“Estimation of Race Admixture–A New Method.”American Journal of
Physical Anthropology 42 (3): 507–511. doi:10.1002/(ISSN)1096-8644.
Chakraborty, R. 1985.“Gene Identity in Racial Hybrids and Estimation of Admixture Rates.”In
Genetic Microdifferentiation in Man and Other Animals, edited by J. V. Neel and Y. R. Ahuja,
171–180. Delhi: Indian Anthropological Association.
CIA World Factbook. 2015.“Country Comparison to the World: Madagascar.”Accessed 19
November 2015. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2075.
html.
CIA World Factbook. 2017.“Jamaica.”Accessed 26 December 2017. https://www.cia.gov/library/
publications/the-world-factbook/geos/jm.html.
Cruciani, F., B. Trombetta, D. Sellitto, A. Massaia, G. Destro-Bisol, E. Watson, E. B. Colomb, J.-
M. Dugoujon, P. Moral, and R. Scozzari1. 2010.“Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup R-V88:
A Paternal Genetic Record of Early Mid Holocene Trans-Saharan Connections and the Spread
of Chadic Languages.”European Journal of Human Genetics 18 (7, January 6): 800–807.
doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.231.
Curtin, P. D. 1969.The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Dallas, R. C. 1803.The History of the Maroons: From Their Origin to the Establishment of Their
Chief Tribe at Sierra Leone. 2 Vols. London: T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster-Row.
Deason, M., A. Salas, S. Newman, V. Macaulay, E. Morrison, and Y. Pitsiladis. 2012.
“Interdisciplinary Approach to the Demography of Jamaica.”BioMedical Central
Evolutionary Biology 12 (1): 24. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-12-24.
Delle, J. A., W. H. Mark, and V. A. Douglas, eds. 2011.Out of Many, One People: The Historical
Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Denevan, W. M., ed. [1976] 1992.The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. 2nd ed.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Dunham, K. 1946.Katherine Dunham’s Journey to Accompong. New York, NY: Henry Holt.
Duster, T. 1999.“The Social Consequences of Genetic Disclosure.”In Culture and Biology, edited
by R. Carson and M. Rothstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Duster, T. 2010.“Ancestry Testing and DNA: Uses, Limits—And Caveat Emptor.”In Race and
the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth and Culture, edited by S. Krimsky and K. Sloan. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Edwards, B. 2015. The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies.
2nd ed. Vol. 4. London: Forgotten Books Classic Reprint Series. Philadelphia: James
Humphreys, 1794. Repr.
Fendt, L. 2012.“MtDNA Diversity of Ghana: A Forensic and Phylogeographic View.”Forensic
Science International Genetics 6 (2): 244–249. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2011.05.011.
Florentino, M., and M. Amantino. 2011.“Runaways and Quilombolas in the Americas.”In AD
1420–AD 1804. Vol. 3 Of the Cambridge World History of Slavery, edited by D. Eltis and S. L.
Engerman, 708–740. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gaieski, J. B., A. C. Owings, M. G. Vilar, M. C. Dulik, D. F. Gaieski, R. M. Gittelman, J. Lindo, L.
Gau, and T. G. Schurr. 2011.“Genetic Ancestry and Indigenous Heritage in a Native
American Descendant Community in Bermuda.”American Journal of Physical Anthropology
146 (3): 392–405. doi:10.1002/ajpa.21588.
Galley, A. 2002.The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South,
1670 –1717. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gates Jr., H. L. 2007.Finding Oprah’s Roots: Finding Your Own. New York: Crown.
Gates Jr., H. L. 2009.In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed
Their Past. New York: Crown.
Gates Jr., H. L. 2010.Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary Americans Reclaimed Their Pasts.
New York: New York University Press.
Gates Jr., H. L. 2014.Finding Your Roots: The Official Companion to the PBS Series. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 73
Gomez, F., J. Hirbo, and S. A. Tishkoff.2014.“Genetic Variation and Adaptation in Africa:
Implications for Human Evolution and Disease.”Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 6
(7): a008524. doi:10.1101/cshperspect.a008524.
Guerra, F. 1993.“The European-American Exchange.”History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
15 (3): 313–327.
Helms, M. 1983.“Miskito Slaving and Culture Contact: Ethnicity and Opportunity in an
Expanding Population.”.”Journal of Anthropological Research 39 (2): 179–197. doi:10.1086/
jar.39.2.3629966.
Henriques, A. 2014.“Historic Trails (Jamaica).”In Encyclopedia of Caribbean Archaeology, edited
by A. Basil, 186. Reid and Grant Gilmore III: University Press of Florida.
Heuman, G., ed. 1986.Out of the House of Bondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in
Africa and the New World. London: Frank Cass.
Heywood, L., and J. Thornton. 2007.Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the
Americas, 1585-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Higman, B. W., and J. H. Brian. 2009.Jamaican Place Names. Kingston, Jamaica: University of
the West Indies Press.
Hoogbergen, W., ed. 1995.Born Out of Resistance: On Caribbean Cultural Creativity. Utrecht,
The Netherlands: ISOR.
Hopper, R. 2008.“Taino Indians: Settlements of the Caribbean.”Lambda Alpha Journal 38: 62–69.
Jacobs, W. R. 1974.“The Tip of an Iceberg: Pre-Columbian Indian Demography and Some
Implications for Revisionism.”The William and Mary Quarterly 31 (1): 123–132. doi:10.2307/
1918985.
Jaynes, G. D., ed. 2005.Encyclopedia of African American Society. Vol 2.1st ed. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
Jobling, M. A., and C. Tyler-Smith. 2003.“The Human Y Chromosome: An Evolutionary Marker
Comes of Age.”Nature Reviews Genetics 4 (8, August): 598–612. doi:10.1038/nrg1124.
Jobling, M. A., M. Hurles, and C. Tyler-Smith. 2004.Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins,
Peoples & Disease. New York: Garland Science.
Johnston, J., and M. Thomas. 2003.“Summary: The Science of Genealogy by Genetics.”
Developing World Bioethics 3 (2, December): 103–108. doi:10.1046/j.1471-
8731.2003.00064.x.
Kars, M. 2016.“Maroons and Marronage.”Oxford Bibliographies: Atlantic History.10.1093/
OBO/9780199730414-0229. August 30.
Keegan, W. F. 1996.“West Indian Archaeology. 2. After Columbus.”Journal of Archaeological
Research 4 (4): 265–294. doi:10.1007/BF02229089.
Klein, H. S., and B. Vinson. 2007.African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. 2nd ed.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Knight, F. W. 1990.The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Kopytoff,B.K.1973.“The Maroons of Jamaica: An Ethnohistorical Study of Incomplete Polities,
1655–1905.”PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania.
Kopytoff,B.K.1976a.“Jamaican Maroon Political Organization: The Effects of the Treaties.”
Social and Economic Studies 25 (2): 87–105.
Kopytoff,B.K.1976b.“The Development of Jamaican Maroon Ethnicity.”Caribbean Quarterly
22 (2–3): 33–50. doi:10.1080/00086495.1976.11671900.
Kopytoff,B.K.1978.“The Early Political Development of Jamaican Maroon Societies.”The
William and Mary Quarterly 35 (2): 287–307. doi:10.2307/1921836.
Kumar, S., C. Bellis, M. Zlojutro, P. E. Melton, J. Blangero, and J. E. Curran. 2011.“Large Scale
Mitochondrial Sequencing in Mexican Americans Suggests a Reappraisal of Native American
Origins.”BioMedical Central Evolutionary Biology 11: 293.
Long, E. 1774.History of Jamaica. Vol. 3. London: T. Lowndes.
Madrilejo, N., H. Lombard, and J. B. Torres. 2015.“Origins of Marronage: Mitochondrial
Lineages of Jamaica’s Accompong Town Maroons.”American Journal of Human Biology 27
(3) 432–437. May/June. Accessed November 12, 2015. doi:10.1002/ajhb.22656.
74 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
Malyarchuk, B., M. Derenko, G. Denisova, A. Maksimov, M. Wozniak, T. Grzybowski, I.
Dambueva, and I. Zakharov. 2011.“Ancient Links between Siberians and Native Americans
Revealed by Subtyping the Y Chromosome Haplogroup Q1a.”Journal of Human Genetics 56
(8, August): 583–588. doi:10.1038/jhg.2011.64.
Mann, C. C. 2011.1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. 1st ed. New York, NY:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Mannix, D. P., and M. Cowley. 1963.Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518 –
1865. London: Longmans.
Marcheco-Teruel, B., E. J. Parra, E. Fuentes-Smith, A. Salas, H. N. Buttenschøn, D. Demontis, M.
Torres-Español, et al. 2014.“Cuba: Exploring the History of Admixture and the Genetic Basis
of Pigmentation Using Autosomal and Uniparental Markers.”PLoS Genetics 10 (7): e1004488.
doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004488.
Marks, J. 2002.“What Is Molecular Anthropology? What Can It Be?”Evolutionary Anthropology:
Issues, News, and Reviews 11 (4): 131–135. doi:10.1002/evan.10031.
Mendizabal, I., K. Sandoval, G. Berniell-Lee, F. Calafell, A. Salas, A. Martínez-Fuentes, and D.
Comas. 2008.“Genetic Origin, Admixture, and Asymmetry in Maternal and Paternal Human
Lineages in Cuba.”BioMedical Central Evolutionary Biology 8 (1). doi:10.1186/1471-2148-8-
213.
Mielke, J. H., and H. C. Michael. 1980-84. Current Developments in Anthropological Genetics.
Vol. 3 . New York: Plenum Press.
Myres, N. M., S. Rootsi, A. A. Lin, M. Järve, R. J. King, I. Kutuev, V. M. Cabrera, et al. 2010.“A
Major Y-Chromosome Haplogroup R1b Holocene Era Founder Effect in Central and Western
Europe.”European Journal of Human Genetics 19 (1): 95–101. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2010.146.
Neeganagwedgin, E. 2015.“Rooted in the Land: Taíno Identity, Oral History and Stories of
Reclamation in Contemporary Contexts.”AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous
Peoples 11 (4): 376–388. doi:10.1177/117718011501100405.
Newell, M. 2015.Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of
American Slavery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Newman, S. P., M. L. Deason, Y. P. Pitsiladis, A. Salas, and A. M. Vincent. 2013.“The West
African Ethnicity of the Enslaved in Jamaica.”Slavery & Abolition 34 (3): 376–400.
doi:10.1080/0144039X.2012.734054.
Nixon, R. 2007.“DNA Tests Find Branches but Few Roots.”The New York Times, November 25.
Accessed 17 September 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/business/25dna.html.
Offen, K. 2002.“The Sambu and Tawira Miskitu: The Colonial Origins of Intra-
MiskituDifferentiation in Eastern Nicaragua and Honduras.”Ethnohistory 49 (2): 319–372.
doi:10.1215/00141801-49-2-319.
Offen, K. 2015.“Mapping Amerindian Captivity in Colonial Mosquitia.”Journal of Latin
American Geography 14 (3): 35–65. doi:10.1353/lag.2015.0042.
Olien, M. D. 1983.“The Miskito Kings and the Line of Succession.”Journal of Anthropological
Research 39 (2): 198–241. doi:10.1086/jar.39.2.3629967.
OPM (The Office of the Prime Minister). 2017.“Jamaica’s National Symbols: Coat of Arms.”
Accessed 17 September 2017. http://opm.gov.jm/symbols/coat-of-arms/.
Padrón, F. M. 2003.Spanish Jamaica. Translated by Patrick Bryan, Michael Gronow, and Felix
Oviedo Moral. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.
Paterson, O. 1970.“Slavery and Slave Revolt: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the First Maroon
War 1655-1740.”Social and Economic Studies 19 (3): 289–325.
Pereira, L., F. Alshamali, R. Andreassen, R. Ballard, W. Chantratita, N. S. Cho, C. Coudray, et al.
2010.“PopAffiliator: Online Calculator for Individual Affiliation to a Major Population Group
Based on 17 Autosomal Short Tandem Repeat Genotype Profile.”International Journal of
Legal Medicine 125 (5): 629–636. doi:10.1007/s00414-010-0472-2.
Price, Alkes L., Nick Patterson, Fuli Yu, David R. Cox, Alicja Waliszewska, Gavin J. McDonald,
Arti Tandon, et al. 2017.“A Genomewide Admixture Map for Latino Populations.”The
American Journal of Human Genetics 80 (6): 1024–1036. doi:10.1086/518313.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 75
Price, R. 1996.Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas. 2nd ed. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Projects Abroad. 2017.“Jamaica Maroon Community Project.”Accessed 27 January 2017. http://
www.projects-abroad.org/volunteer-projects/culture-and-community/maroon-community-
project/volunteer-jamaica/.
Ragosta, S. A. 2011.“Historical Influences on the Development of Indigenous Jamaican Maroon
Ethnomedicine: Comparisons with West African and Arawak Ethnopharmacopoeia.”PhD
diss., University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Rajeevan, H., U. Soundararajan, J. R. Kidd, A. J. Pakstis, and K. K. Kidd. 2011.“ALFRED: An
Allele Frequency Resource for Research and Teaching.”Nucleic Acids Research 40, October 28:
gkr924.
Relethford, J. 2004.Reflections of Our Past: How Human History Is Revealed in Our Genes.
Boulder: Westview Press.
Rito, T., M. B. Richards, V. Fernandes, F. Alshamali, V. Cerny, L. Pereira, and P. Soares. 2013.
“The First Modern Human Dispersals Across Africa.”PloS One 8 (11): e80031. doi:10.1371/
journal.pone.0080031.
Royal, C. D., S. M. John Novembre, D. B. Fullerton, J. C. L. Goldstein, M. J. Bamshad, and A. G.
Clark. 2010.“Inferring Genetic Ancestry: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications.”The
American Journal of Human Genetics 86 (5): 661–673. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.03.011.
Ruiz-Linares, A., K. Adhikari, V. Acuña-Alonzo, M. Quinto-Sanchez, C. Jaramillo, W. Arias, M.
Fuentes, M. Pizarro, P. Everardo, and D. A. Francisco. 2014.“Admixture in Latin America:
Geographic Structure, Phenotypic Diversity and Self-Perception of Ancestry Based on 7,342
Individuals.”PLoS Genetics 10 (9): e1004572. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004572.
Saco, J. A. 1879.Historia de la Esclavitud de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en Especial en
los Países Américo-Hispanos. Barcelona: Imprenta de Jaime Jepús.
Salas, A., M. Richards, M.-V. Lareu, R. Scozzari, A. Coppa, A. Torroni, V. Macaulay, and Á.
Carracedo. 2004.“The African Diaspora: Mitochondrial DNA and the Atlantic Slave Trade.”
The American Journal of Human Genetics 74 (3, March): 454–465. doi:10.1086/382194.
Salas, A., M. Richards, T. De la Fe, M.-V. Lareu, B. Sobrino, P. Sánchez-Diz, V. Macaulay, and Á.
Carracedo. 2002.“The Making of the African mtDNA Landscape.”The American Journal of
Human Genetics 71 (5): 1082–1111. doi:10.1086/344348.
Santos, A. L., M. T. Gardner, and P. Allsworth-Jones. 2013.“Treponematosis in Pre-Columbian
Jamaica: A Biocultural Approach to the Human Cranium Found in Bull Savannah.”Journal of
Archaeological Science 40 (1): 490–496. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2012.06.001.
SDC (Social Development Commission). 2009.“2009 Socio-Economic Survey: Accompong
Summary Profile.”Accessed 27 January 2017. http://sdc.gov.jm/communities/accompong-sum
mary-profile/.
Senior, O. 2003.Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage. St. Andrew, Jamaica: Twin Guinep
Publishers.
Sheridan, R. B. 1985.“The Maroons of Jamaica, 1730-1830: Livelihood, Demography and
Health.”Slavery and Abolition 6 (3): 152–172. doi:10.1080/01440398508574898.
Simms, T. M., C. E. Rodriguez, R. Rodriguez, and R. J. Herrera. 2010.“The Genetic Structure of
Populations from Haiti and Jamaica Reflect Divergent Demographic Histories.”American
Journal of Physical Anthropology 142 (1): 49–66. doi:10.1002/ajpa.21194.
Simms, T. M., M. R. Wright, O. A. Michelle Hernandez, E. C. Perez, E. M. Ramirez, and R. J.
Herrera. 2012.“Y-Chromosomal Diversity in Haiti and Jamaica: Contrasting Levels of Sex-
Biased Gene Flow.”American Journal of Physical Anthropology 148 (4): 618–631. doi:10.1002/
ajpa.22090.
Soares, P., L. Ermini, N. Thomson, M. Mormina, T. Rito, A. Röhl, A. Salas, S. Oppenheimer, V.
Macaulay, and M. B. Richards. 2009.“Correcting for Purifying Selection: An Improved
Human Mitochondrial Molecular Clock.”The American Journal of Human Genetics 84 (6):
740–759. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2009.05.001.
76 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
Stefflova, K., M. C. Dulik, J. S. Barnholtz-Sloan, A. A. Pai, A. H. Walker, and T. R. Rebbeck. 2011.
“Dissecting the Within-Africa Ancestry of Populations of African Descent in the Americas.”
PLoS One 6 (1): e14495. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014495.
Tajima, A., K. Hamaguchi, H. Terao, A. Oribe, V. M. Perrotta, C. A. Baez, J. R. Arias, H.
Yoshimatsu, T. Sakata, and S. Horai. 2004.“Genetic Background of People in the Dominican
Republic with or without Obese Type 2 Diabetes Revealed by Mitochondrial DNA
Polymorphism.”Journal of Human Genetics 49 (9): 495–499. doi:10.1007/s10038-004-0179-7.
Teulon, A. E. 1967.Report on the Expedition to Nanny Town (July 1967). Kingston: Institute of
Jamaica, Mimeo pamphlet.
Thompson, A. O. 2006.Flight to Freedom: African Runaways and Maroons in the Americas.
Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press.
Thornton, J. K. 2012.A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820. New York,
NY: Cambridge University Press.
Thornton, J. K. 2017.“The Zambos and the Transformation of the Miskitu Kingdom,
1636–1740.”Hispanic American Historical Review 97 (1): 1–28. doi:10.1215/00182168-
3727364.
Thwaites, D. 2014.“Wackos are Not Extinct.”The Gleaner, July 27. Accessed 12 November 2015.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140727/cleisure/cleisure4.html.
Tishkoff, S. A., F. A. Reed, F. R. Friedlaender, C. Ehret, A. Ranciaro, A. Froment, J. B. Hirbo,
et al. 2009.“The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans.”Science
324 (5930): 1035–1044. doi:10.1126/science.1172257.
Uring, N. 1726.A History of the Voyages and Travels of Capt. Nathaniel Uring: With New
Draughts of the Bay of Honduras and the Caribbee Islands: And Particularly of St. Lucia, and
the Harbour of Petite Carenage, into Which Ships May Run in Bad Weather, and Be Safe from
All Winds and Storms. Very Useful for Masters of Ships that Use the Leeward Island Trade, or
Jamaica. London: Printed by W. Wilkins, for J. Peele, at Locke’s Head in Pater-noster-Row.
van Oven, M., and M. Kayser. 2009.“Updated Comprehensive Phylogenetic Tree of Global
Human Mitochondrial DNA Variation.”Human Mutation 30 (2): E386–E394. doi:10.1002/
humu.v30:2.
Vilar, M. G., A. B. Carlalynne Melendez, A. W. Sanders, J. B. Gaieski, A. C. Owings, and T. G.
Schurr. 2014.“Genetic Diversity in Puerto Rico and Its Implications for the Peopling of the
Island and the West Indies.”American Journal of Physical Anthropology 155 (3): 352–386.
doi:10.1002/ajpa.22569.
Watlington, F. 2009.“Cassava and Carrying Capacity in Aboriginal Puerto Rico: Revisiting the
Taino Downfall at Conquest.”Southeastern Geographer 49 (4): 394–403. doi:10.1353/
sgo.0.0059.
Wheat, D. 2016.Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
Williams, J. J. 1938.“The Maroons of Jamaica.”Anthropological Series of the Boston College
Graduate School 3 (4): 377–480.
Williams, P. H. 2014a.“‘I Am Not Extinct’- Jamaican Taino Proudly Declares Ancestry.”The
Gleaner, July 5. Accessed 12 November 2015. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140705/
lead/lead5.html.
Williams, P. H. 2014b.“I Am Not Extinct - Pt II.”The Gleaner, July 12. Accessed 12 November
2015. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140712/news/rural2.html.
Williams, P. H. 2014c.“Indigenous Peoples For Charles Town Maroon Conference.”The
Gleaner, June 14. Accessed 12 November 2015. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/
20140614/news/news3.html.
Williams, P. H. 2014d.“The Tainos: In the Shadows of Heritage Tourism.”The Gleaner-
Hospitality Jamaica, October 1: 12-13. Accessed November 12, 2015. http://hospitalityja
maica.com/epaper/20141001.pdf.
Wilson, J. L., B. Ely, and B. A. Jackson. 2010.“Evaluating African-Derived mtDNA Haplotype
Diversity via Independent Sample Collections.”Journal of the Canadian Society of Forensic
Science 43: 65–74. doi:10.1080/00085030.2010.10757619.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 77
Wilson, S. M. 1997.The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of
Florida.
Winks, R. W. 1971.The Blacks in Canada: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
World Bank. 2000-2001.“World Development Report 2000/01, Consultations With the Poor:
Country Report, Jamaica.”Accessed 27 January 2017. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/
INTPOVERTY/Resources/335642-1124115102975/1555199-1124138866347/jamaica.pdf.
Wright, I. A. 1923.The English Conquest of Jamaica: An Account of What Happened in the Island
of Jamaica, from May 20 of the Year 1655, When the English Laid Siege to It, up to July 3 of the
Year 1656, by Captain Julian de Castilla. Translated from the Original MS. in the Archives of
the Indies, and edited for the Royal Historical Society. Camden Miscellany 13. Vols. XXXIV:
i-vi. London: Camden Record Society, Third Series. 1–32.
Wright, P. 1970.“War and Peace with the Maroons, 1730-1739.”Caribbean Quarterly 16 (1,
March): 5–27. doi:10.1080/00086495.1970.11829035.
Y Chromosome Consortium. 2002.“A Nomenclature System for the Tree of Human
Y-Chromosomal Binary Haplogroups.”Genome Research. 12(2);339–348. February.
doi:10.1101/gr.217602.
78 H. FULLER AND J. BENN TORRES
