Captain Cudjoe

Cudjoe (Kojo Akan day-name for a son born on Monday), the principal commander of the Leeward Maroons of the British colony of Jamaica, was born about 1690 in the principal Saint Elizabeth parish of southwestern Jamaica, the principal son of the Akan Coromantee chieftain Naquan — a captive of the principal Asante gold-and-slave-raiding wars of the late seventeenth century enslaved and sold westward to the principal Jamaican Sutton plantation.

He was raised across the principal turn of the eighteenth century in the principal Sutton sugar economy — and was instructed in the principal Akan Twi oral canon carried by his father, the principal Akan-Coromantee Obeah and ancestor cosmology of the Jamaican enslaved community, and the principal abeng horn signal-language of the principal Maroon woodland communications system.

He rose with the principal Sutton slaves about 1702 under the command of his father Naquan, killed the principal Sutton overseer, and led the principal Sutton company into the principal Cockpit Country limestone karst of the Saint James and Trelawny parishes — the principal Leeward Maroon stronghold of the seventeenth-century Spanish-Maroon and Akan-Akani-runaway populations. He assumed the principal Leeward command on the death of Naquan about 1720, and rallied the principal Trelawny and Accompong towns to the principal Akan-Coromantee polity that the British colonial registers came to call Cudjoe's Town.

He fought the principal First Maroon War of 1728 to 1739 against the principal British Jamaican militia of the Stoddart and Brooks campaigns — by the principal classical Akan-Maroon tactics of the elevated ambush, the principal abeng-signal coordination of dispersed companies, and the principal scorched-plantation raid on the principal Saint Elizabeth and Saint James sugar estates. He defeated the principal British detachments at the principal Petty River Bottom about 1734, the principal John Stevens campaign of 1736, and the principal Brooks campaign of 1738.

He signed at Petty River Bottom on the first of March 1739 the principal First Maroon Treaty with the principal British colonial Governor John Guthrie — a treaty that recognized the principal Leeward Maroon polity, granted the principal Cudjoe's Town (renamed Trelawny Town) the principal fifteen hundred acres of Cockpit territory, and the principal Maroon self-government under Cudjoe's Akan title of Colonel. He governed Trelawny Town across the principal next quarter-century, signed the principal Second Maroon Treaty with the principal Windward commander Quao in 1739, and died at Trelawny Town about 1764 of natural causes. He is honored here as the principal commander of the Leeward Jamaican Maroons and the principal first Black sovereign of a treaty-recognized polity in the post-Columbian Atlantic.