In Jamaica, the first Maroons were the indigenous Tainos, a group of Arawak people that migrated from South and Central America. They moved to the hills when the Spanish invaded Jamaica in 1494. A number of the first Africans that were brought into Jamaica by the Spanish, 1513 onwards, moved straight to the hills. They came into contact with and lived among the Tainos.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the word Maroon as “a member of a black people living in parts of Suriname and the West Indies descended from runaway slaves”. It is important to state here that the first Taino and African Maroons in Jamaica were never slaves. They saw the signs of things to come and acted speedily to get away from it. The growing number of runaway slaves, however, later expanded the Maroon groups across the island. The main Maroon settlements were the interior mountains in the parish of Clarendon, which later moved to the Cockpit Mountains in Trelawny, and the Blue Mountains in the eastern parishes of Portland and St. Thomas.
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