Cudjoe, Codjoe or Captain Cudjoe, sometimes spelled Cudjo - corresponding to the Akan day nameKojo, Codjoe or Kwadwo – was a Maroon leader in Jamaica during the time of Nanny of the Maroons. In Twi, Cudjoe or Kojo is the name given to a boy born on a Monday. He has been described as "the greatest of the Maroon leaders." The Jamaican Maroons are descended from runaway slaves who established free communities in the mountains of Jamaica during the era of slavery on the island. African slaves imported during the Spanish period may have provided the first runaways, apparently mixing with the Native AmericanTaino or Arawak people that remained in the country. Some may have gained liberty when the English attacked Jamaica and took it in 1655, and subsequently. Cudjoe was the leader of a community of runaway slaves known as Cudjoe's Town. For nearly a century, until the 1739 and 1740 peace treaties with the British rulers of the island, the Maroons victoriously resisted conquest.
Origins of Cudjoe
Western slaves ran away into the Cockpit Country and established the first community of Leeward Maroons in the mountainous interior of the island. The runaway slaves were called Maroons, after the Spanish word cimarron. The Leeward Maroons most likely emerged in 1690 when there was a Coromantee rebellion on Sutton's estate in western Jamaica, and most of these slaves ran away to form the Leeward Maroons. Cudjoe is probably the son of one of the leaders of this revolt. Milton McFarlane explains that his family's Accompong Town Maroon oral history states that Cudjoe was the freeborn son of Naquan, who was the leader of the rebels who fled from Sutton's estate. According to contemporary white planters, Cudjoe challenged a Madagascan escaped slave for the leadership of the Leeward Maroons in 1720, and when he defeated and killed his challenger, Cudjoe became the undisputed leader of these western Maroons. The two main Maroon groups in the 18th century were the Leeward and the Windward Maroons, the former led by Cudjoe in Trelawny Town and the latter led by Queen Nanny and Quao.
Description
R. C. Dallas, who wrote his account half a century after Cudjoe lived, claimed the Maroon leader was described short and stout, with a "wildness in his manners". He also described Cudjoe as having "a very large lump of flesh upon his back, which was partly covered by the tattered remains of an old blue coat, of which the skirts and the sleeves below the elbow were wanting." Planter Thomas Thistlewood, who actually met Cudjoe in 1750, noted in his diary that "he had on a feather’d hat, Sword at his Side, gun upon his Shoulder...Bare foot and Bare legg’d, somewhat a Majestic look".
Treaty with the British
During the First Maroon War of the 1730s, the English colonial forces failed to secure any significant victories against Cudjoe's Leeward Maroons. In 1739, Cudjoe reached an agreement with the British that recognized the Leeward Maroons as an independent nation. The Maroons also received a large tract of land and would not have to pay any taxes on it. However, Cudjoe, in return for this recognition of autonomy, promised to return runaway slaves and help put down future slave rebellions. In the 1740s, some Leeward Maroons who opposed the 1739 treaty rose in revolt, but Cudjoe crushed those rebellions. According to one story, Cudjoe died at Nanny Town in the Blue Mountains five years after peace was concluded. However, white Jamaican writers Edward Long and Thomas Thistlewood wrote of personal encounters with Cudjoe in the 1750s and 1760s. In the last written reference, Long described how Cudjoe led his Leeward Maroons in a martial performance at Montego Bay for Governor Sir William Lyttleton in 1764. That same year, Thistlewood reported receiving news that "Colonel Cudjoe is dead some time ago".
Legacy
The treaty of 1739 named Accompong as Cudjoe's successor, and Accompong tried to take control of Trelawny Town when Cudjoe died in 1764. However, the governor, Roger Hope Elletson, asserted his new authority over the Leeward Maroons. Elletson instructed Superintendent John James to take the Trelawny Town badge of authority away from Accompong, and to give it to a Trelawny Town Maroon officer named Lewis. James instructed Accompong that he was to only have authority over Accompong Town. Cudjoe Day is celebrated in Jamaica on the first Monday in January.
