Historical novelists engage in research to ensure the authenticity of facts, and read as many related books, non-fiction and fiction, as possible. In my blogs I share the more fascinating fruits of my labours.
Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Taino people populated Jamaica. When the Spanish settled there around 1509, they enslaved the Tainos, causing many to die of Western diseases. Some escaped to the Island’s interior forming the nucleus of the Maroons. The Spanish then brought slaves from Western Africa but, not appreciating the Island’s potential, defended it poorly. Consequently, when the English failed to take Hispaniola from the Spanish, in 1655 they consoled themselves by capturing Jamaica. In the ensuing confusion, many slaves ran away and added to the embryonic Maroon population. The British developed sugar plantations, transporting more African slaves as cheap labour. The Maroon were further swelled by new escapees. They clustered largely around the western and eastern mountains. In the west were the Leeward Maroons, led in the 1730s by Kojo. Those in the Blue Mountains to the east were termed the Windward Maroons, led jointly by Captain Quao and Queen Nanny.
There are varying accounts of how Nanny arrived in the Blue Mountains, including being born there around 1686 to a Ghanaian prince, Naquan, who was tricked into slavery then escaped. Another maintains she was brought as a slave but swam to freedom. A third says that she came as an aristocratic free African with her own slaves and married Adou a Windward Maroon. She is also known by different names, including Sarah or Matilda Rowe, Abena Pokua and Granni Nani. One report states that she was killed in 1733 and yet this is known to be inaccurate because in 1740 she signed a ‘`Land Grant’ with the British who officially gave her and her people a substantial acreage of land.
The various contradictions in her life story suggest that maybe more than one powerful female leader in the Maroon community was called ‘Nanny’. The name is an anglicized version of the Ashanti ‘Nana’ a term of respect given to important females and ‘ni’ meaning ‘first mother’. Unlike the extremely paternalistic Georgian society, Akan and Ashanti culture is matrifocal, that is focussed on the mother, with kinship passed through the female line. Therefore, the title Nanani might well have been given to important woman in various Blue Mountain villages. Several of these were named after their leaders, examples include Holly’s Town and Diane’s Town. One of these women might have been the charismatic person Tomasina met. However, records show that there was one outstanding female leader who dominated first Nanny Town then Moore Town, and with whom the British authorities were forced to negotiate.
First, as we know from the significance of breaking the German Enigma codes in World War II, communication is vital in any military conflict and the Maroons use the Abeng, an animal horn with which they could transmit messages over long distances and which were indecipherable to their enemies. Secondly, the Maroons mastered the arts of guerrilla warfare, ambush and camouflage. As a strategist, Nanny determined where and how these were deployed. Finally, she may have used supernatural powers or the arts of illusion to create terrifying and miraculous spectacles such as ambushes containing a cauldron of boiling water with no visible heat source, or catching fired bullets in her hand, maybe a talent inherited from her African forebears or her mastery of misdirection and sleight of hand.
Western philosophy has unfortunately separated mind, body and spirit, distinguishing neurology from psychiatry, despite clear links between physical and mental wellbeing, such as the placebo effect. The Akan and Ashanti people have had no such divide. Therefore, Queen Nanny gave her people pride and confidence by revealing her understanding of African culture, with its respect for ancestors and the spiritual world, knowledge of herbs and healing, and harnessing a holistic view of people. She is said, for example, to have planted pumpkin seeds which grew extremely quickly thus saving the starving community. This might be because she understood where best to plant the seeds, or a metaphor for the way she nourished her people.
