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Prince Naquan: The Fante Prince of Kormantsi and father of Queen Nanny of the Maroons
This is the true account of events as corroborated by Zora Neale Hurston.
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“Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a globetrotting female investigator and in her book ‘Tell My Horse’ talks about the Maroons of Jamaica and their Fanti heritage.”
Prince Naquan was a Fanti Prince born into the Royal House of Kormantsi around 1620. In his teenage years as custom demands in Fantiland that all royals undergo rigorous military training known as Asafo companies, he was hell-bent on learning the ways of his ancestors. Hence, establishing himself as a fierce warrior.
Due to the numerous wars, Fantis had already built solid fortifications at the coast which were impenetrable. However, they needed copper for shield despite the tons of gold available. it must be noted that the first people to engage in serious trading with the whites where Fantis were acting as middlemen.
When goods such as gold, silver, and precious minerals were brought to the coast, they purchased the goods and supplied them to the whites at an exorbitant price making them wealthy businessmen. He started trading with the Spanish much to the displeasure of his family who had warned him about the treacherous nature of these white folks.
Prince Naquan was young and vibrant. His youthful exuberance and naivety led to his captivity. Despite his family thought that his trading with the Spanish was a bad idea, he wanted to prove them wrong. The Fante traded with the Spanish for a very long time because they had a ton of gold that wasn’t important to them. After all, it didn’t protect them in battle.
They wanted copper for shields. The Spanish asked him to get his men together to go to the New World so they could get their copper and set up their outpost. Naquan was lured to Jamaica by the Spanish whom he was already trading with frequently (gold for copper). He only brought men—80 strapping men that the Spanish approved for carrying the copper (aka being slaves). He was a teenager—possibly not even 18 In 1640. When the trip on the boats seemed too long, Naquan led a revolt that was squashed by the Spanish, and these Fantes were enslaved.
They fought but it didn’t work so Naquan made it seem like they gave up. They pretended to submit for a while as Naquan advised his fellow Fantes to work as slaves so they could buy themselves some time to become more organized. They later then revolted and took off for the Blue Mountains where they were aided by Arawak natives and other slaves that escaped.
He had a lot of children since he was a teenager when he arrived namely; five brothers, Cudjoe (Kojo), Accompong, Johnny, Cuffee (Kofi), and Quao (Kwaw), and one sister, Nanny. Nanny was one of his youngest.
Since the Fante only came with men and she’s depicted as fair-skinned, it’s most likely that her mother was an Arawak or even mixed with Spanish. He was killed in battle in 1690. Nanny and her older brothers are on record as being alive for the treaty in 1740. There isn’t a way for her to have been born in Fante/Ghana.
Below is the video on YouTube as narrated by the great-grandson of Prince Naquan.
https://youtu.be/cS5Od6V8AG0?si=HiqhYB_584UDQNxC
The Children of Prince Naquan
1. Cudjoe: The celebrated Maroon leader who overcame the British in the 1730s
Cudjoe, the descendant of a West African prince transported to Jamaica was known as the greatest Maroon leader after he fought the then Madagascan leader of the Leeward Maroons – and won by killing him. In 1720, Cudjoe was instated as the front-runner of the Leeward Maroons.
Cudjoe, who was named Kojo was born in Accompong Town, Jamaica in the late 1600s. He was described as having a lump of skin on his back that was often covered by a frayed coat. His temperament was labelled as being wild. He was short and round.
Cudjoe’s father, Naquan was the frontrunner of a group of rebel slaves from Sutton’s Estate. An uprising at Sutton’s Estate led to the formulation of the Leeward Maroons.
Another group of prominence among Jamaican slaves of African Descent was the Windward Maroons.
The battle of the Maroons against British forces in 1730 was a result of the constant defeats faced by the British while attempting to conquer the slaves.
In 1739, Cudjoe was able to secure an agreement that established the Leeward Maroons as an independent state. They were also given land as part of the deal. Cudjoe was also required to return runaway slaves and discourage future slave uprisings.
Cudjoe died in 1744 at Nanny Town in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.
2. Queen Nanny of the Maroons
Queen Nanny, Granny Nanny, or Nanny of the Maroons ONH (c. 1686 – c. 1760), was an early-18th-century freedom fighter and leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly-enslaved escapee slaves, the majority of them West African in descent, called the Windward Maroons, along with their children and families. At the beginning of the 18th century, under the leadership of Nanny, the Windward Maroons fought a guerrilla war lasting many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica, in what became known as the First Maroon War.
Much of what is known about Nanny comes from oral history, as little textual evidence exists. According to Maroon legend, Queen Nanny was born in 1640 in Jamaica, the daughter of Prince Naquan of the Fante from Ghana, who was taken into slavery by the Spaniards.
During the years of warfare, the British suffered significant losses in their encounters with the Windward Maroons of eastern Jamaica. Maroons attributed their success against the British to the successful use of supernatural powers by Nanny, while historians believe that the Maroons’ mastery of guerrilla warfare and vast knowledge of the natural terrain played a significant role in their successes. Having failed to defeat them on the battlefield, the British sued the Maroons for peace, signing a treaty with them on 20 April 1740. The treaty stopped the hostilities, provided state-sanctioned freedom for the Maroons, and granted 500 acres (202 ha) of land to Nanny and her followers. The village built through that land grant still stands, and is called Moore Town (after the Fante town “Moree”) or the “New” Nanny Town. Modern members of Moore Town celebrate 20 April 1740 as a holiday, known informally in places today as “4/20” or “four-twenty”.
In 1975, the government of Jamaica declared Nanny their only female national hero by celebrating her success as a leader. Her image is printed on the Jamaican $500 note, which is referred to as a “Nanny”.
The origins of Nanny
According to a Maroon legend espoused by the Maroons of Accompong Town, Nanny was born into the Akan (Fante) people in Blue Mountains of Jamaica, but it is also possible that she came from West Africa. Her father was allegedly one of 600 Fante people who came to Jamaica on a trading excursion with the Spaniards, when they were betrayed and sold into slavery in 1642. The legend claims that they eventually escaped and found refuge in the Blue Mountains, where they encountered the existing Taino Maroons who had been there since the time of Columbus.
According to one Maroon legend, Nanny’s name was also Sarah “Matilda” Rowe, but that has not been verified. The Rowe family of Jamaica claim direct descent from Nanny. According to oral history, her second husband was named Swipplemento, later known by the Anglicised name of Rose Harris, affectionally called Pa Rose then Pa Ro, Queen Nanny was known as Shanti Rose or Ma Ro. Oral tradition states that Ro eventually became anglicized as Rowe, though many Maroons of the late 18th century changed their African names for European ones, as they converted to Christianity. Maroon legend states that Nanny was known to have gone by the name Sarah, and sometimes Matilda. Oral history states that she had three children with Swipplemento; two sons Kojo Rowe and Ampong Rowe, and a daughter called Nanny as well.
The Jamaican Maroons
The maroons are descendants of West Africans, mainly people from the Akan (Fante). They were known as Coromantie or Koromantee (after the Fante town of Kormantse), and were considered ferocious fighters. A number of the enslaved people originated from other regions of Africa, including Nigeria, the Congo and Madagascar. However, the origin of at least half of the enslaved African people in Jamaica during the early English colonisation of the island is uncertain.
After being brought to Jamaica in the course of the Transatlantic slave trade, many enslaved Africans fled from the oppressive conditions of plantations and formed their own communities of free black people in Jamaica in the rugged, hilly interior of the island. People who escaped from slavery joined these Maroon communities in the mountains of eastern Jamaica, or the Cockpit Country in the west of the island. Up to the 1650s under Spanish rule, enslaved Africans escaped and intermarried with the native islanders, the Taíno or Arawak, in their communities in the Blue Mountains (Jamaica), located in Portland Parish and Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica, in the eastern end of the island.
Many Maroons were escaped slaves, who ran away from their Spanish-owned plantations when the British took the Caribbean island of Jamaica from Spain in 1655. However, many modern-day Maroons believe that The Maroons of Nanny Town belonged to a separate group that existed in the Mountains prior to 1655. They state that Queen Nanny’s Maroons date back to the Tainos fleeing to the Blue Mountains when the Spaniards first arrived in Jamaica. Maroon oral history maintains that her family arrived in 1640 and joined the existing Maroons, whose community allegedly existed about 150 years before the Spanish fled Jamaica.
3. Windward Maroons: Quao, Cudjoe, Accompong and Nanny
In 1655, following the Invasion of Jamaica, the English captured Jamaica from the Spaniards, but many Spanish slaves became free under Spanish Maroon leaders such as Juan de Bolas and Juan de Serras. The Spanish left, freeing their slaves in the process, and they joined the Windward Maroon communities. These formerly enslaved people, with their ranks enhanced with escaped and liberated slaves, became the core of the Windward Maroons. They staged a prolonged fight against English subjugation and enslavement. Later in the 17th century, more slaves escaped joining the two main bands of Windward and Leeward Maroons. By the early 18th century, these Maroon towns were headed respectively by Nanny, who shared the leadership of the eastern Maroons with her brothers Quao, and Captain Cudjoe and Accompong in the west. The Windward Maroons fought the British on the east side of the island from their villages in the Blue Mountains of Portland.
The community raised animals, hunted, and grew crops. Maroons at Nanny Town and similar communities survived by sending traders to the nearby market towns to exchange food for weapons and cloth. It was organized very much like a typical Fante society in Africa. From 1655 until they signed peace treaties in 1739 and 1740, these Maroons led most of the slave rebellions in Jamaica, helping to free slaves from the plantations. They raided and then damaged lands and buildings held by plantation owners.
The Maroons were also known for raiding plantations for weapons and food, burning the plantations, and leading freed slaves to join their mountain communities. Nanny was highly successful at organizing plans to free slaves. During a period of 30 years, she was credited with freeing more than 1000 slaves, and helping them to resettle in the Maroon community.
The First Maroon War
By 1720, Nanny and Quao her brother, settled and controlled an area in the Blue Mountains. It was later given the name Nanny Town, and it had a strategic location overlooking Stony River via a 900-foot (270 m) ridge, making a surprise attack by the British very difficult.
Nanny became a folk hero among the Maroons and the slaves. While the British captured Nanny Town on more than one occasion, they were unable to hold on to it, in the wake of numerous guerrilla attacks from the Maroons. The Maroons waged a successful war against the British colonial forces over the course of a decade.
When Nanny Town was abandoned, the Windward Maroons under the command of Nanny moved to New Nanny Town. Between 1728 and 1734, during the First Maroon War, Nanny Town and other Maroon settlements were frequently attacked by British colonial forces. They wanted to stop the raids and believed that the Maroons prevented settlement of the interior. According to some accounts, in 1733 many Maroons of Nanny Town travelled across the island to unite with the Leeward Maroons. In 1734, a Captain Stoddart attacked the remnants of Nanny Town, “situated on one of the highest mountains in the island”, via “the only path” available: “He found it steep, rocky, and difficult, and not wide enough to admit the passage of two persons abreast.”
In addition to the use of the ravine, resembling what Jamaicans call a “cockpit”, the Maroons also used decoys to trick the British into ambushes. A few Maroons would run out into view of the British and then run in the direction of fellow Maroons who were hidden and would attack. After falling into these ambushes several times, the British retaliated. According to planter Bryan Edwards, who wrote his narrative half a century later, Captain Stoddart “found the huts in which the negroes were asleep”, and “fired upon them so briskly, that many were slain in their habitations”. However, recent evidence shows that the number of Windward Maroons killed by Stoddart in his attack on Nanny Town was in single digits.
Military tactics
The Windward Maroons’ succeeded against a much superior and better armed enemy. One of their advantages over the British was their long-range communications capability. They pioneered the use of a cow horn called an abeng in Fante. This horn with a hole drilled in one end was used for long range communications. Its signals allowed Maroon lookouts to communicate over great distances, and they were not understood by the British who had no similar communications capability.
Nanny’s troops were masters of camouflage. The soldiers were so proficient at disguising their location that the British would circulate tales of trees in the forest becoming alive and cutting one’s head off. Besides the physical aspects of camouflage the Maroons became experts in slowing their breathing so as not to reveal their presence to someone in their vicinity. The maroons also developed ways of creating stealthy fires that were not readily visible.
The Windward Maroons were innovators in guerrilla warfare. They used surprise, the knowledge of the terrain, and cleverly chosen positions in their fight against the British. Their village was located in rugged territory with only one way in. That one way in was a narrow path that was only wide enough for one person. Soldiers trying to attack arrayed in a single file were easily ambushed. To heighten the enemy’s fear, Nanny’s forces never killed all of the attacking forces. She would always allow a remnant to live to return to base to relay the story and horror of the encounter.
Treaty
When the British signed a treaty with Cudjoe in 1739, this success allowed them to offer a less favorable treaty to the Windward Maroons. Representatives of the British governor in Jamaica signed a treaty with the Windward Maroons in 1740, between the colonial authorities and Quao, who later became one of the leaders of Crawford’s Town. This treaty between the colonial authorities and Quao’s Maroons made no mention of how much land would be allocated to Crawford’s Town. As a result, a number of disputes occurred between planters and the Maroons of Crawford’s Town, and later the succeeding towns of Charles Town and Scott’s Hall. In response, the Assembly of Jamaica often tried to resolve the land disputes in favour of the Maroons to keep the peace.
In addition, later that year, there was a separate land grant signed with Nanny and the Maroons of Nanny Town, which granted “Nanny and the people now residing with her and their heirs … a certain parcel of Land containing five hundred acres in the parish of Portland …”. This land patent consisted of 500 acres (2.4 km2) of land granted by the government to the Maroons of New Nanny Town under a separate 1740 document ending the First Maroon War. The rebuilt Nanny Town, later called Moore Town was built on that location. In 1781, the Assembly agreed to purchase another additional 500 acres from neighbouring planter Charles Douglas to increase Moore Town’s communal land to 1,000 acres.
Death
Some claim that Queen Nanny lived to be an old woman, dying of natural causes in the 1760s. The exact date of her death remains a mystery. Part of the confusion is that “Nanny” is an honorific title, and many high-ranking women were called that in Maroon Town. However, the Maroons are adamant that there was only one “Queen Nanny.”
According to Maroon oral history, Nanny’s remains are buried at “Bump Grave” in Moore Town.
Accolades
Nanny is celebrated in Jamaica and abroad:
- The government of Jamaica declared Queen Nanny a National Hero in 1975. Colonel C.L.G. Harris of Moore Town, then a Senator in Jamaica’s upper house, was the driving force behind the move to recognise Nanny as a National Heroine.
- Her portrait is featured on the $500 Jamaican dollar bill, which is colloquially referred to as a “Nanny”.
- Nanny is celebrated every October on Jamaican National Heroes Day.
- Nanny’s Monument is located in Moore Town, Portland, Jamaica.
- Nannyville Gardens, a residential community located in Kingston, Jamaica, was founded in 1977 and named after her.
- The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University in the United States uses Nanny’s portrait in its logo. The Center sponsors research and conferences on slavery in the Americas.
- A ship in the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard is named after Nanny. HMJS Nanny of the Maroons.
