Nova Scotians and Maroons
In 1792 the original settlers were joined by about 1,000 freed slaves from Nova Scotia. These blacks had come from the thirteen colonies during or immediately after the American Revolution, having been promised liberty if they would flee their masters to join the British side. A large group of escaped slaves who had fought for the British fled to Nova Scotia from as far south as Georgia, accompanying the British forces and the Loyalists leaving the United States when the war ended.
In 1800 another 550 blacks arrived from Jamaica via Nova Scotia. They were from a community of Maroons, a tightly organized group of escaped slaves who had managed to maintain their independence in the mountains of Jamaica after the English took the island from the Spanish in 1655. In 17%, however, one group of them surrendered to British forces and were deported to Nova Scotia; later at their own request they were transferred to Sierra Leone. They arrived just in time to force the collapse of a brief rebellion by some of the earlier settlers (Nova Scotians and the few remaining Black Poor) aimed at ending what were regarded as the injustices of company rule. The settlers’ major complaint was that they were being forced to pay the company for the use of land that they regarded as rightfully theirs since they had been promised private ownership before coming to the colony.
The arrival of the Maroons brought several benefits to the colony. Because the Maroons had been charges of the British government, the colony received grants from the government in return for taking them in, significantly bettering the colony’s finances. The Maroons were also much better adjusted to tropical life and better organized than their predecessors. In addition, in 1800 the government finally granted the Sierra Leone Company its long-delayed charter, which, although not favorable to the colonists, did regularize the basis of law and or- der.
Hardships continued to plague the settlers. The threat of renewed attacks by the neighboring Temne remained. The soil around the settlement proved to be unsuitable for the hoped-for cash crops. Better land lay at the mainland end of the peninsula, but it was denied to the settlers by the Africans. Disease remained a major problem, particularly during the long rainy season. Outsiders, too, struck at the settlers. French naval forces ravaged the newly built village of Freetown in 1794. Those black settlers who left the security of the settlement were open to seizure by slave traders, including Englishmen who had factories on the islands in the Sierra Leone River close to Freetown. By 1807 only half of the 3,000 settlers who had arrived in the colony since its founding were still alive.
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