Cudjoe, Codjoe or Captain Cudjoe (c. 1659 – 1744),[1][2] sometimes spelled Cudjo[3] – corresponding to the Akan day name Kojo, 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."[4]
The Jamaican Maroons are descended from Africans who conquered enslavers and established communities of Free black people in Jamaica in the mountains of the Colony of Jamaica during the era of slavery on the island. Enslaved Africans imported during the Spanish period may have provided the first self-liberated Africans ("runaways"), apparently mixing with the Native American Taino or Arawak[5] 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 self-liberated Africans known as Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town). For nearly a century, until the 1739 and 1740 peace treaties with the British rulers of the island, the Maroons victoriously resisted conquest.
- ^ Kopytoff, B. (1976). "The Development of Jamaican Maroon Ethnicity", Caribbean Quarterly, 22(2/3), 33–50.
- ^ Michael Sivapragasam, After the Treaties: A Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739–1842, PhD Dissertation, African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica library (Southampton: Southampton University, 2018), pp. 61–2.
- ^ Thomas W. Krise, "Cudjo", in Junius P. Rodriguez (ed.), The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, Volume 1, 1997, p. 203.
- ^ J. A. Rogers (2010). "Captain Cudjoe". World's Great Men of Color, Volume 2. Simon and Schuster. p. 222. ISBN 9781451603071.
- ^ E. Kofi Agorsah, 'Archaeology of Maroon Settlements in Jamaica', Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives, ed. by E. Kofi Agorsah (Kingston: University of the West Indies Canoe Press, 1994), pp. 180–81.