Juan De Bolas And His Pelinco

Abstract

There is a prevailing notion, initiated perhaps by Edward Long, that the sources for the history of Jamaica during the 1 7th and 1 8th centuries are very thin, One hears it said for instance, that a good deal of licence is possible in writing about Juan de Bolas 'since we really know so little about him', The aim of this article is to demonstrate the falsehood of this belief, at least in this particular case, and to set out the facts of Juan de Bolas' life as we at present know them. 1 . Pelinco at Murmuring Brook (a) 11th Article of Capitulation 'That all the slaves, Negroes and others ordered by their masters to appear on the 26th of this month before His Excellency in the Savanna near this town to hear and understand the favours and acts of grace that will be told them concerning their freedom' translation by J. L. Pietersz, The Jamaican Historical Review, I (1945) (b) Ysassi to the king of Spain, 16 August 1658 'I have not done a small thing in conserving [the fugitive Negroes], keeping them under my obethence when they have been sought after with papers from the enemy. I have promised their Chiefs freedom in Your Majesty's name but have not given it until I receive an order for it' (F. Cundall and J. L. Pietersz, Jamaica under the Spaniards, Kingston 1919, p. 81). On May 10th, 1655,1 the English began landing a force of about 7,000 men at called Passage Fort The Spaniards could muster less than 200 ill- armed militiamen to resist them, and by May 17th were consequently obliged to agree to the surrender-terms one of which is set out in (a) above. We have, of course, no means of knowing if Venables intended to grant 'favours and acts of grace' to those whom the Spaniards had enslaved. In any case, most of them very soon freed themselves, retreating to the woods from where they began to wage guerilla warfare on the English invaders. Christob al de Ysassi, who emerged as the leader of the Spanish resistance claimed that he collected these 'fugitive Negroes' and settled them under their own leaders at three places in the interior. We cannot tell how important Ysassi' s role really was in the emergence of these settlements, or how closely he was able to control them. However. It looks as though he at least maintained contact with them, and as he claims in (b) succeeded for some years in persuading them not to make peace with the English. One of the three settlements was in the hills above Guanaboa Vale, and its leader was Juan Lubolo. The precise site of his pelinco has now been lost, but it seems very likely that it was just to the south of Murmuring Brook, in the district now called Juan de Bolas.4 Here the guerillas, who eventually numbered about 180,5 built up a thriving settlement, constructing a town and planting about 200 acres of provisions.6 This food probably played an important part in supplying parties moving through Murmuring Brook in order to strike at the English outposts. In the first months after the English invasion, Lubolo' s men were probably active on the plain below, picking off stragglers from the invading army. However, once Edward D'Oyley had begun to organize the English more effectively, such random actions be came fewer; after that it was chiefly the raiding-parties organized by Ysassi which earned the war on. We have accounts of these operations from both sides, and they do not suggest that Lubolo and his pelinco were very active in this phase of the struggle. 2. Discovery and surrender (a) from D'Oyley' s journal 'Order issued to Mr. Peter Pugh to pay Lt. Carman as a reward out of the impost money for taking two Negroes, twenty pounds sterling, dated 16th January 1660' (British Library, Additional Manuscripts 12423, fo. 83r°). (b) Colonel Edward Tyson to the Admiralty, 1 February 1660 '[I] have had the good success of finding out where the Negroes have lurked these four years undiscovered, who have built a town and planted about 200 acres of provisions; [I am] now in parley with them and doubt not a good issue' Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1675-1676, No. …