A Road Not Taken?

 Sir Francis Drake’s Association with the Cimarrons of Panama and the Alleged Missed Opportunity of Interracial Harmony in the Colonial Atlantic World

 By: Garrett Keenum, The University of North Alabama 

 “The alliance seems to have been untroubled by racial prejudice. To be sure, the English were scarcely in a position to assume airs of superiority, but the accounts suggest a camaraderie that went beyond the mutual benefits of the alliance.”[1]

                                    -Edmund. S Morgan on Drake and the Cimarrons

In the book American Slavery, American Freedom, Edmund Morgan spends his first two chapters speaking of an unrealized utopian colony proposed by Richard Hakluyt the younger, who believed interracial harmony between Europeans and Africans was possible.[2] This idea was based largely on Sir Francis Drake’s interactions with the Cimarrons of Panama from the fall of 1572 to the spring of 1573. It was an unlikely alliance for the time—Europeans teaming up with enslaved Africans against other Europeans. On the surface, it has the trappings of equitable association. This paper examines the claim that this colony was truly a missed opportunity for interracial harmony or if, instead, it possessed the same underlying prejudices that gave us the world we have today.

Tensions began rising between England and Spain the moment that Elizabeth I ascended to the English throne. The throne had previously been held by Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary, a fierce Catholic who had married Spain’s King Phillip II. At Mary’s death, Elizabeth reverted England to a protestant country as her father intended. Phillip, an unapologetically Catholic king who viewed himself above reproach from other nations, immediately began a campaign to bring England back to heel.[3]

In December of 1568, after nine years of building tensions, Queen Elizabeth ordered the seizure of all gold from Spanish ships in Plymouth.[4] A few months earlier, English Captain John Hawkins and his 28-year-old second cousin, Francis Drake, were in the Caribbean with five hundred sailors and six ships on an illicit slave trading mission for the Queen in which they would receive a third of the profits. After they had unloaded their human cargo, Hawkins and his young protégé ran into a storm that forced them into the harbor of San Juan de Ulua. Unfortunately, their timing coincided with the Viceroy of Mexico’s yearly visit. As it was illegal for any foreign merchant to do business in Spanish territory, Hawkins had to negotiate with the Viceroy as well as his General. The Spanish officials agreed to let the English repair their ships so long as they got on their way, and with that, the Viceroy left for Mexico City. The general, Don Francisco de Lujan, did not feel honor bound to an agreement made with those he considered criminals and ordered his thirteen ships to open fire on the six English ships During the Battle of San Juan de Ulua, Drake and Hawkins managed to escape separately, not knowing if the other was alive or dead.  Having lost most of their ships, most of their men, and most of their treasure, Drake-- now a captain by circumstance-- made his way home on his first solo command, hoping that his cousin might follow.[5] When the monarchs learned of these events in 1569, a shadow war began with both Elizabeth I and Phillip II sanctioning acts of violence against the other, yet neither “saw fit to recognize it for what it was.” War. [6] It was in this climate that Francis Drake found his way out of obscurity and into infamy.

After making reconnaissance voyages in 1570 and 1571, Francis Drake set sail for the Caribbean from Plymouth on May 24, 1572, with seventy-three of the finest volunteers he could find. His aim was the coastal city of Nombre de Dios on the Isthmus of Panama, where Drake believed the Spanish kept their gold before loading it onto the Treasure Fleet. This was both business and a pleasure. On one hand, he was commissioned to win treasure for Queen Elizabeth I, on the other, he was ready to take revenge upon the Spanish for the friends and fortune he had lost.

In late July of 1572, Drake landed at Nombre de Dios in the dead of night, taking the citizens by surprise. With a crew of “sixe Targets (shields), sixe fire pikes (fire poker), twelve pikes, twenty-four Muskets and Cavaliers, sixteen bowers, and sixe Partizans (spears), two Drums, and two Trumpets,”[7] Drake was able to easily defeat the scattered defenses of the unprepared town. After Nombre de Dios had been taken, a great storm forced Drake and his men to take refuge beneath the awning of the King’s Treasure-house. Once the storm ended, Drake directed a small team of his men to break open the treasure house to retrieve the gold and jewels he believed to be inside. He then commanded the rest of his 73 men to follow his lead and storm the marketplace in order to maintain English supremacy. As soon as he gave the orders, however, Drake took one step forward and collapsed; he had been shot in the leg, losing enough blood that it “filled the verie prints that our footsteps made.” Out of respect and admiration for their captain, Drake’s men abandoned their quest for wealth and spirted Drake back to his ship for treatment by the ship’s surgeon.[8]

After relinquishing their prize in Nombre de Dios (although they did abscond with a ship of wine to ease the pain),), Drake and his crew made for a nearby island where he and his men could recover. After they made landfall, the governor of the region sent a soldier who strode into Drake’s quarters, demanding to know if he was indeed Captain Drake and if the arrows that they had used were poisoned. Drake replied that it was in fact him and that they did not use poisoned arrows. Drake also told the soldier that the only thing he wanted from the Spanish was gold and that the soldier should tell the governor to “hold open his eyes, for…[Drake] meant to reape some of their Harvest…and to send into Spaine [enough trouble for] all the Earth.” To this threat, the soldier rather impetuously replied that if Drake had captured the town so easily, why had he abandoned the “three hundred and sixtie Tun of silver…and much more in gold?” Drake responded that he had been shot. [9]  With the questioning done, Drake supplied the soldier with entertainment and sent him on his way.

Drake was now upset. His painstaking plan to raid Nombre de Dios would have succeeded if not for an errant bullet. To top it off, some stranger, a Spaniard and a Catholic, came into his home and insulted him. Drake had originally come to the Caribbean for glory, God, gold, and revenge, but revenge had just moved up the list.

During the raid on Nombre de Dios, Drake first encountered a Cimarron, an enslaved man named Diego who had escaped his captors and ran headlong through several volleys of gunfire straight to the English ship, in an attempt to warn Drake’s men of the approaching Spanish troops.[10] By this means, he hoped to solidify his freedom. Some scholars, such as Ruth Pike, assert that Diego was with Drake before the raid and is the one who told him of Nombre de Dios in the first place; however, the source material proves Pike is mistaken.[11]  However, Diego did deliver to Drake and his crew a more valuable piece of information—that a powerful band of freed people living in the forests around Nombre de Dios existed.

Cimarron, a word meaning “wild” or “untamed,” was the name that the Spaniards of Tierra Firma used to classify the bands of escaped enslaved people who were living in the wilds of the Isthmus of Panama. As Edmund Morgan attested, “The Cimarrons were no fearful little band of fugitives. The officials at Nombre de Dios estimated their numbers at more than 3,000.”[12]  Cimarrons had three distinct communities. One was a small band that would steal from the Spanish mule trains en route from the city of Panama to Venta Chagre. Another was a reasonably sized settlement at Puerto Bello that would raid the city Nombre de Dios itself. The last was a large group that lived in the mountains in the southernmost part of the isthmus.[13] While neither the Spanish documents nor Drake Revived, Drake’s approved account of the adventure, explicitly stated which of the bands Drake allied with, the Spanish documents and the Drake account indicate that he was allied with the first and third groups. (The second group operated outside of the area in which the bulk of this narrative took place.)

Drake’s wound healed, but the insult he suffered at the hands of the Spanish soldier festered. Drake set out to take the second richest town in the South Atlantic, Carthegene. [14] However, when Drake arrived at Carthegene, he found the city on high alert, ready to fight off any ship. Due to the clear threat, Drake did not attempt to take the town and stayed out of range of the city’s defenses. Rather, the next morning, Drake’s crew captured two frigates from Nombre de Dios carrying letters warning the city that “Drake had beene at Nombre de Dios, had taken it, and had it not beene that hee was hurt with some blessed shot, by all likelihood he had sackt it…therefore carefully prepare for him.” At that moment, Drake realized that both Plan A (Nombre de Dios) and Plan B (Carthegene) had failed. He had no Plan C. Furthermore, the Spanish were spreading the word of the “blessed shot” that stopped him. Knowing he could not return home without gold, Drake resolved to “f(i)nd the Simerons and ma(k)e his voyage.”[15]

Before making contact with the Cimarrons, Drake needed his crew to be at full strength. He did not have enough men to efficiently crew his two full-sized ships and his three pinnaces (much smaller boats). Drake had his shipwright secretly bore holes in one of his ships to sink it to free up crewmen and resolved to anchor his other ship as a storehouse.[16] Drake located a suitable island in the Gulf of Darien where he and his crew laid low and refitted the pinnaces and built lodging and storehouses. After fifteen days, Drake took two pinnaces and raided Spanish settlements for supplies. He left the other pinnace with his brother, John, and Diego and instructed them that they should make first contact with the Cimarrons.[17]

Diego led the men to a place on the mainland that he knew the Cimarrons frequented. The Cimarrons, knowing well of Francis’s exploits against the Spaniards, exchanged hostages with the English as a sign of goodwill. Drake was present at a second meeting where he determined that the Cimarrons were well-disposed toward them and arranged the third meeting, this time with “another Companie of Symerons, which were now in the mountains.” After a weather delay, Drake and his crew finally made it to the mouth of the Rio Guana where both groups of the Cimarrons were waiting. When Drake took the delegation aboard, he asked whether the Cimarrons could supply him with gold. They replied that if they had known it was gold he wanted, they could have given it to him, but unfortunately it was now September, the rainy season, and the riverbed in which they had stashed the gold was too full for recovery. However, the Cimarron leadership told Drake that the Spanish would be moving large quantities of gold from Panama City to Nombre de Dios to be loaded onto the treasure fleet in five months’ time. Moreover, they knew how to get it; a secret path through the jungle that would lead them to a perfect spot for an ambush.  The excitement was palpable as the Cimarrons “rejoyc(ed) that they should…wreake their wrongs on the Spaniards” and the Englishmen “hop(ed) that (their) voyage should be bettered.”[18]

With the promise of gold on the horizon, Drake ordered the construction of a fort.[19] According to Drake Revived, “Our Symerons cut downe Palmito boughs and branches, and with wonderful speed raised up two large houses for all our Company.” After supervising construction himself for fourteen days, Drake headed to Carthagene in an effort to conduct some “honest” trade using his stolen goods. In his absence, Drake left John “to governe those who remained behind with the Symerons” to complete the fort. He also left John with the charge to go salvage the wood from the ships they left at Cativaas.[20] Drake was unable to sell his goods to the Spanish as King Phillip II had barred any trade with foreigners, so he settled for taking a few prizes and trading with indigenous tribes for food and information regarding Spanish movements.[21] When Drake returned to Fort Diego, he received tragic news: while bringing the salvaged wood back from Cativaas when his crew spotted a prize that they were more interested in and urged him to throw the lumber overboard and attack the frigate. Upon boarding this ship, John was killed. Heartbroken, Francis vowed to “set no more to sea” until he heard that the Spanish Treasure Fleet was returning to the Caribbean.[22]

Unfortunately, in early January, Drake’s men contracted an illness and, within two to three days, thirty died. One of these men was Joseph Drake, the second of Drake’s brothers to die on the voyage.[23] Over these five months, the Cimarrons—who disguised themselves as slaves— acted as spies in Nombre de Dios, listening for word of the arrival of the Spanish Treasure Fleet. Finally, in late January, the spies sent word that the Fleet had indeed arrived. After sending a ship to verify, Drake gave the order to seek out and capture a food ship that would be making its way to the Fleet. They succeeded in taking a ship that was not only filled to the brim with supplies but also carrying thirteen Spaniards, whom the Cimarrons wanted to summarily execute, though Drake forbade it. Drake and the “Chiefest of the Symerons” discussed the food, weapons, and clothes needed for the journey ahead. The Cimarrons advised Drake to carry “as great store of shoes as possibly he might” for this was going to be a long, arduous trek.[24]

After getting the affairs of the fort squared away, this company of eighteen Englishmen and thirty Cimarrons set out for Venta Chagre to ambush the Spanish treasure mule trains that were making their way to the Treasure Fleet in Nombre de Dios.[25] As they traveled, the Cimarrons carried the bulk of supplies so that the English “were not troubled with any thing but (their) furniture.”[26]  The Cimarrons proved themselves invaluable on this expedition as they would hunt for food and nightly construct lodging for Drake’s crew.[27]  Three days into the journey, the Company came to a Cimarron town of around fifty-six houses where Drake was surprised to find they lived so “civily and cleanely” that “not only the houses but the verie streets were verie pleasant to behold.”[28]  They also found that the Cimarrons practiced a form of Catholicism where there were no priests, but they worshiped the sign of the cross. When Drake saw this, he took it upon himself to instruct them in Protestant ways, so that they may know “Gods true worship.”[29] The Cimarrons of the town begged for the Company to remain there for two to three days so that they could send word to the Cimarron king to send Drake his army of “one-thousand seven hundred fighting men.” Drake responded that he had what was required and must take his leave, though he appreciated the offer. Although the Cimarrons saw Drake as a liberator, Drake’s true interest was treasure, not emancipation.

The forty-eight members of the Company departed from the town the next day, with four Cimarrons going before them as scouts to make the trail plain. On the morning of the fourth day after departing from the town, the Cimarrons led the English men to a tall hill with a great tree growing on top of it. On this particular tree, the Cimarrons had placed stairs to the top where they had built a watch tower capable of holding twelve people. The “Chiefest” Cimarron, Pedro, asked Drake to follow him up the stairs. At the top, Drake became the first Englishman to see the Pacific Ocean upon which moment he “besought Almightie God of his goodnesse to give him life and leave to sayle once in an English ship in that sea.”[30]

Afterward, Drake and the company marched for a week to a grove on the outskirts of Panama City. One hour before nightfall, when the city would close its gates, Drake sent a Cimarron spy into the city to learn what they could of mule train movements. The next morning the spy reported that there would be two mule trains on the road that day. The first would be carrying food and other supplies, coming from Venta Chagre, while the second would be going to Venta Chagre and carrying more than “eighty-thousand pesos in gold and silver.”[31] With this intelligence, the company made haste for the appointed ambush location which was two leagues from Vente Charge. Once there, Drake commanded the entire company to lie down and let the first train pass by unscathed; the target was the second train. Things did not go according to plan. One of Drake’s men was intoxicated and tried to attack the first mule train all by himself. One of the Cimarrons tackled him and tried to stop him, but the ruckus alerted the Spanish that an attack was imminent, and the treasure train turned around. With that, Drake’s hopes were dashed once more.

Now Drake had to decide which way to flee. Pedro offered two suggestions: one, they could make their flight through the secret path in the rough country from whence they had just come or, two, they could fight their way through Venta Chagre and take the well-maintained road home. Drake decided to go through Venta Chagre and fight while they had strength rather than risk the Spanish finding their secret route and having to fight anyway. In a symbolic gesture, Drake publicly asked Pedro if he would continue with them “because he knew that the rest of the Symerons would also then stand fast and firme” to which Pedro replied with a pledge of his undying loyalty.[32] As the Company made its way to the waystation of Venta Chagre, they came to a piece of the road which was cut twelve feet wide through woods that were “as thicke as our thickest hedges in England.” It was at this bottleneck that the Spanish mounted their defense; a company of soldiers and a convent of Dominican friars. The Spanish Captain announced “in the name of the King of Spain” that if Drake and his Company would lay down their weapons, then he gave his word that no harm would come to them.[33] Drake replied that “in honour of the Queen of England” he would be passing through, and then shot the Spanish Captain with his pistol.  The company, with the help of the Cimarrons, quickly scattered the Spaniards. One Cimarron was killed by being impaled with a spear, but before dying managed to kill the man who stabbed him. In all, the company killed four Spaniards and one friar.[34]

When Drake entered Venta Chagre, he gave the men leave to search for food and supplies, but to kill no woman, child, or unarmed man.[35] He also gave permission to the Cimarrons to do some light looting, so long as they could travel with whatever they found. After an hour and a half, Drake was ready to move, so they burned the town and left. Drake had been away from the ship for fourteen days and he was impatient to return. Although the Cimarrons requested multiple times that they stop in one of their towns for rest and food, Drake refused and insisted that they keep marching “many days with hungry stomackes.”[36] When the Company was only three leagues from the ship, they arrived in a town the Cimarrons had built for Drake and his men. Drake decided to stop and had a Cimarron send word to his ship to meet him at this town.[37]

When Drake’s ship and the remaining crew arrived, everyone was overjoyed to see one another. That joy turned to disappointment, however, when it became evident that Drake had not brought back any gold. But he announced that he intended to make the same journey once more, this time with all his men. In the meantime, he would not suffer the crew to lose their edge and so he consulted with his men and the Cimarrons on what activities they thought they should undertake.[38] Some of Drake’s men voted to seek out the unguarded ships carrying food. Others said that they had plenty of food, what they needed to do was intercept the treasure fleet. The Cimarrons proposed a different plan. They told him of a Spaniard named Pezoro who owned a gold mine that many of the Cimarrons had escaped from. In this mine, he kept one hundred slaves and required of them two hundred pounds of gold to be mined per day.[39] This gold was then kept in a treasury on site. Since neither the treasure nor the mine had sufficient defenses, the Cimarrons proposed that they free the slaves and take the gold. Drake decided to split his forces and they would go with the English plans to search for ships carrying food and hunt for treasure ships. Drake did not wish to make the land assault against Pezoro as it might leave his crew too tired to attack the mule trains later. Understanding that some of the Cimarrons had been away from their families for quite some time, Drake gave leave to any who wanted to return home and thanked them for their service.[40]

Once again, however, Drake returned empty-handed. He managed to take a frigate, the helmsman of which told Drake that he knew of a ship that was hauling “above a million gold” and that he would show them a secret way to get it if Drake would release him.[41] The helmsman led Drake to the secret path where they were immediately discovered by the Spanish. They went back to meet Oxnam who had taken plenty of food and such a nice frigate that Drake refitted it as his new man-of-war. [42]

So impressive was this new man-of-war, that another battleship signaled them to come alongside them for a meeting. The captain of this newcomer was a French pirate named Tetu who had been searching for Drake. Upon their meeting, Tetu presented Drake with a case of pistols and a golden scimitar belonging to Henry II, the late King of France. Tetu then asked Drake whether he and his men could assist the Englishmen in their predation upon the Spanish. After discussing it with his crew, Drake agreed that Tetu and twenty of his men may join for a cut of fifty percent of the treasure.[43]  Only after the agreement did Drake tell the Cimarrons of the alliance.

Six days later, twenty French, fifteen English, and fifty Cimarrons marched toward Nombre de Dios. When they arrived, and the Cimarrons heard the bells of the treasure trains, they excitedly told the Europeans that they would soon have more gold than they could carry. The train was guarded by forty-five Spanish soldiers and carried nearly thirty tons of precious metals. The allies attacked, making the leading mules and the ones bringing up the rear lie down, thus freezing the caravan. The Spanish soldiers fired a volley of bullets that mortally wounded Captain Tetu and killed one Cimarron, but seeing that they were outnumbered, they fled.[44] The allies spent the next two hours securing the gold and silver and burying what they could not carry.

One French soldier consumed too much wine and stumbled into the Spanish, who tortured him until he told the location of the treasure the allies had buried. Meanwhile, Drake arrived at the waters’ edge, only to find their ships were not there. Fearing the pinnaces had been taken by the Spanish, Drake encouraged his followers that all was not lost: “If the enemy have prevailed against our pinnaces, which God forbid, yet they must have time to search them, time to examine the Mariners; time to execute their resolution after it is determined; before all these times be taken, we may get to our ships if yee will.”[45] He then advised, against the protests of the Cimarrons, that he and three others should build a raft from driftwood and sail ahead. . After frying in the sun and soaking in salt water for six hours, Drake caught a glimpse of one of his pinnaces. Once he was aboard, his crew explained a storm had prevented their arrival.[46]

After retrieving the other allies, Drake divided the gold and silver into two equal parts between the English and the French. Afterward, Drake gave some of his men and the Cimarrons a secret mission. This task force was to sail back to the beach they were stranded on to see if there was any chance of rescuing Tetu or, at the very least, recovering some of the buried treasure. When they arrived, they managed to find thirteen bars of silver and a few large rings of gold.

With the goal of the voyage accomplished, Drake, his men, and the Cimarrons that were with them made their way back to Fort Diego. On their way, they came across the Spanish Treasure Fleet departing from Carthagena. They raised the English flag so that the Spaniards could clearly see them as they passed by.[47] Once they had arrived at the fort, the English began preparing to return home. They loaded only the food that they would need on their journey and left the rest in the care of the Cimarrons. Drake’s crew also burned their pinnaces as they would not be needing them any longer and gave the ironwork to the Cimarrons. In the days before the departure, Drake invited Pedro and three other Cimarrons on board his ship to pick out anything they desired as long as it was “not so necessary as that he could not returne to England without it.”[48] Pedro asked for the golden scimitar that Tetu had given Drake. When Drake agreed, Pedro was so happy that he gave Drake four rings of gold. After granting these gifts, as well as fine silks and linens for the Cimarron leaders’ wives, Drake and his crew departed for England as wealthy men.[49]

So, was Drake’s interaction with the Cimarrons truly a missed opportunity for interracial harmony? Many interactions between Drake and the Cimarrons demonstrate that Drake believed their relationship to be unequal. Drake’s repeated unwillingness to take any advice or suggestions from the Cimarrons strongly indicates he had little respect for their capabilities. For instance, when the Cimarrons implored him to rest at their towns after the failed Venta Chagre raid, he refused.[50] Drake’s disrespect is also evident when he agreed to let the French join in their alliance without consulting the Cimarrons, despite knowing their distrust of the French.[51] Before 1573, Drake’s chief interaction with Black people was as an enslaver. He was surprised to see how clean the streets and houses were in Cimarron village. He also felt the need to specify that they washed themselves and wore “fit and finely made” clothes.[52]

The importance of the Cimarrons to Drake’s success cannot be downplayed. Drake could have accomplished very little on this voyage without their help. His own approved account of his expedition makes clear that he understands this. The Cimarrons did not need Drake to rob a mule train. They had done it many times before and had plenty of treasure stored away.[53] The Cimarrons were self-sufficient, whereas the English were out of their depth, so then why does Drake place himself in a position of leadership? Is it too much of a stretch to say that this is the beginning of the English policy of paternalism? The belief that Africans are like children who do not know how to reach their full potential, so it is the role of the white man to teach them how. When the Spaniard proves himself too cruel a master, the Englishman must step in as a loving father to rescue them from harm and gently shepherd them into a life of fulfilling subservience. Drake is not in Panama to lead a revolution, but could it be that he believes he is helping teach them the way of civilization? There is an account that Drake arranged for the Cimarron “to be instructed in some measure concerning Gods true worship.”[54] Even though this was the reason that the Cimarrons agreed to an alliance, he repeatedly stops them from killing Spaniards because it is not what he deems to be an appropriate way to get revenge.[55]  The Cimarrons accepted his leadership because they knew Drake was an enemy of the Spanish who had been preying on their shipping for years. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he truly believed himself to be the Cimarron’s better.

A few years later, when Drake met natives under the rule of Spain in South America, he remarked “How grievous of a thing it is that they should by any meanes be so abused as all those are, whom the Spaniards have any command or control over.”[56] Of course, Drake would say this and of course Richard Hakluyt, would publish this. After all, Hakluyet was trying to get approval for his South American colony. At that time, Spain and England were at war. They used the “Black Legend” of Spanish atrocities as propaganda to influence public opinion. While Hakluyt was making his proposal for gentle English rule and Drake was lamenting the treatment of natives under the Spanish, England was actively pursuing a policy of forced servitude and conquest over the native population of their next-door neighbor, Ireland.[57] The natives were starved to the extent that they “looked Anatomies [of] death, they spake like ghostes, crying out of theire graves; they did eate of the carrions, happye wheare they could find them, yea, and one another soone after, in soe much as the verye carcasses they spared not to scrape out of theire graves.”[58] If the English crown was not treating other whites well under their rule, how could they possibly hope to run a harmonious community of formerly enslaved blacks and indigenous Americans?

Following Drake’s departure, he seems to have all but forgotten the Cimarrons. He never promised to return, though it is evident that the Cimarrons believed he would. When Drake gifted Pedro the golden scimitar for Captain Tetu, Pedro gave Drake four rings of gold that he had hidden “till another voyage.”[59]  Though Drake did in fact visit the Caribbean four more times, it was not until 1595, twenty-three years later, that he called upon his former allies when he and Hawkins, Drake’s cousin from the ill-fated San Juan de Ulua voyage, pursued a Spanish treasure ship into Puerto Rico. When they arrived, they found that the fortifications were too great. Drake returned to Nombre de Dios, where he believed his Cimarron friends to be waiting for him to lead them to victory. But when he arrived, he found a rotten, abandoned city and the Cimarrons “nowhere in sight.” In the time that Drake left them to clean up his mess, the Cimarrons had taken salaried jobs with the Spanish in exchange for peaceful lives.[60]

The interactions between Sir Francis Drake and the Cimarrons demonstrate that it was unlikely that this “road not taken” could have altered the course of history, despite Edmund Morgan’s insinuation. The English had already established a pattern of mistreatment of those they found to be inferior, whether they were Irish or African. While the relationship seemed untroubled by racial prejudice and that—at least by Drake’s account—a certain fondness existed, such does not indicate the absence of prejudice. It was a remarkable moment in history, but that is all it was: a moment in history.

Sir Francis Drake, 1540s

Notes

[1] Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), 13.

[2] Ibid, 17.

[3] De Pazzis Pi Corrales, Magdalena, and Susan Doran, “From Friendship to Confrontation: Philip II, Elizabeth I, and Spanish-English Relations in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain, edited by Eduardo Olid Guerrero and Esther Fernández. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 51–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzkn5.7.

[4] Conyers Read, “Queen Elizabeth’s Seizure of the Duke of Alva’s Pay-Ships.” The Journal of Modern History 5, no. 4 (1933): 443-450. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1872080.

[5] “Hans Peter Kraus, Sir Francis Drake : A Pictorial Biography. (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1970), https://www.loc.gov/collections/sir-francis-drake/articles-and-essays/drake-biography/the-unfortunate-voyage/.

[6] Irene A. Wright, Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1569-1580, (London: Routledge, 2016), xvi.

[7] Ibid, 256.

[8] Ibid, 265-267.

[9] Ibid, 268.

[10] Ibid, 265.

[11] Ruth Pike, “Black Rebels: The Cimarrons of Sixteenth-Century Panama,” The Americas 64, no. 2 (2007): 256, https://doi.org/10.1353/tam.2007.0161.

[12] Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 11.

[13] Ibid, xxvix.

[14] Carthagene refers to the modern city of Cartagena, Columbia.

[15] Wright, Documents, 272.

[16] Ibid 272.

[17] Ibid, 275.

[18] Ibid, 281.

[19] Ibid, 281.

[20] Ibid, 282.

[21] Ibid, 285.

[22] Ibid, 292.

[23] Ibid, 293.

[24] Ibid, 294.

[25] In Drake’s account, it is referred to as Venta Cruz, but the Spanish accounts refer to it as Vent Chagre

[26] “Furniture” here refers to clothing and personal effects.

[27] Ibid, 295-296.

[28] Ibid, 297-298.

[29] Ibid, 298.

[30] Ibid, 300-301.

[31] Ibid, 301.

[32] Ibid, 305.

[33] Ibid, 306.

[34] Ibid, 307.

[35] Ibid, 308.

[36] Ibid, 309.

[37] Ibid, 310.

[38] Ibid, 311.

[39] Ibid, 312.

[40] Ibid, 313.

[41] Ibid, 314.

[42] Ibid, 315.

[43] Ibid, 316.

[44] Ibid, 318.

[45] Ibid, 320.

[46] Ibid, 321.

[47] Ibid, 324.

[48] Ibid, 324.

[49] Ibid, 325.

[50] Ibid, 309.

[51] Ibid, 316-318.

[52] Ibid, 298.

[53] Ibid, 281.

[54] Ibid, 298.

[55] Ibid, 294, 303, and 308.

[56] Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 14.

[57]  Ibid, 17.

[58] Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), https://celt.ucc.ie//published/E500000-001/.

[59] Ibid, 325.

[60] Ruth Pike, “Black Rebels: The Cimarrons of Sixteenth-Century Panama,” The Americas 64, no. 2 (2007): 265.