Canada – AMERICAN CONTACT

The terms of a settlement between the Sierra Leone Company and a group of Maroons.

Creators: The Sierra Leone Company founder Henry Thornton sent The Terms in a letter to William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3^rd Duke of Portland and Home Secretary, in October 1799. Sierra Leone colony Governor Thomas Ludlam, Maroon Superintendent George Ross, and Maroon captains Montague James, Andrew Smith, Charles Shaw, John Palmer, Thomas Johnstone, and a captain named only as Baily discussed revisions to The Terms on October 2, 1800

Date of Creation: 1799-1800

Place of origin: England and Freetown, Sierra Leone

Physical measurements: 2 pages, one covered on both sides and one single-sided

Materials: Paper and ink

Process by which it was made: Handwriting

Current location: National Archives, Kew, London, United Kingdom

Further Reading

Kenneth M. Bilby, True-born maroons (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005).

Ruma Chopra, Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

Mavis C. Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796 (Amherst, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1988).

Barbara Klamon Kopytoff, “Jamaican Maroon Political Organization: The effects of the Treaties,” Social and Economic Studies 25, no. 2 (June 1976), 87-105.

Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).

Information contributed by Rachel B. Herrmann.

A great cliff in Alberta, Canada, featuring a 1500 year-old petroglyphic record.

Creator: Blackfoot People of the Great Plains

Date of Creation: 500 CE – 2020 CE

Place of origin: Alberta, Canada

Physical measurements: 4.35 miles long and 115 feet high.

Materials: Sandstone

Process by which it was made: Carving and pecking

Current location: Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, Alberta

Further Reading

Writing-on-Stone and its “Rock Art”

James D. Keyser and Michael A. Klassen. Plains Indian Rock Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, and Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2001

War Robes

Arni Brownstone. War Paint: Blackfoot and Sarcee Painted Buffalo Robes in the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1993.

Garments, Objects, Womens’ Artifacts, Contemporary Indigenous Work

Gaylord Torrence. The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky. Skira Rizzoli and Musée du Quai Branly, 2014.

Winter Counts

Candace Greene and Russell Thornton, eds. The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian. Smithsonian Museums and University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Ledger Books

Castle McLaughlin, A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn: The Pictographic “Autobiography of Half Moon.” Cambridge, Mass: Houghton Library and Peabody Museum, 2013.

Information contributed by Germaine Warkentin.