The temporary autonomous zone

 

13

ways, intermarried with Caribs, accepted blacks and Spaniards as equals, rejected all 

nationality, elected their captains democratically, and reverted to the "state of Nature." 

Having declared themselves "at war with all the world," they sailed forth to plunder under 

mutual contracts called "Articles" which were so egalitarian that every member received a 

full share and the Captain usually only 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 shares. Flogging and punishments 

were forbidden-- quarrels were settled by vote or by the code duello. 

 

It is simply wrong to brand the pirates as mere sea-going highwaymen or even proto-

capitalists, as some historians have done. In a sense they were "social bandits," although 

their base communities were not traditional peasant societies but "utopias" created 

almost ex nihilo in terra incognita, enclaves of total liberty occupying empty spaces on 

the map. After the fall of Tortuga, the Buccaneer ideal remained alive all through the 

"Golden Age" of Piracy (ca. 1660-1720), and resulted in land-settlements in Belize, for 

example, which was founded by Buccaneers. Then, as the scene shifted to Madagascar-

-an island still unclaimed by any imperial power and ruled only by a patchwork of native 

kings (chiefs) eager for pirate allies--the Pirate Utopia reached its highest form. 

 

Defoe's account of Captain Mission and the founding of Libertatia may be, as some 

historians claim, a literary hoax meant to propagandize for radical Whig theory--but it was 

embedded in The General History of the Pyrates (1724-28), most of which is still 

accepted as true and accurate. Moreover the story of Capt. Mission was not criticized 

when the book appeared and many old Madagascar hands still survived. They seem to 

have believed it, no doubt because they had experienced pirate enclaves very much like 

Libertatia. Once again, rescued slaves, natives, and even traditional enemies such as the 

Portuguese were all invited to join as equals. (Liberating slave ships was a major 

preoccupation.) Land was held in common, representatives elected for short terms, booty 

shared; doctrines of liberty were preached far more radical than even those of Common 

Sense. 

 

Libertatia hoped to endure, and Mission died in its defense. But most of the pirate utopias 

were meant to be temporary; in fact the corsairs' true "republics" were their ships, which 

sailed under Articles. The shore enclaves usually had no law at all. The last classic 

example, Nassau in the Bahamas, a beachfront resort of shacks and tents devoted to 

wine, women (and probably boys too, to judge by Birge's Sodomy and Piracy), song (the 

pirates were inordinately fond of music and used to hire on bands for entire cruises), and 

wretched excess, vanished overnight when the British fleet appeared in the Bay. 

Blackbeard and "Calico Jack" Rackham and his crew of pirate women moved on to wilder 

shores and nastier fates, while others meekly accepted the Pardon and reformed. But the 

Buccaneer tradition lasted, both in Madagascar where the mixed-blood children of the 

pirates began to carve out kingdoms of their own, and in the Caribbean, where escaped 

slaves as well as mixed black/white/red groups were able to thrive in the mountains and 

backlands as "Maroons." The Maroon community in Jamaica still retained a degree of 

autonomy and many of the old folkways when Zora Neale Hurston visited there in the 

1920's (see Tell My Horse). The Maroons of Suriname still practice African "paganism." 

 

Throughout the 18th century, North America also produced a number of drop-out "tri-

racial isolate communities." (This clinical-sounding term was invented by the Eugenics 

Movement, which produced the first scientific studies of these communities. 

Unfortunately the "science" merely served as an excuse for hatred of racial "mongrels" 

and the poor, and the "solution to the problem" was usually forced sterilization.) The 

nuclei invariably consisted of runaway slaves and serfs, "criminals" (i.e. the very poor), 

"prostitutes" (i.e. white women who married non-whites), and members of various native 

tribes. In some cases, such as the Seminole and Cherokee, the traditional tribal structure 

absorbed the newcomers; in other cases, new tribes were formed. Thus we have the 

 

14 

Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp, who persisted through the 18th and 19th centuries, 

adopting runaway slaves, functioning as a way station on the Underground Railway, and 

serving as a religious and ideological center for slave rebellions. The religion was 

HooDoo, a mixture of African, native, and Christian elements, and according to the 

historian H. Leaming-Bey the elders of the faith and the leaders of the Great Dismal 

Maroons were known as "the Seven Finger High Glister." 

 

The Ramapaughs of northern New Jersey (incorrectly known as the "Jackson Whites") 

present another romantic and archetypal genealogy: freed slaves of the Dutch poltroons, 

various Delaware and Algonquin clans, the usual "prostitutes," the "Hessians" (a catch-

phrase for lost British mercenaries, drop-out Loyalists, etc.), and local bands of social 

bandits such as Claudius Smith's. 

 

An African-Islamic origin is claimed by some of the groups, such as the Moors of 

Delaware and the Ben Ishmaels, who migrated from Kentucky to Ohio in the mid-18th 

century. The Ishmaels practiced polygamy, never drank alcohol, made their living as 

minstrels, intermarried with Indians and adopted their customs, and were so devoted to 

nomadism that they built their houses on wheels. Their annual migration triangulated on 

frontier towns with names like Mecca and Medina. In the 19th century some of them 

espoused anarchist ideals, and they were targeted by the Eugenicists for a particularly 

vicious pogrom of salvation-by-extermination. Some of the earliest Eugenics laws were 

passed in their honor. As a tribe they "disappeared" in the 1920's, but probably swelled 

the ranks of early "Black Islamic" sects such as the Moorish Science Temple. I myself 

grew up on legends of the "Kallikaks" of the nearby New Jersey Pine Barrens (and of 

course on Lovecraft, a rabid racist who was fascinated by the isolate communities). The 

legends turned out to be folk-memories of the slanders of the Eugenicists, whose U.S. 

headquarters were in Vineland, NJ, and who undertook the usual "reforms" against 

"miscegenation" and "feeblemindedness" in the Barrens (including the publication of 

photographs of the Kallikaks, crudely and obviously retouched to make them look like 

monsters of misbreeding). 

 

The "isolate communities"--at least, those which have retained their identity into the 20th 

century--consistently refuse to be absorbed into either mainstream culture or the black 

"subculture" into which modern sociologists prefer to categorize them. In the 1970's, 

inspired by the Native American renaissance, a number of groups--including the Moors 

and the Ramapaughs--applied to the B.I.A. for recognition as Indian tribes. They received 

support from native activists but were refused official status. If they'd won, after all, it 

might have set a dangerous precedent for drop-outs of all sorts, from "white Peyotists" 

and hippies to black nationalists, aryans, anarchists and libertarians-- a "reservation" for 

anyone and everyone! The "European Project" cannot recognize the existence of the 

Wild Man-- green chaos is still too much of a threat to the imperial dream of order. 

 

Essentially the Moors and Ramapaughs rejected the "diachronic" or historical explanation 

of their origins in favor of a "synchronic" self-identity based on a "myth" of Indian 

adoption. Or to put it another way, they named themselves "Indians." If everyone who 

wished "to be an Indian" could accomplish this by an act of self- naming, imagine what a 

departure to Croatan would take place. That old occult shadow still haunts the remnants 

of our forests (which, by the way, have greatly increased in the Northeast since the 18-

19th century as vast tracts of farmland return to scrub. Thoreau on his deathbed 

dreamed of the return of "...Indians...forests...": the return of the repressed). 

 

The Moors and Ramapaughs of course have good materialist reasons to think of 

themselves as Indians--after all, they have Indian ancestors--but if we view their self-

naming in "mythic" as well as historical terms we'll learn more of relevance to our quest 

---