The Ashanti woman who ended up as freedom fighter and hero in Jamaica. 

This statue is located in Emancipation Park, New Kingston, Jamaica🇯🇲. 

Queen Nanny (Nana), Granny Nanny or Nanny or Nanny of the Maroons was an 18th-century leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly enslaved Africans called the Windward Maroons. In the early 18th century, under the leadership of Nanny, the Windward Maroons fought a guerrilla war over many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica in what became known as the First Maroon War.

She was a former slave stolen from the Ashanti Empire and brought to Jamaica during the late 1700s together with her other four brothers. Maroons were escaped slaves who formed their own independent settlements. She and her 4 Brothers who were Maroon leaders escaped their plantation and hide in the mountains and jungles in Jamaica. Maroons were slaves in the Americas who escaped and formed independent settlements.

They created a village in the Blue Mountains where they took slaves after they raided numerous plantations. Nanny is credited to freeing over 1,000 slaves. Maroon in Latin means wolf. The Spanish called these free slaves "Maroons," a word derived from "Cimarron," which means "fierce”.

Nanny Town, placed as it was in the mountains away from European settlements and difficult to assault, thrived. Nanny limited her attacks on plantations and European settlements and preferred instead to farm and trade peacefully with her neighbors. She did however make numerous successful raids to free slaves held on plantations and give them a place to stay in her town.

While Nanny lived, Nanny Town and the Windward Maroons thrived and multiplied. The British colonial administration became embarrassed and threatened by the successes of the Maroons. Plantation owners who were losing slaves and having equipment and crops burned by Maroon raiders demanded that colonial authorities act. Hunting parties, made up of British regular army soldiers, militiamen, and mercenaries (many from the free black community), scoured the Jamaican jungles.

When the British decided to fight Nanny, during the years of warfare, they suffered significant losses in their encounters with the Windward Maroons of Jamaica. Maroons attributed their success against the British to the successful use of supernatural powers by Nanny, but historians argue that the Maroon mastery of guerrilla warfare played a significant role in their success. Having failed to defeat them on the battle field, the British sued for peace signing a treaty with them on 20 April 1740. The treaty stopped the hostilities, provided for state sanctioned freedom for the Maroons, and granted 500 acres of land to Nanny and her followers. The village built on the land grant still stands and today is called Moore Town. It is also known as the New Nanny Town. Modern members of the Moore Town celebrate 20 April 1740 as a holiday.

Both legends and documents refer to her as having exceptional leadership qualities. She was a small, wiry woman with piercing eyes. Her influence over the Maroons was so strong, that it seemed to be supernatural. She was particularly skilled in organising the guerilla warfare carried out by the Eastern Maroons to keep away the British troops who attempted to penetrate the mountains to overpower them.

Her cleverness in planning guerilla warfare confused the British and their accounts of the fights reflect the surprise and fear which the Maroon traps caused among them.

Besides inspiring her people to ward off the troops, Nanny was also a type of chieftainess or wise woman of the village, who passed down legends and encouraged the continuation of customs, music and songs, that had come with the people from Africa, and which instilled in them confidence and pride.

Her spirit of freedom was so great that in 1739, when Quao signed the second Treaty (the first was signed bv Cudjoe for the Leeward Maroons a few months earlier) with the British, it is reported that Nanny was very angry and in disagreement with the principle of peace with the British, which she knew meant another form of subjugation.

In 1975, the government of Jamaica declared Nanny as their only female national hero celebrating her success as a leader, military tactician and strategist. Her image is also on the Jamaican $500 note which is called a Nanny in Jamaican slang.

On March 31, 1982 the Right Excellent Nanny of the Maroons was conferred the Order of the National Hero as per Government Notice 23 Jamaica Gazette along with Sam Sharp.

ASANTES DIASPORA.

Due to the Atlantic slave trade, a known diaspora of Ashanti exists in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica. Slaves captured and sold to the British and the Dutch along the coasts were sent to the West Indies, particularly Jamaica, Barbados, Netherlands Antilles, British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Guyana, Suriname, etc. Ashanti were known to be very opposed to both the Fante Confederacy and the British people, as the Ashanti only traded with the Dutch in times of their ascension to becoming a hegemony of most of the area of present-day Ghana.

The name Coromantee (from Fort Kormantse, purchased by the Dutch in 1665) came from the original British fort on the Gold Coast to host Ashanti captives, despite this fort being used by the Dutch and having no records of trade to Jamaica while being under Dutch ownership.^[32] Evidence of Ashanti and Akan-day names and Ashanti and Akan-surnames(but mispronounced by the English), Adinkra symbols on houses, Anansi stories and the dialect of Jamaican Patois being heavily influenced by Twi, can all be found on the island of Jamaica. Edward Long and white British planters before him, described "Coromantees" the same way that the British in the Gold Coast would the "Ashantis", which was to be "warlike". Edward Long states that others around "Ashantis" and "Coromantees" feared them the same way as they were feared in Jamaica and from the hinterlands of the Gold Coast.

According to BioMed Central (BMC biology) in 2012, the average Jamaican has 60% of Ashanti matrilineal DNA and, today Ashanti is the only ethnic group by name known to contemporary Jamaicans. Famous Jamaican individuals such as: Marcus Garveyand his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey, are of Ashanti descent. It is commonplace for many Jamaicans to have this descent. Also are Jamaican freedom fighters during slavery: Nanny of the Maroons (now a Jamaican National Heroine), Tacky and Jack Mansong or Three-finger Jack. The names Nanny and Tacky are English corruptions of Ashanti words and names: "Nanny" is a corruption of the Ashanti word Nana, meaning "king/queen/grandparent", the name Tacky is a corruption of the Ashanti surname Takyi, and Mansong is a corruption of the Ashanti surname Manso, respectively.

“Anywhere Asante goes, it will shine” - Komfo Anokye. 

Anywhere we step our feet at, our presence must be felt by all. We were born freedom fighters. The kind of spirit our ancestors placed in us, only the “Sikadwa Kofi” can tell. It is a resilient spirit.

Black Power, Salute the Queen.

Piawwwwwww!!!