1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Maroons

MAROONS. A nègre marron is defined by Littré as a fugitive slave who betakes himself to the woods; a similar definition of cimarron (apparently from cima, a mountain top) is given in the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy. The old English form of the word is symaron (see Hawkins’s Voyage, § 68). The term “Maroons” is applied almost as a proper name to the descendants of those negroes in Jamaica who at the first English occupation in the 17th century fled to the mountains. (See Jamaica.)