Sebastián Lemba (fl. 1540s) was an early Dominican slave rebel leader who led a prolonged maroon rebellion in the colony of Santo Domingo, (present day Dominican Republic). Born in Africa, a member of the Lemba tribe, hence the name. When Lemba was a young man he was captured and taken to companies in France and Spain around the year 1525, and was eventually transferred to the island of Hispaniola. Furiously tired of the harsh endurance of slavery, Lemba decided to revolt against the Spanish crown in 1532, which succeeded. Determined to liberate the island from slavery, Lemba engaged in a 15-year long maroon rebellion, which subsequently went down in history as one of the first Maroon activities in the entire Americas. Origins Background While the exact date and place of birth is still unknown, some historians agree that he was born in West Africa and may have been born at some point between 1510 to 1520. His mother was of the Lemba tribe, and his father was of the Calembo tribe of the Kongo people, which would explain his surnames. At some point around 1525, a young Lemba was captured and brought to the Caribbean island called Hispaniola, during which at the time was governed by Spain as the colony of Santo Domingo, the first colony of the New World. The island was previously inhabited by the Taínos, an Arawak-speaking indigenous tribe of the Caribbean, for some couple thousands of years. The Tainos called the island Quisqueya and Aytí. They lived mostly in peace, but their peace was often disrupted due to constant harassment from the Caribs, another indigenous tribe. These events transpired so much that by the time of European contact, many of the Taínos were seeking for protection. Their lives change in 1492, when the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus arrived on the island and claimed the island for Spain, to which they renamed it Hispaniola. Relations between the Taíno and the Spanish colonists started off warm, but they quickly soured as the Spanish began to forcibly deprive the natives of their gold, subject them to slavery, and inflicted terror on the population, thereby causing the Tainos to fight back. These resistances from the Taínos continued to intensify, resulting in a series of bloody wars between them and the Spanish colonists. Eventually by the beginning of the 1500s, the Taino population was nearly decimated, mostly due to diseases. Warfare,