oral traditions about her arrival in Jamaica maintain that she was always free. Another version of her life tells that she was of royal African blood and came to Jamaica as a free woman. She may have been married to a Maroon man named Adou, but had no known children who survived. Relatives of poet John Agard claim descent from Nanny. The Jamaican Maroons The maroons are descendants of West Africans, mainly people from the Akan. They were known as Coromantie or Koromantee, and were considered ferocious fighters. A number of the enslaved originated from other regions of Africa, including Nigeria, the Congo and Madagascar. However, the origin of at least half of the enslaved African people in Jamaica during the early English colonisation of the island is uncertain. After being brought to Jamaica in the course of the Transatlantic slave trade, many enslaved Africans fled from the oppressive conditions of plantations and formed their own communities of free black people in Jamaica in the rugged, hilly interior of the island. People who escaped from slavery joined these Maroon communities in the mountains of eastern Jamaica, or the Cockpit Country in the west of the island. Up to the 1650s under Spanish rule, enslaved Africans escaped and intermarried with the native islanders, the Taíno or Arawak, in their communities in the Blue Mountains (Jamaica), located in Portland Parish and Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica, in the eastern end of the island. The Maroons were escaped slaves. They ran away from their Spanish-owned plantations when the British took the Caribbean island of Jamaica from Spain in 1655. Windward Maroons In 1655, following the Invasion of Jamaica, the English captured Jamaica from the Spaniards, but many Spanish slaves became free under Spanish Maroon leaders such as Juan de Bolas and Juan de Serras. The Spanish left, freeing their slaves in the process, and they joined the Windward Maroon communities. These formerly enslaved people, with their ranks enhanced with escaped and liberated slaves, became the core of the Windward Maroons. They staged a prolonged fight against English subjugation and enslavement. Later in the 17th century, more slaves escaped joining the two main bands of Windward and Leeward Maroons. By the early 18th century, these Maroon towns were headed respectively by Nanny, who shared the leadership of the eastern Maroons with Quao, and Captain Cudjoe and Accompong in the west. The Windward Maroons fought the