across the Caribbean, such as those of the Garifuna people on Saint Vincent. Many of the Garifuna were deported to the American mainland, where some eventually settled along the Mosquito Coast or in Belize. From their original landing place in Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras, the maroons moved to Trujillo. Gradually groups migrated south into the Miskito Kingdom and north into Belize. In Dominica, escaped slaves joined indigenous Kalinago in the island's densely forested interior to create maroon communities, which were constantly in conflict with the British colonial authorities throughout the period of formal chattel slavery. In the French colony of Saint Lucia, maroons and fugitive French Revolutionary Army soldiers formed the so-called , which comprised about 6,000 men who fought the First Brigand War against the British who had recently occupied the island. Led by the French Commissioner, Gaspard Goyrand, they succeeded in taking back control of most of the island from the British, but on 26 May 1796, their forces defending the fort at Morne Fortune, about 2,000 men surrendered to a British division under the command of General John Moore. After the capitulation, over 2,500 French and Afro-Caribbean prisoners of war as well as ninety-nine women and children, were transported from St. Lucia to Portchester Castle. They were eventually sent to France in a prisoner exchange; some remained in Europe while others returned to France. Dominican Republic American marronage began in Spain's colony on the island of Hispaniola. Governor Nicolás de Ovando was already complaining of escaped slaves and their interactions with the Taíno Indians by 1503. The first slave rebellion occurred in Hispaniola on the sugar plantations owned by Admiral Diego Columbus, on 26 December 1522, and was brutally crushed by the Admiral. Maroons joined the natives in their wars against the Spanish and hid with the rebel chieftain Enriquillo in the Bahoruco Mountains. When Archdeacon Alonso de Castro toured Hispaniola in 1542, he estimated the maroon population at 2,000–3,000 persons. Haiti The French encountered many forms of slave resistance during the 17th and 18th centuries, in Saint Domingue, which later came to be called Haiti. Formerly enslaved Africans who fled to remote mountainous areas were called marron (French) or mawon (Haitian Creole), meaning 'escaped slave'. The maroons formed close-knit communities that practised small-scale agriculture and hunting. They were known to return to plantations to free family members and friends. On a few occasions,