Many historians believed that after the Jamaican Maroons signed treaties with the British colonial authorities in 1739 and 1740, the treaty-signatories effectively prevented runaway slaves from forming independent communities in the mountainous forests of the interior of the island of Jamaica.
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] However, a number of communities of runaways continued to thrive in the Blue Mountains in the decades that followed the 1740 treaty between the Windward Maroons and the British colonial authorities.
[12] In 1759, two women, one of them from an official Maroon community that had signed treaties with the colonial authorities, conspired to kill Ancoma, and they received rewards from the Jamaican Assembly for their accomplishment.
Some historians and contemporary writers claimed that a single Maroon named James Reeder killed Jack in hand-to-hand combat, securing his freedom as a result.
When he died in 1816 in Charles Town, and was buried in a Maroon funeral, Little Quaco, who had by now converted to Christianity and was now named William Carmichael Cockburn, petitioned the Assembly for his pension, and it was granted to him.