"For more than two centuries men, women, and children escaped from slavery and made the Southern wilderness their home. They hid in the mountains of Virginia and the low swamps of South Carolina; they stayed in the neighborhood or paddled their way to secluded places; they buried themselves underground or built comfortable settlements. Known as maroons, they lived on their own or set up communities in swamps or other areas where they were not likely to be discovered. Although well-known, feared, celebrated or demonized at the time, the American maroons, whose stories are the subject of this book, have been forgotten, overlooked by academic research, which has focused on the Caribbean and Latin America."--