Nanny of the Maroons

Nanny, often called Queen Nanny, is believed to have been born around 1686 into an Akan community in present-day Ghana, enslaved and transported across the Atlantic to Jamaica, where she escaped into the island's rugged interior mountains.

She became the foremost leader of the Windward Maroons, a community of self-emancipated formerly enslaved people who established fortified settlements in Jamaica's Blue Mountains, most notably Nanny Town. Under her leadership, the Windward Maroons waged a sustained guerrilla war against British colonial forces for decades during the First Maroon War, using their intimate knowledge of the mountainous terrain to stage ambushes and evade capture, employing camouflage and tactics so effective that British soldiers described trees appearing to come alive around them.

Nanny is credited with uniting Maroon communities and, despite Nanny Town being destroyed by British forces in 1734, sustaining resistance until a 1739 peace treaty secured land and a significant measure of autonomy for the Windward Maroons. She remains the only woman among Jamaica's National Heroes, and her image appears on the Jamaican $500 banknote, a lasting tribute to her role in one of the most successful sustained resistances to British colonial power in the Caribbean.