The smokeless pit’s significance stems from the fact that the Maroons, who sought refuge in Cockpit Country—the mountain range surrounding the plantations where they’d previously been enslaved—had to sustain themselves without revealing their locations. If they cooked over an open fire, the smoke would betray them.
The smoke from the pit is enveloped in the architecture of the underground pit, containing it so that cooking does not give away the location to enemy forces. Jerk is precisely not barbecuing — another part of the lexicon derived from the early Indigenous colonial Caribbean.
When the Maroons hid they would escape mainly to the Cockpit Country, that is, inaccessible and remote parts of the island where it was hilly and densely vegetated and established communities, which were frequently disrupted by the English. The Maroons have been divided into two groupings based on their location, windward and leeward.
The Maroons were 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 practiced small-scale agriculture and hunting. They were known to return to plantations to free family members and friends.
The Spanish called these free slaves "Maroons," a word derived from "Cimarron," which means "fierce" or "unruly."
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