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Maroon

Maroon is a colour mixture composed of brown and purple. It vibrates in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about ?-? nanometres.

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A Maroon (from the word marronage or cimarrón) was a runaway slave. Eventually, the terms was generalized to include any slave or any group of slaves that had rebelled or escaped from their owners. Individual groups of Maroons often joined with indigenous tribes. Characteristics of the various cultural groups differ widely because of difference in history, geography, African origin, and the culture of Indigenous people throughout the Western hemisphere. Populations of Maroons are found north from the Amazon river Basin to the American states of Florida and North Carolina. Maroons played an important role in the histories of Brazil, Suriname, and Jamaica. Maroon settlements often possess a clannish, outsider identity.

Slaves began running away into the jungle as soon as Slavery was introduced to the Americas. Indigenous tribes provided a new home and community to those separated from their own tribes in Africa. Maroons are an example of successful resistance to slavery.

A name for a Maroon village is a palenque. The palenqueros developed a Creole language mixing Spanish and their African languages. Other Maroon Creole languages were Saramaccan and Sranan Tongo.

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The Montreal Maroons were a professional ice hockey team, in existence from 1924 to 1938, with a final record of 271-260-91, and were Stanley Cup champions in 1926 and again in 1935.
The Chicago Maroon is the independent student newspaper of the University of Chicago, in publication since 1892.


See marooning for the act of leaving someone on a desert island.