Tacky was not so easy to dissuade: he gathered about twenty men and continued taking plantations in Westmoreland, St. John, St. Thomas in the East, Claredon, and St. Dorothy parishes. As the maroon forces pursued Tacky and his men into the mountains, Davy, a famed marksman, shot Tacky and killed him. The maroons brought his head into Spanish Town and put it on display in the center of town to dissuade others from rising in rebellion, but one of Tacky’s supporters removed his head after night fell.
The British and maroon soldiers traced the rest of Tacky’s men to a cave, where they found that the men had committed suicide instead of facing the alternative of returning to slavery. Although the initial rebel force was dead, the rebellions that had spread outside of St. Mary’s Parish continued for many months. When the resistance moved to Westmoreland parish, the escaped slaves hid in the mountains, with women and children, indicating their plans to stay there. Their high elevation made it easier to defend, but the British eventually found the camp and destroyed it. The rebels spread throughout the mountains and swamps, using their hiding places to attack plantations and disappear back into the terrain.
The British brutally put down the uprisings one by one, torturing and executing the leaders and harshly punishing their followers. By the time the British established control of Jamaica in October 1761, they knew they had to prevent it from happening again. The Lieutenant Governor asked the King of England to supply more troops to the island for defense as well as limit the number of slaves imported from the Gold Coast to prevent more unrest. The colonial government also outlawed obeah, whose priests had influenced the slave population.
The memory of Tacky’s Rebellion is alive in Jamaica today, a symbol of widespread resistance to slavery. A monument in Port Maria commemorates the starting point of the uprising. Tacky Falls, where his followers committed suicide, is named in the leader’s honor, although the actual cave has never been identified. The uprising is mentioned in the literature of the period, including Edward Long’s History of Jamaica, written in 1774, and the diaries of Thomas Thistlewood, who was an overseer in Westmoreland parish when the rebellion broke out.
Despite holding the colony of Jamaica in a state of panic for over one year, Tacky’s Rebellion failed to accomplish its goals. It didn’t create an African kingdom, and it didn’t end slavery on the island. The British continued to import slaves to Jamaica until the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Still, despite being largely forgotten today, Tacky’s Rebellion was the most significant eighteenth-century slave uprising in the British empire. It also served as a predecessor to the only successful slave insurrection in history: the Haitian Revolution.