https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020943010 Memory Studies 2020, Vol. 13(5) 792–804 © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1750698020943010 journals.sagepub.com/home/mss Rainforest villages, eighteenth-century history Richard Price Independent Scholar Abstract Based on long term ethnographic work with the Saamaka, and with the benefit of hindsight, this paper unpacks the specific ways in which the descendants of these Suriname Maroons have constructed and transmitted the historical knowledge of their 18th-century ancestors, who escaped slave plantations and confronted the colonial powers from their new settlements in the depth of the forest. In the process, they created an original memory of these historical events—First-Time or Fesiten knowledge—and managed to keep it alive. The article explores the specific ontology, frames and idioms of this historical knowledge, as well as its ideological role, the (dis)connections to hegemonic colonial memory devices, its evolution in time, the ways of transmission, and the memory specialists that have kept and circulated it. Keywords collective identity, Maroon memories, Saamaka, ritual possession The recent book I’ve written with Sally Price centers on our first 2 years of anthropological fieldwork (1966–1968) with the Saamaka people in the rainforest of Suriname, descendants of self-liberated enslaved Africans (2017). After fleeing the plantations, their ancestors fought a multi-decade war against the colonists, ending in 1762 when the Dutch sued them for peace and signed a treaty granting them liberty and effective sovereignty over their forest realm, even as plantation slavery continued for another one hundred years on the coast. Our 1960s stay was predicated on our obeying two taboos, spelled out publicly by gods and oracles and often reiter- ated by village officials: Sally’s involved female pollution and mine involved Saamaka history. More specifically, Sally would have to go to the menstrual hut upon the first sign of blood each month and obey a long list of related rules, and I would have to avoid ever discussing anything having to do with “First-Time” (i.e. 17th- and 18th-century) history. Nor were we to walk on the path across the river that led by the shrine to the Old-Time People (those who shed their blood for freedom), or travel upriver to Baakawata, the creek where the Saamakas’ ancestors had lived during the wars of liberation. During our first 2 years living with Saamakas, anthropology was allowed, history strictly forbidden. Corresponding author: Richard Price, Independent Scholar. Email: rixsal@gmail.com 943010MSS 0 0 10.1177/1750698020943010Memory StudiesPrice research-article 2020 Article