# Marronage  
In contrast to the men and women who took refuge in the northern or southern urban centres, others opted for the woods and the swamps (Diouf, 2014). From the early seventeenth century to 1865 , these maroons settled and sometimes prospered throughout the slave territories. Maroons, called outliers or simply runaways, appeared in the very first Acts passed by the colonial legislatures from Virginia to South Carolina. American maroons settled in two geographical areas: the hinterland made of secluded, hard-to-reach areas; and the borderlands of plantations and cities. To conceal themselves better, some lived in 'houses' they had dug six feet underground. Maroons were individuals living alone, families, small groups or large ones of up to a hundred people. Like maroons throughout the Americas, they generally did not initiate confrontations, but when attacked, they fought back. Since they were commonly undergunned, they used guerrilla tactics, and the preferred one was to disappear. North American maroons created a unique way of life by developing social and economic networks made of free and enslaved blacks as well as poor whites, and by taking what they needed from slaveholders. Although even the largest and best-organized inflicted few casualties other than economic ones on society, their autonomy and freedom could not be tolerated as they threatened the established order and stimulated desertion among the enslaved population.