A Maroon (from the word marronage or American/Spanish cimarrón: "wild, savage, fugitive, runaway", lit. "living on mountaintops"; from Spanish cima: "top, summit") was a runaway slave in the West Indies, Central America, South America, or North America. Maroon populations are found from the Amazon River Basin to the American states of Florida and North Carolina.

The term Maroon was generalized to include any slave or group of slaves that had rebelled or escaped from their owners frequently within the first generation of their arrival from Africa, often preserving their African languages and many of their cultural traits. In the Guianas they were commonly known as Bush Negroes or Refugee Blacks. The jungles around the Caribbean Sea offered food, shelter, and isolation for the escaped slaves. There, the Maroons created their own independent communities which have survived for centuries and until recently remained separate from mainstream society. Individual groups of Maroons often allied themselves with the local indigenous tribes and occasionally assimilated into these populations. Maroons played an important role in the histories of Brazil, Suriname, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica.

Djuka Maroon village, Suriname River, 1955Maroon settlements often possessed a clannish, outsider identity. The villages were sometimes called palenques or quilombos. The palenqueros developed Creole languages by mixing European tongues with their original African languages. One Maroon Creole language in Suriname is Saramaccan. Maroons survived by growing vegetables and hunting. They also raided plantations. At these attacks, the maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slavemasters, and invite other slaves to join their communities.

A British governor signed a treaty promising the Maroons 2500 acres (10 km²) in two locations, because they presented a threat to the British. Also, some Maroons kept their freedom by agreeing to capture runaway slaves. They were paid two dollars for each slave returned.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Maroon communities began to disappear as forests were razed, although some countries, such as Guyana and Suriname, still have large Maroon populations living in the forests. Recently, many Maroons have moved to cities and towns as the process of urbanization accelerates

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