The man who was to become the first African-American maroon arrived within a decade of Columbus' landfall on the very first slave ship to reach the Americas. One of the last maroons to escape from slavery was still alive in Cuba only 15 years ago. The English word "maroon" derives from Spanish cimarron—itself based on an Arawakan (Taino) Indian root. Cimarron originally referred to domestic cattle that had taken to the hills in Hispaniola, and soon after it was applied to American Indian slaves who had escaped from the Spaniards as well.