Drake had turned to the cimarrones as tools to his ends, but from the relationship he learned a respect for Negroes and coloured peoples generally that was in advance of most of the empire builders of his time. Working shoulder to shoulder with these black men, following them along jungle trails only they knew, confronting hazards together, and listening to their stories of the treatment they had received from the Spaniards, Drake thought that he understood their plight.

John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, loc. 279