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LORD GOVERNOR TO THE KING: Luanda, 1622. Your Majesty, we have agreed with the ambassadress [Nzinga] to recognize Ndongo as an independent monarchy, owing neither tribute nor allegiance to Portugal. LORD GOVERNOR TO THE KING: Luanda, 1624. Your Majesty, Nzinga has made herself Queen of the Ndongo. She demands that we honor the Treaty of 1622 and immediately remove ourselves from the fortress in the middle of the Ndongo lands. NZINGA: As a mark of my disfavor with the Portuguese I renounce the Christian religion and give up my Christian name. Furthermore I offer to all Portuguese-trained Ndongan soldiers both land and spoils of war, and call upon them to remember they are Ndongans and not Portuguese dogs. I offer asylum and freedom to all slaves from Portuguese controlled areas. I call the bloodthirsty Imbangala, sister and brother. LORD GOVERNOR TO THE KING: Luanda, 1625. Your Majesty, soldiers and slaves are flocking to that pestilential woman like flies to carrion. She is inciting vassal chiefs to rebellion. She is growing dangerously strong. We have offered her war if she does not return the slaves and soldiers, and stop making trouble with our vassals. Unfortunately the Dutch are an ominous presence behind us and we fear to leave Luanda undefended. I have told the Ndongans that it is a shame and a scandal that a woman be their ruler and I have recognized Hari as the rightful king of the Ndongo. Nzinga has attacked us and we have defeated her. She has fled southeast to the kingdom of the Imbangala. During the next ten years Nzinga developed Matamba into a major source of slaves and cultivated the Dutch both as her favored buyers and favorite potential allies. The Dutch, at first, were none too pleased to be associated with a savage woman who drank human blood and ate her husbands, but as time went on they began to think better of Nzinga as a possible ally. Consequently the Portuguese found themselves in a growing squeeze with the Dutch threatening Luanda from the sea, and Nzinga dominating the slave trade and harassing them from the interior. NZINGA: I have decided to be King and wear men's clothes. I have decided to take young men as my wives and put them in dresses. I have decided to take other young men as my husbands. Wives and husbands both can have other lovers but any babies born to them are to be instantly killed. My wives will sleep in the women's quarters, but if they make love to any of the women there, they will immediately be killed. Any husbands who displease me will be killed and eaten. THE PORTUGUESE LORD GOVERNOR TO HIS MAJESTY ALPHONSO VI and HIS MOST EXCELLENT REGENT, HER HIGHNESS LUISA DE GUSMÃO: Luanda, 1656. Your Majesty the Treaty of 1656 has been signed. Portugal recognizes the independence of Matamba, and acknowledges Nzinga's sovereignty. Nzinga gives up her claim to Ndongo… The slave fairs are now being reopened. Portugal promises military assistance in case of need. Nzinga has been baptized in the Holy Church and has given up her barbarous practices of infanticide, human sacrifice, polygamy, and cannibalism. She promises to build a church and to welcome missionaries. * * * * *
The slave trade was probably the single most dominant force in sixteenth and seventeenth century Africa… The Africans had taken slaves for centuries. And when Europeans first joined the slave trade the number of slaves purchased remained relatively low. Slaves were taken by African slavers from a fairly wide area; a tribe might lose a few men and women, but depredations on the tribe as a whole were limited. When the military slaving of the Portuguese began, however, whole tribes were captured and erased. At the height of the slave trade it is estimated that 10,000 persons each year were exported as slaves from Luanda. In the hundred years of the Angolan Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, some one million people were sent out of Angola to be slaves in the New World, particularly in slave hungry Brazil. |
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