requiem for the jaga - joseph miller

7/28/2019 Requiem for the Jaga - Joseph Miller

1/30

EHESS

Requiem for the "Jaga" (Requiem pour les "Jaga")Author(s): Joseph C. MillerReviewed work(s):Source: Cahiers d'tudes Africaines, Vol. 13, Cahier 49 (1973), pp. 121-149Published by: EHESSStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4391189 .Accessed: 23/05/2012 09:39

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

EHESSis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Cahiers d'tudes Africaines.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ehesshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4391189?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4391189?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ehess


2/30

JOSEPH C. MILLERUniversity of Virginia

Requiem for the "Jaga"*

Few myths about Africa or Africans have achieved greater fame onthe basis of less evidence than stories of the sixteenth and seventeenthcentury "Jaga" invasions of Kongo and Angola. The standard author-ities have consistently depicted the "Jaga" as skilled warriors whodrove the Kongo ruler from his kingdom in I568 (until recently, withthe pejorative fillip that they were ferociousmaraudersand bloodthirstycannibals), then assaulted the Mbundu populations living just to thesouth of Kongo in Angola, and finally disappeared after I650 or so,except for a hardy few leaders who founded such states as Kasanje andsome of the Ovimbundu kingdoms.' In contrast to the generallyaccepted view, careful analysis of the sources for early Kongo andAngola history suggests that no such "Jaga" ever existed outside theimaginations of missionaries, slave dealers, and Government officialswho created these mythical cannibals to justify or conceal their ownactivities in Africa. The extant data, fragmentaryas they are, suggestat least two other explanations for the I568 attack on the inani Kongo,both more plausiblethan the hypothesis of a mysteriousdeits ex nmachinafrom the far interior. Unrelated warrior bands, called Imbangala,account for all reported appearancesof "Jaga" fartherto the south.2

* I am indebted to Professors Allen Isaacman, Paul Lovejoy, and Jan Vansinafor their searching criticisms of an earlier draft of this article; any remaining faultsare, of course, my own responsibility. I would also like to thank the CartographicLaboratory of the University of Wisconsin for preparing the maps which accompanythe text.i. To cite onlv the most recent repetition of this version, Robert 0. COLLINS,African History: Text and Readings, New York, I97I, P. 349: "Erupting from theKwango region to the south and east, the Jaga destroyed the Congolese army anddrove the king into exile on an island in the Congo river [. . .1 the Governor ofSao Tom6, Francesco de Gouveia, rallied the Congolese and with his harquebusesdrove the Jaga from the kingdom in I57I [ . .]. The Jaga meanwhile establishedstates to the east and south and from these continued to raid the Congo."2. David BIRMINGHAM (Trade and Conflict in Angola, London, I966, pp. 64-65)has recognized the distinction between the "Jaga" and the Imbangala, as hasJan VANSINA ("More on the Invasions of Kongo and Angola by the Jaga and theLunda," Journal of African History, VII, 3, I966, PP. 421 -429). My unpublishedlissertation, "Kings and Kinsmen: the Imbangala Impact on the Mbundu ofAngola" (University of WVisconsin, 972) deals with the origins of the Imbangalaat some length.


3/30

I22 JOSEPH C. MILLERNo eyewitness has left a shred of direct evidence describing the

people who invaded Kongo in 1568. Historians who have acceptedthe myth of the "Jaga" on the authority of standard secondary accountswill be surprised to learn that the only sixteenth century documentpurporting to illuminate the attack contains only an insignificantamount of factual material of authentic Kongo provenance. The bulkof this description draws on other sources: a specifically Portugueselegend about a mysterious nation of savages believed to inhabit theunknown African interior, generalized European beliefs about barbarianinvaders of the civilized regions of the world, and a potpourri ofrumors then current among Portuguese sailors on the Atlantic shoresof Africa.This document, ostensibly the memoire of Duarte Lopes, a Portuguesemerchant who first set foot in Kongo nearly ten years after the "Jaga"invasions (I578 or I579),' in fact represents the product of interviewsLopes gave in Rome to Filippo Pigafetta, a noted sixteenth centuryItalian scholar. By Lopes' own admission, the "Jaga" had vanishedcompletely by the time he arrived on the scene, and so his story musthave contained numerous gaps which Pigafetta filled by incorporatinghis own notions about African geography and deep-seated Europeanbeliefs about barbarian invaders in other parts of the world. All laterdescriptions of these "Jaga" derive either from Lopes' highly suspectmemoire or from equally fictional seventeenth century Angolan Portu-guese oral traditions.The sixteenth century intellectual climate of opinion which influencedboth Lopes and Pigafetta accounts for many elements in their colorfulpicture of the "Jaga." This background included a strong belief amongPortuguese all over Africa that various intrusive peoples, whom theyhad by then encountered in Abyssinia, Sierra Leone, and Kongo, allbelonged to a single nation of "savages" living in the mysterious innerregions of the continent. Published evidence of this belief appearedin the I566 description of the Ethiopian highlands written by JoaoBermudes, Portuguese ambassador to the court of the Abyssinian kings.Bermudes claimed that the Galla, peoples from the southern Abyssinianhighlands who had overrun the Christian kingdom of the negus duringthe I540's, had close connections with the Sumbe or Mane who appearednot long afterward in Sierra Leone.

"These Gallas-he wrote-lived in the country near Magadoxo;' they are afierce and cruel people, who make war on their neighbors, and on all, only todestroy and depopulate their countries. In the places they conquer, they slayall the men, cut off the privy parts of the boys, kill the old women, and keep the

i. Willy BAL, ed., Description du royaume de Congo et des contr!es evvironnantes(par Filippo Pigafetta et Duarte Lopes-I59I), Louvain-Paris, I965, P. XII.2. Author's note: Mogadishu, a trading town on the Indian Ocean coast, nowlocated in the Somali Republic.


4/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I23young for their own use and service. It would seem that hence came the pumbas1who are destroying Guinea, for in cruelty they are alike."'

Bermudes' description of the Galla first introduced several character-istics which later became standard features of such other African bar-barians as the "Jaga."Superficial similarities on the level of Bermudes' "cruelty" led Portu-guese along Africa's Atlantic coast to identify the "Jaga" in Kongowith the Galla and Mane. The belief that all three came from a singlesource became part of the common lore of the Portuguese maritimecommunity (and its clerical adjuncts) before the end of the century.3A Jesuit missionary, Father Barreira, made the first explicit statementof the theory in letters to his European superiors during the first decadeof the seventeenth century.4 Barreira had spent fourteen years inKongo, probably in the I590's and early i6oo's, where he certainlyheard stories about the I568 invasion, and then served in Sierra Leonefrom I6o6 to i6io where he would have encountered tales about theMane, who had reached there during the I550's.5 These legends' vitalityamong Portuguese sailors in the Atlantic contributed to the later extensionof the same beliefs about the peoples of the unknown interior to anotherset of "barbarian" invaders, the Imbangala in Angola. The man whoextended the myth to the Imbangala had travelled extensively onPortuguese trading vessels in the Atlantic and spoke in terms whichrevealed the influence of Portuguese from both Guinea and Kongo.6

i. Author's note: Sumba, or Mane.2. The original account appeared in Joao BERMUDES, Breve relafdo da embai-xada. . ., Lisboa, 1566 (reprinted I875); I have taken the quotation from anEnglish translation, R. S. WHITEWAY, Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia in

I54I-I545, London, 1902, pp. 228-229.3. The most extensive description of the Mane, written in I595 on the basisof the author's experiences in Guinea from the I56o's until I580, showed thatPortuguese in the Atlantic had already made the connection between the Maneand the "Jaga;" see the report of Alvares de Almeida, Biblioteca do Porto, MS. 603,copy as no. 297 of the Fundo Geral of the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon (BNL);published by Diogo KOPKEAS ("Tratado breve dos rios de Guinea do Cabo-Verde,"Porto, I841) and reprinted in Antonio BRASIO (Monumenta missionaria africana,Lisboa, 1952-continuing Serie II, vol. III, pp. 229-378, esp. p. 36I).4. Fernao GUERREIRO, Rela(do annual das cousas que fizeram os padres daCompanhia de Jesus nas partes da India Oriental das cartas dos mesmos padres quede la vierdo, Coimbra, 1942, III, p. 237.5. On the Mane, see Walter RODNEY, "A Reconsideration of the Mane Invasionsof Sierra Leone," Journal of African History, VIII, 2, I967, Pp. 2I9-246.6. The reference is to the report of Andrew Battell in E. G. RAVENSTEIN, TheStrange Adventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh in Angola and Adjoining Regions,London, I90I. Battell's use of the Senegambian word (Wolof?) tavale to describean Imbangala drum in Angola showed that vocabulary, and presumably ideasas well, circulated freely along the entire western coast of Africa at that time; seeRAVENSTEIN, P. 2I. Other linguistic evidence of the Portuguese community onthe Atlantic appears in MILLER (dissertation), App. G to Ch. v. In such anatmosphere, superficial similarities of the names Sumba and Mane to well-knownKikongo and Kimbundu terms (the title mani, or the inhabitants of the Angolacoast north of Benguela called Sumbi, or even the final syllables [-gala] in the nameImbangala which provided a false link with the invaders in Abyssinia) might wellhave contributed to the confusion.


5/30

124 JOSEPH C. MILLER

G A"

/ / ~ZIMBA

MAP i. - Sixteenth-seventeenh century "barbarian" invaders in Africa

The equally mythical history of the Zimba in East Africa illustratesthe ease with which these Portuguese beliefs expanded to encompassnew attackers. In this case, a fourth and last mysterious invasion tookplace during the I590's near the Tete outpost of Portuguese authorityin upper Zambesia. There a real enough people called Zimba or Zimbo1fought an inconclusive series of battles against armies led by the cap ito-mor at Tete.2 Although these invasions produced no lasting effectsi. I am so informed by the only scholar recently to perform fieldwork in theTete region; my thanks to Professor Allen Isaacman of the University of Minnesotafor this detail.2. The source is Joao DOS SANTOS, Ethiopia Oriental, Evora, i6og. I have


6/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I25on the Zambezi river, a "Zimba" myth has attained a lasting place inthe historiography of Portuguese East Africa, where the "Zimba" bearresponsibility for numerous attacks on coastal city-states as far northas Mombasa. Even admitting that the Zimba or related groups mayhave reached the sea near Angoche (directly east of Tete), no substantiveevidence supports the early seventeenth century thesis that these sameZimba also attacked Kilwa, Malindi, and Mombasa, the largest townsalong the coast to the north.2 The originator of this theory personallywitnessed none of the attacks he attributed to the "Zimba" and probablycombined numerous unrelated and unidentified invaders under thecatch-all category of "Zimba."3 As a modern scholar has noted, "Zimbawas a general [Portuguese] term for any fierce bellicose group."4 Theevidence for Zimba activities on the northern coast therefore rests ona single hearsay account and lacks any support in contemporarydocuments.5 The Zimba legend eventually expanded beyond theconfines of Eastern Africa when a mid-seventeenth century writerargued that a single band of "Zimba" had besieged Kilwa, then continuednorth to Malindi and Mombasa before turning westward across southernAfrica to reach Angola where they became the "Jaga."6 The assimila-tion of the "Zimba" to the "Jaga"/Galla/Mane myth had finallylinked intrusive attackers in all of the Portuguese-influenced regions ofAfrica.Sixteenth century notions about the role of barbarians in Europeanhistory also help explain the description of the "Jaga" left by Lopesand his editor, Pigafetta. Lopes' introductory remarks, perhaps addedby Pigafetta, made explicit reference to these ideas, likening the "Jaga"used the translation in Eric AXELSON (South African Explorers, Oxford, I953),republished in G. S. P. FREEMAN-GRENVILLE (The East African Coast, Oxford,i962, Pp. I46-I5I).i. This is the hypothesis of Edward A. ALPERS ("The Mutapa and MalawiPolitical Systems to the time of the Ngoni Invasions," in Terence 0. RAN-GER, ed., Aspects of Central African History, London, I968, p. 2I). Alpers'evidence for the Zimba at Angoche seems tenuous at best, since even if oneaccepts his identification of Angoche political authorities called marufndu withthe Malawi king Lundu, the connection of Lundu with the Zimba remains prob-lematic.

2. We may expect significant enlightenment on the true nature of these repeatedattacks on the coastal city-states when Professor Steven Feierman of the Universityof Wisconsin publishes the results of his current work on the problem. ProfessorFeierman's research confirms the possibility that invaders other than the Zimbacommitted these attacks.3. Dos Santos was in Sofala, over five hundred miles from Tete, at the timethe Zimba appeared in Zambesia; nor was he present to witness the attacks onKilwa, Malindi, and Mombasa; see FREEMAN-GRENvILLE, p. 146.4. ALPERS, p. 2 I.5. A point first noted by R. AVELOT ("Les grands mouvements des peuplesen Afrique. . .," Bulletin de Geographie Historique et Descriptive, XXVII, I927,pp. ii6-i i8), but often neglected by later writers.6. P. Joao Ant6nio CAVAZZI DE MONTECUCCOLO, escri,cao hist6yica dos tresreinos do Congo, Matamba e Angola (trans. and ed. P. Graciano Maria DE LUGUZ-ZANO), Lisboa, I965, I, pp. I75-I76.


7/30

I26 JOSEPH C. MILLERto "people living like Arabs, and ancient nomads."1 Their cruelty,warlike habits, cannibalism, origin in an unknown part of the interior,and so on, qualities which linked them to such other invaders as theMane and Galla, derived in the main from characteristics automaticallyattributed to all peoples considered "barbarians" by Europeans of thetime.2 Pigafetta almost certainly knew of these generalized Europeanbeliefs and had had ample opportunity to encounter the Portugueselegend identifying the Mane and Galla before he spoke to Lopes.3The Lopes-Pigafetta description of the "Jaga" gave particularemphasis to a religious theme found in the generalized European imageof barbarians by associating them with the forces of the Christian Devil.4Their account became a Christian allegory of sin and Divine punishment,in which the disaster of the "Jaga" invasion represented Divine retribu-tion for the derelictions of most Europeans and Kongo nobles at theKongo king's court. The "Jaga", Lopes related, first appeared in theEastern Kongo province of Mbata, which they destroyed without meetingserious opposition. They then marched on the king's capital at SaoSalvador where the mani Kongo Alvaro tried to stem their advance butquickly suffered defeat and withdrew to the security of his fortifiedtown. Even there, however, Alvaro felt unsafe, "abandoned as Lopes-Pigafetta phrased it by the Divine Grace because of his sins. "5 Heand the Portuguese priests attending his court then fled to an island inthe Congo river and left the "Jaga" in complete mastery of the kingdom.The Kongo people who remained on the mainland abandoned theirvillages and churches to the invading "Jaga" and fled to remote andinaccessible places. King, nobles, people, and Portuguese alike, theaccount makes clear, were paying for their sins against God:

"Therefore the king clearly knew that it was on account of his misdeeds somuch misery had come upon them [. . .]. Grieved to the heart by these calamities,the king was converted to God, asking pardon for his offences, and doing penancefor his sins."6The story reached its appropriately happy conclusion when Alvaro'srapprochement with God brought prompt salvation through his restora-tion to the good graces of the Portuguese. The Portuguese king, DomSebastiao, sent aid to his beleaguered brother in Kongo in the form ofa six hundred man army under the command of Francisco de Gouveiai. BAL, P. io6; quoted from Margarite HUTCHINSON, A Report of the Kingdomof Congo and of the Surrounding Countries Drawn out the Writings and Discoursesof the Portuguese Duarte Lopez in Rome (I59I), London, i88i, p. 96.2. See W. R. JONES, "The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe,"

Comparative Studies in Society and History, XIII, 4, I97I, PP. 376-407.3. Bermudes' account had been published by the time Pigafetta recordedLopes' story in I588; Alvares de Almeida's story, while not published until I594,must have been current among interested geographers in Europe.4. JONES, esp. pp. I98-I99.5. Quoted from HUTCHINSON, PP. 97-98.6. BAL, P. i o6.


8/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I27the governor of Sao Tom6. This military force rescued Alvaro fromhis refuge on the island and joined with the remaining Kongo armiesto effect his return to the mainland. They then drove out the remaining"Jaga" within a year and a half, routing them so completely with thenoise of their firearms that almost no trace of the invasion remained.Alvaro became a good Christian and friend to his European benefactors,who did not finally leave his side until I576.1The Lopes-Pigafetta account of the "Jaga" invasion shows nothingmore definite about these wars than the fact that the description probablycame from the Kongo king and his advisors, since it gives the vaguestsort of information on the origins of the "Jaga" in the east and becomesspecific only when they finally engaged the king's armies near SaoSalvador. The activities of the "Jaga" on the mainland again fadeinto vagueness after the king's flight to the island in the Congo river.The remainder of the narrative deals exclusively with events on the island,detailing the sufferings of Alvaro and his courtiers who, through thesimilarities of their hunger to the plagues visited on the recalcitrantEgyptian pharaoh in retribution for his persecution of the Jews, effectivelymaintain the Christian allegorical tone of the story.2 Missionaries,perhaps those who fled Sao Salvador with Alvaro, very likely contributedto Lopes' version of the story, since only they would have includ-ed implied criticism of slavers who exploited the Kongo starving onthe island;3 missionaries would also have been likely to see the anal-ogy between events in sixteenth century Africa and those in biblicalEgypt.If analysis of the Lopes-Pigafetta text reveals its genesis in medievalEuropean ideas about barbarians and their role in Christian eschatology,the name "Jaga" indicates the influence of sixteenth century Europeannotions about African geography. The lack of accurate chronometersat that time had prevented European navigators and geographers fromestablishing correct longitudes for most of the coastline of Africa.Although they had gained a fairly good idea of the general shape of thecontinent, particularly in its north-south dimension, it appeared muchnarrower from west to east than it later proved to be. Both Lopes andPigafetta, as well as all of their contemporaries, drastically under-estimated the true distances which separated Portuguese possessionson the Atlantic Ocean from those on the Indian Ocean and the countries

ii. The total lack of documentation on the "Jaga" invasions extends to Gouveia'srescue mission, thus reinforcing the mystery surrounding these events. Availabledocuments do no more than establish Gouveia's presence in Silo Tomd shortlybefore he led the expedition to Kongo and the favor he enjoyed after his returnto Portugal. Letters from the mani Kongo about the momentous happeningsappear only after I575; see Delgado's note in Ant6nio DE OLIVEIRA DE CADORNEGA,Hist6ria geral das guerras angolanas (ed. Jos6 Matias DELGADO), Lisboa, 1940-I942,I, pp. I2-I3.2. Cf. Exodus, 7: 14 - 12: 28.3. Lopes, himself a trader, would have been unlikely to mention this aspectof the events. See BAL, P. I07.


9/30

I28 JOSEPH C. MILLERon the Red Sea, placing, for example, Kongo quite close to the Abyssinianhighlands.Sixteenth century cartographers exaggerated the importance andextent of familiar portions of Africa, thus diminishing the size of theunknown interior until the eastern borders of Kongo appeared to touchthe southwestern marches of the Abyssinian empire.' It happened that,among the numerous peoples of southwestern Ethiopia, those best knownto European scholarship included the Agao, or Agagi (Agag in thesingular). These Agagi had independently acquired a reputation whichmade them appear products of the same barbarian mold which hadproduced the Galla and Mane. European classicists knew them asfierce warriors who had repeatedly invaded Egypt in the third millen-nium B.C., while the Agagi had more recently reinforced their barbarianimage by overwhelming the Monophysite Abyssinian dynasty of thetenth century, driving the king from place to place and devastatingthe churches in a war which Christian Abyssinians later interpretedas divine punishment for disturbances connected with their church.2The barbarian Agagi, from the perspective of Portuguese resident inKongo, seemed to live somewhere just east of the furthest Europeanknowledge of the interior and, on the basis of the known propensityof the Agagi to harass the outposts of civilization, must have beenregarded as a potential menace to the Christian Kongo of the sixteenthcentury.The presence of a widespread Bantu root meaning "foreigner" inKikongo apparently provided the key which led Europeans to associatethe mysterious invaders of I568 with the Agagi and to call them by thesimilar name "Jaga. " Although copyists' errors and irregularitiesin sixteenth century orthographies have obscured the exact form ofthe Kikongo word which Europeans thought sounded like Agagi, theroot resembled -aga or -aka with the consonant perhaps approximatingan unaspirated "k" found today in eastern Kimbundu. The coincidence

i. Avelino TEIXEIRA A MOTA A cartografiaantiga da Africa centrale a travessiaentreAngola e Mozambique,i5oo-i86o, Louren9o Marques, I964), W. G. L. RANDLES("Southeast Africa and the Empire of Monomotapa as Shown on Selected PrintedMaps of the i6th Century," Studia, 2, 1958, PP. I03-I64, esp. II7-120), and JacquesDENIS (Les Yaka du Kwango: contribution a une dtudeethno-ddmographique,Ter-vuren, I964) discuss the maps which illustrate this point.2. BAL(P. 194, n. 234) summarizes the evidence on the Agagi of classical antiq-uity. Jean DORESSE (Ethiopia [trans. Elsa Coult], New York, 1959, pp. 92-93) andEdward ULLENDORFF (The Ethiopians, London, I965, pp. 6I-62) give differinginterpretations of the invasion but agree on its significance in Ethiopian mythologyand, by implication, on the form in which sixteenth century Europeans wouldhave known of the Agagi.3. Variant spellings included Giachas, Giacas, Giachi, Giaki, Jagas, Jagos,Jacas, Aiac(c)as, Aiacchi, Majaca, Mujac, Mujaca; list taken from BAL, P. I9I.4. Information from my own field research in Angola; the uncertainty amongEuropeans as to the exact consonant in the name persisted into the nineteenthcentury; see Joao VIEIRA CARNEIRO, "Observag6es feitas em I848 relativas adiversos objectos que the parceceram nao exactos no 30 volume dos Ensaios sobrea Estatistica das Possessoes Portuguezas da Africa Occidental pelo Conselheiro


10/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I29of two superficiallysimilar but unrelatedterms, Agagi and jiaga oryaga(the most probable Bantu plural forms of a nominal built on the root-aga), which referred to intrusive warriorpeoples, fit perfectly into theagglutinative myth of the African barbarian invader.Resemblances between the characteristicsattributed to the "Jaga"and the alleged attributes of other barbarian nvaders in the Portugueseworld show how little of the Lopes-Pigafetta description came fromobserved fact. The origins of the "Jaga," according to this account,lay in the semi-legendary lands near the first lake of the Nile, a regionknown in the sixteenth century only from vague references in ancienttexts but believed to lie in a province of the "Monemugi"empire. Themwene mugi was another half-mythical king whom geographers of thetime commonly placed in the unknown interior of the continent. If hehad any real analogue near Kongo, which is doubtful, he was very likelya local ruler in the Stanley Pool regionor on the lower Kwa river,knownto Portuguese from his trading contacts with Kongo.' Europeanscholars, however, preferredto locate his lands along the banks of theupper Nile for want of real knowledge about the interior and, althoughno direct evidence linked him with the "Jaga," Lopes-Pigafetta put theirhome in a provinceof his empire by inference.The homeland attributed to the "Jaga" underlined their overtlymythical qualities. Lopes-Pigafetta elsewhere, in a clearly legendarycontext, noted that the "Jaga" lived on the borders of the empire ofthe mwene Mutapa (still clothed in fanciful garments despite Portuguesecontacts with the real Mutapa state in southeastern Africa) who hadconductedgreat wars against both the Amazons and the "Jaga." "They[the 'Jaga'] are large in stature, but ill-proportioned,and live like wildbeasts, and feed on human flesh. When fighting they show greatcourage, and use frightfulnoises to terrify their enemies."2 The physical

Jos6 Joaquim Lopes de Lima," Annaes do Conselho Ultramarino (parte nao official),s6r. II, I859-I86I, p. I73. See M. KADIMA, "Le theme pour 'autre' dans les languesbantoues," Africana Linguistica III, Tervuren, I967, PP. 30, 31, 33, for the root-aka, which has some reflexes of the form -aga. The modern Kikongo form is-kaka; Kimbundu, a neighboring language, has -eka, as do the two languages tothe southeast, Cokwe and Lwena. The Bemba and Bisa in Zambia have -yake,and some western Tanzanian languages have -yage. J. VAN WING and C. PENDERS(Le plus ancien dictionnaire bantu, Louvain, I928) show several related seventeenthcentury words in Kikongo, only a century or so after the "Jaga" had appeared;they give -aka meaning "the other" and mwaka-ani for "brigand," pp. I, 240.According to more recent dictionaries, akaka can mean "foreigners" as opposedto nzenza, which is employed in the sense of "stranger;" see W. Holman BENTLEY,Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language, London, I887, P. 207. The sameroot also appears in muakaka meaning "elsewhere" (i.e. "the foreigners' place"?).Tundaka means "foreigners or barbarians" in Cokwe; Jos6 REDINHA, "Metodopara a reconstituivao hist6rica das migrao6es," Mensdrio administrativo, 22-23,1949, p. 42.i. Frangois BONTINCK, Diaire congolais (I690-I70I) de Fra Luca de Caltani-setta, Louvain-Paris, I970, PP. xxxiv-xlvii; personal communication from ProfessorJan Vansina.2. BAL, Pp. I35-136; I have followed the HUTCHINSONtranslation, p. I25.

9


11/30

I30 JOSEPH C. MILLERfeatures and behavior ascribed to the "Jaga" reversed all things familiarto Europeans; they were black rather than white, monstrous insteadof handsome, ate human flesh in preference to the meat of animals, andfought and destroyed all forms of civilization. They even, symbolically,turned their eyelids inside out. They thus performed the same functionin European mythology as the Amazons, with whom Lopes explicitlyassociated them, in expressing the opposite of all "civilized" values.1LThe same point, translated into Christian terms, emerged from the trulysatanic qualities given them by Lopes-Pigafetta in the belief that theinfernal regions of the Devil contained all things opposed to Christiancivilization.

Some details of "Jaga" appearance and armament derived from thegeneralized stereotype of the African savage and recurred from time totime all over the continent, usually with little or no basis in fact. TheMane and "Jaga" both allegedly possessed large rectangular shieldswhich they used to protect their bodies when engaged in close fighting.2Like the Mane, the "Jaga" had also developed coordinated militarytactics in which the warriors threw their lances in torrents which raineddown on their enemies during attacks. Lopes (or Pigafetta) apparentlyadded the variant that the "Jaga" placed their shields side by side inthe ground between battles to make a palisade around their camps.The large shields predictably reappeared once again in connection withthe "Zimba" in Mozambique.3Even though European, especially Portuguese, beliefs about Africangeography and "barbarians" explain most of the Lopes-Pigafetta accountof the "Jaga" invasion, the absence of authentic written evidence isno novelty for sixteenth century events in Africa and would not alonecall the existence of the "Jaga" into question if local traditions preservedsome trace of the alleged invaders. The Kongo, who reportedly sufferedso greatly at the hands of the "Jaga," have no oral record of the disasterof I568. Mid-nineteenth century travelers who inquired about the"Jaga" found a total lack of Kongo traditions on the subject.4 Althoughone investigator claimed to have viewed the site of the great market-place where, local residents explained, the "Jaga" sold human flesh justas white men would buy mutton or beef in European marketplaces,5this story clearly did not come from Kongo sources. It had first appearedin Lopes-Pigafetta's description of a different people, the Tyo (Teke,or Anziko), and had reappeared occasionally in later writings, alwayswith the identifying detail that the various authors of the crime had sold

I. On the mythical functions of the Amazons, see Encyclopedia Britannica,article on "Amazon," I969, I, p. 709.2. Cf. BAL, P. io6, and RODNEY, Pp. 222 ff., and sources cited.3. Dos SANTOS in FREEMAN-GRENVILLE, p. I47.4. CARNEIRO, "Observav6es," I77; also Tito OMBONI, Viaggi nell'Africa Occi-dentale, Milano, I846, P. i63.5. A. BASTIAN, Afrikanische Reisen: ein Besuch in San Salvador, Bremen, I859,P. I50.


12/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I3Ihuman flesh just as Europeans dispensed mutton and beef.' The sameapocryphal tale, apparently memorable for its vivid imagery, undoubt-edly circulated among the Portuguese in nineteenth century Angola,who repeated it to unsuspecting European visitors at Sao Salvador.Identification of this story as part of a lively Portuguese oral tradition,derived ultimately from the written account of Lopes-Pigafetta, relievesthe Kongo of all responsibility for spreading the rumor that the "Jaga"had ever appeared in their lands.The supposed descendants of the "Jaga," the Imbangala, mightremember their ancestors' passage through the Kongo even if the victimsdid not. Although the Imbangala have extensive oral traditions cover-ing this period, they place their ancestors far to the south and east duringthe middle years of the sixteenth century.2 This contradicts an Englishsailor who spent several months with the seventeenth century forebearsof the modern Imbangala and reported that his African companionstold him that they had come from Sierra Leone through Kongo to Angola.3This account, like that of Lopes, contained numerous additions madeby an editor in Europe, so that the reference to Kongo almost certainlycomes from his editor's familiarity with the prevalent European mytho-logy of the "Jaga"/Mane/Galla/Zimba.4 The modern Imbangala knowthe term "Jaga" only vaguely as a Portuguese administrative classifi-cation introduced briefly in the I95O's.5 Imbangala disclaimers of thissort place responsibility for the term once again on the Portuguese whoused it to refer to Imbangala kings from the seventeenth through thenineteenth century.Nearly all references to the "Jaga," in fact, occur in Portugueseand/or missionary sources. Seventeenth century Dutch accounts, forexample, found remarkably few indications of the presence of the "Jaga"during the same years that their Portuguese adversaries mentionedthem repeatedly. The major Dutch compilation of information about

i. For examples, see Girolamo MEROLLA DA SORRENTO, "Voyage to Congoand Several Other Countries, Chiefly in Southern Africk in the Year I682," trans.in John PINKERTON, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyagesand Travels in all Parts of the World. . ., London, I808-I8I4, XVI, p. 285; itappeared also in East Africa, attributed to the "Mumbos" in DOS SANTOS; seeFREEMAN-GRENVILLE, P. 146. Olfert DAPPER (Naukeurige beschrijvinge derAfrikaensche gewestern, Amsterdam, 2nd ed., I676, II, p. I8o) accurately repeatedthe story in connection with the Tyo.2. Joseph C. MILLER, "The Imbangala and the Chronology of Central AfricanHistory," Journal of African History, XII, 4, I972, PP. 553-565.3. The report of Andrew Battell in RAVENSTEIN, Pp. 19-20.4. The editor was Samuel Purchas; MILLER, 1972, contains further evidenceon this point.5. Based on interviews with Imbangala historians in I969. The testimoniescited refer to tapes and field notes in my possession which will be deposited inappropnate archives in Africa and the US. I gratefully acknowledge receipt ofa grant from the Foreign Area Fellowship Program of New York which made thatresearch possible and which supported part of the composition of this article.The Program has no responsibility for the conclusions expressed here. Testimoniesof Sousa Calunga, II.9.I969; Mwanya a Shiba, 14.6.I969; Ant6nio Cunha.


13/30

I32 JOSEPH C. MILLERAngola, based on their experiences during the occupation of Angolain the I640's, always located the "Jaga" somewhere outside the rangeof verifiable observation and carefully attributed most informationabout them to "Portuguese with long experience in the country," as ifnoting a disclaimer.' The Dutch compiler sometimes identified the"Jaga" with the Tyo, elsewhere connected them with various Kongogroups, and finally placed them (correctly) in the legendary realms ofthe far interior, adding pointedly that no "Jaga" remained by theI640's and that certain (unnamed) persons in Angola doubted the entirestory.2The pattern of evidence on the "Jaga" corroborates Dutch suspicionsto suggest that the true origins of the myth of the "Jaga" lie in Portu-guese and missionary conceptions about Africa rather than in the historyof Kongo or Angola. The later history of the legend reinforces thisconclusion by pointing to the missionaries, administrators, and tradersin Angola who had very good reasons for preserving and elaboratingthe story of the "Jaga," each for his own purposes.Seventeenth century missionaries, whose predecessors had evidentlyhelped to establish the Lopes-Pigafetta version of the "Jaga" myth,found the "Jaga" extremely useful exponents of the heathen practiceswhich they intended to eradicate. One late seventeenth centurymissionary author described his call to bring the word of God to Kongoby pointing to them as the worst (or best) examples of the kind of peoplewho needed Christian salvation.He had "expose[d] his life by reason that those people, especially the Giaghi['Jaga'], were so far from paying any adoration to the true God, that they sacrificeddirectly to the devil; and, what is worse, their oblations were not sheep and oxen,but men and women."sAnother missionary, author of an official history of the Angola missions,made the same point more explicitly:

"After narrating the extravagant customs of these kingdoms, it will be usefulto describe in particular the customs of the Jaga, a people cruel and blood-thirsty,who, coming from other regions, settled among these kingdoms by means of violenceand imposed laws so unworthy and inhuman that only the description of themis able to provoke horror, and they would appear to be exaggerated had not othersbefore me already described them."4These missionaries depicted the "Jaga" in as terrible a manner aspossible for the apparent purpose of arousing support for their endeavorsin Africa. They might thus challenge idealistic young clerics in EuropeI. DAPPER, II, pp. I82, 2I6-2I7.2. Ibid., p. I82.3. MEROLLADA SORRENTOn PINKERTON,XVI, P. I95. The "sheep and oxen"mentioned here once again recall the apocryphal tradition mistakenly attributedto Kongo sources.4. Author's translation of CAVAZZI,I, P. 173.


14/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I33to join the battle against such repulsivepractices. They might also usethe "Jaga" to engage the interest of their European superiors and toraise funds from wealthy patrons who dared not fail to show the propersense of horrorat these cannibals'misdeeds. The missionary referencesto the "Jaga" excerpted such gruesome details from Lopes-Pigafettaas stories of fathers who survived at the cost of their sons' lives whilehiding from the terribleinvaders. Although the originaltext had statedonly that some fathers on the island in the Congo river had sold theirsons to Portugueseslavers, later versions of the tale included substantialexaggeration, implying that father ate son to avoid starvation. Theseelaboratedon the parallelbetween the "Jaga" invasions and the biblicalplagues in Egypt to describe the invaders almost literally as divinescourges, who emerged from holes in the ground, fell upon the entireKongo kingdom with extraordinary rapidity, and reduced it to utterruin through rapine, destruction, and massacre. Disease, clouds oflocusts, and famine then followed upon the initial disaster in the bestOld Testament style.' The spirit of the Lopes-Pigafetta account hadclearly struck a responsivechord in the minds of later missionaries,andthey enlargedit almost beyond recognition.The myth of the "Jaga" served equally well the purposes of Portu-guese government officials, since Gouveia's rescue of the mani KongoDom Alvaro after the I568 invasion had indebted all his successors totheir European sponsors and gave the Portuguese a chance to claimformal sovereignty over their realm. Dom Alvaro had granted substan-tial concessions to Portuguesemerchants and missionaries in recognitionof his gratitude for the assistance sent by King SebastiTo. Neitherthe Luanda governorsnor the Kongo kings ever forgot the significanceof that event. The Portuguese habitually referred to the "Jaga"whenever they wished to impose their will on a reluctant Kongo ruler,and the mani Kongo, for their part, mentioned them whenever theydesired to remind Lisbon of its obligation to protect the dynasty it hadenthroned in the i570's.2 The myth thus became enshrined as adiplomaticprecedentwhich eitherside invokedas it suited theirrespectivepurposes.The allegedly voracious "Jaga" appetite for human flesh receivedspecial attention from slave tradersin Angola. Both private merchantsand public officials used it to defend the morality of the slave trade bypointing to the bellies of the "Jaga" as the only alternative fate awaiting

i. Ibid., I, p. 243.2. See, for examples, Domingos DE ABREU E BRITO, Um inqudrito a' vida admi-nistrativa de Angola e do Brazil (ed. Alfredo de Albuquerque Felner), Coimbra,1931, P. 54; DE CADORNEGA, III, pp. I88-I89; Relagao do Governador Fernilo deSousa (ca. I624-I630), Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon (BAL), MS. 51-VIII-30,fos 220-234 vs, published in BRASIO, VII, pp. 640-654; Martinho de Mello Castro,instruc9oens para o Bispo de Angola, 22.6.I779, Arquivo Hist6rico UltramarinoLisbon (AHU), Angola, cx. 37; Relaao de Ant6nio Diniz, I622, in BRASIO, VII,pp. 67-74.


15/30

134 JOSEPH C. MILLERthe oppressed Mbundu and Kongo villagers. Gory descriptions of "Jaga"feasting on the flesh of loyal subjects of the Portuguese Crown effectivelycarried the message that the slave trade, bad as it was, might save itsvictims from an even worse end. One chronicler of the Portugueseconquest in Angola made this point explicitly when he argued at the endof the seventeenth century that rescuing other Africans from the "Jaga"ranked as a blessing of the slave trade equal to salvation of the Africans'souls and the recruitment of converts to the Church.' A missionaryreported at the end of the century that Portuguese slavers in Sao Salvadoropenly used the myth of the "Jaga" to justify their activities there:"On this account, they [the merchants] pretend they have a license tobuy slaves, which however they could never produce to this day."2Private slavers, actively engaged in avoiding the royal duties onslave exports from Kongo and Angola,3 found yet another function forthe myth of the "Jaga" by using it to account for the obvious differencebetween the large numbers of captives taken in the interior and thesmaller totals passing through the customs houses at the coast. Themissing slaves, of course, left Africa illegally, but the illicit tradersexplained the discrepancy by accusing the "Jaga" of having eatenthem.4 A slave allegedly consumed on the battlefield convenientlyleft no more traces than one actually shipped surreptitiously to Brazil.At least one newly-arrived governor in Luanda unsuspectingly collab-orated in propagating this story when he accused the Portuguese inthe interior of "robbing, killing, capturing, and giving the vassals ofYour Majesty to the Jagas to eat." In the same letter he also complainedof the many slaves leaving Angola without paying the taxes due the king.5One of the most experienced observers of early seventeenth centuryAngola, on the other hand, cast serious doubt on the validity of theprevailing excuse for relatively low exports of slaves. He pointed outthat the blame for Angola's financial distress should not fall on the"Jaga," as many traders claimed it should, but rather on the Portuguesewho regularly evaded duties imposed by their Spanish monarch. Headmitted that the "Jaga" were cruel and stole whenever they could,but he significantly refrained from any reference to cannibalism onthe scale cited by his contemporaries.6

i. Dr CADORNEGA, I, Pp. I I-4.2. MEROLLADA SORRENTO n PINKERTON, XVI, P. 285. Some modern apolo-gists for Portuguese activities in Africa still repeat the point; see, for example,Ralph DELGADO (Historia de Angola, Lobito, 1948-I955, III, pp. I29-130), wherehe argues that the slave trade was far better than the cannibalism which preceded it.3. Joseph C. MILLER, "The Dual Slave Trade in Angola" (unpublished paperpresented to the 197I Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Denver,November 3-6, I971).4. For example, see the Fajardo account published in Luciano CORDEIRO,ed., Viagens, explorafoes e conquistas dos Portuguezes, Lisboa, I88I, VI, p. 23.5. Governor Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos to el-Rei, I5.8.I6I7, AHU, Angola,cx. i, dos. #I29; BRASIO, VI, P. 285.6. Balthasar REBELLO DE ARAGAO in CORDEIRO, III, P. 17.


16/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I35The "Jaga" also received the blame for a related fact which somePortuguese offered as an excuse for relatively low shipments of slavesfrom Angola, the population density along the Kwanza which someEuropean observers felt was abnormally low. Ignorant of the effectsof soil quality and agricultural technology, they argued that attacksby wild beasts and the "demands of the Devil [. . *] running intothousands [of souls] wherever the cruel customs of the Jaga flourish"had severely reduced the numbers of the Mbundu.' Cannibalism onthe scale required to produce the effects which Portuguese attrib-uted to it in this case has never been documented anywhere in theworld, and the evidence on Imbangala cannibalism (the groups iden-tified by most Europeans as "Jaga") shows that the Imbangalarestricted their consumption of human flesh to a relatively few ritualoccasions.2 The emphasis given to the cannibalistic aspect of the "Jaga"myth, however, suggests that it must have helped to account for theotherwise inexplicably low slave exports reported at the royal customshouses.The I568 invasion of Kongo served still different purposes in thenineteenth century, when Portuguese diplomats tried to justify Portugal'sclaim to the mouth of the Congo river against challenges from rivalEuropean powers. Lisbon officials attempted to establish the legalbasis for their control by resurrecting the Kongo-Portuguese agreementsof the I570's, in which Alvaro had declared his subservience, to showthat the "Jaga" threat had resulted in Portuguese suzerainty in Kongo.3The "Jaga" performed a final and curious service in the studies of theConde de Ficalho, a late nineteenth century scholar who made extensivestudies on plants found in Angola. His review of the evidence on the"Jaga" convinced him that they had carried Eleusine coracana from itsorigins in northeastern Africa to the Mbundu and Kongo farmers inAngola.4 As his nominees for this role, the "Jaga" not only aided thedevelopment of African agriculture but-in ironic contrast to theiroriginal function as the prototypical barbarians of the sixteenth century-became prime examples of the tall, light-skinned, culturally superiorinvaders favored by proponents of the "Hamitic hypothesis." Timehad completely transformed originally dark, savage "Jaga" into thebringers of civilization to southern Africa.

I. CAVAZZI,, p. 8i. Fajardo had earlier listed the same factors affectingAngolan demography; see CORDEIRO, VI, P. 23.2. Full discussion on this point appears in MILLER, dissertation, Ch. vII.3. Jose Joaquim LOPES DE LIMA ("Descobrimento e posse do Reino do Congopelos Portugueses no Seculo xv, sua conquista por as Nossas armas no seculo xvi,"Annaes Maritimos e Coloniaes, V, 3, I845, PP. I02-103) first developed thisargument.4. Conde DE FICALHO, Plantas uteis da Africa Portugueza, Lisboa, 1947,PP. 49-5I


17/30

136 JOSEPH C. MILLER

The Lopes-Pigafetta description of the "Jaga" shows only thatunidentified enemies attacked Sao Salvador from Mbata province ini568, driving the mani Kongo Alvaro and his followers into exile on anisland where they suffered from extreme shortages of food. Eliminationof the mythical elements leaves the historian with the task of discover-ing the groups most likely to have attacked the mani Kongo atthat time.Although the bulk of the available evidence indicates that localKongo rebels attacked their own king in I568, conditions in at least twoneighboring regions could have caused small groups of alien invadersto join in the domestic Kongo uprising. The turbulent Matambahighlands provide one possible origin for a foreign invasion on the basisof the factual material in Lopes' often fanciful accounts of the regionseast of Kongo. The pattern of the identifiable landmarks mentionedby Lopes suggests that an ancient trade route ran southeast from Kongothrough Matamba and that economic rivalries caused hostilities whichcould have led the Matamba kings to attack Sao Salvador. This hypoth-esis depends on the assumptioni that Europeans like Lopes heardrumors about the geography of the far interior primarily from Africantraders who had travelled there.' Pigafetta attempted to reconcileLopes' fragmentary data with sixteenth century European notionsabout African geography, but despite such distortions the text containsone remarkably accurate description which fits the lands lying along atrail leading from Kongo through Matamba to important salt pansnear the Luhanda river, an affluent of the Lui.Matamba was originally a relatively small province on the south-eastern slopes of the mountainous watershed near the modern townsof Carmona and Negage. Lopes confirmed this location by noting thatthe air there was healthful for Europeans, a very good indication thatthe region lay at relatively high altitudes.2 All earlier documentaryreferences agreed, vaguely, that mountains separated Matamba fromKongo,3 and later sources identified them as the semi-legendary "Moun-tains of Silver," perhaps owing to the two silver bracelets which Matamba

i. The Portuguese would have had little direct interest in this route sinceit primarily handled salt, a commodity of negligible interest to them exceptas competition to their own salt industries on the coast. Such reasons asthese explain the relative obscurity of this trading system in documents of thetime.2. BAL, P. 39.3. Only one writer named them: "Nambuadeamplo;" Apontamentos of Sebas-tiao de Souto (ca. I56I), BNL, MS. 3767, fOS 9-12; BRASIO, II, PP. 477-48I. Thefirst portion of this name evidently corresponds to a common southern Kongopolitical title, nambo, plus a connecting particle, a; the latter portion has beenmisread, as it corresponds to no known vowel or consonant cluster in Kikongo orKimbundu.


18/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I37

N'CO Carmona) .\

"(egage)

(uale) 1

. YE %Mle (MCntalegre) o maps oNGft

afar, these clifswtn tMt. MbasoQuela) (LP

oi-AI NS(Cambambe). -

MAP 2.- Reconciliation of Lopes' Geography of the Interior with Modern Maps

rulers had sent to the mani Kongo in 1530.1 An equally likely originfor the name came from the fact that such toponyms as "Mountains ofSilver" or "Mountains of Crystal" occurred frequently on maps of theAngolan interior, generally indicating only a distantly known mountain-ous area with exposed rock faces on its western slopes. When seen fromafar, these cliffs, wet and glistening during the rainy season, seemed tosparkle like silver or crystal in the afternoon sun. The name "Mountainsof Silver" therefore came to denote any number of highland regions,and the location of similarly named mountains elsewhere in Angola does

i. Letter from el-Rei do Congo to D. Joao III, 28.I.I530; Arquivo Nacionalda Torre do Tombo, Lisboa (ANTT), Corpo Chronologico, I-44-70; BRASIO,I,PP. 540-54I. These bracelets made a strong impression on the Portuguese andfueled their fruitless search for the reputedly fabulous silver mines in other"Mountains of Silver" near Cambambe on the Kwanza river. See, for one account,Alfredo DE ALBUQUERQUE FELNER, Angola: apontamentos sobre a ocupa,do einicio do estabelecimentodos Portugueses no Congo, Angola e Benguela, estraidosde documentoshistoricos, Coimbra, I933, P. 90.


19/30

I38 JOSEPH C. MILLERnot exclude the Carmona highlands as those mentioned by Lopes in thiscontext.Lopes gave a single specific detail in the midst of his otherwise vagueand imprecise description which confirmed the location of these "Moun-tains of Silver" in Matamba and lent credence to his description of thisremote region. The eastern boundary of the province, he said, crosseda river "Coari" at one point, almost certainly the Kwale which rises justeast of the Carmona highlands.1 His further attempt to place "Moun-tains of the Moon" south of Matamba also coincides with a real geo-graphical feature, a long line of cliffs called Katanya which separatesthe Matamba highlands from the low Baixa de Cassanje to the southand east.A simple correction for a systematic error, present in nearly allsixteenth century maps of Kongo, converts other apparently incoherentdata in Lopes' account to a fairly accurate description of now-familiarmountains and rivers, all located on a line leading from Matamba tothe Luhanda salt pans. European cartographers did not realize thatmost rivers in Angola, which ran from east to west near the coast, camefrom the southeast or south in the higher elevations of the interior.2They therefore calculated the location of distant landmarks in the farinterior known only from hearsay on the basis of an erroneous assumptionthat the watercourses, which their informants used to describe theseregions, maintained their east to west orientation. This error causedthem to misplace geographical features by 450 to goo angles from thepoint where the rivers changed direction, so that northeast-flowingrivers like the Kwango appeared to flow northwest or even west.Mountains believed situated east of a known location at the coast oftenturned out to lie southeast or south.The Lopes passage which exhibits a close correspondence to realgeographical features, making allowance for the systematic error inorientation of 450 to 900, occurs in the context of defining the easternKongo border:

"One may draw a line southward [. . .] to the mountain of Crystal which risesvery high to uninhabited summits [. . .]. Further on, the line passes the so-calledmountains of the Sun, due to their great height, which are nevertheless nevercovered by snow; they are infertile, and bare and destitute of trees. To the leftrise other mountains called the Mountains of Saltpeter since that substance isfound there in abundance. Finally, one crosses the river Berbela, which comesfrom the first lake [of the Nile].""

i. BAL, P. 39; the name stands out amidst numerous other less authenticdetails. Cf. H. CAPELLOand R. IVENS (From Benguella to the Territoryof the Yacca[trans. A. Elwes], London, I882, II, p. 52) who confirmed this location for Matamba.The center of the original kingdom apparently lay northwest of the later statebuilt in the I630's by Nzinga.2. Maps of Angola retained this error through the i850's.3. BAL, P. 36; translation of the author.


20/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" 139The "line" to which Lopes referredappears to have marked the traderoute from Sao Salvador through Matamba and on to the Baixa deCassanjesalt pans.The "Mountainsof Crystal" in this section appearedto be the samehighlands designated as the Matamba "Mountainsof Silver" since thetwo names could occur almost interchangeably, and since Lopes else-where remarked that the "Mountainsof Crystal" lay some four hundredand fifty "miles"east of the mouth of the Rio das BarreirasVermelhas,probably the Chiloango river north of the mouth of the Congo.' Inmodern measures,and still allowing for the probableerror n the bearingof interior landmarks in relation to the coast, this distance wouldcorrespondto 330 to 380 miles2andwould follow an arc southeast ratherthan the specified easterly direction. Within reasonable limits ofaccuracy for the time and place, such a line would reach the Carmonahighlands and Matamba at approximately the place where these"Mountainsof Crystal"should rise.3The so-called "Mountainsof the Sun" probably correspond to thesame barren cliffs which rise abruptly out of the Kambo river basin andwhich Lopes elsewhere called the "Mountains of the Moon."4 Thedescription fits this escarpment in detail, since further south it formsthe right side of a pass between the Quela highlands and the YongoHills, which would correspond to Lopes' "Mountains of Saltpeter."The Yongo Hills lie between the Kwango and lower Lui rivers, justbeyond the extensive salt pans of the Luhanda and its affluent, theKihongwa. The Kihongwa river, which actually drains the salt pans,takes its name from the Kimbundu word for saltpeter, and very likelyexplains Lopes' terms for the region.5Lopes' "Berbela," finally, can refer only to the Kwango, which salt

i. Identification based on BAL, pp. 66, 149, n. 75.2. The Italian mile varied greatly, from I 250 meters to I 460 meters or more;see BAL, p. I52, n. 5.3. Although Lopes-Pigafetta did not specifically mention "Mountains ofCrystal" in the other description of Matamba, they did add that the country therewas rich in crystal, thus implying a connection; BAL, P. 39.4. A possible linguistic connection may link the name "Mountains of the Sun"with the Kimbundu words for sunlight (mwanya) and the sun (Iwanya); J. PEREIRADO NASCIMENTO, Diccionario Portuguez-Kimbundu, Huilla, I903, P. IOO. Thevariation in the initial consonant of these related words makes it likely that thenineteenth century name for the same escarpment, Katanya, may once havemeant "Mountains of the Sun;" see CAPELLO and IVENS, II, 15; testimonies ofSousa Calunga, 20.7.I969 and 22.7.I969 confirm the name. An initial t- appearsin the Kikongo root for sun, -tangwa (ntangwa, ditangwa, etc.); BENTLEY, I, P. 210.5. The Kimbundu word is mongwa; Antonio DE Assis, Jr., Diciondrio Kim-bundu-Portugues, Luanda, n.d., p. 136. A similar linguistic relationship may linkthe root for saltpeter and the name of the Yongo Hills. If the name Yongo camefrom mongwa by shifting the initial consonant and shortening the final -wa to -o,"Yongo" may have meant, literally, "Mountains of Saltpeter." The same rootoccurred elsewhere in toponyms associated with sources of salt; the Portugueseonce defeated the owner of the famous Kisama salt deposits at a site called "Agoa-caiongo" or "Angoykayongo" (Anonymous account in CORDEIRO, IV, and RAVEN-STEIN, p. 37).


21/30

140 JOSEPH C. MILLERtraders would have known only by hearsay since it ran east of thetermination of this trade route.' Real knowledge of these regionsobviously ended at the salt pans, since the vagueness of Lopes' furtherdata evidently allowed Pigafetta to replace facts with the semi-mythicalBerbela and even the great interior lake "Aquelunda," from which theriver supposedly flowed.2 All of Lopes' definite information on theregions east of Kongo, therefore, related to a single trade route whichbegan in Matamba, dropped down into the lowlands of the Baixa deCassanje near the Kambo river, passed below the Katanya cliffs, andended at the Kihongwa, where local residents processed and sold saltfrom the salt marshes located there.

The small amount of information available on the sixteenth centuryhistory of Matamba seems to indicate that a dispute over control of thistrade route might have brought rulers there into conflict with the maniKongo. Kongo kings had claimed suzerainty over Matamba since atleast I530, when the name first appeared in the list of conquered provincesappended to each king's name.3 Rulers in Matamba, believed to havebeen females, soon attempted to make direct contact with the Portuguese,presumably with the intent of escaping Kongo domination by evadingthe kings in Sao Salvador who stood between them and the Europeans.A Matamba queen around the middle of the century sent ambassadorsto request missionaries and instruction in Christianity.4 This embassymay have indicated the first stirrings of Matamba revolt against its

i. Various Europeans may have attempted to identify different African riverswith the "Berbela." The conclusion offered here does not invalidate the possibilitythat the name may have referred at other times to the Nkisi or Serbele. SeeI. STRUYF, "Migrations des Bapende et des Bambunda," Congo, I, 5, 1931, p. 667.2. It may not be excessive to suggest that these same traders also created thewidespread legend of the great lake "Aquelunda" out of rumors they heard of oneof the small lakes in Songo territory not far from where the Lui took its source.A small lake, now called Kalunga, lies between the Jombo and Luhando riversthere. This vague knowledge, together with European assumptions that largerivers known only along their lower courses began in some sort of interior lake,could have accounted for this legend. The prefix on the name "Aquelunda"also locates the lake near the sources of the Kwango, since it is distinctively Um-bundu (oki- or oci-), the language spoken in the southern highlands where theriver begins. Lopes confirmed this location when he noted that the lake "Aque-lunda" lay near the home of the Malemba people (BAL, P. 36); other sources locatethe Malemba south of Hako in the Ovimbundu (Umbundu-speaking) regionsbeyond the Kwanza. All those hints agree in pointing to the area near the sourceof the Kwango, the "Berbela" which Lopes said flowed from this lake.3. Letter from el-Rei do Congo to D. Joao III, 28.1.1530, ANTT, Corpo Chro-nologico, I-44-70; BRASIO, I, PP. 540-544. Mentioned again in letter from el-Reido Congo (D. Afonso) to Paulo III, 21.2.1535, ANTT, Corpo Chronologico, I-3-6and I-48-4; BRASIO, II, PP. 38-40. The Kongo kings continued to claim that theycontrolled Matamba long after it became independent; see, for example, lettersfrom D. Alvaro IV (rei do Congo) to Geral da Companhia de Jesus, 25.10.1632,Arquivo Romano da Sociedade de lesus (ARSI), Lus. Cod. 55, fos I25-125 VS;BRAsIo, VIII, pp. 199-200; also D. Garcia II (rei do Congo) to Joao Mauricio deNassau, I2.5.I642, Algemein Rijksarchief (The Hague), Raporten en Breeven:Congo, I642-I645, WIC, Brazilee no. 58; trans. in BRASIO, VIII, PP. 584-587.4. Report of Sebastiao de Souto (ca. i56i), BNL, MS. 3767, fos 9-12; BRAsio,II, PP. 477-481.


22/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I4Kongo overlords, since a ruler of the regionembarkedshortly afterwardson open rebellion, proclaiming himself independent under the title of"Kombolo." Kombolo became a great warrior and conquered manynew provinces for Matamba, especially lands formerly held by a kingknown as "Bututa."'lKombolo's conquest of "Bututa" supports the hypothesis thatcontrol over the trade route to the Luhanda salt pans figured in theexpansion of Matamba. Butatu a Kuhongo kwa Wutu wa Nyama wasa very ancient king who ruled the Pende occupyingthe Baixa de Cassanjeat that time.2 Although modern traditions recall little more thanButatu's title, this king probably based his power on control of the salttrade from the Luhanda. Matamba appears to have wrested thisvaluable source of wealth from him during its expansionary phase andcould have coincidentally attempted to dominate the western end ofthe same trade route leading to Kongo. The date of these events, whileuncertain, coincides roughly with the I568 "Jaga" invasions, since the"king of Matamba"had already acquireda reputationas a great conquerorby the I58o'S.3 The known facts do not prove that invaders fromMatamba participated in the attack of I568, but all available data fitthe hypothesis that Kombolo's armies may have to assume responsi-bility for deeds formerly laid at the feet of the "Jaga."

A second, equally plausible non-Kongo candidate for "Jaga" emergesfrom the hypothesis that trade provided the casus belli for the I568attack on the mani Kongo. The provinces northeast of Sao Salvadorhad troubled the mani Kongo since at least the late fifteenth centurywhen a Kongo ruler requested Portuguese assistance in an expeditionagainst the peoples near the "lake from which the river Zaire [Congo]flows."4 He probably intended the proposed expedition to extendhis control over a well-established trade route, then dominated by therulers who lived upstream, leading to the Tyo near Stanley Pool.5I. CAVAZZI,, P. 22.2. Testimonies of Sokola; Kasanje ka Nzaje; Domingos Vaz; Sousa Calunga,i6.6.1969. A somewhat longer discussion of Butatu appears in MILLER disser-tation), pp. I63-I65. Evidence for Butatu's former importance takes the form ofother political titles derived from his own and from the fact that his name appearsat all in the very sparse traditions from this early period.3. Pero RODRIGUES, "Hist6ria da residencia dos Padres da Companhia deJesus em Angola, e cousas tocantes ao reino, e conquista,"' ARSI, Lus. Cod. io6,fos 29-39; Arquivos de Angola, s6r. II, XVII, nos. 67-70, I960, pp. I89-216; alsoArquivo Hist6rico de Portugal, II, I936; as Uma hist6ria inddita de Angola(ed. P. Francisco Rodrigues), Lisboa, I936; and in Hist6ria da Companhia de Jesusna Assistencia de Portugal, Porto, I939, II, vol. II; BRASIO, V, PP. 546-58I. Seealso the rela(do of Garcia Mendes Castello Branco, I6.I.I620, BAL, 51-VIII-25,fOs 79-85; BRASIO, VI, PP. 437-445, and CORDEIRO,I.4. Joao DE BARROS, Da Asia, Ia decada, liv. III, cap. 9, p. II3 (i945 ed.);the date was probably June 149 I.5. Traces of this ancient network of trade routes remained even in the twentiethcentury; these radiated outward from the pre-European Kongo capital (mbanzaKongo) like the spokes on a wheel, touching nearly all provinces of the kingdom.Regional centers at the ends of the spokes sent cloths, iron, pottery, carved wood,


23/30

I42 JOSEPH C. MILLERThe Stanley Pool trade route acquired added importance for the

Kongo kings soon after the Portuguese began to buy quantities of theslaves and ivory coming from the upper Congo river. The mani Kongoevidently wished to protect their own position in this trade by preventingEuropean exploration to the northeast, but the Portuguese resistedthese controls for several reasons. In addition to the obvious economicgoals which attracted them, the Portuguese hoped to contact the legend-ary Prester John of the Indies by opening a water route to his kingdomwhich they believed lay not far beyond the eastern borders of Kongo.'Their interests had already resulted in some familiarity with the geo-graphy of the Stanley Pool area by I49I,2 less than a decade after theirfirst ships had sailed into the lower river, and fairly accurate knowledgehad reached Lisbon by the I520'S. Increasing penetration during thelatter period had brought the Portuguese into conflict with unnamed"rebellious" peoples living to the northeast, probably those who con-trolled the growing commerce from Pumbo (as the Stanley Poolregion was known) and who would have resisted European efforts to dis-place them.3Kongo dynastic struggles in the sixteenth century revolved aroundcontrol over this trade route and its southwestern extension to the sea.Although pretenders to the Kongo throne ostensibly fought over theissue of the royal family's conversion to Christianity under the kingNzinga a Nkuwu (or Joao), economic interests seem to have played arole as well, since his most powerful opponents came from Nsundi, theprovince nearest the trading peoples at Stanley Pool and the area wherethe trade route passed. Conflict between the king and those whocontrolled this commerce came into the open in I504-I506 when Nzingaa Nkuwu found himself facing the combined opposition of the merchants

and other articles to the central king's market near his capital; the king thenredistributed these commodities, supplying each part of his realm with productsfrom the other provinces. The most important of these routes ran from mbanzaKongo northeast through Kimpesi to the Stanley Pool. See Robert L. WAN-NYN, L'art ancien du mttal au Bas-Congo, Champles, ig6i, pp. I8-2o. Linguisticdata also support the importance of this route to the northeast. One of thenames used for the Stanley Pool markets, "Pumbo," became the commonword for "trader" (pumbeiro in its Portuguese form), or "an individual atthe Pumbo." Since this linguistic development occurred very early in thesixteenth century, the northeastern trade route miust have been very importantat that time; see Willy BAL, "Portugais pombeiro, commergant ambulant dusertao," Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale (Napoli), VII, 2, I965, pp. I35-136.i. In conformity with sixteenth century misconceptions about African geo-graphy (see above), they believed that Abyssinia lay just beyond the eastern limitsof Kongo, near the sources of the Nile in the "Mountains of the Moon;" see LeiteDE FARIA, "Uma relag.o de Rui de Pina sobre o Congo escrita em 1492," Studia,I9, I966, P. 249.2. DE BARROS.3. Balthasar de Castro to JoaLo II, 15.15.1526, ANTT, Gav. 20-4-2I; BRASIO,I, pp. 485-487; also letter from Manoel Pacheco to D. Joao III, 28.3.1536, ANTT,Gav. 20-5-24; BRASIO, II, PP. 58-60.


24/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I43

Pumbo(Stanley Pool)C,~~~~~~~~I,

NUNDI( ~1) Ml,PAGU

SOYO Sao Salvador N

lpj 0

0~~~~~~~~~~

0~~~~~~

A MAtEtXMALOVIMBUNDU\ X

____ MajorTrade RoutesMAP 3. - Kongo and surrounding regions in the sixteenth century

involved in the trade and the leaders of Mpangu, Soyo, and Nsundi,the three provinces where the Pumbo trade route ran.'The Nsundi leader of the opposition to Nzinga a Nkuwu, Afonso,became mani Kongo in I506 and quickly introduced policies favorableto the European sponsors who had aided his quest for power, presumablythe traders who hoped to maintain their contacts with Pumbo throughi. Most scholars have emphasized the religious dimension of these conflictswhich, while real enough, seems to correspond in this case to a pattern based oneconomic interests. Cf. Jan VANSINA, Kingdoms of the Savanna, Madison, I966,p. 46; also Georges BALANDIER, Daily Life in the Kingdom of the Kongo (trans.Helen Weaver), New York, I969, PP. 48-49. I have made no attempt in thelimited space available, to discuss the themes of general Kongo history, but drawselectively on the data which support the arguments raised in connection withthe "Jaga."


25/30

144 JOSEPH C. MILLERAfonso's influence in his home province. He embraced their religionand launched an assault against traditional Kongo religious beliefs,destroying the sacred houses at his capital, and placed the slave tradeon a firmer basis by allowing Portuguese merchants to follow the trailsall the way to Stanley Pool.Afonso's arrangement with the local European trading communitydid not extend to their official sponsors in Portugal who had designsof their own on the northeastern trade route. His hostility to Lisbonapparently placed him in alliance with the Sao Tome slave traders intheir continuous disputes with the representatives of their king, sinceAfonso and his local European collaborators opposed further Lisbon-sponsored exploration to the northeast as soon as they had secureddomestic control in Kongo. They probably feared that royal agentsmight interfere with their domination of the slave, ivory, and othercommerce from Pumbo. Afonso, many of this nobles, and all thePortuguese traders in Sao Salvador, for example, opposed KingManoel's I520 attempt to send an expedition up the Congo river.' Theysucceeded to the extent that the leader of the frustrated official expedi-tion, Balthasar de Castro, still remained in So Salvador in I536 beggingAfonso to allow him to proceed.The details of the Lisbon proposal for the I520 expedition revealthe economic strategies of the two parties and underline the crucialimportance of the trade route to Afonso's fortunes. The Portugueseking's advisors intended to develop a waterborne trade route up theriver (since they did not know of the rapids which blocked navigationimmediately below Stanley Pool) in the hope of bypassing the land-based commercial system controlled by Afonso and his allies. Theexpedition intended, for example, to build bergantines to carry goodson the unknown stretches of the river above the lower falls then known.2The Lisbon proponents of this plan justified the necessary expense onthe basis of the reputedly large numbers of slaves, some 4 000 to 5 ooo peryear, which came from the northeast.3 Their plan made good sensestrategically since it capitalized on Portuguese superiority in maritimetechnology to overcome the mani Kongo's strength on the land. Thepolitical tensions between Afonso and Lisbon which clustered aroundthe great northeastern trade route continued the economic rivalrieswhich had earlier propelled Afonso to the kingship.Persistent reports of wars near Pumbo against the "Anziko" or Tyo(Teke) during the I560's provided further indications of the importance

i. BONTINCK,p. xxi; Damiao DE GOES, Chr6nicadofelicissimo rey Dom Manuel,Coimbra, I949-I953, IV, P. I50; J. OSORIO, Da vida e feitos de el-Rei D. Manoel(trans. Joaquim Pereira), Porto, I944, II, pp. 256-258.

2. Letter from Manoel Pacheco to D. Joao III, 28.3.I537, ANTT, Gav. 20-5-24;BRASIO, II, PP. 57-60.3. Philip D. CURTIN (The Atlantic Slave Trade, Madison, i969, p. ioi) suggeststhat this estimate was either atypical or far too high. The actual figures matterless in this context, of course, then Portuguese beliefs about them.


26/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I45of the northeastern region to the Kongo kings.' Since these troublesreached serious proportionsin I567, when two Kongo kings died withina year in wars against people believed to have been Tyo,2 the growingtensions in this quarter could have led directly to the I568 "'Jaga"invasion of Sao Salvador. If these hostilities, in fact, formed a preludeto the I568 attack, the unknown warriors who gave rise to the myth ofthe "Jaga" may have been Tyo. A century later, the Dutch identifiedthe legendary qualities of the "Jaga" with the still barely-known"Anziko."3 Competition over control of the northeastern trade routeprovided more than sufficient motivation for Tyo conquests intendedto establish direct commerciallinks with the Europeans.Whichever explanation one accepts, Matamba or Tyo, for the possi-bility of alien participationin the I568 "Jaga" invasion, the more likelyhypothesis that one or more Kongo provinces led or supported theattack against the mani Kongo explains several otherwise puzzlingaspects of these events. Manypeople in Kongo, both provincialnobilityand common folk, abandoned their loyalty to the mani Kongo duringthe course of the sixteenth century. Ideologicaldisputesover the court'sadoption of Christianity4and political fragmentation resulting from theslave trade5 heightened disunity at the same time as Kongo kingsattempted to enforce a greater degree of centralized control than everbefore.6 The increased pressure on local nobles and royal attemptsto extend Kongo control to neighboringregions had already provokedseveral wars by the I560's. Along the southern Kongo border, thengola a kiluanje, an increasingly powerful Mbundu king, had becomemore and more assertive until a I556 war between his armies and thoseof the mani Kongo brought tensions to a peak.7Evidence of disaffection in the integral Kongo provinces appearedatabout the same time. The mani Kongo Diogo I (ca. I545-I56I) foughtrebellions led by a pretender to his title but supported by many localchiefs8 in both Mbata and Nsundi. The similarity of this alignmentto the coalition of provincial rulers who had backed Afonso's I5o6 riseto power suggests that the wealth of the northeasterntrade route mayonce again have generatedopposition to the king at SaoSalvador. If so,the I556-I567 wars which caused the deaths of two mani Kongo mightwell have involved rebellious Kongo subjects in addition to, or eveninstead of, the Tyo. The first appearance of the "Jaga" in Mbata,

I. J. CUVELIER, "Contribution i l'histoire du Bas-Congo," Bulletin des Seances(Institut Royal Colonial Belge), XIX, 1948, pp. 897-899 and sources cited.2. Identification has been based on the word cucu, believed to represent theTyo king's title, makoko;see BAL, P. 104.3. For example, see DAPPER, II, pp. 2I6-217.4. BALANDIER, PP. 46-47.5. VANSINA, PP. 52-53.6. BALANDIER, PP. 46-58.7. FELNER, Pp. 102-IO3.8. BALANDIER, pp. 65-67; VANSINA, p. 6o.To


27/30

I46 JOSEPH C. MILLERin the heart of this region, and the later presence of a class of mercenarywarriors known as majaka in the same area (in Nsundi) make this a likelypossibility.1Lopes' account of the "Jaga" invasion, in fact, makes sense onlyunder the assumption that local Kongo peoples attacked their ownking at Sao Salvador. Lopes' only concrete information concerned anassault against the mani Kongo and made no mention of wars directedagainst his subjects. The strategy of Alvaro's Portuguese rescuersweighs heavily in favor of this interpretation, since Gouveia preparedthe king to meet future threats from the "Jaga" by erecting a stout wallaround his capital, an obvious defense against not only foreign invadersbut also his own subjects.2 The civil war hypothesis would also accountfor the total disappearance of the "Jaga" after Gouveia's campaigns,since native Kongo subjects in rebellion would have left few culturaltraces of their presence. Policies subsequently adopted by the maniKongo Alvaro also seemed to show his fear of domestic rebellion, sincehe refused to permit most provincial governors to possess arquebuses.3In this case, the "invasion" should more accurately be described as acivil war.The opposition of the mani Kongo and many Portuguese residentsin Kongo to close regulation from Lisbon explains the remaining ambigu-ities in the story of the "Jaga" invasion: the striking lack of documen-tation and the sudden interest of the royal authorities in sending severalhundred men to a region where they had previously resisted committingsubstantial sums of money. Kongo kings, from Afonso's last yearsthrough his successors up to 1568, had to steer a precarious course be-tween threats from Europe, rebellion by their own subjects, and pressuresfrom local Portuguese interests. In this welter of conflicting demands,Lisbon's desires generally received with little attention and officials atthe Portuguese king's court became increasingly dissatisfied with thekings who ruled in Sao Salvador. Their frustrations led directly toGouveia's rescue mission and indirectly created the "Jaga" myth as asmokescreen to hide the fact that they had engineered the restorationof an unwanted king to the throne.Several factors contributed to misunderstandings between Lisbon

i. DE CADORNEGA, III, Pp. I90-19I, 278; CAVAZZI, I, Pp. i8, 252; letter fromPadre Jcr6nimo de Montesarchio to Padre Boaventura de Sorrento, 22.3.I650;Arquivo da Propaganda Fide, Scrittere riferite nelle congregazioni generali, vol. 249,fos 8I-82 vs; BRASIO, X, PP. 483-487. The mani Nsundi used his majaka to attackthe Kongo king Antonio I (once again?) in I665, this time with results which didnot approach the legendary successes of the -"Jaga" but which perhaps sprangfrom the same economic factors which had divided Kongo in the 1560's.2. Carta regia to Francisco de Gouveia, I9.3.I574; BRASIO, III, Pp. I20-121.3. Alvaro permitted only the duke of Mbata to retain a corps of arquebusiers,ostensibly to thwart the return of the "Jaga" from the eastern banks of the Nilebeyond the "Mountains of the Sun;" BAL, P. 70. The location of Mbata onthe trade route to Stanley Pool suggests that Alvaro may have directed thisprecaution against the Tyo.


28/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" 147and Salvador throughout the sixteenth century. Portuguese at theKongo court tended to misrepresent events there in their reports toEurope, portraying developments exclusively in terms of their effectson the various European factions and distorting the true dimensionsof Kongo politics. Officials in Lisbon consequently blamed the Kongokings for the failures of their own subjects. Missionaries, for example,consistently appropriated domestic Kongo issues to vilify each other,with the Jesuits most often in conflict with the regular religious orders.These conditions intensified especially after D. Diogo (mani Kongofrom ca. I545 to 156I), who became something of a bdte noire in officialLisbon circles.'

Specific issues which contributed to the deterioration of D. Diogo'srelations with Lisbon included his attempts to circumvent the hostilePortuguese court by opening direct diplomatic relations with the Papacy.2He further worsened the situation when he tried to expel all Portuguesefrom Kongo in I555. Spreading resentment of the Europeans turnedto open violence in I56i when disorders attending the accession of thenext maui Kongo, D. Bernardo, caused the deaths of several Portuguese.3Economic factors simultaneously worsened Portuguese-Kongo rela-tions and increased Lisbon's desires to reestablish firm control at SaoSalvador. As traders found conditions there less and less conduciveto profitable slave trading, they fled south in increasing numbers to theMbundu region where they initiated more satisfactory commercialcontacts with the ngola a kiluanje.4 Joao III shifted his policy to activesupport of the Mbundu king during the 1550's, and Paulo Dias de Novaes'I56o mission to the court of the ngola a kiluanje indicated Lisbon'swillingness to seek new African allies to replace the mani Kongo.5The contradictory impulse to regain control in Kongo came from thelong-standing Portuguese goal of discovering the reputedly rich minesbelieved to lie somewhere in Kongo. The silver bracelets which maniKongo Afonso had sent to D. Joao III in I530 had prompted a Portugueseexpedition in 1536 to search for the legendary "Mountains of Silver"from which the metal reportedly had come. Afonso had refused onthat occasion to allow prospecting of any kind, but renewed reports ofmineral wealth in the I56o's rekindled Portuguese hopes and broughtthe issue to a head once again.6 When Paulo Dias de Novaes returnedi. The literature on these disputes is enormous; for the specific effect noted,see letter from Padre Jorge Vas to Capitao de Sao Tomd, II.2.1549, ANTT, CorpoChronologico, I-82-48; BRASIO, II, pp. 228-230. Cf. BALANDIER, pp. 65-67.2. Letter from Comendador-mor to Joao III, I8-II.I553, ANTT, Corpo Chro-nologico, 9I-48; BRASIO, II, PP. 308-3IO. Lisbon blocked Kongo embassies sentto the Vatican in I532, I539, and 1552-I553.3. VANSINA, p. 66.4. FELNER (PP. 97-IIO) gives a convincing analysis of Portuguese policy atthis juncture.5. Alvara of el-Rei D. Joao III (ca. I553), ANTT, C.M., 4-463; BRASIO, II,PP. 323-324.6. Ant6nio Vieira brought his plan for exploiting the Bembe copper mines to


29/30

I48 JOSEPH C. MILLERto Lisbon in 1565, he must have indicated that the Mbunduking seemedlikely to allow no easier access to the mines in his territories than themani Kongo to those in the north. All these developments would havestimulated Lisbon's search for a way to circumvent the recalcitrantkings at Sao Salvador.The bad news from Africa combined with pressuresat the Portuguesecourt to force armed intervention in Kongo. Martim Gonvalves daCamara, president of the influential Mesa de Consciencia e Ordens,representeda powerfulLisbon faction which favored an agressive Kongopolicy. Shortly after Dias de Novaes' return, he wrote a letter recom-mending that the regent (then ruling during the minority of DomSebastiao) take positive steps to restore "order;" by this he meantconditions favorable to peaceful and profitable Portuguese commerce.'His advice came on the heels of Dias de Novaes' discouraging reportfrom Luanda and the hopeful data on the existence of rich copper minesin Kongo. Combinedwith the well-knownpredilectionsof Dom Sebas-tiao and his advisors for adventurous overseas projects,2it could wellhave led them to welcome, if not actively promote, an opportunity toreimpose Portuguese authority in Kongo by rescuing the beleagueredAlvaro from his exile on the Congoriver island and then restoringhimas a puppet king loyal to Europeanadvisors.The hypothesis that Gouveia intervened for such purposes explainswhy the "Jaga" invasion ultimately benefited the Portuguese at leastas much as it helped the restored Kongo monarchs. An English traderwho travelled through the area in I597-98 noted that the mani Kongoof that time (AlvaroII) had surroundedhimselfwith Portugueseadvisorswhom he greatly favored.3 Lopes remarked somewhat earlier thatmany of Gouveia's companionshad stayed in Kongo after their campaignhad ended, where they became rich and prosperous.4 Since Lopes, theoriginatorof the myth of the "Jaga,"was himselfa Portuguesemerchantand one of the prime beneficiaries of the restoration of Portuguesecontrol, he had good reason to obscure this aspect of the Portugueserole in the "Jaga" assault. If Sebastiao and his advisors in Lisbonused Kongo civil disturbancesof the 156o's to impose a king favorableto Portuguese interests, the European coup may have created a need

the attention of Lisbon officials in I566; see letters from Ant6nio Vieira to DonaCatarina, I8.4.I566, ANTT, Corpo Chronologico, I-IO7-I20; to el-Rei de Portugal(i566), ANTT, C.M. I-219; idem, ANTT, C.V. I, doc. #I30; all in BRakSIO, I,pp. 543-548.i. A. DE MAGALIPEs BASTO, "Notula documental sobre a acvao dos Portuguesesno Congo," Primeiro Congresso da Hist6ria da Expansdo Portuguesa no Mundo,4a Secg.o (Os Portugueses em Africa), Lisboa, 1938, I, pp. 123-I29; also BRASIO,II, pp. 559-560.2. Dom Sebastiao met his death a decade later in the most adventurous anddisastrous project of all, near Ceuta in I578.3. Anthony KNIVET in RAVENSTEIN, p. 98.4. BAL, Pp. 109-IIO.


30/30

REQUIEM FOR THE "JAGA" I49for secrecy which contributed to the total lack of solid documentationon both the "Jaga" and the Portuguese invasions.While acknowledging the tentative nature of these conclusions,unsettled Kongo domestic politics during the I560's suggest that the"Jaga" invasion was in fact an attack against the mani Kongo by oneor more local enemies,' probably the inhabitants of Nsundi and Mbataaided by the Tyo or, less likely, by Matamba. The Kongo kings' badreputation in Portugal coincidentally prompted Lisbon to appropriatethe rebellion as a means of restoring firm Portuguese control at SaoSalvador, which Gouveia accomplished from I570 to I574. Diplomaticprotocol and political realities guaranteed that the Portuguese role inthe "invasion" did not receive publicity. Lisbon, in fact, may neverhave correctly understood events in Kongo, as Alvaro could havefabricated the myth of the "Jaga" himself in order to draw the Portugueseinto the conflict on his side. Whatever the origin of the myth of the"Jaga," which still remains uncertain, the story fit perfectly with six-teenth century European misconceptions about Africa and Africans.Its adaptability to the purposes of later Portuguese in Africa gave ita long and vigorous history which may now be laid respectfully to rest.

J. C. MILLER - Requiempour les z Jaga n.Les (( eroces Jaga ' qui, d'apres tous les historiensclassiques du Kongo, ont envahi ce royaume, ainsi que celui de Ngola, aux XvIe et XvIfe siecles,n'ont jamais existg. II s'agit, en fait, d'une sorte de legende d'origine portugaise et non appuy6esur des faits. La decadence du royaume de Kongo s'explique par des causes internes. L'expli-cation par une invasion etrang&e resulte de l'image de l'Afrique prevalente chez les Portugaisdu xVIe siecle, et d'autant mieux acceptee qu'elle servait leurs interets.

i. Professor David Birmingham, of the School of Oriental and African Studies,University of London, has independently reached this conclusion with regard tothe nature of the I568 disturbances in Kongo, although for somewhat differentreasons; see his "Traditions, Migrations and Cannibalism: an Entertainment onthe Problems of Historical Evidence," unpublished paper presented to the HistorySeminar, University of East Africa, Dar es-Salaam, I97I, p. 5.

requiem for the jaga - joseph miller

Documents