Andrew Battell

“ And surely it was the export slave trade, created by the cupidity of the Portuguese, but shared in by Dutch, French and English, which undermined the prosperity of the country, and decimated its population. And the missionaries never raised a protest against this traffic, although it was against the tenets of their Church,386 for they profited by it. The only thing which they did for the wretched slaves was to endeavour to secure, as far as possible, that they should not fall into the hands of heretics; so that at least their souls might be saved, whatever became of their bodies. ”

“ And every month there is a meeting of the kindred of the dead man, which mourn and sing doleful songs at his grave for the space of three days, and kill many goats, and pour their blood upon his grave, and palm-wine also; and use this ceremony as long as any of their kindred be alive.112 But those that have no kindred think themselves unhappy men, because they have none to mourn for them when they die. These people are very kind one to another in their health; but in their sickness they do abhor one another, and will shun their company. ”

“ In the town of Mani Mayombe is a fetish called Maramba, and it standeth in a high basket made like a hive, and over it a great house. This is their house of religion, for they believe only in him, and keep his laws, and carry his reliques always with them. They are for the most part witches, and use their witchcraft for hunting and killing of elephants and fishing, and helping of sick and lame men, and to forecast journeys, whether they shall speed well or evil. By this Maramba are all thefts and murders tried, for in this country they use sometimes to bewitch one another to death. ”

“ The only attempt at geographical exploration was that of José de Roza, who left Masanganu in 1678, for the lower Zambezi, but turned back after only a few days’ journey, owing to the hostility of the natives.
At the end of the seventeenth century, Portugal held sway over a territory of over fifty thousand square miles; she maintained fortified posts far inland; her traders had penetrated as far as the upper Kwanza; and on the coast she held the prosperous cities of S. Paulo de Luandu and S. Filippe de Benguella. But this prosperity depended almost exclusively upon the slave trade. ”

“ This country is very rich. The king had great store of gold291 sent him from this place: the time that I was there, the King of Angica had a great city at Masangana; which city Paulas Dias, Governor of Angola, took and situated there; and finding hard by it great store of gold, fortified it with four forts, and walled a great circuit of ground round about it, and within that wall; now the Portugals do build a city, and from this city every day they do war against [Pg 101] the King of Angica, and have burnt a great part of his kingdom. ”

“ These wear a collar about their neck in token of slavery, until they bring an enemy’s head slain in battle, and then they are uncollared, free’d, and dignified with the title of soldiers; if one of them runs away he is killed and eaten; so that, hemmed in betwixt hope and fear, they grow very resolute and adventurous, their collars breeding shame, disdain, and desperate fury, till they redeem their freedom as you have heard. ”

“ The Moors do watch which way they come, and as soon as the elephants are at meat, they dig great holes in the ground, and cover them with sticks, and then they cover the pits with earth; and when they have made all ready they go to the elephants and shoot at them with their arrows; and as soon as the elephants feel themselves hurt, they run at whatsoever they see before them, following after the Blackamores that chase them. Then they fall into the deep pits where, after they are once in, they cannot get out.
The Moors of Angola are as black as jet; they are men of good stature ”

“ Horse-tails are great jewels, and two slaves will be given for one tail, which commonly they bring from the River of Plate, where horses are exceedingly increased and grown wild. They will, by firing the grass round about, hem the horses about with a fiery circle, the fire still straightening and growing nearer till they have advantage enough to kill them. Thus have the European cattle, of horse and kine, so increased in the other world, as they spare not to kill the one for their hides, and the other for their tails. ”

“ When King Ngola nzinga mbandi heard of the arrival of João Corrêa de Souza, the new Governor, in September, 1621,472 he at once sent his sister to Luandu to arrange terms of peace. This woman, then about forty years of age, proved an excellent diplomatist. When the Governor alluded to the payment of tribute, she declared that tribute could only be demanded from a conquered people, and the treaty ultimately signed was one of reciprocity: fugitive slaves were to be surrendered, and assistance to be given against common enemies. ”

“ The Portugals do mark them as we do sheep, with a hot iron, which the Moors call crimbo.280 The poor slaves stand all in a row one by another, and sing Mundele que sumbela he Carey ha belelelle,281 and thus the poor rogues are beguiled, for the Portugals make them believe that they that have not the mark is not accounted a man of any account in Brazil or in Portugal, and thus they bring the poor Moors to be in a most damnable bondage under the cover of love.
The country of Angola yieldeth no stone, and very little wood: the Moors do make their houses all covered with earth. ”

“ Thus, being all alone, I bethought myself that if the negroes did take me in the woods they would kill me: wherefore, thinking to make a better end among the Portugals and Mulatoes, I came presently out of the wood with my musket ready charged, making none account of my life. But the captain, thinking that we had been all twelve together, called to me and said: “Fellow Soldier, I have the governor’s pardon; if you will yield yourselves you shall have no hurt.” I, having my musket ready, answered the captain that I was an Englishman, and had served six years at Massangono, in great misery ”

“ Of the domestic wars corned on by the King, we know next to nothing. Angola and Matamba seem to have been virtually independent in his day, though the island of Luandu, with its valuable cowry-fishery, was held by him and his successors until 1649. He conquered, however, Mpanzu-alumbu (Mpangu-lunga?) 329 on the lower Kongo, a district inhabited by a predatory tribe.330 That his successes in these “wars” were due to his Portuguese mercenaries and their fire-locks is a matter of course. ”

“ They would have proved still more satisfactory had the Portuguese thought it worth while to produce a trustworthy map of a colony of which they had claimed possession during four centuries. It seems almost incredible that even now many of the routes followed by the Conquistadores and missionaries of old cannot be laid down upon a modern map for lack of information. Sonyo, for instance, through which led the high road followed by soldiers, traders, and missionaries going up to San Salvador (the present route leaves the Kongo River at Matadi) , is almost a terra incognita. ”

“ Angola is a kingdom of itself in Ethiopia, where first the Portugals did begin to inhabit: The country of Angola cometh along the coast; as Portugal doth upon Spain, so doth Angola run upon the Kingdom of Longa [Luangu] and Manicongo.
[Pg 94]
In Angola the Portugals have a City called the Holy Ghost,268 where they have great store of Merchandise, and the Moors do come thither with all kind of such things as the country yieldeth; some bring elephant’s teeth, some bring negro slaves to sell, that they take from other kingdoms which join hard by them ”

“ For there are such abundance of crocodiles in this river that no man dare come near the riverside when it is deep. The fifth day, at night, we came to the river Dande, and travelled so far to the eastward that we were right against [Pg 12] the Serras, or mountains of Manibangono,43 which is a lord that warreth against the King of Congo, whither we intended to go. Here we passed the river, and rested half the night. And being two leagues from the river we met with negroes, which asked us whither we travelled. We told them that we were going to Congo. ”

“ OUR Englishmen are known to have visited Angola towards the close of the sixteenth century, namely, Thomas Turner, Andrew Towres, Anthony Knivet and Andrew Battell. All four were taken by the Portuguese out of English privateers in South-American waters, and spent years of captivity as prisoners of war; happy, no doubt, in having escaped the fate of many of their less fortunate companions, who atoned with their lives for the hazardous proceedings in which they had engaged. ”

“ But being recovered of my sickness, Don John Hurtado de Mendoça,32 who then was governor, commanded me to go to the river of Congo, called Zaire, in a pinnace, to trade for elephants’ teeth,33 wheat,34 and oil of the palm-tree. The river Zaire35 is fifty leagues from the city, to the northward, [Pg 8] and is the greatest river in all that coast. In the mouth of that river is an island, called the Isle de Calabes, which had at that time a town in it. Here we laded our pinnace with elephants’ teeth, wheat, and oil of the palm, and so returned to the city again. ”

“ In this island are no inhabitants, but it is very fruitful. And being here some twelve days there came in a little pinnace which was bound to the River of Plate, which came in to water and to get some refreshments: and presently we went aboard, and took the Portugal merchant out of the pinnace, which told Abraham Cocke, that within two months there should two pinnaces come from the River of Plate, from the town of Buenos Aires. ”

“ In 1653, the parochial priests complained that the Capuchin friars administered the sacraments without claiming an “acknowledgment;” and the authorities at Rome (1653) prohibited their doing so within five leagues of the capital (Paiva Manso, p. 233) . At Mbamba, the priest had a regular scale of prices. A baptism cost 7,000 cowries, for a marriage a slave was expected, and so forth; and thus, adds the Bishop of Angola (1722) : “little children go to limbo, and grown-up people to hell!” ”

“ On July 13th, 1665, the King called upon his people to rise in defence of their country and liberty.371 His diviners had promised him an easy victory. The Portuguese had recently been reinforced from Brazil, yet the army which they were able to put into the field only numbered four hundred Europeans, with two field guns and six thousand negroes. It was commanded by Luiz Lopez de Sequeira, the captain-major, with whom were Manuel Rebello de Brito, Diogo Rodriguez de Sá, Simão de Matos and Antonio Araujo Cabreira, the serjeant-major. ”

“ The Portugals make rings of them, and they are a present remedy for the flux.
[Portuguese dealings with the Natives.]
The Portugals make war against the negroes in this manner. They have out of Congo a nobleman, which is [Pg 65] known to be a good Christian and of good behaviour. He bringeth out of Congo some one hundred negroes that are his followers. This Macicongo [mwishi-Kongo] is made Tandala,193 or general over the black camp, and hath authority to kill, to put down Lords and make Lords, and hath all the chief doings with the negroes. ”

“ Those Pongoes are never taken alive, because they are so strong that ten men cannot hold one of them, but yet they take many of their young ones with poisoned arrows. The young Pongo hangeth on his mother’s belly, with his hands clasped fast about her, so that when the country people kill any of the females, they take the young one which hangeth fast upon his mother. ”

“ ASTER ANTHONY KNIVET joined the second expedition of Thomas Cavendish, which left England in August, 1591. He seems to have served on board the Roebuck, of which vessel one Cocke was captain. Nothing in his narrative enables us to identify this Cocke with the Abraham Cocke of Limehouse, who was “never heard of more” after he parted from Battell on the coast of Brazil in 1590, nor with the Abram Cocke who, according to Knivet, put in at the Ilha Grande in 1598, in the hope of making prizes of some of the richly-laden Spanish vessels returning from the Rio de la Plata. ”

“ Pechuel-Loesche (Die Loango Expedition, vol. iii, p. 279) , this seems to be the cowfish of the whalers, or Tursions gillii, Dale. The natives call it ngulu-mputu (ngulu, hog-fish;-mputu, Portugal) . He says that the natives will not suffer this fish to be injured, as it drives other fish ashore and into their nets; and that if one of these fish were to be wounded or killed they would stop away for ever so long. The Rev. W. M. Holman Bentley, in his Dictionary of the Kongo Language, says that the ngola of the natives is a bagre, or catfish. ”

“ Francis.
268 There is no such city in Angola. It seems to me that Knivet found the name in Linschoten, a translation of whose work appeared in 1698. Linschoten says here of the island of Luandu, which lies in front of the Portuguese town of S. Paul de Loanda, that “there were seven or eight villages upon it, at one of which called ‘Holy Ghost’, resides the Governor of Kongo, who takes care of the right of fishing up shells.” This “Governor” was an officer of the King of Kongo. The island, with its valuable cowrie fishery, was ceded to Portugal in 1649. ”

“ The clergy were numerous in his day, and in addition to secular priests included Franciscans, Dominicans and Austin Friars. They were wealthy, too, for lands and slaves had been given them, and Christian churches arose even in remote parts of the country. A Franciscan friar, Antonio de Dénis (known in the world as D. Diogo de Vilhegas) had been appointed Bishop of S. Thomé and Kongo,323 and took possession of his see in 1534, on which occasion exceptional honours were shown him. He was a man of energy and much sincerity, but, unhappily for his Church, survived only a few years. ”

“ Alvaro IX was succeeded in 1694 by his brother Pedro IV nsanu a mbemba, also known as agoa rosada,382 who once more returned to the ancient capital. He and D. João of Mbula were the only Kings alive in 1701, when the Capuchin Friar Francisco de Pavia, and his colleague Friar João Maria went throughout the kingdom of Kongo, preaching peace, and calling upon the leading men to recognise D. Pedro as their King; and thus put an end to quarrels which had distracted the country for an entire generation. ”

“ Portuguese merchants to be exempted from the payment of tolls; a site to be granted at the mouth of the Kongo for a fortress; all gold and silver mines to be ceded to the crown of Portugal, and the country to the south of the river Dande to be ceded absolutely ”

“ F traditions may be accepted where written history fails us, the foundation of the Empire of Kongo lies back no further than the middle of the fifteenth century.
The founder of the dynasty and first King of Kongo—Ntotela ntinu nekongo—was Nimi a Lukeni, the son of Nimi a nzima and of Lukeni lua nsanzi, the daughter of Nsa ku ki-lau. His father appears to have been a mere village chief in Kurimba (Corimba) ,293 a district of the kingdom of Kwangu. ”

“ Cocke, desirous to make his voyage, took some of the Dolphin’s men into his ship, and sent the Dolphin home again, which had not as yet made any voyage. This Portugal merchant carried us to a place in this island, where there was a banished man,21 which had planted great store of plantains, and told us that we might, with this fruit, go to the River of Plate: for our bread and our victuals were almost all spent. ”

“ The predatory man-eating bands at whose head they invaded the agricultural districts towards the sea coast, included elements of all kinds, not unlike the bands of the “Zulu” of our own time; and hence, one of the names by which they became known in Angola was Bangala.417 I have already stated that I do not think that these military leaders, or Jaga, have anything to do with the tribe of the Ayaka to the east of Kongo. ”

“ But although the Portuguese were masters on shore, the Dutch, and occasionally also French or English “pirates” frequented the coast. In 1650 Alvaro d’Aguiar defeated five of these interlopers, who had made prizes of two ships on a voyage from Brazil; in 1651 João Duque was killed in an action with Dutch men-of-war; in 1652 João de Araujo drove away the Dutch from Mpinda and Luangu; in 1658 the same officer made a prize of a English slaver off Benguella. A second English slaver was captured in 1659 by João Cardoso, who also captured a Dutch vessel off the Kongo in 1661. ”