The Making of Kongo Identity in the American Diaspora: Case Studies from Brazil and Cuba

Interrogating what conditions informed the creation, re-making or

even the forgetting of African ethnic and cultural identities in the Americas

is an issue that scholars from Melville Herskovits onwards have wrestled

with.1 Although the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and lately the

partially completed African Origins Project have contributed significantly to

our knowledge of the African homeland and the ethno-linguistic origins of

significant numbers of enslaved Africans, linking enslaved Africans in the

Americas to their places of origin in Africa and the historical conditions of

their enslavement remains a daunting task.2 The problem is even more

challenging if the focus is on Central Africans who appear in the records

under broad ethnic or regional categories such as nacão/nacíon (nation)

“Angola,” “Congo” or even “Cassange.”3

Since identities are situational, examining the central African

background of these enslaved Africans is a crucial first step in understanding

1 For a recent attempt to reconsider the Herskovits syncretic model see, for example, Andre Apter, “Herskovits Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnatinal Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (1991), pp. 235-260. 2 The recent studies of Henry Lovejoy offer exciting examples of what is possible if these databases are fully exploited. See, for example, Henry Lovejoy, “The Registers of Liberated Africans of Havana Slave Trade Commission: Transcription, Methodology and Statistical Analysis,” African Economic History, v. 38 (2010), 107-135; Henry Lovejoy, “Old Oyo Influences on the Transformation of Lucumi Identity in Colonial Cuba,” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2012. See also Gwendolyn Hall, Africans in America. 3 See, for example, Camilo Agostini, “Africanos e a Formaão de Identidades no Além-Mar: Um Estudo de Etnicidade na Experiência Africano no Rio de Janeiro do Século XIX,” História & Perspectivas, Uberlândia (39): 2008, pp. 241-259

identity formation in the Americas. The history of the Kingdom of Kongo,

the Kingdom of Loango, the Kingdom of Ndongo and Portuguese Africa (all

located in modern Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and even parts of

Republic of Congo) from where these enslaved Africans originated is well

represented in extant primary sources beginning from the late 1400’s

through the last years of the slave trade. Moreover, extensive accounts of

the cultural practices of Africans in these kingdoms are also available.

Enslaved central Africans in Brazil and Cuba left their own cultural marks

and these have also entered the historical records.

Exploring specific historical events and descriptions of cultural

practices recorded during the period of the slave trade must be the entry

points for assessing whether enslaved Africans had strong attachments to

their place of birth in Africa, its history and culture. Records of these events

allow us to interrogate to what extent the African background may have

informed identity formation in the Americans. During the past two decades,

several Brazilian scholars have examined the links between African history

and Afro-Brazilian identity formation.4 The general consensus, however, is

to view these claims as political motivated. In fact Suzel Ana Riley went so 4 For one of the earliest studies see Elizabeth W. Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). See also Agostini, “Africanos e a Formaão de Identidades no Além-Ma,” pp. 241-259. See also Reginaldo Prandi, “De Africano de Afro-Brasil: Etnia, Identidade e Religião, Revista, USP, São Paulo, no. 46, pp. 52-65, Junho-Augusto, 2000. The scholarship on identity formation among enslaved central Africans in Cuba is almost non-existent but see Lovejoy above.

far as to dismiss Afro-Brazilian claims of African-informed identity and

culture as politically motivated forums “for collectively negotiating the past

as a means of constructing critiques of their present experience.”5

Stewart Hall’s contention that creating identity is a continuing process

which is “never complete or final, but always in the making, thus always

changing” offers a framework for interrogating identity formation among

enslaved Africans in Brazil and Cuba during and after slavery. For Hall,

history, language and culture are malleable tools for identity construction.6

An analysis of selected historical and cultural practices in Africa, the history

of the autos de congo, congada, (King of Kongo) and similar celebrations in

Brazil and “cabildos de Congo reales” (Cabildos of Royal Congos) in Cuba

are relevant entry points into how Congos (and other central Africans) made

and remade their African Diasporic identity in Brazil and to a lesser extent in

Cuba.

Autos de Congo and the Making of Identity in Brazil

Folklorists working in Northeast Brazil during the late 1800’s and

early 1900s were some of the first outsiders to observe, record and analyze

what was by then the end-product of African Diasporic-identity making in

Brazil. Gustava Barosa and Luís da Câmara Cascudo, two of the earliest 5 Suzel Ana Reily, “To Remember Captivity: The Congadas of Southern Minas Gerais,” Latin American Music Review, 22.1 (Spring/Summer 2001): 4-31. 6 Stewart Hall and Paul Du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (Sage, 1996), pp. 1-17.

folklorists to study Afro-Brazilian cultural festivals called autos de congo,

congadas, cucumbis, maracutas and the like were convinced that the

dramatizations were based on actual historical events that occurred in

Angola and Kongo during the period of the Dutch occupation (1641-1648).

They concluded that the performances were the result of hundreds of years

of adaptations during which enslaved central Africans and their descendants

(as well as enslaved Africans from other regions of Africa) made and

remade African history, language and culture in exile. Barbosa also

suggested that the autos de congo and the congadas began to appear at the

beginning of the eighteenth century when these memories surfaced among

Africans even as white Brazilians had forgotten them.7 In the process they

used the rituals connected to the autos de congo and the like where the

King of Kongo was the central player to develop an African-Diasporic

identity in Brazil.8

By the early twentieth century these celebrations consisted of

elaborate folk dramas performed publicly on saint’s days (particularly Saint

Anthony and St. Benedict) in communities form the Amazon in the north to

7 Gustavo Barosa, Ao Son da Viola new ed. (Rio de Janeiro: 1949), p. 170; See also, Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola,” Anais da Academia Portuguesa de História, VII (1942), pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa (Pesquisas and notas), (Brazil: Global Editora, 2002, 4th ed.). 8 Barosa, Ao Son da Viola); Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola, pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa.

Porto Alegre in the south. In the dramas the King of Kongo, his queen and

his court took center stage. Barosa, for example, noted that the performers

sang in an African idiom, and the long speeches that the leading figures

dramatized were all spoken or sung in an African idiom. Culture was also

an important element of the spectacle. In the autos, for example, the most

important roles in the celebrations were set aside for the King of Kongo and

a queen--often identified as Queen Njinga—along with court officials. The

historical events that the dramas recorded would be easily recognized by any

historian of pre-1860 central Africa.

The central part of the public drama involved the king of Kongo

publicizing his royal power and prestige. In one dialogue from a 20th century

maracuta performance, the King of Kongo proudly announced:

Eu sou Rei! Rei!Rei I am king, King, King Rei do meu Reinado! King of my kingdom Maracutal la do Congo Maracuta there of Kongo La do Congo There of Kongo Nêle foi corado! In that land I was crowned!9

Another core part of the drama included the verbal and physical

combat between the King of Kongo and members of his court and the

ambassador of Queen Njinga. Some of the songs that accompanied the

9 Vanda Cunha Albieri Nery, Maryely Cornélia Eliciano, Vanessa Faria Firmino, “Dança Conga: o ritual sagrado de uma tradição milenar” Intercom-Sociede Brasiliera de Estudos interdisciplinares da Comunicção XXVI Congresso brasiliero de Ciêcias da Comunicação-BH/MG 2 a 6 Set 2003, p. 21.

dramatization sometimes linked a historical Kongo with the 17th century

ruler Queen Njinga of Ndongo.

For example, in one congada that Barosa witnessed in Fortaleza

performed by two rival groups, the king, called Dom Henrique Cariongo,

appeared as well as Queen Njinga, represented by her ambassador. The

ambassador, after first convincing the king’s secretary that he was not a spy,

announced to the secretary “I am the ambassador that brings the embassy of

Queen Njinga for D. Henrique, King Cariongo.” Although he initially

encountered some resistance, when the ambassador finally obtained

permission to enter into the king’s chamber, he revealed his true identity.

He informed the king that he was not a soldier (guerreiro) but a knight

(cavaleiro), a representative of his nation. He also informed the king that as

a “son of Guinea” his monarch had sent him to bejewel his feet.10

Moreover, some of the popular refrains in many congadas leave no

doubt as to the dominant figure of Queen Njinga. In one of the congadas,

the performers chanted:

Mando matar Rei meu Senhor E quem mando foi Rainha Njinga

(I was ordered to kill the King, my Lord And it was Queen Njinga who ordered me!)

10 Barosa, Ao Son da Viola; Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola,”, pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa (Pesquisas and notas), (Brazil: Global Editora, 2002, 4th ed.).

In another part of the Congada Njinga appeared in all her power:

Senhora, Rainha Njinga, mulher of Camumbira de Moxaritatiguari, Senhora Dona Flor de Cambange

que passeai em terras de gentes Gines e faz anos que nao vem cá. (Mistress, Queen Njinga, woman of Camumbira Of Moxaritatiguari, Mistress Dona Flor of Cambange who stayed in the lands of the Guine people and who for many years has not come here.) 11 In this auto de congada, Afro-Brazilians encapsulated the entire

history of the relationship between the King of Kongo and Queen Njinga of

Ndongo (1582-1663. Between 1620s and the 1660s both kingdoms were at

the height of their power and exchanged embassies as well as engaged in

warfare.12

The performers also creatively situated the King of Kongo and Queen

Njinga in their midst in Brazil. Although this part of the auto highlighted the

relationship between the historical queen Njinga and not King Garcia II of

the Kongo (who was her ally from 1641-1648 but whose lands she also

invaded and with whom she exchanged embassies) the congada highlights

later historical events. In the congada the king was identified as D. Henrique

King Cariongo (an actual Kongo king known as D. Henrique who ruled from

1842 to 1856. This was a period when slaves from the Kingdom of Kongo

11 Albieri Nery et al. “Dança Conga: o ritual sagrado de uma tradição milenar”, pp. 21-32. 12 See, for example, Linda Heywood, “African Goddess: The Life of Queen Njinga Mbandi of Angola” Unpublished Manuscript.

who knew about King Dom Henrique were still arriving in Brazil.

Interestingly, enslaved captives from Angola would also have been familiar

with the name Njinga since the rulers of the kingdom of Ndongo/Matamba

bore the title “Rei Ginga.”13

How was it possible for Africans to remember and re-enact in the

autos de congo, congadas and other celebrations in Brazil specific historical

events like the conversion of the King of the Kongo, the relationship

between the kings of Kongo and Queen Njinga, and other events in the life

of central Africa? Barosa and Câmara Cascudo suggested that the

performances and lyrics of some of the autos de Congos and other Afro-

Brazilian celebrations that emerged in the Northeast and elsewhere referred

to actual historical events that occurred during the period of the Dutch

occupation of Angola (1641-48) when Brazilians troops expelled the Dutch

and re-conquered the country.14 Barrosa went so far as to claim that the

autos de Congo performed during the congadas began to appear at the

beginning of the eighteenth century when these memories surfaced among

13 See, for example, See also P. Graziano Saccardo, Congo e Angola con la storia dell’antica missione dei Cappuccini (Venice, 1982), 14 See for example, Gustavo Barosa, Ao Son da Viola new ed. (Rio de Janeiro: 1949); Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola,” Anais da Academia Portuguesa de História, VII (1942), pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa (Pesquisas and notas), (Brazil: Global Editora, 2002, 4th ed.).

Africans, even though they were forgotten in Portuguese and Brazilian

popular culture.15

Despite these early observations, it has only been in the last two

decades that Brazilian historians have attempted to examine religious and

other cultural practices of Afro-Brazilians with an eye to their central Africa

roots.16 As regards to religious practices and other cultural practices of

central Africans in Brazil, these too were informed by their African

background. James Sweet, for example, provided extensive details on the

specific cultural practices of enslaved Angolans (Francisco Dembo and

Domingos Umbata (Mbata) who lived in Salvador, Brazil in 1634 and 1646.

Francisco was most likely captured and enslaved during the Portuguese wars

against the rulers of the Dembos who were sympathetic to Queen Njinga,

while Domingo may have been enslaved during the series of succession wars

in Kongo during the 1930s. In any event both continued practicing many of

the religious rituals from their homelands.17

Several other studies have argued that Brazilian institutions such as

the black Brotherhoods of the Rosary (Irmandades) and the festivals

15 Gustavo Barosa, Ao Son da Viola, p. 170. 16See, for example, Maria de melo Sousa, Reis Negros No Brasil Escravista : História : História da Festa de Coroação de Rei Congo (Belo Horizonte : Editoria, 2002) ; Juliana Beatriz Almeida de Sousa, « Viagens do Rosário entre a Velha Cristianidade e o Alem-Mar, » Estudos Asiasticos, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 1-15 Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary, esp. Pp. 37-63. 17 James Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship and Religion in the African Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (North Carolina Press, 2003), pp.132-33.

associated with the congadas, cucumbis have links to central Africa.18 A

recent penetrating analysis by Camilla Agostinni who studied the responses

that enslaved Africans in Rio de Janeiro gave in criminal processes covering

the period from 1820 to 1880 about family and homeland suggest how

important the African background was in informing identity in Brazil.

Agostini concluded that despite the stereotypes about the African nations

that emerged from the slave trade, “experiences in Africa informed the

construction of identities of African orientation in Brazil.”19

Despite the interest in the African background, Brazilian scholars still

have not systematically examined the plethora of readily available

seventeenth and eighteenth century documentation on Angola and Brazil to

link the folk-dramas that originated in northeast Brazil and which spread to

other regions to their African historical antecedents. Such as exercise would

help explain why ideas of royalty that linked the King of Kongo to Queen

Njinga, elaborate public embassies, and Catholicism figure so prominently

in Brazil’s folk culture.

In fact, both the early folklorists as well as several recent works on

Brazilian folk culture locate the antecedents of the congadas and other Afro-

Brazilian folk festivals in Portuguese medieval religious and secular folk

18 See Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary), esp. pp. 37-63. 19 Agostini, “Africanos e a Formaão de Identidades no Além-Mar…,” p. 258

festivals and pay little attention to whether similar festivals were

commonplace in central Africa during the period of the slave trade.20 Other

historians, although acknowledging the central African connections, argue

for a Brazilian birthplace.21 Even when Brazilian scholars acknowledge the

prior existence of practices associated with the well-known Brotherhood of

the Rosary in Central Africa, as the study by Maria de Melo e Sousa, they

still do not explain why central African events and not those from other

regions of Africa that provided slaves to Brazil came to be retained as

memory in Brazil.22

Kongos, Kimbundus and the Place of Royalty in Central Africa

Any scholar who has studied the seventeenth century writings of

rulers and other officials from the kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo and the

Europeans with whom they had extensive diplomatic, commercial and

cultural ties comes away with the sense that rulers and peoples had well-

developed notions of an African identity despite their deep integration into

the Atlantic World. Their deep sense of identity goes a long way in

explaining why central African historical motifs, particularly the King of

20 See, for example, Cascudo, Made in Africa, pp. 33-40. 21 Kiddy, “Who is the King of Congo? A New Look at African and Afro-Brazilian Kings in Brazil,” in Linda M. Heywood (ed.) Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 174-75. 22 de Mello e Souza, Reis Negros No Brazil Escravista; Almeida de Souza, “Viagens do Rosário entre a Velha Cristandade…” pp. 1-15; Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary, pp. 37-63.

Kongo and Queen Njinga, came to serve as vehicles for memory and identity

among enslaved central Africans arriving in northeast Brazil in the 1600s.

Central African motifs related to royalty, Christianity, and embassies

came to dominate the folk-cultural landscape of colonial north-east Brazil

(and more recently of all Brazil) because central Africans comprised the

largest segment of the slave population during the seventeenth century when

Brazilian folk culture began to emerge in the region. These slaves came from

an African environment where kings and queens were attached to the idea of

royal rule and defended their claims to royal privileges and rituals.

Moreover, this was a period when the politics of diplomacy between the

Kongo kingdom, the Portuguese kingdom of Angola (Reino de Angola) and

the kingdoms Ndongo and Matamba reached beyond the borders of central

Africa to Portugal, Rome, and Brazil. Finally, it was also a period when the

Portuguese, the Kings of Kongo and Queen Njinga of Ndongo/Matamba all

helped to spread Catholic teachings and rituals in their kingdoms. This

environment provided enslaved central Africans who came to northeast

Brazil with the building blocks for the cultural traditions that would in time

become part of the folk tradition, particularly the congadas.

The idea of royalty and the rituals associated with it was particularly

pronounced in the Kingdom of the Kongo. Protestant and Republican-

minded Dutch representatives who were staunchly anti-papist and who they

developed diplomatic relations with the King of Kongo were taken aback

with royal rituals at the Kongo court. Dutch writers such as Johann Nieuhof

and Olifert Dapper who commented on the issue believed that the adulation

and respect the Kongos showed the king was unnatural and bordered on

idolatry.23 Missionaries likewise condemned the Kongos for the attitudes.

Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi noted that Kongos were always ready to praise

their country, suggesting that it was the most beautiful country, had the best

food, the nicest climate and the like. The missionaries noted that one of the

stories the Kongos believed was that God sent his angels to create the rest of

the world so he could devote himself to constructing Kongo.24 The

missionaries regarded the pride that Kongos showed for their king and

country as outrageous and included it as one of their major “defects. Writing

in the late 1650s Cavazzi commented that the Muxicongos (Kongos) had an

exaggerated idea of their own pasts and glories and “think this part of the

world not only is the largest but also the happiest, richest and beautiful of

all.”25 He also expressed disdain with the way that even Kongos of humble

peasant birth all wanted to be addressed with the title of “Don or Dona.”

23 Dapper and Johan Nieuhof, 24 Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, Historica Descrizione dei tre Regni Congo, Matamba, ed Angola (Bologna, 1687), Book 1, paragraph 156 (p. 63). 25 António Cavazzi de Montecculo, MSS, Araldi, Missione Evangelica, Vol A, Book 1, 154

Cavazzi and other missionaries also commented on the ostentatious

public displays of Kongo’s elites. For example, traveling through the

Province of Mbamba in the mid-1660s, the missionaries Micheanglo de

Gattini and Diongi de Carli commented on the dress of the Duke noting that

although not as elaborately dressed as his overlord then King Alvaro, the

Duke’s attendants included “the son of some lord who carried his hat,

another his symitar, and a third his arrows. Fifty blacks went before him

playing confusedly on several instruments, twenty five of note and one

hundred archers followed him.” The women of “quality”, he commented

“wear the finest cloth of Europe.”26 Indeed, António Cadornega, the

Portuguese chronicler and soldier in reference to the famous 1665 victory at

the Battle of Mbwila that Portuguese forces had over the Kongos believed

that despite their inglorious defeat (the King Antonio’s head was paraded by

victorious troops in Luanda, the “Nação Muxiconga (Kongo nation)”

remained “arrogant.”27

Observers also made similar observations about the role of royalty in

the Kingdom of Ndongo. Queen Njinga Mbandi’s long rule (1624-1663)

and frequent wars against the Portuguese were without doubt the most

visible way in which she broadcast her royal status. Njinga was proud of her

26 Michelangelo de Gattina e Dionigi Carli, Viaggio nel Regno del Kongo (Milan, 1997), p. 572. 27 Cadornega, História, Vol. 2 p. 208

royal lineage. Her father, Ngola Mbandi Angola, was the 8th King of

Ndongo, and a 1585 description of him as fled his court at Kabassa after

being abandoned by many of his vassals leave no doubt about his own ideas

about his royal status. A Portuguese chronicler captured his sentiments. He

wrote, “he still thinks of himself as the greatest king in the world” and

“believed that they were only three kings in the world “Congo, Portugal and

him.”28 Writing several decades later from Queen Njinga’s court in

Matamba, Cavazzi, confessor to the queen, noted the emphasis on royalty.

He wrote that the Mbundu were so proud of their king that “they judge

themselves the first among all the people of the world and do not credit the

stories of the Europeans concerning the magnificence of such kings and

monarchs and the beauty and other qualities of such kingdoms in the

universe…”29

Describing Njinga’s first audience with the Portuguese Governor João

Correia de Sousa in 1622, Cavazzi also captured this royalist bias. He

described her as entering the hall wearing precious gems and “dressed in a

remarkable way according to the custom of black people, accompanied by a

good many pages & waiting women.”30 Njinga dismissed the governor’s

demand that her brother pay tribute to the Portuguese with a royal hauteur, 28 Diego da Costa, letter, 20 July 1585, MMA 3, p. 319. 29 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book I, 154; See also, Cavazzi, Historia, Book 1, paragraph no 156. 30 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Vol. A, Book 2, p. 25; Cavazzi, Descrição Histórica, Vol. II, p. 67.

remarking that “such a condition should only be placed on a nation that has

been conquered [and] “not on one that spontaneously offers friendship.”31

After being elected “Lady of Ndongo” in 1624 following her brother’s

suspicious death, Njinga devoted as much attention to orchestrating her royal

status as she did to stave off Portuguese designs on her kingdom. She

desperately wanted the Portuguese and her own people to acknowledge her

as queen. Within a few months after her brother’s death she was being

addressed by the title “Queen of Dongo,” and not long after had another title

“Angola Quiluange” which meant “Queen of Angola.”32 In fact, Cadornega

who first faced her in a 1639 battle noted that her success in the wars she

waged against her Mbundu detractors led the people to adore her “as their

Queen and Lady.”33 By the end of her life her subjects regarded her as a

“Goddess.” Not only did Njinga successfully claim royalty, but the

Portuguese also concurred, addressing her as “Lady Queen” and “Your

lordship” noting that she came “....from the royal blood of Kings and

Emperors.”34

Furthermore Njinga took advantage of every opportunity to remind

the people of her royal status. This attitude prevailed even in her last years 31 Cavazzi , Descrição Histórica , Vol. 11, pp. 67-68. 32 Queen Njinga to Bento Banha Cardoso, 2 March 1625, quoted in Fernão de Sousa to Conçalo de Sousa and Brothers, c. 1630, FHA 1: 244-5. See also Antonio Brasio, Monumenta Missionario African (MMA) (Lisbon: Agancia do Ultramar, 1956) Vol. V11, p. 249. 33 Cardonega, História, vol. 2, p. 293-4. 34 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 5, Letter of 13 April 1651, pp. 8-9.

when she had returned to Christianity and swore obedience to Pope. Indeed,

in 1662 after Njinga receipt of a letter from Pope Alexander VII

acknowledging the receipt of her swearing obedience to Rome and the

Catholic Church, she still wanted her people to recognize her royal status

according to Mbundu customs. Thus on the day that she had set aside to

have the missionary publicly read the contents of the Pope’s letter, she

appeared at the public square to receive the traditional royal greeting that

consisted of “clapping of hands, shouting and daubing themselves with

earth.”35

Njinga not only promoted herself as a king/queen through her own

words and actions, but also made it possible for the royal Ndongo line to

continue. Even while living in her quilombo (war camp) she paid attention to

royal etiquette. Cadornega reported that when Portuguese troops captured one

of Njinga’s capitals, they found Cundi/Barbara (her sister who the Portuguese

kept as a prisoner for several years) in a house waited on by “40 ladies.” She

was “dressed in rich cloths, her fingers full of gold rings, on her head and neck

with beautiful jewels and necklaces.”36 Njinga spent more than twenty years

negotiating for Barbara’s release to ensure that she would take over as queen

35 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Bk 2 chapter 11 p. 5. 36 Cardornega, História 1, pp. 414-16. See also Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, chapter 7, p. 11.

after her death. Barbara was elected queen because the people believed in

“her… dignity and Royal crown.”37

Barbara herself did much to uphold the idea of royalty despite the

more than two decades that she had spent as a Portuguese prisoner and her

conversion to Christianity. Facing imminent civil war from disgruntled

Mbundu nobles and people who blamed the missionaries for Njinga’s death

and for the illness that Barbara contacted soon after her accession, the newly

installed queen allowed permitted some Mbundu royal rituals at court in

order to demonstrate her royalty.38 Moreover, like their neighboring royals

in the Kingdom of Kongo, all the rulers of Matamba (from King D. João

Guterres Ngola Kanini who took over the kingdom in 1669 to Queen Ana

Guterres III who was killed in a coup in 1767) asserted their royal claims to

the throne of Matamba and expected to Portuguese and neighboring African

rulers to treat them as royals.39 The custom of electing kings and queens

(reis gingas) in the area continued into the 19th century even as the

Portuguese increasingly controlled more and more of the territory that

Njinga had left.

Catholic Christianity as a Mark of Identity in Central Africa

37Cavazzi, MSS, Araldi, Vol. A Book 2 Chapter 14, pp. 15-16. 38 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 15, p. 9 39 For the history of these rulers of Matamba see Fernando Campos, “Conflitos Na Dinastia Guterres Através Da Sua Cronologia,” (Paper presented at the Canadian Association of African History, 1992).

The place of the Catholic Church in central Africa as a marker of

identity among Kongos and Kimbundus in Africa provides persuasive

evidence for why this identity re-appeared in Brazil among enslaved central

Africans. From the turn of the 1600s to 1860s when millions of captives

from the kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo were shipped as slaves to Brazil

and Cuba, a significant percentage of these enslaved central Africans

identified themselves as Catholics or were familiar with the rudiments of

Catholic Christianity. During the first years of their arrival in northeast

Brazil, the Catholicism they brought with them was home-grown.

Kongo had the longest and most sustained exposure to Christianity, a

relationship that began when King Nzinga Nzuwu converted to Christianity

in 1491. Throughout the sixteenth century and increasingly in the

seventeenth century the Christian identity of the kingdom and its population

set Kongo apart from other central Africa polities. The many churches that

sprang up in the capital and provinces, the presence of Christian crosses

even in remote villages, the political intrigues in which noble factions and

priests became involved, and the host of public religious rituals in which the

Kongos participated were the visible symbols of this Christian identity.40

40 John Thornton, “Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo.” Journal of African History, 54 (2013), pp. 53-77.

Public religious ceremonies involving the entire community were

quite commonplace. By the beginning of the 1600’s Kongo’s capital, São

Salvador was an Episcopal See with a Cathedral with twelve churches and a

large Catholic population. From her Kongo kings sent and received

embassies from the rulers of Portugal, the Papacy, the Portuguese colony of

Angola and Dutch in the Netherland and Brazil. Kongo welcomed several

orders of regular clergy, including Dominicans, Capuchins and Jesuits.

Moreover had its own lay teachers who spread Christianity throughout the

kingdom, but also Kongo had a corps of parish priests and lay ministers and

teachers who catered to populations even in remote districts! The capital was

a bevy of coronations and rituals where Catholic rituals mixed freely with

Kongo ones despite kings preferences for promoting celebrations of the

Brotherhood of the Rosary the “was it was done in Portugal.” Elite Kongos

who lived in the capital became members of various religious Brotherhoods

that had their own offices in the capital.41 Throughout seventeenth and early

eighteenth century foreign missionaries who visited Kongo described being

41 Luis de Cácegas and Luís de Sousa, “História de S. Domingos, MMM 5, pp. 608. See also, Linda Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge University Press, 2007); see also, See also, John Thornton, "The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1483-1750," Journal of African History 25 (1984): 147-67.

welcomed by huge crowds eager to have their children baptized as was the

case in 1610 with Dominican missionaries.42

Furthermore, no provincial noble would go off to war without first

making confession and taking Holy Communion, and some armed themselves

“with the relics of various saints.” Christian Kongos who made up the army

would also have been familiar with, and were likely to have been

participants in the elaborate military/religious festival held on St. James Day

(July 21) where the Kongo king received homage, collected taxes, and

witnessed the military dance performed by soldiers called sangamento.43

As their Kongo counterparts, Christianity was also a marker identity

about the Mbundus who lived in Portuguese Angola and in the kingdoms of

Ndongo and Matamba. This experience informed the identity and cultural

practices of the enslaved Mbundus who ended up in Brazil and Cuba. Most

Mbundus who lived in the Reino de Angola (Kingdom of Angola) which the

Portuguese controlled had a Creole Christian identity informed by Christian

and Mbundu religious and cultural beliefs and practices. Mbundus living in

Luanda and next to the various Portuguese settlements along the Bengo and

Kwanza Rivers were first exposed to Christianity by the earliest Jesuit

42 MMA 5: 607-14 [Luís de Cácegas and Luís de Sousa, História de S. Domingos (Lisbon, 1662), Pt II, Liv IV, cap XIII, pp. 612-613; Luís de Cácegas and Luís de Sousa, História de S. Domingos, p. 608. 43For a description of this celebration for the early 1700’s see John Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 30-35.

missionaries who accompanied Portuguese armies in the wars against the

Ndongo kingdom from the 1570s onwards. According to a report covering

the years from 1600-1611, the number of African Christians in Luanda

already stood at 2000, although none of the Christians knew how to make

the sign of the cross and “no more than two were married in the Church.”

However, the missionaries stressed that the Mbundus were quick learners, and

that “most of them knew the orations and sang in the streets…or in their

houses.”44

During the 1620s Mbundu rulers who became allies of the Portuguese

were publicly baptized as was the son of the Portuguese ally Aire

Aquiloange who had been sent to Luanda in 1627 to be converted. Aire

Aquiloange’s baptism took place on 31 May, the Day of Most Holy Trinity.

Not long afterwards his parents were also baptized by one Father Paccoino on

St. Peter and Paul’s day, 29 June, his father receiving the baptismal name

“Felipe in honor of Your Majesty”.45

By 1628 the number of African Christians in the colony was large

enough that officials built a chapel dedicated to the Lady of the Rosary

specifically for them, and stipulated that the chapel be used to catechize

Africans “in their own language,” to hear their confessions, and to oversee

44 MMA 5:239-40 45 Fernão de Sousa to Governo, 2 August 1627, FHA 2, p. 183.

their burials.46 Missionaries also took Christianity to Africans who lived in

the nearby settlements areas along the Bengo and Galungo Rivers where

Portuguese lived with their African slaves surrounded by independent

Mbundu communities. The numbers of Mbundu Christians in these

communities increased over the years. By 1635 Tavares estimated that over

“200,000 souls” had been baptized in the seven parishes of Portuguese

Angola, excluding Luanda in Angola. 47

These Mbundu Christians were not the barely catechized slaves on

whom the priest threw water and in whose mouth they put salt as they

waited to board the vessels that would take them to the slave ship. In

describing his approach to teaching Africans in Bengo, Tavares wrote “I

give lessons of catechism several times a day, then have them memorize

prayers. I divide [them] into groups, men on one side, adult women on

other, young girls aside, etc. I give each group an interpreter.48 Religion and

religious pageantry among Mbundu in Luanda and the other Portuguese

settlements continued to develop after the Portuguese reconquest of Angola

46 Cardonega, História, II, 26-28. 47 Tavares to P. Provincial of Portugal, Jeronimo Vogado, 29 June 1635 [ARSI Lus. 55, fols 84-107; Evora CXVI/2-15, peça 15i, fol.76v-77. 48 Pero Tavares, Fl. 86.

from the Dutch in 1648.49 The number of Mbundu Christians in Portuguese

Angola continued to increase throughout the 1700’s and into the 1800s.50

Indeed, these Mbundu Christians were developing a Creole

Christianity which would inform the identity that enslaved Africans from

Portuguese Angola carried with them to Brazil.51Already by the 1650s

missionaries complained that a few miles outside of Luanda the people were

“only Christian in name…all works and deeds are heathen.”52 Indeed, the

creolization of Angola culture was so pronounced by the 1670s that the

missionary Merolla noted that Angolan Christians living among the

Portuguese participated in a “pagan” ritual for the burial of their deceased

called tambi. Merolla condemned the practice noting that “these

abominations (tambi) were used among some depraved Christians not only

in the kingdom of Angola but in Luanda itself.”53

The most notable aspect about the spread of Christianity among the

Mbundu Christians in the early 1600s was that their chapels were all

dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary. There were chapels to Our Lady of the

Rosary in Cambambe, Pedras Negras, and Massangago--all major centers in

49 Cardonega, História, vol. 2, p. 386. 50 Cardonega, História, Vol. 2, p. 390. 51 See also Heywood and Thornton, Atlantic Creoles, pp. 185-196. 52 Informação sobre as missões q sepodem fazer em Angola e outros Reinos vizinhos, nd. C 1650? [ARSI 55, 195-99] 53Giralamo Merolla da Sorrenta, “A Voyage to Congo, Part II” in Awnsham and John Churchill, A Collection of Voyages and Travels, (London, 1702), Vol. I, 1674.

Portuguese controlled Angola where Mbundus lived. Other chapels were

dedicated to Saint Benedict as well. Kongo and Mbundu Catholics, as their

Portuguese counterparts in central Africa at the time participated in the many

yearly religious celebrations associated with Catholicism. Some of these

celebrations were decidedly creole as “Christian rituals from the Iberian

church, and …Mbundu and Kongo rituals” mixed freely.54

Olifert Dapper, describing Portuguese Angola as the Dutch found it

during their seven year occupation (1641-48) noted that “in recent years

many of them, by the endeavor of the Portuguese Jesuits, have been brought

from their idolatry to the Roman religion and baptized….every Sova [local

ruler) usually controlling a few villages] has a chaplain in his Banza or

village, to baptize children and celebrate mass.” 55 The missionaries

considered the Christian Mbundus “Christian in name only,” because they

failed to understand that as their Kongo counterparts, Mbundu Christians

had developed a Catholic Christianity that was informed by Mbundu cultural

and religious beliefs. Their many public religious festivals and burial rituals

had an African and not a European orthodox orientation.56

54 David Birmingham, “Carnival at Luanda,” Journal of African History, Vol. 29 (1988), p. 97. 55 John Olgiby, Africa (London, 1670), p. 569. 56 For a recent discussion of this issue see John Thornton, “conquest and Theology: The Jesuits in Angola, 1584-1650,” Journal of Jesuit Studies, no. 1, 2014, pp. 245-259.

Njinga’s baptism in 1622 eventually led her many years later to

declare Catholic Christianity the official religion of the kingdom of

Ndongo/Matamba which she then ruled (1657-1663). During the six years

after this decree Njinga lived as a devout Christian and worked hard to turn

her followers into Catholics.57 She spearheaded the establishment of the

religion after she signed the peace treaty with the Portuguese in 1657 and

invited priests to convert her people. Moreover, she also supported a chapel

of Our Lady of the Rosary which she organized in 1657-8 in the church of

Saint Anne that she helped to build. Indeed, some of her followers became

members of the Brotherhood and when Njinga died “twelve brothers of the

Most Holy Rosary” accompanied her burial procession.58 Like her Kongo

counterparts Njinga gave the Capuchin missionaries permission to convert

her regional vassals, and many of them and their people were baptized.59

The Catholicism that Njinja pioneered in Ndongo/Matamba did not

disappear with her death in 1663, for her sister, Barbara ruled from 1663-

1666, who had been converted while a captive in Luanda and who had lived

many years under the Portuguese attempted to keep Catholicism alive.

Moreover, when Njinga’s niece, Donna Veronica Guterres who became

57 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 10, p. 5 58 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 14, p. 6. 59 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2 Chapter 11 p.1-2.

Queen in 1681 took over the kingdom, she also maintained some elements of

Catholicism that Njinga and Barbara had institutionalized. Well into the

1700’s rulers in Matamba attempted to get Capuchin priests to return to the

country.

Njinga’s efforts to establish orthodox Christian rituals in Matamba

were only partially successful as during the civil war the thousands of

Christians in Matamba were either killed or sold off to the Portuguese for

slave as slaves in Brazil. In fact many members of Njinga’s court who were

members of the Nossa Senhora de Rosario Brotherhood brought the

knowledge of membership in Brotherhoods with them to Brazil. But

Mbundus from Matamba, like their counterparts in Kongo and Portuguese

Angola, also brought the mixed Christianity with them as well. Chief

among these were mourning rituals associated with deaths, called by the

people tambo or tambi. 60 Although missionaries did everything they could

to stamp out the “tambi” (even exporting many of the religious practitioners

to Brazil and elsewhere) many of these practitioners were welcomed by their

compatriots in the plantations and cities in northeast Brazil. In Brazil,

enslaved Africans, Christians as well as non-Christians, (and even some

Portuguese whites) brought this creole Christianity with them to Brazil.

60 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 14, p. 14

Northeast Brazil: Kongos, Angolas and the Construction of Afro-Brazilian Identity Although “Kongos” and “Angolas” began appearing in the records of

colonial Pernambuco in large numbers from the 1580s (in 1584 there were

10,000 slaves in Pernambuco who were identified as “Angolas and

Guineas,”61 imports from Angola steadily (an Angolan wave) increased from

1600 to1725 (especially the early decades of the 17th century). During the

entire period when the Charter generation of Africans set down roots in

northeast Brazil and other regions of the Americas, a total of 1,386,527

slaves or 46.6% of all the slaves exported to the Americas came from

Central Africa.62 Moreover, during the years from 1600 to1650 86% of all

the captives exported from Angola ended up in Northeast Brazil

(Pernambuco and Bahia).63

The central African presence in the northeast was dramatic. In 1612

an anonymous writer assured the crown that settlers in Pernambuco “are

powerful in slaves of Guinea because of the many vessels from Angola

61 Anais Pernambucos, Vol. 1, no. 6, p. 557. 62 For the discussion of Charter Generation see Heywood and Thornton, Central Africans. For a relevant debate see Francisco Betancourt, “Creolising the Atlantic World: The Portuguese and the Kongolese,” Portuguese Studies, no. 1, vol. 27, pp. 56-69. 63 Thanks to Davis Eltis and David Richardson for sharing with me their unpublished paper where they have recalculated the figures appearing in the 2000 DuBois Database. David Eltis and David Richardson, “Missing Pieces and the Larger Picture of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Some Implications of the New Database,” Unpublished Ms. 2006.

which come every year.”64 The numbers of central Africans imported into

the region continued to increase in the following decades. When the Dutch

took over Bahia in 1620, Isaak Commelyn, a Dutch official actually

consulted local records in Pernambuco and calculated that between 1620

and1624 alone some 15, 430 slaves had entered Pernambuco from Angola.65

The scale of this Angolan wave can be gauged from a letter that Governor

João Correia sent to officials in Lisbon in 1625. Correia informed officials

that “each week 200 or 300 pieces are traded being a thousand a month [and

that] 12,000 leave from this port each year with which the Indies and Brazil

are provided.”66

The predominance of central Africans from the kingdom of Kongo,

the kingdom Angola and Ndongo on sugar plantations and in the cities of

northeast Brazil during the early 1600s when the Dutch were challenging

Portuguese hegemony there. Pernambuco officials were sufficiently

concerned about retaining control over the city of Salvador. That he

cautioned in a 1630 report that he warned superiors in Portugal that the loss

of Bahia to the Dutch would mean the loss of other parts of Brazil since the

64 Engel Sluiter, “Report on the State of Brazil, 1612,” Hispanic America Historical Review, vol. 29, n0. 4 (Nov. 1949), 518-562. 65 Anais Pernambucos, Vol. 2, no. 8, p. 419 66Fernão de Sousa, “Relação de Dongo que foy a elRey nosso Senhor,” 6 September 1625 FHA I, p. 200

New Christians, Indians and “Negroes from Angola …would not hesitate to

pass over to the enemy in exchange for their freedom.”67

The demographic strength and importance of the central African slave

population also came to the attention of the Dutch conquerors. In 1637 a

Dutch official pointed out that enslaved Africans from Angola were more

desirable than their less numerous West African counterparts the Ardras. In

his view the Angolans not only because “rendered better service” but also

because the Ardras “speak a language that our older negros do not

understand, not one person,” while recently arrived Angolans “are instructed

by older negroes who understand each other’s language.”68

The fact that Kimbundu was the lingua franca on the plantations was a

striking example of cultural carryover from central Africa to Brazil. During

the Dutch occupation the central African predominance also came to the

attention of visitors to the region. Pierre Morreau, a Frenchman visiting Recife

in 1644-45, observed during his stay in the city every month there arrived in

Recife “a multitude of poor, naked slaves fed like dogs that the king of Kongo

and the Queen of Angola and their…governors exchange for cloth, hats,

67 Two Unpublished Portuguese Manuscripts about the Dutch Conquest (1624) & Iberian Recovery (1625) of Salvador da Bahia in Brazil A Forgotten Letter Written by Martim Correia de Sá, 1630. (Rio de Janeiro: Editoria Index, 1999), p. 79 68 Anais Pernambucos, vol. 2, no. 8, p. 419

various types of instruments of iron…”69 The number of enslaved central

Africans continued to increase and by 1666 when the Marques of

Mondevergu visited the city he identified “negros who are brought from

Angola” along with Portuguese, Indians, Tapuios as comprising the four

castas (ethno-racial) who made up the city’s population.70 Although the

number of central Africans fell off somewhat the 1670s as the importation of

“Minas” from Dahomey increased, Central African imports to the Northeast

still represented a significant percentage of the slave population, and in fact

continued into the 19th century.

In Pernambuco and other regions of the northeast, Kongos and

Angolans sought to maintain their Christian identity and royalist propensity

in novel ways. The fact that some members of the Kongo and Mbundu

nobility and ordinary Christian villagers were also enslaved made it easier

for these ideas to thrive.71 For example, one group of Kongo nobles who

were captured and exported to Pernambuco early in 1622 ended up in

“Maranhão and other localities” within a few months of their arrival.72

Although in 1624 some of the captives were rounded up and returned to

69 Pierre Moreau, Histoire des Derniers Troubles entre les Hollandois et les Portugais, 1644-5 (Paris, 1651) Portuguese Trans., p. 35. 70 Alfredo de Carvalho, O Marques de Mondevergue em Pernanbuco, 1660,” “Revista do Instituto Archeológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano, Vol. XIII, no. 70, pp. 637. 71 Jesuits to Lord Collector, 20 October 1623, MMA 15, p. 514 72 Royal Letter to Governors of Portugal, 9 December 1622, MMA 7: 64-5

Kongo as a result of complaints that Kongo King Pedro and a Jesuit report

made to King Philip in Spain, many others remained in Brazil. Other noble

captives joined them in subsequent years.73 Some of these included the 200

Kongo Christians from the village of Ulolo in Kongo who King Garcia

condemned and sent as slaves to Brazil in 1651. The villagers were found

guilty of murdering the missionary Jorge de Geel who had traveled to the area

to weed out “unchristian practices.”74 Missionaries in Kongo had no

compunction in selling of Kongo Christians accused of practicing witchcraft

to Portuguese slave traders. 75

Mbundus with their Creole culture also ended up as slaves in Brazil

and as the Kongos maintained their Christian identity and royalist bias. In

1634, for example, Pero Tavares traveled on a slave ship from Angola to

Brazil, and reported that there were 600 slaves on board. Tavares “confessed

all.” Most of the Mbundu captives, he noted were already baptized, but “knew

nothing of the faith.” He did note that others who came from some “200

leagues in interior of land, or just as arrived in city…were baptized and

embarked as soon as ship set sail.”76 Furthermore, Cadornega wrote that after

73 Royal Letter to Governor of Brazil, 18 March 1624, MMA 7: 220 74 “Provisão de D. Garcia Afonso II Sobre O Padre Jorge de Geel” 2-3-1653, MMA XI, pp. 264-267; See also Saccardo, Congo e Angola con la storia dell’antica missione dei Cappuccini (Venice, 1982), p. 490. 75 Merolla, “Voyage to Kongo”, p. 617. 76 Tavares, Fol. 106

the reconquest of Angola in 1648, and the wars of retaliation that the

Portuguese troops made against Njinga and the Mbundu rulers who had

allied with the Dutch, the governor “sent the guiltiest [of the Mbundu

prisoners] secretly to this city….” These prisoners joined others who had

been “redeemed and purchased” and were sent out on the slave ships.77

Moreover, many Christians from the Bengo region who the missionaries

condemned for practicing witchcraft were also sent to Brazil, as was the case

with those that Merolla described in the 1680’s.78 Njinga also sold many of

her own people to Portuguese traders. In fact, the civil war that followed her

death led to the export of many of the Christian Mbundus who had officiated

at her funeral. Finally, during the 18th and 19th century hundreds of

thousands of Mbundu, many of them creoles from Portuguese Angola ended

up as slaves in northeast Brazil and in Rio de Janeiro as well.79 In Brazilian

cities these Mbundu Africans were identified as creolos (Creoles).

The Christian and Creole identity of the Kongos and Mbundus was

visible in north east Brazil from the time the group arrived. The earliest

reference to Kongos and Angolas comes from Curia Archives in Salvador at

Praia baptismal records of the church (recorded on 10th December 1601)

77 Cardonega, Hisória, vol. 2, p. 387. 78 Merolla, Relatione de Viaggio, p. 615. 79 Evora CXVI/2-15, peça 15i, fol. 75v-76

identified this. For example, the daughter of Sebastião Congo was baptized

on 10 December 1601, and in 1605 several Kongo and Angolans were

married and were received into the church. The group included Francisco

Congo who was married to Maria, and Sebastião Angola who was married to

Maria Conga. In addition, the records for the period from to 1604 to 1611

indicate that the church had received into the congregation João Quiloange,

and his wife Maria Cahango, as well as a Maria Quiloange.80 These three

Mbundus were members of the Mbundu ruling families who had been

baptized in Africa and therefore were not required to undergo another

baptism. They, along with many white Portuguese were accepted as good

Catholics. These Angolans and their children were the founders of the

central Africans community that would later be associated with the Afro-

Brazilian Brotherhoods. 81

The Christian identity and royalist bias made Kongos and Angolans

stand apart from the enslaved West Africans from Dahomey as the latter

were imported in larger numbers during the 1700s. Kongos, Angolans and

their descendants were the first Africans to establish the Nossa Senhora de

Rosario Brotherhoods and begin the custom of electing kings and queens. In

80 Estante 2, Cx. 9, Paróquia Conceição da Praia, 1649-76, Fol. 17, 25.

81 Estante 2, Cx. 9, Paróquia Conceição da Praia, 1649-76, Fol. 17, 25.

1627, for example, the members of the Nossa Senhora de Guadeloupe dos

Homens pardos de Olinda (Brotherhood of Guadeloupe of Creoles of

Olinda) were identified as playing a leading role in the church festivities,

which involved the election of kings and queens.82 Father Santa Maria,

writing in 1627 noted that the establishment of the chapels and brotherhood

“raised the profile of free blacks and captives of the city of Olinda, who,

besides being poor, founded a famous church dedicated to Nossa Senhora de

Rosario (Our Lady of the Rosary).”83

Two years later in 1629 to honor their patron, the members of the

brotherhood made a 24 inch image of the Virgin Mary and Child filled with

gold and celebrated with “a big festival in the church.”84 During the

celebration they “carried it to the newly built chapel and “made a great feast,

in their manner.” The members also held “various sermons…with …much

grandeur.” This first celebration attracted the entire population of Olinda

who “competed to participate in the festivities.”85 The members of the

Brotherhood of the Rosary seemed to have continued functioning even

during the Dutch occupation. In 1654 the Brotherhood of Nossa Senhora do

82 Mario do João Varela, A Capelina dos Quinze Mistério e a devoção do Rosário entro os Pretos”Revisto do Arquivo Municipal de São Paulo, XXXIX, p. 319 83 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 5 p. 32 84 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 2, p. 468 85Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 5, p. 32

Rosário of Olinda held its first election.86 By the 1680s several other

churches and brotherhoods in Pernambuco catered to the African population,

including the chapels and brotherhoods associated with the original Church

of Nossa Senhora de Rosario built in 1627 before the Dutch invasion.87

Kongos and Mbundus also demonstrated the Christian and Creole

identity in other ways as well. For example, in 1668 when the Capuchin

missionary Dionigi Carli passed through Pernambuco on his way to Kongo

he recorded having observed a black woman “who kneeled, beat her breast

and clap his hand on the ground.” When he enquired of the Portuguese who

were observing the antics of the Kongo he was told “Father...she is of the

Congo and was baptized by a capuchin. And being informed that you are

going thither to baptize she rejoices, and expresses her joy by those outward

tokens.” As he traveled through the town he noticed that it was full of

people, especially of black slaves from “Angola, Kongo, Dongo and

Matamba.” 88

The Marques of Mondevergue who was visiting Pernambuco in 1666,

provided one of the earliest and most elaborate descriptions of public

celebrations that Kongos and Angolans in the area organized. The Marques

recorded that on Sunday, September 10 he saw present when the Angolans 86Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 4, no 1, p. 395 87 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol 2, p. 468. 88 Guattino e Carli, Viaggio ne Regno del Kongo, p. 157.

began their “festa” (celebrations) in Pernambuco. He noted that the events

began in the church and after having “gone to mass,” about four hundred

men and one hundred women “elected a king and a queen and marched

through the streets, singing and dancing and reciting improvised verses,

accompanied by drums, trumpets, and tambourines.” The group was dressed

in the clothes of their masters and mistresses and carried cords of gold and

other trinkets of gold and pearls, while some wore masks. These festivities

lasted an entire week, during which time the “king and the officers did

nothing other than “parade gravely through the streets with a sword and a

dagger in the belt.”89

The custom of electing a king and queen and the symbols that they

carried, a sword and axe, were undoubtedly copied from the ceremonial

sword carried by the king of Kongo and the axe represented the famous

battle axe that Njinga always carried and was said to be expert at using.

These brotherhood and the celebrations they sponsored took firm root

in the region. In 1683 the governor of Pernambuco João de Sousa informed

the officials of the cãmara of Olinda that the members of the brotherhood

who had demonstrated “elevated zeal and Christian piety” despite being

black and were “faithful Christians” had petitioned the king to ask for

89 Alfredo de Carvalho, “O Marques de Montevergue em Pernambuco, 1666,” Revista do Instituto Archeológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano, Vol. XIII, no. 70, 637-638.

permission to purchase the freedom of their enslaved members. The petition

pointed out that the members of the brotherhood had collected funds among

themselves to buy from slavery “all the slave men and women of their color”

since many of them suffered terribly under slavery since they were “sons of

honorable men who served in the war.” The group’s request pointed out that

the captives were taking measures into their own hands by fleeing their

captivity and joining the “negroes of Palmares” and thus separating

themselves from the “church community.”90 The petitioners received the

permission they requested and on 17th of November a royal provision called

on the cãmara to choose two who would oversee the freeing from captivity

all the “slave men and women of color” at a reasonable price, following the

example set for the “Brothers of the Rosário of São Tome and Lisbon.91

This Charter Generation and their “Creole” children not only

supported their own chapels and brotherhoods, but they also participated in

European churches as well. The actions of Henriques Dias, the grandson of

Angolans and an intrepid resister against the Dutch is illustrative of the

strong identity of the central Africans. Dias began his military career in

1630 and by 1636 he was the head of a group of 40 “Negros de Angola”

who took up arms against the Dutch. By 1648 the group had expanded into

90 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 2, no. 3, p. 468 91 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 2, p. 469

a formidable black regiment whose ranks included “Ardras, Minas,

Angolans and Crioulos” (Dahomeans, Gold Coast, Angolans and Creoles).92

Yet at the same time he was deeply pious man, and in the middle of a

difficult campaign against the Dutch who sent a major force against him to

dislodge his regiment from their camp, he consecrated a simple chapel to

“Nossa Senhora da Assunção” where the dead soldiers were interred. A

permanent church was finally constructed on the site one hundred years later

following several persistent petitions to the king by the descendants of the

soldiers.93

The central Africans who founded the state of Palmares also exhibited

the marks of their Creole identity in the religious activities they practiced. .

Johan Nieuhof who lived in Brazil from 1641-46 and who was familiar with

the situation in Palmares noted that even though the Africans of Palmares had

forgotten “all subjectivity, they have not lost all recognition of the

church,”94since they had a “well made” chapel that contained “a fine statute of

the infant Jesus, another of our Lady of Conception, and another of Saint

Blaise,” and that they were able to baptize their children and marry because

they had “one of their most ladinos (Creole) who they venerate as pastor.”

92 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 4, p. 317 93 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 4, pp. 231-2 94 Edison Carneiro, O Quilombo dos Palmares 2nd ed. revised (São Paulo, Companhia Editoria Nacional, 1958), p. 246.

Nieuhof, noted however that the baptisms and weddings that the people

followed did not reach the standards of European norms since they were

“without the particulars required by the law,” especially because “each one has

the wives he wants.”95 Undoubtedly the central Africans were practicing the

Creole Christianity that flourished in Angola.96

The public festivals which followed the religious ceremonies

organized by the black brotherhood of Nossa Senhora do Rosario or St.

Benedict had become so essential to the slaves that in 1681 the Antonio

Viera, the leader of the Jesuit Order in Brazil, warned plantation owners that

they should not deny their slaves their only time of enjoyment when they

“create their kings, sing and dance for some hours on some days of the

year.” He also encouraged them to allow their slaves to “enjoy themselves in

the evening after they have completed in the morning their feasts to Our

Lady of the Rosary [or of] St. Benedict.97

Although their Creole identity made central Africans more appealing

to Brazilian slave owners, their most important legacy was their

contributions to Afro-Brazilian culture and identity. The brotherhoods that

they founded and the celebrations and rituals connected with them

95 Carneiro, O Quilombo, p. 236. 96 See Thornton, “Conquest and Conversion.” 97 André João Antonil, Cultura e opulêcia do Brasil do por suas drogas e minas (Lisboa, 1711), ed. Afonso de Tauney, São Paulo, 1922, p. 68.

eventually received official recognition. With official recognition they

celebrated their Christian identity with their membership in the brotherhood

of Nossa Senhora de Rosario and their royalist bias by participating in

increasingly elaborate parades where they elected their king and queen and

dramatized central African historical events with musical instruments and

music patterned after what they had known in Africa.

The first written record of Africans electing a “King of Congo”

occurred in 1711 when the Brotherhood of the Rosary of Blacks of Olinda

received official recognition from the Bishop. During the celebrations not

only central Africans but all the enslaved African elected the “King of

Congo.”98Central Africans in other parts of Brazil also tried to retain a unity

and distinct identity. A series of reports from the governor between 1725

and 1728 concerning an uprising of slaves in the Minas Gerais concluded

that one reason the revolt failed was owing to a dispute among the slaves

since “the negros of Angola wanted a person from their kingdom to be king

of all and the Minas also wanted their own countryman to be king.”99

Although Brazilian slave owners attempted to exploit the different ethnic

identities of the enslaved Africans, what was important was the legacy they

left of the Central African presence in Brazil and elsewhere. 98 Ovidio Martins, “A Presença do Negro na Documentacao Colonial Brasileira,” no page number. 99 Lucilene Reginaldo, “Os Rosários Dos Angolas: Irmandades Negros, Experiêcias Escravas e Identidades Africans Na Bahia Setecentista,” Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2005, p. 154.

Throughout the 1700s and 1800s the public celebrations celebrating

the election of the “King of Kongo” continued. By the early 1800s the

central Africans were openly connecting the King of Kongo to Queen Njinga

and this custom took root all over northeast Brazil. These celebrations were

not limited to the northeast, for by them Rio de Janeiro had become the main

port for the hundreds of thousands of central African captives entering

Brazil. Visitors to Brazil as well as Brazilian intellectuals left detailed record

of the public celebrations where the King of Kongo and Queen Njinga held

court. By this time although the elections involved individuals who claimed

direct Kongo (or central African ancestry), Brazilians of various part of

Africa participated.

When Henry Koster visited Itamaraca, one of the oldest settlement in

Pernambuco he left the earliest and most detailed account of the celebrations

which had become elaborate public spectacles. Although he wrote that the

participants were celebrating “the white man’s” religion and copying his

dress, in reality they were continuing to publicize their royalist orientation

and Christian outlook whose deep roots lay deep in central Africa but which

they had adapted to Brazilian reality. Koster commented:

The election of a king of Congo by the individuals who come from that part of Africa seems indeed as if it would give them a bias towards the customs of their native soil. But the Brazilian Kings of Congo worship Our lady of the Rosary, and are dress in the dress of the white man, they and their

subjects dance, it is true, after the manner of their country; but to these festivals are admitted negroes of other nations, creole blacks, and mulattoes, all of whom dance after the same manner, and these dances are now as much the national dances of Brazil as they are of Africa.100

Thus by the time folklorists like Barosa observed began to record the

celebrations, the customs had come to define not only Kongo and Angolan

identity, history and culture in Brazil, but also Afro-Brazilian identity.

Congo Reales, Cabildos and Kongo Identity in Cuba

Cuba, as Brazil, received its first group of enslaved central Africans

during the mid-to-late decades of the 16th century. The majority of these

Africans came from the same locations as the people who went to Brazil (the

Kingdom of Kongo, Portuguese Angola and Ndongo). Although for much of

the seventeenth century the numbers of central Africans in Brazil far

outnumbered their counterparts in Cuba, here, as in Brazil, central Africans

were identified in official records as Congos and Angolas. Significant

increases in the importation of enslaved Central African into Cuba had to

wait for the last years of the eighteenth century up to the 1860s. Between

1801 and 1866, for example, when 766,411 enslaved Africans were

imported into Cuba, Central Africans from the Kingdom of Kongo and its

100 Henry Koster, Vagens Pictoresca atraves Brasil, p. 411.

hinterlands, Portuguese Angola, Matamba, Loango and elsewhere accounted

for at least 31% (240,669 persons) of all the enslaved African imports.101

As other Africans, enslaved central Africans lived in Havana and

Santiago de Cuba, the main cities in Cuba. Like their Brazilian counterparts,

Kongos and Angolas (variously called in Cuba Kongo Reales, Kongo

Mondongos, Mondongos) brought their royalist orientation and Christian

identity with them to Cuba as well. These became most visible in the culture

that the central Africans promoted in the cabildos (social organizations) that

Africans who gained their freedom (along with enslaved Africans) were

allowed to establish from the mid-1700s into the late 1800’s.

Early Cuban ethnographers such as Fernando Ortiz dismissed

evidence from late nineteenth century sources that the cabildos elected kings

and queens that had African antecedents. In fact he actually asserted

categorically that “such opinion appears infantile to me.”102 The evidence,

however, suggests otherwise. Both official and non-official sources clearly

demonstrate that Kongos and Angolas in Cuba, like their Brazilian

counterparts, organized celebrations centered on the election of “kings and

queens.” Moreover, they also held public celebrations where they played

101 Eltis, Atlas of the Atlantic Slave Trade. 102 See, for example “ La Antigua Fiesta Afrocubana del día de Reyes” in , Ensayos etnograficos Fernando Ortiz, selleción de Miguel Barnet y Ángel L. Fernández, Ensayos etnograficos (Habana, 1984), p. 53.

African musical instruments, did African dances, and also regularly met in

the cabildos for “consultations” presided over by the “kings and queens.”

Cabildos were different from the religious brotherhoods that catered

to free Africans (morenos) and their mixed-race children (pardos) ). The

religious brotherhoods operated along the same lines as those in Brazil. One

of the earliest brotherhoods of pardos was called Santo Espíritu de

Humilidade e Paciencia (Holy Spirit of Humility and Patience). These

brotherhoods were officially recognized by the Catholic Church and

followed the same formal rules as the white brotherhoods.103 During the late

seventeenth century as the numbers of Africans who gained their freedom

(morenos) increased, the public meetings and celebrations they sponsored

proliferated. In time, the locations where they held their informal gatherings

and reunions became known as cabildos de naciones. This was because the

cabildos were organized by Africans who came from the same linguistic

regions (for example, Kongos and Angolans).104In their cabildos Kongos

and Angolas took the opportunity to continue with some of the royalist and

Christian practices that had shaped their identity in central Africa.

By the early years of the eighteenth century, several of central African

cabildos de naciones operated but were not formally recognized by the 103 María del Carmen Barcia, Los Ilustres Apellidos: Negros in La Havana Colonial (Havana, 2009), Appendix, pp. 45-65. 104 Carmen Barcia, Los Ilustres Appelidos, passim.

religious or secular authorities. This situation changed in 1755 when the

religious authorities intervened to regulate the cabildos since they suspected

that Africans were using them to perform “primitive rites and illicit dances,”

drumming, and the like. The new regulations that were put in place required

that the leaders (capitazes) of the cabildos register them with secular

authorities who would grant them official permission to hold meetings and

authorize their public celebrations. Although the cabildos were not affiliated

to the churches as the brotherhoods in Brazil or the Cuban white and pardo

cofrarias were, the Catholic hierarchy spearheaded an attempt to transform

them into Christian organizations because they feared that they were too

independent. The attempt to bring the cabildos de ncciones more directly

under official control and to eradicate African customs led the authorities to

distribute a statute of a Saint to each cabildo. Once they received this

religious affirmation members had to meet on the Saint’s Day to oversee

celebrations as well as attend Sunday services. Priests were also sent out to

cabildos to perform baptisms and to teach members the catechism.

The cabildo that the African-born central Africans organized was

under the patronage of Santo Rey Melchor (Saint King Melchor) and the

leader had to make sure that members participate in the yearly veneration of

the saint as well as be present every Sunday and feast days to participate in

religious activities.105 By the mid-eighteenth century when the new laws

regulating cabildos came into effect, enslaved Africans in Cuba with Central

African origins were all classified as subgroups of Congos in official

records. In 1755 the first official count of cabildos listed a total of six Congo

cabildos –two were identified as Congo Mundongo (people from the

Kimbundu region), another was listed as Congo Loango, and the remaining

three were listed as simply as Congo. Throughout the nineteenth century as

more Central Africans gained their freedom (became emancipados) they

founded new cabildos. In fact, one of the few studies of cofrarios and

cabildos in Cuba identified a total of 119 cabildos operating in the island

between 1755 and 1917. Of these, at least 26 were Congo cabildos. Six of

the Congo cabildos were identified as Congo Mondongos.106

Some of the Congo cabildos were still functioning during the first half

of the twentieth despite the spate of laws passed in the last two decades of

the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century closing

all cabildos. In fact, as late as 1947 Fernando Ortiz visited one cabildo

called Congo Kimalimbu that traced its foundation to the middle of the

105 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. p. 29-32. 106 María del Carmen Barcia, Los Ilustres Apellidos: Negros in La Havana Colonial (Havana, 2009), Appendix, pp. 406-413.

nineteenth century. The founder Francisco Alcassar who died in 1882, was

born in Nsundi, one of the core provinces of the Kongo kingdom.107

Although evidence of the persistence of Kongo (and Kimbundu)

royalist and Christian identity is not as visible in the Cuban Kongo cabildos

as in the brotherhoods in Brazil, the founding and operation of cabildos

provided the unique conditions for the creation and recreation of identity. In

the Congo reales cabildos African-born members from the core provinces of

the Kingdom used their common language, their Christian cultural heritage,

and their knowledge of courtly life in the kingdom to fuse together a

distinctive identity which all Cubans accepted. During the nineteenth and

early years of the twentieth century Congo emancipados were identified by

their Christianity identity, the tendency to identify the heads of their

cabildos as kings, and their attention to public rituals and parades. This

Christian and royalist bias informed Congo identity in Cuba.

These royalist and Christian orientation of the African-born Congos

from the central Africa emerge clearly in contemporary documents detailing

disputes and other activities of the Congo cabildos. The documents reveal

that the early founders of the cabildos congos were Congos who came from

the core provinces of the kingdom. The first detailed references are from a

107 “Cabildo Congo Kimplimbu”

1780-82 inquest that investigated a dispute between members of a cabildo

called Santo Rey Melchor. The cabildo had been founded several decades

earlier in Havana by Congos from the kingdom of Kongo. The dispute arose

because various members were contesting the ownership and use of the

cabildo property, the use of funds collected by the members and the

succession to office. 108 The inquest tells much about the identity of the

founders and the makeup of the cabildo’s membership. In the first case the

records show that the members of the cabildo were all born in the main

provinces of the Kingdom of Congo (Mbata, Soyo, Mbanza Kongo, and

Sonso) and had gained their freedom after years as slaves in Cuba. These

men referred to themselves as Congo reales (Royal Kongos), a clear

indication of their identity with the king and kingdom.109 Furthermore, their

royalist bias was evident in their use of the word “palace” to identify the

building that housed the cabildo. The Christian identity was also important.

One if the main duties of the leader was to require all members to participate

in the yearly veneration of Rey Melchor, as well as be present every Sunday

and feast days to participate in religious activities.110

108 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. 109 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. 110 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. p. 29-32.

The cabildo congo reales continued to operate well into the 1900s

even after several laws were passed beginning from 1877 restricting their

activities. In 1884 another piece of legislation totally banned the Dia dos

Reyes-the major annual function when all the African cabildos paraded

through the streets of Havana and other major centers performing their

African music and dances and carrying their flags and other symbols of the

nations and saints.

A series of letters written between the 1860s to the early 1900s which

were sent by the head of the cabildo congo reales in Havana and Matanzas

to various government officials as well as to local cabildos reveal that the

leaders of the cabildo congo reales in Havana took their position as head of

all cabildos seriously. They regarded themselves as the sole representative

between the authorities and all the naciones aftricanas in Cuba. During the

period the king intervened to resolve various conflicts concerning opening

up of new cabildos in Matansas and Cardenas, and attended to issues of

local leadership of cabildos. The head of the cabildo congo reales also sent

several letters to regional and national authorities requesting permission for

the cabildos to celebrate various functions through the public thoroughfare

using African musical instruments. The leader also vetoed requests that

undermined the leadership of the central cabildo congo reales which he

oversaw at the headquarters in Havana.111 In 1886, for example, the head of

the cabildo congo reales petitioned the authorities asking for permission to

establish a cabildo under the protection of “Nuestra Señora des Mercedes

(Our Lady of Mercy)” in Matanzas.112 One such cabildo composed of free

and enslaved Africans from Ndongo had been in existence in the city since

1844.113

Other Congo cabildos were established under the patronage of

“Nuestra Señora de Rosario (Our Lady of the Rosary) and Santo Antonio,

the two Saints who were very important in the history of the Kongo

Kingdom and Ndongo. In fact, the cabildo Nossa Señora de Rosario which

was in existence before 1860 was specifically associated with the Congo

Mundongos, people originating from Portuguese Angola and Ndongo.

These cabildos, as others, were ultimately under the patronage of the cabildo

Santo Rey Melchor congo reales. In 1888 when a dispute arose over the

position of the cabildo Ganga (one of the five nations --Congo Reales,

Carabali, Mandinga, Mina, and Ganga) that the authorities recognized, the

head of the congo real Modesto Enrique wrote several letters to the

authorities contesting the position that the Gangas had taken to act 111 For the various disputes see Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religiosos Africanos. 112 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religiosos Africanos,“Comunicaciones referente al cabildo Congo Reales. 113 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religios Africanos, Comunicaciones referente al Cabildo Vigen de Mecedes.

independent of the congo reales. In asserting his right as the head of all the

cabildos in Cuba, he reminded the authorities that “since antiquity, the

leader of the congo reales had been officially recognized as the Crown and

head of the five nations.”114 In fact, at an official meeting of the heads of all

five cabildos naciones, the head of the congo reales was addressed with the

title “The King Melchor, his patron Nossa Señora de Rosario, and the Congo

Reales.” The four leaders of the remaining cabildos had no titles and were

subordinate to the head of the congo reales. Thus although Africans from

other regions in central Africa--the Loangos, for instance had a cabildo

under the patronage of “El Virgen de Belen”—which was founded in 1818

and those from elsewhere in Africa headed cabildos—(ganga, Mina, etc.)

operated cabildos, these never achieved the kind of public acclaim nor did

their public stature compare with that of the head of the congo reales.115 The

legal position that congo reales held reinforced the ethnic identity markers

that they had brought with them from Africa and allowed them to

manipulate it to create a new Congo identity in Cuba.

As in Brazil, throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s the Christian

identity of the cabildo congo reales attracted the attention of visitors to the 114 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religios Africanos, Comunicaciones referente,al cabildo Cayetano de nacion Congo Luango, 1883. 115 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, [AHCPM] Fondo, Religiosos Africanos, “Comunicaciones referente al cabildo Virgen de Belem”; AHCPM, Fondo Religiosos Africanos, “Communicaciones referente Virgin de Mercedes.[The folder deals with the Cabildo Mondongo).; See also María del Carmen Barcia, Los Illustres Apellidos: Negros en La Habana (Habana, 2009), Appendix.

island. Fredrika Bremmer, for example, who visited Havana and Matansas in

1853 and described the various “cabildos de naciones” which were located

in Serro, some two miles outside the walls of Havana at the time. Noting that

in this location the free Africans met to dance, play drums, she compared the

cabildos “public houses” in Europe.116 After visiting several of the cabildos

what caught her attention was the Christian appearance of the cabildo de

Congos which she noted contained “several Christian symbols” which the

members displayed on the walls.117 From the celebrations and other

spectacles she observed in Havana and other cabildos, she concluded that

members of the Congo cabildos appeared to be genuine Christians even

though she disproved of their retaining “somewhat of the superstition and

idolatry of their country.” Undoubtedly the African born Congos were

practicing the Kongo Christianity they brought from their homeland. 118

The Kongo Christianity that Kongos practiced continued into the

twentieth century. In a 1921 article written by Fernando Ortiz one of his

informers an-- “old Congo” referenced the Christian practices associated

with the Congo cabildos that functioned during his youth (1860a). He noted

that for three days following the elections for the “rey congo” (see below)

members of the cabildo congo reales lighted candles and held ceremonies in 116 Fredriker Bremmer, The Homes of the new World, vol. II (New York, 1853), p. 276. 117 Fredriker Bremmer, The Homes of the new World, vol. II (New York, 1853), p. 383. 118 Fredriker Bremmer, The Homes of the new World, vol. II (New York, 1853), p. 383.

honor of St. Anthony (the Patron St. of Kongo).119 Official reports also

referenced the Christian background of the Congos in Cuba. A Havana

newspaper that carried national news included in its 11 February 1913

publication a note about the burial of the “king of the Congos, his majesty

Canute Montalvo.” The report noted that many of “his subjects”

accompanied the body to the cemetery singing “mournful songs” and that on

passing in front of the Catholic Church the bells rung “in honor of the

deceased.” The correspondent went on to wish the deceased “eternal rest and

also sent “to his numerous family our deepest sympathy.”120 Despite their

slave status in Cuba, the Christianity and royalist orientation that marked

Kongos (and Angolas) from the kingdom in Brazil also set them apart in

Cuba as well.

The royalist orientation of the Kongos (and Angolas) was reinforced

in Cuba in other ways as well. The role of the government in the colony, as

in Brazil, played a crucial role her. By the early 1800s provincial governors

and other local authorities designated the Santo Rey Melchor cabildo as the

most important of all the cabildos in Cuba, and identified the head as the

“ambassador” for all the other cabildos de naciones in Cuba. In fact, the

head even had the authority to impose fines on heads of other cabildos.

119Fernando Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos (Habana, 1984), p. 13. 120 Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos, p. 36 note 6.

Records for the period show that the head of the Santa Rey Melchor

cabildo actually referred to himself as king. This was the case in 1808 with

the Santa Rey Melchor cabildo in Havana where the “President” or head of

was addressed by the title “King Mofundi Silaman.”121 The social status of

the “rey congo” only increased during the following years. In October 1848,

for example, when Jose Trinidad XXXV, the head of the cabildo congo

reales in Santiago de Cuba died, the official compendium which listed all

the important events for the region included an announcement about his

solemn burial. Identifying him as el rey Congo [king Congo], the writer

noted that many people of his “congregation” attended and that he was

honored with a volley of artillery fired at his funeral.122

References to the royalist identify of the cabildos of Congo reales

appeared in some of the earliest ethnographic records of noted Cuban

ethnologists Fernando Ortiz and Lydia Cabrera. In 1906, for example, Ortiz

recorded the story told to him by an old ex-slave who recalled “the royal

Congos are the slaves who are called in Africa angunga [Kongo word for

bell] because they have a bell in their country.”123 Ortiz, in referring to the

royalist elements among the congo reales summarized the elaborate

121 Proclama que en un cabildo de negros Congos de la ciudad de La Havana pronunció su Presidente…” (Havana, 1808) 122 Emilio Barcardi Morreau, Cronicas de Santiago de Cuba, vol. 2 (Barcelona, 1908-1913), pp. 369-70. 123 Jesus Guanche, Africania e Etnicidade en Cuba (Habana, 2008), p. 212.

procedures that his informant, the “old Congo” related to him. The “old

Kongo reported that election of the head (king) of the cabildo occurred

every four years [and] was an elaborate affair which seem to mimic the

process for electing kings in the Kongo Kingdom. The “old Congo” insisted

that only the Congos elected kings and that the Lucumis (Yorubas) did not

elect kings.124

Events surrounding the rey congo also continued to make national

headlines in Cuba and no doubt helped to reinforce the royalist and Christian

identity of members of the congo cabildos reales. For example, a Havana

newspaper which carried announcements from other areas of the country

included in its 11 February 1913 publication a notice about the burial of the

“rey Congo, his majesty Canute Montalvo.” The report noted that many of

“his subjects” accompanied the body to the cemetery singing “mournful

songs” and that on passing in front of the Catholic Church the bells rung “in

honor of the deceased to who we desire eternal rest, sending at the same time

to his numerous family our deepest sympathy.” The royalist identity was

also reflected in descriptions from old informers and newspapers accounts

about the dress and deportment of the “King Congo” during the Day of the

124 Fernando Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos (Habana, 1984), 13

Kings celebration. In one of his early essays Ortiz described the dress and

demeanor of the king:

On the Day of Kings, rey congo wore jacket and pants, two pointed, tasseled cane, etc. All these attributes were of European origin, and also a royal robe and the one scepter were the very one that the African Congo king received when he gave allegiance of the king of Portugal in 1888.125 The several letters that the heads of the congo reales cabildo in

Havana forwarded to government officials between 1878 and the first two

decades into the 20th century leave no doubt that the leaders and members

alike were invested in protecting their position.. Whether they intended to or

not, their royalist orientation and Christian outlook helped to preserve the

traditions and explain why Kongo Christian ideas and notions of royalty

persisted into the twentieth century.126 Although the rey congo did not have

the same level of national recognition and position in Afro-Cuban folklore

and memory as was the case with the “rei de Kongo in Brazil, the status and

role of the rei congo set him and the congo reales apart from other Africans

in the island.

When Lydia Cabrera did her ethnographic work in Cuba, she

deliberately set out to learn more about the congo reales whose exalted

public had given way to accusations of witchcraft and who been supplanted

125 Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos , p. 12. 126 Ortiz, “Los Cabildos Afro-Cubanos” in Ensayos Etnograficos Miguel Barnett and Angel Fernández, eds. (Habana, 1984) p. 13.

in the larger public eye by the more organized lucumis (Yorubas) and their

Orisha religion. Cabera, recalling celebrations she had seen as a child,

sought out former slaves who she knew would recall the glory days of the

congo reales. Old Congos she interviewed not only spoke the dialect of

Kikongo (in fact one man who used in the kingdom of Kongo) but described

rituals to her that contained many similarities with the Christianity of the

Kongo kingdom. Cabrera’s study provides rich details of the persistence of

Congo exceptionalism in Cuba.

Most of the materials she collected came from African born elderly

Congos or creoles (some of them were well into their 90s and were alive in

the mid-1950s), and recollected their personal interactions with Congos born

in Africa who were members of the cabildos Congo reales. Some of the

Afr0-Cubans had lived during the last years of slavery and recalled that

during that time “the congos were as numerous as the lucumis.” One of her

interviewers stressed that members of the congo reales were all “natives of

Guinea” and that they were found in “the cities as well as the haciendas.”127

Some of them recalled that the Congos were distinguished by their rituals of

royalty and Christian identity. Her elderly informants who were descended

from Lucumi Africans defended the congo reales when others vilified them

127 Lydia Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, Palo Monte, Mayombe (Miami: Peninsular, 1979), p. 1.

as primitive. They dismissed these accusations, and instead asserted that on

the contrary, all the congo reales “were very civilized” and had “in their

cabildos a ceremonial court, a kind…Because of this many hand-drawn

carriage workers and man-servants who were rich were congo reales.”128

The description of the rituals that in the cabildos congo reales that one

elderly Cuban described to Cabrera leaves no doubt that the Kongos in Cuba

attempted to recreate the rituals and bearing of the kings and nobility of the

Kingdom. Recalling the setting for a typical audience that the rey congo of

the cabildo congo reales held, the informant recalled:

That was really Congo di Ntótila (the Kingdom of Kongo) the same Kongo kingdom with the King and Queen, the vassals, and all with order and respect. For this the cabildo congo was regarded as a kingdom. The celebrations were very good, the best; there everything was luxury. The King came down with his frustraque and sword and was seated on the throne with the Queen. There he governed like an African!”129

Although he did not know it, the image that Cabrera’s elderly Afro-

Cuban informant described did not depart much from the many visual and

descriptive images that European missionaries and secular visitors to the

court of the kings recorded over the 400 years and more that Kongo kings

held audience in their court at Mbanza Kongo.

Despite the ridicule that enslaved Kongos faced with in their attempts

to recreate Kongo and central African religious life and culture during the 128 Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, p. 14-15.. 129 Cabrea, Reglas de Congo, pp. 15-16.

congadas in Brazil and in their cabildos in Cuba, there is no doubt that the

Cristian and royalist outlook which Kongos (and Kimbundus) brought with

them from Africa allowed them to survive the enslavement. More important,

however, these traditions are visible in the folklore of Afro-Brazilians and in

the several instances of Kongo linguistic and cultural influences in Cuba.