African
Diaspora
African Diaspora 4 (2011) 76-94
brill.nl/afdi
“Canniball Negroes,” Atlantic Creoles, and the
Identity of New England’s Charter Generation
Linda M. Heywooda and John K. horntonb
Professor of History and Director of the African American Studies Program,
Boston University, 138 Mountfort Street, Brookline, MA 02455, USA
heywood@bu.edu
b)
Boston University, African American Studies Program, Boston University
138 Mountfort Street, Brookline, MA 02455, USA
jkthorn@bu.edu
a)
Abstract
In the early seventeenth century, New England merchants were heavily involved in privateering
raids on Spanish and Portuguese shipping in the Caribbean and in capturing slave ships, almost
entirely sent from Angola. Knowing the specific background and historical events in Angola
allows us to solve a number of mysterious appearances, such as Imbangala (“canniball negroes”)
raiders, and a “queen” who was probably a member of the Kongo-Ndongo nobility whose
enslaved members also appear in Brazilian records of the same epoch. Careful use of contemporary and dense documentation of Angola and shipping allow this greater nuance and opens the
way for other research.
Keywords
New England, Angola, privateering, slave trade, identity
Résumé
Au début du XVIIe siècle, les marchants de Nouvelle-Angleterre étaient profondément impliqués
dans des assauts privés sur des navires espagnols et portugais, dans les Caraïbes, et dans la capture
de bateaux d’esclaves, presque entièrement envoyés d’Angola. Notre connaissance du contexte
spécifique et des événements historiques de l’Angola nous a permis de mieux comprendre un bon
nombre d’aspects mystérieux, comme les bandits Imbangala (“nègres cannibales”), et une “reine”
qui faisait probablement partie de la noblesse Kongo-Ndongo dont certains membres réduits à
l’esclavage apparaissent aussi dans les archives brésiliennes de la même époque. Une utilisation
prudente de la dense documentation contemporaine concernant l’Angola et la navigation permet plus de nuances et ouvre la voie à d’autre recherches.
Mots-clés
Nouvelle-Angleterre, l’Angola, cossaire, traite des esclaves, identité
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011
DOI: 10.1163/187254611X566279
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We would have the Canniball Negroes brought from New England . . .and speciall care
taken of them.1
. . . she had been a Queen in her own countrey, and [I] observed a very humble and dutiful
garb used towards her by another Negro who was her maid.2
hese two mysterious references, both written around 1638, present revealing
insights into the composition of the earliest cohort of Africans in New England. Rather than being just a footnote on early Afro-New Englanders and the
beginnings of slavery in this part of North America, they give us pertinent
clues about their conception in relation to their African identity and their
capacity to build a community. hese early Africans almost certainly came
from west central Africa, where for many years wars involving people reputed
to be cannibals resulted in the enslavement of some high born nobles along
with the many thousands of freeborn central Africans who made up the bulk
of the unwilling workers exported to the Americas. Some of the enslaved Africans were Atlantic Creoles, Africans who had already been exposed to elements of European culture in their homelands. Beyond simply solving a little
known historical oddity, these references situate New England’s earliest African inhabitants in the larger African and Atlantic context at a time when other
areas of North America were also receiving their first Africans.
Knowing that the first Africans in New England (and indeed elsewhere in
the English and Dutch Americas) came from one place, spoke common languages, and followed similar customs, including an interface with Western
European cultures, all help to explain the sort of community sense that is
underscored by the limited evidence we have. hese Africans, in turn, helped
to establish the cultural foundations for those who would follow them, laying
the base for the later generations who would form New England’s enslaved
and free African American community (Berlin, 1988; 17-36; Heywood and
hornton, 2007).
National Archives, United Kingdom [NAUK] Colonial [CO] 124/1, fol. 124v, letter to the
Swallow, July 3, 1638.
2)
John Josselyn, An Account of two Voyages to New-England. Wherein you have the setting out of a
ship . . .to the year 1673, p. 28, (he pagination of the original is also supplied in the edition in
Massachusetts Historical Society Collections ser. 3, vol. 3 (1833).
1)
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African or Native American Cannibals?
Before exploring their origins, we must decide if the “Cannibal Negroes” of
the cryptic, one-line reference that appeared in the records of the Providence
Island Company in 1638 were, in fact, Africans. Karen Kupperman, whose
work on the company’s activities is the modern standard, has argued that these
“canniballs” were actually Pequots, captured, enslaved and deported to Providence Island following their crushing defeat of May 26, 1637 (Kupperman,
1993; 178). After that battle, there was some debate as to the fate of the
Pequot captives, as reflected in Roger William’s musings when he wrote to
Winthrop about them, “the Scripture is fully of mysterie & the Old Testament
of types. If they have deserved Death – ‘tis sin to spare. If they have not
deserved death than what punishment whether perpetual slavery. . . .”.3 In the
end, the perpetual slavery argument won out, for according to John Winthrop, the New Englanders sent “fifteen of the boys and two women to Bermuda, by Mr. Peirce; but he, missing it, carried them to Providence Isle.”
Pierce’s return cargo, delivered by his ship the Desire on February 26, 1638,
included “some cotton, and tobacco, and negroes, etc. from thence, and salt
from Tertugos [Tortuga].”4
While the timing of the two events certainly makes a good case for the
equation of the Pequot captives with the “canniball negroes” there are a
number of problems with it. In the first case, no New Englander described
the Pequots as cannibals, as they did for various Iroquoian groups such as the
Mohawks. William Wood, who left New England in 1633, noted that the
Mohawks and the Tarrentines were horrific fighters. he Mohawks, he
declared, ate human flesh, and the Tarrentines were almost as fearsome, “saving that they eate not mans flesh,” and thus were “a little less savage and cruell
than these Canniballs.”5 Phillip Vincent three years later also called the
Mohawks “cruell bloody Canniballs.”6 Roger Williams, who had extensive
knowledge of the customs and languages of the area, noted the “man eaters”
among the native people of New England and identified them in a letter to
Roger Williams to John Winthrop, July 3, 1639, in Glenn W. LaFantase, ed. he Correspondence of Roger Williams, 1629-1653 (Hanover, 1988), pp. 108-109.
4)
Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle (eds.) he Journal of John Winthrop,
1630-49 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996, p 227, entry of July 13, 1637 and p. 246, entry of
February 13, 1638.
5)
William Wood, New England’s Prospect (London, 1639), pp. 49, 51.
6)
Phillip Vincent, A True Relation of the Late Battle Fought in New England between the English
and the Salvages (London, 1637), p. 16.
3)
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Winthrop in 1637 as being in “Mauquowkit, alias Waukheggannick, where
the men eaters are. . . .”7 But these Native Americans were not New Englanders, for in his 1643 linguistic study Williams places the “Mauquáuog or
Mohowaúgsuck” in his more careful orthography as “two, three or four hundred miles” away.8 Furthermore, in his extensive notes on New England, Williams did not include the Pequots among the “man eating” group. Although
later English historiography linked the Pequots to the west and thus potentially to the “man eating” Mohawks, none of the more contemporary writers
made such a link, as indeed, the Pequots were not immigrants in the region
(Salsbury, 1982).
he reference to the cannibals being negroes is even more problematic, for
there is no evidence that English writers ever referred to the native peoples of
New England as “negroes.” In 1643, Williams provided a comprehensive list
of the terms used by English to describe their Native American neighbors:
“Natives, Salvages, Indians, Wild-men (so the Dutch call them Wilden), Abergeny men, Pagans, Barbarians, Heathens,”9 but most noticeably not “Negroes.”
He also noted that the Narragansetts, for their part, called Africans “Mowêsu,”
a compound of “Moor” borrowed from the English term and the suffix indicating a person, or “Suckêsu.”10
In addition, linguistic evidence also debunks the idea that the term ‘negroes’
would refer to Native Americans. English usage had not linked the term
“negro” and “slave” at this time, as it would later, so the possibility that even
the enslaved Pequots might be identified as negroes is unlikely (Heywood and
hornton, 2007; 294-330). Indeed, at that time when the term “slave” was
used in New England, it typically referred to Europeans condemned to periods of temporary servitude for crimes. he Court of Assembly in Massachusetts, for example, occasionally noted such condemnations and their subsequent
expiration. From 1639-40 for example, William Andrews was condemned to
slavery for assault, as was John Kempe for a sex offense, and homas Dickenson and homas Savory for breaking and entering.11
7)
Roger Williams to John Winthrop [4th of the week mane, c. June 1637] Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society ser. 4, vol. 6, p. 194.
8)
Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America . . . (London, 1643, facsimile reprint,
Bedford, MA, 1936), pp. 16, 45, 49.
9)
Williams, Key, “To the Reader”.
10)
Williams, Key, p. 52. he term “sucki” meant “black” and a coale-black man was “suckáutacone.”
11)
John Noble, ed. Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1630-92
(Boston, 1904), pp. 78-9, 89 (Andrews condemnation and release); 86 (Kempe); 90, 97 (Dickenson); 94 (Savory).
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During the first half of the seventeenth century, nowhere in the Englishspeaking colonies in the Americas were native people ever referred to as
“negroes.” Indeed, in this way English usage of the term differed from colonists in the Iberian world, where in Brazil it was common to refer to various
enslaved Native Americans as “negros da terra” (country slaves) as opposed to
“negros da Guiné” (African slaves), but this usage did not appear among the
English (Monteiro, 1994). Even here, however, the custom did not extend to
the Spanish, who generally called enslaved Native Americans “indios esclavos”
(enslaved Indians).
Privateering and the Slave Trade
In British North America, Africans were to be found in places such as the Massachusetts Bay Colony within three years of its founding. In 1633, William
Wood referred to “a poor wandering blackamore” who frightened some passing Native Americans before they “conducted him to his master.”12 A few years
later, John Josselyn, an Englishman, visiting the island property of Samuel
Maverick recorded the presence of at least three Africans in his possession,
including the alleged “African queen.”13
he most likely explanation of the source of these “canniball negroes” is that
they were Imbangala, fierce mercenary marauders who were major combatants
in a series of wars that plagued Angola in the early seventeenth century. hey and
a host of other Africans including the “queen” had been enslaved during the wars
of the 1630s for export by Portuguese merchants to the Spanish Indies, but had
been intercepted on the high seas by English privateers and eventually carried to
New England (Heywood and hornton, 2007; 5-48). he privateers who captured the Portuguese slave ships were probably associated with the Providence
Island Company, formed in 1630, the same year that the Massachusetts Bay
Company was formed and led by the same Puritan group (Kupperman, 1993;
1-23). his common foundation and close association created regular trade
between the two colonies. Neither company bought slaves directly from Africa,
as all the slaves acquired by English settlers, whether in the Caribbean or North
America, were obtained by privateers who captured Portuguese slave ships
attempting to deliver enslaved Africans to the Spanish Indies. he Earl of Warwick, a principal leader of the Providence Island Company, had been sponsoring
12)
13)
Wood, New England’s Prospect, p. 66.
Josselyn, Two Voyages, p. 28.
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privateering for many years, and it was his ships that brought many of the first
Africans to Bermuda and Virginia.14
he Providence Island Company continued this privateering tradition in its
two bases, Providence Island (settled in 1629) and Tortuga (settled three years
later), which the company called Association Island (Newton, 1914; Andrews,
1984; 302). English attacks on Spanish shipping began immediately after
the founding of the settlement. In 1633 homas Gage, an English traveler
in the Spanish Indies, observed that the Spanish were already concerned about
the English of Providence Island. “hey cursed the English in it,” he wrote,
“and called the island the den of thieves and pirates” who threatened New
Granada, and the shipping of Portobello and Cartagena.15 As a result, the Spanish attacked both Providence and Tortuga. While Tortuga fell in 1634 (but was
soon reoccupied), Providence managed to repel attacks in 1635 and 1640,
though the Spanish annihilated the colony in 1641 (Kupperman, 1993; 75-76,
288-89, 336).16
Pirating of enslaved Africans transported to the Spanish Indies became the
main occupation of Englishmen connected to the company. For example, the
Providence Island Company instructed its privateers to operate in conjunction with the Dutch West India Company, whose fleets had been raiding
Spanish shipping, including slave ships in the Caribbean since 1624. By 1636,
Dutch privateers captured, according to their reckoning, 3,256 slaves from
Iberian vessels.17 West India Company ships occasionally sold some of these
slaves to the Providence Island Company. In 1636, for example, one Captain
14)
he first captive Africans were brought to Bermuda in 1617 by Henry Powell, a Rich associate, Robert Rich to Nathaniel Rich, May 25 [19?] 1617, Vernon A. Ives (ed.) he Rich Papers.
Letters from Bermuda, 1615-46 (Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1984), pp. 17, 25; one of the ships
delivering slaves to Virginia, the Treasurer, was captained by Daniel Elfrith, another Rich associate – on this complex case which would contribute to the dissolution of the Virginia Company.
15)
homas Gage’s Travels in the New World, ed. J. Eric hompson (Norman: U Oklahoma Press,
1958), p. 332. Kupperman (1993; 199) notes that official privateering from the island only
began in 1635, following the Spanish attack, but it seems likely that unofficial privateering was
going on before this.
16)
On the Tortuga attack, see David Pieterszoon de Vries, Korte historiael . . . (Hoorn, 1655),
pp. 139-41 and British Library [BL], Additional Mss 13 992, “Relacion sumaria del estado presente
en que se halla la Isla Espanola . . .c. 1650 and Add Miss 13 977, Papeles de Indias, Letter of unknown
author June 12, 1635.
17)
Johannes de Laet, Historie ofte Iaerlijck verhael van de verrichtinghen der Geoctroyeerde WestIndische compagnie, zedert haer begin, tot het eynde van’t jaer sesthien-hondert ses-endertich (Leiden,
1644) Appendix, p. 21 (a separate pagination, not published in the modern Dutch edition of
this book).
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Riskiller of Providence Island bought ten Africans from a Dutch ship from
Tortuga.18 he fact that slaves could be obtained so easily led the Company to
instruct the settlers to obtain as many slaves as they could to be used in public
works and to supplement European servants (Kupperman, 1993; 167).
he 1636 letters of instruction issued by the Providence Company to its
ships provided for cooperation with the Dutch, and also included instructions
for how to dispose of “prizes of Negroes.”19 A few examples suffice. In 1636 a
Dutch captain based in Tortuga took a slave ship with 96 negroes.20 Also in
1636, Spanish customs officials recorded the loss to privateers of a slave ship,
the Nossa Senhora das Animas bound for Cartagena with 90 slaves, and Dutchmen captured the Nossa Senhora de Monserrat e São Antonio bound for Vera
Cruz with 193 slaves. In 1638, the São Antonio was pursued near Jamaica by
privateers, perhaps from Tortuga (Villa Vilar, 1977; Quadro 4). he Dutch
West India Company and other Dutch privateers also cooperated with the
English, and the company ordered them to sell any prizes to Englishmen at
St. Christopher “or other places.”21 he Providence Island Company probably
was responsible for taking all 16 slave ships that Portuguese slavers reported
had been seized by the English between 1631 and 1639. hese ships probably
were transporting more than 3,000 Africans to the Spanish possessions in
America.22
Such ventures were so successful that soon the Caribbean islands held by
the Providence Island Company were filled with African slaves, so that the
Company expressed concern that the population of slaves there would outnumber English. When the Spanish took Tortuga in 1635, they found
700 Europeans holding 200 slaves, at the same time Providence Island had
150 Africans and only 80 English.23 hree years later, as the number of revolts
NAUK, CO/124/2, fol. 133v, Committee for [Providence] Island and Brookehouse March 6,
1636.
19)
NAUK, CO 124/1, fol. 58v; 94v-95, Instructions to William Rous of the Blessing, fol. 104,
Instructions to Capt. Newman of the Happie Return, 1636.
20)
Francisco de Tajagrano to Diego Nuñez de Peralta to Crown, SD, June 24, 1640, in Irene
Wright, Zeevaarders.
21)
Nationaal Archief, Nederland [NAN] Oude West Indische Compagnie [OWIC] vol. 22,
fols. 710v-711, Notes of the Zeeland Chamber, Privateering agreement with Frederick and Johan
Roubergen, January 29, 1637, with references to several voyages in 1636.
22)
Archivo General de las Indias (Seville) [AGI], Indiferente General, 2796, “Declaracion
por causas nuevamerte sobre venidas algunas de los condiciones que Melchor Gomez Angel y
Christofo Mendoza de Sosa . . .” February 28, 1639, fol. 33.
23)
BL Add Mss 13 992, “Relacion sumaria del estado presente en que se halla la Isla Espanola . . .
c. 1650, fol. 500v; PRO 124/2, fol. 133v, Committee for Island and Brookehouse March 6, 1636.
18)
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83
and runaways increased, Company officials expressed a desire to maintain
a ratio of two English to one African among the inhabitants (Kupperman,
1993; 170-71). Yet, by the time the Spanish captured Providence Island, it
held 381 Africans and 350 English, and that did not include a number of
Africans removed to other islands to limit the risk of rebellion (Kupperman,
1993; 338).
New England shared in some of this human bounty, in part because security concerns caused Providence Island to consider relocating some of their
Africans elsewhere. A number of Providence Island Company ships visited New
England with prizes in this period. In 1637, the Queen of Bohemia, the Company’s ship, brought prizes to Boston.24 Another Providence Island privateer, one
Captain Newman brought a Spanish frigate as a prize there in September 1638.25
Moreover, in 1639, the Company’s flagship was back in New England with a
Spanish prize rich in sugar, indigo and silver coinage, as well as slaves captured
off the coast of Honduras.26 Pierce, who took the Pequots to Providence and
returned with Africans, “met there [at Providence Island] men of war, set forth
by the lords, etc. of Providence with letters of mart, who had taken divers prizes
from the Spaniard, and many negroes.”27 In fact, Pierce’s wife had an African
maid in 1641, probably the product of the sale of Africans by privateers.28
he Africans captured during the period of privateering doubtless came from
Angola which supplied what can be referred to as an Angolan wave of slaves. A
complex set of circumstances converged to make Angola supply the overwhelming majority of the slaves that the Portuguese delivered to the Spanish Indies. By
1600 the Portuguese held the asiento, the contract by which the Spanish crown
had provided its American possessions with slaves since 1595, and Angola where
conquest had secured Portugal a foothold, and became the prime source of these
slaves. Between 1615 and 1640, according to asiento records, over 80 percent of
the slaves delivered to Spanish harbors in the Americas originated from Angola.
Angolans comprised the entire cargoes on the ships providing slaves to the Indies
between 1634 and 1635 and 1638 and 1640 (Vila Vilar, 1977; Quadros 2-4).
Josselyn, Two Voyages, p. 26.
Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds. he Journal of John Winthrop,
1630-49 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996, p 266, entry September 21, 1638.
26)
Journal of Winthrop (ed. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle), p. 300-301, Entry of August 27, 1639.
Jackson headed immediately back to the West Indies.
27)
Journal of Winthrop (ed. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle), p. 246, Entry February 26, 1638.
28)
Journal of Winthrop (ed. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle), p. 352, entry of February 15, 1641.
24)
25)
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Similarly, between 1624 and 1636 all the known prizes captured by the Dutch
West India Company were Angola men,29 and all of the ships that the Spanish
authorities reported lost to privateers had central African origins (Vila Vilar,
1977; Quadros 3 and 4). Given this pattern, it seems likely that the English
prizes that held slaves were bound from Angola as well. he first slaves carried to
Virginia were from an Angolan vessel, as was the second known cargo, carried by
the Fortune in 1628, “an Angola-man with manie negroes.”30 In 1639, Melchor
Gomez Angel and Christoforo Mendoza de Sosa noted that shipping lost
recently to English privateers came from “the port of Angola which is the
principal one from which the slaves come out.”31 Between 1635 and 1639, 80
percent of the 4,904 slaves known to be delivered to Spanish harbors in the
Indies originated from Angola.32
Imbangala: he Cannibal Negroes
Many of the Angolan captives had been seized during a series of wars fought
between the Portuguese settlers and the people of the Kingdom of Ndongo.
After 1615, the Portuguese governors enlisted mercenaries they called “Jagas”
and who called themselves Imbangala (hornton, 1998). hese Imbangala
were cannibals, “the greatest cannibals and man-eaters that be in the world”
according to Andrew Battel, an Englishman who lived with them for 16 months
around 1600, “for they feed chiefly on man’s flesh.”33 Not an ethnic group but
a cult of mercenary soldiers who lived by rapine, the Imbangala, according to
Battell, “will not sow nor plant nor bring up any cattle, more than they take
by wars.”34 hey expanded their numbers by integrating young children “of
de Laet, Iaerlijk verhael, Appendix, pp. 11-13.
NAUK, State Papers. Domestic. Charles I, letters and Papers 16/103, John Ellzey to Mr. Nicholas
Esq., Secretary of the Duke of Buckingham “at his house in Chanell Roe.” Southampton,
May 13, 1628.
31)
AGI Indiferente General, 2796, “Declaracion por causas nuevamerte sobre venidas algunas
de los condiciones que Melchor Gomez Angel y Christofo Mendoza de Sosa . . .” February 28,
1639, fol. 33.
32)
Compiled from Vila Vilar, (1977) Quadros 3 and 4. Note that these numbers do not represent totals as available Spanish records are not all extant.
33)
Andrew Battel, “he Strange Adventures of Andrew Battel of Leigh . . .” in Samuel Purchase,
Purchase his Pilgrimmes (London, 1625), Chapter 3. We cited and quote from the critical edition
of E.G. Ravenstein, he Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh, in Angolan and the Adjoining Regions (London, 1901), p. 21.
34)
Battell, “Strange Adventures,” ed. Ravenstein, p. 30.
29)
30)
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thirteen or fourteen years,” whom they captured, going so far as to kill any
infants born in their own bands. hese children were comparable to modern
child soldiers, since Imbangala adults “train [them] up in their wars and hang
a collar about their necks . . .it is never taken off til he. . . . bring his enemy’s
head to the general.” As for the others, “the men and women they kill and eat,”
once they captured the town and removed the children. his method of
recruitment meant that most Imbangala originated from among the people
they attacked. Battell noted that “there were but twelve natural Gagas that
were captains and fourteen or fifteen women” in all the people of the band
with which he lived.35
Imbangala also cultivated a unique appearance. hey wore their hair long
and knotted in dreadlocks and decorated with shells, so as to distinguish
themselves from common Mbundu, whose hairstyles were shorter and
combed. Partial toothlessness was the great sign of being an Imbangala. Battell
noted that “they pull out four of their teeth, two above and two below for a
bravery, and those that have not their teeth out are loathsome to them and
shall neither eat nor drink with them.”36
Initially, the Portuguese encountered the Imbangala along the coast of Benguela, south of their colony of Angola, and Battell’s itinerary among them was
in lands south of the Kwanza River, which made up Angola’s southern boundary. Portuguese visitors to the region engaged in slave trading with them. Battell was among a group of traders when he visited their land, and reported that
with the Imbangala’s help they “laded our ship in seven days and bought them
so cheap that they did not cost one real, which were worth in the city of
Luanda twelve milreis [12,000 reals].”37
In 1615, however, the Portuguese governor of Angola, Bento Banha Cardoso, hired some Imbangala bands to assist him, thus establishing a more
general alliance. Governor Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos, who replaced Cardoso, arrived in Angola with instructions not to employ Imbangala; nevertheless he used them fully in his highly successful 1617 campaigns against
Ndongo. With Imbangala help, Mendes de Vasconcelos destroyed Kabasa, the
capital of the Mbundu kingdom of Ndongo and forced its royal family to flee
to islands on the Kwanza River. But the alliance between the Imbangala and
the Portuguese was unstable, and Imbangala bands were soon freebooting in
the interior, out of Portuguese control. Some went as far north as southern
35)
36)
37)
Battell, “Strange Adventures,” ed. Ravenstein, pp. 32-3.
Battell, “Strange Adventures,” ed. Ravenstein, p. 32.
Battell, “Strange Adventures,” ed. Ravenstein, p. 20.
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Kongo and as far east as Matamba. By 1623, at least one band, led by the
Imbangala Captain Kaza, had joined Ndongo to fight against the Portuguese,
while Kasanje, another Imbangala leader, ravaged the interior lands. Ngola
Mbandi, the ruler of Ndongo, agreed to accept Portuguese vassalage if the
Portuguese would remove the Imbangala bands from his country. In 1624,
when they proved unable or unwilling, he became despondent and committed
suicide.
Upon Ngola Mbandi’s death, his sister, the formidable Queen Njinga
Mbandi succeeded to the throne of Ndongo and led a desperate struggle
against Portugal and the renegade Imbangala. Driven from the Kwanza Islands
by Portuguese campaigns in 1626 and again in 1629, she fled with a remnant
of her army to Matamba in the east. here she joined with a large Imbangala
band led by Kasanje, but soon fell out with him. In the aftermath of their
victories over Njinga, the Portuguese installed a rival and more pliable ruler,
Hari a Ngola as king of Ndongo. He continued the war against Njinga with
Portuguese and Imbangala assistance (Heywood and hornton, 2007).
From 1617 the war against Ndongo and then between Njinga, the renegade
Imbangala band of Kasanje, and the Portuguese puppet king, Hari a Ngola of
Mpungu a Ndongo, constantly disrupted the region and allowed the combatants to enslave refugees and war captives by the thousands for shipment across
the Atlantic (Heywood and hornton, 2007; 109-68). A 1633 report noted
that markets for slaves near the Portuguese capital Luanda, that had formerly
served for trade with Ndongo and other eastern states, had evaporated and that
“armies which go in the field with Queen Ginga [Njinga], pretender to the kingdom of Dongo; and those which the jagas carry, that killing and eating because
they sustain themselves on human flesh, destroy and consume the provinces.”
he general state of chaos meant that merchants had to travel far inland to purchase slaves who “must come a long distance and in chains.”38
he “cannibal Negroes” of New England most likely originated from one or
other Imbangala band, captured by Njinga or by Hari a Ngola. hey were
purchased or captured sometime between 1633 and 1638, when Imbangala
were occasionally defeated and enslaved. According to the Portuguese chronicler Antonio de Oliveira de Cadornega, the governor of Angola, Francisco de
Vasconcelos da Cunha (1635-1639), “had news from Enbaca [an eastern Portu38)
Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (Lisbon) [AHU] Caixa [Cx] 3, doc. 5, 5th and 6th attachments (the 6th is published, P. Gonçalo de Sousa (in name of Câmara de Luanda) July 6, 1633, in
António Brásio, ed. Monumenta Missionaria Africana (1st series, 15 volumes, Lisbon, 1952-88)
[MMA] 8: 242.
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87
guese fort] that Queen Ginga [Njinga], [is] now unbothered by the conquest of
Matamba where up to now she had been occupied.” he queen “now commenced to make new assaults on the lands assigned to the King of Dongo Dom
Phelipe Angola Airi, molesting also some Sovas [local leaders] of the region of the
fort of Enbaca, vassals of the Portuguese crown.”39 In such a war, Imbangala
probably served in Njinga’s army or that of Dom Felipe, or in the forces of
Njinga’s rival Kasanje, against whom she continued to fight throughout this
period and could fall captive to the Portuguese army.
Recognizing the Imbangala
Having established that there were Africans reputed to be cannibals among the
slaves that the Portuguese were carrying to Spanish America, all that remained to
be demonstrated was that the English of New England would recognize them as
such when they were removed from the prize ships. he possibility that the British might have been able to identify the “canniballs” as Imbangala might rest on
the strength of testimony of other Africans enslaved in New England. Kongos
certainly knew them. In 1623, for example, King Pedro II of Kongo wrote to the
Jesuits in Luanda complaining about “the tyranny and scandals committed by
this [Portuguese] Governor in this kingdom and Christianity, where there
entered an army of more than 200 thousand Jagas, barbarous heathens, who
sustain themselves on human flesh, outside the army of the Portuguese who . . .
destroyed and desolated many provinces and lands . . . where they are infinite
Christians, who were killed and eaten. Others were made slaves.”40 Popular
disgust was so great in Kongo that it was only with great effort that Pedro was
able to prevent a general massacre of the resident Portuguese. he memory of
the massacre remained vivid, for even in 1628 another Kongo king, Ambrósio
I, referred to the invasion and the damage it had done, asking that no governor of Angola enter his lands “as was done years ago, [when one] entered in
my lands close to my city killing and capturing from me many fidalgos [noblemen] of the blood.”41
Not only would Africans from Angola know the Imbangala’s reputation, but
Englishmen would also know about it from their own sources. Surely the best of
these was the remarkable account of the sailor, Andrew Battell, captured by the
António de Oliveira de Cadornega, História geral das guerras angolanas (1680-81) mod. ed.
Matias Delgado and da Cunha (3 vols. Lisbon 1940-42, reprinted 1972) 1: 193-194.
40)
Pedro II to Giovanni Battista Vives, November 28, 1623, MMA 7: 161.
41)
Ambrósio I to Pope Urban VIII, May 20, 1628, MMA 15: 560.
39)
88
L. M. Heywood, J. K. hornton / African Diaspora 4 (2011) 76-94
Portuguese, enslaved in Angola, and who was then abandoned to travel with an
Imbangala band for 16 months in 1600-1601 as they pillaged their way across a
swath of central Angola. Battell’s account, still regarded as the best source of early
Imbangala history, was published in summary by Samuel Purchas, his “near
neighbor” in England, in 1613 and the full document was published in Purchas
His Pilgrimmes 20 years later.42 Purchas interviewed Battell and edited and modified the written account based on these interviews, Battell having entered Angola
through the same sort of privateering activities that led to the arrival of slaves in
American colonies. Purchas also interviewed two other English mariners who
had visited Angola in Battell’s time, homas Turner and Anthony Knievet. No
doubt everyone involved in colonial ventures read these books and appreciated
their contents. And doubtless there were other stories of Angola that circulated
orally among the English maritime community, including those regularly frequenting Boston. he Imbangala’s distinctive features – their dreadlocked hair
and missing teeth – would be known to anyone from west central Africa and no
doubt would also be identifiable to any Englishman who had read Battell’s
account.
Christian and Elite Africans in America
Besides Imbangala “Cannibals”, Africans of very different status and background were crossing the Atlantic on Portuguese ships. In 1634 the Jesuit
priest Pedro Tavares returned to Portugal by way of Brazil after six years in
Angola. he ship left Luanda with 590 slaves, but the Jesuit saw a horrible
mortality among them, and wrote that “God took 130 and some slaves to
him” during the voyage. Tavares baptized and catechized many “as most of
those being baptized know nothing of our Faith, and others know even less. . . .”
he second group was those “who came from two hundred leagues in the
interior and no sooner had they come to the city [of Luanda] then they were
immediately baptized and put on the ship.”43 Tavares’ ship thus had both baptized African Christians and non Christians who had been perfunctorily baptized. he first group probably came from the Christian Kingdom of Kongo
For a fuller history and all the relevant extracts, see Ravenstein’s edition of Battell.
Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Assistencia Lusitania, vol. 55, fols. 106-106v, Pedro
Tavares to Jeronimo Vogado, June 29, 1635, a loose and sometimes incomplete French translation is found in Louis Jadin, “Pero Tavares, missionaire jésuite, ses travaux apostoliques au Congo
et en Angola, 1629-35,” Bulletin Institut historique belge de Rome p. 390.
42)
43)
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89
or the areas just around the Portuguese colonial capital of Luanda, and the
second from the eastern wars that brought the Imbangala to Massachussetts.
Considering those slaves who had already been baptized in Tavares’ ship makes
it possible to situate the African queen, the second of our mysterious early New
England references, since she, like most of her fellow Africans in the Charter
Generation, was probably also from central Africa. hey were the mainstream of
what Ira Berlin has called “Atlantic Creoles,” but not derived, as he contends,
from the trading posts in West Africa or the Caribbean, but from west central
Africa where there had already been a century and a half of intense Euro-African
cultural exchange (Berlin, 1998; 15-46). Atlantic Creoles, in Berlin’s vision,
repeated by ourselves (Heywood and hornton, 2007) were Africans who had
come into intense contact with European culture while living in Africa, either
through contact with merchants, sailors, or missionaries or more cogently for
Central Africa, through the conversion of Kongo to Christianity (after 1491)
and the widespread adaptation of elements of European language, clothing,
names, and dietary items from Portugal. Kongo’s cultural pattern, well established by the mid-sixteenth century, also became the root of the Luso-African
communities in the Portuguese colony of Angola after its foundation in 1575
(Heywood and hornton, 2007; 49-109, 169-235).
he story of the African queen that Josselyn encountered during his visit to
Samuel Maverick on Noodles’ Island in 1637 reveals that some Africans in
New England were high status individuals. Josselyn reported that one morning “Mr Maverick’s Negro woman came to my chamber window, and in her
own Countrey language and tune, sang very loud and shrill.” Learning from
her that she “had been a Queen in her own Countrey,” the fact that he “observed
a very humble and dutiful garb used towards her by another Negro who was her
maid” led him to believe her story. he woman’s high status perhaps contributed
to her reaction to Maverick’s scheme “to have a breed of Negroes.” She objected
to his plans to have her sleep with one of his slave men, and, “therefore seeing she
would not yield by perswasions to company,” with him, Maverick “commanded
him will’d she nill’d she to go to bed to her, which was no sooner done, but she
kickt him out again, this she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, and this
was the cause of her grief” (Warren, 2007).44
Josselyn did not indicate if the queen was a Christian, though there is reason
to believe that she might have been and that there were Christians among the
early New England Africans. In 1641, for example, the church in Boston accepted
the “Negro maid, Servant to Mr. Stoughton of Dorchester, being well approved
44)
Josselyn, Two Voyages, p. 28.
90
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by divers years’ experience, for sound knowledge and true godliness,” who was
received into the church and baptized in 1641.45 Although the church fathers
thought fit to baptize her, it is reasonable, once the background of the early Africans in New England is understood, to suppose that she had been a Christian
before her arrival. In any case, the Portuguese gave at least a perfunctory baptism
to all the slaves they exported from Luanda, as Tavares testified.
he Kingdom of Kongo was the principal source of both nobles and Christians during this period. Kongo had been officially Christian since 1491, and the
faith had grown in the seventeenth century. Dutch visitors to Kongo’s coastal
province of Soyo in 1608 wrote that the inhabitants “are mostly Christians
and go to mass every day, twice a day when it rains. hey maintain five or six
churches.”46 “Congo is a Christian kingdom situated in Western Ethiopia,”
begins the brief history of the country written in 1624 by Mateus Cardoso, a
Jesuit priest who had lived there.47 Finally, another Dutch report comments
on Kongo, “all the country is full of wooden crosses which they salute very
devoutly and which they kneel down before. Every noble in his village has his
own particular church and the crosses. Furthermore, all have their rosary or
chapelet around their neck, which serves some to say their office. Most have it
in their hand as if they pray and they do not know how to speak or understand
a word of Portuguese. In sum, overall, for the crosses, marriage, baptism, confession, they imitate the Portuguese as best as they can.”48
Kongo was wracked by civil wars in this period. A chronicle probably composed by an eyewitness noted that in 1633 there was a substantial war between
the new king, Álvaro IV, and his uncle, Daniel da Silva, a rival for the throne.
From 1636 to 1638, warfare disturbed Kongo again following the death of
Álvaro IV as his brother successfully confronted two other brothers over the
throne. hese wars involved large armies and it is likely that many people were
Journal of Winthrop (ed. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle), p. 347, entry of February 13, 1641.
Pieter van den Broecke’s journal of voyages to Cape Verde, Guinea, and Angola, 1605-1612
(translated and edited by J.D. La Fleur, London, 2000) entry of September 1608, p. 59.
47)
[Mateus Cardoso] História do Reino do Congo (ed. António Brásio, Lisbon, 1969), p. 15.
48)
NAN, OWIC, vol. 46, Frans Capelle to Count Jan Maurits van Nassau and Directors, “Corte
beschrijvinge van de principaelste plaetsen gelegen in Angola te weten Commo, Goby, Maiomba,
Loango, Cacongo, Molemboe, Zarry, Sonho, Congo, en aderen omleggende plaetsen . . .” March
1642 [original unpaginated, pagination supplied here] fol. 5. here is a French translation, frequently truncated and not always accurate, by Louis Jadin, “Brève description des lieux principaux situés en Angola à savoir Comma, Goeby, Maiomba, Loango, Cacongo, Malemba, Zarry,
Sonho,Congo et autres lieux circonvinsis et de leurs moerus et coutumes,” Rivaltés luso-néerlandaises au Sohio, Congo, 1600-1675. Tentatives missionaires des récollets flamands et tribulations des capucins italiens, 1670-75.” Bulletin, Institute historique belge de Rome 37 (1966).
45)
46)
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91
enslaved under them and subsequently sold to Luanda. Kongo armies included
thousands of soldiers who were classified as nobles. heir wives often accompanied them to battle to provide for domestic services, and so might have been
captured. Undoubtedly some of the ships departing Luanda that were later intercepted by English and Dutch privateers also carried many Kongolese Christians,
including nobles, in their holds.
here were, of course, many Christians who were not noble, and not all Christians lived in Kongo. he Portuguese had also converted thousands of people
who resided within their small colony of Angola, and even its hostile neighbors
to the east had some Christians among them. In Portuguese Angola, Jesuit missionaries, most notably Pedro Tavares, had converted and ministered to Africans along the Bengo River and Portuguese farms and establishments around
it in the 1630s. Portuguese diocesan officials reported that there were some
20,000 African Christians around the city of Luanda itself. he Portuguese
church, moreover, made efforts to instruct enslaved people, as it was supposed
that “in the church there are ordinarily captives baptized, who come from paganism, and are taken to parts of [West] India, Brazil and elsewhere with great
danger.”49
Even though there were many central Africans who had no meaningful
contact with Christianity and European culture, a significant minority did.
here were some who were literate in Portuguese and were familiar with European names, clothing, and cuisine. Many enslaved Virginians and New Netherlanders in this period bore the distinctive Portuguese names that marked
Kongolese and Christian Angolans, and some of them may have used a Christian background to win freedom, acquire land and improve their social status.
he strong-willed African queen who refused to sleep with another slave at the
command of Samuel Maverick may well have come from that class.
hough this nameless woman was probably not a queen as Josselyn imagined, she might have borne a title of some sort, for central African nobles were
occasionally enslaved. When Antonio Manuel, the Kongolese ambassador to
Rome, passed through Brazil on his way to Europe in 1604, he obtained the
freedom of a certain “Pedro Manbala,” a name which indicates that Pedro was
a titled noble and probably freed for this reason.50 he first part of his name
“Man-” is a shortened form of Mani [mwene] which can mean either a ruler or
49)
Francisco do Soveral, “Infra scriptam relationem de statu Cathedralis ecclesiae Sancti Saluatoris
transmittit ad Sanctissimum D. N. Vrbanum Papam . . . Anno Domini de 1631,” April 1, 1631,
MMA 8: 22 and 24.
50)
Archivio Segredo Vaticano, Miscellanea, Armadio II, volume 91, fol. 126, November 10, 1604.
92
L. M. Heywood, J. K. hornton / African Diaspora 4 (2011) 76-94
a titled noble, and perhaps Maverick’s enslaved queen bore such a title, which
she chose to translate it into English as “queen.”
Enslaved members of the central African nobility were not confined to
Kongo. In 1605, Brazilian church records mention the reception of a certain
Maria Quiloange into its membership, along with several Portuguese.51 A few
years later, in 1611, João Quiloange and his wife Maria Cahango were also
received into the Church. Both the names “Quiloange” and “Cahango” were
among the most powerful noble families in Ndongo.52 hese receptions, rather
than baptisms, strongly suggest that these people came to Brazil as Christians,
while their Kimbundu surnames indicate a claim to status that the Portuguese
at least partially recognized. Most Africans were known by an ethnonym, such
as “Angola”, “Congo”, “Matamba” or “Andalla” rather than a surname in Portuguese records in Brazil.
In any case, in New England a small community of Africans developed in
the mid-seventeenth century. he community started around Boston merchant Captain Robert Keayne, who owned three slaves: Angola (also known as
Angelo), Richard and his wife Grace and their daughter Zipporah (who was
not considered a slave) in 1656 (Sanborn, 1999; 121). In his will that year,
Keayne granted Richard and Angola 40 shillings and Grace received 20 shillings with the provision that Zipporah would receive Richard’s share if he died
(Sanborn, 1999; 120). Eventually Zipporah would come to own land in Boston by 1670. Meanwhile, an African seaman named Boston Ken, whose name
suggests that he too once had a connection to Keayne, and who owned a house
and at least four acres of farmland in nearby Dorchester, paid Keayne’s widow
to buy out the time owed by Angola.53 Boston Ken, also known as Sebastian
Cane moved to the eastern shore [nb. the “Eastern Shore” is a proper name
and thus ought to be capitalized jkt] of Maryland in 1662, where he married
into the vibrant free African community, many if not all of whom were of
Angolan origin (Deal, 1993; 374-79). Angola would eventually prosper, especially after he rescued the Governor, Richard Bellingham from drowning in
the Charles River in 1667, and in gratitude the governor gave him a plot of
land along the Roxbury Neck.54
51)
Arquivo da Curia, Arquebispado de Bahia, Estante 2, Cx. 9, Paróquia Conceição da Praia,
1649-76 [mistitled, actually covers 1599-1647], fol. 25v.
52)
Arquivo da Curia, Arquebispado de Bahia, Estante 2, Cx. 9, fol. 25v.
53)
Suffolk Deeds 2: 297-8 Contract of “Bostian Ken, commonly called Bus Bus Negro of
Dorchester” June 2, 1656.
54)
he land is mentioned as being on the highway leading to the road to Roxbury near the
Neck, Suffolk Deeds 7: 22 Deed of sale, April 30, 1670 (boundary description); the circumstances
L. M. Heywood, J. K. hornton / African Diaspora 4 (2011) 76-94
93
Conclusion
he earliest stream of Africans carried to New England was a small group that
included a few cannibals, some Christians, occasional nobles, and some nonChristian ordinary individuals, all enslaved as a result of the disturbed conditions in central Africa. he long-standing engagement of central Africans with
Europeans also made them the pre-eminent Atlantic creoles. It is not a surprise that one of the first African New Englanders to be known by name was
called “Angola” (Sanborn, 1999; 119-29). his situation probably also helps to
explain the sense of community that the earliest, though limited documentation reveals about the group.his unique pattern of Central African prominence of the Charter Generation would continue until the rise of the English
slave trade in the mid-1640s. hat trade centered on West Africa, and created
a more diverse black population in New England and a new engagement of
Africans with the Americas. hese enslaved West Africans met a small population of enslaved central Africans whose culture was informed not only by their
exposure to Iberian culture in central Africa but increasingly by culture of the
emerging New England society. hese “Creole” Africans played an important
role in shaping the adjustment of the enslaved West Africans to life in New
England.
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Menene, February 1673/74 (indicating that the land was given to Angola in 1669/70, and the
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