Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  For ten years João Angola served his master, Menezes, but when the Dutch invaded Pernambuco in 1630, João and forty slaves from Engenho Formosa ran into the sertão. As a fugitive, João Angola received another set of names from the Portuguese, a corruption of “Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe”: “Ganga Zumba.”

  By 1645, Ganga Zumba had achieved notoriety, for in the fifteen years since his flight, he had evaded recapture by Dutch or Portuguese in the sertão of the Serra do Barriga.

  Nhungaza was with João Angola and João’s mother when they were caught by slavers at the Zambesi River, ten days’ march from the east coast of Africa. Nhungaza had also been sold to the owner of Engenho Formosa and had shared João Angola’s experiences in the sertão.

  Not only had Ganga Zumba remained free these past fifteen years; he had attracted fourteen thousand runaway slaves to his refuge. His capital, Shoko, was home to six thousand people, their huts lying along three avenues, each of which was a mile long. Three hours’ walk from Shoko was a second city, with five thousand inhabitants, ’Ngola Jango (“Little Angola”). The royal enclosure of lord of the kingdom, his family, and councilors was equidistant from Shoko and ’Ngola Jango and lay in the foothills of the Serra do Barriga. Three miles from the cities, it was known as Place of Stones. At the time of their capture in 1619, only a few hundred slaves had been shipped from Mozambique Island and Sofala to Brazil. The majority of 250,000 slaves transported to the captaincies by the first quarter of the seventeenth century had come from the kingdom of the Kongo, Angola, and the Guinea coast. Their unique background helped João Angola and Nhungaza to remain aloof from the petty rivalries among ’Ngola, Kongo, Jaga, and other Bantu-speaking slaves.

  At Pernambuco, Nhungaza was a regular visitor to the royal enclosure behind the cities of Shoko and ’Ngola Jango. When Nayamunyaka took him on a circuit of a high earth embankment thrown up around the royal huts and pointed agitatedly to piles of rough-hewn stone brought from the hills beyond, Nhungaza was sympathetic. He knew that Nayamunyaka envisaged walls and towers such as existed at Great Zimbabwe, but that ten years of sporadic effort had produced no more than forty feet of loose foundation. Still, the site was called Dzimba we Bahwe (“Place of Stones”).

  Within the earth embankment, Nayamunyaka had had more success in creating a court similar to what both men had known among the Karanga. Here the royal huts stood on raised platforms; they had well-packed clay floors, solid daub walls, and thatched roofs. Nayamunyaka and his three wives occupied four huts; another hut stood sixty feet from these and was the home of Great Mother.

  Just beyond the royal enclosure was a stockade with the huts of the officials of the kingdom: captain of the household guard, keeper of the royal relics, chief diviner, master of ceremonies, drummer of the king.

  When Nayamunyaka first stood among the boulders on the hill in Pernambuco, he saw a group of toucans in the trees below the rocks. They had immense bills similar to those of the sacred hornbills at Great Zimbabwe, and their presence had stirred a tremendous hope in Nayamunyaka. He decreed that anyone harming a toucan would be put to death.

  The two contestants now wheeling and dancing toward each other at Nhungaza’s village were the same young men who had trapped the bird as a gift for the Nganga. After observing them for fifteen minutes, the captain raised his iron staff and brought it down sharply. The rhythms of the berimbau died away. The two men stopped their sparring and turned to face Nhungaza, their ebony skin glistening with sweat, their chests heaving.

  Nhungaza stepped up to one and touched his shoulder with the staff. The young man smiled broadly at this sign of acceptance as candidate for the royal regiment. His opponent bowed his head with disappointment, but then Nhungaza moved over to him and touched his shoulder. The villagers cheered this rare selection of both candidates.

  This excitement was short-lived. Nhungaza was standing opposite the second candidate when two men burst through the entrance to the stockade and ran toward the ceremonial ground.

  “Portuguese!” they shouted. “Three! Others . . . one hour’s march from the village!”

  A panicky outcry rose from the crowd. Nhungaza shook his staff of office. “Silence!” he ordered. He turned to the warriors who’d come with the alarm. “How many march with them?”

  “Seven,” one man said.

  “No more?”

  The man shook his head.

  Nhungaza spoke loudly for all to hear: “These Portuguese have been given permission to pass through our lands to see Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe.”

  “For what purpose?” the headman asked.

  “They come to seek our help.”

  The headman slapped his thigh with merriment. “Is it not a memorable day when Portuguese come to us for help?”

  As Nhungaza, captain of the royal regiment, led Amador and Fernão Cavalcanti along a main thoroughfare of Shoko, he kept turning to glance at the two men, curious at their reaction to the capital.

  Fernão Cavalcanti’s astonishment grew as they advanced down a mile-long street of grass huts; a few times, he expressed dismay at the extent of the fugitive stronghold, potentially as threatening to Pernambuco as the Dutch occupation.

  Amador spoke breathlessly: “I didn’t believe the governador. A hundred, perhaps two hundred peças, I thought. I never expected a city with thousands. Senhor Fernão, how in heaven’s name was this allowed?”

  “The Hollanders were occupied with destroying Portuguese engenhos and ignored the peril. They encouraged peças to desert the plantations and promised them their freedom if they took up arms against us. Most ran away to join others in these hills. Ganga Zumba rules them all. Planters have sent militia to capture runaways. When the Dutch finally woke to the danger, they dispatched squadrons. But not one peça has been taken from these lands.”

  Amador observed that many half-breeds and natives had joined the nation of fugitives. Yet Nhungaza had told them that a few miles distant was another city occupied by men from ’Ngola and led by one of their tribe, who was married to a daughter of Ganga Zumba.

  Halfway along the thoroughfare, the party reached a plaza where a daily market was in progress. Food vendors offered a great variety of fresh produce, wild fruits and herbs, cakes of maize and manioc, sweetmeats and other edibles. There was a fish market, the catch coming from a lake close by the capital. Beyond the food vendors, other traders displayed their wares on grass mats: beads, shells, basketware, pottery, expertly forged farm implements.

  Fernão Cavalcanti looked at five blacks squatting on the ground. “Why are they tied up?” he asked Nhungaza.

  “They wait to be sold,” Nhungaza said, in good Portuguese.

  “Sold? But aren’t these men runaways from the engenhos?”

  Nhungaza shook his head. “They were captured by a force from Shoko. They’re slaves.”

  “They’re slaves who deserted their owners,” Cavalcanti persisted.

  “I told you, senhor, they were seized by my warriors.”

  “Where?”

  Nhungaza ignored the question. “Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe has decreed that men forcibly seized by us are to remain slaves to work in the royal plantations.”

  A look of incredulity came to Cavalcanti’s face.

  “Most slaves we take remain with us, senhor. They have a better life than what they knew at the engenhos.”

  “It makes no sense, this trade by peças.”

  “We kept slaves in Africa,” Nhungaza said. “The Nganga makes a distinction between these captives and slaves who voluntarily flee their engenhos. All runaways are free men when they reach our lands. There is one prohibition: A man who becomes the subject of the Nganga may never return to the Portuguese. If a deserter is caught, he is put to death.”

  Amador gestured at the five prisoners. “If these peças attempt to run away, will they be killed?”

  “Why should we punish a man who seeks the freedom we have?”

  Nhungaza led Amador and Cavalcanti to a compound with several huts
behind a wall of reeds.

  “You will stay here until the Nganga calls for you,” he announced.

  “And when may that be?” Fernão Cavalcanti asked irritably.

  “When the Nganga is ready.”

  “Our mission is urgent.”

  “So, Senhor Cavalcanti, was the visit of men who came three weeks ago.”

  “Who?”

  “The Hollanders, Blaer and Vlok. They wanted the help of my royal regiment.”

  “Did you offer it?”

  “Would you be here if I had?”

  Cavalcanti flushed with anger but said nothing.

  The fourth morning after their arrival, Nhungaza sent a messenger to tell Amador and Cavalcanti to ready themselves for an audience with Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe.

  “Prepare myself?” Fernão Cavalcanti said. “For a peça?” But, remembering João Fernandes’s insistence on an alliance with Ganga Zumba, he dressed in a costly doublet with paned sleeves, clean breeches and silk stockings, a long gray cloak draped over his right arm, and a broad-brimmed hat with white feathers.

  When Nhungaza and six warriors arrived to escort them to the royal enclosure, Amador and Affonso Ribeiro stood ready with their muskets. “You cannot take weapons into the royal enclosure,” Nhungaza told them.

  “Your escort is armed,” Cavalcanti protested.

  “Visitors do not appear before the Nganga bearing weapons,” Nhungaza repeated.

  Cavalcanti looked at Amador, who said, “The governador sent us to appeal to this king. We have no choice, senhor.”

  With Nhungaza walking up front, they came to a stockade a mile from the royal enclosure. Nhungaza halted the escort. “Let me show you the soldiers of our kingdom,” he said to the visitors.

  Beyond the entrance to the stockade were rows of small domed huts similar to those at Shoko and built in three great circles around a central parade ground — fifty huts to a row, six men to a hut, almost one thousand warriors.

  At Nhungaza’s approach, some men went down on their knees, some stood rigidly with bowed heads.

  “First we teach obedience,” Nhungaza said, as he signaled a group of young men to rise from their knees. “Obedience to the Nganga, to the royal household — to me.”

  “And if they disobey?”

  “Death, senhor.”

  “They chose this regimen above life at our engenhos?”

  “They live as we did in the lands of our fathers. Few disobey.” Nhungaza turned away from them and spoke with one of his warriors.

  “What will become of this kingdom if they continue to thrive here?” Amador asked Cavalcanti.

  “These are peças. Where peças do not listen to reason, there are ways of persuading them.”

  Nhungaza rejoined them. “I wanted you to see my regiments. When Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe speaks, you will know that he has the power to enforce his words.”

  Fernão Cavalcanti sat uncomfortably on a grass mat, with Amador and Affonso Ribeiro behind him. To their left were court officials, including chief diviner, chief magistrate, and captain of the household guard; to the right, the drummer of the king stood behind three sacred instruments. A group of headmen from five outlying villages sat beyond the drummer, their loincloths and simple adornments reflecting their lower status. The court officials were richly dressed in colorful robes; two wore doublets and breeches and feathered hats. Standing farther back were the guards, who had adopted bright feather diadems similar to those of the natives of Brazil. The guards had bands of light monkey fur around their upper arms and ankles. Nhungaza was on his knees, in front of the trio he had brought to the Nganga, who had yet to step out of his hut.

  The three men had grumbled when Nhungaza told them that they were not to stand or speak in the presence of the Nganga unless ordered to do so. They would not have to “touch the earth,” but were warned that an insult or displeasing word or deed before the high priest and lord of the kingdom would bring immediate expulsion from the enclosure.

  The Nganga’s hut was on a raised platform of stone and clay, fifty yards in front of the visitors. It was much larger than the habitations at Shoko, one hundred feet in circumference, with smooth circular clay wall and conical thatched roof. Three smaller huts of similar design stood close by, the abodes of the Nganga’s wives, Nhungaza said, and off to the right, a lone hut where Great Mother lived.

  Soon after they were seated, Great Mother emerged from her residence in a gaudy gown of mauve and green. All within the enclosure bent their backs and pressed their noses to the dirt as the Nganga’s mother was led to a low chair outside the hut. Two virgins attended Great Mother, one holding a plaited grass parasol to shield her from the sun, the other fanning the venerable woman with a wild-banana leaf.

  Then the Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe came out of his hut.

  Again the Nganga’s subjects touched the earth with their noses, then raised themselves and began to rub their palms together. The chief drummer beat the drums slowly. The Nganga moved forward on jaguar skins thrown over the ground from the entrance of his hut down three steps from the raised platform toward a high-backed chair twenty feet away from Cavalcanti and the others.

  The Nganga was small, almost frail, with a narrow face and tiny eyes. He wore the simplest cotton robe, the same as Nhungaza’s. He had a low crown of yellow and black feathers that had been shed by the toucans at his hill of worship. An inch-wide collar of beaten brass and a long iron staff were his symbols of kingship.

  He stopped and smiled at the group of visiting headmen. Everyone in the enclosure smiled. He continued toward his chair and sat down. The drums fell quiet. The court stopped rubbing their palms, resumed their sitting positions, and waited for the day’s business to begin.

  Nhungaza rose to his feet to describe the arrival of the Portuguese and the purpose of their mission. The Nganga already knew the information Nhungaza was offering him; this formal introduction was for the benefit of the royal court. When Nhungaza completed his address, the Nganga spoke with him in Karanga; then Nhungaza turned to Cavalcanti:

  “The Nganga wishes to hear from you,” he said. “You may stand to speak with him — in Portuguese.”

  Fernão Cavalcanti got to his feet. Momentarily, he did not know what to say.

  The Nganga smiled faintly. “It is difficult, is it not, for a senhor de engenho — lord of a great valley of Pernambuco — to stand before João Angola?”

  Cavalcanti frowned.

  “My master called me this — ‘João Angola, the peça.’ I am Nayamunyaka! Nayamunyaka of the royal house of the Mwene-Mutapa, ‘The Great Pillager,’ whom the Portuguese know as ‘Monomotapa.’”

  These acclamations made the Nganga’s subjects rub their palms vigorously; the visiting headmen increased their adulation by pressing their noses to the dirt.

  The Nganga tapped his staff to signal an end to the praise-giving.

  “Let us hear, Senhor Cavalcanti, of your mission to us.”

  “You are a nephew of the great Monomotapa? One of his royal household?”

  “All this, senhor, until one night when I was stolen from the land of my ancestors.” He gestured with his staff toward the chief magistrate. “This man is from the kingdom of the ManiKongo, the great grandson of a prince the Portuguese honored with the title ‘Duke of Nsundi.’” He pointed to another official. “This councilor was a chief of the ’Ngola. . . . But, senhor, of what concern is our past to one who buys peças as he would buy an ox?”

  “We buy a peça’s labor, not his flesh . . . not his body or his soul.”

  Nayamunyaka leaned forward. “You have come to us peças to ask for our help.”

  “We march for the cause of true liberty in Pernambuco,” Cavalcanti said. “I have been told that you sent Blaer and Vlok away. God be praised, Ganga Zumba, for the wisdom given you in refusing the heretics. I have seen your regiments: Bring them to battle with us and we will have a glorious conquest.”

  “And when the war is over and the Hollanders have been
defeated, who will help us when the senhores de engenhos demand their peças?”

  “Our Governador João Fernandes promises the freedom of every man who fights for us.”

  “But the war will end, senhor, and the fields of cane will lie untended. Who will work those lands?”

  “There will be other peças.”

  “Stolen from their lands and carried across the sea to Brazil?”

  Cavalcanti looked at him sourly. “I have seen the slaves you keep here.”

  “We treat them as family. We do not whip them; we do not shackle them.” He stroked the brass ring he wore around his neck. “We do not choke them with iron collars.”

  Cavalcanti admitted that there had been abuses. “March with us and you will be heroes. When the war is over, we will appeal to Dom João on your behalf to grant you these fields and plantations as free subjects.”

  “I, the Nganga, need no land grant from Dom João! You can talk for hours, Senhor Cavalcanti, and we will listen, but already my councilors and I have decided.”

  “You have?”

  “We will not fight for the Hollanders.”

  Cavalcanti looked at him keenly. “Yes.”

  “And we will not fight for the Portuguese.”

  “You must! You must help us!”

  “We are not peças who must obey the senhor de engenho.”

  “Refuse us today, Ganga Zumba, and you condemn every person here!”

  Nhungaza stepped toward Cavalcanti, but Nayamunyaka ordered him to halt. “Leave now, senhor,” he said to Cavalcanti, “before you anger my people.”

  “As God is my witness, you will come to regret this!”

  Nayamunyaka shook his head. “Seven years, senhor — ”

  “For what?” Cavalcanti interrupted.

  “Seven years is how long a peça can expect to live when he comes to Pernambuco. Seven years, and most die from hard labor, from sickness . . . some because they are sad.” He stood up. “We have lived for fifteen years in these hills — two lives for a peça. It would be madness, Senhor Cavalcanti, to march back to lands where we would long ago have been dead.”