Re: interesting connections (#45850)
by Richard Henry Morgan on November 2, 2004 at 3:52 PM

And I refer you to the publications of Stuart Schwartz and Martin Klein touching on Palmares. Schwartz holds an endowed chair at Yale, and Klein a professor emeritus at Toronto, voted Africanist of the Year in 2001.

Yet both assert (or assume) that the Ganga Zumba of Palmares (and in the original sources) is in fact a corruption of the Imbangala priest from Angola, nganga a nzumbi [note the change in the trailing vowel], amd therefore (without noting their change from the original documents, or explaining why) they have Ganga Zumba transformed into Ganga Zumbi. That the posited corruption is unpatterned linguistically and is therefore unlikely is established by the fact that that other character, Zumbi (a distinct person), remains unchanged in spelling. Schwartz (in his book from Cambridge University Press, with Lockhart -- Early Latin America, p. 221) even goes so far as to call Ganga Zumbi the last leader of Palmares against the Portuguese -- a strange assertion since there is today in Brazil a National Day of Black Consciousness, which falls on the anniversary of the death of Zumbi, the last leader of Palmares (the date of Ganga Zumba's or Ganga Zumbi's death is unknown).

Now in the academic universe the evaluation of these rival claims would be decided, in the absence of any real knowledge about the subject (sort of like a claim to know my state of knowledge of LBJ's character), by histories of prior publication, and I have not published on Palmares.

Yet Schwartz's and Klein's error (Klein apparently relying on Schwartz) is easy enough to understand. Schwartz never dug deeper than Joseph Miller's study of the Imbangala, which mentions only the nganga a nzumbi. Had either read Cavazzi de Montecuccolo's Istorica Descrittione de Tre Regni Congo, Matamba e Angola (1687-90), upon which Miller in part draws, they would know there is a separate Imbangala priest, the nganga a nzumba (head of the billy-goat cult) to go along with the nganaga a nzumbi, the priest in charge of spiritual purity. Alas, they did not. And any number of people, relying on their credentials and publication history (and they are both good scholars, as far as I can tell), would bet they are right and believe them.

Or perhaps there are some who think Schwartz can draw strength from Reijmbach's expedition of 1645, which describes a king who kills witches (nganga a nzumbi?). But Ganga Zumba doesn't appear in the records until a document from the 1670's, so we can't know he was ruling in the 1640's, can we? Moreover, that document has Ganga Zumba living in the capital city, while the 1645 document has the un-named king living outside.

Certainly we know the Imbangala leader lived in the capital, though, which would seem to count against the 1645 document as establishing Imbangala rule or describing the nganga a nzumbi. And we don't know when the Imbangala arrived in Brazil -- there being no evidence dating to before the 1670's document mentioning Ganga Zumba.

Or do we? It has been a mystery, unsolved even by Schwartz, who had the good sense to see the relevance of Miller's work. Oops. Buried there in the footnotes in Miller is reference to a document establishing that Imbangala were shipped off to Brazil in 1655 -- too late for the 1645 expedition (another mystery that is unsolved in the literature because of quick reading and inattention to detail on a subject not central to the author's area -- a forgiveable error, in other words). On other matters, however, I find Schwartz excellent.

The capital of Palmares was named Macoco. R.K. Kent correctly traces Macoco to Makoko, from Loango. But he doesn't point out that Makoko was the Loango name for the king of the Tio (who called their king Moko-o), who supplied a majority of slaves to the Portuguese from the Malebo Pool area only perhaps through the 1550's. Interestingly, the Tio (if Jan Vansina is read and believed) had a king chosen on the basis of his power over witches (consistent with the 1645 document), who lived outside the Tio capital (!!). And Brazil had African slaves since at least the 1530's, and maroon societies generally popped up on the edges of plantation societies within 20 years of the introduction of slaves. The evidence points back to an origin of Palmares at least as far back as the 1550's (as Ennes nearly speculated), rather than the 1605 date preferred by Klein and Kent (relying, as they did, on explicit mention in the sources).

Now I would submit that isn't God you're sitting next to. If it were, you wouldn't have to rely on publication history to determine my level of knowledge on any subject, even LBJ. But if you persist in that view, I suggest you (and Tim Lambert) put your money where your mouthes are, and bet me that I can't possibly know more on a subject than a professor emeritus from the University of Toronto, and the holder of an endowed chair from Yale -- I'm similarly unpublished in that area, and two distinguished scholars would seem to trump even KC's presumptive superiority of knowledge. To play off of Dirty Harry: "Do you feel lucky?" Or should I say, "Do you feel divine"?