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Africa, Brazil and the Constructionof Trans-Atlantic Black Identities



A frica ,Brazil and the

Construction of

Trans-Atlantic

Black Identities

E d i t e d b

L i v i o S a n s o n e ,E l i s e S o m o n n i

a n d B o b a c a r B a r r



Copright © 2008 Livio Sansone, Elise Somonni and Bobacar Barr First Printing 2008

All rights reserved. No part o this pblication ma be reprodced, stored in aretrieval sstem or transmitted in an orm or b an means electronic, mechani-cal, photocoping, recording or otherwise withot the prior written permission o the pblisher.

Book design: Saverance Pblishing Services(www.saverancepblishing.com)

Cover design:

Librar o Congress Cataloging-in-Pblication Data

Arica, Brazil, and the constrction o trans-Atlantic Black identities /edited b Bobacar Barr, Elise Somonni, and Livio Sansone.

p. cm.Conerence papers.

Incldes bibliographical reerences and index.ISBN 1-59221-526-2 (hard cover) -- ISBN 1-59221-527-0 (pbk.)1. Blacks--Race identit--Histor--Congresses. 2. Blacks--Race

identit--Arica--Histor--Congresses. 3. Blacks--Raceidentit--Brazil--Histor--Congresses. 4. Blacks--Raceidentit--Historiograph--Congresses. 5. Arican diaspora--Congresses. I.Barr, Bobacar. II. Somonni, Elisee Akpo. III. Sansone, Livio.D16.5.A323 2007

305.896’01821--dc22 2007037312



T f Ctt

ForewordBoubacar Barry, Elisée Soumonni and Livio Sansone

vii

IntrodctionLivio Sansone

1

PAR I: AFRICAChapter 1 Colonialism and the Creation o Racial Identities

in Lorenço Marqes, Mozambiqe Valdemir Zamparoni

19

Chapter 2 Ever Hose has a Stor: Te Archaeolog o GoreIsland, Sngal

Ibrahima Tiaw45

Chapter 3 An Imaginar Ocean: Carnival in Cape own and theBlack Atlantic

Denis-Constant Martin63

Chapter 4 ransatlantic ransormations: Te Origins and

Identities o Aricans in the Americas Paul E. Lovejoy 81

Chapter 5 Making Place, Making Race: St. Helena and the SothAtlantic World

Daniel A. Yon113

Chapter 6 Looking Trogh a Broken Mirror: Blackness, SharedMemor, Shared Identit and Shared Destin

Chris O. Uroh127

PAR II: HE NEW WORLDChapter 7 Global Names, Creolized Identities Alex van Stipriaan

147

gh



ABLE OF CONENS

vi

Chapter 8 Ethnic-Religios Modes o Identication among theGbe-Speaking People in Eighteenth and NineteenthCentr Brazil

Luis Nicolau Parés

179

Chapter 9 Saint Anthon at the Crossroads in Kongo and Brazil:‘Creolization’ and Identit Politics in the Black SothAltantic, ca. 1700/1850

Robert W. Slenes 209

Chapter 10 Te Constrction o a Black Catholic Identit inBrazil dring the ime o Slaver: Saints and Minkisi aReection o Cltral Miscegenation

Marina de Mello e Souza

255

Chapter 11 “From ‘Near White’ to ‘Almost Black’: Racial Classi-cations in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Centr Brazil

Jocélio eles dos Santos 269

Chapter 12 ‘erras de Qilombo’: Land Rights, Memor o Slaver,and Ethnic Identication in Contemporar Brazil

Hebe Mattos 293

Chapter 13 Te Atlantic Connection: Histor, Memor andIdentities

Ubiratan Castro de Araújo319

Te Contribtors 335

Index 341



ROBER W. SLENES

210

Lso-Brazilians, or whom “Anthon o Lisbon and Pada” was virtall the patron saint?3 o what transormations had Anthon been sbjectedto make him compatible with the Kimpasi clts? Had a Central-AricanSaint Anthon gone to Brazil, along with slaves rom Kongo and the Por-tgese sphere o inence centred in Landa?

Saint Anthon, integrated into Kimpasi-related movements on bothsides o the “Portgese Atlantic”, oers a niqe opportnit or thestd o “creolization”. B “creolization” I mean “transcltration”: theselective appropriation and reinterpretation o the cltre o the “other”,as engaged in b all grops involved in a given sitation o contact andconict.4 On the Arican side, the qestion has been intensivel stdied,notabl in recent ears b John K. Tornton. I share Tornton’s basic

approach: rst, his insistence on the achievement o enslaved Aricans inthe Americas—as grops o origin—in re-onding and maintaining toa signicant degree their native cltral commnities, while engaging intranscltration with other grops rom their home continent; second,the idea that Arican/Eropean creolization was an active process romthe beginning and commenced, particlarl in the Portgese world, inArica, not in the Americas.5

Tornton has shown that a “natralized” Christianit, reinterpreted

within the matrix o the atochthonos religion, was thoroghl rootedin the Kongo b the eighteenth centr.6 I bild on this idea to argethat Eropean ideas and texts on Saint Anthon had penetrated certainsectors in the Kongo to a greater extent than even Tornton has sggested.Indeed, the accsation b Capchin missionaries that Kimpa Vita was aheretic was in a sense tre; she knew the Catholic tradition so well thatshe cold radicall reinterpret it “rom within”, even while reading it roma Central-Arican perspective.

On the other hand, Tornton has also given considerable attentionto the “cltre wars” over Christianit in the Kongo: that is, the contrast-ing was o re-signiing Catholic dogmas and icons or dierent politicalprposes.7 I attempt to rther sharpen this ocs here, on the assmptionthat political strategies, elaborated to dene contending social identities,are central to the process o creolization/transcltration. From new dataregarding the clash o missionaries and native athorities at the local leveland a new interpretation o Kimpa Vita’s allegories regarding the dierent

origins o blacks and (white) missionaries, I arge, more emphaticall than Tornton, that the Antonian movement rejected missionar Christianit as witchcrat, at the same time that it appopriated Saint Anthon andother Christian hol gres or the Kongolese peasantr, integrating them



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211

in new was into the indigenos religios sstem. In addition, it sed thenew snthesis to press political leaders to remed the sitation o endemicinstabilit and re-embrace atochthonos vales i the wished to maintaintheir legitimac. In sm, the Antonian clt was both a nativist movementand a dennciation o the rling elites’ betraal o trst.8

In later ears, Kimpasi-like movements in Brazil’s Soth-east incor-porated Saint Anthon in a similar manner, as part o the ormation o aCentral-Arican identit among plantation slaves in opposition to that o their masters. In doing so, these clts probabl bilt on Anthon’s prior“natralization” in the Kongo, which contined throgh the eighteenthand into the nineteenth centr. In the political and cltral crossroadso Kongo and Brazil, Saint Anthon was directed b Central-Aricans

and their children down nexpected paths. In both cases, this creolizedhol gre contribted to orming new social identities, oten dened inopposition to those o the people rom whom he had been appropriated.

I

In 1965, sociologist Georges Balandier arged that the Kongo kingconverted to Christianit in order to acqire a new bt not exclsive sorceo ngolo, or “power”. Te idea was developed in depth b John Tornton and

Anne Hilton in their books on the Kingdom o Kongo, pblished respec-tivel in 1983 and 1985.9 For both athors, Kongo roalt saw in Catholi-cism the opportnit to bild a centralized religios hierarch nder thecontrol o the state, mch as the Portgese monarch had done nder the padroado, and thereb strengthen their political control over the conqeredprovinces. Tese Central-Arican rlers never obtained the Pope’s atho-rization o an Arican padroado, nor even the permanent establishmento a Chrch hierarch sbordinated to Rome, which wold at least have

allowed the ordainment o native Kongolese. Te did, however, receivea signicant nmber o seclar and reglar priests (particlarl ItalianCapchin missionaries, rom 1645), adopt Portgese as the ocial lan-gage o correspondence, encorage the residence o a sbstantial, largel Portgese, trading commnit in the capital, Mbanza Kongo (also giventhe name São Salvador), and embrace Christianit as the state religion, withot necessaril discarding indigenos religios sorces o ngolo. Asa reslt o their eorts, in the beginning o the eighteenth centr it was

possible or a emale “Saint Anthon” to realize the extraordinar eat o bilding a broad-based prophetic movement with strong spport amongthe peasantr.



ROBER W. SLENES

212

B ar the most thorogh std o Kimpa Vita and the Antonianmovement is Tornton’s Te Kongolese Saint Anthony (1998b). For m pr-poses here, three lines o argment in the book stand ot. First, there is thedetailed docmentation o the degree to which Christian religios estivals(or instance, All Saints’ Da and St. James’ Da) took root in the Kongo,particlarl in the capital, the extent to which Christianit was propagated(largel throgh la catechists and preachers—mestres , “teachers”—literatein Portgese, recrited rom the Kongolese nobilit) and the ervor with which this originall “imported” aith was proessed b the Kongolese elite.Second, there is the clear demonstration o how Christianit was “nat-ralized” b selective reinterpretation, based on atochthonos categories.(Ts, among Christian celebrations, All Saints’ Da lent itsel particlarl

to cltivation b people concerned with honoring the recent dead and theancestors o their matrilineal clans, or kanda .)10 Tird, there is an emphasison conict, arising ot o the conrontation o dierent religios actors(or instance, Capchin missionaries and Kitome , or native high priests who mediated between the hman commnit and the bisimbi , regionalttelar earth and water spirits) and o Kongolese proposing contrastinginterpretations o Chistianit.

I will attempt to advance rther on all three o these ronts, taking as

m starting point one o the high moments o Tornton’s book, his analsiso the “Salve Antoniana”, Kimpa Vita’s reworking o the “Salve Regina”. Tornton notes that a crcial change in the praer was Beatriz’s assertionthat “Gods wants an intention, it is the intention that God grasps. Baptism[like marriage, conession, praer, good works] serves nothing, it is theintention that God takes”. Remarks Tornton: “in Kongo … intention iscritical to determining whether the se o kindoki [otherworldl power]is positive or negative, and hence to be considered helpl or evil, so that

these lines transport the concept o kindoki rml into the praer”.11

yet, Tornton does not convincingl explain wh it made sense, in Kongoleseterms, or Kimpa Vita’s praer to pt Saint Anthon “above the angels andthe Virgin Mar” and recognize him as “the second God”, il secondo Dio inthe Capchin sorces. (Anthropologist Watt MacGae has sggestedthat the epithet “second God … is strongl reminiscent o the positionattribted to Fnza, chie o all … [bisimbi]”; bt this still does not tell s what it was in the Saint that led Beatriz to make this identication.)12 Fr-

thermore, Tornton does not satisactoril accont or wh Beatriz endedher praer with repeated expressions o “merc, merc”, indeed, wh thisbecame virtall a cri de guerre o the movement.13

I begin with the problem o Saint Anthon, which reqires lookingrst, in more detail, at the Kimpasi. Tese clts have appeared in the




213

Kongo historicall dring times o severe commnit afiction, attribtedto witchcrat (evil kindoki) rn rampant. picall, the have exhibited theollowing characteristics, all part o the eort to place the hman comm-nit in harmon again with the ttelar earth and water sprits: the holdingin high regard o stones o spherical or other nsal shape, oten takenrom watercorses and deemed to be maniestations o bisimbi; the se o a “secret langage” among clt members, consisting sall o the attach-ment o special prexes or sxes to normal words; meetings in clearingsdeep in the orest; the inclsion o both males and emales as members andpriests, initiated, at least in the twentieth centr, as children or adolescents(bt ater “tribal initiation”/circmcision), or even when older; initiationthrogh a ceremon o rital death and rebirth, with the new member

incorporating an individal giding spirit (rom the realm o the bisimbior rom that o ancient hman “ancestors” associated with them) while intrance and taking its name and identit or the rest o his or her lie.14 As Tornton and Hilton have observed, Kimpa Vita reported her “rebirth” asSaint Anthon in terms that wold have been credible to people raised inthe bisimbi and Kimpasi tradition.

yet, practicall no one who has written abot Kimpa Vita’s move-ment has noticed that there is a remarkable similarit between elements o

Antonian devotion, particlarl the “Salve Antoniana”, and the traditionsand teachings abot the Saint in Portgese and Italian sorces. In sm,circmstantial evidence sggests that the Antonians, particlarl KimpaVita, a member o the nobilit, were well-versed in Eropean lore. yet, atthe same time, the pecliar Eropean congration o Saint Anthon’sattribtes and miracles lent itsel, even more than Tornton sspected,to reinterpretation b people devoted to the bisimbi and steeped in theKimpasi tradition.

Tornton notes that Kimpa Vita’s sermons presented “Saint Anthon … [as] the most important saint” and that “it was not diclt to convincepeople o this, or Saint Anthon, as patron o Portgal, was regarded asbeing a patron . . . o Kongo as well”.15 Frthermore, Anthon and SaintFrancis were “[alread] the saints most venerated in Kongo”. o this, itshold be added that Saint Anthon was not onl revered b the Lsita-nian Cort, bt was also the saint most oten called pon in the devo-tion o the Portgese people. Ten too, the high esteem given to Saints

Francis and Anthon in the Kongo mst, in part, have reected the actthat the Italian Capchins, the major missionar grop in the kingdomand a sborder o the Franciscans (who conted Anthon as prominentmember and Francis as onder), were particlarl devoted to these hol gres. Ts, one might expect that Portgese and Italian priests wold



ROBER W. SLENES

214

have broght to the Kongo books and manscripts or proseltizing andteaching that gave a certain pride o place to Anthon. Tat the did havetexts and valed them highl is beond dobt; when a mission chrch inSoo province was sacked in 1708, one Capchin noted that “the mis-sionaries … were deprived o everthing, even their sermons”.16 Tat SaintAnthon gred as athor or theme o some o these texts is sggested b Bernardo da Gallo, the Capchin missionar who is the main eewitnesssorce on the Antonians. Da Gallo wrote that Kimpa Vita “had perhapsheard some sermon o [or abot?] Saint Anthon in Portgese, that wasin the hands o some black man o little accont [sic ], who knew how toread a bit”: that is, a mestre, and ths almost certainl a member o theKongolese nobilit.17

In the light o da Gallo’s statement, the compilation o sermons and writings attribted to Saint Anthon, most notabl the 1641 and 1653editions in Latin repted to be the most complete, is the rst possiblesorce o Kongolese knowledge abot this saint that shold be mentioned.A second, perhaps even more important, is the Book o Miracles (later, theLittle Flowers ) o Saint Anthony, the most amos compilation o the mar- vellos deeds attribted to the saint, dating rom the earl 14th centr.Another is Lorenzo Srio’s Lie o the Saints , pblished in Latin in six

volmes between 1570 and 1575, and sbseqentl in several vernaclartranslations, Italian inclded; Srio’s work reconted man o the storiesabot Anthon’s miracles and was “an obligator presence in the librar o ever monaster, convent or parish hose”.18

A orth work, or set o texts, incldes the nine sermons on SaintAnthon given b the Portgese Jesit preacher Antônio Vieira in variosplaces between 1638 and 1672.19 Pblished versions o all nine sermons inPortgese cold have reached the Kongo b the end o the seventeenth

centr in the rst edition o Vieira’s collected sermons, prepared b theathor himsel.20 Some o them cold also have arrived there in Spanish,Italian or Latin collections.21 Manscript versions cold have reached theKongo earlier. One researcher has discovered that a cop o Vieira’s thennpblished Clavis Prophetarum was circlating amongst Jesits in MinasGerais, Brazil, ca. 1715-1719.22 Another has shown that Vieira commonl gave his sermons rom rogh otlines, which he then eshed ot later, inpreliminar versions, attending to the reqests o other priests, who nat-

rall were interested in the plpit speeches o this renowned preacher. Firstdrats then apparentl circlated (and sered revisions) in nathorizedcopies, sometimes reaching pblication in versions that were repdiated b Vieira himsel.23 Vieira’s seventh and eighth sermons on Saint Anthon were proered in Rome in 1670 and 1671; ths, in view o the preacher’s




215

ame and the Capchins” devotion to Saint Anthon, it is particlarl plasible that preliminar versions o these sermons cold have ondtheir wa to the mendicant order’s headqarters in Ital and thence to theKongo beore their pblication in Portgese in 1682 and 1699. On theother hand, the act that ve o the sermons and the second hal o a sixth were pblished in 1696 and 1699 meant that most o Vieira’s preachmentson Saint Anthon wold have been relativel “hot o the press”—and thsperhaps still circlating as high-prole novelties among missionaries andmestres— at the time Kimpa Vita took on the Saint’s identit. In an case,Vieira’s sermons, while masterpieces o rhetoric, probabl articlated thestandard sorces on Saint Anthon mentioned above in was that weremostl amiliar to his Eropean adience; ths, independentl o whether

and how long the circlated in the Kongo, the provide s with some ideao the notions regarding the Saint that priests and missionaries wold havecarried with them and propagated in the Kongo, particlarl throgh themestres.

W. G. L. Randles was the rst (and to m knowledge onl) historiano Arica to speclate that Kimpa Vita might have been inspired b oneo Antônio Vieira’s sermons.24 Ater qoting the phrase rom Bernardo daGallo cited above, Randles called attention to Vieira’s 1638 sermon in Sal-

vador, Bahia (pblished in Portgese in 1690) in which the preacher gaveSaint Anthon credit or orcing the Dtch to end their siege o that cit.Vieira calls Anthon “Saint o all Saints”, thereore the special protectoro São Salvador, Brazil, located on the “Ba o all Saints’; rthermore, toace down the Dtch threat, God had particlarl “delegated his powers”to Anthon. Randles cited the last part o Kimpa Vita’s “Salve Antoni-ana”—”Saint Anthon is the restorer o the kingdom o Kongo, . . . SaintAnthon is himsel the second God”—and then asked: “wold it be going

too ar to imagine that the Kongolese had seen, in the providential deliver-ance o São Salvador, Bahia … an example permitting the hope that SãoSalvador in the Kongo might have an analogos deliverance?” (He reerredhere to Kimpa Vita’s goal o resettling Mbanza Kongo, then in rins, andmaking it once again the capital o a prosperos, peacel kingdom.)

Randle’s sggestion, while stimlating, remained at the level o spec-lation, since he called attention to onl one o Antônio Vieira’s sermonson Saint Anthon and made no attempt to pt the preacher’s work into a

broader context. In act, Vieira makes clear that Anthon was the “Saint o all Saints” becase he occpied a place in all the varios categories o saintsand stood near the top in man o them; he was martr among marts (heonce had the intention to martr himsel), virgin among virgins (he wasknown to have a special resistance to temptations o the esh), etc.25 (It



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has not been noted b specialists on the Antonians that Kimpa Vita’s preg-nanc mst have been especiall embarrassing to her, or she had assmedthe identit not jst o an saint bt o the qintessential virgen amongthem—indeed, as we shall see, one whose prit had been received romthe Madonna hersel.) Vieira did not invent these notions with his rheto-ric, bt took them rom poplar tradition, the book o Anthon’s miraclesand hagiographic works. Still, he presents Anthon as “Great” in this andin the other sermons with hperbole that cold strike a listener namiliar with baroqe rhetoric as blasphem. In a 1658 sermon (pblished 1696)he compares Anthon to the trine God; Anthon is the “imitator” o theFather, the Son and the Hol Ghost, combining their respective powers o “doing”, “teaching”, and “calling”. Indeed, Vieira here reers to Anthon

as “this Portgese God, or Vice-God”; “jst as divine providence madeMoses god o Egpt, with power over the elements . . . , so also He madeSaint Anthon with that same power o doing [ azer ], not God o onl one reign, or o part o the world, bt o all o it, with niversal dominionover all creatres”.26 Te hperbole here comes even closer to Kimpa Vita’s“second God” than “Saint o all Saints”. Developing this notion rther,in the 1670 sermon in Rome (pblished 1699), Vieira compares Christ’smiracles to Anthon’s and nds them wanting—as anone might, when

comparing the respective deeds o these gres in the Bible and in theBook o Miracles o Saint Anthony .27 Indeed, the Saint was commonl calledthe “Tamatrge”, or “miracle worker”.

From sch ideas as these—ideas that did not originate with Vieira,bt that were inated b his hperbole—it was onl a short step to thenotion that Anthon cold intervene in wars and win them. HistorianEvaldo Cabral de Melo has persasivel arged that Vieira contribtedpowerll to making this tradition; bt he also shows that the decisive

intervention attribted to Saint Anthon b the leaders o the sccesslprising against the Dtch occpation o Pernambco in 1645 was prob-abl even more crcial. Certainl, b the second hal o the seventeenthcentr Anthon was commonl called pon in the Lsitanian world tohelp Portgese armed orces win battles (oten being “enlisted”, with asalar paid to the Franciscan Order, as an ocer or common soldier—thelatter, or instance, in the 1685 expedition against the rnawa-slave com-mnit, Palmares).28 Te most amos occrrence o this natre in Brazil

was in 1710, when Anthon was again credited with deeating a oreignsiege: this time that o the French against Rio de Janeiro.29 In 1704, Kimpa Vita probabl did not have to learn abot Anthon’s

prowess as a “warrior” rom Antônio Vieira; acqaintances and relatives whohad been edcated as mestres in a mission school most likel cold claim




217

sch lore as part o their cltre.30 Ts, it wold not have been a majorstep or her to conceive o Saint Anthon as “the restorer o the kingdomo Kongo”, particlarl given his other attribtes. Indeed, “restorer” is ake word. It shold be emphasized that long beore becoming a warriorsaint, Anthon was appealed to in Erope as a restorer o lost objects. AsAntônio Vieira pt it, “God, as the athor o all things, is the one whogives them; and when these things are lost, Saint Anthon, as the nder, isthe one who recovers them”.31 Indeed, this is probabl the ke attribte o Anthon—in addition to his being the onl saint o Portgese nationalit and the most poplar saint in Pernambco—which led to his “appoint-ment” as the restorer o this “lost” province and sbseqentl to his militar ame (especiall in campaigns against rnawa—i.e., “lost”—slaves). For

Kimpa Vita, looking backward, it wold have been hard to nd a bettersaint to champion her case.

yet, Anthon had additional qalities. I God had delegated His powersto the Tamatrge, the Virgin Mar had appointed him her deender andhad given him gardianship over the Christ child. Vieira noted Anthon’sdeense o the “prit o her Immaclate Conception”; indeed, Anthon was particlarl known or his man sermons in praise o the Madonna. Anearl 18th centr oil painting (ca. 1705-1716) b António Pietro de Pietri

expresses the close relationship between the two virgins, the Hol Motherand the Saint, mediated b the Christ child; it shows Anthon receiving asprig o “madonna lilies”, simbol o prit and chastit, rom Mar throghthe hand o the inant Jess. Another painting rom 1729, b FranciscoVieira de Matos (Vieira Lsitano) shows Mar abot to hand her bab toAnthon’s otstretched arms.32 Finall, innmerable paintings and sclp-tres complete the seqence, portraing Anthon with the Christ child inone arm, sall monted on a Bible, a smbol o the Saint’s knowledge

o hol writ and his prowess as a preacher.33

Christ in these works, as achild, is portraed smaller than Anthon; as Antônio Vieira explained it,“[Anthon] made himsel smaller [he joined a “minor” mendicant order]or love o Christ, and Christ in pament or this great decision madehimsel smaller than the Saint, when in Anthon’s presence”.34 Can therebe an dobt that the Eropean tradition was one o the sorces o anotherline in Kimpa Vita’s “Salve Antoniana”: “the Mother with the son on herknees. I there had not been Saint Anthon what wold the have done?

. . . Saint Anthon is above the Angels and the Virgin Mar”?35

In thetwo paintings I have reerred to, Anthon is portraed below Mar andChrist; nonetheless, Kimpa Vita’s sentences do seem to resonate with thehperbole o Eropean praise or him.



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I do not wish to arge, however, that the leader o the Antonians mis-nderstood baroqe rhetoric. Rather, she activel reinterpreted Christianhagiograph, engaging in a process o “transcltration”, that is, a selec-tive appropriation o oreign elements o cltre and their sbordinationinitiall—or even, as in this case, ater 200 ears o conversion—to indig-enos conceptal schemes. Kimpa Vita xed on the hperbole o baroqerhetoric abot Saint Anthon becase it made striking sense to someoneraised in the Kimpasi tradition, as this tradition was ormed, or reorged,nder crisis. o nderstand this, it is worth looking more closel at the Tamatrge’s miracles.

Te bisimbi spirits were deemed responsible or individal and comm-nit health (or the lack o it, i their ire was piqed). Signicantl, o the 80

stories inclded in a modern edition o the Miracles o Saint Anthony 36—64rom the original edition, the rest clled rom other sorces—18 recontmiraclos cres (rom diseases and wonds) eected b Anthon, threedispla the Saint’s power to conteract natre and resce people romdisaster (a landslide, a shipwreck, immersion in boiling water), and ninerecont cases in which the Saint resrrects people; i. e, a total o 30 stories,or 38%, present Anthon as a great healer who even has the power toreverse death.

Te bisimbi were closel associated with water, particlarl largebodies o water (lakes, rivers, the ocean). Signicantl, eight o the Saint’smiracles—several o them among the best known toda—take place inthe water, inclding ve o the resrrections, which are o people whohad drowned. One o these water stories, which is set at a point wherea river enters the sea, reconts Anthon’s amos “sermon to the shes”. o conond disbelievers, Anthon preaches to the sh, which come inschools to hear him, raising their heads above the srace in rapt atten-

tion and arranging themselves in size rom little sh in the shallow waterto big ones in the deep. Te Kongolese held chies who had the powero persasion in high esteem. Bt the also believed that bisimbi spiritsrevealed themselves to people in the orm o water animals, especiall sh,and the told tales which relate the size o sch “sh” to the importanceo the spirit that ths presents itsel.37 Someone with Anthon’s attribtes, who cold enthral the varios ranks o “sh” with a speech in their ownlangage, clearl was a powerl nganga (doctor-priest): at the ver least,

similar to the hol men who called crocodiles and snakes to the sraceo the water to negotiate a pact with them, according to stories recontedb missionar-ethnographer Karl Laman (resident among the Nsndi, aKongo grop, rom 1891 to 1919).38 Or, perhaps as MacGae has sg-gested, he was Fnza itsel, the biggest “sh” o them all.




219

Five o the miracles—some o them, again, among the best knowntoda—portra Saint Anthon as being in two places at once (evidenc-ing his powers o “bilocation”), that is, with his sol separated rom hisbod; and an additional tale is abot a woman whose sol is indced b the Saint to leave her esh and experience a vision o the Other World.Probabl Anthon’s most renowned miracle is that in which his spirit iesrom Pavia in Ital across the sea to Lisbon, where it temporaril revivesa mrdered man, who then clears the Saint’s ather o the charge o assas-sination.39 Onl the greatest nganga or a great spirit rom the Other Worlditsel cold combine bilocation with sch powerl divining. Finall, otherstories and poplar Eropean tradition considered Anthon “a protectoro love and marriage”, a qalit linked to the promotion o ertilit. Kimpa

Vita certainl nderstood this. Da Gallo reported that “she … boasted thatshe had the power to make sterile women become ertile”. Her ollow-ers were taght—or alread had learned—to respond the wa Portgese women might (albeit, as Tornton notes, or atochthonos reasons). SasGallo:

Te women who wanted to have lots o children not onl askedher or this, bt in addition wond little cords and threads

arond her arms and eet, the wa the Portgese wold bindor tie the states o Saint Anthon as a sign o aith when the wanted to obtain a avor.40

It was rom this set o miraclos tales that Portgese and ItalianCatholicism elaborated the gre o the great Tamatrge and healer,the promoter o “matrimon”, the delegate o the Virgin Mar and thetrine God, the restorer o “lost” Pernambco, the great warrior, the “Sainto All Saints”, the (Portgese) “Vice-God”. And it was this combination

o attribtes that lent itsel so well to being “read” throgh indigenoscategories, centred on the spirit world o the bisimbi. In the Kongo in later ears, perhaps also in 1704, Saint Anthon was known as Ntoni Malau. Tistranslates as “Anthon o the good ortne”41 or “Anthon o prosperit”,42 meanings which are qite close to his nickname in Portgese, “Antônioda Boaventra”; or, alternativel, it ma be rendered as Anthon the “all-powerl”, which is what lau means in the dialect o São Salvador.43

yet there is one nal, qintessential characteristic o the Eropean

Saint Anthon which needs to be examined, or it ma have been partic-larl attractive to the Kongolese. Te reader will have noted that Anthon broght with him to the Kongo a crios set o “hard” and “sot” qalities,combining the power o God the Father with the prit and motherl



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concern o the Virgin Mar. In Antônio Vieira’s sixth sermon on the Saint(1658, pblished 1696), the athor highlights a pecliar qalit o thePortgese Tamatrge which nites these two natres. Saint Anthon was known in Erope as the “hammer o the heretics”; “bt I do not know what tpe o hammer this was”, sas Vieira, “which did not seem to beo iron bt o wax, becase he [Saint Anthon] alwas redced the her-etics with gentleness, never with severit”.44 “Hammer” in the Kongolesecontext wold have sggested “blacksmith”, an indigenos mediator withthe bisimbi, who also combined “mascline” with “eminine” qalities(his orge was likened to a woman’s womb, he promoted ertilit, credpeople with air rom his bellows, and had the power o reviving peopleon the edge o death).45 Indeed, Anthon’s “sot hammer”, along with his

other attribtes, cold easil have been incorporated into the Kongoleselingistic eld arond “blacksmith”, which inclded sch words (withdierent “melodies”, Kikongo being a tonal langage) as mula (“smith”), ula (“to work at the orge”), ula (“to … revive a re or someone who issick to death”), utumuna (“make [someone] come to lie again”, which“wold seem to be a reinorced orm o ula ”), and the contrasting uula (“to destro, exterminate”).46

In this context, the new ondation mth or the Kongo state,

promoted b Pedro IV, the leading pretender to the throne o a nitedkingdom, ma acqire a hitherto nsspected signicance. A high cortocial expressed this new histor on Saint James’ da (celebrating theonding o the Christian kingdom) in 1700, in a speech aimed at obtain-ing spport rom other regional leaders or Pedro’s plan to reoccp SãoSalvador. Te speech was smmarized b a Capchin missionar and isreported b Tornton: “‘the kingdom o Kongo … was onded long ago b a wise and skill blacksmith who settled dierences among the people’”.

Tornton creates a plasible ction b attribting the speech to Migel deCastro, the cort’s roal interpreter and secretar, a mestre and a member o Kimpa Vita’s kanda (matrilineal clan). Cold Kimpa Vita’s new identit in 1704 and Castro’s initial deence o her beore missionar da Gallo bedirectl tied to high politics, at a time when Pedro was still casting abotor spport or his projects and she was looking or a champion? Did theKongolese Saint Anthon believe she cold present hersel convincingl as that “wise blacksmith” who might orge a new political nit with her

gentl persasive “wax” hammer?47

Whatever the case, one ma conclde that intense creolization, basedon intimate knowledge o Eropean texts, probabl had proceeded rtherin this instance than even Tornton has arged. yet, the conclsion thatthe original cltral matrix was not mch modied b this process still




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stands. Indeed, “Ntoni Mala” seems to have signicantl reinorcedindigenos nderstandings. Te ke to appreciating wh this happenedlies not jst in the ease with which the Catholic tradition (particlarl Anthon) lent itsel to Kongolese “translation”, bt in the t-ear socialand political crisis that preceded the Antonian movement, stimlatedthe mltiplication o Kimpasi clts and predisposed ordinar Kongoleseto appropriate Saint Anthon or their own prposes. Tornton, despitehis attention to “reinterpretation”, his stress on the impact o decades o warare (and accompaning slave raids) on the peasantr, and his portraalo clashes between missionaries and local religios leaders at the time o Kimpa Vita, gives relativel little attention to the intertwining o religiosconict and politics in this previos period o crisis, in his discssion o the

origins o the Antonian movement. Ts, historian Anne Hilton’s ocs onthis sbject provides important insights: indeed, ones that ma allow s tonderstand Kimpa vita’s cr o “merc, merc”.

II

Both Hilton and Tornton in their respective books on Te Kingdom o Kongo have docmented the rapacios eort o King Garcia II to extractrevene rom the provinces dring his twent-ear reign (1641-1661),

throgh governors appointed rom the capital’s elite. Both also show how the King into the 1650s and some o the governors into the 1660sspported the Capchins’ attempts to stamp ot “etishism” and “devil worship” b attacking local religios leaders and movements, inclding theKitome and the Kimpasi clts. (Te latter orished in the 1650s and1660s, Hilton tells s, becase o droght, plage, and warare; I sspect,on her evidence and Tornton’s, that the excessive taxation o Garcia andhis governors provided another stimls.) Frthermore, both athors

intimate that the religios strggle contribted to the roal attempt tobreak the power o local leaders (the Kitome, or instance, had impor-tant political nctions and were also spported b “taxes”). Onl Hilton,however, develops the argment that attacks on local Kitome and Kimpasicombined with political dissatisaction to el local revolts. She notes that“the indigenos religios revival consciosl opposed the Christian cltand the Mwissikongo [capital-province nobilit’s] overlord-ship”. In 1663,“nganga brnt chrches throghot [several provinces]”. As a reslt, “Both

Garcia II in his later ears and António I [1661-1665] ond it prdent toaccommodate themselves to the indigenos movements”. Te ormer even“pblicl associated himsel ” with the Kimpasi.48 As late as 1664, however,missionar Girolamo da Montesarchio was able to browbeat the governoro Mpang province and a local headman to march against “a ver old



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and mch respected” Kimpasi to brn it; the were replsed b the nganga nkita priests o the Kimpasi, who “marched against them with bows andarrows and all sorts o other arms, saing that the, Blacks, wold not ieldbeore other Blacks”.49

At the trn o the centr, on the eve o Kimpa Vita’s movement, mis-sionar intolerance had not changed. What does seem dierent, at least incomparison to the sitation described b da Montesarchio, is that villageheadman oten gave cover to “etishists” and Kimpasi members, whichsggests that, althogh the elt the pressre o speriors to respect thepersons o missionaries, the normall no longer had the obligation (inthis period o acephalos central control and relativel weak government atthe provincial level) activel to spport the persection o native religios

actors. It is worth looking closel at one conrontation between a mis-sionar and villagers in 1697 or insight into the tacit protection that localchies now oered Kimpasi adepts and also ll to perceive the impactsch enconters mst have had on the sensibilities o commoners andheadmen.

In 1697, Lca da Caltanisetta visited the village (libata ) o Nkasa inthe province o Mpang, onl a hal-da’s jorne rom the provincialcapital.50 Tere he ond that “there were ver ew Christians”, that is,

baptized people. Among the 183 persons he proceeded to christen (nor-mall people trned ot or this ceremon, seen as conerring protectionagainst witches)51 was

a little bo who carried two small bags arond his neck, llo diabolical amlets that had come rom etishists [nganga];I ordered his old ather to take them o him; the latter obeedagainst his will and soght to recover them, bt he did notscceed in the attempt; when he saw me brn them, he almostbegan to cr and went awa ver vexed.

Te prses mentioned were probabl utu bags—“small sack[s] madeo Eropean or indigenos cloth i not o animal skin”—described b mis-sionar-ethnologist J. Van Wing among the Mpang in the earl twentiethcentr, in what was then the Belgian Congo.52 Van Wing did not indicatehow the t bag was sed, bt Karl Laman, active among the neighbor-ing Nsndi, provided this description:53

In case o [a child’s] illness etc. the ather and mother see that… [nganga] are smmoned. Bt even i the child is orishingand comel it mst be magicall protected ... throgh t-bags. Te medicine in these is taken rom venomos snakes.... Other




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common medicines are pt in them. wo or or t-bags aremade and tied arond the chest. Tese conteract the evil inten-tions o bandoki [“witches”, plral o ndoki] or nkisi [spirits,acting directl or throgh charms]. With t-bags containing

abot the same medicine as mentioned above the grown-pchild ma also be consecrated to a great nkisi”.

One nderstands, then, the ather’s near tears when his son, having beenpresented to da Caltanisetta or baptism, had his health-protecting t-bags removed and brned. Here was one ather whose native was msthave been reinorced b the shock o the particlar “creolization” promotedb missionar aggression.

He was not an exception to the rle. In the same village da Caltanis-etta ond

a bndle o thick hal-brned sticks beore the door o themani [headman], placed on a orked spport; I had the qestionposed to a relative o the mani abot what was the meaning o these sticks …; he responded that it was a diabolical exorcism sothat the elephants wold not come to destro the palm groves[a major economic resorce], which were ver abndant in that

libata , nor the homes o the inhabitants.

Te missionar ordered the orked spport and the bndle o sticks to betaken awa, bt when his translator told him that the job was being doneb a member o a “Kimpasi sect” (clearl operating nder the nose o theheadman) whose intent was to hide the objects in a sae place, he had the“etish” brned in pblic “in ront o the people, who had qickl gatheredot o criosit”. He then planted a “hol cross” on the spot where the

“diabolical exorcism” had stood. Te object o da Caltanisetta’s ire was probabl the principal nkisi (heremeaning “charm, sacred medicine”, a condit or a particlar spirit) thatgaranteed the well-being o the village. In the earl twentieth centr theMpang called the consecrated object that served this prpose “ Mpungu”,a name also reserved or the spreme being, Nzambi .54 Mpng was alsocalled Kinda gata , “that which makes and keeps the village prosperos”,and was said to have “a hndred ees”, meaning immense power to see

spirital orces.55

Te emplacement o Mpng reqired complex ritals, as betted annkisi that was considered associated with the village’s onding ancestor.Like the object o da Caltanisetta’s piqe, Mpng was located in ront o the headman’s hose. It was not “a bndle o thick hal-brned sticks”, bt it



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was something recognizabl related: a sack lled mainl with “wood char-coal and white cla”. Mpng was spported b a tree branch with a three-pronged ork, perhaps not dissimilar to the “orked spport” described b the earlier missionar in 1697. Flanked b a banana palm and “three postsabot one meter high joined at the top b a liana and srronded b palmlaths”, Mpng with its accotrements was more elaborate than the nkisidescribed b da Caltanisetta. Te twentieth-centr ensemble represented“a sort o throne, and this is the reason that one also gives it the title o king: Mpungu mayala , the Mpng who reigns”.

Once consecrated, Mpng was the centre o village aairs. “Forimportant events all the villagers receive a ew lines o charcoal on theiroreheads and temples. Tis is done especiall on the approach o a White

Ocial o the State [un Blanc de l’État ]”, a earsome event, indeed, dringthe earl Belgian Congo, when sch an athorit was called Bula Matadi ,literall “break-rocks”.56 People’s aces were also marked with the sacredcharcoal “when the chie goes awa or an important palaver, or when a vil-lager alls gravel ill”. In addition, “in man villages, one addresses solemninvocations to Mpng and one makes him resolte at the beginning o the great hnts, beore setting re to the brsh”. Hnters’ aces on theseoccasions were marked b charcoal and white cla, the latter also associated

with the spirit world, to garantee their sccess. We do not have to assme an absolte cltral continit between

1697 and the earl twentieth centr to conclde that Father da Caltanis-etta went straight to the sacred centre o the township’s lie and desecratedit. Indeed, the eqivalent in Erope wold have been to brn not onl the village chrch bt also the preectre; or the hal-brned sticks (likethe later charcoal in the Mpng), located on an “altar” in ront o theheadman’s ht, srel came rom the “sacred re” kept alive in the latter’s

residence, which was his channel o commnication to the ancestors andbisimbi.57 Tat da Caltanisetta was not torn apart b the people is a tes-timon to his recognized kindoki and also to the power o the provincialCorts and nobilit, reaching to the headmen at the village level throghties o kinship and clientelism. Christianit, ater all, was the state religionand Capchin missionaries, as recognized chie nganga o the Christianclt, had the benet o state protection.

yet, t ears o missionar abse mst have let its marks. Srel

one was to alienate local religios leaders, especiall those o the Kimpasiclts. Another was to replse Kimpasi members as well, who—ater severaldecades o crisis and the continal existence o the clts—now ma haveinclded the greater part o village elders. (It shold be noted that among




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the Mpang in the earl twentieth-centr Belgian Congo, ater anotherlong period o severe social dislocation nder the Congo Free State,the great majorit o elderl men had been initiated at some point intoKimpasi.)58 In other words, the missionaries had probabl obtained theenmit o the most prestigios gres o the local religios world, who werenow tolerated openl (or ll spported) b headmen. In Kongo cosmol-og, individals with kindoki who worked against the common weal weredeemed witches. Tose who openl destroed commnit minkisi (plralo nkisi) wold have been so considered, nless the had scceeded inconvincing the people that it was the consecrators o these altars who werethe witches—something that the Capchins cold scarcel have achieved,i da Caltanisetta’s accont (consistent with Hilton’s general analsis o the

missionaries’ arrogance) is an gide. Tornton’s discssion o missionar intolerance ocses on the actions

o Marcellino d’Atri at the cort o Pedro IV, prior to Kimpa Vita’s pos-session b Saint Anthon. In order to get d’Atri to establish residence inKibang, his capital cit, and thereb obtain the Capchin’s implicit spportor his ambitions, Pedro gave the missionar a relativel ree hand againstthe Kitome and Kimpasi. Repeating da Montesarchio’s iconoclasm, d’Atriproceeded to brn Kimpasi and took possession o the Kibang Kitome’s

sacred stone. According to Tornton, “it was not long ater the Capchinsarrived in Kibang that … [Kimpa Vita] decided to stop her practice o nganga Marinda [a Kimpasi-related priesthood devoted to the bisimbi]. Sheconclded that the practice was too close to evil kindoki”.59 Tis interpre-tation, however, accepts almost to the letter Kimpa Vita’s statements nderdress (ater being condemned to death) in her 1706 abjration beoremissionaries Bernardo da Gallo and Lorenzo da Lcca, as reconted b the latter.60 Srel, it is more likel that she stopped practicing becase she

recognized the danger she aced, not becase the Capchins had sddenl convinced her “to renonce the Kimpasi societ and her own calling”.61 B the same token, Tornton’s portraal o her incipient “sspicions abotthe priests as well as abot other ngangas” and his sggestion that shenow began to listen to growing accsations that the priests were bandoki (witches) are probabl mch too nderstated. In the light o t ears o Capchin intolerance, rom da Montesarchio to da Caltanisetta, it srel did not take the actions o d’Atri and the pressres o da Lcca and da

Gallo in Kibang, in whose jrisdiction Kimpa Vita resided, to wake herto a ndamental act o Kongo political and religios lie.Frther evidence in this direction is provided b Kimpa Vita’s allego-

ries abot the contrasting origins o the Kongolese and the missionaries,reconted b Bernardo da Gallo. Whereas Tornton sees her metaphors as



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expressing a rather ambigos, perhaps inchoate contrast between thesetwo sides at the religios level, I see them as strong armations o a radicalopposition. Mch o da Gallo’s inormation on Kimpa Vita comes romthe “private abjration that she made [to him and Lorenzo da Lcca] jstbeore the nhapp end o her lie”, while awaiting exection. Other acts,however, seem to come rom third part sorces, and it is diclt to know the provenance o individal details. In an case, da Gallo was one o theew missionaries who spoke Kikongo well enogh to dispense with inter-preters, so that we ma be sre that his inormation was not distortedb lingistic intermediaries. On the other hand, as we shall see, he doesnot seem particlarl attned to the sbtleties o Kongo cosmolog, whichmeans that his inormants—particlarl Kimpa Vita, speaking to him ot

o a sitation o extreme danger—cold have plaed on his ignorance o sacred signs and metaphors to conceal details that were essential or a llcomprehension o the Antonian movement.

Da Gallo’s description o Kimpa Vita’s belies regarding Christ, theMadonna and Saint Francis is qite detailed, sggesting that this inorma-tion came directl rom her abjration. “She said that Jess Christ had beenborn in S. Salvador [Mbanza Kongo], which was Bethlehem, [and] that he was baptized in [Mbanza] Nsndi, which was Nazareth”. Frthermore, she

maintained that “i Jess Christ with the Madonna, as well as S. Francis,had their origin in the [K]ongo, rom the race o the blacks..., S. Francishad issed rom the Hose o the Marqis o Vnda, and the Madonna... had been born o a slave woman, who was the servant o the Mar-chioness Nzimba npanghi [mpangi]”.62 Both “Vnda” and “Nzimba” wereKitome titles, the Marqis o Vnda (as Tornton notes) being the Kitomecharged with crowning the King o Kongo.63 (Criosl, the idea that theVirgin and Christ were rom a slave lineage on their mother’s side ma be

rther evidence that Kimpa Vita knew Catholic “traditions” well; in theseventeenth centr the notion became widespread that the Virgin hadreplied to the Angel o the Annnciation, “Behold the slave o the Lord”.In a sermon pblished in the 1680s, Antônio Vieira explained: “As the Sono his Father, [Christ] is the lord o mankind; bt as the Son o his Mother,that ver Mother wished that he also be the Slave o mankind”.)64

Te next paragraph o the missionar’s accont maintains this levelo detail and thereore ma also be based on Kimpa Vita’s recantation. In

addition, however, it sggests an incomplete nderstanding on da Gallo’spart o Kongo metaphors, or even a deliberate attempt b Kimpa Vita—i indeed her abjration is his sorce—to deceive him. Kimpa Vita, sas daGallo,




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taght that whites originated rom a certain sot white stonecalled “ma”, and or that reason are white. Blacks had theirorigin in a tree called msanda [nsanda in most Kikongo dia-lects, a species o g, Ficus psilopoga Welwitsch], rom the bark or

cortex o which the make rope and the cloths with which the cover and dress themselves, and or this reason the are black, orthe color o this bark.

Da Gallo adds that “rom this came her invention o certain things thatshe called crowns, made o the bark o this same . . . [nsanda] tree”, which were worn b her and the leading men in her movement, inclding therival pretender to the throne who was now the deender o her case.

Te two English-langage scholars who have analzed this passagein detail have regarded it as a direct window on Kimpa Vita’s preachings,emphasizing the black/white contrast it establishes and not consideringthe possibilit that da Gallo cold have misnderstood his sorces or beenmisled. Ts, Watt MacGae (1986) takes da Gallo’s explanation liter-all and analzes it with reerence to the color smbolism o the Kongoand the act that ma is a “whitish . . . riverine cla”. “Te smbols areeasil decoded: whites are the dead, whose sphere is the water, whereasblacks are the living” (since white smbolizes the realm o the spirits ando the ancestors, and black signies “Tis World”). MacGae does add,however, that “the g tree, at least one species o which is propagated onl b hman agenc, is especiall associated with domesticit and kinship”;along this line, he notes that nsanda bark, according to seventeenth-centr sorces, “provided a kind o natral cloth prescribed as maternit wear toease childbirth and as swaddling material”, and adds that “the connexion was made b Beatrice [Kimpa Vita] hersel ”.65 (Actall, the sorce hecites—the 1707 accont o missionar Lorenzo da Lcca—goes rther

than this, noting that or Kimpa Vita “[the nsanda bark] Crown … wasmade rom the same cloth as that with which the [Kongolese] bab Jess was dressed or the rst time”.66) Frthermore, MacGae notes that thename o the nsanda crown—in da Gallo’s accont, “ne yari ” (eqivalent tone yadi in present-da Kikongo)—is also “a title that proclaims a governor(n’yaadi )”.67 (Indeed, Laman’s dictionar—sing a slightl dierent ortho-graphical sstem—indicates that “ne yaadi ” can be translated as “Sir, goodrler”.)68 What this sggests is a possible relation between nsanda bark

and political athorit. Indeed, MacGae had noted in an earlier std that the nsanda “to this da is a sign o the athorit o the elders in the village”.69 Tese insights, however, are not developed, and one is let essen-tiall with the idea o a contrast between the origins o blacks and whites



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(Tis and the Other World, respectivel), which, i it had an politicalconnotations, might well have denoted white speriorit.

Tornton essentiall repeats MacGae’s ormlation, based onKongo color smbolism: blacks were associated with the world o theliving, whites with the world o the ancestors. He does note in passing thatthe nsanda tree “was regarded as sacred—a nsanda tree shaded Lsnzi’sstone [a shrine] at Kibang” (the stone apprehended b d’Atri); nonethe-less, he interprets nsanda bark cloth as “closel associated with the livingand with Tis World”. As conrmation o this, he paraphrases Lorenzoda Lcca’s observation (immediatel ollowing the passage I have qotedabove) that “to those wearing it [the crown o nsanda bark] nothing coldbe lacking, gold, silver, silk clothing, and all that the ma have thoght o

desiring”.70

Other scholars, however, while still taking da Gallo’s accont at ace vale, have collectivel prodced a more convincing interpretation o it, orat least o the metaphor identiing blacks with the nsanda tree. In 1968 G. W. Randles, writing in French, noted that “in Loango [part o the Kongocltre area] the musenda [nsanda] is planted near the tombs o the kings”, which sggests that the tree had political/religios connotations; et he didnot risk drawing an conclsions rom this.71 In the same ear, however,

the Portgese scholar A. Margarido wrote o the nsanda that this “sacredtree, connected to roal sovereignt b almost all the peoples o this regiono the Congo, is also considered sacred b practicall all Angolan peoples”. Ts, or him, Kimpa Vita’s “imposing [sic] the retrn to nsanda clothing” was a nativist political reaction, a wa o denoncing “the oreign charactero the cstoms o the cort”, jst as attribting (hol) nsanda-bark swad-dling clothes to the (hol) inant Christ was a wa o “rescing him romthe monopol o the oreign missionaries”.72 In 1972 Portgese anthro-

pologist Jos Redinha contribted additional elements to the analsis b noting that “a rite o the ancestor clt that is ver widespread in Angolaand mch practiced b the peoples who are descended rom the ancienthnters o the savannas [in north-western Angola, inclding the soth-ern Kongo region] consists in planting living trnks o rital trees. Temost common is the mulemba [‘nsanda’ in Kimbnd, the langage o theMbnd, a people rom the hinterland o Landa]”.73

Bilding on these contribtions, another Portgese anthropologist,

António Cstódio Gonçalves, provided the most satising explanation o Kimpa Vita’s nsanda metaphor in a 1985 book on the political dnamicso the Old Kingdom o Kongo. Gonçalves showed that




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Te “nsanda” … is a tree with ver strong smbolic connota-tions, serving on the one hand to indicate the link with theearth spirits, the principle o athorit, … and, on the other, tomake perceptible the passing o the spirits throgh the night air

b the movement o its leaves or branches. Te connection withthe earth spirits, on whom political athorit and the srvival o the commnit rested, reqired that migrant grops take withthem the root o a “nsanda” tree: i this took hold, the villagecold be onded, since this root assred the protection o thespirits.

Gonçalves also arged that “the tree with its latex [the nsanda has a white,milk sap], the expression o the matrilineal descent grop, a smbol o the

mthical origin o the Kongo and o the vertical continit o the natralkinship grop and o lineage solidarit, becomes the axis o the politicalsstem and the insignia o the Antonians”.74

Indeed, a closer look at Kimpa Vita’s metaphor, as reported b Ber-nardo da Gallo, reveals that it points directl to the matrilineal principle.75 MacGae has called attention to the extensive se o what might becalled “serios word pla” among the Kongolese to point to ontologicallinks between dierent elements o natre and societ. For instance, “birds

sggest spirits (mpeve ) becase their wings (maveve ) stir the air (vevila ,‘to an’)”. B the same token, he notes, comparisons between people andtrees are encoraged b the act that both “skin” and “bark” are expressedb the same word, nkanda .76 Given this propensit o the Kongolese tothink associativel b linking homonms or near homonms, Kimpa Vita’ssimile, asserting the origin o the black skin o indigenos people in theblack bark o the g tree, wold srel have indced native speakers to goone step rther: to kanda , “matrilineal clan”, whose emblem was precisel

the bisimbi-blown nsanda. Ts, the pla on the doble meaning o “black nkanda ”, rather than pointing to “Tis World”, establishes the identit o the Kongolese as an extended matrilineal clan, linked to the land and itsprotective spirits. “Black” actall leads to “white’: to the milk (matrilin-eal) latex o the nsanda and to mother’s milk (both nderling nkanda inits two meanings, as well as kanda ), which in trn embod and rearm the whiteness attribted b the Kongolese to the (bisimbi) spirit realm.

In sm, Kimpa Vita’s nsanda tree metaphor “gronded” the Kongolese

rml in the Other World , as it was imagined b indigenos Kongo cosmol-og. “Made” rom nsanda bark, the Kongolese had a privileged relationship with local territorial spirits and with the most ancient ancestors (sbsmedto, or associated with, the bisimbi), who were responsible or commnit



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welare. Teir political instittions, particlarl their headmen and theirmatrilineal lineages, were assred a divine legitimac. Within this context,the redenition o Christ, the Madonna, Saint Francis and Saint Anthon (incorporated in Kimpa Vita) as Aricans, with the Christ child explicitl linked to the nsanda and identied, along with the other hol gres, withbisimbi-based chiedoms or clans that were centres o political power, con-stitted nothing less that the seizre o the essential smbols o Christian-it or the Kongolese, as Gonçalves arges.77

Bt what are we to make o the other part o Kimpa Vita’s reportedanalog, that which traces white origins to the “sot white stone calledma’? Here, Gonçalves’s argment ails to convince me. He sees the(nsanda) “tree” and the (riverine) “stone” as the ndamental smbols o

traditional Kongo cltre. For him, the redenition o meanings operatedb Kimpa Vita with respect to the nsanda, withot a corresponding changein the signications o the “stone”, apparentl breaks the harmon betweenthe two smbols. Following the sentence qoted above abot “the tree withits latex”, he writes: “Te stone, an expression o socio-political solidarities,o a sstem o social norms necessar to action and to the tre wellbe-ing o the grop, o solidarit with the ancestral spirits, becomes [or theAntonians] a sign o discontinit with the ‘normal’ plant world, with the

principle o patrilocalit and the sstem o power”.78

Tere ma be a simpler wa o nderstanding Kimpa Vita’s trope. Istart b observing how strange it now seems, ater decoding the meaningso the nsanda, that da Gallo reports her analog as one bilt on an opposi-tion o colors. B now it is clear that what links blacks to the nsandais not primaril the similar color o their respective skin and bark; thisis an incidental eatre, or a secondar metaphor. Te act that da Galloredces a complex trope to a simple qestion o color indicates that he

knew ver little abot the central metaphors o Kongo cltre. It ma alsomean—i his inormation came rom Kimpa Vita’s abjration—that he was maniplated, in his ignorance, into raming the qestion in terms o “Black” and “White”. His description o ma as “na certa pietra biancamolle” (‘a certain sot white stone’) is consistent with this hpothesis; inact, according to Carl Laman’s earl twentienth-centr Kikongo-Frenchdictionar, ma is “red” (rouge ) in color, perhaps not altogether nlikeEropeans” skin, bt not literall “White”.79

Indeed, along this line it is qite possible that Kimpa Vita did noteven sa “ma”; or, i she did, that she actall meant something else.MacGae’s observations regarding Kongolese analogies are crcial here.“Oten a given plant or creatre”, sas MacGae, “has several smbolic




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vales. In practice it is nearl alwas paired with another, reptile withreptile, tree with tree, rodent with rodent, the contrast between the twoserving to speci the vale o each …”. Frthermore, “so general is thepairing rle” that “one can be sre that [missionar-ethnographer] Van Wing has mistranslated” the paired pn on nsiki and mbendi in the phrase“Who has eaten n’siki , let him be jstied (sikalala ); who has eaten mbendi [c. m’bedi , “loser”], let him lose (bela )”. “Nsiki” is a tpe o tree, notes Mac-Gae, thereore “mbendi” “cannot be the striped eld rat (mbendi ), as Van Wing spposes, and mst be the tree with striped bark, m’bendi ”.80

I this is so, then what tree might have a name that cold be consed with “ma”, et oer a smbolic contrast to nsanda? Te answer is muma ,the “silk cotton tree” (Ceiba pentandra ). Tornton notes that “in reglar

spoken Kikongo” an initial nasal sond beore a consonant “is oten notprononced or is prononced so sotl and qickl that it almost disap-pears”.81 Tis leads to phonetic variation; in this case, muma is prononced uma in the western (yombe) dialect o Kikongo.82 In sm, it is not at allimplasible that da Gallo consed or was misled into consing uma andits virtal homonm muma .

Te hpothesis becomes especiall compelling when the ethical andotherworldl connotations o muma are taken into accont. I ollow Mac-

Gae again: “[Mma,] the silk-cotton tree …, which so dominates theorest that vltres . . . perch in it, resembles the chie (mumu) bt alsois a hant o witches ( umana ‘to conspire’); like power itsel, the tree isambivalent”. Note also υ anga muma , “to conspire”, literall “to make an‘assembl’”, or the silk cotton tree is a metonm or (nsavor) “meeting”.Indeed, the tree’s reptation carries over to its vltres, which sall con-gregate in crowds: “the vltre … is a witch … becase it is black and white, perches on the … [muma -assembl] tree, and lives on carrion and

sh (the dead)”.83 Finall, John Janzen and Watt Macgae note that,becase o these connotations, “prophets ‘cleaning p’ a village [eliminatingbad kindoki] sometimes decree that one or more sch trees be ct down”. Tese athors cite verses recorded b Laman among the Nsndi, addressedto an nkisi to obtain the pnishment o thieves: “Ct down the mmatree, … where the sealed their agreement”.84

Tese observations, o corse, come rom twentieth-centr dictionar-ies and ethnographic research. A glimpse rther into the past, however, can

be obtained b looking at Cba, where Central Aricans, particlarl romKongo, eatred prominentl among people broght b the nineteenth-centr slave trade. Tere, nder the silk-cotton tree (Ceiba ), ganguleros (priests o the Regla Palo Monte religion, whose origins are in Central



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Arica; c. Kikongo nganga ) compose their charms (ngangas y prendas ).“ Indoki es el árbol brujo”—“an Indoki [c. Kikongo ndoki , ‘witch’] is whatthe witch tree is”—sas one o the Palo Monte inormants o olkloristLdia Cabrera, reerring to the Ceiba; “whoever wishes to rin [ perder a ]a person whom he/she hates will go p next to this tree at midnight ormidda” and move arond it, singing special songs, “mambos ” (c. Kikongomambu, “words, bsiness, lawsit”).

Te spirits called pon or this witchcrat are apparentl those o the dead, or according to another o Cabrera’s inormants the Ceiba“attracts the dead like a magnet”. Indeed, the tree is also called “ Númba or Fumbe , ‘dead person’”, or “mamá mbe” or “mother o the nkitas”.85 Telink here to muma is evident, as is the word pla with Kikongo mvumbi ,

“cadaver, dead person” (Bembe dialect) or “the name o a child becaseo witchcrat” (western dialect).86 Also clear is the tie to Kikongo nkita ,the “sol o the dead person who has established his home in the wateror the ravines” (associating him/hersel with the bisimbi), or—among theMpang in the earl twentieth centr—the spirits o people who hadexperienced a violent death, oremost among them (bt not exclsivel)those “ancestors rom the beginning” who had so sered.87 Becase o these associations with the dead, rital baths in the Palo Monte tradition

are made with the Ceiba’s leaves or those wishing to make contact withhman spirits. However, “one does not pt its leaves on a nt (‘head’ ormedim [c. Kikongo ntu, ‘head’]), o Balande, Mamá Fúnge, MamáChóa or Kisimba [m italics], who are Mother o Water [Spanish Madre de Agua ]”.88 Te reerence here is to Kongolese ttelar bisimbi (kisimbi orsimbi in the singlar), whose preerred habitat is the water o natre. Terecold not be a clearer statement o the opposition drawn b the Kongolesebetween the recent dead, who are still interested in the aairs o their

living kin and willing to be called pon b the latter (acting as “witches”)to bring woe to their enemies, and the bisimbi, the ttelar earth/waterspirits, who are oended b witchcrat and concerned with the good o the wider commnit.89

In addition to these ethical and spirital contrasts between the nsandaand the mma, there is also an opposition o colors: that between theblack bark o the nsanda and the white “cotton” o the mma’s seed pods.“When its seeds brst”, mma “appears covered in a white clod”, sas

MacGae. Te mma’s “bare pper branches, on which the vltre otenperches, are likened in certain conceits and wordplas to a man’s bald orshaven head”, adds MacGae, which sggests that “the white clod”covering the tree when its seeds are ll matre might easil be likenedto an old man’s white hair, elder patriarchs being called—along with the




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dead—bakulu.90 In an case, the tree’s association with the “recent” dead wold mean that its cotton wold indeed recall the “White” spirit world,bt not that o the ttelar bisimbi. In sm, Kimpa Vita’s metaphor, b opposing the nsanda and mma trees, drew a clear distinction betweenthe Kongolese, linked to the ancient matrilineages and the bisimbi o thespirit world, and the capchin missionaries, devoted to conspiring like witches in the hman world—breaking consecrated minkisi and thenbrandishing the cross, the object on which a Kongo-born Christ had beencrcied. Te metaphor’s color smbolism also seems to have worked inparallel, with black nsanda bark ltimatel pointing (throgh the milk o the matrilineage) to the bisimbi spirit world (connoting good kindoki), while the white silk-cotton o the mma leads to the realm o hman

patriarchs (the mm and his brothers) and the still all-too hman sphereo the intriging “recent” dead (who υ anga muma , “conspire”, that is, appl evil kindoki).91

One ma conclde, then, that Kimpa Vita’s allegor drew a sharp con-trast between blacks and whites, or at least white missionaries, which wasnot at all attering to the latter. Da Gallo ma have consed “ma” and“mma” or, alternativel, Kimpa Vita ma have misled him into thinkingher reerence was to the rst, not the second. She wold have had good

reasons or doing this, or she knew that the missionar, speaking entkikongo, might have nderstood enogh abot Kongo religios cltreto nderstand the respective connotations o “white” riverine stones andsilk-cotton trees. Ts, she cold have believed it saer, in the dangerosbt perhaps not hopeless moment o her abjration, to pretend to him thatshe traced whites’ origins to the ormer, rather than the latter.92

Tis analsis o Kimpa Vita’s allegor permits a rther hpothesisregarding its meaning within the context o Kongolese politics. Anne

Hilton, in reviewing the relationship between political power and kinshipat the beginning o the eighteenth centr, notes that “the Mwissikongo[elite] o the centre [o the ormer kingdom] increasingl sed a cognaticmode o descent reckoning to establish a claim to the throne or to alignthemselves to the major contenders”. Frthermore, “the nstable condi-tions o the time encoraged people to se the ‘individal’ mode o kinshipreckoning to establish [and se expedientl] relationships with powerlcontenders”. As a reslt o this and other actors,

Te … strength o the contending warlords was based, rst, onpersonal slaves; second on the precarios loalties o Mwis-sikongo slaveholders seeking personal advancement; third, onindividals and grops seeking protection throgh client stats,



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and, orth, on traders … who prchased the slaves the warsprodced.93

Te matrilineal kanda, in other words, were no longer the central politi-

cal instittions the once had been, or were thoght to have been. Withinthis context, Beatriz Kimpa Vita’s rearmation o the kanda principleseems signicant. It sggests that her approximation o the missionaries,the protgs o high rlers, to the mma implied a criticism o the mm(rom local chie to kanda elder to “extra-kanda chietain”, in Hilton’sphrase) or having deviated rom kanda principles o political sccession,or otherwise betraed his trst.94 In this regard, the name the Antoniansgave to their nsanda-bark crown, Ne yaadi , “Sir good rler” (close in orm

to ki-yaadi , “rler, governor”), as well as their ralling cr ky-adi , “merc”,are intriging.95 As Hilton has noted, the nsanda-bark crown clearl wasmeant to contrast with the mpu, the traditional bonnet that was the insig-nia o the Kongo kings and their appointed provincial governors.96 Ts,the Antonians appear to have been arming that legitimate “ki-aadi”, wearing “ne-aadi” wold show, above all, “k-adi” (the qalit o “merc”)to their own people.97

Tis is a set o ideas constrcted within the Kikongo lingistic eld. yet,

given Kimpa Vita’s knowledge o Christian texts, it is dobtl that “k-adi” (present in the “Salve Regina” and “Salve Antoniana”) was innocent o the meanings attached at that time to misericórdia (the word it translated)in the Portgese world, as instittionalized in the charitable hospitals o the “Santa Casa de Misericórdia ” rom Lisbon to Goa and Salvador, Bahia.Likewise, the implicit obligation o powerl “ki-aadi” to show “k-adi”probabl wold not have been ntoched b the phrase rom the Gospel o Mathew, Beati misericordes , “blessed are the mercil [or the will receive

merc]”, which inspired the noble governors o the varios “Misericórdias”and was sed b them (and the Portgese King above them, the highpatron o the “Santas Casas”) to jsti their stewardship.98 Beati pauperes,Beati misericordes was the theme o a 1647 sermon b Antônio Vieira, who arged that the poor ( pauperes ) are blessed “becase God [Christ]is in them”; et, the misericordes are even more blessed becase “he whogives alms to the poor … makes himsel God”, or “Mankind has nothingso divine, and so pecliar to God, than to do good [to others]”.99 Cold

this idea have helped inspire the Antonians to crown themselves with theindigenos nsanda cloth that had wrapped the native Christ child, thereb “making themselves God”, as an armation o what wold constitte thebase o legitimac or an Antonian political leadership? I so, then cre-olization in this case involved the appropriation o a “natralized” oreign




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tradition b a Kongolese poplar movement to bolster its attempt to holdits own rlers accontable. In short, Kimpa Vita ma have redened theroalt’s Christian ngolo as a principle or the people.100

III

Like Saint Anthon himsel, let s now “bilocate” across the Atlanticto soth-eastern Brazil.101 On the plantations o this region (in the ParaíbaValle o Rio de Janeiro and São Palo, in central-western São Palo, andin parts o sothern Minas Gerais) dring the rst hal o the nineteenthcentr, commonl 80 percent or more o adlt male slaves and two-thirdso adlt emales (people over 15 ears o age) were Arican; the greatmajorit o these were West Central Arican; and at least a large minor-it o the latter—enogh to dene the cltral matrix o the slave qar-ters—were rom Kongo, Mbnd and closel related cltres.102 Ts, it isnot srprising that a major slave conspirac in 1848, apparentl centred onthe conties o Vassoras and Valença in Rio’s Paraíba Valle, had Central-Arican, indeed Kongo/Mbnd roots.103 Te vocablar o the religiosclt arond which the movement was organized—cambono, tate , gola [ngola ?], mocamba do anjo, cangeré , ubanda [sic ]—is related to the lexicon o

Kimbnd and/or Kikongo, the respective langages o the Mbnd andKongo. At the same time, along with the expression lhos de terreiro (“chil-dren o the cleared, rital circle”), this vocablar points to a sbseqentlink with twentieth-centr Umbanda , which sggests that some orm o spirit possession was at the centre o the clt. Both men and women seemto have been involved. Finall, the lexicon in the 1848 movement, along with the rital clothing o its leaders (a small cap with eathers, a whiteapron), the title attribed to them (tate , clearl derived rom a widespread

root in the western Bant langages meaning “ather”) and their individalnames in Portgese, particlarl Guieiro, “One who gides”, all sggest alinkage with another clt, also with anti-slaver overtones, which appearedin São Roqe in soth-western São Palo province in 1854.

In the São Roqe movement, the religios vocablar was predomi-nantl Kikongo; or instance,kwenda landa ma-lavu, “go get palm wine [i.e.,alcoholic beverage]”, kwiza , “come”. Frthermore, the leader, Jos Cabinda,sed tpicall Kongo devices or divination: or instance, a “vungo” or “ox

horn” (c. Kikongo υ ungu, “animal horn’) with a mirror on its base. Tis wasclearl an initiator clt that met in or near a wooded area and that involvedspirit possession. At its heart was a process o rital death, ollowed b theprication o the initiates and their rital rebirth. Adepts took on a new



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name, receiving the title Pai (Portgese “ather’), evidentl a translationo Kikongo taata , “ather, ncle, chie ”. Te new names evoked power andaggressiveness, or some image o spirits (birds, rapidl moving wings) oro the spirit world (the “Kongo cosmogram”, ormed b a or-cornered“cross” [“+”]): or instance, the Portgese names, Gavião, “hawk” (theleader’s sobriqet), Rompe erro, “Break iron”, Chupa-or , “Hmming bird”,and Quatro cantos , “For corners’; and the non-Portgese name Quinuano(c. Kikongo ki-nwani , “warrior’; ki-nwana , “combative spirit’).

Te São Roqe clt, together with the 1848 movement, points ahead tothe “Cabla”, a spirit possession clt in northern Espírito Santo, describedin great detail in 1900 b the region’s bishop.104 “Cabla”, which beoreabolition was said to have been a movement o slaves and ex-slaves, had an

extensive rital vocablar that was clearl derived largel rom Kimbndand/or Kikongo. It was strctred like the São Roqe rital and exhibited virtall all the major traits o a Kimpasi clt cited earlier. One o its adeptsexpressed devotion to a stone shaped like those ond in ancient Indianbrial sites, which recalls the association o smooth riverine rocks withthe bisimbi. (Note that Central Aricans wold natrall have spposedthat the most ancient spirits o the original inhabits o their new landhad been sbsmed to, or become associates o, the local bisimbi.)105 Te

Cabla’s meetings were held at night in a orest clearing, marked ritall like a Kongo cosmogram, with an altar on the eastern side in honor o karunga (c. Kikongo and Kimbnd kalunga , “ocean, death”). As in thecase o Kimpasi, the adepts sed a “secret” rital langage (“ca-” was re-qentl attached to words as a prex). Men and women were initiated inceremonies that involved rital death, prication and “rebirth” throghpossession b a “giding” or “protective” spirit. Te latter had the title o tatá (clearl, like the 1848 tate , reminiscent o Kikongo taata ) and aggres-

sive or other-worldl names in Portgese: Rompe Ponte and Rompe Serra , “Break-bridge” and “Break-montain” (c. São Roqe’s “Break Iron”); Guer-reiro, “warrior” (c. São Roqe’s Quinuano); and Flor da Carunga, “Sraceo Kalnga”.106 Te aggressive names here and in São Roqe seem signi-cant in view o the act than in a Kimpasi among the Mpang in the earl twentieth centr, the possessing spirits were ancient hman sols (nkita) who had died violent deaths (ths were particlarl angr), bt which hadnow become assimilated to, or associated with, the bisimbi.107 In view o

the several “break” names in these clts, I sspect that “Cabla” is derivedrom Kikongo bula , “break”, with the clt’s “secret” prex “ca-‘ beore it.Bula ntu in Kikongo—literall “to break the head”—means “to all intoecstas” (to enter into trance).




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It wold appear, thereore, that Kimpasi-like clts were present amongslaves in nineteenth-centr soth-eastern Brazil—indeed, omnipres-ent, given that the have been docmented in three ar-ng areas o theregion. Tis conclsion is hardl srprising. Jst as Kongolese in seven-teenth, eighteenth and earl twentieth-centr Arica trned to Kimpasicommnit clts o afiction, which oten had political overtones, whenthe aced conditions o extreme dress—war, enslavement, orced labor,disease—so too did Central Aricans in Brazil, organized arond a largencles o Kongo, Mbnd and other closel related peoples, when the conronted analogos evils.

Where was Saint Anthon when all this was happening? According toa ormer jdge o Vassoras, who witnessed the trial o the 1848 conspira-

tors in that cont, the plan or revolt was drawn p b a “secret association. . . known b the name o Ubanda ”, which “was o a mstic natre, becase, with its aspirations or reedom, it was devoted to a sperstitios ado-ration o Saint Anthon”.108 Umbanda meant in late nineteenth-centr Kimbnd “the aclt, science, art . . . o healing, . . . o divining . . . ando indcing … [the] spirits to inence men and natre or hman wealor woe”.109 Clearl Anthon, the healer, the diviner, the Tamatrge, hadbeen initiated into a Central-Arican instittion. Athogh I have ond no

rther inormation on the exact place o the Saint in this conspirac, SaintAnthon was also present in the 1854 São Roqe clt. wo wooden imageso him, made rom nó-de-pinho, the hard, twisted knot o the Aracáriapine tree, were present on Jos Cabinda’s altar. One o these images hadbeen beheaded: perhaps a literal enactment o “bla nt” to make sre theSaint’s spirit wold enter it.

Data in an case is not lacking on the broader “creolization” o Anthon in soth-eastern Brazil, particlarl rom the mid-nineteenth to the earl

twentieth centr. Te American traveller, Tomas Ewbank, visited theMonaster o Saint Anthon in Rio de Janeiro in 1846 and describedseveral o its paintings, which illstrated some o the Tamatrge’s most well-known miracles: his bilocation to absolve his ather, his sermon tothe shes, and varios acts o healing. Clearl, the Book o Miracles o Saint Anthony was alive and well in Brazil. In addition, Ewbank noted slave-owners” condence that the Saint cold nd “lost objects”, in particlarrnawa slaves.110 In the Paraíba Valle, the elite’s penchant or the Saint

was demonstrated b the considerable nmber o parishes and plantationsthat bore his name. Anthon’s prestige at the Brazilian Cort was alsohigh. Since 1814, in keeping with his long tradition as a “warrior”, he helda patent in the arm (as litenant colonel) and the title o “CommandingCavalier o the Militar Order o Portgal and Brazil’; in other words, his



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position as a patron saint o the Portgese Empire and then, ater Inde-pendence, o the Brazilian state, had long been ormall recognized.111

Ewbank also observed the poplarit o Saint Anthon among allclasses in the cit o Rio, remarking on the devotional aspect as well ason the prevalence o small, inexpensive images representing the Saint.112 Historian Mar Karasch has demonstrated the esteem accorded to SaintAnthon b the black poplation o the cit in the nineteenth centr,113 reinorcing Stanle Stein’s similar comments (based on interviews withex-slaves) regarding the devotion to this saint among plantation workersin the Paraíba Valle:

“Most preerred” [o all saints in the slave qarters] was Saint

Anthon, described as “alwas on the table [probabl mesa ,“table/altar”] o the qimbandeiros” [Kimbnd or slavedoctor-priests, who most certainl worked umbanda , a wordderived rom the same root]. Saint Anthon reqentl held inhis let arm a small Black child who sat pon a peg or nail rom which he cold be easil removed. Te child plaed an impor-tant role or i a slave wished to obtain a reqest, he removedthe child while promising to retrn it onl ater the reqest wasperormed.114

“Pnishing” Saint Anthon ntil he accedes to one’s wishes is a venerablePortgese cstom that still exists in Brazil toda. yet, the child in SaintAnthon’s arms, in traditional representations b whites, was the Christchild. Te slaves srel knew this. Ts, their sbstittion o a black bo ma have been a wa o appropriating Christ or themselves, as KimpaVita had done when she preached that Jess had reall been born in theKongo.

Stein’s observations, in other words, point not to a passive “sncretism”bt to reinterpretation, or transcltration, an argment that Karasch alsoendorses. Indeed, other evidence makes it clear that the Saint Anthon o slaves and ree blacks was pressed largel rom a central-Arican mold, et with attention to details rom the Portgese tradition. In a criminaltrial record rom the interior o São Palo in 1875,115 we are told that“ever Frida night” a eiticeiro, or sorcerer, whose name was Jos Portgês(Portgese Joe)

held cabalistic meetings, in which the adepts o his ablos arttwisted and jmped in extravagant dances, to which the gavethe name o cangirês , in ront o an image o Saint Anthon,mtilated all over and with the nose and hands severed; all o




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them wold look at themelves in small rond mirrors, whichthe held in their hands, making grimaces and scowls.

Jos Portgês, described as a “magician, witch and conjrer [mezinheiro]”,

“created charm pots [descobria panelas de encantamento]”: perhaps a reer-ence to a certain orm o charm prepared in a cla pot and ver commonin Kongo and related cltres. Later, Jos Portgês was ond mrdered,“ling on his back with a small rond mirror over his ees”. Jdging romhis name, Jos Portgês probabl was not black; neither, apparentl, were his ollowers slaves. yet, the word cangirê —a variant o the cangeré (“meeting”) mentioned b the sorces on the 1848 conspirac—appearshere and in a std o remnants o a largel Central Arican vocablar

in Minas Gerais.116 More impressivel, the smbolism permeating theseparticlar cangirês and srronding Jos Portgês’s own death was qiteclearl that o the Kongo and related grops. As we have seen, amongthe Kongo and Mbnd “kalnga” meant “death” or “ocean”. Among theKongo, at least, it also reerred to the interace, or point o passage, betweenthe world o the living and that o the dead, and was oten represented asa reective srace or a line dividing a rond or oval plane.117 Te smallrond mirrors described in the trial record are like the mirrors on Jos

Cabinda’s divining horns; explicitl meant to encorage a trip to the Other World, the are nmistakable smbols o kalunga . Saint Anthon again was in the middle o all this, with his bod mtilated: here, perhaps, inaccordance with the Portgese tradition o pnishing him ntil he pro-dced the desired reslts.118

Also indicative o the reinterpretation o Saint Anthon alongCentral-Arican lines are the small grines representing him that havebeen collected in the São Palo Paraíba Valle and that apparentl date

rom the beginning o the twentieth centr.119

According to the special-ized literatre on the sbject, grines o other sacred personages also havebeen collected, bt Anthon is more oten represented than an o theother saints and cedes rst place in reqenc onl to the Virgin Mar.120 Tese Saint Anthonies are made o wood o varios tpes, horn or othermaterials; however, the are most oten carved rom the same raw materialo Jos Cabinda’s states: the extremel hard knot o the Aracária pinetree, which grows high in the Mantiqeira montains behind the Valle.

Wh wold Aro-Brazilian artisans have preerred this hard-to-get and ver hard-to-work material to other woods? Te answer ma well lie in the analog the Kongolese oten make

between the “orce” (or moral qalit) o a person, spirit or charm and thedegree o hardness o a given tree or tpe o wood.121 (It is exactl this



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metaphor that Brazilian slaves sed in the jongo, or challenge song, thatcompared planters to the sot, no-good embaúba tree—a song registered b Stanle Stein in the Paraíba Valle: “with so man trees in the orest, [how is it that] embaúba is the colonel [big man, or local political boss]”?)122 Especiall appreciated b the Kongolese or making a charm was woodthat was not onl hard, bt also twisted, or with gnarled veins, as in the caseo certain roots. wisted objects were another orm o “crossroads”: schconjnctres, jst as in West Arica, ormed a sacred point that provided amore read access to the spirit world. Ewbank was witness to the act thatthis preerence in charms had crossed the Atlantic. According to him, “therst mone that a slave [in Rio de Janeiro] earns is spent on the prchaseo a ga [a representation o a st, with thmb placed between index and

orenger], which sometimes is made rom the root o the [ver hard] rose- wood tree [ jacarandá ]”.123 It is within this context that one shold interpretthe se o nó-de-pinho (not onl ver hard wood, bt also gnarled, like aroot) in the conection o the Saint Anthon gres. Te material reqiredconsiderabl more eort rom the artist or rital expert who carved it, btthe power o the charm was correspondingl mch greater—as betted the“Saint o All Saints”, the bilocating miracle worker who constantl crossedback and orth between Tis World and kalnga.

Once the choice o material was made, the conection o the ParaíbaValle Saint Anthonies ma well have ollowed Kongolese (or broaderCentral Arican) patterns. Man o these small Saint Anthonies (generall rom ve to teen centimetres tall) resemble the tin anthropomophicgres inclded as ingredients in a Kongo nkisi , as illstrated in KarlLaman’s std o the Nsndi.124 Te ver simple natre o the carvings inboth cases reects their small size; that is, there is not mch scope hereor detail. Within this simplicit, however, there are resemblances between

the Brazilian and Arican gres, particlarl with respect to their capsand the wa their hands are crossed, sall over the stomach, whichma be more than casal.125 In an case, the da-to da se o these SaintAnthon images seems to have been similar on both sides o the Atlantic. Te copper Ntoni Mala rom eighteenth centr Kongo, photographedand described b art historian R. Wannn, shows severe signs o wear rom“rbbing”, jst as man o the pine knot Anthonies rom the earl twen-tieth centr.126 Probabl on both sides o the Atlantic these gres were

sed as instrments to rb (and cre) the bod.In Soth-eastern Brazil in the mid-nineteenth-centr, at the heighto the slave trade, Central Aricans had ormed a creole cltre throghclose enconters with Lso-Catholicism, particlarl with Saint Anthon.As in the Kongo o the earl eighteenth centr, however, Anthon had




241

largel been congred b a Central-Arican matrix; in the 1848 and 1854episodes, he appears to have been indcted into the Kimpasi tradition,as he had been in the Kongo b Kimpa Vita. John Tornton and LindaHewood (the latter writing abot the Angolan “connection” with Brazil)have rightl warned s not to see sch Brazilian transcltrations as entirel a New World process. Indeed, historian Hein Vanhee has demonstratedthat the Christian la catechists—the mestres—contined to exist in theKongo into the second hal o the eighteenth centr. B 1760, the con-tined to be “qite nmeros”, bt most were now “initiated b chies andnoblemen on behal o local interest grops”, rather than being selected, asbeore, b missionaries, whose nmbers had dwindled.127 Tornton cites aCapchin sorce or 1781, which reports that the mestres and their helpers

still maintained well-kept chapels in Kongo and that man high noblesstill held titles sch as “Master o the Chrch”.128 In 1816, the Englishexplorer o the Zaire River, J. K. cke, described a man who was srel one o the indigenos mestres. cke took on board a grop o AricanChristians rom Soo, a ormer Kongo province, among them a priest orla preacher who cold “read the Romish litan in Latin” and “write …[his own name] and that o Saint Antonio”. Here we have proo, then, thatat least some active devotion to Saint Anthon contined in the region o

the ormer Kingdom into the earl nineteenth centr.129 Ts, it is likel that among the thosands o Central Aricans who pored into Brazil inthe decades beore 1848—at least a large minorit o them Kongo andMbnd—there were man who broght with them a signicant amil-iarit with a transcltrated Saint Anthon, even i this latter-da Ntonima have been less engaged in dialoge with the latest Eropean texts andsermons than he had been in 1704.

In an case, it seems likel that cosmological orientations that were

common to Kongolese, Mbnd and other peoples wold have predis-posed most Central Aricans, once in Brazil, to ollow paths traced earlierin the Kongo: on one hand, the orging o commnit clts o afictionaimed at coping with the crisis o enslavement; on the other, the creation o a transcltrated Central-Arican Saint Anthon, similar in man respectsto Ntoni Mala. Indeed, the joining together in a new Antonian devo-tion o people who broght Ntoni Mala with them and persons who hadnever met him in Arica ma have been acilitated b Anthon’s stats in

Brazil as a patron saint. Te bisimbi spirits, ater all were local territorialgenii who were arranged in a hierarch with Fnza on top, as the spremelord o all the land. Who else in Brazil cold hold that title, i not SaintAnthon himsel? How cold slave revolts—or strategies o assimilation, which ma have been more common in non-plantation contexts—not be



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sccessl, i Anthon, the “Saint o All Saints”, the Brazilian “Vice-God”,cold be persaded to lend his spport?130

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Notes1. Or continosl rom 1509, ater a civil war between a Christian and aspposedl non-Christian pretender. (I se Tornton’s dating, ater F. Bon-tinck: Tornton, 1984: 148, note 7.) In 1704, the dismembered kingdom was located in the lower Zaire basin, almost entirel soth o the River, in




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what is now the Democratic Repblic o Congo and northern Angola, andextended rom the ocean almost to Malebo Pool. Te larger Kongo cltrearea reached somewhat rther east and considerabl rther north.

2. On Kimpasi-like clts in Brazil and their relation to the Kimpasi and similar

clts o the Kongo, see Slenes (2006, orthcoming).3. Saint Anthon (ca. 1195-1231), born in Lisbon, spent most o his lie in

Pada. He was canonized in 1232.4. “ranscltration” was rst coined b Fernando Ortiz, in opposition to

“accltration”, i.e., to emphasize the two-wa natre o cltral exchanges:Ortiz (1970), “introdction” and pp. 97-103. Pratt (1992), ch. 1, placed “politi-cal” strggle, particlarl over the ormation o contrasting social identities,at the heart o the concept. “Creolization”, a more amiliar word, bt onethat has acqired man signications, can perhaps be given a more precise

meaning b eqating it with “transcltration”, as redened b Pratt.5. Both sets o themes are particlarl developed in Tornton’s articles: or

instance (1988), (1991), (1998c). Tornton’s book, Arica and Aricans (1998a), also looks at both, bt in separate chapters and (perhaps becaseit is a general textbook) with less attention to Aricans’ strategies in speciccontexts. Ts, it has been criticized as too Aro-centric or, alternativel, astoo mch concerned with the creolization (indeed, accltration) o Ari-cans to Eropean standards. See, respectivel, Price (2003) and Sweet (2003),especiall ch. 5. On creolization in the Lso-Angolan-Brazilian world, seeHewood (1999), (2002).

6. See especiall Tornton (1984).7. He takes this approach in Te Kongolese Saint Anthony (1998b), bt mch

less so in his earlier Te Kingdom o Kongo (1983), as I show below. Note,however, Tornton’s own assertion (1998b, p. 6) that his interpretation o theAntonian movement did not change between the two books.

8. I se “nativist” advisedl. I believe that in Kongolese (1998b) Tornton movesawa rom his rejection o an earlier historiograph in Kingdom (1983)—

e.g., Balandier (1968) and Filesi (1972), who saw the Antonians as a proto-nationalist movement—despite his own armation o continit betweenhis books (1998b: 6); compare Kongolese , pp. 138-9, with Kingdom, pp. 106-9. I go one step rther in this direction.

9. Balandier (1968: 47), Tornton (1983, ch. 5), Hilton (1985, chs. 2-3). Hilton’sand Tornton’s works were originall doctoral dissertations, Hilton’s rom1977 and Tornton’s rom 1979.

10. For the orthograph o Kikongo, the langage o the Kongo, I ollow Laman(1936), except in qotes rom other athors; however, I drop Laman’s dia-

critical (tonal) marks.11. Tornton (1998b: 117, 215-6). On “kindoki” among the Kongo toda:

Bockie (1993, ch. 2).12. MacGae (1986: 211). Tornton (1998b: 117), simpl notes that Anthon,

the Virgin and the other saints were viewed as powerl (ba)nkita (the sev-



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enteenth and eighteenth-centr word or “bisimbi” in the São Salvadordialect).

13. He notes onl (1998b: 117) that appeals or “merc” gre in the SalveRegina and were made b earlier prophetic voices in the Kongo. On Anto-

nians cring “merc” as a badge (and as an aront to missionaries), see theee-witness acconts o da Gallo, 1972 (ms. 1710: 59), p. 59, and da Lcca(1972 [ms. 1707]), pp. 95, 103.

14. See Slenes (2006, orthcoming), or sorces and a ller analsis. Tese char-acteristics are a composite o details recorded b missionaries in the seven-teenth and earl twentieth centries. Movements inspired b Kimpasi idealsdid not necessaril espose Kimpa Vita’s extreme iconoclasm; earl twenti-eth-centr Kimpasi, or instance, sed man-made charms in their ritals.On clts (or ngoma , “drms’) o afiction in central and sothern Arica, see

especiall Janzen (1982), (1992), and Van Dijk, et al., eds. (2000).15. Tornton (1998b: 112-3).16. Da Lcca (1953 [ms. 1709]), p. 290.17. Da Gallo (1972 [ms. 1710]), p. 76, m translation (here and in sbseqent

citations rom oreign-langage sorces): “orse haveva dito qalchesermone di S. Antonio in portghese, che stava nelle mani di qalche bagat-tello negro, che sapeva leggere alqanto”. Editor . Filesi sggests in a oot-note that “bagattello” probabl means “omo di poco conto”. See Tornton(1984: 155-6), on King Aonso I (reigned 1509-1543) as an avid reader o Christian texts and on the 1555 Kikongo catechism, elaborated with inptrom mestres.

18. Neotti (1997: 19-20), or sorces and qote.19. I se “Antônio”, the sal wa o writing the name in Brazil, bt respect

citations that se “António”, the Portgese spelling. Te rst version o thisarticle was written in 2002, ollowing m earlier attempt to compare SaintAnthon in the Kongo and in Brazil in a 1991-92 article, pblished later inEnglish: Slenes (2000). Since then, Ronaldo Vainas (2003) anticipated part

o m argment regarding Saint Anthon’s importance in the Lso-Brazil-ian world, emphasizing the role o Antônio Vieira’s sermons in constrctingthe saint’s image as warrior and “restorer” o lost things.

20. In the collected sermons, rst Portgese edition: António Vieira, Sermoens do P. Antonio Vieyra, da Companhia de Jesu ..., 15 vols. (1679-1748). TeSaint Anthon sermons, nmbered as ollows according to the dates o theirdeliverance, are spread over ve volmes (‘Parts’), all pblished in Lisbon b Migel Deslandes: Vol. II (1682), sermons 4 and 8 (rst part); III (1683),sermon 5; VI (1690), sermon 1; XI (1696), sermons 2 and 6; and XII (1699),

sermons 3, 7, 8 (2nd

part) and 9. B order, place and ear o deliverance,the sermons are: 1) Salvador, Bahia, 1638; 2) Lisbon, 1642; 3) São Lís doMaranhão, 1653; 4) S. Lís, 1654; 5) S. Lís, 1657; 6) S. Lís, 1658; 7)Rome, 1670; 8) Rome, 1671; 9) Rome, 1672 (prepared bt never delivered).Sermon 2 was also pblished separatel in several editions between 1642




249

and 1672; see Paiva (1999), p. 271 . I se Neotti’s edition o these sermons:Vieira (1997).

21. See the list o volmes in Paiva (1999: 327-31), with no indication o thesermons inclded.

22. Romeiro (2001: 151-3).23. Castro (1997: 79-94).24. Randles (1968: 159). Tis was m point o departre or stding Vieira’s

sermons. A specialist in Brazilian histor, Ronaldo Vainas (2003: 37), hasrecentl sggested (withot citing Randles) that Lso-Brazilian ideas abotSaint Anthon, inenced decisivel b Vieira, ma have had an impact onKimpa Vita.

25. Vieira (1997: 34-9), sermon 1 (Salvador, 16 Jne, 1638; pblished in Vieira,Sermoens , Vol. VI [1690]).

26. Vieira (1997: 211), sermon 6 (São Lís, 13 Janar, 1658; pblished in Vieira,Sermoens , Vol. XI [1696]).

27. Vieira (1997: 251-77), sermon 7 (Rome, 13 Janar, 1670; pblished inVieira, Sermoens , Vol. XII, [1699]).

28. Melo (1997: 306-12, 317-8).29. Fazenda (1920: 379).30. Tornton (1998b: 28), or a description o one prominent mestre, Kimpa

Vita’s kinsman.

31. Cited in Melo (1997: 311).32. For reprodctions o these paintings, see: Varios athors (1996: 88, 91).33. Neotti in Vieira (1997: 192), observes that the book appears in Anthon’s

iconograph rom the 14th centr, while the Christ child and the sprig o lilies dates rom the 16th.

34. Vieira (1997: 274), sermon 7.35. Tornton (1998b: 117).36. Gamboso (1995).

37. Vaz (1970: Vol. II, 331-3); or a similar tale rom the Mbnd, Chatelain(1969 [1894]), stor IV, p. 83.38. Laman (1953-1968: Vol. III, 38, 40).39. Tis stor cold have marked Anthon as a nganga o atombola , a clt that

resurrected lineage elders, made them talk and then rebried them. See thedescription o atombola in Hilton (1985: 11, 196-8).

40. Da Gallo (1972 [ms. 1710], p. 68). Tornton (1998b: 133), observes theindigenos meanings o “kanga ”, “tie”; bt he notes neither Saint Anthon’slink with ertilit in Portgal, nor da Gallo’s comment on the similarit between coeval Portgese and Kongo practices o ting cords arond SaintAnthon’s limbs.

41. Randles (1968: 151).42. Filesi (1972: 34, note).



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43. Balandier (1968: 241), ollowing Laman (1936).44. Vieira (1997: 212-3), sermon 6.45. MacGae (1986: 65-9, 196). In the twentieth centr (p. 65) smiths were

initiated throgh a commnit clt o action. See also Herbert (1993),

especiall chs. 3, 6.46. Laman (1936).Van Wing (1959: Vol. II, 458), or utumuka and its relation

to ula .47. Tornton (1998b: 77, 120-3).48. Hilton (1985: 197). Compare Tornton (1983), ch. 5, particlarl p. 65,

where the conict between “priests … [and] local nganga” (as i Kitome andKimpasi were not involved) is isolated rom politics—it becomes “a strgglebetween rival religios actors or control o the same religion”—even thoghthe priests were “ll spported b Kongo’s rling class and nobilit”.

49. Boveignes and Cvelier (1951: 164). I se Tornton’s dating o this episode(1983: 61).

50. Da Caltanisetta (1970: 70-1) or the discssion that ollows. Da Caltanisetta was convinced he had been poisoned several times b “etishers” (e.g., Ibid.,pp. 22, 25, 32); i so, this was another sign that man people rejected hispresence.

51. Hilton (1985: 98, 101-02).52. Van Wing (1959: 386).

53. Laman (1953-1968: Vol. II, 20).54. Van Wing (1959: Vol. II, 400-05), or what ollows. Mpungu means “the

highest, greatest”; Laman (1936).55. See MacGae (1977: 188), and (1986: 132), on the idea that diviners have

extra ees to see the Other World. Te notion seems to carr over here tominkisi (plral o nkisi ).

56. Axelson (1970: 203, 251).57. See the review o the evidence on this cstom in Slenes (1999: 249-52).

58. Van Wing (1959: Vol. II, 429). Te same seems to have been tre in theKimpasi-related Bakhimba clt among the yombe; see Bittremiex (1936:14).

59. Tornton (1998b: 74).60. Da Lcca (1972 [ms. 1707]), p. 97: “ma che conoscendo esser [l’Arte Magica]

cose diaboliche, haveva traslasciato qell’esercizio”.61. Tornton (1998b: 74), or this and sbseqent qotes in this paragraph.62. Da Gallo (1972 [ms. 1710]), p. 78, or this and sbseqent qotes.63. Tornton (1983: 108-9), or Marqis o Vnda: title, role; Hilton (1985: 23),

or Nzimba: title.64. Soza, Jliana (2001: 393), citing the 20th Maria Rosa Mística sermon, pb-

lished in 1686 or 1688.65. MacGae (1986: 210), or this and sbseqent qotes.




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66. Da Lcca (1972 [ms. 1707]), p. 94.67. MacGae (1986: 210), da Gallo (1972 [ms. 1710]), p. 78. Note that Jadin’s

French translation o da Gallo’s manscript attribtes the correct date to it(17 December, 1710), bt gratitosl inserts “c’est à dire la misricorde”

(not in the original Italian) ater “Ne yari”; Jadin (1961: 517). See Tornton(1998b: 117), on the replacement o intervocalic r b d in the Kikongo o theeighteenth centr ( yaari becoming toda’s yaadi ).

68. Laman (1936): ne or (sothern dialect) na (pp. 296, 362), “a title o respect”; yaadi (p. 1110), “one who reigns well, rler”.

69. MacGae (1977: 187).70. Tornton (1998b: 12, 161), da Lcca (1972 [ms. 1707]), p. 94.71. Randles (1968: 158).

72. Margarido (1968: 546-7), cited in Filesi (1972: 30, note 33).73. Redinha (1972: 757), cited b Gonçalves (1985: 177, note 34).74. Gonçalves (1985: 167). See also Abranches (1991: 83), (Tompson 1993:

69-72). On the similar signications o the mulemba (Kimbnd or nsanda )among the Mbnd, see Miller (1976: 48-53).

75. I borrow here rom the analsis in Slenes (2006, orthcoming).76. MacGae (1986: 132, 127).77. Gonçalves (1985: 164-5).78. Gonçalves (1985: 168).79. Laman (1936); bt note what MacGae’s inormants sa (1977: 187, note

23).80. MacGae (1986: 133-4).81. Tornton (1998b: 9).82. Laman (1936: 161). In Laman’s “SB” dialect in the area o Mbanza Kongo (p.

lix) the prex m- alwas replaces that o “n”; indeed Gallo gives musanda orthe g tree, not nsanda . Conceivabl this was the case with the other nasalprex “m”, in which case muuma wold have been the sothern version o

muma . (Swartenbroeckx [1973: 336], gives muuma as a variant o muma,bt does not indicate its regional se.) Muuma is still close enogh to uma ,however, or the hpothesis o error on Gallo’s part or deception on KimpaVita’s to remain plasible.

83. MacGae (1986: 130, 133). See also Pierre Swartenbroeckx (1973: 336,muma ), which gives “ganga-mma”, also “to conspire”. Tis combinesmuma with nganga , the “priest doctor” who normall works to solve anindividal’s problems; it is tempting to speclate that this ma have beenKimpa Vita’s private name or the Christian priests, who were commonl

called “nganga”. I cold not nd this expression, however, in Laman (1936).Other relevant words rom Laman are: muma avondwa , “to combine to kill,assassinate”; mumbi , “assassin”.

84. Janzen and MacGae (1974: 7).85. Ldia Cabrera (1983: 150, 158, 166, 175, 177).



ROBER W. SLENES

252

86. Laman (1936). Note that Swartenbroeckx (1973) gives mvumbi , “cadaver,deceased” as standard Kikongo, common to all dialects.

87. Laman (1936: 638). Van Wing (1959: Vol. II, 292). In the bibliograph onthe Kongo, the stats o the oldest nkita—as a separate spirit grop or as one

sbsmed to the bisimbi—is nclear; see Slenes (2006, orthcoming). In an case, in Kongo (Tornton, 1998b: 117), these nkita had “lived long ago bt were the ancestors o no one in particlar. … Te were positive, even stern,moral gres who were nevertheless non-partisan and protecting”. In thisCban sorce, however, “nkita” seems associated with the recent dead, whichis consistent with the ambigit in Van Wing’s accont.

88. Cabrera (1983: 175).89. See Tornton (1998b: 117), on “the pett concerns and willingness to do

evil on behal o their descendants” which characterized “the recentl dead

ancestors”.90. MacGae (1986: 133). Laman (1936), entr or nkulu (singlar). Bakulu

can also mean “the oldest ancestors”, i. e. presmabl those who eventall become associates (or a sbclass) o bisimbi.

91. Te opposition between nsanda and mma brings to mind the one notedb MacGae (1986: 178), between “charms o the below”, “associated withterrestrial waters, women’s activities, healing and ertilit”, and “charms o the above” (o “land, with respect to water, or sk with respect to earth”), which “are associated … with men’s aairs” and “are sed primaril in combat with witches”. Tis opposition is also central to Hilton’s analsis o the “sk-spirit” and “water-spirit” dimensions, the Christian priests being primaril associated with the ormer, bt also seen as having qalities related to thelatter (at least beore the Capchins began trl acting like witches). Teopposition was rst stated in Dpr (1975: 12-28).

92. Kimpa Vita’s analog is so consistent that I believe m argment stands,even i she did sa uma (“white/red riverine stone”); or uma (according toMacGae “associated with the dead”), wold still have led Kikongo speak-

ers to mumu, muma , umana ,υ

anga muma and other words cited in thenotes above, thereb establishing a set o meanings/connotations in contrastto that o nsanda .

93. Hilton (1985: 200-01).94. Note that “mm” can also mean “king, noble”; ki-mumu is “reign”, also

“athorit, nobilit, roalt”, among other meanings. Laman (1936).95. See note 67, and Laman (1936): ki-yaadi (p. 296) and ky-adi (p. 362). See

also Tornton (1998: 117, note 5; 219, note 16), who translates Italian miseri-cordia (“merc”) as kiyadi (or kiyari , at the time o the Salve Antoniana).

96. Hilton (1985: 209).97. See Tornton’s hpothesis (1998b: 44) that commoners increasingl believed

the high nobilit was acting with evil kindoki.98. Sá (1997: 210-221).




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99. In: Vieira (2000-2001: 78, 89).100. Wh Kimpa Vita, a member o the nobilit, wold have taken this stance is

probabl in good part explained b Tornton (1998b: 14, 54-6): her mate-rial conditions o existence were not radicall dierent rom those o the

majorit; her practice as Nganga Marinda broght her closer to the people.I sspect that one ma add to this something that is implicit in both Torn-ton’s and Hilton’s analses: the severe loss o material benets b the greaterpart o the nobilit over the previos several decades becase o shrinkingpossibilities o roal patronage, in the context o economic decline and theshattering o centralized control.

101. In this section, I borrow and add to material in Slenes (2006, orthcoming)and Slenes (2000). Since the pblication o the latter (the original Port-gese version o 1991-1992), other important stdies have appeared on Saint

Anthon in Brazil: Mott (1996); Soza, Marina (2001); Vainas (2003).102. See Slenes (2000: 223); the strong presence o Kongo and related cltres

ater ca. 1810 (ollowing the massive shit in the ocs o the trade awa rom “Bengela” and toward “Congo North”—the moth o the Zaire andthe coastline above it) is emphasized in Slenes (2006, orthcoming).

103. Tis and the ollowing paragraphs are based on Slenes (2006, orthcoming).104. Te main docment on Cabla has been pblished several times: see, in

English, Bastide (1978 [1960]), pp. 202-4.

105. Cabla is clearl related to the present-da possession clt, umbanda. Ts,in view o its connection to Kimpasi, it is signicant that one o the mostcommonl called-pon grop o spirits in umbanda is that o the Caboclos Velhos (“Old Indians”). See Slenes (2006, orthcoming).

106. Laman (1936), entr or bula . Note that Saint Anthon entered Kimpa Vitathrogh her head; Tornton (1998b: 10).

107. See Slenes (2006, orthcoming), which also notes that the “Caboclo Velho”spirits in present-da umbanda are considered powerl and aggressive.

108. Siqeira (1975 [1852]), p. 109.

109. Chatelain (1969 [1894]), p. 268.110. Ewbank (1976 [1856]), pp. 250-1.111. Fazenda (1920: 379).112. Ewbank (1976 [1856]), pp. 188-9.113. Karasch (1987: 266-7, 277, 282, 284).114. Stein (1985: 203).115. O Direito (1880: Vol. 21 [ Janar/April], 12).116. Machado Filho (1985: 67-8, 129): canjira, canjerê , meaning “charm”, also the

name o a dance; perhaps rom Kimbnd ka- (dimintive particle) + njila (c. Kikongo nzila ), “path”.117. MacGae (1986: 146), Tompson (1985: 121-5).118. See Neotti’s note in Vieira (1997: 190). Jos Portgês had been hired b

a planter to obtain the marriage o a spinster daghter. Tis case allows a



ROBER W. SLENES

glimpse into a world o transcltrated meanings where social actors o alltpes ond some common grond.

119. I draw here on m observations regarding these grines in Slenes (2000);see also the recent article b Soza, Marina (2001).

120. Etzel (1971: 152-6), Lemos (1988: 192-7).121. Volavkova (1972: 52-89), Tompson (1985: 138-9), MacGae (1977: 127-

31).122. “Com tanto pau no mato / Embaúba é coronel ”; Stein (1985: 208).123. Ewbank (1976 [1856]), p. 187.124. Laman (1953-1968: Vol. III, gre p. 93).125. Te hands on the stomach cold represent the Kongo gestre o simbidila

(‘holding rm’), a orm o praer and meditation “to prepare the grond” or

rther action. See Tompson (1981: 75-6).126. Wannn (1961), plate xxiv (npaginated) and p. 79.127. Vanhee (2002: 243-64).128. Tornton (1984: 165).129. J. K. cke (1967 [1818]), pp. 79-81. cke’s observation is mch stron-

ger evidence o this than the ver small nmber o carved states o SaintAnthon ond in the possession o elite Kongo amilies at the end o thenineteenth centr, who regarded them as ancient heirlooms. For two schgres, see Bentle (1900: Vol. I, 39, 259).

130. Manmission rates appear to have been mch higher in small properties,even or Aricans; ths, in these properties, processes o transcltration andidentit ormation ma have been dierent rom those sketched here. SeeSlenes (2006, orthcoming).

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