Nganga Nzumbi an African Royal who refused slave status & Created a Kingdom of his own After escaping Slavery.
Nganga Nzumbi an African Royal who refused slave status & Created a Kingdom of his own After escaping Slavery.
Nganga was born around 1630 in Kingdom of Kongo. His mother was Aqualtune, daughter of an unknown king of Kongo who led her people in the Battle of Mbwila against Portugal. The Portuguese won the battle and captured the king and many other nobles and sold them as slaves to America. It’s likely that Ganga was among these captives. He along with other members of his family were sold as slaves at the plantation of Santa Rita in the Portugal’s Colony of Pernambuco (Northeast Brazil). After few years Nganga who was an African Royal refuses to accept his slave status and escape. He also stated a rebellion which led to the founding of the massive runaway slave settlement of Quilombo dos Palmares. Nganga rose to the position of highest authority within the kingdom of Palmares, and it was then that he was given the title of Ganga Zumba which means “Great Lord” in Kimbundu.
By the 1670s, Ganga had a palace, three wives, guards, ministers, and devoted subjects at his royal compound called Macaco. The compound consisted of 1,500 houses which housed his family, guards, and officials, all of which were considered royalty. Over the course of the century, Nganga had armies which rescued other enslaved Africans from the plantations and brought them to Palmares territory. He also defited several European who attacked his kingdom trying to enslave his people again.
In 1677 Palmares suffered devastating attacks in which Two of Nganga’s children were taken prisoner, one was killed and even Ganga himself was wounded. In 1678 Nganga accepted a peace treaty offered by the Portuguese Governor of Pernambuco, which required him to relocate his people from Palmarinos to Cucaú Valley. The treaty was challenged by Zumbi, one of Nganga’s nephews, who led a revolt against him. In the same year, Nganga was poisoned, most likely by one of his own relatives for entering into a treaty with the Portuguese. Many of his followers who had moved to the Cucaú Valley were re-enslaved by the Portuguese.
