Queen Njinga's Cleverness

nothing of the constant threat of crocodiles and hippos. The largest kingdom in Central Africa was Congo, stretching over three hundred miles long, although the arid western side of the kingdom made it inhospitable and meant that the population was primarily and traded in the city of Mbanza, Congo. Portugal had arrived to Central Africa with the ostensible goal of converting the local population to Catholicism and the added benefit

of joining in on the lucrative slave trade. King Alfonso of the Congo submitted to the Portuguese under a mutually beneficial arrangement. He converted to Catholicism allowed the Portuguese to engage in the slave trade, and in return, he used Portuguese military power to continue the expansion of his own kingdom against neighboring states. One of those states to the south of Congo was Indongo, the second largest kingdom in

Central Africa. When the Portuguese built a fort in Luanda directly on the border, encroaching on Nindongo territory, the King of Ndongo knew something had to be done, and in sixteen twenty two, the king sent his sister in Jinga to negotiate. And Jinga knew what a precarious situation she was walking into. Trading with colonialist Europeans was something of an arms race amongst the kingdoms of Central Africa. You didn't want to be the last kingdom left without guns.

Button Jinga had seen what had happened to King Alfonso and the Bcongo people. The goal for her was preserving independence. In autonomy, she needed to negotiate with Portugal in a way that would give her kingdom access to Portuguese resources, but also that would keep Portugal from absorbing her kingdom entirely. The Portuguese governor Chua de Susa showed up for the meeting informal European dress, and he sat on a high seat.

There was only one chair in the room. When Inga entered, di Susa indicated that she should sit on the carpet. It was, of course a classic power move to make her sit an attempt to negotiate with him as equals when she was physically put already in the position of an African who had been conquered. But instead of kneeling, Jinga gestured for one of her lady's maids to get on all fours. The woman became a human chair. Jinga sat on her back and conducted the meeting at eye

level with the Portuguese governor. That anecdote, which has been retold for hundreds of years and been the subject of numerous artistic renderings, is perhaps the best possible embodiment of Jinga's fascinating legacy, a woman who defied European colonialism with cleverness and flair, but also sometimes on the backs figuratively

and literally of her subjects. After her brother's death, and Jinga would become a conquering queen and an inspiration for the spirit of African independence against colonialists even to the

present day. But she's also a complex figure of course, as a female African ruler, propaganda from European missionaries would paint her in incredibly racist and sexist terms, claiming she was a cannibal and extremely sexually promiscuous, but more credible historians, particularly Dr Linda Haywood, have worked to uncover the truth

behind the bluster, both positive and negative. Another historian, Aurora Levin's Morales, writes of Queen Jinga in her essay Historian as Corndera quote, she was a fierce anti colonial warrior, a militant fighter, a woman holding power in a male dominated society, and she laid the basis for successful and Golan resistance to Portuguese colonialism all the way into the

twenty century. She was also an elite woman living off the labor of others, who fought other African people on behalf of the Portuguese and collaborated in the slave trade. It is in many ways more empowering when we tell the stories of our heroic figures as contradictory characters full of weakness and failures of insight. It enables us to see our own choices and potentials more clearly, and to understand that imperfect people can have a powerful liberating impact

on the world end quote. By the end of her meeting with the Portuguese governor, and Jinga had agreed to convert to Christianity as a means of securing a peace treaty. As she left, her servant remained on all fours. The Portuguese called after her. You're not going to take your chair, they said, Jinga shrugged. I have many more chairs where I come from. I'm Dani Schwartz, and this is noble blood. The future Queen Jinga was born to the soon to be King Umbande and one of his enslaved wives. Her

father became King or Ngola when Jingo was ten. The present day country of Angola, which encompasses what was once the Indongo Kingdom, actually gets its name from a European misunderstanding of that word Ingola. King Jinga's Mother's name was King Gala, and as an enslaved woman, she was presented to the king as a gift, but she soon became his favorite companion, eventually receiving the title of principal concubine, which is the status just below chief wife. According to legend.

When Jingo was born, she was breach with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around her neck, threatening her airflow. The newborn baby was turning blue, but even as an infant, Jinga clung to life, and she twisted herself out of the umbilical cord and earned herself her first breath. Jinga also earned her name that way from the Kimbund language

verb kajinga to twist and turn. According to local tradition, a baby who survives being born with an umbilical cord wrapped around its neck is a symbol that they'll grow up to be powerful and proud. But Njinga's birth was also prophetic in another way. It foreshadowed the way that she would be able to manipulate situations to her advantage, to be able to twist and turn and adapt amongst various tribes and European allies in order to protect herself

and her kingdom. Jinga, clever and hard working, quickly became her father's favorite child. Though no women were actually rulers of the Dongo Kingdom, they weren't excluded from the political sphere either. Jinga's father became king when she was ten and she was constantly at his side, standing at his knee and learning while he conducted various diplomatic affairs and meetings. She learned how to fight and received the same military

training as her brother, and she also learned Portuguese. Because she was a woman, her brother didn't see her aptitude as a threat. He just saw her as her clever sister. Isn't it sweet how much time she spent with Dad. The monarchy in the Nindongo Kingdom wasn't a direct father

to son dynasty. It was a little more game of thrones e in which there were a number of eligible possible kings based on their royal lineages, and any one of them could be selected, or one of them could establish themselves as king in a show of force, like Njinga's brother Bondi did by more or less staging a coup before the formal council decision was made. After their father's death, button Bondy's fragile hold on the throne in the early days meant that he had to be vigilant

of every possible threat. According to the story, Jinga had a son at this point, and Bondi, afraid that his nephew might one day, usurp him killed the baby and for grotesque good measure forcibly sterilized Jinga with hot oil and herbs to make sure that she could never have any more male heirs. Because Njinga was a woman, she was allowed to live. She wasn't seen as a threat to his throne. But after being on the receiving end

of such extreme violence, Jinga fled the kingdom. Maybe there was a chance that her brother, in his paranoia, might have seen her as a threat after all. But for the next few years, Jinga stayed in the nearby kingdom of Matamba while Mbandi solidified his position as king and became newly aware of the quagmire his kingdom was facing

in regards to Portugal. Maybe he begged, or maybe he didn't have to, but in sixteen twenty one, Njinga returned to the Kingdom of Indongo at her brother's behest, in order to act as his ambassador with the Portuguese governor. Jinga was an invaluable asset. She was fluent in Portuguese and had spent her entire childhood learning diplomacy beside her father. This is the point in the story when Jinga met with Governor de Suza and the Wanda, the infamous human

chair Comeback of sixty two. While most African diplomats met with their European counterparts in European clothes, Jinga made the tactical decision to where her own traditional clothing first. In the negotiations, she refused point blank for her kingdom to offer our Portugal anything in tribute. They were equals, she argued. If they were going to give them anything, it would be as a gift. Eventually, a settlement was reached in exchange for opening trade routes to the Portuguese and Jinga

becoming baptized. Portugal would withdraw from Dongo territory and recognize its national sovereignty. But the peace would be short lived. Donga was under threat from a new kingdom called Cassanja, made up of in Bengala warrior soldiers who had broken ranks with the Portuguese. Dongo was a tact and the king bandy was forced to flee and go into exile. Now, because the King of Nudonggo was now exiled and unbaptized, the Portuguese decided that they didn't need to honor the

treaty that they had negotiated with Njinga. After all, she had negotiated on behalf of a king who wasn't Christian and wasn't really a king anymore. And so, with most of Western Africa already gutted from the slave trade and monopolized by the French and English, the Portuguese came for Central Africa with a fervor. According to Dr Haywood, between fifteen eighty and sixteen forty, the majority of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were from the Indongo people in

present day Angola. In sixteen twenty four and Bandy, the ing of Inndongo, died. It may have been poisoning, but more likely it was suicide, maybe out of shame for

having not better protected his kingdom from the Portuguese. Though he made it very clear that his sister, in Jinga diplomat extraordinaire, was his heir, most of the Indongo nobility rejected her, some because they thought that Ndongo should become a vassal state under Portugal, and others because they straight out refused to acknowledge a female leader, and Jingo was

forced to flee her kingdom. Needing security, she joined up with the in Bengala camp for protection, although she was only allowed in on the conditions that she submit to their chief as his wife, which she did. As a new ward of the warrior in Bengala tribe, Jinga trained. This is the part of the story where if Njinga's life was a film, we would get an epic Rocky

style training sequence. Njinga would be a fierce fighter for the rest of her life, physically leading her soldiers into battle well into her sixties, and she learned much of that by training with the in Bengala people. She was already a diplomat, but after her period with the in Bengala she was a warrior, and as a warrior, Jinga wanted to retake her kingdom, but first she needed an army.

Do you remember that neighboring kingdom of Matamba, the kingdom where Jinga had stayed after her brother killed her son and forcibly sterilized her. Well, Njinga went back to Matamba with a band of in Bengala soldiers and kidnapped their queen. She declares herself the new queen of Matamba, and using their army and their resources, she returned to Indongo and took the throne to which she was entitled. For forty years, Jinga was the Queen of the United Kingdoms of both

in Dongo and Matomba. Even with all of her political and military strength, Jinga understood that she needed to subvert the negative assumptions that came with her being the first female in Donga ruler. In a strategy not unlike Queen Elizabeth the First of England, and Jinga ceremonially became a man in order to reaffirm her legitimacy as a monarch. Just to be clear, it was a symbolic ceremonial move,

not a reflection of her gender identity. It just meant that Jinga acted in stereotypically masculine activities in order to assuage all doubt about her capabilities. She led battles, forced people to address her as king, and male concubines. According to Dr Haywood, Jinga forced her male concubines to dress

in the female clothing of her female bodyguards. She made the men and women in her service sleep in the same room, but they were all required to remain chaste if the men or women so much as touched one another, even if it was just an accidental graze in someone's sleep, he or she would be rendered impotent or infertile, or

even killed. Some of the other stories about Jinga's brutality have more nebulous sources, and are, in this writer's opinion, evidence of the cultural European racism of missionaries reporting back. One missionary wrote that in Jinga was a cannibal, that she delighted in bloody rituals, and that she forced the men in her harem to fight to the death in order to win the chance to spend a night with her. Then in the morning, even the winner would be put

to death. Quing Jinga came to power in Africa through her military prowess, skillful manipulations of religion, successful diplomacy, and remarkable understanding of politics. Despite her outstanding accomplishments and her decades long reign comparable to that of Elizabeth the First of England, she was vilified by European contemporaries and later writers as an uncivilized savage who embodied the worst of womankind. End quote. One more note about in Jinga's historiographical legacy.

There are a number of different spellings of her name, Some of her own writings and letters even have her using her Europeanized baptismal name Anna de Suza. But I'm following the path of doctor Heywood and going with Jinga n j I n g A. I also find for me it visually makes that soft end sound easier to pronounce than the other common way of spelling Njinga with a Z instead of a J. Ever willing to twist

and turn as a political tactician. In sixteen thirty one, Jinga formed an alliance with the Dutch West India Company as the Dutch moved in against the Portuguese in Central Africa. The Dutch sees Luongo, and with their help, Jinga defeated

the Portuguese army at Golme in sixteen forty four. It's easy sometimes to skate past decades of battles and paint them all in broad swatches without actually becoming cognizant of the human toll that was sacrificed, the tragedies tiny and large, that get swept up and pushed to the back of a closet marked this or that war because company is coming in. We want all these things out of the way.

But there was a human toll, especially on Queen Jinga and an especially visceral one in sixteen, when the Portuguese kidnapped her sister. Accurate accounts are difficult to come by, and some sources report that they actually captured two of her living sisters, but the Portuguese at least had one, a sister who had grown up in Dongo by Njinga's side, who had been with her and experiencing the horrifying ordeal

of being forcibly sterilized by their brother. Jinga's sister, named Kifnuji, remained behind Portuguese enemy lines for years, and we do have records of her writing back smuggled reports about Portuguese goings on, which indicate that she might have been working as a spy, and that might be part of the

reason that the Portuguese drowned her in the quand The River. Still, Jinga continued her fight at this point in her mid sixties, and Jinga had her soldiers using guerrilla tactics against the Portuguese, and she oftentimes led the troops into battle herself. But the Dutch were defeated by the Portuguese in six and they withdrew from Central Africa eliminating one of Jinga's key allies. But soon she would have another ally in her long

struggle to maintain Dongo sovereignty the Vatican. Back when she was her brother's ambassador and she converted to Christianity in negotiations with the Portuguese, that conversion didn't really stick in her heart. She was committed to the cultural sovereignty as well as the political sovereignty of her kingdom, and so pretty soon after her treaty with Portugal was resolved, so

too did her commitment to Christianity. But in her mid sixties, another flavor of missionary arrived in Nindongo, two Capuchin monks. Now it's impossible to know exactly what in Jinga's thought process was here. It's possible that the Capuchin monks, devoid of any political agenda, really spoke to her and Jinga felt connected to the Catholic faith. Or it's possible that in Jinga realized the value of becoming Christian as a means of establishing her country on the world stage as

one of the Catholic nations recognized by the Pope. Or maybe it was a combination of the two factors. But for whatever reason, this time Jinga's Christianity seemed to stick, she saw to it that as many Nindongo and Matomba babies were baptized as possible, and she built an elaborate

European style church in her kingdom's capital. When traditional Dongo priests were wary of their queen's seemingly sudden left turn away from their spiritual teachings, and Jinga performed a public right in which she used holy relics from the remains of her brother's body the former king and asked him and their ancestors if they approved of her converting to Christianity if it meant that it would bring their nation peace and surprise, Surprised, the holy relics agreed with her decision.

In sixteen sixty, her efforts came to fruition in the form of a letter from Pope Alexander the seventh himself, recognizing her as a daughter in Christ and saying that he'd pray for her kingdom during the end of her life. Jinga also turned her kingdom into a safe haven for formally and slaved people escaping from slave trading colonists, which was humanitarian but also an effective strategy to increase her

army strength and further her kingdom's expansion. It's tempting to see that action as a symbol that in Jinga was always fighting against slavery with the same zeal with which she fought for her nation's sovereignty. But the truth is a little more nuanced. Jinga and her family all owned enslaved people, and she would gift enslaved Africans to the Portuguese as diplomatic gestures. At certain times she supported the

Portuguese slave trade. But I also think it's important to recognize that, even as she engaged in the political realities of the time, her goal was always African sovereignty and protecting the strength and autonomy of her kingdom, even if she had to make horrific civil sacrifices in order to achieve her your political goals, there are plenty of writers who speak far more eloquently about the impact of the

European slave trade in Africa. Dr Linda Haywood's entire book, Jinga of Angola is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn more about this topic from an actual expert. Jinga made enemies both domestic and Portuguese throughout her life, but despite numerous assassination attempts, Jinga's final revenge on her adversaries was dying peacefully in her sleep at age eighty. She knew how to lead and what it took to

maintain power, especially against the encroaching threat of colonialism. Though Njinga requested a simple Christian burial in a Capuchin habit after her death, her attendants couldn't help but sending her off with more traditional and dongo adornments. According to Anne Theoryo's essay on Jinga in her series Queens of Infamy quote, after she died, Jinga's body was carefully washed by her attendants,

who anointed her with herbs, perfume, and powders. Her hair was styled with corals, pearls, and feathers, and her crown was placed on her head. Her limbs were loaded down with jewelry and arrangements of elephant hair, a symbol of royalty. Her body was wrapped in two richly wrought brocade cloths, and velvet slippers were placed on her feet. Then, mindful of her instructions, her attendants replaced all of this with a habit, crucifix, and rosary, although they left her hair

and crown as they were. This ceremonial dressing and redressing represented a middle ground between the two traditions. Njinga had spent decades navigating. Though Njinga was Ndongo's first female leader, her sister to go over after her death, and out of the next one hundred four years in Dongo, eighty of those years would be under a female ruler. That's the life of Queen Jingo of modern day Angola. But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear more

about her modern legacy. Four hundreds of years, Ninjinga has remained a powerful figure embodying African independence across the entire continent, but also, of course, in the present day country of Angola. In and Gola finally broke free of Portuguese rule for good. In Ninjinga and everything she stood for was a guiding symbol for those who fought once again protect their nation from European imperialism. In two thousand two, they built a giant statue of Nyjinga, which was placed in a public

square in Luanda. Today the statue stands in the Engolan Museum of Armed Forces. But there's another reminder of Jinga's legacy that I find particularly interesting. She's a heroic figure in Africa, but also in the Americas, where so many of her people were brought against their will. In Brazil, where many enslaved Africans were brought, there's a number of businesses that bear in Jinga's name. A form of Brazilian martial arts called capuara frequently has studios named Njinga, keeping

her fighting spirit alive. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.