This was the recipe I made for last year’s Ealdormere Cooks’ Calendar. The original recipe was very complete, so it was a simple redaction. It comes from A Persian Cookbook: The Manual by Bavarchi, translated from the Persian by Saman Hassibi & Amir Sayadabdi (drafted in 1521, published in 2018).
6 quails (could use one whole chicken cut into pieces, or other birds) – boil for about 20 minutes, or until done 1 onion (about 500 g), diced 1.1 g cinnamon (approximately 1 tsp) 450 g white, long grain rice Water as needed to add to the liquid from boiling the birds, in order to cook the rice. A minimum of four cups of liquid is required 200 g cooked chickpeas .5 g cumin .5 g whole or ground pepper (I used long pepper) 100 g olive oil, plus oil to fry birds (until they are browned) ¾ tsp salt (or more to taste) 1/8 tsp mastic
Add chicken pieces to pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and boil with cinnamon and half the onion for 20 minutes or until cooked through and skimming off foam. Drain and reserve liquid.
Fry the bird and boiled onions in oil.
Boil the reserved liquid (adding extra water if needed), wash chickpeas and rice thoroughly and add to the pot, adjust the salt, and cook until the rice is half done.
Once the rice is half-done, add in remaining onions and the fried bird, caraway and pepper, and mix together.
Add olive oil, and mix together, then steam until the rice is cooked.
Grind mastic in cold water, sprinkle over everything and serve.
Serves 6
Notes: Measurements: 1 man = 2784 grams; 1 carak = 742 grams; 1 mesqal = 4.64 grams. Kerman is a region in Iran famous for its cumin. In this context, cumin is the correct ingredient to add, not caraway seed. Mastic is a resin grown primarily on the island of Chios in Greece. You can find it by asking at a good Middle Eastern grocery.
The side dish presented here is Sabzi Rahwash, an Afghan spinach dish with leeks, rhubarb and dill weed. Afghanistan was part of the Persian Safavid dynasty at the time Bavarchi wrote his cookbook. The ingredients are plausible for the period, though I cannot document the recipe.
Nowruz, the first day of the Persian new year, begins on the vernal equinox, usually around 21 March. Nowruz is observed throughout central Asia, and is a religious holiday for Zoroastrians, Shias and Bahais. Pilafs and green vegetables are commonly served.
Now that my waterfront property is starting to be a reality for medieval camping and experiments, it may need a name. Joking about it being a hideaway got me thinking about Brazilian history. When I lived in Brazil many years ago, I first heard about quilombos, settlements of runaway slaves that continued to the present day.
As I started to dig into the history, and how it might apply in the SCA context, I discovered that there were, in fact, slave uprisings almost from the moment the slave trade began in the Americas. The slaves did not forget their origins, traditions or cultures. Escaping and forming independent communities, often with the collaboration of local indigenous peoples, was a spontaneous phenomenon that took place as soon as the first African set foot on American soil. It happened in parallel throughout the entire continent, regardless of the nationality of the masters or the ethnic group of those subjected. Further, there were well-known leaders who fought successfully for the freedom of some of these communities, particularly in the Caribbean region and into Colombia and Ecuador during the SCA period. Their struggles had a direct impact on eventual decolonization in some of those countries, and their efforts are finally being recognized. Indeed, this history is starting to be a point of pride – There are statues of famous maroons in various countries, archaeological digs in Panama, a national park in Brazil, the legal recognition of Quilombos and their land rights in Brazil, and UNESCO intangible heritage designation for the Palenquero language and community in Palenque, Colombia.
Caveats – This is a new area of study for me. Many key documents are likely available only in Spanish, or Portuguese, which are much less available via the internet as I don’t know where they are stored to track down on-line or translated versions. Most of what is available is from European perspective. Much of what is recorded – especially regarding culture, how people lived – is post-1600. This included communities where I expected to find information (Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica, USA). Instead, I found myself learning about regions where I knew very little about their black communities (Mexico, Ecuador, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela). Pre-1600, most slavery was Spanish or Portuguese. Portuguese slave trading began in the 1400s, the English in the 1500s, and the French didn’t seriously enter the trade until the 1670s. In fact, “The Negro in France” (Shelby T McCloy, University of Kentucky Press, 1961, p. 12) notes that “Some Negroes brought to Bordeaux by a shipowner and placed on sale there in 1571 were ordered released by the parlement of that city on the ground that slavery did not exist in France.”
Definitions
Maroons, Cimarróns and Bozales – The first Maroons were African-born Blacks, whom the Spanish called “Bozales.” Maroon, which can have a more general sense of being abandoned without resources, entered English around the 1590s, from the French adjective marron (Wikipedia),meaning ‘feral’ or ‘fugitive’. The American Spanish word cimarrón is often given as the source of the English word maroon, used to describe the runaway slave communities in the New World. The Cuban philologist José Juan Arrom has traced the origins of the word maroon further than the Spanish cimarrón, used first in Hispaniola to refer to feral cattle, then to enslaved Indigenous people who escaped to the hills, and by the early 1530s to enslaved Africans who did the same. He proposes that the American Spanish word derives ultimately from the Arawakan root word simarabo, construed as ‘fugitive’, in the Arawakan languag spoken by the Taíno people native to the island.
Kilombo or Quilombo – independent nation made by African slaves, who fought against slavery. Usually localized in densely forested regions far from plantations. A quilombo from the Kimbundu or Bandu word kilombo, “war camp” establishes a link between settlements and the culture of West Central Africa from where the majority of slaves were forcibly brought to Brazil. During the era of slave trafficking, natives in central Angola, called Imbangala, had created an institution called a kilombo that united various tribes of diverse lineage into a community designed for military resistance. They were first written about by an English sailor who lived with them in about 1600-1601.
Mocambo is said to have come from the Kimbundu and Kicong languages and referred to structures used for the construction of huts (https://escolakids.uol.com.br/historia/o-que-e-um-quilombo.htm). In Brazil, the word mocambo was used earlier in the history, and in the northern part of the country. Quilombos were usually larger communities, established later and found further to the south. Their inhabitants were and are known as qulombolos. Cumbes, ladeiras or mambieses are also Brazilian names for these communities.
Palenque – the name for independent Black villages or camps in the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. Its inhabitants are palenqueros. They spoke/speak various Spanish-African-based creole languages such as Palenquero. In some places, the communities were also known as Cimarroneras.
How were Maroon Communities Formed? Were there Maroons Outside the Communities?
Marronage began as soon as the Bozales touched American soil. These original Maroons often escaped in groups, some in vain efforts to return to Africa (Richard Price, Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, Johns Hopkins University, 1979, p 2). If Bozales did not flee upon first arriving they fled after being enslaved for years. European colonizers found it more difficult to subdue Bozales as they had vivid memories of Africa and freedom. Marronage occurred in several different forms. The majority of Maroons fled individually or in small groups, not in massive uprisings. “Many slaves slipped away quietly, individually or in groups, to join Maroons or to fend freely for themselves” (Barbara Klamon Kopytoff, The Early Political Development of Jamaican Maroon Societies, in The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol 35, No 2, April 1978, p 294). Isolated runaways sought to lose themselves in towns or areas of Freedmen or Indigenous populations. Groups of Maroons often created small networks located near each other and formed bands of “gangs” and “bandits.” From their villages Maroons could rob and pillage nearby towns and travelers on the main road. They also illegally traded and bartered goods at market. Maroons who created their own large and relatively safe societies sustained themselves through agriculture or a hybrid of agriculture and robbing colonists (Joe Pereira, Maroon Heritage in Mexico, In Maroon Heritage: Archeological, Ethnographic & Historical Perspectives, ed. E. Kofi Agorsah. Kingston: Canoe Press, 1994, p 97).
Location was also a significant factor in marronage. Urban areas gave Maroons opportunities to participate in the mainstream colonial Americas. “The city was a place where many escaped slaves headed, for it allowed them better opportunities to escape detection, retain anonymity and find employment” (Valdés 192). Once Maroons established themselves as Freedmen, freedom was contingent on their abilities to remain inconspicuous and if necessary, maroon again. The majority of Maroons who escaped to urban areas were Mulattos (people with African and European ancestry) and Creoles (Africans born in the Americas); These two groups were more likely to successfully escape from enslavement in the cities because they were less distinguishable and were more acculturated to colonial American society. “…unlike Blacks, those Mulattos who escaped [enslavement] frequently could pass as free individuals without suspicion….they tended to lose their distinct physical and cultural characteristics” (Dennis Nodin Valdés, The Decline of Slavery in Mexico, Americas 2 , 1987, p 193).
Political and Economic Importance of Maroon Communities
Maroons played the main (and unique) role in defying the slave system in the Caribbean and Latin America. This is especially true for Brazil, Jamaica, Haiti and Suriname. The Maroons challenged the system in at least three different ways: ideologically, organizationally, and militarily. Desertion was rejection of the slave system.They established political and administrative systems (communities ranging from a few tens to several thousand people), that were alternatives to the slave system, some of them lasting for decades. At the military level, the Maroons defended their political regimes, attacked plantations and other communities, forced the enslavers to spend large sums of money to respond to such attacks, and limit the geographic growth of plantations.
The challenges that the Maroon activities posed to the plantocracy can also be measured through the many proposals that the planters made in order to reach a peaceful and negotiated agreement with them. Even if these initiatives sometimes came from the Maroon leaders, more often they came from the colonial governments. The treaties that the colonial authorities and the Maroon leaders signed were never honored loyally by any of the parties, but they helped them maintain an uncertain peace, punctuated periodically by discontent and allegations. (http://www.caribbean-atlas.com/fr/thematiques/vagues-de-colonisation-et-de-controle-de-la-caraibe/resistances/les-marrons-contre-le-regime-esclavagiste-les-defis-militaires.html.)
Where were these communities found?
São Tomé – São Tomé is not part of the Americas, but it is important because it was the location of some of the first references to Kilombos. It was the home of the Angolars, who may have been escaped slaves, probably from Angola, who survived a shipwreck, or possibly settlers from the mainland. They appear to have created their own free nation, or Kilombo, as early as 1470. Amador Vieira, best known as Rei Amador, led his people, the Angolars, allied with other enslaved Africans of the plantations in Sao Tomé, marched into the interior woods and battled against the Portuguese. Rei Amador and his followers raised a flag in front of the settlers and proclaimed Rei Amador as king of São Tomé and Príncipe, making himself as “Rei Amador, liberator of all the black people”. Between 1595 and 1596, the island of São Tomé was ruled by the Angolars, under the command of Rei Amador. On 4 January 1596, he was captured, sent to prison and was later executed by the Portuguese. Today, he is still remembered fondly and considered a national hero. (http://www.Afrocentricite.com and Wikipedia).
American marronage began in Spain’s colony on the island of Hispaniola (modern Haiti and Dominican Republic), Governor Nicolás de Ovando was already complaining of escaped slaves and their interactions with the Taino Indians by 1503. Maroons joined the natives in their wars against the Spanish and hid with the rebel chieftain Enriquillo in the Bahoruco Mountains. When Archdeacon Alonso de Castro toured Hispaniola in 1542, he estimated the maroon population at 2,000–3,000 persons (Wikipedia).
Panama – The first Africans to arrive in Panama came with Vasco Núñez de Balboa, in 1513. Panama was a very important territory because it had the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Isthmus of Panama became a strategic point of the Crown regarding interoceanic trade; all the wealth of Peru crossed the isthmus. The road conditions were very bad, and attacks by the maroons on the way were continuous. Sometimes they put the Spanish power in check. Already in 1530 we have news of a first important uprising of Negroes in Acla and from there a whole series of rebellious outbreaks and uprisings followed one another. Around the year 1575, in Panama there were a total of 5,600 slaves, 2,500 of whom were maroons. The safety of the road was impaired especially between 1549 and 1582, the peak of the maroon age. Thanks to these attacks, the maroons not only increased their numbers by freeing slaves, but also obtained the necessary goods for their survival. Cimarrones set up autonomous regions known as palenques, many of which successfully fended off Spanish control for centuries using guerrilla war and alliances with pirates, or indigenous nations who were in similar circumstances.
Bayano (aka Vino, Ballano) was a Mandinka or Yoruba man who had been enslaved by Spaniards and taken to Panama in 1522. He led the biggest slave revolt in Panama in the 16th C. There are different versions of the story of the revolt, but the main information is that the revolt in began while traveling by ship or while on route, somewhere in Darien province in Panama, which is on the modern-day border with Colombia, in 1552. Bayano’s forces numbered between four and twelve hundred Cimarrons, depending upon different sources, and set up a palenque known as Ronconcholon near modern-day Chepo River, also known as Rio Bayano. They fought their guerrilla war for over five years while building their community. The the most important primary source about the community was written in 1581 by Pedro de Aguado. Bayano gained truces with Panama’s colonial governor, Pedro de Ursúa, but Ursúa subsequently captured the guerrilla leader and sent him to Peru and then to Spain, where he died. (Wikipedia)
Luis de Mozambique founded Santiago del Principe Cimarronera and Antón de Mandinga founded Santa la Real. (Afro-Panamanians Wikipedia). An estimated 3,000 cimmarones lived near Nombre de Dios, a town on the Caribbean side of Panama. Their principal settlement was at Vallano (or Bayano), 30 leagues (90 miles) from Nombre de Dios. Many lived in large settlements or in hideouts concealed in the inhospitable mountains. They frequently organized raids on the Spanish settlements and had threatened to burn down Nombre de Dios.
In 1572, Drake traveled to Nombre de Dios in search of the Spanish treasure being carried from Peru across the Isthmus of Panama. While waiting for the treasure to arrive, he made contact with the Cimarrones, whom he described as “certaine valiant Negros fled from their cruel masters the Spaniards”. The first Cimarron he encountered was named Pedro Mandiga (or Mandinga), who helped guide Drake and his men across the Chagres River to Spanish outposts. In April 1573, an ambush was set near Nombre de Dios. Little of the massive haul of silver could be carried off, but gold to the value of 80–100,000 pesos was taken away. The Cimarrons cared little about getting a part of the stolen gold or silver, but rather desired iron, which Drake handed over to them in plentiful amounts.
«In the Name of God (Nombre de Dios) on August 24, 1551 (…), the neighbors denounced a situation that it was very harmful to him (…). They estimated that on the way to Panama the maroons surpassed the number of six hundred individuals who robbed and even killed travelers and muleteers. They dared to enter the Name of God with the same purpose or to take blacks and blacks to swell their ranks … despite killing many of they were not able to finish off the rebels ” (Wikipedia). It is possible, as is clear from a Royal Decree of 1574, that the panic caused by Drake’s attack caused the Crown to consider a change of attitude regarding the way to face the problem and consider, after more than three decades of war against Maroon, offering forgiveness to those who voluntarily surrendered and returned to their former masters (Diego de Encinas, Cedulario indiano: Reproduccion facsimile de la edicionunica de 1596. Madrid, Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1945, p 394). However, this solution was not effective, as the maroons were not willing to return to servitude. Marooning represented an alternative to colonial powers both from the point of view of politics and social organization and finally represented the freedom, which they were not willing to give up (Javier Laviña and Jose I. Ruiz-Peinado, Resistencias Esclavas en las Americas, Doce Calles, 2006).
By 1579, it was clear that the colonial authorities were unable to defeat the maroons of the area between Nombre de Dios and Portobelo militarily, and they were forced, with the approval of the Crown, to negotiate a lasting peace. With these words, the leader of the maroons of Portobelo, Luis de Mozambique, accepted the peace and reduction of the people from him:
«Very illustrious lord I, Luis, king of the soldiers of Portobelo in fulfillment of the word by my soldiers put in my name with your lordship, I present myself before your lordship with all the soldiers who were with me under the word that by your lordship was given to me in the name of King Don Felipe, my lord, that coming from peace to obey the command of the majesty of him would be given freedom to me and all my soldiers, which accepting I present myself before your honor to order me and all of them where the majesty of him who resides with my people will be served, that where your Your Honor, order there I will go » (Carol F. Jopling, Indios y negtos en Panama en los siglos SVI y SVII: selecciones de los documentos del Archivo General de Indias, Centro de Investigacciones Regionales de Mesoamerica, 1994, p 378).
The new town of Santiago del Príncipe – named in honor of the heir prince Felipe (future Felipe III), born the previous year – had as its main objective to guarantee peace in the area and allow trade between Panama City and Nombre de Dios. The town’s urban plan followed colonial criteria: it would have a church with the name of Our Lady of Candelaria; buildings for the governor and court, a square with a gallows; a jail; wide streets; blocks of lots with well-designed houses for each family, including an farmyard in which birds of Castilla, Nicaraguan chickens, ducks and other domestic birds could be raised, and with orange, lemon and other fruit trees. One of the tasks of the inhabitants of Santiago del Príncipe would be to travel the mountains of Portobelo and its region three times a year to make prisoners of fugitive slaves. Thus, the former Maroons became one of the tools of control and repression of the remaining Maroons. (Don Luis de Mozambique, el que elegido fue de su rebelión por rey primero: Santiago del Príncipe, primer pueblo de negros libres de América, http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/160083/1/656242.pdf)
Venezuela – Miguel I of Buría (c. 1510 – c. 1555), also known as King Miguel (Spanish: Rey Miguel), Miguel the Black (Spanish: El Negro Miguel) and Miguel Guacamaya, was a former slave from San Juan, Puerto Rico who reigned as the King of Buría in the modern-day state of Lara, Venezuela. His leadership began in 1552 and lasted until some point between 1553 and 1555. (Wikipedia)
He obtained his political influence and the control of the region adjacent to the Buría River after leading the first African rebellion in the country’s history. During this insurrection he took over the Minas de San Felipe de Buría in modern-day Simón Planas Municipality. Gold mines established in the area depended heavily on slave work. Miguel resisted an attempt to use a lash to discipline him and led several slaves in an escape. They established themselves in a settlement in the adjacent jungle, from where incursions were routinely carried out. During these, Miguel would encourage other slaves to join him and seek freedom. In 1552, accompanied by about 50 slaves, Miguel led an insurrection against the mine’s foreman. Killing a Spaniard and sacking and burning some houses, the group took some weapons before fleeing towards the vicinity of the San Pedro river.
Miguel I organized his followers into an army and established his royal lineage with his wife Guiomar as queen and their son as prince. His birth and upbringing in San Juan made him the first black king born in the Americas. It also influenced him to use the European format for his kingdom. In his settlement, Miguel I also created his own church, naming one of the former slaves as bishop. Officers were assigned to the royal household. Other functionaries named included ministers and councilors of state. Miguel led his forces in a clash against the Spaniards in Nueva Segovia, but was killed in the ensuing battle. The fall of the king led to the dissolution of the political entity that he created, and the remaining survivors were captured and reintroduced to slavery. Following his death, Miguel became a part of Venezuelan folklore. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Bur%C3%ADa)
Colombia – and Benkos Bioho (lasorga.or Comaroones de Palenque, Wikipedia
Benkos was the king of the Biohó region, a territory that now known as Guinea Bissau, when he was captured by a Portuguese slave trader and taken to Cartagena de Indias. In 1596 he made a first escape attempt. He was captured but in 1599 he organized a revolt and fled along with dozens of his former subjects through the marshy areas of southern Cartagena, where the ships had no draft. He knew that dogs would not be able to track them through boggy territory and that masters would not risk injuring a horse which was more valuable than most slaves, trying to capture the Africans. For context, by the seventeenth century a pig was worth thirty pesos; a girl, eighty; a useful young Negro, four hundred; and a good horse, five hundred pesos.
He established himself in the mountains of María, and took refuge in the old settlements of the indigenous Zenúes, who with colonization had gradually disappeared from those lands. He ordered the rebuilding of fortifications and constituted an organized army, prepared land for cultivation, diverted streams to improve irrigation, and built a small kingdom in the style of what it would have been in Guinea. He organized a sophisticated mail and intelligence network using ancient Zenué trails and organized ransoms of slaves who then joined his army. The Blacks of the nearby estancias (ranches) soon learned of the existence of this palenque and a drip of Maroons began to flee towards the area until the militia reached several hundred. He began to be called King of Arcabuco, the name of the nearest parish, and the story of his heroics and the fairness of his government won the sympathy of the Creoles (people of mixed Black and European heritage) of the region.
The governor of Cartagena, knowing that his troops were inferior to those of King Benkos and fearing an uprising, proposed a peace treaty in 1605 in which he recognized that the Maroons were considered free men and that the Arcabuco region was autonomous. The capital would be the Palenque de La Matuna, located just twenty leagues (60 miles) from Cartagena. In exchange, the Maroons would not intrude into the lands of the government or encourage the escape of more slaves and Benkos would renounce using the title of king. The negotiations lasted seven years until in 1612, when a peace agreement was reached, including a trade agreement between the two parties.
This situation lasted until 1619, when a new governor was appointed. He ordered the surprise arrest of Benkos Biohó when he was walking unarmed through the market of the city, thus violating the peace treaty. He argued that the Benkos had betrayed the crown by allowing his subordinates to treat him as king, as well as failing to prevent the continual escapes of slaves to the mountains. He was sentenced to hang and it is said that before his execution, in March 1621, his last words were: “I am only guilty of continuing to be what I was born for, what many cannot be: a warrior”.
The so-called war of the maroons lasted forty more years. The La Matuna palenque was razed, but in its place the survivors built those of San Miguel, Betancur, Matubere, Norosí and El Arenal, among others, and new leaders inspired by Benkos emerged. One of those was Domingo Padilla, a Creole self-proclaimed captain of the maroons, whose group resisted until 1694. Around 1700, the six hundred survivors of the San Miguel palenque founded San Basilio, which with the mediation of the bishop of Cartagena was constituted as a parish. This bishop got the colonial government to sign the Entente Cordiale document that recognized the Palenqueros as a people, a free community and the legitimate owner of the territory they occupied. It still exists and preserves its own Creole language, ancestral cultural rites and social organization. The San Basilio Palenque was declared an Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005. (https://lasoga.org/cimarrones-de-palenque-guerreros-de-la-libertad/)
Gaspar Yanga—often simply Yanga or Nyanga was said to be a member of the royal family of Gabon. He was captured and sold into slavery in Mexico. Around 1570, Yanga led a band of slaves in escaping to the highlands near Veracruz. They built a small colony whose isolation helped protect it for more than 30 years, and other fugitive slaves found their way there. Because they survived in part by raiding caravans taking goods along the Camino Real between Veracruz and Mexico City, in 1609 the Spanish colonial government decided to undertake a campaign to regain control of this territory.About 550 Spanish troops set out from Puebla; There were about 500 Maroons; 100 fighters had some type of firearm, and 400 were armed with stones, machetes, bows and arrows. Yanga used his troops’ superior knowledge of the terrain to resist the Spaniards, with the goal of causing them enough pain to draw them to the negotiating table.Yanga asked for a treaty akin to those that had settled hostilities between Indians and Spaniards: an area of self-rule in return for tribute and promises to support the Spanish if they were attacked. In addition, Yanga said this proposed district would return any slaves who might flee to it. This last concession was necessary to soothe the worries of the many slave owners in the region.The Spaniards refused the terms and went into battle, resulting in heavy losses for both sides. The Spaniards advanced into the settlement and burned it. The Maroons fled into the surrounding terrain and a stalemate lasted years. Finally, the Spanish agreed to Yanga’s terms, and in 1618 the treaty was signed. By 1630 the town of San Lorenzo de los Negros de Cerralvo was established. In the late 19th century, Yanga was named as a “national hero of Mexico” and “El Primer Libertador de las Americas”. In 1932 San Lorenzo de los Negros de Cerralvo was renamed as Yanga in his honor. (Wikipedia)
Ecuador – The Mangaches were one of the first populations of maroons – rebellious slaves – in the province of Esmeraldas. Their arrival took place after a shipwreck and is narrated by Cabello Balboa (Verdadera descripcion y relacion larga de la Provincia y Tierra de las Esmeraldas) without specifying the date of the event. According to Cabello, Andrés Mangache’s wife was an Indiginous woman who may have come from Nicaragua. They had several children, among them Juan, who would keep the surname, and Francisco who was baptised in 1577 as Francisco de Arobe.
The group established their palenque in the areas surrounding the Bay of San Mateo. In 1599, according to the records of the Secretary of the Royal Court, Francisco Arobe, and two of his sons, Pedro and Domingo, “gave peace and obedience to the King”.
The mulattoes of Esmeralda, by Adrian Sanchez Galque
Juan del Barrio Sepúlveda in 1599 commissioned the Indigenous painter Andrés Sánchez Galque to portray the Arobes men who arrived in Quito to render obedience to the king. This painting was sent to the monarch as a testimony of the conversion and peaceful population of the Blacks and Indigenous of the province of Las Esmeraldas. The painting dedicated to “Philippo 3 Regi Hispaniar Indiar” is at the Museum of America in Madrid. It represents Don Francisco de Arobe, with two children: to his right, Don Pedro, 22, to his left, Don Domingo, 18. The portrait indicates that Francisco de Arobe was 56 years old, so his arrival in Ecuador would have occurred around the year 1543.
Another group was led by Anton, who was originally from Cap Verde. In 1553, leaving Panama for Peru, the ship ran aground and 23 of the crew escaped with weapons. They fought with local indigenous groups and it appears Anton ruled the area until 1555, when there was another indigenous revolt, and he was killed. There was a decade-long battle for control, eventually won by Alonso de Illescas. (https://pueblosoriginarios.com/biografias/anton.html)
Alonso de Illescas was born around 1528 and raised off the coast of western Africa on either the Cape Verde Islands or the island of Tenerife. At the age of eight or ten years old he was taken to Seville, Spain where he served as a slave to one of the city’s richest and most prominent merchant families, the Illescas. It was during this time he learned the Spanish language, religion, culture, and traditions, including how to play the vihuela (Spanish guitar). He lived in Seville for seventeen years before he was sent to the Caribbean to assist his owners. He first spent time on the island of Santo Domingo where his owners established a merchant enterprise which included clothing, cured meats, swords, horses, olive oil, wine, and the selling of Africans.
In contrast to the lives of other Africans who were brought to the Americas as slaves, Illescas more than likely never worked on a sugar plantation or in a rice field. Instead, he was a trusted personal servant expected to perform many duties for his owners and probably served as a personal servant during his youth in Seville. From the Indies he traveled to Panama and then to Peru. Records indicate that he and Alvaro, one of his owners, were active in Peru by 1551. In 1553, he along with twenty-three “Guinea slaves” departed the port of Panama on the southbound journey to Lima, Peru. The journey proved to be typical in that the ship’s pilot had to contend with north and westerly Pacific Ocean currents and therefore decided to seek harbor in San Mateo Bay on the Esmeraldas coast. In spite of this, the ship ran aground inside the bay and stranded the crew, passengers, and slaves onshore. They were forced to travel along ragged shorelines to reach the nearest settlement, Puerto Viejo. In the course of the journey, Illescas and the other slaves decided to seize the moment to head into dense forest and claim their freedom. None of the crew or passengers ever reached Puerto Viejo.
Throughout the rest of the sixteenth century under Illescas’ leadership, the community came to include Amerindians and even a few Europeans. Examples include a friar named Alonso de Espinosa, who served as a minister at the request of Illescas, and Illescas’ chief assistant, a Portuguese soldier named Gonzalo de Avila.Similar to other Maroon communities, Illescas’ communities’ inhabitants intermarried with and subjugated native communities, thus allowing him to establish a level of political authority and military power in the region. The African men intermarried with local native women, many formed polygamous partnerships, and their offspring at first were referred to as mulattoes by the Spanish and by the 1590s as zambos.
In the 1570s Illescas’ Maroon community began trading with Spanish ships that periodically stopped on the Esmeraldas coast. However, he had to assert dominance over another group of African Maroons, the Mangaches (Arobes), mentioned above. The region’s remote geography with dense forests and mangroves and the indigenous inhabitants’ prolonged resistance to Spanish rule helped to enable the Maroon community to survive for generations. Illescas wanted to make peace with Spanish authorities in exchange for official recognition of himself and his community members as free Africans. In 1577, the Crown Court in Quito, in response to demands by Spanish merchants for a port closer to Quito for increasing trade with Peru and Panama, proposed to appoint Illescas as governor of the region and to give him the honorific title of “Don,” a form of address denoting noble status. This unprecedented honor for an African Maroon was a royal decree that would have made Illescas ruler of the province. In exchange he was supposed to persuade other chieftaincies of the region, along with rival maroon bands, to settle at the mouth of the Esmeraldas River. Illescas’ attempt to do this led to internal warfare between both maroon communities and lowland native societies.
Near the end of Illescas’ life, he ruled his community with the help of two sons, Sebastián and Antonio. There is no historical record of Alonso de Illescas after the 1590s. Therefore, he must have died in the Esmeraldas region at some point between 1587 and 1596. While Illescas did not live long enough to witness a peace agreement was achieved and his son Sebastián obtained the title of Don and was recognized as leader over the Illescas Maroons by 1600. Illescas’ family ruled Esmeraldas for at least two more generations.
The Illescas palenque was called the “Kingdom of the Zambos” by the Spanish. It was an invincible territorial enclave for almost 100 years, thanks to which they negotiated a statute of autonomy with the Spanish Crown that made possible the emergence of notable black power groups in Esmeraldas. In 1997, the National Congress of Ecuador officially declared 2 October as the national day of Black Ecuadorians and thus gave formal recognition to Alonso de Illescas as a national hero. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonso_de_Illescas)
Brazil – Legal slavery was present in Brazil for approximately four centuries, with the earliest known landing of enslaved Africans taking place in 1552. The first recorded community of escaped slaves was in Bahia, in 1614. Brazilian communities were known first as Mocambos; the name Quilombos came into use in later centuries, as and was more common in the south. (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268340409.pdf)
Fugitive communities flourished in almost all areas of the Bahia captaincy. “These people have the habit of fleeing to the forest and gathering in hiding places where they live from attacks on the colonists, stealing cattle and ruining crops and sugarcane fields, which results in a lot of damage and a lot of damage, greater than the disadvantages of slowing down the daily labor. Many of these (fugitives) live for many years in the forest, never returning and living in these huts that are places or villages that they created at the bottom of the forest, and from there they set out for their assaults, stealing and often killing many, and in these attacks they seek to take their relatives, men and women, to live like barbarians”. (https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/quilombo-brazilian-maroons-during-slavery)
Zumbi (Zumbi dos Palmares)
Palmares, which at its height in the mid-17th century held sway over 10,000 square miles in the north coastal mountains. It was formed in about 1605, though local legend says it was founded by Aqualtune, a Kongo princess and general enslaved in 1655. Soon after arriving in Brazil, the pregnant Aqualtune escaped with some of her soldiers and fled to Palmares. Today Palmares is a national park in the state of Alagoas. A plaque by the high-crest pond recounts Aqualtune’s story—to the distress of historians, because nobody knows how much of it is true. What researchers do know is that the quilombo’s dozen villages became a haven for as many as 30,000 Africans and Indians, as well as a few renegade Europeans. It had roughly as many inhabitants at the time as all of British North America. (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2012/04/maroon-people/).
The last leader of Palmares was Zumbi. Zumbi’s mother Sabina was a sister of Ganga Zumba, who is said to have been the son of Aqualtune. It is unknown if Zumbi’s mother was also daughter of the princess, but this still makes him related to the Kongo nobility. Zumbi was born in Palmares in 1655, which makes the stories about Aqualtune suspect. He was captured by the Portuguese when he was six, but eventually escaped in 1670 and returned to Palmares. In1678 Ganga Zumba, who was leader of Palmares, accepted a peace treaty offered by the Portuguese Governor of Pernambuco. The treaty was challenged by Zumbi, who led a revolt against him. Ganga Zumba was killed and Zumbi became the new king. He vowed to continue the resistance to Portuguese oppression, and tensions with the Portuguese quickly escalated. In 1694, Portuguese colonists assaulted Palmares and after 42 days destroyed Cerca do Macaco, the kingdom’s central settlement. In 1695 Zumbi was killed and decapitated, his head displayed on a pike to dispel any legends of his immortality.
Jamaica – Escaped Africans who were enslaved during Spanish rule over Jamaica (1493–1656) may have been the first to develop such refugee communities of maroons, mostly in the mountainous interior and on the eastern coast. Most information I could find is from post 1655. One of the most famous communities is Nanny Town, named for Granny Nanny, an escaped slave originally from Ghana who led the community in the early 1700s and negotiated a deed of land from the British and allegedly freed more than 800 slaves over 50 years.
Honduras – Although this former slave culture is relatively well-known, it didn’t arise until well after 1600. The Honduran Garifuna culture was developed by Maroons deported from St Vincent in 1700s, while the Miskito Sambu are slaves who escaped a shipwreck in Honduras and intermarried with Miskito Indians, some time after 1600.
Suriname – This is another community with an important slave rebellion history and large Black population today, but I couldn’t find any information about communities prior to 1600. Former slaves in Suriname and French Guiana account for about 15% of the population. They joined with indigenous peoples and created independent tribes. The first to sign a peace treaty with European colonizers were the Nkykq in 1760, and they achieved territorial autonomy. Battles for rights continued through to the 1990s, with massacres into the 1980s. In June 2020, the first Maroon in Suriname to serve as vice president was elected. (http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0020093/ngwenyama_c.pdf)
Circling back to Canada, an interesting piece of history is the Cantino Planisphere, from 1502. It is the earliest positively dated map of America. The area in the mid Atlantic, labeled “Terra del Rey de Portugall,” is one of the earliest representations of Newfoundland and Labrador in any detail. The original map is in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, Italy. It also shows the line created by the Treaty of Tordesilhas from 1500, which divided the territories newly “discovered” by Spanish and Portuguese. The Spanish got everything west of the treaty line, while the Portuguese got everything to the east. That included Brazil, Africa, and Newfoundland.
El Mocambo – Apocryphally, the original building of this famous Toronto music hall had been a music venue since 1850 and was first used as a haven for escaped slaves. Given the word Mocambo means community for escaped slaves, there may be some truth to this. (Wikipedia).
This week I dug out an Afghan naan recipe I first learned to make about 30 years ago. It was taught to me by a lovely woman who spoke no English. Her husband had to come into the kitchen to translate as she demonstrated – a weird experience for this very traditional family.
Naan is a thick leavened flatbread that may be among the first processed foods. Flatbreads originated in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East and spread on a broadly east-west axis from the Mediterranean area to the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. (Antonella Pasquelone, Journal of Ethnic Foods, “Traditional flat breads spread from the Fertile Crescent: Production process and history of baking systems”, Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2018, pp 10-19).
Flatbreads have a lot of advantages, especially in places with nomadic populations (including Central Asia):
they can be made of a variety of grains and legumes, which means marginal agricultural lands can be used for production;
The can be baked directly in hot sand or embers, or on hot stones or a metal or terracotta pan, as well as in an oven;
they can be used as a dish, with other foods piled on top, or as cutlery, using the bread to scoop up or lift foods from a pot or plate;
they can be baked a second time or dehydrated, which prevents mould;
they are easy to stack and carry, which is handy for a nomadic community.
Naan are baked in a vertical oven known as a tannur or tandoor. Archaeological remains of such ovens date back to about 5000 BC in Syria and Iraq, and they had reached India and Pakistan by 2500 BC. There are six bread recipes using a tannur in Ibn Al-Warraq’s Tenth Century Baghdadi Cookbook (Nawal Nasrallah, Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens, Brill: 2010, pp. 119-124).
Noni Afghani, naan-i-Afghan or Afghan naan, is a staple food, served at every meal and as a snack. It can be made with whole wheat or a sourdough starter. Mix flour, water, yeast or sourdough and salt. Let it rise overnight, then form it into a patty and bake at 350F on a pan greased with vegetable oil for 20 minutes to a half hour. When a little browned, put on the highest rack for a few minutes, until golden brown with some darker flecks. You can buy special long pans, but I just used an aluminium comal for making tortillas.
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