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90-628: The word Anziku comes from the KiKongo phrase "Anziku Nziku" meaning "to run" referring to inhabitants who leave the interior to protect the border. The term was applied most famously to the Bateke , which is why the state is sometimes called the kingdom of Teke or Tiyo. Teke oral tradition holds that Mabiala Mantsi , also known as King Mbé , united the Bateke tribes, centralised his governance, and expanded using militaristic and diplomatic skill. In

180-546: A Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo . Subgroups include the Beembe , Bwende , Vili , Sundi , Yombe , Dondo , Lari , and others. They have lived along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa , in a region that by the 15th century was a centralized and well-organized Kingdom of Kongo , but is now a part of three countries. Their highest concentrations are found south of Pointe-Noire in

270-456: A "dual soul-mind," or mwèla-ngindu , they are able to exist and live in both realms during the different moments of their lives. Even while in Nu Mpémba, a muntu still lives a full life as they prepare for Kala time once again. The right side of the body is also believed to be male, while the left side is believed to be female, creating an additional layer to the dual identity of a muntu. For

360-405: A circle with a cross inside. In this cosmogram or dikenga, the meeting point of the two lines of the cross is the most powerful point and where the person stands." The creation of a Bakongo person, or muntu , is also believed to follow the four moments of the sun, which play a significant role in their development. Musoni is the time when a muntu is conceived both in the spiritual realm and in

450-668: A complete Christian Bible in 1905. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has published a translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Fiote. The work of English, Swedish and other missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries, in collaboration with Kongo linguists and evangelists such as Ndo Nzuawu Nlemvo (or Ndo Nzwawu Nlemvo; Dom João in Portuguese) and Miguel NeKaka, marked

540-517: A dictionary in Kongo, the first of any Bantu language. A catechism was produced under the authority of Diogo Gomes, who was born in 1557 in Kongo to Portuguese parents and became a Jesuit priest. No version of that survives today. In 1624, Mateus Cardoso, another Portuguese Jesuit , edited and published a Kongo translation of the Portuguese catechism compiled by Marcos Jorge. The preface says that

630-519: A difficulty; it has therefore been decided to use s and z only, and in those parts where the sound of these letters is softened before i they will be naturally softened in pronunciation, and where they remain unchanged they will be pronounced as written. Kikongo belongs to the Bantu language family. According to Malcolm Guthrie , Kikongo is in the language group H10, the Kongo languages . Other languages in

720-476: A host of nature spirits that were referred to as simbi , nkisi , nkita and kilundu spirits. In an attempt to convince Kongo people to convert to Catholicism, Portuguese missionaries often stressed that Nzambi was the Christian God . Similarly, the early missionaries used Kongo language words to integrate Christian ideas, such as using the words "nkisi" to mean "holy". Thus, church to Kongo people

810-418: A noble family. Christianity was growing again with new chapels built, services regularly held, missions of different Christian sects expanding, and church rituals a part of the royal succession. There were succession crises, ensuing conflicts when a local royal Kongo ruler died and occasional coups such as that of Andre II by Henrique III, typically settled with Portuguese intervention, and these continued through

900-481: A role in the formation of Voudou in Haiti. The large Bakongo society features a diversity of occupations. Some are farmers who grow staples and cash crops. Among the staples are cassava , bananas , maize , taro and sweet potatoes . Other crops include peanuts (groundnuts) and beans . The cash crops were introduced by the colonial rulers, and these include coffee and cacao for the chocolate industry. Palm oil

990-408: A system of 18 noun classes in which nouns are classified according to noun prefixes. Most of the classes go in pairs (singular and plural) except for the locative and infinitive classes which do not admit plurals. NB: Noun prefixes may or may not change from one Kikongo variant to another (e.g. class 7: the noun prefix ci is used in civili, iwoyo or ciladi (lari) and the noun prefix ki

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1080-576: A title, it is incorrect to call Kongo people by Ne Kongo or a Kongo person by Ne Kongo. The ancient history of the Kongo people has been difficult to ascertain. The region is close to East Africa, considered to be a key to the prehistoric human migrations. This geographical proximity, states Jan Vansina , suggests that the Congo River region, home of the Kongo people, was populated thousands of years ago. Ancient archeological evidence linked to Kongo people has not been found, and glottochronology – or

1170-488: A two-page sermon written in Kongo. The dictionary has some 10,000 words. In the 1780s, French Catholic missionaries to the Loango coast created additional dictionaries. Bernardo da Canecattim published a word list in 1805. Baptist missionaries who arrived in Kongo in 1879 (from Great Britain) developed a modern orthography of the language. American missionary W. Holman Bentley arranged for his Dictionary and Grammar of

1260-589: A vassal in return for protection. In 1880, the last independent Anziku king Makoko signed a treaty of vassalage with the French naval officer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza . The kingdom continued under French protection producing a line of kings that continues to this very day. The kingdom was centered on the Congo River around the Pool Malebo . It also controlled land directly north of that placing closer to

1350-605: Is a tonal language . The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo in the above-named countries. An estimated five million more speakers use it as a second language . Historically, it was spoken by many of those Africans who for centuries were taken captive, transported across the Atlantic, and sold as slaves in the Americas . For this reason, creolized forms of

1440-469: Is a strong undercurrent of messianic tradition among the Bakongo, which has led to several politico-religious movements in the 20th century. This may be linked to the premises of dualistic cosmology in Bakongo tradition, where two worlds exist, one visible and lived, another invisible and full of powerful spirits. The belief that there is an interaction and reciprocal exchange between these, to Bakongo, means

1530-475: Is another export commodity, while the traditional urena is a famine food. Some Kongo people fish and hunt, but most work in factories and trade in towns. The Kongo people have traditionally recognized their descent from their mother ( matrilineality ), and this lineage links them into kinship groups. They are culturally organized as ones who cherish their independence, so much so that neighboring Kongo people's villages avoid being dependent on each other. There

1620-474: Is limited and does not exhaustively cover all of the Kongo people. The evidence suggests, states Vansina, that the Kongo people were advanced in their culture and socio-political systems with multiple kingdoms well before the arrival of first Portuguese ships in the late 15th century. Kongo oral tradition suggests that the Kingdom of Kongo was founded before the 14th century and the 13th century. The kingdom

1710-554: Is the emergence of the fire. The second stage is the red stage where the planet is still burning and has not formed. The third stage is the grey stage where the planet is cooling, but has not produced life. These planets are naked, dry, and covered with dust. The final stage is green stage is when the planet is fully mature because it breathes and carries life. As the Bakongo believe is part of the universal order, all planets must go through this process. According to Molefi Kete Asante , "Another important characteristic of Bakongo cosmology

1800-407: Is the sun and its movements. The rising, peaking, setting, and absence of the sun provide the essential pattern for Bakongo religious culture. These “four moments of the sun” equate with the four stages of life: conception, birth, maturity, and death. For the Bakongo, everything transitions through these stages: planets, plants, animals, people, societies, and even ideas. This vital cycle is depicted by

1890-409: Is unclear, and several theories have been proposed. According to the colonial era scholar Samuel Nelson, the term Kongo is possibly derived from a local verb for gathering or assembly. According to Alisa LaGamma , the root may be from the regional word Nkongo which means "hunter" in the context of someone adventurous and heroic. It may be derived from the proto-bantu word for hunter, similar to

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1980-455: Is used in kisikongo, kiyombe, kizombo, kimanianga,...). NB: Not all variants of Kikongo have completely the same personal pronouns and when conjugating verbs, the personal pronouns become stressed pronouns (see below and/or the references posted). Conjugating the verb ( mpanga in Kikongo) to be ( kukala or kuba ; also kuena , kwena or kuwena in Kikongo) in the present: Conjugating

2070-523: The Atlantic slave trade spoke Kikongo. Its influence can be seen in many creole languages in the diaspora , such as: Prior to the Berlin Conference , the people called themselves "Bisi Kongo" (plural) and "Mwisi Kongo" (singular). Today they call themselves " Bakongo " (pl.) and "Mukongo" (sing.). Kongo was the earliest Bantu language to be written in Latin characters. Portuguese created

2160-682: The Caribbean , originally applied the term Bafiote (singular M(a)fiote ) to the slaves from the Vili or Fiote coastal Kongo people, but later this term was used to refer to any "black man" in Cuba, St Lucia and other colonial era Islands ruled by one of the European colonial interests. The group is identified largely by speaking a cluster of mutually intelligible dialects rather than by large continuities in their history or even in culture. The term "Congo"

2250-708: The Republic of the Congo , southwest of Pool Malebo and west of the Kwango River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , north of Luanda , Angola and southwest Gabon . They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of the Congo, and one of the major ethnic groups in the other two countries they are found in. In 1975, the Kongo population was reported as 4,040,000. The Kongo people were among

2340-531: The 1560s, over 7,000 slaves per year were being captured and exported by Portuguese traders to the Americas. The Kongo people and the neighboring ethnic groups retaliated, with violence and attacks, such as the Jaga invasion of 1568 which swept across the Kongo lands, burnt the Portuguese churches, and attacked its capital, nearly ending the Kingdom of Kongo. The Kongo people also created songs to warn themselves of

2430-574: The 15th century, the Kingdom of Kongo 's conquests eastward brought it into conflict with the Teke Kingdom which halted their expansion. In the early 17th century, the Anziku population controlled the copper mines around Kongo's northeast border and may have been there specifically as a buffer. When the Anziku groups consolidated to form their own independent kingdom, Kongo proceeded to take over

2520-423: The 1660s. In 1665, the Portuguese army invaded the Kingdom, killed the Kongo king, disbanded his army, and installed a friendly replacement in his place. The 1665 Kongo-Portuguese war and the killing of the hereditary king by the Portuguese soldiers led to a political vacuum. The Kongo kingdom disintegrated into smaller kingdoms, each controlled by nobles considered friendly by the Portuguese. One of these kingdoms

2610-516: The Bakongo, a person is a kala-zimikala , which means a "living-dying-living being." A simbi (pl. bisimbi) is a water spirit that is believed to inhabit bodies of water and rocks, having the ability to guide the bakulu , or the ancestors, along the Kalûnga River to the spiritual world after they pass away. They are also present during the baptisms of African American Christians , according to Hoodoo tradition . The religious history of

2700-520: The Christian ruling classes, as well as in the villages. The later Portuguese missionaries and Capuchin monks upon their arrival in Kongo were baffled by these practices in the late 17th century (nearly 150 years after the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion in the Kingdom of Kongo). Some threatened to burn or destroy the shrines. However, the Kongo people credited these shrines for abundance and defended them. The Kongo people's conversion

2790-618: The Democratic Republic of Congo also speak French . In the Democratic Republic of the Congo most also speak French and others speak either Lingala , a common lingua franca in Western Congo, or Kikongo ya Leta (generally known as Kituba particularly in the Republic of the Congo), a creole form of Kikongo spoken widely in the Republic of the Congo and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Bakongo believe that in

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2880-400: The European colonial interests in 17th and 18th centuries. The slave raids, colonial wars and the 19th-century Scramble for Africa split the Kongo people into Portuguese, Belgian and French parts. In the early 20th century, they became one of the most active ethnic groups in the efforts to decolonize Africa, helping liberate the three nations to self-governance. The origin of the name Kongo

2970-765: The IsiZulu term khonto, which means spear as in "umkhonto we sizwe", Spear of the Nation, the name for the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC) during its struggle against apartheid. Douglas Harper states that the term means "mountains" in a Bantu language, which the Congo river flows down from. The Kongo people have been referred to by various names in the colonial French, Belgian and Portuguese literature, names such as Esikongo (singular Mwisikongo ), Mucicongo , Mesikongo , Madcongo and Moxicongo . Christian missionaries, particularly in

3060-522: The Kongo Language to be published by the University of Michigan in 1887. In the preface, Bentley gave credit to Nlemvo, an African, for his assistance. He described "the methods he used to compile the dictionary, which included sorting and correcting 25,000 slips of paper containing words and their definitions." Eventually W. Holman Bentley, with the special assistance of João Lemvo, produced

3150-463: The Kongo is complex, particularly after the ruling class of the Kingdom of Kongo accepted Christianity at the start of the 16th century. According to historian John K. Thornton , "Central Africans have probably never agreed among themselves as to what their cosmology is in detail, a product of what I called the process of continuous revelation and precarious priesthood." The Kongo people had diverse views, with traditional religious ideas best developed in

3240-453: The Kongo language cluster. Not all varieties of Kikongo are mutually intelligible (for example, 1. Civili is better understood by Kiyombe- and Iwoyo-speakers than by Kisikongo- or Kimanianga-speakers; 2. Kimanianga is better understood by Kikongo of Boko and Kintandu-speakers than by Civili or Iwoyo-speakers). There is contrastive vowel length . /m/ and /n/ also have syllabic variants, which contrast with prenasalized consonants. Kikongo has

3330-491: The Kongo nobility and traders, and the coastal ports were flooded with "war captives turned slaves". The other effect of this violence over many years was making the Kongo king heavily dependent on the Portuguese protection, along with the dehumanization of the African people, including the rebelling Kongo people, as cannibalistic pagan barbarians from "Jaga kingdom". This caricature of the African people and their dehumanization

3420-692: The Kongo people disputed each other's boundaries and rights, as well as those of other non-Kongo ethnic groups bordering them, leading to steady wars and mutual raids. The wars between the small kingdoms created a steady supply of captives that fed the Portuguese demand for slaves and the small kingdoms' need for government income to finance the wars. In the 1700s, a baptized teenage Kongo woman named Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita claimed to be possessed by Saint Anthony of Padua and that she had been visiting heaven to speak with God. She started preaching that Mary and Jesus were not born in Nazareth but in Africa among

3510-678: The Kongo people exchanged ivory and copper objects they made with luxury goods of Portuguese. But, after 1500, the Portuguese had little demand for ivory and copper, they instead demanded slaves in exchange. The settled Portuguese in São Tomé needed slave labor for their sugarcane plantations, and they first purchased labor. Soon thereafter they began kidnapping people from the Kongo society and after 1514, they provoked military campaigns in nearby African regions to get slave labor. Along with this change in Portuguese-Kongo people relationship,

3600-580: The Kongo people's Atlantic port settlement. They also found exchange of goods easy and the Kongo people open to ideas. The Kongo king at that time, named Nzinga a Nkuwu allegedly willingly accepted Christianity, and at his baptism in 1491 changed his name to João I, a Portuguese name. Around the 1450s, a prophet, Ne Buela Muanda, predicted the arrival of the Portuguese and the spiritual and physical enslavement of many Bakongo. The trade between Kongo people and Portuguese people thereafter accelerated through 1500. The kingdom of Kongo appeared to become receptive of

3690-400: The Kongo people. She created a movement among the Kongo people which historians call as Kongo Antonianism . Dona Beatriz questioned the wars devastating the Kongo people, asked all Kongo people to end the wars that fed the trading in humans, and unite under one king. She attracted a following of thousands of Kongo people into the ruins of their old capital. She was declared a false saint by

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3780-498: The Portuguese-appointed Kongo king Pedro IV, with the support of Portuguese Catholic missionaries and Italian Capuchin monks then resident in Kongo lands. The 22 year old Dona Beatriz was arrested, then burnt alive at the stake on charges of being a witch and a heretic. After the death of Dona Beatriz in 1706 and another three years of wars with the help of the Portuguese, Pedro IV was able to get back much of

3870-554: The Vili and Yombe do not believe in the power of ancestors in the same degree as to those living farther south. Furthermore, she and John Janzen state that religious ideas and emphasis have changed over time. The slaves brought over by the European ships into the Americas carried with them their traditional ideas. Vanhee suggests that the Afro-Brazilian Quimbanda religion is a new world manifestation of Bantu religion and spirituality, and Kongo Christianity played

3960-444: The area well before the fifth century CE, begun a society that utilized the diverse and rich resources of region and developed farming methods. According to James Denbow, social complexity had probably been achieved by the second century CE. According to Vansina small kingdoms and Kongo principalities appeared in the current region by the 1200 CE, but documented history of this period of Kongo people if it existed has not survived into

4050-520: The arrival of the Portuguese, one of the famous songs is " Malele " (Translation: "Tragedy", song present among the 17 Kongo songs sung by the Massembo family of Guadeloupe during the Grap a Kongo ). The Portuguese brought in military and arms to support the Kingdom of Kongo, and after years of fighting, they jointly defeated the attack. This war unexpectedly led to a flood of captives who had challenged

4140-407: The beginning, the world was circular void, called mbûngi , with no life. Then Nzambi Mpungu , the creator god , summoned a great force of fire, called Kalûnga , which filled this empty circle. Then Kalûnga heated up the contents of mbûngi, and when it cooled, it formed the earth. The Earth, the starting point of the fire, then became a green planet after it went through four stages. The first stage

4230-537: The coast in return for cowries , salt , silk , linen and glass . The area was also rich in metals particularly copper . This led to conflict between Anziku and its southern neighbor Kongo. The BaTeke and other Anziku groups practiced facial scarification . The people were also notable for elaborate dress and hairstyles including ornamented braids. Commoners of both sexes usually went bare chested, but those with money were covered "head to foot" according to European accounts. Nobles wore robes of silk imported from

4320-525: The coast. The Anzikus may have begun as a military class protecting the BaKongo border. They were famed as excellent warriors and courageous. They specialized in archery with poison arrows. In close combat, they relied on battle axes. No mention of shields occurs as with most peoples in this region with the exception of Kongo. At times the Anzikus have been described, probably falsely, as cannibals in

4410-668: The creation of Angola by the Portuguese Crown in 1575. The Berlin Conference (1884-1885) among major European powers divided the rest of the kingdom into three territories. These are now parts of the DRC ( Kongo Central and Bandundu ), the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon. Kikongo is the base for the Creole language Kituba , also called Kikongo de l'État and Kikongo ya Leta ( French and Kituba, respectively, for "Kikongo of

4500-399: The demand and accepted an export of those who willingly accepted slavery, and for a fee per slave. The Portuguese procured 2,000 to 3,000 slaves per year for a few years, from 1520, a practice that started the slave export history of the Kongo people. However, this supply was far short of the demand for slaves and the money slave owners were willing to pay. The Portuguese operators approached

4590-490: The earliest indigenous Africans to welcome Portuguese traders in 1483 CE, and began converting to Catholicism in the late 15th century. They were among the first to protest slave capture in letters to the King of Portugal in the 1510s and 1520s, then succumbed to the demands for slaves from the Portuguese through the 16th century. The Kongo people were a part of the major slave raiding, capture and export trade of African slaves to

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4680-448: The estimation of ethnic group chronologies based on language evolution – has been applied to the Kongo. Based on this, it is likely the Kongo language and Gabon-Congo language split about 950 BCE. The earliest archeological evidence is from Tchissanga (now part of modern Republic of the Congo ), a site dated to about 600 BCE. However, the site does not prove which ethnic group was resident at that time. The Kongo people had settled into

4770-512: The growing import of Christian missionaries and luxury goods, the slave capture and exports through the Kongo lands grew. With over 5.6 million human beings kidnapped in Central Africa, then sold and shipped as slaves through the lands of the Kongo people, they witnessed the largest exports of slaves from Africa into the Americas by 1867. According to Jan Vansina, the "whole of Angola's economy and its institutions of governance were based on

4860-472: The help of non-Kongo ethnic groups such as the Chokwe people , which were then exported with the labor of Kongo people. Swedish missionaries entered the area in the 1880s and 1890, converting the northeast section of Kongo to Protestantism in the early twentieth century. The Swedish missionaries, notably Karl Laman , encouraged the local people to write their history and customs in notebooks, which then became

4950-426: The interior of West Central Africa who were, indeed, different Mbangala groups. There are other scholars, such as Joseph Miller, that believed this 16th and 17th centuries' one-sided dehumanization of the African people was a fabrication and myth created by the missionaries and slave trading Portuguese to hide their abusive activities and intentions. From the 1570s, the European traders arrived in large numbers and

5040-434: The interior of its better known contemporaries such as Kongo and Loango . The BaTeke people, who dominated the kingdom, lived on the plateaus of the region from early times. By 1600, Anziku controlled the lower Congo River and extended northwest to the upper Kouilou-Niari basin. The kingdom was ruled by a king called a makoko . This led to the state sometimes being labeled "Great Makoko" on European maps. The capital

5130-725: The language are found in ritual speech of Afro-American religions , especially in Brazil , Cuba , Puerto Rico , Dominican Republic , Haiti , and Suriname . It is also one of the sources of the Gullah language , which formed in the Low Country and Sea Islands of the United States Southeast. The Palenquero creole in Colombia is also related to Kong creole. Kongo was the language of the Kingdom of Kongo prior to

5220-411: The large inland region of Africa went to Belgium (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and the southern parts (now Angola ) remained with Portugal. The Kongo people in all three colonies (Angola, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo) became one of the most active ethnic groups in the efforts to decolonize Africa, and worked with other ethnic groups in Central Africa to help liberate

5310-407: The mid 19th-century. After Henrique III died in 1857, competitive claims to the throne were raised by his relatives. One of them, Pedro Elelo, gained the trust of Portuguese military against Alvero XIII, by agreeing to be vassal of the colonial Portugal. This effectively ended whatever sovereignty had previously been recognized and the Kongo people became a part of colonial Portugal. In concert with

5400-409: The mines personally. This process was complete by the 1620s. There was, however, fighting between the two states over the region throughout the 17th century. The kingdom of Anziku survived well into the 19th century. This is likely in no little part due to its relative isolation from coastal powers. The French , from whom much of our information about Anziku derives, convinced the kingdom to become

5490-486: The modern era. Detailed and copious description about the Kongo people who lived next to the Atlantic ports of the region, as a sophisticated culture, language and infrastructure, appear in the 15th century, written by the Portuguese explorers. Later anthropological work on the Kongo of the region come from the colonial era writers, particularly the French and Belgians (Loango, Vungu, and the Niari Valley), but this too

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5580-557: The new traders, allowed them to settle an uninhabited nearby island called São Tomé , and sent Bakongo nobles to visit the royal court in Portugal. Other than the king himself, much of the Kongo people's nobility welcomed the cultural exchange, the Christian missionaries converted them to the Catholic faith, they assumed Portuguese court manners, and by early 16th-century Kongo became a Portugal-affiliated Christian kingdom. Initially,

5670-409: The northern coast) and speakers of Kisansolo (the central dialect) would have trouble understanding each other. In Angola, there are a few who did not learn to speak Kikongo because Portuguese rules of assimilation during the colonial period was directed against learning native languages, though most Bakongo held on to the language. Most Angolan Kongo also speak Portuguese and those near the border of

5760-425: The old Kongo kingdom. The conflicts continued through the 18th century, however, and the demand for and the caravan of Kongo and non-Kongo people as captured slaves kept rising, headed to the Atlantic ports. Although, in Portuguese documents, all of Kongo people were technically under one ruler, they were no longer governed that way by the mid-18th century. The Kongo people were now divided into regions, each headed by

5850-523: The publication of newspapers in various dialects of the language. In 1910 Kavuna Kafwandani (Kavuna Simon) published an article in the Swedish mission society's Kikongo language newspaper Misanü Miayenge (Words of Peace) calling for all speakers of the Kikongo language to recognize their identity. The Bakongo people have championed ethnic rivalry and nationalism through sports such as football. The game

5940-530: The roller coaster Kumba at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay in Tampa, Florida gets its name from the Kongo word for "roar". According to Filomão CUBOLA, article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Fiote translates to: Kongo people The Kongo people ( Kongo : Bisi Kongo , EsiKongo , singular: Musi Kongo ; also Bakongo , singular: Mukongo or M'kongo ) are

6030-401: The same group include Bembe (H11). Ethnologue 16 counts Ndingi (H14) and Mboka (H15) as dialects of Kongo, though it acknowledges they may be distinct languages. Bastin, Coupez and Man's classification of the language (as Tervuren) is more recent and precise than that of Guthrie on Kikongo. The former say the language has the following dialects: NB: Kisikongo is not the protolanguage of

6120-467: The slave trade" in 18th and 19th century, until the slave trade was forcibly brought to an end in the 1840s. This ban on lucrative trade of slaves through the lands of Kongo people was bitterly opposed by both the Portuguese and Luso-Africans (part Portuguese, part African), states Vansina. The slave trade was replaced with ivory trade in the 1850s, where the old caravan owners and routes replaced hunting human beings with hunting elephants for their tusks with

6210-533: The slave trading through the Kongo people territory dramatically increased. The weakened Kingdom of Kongo continued to face internal revolts and violence that resulted from the raids and capture of slaves, and the Portuguese in 1575 established the port city of Luanda (now in Angola) in cooperation with a Kongo noble family to facilitate their military presence, African operations and the slave trade thereof. The Kingdom of Kongo and its people ended their cooperation in

6300-547: The small northern Kikongo-speaking area, and this region neither converted to Christianity nor participated in slave trade until the 19th century. There is abundant description about Kongo religious concepts in the Catholic missionary and colonial era records, but states Thornton, these are written with a hostile bias and their reliability is problematic. The Kongo people believed in the Creator God Nzambi Mpungu , his female counterpart Nzambici , and

6390-476: The source for Laman's famous and widely cited ethnography and their dialect became well established thanks to Laman's dictionary of Kikongo. The fragmented Kongo people in the 19th century were annexed by three European colonial empires, during the Scramble for Africa and Berlin Conference , the northernmost parts went to France (now the Republic of Congo and Gabon), the middle part along river Congo along with

6480-419: The standardisation of Kikongo. A large proportion of the people at San Salvador, and in its neighbourhood, pronounce s and z before i as sh and j; for the sound sh, the letter x was adopted (as in Portuguese), while z before i was written as j. Our books are read over a much wider area than the district of San Salvador, and in those parts where s and z remain unchanged before i, the use of x and j has proved

6570-534: The state administration" or "Kikongo of the State"). The constitution of the Republic of the Congo uses the name Kituba , and Democratic Republic of the Congo uses the term Kikongo . Kituba (i.e. Kikongo ya Leta) is used as the term in the DRC administration. This can be explained by the fact that Kikongo ya Leta is often mistakenly called Kikongo (i.e. KiNtandu, KiManianga, KiNdibu, etc.). Kikongo and Kituba are spoken in: Many African slaves transported in

6660-467: The succession system within Kongo kingdom changed under Portuguese influence, and in 1509, instead of the usual election among the nobles, a hereditary European-style succession led to the African king Afonso I succeeding his father, now named João I. The slave capture and the export of slaves caused major social disorder among the Kongo people, and the Kongo king Afonso I wrote letters to the king of Portugal protesting this practice. Finally, he succumbed to

6750-503: The three nations to self governance. The French and Belgium regions became independent in 1960. Angolan independence came in 1975. The language of the Kongo people is called Kikongo (Guthrie: Bantu Zone H .10). It is a macrolanguage and consists of Beembe , Doondo, Koongo, Laari, Kongo-San-Salvador, Kunyi, Vili and Yombe sub-languages. The Kongo language is divided into many dialects which are sufficiently diverse that people from distant dialects, such as speakers of Kivili dialect (on

6840-484: The traders at the borders of the Kongo kingdom, such as the Malebo Pool and offered luxury goods in exchange for captured slaves. This created, states Jan Vansina, an incentive for border conflicts and slave caravan routes, from other ethnic groups and different parts of Africa, in which the Kongo people and traders participated. The slave raids and volume of trade in enslaved human beings increased thereafter, and by

6930-425: The translation was done by Kongo teachers from São Salvador (modern Mbanza Kongo ) and was probably partially the work of Félix do Espírito Santo (also a Kongo). The dictionary was written in about 1648 for the use of Capuchin missionaries. The principal author was Manuel Robredo, a secular priest from Kongo (after he became a Capuchin, he was named Francisco de São Salvador). The back of this dictionary includes

7020-505: The verb ( mpanga in Kikongo) to have ( kuvua in Kikongo; also kuba na or kukala ye ) in the present : NB: In Kikongo, the conjugation of a tense to different persons is done by changing verbal prefixes (highlighted in bold). These verbal prefixes are also personal pronouns. However, not all variants of Kikongo have completely the same verbal prefixes and the same verbs (cf. the references posted). The ksludotique site uses several variants of Kikongo (kimanianga,...). In addition,

7110-409: The week. Larger market gatherings were rotated once every eight days, on Nsona Kungu. The Haplogroup L2a is a mtdna clade that was found to be common in the Democratic Republic of Congo amongst Bantu groups, including the Bakongo. Haplogroup E1b1a8 was the most commonly observed y-chromosome clade. The idea of a Bakongo unity, actually developed in the early twentieth century, primarily through

7200-451: The womb of a Bakongo woman. Kala is the time when a muntu is born into the physical world. This time is also seen as the rise of the sun. Tukula is the time of maturity, where a muntu learns to master all aspects of life from spirituality to purpose to personality. The last period of time is luvemba , when a muntu physically dies and enters the spiritual world, or Nu Mpémba , with of the ancestors, or bakulu . Because Bakongo people have

7290-510: The works of European authors. It was claimed that whole markets were dedicated to the sale of human flesh for consumption. A notable example is H. P. Lovecraft's The Picture in the House . KiKongo Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of the Congo , Gabon , and Angola . It

7380-505: The world of spirits can possess the world of flesh. Article about Kongo clans  [ fr ] Article about Vili clans  [ fr ] The Kongo week was a four-day week: Konzo, Nkenge, Nsona and Nkandu. These days are named after the four towns near which traditionally a farmer's market was held in rotation. This idea spread across the Kongo people, and every major district or population center had four rotating markets locations, each center named after these days of

7470-507: Was nzo a nkisi , which means "another shrine," and the Bible was mukanda nkisi , which means "a consecrated charm." Kongo people maintained both churches and shrines, which they called Kiteki . Their smaller shrines were dedicated to the smaller deities, even after they had converted to Christianity. These deities were guardians of water bodies, crop lands and high places to the Kongo people, and they were very prevalent both in capital towns of

7560-608: Was about 200 kilometers inland from the Atlantic coast. The Portuguese arrived on the Central African coast north of the Congo River, several times between 1472 and 1483 searching for a sea route to India , but they failed to find any ports or trading opportunities. In 1483, south of the Congo river they found the Kongo people and the Kingdom of Kongo, which had a centralized government, a currency called nzimbu , and markets, ready for trading relations. The Portuguese found well developed transport infrastructure inlands from

7650-435: Was based on different assumptions and premises about what Christianity was, and syncretic ideas continued for centuries. The Kongo people, state the colonial era accounts, included a reverence for their ancestors and spirits. Some BaKongo people shaved their heads to keep it smooth “for spirits that might want to land there.” However, some anthropologists report regional differences. According to Dunja Hersak, for example,

7740-411: Was called Monsol , located slightly north of Stanley Pool. According to the account of one of the few visitors, the makoko ruled over 13 vassal kings. The Anziku kingdom manufactured and sold fabrics made of leaves, which doubled as currency throughout the region. Their position closer to the interior also made ivory accessible. Along with these products, the Anziku sold slaves which they brought to

7830-480: Was modeled not on hereditary succession as was common in Europe, but based on an election by the court nobles from the Kongo people. This required the king to win his legitimacy by a process of recognizing his peers, consensus building as well as regalia and religious ritualism. The kingdom had many trading centers both near rivers and inland, distributed across hundreds of kilometers and Mbanza Kongo – its capital that

7920-610: Was more widely deployed to identify Kikongo-speaking people enslaved in the Americas. Since the early 20th century, Bakongo (singular Mkongo or Mukongo ) has been increasingly used, especially in areas north of the Congo River , to refer to the Kikongo-speaking community, or more broadly to speakers of the closely related Kongo languages . This convention is based on the Bantu languages, to which Kongo language belongs. The prefix "mu-" and "ba-" refer to "people", singular and plural respectively. Ne in Kikongo designates

8010-459: Was the kingdom of Loango. Loango was in the northern part, above the Congo River, a region which long before the war was already an established community of the Kongo people. New kingdoms came into existence in this period, from the disintegrated parts in the southeast and the northeast of the old Kongo kingdom. The old capital of the Kongo people called São Salvador was burnt down, and was in ruins and abandoned in 1678. The fragmented new kingdoms of

8100-501: Was vociferous and well published by the slave traders, the missionaries and the colonial era Portuguese historians, which helped morally justify mass trading of slaves. Modern scholars such as Estevam Thompson have shown that there is much confusion between the "original" Jagas, who left the land of Yaka on the eastern bank of the Kwango River and invaded Mbata and mbanza Kongo, and other later references to "Jaga warriors" roaming

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