Warfare in Northern Mozambique, Late Sixteenth to Late Nineteenth Centuries (original) (raw)

Abstract

Studies of precolonial African warfare are still relatively scarce and northern Mozambique is no exception. This paper examines more than three centuries of African warfare among the Makua of Macuana. It emphasizes continuities in strategy and tactics, while at the same time paying attention to innovations in weaponry, above all the adoption and effective utilization of firearms. Based on a critical assessment of both primary and secondary sources, it analyzes Portuguese claims of cannibalism among the Makua in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and the development of a “gun culture” from the late eighteenth century. It also seeks to locate Makua warfare in a broadly comparative African perspective.

Attention to precolonial African military history has taken a decided upturn in the past two decades.1 Yet much work remains to be done to achieve more comprehensive historical coverage of African warfare. One sub-region that remains seriously understudied is northern Mozambique, for which a number of primary sources—both archival and published—are available for the Makua of Macuana. In a short essay that appeared in the first volume of this journal, John Thornton reflects that in Africanist historiographical tradition the tendency “is more to ignore military history in favor of dealing with the slave trade …”2 Certainly, conflicts over the slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were an important element in the history of warfare in northern Mozambique, but African state politics were also an important factor. Thornton asks further, “Did Africans even have armies? Did they fight in some sort of organized ways, with units of varying size, with a chain of command, and the sort of organization one associates with ‘real’ war, or did they simply grab weapons and rush out in a mob to fall upon their enemies?”3 As this article seeks to demonstrate, the answers to each of these questions is affirmative.

In his article, Thornton also comments on “the shortage of acceptable primary sources about warfare,” adding that “where first-hand accounts are written at the time of the events are available, they are typically by European visitors.”4 To be sure, the sources for this contribution on Makua warfare are exclusively European and were generated in the context of Portuguese conflicts with their African adversaries. Some of these are probably eye witness accounts; others are clearly based on second-hand testimonies. Regrettably, no one has yet attempted to collect Makua oral traditions that speak to issues of conducting warfare. The one exception may have been Portuguese colonial administrator Eduardo do Couto Lupi, whose detailed account of late nineteenth century Makua warfare that is presented in the third section of this paper appears to be based both on his direct observations and on information garnered from unnamed Makua informants and his interpreter, Ussein Caximo, who were undoubtedly the sources for his knowledge of eMakhuwa terminlogy.5 Taken together, and appreciating their limitations, a careful reading of these sources makes it possible to respond substantively to Thornton’s challenge.

Beginning in the late sixteenth century and continuing through the nineteenth century, Portuguese relations with the Makua states of Macuana—the coastal hinterland opposite Mozambique Island—were characterized by hostility and mutual suspicion. Open warfare was more common than not, especially after the middle of the eighteenth century, and peace was always a fragile affair which was generally based upon the ability of one party to dominate the other. In all but a few isolated instances this meant that peace was a reflection of Makua superiority of arms. Moreover, the system of shifting alliances characteristic of politics in this small region gave rise to a series of related conflicts between the Makua states, the Portuguese, and the Swahili sheikhdoms of the coast, and between rival Makua polities. This essay seeks to explore the way in which this long history of military confrontation in Macuana both reflected and affected the political rivalries of northern Mozambique, especially from the eighteenth century onwards.6 It also examines military strategy, tactics, and technology in order to understand both continuities and innovations in conducting warfare.

1 Maravi Expansion and the Invasion of the Mauruça

The earliest available accounts of Makua hostilities with the Portuguese date to the great period of Maravi expansion from the middle Zambezi into northern Mozambique.7 Quite apart from the general military domination of the Maravi throughout northern Mozambique from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century, there is no question that the most important Makua king of Macuana, the Mauruça, was an invader from farther inland whose origins are traceable to this period of enormous unrest.8 The Mauruça’s origins are uncertain; some scholars consider him to have Maravi origins, others that he was Makua.9 What matters here is that the Mauruça almost certainly made use of military strategies and techniques which were being spread by the Zimba warriors of the Mang’anja king, the Lundu.10 In this respect we may be able to assume that there was a general adoption and adaptation of Maravi warfare in northern Mozambique during this period which foreshadowed the military impact of the Ngoni during the nineteenth century in east central Africa.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that we know little about the Maravi/Zimba military system. Diogo do Couto describes the way in which they first built a strong stockade of rocks, earth, and trees, from which they launched their operations. In battle they carried large shields, forming a great wall behind which they were protected from the arrows and assegai of their enemy.11 João dos Santos lists their weapons as bows, arrows, battle-axes, and assegai, as well as large shields constructed of wood frames and animal skins “with which they entirely cover themselves.” Their defensive tactics within the stockade reportedly included pouring boiling oil upon their attackers and spearing them through loop-holes with a sort of bill-hook. They also practiced large scale ambush, a tactic they used to devastating effect in 1592 against a poorly disciplined Portuguese column that Zimba spies along the route had seen approaching from Sena.12 As was also to be true of the development of the Zulu military system, there was probably less originality in the weaponry utilized by the Zimba/Maravi than in the organization of warfare by a powerful central political authority, that aspect of Maravi warfare about which we know the least.

When the warriors of the Mauruça began to wreak havoc on the mainland opposite Mozambique Island in the early 1580s their shock tactics consisted of raids marked by looting and sacking. According to Couto, a stockade was built some ten kilometers or more inland from the coast as a base for the invaders’ operations in this region. By 1585 the situation had become intolerable for the Portuguese and a major surprise attack was launched against the Mauruça’s main settlement, which was said to lie some fifteen to twenty-five kilometers inland. The column of almost four hundred men, a tenth of whom were Portuguese, marched from the coast during the fight and attacked at dawn, catching the Makua completely off guard. Many were killed by the Portuguese and the entire settlement set afire. Those who escaped the Portuguese assault, however, withdrew in some order to the bush through which the main route back to the coast ran and virtually decimated the entire Portuguese column on its return march. Santos attributes the major blame for this disaster to Portuguese overconfidence “and the contempt with which they look upon the Kaffirs.”13 But it did not escape Santos that the Makua ambush was a well-organized tactic. It seems likely that they were prepared in advance to respond positively to this sort of surprise attack. Further raids by the Makua were before long abandoned in favor of a mutually beneficial modus vivendi with the Portuguese and a peace in which the Mauruça was recognized as the dominant local authority on the mainland, though he was just as clearly subordinate to Maravi hegemony.

Any account of warfare among the Makua must take account of the persistent, sensationally lurid, Portuguese reports of the mutilation and cannibalism which they practiced upon vanquished enemies. Cannibalism, in particular, is a difficult issue to analyze, and in this case it is complicated by association with the sensational notices of cannibalism among the Zimba, whom Santos alleges ate their way from Zambesia through northern Mozambique and up the Swahili coast until their demise at Malindi.14 Echoing this trope, Couto writes that Odeburi, the Maravi/Makua leader who established his stockade in the coastal hinterland of Mozambique, “began to eat the lands.”15 If one assumes with Schoffeleers that Mang’anja was the probable language of these fearsome warriors, it is instructive to read in David Scott’s authoritative dictionary that the first example under the verb “Dia, ku, to eat” is: “metaphorically: ku dia dzito, to eat up the land …”16 As E.E. Evans-Pritchard argued forcefully sixty years ago, “in matters of this kind one cannot be too cautious in accepting the evidence of hearsay.”17 Indeed, although both Santos and Couto state unequivocally that the Zimba and Makua ate their victims, we must recognize that neither one provides a shred of direct evidence for this assertion. Jared Staller notes of the contemporary Jaga (or Imbangala) in Angola, that accounts of their cannibalism are “part of a broader pattern of cannibal narratives told by Europeans about indigenous peoples throughout the world.”18 Indeed, when Couto records that, having defeated the Portuguese in 1585, “the Cafres, after killing everyone, collected the bodies and withdrew to eat them on the shore opposite Mozambique, where afterwards were found the hands, feet, and heads, of which they only eat the brains,” he explicitly contrasts this last practice to the “natives of Yucatan,” as described in a Spanish account of the New World.19 Similarly, the significance of cultural relativism is vividly underscored when Santos records with clear distaste subsequent cases of rumored Makua cannibalism, while considering the severing of hands and drawing and quartering of four Makua charged with murdering a Portuguese to be “justice.”20 Whatever its substance in fact, it is clear that belief in Makua cannibalism put great fear into the Portuguese community of Mozambique, as it was intended to do. The reputed barbarism of conquering hordes is often as effective a weapon against retaliation as force of arms, and it seems reasonable to hypothesize that the inflated accounts of both Zimba and Makua cannibalism during this period bear eloquent testimony to this aspect of Maravi military strategy.21

Just how such a strategy might have developed is unclear, as there is not even hearsay evidence concerning cannibalism among either the Maravi or the Makua before the period of contact with the Portuguese and Maravi expansion. Robert Padden argues that the Araucanian Indians of Chile probably did not eat human flesh before the Spanish intrusion in the sixteenth century and that cannibalism “was developed for its propaganda value” as “an intended clash of values … a cultural opposite, a symbol of resistance.”22 However attractive a hypotheses this might be for the Zimba and Makua situations, it is unlikely. First, it is quite clear that cannibalism was just as abhorrent to Africans as it was to Portuguese of the period. Santos specifically notes the fear with which the indigenous Makua of Macuana regarded the Mauruça’s hordes, while twentieth-century sources also refer to Makua beliefs about Maravi cannibalism. Second, Santos reports the belief—since he never observed it personally—that the Zimba “are in the habit of eating the men they kill in war, and drinking out of their skulls, showing themselves in this boastful and ferocious.”23 What is one to make of this popular belief? In a comparable situation among the small villages of Doe people of eastern Tanzania, there is internal evidence that cannibalism was actually developed as a weapon of psychological warfare in order to terrify their Kamba opponents in the second half of the eighteenth century and that their reputation as cannibals was both greatly exaggerated and a valuable protection against attack by their neighbors.24 Speaking directly to this question, Staller astutely observes that “cannibal talk was a strategy to terrorize others,” whether African or European.25 In this interpretation, whether the Makua and Zimba ever actually ate their victims of battle is irrelevant; what counted was belief in their cannibalism. What remains is the distinct possibility that this practice was developed as an integral part of their practice of warfare for the purpose of terrifying both their African and Portuguese opponents alike, as its rumored existence incontestably did. Looked at differently, Eric Allina suggests that “cannibal talk” may also have been “a vernacular expression of African beliefs and ideas about political power,”26 the equivalent of the metaphor of eating cited above (n. 16).

2 Commercial Competition and Armed Conflict in the Eighteenth Century

During the seventeenth century there were no major conflicts between the Makua and the Portuguese, as both were equally dominated by the Maravi warriors who were greatly feared throughout northern Mozambique. Curiously, in the 1630s the Makua of Macuana specifically refused a Portuguese offer to build them a fort at Cabaceira from which they could oppose the Maravi.27 The collapse of the Maravi empire by the end of the century enabled the Makua chiefs of Macuana to exercise their power independently,28 but rivalries over trade at the coast in both ivory and slaves soon dominated relations with their neighbors. At Mozambique Island and on the mainland settlements, the Portuguese struggled to assert themselves over the Indians and Africans who controlled the ivory trade. Similarly, the Makua rulers of the mainland and its immediate hinterland sought to profit from the Yao caravans arriving annually from the interior to trade at fairs in Mossuril and Sanculo.29 They also competed with each other and the Yao in supplying the growing slave trade, which became a particular flash point in the last quarter of the century. Soon these rivalries brought them into open and continuous conflict with their neighbors on all sides.

No less significantly, this competition greatly increased the possibilities for concentrating power in the hands of Makua chiefs. Portuguese sources reveal a series of skirmishes in the 1720s, but it was not until 1749 that the level of conflict became serious. For the next sixty years there was almost unabated warfare which was marked by a series of shifting alliances between various Makua states, Swahili sheikhdoms, and the Portuguese. By about 1810, although the Makua states of Macuana remained a formidable force on the mainland, the balance of power had shifted to the major Swahili polities which were able to take advantage of the booming slave trade without suffering the debilitating effects that came to sap the strength of the Makua political economy.30

By the eighteenth century it becomes possible to say something about the political economy of Makua states and therefore to relate military developments to the larger social context in which they were embedded. At their base, Makua states derived from the interaction of kinship and territorial organization. They were small, localized polities which retained a very high degree of internal independence throughout their histories. At the same time, however, virtually all of the Makua states were clustered into hierarchical associations of states which generally traced their organization to the common putative clan membership of their chiefs. Thus their political relationships expressed themselves in the idiom of perpetual matrilineal kinship. In reality, the origin of any such confederation might be quite different. The Mauruça, as we know, entered Macuana as a conqueror in the sixteenth century, but by the eighteenth century he was regarded as the senior mother’s brother by those chiefs who were subordinate to him in the hinterland region of Uticulo.

Effective authority within each chiefdom rested on the rendering of minimal tribute and service by commoners in exchange for the religio-juridical services of the chief. While such an exchange was inherently unequal and may initially have been predicated on force, there can be little doubt that by this time it had been internalized by all members of the society and was based on the general consent of the common people. At the level of the confederation, subordinate chiefs undoubtedly funneled tribute in produce to the king on certain annual occasions and may also have been expected to supply some symbolic service in labor. These junior chiefs also acted as councilors and had a major voice in the selection of the king. In general, however, the confederacy rarely touched the daily lives of most Makua and was certainly no guarantee against internecine quarrels and fighting between constituent states. Certainly to outsiders, it operated effectively only in times of war, when the loose structure of political kinship revealed itself in an effective military presence. Indeed, the logic of Makua political organization suggests that the essential purpose of wider association was to provide a viable bulwark against outside transgression in order to preserve a high degree of internal political independence.31

Several important aspects of Makua military history emerge from the mass of documentation on their conflicts with the Portuguese during this period. First, there was the successful adoption of firearms, which they acquired in clandestine trade with Portuguese inhabitants of the mainland and French slave traders until the trade was legalized by the Portuguese Crown in 1787 as a specific stimulus for the slave trade.32 One source states that firearms were unknown among the Makua in the 1720s, while a governor-general of Mozambique partly attributed a devastating loss in 1753 to a major Makua leader, the Murimuno, to their possession of these new weapons.33 There is little doubt that the Makua very rapidly mastered the use of firearms and were able to employ them effectively, but far too much has been made in African historiography of the impact of firearms as a weapon without considering the different tactical situations in which they were employed.34 This was not, however, a situation in which firearms were merely used “to frighten the enemy, since they charge them with powder alone,” as A.C.P. Gamitto reported of the Eastern Lunda in 1831.35

To evaluate the impact of firearms on Makua warfare let us take a close look at the 1753 Portuguese campaign against the Murimuno. What is striking about this campaign is the very strong resemblance that it bears to that launched against the Mauruça in 1585. On this occasion a force of more than one hundred regular Portuguese troops was augmented by possibly as many as a thousand auxiliaries and by the armies of the Sheikhs of Quitangonha and Sanculo, small sheikhdoms on the coast to the north and south of Mozambique Island. Unlike the sixteenth-century column, this one did not set forth until the morning and when it reached the Murimuno’s territory all element of surprise was lost. Before arriving at the first of his villages, a single shot was heard and when the Portuguese army entered they found it totally abandoned. After setting it on fire they pressed on to successive villages which were similarly empty and consequently burned without any loss of life to the Makua. When scouts sent out by the Sheikh of Quitangonha discovered Makua armed with firearms, bows and arrows, and spears hidden in the bush, the Portuguese realized that they were not going to meet the kind of resistance which they had anticipated. At this point serious dissension—the cause of which remains unknown—disrupted the Portuguese alliance with Sanculo and before long it was decided that with no one for them to fight and with all provisions having been removed by the Makua, the Portuguese column should return to the coast. Discipline was lax and as soon as the Makua began to ambush the retreating army it collapsed altogether.36 The principal Portuguese sources agree that the major toll was taken by Makua firepower, but the earlier comment by one of them that Makua armament typically consisted of bows and arrows and “some guns” suggests that indigenous weapons also played an important role in warfare.37 Whichever may have been the case, the acquisition of firearms does not seem to have affected the basic strategy involved, which clearly dates as far back as 1585. In view of the success which the Makua enjoyed against the Portuguese and the obvious skill with which they planned this action, only spite and bitter disappointment at the failure of the 1753 column can have moved the governor-general to dismiss “the military operations of these Kaffirs” as being “superstitious and lax.”38

During the following year, the Portuguese left all of the fighting against the Murimuno to their allies, the Sheikh of Quitangonha and a Makua chief named Micieyra. The Portuguese were eager to seek vengeance and were visibly upset when they felt that the Micieyra was “superstitiously and grievously wasting time with his auguries until the season should change,” although the reason for his procrastination was clearly to allow his people “to tend to their agriculture so that in the Winter they would obtain sustenance for the Summer.”39 For the Makua, if not for the Portuguese, it was understood that in order to wage war successfully a people had also to ensure their own food supplies.

In time, a successful attack was launched by the Sheikh of Quitangonha and his allies into the very heart of the Murimuno’s bailiwick. Many Makua were killed and many others taken prisoner, and it was not long before the Makua chief sought his own revenge. On this occasion, however, the Murimuno’s warriors were routed by the same tactics which they had used against the Portuguese-Quitangonha force a year before. Forewarned of the impending attack, the Sheikh of Quitangonha deployed his soldiers in the bush, where he “ambushed, as these people are accustomed to do, dividing his part into two bodies, so well positioned that when the enemy entered he ensnared them in the middle and crushed them so unyieldingly that the unexpectedness of that outburst made any response other than precipitate flight impossible.”40 Although firearms were probably used in this attack, the key element clearly was not the weaponry but that of coordinated surprise.

For the next two decades, intermittent warfare plagued Macuana, but since most of the fighting was beyond the ken of Portuguese officialdom we know very little about its details. The character of the conflict changed dramatically on 6 January 1776, when a massive force of at least eight thousand Makua swept down upon the Portuguese mainland settlements in retaliation against Portuguese kidnapping of people living under the jurisdiction of the Murimuno for sale into slavery, for which he had vainly sought satisfaction through negotiation. More than one hundred individuals were killed, houses and plantations razed, and the fortress and church at Mossuril thoroughly looted. Upon their withdrawal, the Makua left the field “full of truncated bodies, and the survivors filled with such a fear that they never more will lose it,” while the Murimuno paraded in his village wearing the holy vestments.41 A less reliable report inflates the size of the invading force to almost twenty thousand and claims that the Makua also drank the blood of their victims, a charge for which there again exists no substantiation. The legacy of this frontal assault was that for the next few years it took only the least rumor of a Makua attack to send all the mainland Portuguese packing across the harbor to the safety of Mozambique Island.42 No doubt this was just as the Makua intended.

Warfare raged continuously in Macuana into the early 1780s and all parties were in a constant state of readiness. Major campaigns were mounted by both sides but with no real resolution of the struggle for power until an alliance of Portuguese, Swahili, and dissident Makua chiefs imposed a peace of sorts on the Murimuno, who on July 24, 1784 formally ceded his territory to the Portuguese Crown. The other major Makua chiefs of Macuana, including the Mauruça, remained independent.43 Most of the Portuguese documentation from this period contains little information on Makua warfare, but there is one well informed account which contains much that is revealing. According to the anonymous Évora Codex, before making war the Makua:

gather together for a long time while they make their superstitious observations, ceremonies, and meals with a Canta, which they prepare with various ingredients;44 this gathering they call “Massassa” with their medicines “war-tail” without which they never enter the field … Before marching all are painted or marked with some devices in order to recognize each other in battle … however if during the march some small animal crosses their path they return home at once, considering the war ended, since they consider that to be a bad augury, or certain signal of being defeated.

They observe the days of the moon to begin a campaign and do other ridiculous things to which they give entire credit.45

On march they follow no order and observe no discipline, the author continues, “they run, attack, kill, sack, burn, and destroy, always in flight and without giving quarter except to the women whom they capture if they are ours, otherwise they kill them. They decapitate the men and carry the upper part of the skull as proof of their victory.” Just as rapidly they withdrew from the battleground in order to celebrate their victory with a great hullabaloo, “dancing in the form of a battle, each one separately, having in front of him on the ground the skulls of his victims, acting out the combat which he had with them, imitating their flight, the screams and everything else until their expiration.”46 Somewhat less colorful is his description of their weapons: “Their arms are some short thrusting or throwing spears (lanças curtas de arremeço) which they call assegai and of which each man carries as many as he can into an encounter, always reserving one to defend himself. They also have some firearms … in the use of which they are quite skillful.”47 Despite the author’s prejudices it is clear that preparing for war was a major undertaking which was not entered into lightly. His account also implies an important role for central authority in directing Makua military organization, an idea which is strengthened by accounts of the 1784 attack on Mossuril. Finally, these notes suggest that the most important weapon of the Makua was still the assegai. The growing significance of firearms is, however, evident from the report in 1785 of a Portuguese naturalist who observed iron-smithing in Macuana and included musket balls as one of the principal manufactures.48

Regarding tactics, it is difficult to reconcile the Évora Codex account of constant, undisciplined activity with contemporary renditions, including that of its author, of the assault made by the Makua of the Murimuno on the fortress at Mossuril on 8 June 1784. Although the several accounts of this attack are marred by heated political infighting among the Portuguese participants, it is clear that there was a force of some fifty Portuguese troops in the fortress which was attacked in a coordinated three-pronged movement by as many as four hundred Makua armed with firearms and assegai that was apparently designed to surround the Portuguese position. How the Makua were routed depends entirely on which Portuguese account one follows—they are that contradictory—but Portuguese preparedness, the effective use of a rapid firing small piece of artillery, and the death of “a great Menafumo” or commander all seem to have contributed.49 What matters is that here we have a well-documented example of an entirely different, and in this case much less successful, kind of Makua heavy assault warfare from the defensive actions and skirmishing which seem more characteristic of their previous encounters with the Portuguese and with each other.

The eighteenth century data are inconclusive with respect to the connection between war and society in Macuana. Certainly, it would seem that the power of the Murimuno was enhanced for as long as his warriors held the upper hand against the Portuguese and their allies. Between 1776 and 1784 he was able to place remarkably large numbers of men on the field of battle and to have attempted a major tactical innovation. Defeat put an end to his personal concentration of power. It did not terminate the historical process whereby chiefs who successfully manipulated the political, commercial, and military components of the evolving political economy of the slave trade to Mozambique Island arrogated increasing power to themselves and their cohorts at the expense of their rivals and their rivals’ people.

Although the struggle for supremacy in Macuana continued between these same parties until the triumph of the Swahili sheikhdoms over the course of the next quarter century, there is little further available evidence concerning their military practices. In the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the energetic French ethnographer, Eugène de Froberville, collected the following notes from emancipated Makua who had been sold as slaves to Mauritius. The weapons of the Makua included the assegai, javelin, bow and arrows, some of which were poisoned, shield, club, and a type of short sword, which was certainly a machete. “The musket is greatly esteemed among these people, but the necessity of being provided with powder and balls is what partially raises the value of this weapon. The Makua are above all renowned for their skill in handling the assegai.”50

Froberville’s informants also told him stories about the mutilation of Makua victims of war. “The hands and the head of a defeated enemy are carried in triumph before the chief, and the flesh of these bloody spoils are boiled or roasted and eaten by the victor, while the skull serves him as a cup.” I wonder. Indeed, the explanation which they gave him for bodily cicatrization among the Makua was to enable a victim’s family to identify his headless corpse on the field of battle.51 Perhaps; but just as possibly such body artistry reflected male Makua esthetics and fashion.52 At the very least we can safely state that the tradition of Makua celebration of victory, as well as the primacy of the assegai, were still apparently in force in the middle of the nineteenth century.

3 Makua Resistance to Portuguese Colonial Conquest

The last great period of Makua warfare took place from about 1875 to 1897 and focused on the resistance to the imposition of Portuguese colonial rule by the Namarral Makua, who were recent immigrants to the immediate coastal hinterland.53 The political implications and economic motivations of the leaders of this long resistance have been discussed most intelligently by Nancy Hafkin and Joseph Mbwiliza, and the campaigns themselves described in considerable detail by René Pélissier and Regiane Mattos.54 What emerges clearly from contemporary accounts of these encounters is that the basic Makua tactics of defensive warfare, involving careful intelligence networks, and attack from ambush, continued to predominate. At the same time, however, the gradual establishment of Portuguese military posts necessitated the mounting of more frequent offensive tactics against these strongholds.

Perhaps the most useful way of examining Makua warfare during this final precolonial period, and of providing a measure by which to ascertain what changes had taken place over the course of the nineteenth century, is to summarize the uniquely available detailed description of their military practices. Of the many early modern colonial administrator-soldiers in northern Mozambique, only Eduardo do Couto Lupi seems to have taken any real interest in the peoples whom the Portuguese were in the process of subjugating after centuries of perching precariously on the coast. Lupi served as Captain-Major of Angoche, to the south of Mozambique Island, from the middle of 1903 to the end of 1905. He was involved in numerous campaigns against the Makua of the Angoche hinterland and made a careful, if not adequately documented, study of Makua and Swahili customs and history in the area to which he was posted. Fighting was a business for which he was trained and his description has the ring of authenticity.55

According to Lupi, Makua warfare followed a “set of rules which are perfectly in accord with modern tactics recognized among civilized nations and which are characterized by surprise attack, as well as by the most effective utilization of the terrain, practicing on a grand scale the strategy of the restraint and dispersion of their forces when fighting with enemies initially more powerful …”56 The declaration of hostilities was exclusively the prerogative of the ruling political authorities among the Makua, although only a declaration by the king had the authority of law for those eligible to bear arms. Sub-chiefs who declared war could count neither on the unanimous support of their men nor on that of their king.57 Lupi makes a specific point of chiding those who claimed that sorcery was a major factor in military affairs, stating that

the Black is not so lacking in reasoning power. As among all the people of the world, war for them is a serious business; the chief studies these cases for a long time with his military councilors, and the medicine men, who only intervene afterwards, sometimes notified to provide determined results, other times following spontaneously the orientation which they perceive (if they are reliable), predict precisely what is wanted to be predicted.58

Once it was decided by a king and his councilors to declare war against another people, an official harbinger (namuh’upe or mamuhupe) was sent to the enemy ruler, who had the option of either accepting or refusing the challenge. In the latter instance he would indicate his unwillingness to fight and thereby his submission by sending a woman and a spear back with the herald.59 Just how long this would satisfy both parties must have varied greatly, but the Murimuno’s attempts to seek retribution from the Portuguese in the 1770s without open warfare may have been a partial reflection of this practice.

Once the prosecution of war was determined, orders were given for all able-bodied men to gather at a particular place (n’ringa) on a certain day. The n’ringa was always established away from centers of population and ideally situated near fresh water on the frontier of enemy territory. This placement also facilitated the plundering of food from the enemy’s fields. The n’ringa was laid out as a circle and was demarcated by dry grass shelters (massaça) on its periphery where the warriors slept. Chiefs and notables bivouacked in the center. The entire n’ringa was sheltered within the thick bush, which was carefully patrolled to avoid a surprise enemy attack.60 Within the n’ringa orders and other information were signaled by the ringing of a wrought iron bell (múlúpa a tíué).61

After the distribution of gunpowder and shot, control of which can only have enhanced the power of political leaders, the entire force assembled in the bush beyond the n’ringa (átá), where they underwent the ceremony of murrápo mácué, which involved a washing with protective medicines prepared and administered primarily by the war-medicine man (chamuíla). After cleansing with water, tiny incisions were made on the forehead, arms, and both breasts into which a mild caustic agent or oil (mácué) was smeared. This was taken from within the war tail (muila), usually that of a zebra or antelope, and the war trumpet (ên’hanga), usually the horn of an antelope or buffalo.62 The warriors then donned the licáta, a signal among allies in white or red cloth or made from the inner bark of certain trees, which was wrapped around the head and arms. Finally, a great war dance took place. All of these preparations were ancient customs and were described recognizably, if in less precise detail, in the late eighteenth century by the author of the Évora Codex.63

Another interesting aspect of Makua military culture which also dates back into the eighteenth century, if not earlier, is the abandonment of the stockade and the retention of the word for stockade to designate the war camp, n’ringa. Lupi, Cunha, and Camizão also note the presence of military officers among the Makua, but the titles (e.g. kazembe < mukazambo: male slave leader) which they give for them are clearly derived from late nineteenth century Luso-Zambesia prazo terminology.64

When the army at last set out for battle, the central position was occupied by the war lord (munéne a vita) either the king or his matrilineal nephew, who was the soul of the alliance between otherwise independent chiefs. Generally, most kings did not accompany their armies into battle, remaining either at a distance behind the main force or in their own villages. The army was divided into three parts while on march, the center (n’tudu) being led by the war lord and other notables, the right rank (m’séguré môno mulopuana) and left rank (m’séguré môno m’tiâna) being under the command of the various military officers. (This tripartite division echoes the Murimuno’s attack against Mossuril in 1784.) Warriors from different paramount states were grouped together into one of these three divisions when a grand alliance was in effect. The center and side ranks advanced in widely separated columns which maintained contact through interstitial patrols. When contact was finally made with the enemy, the center advanced slowly while the two flanks spread out as quickly as possible in a wide radius around the enemy. Only then was the signal for general attack given. This three-pronged battle formation recalls Ndongo operations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in west central Africa and appears to have been a familiar southern Savannah template for open field warfare. If the attack was unsuccessful the army retired to previously determined, widely dispersed refuges. Second charges were rarely mounted. Greater defeat was the signal for a retreating guerilla action.65

It must be noted, however, that what Lupi calls full-scale war was not the only form of disciplined military action practiced by the Makua. More limited varieties were prosecuted either in support of a full-scale war or in more localized border clashes and inter-chiefdom conflicts. One of these, mápúara, involved the positioning of a staggered double skirmishing line of marksmen according to the cover offered by the terrain, but carefully aligned like the teeth of a saw. After firing on signal the first rank of marksmen lay down on their backs to load their muskets while the rear rank discharged their weapons from a sitting position. Thus firing in alternate order, this pattern continued until the engagement was concluded. This strategy was favored for the defense of a position, especially when the enemy was certain to pass through an open field before reaching the defenders, who would be hidden in the bush or rocks. Another variety of mápúara fighting consisted of the two ranks of marksmen making a right turn and then firing from a side position, which thereby offered the enemy a smaller target at which to fire.66 How, exactly, the practice of firing in rank was acquired by the Makua remains unknowable, but they possibly learned it by observing the Portuguese and, perhaps, from renegade Portuguese army soldiers.

A different kind of offensive warfare was built around launching a surprise attack (otimáca) against an enemy’s stronghold. This began with careful instructions in the n’ringa and a nocturnal march through friendly territory until daybreak brought them to the border of their enemy’s lands. At this point the column broke into an open run and did not stop for anything, “neither giving quarter to men, women, or children,” until they attacked the main concentration of enemy power “with cold steel.” Lupi avers that in otimáca warfare as many as twenty kilometers or more were covered by the aggressor and the effect, if unanticipated, was devastating. In the administrative district of Angoche, the warriors of Namecoio-muno in the Erati Hills were especially noted for favoring this sort of attack.67 With virtually no appreciation of the strategy involved, but in almost exactly the same words, the anonymous author of the Évora Codex confirms that this form of warfare had a long history among the Makua of Macuana.

A final method of offensive warfare recorded by Lupi is uita. Here the warriors crept up on their enemy by crawling with “unsurpassable” skill, each carrying his gun in his right hand, until they were able to open fire. In uita, “the riflemen do not maintain a line of fire, because of the slowness of loading the guns, and their limited range,” so once the battle was joined they sought more secure shelter and fought from there until the issue was resolved. It is not clear if we should identify uita with the ambush tactics that characterized the Makua devastations of Portuguese columns in 1585 and 1784, but a similar disaster by ambush befell the Portuguese in 1888 during their retreat from the first expedition against the Namarrals.68 Except in the case of a total surprise attack, otimáca, where combat was immediately hand to hand, fighting was always begun by the firing of a gun especially prepared with and carrying medicines (chamirête), which was discharged by the war-medicine man.69

Two further customs of Makua warfare deserve notice here, as well, since their practice can again be traced back at least into the eighteenth century. First, there were definite restrictions on precisely when war could be waged. Lupi notes that hostilities could begin only on Tuesday, and that this custom also obtained among Islamized Africans in Angoche, while in the eighteenth century we have seen that the Makua paid careful attention to both season and the position of the moon before taking up arms.70 Second, Lupi comments upon the terrible fury with which a successful campaign was waged. All men were killed and women and children taken captive. Everything movable was robbed and houses and fields set afire. Enemies killed in battle were decapitated and their skulls displayed on stakes in the victorious villages. Indeed, the caption to a photograph of a warrior dancing in celebration of victory is translated from the Makua as “ ‘I made war, I cut heads, I made war in the lands of my enemy’.”71 When the British Consul at Mozambique, Henry O’Neill, traveled north of Mozambique Island in May 1880, he found the country abandoned “from a fear of Namarolo [the Namarral] and his Makua, by whom the surrounding country was devastated and their markets destroyed.” At one small village, “the dread of Namarolo’s Makuas, roused by that war, still continued,” while at another he learned “that since the last war of 1875–76, when the adjoining country was utterly devastated by the Makua chief, no attempt had been made to reoccupy the points they had abandoned.”72 A year later, in August 1881, when O’Neill visited the village of Bwebwe, near the coast and just southwest of Mozambique Island, he found the chief’s compound as being “surrounded by stakes topped with human skulls, relics of the intertribal wars not infrequent in this country.”73 A quarter century later, Lupi included a photograph of more than a dozen skulls laid out on the ground at a village some thirty leagues (about 100 miles) from the coast that he titled “the spoils of war.”74 Unquestionably, violent warfare and terrorizing display remained a standard of Makua warfare, but what is conspicuously absent from the accounts of both O’Neill and Lupi, is any reference to Makua cannibalism. Surely if there had been even a whisper of this practice these agents of British abolitionism and Portuguese imperialism would not have failed to mention it. That they do not reinforces one’s doubts about all the earlier hearsay reports of its existence, even that of the usually reliable Froberville.

Another very significant point to emerge from Lupi’s careful discussion of Makua warfare is the great predominance which he seems to give to firearms. Most of these were flint muskets, but he also mentions the possession of both Snyder and Kropatscheck breech-loaders in the interior.75 The effectiveness of these, however, was restricted by the difficulty of maintaining adequate reserves of cartridges, and many Snyders were ultimately converted to muzzle-loaders.76 Lupi also records that the Makua used much gunpowder in loading their muskets, observing that at minimum the charge for each shot was two-and-a-half centiliters.77 Certainly by the 1870s flint muskets were truly ubiquitous among the Makua, even well away from the coast, but spears and machetes were also carried by all able-bodied men.78 Yet although Lupi makes no specific mention of traditional weapons, he clearly is referring to their use in otimáca warfare when he speaks of the devastating employment of “cold steel.” Elsewhere, he comments on the skill of Makua blacksmiths, who fashioned “spears, knives, and cutlasses (zagaias, facas e cutellos).”79 Moreover, Albuquerque’s account of the Portuguese rout by the Namarral Makua at Mujenga in 1896 notes the effectiveness of both lances and “daggers” at close quarters in the bush against Portuguese cavalry.80

What seems to have taken place by the end of the nineteenth century is the full development by the Makua of the use of firearms in ambush, a process that dates back to the middle of the eighteenth century; in full scale offensive warfare, where they were similarly employed in conjunction with assegai in the late eighteenth century; and in the somewhat different late nineteenth and early twentieth century situation of assault upon a fortified Portuguese military post. Traditional weaponry appears to have been abandoned almost totally in the first case, although Makua marksmen surely retained machetes for the possibility of hand to hand combat. In the other two situations it would be interesting to know if there had developed a division of labor between those who handled firearms and those who were specialists in the deployment of assegai and other hand arms, such as machetes, battle-axes, and clubs. If this should prove to be true, then it would suggest the existence of a very important possible social distinction between different categories of Makua warriors which may have begun to surface as early as the first effective deployment of firearms by them in the eighteenth century.81

The Makua were able to make good use of flint muskets almost at once against the Portuguese and, what is more important, maintained and apparently improved upon their skill in handling firearms. One factor working in favor of this success was the regular and increasing supply of firearms which entered Macuana and was intimately tied to the growth of the slave trade at Mozambique and along its adjacent coastline. A second surely was the proximity of Afro-Portuguese and Portuguese-trained African soldiers in Macuana who were willing and able to transmit the technical and tactical skills involved in the use of firearms throughout the pre-colonial era.82 A third and perhaps decisive factor was the equally rapid ability of the Makua to put them to effective use in hunting elephants, the source of the ivory which dominated the commercial economy of Mozambique during the eighteenth century.83 By the 1760’s one Portuguese observer could write that “the Makua around Mozambique kill them by musket,” but when British Consul J. Frederic Elton traveled in the Mozambique hinterland in the 1870s, he observed that “traces of elephant were seen, but of old date; hunting them is no longer an industry, and it is now several years since it has been discontinued.”84 By then, however, Makua elephant hunters armed with guns roamed as far afield as central Tanzania and possessed a reputation unrivaled by any others.85

Perhaps the most important remaining question is to ascertain what there was about Makua social and political organization which enabled them to develop such a disciplined military system. Except in times of war political authority was very localized and political competition between states intense. How was it that the otherwise fiercely independent Makua were able to work together so effectively when fighting a common foe? The most likely possibility is that these vitally important military skills were inculcated during the circumcision ceremonies of the Makua, which involved a lengthy period of isolation and intensive instruction in the way of Makua life and of their roles in it as adult males. Indeed, at the end of their long period away from the village, writes Froberville in the mid-nineteenth century, the neophytes armed themselves with batons, burned the initiation hut together, and returned to the village “without looking back.” For their part, the people of the community took up “poles and switches” and “endeavored to defend the village against entrance by the young men. The blows soon rained from both sides in this simulated combat.”86 The symbolism of combat runs strongly through this final ritual of reintegration (which is not mentioned in twentieth century accounts) and it would be surprising if among the many things transmitted to the initiands during the rites of passage, the practices of warfare and the proper behavior of warriors were not accorded a prominent place. Certainly, Lupi notes that among the knowledge and skills acquired by young men during their initiation were included “the industrial processes of hunting, fishing, the manufacture of arms and utensils.”87 In this way it would have been entirely possible for the Makua—like the Xhosa88—to maintain a highly disciplined military system without benefit either of standing armies, as among the Zambezi prazos, or of warrior age sets, as had the Gaza Nguni of southern Mozambique or the neighboring Ngoni of Malawi.89

4 Conclusion

The history of Makua warfare in the Mozambique hinterland of Macuana reveals remarkable continuity in both strategy and tactics over a period of more than three centuries. From the available evidence it appears that the organization of warfare and the relationship between war and society remained fairly stable over time. Similarly, military strategy and tactics, both defensive and offensive, continued to draw upon established practice, while also exhibiting flexibility and openness to change. The early adoption of firearms by the Makua provides an important example of how new military technology could be incorporated successfully by integrating guns into well-established military tactics, hunting, and existing expertise in iron-working. In this regard, Makua employment of firearms parallels important elements of the adoption of firearms in eighteenth-century Madagascar and nineteenth-century north-western Zambia.90 How best to categorize the wholesale adoption and employment of firearms by the Makua is beyond the scope of this article, though worth considering in a broadly African comparative context. If one follows Giacomo Macola’s analysis of guns in central Africa, by the late eighteenth century one might identify the Makua of Macuana as a “gun society.”91 But if one accepts Saheed Aderinto’s distinction that “the difference between a gun culture and a gun society is the level of interaction between a society and a gun” as it relates to “the level of indispensability of firearms in a society,” a more limited notion of a “gun culture” will prevail.92 At the very least, how to consider the place of firearms in precolonial Africa surely remains an important question for future research.

A significant nineteenth-century change in Makua strategy, however, is the absence of explicit European references to cannibalism in the conduct of war. While the display of skulls as evidence of success in war and ferocity persisted, I suggest that the generally unsettled conditions prevailing across northern Mozambique in the late nineteenth century may have rendered such a strategy irrelevant. Ngoni invasions, the persistent threat of raiding by bands of Ngoni-influenced young men operating under a number of different epithets, e.g. Maviti, the last upheavals of the slave trade, and the steady encroachment of forcible Portuguese occupation, all contributed to a volatile political environment. In these circumstances, a new invading entity like the Namarral Makua needed only to demonstrate the effectiveness of its shock tactics to strike fear in surrounding communities. Whereas the small-scale society of the Doe of eastern mainland Tanzania still propagated stories of their cannibalism as a defensive strategy in the late nineteenth century, it appears that the Makua no longer regarded “cannibal talk” as essential propaganda during the same period. Strength alone mattered.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to John Thornton for a careful reading of an earlier draft of this paper, and to the very helpful comments by the two anonymous readers for this journal.

Bibliography