A Wind From the North (21 page)

Below Cape St. Anna another small bay opens out, and it was here that Nuno Tristao dropped anchor in the lee of an island. Arguim Bay they called this second of the two folds in the great land mass of Africa. It was to play an important part in Portuguese history, for it was here, on the main island in the bay, that Prince Henry began to build a fort and trading post in 1448. So small a thing was the beginning of colonialism in Africa—one mud-and-stone fort on an islet in an obscure bay —yet it marked the beginning of the vast colonial empires of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and the Spanish. What must always be remembered about Prince Henry and his place in history is that he not only began the exploration and discovery of the world, but he set the pattern for all future colonialism. His dream may have been of the conversion of souls, but its outcome was the fort, the armed caravel, and the slave trade.

In the hot bleak bay, between Arguim Island and another, which they named the Isle of Herons, Nuno Tristao’s men captured fourteen Negroes. They had been rash enough to paddle out in canoes to investigate this curious great bird that had dropped into their quiet world out of the Atlantic. On Arguim Island itself the Portuguese captured a further fourteen natives, and on Heron Island they took many royal herons and other sea birds. “So Nuno Tristao returned to Portugal with his captives, more pleased than the first time because he had taken more, and also because he was alone and therefore had no need to share with anyone else.”

When Balthasar, Antao Gongalves, and Nuno Tristao returned to Portugal, they were hailed as heroes. Now people could see some tangible profits accruing from the Prince’s African expeditions. The slaves, the gold dust, even the ostrich eggs, were seen as an earnest of future, and fabulous, wealth. Some of the ostrich eggs were served at the Prince’s table “as fresh and as savory as if they had been of domestic birds,” though one feels that after a long sea voyage in the hot summer, only a palate prejudiced in their favor could have come to this conclusion.

A new type of hero now began to emerge, a hero who would dominate European life and literature until the collapse of colonialism in our own century—the adventurer-explorer, the warrior-colonist. How many young Portuguese, as they looked at men like Nuno Tristao, must have felt as Rimbaud put it centuries later:

“Je reviendrai, avec des membres de feu, la peau sombre,

Voeil furieux: sur mon masque, on me jugera d’une race forte. Taurai de Vor… .”

Thus, after a quarter of a century’s dour persistence in the face of failure and discouragement, the dedicated policy of Prince Henry began to yield results. Like many another man of genius, he could have no idea what forces he had set in motion. In exploration as in love, it is the first step that counts. From now on, there could be no turning back.

Men who in the past would venture into the unknown only to gain the Prince’s rewards and favors now went willingly to win themselves a private fortune. On Henry’s orders, they marked the new capes and bays with wooden crosses, and their caravels flew the Cross of Christ on their sails. On Henry’s orders, the captives were instructed by priests in the Christian faith. But the religion of Europe came hand in hand with the sword and the culverin. Before long, many a lonely bay in Africa would echo with the cries of captives, as a superior technology and civilization were imposed upon them by force.

Henry was still eager for his navigators to sail to the fertile lands and the great rivers, which he had heard lay farther to the south of Cape Blanco. The fact that he was now able to find men willing to put up the money for these expeditions was a great relief. He had borne the whole cost for so many years that it seemed logical to allow others to fit out the ships. He could content himself with the knowledge that even if they went for personal gain, they were also serving his purpose. Whether they would or not, some of them were bound to advance the geographical knowledge of the continent.

Typical of these early expeditions was one fitted out by Langarote, the King’s customs officer at Lagos. Langarote provided and provisioned six caravels, the captain of one of them being Gil Eannes, the man who had made all this possible by being the first to round Cape Bojador. In midsummer the raiding expedition came down the hot coastline, and into the steamy Bay of Arguim. Azurara cannot restrain a note of pity as he tells of what followed:

“Then you might see mothers abandoning their children, and husbands abandoning their wives, each thinking only how to escape as quickly as possible. Some drowned themselves in the sea, others sought refuge in their huts, and others hid their children under the mud—thinking that they might thus hide them from the enemy and be able to collect them later… .” Yet he is able to go on, without any trace of irony: “And at length Our Lord God, who always rewards the upright, wishing to recompense them [the Portuguese] for their work during this day, ordained that they should have victory over their enemies and should capture 165 men, women and youths. This is without reckoning those that died in the battle or killed themselves.”

It was a polite fiction to call these unhappy Berbers and Negroes “enemies.” Although most of the Berbers were certainly Mohammedans—and therefore technically at war with Christians—the Negroes were primitive heathen. They were quite unaware of the conflicting merits or demerits of the two warring religions.

On August 8,1444, the six caravels landed their prisoners at Lagos. The whole town was astir, and people had even ridden in from the surrounding countryside to see the black gold that was being mined in the distant south. Merchants, farmers, and nobles alike had been quick to see the value of cheap labor in their fields and houses. “Envy began to gnaw at them as they saw the houses of others filled with servants, and their possessions increased… .”

The manpower problem in Portugal was acute, and it was easy to see how these captives could help to solve it. The population, small in any case, had been drained by the Castilian wars of King John’s time; men had been lost at Ceuta, others at Tangier, and yet others had gone to colonize Prince Henry’s Atlantic islands. The almost annual recurrence of plague in the seaports of Lisbon and Porto caused a further steady drain on the country’s population.

Seasick, homesick, and some of them wounded, the Africans were destined for the first of the Lagos slave auctions. “… Very early, because of the heat, the sailors began to fill the boats and take the captives ashore as they had been ordered. And when they were all assembled in this field it was an astonishing sight, for some of them were almost white, handsome, and with well-made bodies. Others were black as Ethiopians and as ugly… . But what heart even the hardest would not be moved by pity when seeing them gathered together; for some bowed their heads, with their faces bathed in tears; others groaned and raised their faces to the heavens as if to implore the Father to help them; others beat their faces with their hands and threw themselves full length upon the ground.”

Without regard for racial or family ties, the captives were divided among their owners. One-fifth of them belonged to Prince Henry, for such were the terms under which the expeditions went to Africa. It is impossible to know what he made of the tragic scene. We know that he was there, on horseback in the midst of his people, and the only clue to his feelings can be gauged from the words: “… He parcelled out his share like a man who was in no way eager to possess great riches, since, out of the forty souls who fell to his lot, he made presents of them. He had no other pleasure than in thinking that these lost souls would now be saved.”

His captains and the merchants of Lisbon may have been hypocritical, but it does not accord with what we know of Prince Henry’s character. Azurara’s comment in this case is probably accurate. He goes on to say that Henry’s “hope was not in vain for, as soon as the Moors understood our language, they became Christians. And I, who write this history, have seen in the city of Lagos boys and girls, the children and grandchildren of these Moors, born in our country, as good and true Christians as though they had been descended from those who were first baptised according to Christ’s law.”

Azurara calls all these first captives “Moors,” but later in his narrative he makes the important distinction that “they were not hardened in their beliefs like other Moors and embraced the law of Christ without difficulty.” Most of them, in fact, were Negroes from northern Senegal, who were of course heathen, not Mohammedan, and thus presented little resistance to conversion. Distributed like slaves, they were not treated as such, for none of them was ever chained. They were treated with kindness, were taught trades, and intermarried with the Portuguese. Within a generation they were regarded as little or no different from any Portuguese peasant. Harrowing though the description of their capture and disposal at Lagos is, it is important to bear in mind how different was their fate from that of later generations in Africa who were sold to slavers for the plantations of the West Indies and America.

The Portuguese attitude toward the Africans was determined by the Church’s outlook on the subject. Color of skin was unimportant. So long as they embraced the Christian faith, they received far better treatment than would any Arab prisoner who remained adamant in his faith. Azurara compares these Negroes with the North African Arabs and notes four things that differentiate them: firstly, that after being for some time in Portugal they did not try to escape, but even forgot their own country; secondly, that they were very loyal and obedient and bore no malice; thirdly, that they were “less inclined to lewdness than the others”; and fourthly, that as soon as they had been given clothes, they evinced a marked taste for “baubles and gaudy colours.” This first European assessment of the African character is curiously accurate, for amiability and a love of bright colors are still outstanding features of the African.

The Portuguese, to their credit, never overlooked their common humanity with their African prisoners. “Sons of Adam like ourselves,” it was said of them. A number of the captives who fell to Prince Henry’s lot were given to the Church to be educated. Among them was one young boy who later grew up to be a Franciscan friar and to serve in the monastery on Cape St. Vincent. Azurara commented with sincerity: “How great must be the reward of the Prince before the Lord God for having saved not these souls alone but many, many more in the course of his life!”

From 1442 to 1447, while Prince Peter was ruling Portugal as undisputed regent, Henry was able to devote himself almost exclusively to his African projects. It was easy now to find men willing to go raiding down the coast, but to find the kind of man who would devote himself exclusively to the Prince’s search for knowledge was another matter. Henry not only wanted information about the continent; he also wanted, if possible, to maintain a friendly relationship with the tribes along the coast. With every year that went by, this became more difficult, for the natives now knew what a caravel portended when she slid round a headland and lowered her boats.

In 1445 Henry had an example of the way in which his captains were disobeying his orders. A squire of his household, Gongalo de Cintra, was ordered to sail as far as Guinea and not to stop until he had reached the fertile country to the south. But Gongalo de Cintra was like everyone else—once it had been raiding parties into the Mediterranean or the Canaries that had deflected the captains from their orders, and now it was the chance of making a slaving raid on the African coast. Gongalo de Cintra paid for his disobedience with his life. He was ambushed and killed, along with seven companions, in the bleak bay north of Cape Blanco, which still bears his name. These were the first Portuguese losses of the West African expeditions, and they served to increase Henry’s desire to make peace with the natives.

From now on the divergence between the Prince’s intentions and the conduct of the ships sailing under his banner became more and more apparent. He could hardly forbid men like Langarote from equipping expeditions, and he could no longer control them by withholding his rewards and favors. They were now able to find their own rewards, and as for favors—he was bound to honor men who brought back heathen souls for conversion. By the end of his life, however, he was successful in winning their friendship by peaceful means.

In the very year in which Gongalo de Cintra lost his life, Prince Henry found a man who was prepared to serve him in the true spirit of adventure. He was a squire called Joao Fernandes, who went out in an expedition financed by the Prince. These ships had orders to treat with the natives, and to try to come to some peaceful arrangement for the exchange of merchandise.

Joao Fernandes volunteered to be set ashore in Africa and to stay there throughout a winter. His aim was to gather information about the climate, geography, and customs, and to make friends with the people. In view of the Portuguese behavior to date along this coastline, he was a brave man. It seems that the natives respected this quality in him, for no sooner was he put ashore than he went off in company with a group of Berbers who practically adopted him. Fernandes was the first European to bring back first-hand information of the Saharan region of Africa and of the customs of the Berbers and Tuareg Arabs. He landed in company with an old Moor who had been in Prince Henry’s court and who was now returning to his own people. Fernandes had already acquired some Arabic, and possibly also a slight knowledge of the Berber dialect.

The following year Antao Gongalves, who had now been given command of a caravel, picked up Fernandes at Cape Resgate. In company with him was a Berber chief who had befriended him, and who brought along some Negroes to barter with the Portuguese. Fernandes’s account of his wanderings in the barren Sahara must have fascinated Prince Henry, for this was just the kind of information he was always seeking and so rarely finding.

It was a land without any grass except in the valleys, Fernandes told him, and the people were nomads speaking the Berber tongue, and of the Mohammedan faith. Their diet was largely milk, except for the coastal nomads who were fishermen and lived on raw, sun-dried fish. Wheat was a luxury, and the nomads ate it as a Portuguese would a sweetmeat. Most of the men were clothed in leather jackets and breeches, the wealthier wearing long woolen capes. “But the chiefs,” said Fernandes, “have good raiment like that of the other Moors. They have fine horses, handsome saddles, and stirrups. Their women wear capes of wool which form a kind of mantle with which they hide their faces.” It seemed that, like the ostriches, they thought that they were thus completely concealed, for their bodies were naked, and Fernandes concluded: “Certainly this is one of the things that show the brutishness of man… .”