By the 1600 they were all participating in the slave trade, English, French, Spanish. They were spreading it as they tried to expand their borders.
They called her Angela and she was one of the first women of African descent to land at Jamestown in 1619. In 1622 lived through the attack of Native Americans. In 1625 she is listed as a Negro woman living in the household of Captain William Pierce. They do not think she was an indentured servant, but was probably made to serve indefinitely.
Angela was Angolan from the Ndongo Kingdom who had been capture in her native land and taken aboard the San Juan Bautista. The ship was headed to Veracruz, Mexico but some English privateers captured it. They split the enslaved individuals and went on their way.
Angela was brought to Jamestown a ship called the Treasurer. She was captured because she has a skillset that would make the owners a profit.
Don Miguel de Castro was an ambassador from the Kingdom of Congo in the 1600s. He travelled to Europe and South America representing the interest of the Congo. He was also a cousin to the Count of Sonho, a province in Angola.
A portrait was painted of him in 1643, one of 20 commissioned. Some of which ended up in the National Gallery of Denmark.
Nzinga Mbande (c. 1583 – 1663) was Queen of the Ambundu Kingdoms of Ndongo (1624–1663) and Matamba (1631–1663), located in present-day northern Angola. Born into the ruling family of Ndongo, Nzinga received military and political training as a child, and she demonstrated an aptitude for defusing political crises as an ambassador to the Portuguese Empire.
In 1624, Ana Nzinga inherited rule of Ndongo, a state to the east of Luanda populated primarily by Mbundu peoples. At that moment, the kingdom was under attack from both Portuguese as well as neighboring African aggressors. Nzinga realized that, to remain viable, Ndongo had to reposition itself as an intermediary rather than a supply zone in the slave trade. To achieve this, she allied Ndongo with Portugal, simultaneously acquiring a partner in its fight against its African enemies and ending Portuguese slave raiding in the kingdom.
Martín de Porres Velázquez OP was a Peruvian lay brother of the Dominican Order who was beatified in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. He is the patron saint of mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, public health workers, and all those seeking racial harmony.
Martin was born in the city of Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru, on 9 December 1579. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman, Don Juan de Porras y de la Peña, and Ana Velázquez, a freed slave of African and Native descent. He had a sister named Juana de Porres, born two years later in 1581. After the birth of his sister, the father abandoned the family. Ana Velázquez supported her children by taking in laundry. He grew up in poverty and, when his mother could not support him, Martin was sent to a primary school for two years, and then placed with a barber/surgeon to learn the medical arts.
The Castillo de San Marcos is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States; it is located on the western shore of Matanzas Bay in the city of St. Augustine, Florida. Originally built of wood by the Spanish, it was later created as a stone fortress in 1672. In 1687 enslaved people from the Carolinas would escape to fort because the Spanish would free them and give them jobs.
A Fistful of Shells, Toby Green
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_2/hd_pwmn_2.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_de_Porres
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/american_latino_heritage/castillo_de_san_marcos_national_monument.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_San_Marcos
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