NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 81Dangerous Passage
In the spring of 1619, the Portuguese-Imbangala
campaign was in full force, capturing and selling
Ndongo prisoners into the Atlantic world. Cap-
tain Manuel Mendes da Cunha, of the Spanish
slave ship San Juan Bautista, stopped in Luanda,
the capital of what was then Portuguese An-
gola, to purchase human cargo to take to Ve-
racruz, New Spain, in present-day Mexico. He
bought approximately 350 Africans, many of
them likely captured from the Ndongo empire.
His ship left the port for a months-long voyage
across the ocean.
They entered the Middle Passage, a phrase
used to describe both the trip itself and the ship-
ping of people from the coasts of Africa to the
European colonies in the Americas. Conditions
aboard the ships were dreadful; a lack of food and
water, physical abuse, and severe overcrowding
led to the death of approximately 30 percent of
the captives on any given ship. To survive the
Middle Passage was a feat in itself: Hundreds of
ships sank, small- and large-scale revolts broke
out, and disease and starvation were widespread.
The San Juan Bautista was no exception, as sick-
ness took hold aboard the vessel. Of the 350 cap-
tured and enslaved African men, women, and
children, roughly 150 died on the journey west.
In addition to the trauma of widespread death
on the San Juan Bautista, the crew was also con-
cerned about English privateers, who were as-
signed to take any goods aboard Spanish and
Portuguese ships. By this period, both Spain
and Portugal had colonized much of the Amer-
icas, and the British were in fierce competition
for both land and power in the so-called New
World. In previous decades, Englishmen such
as Sirs Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Grenville,
John Hawkins, Walter Raleigh, and Francis Drake
were sent by Queen Elizabeth I to the Atlantic
and Caribbean, where they attacked and seized
goods from Spanish ships and colonies.
It was because of this complex political cli-
mate that the Africans aboard the San Juan Bau-SCULPTORS IN THE KONGO CREATED NKISI, POWER FIGURES
LIKE THIS ONE FROM THE 19TH CENTURY, THAT WERE BELIEVED
TO POSSESS MYSTICAL FORCES. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK