with Palmares and other runaway settlements reckon that maroons used bows, arrows, and even firearms
when fighting the armies sent out to catch them.^70
The image of the African fighting with bare hands seems to derive from the already mentioned common
ignorance of African history and African warfare. Many African states maintained professional armies, whose
soldiers were experts in the use of sword, club, axe, spear, shield, bow and arrow. As John Thornton has
pointed out in a seminal article on the topic, the art of war in Angola evolved considerably after the arrival
of the Europeans, and both they and the Africans had to adapt to new circumstances.^71 As a result not only
arquebus and firearms (muskets) but even artillery was introduced on the Angolan battlefields. Some
African armies experimented with cotton armours, since the use of armour—more than firearms or horses—
seems to have been a key to the military success of the Portuguese in Angola. It appears therefore that one
should not look too much into African warfare for the origins of capoeira. But war dances and combat
games also featured prominently in many, if not all, African societies and were part of the arts of war in the
widest sense. Unfortunately the literature on this topic is scarce to the point that one can hardly dare to give
an overview.
African combat gamesFrom the scattered published sources at our disposal, it is clear that Africans used a wide range of fighting
techniques. Many of these were practised as combat games, that is, performed in contests with specific
rules.^72 It is difficult to assess for the pre-colonial period to what extent some of these combat games
constituted martial arts, based on specific philosophical and aesthetic principles only shared by practitioners.
Combat games can be classified according to their formal aspects into wrestling, hand or fist fighting
(boxing), kicking and head butting. A number of combat games also involved the use of weapons such as
sticks or spears.^73 Most arts were and are particularly strong in one or several of the African macro-regions.
Wrestling is especially prominent in West Africa, but also known in many other parts of the continent,
including Angola and Mozambique. Stick fighting is widely performed in most of Southern and Central
Africa, but is also practised in West and East Africa.^74 ‘Traditional’ fist fighting is still important in present-
day Nigeria and Cameroon. In contrast to the almost continental (and one should add universal)
dissemination of wrestling and stick fighting, references to combat games that use kicking and head butting
are much more limited. The known sources suggest that it was and is practised by some groups in Central
Africa, on Madagascar and other islands of the Indian Ocean where African slaves were introduced.
The social context of African combat games varied widely. Wrestling, for instance, was sometimes
practised by pre-pubescent boys, but in other cases it was part of the initiation ceremonies around puberty.
It was sometimes linked to circumcision, or to secret societies and cult groups.^75 Even though most of the
time wrestling was limited to younger age groups, on some occasions even married men wrestled. In a
number of matrilineal societies girls also participated in wrestling contests, and sometimes boys and girls
wrestled against each other. The place for wrestling contests varied accordingly, from the town marketplace
to hidden locations outside the settlements. Stick fighting is also commonly associated with younger age
groups.
Combat games fulfilled a wide range of social functions. In the Crossriver region of Cameroon (known as
Calabar to slave traders) wrestling contests also served as a means of settling quarrels, but they could also
symbolize the rivalry between marriage groups (the bridegroom’s age group relatives fighting with those of
the bride). Wrestling between boys and girls could dramatize the ambivalence of male-female relationships.
In other contexts wrestling styles served as means of group identification. Wrestling helped to establish
male rank order and good wrestlers always gained prestige within their kinship group and their community.
THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC 45