Jaga, Cannibalism and the "Guerra Preta": the Mbangalas, between the european myth and the social realities of the Central Africa in the XVII century

The seventeenth-century European texts generally describe the Jaga role as a disruptive element of the peoples in the central Africa, calling them savages, cannibals and who practice idolatry. This paper presents to such view from the study of the rituals assigned to the Jaga in the Istorica descrizione tre regni, Congo, Matamba et Angola, by capuchin missionary Giovanni Cavazzi of Montecúccolo. Such rituals are faced with the descriptions about the role that Jaga played in the wars of the african hinterland during the conquest of Ndongo.

Jagas; Rituals; Central Africa; Traveler's accounts