In 1588, Duarte Lopes, Kongo’s ambassador to Rome, related an account of Kongo to the Italian humanist Filippo Pigafetta (1591). In this account, among other things he related a devastating attack on Kongo by a group of rootless cannibals called “Giaghi,” re-graphed by later historians as “Jagas.” The English traveler Andrew Battell (Ravenstein 1901) also recorded his adventures farther south in Angola with a band of Jagas, and Jagas also played a major role in the Portuguese military operations in Angola.
As a result of the success of the first Jaga invasion, writers of the age sought to discover routes and groups of cannibals emerging from what was supposed to be a single Jaga invasion. It was connected to the Mane invasions of Sierra Leone, the Zumbi movement in Mozambique and surrounding areas, as well as the Imbangala invasions in Angola (Miller 1972; Sousa Pinto 1999-2000). Subsequent research has shown all of these groups to be separate and independent of each other; this arti...
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