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Milho Zaburro and Milho Maçaroca in Guinea and in the Islands of Cabo Verde1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Extract

It has been claimed that Zea mays existed in Africa before the discovery of America, but the plant is more generally considered to be a native of America, which could have spread through other continents only in post-Columbian times.

This latter opinion has recently been challenged by several writers. Jeffreys, for instance, has since 1953 consistently maintained that on arrival in Guinea the Portuguese found Zea mays already well established there, as the cereal they called milho zaburro, previously introduced by the Arabs, who would have visited America long before Columbus. On the other hand, V. de Magalhães Godinho, pertinently refuting many of Jeffreys's reasonings and identifications, has put forward the view that, before the Portuguese voyages of discovery, there existed in Africa a variety of Zea mays, which was subsequently replaced by the American variety; the Portuguese would have become familiar with this variety in Morocco, and it would be this plant which they called milho zaburro, or milho maçaroca. To both these authors the designations milho maçaroca and Zea mays are indisputably synonymous.

Résumé

MILHO ZABURRO ET MILHO MAÇAROCA DANS LA GUINÉE ET DANS LES ÎLES DU CAP VERT

L'identification du milho zaburro et du milho maçaroca des textes portugais du XVIe siècle a été le motif de grandes discussions dans les dernières années, les opinions se partageant entre le Zea mays et le Sorghum. On fait maintenant une nouvelle analyse de la question, en utilisant nouveaux éléments, sous trois aspects: géographique, linguistique et documental. Les textes portugais montrant que, au XVIe siècle, le milho zaburro ou maçaroca était très abondant dans la zone du Sénégal, il ne pouvait, donc, s'agir du Zea mays, puisque les conditions de sols et climat n'y lui sont favorables, la production actuelle ne dépassant 1/50 de l'ensemble Sorghum-Pennisetum. L'analyse de la terminologie dans le Créole de Guinée portugaise est aussi très significative. Ce parler a une grande influence mandingue et conserve beaucoup de mots portugais archaïques. Ainsi, dans le Créole, le Sorghum est appellé miju branku, correspondant au milho branco des textes portugais anciens, et au Zea mays est donné le nom miju brazil, ce qui prouve son origine americaine et son introduction post-colombienne. Sous l'aspect documental, on cite deux nouveaux témoins. L'un est la description du milho maçaroca faite en 1616 par le Pe Manuel Álvares, qui vécut dix années à Sierra Leone; on vérifie qu'il s'agit du Pennisetum. L'autre est la description des milhos de la Gambie, faite par Francis Moore, en 1728; on en vérifie que dans le Créole le nom manseroke était donné au Pennisetum. En appendix on cite deux nouveaux documents, témoignant que l'expression milho maçaroca de Guiné était courante parmi les Portugais dans cette région vers 1528, et un autre document de 1641, où l'on parle du milho brazil, ce qui vient confirmer que l'actuel miju brazil du Créole vient d'une désignation portugaise aujourd'hui en desuétude. En concluant, tout fait croire que les Portugais, au XVIe siècle, ont donné les noms milho zaburro et milho maçaroca au Pennisetum.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1966

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References

page 73 note 2 Jeffreys, M. D. W., ‘The Origin of the Portuguese Word Zaburro as their Name for Maize’, in Bull. I.F.A.N., Dakar, xix B, 1–2, 1957, pp. 111–36Google Scholar, and other papers, the most recent of which is Milho zaburro = Milho da Guiné = Maize, in Garcia de Orta, xi. 2, pp. 213–26, Lisboa, 196;.

page 73 note 3 Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães, ‘O milho maiz—origem e difusão’, in Revista de Economia, xv. 5, 1963, pp. 3338Google Scholar.

page 73 note 4 J. B. Ramusio, Delle navigation! et viaggi, Venetia, 1550.

page 73 note 5 Throughout this paper the word ‘Guinea’ will refer to the region which the Portuguese used to call ‘Rios de Guiné de Cabo Verde’—this is to say, the area extending from Senegal down to Sierra Leone.

page 73 note 6 Th. Monod, A. Teixeira da Mota et R. Mauny, Description de la Côte occidentale d'Afrique (Sénégal au Cap de Monte, Archipels) par Valentim Fernandes, Bissau, 1951, p. 191.

page 74 note 1 ‘the milhos of maçaroca which we call zaburro, which is the normal nutriment of those peoples’— henceforward the Portuguese word mantimento will remain untranslated; we have chosen to translate it here by the archaic nutriment (term of 1541, Shorter Oxford English Dictionary): ‘that which nourishes’. Mantimento was used to designate the staple foodstuff, as opposed to fruto ( = fruit)—(translator's note).

page 74 note 2 ‘the wonderful & famous seed called mahiz in the West Indies, which nourishes half the world, is called milho zaburro by the Portuguese’.

page 74 note 3 Luigi Messedaglia, Il mais e la vita rurale italiana, Piacenza, 1927, especially chapters viii and xiv.

page 74 note 4 Portères, Roland, ‘Les appelations des céréales en Afrique’, in Journal d' Agriculture tropicale et de botanique applique, v. 1–11, janv.-nov. 1958, vi. 1–7, janv.-juill. 1959 (pp. 127–30 of the offprint)Google Scholar.

page 75 note 1 ‘… its white milho, and other kinds and the one called maçaroca, because it grows at the top of the stem, and there, where nature produces it, takes the form of a long maçaroca; with this we make the cakes, called batancas, which on our tables take the place of common bread’ (Part II, chapter I). The manuscript of this large and valuable work of Manuel Álvares belongs to the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa; it will be published shortly, in Portuguese and French, in an annotated edition, by Luis de Matos and A. Teixeira de Mota.

page 75 note 2 ‘it is as substantial as bread’, ‘the flour of this milho is dark in colour’. André Álvares de Almada, Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guiné de Cabo Verde, ed. Luis Silveira, Lisboa 1946, pp. 62 and 96.

page 75 note 3 The particle ‘nyo’ is used in the Mandingo language to designate most varieties; lacking an equivalent term in English, we used the Portuguese form milho, which to a large extent corresponds to it, in (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), and (h).

page 76 note 1 Geraldes, F. A. Marques, ‘Guiné Portuguesa’, in Bol. Soc. Geografia, Lisboa, 7th ser., n. 8, 1887, p. 505Google Scholar.

page 76 note 2 The original meaning of tubabo has been the subject of controversy, some authors suggesting that the term was applied to the Arabs as well as to the Europeans. We must point out that, in Mandingo, tuba means trousers of European type, and so tubabo could have originally meant a man using this type of clothing, which would exclude the Arabs. It is interesting to note that in Mandingo tubabo also means ‘leper’. We must remember that in the area of Guinea the word tubabo appears in old Portuguese texts clearly associated with ‘whiteman’ ( = Portuguese). For instance, in the Descrição da Costa da Guiné, written 1669, Francisco de Lemos Coelho refers to the ports of Tubabocolom and Tubabocitá (‘which in the local language means whiteman's figtree’), both situated on the banks of the River Gambia, and the settlement of Tubabodaga (‘which in the Mandingo language means whiteman's village’) on the River Farim (Duas descryções seiscentistas da Guini de Francisco de Lemos Coelho, ed. Peres, Damião, Lisboa, 1953, pp. 14, 25, 37, and 131)Google Scholar.

page 76 note 3 Portères, op. cit., pp. 120–3.

page 77 note 1 ‘in all Brazil grows another mantimento, native of the same land, which the Indians call ubatim, and which is the milho of Guinea called zaburro in Portugal’. Gabriel Soares de Sousa, Noticia do Brasil, 1587, ed. Pirajá da Silva, São Paulo, n. d.

page 77 note 2milho of Guiné grows in Baía, but there it is not considered mantimento’.

page 77 note 3 ‘the Portuguese supply it [the ubatim] as fruto to the negroes of Guinea, who do not accept it as mantimento although this is the best their land gives’. (For the distinction between fruto and mantimento see p. 74, n. 1, above).

page 77 note 4 In several descriptions of English voyages to Guinea, published by Hakluyt and Purchas, one sees that the English use the name mayes or Guinea wheat to designate a certain African milho, which we feel sure could not have been Zea mays. It would be tedious to demonstrate here the fragility of a number of identifications made from texts of this kind, a mistake frequently committed by Jeffreys, an author who, furthermore, makes statements which are not in accordance with the history of Portuguese colonization on both shores of the Atlantic.

page 77 note 5 Lopes, Duarte and Pigafetta, F., Relação do Reino do Congo e terras circumvizinhas, facsimile edition and Portuguese translation by Capeans, Rosa, Lisboa, 1949–51Google Scholar.

page 77 note 6 de Marees, Pieter, Description et ré cit historial du riche royaume d'or de Guinée, Amsterdam, 1605Google Scholar.

page 78 note 1 After Gaudy, M., Manuel d' Agriculture tropicale — Afrique tropicale et equatoriale. Paris, 1959Google Scholar.

page 78 note 2 After Johnston, Bruce F., The Staple Food Economies of Western Tropical Africa, Stanford, 1958, p. 58Google Scholar, with the addition of data concerning Portuguese Guinea, after Cabral, Amilcar Lopes, ‘Recenseamento Agricola—estimativa em 1953’, in Bol. Cult, da Guiné Portuguesa, xi. 43, Julho, 1956Google Scholar.

page 79 note 1 Barros, loc. cit., gives details of the cultivation of this milho showing its resistance to low rainfall. Jeffreys (in his paper of 1963 mentioned in p. 73, n. 2, above) quotes a text of Bluteau, Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino, Lisboa, 1721, where the same Barros text is said to be from Decada I, book 3, chapter 7, and to refer to the Prester John—and this Jeffreys accepts. Now, chapter 7 deals with the christening of the Wolof Prince Bemoin in Lisbon, and there is no mention of milho whatsoever; it is obvious that Bluteau wrote chapter 7 for chapter 8, and this fact demonstrates how unreliable Bluteau can be in these matters, and shows the carelessness of Jeffreys, who fails to examine his sources critically and quotes them quite indiscriminately. This carelessness is revealed in many of the quotations he uses on which to base his arguments. Thus, in the same paper of 1963, he quotes a translation of the ‘Ordenações Manuelinas’ (1514), made by J. Blake in 1937, where there is a mention of a sale of milho in Guinea (more precisely in Bezeguiche, in the Wolof land) for the feeding of slaves; Blake translated ‘milho’ as ‘maize’ and Jeffreys shows no hesitation in using this translated text as a proof that Zea mays was then plentiful in Guinea! These are but two examples among many of a similar nature which we could give. Still on the subject of Bluteau, we recall that a Portuguese agriculturalist, C. da Cunha Moutinho (Origem e aclimação do milho em Portugal, Lisboa, 1917) had already shown almost half a century ago that Bluteau (as well as most Portuguese lexicographers) is not reliable when one is trying to identify botanically the various Portuguese designations for the various milhos.

page 79 note 2 In a long note, still unpublished, at the end of one of the known manuscripts of Almada's ‘Tratado Breve’ the importance of milho maçaroca in the feeding of both men and horses among the Fulas of Senegal is particularly emphasized. The ‘Tratado Breve’ will be published shortly in an annotated edition, in Portuguese and French, by A. Teixeira da Mota.

page 80 note 1 Manuscript of the Academia de Ciências de Lisboa, eventually to be published, because of its considerable contribution to the knowledge of the social and economic life in the islands in the early nineteenth century.

page 81 note 1 ‘the main sowing is that of milho zaburro; this is usually consumed by the creoulos and negroes, who make great quantities of xarem and cuscus; wheat gives a very good crop when they sow it, but few do, because a lot of flour is imported, and with this they prepare the daily bread eaten by the Portuguese’. These letters, as well as many other letters and reports by the Jesuits of Cabo Verde and Guinea Mission, particularly interesting for the knowledge of the social and economic life, as well as the history of islands and of Guinea, will be shortly published, in Portuguese and French, by A. Teixeira da Mota.

page 81 note 2 Today, as in the time of Lucas de Sena (1817), there is only one milho in the Cabo Verde islands. When earlier documents speak of two milhos, one of them called branco (branco still being used for Sorghum in creoulo, see p. 75), it is logical to conclude that those two milhos were Sorghum and Pennisetum.

page 81 note 3 ‘that the inhabitants of Cacheu order the preparation of the mantimento, which is the milho maçaroca and in each village they make more than five hundred moios of milho’. (moios = old measure equivalent to 822 litres—translator's note). Op. cit. in n. 2, p. 76, above.

page 81 note 4 Cultru, P., Premier Voyage de Sieur de La Courbe fait à la Coste d'Afrique en 1685, Paris, 1913, pp. 197 and 214Google Scholar.

page 82 note 1 Moore, Francis, Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa, London, 1738, pp. 3132Google Scholar.

page 83 note 1 A very interesting journal of a trading voyage of the same caravel Santiago to Serra Leoa (R. Scarcies?) and R. S. Domingos, in 1526, will be published shortly in Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, where it is stated that 12.5 moios de milho were bought in the latter river, for the feeding of the crew and slaves. This journal, written by the clerk according to the royal legislation, was to be delivered, upon arrival at Lisbon, to the officers of ‘Casa da Guiné e Mina’, where João de Barros was treasurer at the time. His name is indeed mentioned in the last pages of the document, in the verification of the clerk's accounts written by one of those officers. Hundreds of journals of this kind, relative to trading voyages to Guinea, must have passed through the hands of João de Barros, and we may even imagine that he sometimes saw the remains of milho maçaroca de Guiné brought by the ships (one must also remember that he had been governor of S. Jorge da Mina between 1522 and 1525). João de Barros was not only a great historian, but also a keen observer and one of the most remarkable geographers of his age; and he was surely very well informed when he wrote in his Asia about the importance of milho maçaroca as mantimento in Senegambia.