Nzinga Mbande

In the early 1600s, the Southwest African region we now know as Angola was divided up between two powerful, incredibly warlike tribes with rhyming names who hated each other's guts with a righteous fury – the Ndongo and the Kongo.  Nzinga, who is also known by Jinga, Singa, Zhinga, and Njinga (but never Njzhsinga) was the daughter of the King of the Ndongo, a misguided idiot who thought the best way to get a leg up on the Kongo was to trust a bunch of fucking Europeans who had come knocking on his door promising to give him all the money and handjobs he wanted if he would just let them cripple his economy, end his dynastic line, obliterate all traces of his native religion and enslave his entire population out from under him.

In the case of Angola it was the Portuguese who came blowing through on the European Civilization V 4X Colonization Exploitation World Tour 1621.   Most people probably don't think of the Portuguese as the pillage/plunder/etc. sort, but in the 17th century these guys came to Angola first as missionaries, then as colonists, then as slave traders, then as full-on occupiers.  At first they were kind of working with the King of Ndongo to capture slaves that could be brought to Portuguese mines and plantation in Brazil (which worked for the King as long as the people being deported were his enemies), but before long they realized fuck it, we don't really need to go through a middle man here, and when the King died the Portuguese threw his son into prison on some island and seized control of the kingdom by force.

The King's daughter, Princess Nzinga Mbande of Ndongo, marched into the Portuguese governor's office to demand the safe return of her brother and the departure of all Portuguese officials in Angola.  When she approached the governor to negotiate, he refused to give her a chair to sit on.  Nzinga snapped her fingers, and one of her servants got down on all fours so the Queen could sit on her back. 

Once the negotiations were over, Nzinga stood up, ordered the servant to stand, and then cut the servant's neck in full view of the horrified Portuguese administrators.  As everyone stood there in stunned silence for a second thinking to themselves, "seriously, what the fuck just happened here," Nzinga calmly informed the Governor that the Goddamned Queen of Ndongo never sits on the same chair twice.

She got her brother back.  She then had him murdered in his sleep so she could take the throne for herself.  Then she killed her brother's son – the only other potential heir to the throne – and ate his heart, believing this would help her absorb his power.  Mola Ram style.

Well the Portuguese weren't exactly about to crap themselves because some psycho cannibal chick was eating the internal organs of her unwanted family members, and they rolled into town with a shitting fuck balls-ton of Marines who proceeded to burn and cap everyone in their way.  Queen Nzinga had to bolt out of town, taking only a trusted bodyguard of hardcore warriors with her.

They headed south, where they ran into the much-feared Jaga Tribe – an understandably-avoided society of freaky Hannibal Lecter motherfuckers who ate human flesh and didn't have any laws preventing you from killing your own children if you thought they weren't going to grow up to be badass enough for your liking.

Nzinga Mbande and her Ndongo Warrior Brigade saw these sadistic mass-murdering maniacs, laughed their nuts off, then utterly destroyed them as a tribe.

From her new base in the south, Nzinga Mbande sat around most of the time bitterly hating the Portuguese and preparing to skewer their testicles on her machete and then impale them with their own nuts.  She trained an elite cadre of male and female warriors, and imported a hardened crew of sixty Dutch mercenaries – hardcore, trained European warriors with guns, rifles, and professional training – to act as the core of her new army and her own personal bodyguard on the front line of battle.  Most of these Dutchmen were a little horrified by Nzinga's pre-battle tendency to decapitate slaves and drink the arterial blood spray as it shot out from their necks like a middle school water fountain, but her money was good so they were willing to accept little eccentricities like cannibalism and borderline-insanity.  They also tried to ignore the 50-60 dudes she had hanging out as her own personal harem any time she got bored.

Next, she made deals with nearby African tribes to shut off the Portuguese slave trade in the heart of Angola by cutting off their access to roads and trading posts, choking off the Europeans' income and crippling the colonial economy.  When Portuguese troops marched in to re-open the roads by force, they were hit by badass guerilla attacks from Dutch riflemen and spear-slinging African tribal warriors with nothing to lose.

Carrying a bow, sword, and axe, and dressed in animal skins, Nzinga Mbande led her men into combat against the Portuguese, defeating them in pitched battles in 1645, 1647, and 1648, at one point even helping a Dutch Marines force re-take her old palace from the Portuguese Governor who had given her so much trouble previously.

Despite a number of victories against the Portuguese, she never fully reclaimed her throne as Queen of Ndongo, but she was also never beaten by the European colonials – a notable achievement for any native uprising at a time in the world where natives had sharp spears and rocks and Europeans were packing cannons, black powder shotguns and steel bayonets.  Eventually, the Portuguese got so sick of dealing with Nzinga that they gave up entirely – in 1656 they called her to a meeting, gave her a chair (they didn't want more servant's blood staining their carpets), and asked for a truce.  Nzinga Mbande allowed missionaries and slavers to come to her lands, and the Portuguese agreed not only to leave her alone, but to send their own troops to help her destroy any rival tribes that were pissing her off.

For the last seven years of her life, Nzinga Mbande's people lived in peace, unconquered by European colonialism.

Nzinga Mbande died in 1663, allegedly with a bow and arrow in her hands.  She is still seen as a symbol of African resistance in Angola and the Western African countries.

Sources:

Cross, Robin, and Rosalind Miles.  Hell Hath No Fury.  Three Rivers, 2008.

De Pauw, Linda Grant.  Battle Cries and Lullabies.  Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1998.

Fraser, Antonia.  The Warrior Queens.  Anchor, 1990.

Miles, Rosalind and Robin Cross.  Warrior Women.  Metro, 2011.