Diogo Cão, the mouth of the Congo and João II's reward of 8 April 1484

Working south along the African coast just north of the Congo in 1482, Diogo Cão's ship passed a line of red cliffs. While the ship was still five leagues from land, about 30 kilometres, the water around it was fresh. A legend on a chart drawn soon after the voyage records the moment.1 source1 source

João de Barros, the royal historian who told the story in 1552, wrote that in the rainy season the river came into the sea so strongly that its water was fresh twenty leagues out. Its own people called it the Zaire. The Portuguese first named it the river of the padrão, after the stone pillar Cão set up at its mouth. Later they called it after the kingdom it ran through, Kongo.1 source1 source

Cão took his ship a short way upstream. People crowded the banks, but his interpreters, Africans from coasts already known to the Portuguese, could not make themselves understood. By signs, the people told him that a powerful king lived inland, so many days' walk away.2 sources2 sources

On 8 April 1484, back in Lisbon, King João II rewarded Cão for that voyage with an annuity. Six days later he made him a nobleman, with a coat of arms bearing two of his stone pillars. What became of Cão after his next voyage is still unknown.2 sources2 sources

Portuguese ships had been working down the west coast of Africa since Gil Eanes rounded Cape Bojador in 1434. Under King Afonso V the crown leased the Guinea trade to a contractor, Fernão Gomes, on condition that his captains discovered new coast; Barros credits them with 500 leagues of it. By the time his monopoly ended in 1475 they had reached Cabo de Santa Catarina, just south of the equator, where a tree marked their furthest point.3 sources3 sources

João II, Afonso's son, had drawn the revenues of the Guinea trade since 1473 and became king in 1481. His first move was to protect that trade from Castilian and other interlopers. On 20 January 1482 Diogo de Azambuja laid the foundations of São Jorge da Mina, a fortress on the Gold Coast. Through it, Barros wrote, the king meant to take possession of the whole coast.2 sources2 sources

Then he took up exploration again. The chronicler Rui de Pina called him a good Catholic and a man with an inquiring mind. His captains were also after trade and, before long, news of Prester John, a Christian king Europeans hoped to find somewhere in Africa or Asia.2 sources2 sources

He chose Diogo Cão, of whom little is known before 1482. The geographer E. G. Ravenstein, who studied the documents in 1900, called him a man of the people, descended from a bailiff of Vila Real in Trás-os-Montes. In 1480 he had captured three Spanish ships on the Guinea coast. Vila Real claims him as a native, and in 1948 the town put a plaque on a house on its main square said to have been his.2 sources2 sources

No log or letter from the voyage survives. Its dates come from stone and parchment. The pillar Cão set up in Angola is inscribed with the year 6681 of the world and 1482 of Christ. In the calendar it uses, the year 6681 began on 1 September 1481, so Ravenstein concluded that the king gave his order between January and August 1482 and that Cão sailed around June.2 sources2 sources

The chroniclers got the dates wrong. Barros put the voyage in 1484 and Rui de Pina in 1485. Royal letters from April 1484 prove Cão was already home by then.2 sources2 sources

Cão called at São Jorge da Mina for supplies and then made for Cape Lopez, in modern Gabon. Beyond it progress was slow, because the current runs north and the winds blow from the south. One bay, which may be Loango Bay, he named the beautiful beach of São Domingos. If he arrived on the saint's day, 4 August, he reached the Congo later that month, which is why the discovery is usually dated to August 1482. The Belgian historian René Cambier put it in 1483.2 sources2 sources

On the southern point of the river mouth, in what is now Angola, he set up his first pillar. It was dedicated to St George, a saint for whom the king had a singular devotion, Barros says. Cão then sent a few of his men inland with presents for the king, guided by local people who promised to bring them back within a set number of days. Ravenstein and Cambier describe the envoys as Black Christians from his crews.3 sources3 sources

The king they were sent to was the ruler of Kongo, the Mani Kongo, whose capital, Mbanza Kongo, lay nearly 250 kilometres inland. It was later renamed São Salvador and is now in northern Angola.1 source1 source

Cão did not wait for them. He sailed south along the coast of present-day Angola, past the islands off modern Luanda. At a low headland he called Cabo do Lobo, Seal Cape, now Cabo de Santa Maria at 13 degrees 26 minutes south, he set up his second pillar, dedicated to St Augustine. A chart drawn soon afterwards marks it as the last one.2 sources2 sources

Back at the Congo, the envoys had not returned, though they had been gone twice the time agreed. Local people still came aboard freely to trade. Cão seized four of them and let their people understand, by signs, that he would bring them back in fifteen moons and exchange them for his own men. Barros says the four were noblemen.2 sources2 sources

According to Rui de Pina, the Portuguese at the king's court had been well treated until then. When the king heard what Cão had done, he refused to receive them and threatened to kill them if his people were not brought back in time.1 source1 source

Cão was back in Lisbon early in 1484. His hostages had picked up Portuguese on the way, Barros says, and could already answer questions about their country. João II was pleased with one of them, a nobleman called Caçuta. The four were dressed in fine cloth and silk.2 sources2 sources

The king first made Cão a cavaleiro, a knight of the royal household. Then, on 8 April 1484, he granted him an annuity of 10,000 reais, which could pass after his death to one surviving son, “in consideration of the services rendered in the course of a voyage of discovery to Guinea, from which he had now returned”.2 sources2 sources

On 14 April, six days later, the king ennobled him and gave him arms. The shield was green, with two silver columns, each rising from a small mound and topped by a cross: the two padrões he had planted in Africa. For a crest, the two columns were crossed and tied with a green ribbon.1 source1 source

The promotion can be read in stone. On the pillar of 1482 he is an escudeiro, an esquire of the king's household. On the pillar he set up on his next voyage, carved after these grants, he is a cavaleiro, a knight.1 source1 source

The next expedition did not sail until late 1485: the Cape Cross pillar gives the year 6685 of the world, which began on 1 September 1485, and 1485 of Christ. Ravenstein thought the delay may have been to carve the new royal arms João II adopted that year. The date was carved in Portugal before the ships left, so the pillar itself probably went up in 1486, the year the German government gives for it.2 sources2 sources

This time Cão led more than one ship. Ravenstein names Pero Anes and Pero da Costa as his fellow captains. On board were the four Kongo hostages, carrying presents from João II and a message inviting their king to give up his old religion and become a Christian.3 sources3 sources

Barros says the people at the river mouth were delighted to see their kinsmen alive and well dressed. Cão sent one of the four inland to the king, got his own men back in exchange for the other three, and promised to visit the king on his way back from the south.1 source1 source

At some point the Portuguese also went up the river itself, about ninety miles, past the site of the modern port of Matadi to where the Congo breaks into rapids. Within sight of the Yellala Falls they cut a cross, the royal arms and their names into the rock.2 sources2 sources

More names follow. Pero Escolar later piloted one of Vasco da Gama's ships, and João de Santiago sailed with Bartolomeu Dias in 1487, as pilot of the store-ship according to Barros. Among the names are crosses and the words “of illness”, which may mark men who died of disease.2 sources2 sources

One name is missing. Martin Behaim, the Nuremberg merchant whose globe of 1492 survives, later claimed to have commanded one of Cão's ships. Ravenstein concluded that he was never part of the expedition.2 sources2 sources

Barros does not mention the trip, and the inscription has no date. Its coat of arms is the version adopted in 1485, so it cannot be earlier, and Ravenstein and Cambier both place it on the second voyage. The rock is about 2 kilometres above the mouth of the Mpozo river, where the rapids begin. A map marked a “Portuguese padrão” there by 1882. Cambier credits its discovery to a missionary at Matadi, Domenjos, whose photograph of it was published in 1907.3 sources3 sources

Then Cão headed south past his old pillar, raiding ashore now and then to seize people who could be taught Portuguese and used as interpreters, Barros says. About 160 miles beyond Cabo de Santa Maria, at 15 degrees 41 minutes south, he set up a pillar on a black headland that rises like an island, Monte Negro.2 sources2 sources

The coast grew poorer until there were only sandhills and bare rock. At 21 degrees 50 minutes south, on a low cone of red sandstone in what is now Namibia, he set up his last pillar. The place is Cape Cross. Ravenstein identified the furthest point the fleet reached as the Serra Parda of the old charts, a dark cliff a little further south.2 sources2 sources

After 1486 Cão's name disappears from Portuguese records. How his life ended is still argued over, and two very different accounts survive.2 sources2 sources

The first is a note on a world map drawn around 1489 by Henricus Martellus Germanus. Beside the African coast he wrote that Cão had died just beyond his last pillar.2 sources2 sources

A Spanish document seems to agree. In 1524 the astronomers and pilots advising Spain at the meeting with Portugal at Badajoz wrote that Cão, on his second voyage, discovered the coast from Monte Negro to the Serra Parda, “donde murió”, where he died. Among those who signed it were Hernando Colón, son of Christopher Columbus, and Juan Sebastián Elcano.2 sources2 sources

The Portuguese chroniclers tell a different story. Rui de Pina and Barros have Cão return to the Congo and visit the king, who asked João II for priests, masons, carpenters and women to bake bread. The king sent Caçuta back to Portugal with Cão as his ambassador, with young men to be taught and baptised, and gifts of ivory and palm cloth. At Beja, Barros says, Caçuta was baptised with the king as his godfather and the queen as godmother, and took the name João da Silva.2 sources2 sources

Ravenstein found that the dates did not fit. Caçuta appears to have been baptised early in 1489, but Cão's ships were back before Dias sailed in August 1487, probably by the autumn of 1486. Ravenstein thought the chroniclers had given Cão events that belonged to a later voyage, perhaps Dias's.2 sources2 sources

Others have disagreed. Writing in 1951, Cambier reported the view of Mgr Cuvelier, an authority on the Portuguese discoveries, that the second voyage left in 1484 or early 1485, and that Cão made a third in 1487 and 1488 and then went home to die in Vila Real. Cambier was not persuaded. He accepted only that the expedition, with or without its leader, was back in Lisbon before Dias set out.1 source1 source

Soon after Cão's ships came home, Bartolomeu Dias was given command of a new fleet. He sailed in August 1487, taking home some of the people Cão had seized south of the Congo, passed Cão's last pillar and went on to round the southern tip of Africa. Barros counted 750 leagues of new coast found by the two captains, with six pillars along it.2 sources2 sources

The contact Cão made with Kongo lasted much longer than he did. In December 1490 Caçuta, now João da Silva, sailed home with João II's ambassador, though both died of plague on the way, and the embassy reached the Congo in about a hundred days. It was received by the king of Kongo in 1491, and the conversion of that king, which Barros saw as the fruit of the hostages' baptism, is another story.3 sources3 sources

The Capuchin missionaries Cavazzi and Merolla recorded that the Dutch broke up the São Jorge pillar when they occupied the Congo coast in 1642. Local priests kept the fragments as powerful charms, until two large pieces went to the museum of the Lisbon Geographical Society, which also received the Monte Negro pillar.2 sources2 sources

In 1893 Captain Becker of the German warship Falke carried the Cape Cross pillar off from what was then German South West Africa. It went to Kiel and then to the Institute of Oceanography in Berlin. In 1895 Kaiser Wilhelm II had a granite copy set up on the cape, with an added German inscription and the imperial eagle.3 sources3 sources

Five centuries on, Cão's last pillar became the subject of a restitution claim. Namibia asked Germany for it in a diplomatic note of 1 June 2017. On 16 May 2019 the trustees of the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, where it had been on show since 2006, agreed to give it back. The museum describes the cross as limestone, 3.5 metres tall and weighing 1.1 tonnes.2 sources2 sources

The pillar reached Namibia by ship in August 2019. In May 2021 the German government told the Bundestag that it was still in a warehouse in Walvis Bay, carefully packed, while the two countries negotiated the formal handover. The German copy of 1895 had been declared a Namibian national monument in 1968, and a faithful replica of the original was unveiled on the site in 1986.3 sources3 sources

For Portugal, Cão's landing at the Congo began a long relationship with Kongo, and it began with gifts and hostages. The river still carries the name of the kingdom he found on its banks, and the point where his first pillar stood is still called Ponta do Padrão, the point of the pillar.2 sources2 sources