Artistry Permits and Custom May Ordain - Northwestern University

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Kirimba Islands 108 indigo was grown primarily on Kirimba and Kiswi at the mouth of the
Milwani river (Miluâne or Melluane in the Portuguese sources). 109 Dos Santos wrote:
In these lands [Kirimba Islands] there are many plants of which they make blue dye . . . This plant is
picked by the mouros of the island . . . And after they have been picked and trampled well, then [it is]
laid out in bundles in a wooden trough of water, where it is dissolved into a liquid . . . which they
throw in other troughs, or basins of stone, and [then] put in the sun to dry, where they are curdled
and dried and are gathered . . . And then extracted in fragments dry and hard like rock. 110
Following extraction of the indigo solids which could be redissolved, the dye blocks were
used for soaking the cotton thread near Milwani, and subsequently the colored thread was
exported to weavers on neighboring islands. There “rich cloths [were] made for women’s
clothing, Portuguese as well as Mouras [Swahili women], and important Mouros [Swahili
men].” Indeed, the reputation of the cloths was so great that Milwani textiles were
sought by non-Swahili aristocrats in the Sofala hinterland and on the Zambezi. The
whole Kirimba archipelago came to be referred to simply as “Melluane” in the 1500s
because of the commercial importance and primacy of cloth. 111
Dos Santos makes it clear that Milwani cloth was prestigious, owned generally by
“important Mouros” and “highly esteemed by the cafres kings of Sofala and Rios de
Cuama.” 112 This broad appreciation on the coast and in the southern interior for cloths
from the Kirimba archipelago fueled a constant demand for regional textiles even though
(or, for the elite, because) their prices were high. Milwani was also of major significance in
the cross-Mozambique channel trade—a web of commercial networks integrating the
108 It is worth noting that dos Santos says two of the islands of the archipelago were named Shanga and Malindi,
presumably by settlers to the region. 1:275. cf. H. Leitão, ed., Dois Roteiros do séclo XVI, de Manuel Monteiro e
Gaspar Ferreira Reimão, atribuídos a João Baptista Lavanha. Lisbon, 1963.
109 The Kirimba Islands were also agriculturally productive. Between them, the islands grew enough rice and millet
for export. Dos Santos, 1:288-92. The Milwani area was heavily engaged in trade with the Comoros and
northwestern Madagascar. “Carta de Sebastião de Sousa para el-Rei, Moçambique, 1521 Setembro 17,” DPMAC.
6:66. On the cartography of the mid-sixteenth century Kirimba archipelago, see da Couto, Decado 10, DPMAC.
8:264-6; G. Randles, The Kingdom of Monomotapa on Selected Maps of the Sixteenth Century. London, 1962; and
Leitão, Dois Roteiros.
110 Dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental, 1:279.
111 Ibid. In the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese at Mozambique traded heavily in local cloth. After six years
in office as Factor of Mozambique, Diogo Vaz had received 2,871 yards of narrow “cloth of the land.” “Carta de
quitação de Diogo Vaz, fietor de Moçambique, 1513 Julho 13,” DPMAC. 3:472. An indigo cloth used by the
Mijikenda on the northern coast is still called musumbiki, and it is possible that Kirimban indigos were exported
to the north until relatively recently. See R. Trillo, “Fashion and Fabrics: The Symbolic Use of Cloth in Swahili
Society,” n.p., 1984. 36.
112 Dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental, 1:279.