page_title: Sena people
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sena people / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The irony of this man's shirt is not understood in this Portuguese speaking nation, most can't even speak Portuguese. This man speaks Sena only. This is an image of Cultural Fashion or Adornment from Mozambique
context_page_description: The Sena people are an ethnic group, with origins in northwestern region of Mozambique in Tete Province, Manica Province, Sofala Province and Zambezia Province. They are also found in Malawi and Zimbabwe near their respective borders with Mozambique.
context_section_description: Historically the autocephalous Sena people were those between the two large cultures of Shona people – a major ethnic group of Zimbabwe, and the Nyanja-Chewa people – a major ethnic group of Malawi and Mozambique. The Sena people have lived mainly in the Zambezi River valley. According to Isaacman, the Sena represent an admix of people, exhibiting "most, though not all, of the characteristics of Shona cultural groups".
  After the arrival in 1498 of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on an Mozambique island in his search of a sea route to India, the colonial influence began on Sena and other ethnic groups in this part of Africa. Few years later, a storm hit a caravan of the ships of his countryman Pedro Álvares Cabral trying to repeat Vasco da Gama's voyage, separating them. Some ships reached modern Brazil, where they founded a Portuguese colony. Others went around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and reached Sofala, a Mozambique trading town with a busy gold market. Their reports triggered a gold rush and a commitment by Portugal king to settle Mozambique region where many ethnic groups including the Sena people lived. In 1514, Antonio Fernandez confirmed there were rich goldfields in middle Zambezi valley, the traditional home of Sena people, and the Portuguese interest in colonizing this region grew.
  Starting with the 16th century, Portuguese traders, farmers and missionaries arrived in the Zambezi valley (stations in Sena, Tete, Zumbo, Quelimane). The Portuguese settlers built farm estates in the river valleys, working them with African labor which included the Sena people. The interaction with the Portuguese settlers since the 1500s through the contemporary times have led to the Sena people absorbing many Portuguese customs. In 1531, Vicente Pegado founded a fair in a Muslim village along the Zambezi river, which then grew to become a major trading post, missionary center, colonial era garrison and market town. Pegado called this place Sena, and it is this Portuguese town after which the "Sena people" take their name.
  The gold trade was lucrative, and of interest to both Arab traders and the Portuguese. By 1542, the Arabs who were established in northeast Africa, the Horn of Africa and along the Swahili coast regions of Africa had established alternate routes for the gold, bypassing the Portuguese towns in Mozambique coast and the Island of Mozambique. The Portuguese attempted to get a larger share of the gold production and trading by establishing a larger presence in the Zambesi valley and by taking aggressive military action against small Muslim controlled sultanates along the coasts of East Africa. By late 16th century, particularly after Francisco Barreto 1569-1575 expedition, the Portuguese had gained control of all the major mining and trading regions along the Zambesi valley where Sena people have lived.
  In the 17th and 18th-century, conflicts grew as did new causes for it. For example, the ivory demand and the ivory exports from Mozambique grew, followed by the demand for slaves outside Africa ravaging the Zambesi valley people as well as all others in the rivers of Sena region.
  Slavery
  The violence and capture of human beings to be sold as slaves grew in late 18th century, and both Islamic and Portuguese official documents of that era refer to slaves as Kafirs. Alternatively, the slaves for export were called Caporros by the Portuguese landowners inside Mozambique. Over 50,000 slaves were exported from Mozambique to Brazil, the Spanish America and the French colonies before 1800. This volume of slave capture and trading increased to a point where it caused major social disorder, when the governor of Mozambique issued an order to stop this abuse, curtail the movement of captured human beings, and end the slave trading that was supplying people across the Atlantic Ocean. In August 1792, states Capela, the Mozambique governor issued an order that, "no more Kafirs will be exported from the Rivers of Sena".
  In the 19th century, the descendants of the colonial Portuguese who had been so far been farm and 
caption: A Sena man from Mozambique.
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