Mariana Xambá and Mariana da Costa; Clara Courá and Isabel Mina (Leading Uprisings)

White men were not the only participants in anti-colonial revolts, as the old textbooks would have it. Mariana Xambá, Isabel Mina, Mariana da Costa and Clara Courá were African women who stood out in insurrections that happened in Minas Gerais. In Itabira during the 1720s, Mariana da Costa, married to the African Manoel Mina, was denounced because in her “house people of the same nation gathered together in merrymaking.” The couple had the support of Isabel Mina, “who intervened” in the revolt. In 1744, Mariana Xambá and Clara Courá were accused of organizing the conspiracy that disseminated messianic and millenarian ideas in the town of Serro Frio.