Njinga Mbande (c. 1583–1663), ruler of the kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba in what is now Angola, who fought, allied with, converted to Christianity, and out-maneuvered the Portuguese empire for nearly four decades — using war, diplomacy, and shifting alliances to hold off full Portuguese domination in her lifetime, and becoming an enduring symbol of African and female resistance to European conquest and the Atlantic slave trade.
In 1622, the story goes, a West Central African envoy arrived to negotiate with the Portuguese governor at Luanda and found that the room had been arranged to humble her. There was a single chair, his. For her, a mat on the floor, the seat of a subordinate. She did not sit on it. She signaled to one of her attendants, who knelt on hands and knees, and she sat on the woman's back, meeting the governor at eye level. The envoy was Njinga Mbande. Whether the human chair is fact or polished legend, it caught something true about her: for forty years she refused to be placed beneath the men who came to conquer her.