Discover · Memory · Benin-Brazil
The story of Nã Agontimé, queen of Dahomey deported to Brazil, and the hypothesis linking her to the Casa das Minas, the oldest Vodun temple in Northern Brazil.
1797
death of King Agonglo, start of the succession crisis
1840s
founding of the Casa das Minas, notarized deed dated 1847
2002
temple listed as national heritage by IPHAN, Brazil
The crisis in Abomey
In 1797, King Agonglo of Dahomey dies. A succession struggle opens between his sons. Prince Adandozan takes the throne and, to neutralize a rival at court, sells one of the late king's widows into slavery: Nã Agontimé, mother of Prince Ghezo, who would later rule Dahomey from 1818 to 1858.
She is deported to Brazil, under a borrowed name, like hundreds of thousands of other captives from the Bight of Benin before and after her.
São Luís do Maranhão
In Brazil, the captive takes the name Maria Jesuína. Records describe her as a Dahomean noblewoman of the Jeje tradition. In the 1840s, in São Luís, capital of Maranhão state, she founds a temple, the Casa das Minas, its official deed dated 1847.
The temple carries on the Jeje cult of Dahomey: liturgy in the Fon language, deities called Voduns rather than Orixás. It is consecrated to Zomadonu, Maria Jesuína's own Vodun. It is today the founding sanctuary of Tambor de Mina, the Afro-Brazilian religious tradition of the North, listed as national heritage by IPHAN in 2002.
Pierre Verger's hypothesis
It was the French ethnologist Pierre Verger, based in Bahia from 1946 and initiated as a babalawo in Benin in 1953 under the name Fatumbi, who put forward this hypothesis: Maria Jesuína, founder of the Casa das Minas, was Queen Nã Agontimé herself, wife of Agonglo and mother of Ghezo.
It is a researcher's hypothesis, built on oral tradition and archives, not a fact established by a civil record. We state it as such, no more settled than the historians themselves settle it.
In Ouidah, the memory of Dahomey and its queens is still carried by the word of the tradition-keepers. In São Luís, Tambor de Mina is still practiced today, in direct line from the Casa das Minas. Two shores, one loyalty, never broken by exile.
Sources
Pierre Verger, Flux et reflux de la traite des nègres entre le Golfe de Bénin et Bahia de Todos os Santos, du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, Mouton, 1966.
"A Casa das Minas de São Luís do Maranhão e a saga de Nã Agontimé," Revista Santuário, Scielo Brazil.
"Casa das Minas," Wikipedia, accessed September 12, 2026.
We promise no DNA test, no genealogical proof. We open a door: to Ouidah, and to the tradition-keepers who still carry this memory.