"[6] This government was confederate in nature, and was led by an elected chief who allocated landholdings, appointed officials (usually family members), and resided in a type of fortification called Macoco.

Finally the governor of the captaincy of Pernambuco, Pedro Almeida, organized an army under the leadership of the Bandeirantes Domingos Jorge Velho and Bernardo Vieira de Melo and defeated a palmarista force, putting an end to the republic in 1694.

[7] Palmares was the general name given by the Portuguese in Pernambuco and Alagoas to the interior districts beyond the settlements on the coast, especially the mountain ranges, because there were many palm trees there.

As early as 1602, Portuguese settlers complained to the government that their captives were running away into this inaccessible region and building mocambos, or small communities.

During this time the vast majority of the enslaved Africans who were brought to Pernambuco were from Portuguese Angola, perhaps as many as 90%, and therefore it is no surprise that tradition, reported as early as 1671 related that its first founders were Angolan.

Although initially the Dutch considered making an alliance with Palmares against the Portuguese,[citation needed] peace agreements put them in the position of supporting the sugar plantation economy of Pernambuco.

A description of the visit of Johan Blaer to one of the larger mocambos in 1645 (which had been abandoned) revealed that there were 220 buildings in the community, a church, four smithies, and a council house.

[8] Schwartz notes that African religious practices were also preserved and suggests that the depiction of Palmares as a largely Christian settlement is perhaps reflective of confusion or bias on the part of contemporary commentators.

The governor responded by agreeing to pardon Ganga Zumba and all his followers, on condition that they move to a position closer to the Portuguese settlements and return all enslaved Africans that had not been born in Palmares.

Cerca do Macaco, the main settlement, fell; accounts suggest a bitter fight that saw 200 inhabitants of Palmares kill themselves rather than surrender and face re-enslavement.

Zumbi's brother continued the resistance, but Palmares was ultimately destroyed, and Velho and his followers were given land grants in the territory of Angola Janga, which they occupied as a means of keeping the kingdom from being reconstituted.

[9] Although the kingdom was destroyed the Palmares region continued to host many smaller runaway settlements, but there was no longer the centralized state in the mountains.

Categories or groupings such as 'Congo' or 'Angola' had no ethnic content in themselves and often combined peoples drawn from broad areas of African who before enslavement had shared little sense of relationship or identity."

He traces the etymology of the word quilombo to the ki-lombo, a circumcision camp common among the Mbundu people of Angola that served to forge cultural unity among disparate local ethnic groups, and argues that this practice might have informed the diversity of Palmares.

He further highlights an economic interdependence between the inhabitants of Palmares and white Portuguese living nearby, manifested in the regular exchange of goods.