“The importance of following these African martial arts into the Americas becomes clear when one considers that while it was economic in its objective, the slave system was ultimately held together by physical and symbolic (real or threatened) violence. Therefore, it should not be surprising that at times African combat traditions were used in the Americas as forms of self-defense against this violence. Many of the bondsmen who rose up in the Haitian Revolution may have relied on previous military experience and their stick- and machete-fighting arts. While such skills were at times used as forms of direct resistance, martial arts were more often used as means to fight for honor within the confines of bondage. These fights for honor in urban Brazil were often just as sanguine as the armed revolts more emphasized by many historians. For example, the Muslim uprising of 1835 in Bahia left only nine people dead. Despite the possession of firearms by the participants, all the dead victims were wounded by swords, knives, and lances, showing that ‘the few firearms the rebels were able to gather did nothing more than weigh them down.’ In contrast, this number could have been equally the result of one week of activity by groups of bondsmen in Rio practicing the martial art of capoeiragem. As a police official reported of capoeira experts in the 1850s, ‘In only one afternoon of the month of February they committed seven murders in the parish . . . of Santa Anna.’ Certainly, many more whites were killed during the 1828 uprising of German and Irish mercenaries, who were mowed down in large numbers by the capoeira experts.”

-T. J. Desch Obi, Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Arts in the Americas