Word: zulus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...guests left their weapons outside the kraal with their women & children. At the height of the festivity, after a tumultuous war dance, Dingaan's Zulus fell upon the Dutchmen, dragged them to the hill of execution, beat them to death with knobkerries, then surged on the Boer wagons to massacre the women & children...
Dingaan's treachery was soon punished. Later that year, on Dec. 16, 1838, on the banks of Natal's Blood River, another Voortrekker column, headed by Boer Leader Andries Pretorius, bloodily defeated Dingaan's plume-decked, assagai-hurling horde. Of 12,000 Zulus, more than 3,000 perished. The Boers resolved ever after to celebrate Dec. 16 as a day of thanksgiving...
Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, king of jazz trumpeters, went back home for a brief reign as King of the Zulus at New Orleans' Mardi Gras. Buttoned into an outlandish red velvet tunic, and brandishing a silver scepter and a fat black cigar, Satchmo began his triumphal tour at 9 in the morning. Rumbled gravel-voiced Louis as he settled himself on the throne on his gilded float: "Man, this is rich." The parade stopped before the Gertrude Geddes Willis Funeral Home, and the royal party dismounted for a light lunch of turkey and ham sandwiches, pickles, olives and champagne...
...flunky keeps his cup filled all day. When the spirit moves him, his majesty throws largess in the form of coconuts; Louis has stocked more than 2,000 of them. Waiting for him on a reviewing stand in front of the Gertrude Geddes Willis Funeral Home stands the Zulus' Queen (this year, attractive, brown-skinned Bernice Oxley, ticket taker at the Ace Theater). In a room where the caskets have been pushed back to the wall, she receives her lord's champagne toast. After the parade the long night of jazz-filled, carnival pandemonium begins...
...like Joe Oliver, headed north for Chicago. But Satchmo Armstrong stayed on in New Orleans for a while. With Oliver gone, Louis began to get his due as the finest cornet in town. At 18 he married a girl named Daisy Parker and bought himself a membership in the Zulus...