Used as soldiers, settlers, and sailors, the degradados, together with exiled Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirables," formed a large majority of the white population in Angola until the beginning of the twentieth century.  The mortality rate among degredados was alarmingly high, and this further discouraged free immigration to Angola, creating a cycle of continued penal settlement.  Because of their small numbers and unreliability, the degredados could not fulfill all the roles of colonial administration and commerce, a class of mesticos, also called the Afro-Portuguese, rose to take many these positions.  Originally descendant from the union of Portuguese soldiers and merchants with indigenous African women, the Afro-Portuguese eventually became their own distinct ethnic group and grew to wield significant economic, and later political, power.