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NATIVE TRIBES

OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE

OF NORTHERN RHODESIA {Notes on their Migrations and History)

BY E. H. LANE POOLE (Former Provincial Commissioner)

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WT 1949 PRINTED BY THE GOVERNMENT PRINTER ■8— Z14 5-49 LUSAKA 60536

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NATIVE TRIBES OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE

OF NORTHERN RHODESIA {Notes on their Migrations and History}

E. H. LANE POOLE (Former Provincial Commissioner'} First Edition ... 1934 Second Edition ... 1938 Third Edition ... 1949

U INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Since the colonisation of the Zambezi in the sixteenth century, the early Portuguese turned their attention almost exclusively towards the fabulous gold mines of Monomatapa in the south and east, and their archives shed little light upon the Native populations on the north bank of the river. Fortunately, however, in the centuries that followed two expeditions passed through the centre of the Province, that of Lacerda in 1798 and that of Livingstone in 1866. The material accumulated and published in the journals of these expeditions has been largely drawn upon in the following pages. In recent times, also, the occupation of Central Africa by the European races has given an impulse to the collection of Native tradition. To the zeal of the members of the Livingstonia Mission, Doctors Laws, Elmslie and Fraser, and Mr. Cullen Young, we are indebted for our knowledge of the Ngoni under Mombera and of the Tumbuka on the Nkamanga Plateau, which is not likely to be much improved upon. In South Africa, too, a revival of interest in the disruptions caused by the reign of Tschaka has led to a considerable literature on the subject, of which the volume by Henderson Soga, himself of Bantu descent, merits special recognition. We are constantly being reminded that it is becoming every year more difficult to collect Native traditions and customs. The reasons are obvious and have often been stated. Mobility of labour and rapidity of transport enables each year the manhood of the population to be despatched to remote labour centres of which their grandfathers never dreamed. The result has been to dissociate the rising generation from the intimate attach­ ment to the soil and village life.. The movement of the Native population into Native Reserves has severed the association with the old tribal lands which were imbued with tradition and history. Education has given a new direction to thought and the modern Native is inclined to speak almost apologetically of the doings of his ancestors. The acquisition of the know­ ledge of reading and writing has obscured tradition and the present generation are probably better informed of Old Testament history than of their own. Formerly there existed in all tribes one in whom Native tradition was deposited ; to many of these, to Kajumba and Nganjo Chiwato of the Northern Senga, to Katawa and Chikoko of the Ambo, to Mumbi of the Nsenga, I acknowledge a debt of obligation. Most of them are now dead, and I am told there are none to take their place as the depositaries of tribal tradition and custom. Inevitably, oral tradition is the main source of information in the composition of any narrative of an illiterate people. The errors into which tradition may lead the most conscientious inquirer have often been em­ phasised : the prepensity of Natives to exaggerate the importance of their own tribe and to depreciate that of their neighbours ; their difficulty in presenting a chronological sequence of events ; their magnification of minor and suppression of major issues in the proportion that these appear in their own imagination. Every endeavour has been made to verify oral evidence

iii and to correlate it with the events of adjoining tribes. Where tradition can be tested by the records of explorers some approximation to exactness can be achieved. The material contained in the following chapters has been collected and transcribed at various times in the past fifteen years, not with any view to publication, but as an agreeable hobby to fill my leisure and often solitary hours. Some of my friends have suggested that others beside myself might find an interest in them. I am conscious that finality has not, and, indeed, cannot, be achieved. But if this brief outline of tribal migra­ tions and tribal history can help others, as it has helped me, to appreciate the tribes with whom they come into contact, it may serve some useful purpose. I indulge in the hope that it may stimulate others to pursue the investigation, and to correct and expose some of those errors into which I must, inadvertently, have fallen.

E. H. L ane P oole. P etatjke, 31st March, 1933.

iv THE NATIVE TRIBES OF THE EAST LUANGWA PROVINCE OF NORTHERN RHODESIA.

NOTES ON THEIR MIGRATIONS AND HISTORY.

CONTENTS.

Chapter P age I. Ngoni ...... 1 II. Northern Senga ...... 20 III. The Chewa and Wisa in the Luangwa Valley 28 IV. Nsenga ...... 35 V. Kunda ... 49 VI. Ambo ... 57

Appen dices : (1) A Tentative Chronology of the Ngoni Migration ...... 71 (2) Genealogy of the Jere family ...... 72 (3) The Wives and Descendants of the first M peseni...... 73 (4) A tentative Chronology of Senga Chiefs ...... 74 (5) Genealogical Table of the Masumba Group of Chewa Chiefs 75 (6) Genealogical Table of Kambwiri (Wisa) ...... 76 (7) Genealogical Table of Sefu (Kunda) ...... 77 (8) Genealogical Table of Mkanya (Kunda) ... 78 (9) Genealogical Table of Tindi (Kunda) 79 (10) Genealogical Table of Kakumbi (Kunda) 80 (11) Boundaries of the Kunda Chieftaincies 81 (12) Genealogical Table of the Ambo Chiefs 82

Maps : (1) Illustrating Tribal Migrations and Territories 83 (2) Illustrating Clan Distribution ...... 84

B ibliography .,. 85

I ndex ...... 87-91

v I am indebted to the African Society for permission to incorporate in Chapter III extracts from an article originally pub­ lished in the Society’s journal. e.h.l.p .

vi The Native Tribes of the Eastern Province

vii

1

Chapter I. NGONI. The Ngoni tribe first appear on the banks of the Zambezi in the year 1835, led by their Chief Zwangendaba (l). A migration which started on the seashore of Natal, proceeded through Portuguese East Africa, Southern and Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Tanganyika Territory as far as Lake Victoria Nyanza, and retracing its steps finally came to a pause in the south-east corner of Northern Rhodesia, has gained for itself a prominent place in Bantu history. The secession of Zwangendaba from South Africa has been said to have led to the slaughter of not less than a million lives ; it is certain that it caused the subjection or disruption of scores of tribes, and, but for the intervention of the European races in Central Africa towards the end of the nineteenth century, might have created a chaotic upheaval of the Central African Bantu. It is, therefore, not uninteresting to give a brief account of what is known of the Ngoni before they set out upon their astounding migration. Those who have contributed to the ethnography of Bantu tribes have usually been content to describe the Ngoni as part of the Zulu-speaking tribes of South Africa. Modern research has niore specifically divided the South African Bantu into three main branches, the Amalala, the Abambo, and the Abanguni(2), which last included the Xosa and many other tribes. We are here only concerned with the Abanguni, which was also the greatest of the three. It is generally supposed that pressure from the Hamitic tribes in the north, which in point of civilisation were dominant, was the cause of the original Bantu migration from a region in the Congo-Niger-Nile watershed to the south. Johnston ascribes the date to about 300 b.c. on the ground that the domestic fowl must have been introduced to the Bantu from Egypt, before their dispersion, since the word for that bird is radically identical in all Bantu dialects(3). The migratory streams travelled south until they came to the Zambezi. From this point two divergent theories are advanced of their further progress. The view which has received the most common acceptance is that the Zambezi was crossed in its upper course and the route taken led the Bantu through what is now Bechuanaland and Basutoland and finally into Natal and Zululand(4). The date assigned to the crossing of the Zambezi on this southward migration is circa 1000 a.d.(5). South of the Zambezi, Africa is believed to have been inhabited only by Bushmen and Hottentots. In favour of this view it is argued that the Zambezi in its lower course was unfordable, a proposition which ignores the crossing effected in 1835 near Zumbo, and assumes that transportation by boat was unknown. More convincing is the application by the Natives of Natal of the word Ebunguni to the country of the Suto situated to the west of them, and to-day the word Amanguni means “ in the west ”(6). The inference is that the Abanguni applied their own name to the country in the west, because they themselves migrated thence. A further point in support of this theory 2 is the identification of the Ngoni of the Natal Bantu with Koni, the clan name of Kama, chief of the Bechwana and of Moshesh, chief of the Basuto, both of which tribes were situated to the west. According to Bryant, the Abanguni seceded from the Bakoni on the Limpopo about the middle of the fifteenth century(7). The alternative theory that the southern Bantu of whom the Ngoni formed a part, emigrated from the north by an eastern route has been developed by Henderson Soga, himself of Bantu descent, in a work originally written in the Bantu dialect Sixosa. He finds in the incursion of the “ Mumbos and Zimbas ” on the north bank of the Zambezi opposite the Portuguese settlements of Tete and Sena in the sixteenth century the origin of the Abambo and AbanguniW. “ Mumbo” is the singular form of Ambo or Abambo, and the “ Zimbas ” are identified with the Abanguni. According to De Conto these tribes descended in the year 1570 from the Rivers Cuama (Zambezi), Zairi (Congo) and the Nile and occupied the region lying between Lake Nyasa and the Zambezi. One branch crossed the Limpopo in 1575 and is known to have reached Natal about 1620. An attractive feature of this view is that it accounts for two tribes which in their own sphere were in the sixteenth century omnipotent, but have since almost completely disappeared. According to Soga these tribes reappear with names transmuted. The Mazimba when they annihilated the Portuguese forces at Tete, forced Sena to capitulate, opposed the garrison at Mozambique, and devastated the coast as far as Mombasa, formed perhaps the strongest military organisation at that period in Central Africa. They were notorious for their cannibalism and atrocities. Yet the name of Zimba has been expunged from the map, and those who bore it extinguished. A similar problem is presented by the Makalanga, identified by Soga with the Amalala. Theoretically they occupied a country which in extent has not been exceeded by any tribe since. Under a dynasty of chiefs named Monomatapa, whose name is familiar in connection with the Zimbabwe ruins, it is supposed to have extended from the Zambezi to the Orange River, and from the Indian Ocean to the Kalahari desert. Any theory which offers an intelligible explanation of the disappearance from history of the powerful Mazimba and Makalanga is not to be hastily rejected. According to this view the name Abanguni is derived from an early chief of the tribe, named Mnguni, the grandfather of Xosa, the patronym of the Xosa tribe in South Africa, and, as a salutation name, is still used by some clans. "The first allusion to the word Nguni as applied to this branch of Bantu is possibly in the year 1589. In that year Manoel de Faria e Sousa described the country near Delagoa Bay as belonging to the Virangune(9). This may be the reproduction in a foreign tongue of the word Abanguni. Our first record of the name being applied specifically to the tribe of which Zwangendaba was the chief, occurs shortly before the demise of Dingiswayo in 1818. When Zwide, the powerful chief of the Ndwandwe was preparing an attack upon his ally, Zwangendaba, his mother Ntombazi tried to dissuade him. “ Would you ”, she cried, “ destroy the Abenguni who succoured you before ? ’ ’ Failing to divert him from his purpose by 3 words, she divested herself of all her clothing before the gaze of the astonished army. The exhibition of her nudity was held to portend such catastrophe that the enterprise was abandoned(10). According, then, to those who hold the view of the western migration, Abenguni is connected with the Abekoni of the Bechwana and Basuto and indicates vaguely the west country. If the theory of the eastern migration is accepted, the Abenguni are connected with the Mazimba on the lower Zambezi in the sixteenth century, and derived their name from an ancestral Chief Mnguni. To this there is, perhaps, one note to add : that from Uganda to Natal the Bantu word for a bird is the root Nguni in various forms, of which the diminutive form is Koni or Kay uni, and it is a plausible assumption that this may be the origin of the word(n ). The meaning, however, attached to the word Ngoni by Fraser is “ foreign people ”, which is supported by a citation from Bleek’s dictionary. In this passage, the word is said to have been applied to the invading tribe by the Tonga(12). To this opinion Young subscribes, inferring that it was not adopted till after Zwangendaba’s secession^3), and Elmslie also held that the name was relatively recent(14). But the Tonga did not come into contact with the Ngoni until 1823, and the references to the word already quoted dispose completely of the theory of its adoption after the secession from Natal. Before we leave the subject of nomenclature, it is not out of place to mention the names by which the Ngoni were known at different places and different periods on their migration. When they reached the country near Delagoa Bay, Owen, a captain in the Royal Navy, surveying the coast in 1822-1823, described them as Vatwah(15). Watwa was the name applied by Bantu to Bushmen, and would appear to signify an inferior race. In this region also they were known to some Portuguese as Hollentontes, a corruption, presumably, of Hottentots. The horde of Shongonane was called by the coastal Portuguese Abagaza, Gaza having been a remote ancestor of the Chief(16). North of the Zambezi the indigenous tribes knew them as Mazitu or Mavitid7). When Stanley encountered them eastward of Lake Tanganyika he referred to them as Watutad8). That branch which settled east of Lake Nyasa were known, after their chief, as Magwangwara. Zwangendaba’s pedigree is traced back to four generations by most authorities. To these Young, on the authority of native tradition, adds four more. He was the son of Hlatshwayod9), and his remotest known ancestor, according to the majority of genealogists, is Lonyanda. Fraser inclines to the opinion that the secession began in the time of his grandfather Magangati, and that Zwangendaba succeeded to the chieftaincy shortly before the arrival at the Zambezi. This supposition is refuted by the contemporary evidence of Owen who in 1823 observed th a t“ Soonkundava ” had usurped the title of Chief from the rightful heir Zeiti, his nephew and then a minor. Moreover his relations with Zwide conclusively show that he was in command of the tribe before the secession. Owen’s note that Zwangendaba was not in the direct line of succession, while not in conformity with the genealogies, is none the less interesting. Zwangendaba’s family or clan name is Jere. It has been asserted that originally it was Tole, meaning a calf, and that Jere was assumed some time before the crossing of the Zambezi(2°). There is considerable support for 4

this view from native tradition. The Jere, in fact, formed a part of the parent clan Ndwandwe. * It has also been maintained that the original clan name was Pakati, and that the name Jere, generally held to mean a bull elephant, was assumed in the neighbourhood of Lake Tanganyika, where it was the eponym of an obscure tribe in the Fipa country(21). But there is here manifest confusion between the family or clan (or totem) name Isibongo (Zulu) or Chiwongo (Nsenga, etc.) and the Sitikazelo or salutation name. Pakati was, in fact, the name by which Zwangendaba was saluted(22). Tole and Pakati both appear as clan names among the Ngoni of Mpeseni, and Pakati was the salutation name of the Ndwandwe tribe of Zwide with whom Zwangendaba was politically allied. The state of African politics at the beginning of the nineteenth century was briefly this. The Umtetwa clan of which Dingiswayo was the head, was by far the most powerful and coherent body at the period. His country embraced what is now Natal and the basin of the Limpopo River as far as Delagoa Bay. He had conquered and reduced to subjection all the neigh­ bouring tribes with the exception of Zwide, the chief of the Ndwandwe clan. Zwide had already tried to bring Zwangendaba under his control, but was defeated, captured and sent home with a present of cattle. A second attempt was frustrated when Ntombazi posed in the nude as already described. But Zwangendaba realised the necessity of a political alliance with Zwide, and, after Dingiswayo’s death, they opposed Tschaka together. By the treachery of Noloju, who was in Tschaka’s pay, the defection of a considerable force of Zwide’s army was arranged. Noloju’s perfidy gave Tschaka the victory which was consummated by the execution of Zwide. Zwangendaba, overwhelmed by the same blow which left Tschaka supreme, made his escape with his following to the north-west. In recent years some writers have attempted the task of exculpating the character of Tschaka. But his accumulated atrocities must have had their share in determining the secessions which took place in this decade. Dingiswayo, for his epoch, might be called humane, and usually spared women and children. But to Tschaka mercy either to sex or age was an act of folly which sowed the seeds of future rebellion. Murder was brought to a fine art, an enormous expanse of country was devastated, thousands of persons were reduced to starvation ; in a single day he is said to have made a holocaust of seven thousand men to commemorate, out of filial piety, the decease of his mother. To this ensanguined appetite was due the exodus that took place in these years. Only two, however, concern the narrative of Zwangendaba. Shongonane withdrew his following to the Gaza country south of the lower Zambezi, where in 1833 he attacked the Portuguese at Inhambane. To the Portuguese he was invariably known as Manukosi. He was succeeded by Umzila who in his turn was followed by Gungunyana, the chief deposed by the Portuguese Government in 1896. Shongonane’s secession is ascribed to the year 1819 and his followers to-day are known in South Africa as Shangaans. The other, Umsilikazi, after marching through the Transvaal, settled in the country of the Makalanga, and finally occupied what we now call Matabeleland in about the third decade of last century. His successor, Lobengula, made modern history at the time of the British occupation. 5

There is some discrepancy among authorities as to the date of Zwangen- daba’s secession. Soga puts it in the year 1829. But it is difficult to recon­ cile so late a date with the reference by Owen in 1823 to the Hollentonte Chief “ Soonkundava ” , in which the word Sungandaba or Zwangendaba is recognisable. Bryant’s date of 1821-22 is probably more nearly corrects3). When he joined forces with Zwide, he had started from the sea-coast near St. Lucia Bay. His flight took him first to where the modern boun­ daries of Natal. Orange Free State and Transvaal converge. Advancing into Swaziland, he incorporated many men in his army and took the women in marriage. He is next found in the country of the Tonga where the absorption of the native population continued. A contemporary record of him and the devastation caused by his army is given by Captain Owen, who at the time was negotiating with the Portuguese a cession of Delagoa Bay. Co-operating in this region with Shongonane, the combined forces inflicted a severe reverse upon the Portuguese at LourenQo Marques. About 1826-1827, having severed his connection with Shongonane, and also with Nquaba who had made his appearance in this part, Zwangendaba moved westward to the country of the Makalanga. The deplorable state of the country, and the still visible signs of devastation were described by Selous when hunting there as late as 1872. Large numbers of the population were again incorporated in the following, which appears to indicate that Zwangen- daba’s policy was rather absorption than annihilation^4). He probably remained some years in the highlands of what is now Mashonaland, and his eldest son, Ntutu, afterwards Mpeseni, was probably born here about 1833(25). His withdrawal to the west again was compelled by the pressure of Shongonane, and he is next found persecuting the timid Marozi people living north of Bulawayo(26). From his headquarters here, he is said to have made forays upon the Transvaal, and came into conflict with Umsili- kazi, by whom he was signally defeated. The reverse was a chief cause in deflecting the Ngoni course to the north, whither they proceeded until they found themselves opposed by the barrier of the Zambezi. On the 19th November, 1835, about two o’clock in the afternoon, Zwangendaba crossed the Zambezi at a point near Zumbo. The chronology is determined by the tradition that a total eclipse of the sun occurred in the midst of the crossing(27). Several incidents are connected in native tradition with the crossing of the Zambezi. The transportation of the army was preluded by a beer drink of more than usual magnitude and conviviality, since to-day, nearly a century later, it has not been obliterated from the memories of the descendants of those who partook of it. That in this crapulous state they should have been somewhat astounded by the unusual phenomenon of a total solar eclipse is perhaps hardly to be wondered at. The women are said each to have carried a pestle and mortar, from which it may be inferred that Zwangendaba was as capable in command of com­ missariat as he was as a general of strategy. Tradition also relates that the cattle were knee-haltered and thus forded across the river, a form of loco­ motion against which they protested so vigorously that many perished in the flood. Mpeseni, the eldest son, was a lad carried on his mother’s back at the time. Another wife of Zwangendaba, heavy with child, having been thrown into a panic at the unwonted spectacle of the sun’s eclipse, was hastily confined on the banks of the Zambezi and prematurely delivered of the robust child who afterwards grew to manhood as Chief Mombera. 6

Young(28) quotes a tradition that the crossing was' made on a sandy causeway in five feet of water, the men breaking the current by making a barrier of their bodies. The release of the barrier caused the flood to rush down, carrying with it the cattle which were drowned. The story, redolent of the Bible, that the waters were struck with a staff, and divided to let the people pass, has been often recorded of this crossing^9). Its interest lies in the frequency of this episode in Bantu tradition. The Baganda are credited with the story by Speke, and Tschaka himself is said to have performed the miracle(3°). One party, possibly that of Nquaba, whose migration was independent of Zwangendaba, appears to have crossed the river at the Lupata Gorge, through which the Kebrabasa Rapids rush(31). The following of Zwangendaba at this crossing of his rubicon consisted of a heterogeneous and polyglot multitude of Ngoni, Kalanga, Suto, Tonga, Swazi and others. The mixture and impurity of blood, which is so evident in the decadent Ngoni of the present day, must have received its first infusion before they came into contact with the subject races north of the Zambezi. Zwangendaba’s route took him along the line of what is now the boun­ dary demarcating Northern Rhodesia from Portuguese East Africa. Some time, possibly years, was spent at Mkoko, in what is now the Petauke Dis­ trict^2), near the headwaters of the Nyimba River. He is said to have spent five years in the country of the Nsenga and to have enlisted a number of witch-doctors for whose sapience the Ngoni had great admiration. From the Nsenga the Ngoni claim to have acquired knowledge of Mwavi poison, of which hitherto they were ignorant. But the Nsenga recall none of the implacable atrocities which some writers attribute to the progress of this migration. The Nsenga, too, had been surprised by the total eclipse of the sun, and warned to expect some phenomenal event. They^lost some cattle to Zwangendaba who was anxious to replace the beasts he had lost in the Zambezi, and some slaves and women. This first occupation of the Nsenga country took place in the Chieftaincy of the first of the line of Kalindawalu, by name Mundikula. The first secession from Zwangendaba’s host occurred at this time. The section of Ngoni known as Magwangwara after their Chief Mungwara withdrew and occupied the eastern littoral of Lake Nyasa. After the death of Mungwara, his son Chikusi and, on Chikusi’s decease, Gomani in turn succeeded. After a series of engagements with Zulu Gama, the leader of another Ngoni army, Chikusi was expelled south of the Shire River between 1867 and 1870. The Magwangwara Ngoni found some scope for their rapacious proclivities in this neighbourhood until about the year 1876 they began to embrace the doctrines of Christianity extended to them by the Blantyre Mission(33). The diligent research of Mr. Cullen Young has elicited that the operation of circumcision was discontinued at this period. After leaving the Nsenga country the main body moved eastwards along the Zambezi-Luangwa Plateau(34), then, turning north, passed west of Lake Nyasa, for we next hear of their slaughter and rapine in the country of the Tumbuka, where the largest section under Mombera is now established(35). Attracted by the lush verdure of the Rukuru pastures they remained for some time, variously given as five or seven years. At Mawiri, Zwangendaba purged the tribe of the witch-doctors whom he 7 exterminated indiscriminately(3f)). Young ascribes to this period the birth of Mombera, discarding the cogent native tradition that he was born on the Zambezi. Resuming their peripatetic mode of life, they next reappear in the Ufipa country, between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa. Here at a place called Mapupo, about the year 1845, Zwangenclaba died from syncope, but not before he had first delivered himself of a prophecy that his successor would behold a race of white men, the vision of whom had been denied to himselfi37). He was interred, according to Ngoni custom, in his cattle kraal. The original composition of Zwangendaba’s following had, as has been seen, already been diminished by the secession of Nquaba south of the Zambezi and of the Mungwara Ngoni north of the river. But from this date there ensue a series of disputes over the succession to the chieftainship, and defections which ultimately led to the disintegration of the Ngoni people. Their story now resolved itself into several narratives of different groups, of which only a brief account need be given. On the death of Zwangendaba the chieftainship was claimed by his two brothers Ntabeni and Mgai(38). In passing, it may be observed that the Ngoni follow and have followed for some generations, a strictly agnatic or patrilineal descent. That the brothers of Zwangendaba should have claimed the succession and moreover have succeeded in persuading a large number to support them, is not only opposed to established usage, but is probably a significant sign of the times of war and revolution when age and experience over-ruled the claims of blood and the laws of succession. It is possible that the brothers contended merely for the guardianship of the sons who at the time were no more than pubescent(39), or they may have aspired only to lead the army not to supplant the true heirs, and this view finds corroboration in the fact that each put his claim to the test of battle and each on his defeat was immediately rejected. It is at least clear that the following leaders separated from the main body and founded settlements of Ngoni in different parts of the continent. i Ntabeni, brother of Zwangendaba, claimed the chieftainship either for himself or on behalf of Ntutu, the eldest son ; but he was unpopular with Lomagazi the mother of Mombera, who was advocating the claims of her own son. Exasperated at his rejection by the loyal elements among the people, he mobilised his columns and led them round the south end of Lake Tanganyika, eventually settling west of that lake on the borders of the Nyamwezi country, where under the name Watuta and acting in co-operation with the Ruga-Ruga of that region, they were encountered by Livingstone and Stanley in 1871. A larger section followed Mgai, with whom were probably the two sons Mpeseni and Mombera, and the widows of Zwangendaba. He came up with the army of Ntabeni, after the death of that chief, and in an engage­ ment was decisively defeated(4°). Mgai continued the odyssey via the east of Lake Tanganyika, and after making havoc of the country round the Ruvuma River, penetrated as far as Victoria Nyanza. In the country of the Sukuma tribe, Mgai, who seems to have been accepted as chief, died and the competition for the succession was renewed among the sons of Zwangendaba, 8

Mpeseni, or Ntutu, as he was then called, claimed the title by right of primogeniture, Mtwalu on the strength of his father’s nomination, and Mombera by virtue of his personal popularity. Mpeseni had this advantage, that he had come of age, whereas his brothers were still in their minority. Though the eldest, he was not the son of the “ great ” wife, but of a slave woman captured from the Swazi; and, moreover, Ntabeni, his principal supporter, was dead. Mtwalu was a pusillanimous figure, totally incapable of controlling a people rapidly falling into disorder and disunion. It has been claimed for Mombera that he had been nominated for the succession by Zwangendaba in his lifetime. In favour of this is the fact that he com­ manded the largest following ; certainly he was the most popular of the three brothers, and, also, he was the youngest. Probably there followed a further interregnum, for no one seems to have ruled with supreme and single authority. Mpeseni, whether elected formally or not, assumed the chieftaincy and marched off to the west to prove his qualifications for the office in battle, was defeated and rejected by a majority of votes. Recourse was then had to Mtwalu. Whether he actually took command remains in doubt, for he was almost immediately superseded by Mombera, who by his strength of character and inherited fitness succeeded in gaining popular favour(41). Solvitur ambulando. Those who disapproved of Mombera’s appoint­ ment set off in every direction of the compass. Zulu Gama, a disappointed aspirant, rather by virtue of his bellicose exploits than of any relation­ ship with the defunct chief, set out with his divisions for the eastern shores of Lake Nyasa, where he combined with the Magwangwara Ngoni, already established there, to devastate with fire and sword those , tribes unfor­ tunate enough to be located there. It was not, however, to be expected that two chiefs with the ambitions and traditions of Zulu Gama and Mung- wara could amicably share the vast region extending from the Indian Ocean to Lake Nyasa. After a series of hostilities, Zulu Gama retained his position in the neighbourhood of Songea, and the Magwangwara withdrew south of the Shire River. Another powerful Induna to secede at this date was Chiwere Ndhlovu. He shrewdly discerned that the disintegration of the tribe since Zwangen­ daba’s death was inevitable and that the easiest avenue to notoriety lay in independent action, and therefore lost no time in putting his regiments in motion. Taking a southerly course west of Lake Nyasa, he eventually made for himself a pied d terre between Kotakota and Domira Bay, where he earned for himself an unenviable reputation in the pages of Living­ stone’s journal for his onslaughts upon the pacific Chewa and Chipeta tribes. The main body, including most of the Jere family, left the southern coast of Lake Tanganyika under Mtwalu, who was quickly superseded by Mombera. Mombera, whether to prove his superiority in battle, or to administer punishment to the defaulting armies of Zulu Gama and Mung- wara, met them and was signally defeated by them at Lumbira, better known in modern geography as Old LangenburgH2). It was no doubt after hearing of this reverse that Mpeseni decided to withdraw his army to the west whither we shall presently pursue his fortunes. After this defeat, Mombera moved south and about 1850 occupied the Henga Valley, finding the local Henga, Poka, Tonga and Nkamanga tribes 9 an easy prey(43). Thence he entered the Tumbuka country and occupied the region round Hora Mountain, which he had already explored some years before on his northward journey, where he was found on the advent of the first Missionaries in the seventies(44). From this centre his voracious forays diverged to the Senga in the Marambo Plain on the west, to the Tonga on the shores of Lake Nyasa on the east; southward they penetrated as far as the Chewa of Chinunda and northwards to the Poka and Henga whose country they had just vacated. The Tumbuka, however, made several attempts to throw off the yoke of their conquerors and under their Chief Chagumuka inflicted upon their oppressors a decisive defeat. On the other hand they suffered more than one massacre of decimating severity especially at Hora Mountain, where the ground was strewn with their bleaching skeletons when members of the Livingstonia Mission erected their station at Ekwendeni. Mombera, a bibulous but highly esteemed old gentleman of the type which is now extinct, lived until the year 1891, when he was seized with an apoplexy, induced no doubt by his too liberal potations. He was pre­ deceased the year before by Mtwalu, who succumbed to tubercular trouble, but Mperembe and probably several other brothers of less distinction survived him and saw the inauguration of British administration, which in the Ngoni country was deferred several years after its introduction in the rest of Nyasaland. After an interval of five years, during which the regency was held by Ngonomo, Mbalekelwa, more familiarly known as Chimtunga, succeeded in 1896. Having spent a period of years in the seclusion of exile at Zomba, for his share in the “ rising ” of 1915, he was deposed and followed by Mkuzo, the present chief and the original nominee of Mombera(45). Mpeseni, with whom at first Mperembe made common cause, chagrined at Mombera’s defeat at Tschohlodhlo, selected the only point of the compass which had not been over-run by his brothers in arms, and marched west. His choice was, perhaps, an unfortunate one, for he soon found himself face to face with the Wemba, a nation as inveterate in warfare as the Ngoni themselves, and at this time much more united. The Wemba were almost the first people encountered in their peregrinations who were not paralysed at the very sound of the word Ngoni, nor sought precipitate flight on the mere rumour of their approach. This was due, perhaps, not so much to any inherent fortitude, as to the fact that the Wemba were at this time in a confederacy with Tipu Tipu and by their Arab allies were furnished with an abundant supply of percussion guns. Tradition handed down in the Wemba tribe ascribes the incursion of the Ngoni to the year 1856, a date which can be conveniently correlated with collateral events(46). Livingstone when he visited Chitapankwa, the chief of the Wemba in 1867, makes frequent allusion to the Ngoni, and records the defeat of a force under Malalami at the hands of the Wemba under one Mapupo. It is claimed by the Wemba and acknowledged by the Ngoni that the latter suffered at least one severe reverse, and were forced to retreat. After this catastrophe, Mperembe retraced his steps, recrossed the Luangwa and rejoined Mombera in the Tumbuka country. Mpeseni, however, deflecting his course to avoid the country over which the Wemba influence was supreme, achieved some minor successes against the Wisa and Lala tribes, whom he harried as far as the flats of Bangweulu. In 1873, 10

Livingstone shortly before his death found Matipa a chief of the Wisa and the neighbouring villages in a state of panic, caused by the presence of the Ngoni. But the area of Mpeseni’s operations was circumscribed : he had no desire to measure his strength a second time against the Wemba to his north, while to the west the Bayeke were making themselves as whole­ somely feared as the Ngoni themselves(47). He therefore turned south and is next heard of at Cheronga’s village on the Muchinga escarpment. Native tradition avers that they spent some time at this place which is the more probable because it is the only place name west of the Luangwa which has come down to us. At Cheronga they fought a pitched battle with a mys­ terious people called the Bapule(48), who were routed and fled to the Luwe- lezi River, an affluent of the Bua, where a few years later they were again expelled and vanquished. They next descended the Muchinga escarpment into the Luangwa Valley. Having crossed that river and mounted the low hills on the east side, they must have sighted the peak of Mkoma Hill which was the scene of their next halt. The Chewa Chief in this region was Mbangombe, uncle of the late Chief; him the Ngoni drove to the top of the hills which bear his name. On the summit Mbangombe discovered a fountain of water upon which, with the addition of a little millet planted in the cavities of the hillsides, he managed to subsist while the Ngoni, remaining on the plains below, invested him until five years later he capitulated. The date was about 1865. Leaving now the Luangwa Basin, the next migration took them to the country which is traversed by the International Anglo-Portuguese boundary. Mpeseni’s own village was situated beneath the beacon hill of Mpinduka, watered by the Matambazi on soil which Chief Chimate has since converted into arable fields. Where the villages of Ngupo, Chimtanda and Kapandula now stand, were formerly the Ngoni villages of Fumbeni, Mtenguleni and Nyandeka. Other settlements expanded westwards to Chipiri Hill, another beacon of the international boundary. To this second occupation of the Nsenga country are to be ascribed the depopulation of the Nsenga villages and the absorption of the Nsenga people in the Ngoni host. To this period, too, belongs the acquisition by the Ngoni of the Nsenga dialect, now so generally spoken by their descendants. From the region of the Matambazi, Mpeseni turned eastwards and in the decade 1870 to 1880, arrived at the headwaters of the Lutembwe and Msipazi Rivers(49). Tradition assigns the motive of this eastern march to the rumour having reached him that his elusive foes, the Bapule, whom he had engaged and routed at Cheronga, had taken refuge in the sources of the Luwelezi River, at no great distance from the Lutembwe. Whether credence be attached to the story or not the Bapule were overwhelmed, incorporated in the Ngoni nation, and henceforth adopted the Ngoni name. Mpeseni, either because he found here exuberant pasturage for his cattle, always a primary consideration with the tribe, or because he saw himself menaced on all sides by the encroaching exploration of Europeans, remained in these salubrious highlands for the rest of his life. Though perhaps lacking the kaleidoscopic variety of their former migratory life, the years which followed were none the less pregnant with momentous events for the Ngoni, 11

Pursuing their natural proclivities, their devastation of the indigenous population extended far and wide. With the single exception of Chuaula, who first made a formidable resistance in his fortified village, and afterwards formed a treaty of alliance with the Ngoni Chief, Madzimawi, the Kunda tribe were either forced to seek refuge elsewhere, some like Sefu and Jumbe even as far as Lake Nyasa, or, like Tindi and Mkanya, were compelled to settle in the proximity of the Ngoni chiefs on the Lutembwe and Chikandu. Further north the Wisa under Kambwiri waged a perpetual and precarious fight against the annual raids. The settlements of the peace-loving agri­ cultural Chewa or Chief Chinunda were the special province of Kapatamoyo, whose fury was spent on the stockade surrounding the village of Kapainzi. To the military leaders Mbalo and Masyanga was delegated the pastime of raiding the Nsenga in the west. The Chiefs Nyanji and Kaluani were forced to take refuge on the summit of Sivwa Hill, the ascent of which was made by a precipitous and tortuous track known only to the defenders. A feature of these expeditions, which usually took place in the dry season, after the crops had been reaped, were the military roads, developed by the invaders. Cut wide through the forest, they are comparable in the directness towards their objective, surmounting all natural obstacles of terrain, with the Roman roads in England. Like them they survive to-day, and fine examples are still visible, extending for miles through virgin forest in the neighbourhood of the Rukuzi River in the north, and of the Kapoche River in the west. A conspicuous instance can also be seen leading from Mombera’s stronghold in Nyasaland to the Luangwa Valley. Towards the end of the eighties, as Zwangendaba had predicted, the Ngoni for the first time beheld the white-skinned race in all its various types : Portuguese, German, British and Dutch. The Portuguese, de Sofia, lived some years about this time at Mpeseni’s village which was situated on the Msipazi River. Carl Weise, a German, established himself at Luangeni, the village of Mpeseni’s head wife Lupoko(5°) and travelled in the latter part of the nineteenth century through most of what are now Fort Jameson and Petauke Districts. Another German, Hugo Genthe, paid Mpeserii a visit and expatiated on the chief’s mode of living in local journals(51). On behalf of the British Government, Joseph Thomson and Sir Alfred Sharpe interviewed him in 1890, and Colonel Warton, representing the North Charterland Exploration Company, and Dr. Maloney, the representative of the Rhodesia Concessions Company, were both entertained by the Ngoni Chief in 1895. Warringham, the first collector in this part of the British South Africa Company, saw him in 1896. In his reception of these gentlemen Mpeseni was much influenced by the political situation at this time. He was in close touch with events in Southern Rhodesia, was informed of the defeat of Lobengula some time before the news reached the Europeans in Nyasaland, and refugees from the Matabele actually sought protection with him. The menace from the east by the British administration at Zomba culminated in the defeat of Mwase at Kasungu on the last day of the year 1895. In this operation Mpeseni became involved owing to his having given tacit support to Chibisa who had escaped from the engagement. Meanwhile, he saw the African Trans­ continental Telegraph being constructed from Salisbury to Tete and from Tete to Blantyre. In British Central Africa, military expeditions were being sent against the Chiefs Zarafi, Tambala, Chimwere, Matapwiri and 12 others. The occupation of Kotakota ancl the erection of Fort Alston on the site of Mwase’s village brought the ambit of British influence uncom­ fortably close. These events led him to regard the British with suspicion, and especially travellers who approached him from Zomba or Kotakota as did Thomson, Sharpe, and later Maloney. The Portuguese Government, however, had shown no disposition to expand or disturb him. To persons entering his country from Tete he, therefore, gave friendly admittance and de Solla and Carl Weise were hospitably treated and permitted to remain in close proxi­ mity to Mpeseni without interference for as long as they wished(52). Carl Weise openly declared himself a German and opposed to British interests and gained Mpeseni’s friendship by offering himself and his party as a bulwark against British expansion. In pursuance of his avowed policy, he warned Hugo Genthe, who though a German, was accustomed to fly the Union Jack in British Colonies, that by doing so he would invite rebellion. Wh’en Major Forbes, the representative of the British South Africa Company, made an expedition to visit Mpeseni, he was warned that unless he identified himself with Weise and the North Charterland Exploration Company, he would have no chance of being received. Colonel Warton, to disguise his nationality, which was so odious to Mpeseni, allowed himself to be known as Weise’s elder brother. The inference is conclusive that WTeise obtained his ascendancy over Mpeseni by declaring himself a German and opposed to the British of the British South Africa Company and the British Central African administration. In 1895, a station was established on the Masupi Stream, only 20 miles north of Mpeseni, by the abortive Rhodesia Concessions Company, under the leadership of Dr. Cyril Hoste, which was christened first Fort Partridge and later Fort Jameson, the name afterwards adopted by the future capital of the country. In 1896, the British South Africa Company erected a fort and posted a Collector at Chinunda’s village about 60 miles north of Luan- geni, Mpeseni’s residence^53). Fort Partridge was evacuated in June of the same year owing to protests, made with great justification, by the North Charterland Explora­ tion Company that it was situated within its concession, and was occupied later by Warringham on behalf of the British South Africa Company. In July, 1896, Lieutenant-Colonel Gardiner Warton established himself in an ancient fort which he named after the Chairman of his Company, Fort Young. The North Charterland Exploration Company, of which he was the first Manager, owed its inception to Carl Weise, who on 14th April, 1891, obtained from Mpeseni a concession of 10,000 square miles north of the Anglo-Portuguese boundary in consideration of a subsidy of £200 a year. Weise made over the concession to the Mozambique Company which formed the subsidiary Company known as the North Charterland Exploration Com­ pany, in which, the British South Africa Company held a large block of shares. It was formally registered in July, 1896(54). For purposes of administration, Colonel Warton proposed to divide this tract into three districts, an Eastern, Central and Western, with head­ quarters respectively at Luangeni, Chasaya and Mulilo. Provision was made for Townships, Customs posts and even a sanatorium ; a police force 13 was to consist of fifty white men and 200 natives, armed with Martini Henry rifles, two maxims and two seven pounders ; a mail service was to be organised via Tete to the East Coast, and a Hut Tax was to be levied on the native population at the rate of 5«s. a hut, of which Mpeseni himself was to receive a percentage of the amount collected. Mining regulations were to be drawn up, and an extensive prospecting programme foreshadowed. Special attention was to be directed to two areas, which, in Weise’s opinion, offered unusual prospects, one in the Katokoli Hills near Msoro, “ where very mineralised and honeycombed quartz reefs are cropping out of the country rock,” and the other in Sopa’s country “ which in different places shows conglomerates very like those in the Transvaal.” Meanwhile surveyors were at work demarcating the south­ east boundary to ascertain whether Misale and the ancient alluvial gold workings in the neighbourhood lay in the concession or, as they were later found to be, in Portuguese Territory. The delegation which visited Mpeseni consisted of three persons, Colonel Warton, his secretary, H. J. Bropley, and Weise who acted as inter­ preter. They stayed four days with Mpeseni and the following account of his character at this period is, perhaps, worth recording in full : “ Mpeseni is an absolute savage. He thinks no more of killing a man than killing an ox, perhaps not so much. As an instance, as soon as we returned here, it was reported to him that the people inconvenienced us by crowding. He ordered that any one causing us annoyance was to be bound and sent over to his village where he would be killed . . . . Mpeseni is a man of about 70 years, and in Mr. Weise’s opinion has aged a good deal since he last saw him some six years ago. He has a strong common-sense and exercises absolute powers over his people. He sits in his hut literally from morning to night, hearing various questions and disputes which are brought before him from all parts of the country . . . Mr. Weise is regarded by the Angoni as almost one of themselves . . . . Personally I am known as Weise’s elder brother . . . Mpeseni, being an old man is naturally capricious and a very little thing might alter the good opinion he seems to have for us. Apart from this he might die, and then in Mr. Weise’s opinion, although his eldest son, Singu, would be proclaimed his successor and assume authority, it is probable that the country would be divided into parties and there would be much fighting amongst the Angoni themselves . . . . Singu is friendly to us and has visited us, but from what I have seen of him I should say that he has nothing like the ability and never will have the undisputed authority of his father who is, no doubt, although a savage, a remarkable man.” Towards the end of 1897, Mpeseni had begun to realise that he had been mistaken in supposing that the professions of Carl Weise were opposed to the interests of the British South Africa Company at Zomba, and moreover that by bargaining away the “ Concession ” he had only contributed to introduc­ ing into the country the very people he had hoped to keep at a distance. But even at this crisis his sound judgment was directed towards a peaceable settlement. In 1896 he had, at the request of the British South Africa Company, punished a party which had raided and robbed 14 a caravan of porters proceeding between Kotakota and Fort Partridge, and as late as November, 1897, had sent friendly overtures to Zomba. But the eruptive elements in his multitude were fomented by his son Singu, who as Chief-designate assumed a commanding position in the army, and is recognised by all authorities, black and white, as being mainly responsible for what followed. That Warton knew that Mpeseni realised the position becomes apparent from letters written about this time (April, 1897). Two hundred native police were asked for, ostensibly “ to support Mpeseni against any of his chiefs when necessary, and to assist in punishing any who carry out raids,” but actually for his own protection. Carl Weise, moreover, who saw with greater perspicacity than any one else the inevitable consequences of this double policy, made overtures with a view to joining the. British South Africa Company’s service, wishing no doubt, to be on the right side when trouble came. Major Forbes realising that, short of using force, Weise was the only intermediary he could use in negotiations with Mpeseni, recommended that Weise be engaged “ as the British South Africa Company’s representative with Mpeseni, supported by a force of 200 or 300 Tonga police, with which he can by supporting Mpeseni, not only keep the North Charterland Company’s territory quiet but can extend the authority of the British South Africa Company for a considerable distance to the west.” The London Board cabled “ advisable to appoint Weise,” but by that time, perhaps fortunately, Weise had disappeared from human knowledge in the unexplored country to the west. By the end of the year, the despatches of Warringham, the representative of the British South Africa Company, indicate a'restlessness among the Ngoni and a propensity for raiding which he was unable to control. A few days before Christmas, 1897, he wrote the despatch which was received at Zomba on the 28th December and gave the British South Africa Company their justification for sending troops into Mpeseni’s country(55). The period of operations from the departure of the troops from Kotakota to the surrender of Mpeseni occupied forty-four days of which the main fighting took place on the 19th and 20th January, 1898. Warringham who had been joined some months previously by Mr. A. C. R. Millar, had his headquarters at this time at Fort Partridge, the old fort of the Rhodesia Concessions, now rechristened Fort Jameson, situated some 30 miles north of Mpeseni and the same distance from Luangeni where Weise was reported to be invested. The force with Warringham consisted of only a handful of some 25 Tonga police, but he had three maxim guns including the two he had taken over from Maloney’s party and a quantity of snider rifles and ammunition. Weise when he left Tete some two years previously had been escorted by 120 armed Makua irregulars, but most, if not all of these seem to have been disbanded some time before. The British South Africa Company, while they undertook the civil administration of the country, possessed no military forces. It was incum­ bent on them, therefore, to appeal to the British Central African adminis­ tration for the assistance of their troops. The Commanding Officer of the British Central African administration’s troops was, therefore, in the delicate position of receiving his instructions from the civil authorities of 15

the British South Africa Company. In these circumstances it is a matter for mutual congratulation that the two bodies worked together so har­ moniously ; nor was there any cause for friction until at the close of the operations the division of the captured cattle gave rise to an acrimonious and indecorous dispute. The direction of affairs, both civil and military, emanated from Zomba. The line of advance was via Lake Nyasa as far as Kotakota, and thence to Fort Alston, the outpost established near Kasungu after the defeat of Mwase. Along these lines of communication were disposed, 250 men at Fort Alston, 120 at Kotakota and 150 at Fort Johnston, who could quickly be rushed to the reinforcement of the expeditionary force in case of need. Colonel Manning, who, as Consular-General and Acting Commissioner, was, in command of the Government’s forces, entrusted the operations to Captain Brake, under whom were Lieutenants Brogden and Sharpe. The force under his command comprised 100 Sikhs and native irregular armed troops. Besides his own ordnance, consisting of 7 pounders and maxims, one 2 | pounder and a maxim were lent by the British South Africa Com­ pany^6). The first intimation of trouble was received at Kotakota on 21st December, 1897, in a despatch from Warringham, transmitting a report from Weise that communication between the latter and himself was inter­ rupted and that both stations, that at Luangeni and at Fort Jameson, were in danger of being attacked. Warringham, who some days previously had reported on the acerbity of the Ngoni raids, without taking responsibility for the accuracy of Weise’s information, advised the Administration “ to smash these Angoni : it must be done sooner or later.” On the information, some days later, that Weise was safe and the position less critical, the troops were ordered to stand fast until further orders, not however without drawing from Colonel Manning some expostulation at the change of policy and a demand for “ a very full report from Mr. Warringham of the facts upon which his original information was based.” On 9th January, Warringham reported that the Ngoni were continuing their raids and cutting off the Wisa and Chewa natives who had been ordered to bring in food against the arrival of the troops, adding “ Weise could get out, I think, but won’t try.” On the 10th, news arrived that Weise was still surrounded in Luangeni, that Warringham had failed to establish contact with him, and that Ngoni were mustering in force at Mpeseni’s village. In view of this intelligence, the advance was ordered to be resumed. Captain Brake arrived at Fort Jameson on 18th January, and relieved Weise in Luangeni about sunset the following day. The actual fighting was summed up in the following brief communi­ cation : “ Weise and party relieved by Captain Brake. Angoni made poor stand. About 20 killed. Impis broken up and retired to hills, being fol­ lowed up.” On the march from Fort Jameson to Luangeni, small bodies of Ngoni kept in touch with the flanks of the column, but retired whenever fire was opened‘upon them. As the column entered the cup-shaped valley in which Luangeni is situated, small parties hung round and the* braver spirits attempted to charge, but were invariably shot down before coming near the troops. Weise and his party were found to be (C alive but in great straits.” 16

On the following day a force of about 200 Ngoni were dispersed from the neighbouring villages, but in the afternoon operations of greater magni­ tude were undertaken. On the information that several impis were ad­ vancing on the fort, fire was opened from the seven pounders and maxim guns, following which the troops charged. The Ngoni were completely broken up and fled to the hills, leaving about 50 dead on the field and many wounded. This figure, however, does not represent the whole extent of their casualties as the Ngoni succeeded in carrying off several of their dead and wounded. There were no casualties on the British side. All the neighbouring villages, including that of Singu, were burnt. On the next day the task of dispersing any large body of natives observed in the vicinity was resumed, and punitive measures were continued until, on 3rd February, 1898, Singu was surrounded in the village in which he had taken refuge by the force under Lieutenant Brogden, who had made a skilfully timed night march. He was surrendered to the troops, tried by a drum-head Court Martial, and summarily shot in the presence of a large number of headmen. A few days later, Nkuchwa, his wife, and the mother of Mpeseni II, the present chief, was killed in the Vubwi Valley, whither she had fled, by a mobile column under the command of Lieutenant Poole. Mpeseni who had sought a sanctuary in the inaccessible fastness of the Nsatwe Hill, volun­ tarily surrendered himself on 9th February. After a year’s exile in the newly founded fort at the headwaters of the Bua River, named after the Commander of the forces, Fort Manning, he was reinstated in the chieftain­ ship and lived long enough to see the infant capital of North-Eastern Rhodesia germinate from the derelict maize fields of Kapatamoyo, his quondam commander-in-chief. He died on 21st October, 1900, and was buried in the cattle kraal at Luangeni, the village of Lupoko, his chief wife. According to the chronology here adopted, he was aged 68, which corresponds with the impressions of his age left upon those Europeans who saw him. He was survived by his mother, Sosera, the wife of Zwangendaba, who lived to a great age and died at Dingeni the following month. So ended the so-called “ Ngoni War.” The results were complete. The Ngoni submitted quietly, and the country was rapidly pacified. About 14,000 head of cattle were captured, and a large number were lost or trampled owing to inefficient herding. Large herds were claimed and appropriated by the troops, and as many were sent to Salisbury as the share of the British South Africa Company. It was due to the opportune arrival and intervention of Mr. P. H. Selby that a large proportion were ultimately restored to their Ngoni owners. Mpeseni was succeeded by his grandson-Chiloa, the son of the peccant Singu, by his wife Nkuchwa. He inherited the name of his grandfather and became known as Mpeseni II. Heredity appears to have contributed less to the formation of his character than the enervating environment of his youth. Succeeding at an early age, he was educated in an era when the rigid discipline, inherent in the tribe, was already obsolescent. He was placed under the guardianship of Mshamunye until he came of age, and the first twenty-five years of his reign saw the death of all his uncles, the sons of the first Mpeseni, men who, while they inherited the true Ngoni traditions, were still young enough at the beginning of the century to assimilate the new methods of government. The power of the Ngoni had already collapsed. The extinc­ tion of the older generation brought the end of the Ngoni tribal supremacy. 1"

(1) Variously Zongwendaba, Zungwendaba, Sungendaba, etc. The orthography in the text is adopted by most modern ethnographical writers. Ndaba, according to Bishop Colenso, is the Zulu word for the father of a Chief, and was the name of Tschaka’s great grandfather. Indaba has also the meaning of a “ public assembly ” and Zwangendaba might bear some such meaning as “ accessible to all ”. (2) Soga : The south-eastern Bantu, 81. (3) Johnston: British Central Africa, 480, which however is not conclusive. His maturer development of the argument will be found in his Comparative Study of Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages, 22. (4) Johnston : British Central Africa, 62. Willoughby : Race Problems in New Africa, 38. Bryant : Olden Times in Zululand and Natal, 5. (5) Willoughby : loc. cit., 38. (6) Kropf: Kaffir-English Dictionary, 503. Soga : loc. cit., 82. (7) Bryant: loc. cit., 14. (8) Dos Santos : Ethiopia Oriental, pub. at Evora, .1609, cited by Theal, History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795, Vol. VII, 291. de Conto : Of the deeds which the Portuguese performed in the conquest and dis­ covery of the lands and seas of the east. Pub. at Lisbon in 15 Vols. Cited by Theal loc. cit., Vol. VI, 392, 403 where the date 1570 is given for the invasion of the Kafirs, Macabires and Ambios. (9) Theal : loc. cit., Vol. I, 389. Manuel de Faria e Sousa : Asia Portuguessa. Pub. Lisbon, 1666, cited by Theal in above volume. Virangune looks suspiciously like Villa Nguni in the Portuguese tongue. (10) Soga : loc. cit., 270. (11) Vide Johnston : Comparative Study of Bantu Languages. The Zulu, Tebele and Ngoni form is Nyoni. The Central African dialects favour Nguni, with diminutive forms Kay uni or Koni. In Luganda the form is enyoni. (12) Fraser : Winning a Primitive People, 311. (13) Young : Notes on the Speech and History of the Tumbuka-Henga Peoples, 221. (14) Elmslie : Among the Wild Ngoni. (15) Owen : Narrative of Voyages. Pub. 1833, cited by Theal, loc. cit., Vol. II, 470. Natives alluded to by others as Watwa are to be found in many parts of Africa, e.f/., in the swamps of Bangweulu, on the Kafue Flats and in the Congo. Possibly the Ngoni were so called because in their speech they employed “ clicks ” like the Bushmen. (16) Bryant : loc. cit., 447. (17) Livingstone : Zambezi and its Tributaries, and Last Journals. (18) Stanley : Through the Dark Continent, 318. (19) Variously Mhlutshwayo (Fraser), Hlachwayo (Young), Mlotshwa (Soga). (20) Fraser : loc. cit., 312. Young : loc. cit., 222. (21) Money: Geographical Journal, August, 1898. (22) Bryant : loc. cit., 278, 458. (23) Bryant : loc. cit., 459. According to this chronology the secession of Zwangendaba was contemporaneous with that of Shonganane. (24) The large number of Kalanga names which survive among the Ngoni to-day is a proof of this absorption of subject tribes. Most common are Hara, Moyo, Soko, but a full list is given by Young in an Appendix to his book. (25) The date is determined by the tradition that he was carried on his mother’s back at the. crossing of the Zambezi. (26) Money : Geographical Journal, August, 1898. He was also, however, engaged in a three days’ battle with Shonganane about this time from which he emerged defeated and anxious to find territory offering greater security. (27) Most authorities have accepted the eclipse in 1825, and have based the chronology of events on the assumption that the crossing was made in that year. Cf. Elmslie, loc. cit., 20, Werner, loc. cit., 279, Young, loc. cit., 194. For the argument in favour of the 1835 eclipse, vide the author’s note in the Journal of the African Society, April, 1930. The water was at 18 its lowest level in November, 1835, but in June, 1825, the flood was much too high to enable the crossing to be made on foot. (28) Young : loc. cit., 194, who is by far the best authority for the itinerary of the Ngoni north of the Zambezi, with the exception of his chronology,* which compared with that adopted in the text, antedates all events by ten years. (29) W erner : loc. cit., 280. (30) Vide Bryant, loc. cit. for the recurrence of this myth in African folk-lore. (31) For Nquaba, vide Bryant, 460. An early official publication by the British South Africa Company states that the crossing was made near Tete, which may refer to the crossing of Nquaba. (32) Young : loc. cit., 195, also mentions Chibandakazi, a place unknown to the geo­ graphy of modern natives. Mkoko, on the other hand, was the village of a well-known chief, the ancestor of the present Chief Matonje in the Petauke District. (33) For the Magwangwara Ngoni, vide Archdeacon Johnson, Nyasa the Great Water, - 110 et passim. (34) Goxhead : Native Tribes of Northern Rhodesia. Pub. by the Royal Anthropologi­ cal Society, Occasional Paper, No. 5, states that their route passed west of the Luangwa River through the Wemba country. This is contraverted by all the known facts. He is followed by Soga, loc. cit., 273, whose account of the Ngoni north of the Zambezi is neither so accurate nor so reliable as his historical narrative of the tribe in Natal. (35) Mombera is a corruption of Mbelwa, but as it is the more familiar appellation I have adopted it throughout. (36) Elmslie : loc. cit., 24. Mawiri is close to the point where the Rukuru River is inter­ sected by the present Lundazi-Loudon Road. (37) I have preferred the date of 1845 to B ryant’s 1840, on the assumption th at at least ten years must have elapsed between the crossing of the Zambezi and Zwangendaba’s death. His prophecy was not original and other parallels may be found in Bantu history. i (38) Young makes' Mgayi to be a cousin, the son of Mafu. Elmslie, Fraser and Soga agree that Ntabeni and Mgayi were both brothers of Zwangendaba. (39) According to our chronology, Mpeseni was aged about 12 and Mombera about 10, both therefore minors. (40) Vide Young, 197 et seq. for a full account. (41) Elmslie : loc. cit., 27, notes th at Mtwalu resigned in favour of Mombera, and is followed by Bryant. Fraser observes that Mombera was the original nominee of Zwangendaba and is followed by Young. (42) Lumbira is to be identified with the cacophonously named Tschidhlodhlo of some writers. (43) According to Young, Mombera came of age at the time of the descent of the Ngoni into the Henga Valley, thus determining the date at about 1850-1853. (44) Dr. Laws and Mr. Stewart in 1875. For the state of the Tumbuka country under Ngoni domination Elmslie’s book should be consulted, and for the historical narrative Young’s volume. (45) Mombera nominated Mkuzo to succeed him, a son by a slave wife whom the people refused to appoint. Mbalekelwa, the son of the eldest and principal wife eventually succeeded, although the purity of his descent was much questioned. His mother had been expelled by Mombera on account of her adultery. (46) Gouldsbury and Sheane : The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia, 29. (47) Livingstone : Last Journals, Vols. I and II. The Ngoni at this time were so dis­ persed that it is difficult to assign any particular reference to any particular group. The presence of Ngoni in the Wemba countries between 1860 and 1873 may have been accounted for by raiding parties from Mombera’s section, or by rear guards of Mpeseni’s columns. Un­ doubtedly Mpeseni himself with the main body must have moved south by the dates mentioned by Livingstone. (48) The Bapule are variously said to have been Ambwela, Alenje, Makololo and Maroze, and to have come from the Kafue, from Barotseland and from south of the Zambezi. They are almost certainly to be identified with the Makololo. After their final defeat by the Ngoni on the Luwelezi River in Nyasaland not far from Fort Jameson, they became incorporated in the Ngoni people and are now given an honoured place under their principal headman Chapita. (49) The North Charterland Concession Enquiry, before Mr. Justice Maughan, Commis­ sioner, 1932, 3, gives the date of the occupation as 1870. Native tradition tends to assign it to a few years later. In fact, the movement of the entire Ngoni people from the Nsenga 19 country to their present home took several years to complete, and the year 1870 may con­ veniently be accepted. (50) Ibid., 33. In the Statutory Declaration made by Carl Weise affirming the Con­ cessions ceded to him by native chiefs, the declarant states that between 1885 and 1891 he resided at Mtenguleni. At the time of the Ngoni rising in 1897, however, he had his head­ quarters at Luangeni. (51) British Central Africa Gazette, August, 1897. (52) Weise regularly flew the Portuguese flag during his residence in Mpeseni’s country, cf. North Charterland Concession Enquiry, 15. (53) Fort Partridge, named after a director of the Rhodesia Concessions Company, was situated near a former village site of Chief Mafuta and in correspondence at this time is often referred to as “ Mafuta’s ”. After its evacuation by the company, it was occupied by Warringham on behalf of the British South Africa Company, and rechristened, after a director of that Company, Fort Jameson. When the present site of Fort Jameson was selected by Mr. Selby, after the Ngoni rising, the old fort was abandoned and the name'transferred to the new township. Remains of a moat and ramparts may still be seen at Chinunda’s village where Warringham with Trooper Middleton first established themselves. (54) This article except for the notes was written before the publication of the evidence given at the North Charterland Concessions Enquiry before Mr. Justice Maughan. Those who are curious as to this transaction I would refer to that exhaustive report. Verbal treaties were made between 1885 and 1886. (55) The British Central Africa Gazette for the year 1898 contains an interesting con­ temporary commentary on the events which follow. (56) At one time or another the following European Officers were engaged in the opera­ tions : Captain Brake, Lieutenants Brogden, Sharpe, Gordon, Cumming, Poole, Garden, Blunt, Margesson and Lieutenant-Commander Rhoades who was in charge of the maxim. 20

Chapter II. NORTHERN SENGA. The Senga are a people living in the Luangwa Valley or Marambo Plain, roughly between the tenth and twelfth parallels of south latitude. They occupy both banks of the Luangwa River, but only those on the left or east bank come within the scope of this survey. For our knowledge of this tribe we have to depend almost entirely upon native tradition. Lacerda and subsequent Portuguese explorers passed south of the Senga country and do not mention it. Livingstone, though unacquainted with this part of the Luangwa, marked Chiwali’s village accurately upon his last map. The first European, as far as is known, to visit this area was John Moir in 1879. They should be distinguished from the tribe known’as Nsenga in the Petauke District further south, with whom, as far as it can be ascertained, they have no affinities, historical or linguistic, closer than those which unite all matrilineal tribes in this Province in one common group. Whereas the southern tribe is almost pedantic in the emphatic pronunciation of the initial nasal of the tribal name, so is the northern tribe punctilious in the omission of it(T). The adoption of the name Senga is probably contem­ poraneous with the settlement of the tribe in the Luangwa Valley. Etymo­ logically its derivation from the root “ Senga,” meaning sand, is more probable than any other that has been advanced. In neighbouring dialects this root takes the form “ Musenga,” “ Lusenga,” “ Mchenga” and “ Henga ” and the signification of the name may be the contrast drawn be­ tween the arid, sandy country of the Marambo Plain in contradistinction to the humid soils of their previous settlements and the heavier loams of the adjoining plateau(2). The controversial question as to the origin of the Senga may now be regarded as settled. In some quarters they have been erroneously identified with their neighbours on the east, the Tumbuka, on account of a certain dialectical resemblance and an undisputed historical intercourse which left the Senga blood much adulterated by intermarriage. But both these things were fortuitous, due first to the Senga males taking to wife Tumbuka females, and the offspring, consequently, being nurtured in their mothers’ tongue, and secondly to the expulsion of a section of the Tumbuka from the uplands to the low altitudes in occupation by the Senga. The use of the Tumbuka dialect as the medium of instruction in the schools of the Living - stonia Mission further contributed towards the identification of the two tribes. But the evidence of oral tradition upon which alone we can rely, since none of the early explorers visited this tribe, points conclusively to a western origin. Indeed, the first reference to the tribe by the name “ Senga ” appears to be in the nineties of last century by the early missionary expedi­ tions recorded in the pages of the “ Aurora ” of that decade(3). As it will be necessary frequently to refer by name to the different groups comprised by the term Senga, it will be convenient to enumerate them now, the second word in each case being the clan or “ totem ” name : 21 from north to south they are Kambombo Goma, Tembwe Zimba, Chikwa Nguni and Chifunda Lungu. Certain anomalies of law and custom dis­ tinguish the first from the other three, but ethnologically and historically they appear to be one peopled). All groups are in substantial unanimity not only as to their origin but also as to the cause of their migration. A pronouncement of Mwinenkonde, who succeeded as Chief Kambombo in 1918, affirmed that his tribe emigrated from Luwunda, the country ruled over by Mulopwe Mpalakasanga ya Uluwa. A headman under Kambombo, Nganjo Chiwato, perhaps the oldest living inhabitant and the depositary of a mine of interesting tradition, assigned the original home of the Senga to the Luapula River, and added the confirmatory fact that a former chief was Undi. Kamulibwe, who succeeded to the chieftaincy of the Tembwe group about 1880 and died in 1922, confirmed the tradition that the Senga emigrated from. Mulopwe Mpalakasanga ya Uluwa and added that the tribe was properly Wisa, a conclusion to which the evidence inevitably directs us. Other chiefs have contributed the names of places which lay on the path of the migration : Matipa, a Wisa Chief who lived on the flats to the south of Lake Bangweulu, who himself may have been in the same party with the Senga in the retire­ ment from Luba, and Mkungule, a Wisa headman living west of the Luangwa River(5), described by Lacerda as “ a powerful Mwiza Knight,” rather an ally than a subject of the Kazembe. The identification of these names presents no obstacles to any student of Lacerda’s journal. Mulopwe is identified by him with Mwatayamvu, king of the Lunda, in the country of Luwa(6). Luwa, Lua or Luba is, of course, the region watered by the Luapula-Lualaba in what is now the Belgian Congo. Finally the reference to Undi is corroboration of the well- founded tradition that the Undi whom we associate with the chieftaincy of the Chewa in Portuguese East Africa is the descendant of a yet more illus­ trious ancestor of that name who led the great dispersion of Chewa and Nsenga peoples at the close of the fifteenth century. Of the cause of the secession of the Senga from Uluba there prevails absolute unanimity. It is summed up, in the vernacular, by the single word “ Vikusi,” meaning weeds, rubbish, etc. Objection was raised to the Mulopwe of the period exacting from his subjects the arduous labour of clearing his gardens and keeping them free of weeds. The reason seems trivial enough to account for a concerted movement by so large a number to such a distant country as that which they occupy to-day. But this was an age of disintegration and the population was outgrowing the available land and food supply. Moreover, the migration, in common with all tribal movements at this time, was prolonged over the best part of a century, and included many sojourns on the way among inclement peoples. We know at least that some years were spent south of Lake Bangweulu and a longer time west of the Luangwa River where three branches of the tribe found a permanent home. The crossing of that river by the others was precipitated by attacks from the Wemba, who had caused them embarrass­ ment throughout their peregrinations. To visualise the magnitude of the disturbance of native tribes through these centuries needs a vivid imagination. Even before a.d. 1500 and from the same focal point in the country of Luba, Karonga and Undi had 22 led, under the name Maravi, the hordes of Che-wa and Nsenga towards the east, followed by streams of fugitive's in their wake throughout the following century. Pursuing the same eastward course the Wisa and Senga in the seventeenth century moved further and further away from the orbit of Mwatayamvu’s immediate influence. Eastward again early in the eight­ eenth century the irresistible Wemba invasion displaced those who had preceded them. A generation later the Kazembe conducted part of the Lunda tribe to the east of the Luapula River. The eastward retreat continued through the first half of the nineteenth century when the Kunda made the same monotonous journey across the plateau of Central Africa, followed by the Ambo by a route only slightly south of those taken by their predecessors. Nor was the migration towards the rising sun arrested until European intervention obliged a halt(7). The Wemba occupation of the plateau had immediate consequences. It scattered the Wisa, and expelled the Senga from the sanctuary they had obtained under the protection of Matipa on the margin of the Bangweulu Swamps. Driven into the valley they found refuge with Mukungule, an important Wisa Chief then living at the base of the Muchinga escarpment. When the Wemba expeditions penetrated the Luangwa Valley, the Senga again turned their faces to the east and crossed the river. The episode of Kolimfumu, transcribed verbatim from th e. description of their native informant by the authors of the Great Plateau of Northern .Rhodesia, may well have been typical of many(8). The date of the crossing of the Luangwa by the Senga may, with close approximation, be determined by its correla­ tion with collateral events. Mr. Cullen Young has ascribed to the years 1780-1800 the advent of Mlowoka on the Nkamanga Plateau, which was contemporaneous with the first appearance of the Senga east of the Luangwa, and nothing in the traditions of the Senga disturbs his conclusion^). Of the northern Senga chiefs the first to cross the river were Kambombo and Tembwe. This vanguard, it is related, consisted entirely of men, unaccompanied by women. They concentrated their following in a camp which, to commemorate their exclusion from female society, they named Chipulabalume, under the massive peak of Mpalausenga. Their melancholy situation is also recalled by its other name Chiwilila,” or the place of wailing(10). A reason for their close association with the Tumbuka is thus to be found at the outset : for having no women they were obliged to procure wives from the adjacent Poka, Lowoka and Tumbuka tribes. This explains not only the prevalence of the Tumbuka dialect (for the children of Tumbuka mothers naturally adopted their speech), but also the frequency of intermarriage and the participation in common of clan or totem names. Kambombo remained here in the basin watered by the Luwumbu and -the Kalinku. It was, at the time of his arrival, sparsely populated by Chidundu and his followers who had been allotted land in this valley by Mlowoka. Kajumba, his grandson and a very aged man who died in 1923, distinguished his clan alike from the Senga and Tumbuka by calling it Lowoka. Prom the people of Chidundu the Senga took their wives and adopted their peculiar custom of inheritance, whereby after the succes­ sion of each brother in turn, the sons succeed. The first of the line of Kambombo was Chiweza. With him were Kazilondo, Chama, Kampuzunga and others whose names have been transmitted to their descendants to-day. 23

On his death the succession was disputed between Kasolwe, the elder son of Chiweza’s head wife Mlowa, and Mwimba, the only son of Mwali, an inferior wife. Such disputes were so common that the present instance would pass without further notice, had it not been referred for adjudication to Chiweza- Kunda, a Wisa Chief living west of the Luangwa and nearly a hundred miles to the south. And the inference to be drawn from this procedure is that the Senga referred the decision of their chieftaincy to a Wisa Chief, because he was the senior chief of the same tribe as themselves. And we arrive at the same conclusion from different evidence that the Senga are, in fact, Wisa. Although Chiweza-Kunda declined to nominate, Kasoiwe was appointed and was succeeded in due course by Mwimba the unsuccessful claimant. Of Matumba and Mazyewa nothing of note is recorded. The reign of Chiawi, Mazyewa’s son, saw the arrival at the headwaters of the Luwumbu of Katumbi’s Poka, driven down the hills by the violence of the Ngoni irruptions in Nyasaland. Chimbunda who succeeded him was harried throughout his reign by the Ngoni who raided him both from the Nkamanga and Fipa countries. In an attempt to escape to his younger brother Mulilo in the Chifungwe country he met his death at the Viziwa Spring, close to that .fossilised forest, of which a gigantic specimen may be seen in the South Kensington Natural History Museum(n ). Chimpundu, his successor, saw the arrival of the first Europeans on Lake Tanganyika and the erection of the first Government station at Abercorn by the British South Africa Com­ pany. After his death in 1913, Itua ruled till the close of 1917, when he was followed by Mwinenkonde at the New Year of 1918. For his failure as a chief there is some mitigation, since he was deaf in both ears and paralysed by an incurable disease. On the death of Chiweza, perhaps out of dissatisfaction at the irregular succession of Kasolwe, Tembwe withdrew from Chipulabalume, where he had hitherto lived in close association with Kambombo’s section, to the next affluent of the Luangwa River to the south, and occupied, with his following, the basin of the Lupamazi and its tributary the Mkoka Stream. Here he met with a Tumbuka headman, Mbachunda, who himself was in search of new territory. The contact left upon Tembwe’s branch that indel­ ible Tumbuka influence which association with Chidundu had imprinted upon the Senga of Kambombo. The first chief of the Zimba dynasty was Kam- pata, whose settlement lay towards the broken country of the hills to the east. His corpse was the first of a distinguished line to decompose in the royal mausoleum on the Mkoka Stream, where in 1905 the first Government station was erected to bring under control this and the Tumbuka tribe(12). After the short and uneventful reign of Chitimbi the accession of Mwila, still in his minority, afforded an opportunity to his uncle, (Kwinya, a man of sinister character, to usurp the throne. His tenure of it, deprecated by everyone was, however, brief and he was obliged to abdicate on Mwila attaining to discretionary years. Mwila’s government, in spite of his youth, was prudent and benevolent, and holds a high place in the annals of the tribe. He came into conflict with at least one aspirant to his position, Mbuleni, a descendant of a sister of Kampata. Mbuleni’s mother had at one time been captured by the Ngoni and in her captivity had given birth to him. A pair of elephant’s tusks had ransomed her from her captors and she forthwith set herself assiduously to promote the claims of her son to the 24

chieftaincy, on the grounds of the legitimacy of his descent on the maternal side. On the other hand, Mbuleni was denounced as an alien, born in a foreign country, and of putative parentage. The contest raged with vituperative acerbity until the chief’s death, when civil war broke out between the rival factions. The cause of Mbuieni this time prevailed against that of Kamulibwe, Mwila’s grandson, and the chieftaincy was held by the cadet branch of the house. He was succeeded by his nephew, Chibere, who achieved a reputation for the most refined cruelties. His favourite diversion was to immerse young infants in the river from the spectacle of whose impotent struggles in the water he derived intense pleasure. On his death the succession reverted to the line of Mwila, whose grand­ son, Kamulibwe, the rival candidate of Mbuleni, entered upon a singularly sagacious reign. He steered the Senga through the two great crises of his generation, the Ngoni wars and the British occupation, and succeeded in gaining the unanimous support of his people to the policy he adopted towards each. The former he countered by concentrating his people within vast stockades, and he is credited with successfully resisting at least one Ngoni impi, a meritorious performance in those days. With the latter he compromised, at first somewhat reluctantly, but afterwards co-operated loyally and in the later years of his life proved himself to be incomparably the most able of the Senga chiefs. His domestic life was embittered by the jealousies of his wives, of whom he allowed himself the generous number of fourteen. Their incessant demands upon him which he was incapable of gratifying betrayed him into an attempt to take his own life by shooting himself with a muzzle-loading musket. The amputation of his left hand remained to his death a melancholy testimony of the inefficiency of his marksmanship or the failure of his courage(13). The group of Senga conterminous with Tembwe on the south is subject to the Nguni family of whom the reigning chief each in turn assumes the heritable name of Chikwa. The pioneers who first explored this region watered by the Lunzi and Lumenzi Rivers were Chimwerampande and Mpiana Chawala. They crossed the Luangwa from the west independently of, and subsequently to, the two groups above described. As in the country to the north, so here, in Chirumba, as Chikwa’s country,is called, some scattered inhabitants under a headman, Mpamvi, were eking out a precarious existence, without the most elementary necessities of life. In graphic language tradition relates with what astonishment the Senga immigrants beheld this timid people, concealed in the most inaccessible folds of the hills, and sustaining life on the wild fruits of the forest, which they prised open with unshapen elephant tusks. - To these helpless folk came Chim­ werampande, so called because he took his potations from a vessel more copious than that in ordinary use for drinking purposes. In exchange for providing them with grain for food and seed corn for planting, of which they were destitute and possibly even ignorant, he collected from them the wealth of ivory which they had so unintelligently misapplied. This legend has been transmitted through an indisputably Senga channel, and, as oral tradition goes, an authoritative one. It is, therefore, of peculiar interest to find that a very similar tradition is related of the first natives found in Nkamanga by Mlowoka at very much the same date. Mr. Cullen Young describes Mlowoka as “ coming among a people whom he found using tusks as seats, as supports to articles which it was desired to 25 raise off the ground, and even as props for cooking pots upon the fire.” The circumstance left a profound impression upon the two invaders, the one from the east and the other from the west, that after a century and a half it remained an outstanding feature in their respective traditions. The people encountered by Chimwerampande in the valley of the Luangwa were Tumbuka as were those found in Nkamanga by Mlowoka(14). In each case the invaders had stumbled upon a very primitive culture. In what is now the Lundazi District vestiges of their villages may be seen inaccessibly situated and remote from their neighbours. Salient episodes in their history are handed down : there was Njoka who committed suicide by precipitating himself over the sheer cliff which overhangs the Nyondwe waterfall, and Kulikuli who was stoned to death for an incestuous act where the Lupwizizi has its source. To those who have delved into the history of these people, it has some­ times come as a surprise to find how widely dispersed were the Tumbuka. As an instance, Lacerda’s encountering them in 1798 on the Mwatizi near the Luangwa is cited(15). But as Mr. Cullen Young observes, this was the close of the patriarchal period, before tribes had become centralised in clan groups under chiefs. The story of Chimwerampande’s end is testified to by several indepen­ dent authorities. Having quarrelled with his brother Muwole over a matter of land, Chimwerampande together with his family of men, women and chil­ dren voluntarily entered the Ntembwa pool and there met their death by committing race suicide. The Ntembwa pool is a small sheet of water north of the Lunzi River near Doroba, and at the present day has scarcely half a fathom of water, yet it is said that until recent times in its waters were wont to aestivate crocodiles and hippopotamuses. Mpiana Chawala who now became chief was a brother of Chimweram­ pande by the same mother, Ngoza Kamunga. He acquired some notoriety on account of his excessive avidity. He would accumulate in his granary the entire food supply of his people which he shared between himself and his dogs. To the Senga, however, a replete stomach was a more cogent desideratum than a chief and they lost little time in deposing him. His successor, Chirutema, also known as Kango, endeavoured to improve the race eugenically by methods entirely his own. To this end he invented an instrument resembling a fishing rod, at the end of which he would cause the young infants of the tribe to suspend themselves. The qualification for survival and physical fitness to propagate the species depended on their ability to maintain their hold of the hook as, seated on the cliffs of the Luangwa, the chief elevated or depressed the rod over the water. For those unable to attain the required standard of prehensility there awaited death by drowning or from the jaws of the attendant crocodiles. The blameless chieftainship of Chimpamba followed, devoid of historical interest except that in his reign was introduced a new strain of Chewa blood into the Nguni family. Zimwanda was a traveller from Kambombo’s country belonging to a section of the Chewa tribe derisively called by others “ Kankuku Kalalanda ”(16) and was journeying to the famous strophanthine groves on the Rukuzi to obtain poison for his arrows. Spying him one day at the watering place, the chief’s mother, Nyawa, immediately conceived for him a passionate desire. Zimwanda was persuaded to accept her pro- 26 posal and soon became a person of much consequence in the country. Whether Nyawa’s first husband, Muchambwe, died or was divorced or, as senior and dormant partner, acquiesced in his wife’s polyandry is not chronicled(17). Chimpamba was succeeded by his cousin, Mwerekete, after whose short reign Marunga, a brother of Chimpamba became chief. At this point the sons of Zimwanda, Chikompa and Musampeni, both insignificant persons, whose accession seems to have been open to much contemporary criticism, survived short periods of uneventful chieftaincy. It is indeed probable that they were ignored by the majority of loyal headmen who gave their allegiance to Mbua, Mwerekete’s mother. The line of Zimwanda, at any rate, expired with Musampeni’s decease, though it is periodically resuscitated by persons living in the eastern part of the country. Mbua was the first but not the last woman of this family to exhibit considerable aptitude for government. But she must have been a great age when she assumed the position and the advent of European administration was a shock to her constitution from which she never recovered. Her son Chipepe or Chadumuka displayed alternately a character of blustering independence and subservient sycophancy until he was brought to reason by the officials of the British South Africa Company at Nawalya in the early years of the century. The majority of his harem of thirteen wives was inherited by his virile nephew and successor Chirubwe, better known as Galamala. This seraglio was augmented to seventeen before and to twenty-one after his deposition, an abrupt interruption of an other­ wise promising career, brought about by his unrestrained exercise of the prerogative to the enjoyment of all and every woman in his country. The Chikwa family, in fact, attained to a standard of uxoriousness to which their neighbours made no pretensions. Galamala’s successor in 1918 was his aunt, Kamutagwara or Kapotwe, who, like her sister Chimpamba and her niece Estere, married husbands with a complacency and divorced them with an indifference which would have scandalised the more orthodox sections of the tribe. The fourth chief of the Senga, who occupied the southernmost part of the Senga sphere of influence, was Chifunda of the Lungu family. This section migrated here in two waves, both probably posterior to the northern groups. The first was conducted by Mwinemitondo who seceded from Ulua about the same time as the others, but took a different and a longer route which covered a greater period of time. He crossed the Luangwa near its confluence with the Rukuzi River, then deflecting his course rather south of east, arrived in the country of the Chewa Chief, Chinunda. Here he settled for some time, certainly years, to obtain the protection from that chief against the raids of the Ngoni about the year 1840. When the pressure was relaxed by the resumption of the Ngoni northward movement, Mwinenitondo turned in a north-westerly direction and occupied the Lundazi-Lumenzi basin, called Nyimbwe. He cpened amicable relations with the sparse settlements of Tumbuka which he found already in possession towards the hills and the Nyondwe waterfall, and remained in this fertile valley until a. few years later he was dispossessed by Mkazingoma, the predecessor of the Kazembe branch of Chewa. Mkazingoma was merely conducting a hunting party, on behalf of his Paramount Chief Mwase of Kasungu, in search of elephants. But he became so enamoured of the fertile country of Nyimbwe 27

that, deserting his chief and employer and expelling the native occupants, he decided to remain. Mwinemitondo withdrew northwards to the valley of the Luelo, known as Chilenje, where he died under the protection of the first of the line of Chifunda, the leader of the second wave of migration. About 1870 to 1880 the second migration under Kapalakonje occupied the Luelo Valley. He lived under a perpetual threat of invasion from the Wemba, who inflicted upon his people many heavy casualties and once at least suffered a heavy reverse at their hands. He was followed by Mwase who in his turn was succeeded by Kasusulu. The next chief, Chiwowe, met the full force of the Ngoni raids and was eventually killed by them in a struggle at Malovia, an inundated strip of land formed by the backwaters of the Luangwa, whither he had fled for refuge. His successor, Tewa, in order to protect himself against the unwelcome attentions of the Wemba, patched up a truce with the Ngoni to whose country he fled and died. The next Chifunda, a senile old gentleman of little ability, enjoyed the reputation of giving the most bibulous banquets of any in the Senga country.

(1) An interesting account of the people as they were before the advent of British ad­ ministration may be found in Dr. Fraser’s Winning a Primitive People. (2) The two tribes have been identified by some writers, e.g., by Coxhead in his Native Tribes of Northern Rhodesia, published as an Occasional Paper by the'Royal Anthropological Society, 58. That they both sprang from one common stock in the Luba country is true of them as it also is of the Wisa and Kunda, but there the resemblance ceases. The northern group of Senga are unquestionably a section of the larger Wisa tribe. (3) For other possible derivations vide infra, 35. (4) Notably in their customs of marriage, succession and inheritance. Kambombo’s group is unique in that the son inherits, but does not marry, his mother. Vide infra, 28. (5) Lands of the Cazembe, 88. For Matipa, vide Livingstone : Last Journals, Vol. II, Chapter XI. (6) The identification of Mulopwe with Mwatayamvu by Lacerda in 1799 was adopted by Monteiro in 1831. Ladislaus Magyar, however, was probably righc when he wrote about 1850 that the natives were not conversant with this name of Mwatayamvu. Like Kazembe, Kwambwiri, Mwase, Mambo and others, Mulopwe was a title not a proper name. Like them, too, it survives now as a personal name in the Senga country. A native informed Lacerda that Mwatayamvu was Mulopwe’s father. (7) For a map illustrating the lines of these several migrations vide the end of this volume. (8) Gouldsbury and Sheane : The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia, 30. (9) Cullen Young : Notes on the Speech and History of the Tumbuka-Henga Peoples, 150. (10) It was also known to the original Senga as Mazingwazingwa, a pool whence they drew their water. The modern name for it is Masekwa, and it is situated close to the small village of Kazembe. (11) Mulilo belonged to the cadet branch of the family and occupied the upper reaches of the Luangwa. Until 1922 his country formed part of the administrative district of Lundazi, but in that year was handed over to the Northern Province and is outside the scope of this survey. (12) The short-lived Mkoka station was founded in 1905 by Mr. Coxhead. (13) Tembwe, in his relations with women, w’as impotent, and his large family is the offspring of various men, to whom, following native custom, he lent his wives. (14) Cullen Young : loc. cit., 156. (15) Lacerda : loc. cit., 84. (16) The words are translated to mean “ miserable chickens”, but the origin of the 3obriquet is unknown. .There had, however, been an earlier connection between the Senga of Chikwa and the Chewa, for Uyoyo a Chewa headman had been settled here for some genera­ tions. (17) Zim wanda’s authority prevailed in the eastern part of Chikwa’s country. The existence of two chiefs’ villages, Doroba in the west and Mtonya in the east, is perhaps explicable on the supposition suggested in the text that the people were divided between the senior and junior branches of the family. The popular explanation, however, is that the chiefs lived at Doroba and were buried at Mtonya. 28

Chapter III. THE CHEWA AND WISA IN THE LUANGWA VALLEY. No consecutive narrative of the Chewa is included in these pages, although they form numerically the largest tribe in the province. Some references to their early history when they were known generally as MaravK1), a name they retained until the twentieth century, will be found in a subse­ quent chapter dealing with Nsenga history. The colonisation of the Luangwa Valley by the Chewa, however, would be incomplete without a prefatory note on Mwase of Kasungu who inspired and organised it. Mwase came originally from Bunda, a hill situated some ten miles south of Lilongwe, the Government station in Nyasaland. Engaged there in a conflict with his brother, Chalera, he was defeated and fled northwards in search of fresh lands. He made himself master of the country and killed the reigning chief, who was then living at Chimalilo, and took his name Mwase. Driven out by a rising of the original inhabitants, he was again recalled and fortified himself under the peak of Kasungu Hill. Maintaining a close connection with the coastal Arabs, he was always well equipped with fire -arms. In later years by virtue of Mwase’s guns the Ngoni under Mombera suffered a signal reverse, and thereafter both he and Mpeseni were prudent- enough to make him their friend. After defying the British Administration at Zomba for some years, he was eventually brought to terms in December, 1896, after a brief resistance. To the chiefs of this dynasty is due the exploration of the Luangwa which was prior to the immigration of the Kunda, Wisa or Ambo. The heirs of the rightful chief, Mwase, now live at Chimalilo, a small tributary to the southern bank of the Lundazi River in the Lundazi District. Formerly known as Mwa.se Chimalilo or Mwase Ntembwa on account of the vast system of earthworks fortifying his village, of which vestiges may still be seen, he is now more familiarly known as Mwase Piri or Mwase Lundazi. The present occupants of the Chiwande, the Wisa of Kambwiri, are recent intruders into the Luangwa Valley. Their predecessors, the Chewa of Mwase, had settled in this region before the end of the eighteenth century and were, as far as is known, the first to occupy it. The meaning of the word “ Chiwande ” has never been explained, but its application to this country dates to a period previous to the Wisa occupation. In its precise denotation it is applied to a fine tree of the thorny acacia species, which traditionally is said to have been so named by the Chewa infants who, using its copious shade as a playground, sportively called it “ chi­ wande.” Subsequently the name became used to denote, not only the tree, but the whole country of the Rukuzi basin in the neighbourhood of the old village of Mwase and the present village of Kambwiri. The first natives known to ha ve inhabited this region were the Chewa(J) under a line of chiefs who, each in turn, to the perplexity of their subsequent biographers, inherited the name of Mwase(2). These Chewa, coming from the plateau near Kasungu, descended into the Marambo Plain, anticipating 29 by more than a century the later settlements under Chitungulu and Kazembe. As in all the principal Chewa groups the ruling dynasty belonged to the Piri family(3), the representatives of whom in the Chiwande were Mwase, and higher up the river Masumba and Kamoto. The Chiwande has more than a passing interest, for it received more attention from European explorers in the nineteenth century than any other part of the Luangwa Basin. These visits will be referred to later chrono­ logically, but they will be more intelligible if the confusions into which the early cartographers fell are first explained. The similarity in the names of the two adjacent rivers, Rukusuzi (north) and Rukuzi (south) led to the confounding of most explorers and map-makers until quite recent times. The northern river, first recorded by Lacerda in 1798, passed through the orthographic variations Ircusuzi (Lacerda), Tocusuzi (Livingstone) until it finally became perpetuated as Rukusuzie(4). First discovered by Lacerda, the southern river was correctly called by him the Rukuzi at its source, but at its confluence with the Luangwa became Mongorozi, which is actually a tributary to the northern Rukusuzi. Livingstone writes it Lokozhwa, and it finally became Rukuzie. A second source of confusion was the curious conformation of the land dividing the two rivers, which so throws the tributaries out of their normal course as to lead Lacerda to suppose that they flowed into Lake Nyasa instead of into the Luangwa. Crossing the Rukuzi near its source he first fell into this error and makes it flow into the Bua and thence to Lake Nyasa. Meeting the feeders of this river later on, he was still convinced from the abnormal direction taken by them that they flowed east and recorded that he was crossing the Luangwa-Nyasa watershed when in reality he was traversing the local divide between the Rukuzi and Rukusuzi Rivers. Lastly, meeting or hearing of the river near its confluence with the Luangwa, he severed it from its source and under the name Mongorozi made it flow, this time correctly, into the Luangwa. This error was not corrected until Livingstone carefully and accurately surveyed the course of the Rukuzi from its source to its confluence with the Luangwa. That Mwase was established in the Chiwande before the dawn of the nineteenth century is abundantly testified by Lacerda and other Portuguese authorities. In 1796, Manoel Caetano Pereira(5), a much travelled Portuguese, journeyed to the Luangwa River and, though illiterate, was able to describe from memory his itinerary through the lands of Bive, Vinde(6), MocandaO, Mazy and Mazavamba(8). In Mazy it is not difficult to recognise Mwase, and his name so interposed between those of Mocanda and Mwazavamba leaves little doubt that he is the Mwase of the Chiwande. In 1798 Lacerda crossed the high ridge dividing the Rukuzi from the Rukusuzi under the mistaken impression that it was the Luangwa-Nyasa watershed, which he patriotically named Cordilheira Carlotina after the wife of the then Prince Regent of Portugal, a name which remained on the maps until the late nineties of last century. He describes it as dividing the lands of Caperemera(9) from those of the kinglet Masse. A combination of circumstances, unfortunate for those who have since tried to trace his itinerary, contributed to Lacerda having made very exiguous entries in his journal at this stage. First, the country at this point 30 was almost uninhabited and -Lacerda, who had a strong aversion to second­ hand information, was unable to obtain local and reliable knowledge of the topography. Secondly he had already begun to sicken with that recurrent fever which afflicted him more or less persistently to his death and prevented him from making detailed observations ; and thirdly, being a man of scientific attainments, he was anxious to press forward to a village with a known name, in order to observe the occultation of Jupiter’s satellites and so to determine his position on the map. With this object, therefore, he made two arduous forced marches over difficult country until he arrived at Mwanzawamba’s village in time to make the astronomical, observations he desired(10). But during these exhausting days he recorded little and gives us no information whatever of Mwase or his people. Before leaving Tete on this memorable journey, the object of which was to open transcontinental communication between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, Lacerda, recognising the wisdom of establishing a base halfway between Tete and Lake Mweru, stipulated with the envoys of Chief Kazembe, who claimed the territorial sovereignty over the country east of the Luangwa River, for the lease of a few acres of land in the country of Mwase. As the early colonisation of the Luangwa Basin by the Portuguese is little known, it may be of interest here to set out the original contract and the evidence identifying the land so leased with the Chiwande of Mwase : “ On February 27th, 1798, in this town of Tete, at the house and in the presence of His Excellency the Governor of the Province, Dr. Francisco Jose Maria de Lacerda e Ameida, and all the citizens and inhabitants of the same town, appeared the envoys of the King Kazembe, to salute His Excellency the Governor on the part of his master and to offer friendship and trade to him and to them. On his side he promised that . . . . the Portuguese would be allowed to build a settlement and to plant manioc near the Arangoa River and that they should not send their goods one at a time but all together. This proposal was unanimously accepted and a resolution was passed . . . Having thus agreed they bound themselves in a bond before me the writer and signer of this instrument.

(Signed) J ose Sebastiao d’Athaide, Public Notary

That this was no visionary idea, but a definite plan for the exploitation of this part of Africa, is revealed in Lacerda’s instructions to his captains, which show his intention of effecting communication between this pro­ jected colony and the outpost at Zumbo founded some thirty years before. These directions were issued on 18th June, 1798, and the third runs as follows : “ Arrived at the (lower) Aruangoa River, the party will select a proper site for the settlement desired by the Cazembe, and will carefully note the advantages to be derived by it from trading with the Mwiza tribe which begins here. The Lieutenant of Sena, Jose Vicente Pereira, will descend that river in the best canoe pro­ curable, to trade with the caffres . . . He must register all such important information as the number of days spent in making Zumbo, and the approximate number of leagues from his point of departure to the end of his voyage whence he will regain his post . . . .” 31

He was only forced to relinquish this ambitious project by discovering that, at the time of year when he touched the Luangwa (August) river transport was, owing to deficiency of water, impracticable. To pursue the history of the colony, the land was eventually purchased from Mambo Muasse in the year 1824, in the governorship of Colonel Jose Francisco Alves Barbosa, and in 1827 was garrisoned by a posse of soldiers. These intrepid pioneers cultivated manioc for the space of two years, at the end of which the survivors abandoned the colony either, as Burton suggests, because of the pestilential climate or else, we may suppose, because the market for manioc a century ago offered insufficiently remunerative pros­ pects. The route explored by the Lacerda expedition was followed by every other expedition travelling through this part of Africa. The survivors of the expedition under the leadership of their chaplain, Fra Jao Pinto, on their return journey passed by a parallel route slightly to the south. But the party had been frequently attacked by natives and the incoherency of the holy Jesuit’s journal is a witness to the panic of his spirit. Although he passed through the centre of Mwase’s country and was in a position to supply much information, he added nothing that was new. In 1810 the two Pombeiros, of whom Pedro Baptista kept a diary, took the same route but recorded only the names of the villages where they halted and added nothing to the information already collected by Lacerda. Their expedition is chiefly noteworthy because they were the first to succeed in crossing the continent from Ocean to ocean. Major Monteiro and his companion, Gamitto, in 1831, who, on behalf of the Portuguese Government, attempted to repeat the success of the Pom­ beiros, left more detailed records. The colony is referred to by them by the name Macambo, a name which cannot to-day be identified with any existing place. The southern boundary is described as the Muata Stream, an affluent of the Luangwa. At this stream the last of the Portuguese explorers, Silva Porto, who between 1852 and 1854 had made a number of journeys in the centre of Africa, crossed the Luangwa. He demarcated it on his map as south of the village of Mwanzawamba, and it may probably be identified with the Mw’atizh11). In 1865 Livingstone surveyed with great accuracy the course of the Rukuzi. As an instance of the stability of native villages, it is worth remarking that the site of Masumba’s village, where he pitched his camp, was then in the identical spot it occupies to-day, sixty years later, in the hook of the Rukuzi. Livingstone’s next camp was made under Mpalawe Hill(12). Here he met the brother of the chief, vigorously engaged in enlisting an apathetic people to join in a foray against his Wisa neighbours. The Wisa who twenty years later expelled the Ghewa from the Chiwande wrere already a menace on the western border. An incident occurred here illustrative of the alarm in which the whole countryside was thrown by the Mazitu or Ngoni : the bark of a jackal followed by the shouts of the boys sent the whole population up the hill for refuge. The Ngoni at this time were occupying the high Nkamanga Plateau and, following elephant paths which they converted into highways of traffic, made frequent raids upon the timid Chewa. Livingstone crossed the Luangwa at Maranda’s village, at this date situated on the west bank of the river(13). 32

In the score of years which elapsed between Livingstone’s visit and their expulsion the Chewa lived in perpetual jeopardy of their lives and property. On the west and north-west the Wisa, a tribe of bellicose traditions, made periodic descents upon them ; from the north-east, the Chief Mombera annually despatched impis of Ngoni for plunder. Between 1880 and 1890 the blow fell and the Wisa occupied the fertile country of the Chiwande of which they remain in possession to-day. The date of this episode has usually been assigned too early. Copious documentary evidence, which has accumulated in recent years in connection with the litigation over the salt deposits between the Kunda of Sefu and the Wisa of Kambwiri, has adduced testimony, almost conclusive, in favour of a date about the middle or end of that decade. Sometime, then, between the year 1885 and 1888, Kambwiri of the Ngona family, himself subject to a superior Wisa Chief, Nkandu Chiti or Kopa, descended the Muchinga escarpment from the source of the Mpamazi where he held sway over a group of villages, and evicted the Chewa from the Chiwande. Several accounts have been given of the episode, and there is much contradiction in detail, but analysed they furnish a fairly coherent record. Kambwiri, who died in 1902, was conducting a caravan of ivory to the coast at Quillimane, his route passing through the Chiwande. The Mwase of this date was engaged in a civil war with the adherents of his brother Mwanya, to whom a short time previously Mwase had administered a dose of poison. The sympathies of their common sister, Ntemba, lay with the deceased Mwanya, and either out of revenge, or, as is affirmed, because she and her people were suffering from the evils of prolonged misgovernment, she solicited the help of Kambwiri to depose Mwase. Kambwiri was too much occupied in disposing of his consignment of ivory to interest himself immediately in this internal quarrel; moreover he was without the munitions necessary to achieve success. He therefore declined to commit himself further than to hold out a vague promise that, on his return from the coast, where he hoped to barter his ivory for fire-arms, he would, if again approached, reconsider the proposition. His ivory evidently fetched the price expected, for Kambwiri is next heard of on his return effectively armed with guns and prepared to embark upon any enterprise which offered him a reward for his trouble. He accepted the overtures of Ntemba and the unexpected reinforcement turned the balance. Mwase was vanquished and killed. His remains repose in the thick thorn grove to the south of his village. His people for the most part fled, some to Kasungu whence a century earlier they had migrated, some to the upper Rukuzi where under the leadership of Masumba they formed a compact little group, others to the Rukusuzi and the Lumimba. Kambwiri remained supreme. Kambwiri had possessed Himself of the country by force of arms and held it by right of conquest, but his claim to it is almost invariably based upon his acceptance of it as a gift from Ntemba in consideration of the assistance given. Ntemba herself was on this account held in high honour by the Wisa. What happened to her first husband, Mambuli, is not known : he either ran away in disgust or else conveniently died. At any rate Ntemba, for practical purposes a widow, was bestowed upon Mundala who, until her death, kept her in exceptional veneration. She lived and died in a halo of majesty, and on her deathbed expressed the wish that her daughter, Chidote, should receive the same liberal provision which she herself had 33

enjoyed. Kambwiri, therefore, presented her to a most respectable Wisa headman, by name Saidi, who proved in every respect a model husband. The country over which Kambwiri now assumed the chieftaincy comprised, besides the Chiwande proper, the basin of the Rukusuzi and the riparian settlements along the Luangwa. Beyond the confines of his own country, he claims a vague suzerainty over the Wisa villages west of the Luangwa, and in proof of this claim, nominated one of his own head­ men for the vacancy of the chieftaincy of Chiwesa Kunda on the Mpamazi, Msolola of the Chiwande. On the south Kambwiri marched with the Kunda, a precise delimitation of the boundary, which involved also the settlement of the claim to the salt deposits, only being arrived at in 1923 after over twenty years of litigation. Higher up the Rukuzi River, Kambwiri claimed authority over the Chewa villages of Masumba. The claim, however, was never valid, and its weakness admitted in that he never had property in the ivory found there His assertion of the right to appoint sub-chiefs of the Chewa, never sustained- in actual practice, was finally disposed of in 1923 when Kamoto succeeded to the headship of the Masumba group. An entirely fictitious claim was advanced to the Lupita Valley, where Chitungulu held undisputed authority. It was decisively dismissed in 1911, but has once or twice been revived since. From the date of their expulsion from the Chiwande, the Chewa group of Mwase ceases to have any significance. The small following of Ntemba and her daughter Chidote on the Rukusuzi have become entirely Wisa-ised and that under Masumba has become so depopulated as to have lost any importance it once may have had. The first Kambwiri who entertained, among other distinguished persons, Joseph Thomson, representing the Foreign Office, and Cyril Hoste, of the Rhodesia Concessions expedition, died in the year 1902. His village according to the latter covered an extensive area, and included within its fortified stockade of poles and plaster a numerous population. Even in recent years Chasela, as the village is called, contained more than two hundred huts ; close by is Chigowe, the name applied to the dwellings of Kambwiri and his immediate entourage. In 1895 he had put bis signature to a treaty, drawn up in manuscript, by the members of the Rhodesia Concessions party, on a sheet of notepaper, assigning his country to Queen Victoria in consideration of a percentage of the hut tax imposed. This interesting document, typical of many framed at this period, for many years reposed in the safe at Lundazi, the most precious of its muniments. His grandson, Salimu, succeeded owing to the predecease or disqualifi­ cation of the senior heirs. Indeed, Nansoro alone was a candidate against him, and he was disqualified by reason of a pristine intrigue with one of the elder Kambwiri’s wives. He was, moreover, unable to move, owing to paralysis, except in a recumbent position. The younger Kambwiri was a man of intelligence above the average. Carefully and wisely instructed through his adolescence by the officials then presiding over the District, first from the old Government station at Nawalya, and later from Lundazi, he lived to take an active and valuable part in the administration of the Chiwande. It was his misfortune that in 1920 his wife came to be delivered 84 of a Chinkula child, one, that is, whose upper teeth were cut before the lower. According to a very general belief, such a child is ominous and brings catastrophe to the family from which it springs. In deference to a strong and united public opinion, Kambwiri gave orders that his child be destroyed in obedience to the precedents of native custom. One morning the mother went to the river, turned her back upon it, loosened the skin by which the child was slung to her back and let it fall into the waters. Kambwiri was charged with homicide, convicted, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and deposed from the chieftainship. He died of sclerosis of the liver before the expiration of his sentence in 1923.

CHEW A SETTLEMENTS IN THE LUANGWA VALLEY. (1) The word Chewa nowhere occurs in the Journal of Lacerda 1798, who invariably refers to this tribe as Maravi. The first allusion to them by the name Chewa appears in the records of Monteiro and Gamitto in 1831. The inference is that the secession from the rest of the Nyanja tribes and the assumption of the name Chewa took place in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Vide History of the Nsenga, 4-1. Cooley translated the word to mean “ foreigners ”, but there is no evidence whatever for this. Some native authorities ascribe the word to a corruption of Chawa, a hill situated near the first village of the Chewa Chief, Mkanda. Vide infra, 38. (2) Vide supra, Northern Senga, 32. Mwase was a particularly favourite name with tho Chewa cf. Mwase Kasungu, Mwase Chimalilo, Mwase Mpangwe and many others. (3) Undi in Portuguese territory is perhaps, the most famous chief of the Piri family. In this province, Mkanda, Kawaza, Katumba, Chitungulu indicate how widely the clan is distributed. (4) The final “ e ” is clearly wrong. The -zi termination to river names is as common as the lu prefix, e.g. Zambezi, Lundazi, Lusangazi and many others. Etymologically it is the same suffix as appears in manzi (mazi or madzi) meaning water, or Mwazi meaning blood. As in Ngazi, the root meaning is bright, glittering. (5) Manoel was the son of Gonzalo Pereira who founded the Portuguese post at Zumbo at the Luangwa-Zambezi confluence about 1780. Communication between Zumbo and the Upper Luangwa was one of the objects of Lacerda’s journey. (6) Undi, then as now on the Kapoche River. The place name of his village is Mano. (7) Mkanda, the most important chief of the northern group of Chewa, whose village then was on the Luwelezi, a tributary of the Bua, flowing into Lake Nyasa. (8) Mwanzawamba who formerly lived on the Mwatizi, a site later selected by Chipan- dwe. Lacerda observes that his people were mixed Wisa and Tumbuka, but Monteiro is probably more correct when he remarks that the Tumbuka were subject to the Chewa. Vide supra., N orthern Senga, 31. (9) The Wisa element at Kaperemera, whose village.until recently was on the same site as that visited by Lacerda, is due to the descendants of traders between the interior and the coast, the village being on the line of communication. (10) Since the position of the village is now known it is interesting to test the accuracy of Lacerda’s observations : Longitude 31.18 east ; Latitude 12.33 south. His latitudinal observation is accurate, but the village is marked 20 miles too far east. Silva Porto corrected this when he placed the village in Longitude 32.0. (11) Vide the author’s article in the Journal of the African Society, April, 1931, for further information about this Portuguese outpost. (12) The strategic site until recently occupied by Mali Kaluka. (13) The first Wisa village to cross to the east bank of the Luangwa, at a reach in the river called Perekani. 35

Chapter IV. NSENGA. The Nsenga tribe inhabit the plateau traversed, by the Zambezi- Luangwa watershed, lying immediately west of the Port Jameson District. Its eastern limit is longitude 32 degrees east, and its northern 14 degrees of south latitude ; to the west it stops short of the Luangwa River but extends south through Portuguese East Africa towards the Zambezi. Numerically, the Nsenga form the largest homogeneous tribe in the East Luangwa Pro­ vince, after the Chewa, and are estimated to number 44,000 soulsG). Various interpretations of the name Nsenga have been advanced, none of which are entirely satisfactory. It has been argued that the name is connected with the root—senga, which appears in neighbouring dialects variously as Mchenga, Musenga, Henga meaning “ sand.” The term, however, is most inappropriately applied to the Nsenga country, and the local word for “ sand ” is not formed from this root, but is Msechi. Still less probable is the derivation from the word Musenga—Misenga, meaning a species of grass. It is true that a wide area of the south-eastern part of the Nsenga country is known as Misenga, on account of the predominance of this species of short grass. But the centre of the country, that occupied by the Paramount (if the adjective may be used) Chief Kalindawalu is known as Mbala, after a species of tall, stout grass characteristic of this district. Similar regional names derived from characteristic natural features are to be found in Luwamba, Marambo, Chiparamba, etc. There is a persistent tradition that the name “ Nsenga ” was applied to the inhabitants from outside, on account of their cultivation and manu­ facture of a species of cotton said to be indigenous to the country which they bartered with other tribes. Modern research has inclined to the view that the so-called indigenous cotton is identical with the Pernambuco variety, having been introduced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the early Portuguese colonists, and that no truly indigenous cotton exists in this part of Africa. On the other hand, Dos Santos, a Portuguese Dominican Friar, discovered between 1586 and 1595 cotton plants growing wild along the banks of the Zambezi, which could hardly have been imported(2), and Livingstone, from three varieties observed by him near Zomba in Nyasaland, in 1859, distinguished an indigenous species(3). In the face of these autho­ rities, it is perhaps too dogmatic to deny positively the occurrence of indi­ genous cotton, and the derivation of the word “ Nsenga ” from this plant may, in default of a better explanation, be adopted. It, at least, has the merit of having been advanced and accepted by the Nsenga themselves. The country is singularly void of any trace of culture prior to that of the present occupants. No archaic relics of a pre-Bantu period have yet been discovered east or south of the Luangwa River, although in the north, in the Serenje District, spherical stone digging sticks and mural markings have been found in a cave, suggestive of Bushmen culture. The first person to find a place in the legends of the Nsenga has a purely mythical interest. His name was Kalanda, and the gigantic footprints of 36 himself, with? his dog at heel, and his wife, together with the impress of his bow, are said to be visible on a rock in the Mvuvye River. Such legendary heroes are common to all tribal historiesW. He is connected with our modern tribes in one particular, however ; the older depositaries of history of the Nsenga sometimes assert that they sprang from Kalanda Kunyansi, or Kalanda in the west(5). Similar markings on rocks are said to be visible near the Msanzara and Nyimba rivers. In the same category of myth is the alleged footprint of the great Undi imprinted upon a rock in the Lusangazi River. That Undi never claimed the Lusangazi as part of his empire, still less set foot upon its banks, is immaterial. The significant fact is that the person of Undi has in this way been extolled in legend to the position of a demi-god. Before passing to facts of history, .two fables of the origin of the Nsenga race may be noted. The first is short and comprehensive. Undi had three wives ; from' the first sprang the Chewa, from the second the Nsenga and from the third the Kunda. The other is this : Undi and Kalindawalu and Mambwe, the heads to-day respectively of the Chewa, Nsenga and Kunda tribes migrated together, and met on the summit of Ngolwe Hill, in the Petauke District. There they proceeded to erect a house of great height, piling one storey above another. Below were assembled the mass of people, not yet divided into tribes. From the top of the house, one chief called down, “ Bring me an axe,” using the word " Nkwangwa ” (Chewa), and below the people said, “ Is it ‘ Katemo ’ (Nsenga) he wants ? ” and another, “ perhaps he wants ‘ Izembe ’ (Kunda).” And again a voice from the roof came, “ Bring me some mud for plastering,” using the word “ Matika ” (Nsenga), and below the people disputed whether he wanted “ Matope ” (Chewa) or “ Matipa ” (Kunda). And a third time a request reached them for bark cord, using the word “ Lusisi ” (Kunda), and below, the argument was resumed as to whether “ Nzizi ” (Nsenga) or “ Maluzi ” (Chewa) was required. Then the three came down from the hut and said, “ You who say ‘ Nkwangwa ’ (axe), 1Matope ’ (mud), and 'M aluzi’ (bark cord) follow Undi, for you are Chewa. And you who say ‘ Katemo ’ (axe), ‘ Matika ’ (mud) and ‘ Nzizi ’ (bark cord) are the children of Kalindawalu, for you are Nsenga. And you who say ‘ Izembe ’ (axe), ‘ Matipa ’ (mud) and ‘ Lusisi ’ (bark cord) follow Mambwe, for you are Kunda.” And the division of land followed the division of tribes, and was made on the top of Ngolwe Hill. Both these fables are reminiscent of Biblical history : the former may be an elaboration of the story of Noah, and of his sons Ham, Shem and Japheth/6). The latter is strongly redolent of the confusion of tongues in the tower of Babel(7). But their significance lies in the description of a common origin in both to the three tribes, the Chewa, Nsenga and Kunda. This mythical epoch was succeeded by a civilisation neither remote from nor inferior to that of the Nsenga. These first inhabitants of whom there is oral tradition were called Bakatanga, and were dispersed or absorbed by the Nsenga on their occupation of the country. Mr. Young refers to a tradition of prehistoric Bakatanga on the Nkamanga Plateau where the Tumbuka live to-day(8), and speculated upon the possible connection of the Bakatanga with the province of that name in the Belgian Congo. Whether the ante­ cedents of the Tumbuka were of the same tribe - as those displaced by the Nsenga must remain a matter of conjecture. But we are disposed to 37 interpret the word 4i Bakatanga ” in either ease to mean “ those who were first,” derived from, the common Bantu root—tanga, meaning to begin ” or to be first ”W. If this be the correct interpretation, the term Bakatanga does not denote a tribe, but is a generic name applied by the present occu­ pants to those who, according to their several traditions, went before them. What we know of the Bakatanga, who at one time occupied the Nsenga country dispels at once any theory of an ancient race or prehistoric culture. They lived a nomadic existence, dispersed chiefly it would appear, in the Monde country on either bank of the Msanzara and in the middle reaches of the Mvuvye River. They did not dwell in villages, but each man built his hut in isolation from his neighbours, a fact commented upon by the Nsenga, from which it may be inferred that the Nsenga had already evolved the compact group of huts comprising the family community. Physically they were well developed, and the characteristic which most impressed the Nsenga was the perforation of the lobes of the ears, a habit which caused them often to be confused in later tradition with the Ngoni. Their prowess in hunting elephant with spears excited the admiration of the Nsenga, but from the tradition that they were easily defeated by the Nsenga, who climbing trees, shot down upon them with, their bows and arrows, we may perhaps infer that the Bakatanga did not employ such missiles themselves. The locality of their ancient habitations may be detected by the presence of smooth, polished grinding cavities on the rock .surfaces. Unlike the Nsenga who employed for grinding detached and portable stones which could be removed from their original site to the village, the Bakatanga caused their grain to be ground on the surface of gigantic boulders in or on the margin of rivers. There is some evidence that they possessed cattle which the Nsenga appropriated, only later to be deprived of them again by the Ngoni. Such were the people whom the Nsenga expelled or absorbed. The process is termed a war, but probably little bloodshed ensued. Tradition ascribes their original home in the vague west, sometimes more particularly described as the Kafue. They can, with almost certainty, be identified with that mysterious people called Bapule, who are variously said to have migrated from the Upper Zambezi, from the Kafue Flats, and from south of the Zam­ bezi. They are known to have perforated the lobes of their ears. They became later incorporated in the population of the Ngoni, und Chapita, a headman under Mpeseni, is the head of the scattered tribe at the present time(!0). The Bapule themselves were probably offshoots from the Makololo. So much for the country which the Nsenga occupied in relatively recent times. Nor are we on much firmer ground when we explore the previous history of the Nsenga. It is beyond contention that originally they formed part of that great population which was known to early ex­ plorers as Maravi or Manyanja. Of this great people it is the tradition that at an epoch antecedent to the earliest Portuguese settlements on the Zam­ bezi, they emigrated from the Luba country in the basin of the Congo, by a route which led them past Lake Nyasa and, under their several chiefs, of whom Karonga, Undi, Mkanda and Mwase, were the most prominent, occupied that vast region enclosed, in very general terms, by the Zambezi on the south, Lake Nyasa on the north, and the Luangwa River on the west. To an ancestor of the Nsenga Chief Kaluani, one Mwanza Ngoteka by name, is given the credit of having invented the rafts (chi-tawa-tawa), by which they were transported across Lake Nyasa. It is not surprising, 38 however, that tradition concerning this migration has become obscured by- lapse of time, since it almost certainly occurred before the year a.d. 1500. The paucity of our knowledge of the tribes living north of the Zambezi is principally due to the fact that the outlook and energies of the early Portuguese colonists were entirely directed towards the south-west, to which they were attracted by the fables accumulating round the person and country of Monomatapa. To the native tribes on the north bank, except in the immediate vicinity of Tete and Sena, they paid little attention, and it was only incidentally that they came into contact with them. When Gaspar Bocarro in 1616 made his journey overland from Tete to Mozam­ bique he accomplished something new in the annals of exploration, and was the real discoverer of Lake Nyasa. The interest of this journey for us lies in the fact that he made the first historical record in 1616 of the Maravi, the parent tribe of the Chewa and Nsenga(H). In 1667, Manuel Barretta added to our information by a note that the Maravi were governed by their Chief Karonga, and that the second person in authority was named Lundu(12h The first recorded expedition through the country of the Chewa was made by Gonzalo Pereira in 1795(13), which was followed by the notable journey of Lacerda in 1798. Both Pereira and Lacerda made reference to Undi, Mkanda and Mwase, but always as Maravi chiefs, and nowhere is the Chewa tribe alluded toG4). Undi was of sufficient importance to be designated the “ Imperador ” of the Maravi(15), and from his capital, then as now called Mano, on the Kapoche River, dominated the country inter­ posed between the Zambezi and the Zambezi-Luangwa watershed,. Be­ tween Lake Nyasa and the Luangwa River the country was divided between Mkanda and Mwase, two chiefs whose villages were situated at that date much where they are to-day. It was not, however, until 'the expedition of Monteiro and Gamitto in 1831 that the name Chewa was first applied to them in European records. Mkanda was then described as the most powerful person between the Zambezi and the Luangwa and is given the title of “ King of the Chevas ”(16). The first documentary reference to the Nsenga under this name occurs possibly in a Portuguese record of the early seventeenth century, which locates the Basonga in the Zambezi Valley above Tete(i7). If identification of the Basonga with the name Bansenga be accepted, the allusion is one of particular interest as supplying proof, against the generally accepted native view, of the early date at which the Nsenga adopted a specific and dis­ tinctive name. But it is almost certain that they had not at this period seceded from their Chief Undi, nor occupied that country with which this article deals. Nearly two centuries elapse before we find a second reference to the Nsenga in historical records. In 1799, however, Fr. Pinto, the Jesuit priest who led the Lacerda expedition back to Tete, records in his journal that they proceeded from a point on the Luangwa River (near Mwanza- wamba’s village), “ downstream till we arrived opposite the country of the Sengas, where we could ford the Aruangoa River (Luangwa), and march straight upon Tete ”(18). This project was, however, abandoned when it was discovered that “ the land of the Sengas was too far off ”(19). Not much illumination is reflected by this reference upon the migration of the Nsenga, but it may perhaps be inferred from the second passage that they were still located in the Zambezi Valley, and had not yet moved to the 39

country they now occupy. This view is supported by native tradition, and by the only reference made to the Nsenga by the Monteiro expedition in 1831, at which date they are located “ at the mouth of the Luangwa River,” i.e. at its confluence with the Zambezi20). Comment upon the accuracy of Monteiro’s sources of information is made in a subsequent paragraph in which the chronology is discussed. The first explorer to place the Nsenga in the country they to-day occupy, viz. the Petauke District, wras Livingstone in 1856, on his trans­ continental journey from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean(2P. In 1860, Livingstone described the Nsenga with greater particularity : “ The Nsenga,” he says, “ belong to the same family as the Maravi, and formerly were all united under their Great Chief Undi, whose empire extended from Lake Shirwa to the Luangwa River, but after his death it fell to pieces ”(22). Some time between 1798 and 1860, the dates respectively of Laceida and Livingstone, there occurred a significant event which serves as the start­ ing point of Nsenga history. If it did not coincide with the change of name, it marks the secession from the Chewa, and inaugurated a new epoch. It must have been early in the nineteenth century that the Undi of the period made an expedition to explore the terra incognita to the north-west of the Kapoche Valley. Traversing what is now the Nsenga country, he crossed the Luangwa River, and penetrated the territories of the Lala-Lenje peoples where he met Mukuni, the. Paramount Chief of this region. He is generally acknowledged to have spent several years here and some of his people remained and became permanently domiciled. He is credited with the intention of crossing the Luapula, possibly with the object of reverting to the land whence his ancestors had migrated more than three centuries earlier, but was deterred by the rumours which had reached him of the devastation caused by the Wemba raids. Either on this account or, as some authorities assert, because he quarrelled with Mukuni about the partition of land, he returned, recrossed the Luangwa and resumed his former occupation of the Kapoche Valley. But the land south of the Luangwa he had found to be uninhabited, and undisturbed by Wemba raiding parties. This country, therefore, he decided to occupy and left here Kalindawalu to undertake the task. The expedition to Mukuni was an outstanding event in the history of the Nsenga, who from this date mark their definite secession from the Chewa of Undi although not the discontinuance of their allegiance to that chief. In fact, Nsenga tradition does not go beyond the Mukuni expedition. That many Nsenga ascribe their origin to Mkuni is due partly to Undi having settled in the Lala-Lenje country for perhaps as long as a generation, partly to the fact of the expedition being the last migration on a large scale undertaken by them, but chiefly because its termination left them a separate entity under their own dynasty and in their own country. That their original home was with the Chewa in Luba is incontestable, and all the better authorities are in agreement on this point. Some of the Nsenga, as we have seen, remained behind in the country of the Lenje after the excursion to Mukuni. But this numerical loss was fully compensated by accretions to their number from the Lenje-Lala populations. Certain it is, too, that during the retreat many fell out and founded Nsenga communities along the route of the march. To this is due the occurrence of Nsenga villages in areas beyond the limits of the main Nsenga influence(23). 40

Of what did this and similar expeditions consist ? Mainly we suspect of the male members of the tribe. Men of position and consequence, men who had reached middle age and attained a social status would no doubt be accompanied by their wives and the women of their choice. Slave women would be required for essential services. But in general, probably more men than women started upon the expedition, more women than men fell out en route, and more men than women arrived at their destination. If this hypothesis is correct, then the Nsenga who remained for several years in the country of Mukuni must have procured women from that country and this, we surmise, is what actually happened(24). To anyone who has made a study of the Chewa tribe and the Nsenga, who until recently formed part of that tribe, the chief problem is to reconcile or to explain the differences between the two. A logical and natural solution is provided if we assume that those characteristics which dis­ tinguish the Nsenga from the Chewa were derived from the offspring of unions contracted between Nsenga males and Lenje-Lala females. To enter fully into this aspect of the migration is not the purpose of this article, but two examples out of many that might be quoted may be given by way of illustration. Linguistically Chinsenga, the dialect spoken by the Nsenga, holds an intermediate place between the eastern group of languages as represented by the dialects of the Chewa, Nyanja and others, and the western and northern group of languages as represented by the Wemba-Wisa-Lala dialects. For instance, as we progress from east to west, there is a tendency for the sibilants to soften. Thus the very common initial syllable of proper names, which is an abbreviation of the word “ wisi ” meaning “ father ” appears in the eastern dialects as Zi, e.g. Zimwanda or Zingulume. In Chinsenga it becomes Simwanda, or Singulume, and in the western dialects Shimwanda and Shingulume. Similarly the Chinyanja “ Tsiku” passes through the same softening process of “ Siku ” in Chinsenga to “ Shiku ” in the western dialects. We submit that the Nsenga occupy this inter­ mediate position between the eastern and the western linguistic groups by reason of their having seceded from the eastern and intermarried with the western peoples. The compromise between the two is the result of the offspring learning the dialect of the mother with the modifications given to it by the father(25). There is, also, at least, very good reason for supposing that the Nsenga brought back with them from the country of Mukuni some new family or totem names. Since both the Nsenga and the tribes of Mukuni practised matrilineal descent and transmitted the totem name through the female, this would be a logical consequence of intermarriage. And in this way another baffling difference between the Chewa and Nsenga is explained. For the Chewa family names are not shared—or only very rarely—by the Nsenga and vice versa the Nsenga family names are not shared by the Chewa. Yet it is incontestable that originally the two tribes were one. The common Chewa totems Piri, Banda, Mwali and Mbewe, we know to be of some antiquity, almost certainly belonging to a period anterior to the Nsenga secession, and some at least may be assumed to have belonged to the generation which originally migrated from the Luba to their present country. Yet they are not found among the Nsenga who seceded only four or five generations ago. Among the common Nsenga totems, Mwanza, Lungu, Tembo and Nguluwe are not distributed among the Chewa. Our 41

conclusion is that the Nsenga derived some of their totem names from their union with the women of Mukuni. It seems almost established that the large family of the Tembo totem returned from the country of Mukuni with the Undi expedition. Mundikula, the first Kalindawalu, who had been deputed by Undi to occupy the country south of the Luangwa River belonged to the family of Mwanza, which is said to mean to sibilate in articulation, as is done in the Wisa dialect(26). Since the clan are believed to have originated from the outskirts of the Luba country where they lived under Chawala Makumba, himself a Wisa chief, the derivation is probably correct. Mundikula had married, before embarking upon the expedition to Mukuni, a sister of Undi, and therefore stood in the relation to him of “ Mulamu ” or brother-in-law. His sagacity is shown in his selecting for his home the intensely fertile country known, after an unmistakable species of tall, stout grass which flourishes there, as “ Mbala,” extending both to the north and to the south of the middle reaches of the Mvuvye River. The people inhabiting it are consequently often known as “ Ambala ”(27). But the country of the Nsenga in general terms is known as “ Unsenga,” just as the language spoken is “ Chinsenga.” From such data as is available it is perhaps possible to assign an approxi­ mate date to the occupation by the Nsenga tribe of the country now known as the Petauke District of the Eastern Province. It is acknowledged that the Nsenga immigration was prior to that of the Kunda to which the period 1840-1850 has been assigned(28). It is known that the Nsenga were in occupation of the sources of the Nyimba River between 1835 and 1840 when Zwangendaba led the Ngoni to Mkoko. A woman of the Lungu family, who lived to a great age, deposed to remembering the total solar eclipse of 1835, when as a small girl she herded goats at Nsima Hill, and affirmed that the Nsenga, forewarned of an impending calamity, were in no way taken by surprise by the incursion of the Ngoni. Monteiro and Gamitto, it is true, located the Nsenga in 1831 at the mouth of the Luangwa River (i.e. its confluence with the Zambezi), but their expedition did not pass within a hundred miles of the Nsenga country and his observation is either a repetition of Lacerda’s journal, or was based upon the hearsay reports of travellers. In any case, there is little difficulty in reconciling Monteiro’s description with the conclusions arrived at here, for it is admitted that the Nsenga extended south from Mbala to the Zambezi. A tradition handed down in the family of Kalindawalu asserts that Mundikula “ found in the country some of the Ngoni who pierced the lobes of their ears. He killed them all, and settled in the country.” At first sight, this would seem to be irreconcilable with the contention that the Nsenga immigration was prior to that of the Ngoni. But the tradition is susceptible of other interpretations. The people with pierced ears may have been one of those Ngoni columns which had already seceded from the main body, and had crossed the Zambezi earlier and independently, such as the following of Nquaba(29). But we believe that the natives were, in fact, a section of the Bapule, Bakatanga or Makololo, who had migrated from the west, and afterwards became incorporated in the Ngoni people. The Bapule, like the Ngoni, pierced their ears and, in course of oral tradition, were likely to be denoted Ngoni, as in fact they now call themselves. Approaching the chronological problem from a different angle, we find that of a large number of genealogies of Nsenga chiefs and headmen, none 42 proceeds beyond the fifth generation from the present possessor of the title. In other words, the village cemetery contains the bodies of only five chiefs buried therein, in many cases not more than four. The succession of reigning chiefs does not always represent generations ; for by matrilineal descent brothers sometimes succeeded brothers. For this epoch, the Nsenga lived a peculiarly undisturbed existence. Their history records little civil strife, and the few external wars, such as there were, with the exception of the second Ngoni invasion, were insignificant affairs entailing few casualties. It will probably, therefore, be acknowledged that a reign of twenty years was not an optimistic expectation. It has, moreover, often been exceeded : the late Mpeseni ruled for over fifty years, the present Sefu (Kunda) for over thirty. The present Kalindawalu (Nsenga), though by no means robust, has reigned for over twenty years, Sandwe (Kunda) for twenty-five, and other Nsenga chiefs for thirty years. Assuming for our present argument that an average chieftaincy endured for twenty years, then the genealogies go back to a period 1825-1845, with a strong presumption of priority for the Mbala headmen(3°). Our conclusion on the question of date, therefore, is that the expedition to Mukuni took place in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and that Mundikula founded the colony in the Mbala between 1825 and 1830. The greater part of the present Petauke District was populated with Nsenga between 1825 and 1845. In the early years of their occupation, Mundikula first devoted his energies to the expulsion of the Alenje. Possibly these Alenje formed a column despatched by Mukuni in pursuit of Mundikula who, as we have seen, was accompanied by some of Mukuni’s clans when he withdrew from the latter’s country. An engagement was fought in the Luwamba country until recently occupied by Chief Chimpanje, ending in the retreat of the Alenje. The next campaign was undertaken against the Bakatanga who, as we have already suggested, may almost certainly be identified with the Bapule, themselves nomadic Makololo. According to tradition, they were defeated by the superiority of the Nsenga bow and arrow over the Katanga spear. That the victory went to the long-range missile is not without interest ; for in later years, the omnipotence of the Ngoni was attributed to the superior effectiveness of the short-range stabbing assegai. One survivor, by pure descent, of the Bakatanga, is known to be alive to-day. He is Cheso, now living at the village of Mbololo. In November, 1835, the Nsenga were forewarned of an impending catastrophe by the same total eclipse of the sun which had obscured the heavens when Zwangendaba led his host across the Zambezi at Zumbo. The route taken by the Ngoni from the Zambezi led through what is now Portuguese territory, and they did not approach the Mbala nearer than Mkoko, an Nsenga village close to the present international boundary. According to Dr. Fraser, Zwangendaba remained here for six years(3i), but as the Nsenga tell us, he did not kill men, but captured slaves. In the circumambulation of Central Africa by the Ngoni, which has gone down to history as a chronicle of slaughter and rapine, it is a pleasure to record one interval of comparatively humane conduct. It is true that the Nsenga with whom we are dealing lay on the perimeter only of Zwangendaba’s sphere of operations, but the eulogy is the more cogent as it comes from the conquered foe, When the Ngoni continued their progress, the Nsenga had lost some 43 herds of cattle, several reputed witch-doctors, and a few men and women. Perhaps the greatest acquisition by the Ngoni was the knowledge of Mwavi poison (Erythlophlaeum judiciale), with which the Nsenga had made them acquainted. Internally, the country was seldom disturbed by civil strife. That which evoked the greatest scandal was the rape of a wife of Undi by one Chumbi. The peccant spouse sought the protection of Mundikula, who concealed the ravished woman on the summit of Ngolwe Hill. Undi, following the practice of this period, called upon a Chikunda, Ndombe, to lead his mercenaries in pursuit. Ngolwe Hill was invested and eventually, deceived by the promise of pardon and the gift of land, the faithless wife was decoyed from her hiding place and killed. More protracted was a war between the Chewa Chief, Mkanda, and Mulewa, a brother of Mundikula. The most important consequence was the establishment of Muya, the first of the line of Mwanjawantu on the Kaumbwe Stream, as a vassal of Undi. Almost immediately Mundikula proceeded to expand the sphere of his authority by posting members of the Mwanza family on the frontiers of his dominion. By making extensive grants of land to his relatives he thus assured the security of his frontiers. Soon after his occupation of the Mbala, the Kunda under their Chief Mambwe, who made his headquarters at Chikunto, appeared on the north-east(32). Ukwimi and Malaza, both of his family, were despatched by Kalindawalu and instructed to occupy the Lusandwa Valley ; Sandwe was given a grant of land in the Lusangazi Valley and ordered to hold it against the Kunda ; Sopa was given the Kasangazi Valley, Karenga the Nyamazi River. By this policy Kalin­ dawalu made his frontiers secure in charge of men whose loyalty could be relied upon. He probably had little real fear of a conflict; his purpose was rather the annexation of unoccupied land. For Mambwe, the Kunda Chief, had emigrated from the Luba country as Undi and he himself had done, and had been on friendly terms with Mukuni at about the same time that Kalindawalu had visited that chief. In the event, the Nsenga rapidly fraternised with the Kunda and intermarried freely. Both Sandwe and Ukwimi took Kunda wives, and their children learnt the Kunda speech. In a short time the Kunda preponderated over the original Nsenga, who adopted Kunda totems, Kunda language, Kunda customs and Kunda fashions. The descendants of Sandwe and Ukwimi call themselves to-day Kunda and belong to the family of Mbawo, the totem of Mambwe who led the Kunda to this region. The traditional legend of the partition of the country between the Kunda and the Nsenga is referred to hereafter, and it is not necessary here to say more than that, from an historical view, it will not bear examina­ tion^). To the north of the Nsenga were the Ambo, under their Chieftainess Mwape, settled in scattered groups on both sides of the Luangwa River. Mwape herself had her capital then, as since, on the Chuambira, a tributary to the north bank of the Luangwa, but had allotted the lower reaches of the Mvuvye to her son-in-law, Mpeta, who had extended his authority by the establishment of several villages on its tributaries. With Mwape and Mpeta Kalindawalu did not interfere. The luxuriantly fertile area known as the Chinsimbwe, where the Petauke River is joined by the Mtikila, was at this 44

time occupied by Nsenga headmen. Nkunta of the Mvula family held paramount influence here. Eastwards towards the Msanzara River the country was subjected to Chikwatu, an Nsenga headman of the family of Nguluwe. The events which, led to the expulsion of the Nsenga from Chinsimbwe and the lower Msanzara and the demarcation of the boundary at the Lukonde Hills, north of Petauke Township, is described in detail in another placet34). The relations of Ngambwa (Nsenga) with the Ambo- in the Mazingwa Valley on the western frontier, afford further proof of the friendly intercourse between the tribes. Mundikula died about 1840, and was buried on the Kafyula Stream, a tributary to the Mvuvye. The stream received its name from a wish expressed by the chief before his death that the skulls of all persons killed in war should be deposited at the spot, and that one should be shaped into the formation of a bowl, filled with beer, and be placed, ever replenished, beside his grave. On his instructions as to the disposal of his body, Mundikula bequeathed that his corpse be disembowelled and his intestines given for consumption to his successor, that he might derive strength therefrom. Now Mundikula was a man of immense physical proportions, and his undertakers were apprehensive of operating upon his enormous corpse. For seven days they procrastinated, and each day, under the rays of the tropical sun, the body became more inflated, until finally the prodigious volume burst with a noise like thunder. With the expulsion of internal gases, the corpse resumed its natural size and those deputed for the task performed the disembowelment and decently interred the remains at Kafyula. Various accounts of his successors have been given ; of Chunguchumase little is known. Sangu, the third in descent, reigned in Mbala during the period of the second Ngoni invasion under Mpeseni I. Mpeseni, who had led his armies southwards from the Wemba Plateau and had invested Mbangombe on the Mwangazi near Mkoma, turned his footsteps south-west until he found in the pastures of the Matambazi River forage for his herds of cattle. His headquarters were established where the modern village of Ngupo is now. Other Ngoni villages extended along the present international boundary, and strong fortresses were erected at Chipiri Hill, close to Mtukuzi in Mwanjawantu’s country. The Ngoni host of 1870 was very different from that under Zwangendaba in 1835. It had been much diminished in numbers by the secession of Mombera, Mgai, Gomani and others. Hence the policy of replenishing their numbers and of absorbing the local population into the tribe was pursued with unremitting vigour. One by one the Nsenga villages capitu­ lated, and few were those (e.g. Chilwa) which by amalgamation with others for common defence, and by the employment of all the then known arts of fortification, repulsed the invading armies. Sangu himself was captured and died later in captivity near Fort Jameson. Mwanjawantu fled to the pro­ tection of relatives near Msoro ; Nyanji was killed defending the hill above his village. The Nsenga population was decimated. Sangu was succeeded by Tembo, a firm and sagacious chief, who saw the new era of European government introduced into the Nsenga country. He died in 1910, said to have been poisoned by a Tumbuka native, with whose wife he had indulged in amorous intercourse at Mkolama’s old village, 45 on his return from a visit to Petauke Boma. His successor is Chipenda, the Kalindawalu of the present day. The original Nsenga settlement was confined to the Mbala, but in the course of the next twenty years this nucleus itself expanded and received accretions from the south. A settlement contemporaneous with that of Kalindawalu, but inde­ pendent of it, was that founded by Nyanji, the Nsenga Chief who had made the journey back from Mukuni’s country with Undi. He appears, however, to have received the grant of his country direct from Undi and not from Kalindawalu. Nyanji was the head of the large Nsenga family of Tembo, and was closely allied with the Kunda of Mambwe. The first chief was killed by the Ngoni on their second incursion into the country under Mpeseni on Kolasisi Hill where he sought refuge. He had before this engaged in a war on behalf of a brother of Kalindawalu with the Chewa Chief Mkanda, to assist in which he summoned to his aid a section of the Nguluwe family who were living in Ngoshya near the Zambezi. As a reward for their help at the end of hostilities he granted this group of the Nguluwe clan land on the Matambazi. This early colony flourished and increased in numbers under its female chieftainess, Chongololo until, at the present day, under the chief, Chimate, it has become numerically the most thickly populated part of the country. The basin watered by the Msanzara, known as Monde, was granted to the widely dispersed Mvula family. Monde is said to be the name of a hill near the Sasare mine, from the summit of which the whole country belonging to the Mvula clan could be seen. Hence, the country was named, after the hill, Monde. Possibly this clan had occupied it independently, for it lays claim to very early associations with the land. Mundikula, how­ ever, appointed his younger brother, Chiwekwe, to the chieftaincy. His heir, Mzenje, had the misfortune to be impotent, and his numerous wives were entrusted to Masengo for the purpose of bearing children to them. Masengo was prodigiously prolific/and gained such ascendancy that the country was apportioned between the two, Mzenje retaining the fertile region of the Mawanda, and Masengo the eastern bank of the Msanzara. The line of Masengo became extinct in 1926, and the whole country reverted to Mzenje. Of Chiwekwe a. peculiar legend is current. He is supposed to have journeyed around the country with a child who ate no food, to the marvel of those who gazed upon the exhibition. Finally, he kept this prodigy in the rafters supporting the roof of his hut for a whole month without food. In commemoration of this miracle he was called “ Msunganjala,” i.e. one who preserves hunger, and was acclaimed by everyone as a suitable person to be chief. The child he had brought up in starvation succeeded him as Mzenje. The chiefs of this line who followed are Chiwembe, Nyakulukunda, Kapamba and Kampango, who rules to-day. The others are buried at Mawanda. Higher up the river at the confluence of the Chirimanyama with the Msanzara River, Simamumbu held a responsible and peculiar position- He seems to have been of greater importance in the country of Mukuni than among the Nsenga. He was held in high estimation as the High Priest who, when rain was needed, invoked its precipitation, and in the worship of ancestral spirits his name is still the first to be invoked. If he did not actually appoint headmen and apportion land, his opinion held great weight. 46

Many headmen, especially those of the Miti family, to which Simamumbu belonged, acknowledged him as their chief. Of the Miti clan Chikuleni was a leader, a pioneer contemporaneous with Mundikula. An intimate friendship sprang up between the two and the families became united by close ties of intermarriage. Chikuleni was assigned land on the upper reaches of the Mvuvye from which he has never been separated. The ancestors of Ndaki, the headman of the ubiquitous Lungu family, lived formerly in what is now Portuguese territory, under a chief named Chifuka, who married a sister of Undi and held the land extending to the Zambezi. Probably the group under Chifuka is that referred to by Monteiro and earlier writers as occupying the land at the Zambezi-Luangwa con­ fluence. That they were early immigrants to the valley of the Nyimba River is evident from their tradition that they acquired cattle from the Bakatanga ; and we know the chief had a village under Nsima Hill when Zwangendaba’s Ngoni invaded the country. But their occupation was independent of Mundikula. The first of the line in the new country was Sichiwendi, who was succeeded in turn by Chifuka, Nyampula (Ndaki I), Mwatolampundu (F), Nyachipinda (Ndaki II), Ndaki III (ob. 1932). The chiefs are interred under the slopes of Nsima Hill. Sakala is a family name borne by many notable Chewa chiefs, but by no means widely distributed in the country of the Nsenga(35). One of those who belong to this family is Mwanjawantu, the present chief of a populous division abutting upon the Anglo-Portuguese border. Although to-day he styles himself Nsenga, from prolonged residence in the Nsenga country, he is by his own admission more properly by tribe a Chewa. On his father’s side he belongs to the Nguluwe family. The first of his line, one Muya, had been captured in a local war waged between Mulewa, the brother of Kalindawalu, and Mkanda, the Chewa chief in the east. As a captive in war he was sent by Undi to erect smelting furnaces and manufacture hoes in the country of Kaombwe, of which his descendant is now chief. Some controversy, however, arose between Muya and his employer which incurred the latter’s wrath, and Muya paid the penalty by being cremated alive in one of his own furnaces. But Undi was mollified by the lamentation provoked by this spectacular death, and made a gift of the land of the Kaombwe to Muya’s successors. Mwanja­ wantu, who followed, led a precarious existence, as it happened that the Ngoni under Mpeseni selected Chipiri Hill close to the chief’s village as their place of residence for a few years. Mwanajawantu at once decamped and sought protection with Matekenya, a half-caste Portuguese, who offered him some security in the country of Msoro, in the District of Fort Jameson. It was not until the Ngoni had passed on to the pastures of the Lutembwe that Mwanjawantu considered it safe to return. Kaluani, of the Nzovu family, is another chief who was appointed directly by Undi, and not by Kalindawalu. Up to recent years, he and his people styled themselves Agoa, denoting thereby their origin from the Chewa, and only in modern times have they identified themselves with the Nsenga. To the first of the line, Mwanza Ngoteka, is given the credit of inventing “ Chitawatawa,” or rafts, by which Lake Nyasa was navigated. A successor, Mwelwa Kaluani, was deputed by Undi to occupy the upper Kapoche River, about the time that Undi himself established his capital at 47

Mano in its middle reaches. First on the banks of the Chiuyu Stream and later under the slopes of Sivwa Hill he developed an industry in iron smelting and the manufacture of iron implements, until his furnaces acquired a reputation over a wide area. An annual tribute of iron ore was paid to Undi in recognition of his grant of land. In the reign of Mwelwa Kaluani arose the war with Mkuwamba, a Chewa headman under Chief Mkanda, who directed covetous eyes upon the flourishing iron industry. Mkuwamba was repulsed but occupied the country to the north, adjacent to that of Kaluani. In recognition of his services in defeating Mkuwamba in the first engagement, Sewa, a headman of Kaluani, was granted the exclusive privilege of making annual raids upon him. Mwelwa Kaluani was succeeded by Mambo, who bore the brunt of the Ngoni raids under Mpeseni I. Ensconced in the hills of Nyanji or Sivwa, he successfully withstood all attacks. The present Chief, Chikowa Kaluani, inherited upon his death. The Kaluani family showed enterprise in every direction. Capacious as their country was, they did not moderate their zeal for annexation, and to this is due the colonisation of the Miezi Valley by Kapiri, at Kaluani’s instigation.

NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE NSENGA TRIBE. (1) R eport of the Secretary for Native Affairs for the year 1930. (2) Ethiopia Oriental, published 1609, cited by Theal: Records of South-Eastern Africa, Vol. V II. (3) Livingstone: Zambezi and its Tributaries, 111. (4} E.g. Smith and Dale : Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, 21, to cite one among many examples. (5) Kunyansi properly means “ below ” or “ down ” and is ordinarily used to mean “ downstream ”. In this connection, it means “ where the sun goes down ”, or the west. (6) Genesis IX , 18. (7) Ibid., X I. I. (8) Cullen Young : Notes on the Speech and History of the Tumbuka-Henga Peoples, 152. (9) Cf. Kuianga in Nsenga, Wisa and Nyanja dialects means to be first or beforehand ”. Kudanga, the Tumbuka equivalent, has the same meaning. (10) For the Bapulo and their connection with the Ngoni, vide supra, 16, 25, note. (11) Decade of Antonio Bocarro, published 1876 by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisbon, quoted by Theal : Records of South-Eastern Africa, Vol. Ill, 416. (12) Report on the State and Conquest of the Rivers of Cuama, by Manoel Barretta, 1667, Theal : Records of South-Eastern Africa, Vol. Ill, 463. (13) Lacerda : Lands of the Cazembe, translated by R. F. Burton, published by R. G. S. 1873, 34. (14) Ibid., 35, 49, 66 et passim. (15) Ibid., 66. (16) Monteiro and Gamitto : O Muata Cazembe, 488, published Lisbon, 1854. Vide also Lacerda : loc. cit., 49. The inference is that the Chewa adopted their tribal name between 1798 and 1831. (17) Cullen Young : loc. cit., 143, quoting from Theal : Records of South-Eastern Africa. But the identification is not altogether free from objection, and we hesitate to adopt it here. (18) Lacerda : loc. cit., 161. (19) Ibid., 162. (20) Monteiro and Gamitto : loc. cit., 47, vide Lacerda, 161, note. (21) Livingstone : Missionary Travels in South Africa, 594. (22) Livingstone : Zambezi and its Tributaries, 198. 48

(23) E.g. on the Luangwa and Lukushashi Rivers, where Ambo, Lenje-Lala and Nsenga are much intermixed. (24) The migrations of the Northern Senga across the Luangwa from the country of the Wisa furnish a parallel: their migration consisted of males only, and they were compelled to find women from the Tumbuka, Henga, Poka and other tribes. Vide supra., 28 of Northern Senga History. (25) The Northern Senga also supply an example of the subordination of the original dialect, Chiwisa, and its modification by Chitumbuka. (26) The same explanation has been given of the distinction between the Chewa and the Nsenga. The Nsenga are said to soften the sibilants, while the Chewa pronounce them harsh. An alternative interpretation of the word Mwanza is that it means the familiar grain, kaffir- corn, sorghum vulgare. (27) Cf. Achipeta for another example of a place name being applied to a tribe. (28) Vide infra, 56. (29) Vide supra, 24, Note of Ngoni History. (30) Vide Bryant : Olden Times in Zululand, 29 et seq., for a detailed analysis of the duration of reigning families. His own conclusion for the Zulu-Xosa-Nguni peoples in South Africa is that eighteen years is average. (31) Fraser : W inning a Prim itive People, 312. (32) For the Kunda migration, vide infra, 49. (33) Vide infra, of K unda H istory, 51. (34) Infra, 68 et seq., of Ambo H istory, 68. (35) Sakalads the family name of many principal chiefs of the northern group of Chewa, e.g. Nyongo, Mbangombe, Kanyindula, Tenje and others, but is not found among the Nsenga. 49

Chapter V. KUNDA. The Kunda tribe inhabit the Luangwa Valley, or Marambo as it is called by them, between the thirteenth and fourteenth parallels of south latitude. Their country on the east bank of the Luangwa River is bounded by its two affluents, the Lusangazi on the south and the Chisitu on the north. Isolated settlements, notably those under the sub-Chiefs Chitungulu and Vuhda, are found north of this, and on the western bank of the river upstream there is a colony on the Nyamadzi River under a Chieftainess Nawalya. The Kunda originated in the same region whence migrated the Northern Senga, the Ambo, the Nsenga and others, namely the Luba country in the Congo Basin. Their migration was, in fact, almost contemporaneous with that of the Ambo and the retreat of the Nsenga from Mukuni’s Lenje country, a fact which suggests a momentous disruption of the tribes in this quarter at this epoch. It is probable that before their migration they formed a part of the vast Wisa tribe. Mambwe, the leader of the secession, traces his descent on the paternal side to Chawala Makumba who is generally supposed to have been a Wisa. Moreover their language, as spoken by the older generation resembles closely the dialects of the Wisa, Northern Senga (before undergoing a similar process of metamorphosis into Chitumbuka) and the tribes which trace a similar migratory origin. Customs in connection with marriage and succession, their dances and songs, and their personal names have a singular consonance with those tribes known to have migrated from the west. Whether, when they formed one of the congeries of tribes living in the Luapula Basin, they w’ere known as Kunda is less certain. Malama, the senior though not the most important of the Kunda Chiefs, has asserted that before their migration they were known as Awetwe, and that section living west of the river under Nawalya are said still to retain this name. The word Kunda, judging from homologous words, suggests a place named) and the balance of evidence favours the view that it was assumed after the migration. The family name of the royal dynasty is Chulu, meaning an ant-hill, but in recent years the Kunda have adopted the Ngoni practice of assuming instead of the maternal, the paternal totem name, which is Mbawo, meaning a minute insect,- parasitic upon the seeds of the castor oil plant, much favoured by them as a condiment with their diet of fish. Through the medium of this totem they formed close affinities with the Tembo family of Chief Nyanji (Nsenga) on the reasoning that Tembo (the hornet) feeds largely upon the insect called Mbawo(2). But for the purposes of marriage, succession and inheritance, the totem Chulu is always followed. The late Chief Malama, who died in 1920, claimed to belong to the Nguluwe family, as did unquestionably his relation, Chawala Makumba. But the present Malama, like all the other Kunda chiefs, retains the Chulu- Mbawo totems. But the founder of the Kakumbi branch, whose claim to be called Kunda is dubious, belonged to the Mvula family, and the Kunda living on the Nyamadzi under Nawalya are said also to be of this clan, 50

There is no allusion to the Kunda in the journals of any of the early explorers prior to Silva Porto. The silence of the Monteiro expedition in 1833 is significant, since it must have intersected the heart of the Kunda country. But in the diary of Silva Porto in 1852, there is recorded a single entry : (i Where the Luangwa is crossed begins the territory of the Cunda ”(3). Livingstone, who crossed the Luangwa rather north of the Kunda country in 1866, had apparently not heard of the tribe. He was accustomed to mark on his surveys the position of tribes as reported to him by travellers, though he never visited them himself, but in the country occupied by the Kunda there is on his map merely an unilluminating hiatus. The Kunda, in fact, found no place upon the early maps until Dr. Hoste visited Chuaula, then in the plenitude of his power in 1895, whom he described as an “ inde­ pendent Wisa Chief ”(<). The absence of any reference to the tribe by Monteiro and the record of Silva Porto confine the problem of determining a date for the migration to the period 1833-1852. Genealogies of the chiefs, which are given in an Appendix, tend to place this date in the decade 1840-1850(5), which receives corroboration from analysis of the chronology of collateral events. For the Kunda migration was posterior to the occupation of the Petauke District by the Nsenga, and approximately contemporaneous with the migration of the Ambo. The Nsenga occupation must be assigned to a date previous to 1835 and the Ambo migration to the following decade. It is probably not wide of the mark if the arrival of the Kunda on the banks of the Luangwa is ascribed to the year 1845. A singular legend is related by Malama, the depositary of Kunda tradition, about the birth of Mambwe, the leader of the migration. On the banks of the Luapula in the Luba country there lived a chief named Chawala Makumba, a member of the Nguluwe family and of the Wisa tribe. He was a chief of some importance, for subject to him were not only the Kunda people, but also the Ambo tribe which migrated about the same time to the Luangwa Valley. One of his wives was a woman named Kawa. Chawala Makumba was of a suspicious disposition and had reasons to be apprehensive lest the Kunda group should increase in numbers and threaten his authority. He therefore issued an edict commanding the extermination at birth of every male child. In passing, it may be noted that an analogous case of wholesale infanticide occurs in Ambo history(6). Now Kawa, already the mother of three daughters, being at the time in an advanced stage of pregnancy, was duly delivered of a child whose life was terminated as soon as its sex was ascertained. At her next confinement again a son was born and again a period was put to his struggle for existence. In due course she perceived signs of her third pregnancy and, with four women whose maternal hopes had, like her own, been disappointed, she escaped to the recesses of the forest where a son, whom she named Mambwe, first inhaled the breath of life. From here she conveyed him to a neigh­ bouring chief, Mwani or Mwanji, a kinsman of her husband for he belonged to the Nguluwe family, but no sympathiser with his barbarous policy. Under Mwani’s protection Mambwe was unobtrusively nursed and brought to manhood. Meanwhile Kawa returned to her husband with a lie upon her lips, for she told him that her son had died. When Mambwe arrived at manhood he learnt the story of his birth and the history of his family. He laid claim to the position and authority of a 51 chief, rallied to himself the Kunda people, and led them, in search of a new country in the unexplored east. About the same time, the Ambo seceded, pursuing a more southerly direction. The route followed by Mambwe took him south of Lake Bangweulu and finally to the summit of the Muchinga escarpment, where he halted. But Chawala Makumba had already collected his men and taken up the pursuit. The two forces were engaged near Cheronga’s village and, accor­ ding to tradition, Chawala Makumba was signally defeated and put to flight. Mambwe, however, had no sooner disposed of one opponent than he was faced with another. He came into conflict with a section of Wisa under one Mwanzawamba. Kunda tradition, always a panegyric of the deeds of its chiefs, extols yet another victory, but Mambwe vacated his position with a celerity that suggests that the retreat was not altogether voluntary. It is possible, however, that these fights are one and the same ; that Mwanza­ wamba was Chawala Makumba’s general, for both belonged to the Wisa tribe. The Muchinga escarpment was descended by the route now familiar as the Port Jameson-Serenje mail road. Having arrived at the Luangwa River, Malama parted company with Mambwe, the leader of the expedition, and settled at ChikuntoP) on the Lusangazi River, close to the village where he resides to-day. The locality derived its name from the depredations caused by a pride of man-eating lions which inflicted many casualties on the population. Malama led here a peculiarly placid life, considering the turbulence of the second half of this century. According to his own assertion—and there is no reason to question it—the country he occupied was void of inhabitants. To the east in the country now under Chief Msoro was a scattered Chewa population of whom Kachenga was the most prominent. Across the Luangwa the Ambo were arriving under their Chiefs, Chitambo and Chisenga. The amicable relations between the Kunda and this tribe were interrupted only once, when Malama and his people were invited to drink beer with Chitambo. Amid their potations a controversy arose and one of Chitambo’s men drew his bow and transfixed Mkumpa, Malama’s nephew, with an arrow. A present of ivory and a girl slave, however, restored their friendship, and shortly afterwards the Ambo are found seeking protection from the Kunda in their war with the Nsenga. The Nsenga were already in occupation of the Mbala under their Chief Kalindawalu when the Kunda crossed the Luangwa. There was never any hostility between the two tribes, which intermarried freely. The legend that Mambwe and Undi met on the summit of Ngolwe Hill where they partitioned the Zambezi watershed to the Nsenga and the Luangwa basin to the Kunda need not be seriously entertained(8). The pact is said to have been sealed by depositing on the apex of the hill a tusk of ivory in the hollow cavity of which a charm had been inserted. The position of Ngolwe Hill in the centre of the Mbala country, apart altogether from the fact that the story finds no place in Nsenga tradition, precludes credence in the legend. Equally mythical is the pronouncement alleged to have been made by Undi : il I am the Hill (piri), you are the Ant-hill (chulu).” Piri and 52

Chulu are the royal totem names respectively of the Chewa and Kunda, and the sentence is well chosen to magnify the former at the expense of the latter. The Kunda settlements on the Lusangazi, however, were sufficiently formidable to compel Kalindawalu to establish villages there for the pro­ tection of his frontier. The ancestors of the Chiefs Sandwe and Ukwimi, and important headmen such as Malaza, were sent east by Kalindawalu for this purpose. They soon married Kunda women, and in a generation became more Kunda than Nsenga. Sandwe is the offspring of a union between Mambwe and an Nsenga woman, Ngao, who was afterwards executed for infidelity. Chikunto was either too remote or too inaccessible to receive much attention from Ngoni raiding parties, but the upper Lusangazi enjoyed no such immunity. The name Chindeni given to the range of hills which incline steeply from the eastern bank of the river perpetuates an incident which occurred on one of these raids(9). Meanwhile Mambwe had not crossed the Luangwa River with Malama, but meandered up the west bank of the river, leaving behind him some small Kunda settlements, until he came to an insignificant tributary named Chanje. At this point he crossed the river and established his first village at the confluence of the Kauluzi with the Luangwa under the umbrageous foliage of a magnificent Mtowe tree. He may have formed the advance guard only of the expedition, the main body remaining on the west bank till the results of his reconnaissance were known. But in the next few years the valley of the Mwangazi became gradually populated. It is said that Mambwe found the land devoid of habitations, and since there have been discovered no traces of earlier occupation, there is no reason to doubt it. Mambwe next explored the Mwangazi as far as the site of the present village of Sefu, where he stayed a short time and, in commemoration of his visit, planted a grove of Mizumba trees which to-day present an imposing sight and afford grateful shaded^). His next move was actuated by the intelligence of the rich salt deposits in the north, and in that direction he repaired. Having crossed the Kauluzi, he found water in what is now a desiccated ditch, known as Ulanda, inter­ secting a monotonously arid expanse of Mipani forest, and on this unpre­ possessing site built his first village. While living here he became embroiled in a fight with some Wisa from the Nyamadzi River under the Chieftainess Nawalya, in which he lost his life. As in so many Bantu wars of this period, the frailty of woman was the cause, and as typical of them and the manner in which the fortunes of tribal communities fluctuated, it is set down here. A certain Wisa woman, by name Mambwe, the wife of one Chalwe Cholola, had joined the Kunda and crossed the Luangwa with them. Whether captured in war and retained as a slave or a hostage, or whether she was merely a camp-follower of the expedition, remains uncertain, but Mambwe had issued an order that her person was to be scrupulously respected. In spite of it, however, she was ravished by one of Mambwe’s men. Her outraged flight to her husband and the disclosure of her rape was enough, in those days of specious argument, to constitute a casus belli. A vengeful horde of Wisa, under the leadership of Chambwe Cholola himself, set out and surprised Mambwe before his stockaded village. After a brief but bloody resistance, Mambwe 53 and his brother Mwase were killed. Their bodies lie buried in a grave midway between the village and the water. The Wisa withdrew and did not renew their attacks in this quarter^1). Mambwe, without being pre-eminent, stands out as a capable chief and an enterprising pioneer. His own occupation of the Ulanda had secured for his tribe the valuable deposits of salt on his northern boundary, which later became the subject o.f protracted litigation. Before he died he had organised and despatched two exploratory expeditions, one under his brother Mchacha which culminated in the foundation of the Kunda colony at the Lutembwe-Msandili confluence, now under Jumbe, and the other under his nephew Chiziwa, who explored and occupied the valleys of the Msandili and Lupande. He undertook himself the task of appointing chiefs in the new country, selecting competent relatives to govern the areas now known as those of Tindi and Mkanya. He also assigned to each chief boundaries which he defined with such precision that to the present day they have never been disputed(12). After the reverse at the hands of the Wisa, the Kunda retired to the Mwangazi where Chiziwa had already built himself a village. Mambwe’s successor was his brother Chuoleka, a man of provocative character, who soon involved himself in a quarrel with another group of Wisa under Nko- maula, whose headquarters were near the Kapamba Stream on the west side of the Luangwa. By Nkomaula he was defeated, put to flight and killed. His head was carried off by the Wisa as the exuviae of battle : his trunk was interred beside those of his uncles in the Ulanda sepulchre. Chuoleka was succeeded by his nephew, Kavimba, a man of strong character and highly esteemed by his people. He lived in the eighties of last century, since we know that during his rule the Chewa of Mwase in the Chiwande were expelled by the Wisa of Kambwiri(13). He lived, however, in a cataclysmic epoch when the Ngoni were raiding the country, and impotent to save his tribe from the fate which menaced them, was forced to remain passive, while one by one the other chiefs submitted. Tindi and Mkanya tamely acquiesced in moving their villages to the Ngoni country ; his own headmen for the most part fled, some across the Luangwa, others to the Wisa of Kambwiri; others again sought protection even further away, with Mwase at Kasungu or on the shores of Lake Nyasa. The most mordant wound was inflicted by his own son Chuaula, who formed an alliance with the Ngoni Chief, Madzimawi, which effectually precluded the possibility of any further resistance. At the time of Kavimba^s death, Mulu, his brother and heir, was living with Kambwiri in the Chiwande, who afforded him some protection against the Ngoni and his still more dangerous foe, Chuaula. But Chuaula, a sagacious opportunist, who had the advantage of being on the spot, made the best use of the occasion. Having usurped the power, he proclaimed himself chief of all the Kunda, which was the more easily accomplished owing to the entire absence of any opposition. His first action was to dispose of Mulu, in whose continued existence he saw the elements of danger to himself. A blasting drought which occurred this year gave the chief his inspira­ tion. In pursuance of Bantu belief in ancestrolatry, Chuaula amiably invited Mulu to return to his paternal hearth in order to immolate the sacrifice necessary to appease the spirits of the departed and to invoke the 54 beneficent showers of rain. Mulu, entirely unsuspicious and persuaded by the patriotic purport of the message, betook himself home to perform the sacerdotal office assigned to him.. Thus decoyed, he was promptly and easily murdered by the agents of Chuaula. The next in succession was Sefu, the present Chief, who had joined Mulu in his refuge in the Wisa country, but the report of Chuaula’s parricide impelled him to seek a sanctuary still further abroad. He turned his steps towards Lake Nyasa where in the Mahommedan society of the Yao at Kotakota he lived in peace until 1898 when, on the pacification of the country introduced by the British South Africa Company, he was installed in his rightful place as chief of the northern portion of the tribe. Meanwhile Chuaula, the usurper, thanks to his pact with the Ngoni, attained to omnipotence in the Kunda country. His only source of weakness lay in the fact that his barbarous methods of government had driven almost all the people from his country. The minor chiefs in the south had, as we have seen, become incorporated in the Ngoni tribe, and those in the north had effaced themselves in exile as completely as though they had been extirpated. None the less, Chuaula was by far the most powerful and autocratic chief the Kunda ever had. He ruled according to the rigorous code of his day, and punished by mutilation of the sensitory organs. Some of his victims, lacking hands, ears or noses survive to-day to testify to his barbarous methods. When in 1895 a Collector of the British South Africa Company was stationed at Chinunda, Chuaula was supreme and almost alone in the Marambo, and his usurpation received official sanction. He died in the early years of the twentieth century, and was succeeded by his nephew. There is a persistent tradition that Mkanya’s colony on the Lupande was among the first to be founded, and there are grounds for believing that it may have been established during Mambwe’s northern march by a flanking division reconnoitring on the east bank of the river. The first chief of importance, Mkanya I, soon found himself faced with the incursions of the Ngoni. He was taken prisoner by them and would have spent the remainder of his life in captivity had not death supervened on his journey thither. His body was left to decompose by the wayside and all that was retrieved by his pploee from the putrescent corpse was the skull, which gruesome relic was interred in the family graveyard by the Chigowe Stream. His successor was Kawindula who for greater security moved his village from the Lupande to the Mwatizi, at that fertile spot called Katemo. But even in this seclusion he was unable to elude the assiduous search of his enemies and, like his uncle, met his end at their hands. He died in battle and his body was laid to rest beside his uncle’s skull. His nephew, the present Chief Mkanya II, after prolonging the impotent struggle for a short time, complied with the Ngoni terms and moved with the greater part of his people to their country. We have already noticed that while Mambwe was still alive, his brother Mchacha had set out on an excursion to explore the country to the south. Following the course of the Msandili, he came to the gorge through which the river debouches from the Mchinje Hills and then to that fertile region where it is joined by its tributaries, the Lutembwe and Mwatizi. His company consisted of only a small number of Kunda, but he was joined by groups of Chewa whom he found living here, and later by others dispersed 55 from the south by the Ngoni(14). Mchacha’s authority also extended south­ wards to the Kasanengwa, whither had emigrated several Chewa villages under their Chief, Chisapa, from Chinunda’s territory(15). First settling at Temani, where he is buried, Chisapa later obtained Mchacha’s permission to occupy that fertile area known as Chikoa. Mchacha was succeeded first by Msenya and next by Chikagona, both of whom are buried with Mchacha on the Msandili. The fourth of this branch, Jumbe, spent many years with his cousin, Sefu, in voluntary exile on the shores of Lake Nyasa. He died in 1931. Contemporaneous with Mchacha was Kongowala who occupied the Lupande above Mkanya’s colony. He was succeeded by Mpundi who again was followed by the paralytic but uxorious Mambwe, better known as the first Tindi. Compromising with the Ngoni, he settled in the country of Chief Madzimawi until the British occupation permitted his release. For the last fifteen years of his life he had been confined to his bed with dorsal paralysis, which place of repose he never left until in 1918 he exchanged it for the grave. His heir, Ntimbansonjo, ruled as Tindi II until 1932. The section of Kakumbi is usually included among the Kunda though the older generation of the Kunda of Sefu were accustomed to call Kakumbi’s people Nsenga. That Kakumbi claims to be Kunda is in itself worthless evidence since he would naturally try to assert relationship with the tribe in whose country he had come to settle ; that the Kunda should derisively term him Nsenga may be due to no more than his later arrival in the country or to his having lived at some previous time in the country of the Nsenga. According to the Kunda version, Kakumbi crossed the Luangwa from a modest eminence on the west bank, named Kapirinkonde, as late as 1895, but there is very strong circumstantial evidence in favour of an earlier settlement. More cogent is the fact that Kakumbi belongs to the Mvula family, not that of Mbawo to which all the Kunda chiefs belong^6). The first known ancestor of Kakumbi was one Munga Kavundi, who is said to have made his entry into this country and his exit from this world about the same time as his more illustrious contemporary, Mambwe. In fact, the death of Munga Kavundi is a sequel to the demise of Mambwe. The tradition runs that on being apprised of Mambwe’s death, Munga Kavundi inaugurated mourning celebrations on a prodigious scale, in which panegyrics of the deeds of the late chief and execrations of the vices of his slayer took a prominent place. When this reached the ears of Chambwe Cholola, he was incensed at what he interpreted to be a defiant attitude towards himself. Descending upon them thus occupied in the ecstasies of funeral orgies, the Wisa chief easily overcame them and slew their leader. Munga Kavundi lies buried at Kawelelo near the Kafunta Stream on the east bank of the Luangwa, decisive evidence that Kakumbi’s branch were settled here at the time of the Kunda occupation of the Mwangazi. If further evidence were needed, it is supplied by the genealogy of the chief’s family, which contains no less than five chiefs, all of whom are buried east of the Luangwa. The correct explanation is probably that given by Malama who asserts that Kakumbi withdrew his people west of the river under pressure from the Ngoni raiding parties. Malama recalls, with evident relish, how the Ngoni once attempted to ford the Luangwa for the purpose of attack, but received so startling a repulse from the crocodiles that infest that river, that retreating with loss of life and limb, they never 56 repeated the attempt. The genealogy of the chiefs is given in an Appendix. Those who followed Munga Kavundi were Mkulamwendo, Mwanda, Kakum- bi I, Chipotera, Komakoma and the present chief who assumed the name of Kakumbi II.

NOTES. (1) It is at least possible that Kunda is a regional name like Mbala or Senga. The syllable “ nda ” occurs frequently in place names, e.g. Bunda and appears to have a locative significance in the common words Nganda (house), Munda (garden), Manda (grave). The derivation that has been advanced from Nkunda meaning a pigeon, and explained by the fact that the Kunda are said to have worn no clothes will not bear examination. (2) Several analogous affiliations of totem names are found, e.g. the Chulu family is affiliated with the Mumba family, because Mumba, the pot makers, require Chulu, the ant- heap, as material for their craft. (3) Journal of the Geographical Society, No. X X X , 1860. (4) Ibid., August, 1897. (5) The Malama who died in 1920 at about the age of sixty years was the nephew of the Malama born west of the Luangw’a. (6) For parallels cf. Torrend : B antu Folklore from N orthern Rhodesia, 93, 97, etc. (7) From the verb Kukunta meaning to destroy. Locally Malama is known as Malama Chikunto. (8) Vide supra : 36 and note. (9) Commemorating a ruse by which some Kunda women beguiled some Ngo'ni warriors to sleep with them on the top of the hills, and then castrated them with their own assegais. (10) The custom of planting a grove of trees at new villages was not uncommon. It was believed to bring prosperity. Similar plantations may be seen at several villages along the Luangwa, notably at Chiuye Msonda, vide Ambo History, 66. (11) They reappear, however, in the history of Kakumbi, infra., 55. (12) The boundaries of the different Kunda chiefs are given in an Appendix. (13) Vide supra : History of Chewa Settlements in the Luangwa Valley, 28. (14) Of Jumbe’s villages only eight were Kunda and eleven Chewa. (15) Chisapa formerly lived in the country of Chinunda, -where he became involved in a case of witchcraft and with all his people fled to the Kasanengwa Valley. In this way the considerable Chewa population here is accounted for. Witchcraft was a very common cause of the movement of village communities. Msoro’s migration from Pule to Kawala is said also to have been due to this cause. . (16) The date of Kakumbi’s occupation of his country is said by the Kunda to have been “ when the Government were still at Zomba ” or about 1895. 57

Chapter VI. AMBO. The Ambo tribe, whose country is denoted Umbo and its language Chiumbo or Chiwambo, is widely distributed in the Petauke District of the East Luangwa Province. Predisposed to the environment of rivers, the Ambo were formerly found dispersed along the Luapula ; in more recent times they occupied the valley of the Zambezi and later still the banks of the Luangwa, Lukushashi and its tributary, the Mlembo. For our present purpose we shall confine ourselves to those sections of Luwembe on the Mlembo, of Mwape on the Chuambira and of Mulilo at Chinsimbwe on the upper Luang­ wa, but occasional reference will be made to Chitambo, the female head of the group on the Lusemfwa, to Nyamalua the Chieftainess of the group north of the river and to Chitambo whose country further east marched with the territory of the Kunda. The total population of the Ambo in this Province is officially given as 9,100 soulsd). The “ Mumbos ” who invaded the Lower Zambezi and invested the Portuguese colony at.Tete in the sixteenth century are now usually identified with the Abambo of South Africa, a tribe distinct from the Ambo under discussion(2). We have, however, a reference to them at the close of the eighteenth century in Lacerda’s journal. In one of his last entries, written twelve days before his death in 1798, he records on the testimony of the natives of Kazembe, “ On the south are the Alambas and the Ambos, peaceful friends of the Cazembe who trade, they declare, with the caffres at Zumbo ”(3). This was the section under Mboroma which Livingstone encountered sixty years laterW. This quotation, while conclusive that the Ambo had occupied the Zambezi Valley, does not throw any light upon the settlements on the Luangwa. For these it is necessary to resort to native tradition. The Ambo tradition relates that the tribe seceded from the Luapula region in the reign of Chawala Makumba(5). Kunda history, which expatiates on the obliquities of that chief, affirmatively records that the Ambo migration was contemporaneous with that of the Kunda. The occupation of the Luangwa by the Kunda has been assigned in an earlier chapter to the decade 1840- 1850(6), and the same epoch probably saw the arrival of Luwembe on the Mlembo and of Mwape at the Chuambira-Luangwa confluence. That the Ambo migrated from the region of the Luapula does not admit of controversy : it is unanimously confirmed by the tradition of each section of the tribe. On the Luapula they were one of the several tribes under the domination of. Chawala Makumba. Their affinities are closer to the Lala tribe than to any other ; there is an obvious linguistic resemblance between the two dialects, an intimate historical intercourse, and the family and clan names are found to be freely distributed among the two tribes. Indeed it has been said that the word Ambo means nothing more than “ Alala who inhabit the low country.” The Ambo themselves interpret their name to mean the people who cultivate by digging as distinguished from the Lala who pollard the treesP), 58

The family or totem name of all the chiefs of the Ambo is Nyendwa, which is said to mean the female pudenda. The name is possibly connected with some unusual features in the custom of succession in vogue with this tribe. The Ambo are unique in that descent, in at least two principal sections, those of the female Chieftainesses Mwape and Nyamalua, is trans­ mitted from mother to daughter instead of from brother to brother or to maternal nephew as is the practice with all other matrilineal tribes. Female succession of this type is without parallel in the other matrilineal tribes which migrated from the same region, and has never been satisfactorily explained. The reasons, which are furnished to-day such as that women achieved a greater longevity than men, that men were more prone to disease and so forth, do not carry conviction. Mwape has propounded the view that the custom originated in the infanticide of male offspring, a parallel for which is to be found in the history of the Kunda tribe(8). Another native authority has affirmed that in early times all male members of the community were killed or banished, except a few especially chosen for the purpose of procreation, which function fulfilled, these too were exterminated. Whatever may have been the true cause, the theory that female succession dates from the infanticide of Chawala Makumba, attractive as it is, is not free from chronological difficulties. Tribal genealogies indicate that it was not adopted till later, and in the case of Mwape, originated with her. The migration of the Ambo was only part of a general movement which was set in motion at this time. The preceding pages have already ascribed to this period the migrations of the Kunda and the Nsenga. The present expedition was composed of three distinct family groups. First the Tembo family under their Chief Mukuni, who ultimately found a home in the country of the Alenje, secondly the Nyangu family under Nkana who advanced into the Nsenga country, and the Nswi-Mpande group under its leader Lungo, with the Nyendwa section under one Kunda. According to tradition the three families sprang from different wives of the notorious Chawala Makum­ ba. Ambo tradition begins with Kunda, but there is a vague allusion to an earlier ancestor named Boto. After crossing the Luapula River, the expedition found itself in Ilala, the country of the Lala people. Here the Tembo and Nyangu peoples diverged to the countries they severally occupied, but Lungo and Kunda remained together, and resided in Ilala for some years. The first incident in the migration worthy of record occurred when the Luapula had been safely forded. The people then found themselves in the unfortunate position of being without fire, or the means to make it. An ancient woman, however, the possessor of the common name, Ngoza, saved the situation by producing from her earthenware pot a glowing ember. She was acclaimed the saviour of the expedition and raised to a prominent place among its leaders. While residing in the Lala country, Kunda, the chief of the Nyendwa family, committed a breach of the rules regulating marriage, which led to the friction between the Nyendwa and Mpande families which survives to this day. He conceived a passion for Kawela, the daughter of Lungo, to whom he proposed marriage. Lungo opposed the union as incestuous, since he and Kunda were half-brothers, both sons of Chawala Makumba. Incestuous relations were held to be a form of witchcraft, liable to bring disastrous consequences in death or disease to the relations of the guilty 59

parties. Observing, moreover, that Kawela reciprocated Kunda’s desire, to avoid the inevitable catastrophe he removed her and all his family to the south, where he found a home on the Mlembo River. Mbachundu, the Nsenga headman of this river valley, who belonged to the family of Mumba, was killed and his people absorbed into Lungo’s following. Nothing is known of Mbachundu, but to this day when sacrifices are immolated and prayers are invoked for rain, the name of Mbachundu occurs first in the recital of Ambo chiefs. The surreptitious departure of Lungo frustrated Kunda’s designs, and he was further embarrassed by being left in ignorance as to whither he had gone. It was some time later that rumour reached him that Lungo was on the Mlembo, and he immediately started in pursuit. His journey took him to the Lower Lusemfwa and across the Luangwa as far as the Mvuvye River before he at last discovered him. Kunda hoped that after the interval of absence, Lungo had forgotten him, and that by adopting a disguise, Lungo would bestow his daughter upon him, as though on a stranger. He, therefore, disguised himself as a professional dancer, investing himself in the skins of antelopes. But though no one recognised him, the village dogs scented him, and betrayed his identity to their master. Although his ingenuity failed, he achieved his desire and married Kawela. Lungo was now obsessed by a new fear lest Kunda should deprive him of his land. The device to compel his departure is attributed to the wife of Lungo. When the season for planting arrived, she supplied'Kunda with seed which had been roasted over the fire and was therefore incapable of sprouting. But Kunda, when he discovered he was the victim of decep­ tion, opposed guile with guile. Plastering his legs with beeswax he pro­ ceeded to dance in the outskirts of the village and in the gardens of Lungo. As he performed evolutions with his legs the grains of maize and kaffir-corn in the gardens adhered to the beeswax, and returning home, he collected the grains, and planted a crop which bore a fruitful harvest. He next returned to Ilala where he summoned a large following with promises of a new land where white corn and flesh of antelope were abundant(9). With this reinforcement he descended upon Lungo. Lungo retreated into the obscurity of the forest, but his own daughter Kawela, Kunda’s wife, revealed a path to his refuge. He was killed, but his wife escaped with a flesh wound. Many years later a skin was found which is supposed to have been worn by her, and a mortar and a grinding stone. The place is held sacred, and her spirit is invoked in times of trouble. At the time when Kunda established himself in the'place of Lungo on the Mlembo, a Nsenga chief named Kanayilowe ruled the country watered by the Mazingwa Stream to the south-east. Kanayilowe had fortified his village with a stockade which rendered it almost impregnable to Bantu methods of warfare, but Kunda, determined after his success against Lungo to extend his dominion, marched upon the Mazingwa and set siege to the stockade. In the battle that followed Kunda was vanquished and killed and only five of his followers, it is said, survived. The corpse of Kunda was eviscerated and the skin preserved and taken possession of by Kanayilowe. Like all heroic figures, Kunda is surrounded by a volume of myth. He is said to have travelled to the Indian Ocean, to have gazed upon the waters of Lake Nyasa and even to have performed miracles. From these 60 journeys he is said to have returned with a number of metal objects, described as huge tin vases which on his death were placed upon his graved). There is possibly more truth in the tradition that he visited the Nsenga Chief Nyanji, where he met Undi, his father-in-law(H). A charm which enabled him to make this circumambulation of Central Africa is supposed to have been obtained from the Lala people. Nor is the legend of his death undisputed. The Mboroma branch of the Nyendwa family assert that he died west of the Luangwa River, and others again affirm that his body reposes in a grave on the Mlembo. In support of this latter view it is claimed that the lion, into which his spirit by metamorphosis changed, still prowls about the forest in the neighbour­ hood. The best authorities agree that Kunda was succeeded by Chilimba, but Mambwe Chisaka appears to have been the head of the tribe, and even to have received instructions from Chawala Makumba, who still apparently survived and remained paramount in the Luapula region, to assume the chieftainship. Chilimba’s first duty was to avenge the defeat inflicted upon Kunda, and to retrieve the chief’s body. An expedition was, therefore, equipped and discharged against the still impregnable stockade of Kanayilowe. The assault on its fortifications lasted five days when Kapeza, who was in command, called a. retreat. To Kapeza’s ingenuity is due the stratagem which enabled a breach to be made in the stockade. He ordered his men to enclose his person in an immense framework of grass, completely concealing every part of his body. Thus disguised he was rolled by night into position before the walls. In the morning the sentries, perceiving a colossal bundle of grass, reported to their chief that the Ambo had gone, leaving only their ghost behind, and appealed to him to exorcise its malevolence. Kanayilowe had no sooner come within reach, than a hand emerged which caught him by the legs and tripped him to the ground. This was the signal for the rest of the army to make the final assault. Some made a breach in the walls, others assaulted the chief’s hut, and after a short engagement triumphantly retrieved the desiccated epidermis of their late chief. ' During the chieftainship of Chilimba took place the penetration by the Ambo into the country east of the Luangwa River. Progress in this direction had been facilitated by the victory over Kanyilowe on the Mazing- wa, and the exploration was entrusted to Luwembe I a nephew of Chilimba. Luwembe, having crossed the Luangwa, advanced as far as the Chifukuzi, where he built his first village^2). This village was the furthest outpost in the interior of the Nsenga country which the Ambo established ; this tributary and the Nyamadzi became the boundary between the Luwembe dynasty and that of Mwape, and Luwembe has at no time since advanced any claim to territory north of the Nyamadzi. The colonisation of the Luangwa followed immediately upon the exploration of Luwembe. In the flat country called Kawonamakuwi, where on all sides nothing obstructs the horizon and the vultures at all hours may be seen hovering in the blue space, Kalembo built his village(i3). Below him were Chikwenya and Chiuye Msonda, whose site may still be detected by the arboretum of baobab trees planted by him to commemorate the births of his sons(14). In the valley of the Kakunto, Kalufya and Mwansanika established themselves. 61

Luwembe did not remain long on the Chifukuzi. His second village was at Mumpanje, where he died. His exploratory feats secured him an illustrious name in the genealogy of the tribe. His contemporaries extolled him by the honorific title of Luwembe Inyanja Inyalungu Intumpaula. Chilimba accomplished more than mere exploration ; he colonised the country and consolidated his territory by the demarcation of boundaries and the appointment of chiefs. To the female chieftainess Mwape he gave the country of which the Chuambira-Luangwa confluence is the centre, extending north and east to the confines of Nyamalua’s country and to the south and west as far as the Nyamadzi. The Lower Lukushashi to its confluence with the Lusemfwa was placed under the authority of a nephew Chiuye, until he succeeded on Chilimba’s death, and later of Miwiri. The Chisanga Valley, or what may be termed geographically, the middle region of Umbo, was given to a female chieftainess, Kalimbangoma, whose place was taken in his later years by Luwembe, another nephew. Chilimba himself remained on the Mlembo, where after an eventful and beneficial reign he died and was buried. The site of his village is marked by a number of Mizumba trees, planted by him and, in particular, by two of the species called Mitondo, which he had brought back with him from his military expedition against the Nsenga on the Mazingwa. Chilimba was succeeded by his three nephews in turn, the sons of his sister Kalimbangoma, Muwanga, Wasi and Chiuye. Chilimba had died full of years, and the reigns of his nephews, with the exception of Chiuye, were not of long duration nor remarkable for incident. The partition of Umbo, effected by Chilimba, led to the different dependencies developing independently, and their histories and successions are difficult to extricate. While Muwanga and Wasi ruled from the now established capital of the Ambo on the Mlembo, the Chisanga country was at first controlled by Kalimbangoma, another instance of the partiality of the tribe for female chiefs, until she was succeeded or superseded by Luwembe I, son of Msonda (F), of whose explorations east of the Luangwa something has already been said. In the Lukushashi-Lusemfwa country Chiuye was paramount until on the death of Wasi he transferred his authority to the Mlembo. On the Lusemfwa he was succeeded by Mboroma ; eastwards on the Chuambira, Mwape had always been independent. Of Chilimba’s three nephews, he who reigned longest and best was Chiuye. His chieftaincy on the Mlembo coincided with that of the second Luwembe in Chisanga and the second Mwape on the Chuambira. About this time there suddenly appeared from the west a host of people calling themselves Ambwela or Amalolod5). They settled down peaceably in the folds of the Muchinga escarpment under their own headmen, who were content to recognise the supremacy of the Ambo. Some village names which have come down are redolent of western nomenclature, Shikatunda, Shikaweta and others. In the eyes of the Ambo they achieved high esteem by their skill and courage in hunting elephants, armed only with spears. In the lifetime of the first Luwembe they acquiesced in surrendering the ivory so obtained, but under the second chief of that name, they protested. Their contumacy brought upon them the full force of Ambo arms, assisted by an Nsenga contingent under Ngam- bwa. After a battle, which is described as more than usually bloody, the 62

Ambwela, or Makololo as they are better known, were defeated and expelled from the country. This battle was one of the first to demonstrate the inevitable superiority of any force equipped with fire-arms over a force deficient in such weapons. The Ambo had acquired fire-arms through contact with the Chikunda from the Portuguese colonies on the Zambezi. The Chikunda belong to a tribe which is not strictly germane to a record of natives living in the Eastern Province. But since their connection with the Ambo is closer than with any other tribe, we shall briefly mention them here. The reason that they are not relevant to this history is that they were never a resident tribe in the country under our notice. Wherever they occur, they are itinerant and isolated communities. Their frequency in the Luangwa Valley is due to the fact that their occupation was trading guns and slaves and the hunting of elephants, and elephants were more abundant in the Luangwa Valley than anywhere else. Chiefs usually welcomed them, for their profession brought wealth : they were permitted to shoot freely in the country upon a stipulation that the chief participated in the tusks or in the proceeds of the sale of the ivory. In this way it came about that Chikunda villages were to be found along the length and breadth of the Luangwa Valley, and their surprising occurrence to-day where least expected is accounted for by a cessation to their hunting having been suddenly imposed by the Pax Britannica^). Some of these communities were led by half-caste Portuguese, for instance those at Chiutika and Mzaza, and all were equipped with flint-locks or percussion guns manufactured in London, Antwerp and Liege. The Ambo, like other tribes which came into contact with the Chikunda, were quick to appreciate the overwhelming advantage in warfare to a force armed with these weapons. Whenever a local conflict arose, one party or the other would endeavour to gain the assistance of the Chikunda, who thus became, like the condotticri in medieval Italy, a mercenary force ready to hire itself to the party offering the highest reward for its services. To Chiuye’s reign must also be ascribed the invasion into the Lala and Lamba countries. The representative of the Nyendwa clan in what is now the Mkushi District was one Mayiri. In a fight with an enemy who are said to have been Ngoni, Mayiri was wounded and left by his fellow- tribesmen to die on the field. Such pusillanimous conduct excited the indignation of Chiuye’s Ambo, who made an incursion upon the country of the offending Lala and caused some casualties and more devastation. Chiuye’s reign was one of peace. His policy had not involved his people in any serious wars, and at his death the title of Peace-maker was bestowed on him. The senior representative of the Nyendwa family was now Mboroma, who lived on the Kapoko Stream in what is now the Mkushi District. Although he never lived east of the Mlembo River, his supremacy over the Mlembo and the Chisanga was immediately recognised. He did not, how­ ever, survive many years, for Mkwemba, a nephew of Luwembe, is soon found in power on the Chisanga. His reign was brought to an abrupt conclusion by a conspiracy contrived by the great Mwape of Chuambira. Mwape, as always intolerant of any assumption to authority, arranged with 03

Ngambwa, then chief of the Nsenga on the Mazingwa, to assassinate him. In pursuance of this plot, Mkwemba was invited by Ngambwa to marry a wife in the latter’s village, a proposal that was readily accepted. After the usual celebrations, Mkwemba retired to the nuptial hut, and was shot dead while enjoying his bride’s embraces. A different version recounts that he was invited to join a convivial party, and when intoxicated was deliberately provoked and, in the ensuing quarrel, assassinated. The heir was Chimkoko, Mwape’s own son, at that time a minor. As she anticipated, she was made regent pending his coming of age. Chimkoko, who reigned as Luwembe III, died in 1915. His reign covered the period of the Chikunda wars, and the advent of European admini­ stration. There followed an interregnum during which, in default of heirs, Ntimba, the father of the present Chiefs Luwembe and Mwape, held the regency. In 1924 his son Changwe came of age and was installed as chief. He was deposed five years later owing to a series of irregularities. His younger brother Taulo, Luwembe V, filled the vacancy in 1930. The first Mwape, like her successors to the chieftaincy, a woman, occupied the Chuambira-Luangwa confluence about the time that Chilimba ruled on the Mlembo. She belonged to the Nyendwa family and was closely related to that branch of which some account has been given in the foregoing pages. Tradition has bestowed on her a reputation for benevolence and good government, but the names by which she was known to her contem­ poraries do not confirm this impression. She was variously known as Namukwanga, or Nachikwakulu, but more frequently as Namutola, an abbreviation for Namutola uutola utwana twa wanakwe, meaning one who deprives others of their children in order to kill them. Whatever may have been her character, it contrasted favourably with her more illustrious successor. Changwe as she was called, before she inherited the name Mwape II on her succession, was the daughter of Mwape of the Nyendwa family on her mother’s side and of Katiula of the Nzovu clan, her father. She lived until 1910 and was buried at her village on the Chuambira. She was indubitably the most remarkable woman of her epoch. Where the outlook of other Ambo chiefs was merely parochial, Mwape’s was imperial. Her authority extended from the Mlembo to the Msanzara, a kingdom twice as large as any Ambo chief had hitherto aspired to. She was genuinely feared by her neighbours who never attempted to intervene in her affairs. She was a blood-thirsty woman in a blood-thirsty age. A Borgia in intrigue, she was a veritable Boadicea in warfare. Her private assassinations caused almost as much loss of life as did her open wars. Absolutely intolerant of any power beside h er’own, she had as little compunction in poisoning her near relations as she had in slaughtering her enemies. Yet there are instances of her clemency. Her escapes from death or capture were miracu­ lous. Her person became invested in a halo of superstition ; she was believed to be so surrounded with magic and witchcraft that attempts on her life were foredoomed to failure. Before this belief in her immunity armies retired and sieges collapsed. Withal, fortune favoured her throughout her career, and delivered her safe from the most desperate situations. While she earned the implacable hatred of many of her subjects, she still retained their loyalty. The Ambo elevated her into something superhuman. 64

It is not certain whether the assassination of Mushalila, a kinsman and a headman of a large village at Katipat1?), was the first act of bloodshed perpetrated by Mwape, but it had consequences which Mwape could not have foreseen. Since it was the first of a series of events which caused Mwape to leave the country and seek refuge with the Wemba nation in the remote north, it must not be omitted from her biography. Mushalila was highly connected : his sister was Nyachiwinda, his son was Milonga, his nephew' Chipota, all persons of position, related to the royal Nyendwa family. On the murder of his father, Milonga proceeded to evince his sorrow by the wholesale slaughter of the innocent Nsenga living in the Mvuvye Valley. Such exhibitions of grief are not without parallels in this age. Mwape, however, took offence at what she considered, to be an osten­ sible act of disapprobation of what she had done, and set on foot designs to assassinate Milonga also. Milonga, however, forewarned of Mwape’s intentions, fled to the Mlembo where he found refuge with Chimona, a daughter of Chiuye. Here he met Matekenya(i8), a half-caste Portuguese, the leader of the Chikunda, operating in this area, who engaged him and promoted him to a position of authority in his service. In the pay of Matekenya, Milonga became affluent, and the recipient of European goods brought from Portuguese territory by itinerant hawkers. These excited Mwape’s covetousness, and she invited Milonga to return and to build a village close to her own, giving her solemn undertaking that his life would be spared. Accordingly Milonga established himself on the Chuambira, and for a year or more Mwape honoured her bond. But one day, when the events of the past seemed already lost in oblivion, Mwape invited Milonga to drink beer with her.- Alone with him in the hut, she burst out in a flow of vituperation, demanded his reasons for lamenting his father’s death, and without waiting for a reply, rushed at him with a large knife and severed his jugular artery. There remained his nephew Chipota to avenge his murder : Chipota sent for help at once to Matekenya and received an immediate response. “ Mwape and her daughter must be brought to me as captives, even if every Chikunda is killed in effecting it ” was the order sent by Matekenya. Chikunda Mkushi, the husband of Chimona, Mponda and Chipota were the leaders of the army which invested Mwape’s stockade at Munyangwa. The Chikunda opened with a fusillade from their percussion guns, but not a man within the stockade was wounded. A second and third time the Chikunda discharged their pieces with equally futile results, and the belief in Mwape’s magical protection was enhanced. But by the evening Mwape’s powder was exhausted, for she too had a few guns, and she decided to escape by night. She ordered two exits to be made in the fortifications, one to the north for herself and one to the west for her daughters. Fortune, as always, was with Mwape, for as she passed through the northern breach, she fell into the hands of Chikunda Mkushi and Mponda. The soldiers were about to fire upon her when Mponda shouted, “ Are we not all the sons of Chiuye of Mlembo ? Shall we kill our mother ? Let her pass for another Chikunda to lay hands on.” So Mwape made her escape, and passed northwards over the Kweshi and Marunda Hills. Her daughters, Nachilashya and Mwandu, were not. so fortunate. Leaving by the western exit, they were made captives and taken to Mate­ kenya. Matekenya handed them over to Chiutika and, to his credit 65 ordered that they were to be properly treated, as princesses of the royal family. Chiutika took them to Katipa, but the blood feud between them and Chipota and Nyachiwinda who lived here was too acute for them to live in amiable propinquity. They were allowed to return to Mwape’s old village on the Chuambira, but after a short time they resolved to follow the footsteps of Mwape in her flight to Luwemba. Mwape’s wanderings first brought her to the Lala country, but she found no one there to befriend her. Continuing her journey she came to the country of the Wemba(19) where, in the hope of gaining his assistance, she married a man named Chikwanda. Here she was joined by her two daughters and they remained about a year. But Mwape was accustomed to more respect than Chikwanda was ready to show towards her ; life in this foreign country was already becoming irksome. The rupture came when Chikwanda suggested marriage with Nachilashya, Mwape’s daughter. The proposal was incestuous, and Mwape with her daughters promptly took their departure. They next found hospitality with Muchinka(2°), a Lala chief of some position, with whom they remained about six months. Meanwhile the news of Mwape’s whereabouts had already reached her adherents in Umbo. To Mteme, a kinsman of her father, must be given the credit for her safe repatriation. One day a party of loyal friends, of whom perhaps the only one deserving of mention was Chushi, afterwards one of Mwape’s numerous husbands, appeared before Muchinka, and a few weeks later escorted Mwape back to the Mlembo. Once back among her own people and in her own country, the inveterate love of battle revived in Mwape. Within a year she had collected an army, waged a war upon a Lala chief, Mutumpa, who reigned on the Manda Stream, defeated and killed him. On her return from this expedition she married Chushi, an alliance which involved her in further complications. Mwape owed her rescue to Mteme and was at this time living at his village. But Chushi had been in the past accused by Mteme of theft and, having, proved his innocence, had persistently demanded the payment of damages for slander. Finally he gained the influence of Mwape who decided that Mteme should surrender all his brother’s sons as slaves. This decision caused the breach between Mwape and Mteme and the war between Mwape and Chikwashya. Mteme and his following, in anticipation of a fight, joined Chikwashya at his village on the Mlembo. Mwape and her following established themselves at Chilumba, the confluence of the Mlembo with the Lukushashi. Before war was formally declared, Mwape played a most successful stroke. Chikwashya, who, was in a trading partnership with a half-caste Portuguese named Chimtanda, had accumulated a large number of guns and deposited them with his brother Mlonda at Kachunda’s village. Mwape made a surprise attack and captured the entire armoury. A few days later Mwape’s people themselves were the victims of a surprise from which they were lucky to extricate themselves. The population from Chilumba, men, women and children made an expedition to the salt deposits, situated midway between the Luangwa and the Lukushashi(215. It is customary on these expeditions to remain several days, camping by the pans, while the salt is collected and distilled. But the moving column of natives had been seen by a man who at once made his report to Chikwashya. During the night Chikwashya skilfully manoeuvred his force, armed with what 66 guns remained, to the shelter of the forest that fringed the salt pans. The breaking dawn revealed Mwape’s people warming themselves in the chill air of, a winter’s morning round their fires. Suddenly a volley, discharged from all sides at once, reverberated through the silent glade. Several fell dead, and others were wounded, but some were able to hasten with the news to Mwape who remained at Chilumba. Mwape collected what force she could, and came up with her enemy close to the village of Chikwashya, but her guns misfired and they made good their retreat. In so far that Mwape remained alive and at large, Chikwashya’s opera­ tion was a failure. Mwape took advantage of the pause in the hostilities to intrigue the assassination of Mkwemba, the ruling chief in Chisanga. How she accomplished this with the aid of the Nsenga Chief, Ngambwa, has already been related on a previous page. While it eliminated her rival, and left her. supreme, it was a political mistake, for Mkwemba had achieved much popularity and his death rallied the public against Mwape. Amongst Mkwemba’s intimate friends was the half-caste Chimtanda, the partner of Chikwashya, who had lost his rifles at Kachunda. With the help of all the headmen on the Lukushashi and this reinforcement, Chikwashya surrounded Mwape in her stockaded fort at Chilumba. The Chikunda controlled their fire in the hope that Mwape would exhaust her powder and ammunition. The engagement lasted two days and two nights. On the second day the first casualty on either side was reported—one man of the Chikunda force was killed. Already the investing army were despondent, convinced of the futility of fighting a woman so protected by magic. But Mwape was, in fact, reduced almost to the point of surrender. That night a man was despatched to the sons of Luwembe for help, and eluding the guards made a nocturnal journey to Chisanga. In the afternoon of the third day, the relieving force in command of Ntimba was seen approaching over the hills. As Ntimba entered the fort on the west, the Chikunda fled north to the Mlembo. Ntimba’s men discharged their pieces and inflicted a few casual­ ties, among whom was the half-caste Mkwaila(22). A fortunate event for Mwape was the arrival, the day previous to the siege, of a hawker from Portuguese territory bartering gunpowder for slaves. His powder was commandeered and enabled Mwape to hold out until relieved. Ntimba was anxious to pursue and informed Mwape that Ngambwa with a force of Nsenga was coming up in the rear. But Mwape now displayed one of her rare acts of clemency. “ He is our ‘ Mother she said “ and takes care of our family graves.-See that he is not killed(23).” So Chik­ washya was saved. Ntimba was rewarded for his services by the gift of Mwape’s daughter. After this victory, Mwape moved to Chisanga, where she reigned as chief of all the Ambo. Later she returned to her original home on the Chuambira, where she was found by the German prospector, Carl Weise, about 1888, whose concession from Mpeseni was the means of inaugurating the North Charterland Exploration Company. His appearance not only prevented the resumption of the campaign against Chikwashya, but the Ambo were so intimidated as to contemplate retiring to their original home on the Luapula. They were frustrated in this by the strong action taken by Mwape in conjunction with Katawa, the very able headman who acted as her deputy on the Mlembo. It is not irrelevant at this point when Mwape was at the height of her ascendancy to observe the extent of her kingdom. In the west, her victory 67 over Chikwashya gave her sovereignty over the Mlambo, Lukushashi and Lower Luangwa, to which, since the assassination of Mkwemba, there was no aspirant. East of the Luangwa she controlled the Nyamadzi Valley, first explored by Luwembe. Her own chieftaincy comprised the Middle Luangwa, the Chuambira Valley, the Marunda Valley and the densely populated settlement at Katipa. To her son-in-law Mpeta, a son of Kalin- dawalu, Chief of the Nsenga, who had married her daughter, she delegated the task of colonising the fertile Mvuvye Valley, to the confines of the Nsenga territory. Further to the east, Mulilo and Chisenga respectively at Chinsim- bwe and Kauncli owed her allegiance. And a vague sovereignty higher up the Luangwa brought her territory to the boundaries of the Kunda chiefs. Mwape and Chikwashya never arrived at complete agreement. The history of the dispute dates to the quarrel between Kunda and Lungo already related, and to the antagonism of the Nyendwa and Mpande families. It was revived acutely at the succession of Taulo to the chieftaincy in 1930, when Chikwashya advanced his claim and the present Mwape intervened to oppose him. The source of Chikwashya’s authority lay in the fact that the supervision and upkeep of the Nyendwa graves were vested in his family. It is said, for instance, that he alone knows the spot where the wife of Lungo lies buried. He was believed to possess a charm of extraordinary potency to expedite the transmigration of the souls of dead chiefs into lions. As the guardian of the graves where all the Ambo chiefs lie buried, and in recognition of his magical power, he was held in great esteem, and allowed to appropriate, as his own perquisite, all ivory found in the country of Mlembo. But never at any time in the history of the Ambo was any one of the line of Chikwashya regarded as a territorial chief. If there is anything absolutely certain of this tribe, it is that the chieftaincy has always been vested in a member of the Nyendwa family. Chikwashya belonged to the Mpande clan. And the fact that all the Nyendwa chiefs were formerly buried in the cemetery on the Mlembo is proof that the Nyendwa were chiefs also of the Mlembo ; for it is inconceivable that their corpses would be deported from their own to be interred in an alien land. Up the Luangwa River, above the Chuambira and Katipa, are two sub­ chiefs who came originally from Luba with the rest of the Ambo. Chisenga and Mulilo accompanied Mwape until she established herself on the Chuam­ bira, when they diverged eastwards and occupied the north bank of the Luangwa between the- countries of Mwape and Nyamalua. They both belonged to the Nyendwa family and were led at first by one Showe, appa­ rently one of Nyamalua’s men. About the time when Mwape occupied the Chuambira Valley, Chisenga built a settlement at Chisani(24), and Mulilo at Kanchi, that deep reach of the Luangwa which is now the habitat of the largest school of hippopotamuses in the river. At some period in his migration, before settling at Chisani, Chisenga was joined by Lundu, an elephant hunter of repute, and a kinsman of the Nyendwa clan. On the journey Chisenga fell ill and lost his appetite for any food, except a species of bean called Nyangu, which he repeatedly asked for. The camp was searched but no one possessed this delicacy. After a long illness, however, Chisenga recovered and the march was resumed. Then, one day, a woman belonging to Lundu’s following stumbled on the path, and upset the basket she carried, and before the eyes of the irate Chisenga out tumbled a quantity of Nyangu beans. Chisenga halted the . 68 expedition and in his wrath delivered judgment. Ci Henceforth,’’ he proclaimed, (i you shall belong no more to the Nyendwa family. From this day you shall be called Nyangu.” So Lundu with his people left Chisenga and founded his community further upstream at Chikoa(25). The story is given here because it is one of the few instances where the family or totem name has been changed, and is of some interest as showing the cause and the manner in which new totems were created. Whether true or not, it has the merit of being a native tradition, not an ethnologist’s theory. Chisenga was the senior of the two chiefs, and made the first attempt to expand to the south of the river. At the lower waters of the Msanzara at this time was an Nsenga headman, Chikwatu, a member of the ubiquitous Nguluwe family who, recognising his inferiority in numbers, attempted to compromise. He demarcated a boundary, which he hoped would prove acceptable, by cutting down the dense and almost impenetrable Mlenje reeds which here fringe the margin of the Luangwa, offering to Chisenga the western and retaining for himself the eastern side. But Chisenga was aware that he held a preponderating advantage, engaged Chikwatu in battle and slew him. The Ambo crossed the river and occupied first Chinguo, where the subsequent chiefs of this group were buried, and later the fertile area, nine miles up the Msanzara, known as Kaundi. The chief of the Nsenga, the first Kalindawalu, in pursuance of his invariable policy of peaceful penetration rather than conquest, ordered two outposts to be established in the rear of the line which had been captured from Chikwatu. Pepe was sent to hold the frontier on the Singozi and a woman, Nyamchere, to the Msanzara. The Nsenga fraternised with the Ambo, and intermarried freely, and finally a boundary was agreed upon at the Lukonde range of hills which overlook the present Government station at Petauke. The first Chisenga was succeeded by Chipotera who was buried, as were all the chiefs, at Chinguo. Siziwiri, the sole survivor of twins, followed him. His successor was Chimboloto, who died after the advent of European administration. Finally Kasense succeeded to the chieftainship of a rapidly diminishing population. He died in 1928, poisoned, it was said, by Mulilo, whose beer he had been drinking shortly before his final illness, but from symptoms which strangely resembled sleeping sickness. More eventful was the history of Mulilo’s occupation of Chinsimbwe. Chinsimbwe is the name given to that area which embraces the confluence of the Mtikila, Mzewe and Petauke Streams, and is perhaps the most fecund region in the Petauke District. At the time when Mulilo’s community were living at Kanchi on the Luang wa, Chinsimbwe was under the authority of two Nsenga headmen, Nkunta of the Mvula family and Mtuna of the Mumba clan. The heir to the Nkunta dynasty had, however, for some years been a minor under the guardianship of Mtuna. When the adolescent Nkunta reached maturity, Mtuna acquainted him with the privileges appertaining to chiefs, and advised him to exhibit his valour in war. Acting upon this advice with unexpected indiscrimination, Nkunta discharged his bow and arrow at Mtuna’s brother, who fell dead from the blow. Mtuna declared war, and summoned to his assistance Kalunga, the chief of the Ambo group at Kanchi. The price of his help, it is interesting to note, was stipulated 69 at four elephant tusks. With the reinforcement of Kalunga, Mtuna com­ pletely vanquished Nkunta. Had Mtuna reflected upon the numerous precedents for his action, he must have foreseen the inevitable consequences. Kalunga set eyes upon what was probably the most luxurious oasis he had ever seen, and no sooner had he done so than he resolved to make it his permanent home. Mtuna made the best of his bad bargain and was permitted to retain his village, but henceforth the chief in Chinsimbwe was neither Nkunta nor Mtuna, but Kalunga. There is probably much truth in the account which states that he was instigated by Mwape who ordered him to demolish the Mvula clan,” and supplied him with Chikunda mercenaries, hired from Matekenya. An indiscretion not less foolish than that which had brought catastrophe upon the heads of Nkunta and Mtuna was the cause of Kalunga’s death. Masako, a prominent headman on the Luangwa and in direct succession to the chieftaincy of Chisenga, died leaving a harem of numerous wives. Kalunga, without making any preliminary overtures, immediately appro­ priated the bereaved widows for his own domestic purposes. Chisenga was righteously angered by this display of insolence, and began to contemplate vengeance. Believing that inebriation would afford him the easiest opportunity of assassination, he invited Kalunga to partake of some beer he had brewed specially for the occasion. Simatombo(1 2 3456), the father of the now respected Chief Nyampande, was the selected assassin. Simatombo was wandering about the outskirts of the village, speculating how best the murder could be perpetrated, when he met four men hunting hares with their dogs. He was inspired to tell these hunters how a man was mad with drink and committing outrageous atrocities in the village, and persuaded them to return and kill him. Simatombo returned with his accomplices, and as Kalunga raised to his lips a gourd of his favourite liquid, Makambwe, one of the hunters, fractured his shoulder with an axe. Kalunga managed to stagger into a hut when Simatombo put a period to his agonies by a blow directed at a more vital spot. Kalunga’s successor was Kapetemira, an infant, and the choice fell on Mulilo, the present occupant who, though most efficient and most popular, was none the less a slave. His appointment proved most successful, but Kalunga’s sister mother of Kapetemira, nursed her wrongs. She called to her aid the Chikunda who were living on the Lusangazi, and there began the wars with the Chikunda which after dilatory prolongation ceased only at the British occupation. In 1890, Mulilo was visited by Sir Alfred (then Mr.) Sharpe, and signed a treaty placing himself and his tribal lands under the protection of the British Government. He died, at an advanced age, in 1933.

(1) Annual Report of tho Secretary for Native Affairs, 1933. (2) Joao dos Santos : Ethiopia Oriental, printed 1609, cited by Theal : Beginnings of South African History, 269. Vide supra, 2. (3) The lands of Cazembe. Lacerda’s Journal, 99; (4) Livingstone : 1856. Missionary Travels in South Africa, 578 et seq. (5) Supra, 50 x (6) Supra, 56. 70

(7) This is possibly the true derivation: The conjunction of the consonants “ MB ” is frequently found in place names where the fertility of the soil is emphasised, e.g. M bah, Chiparawda, Madiw&a. Cf. K u im b a= to dig. (S) Supra, 50. (9) In the Lala country the staple crop was a red millet. Hence the attraction of a land which produced a white variety. (10) They were, according to the tradition, robbed from the grave by one of the first Europeans to explore this part of Africa, but no names are handed down. (11) Nyanji belonged to the family of Tembo which, we have seen, migrated with their Chief, Mukuni, at the same time as Kunda. The relationship with Undi is interesting, and refers presumably not to the precise relationship of father and son-in-law, but to a connection between the two.families some generations earlier. (12) Where the village of Lisati, until recently, was situated. (13) On the south bank of the Luangwa opposite to the present village of Kapepa. Kawonamakuwi means “ the place where vultures are seen.” (14) For a similar call, vide supra, 52. (15) Better known as Makololo. WTe should be disposed to date this incursion to the decade 1SCO-1870. (16) Such villages are Palangeta, Mwandauka, Chiutika, Mzaza, Chasia, Chilupe, Chim- tafu, Matutumushya, Peregu and others. (17) Katipa is a place name given to the Mvuvye-Luangwa confluence. The Chikunda Chief, Chiutika, for many years had his village here and later the North Charterland Explora­ tion Company established a post which they named, after a director of the Board, Fort Har­ greaves. This last name denotes the place in all the earlier maps of the country. The site is now occupied, as it was when Mwape lived, by the village of Nyachiwinda. (18) Matekenya, a Portuguese half-caste, caused considerable embarrassment to the Portuguese Government, and much devastation among the Ambo and Nsenga tribes. His operations in this part may be dated to 1875-1885. (19) The Ambo are disposed to name all that country north of them which is not Ilala, Luwemba. It is probable that actually Mwape did not proceed beyond some of the Wisa villages which intervene between the Lala and Wemba tribes. (20) Muchinka, a Lala chief, residing then as now close to Chitambo, the station of the Livingstonia Mission, about 30 miles north of Serenje. (21) About 10 miles west of Kapepa’s village, these salt pans have been a source of con­ stant litigation. (22) Chikusi, who died in 1929, was wounded in both arms in this fight. Assuming him to have been no more than twenty years of age at the time, the date would be about 1880. (23) The expression “ Mother ” as applied to Chikwashya means no more than a relative on the maternal side, through Kawela, the daughter of Lungu and wife of Kunda. (24) The villages of Chuusi and Changwe subsequently occupied this site, under the chieftaincy of Nyamalua in the Serenje District, but it has long been vacated. (25) For a very similar story, vide Coxhead : Native Tribes of North-Eastern Rhodesia, published by the Royal Anthropological Institute^ in connection with the Wisa tribe. (26) Simatombo was alive in 1931, but must have been a nonagenarian. His son, Nyampande, was born about 1880, a year or so previous to the expulsion of the Nsenga from Chinsimbwi. 71

Append ix I. A TENTATIVE CHRONOLOGY OF THE NG ONI MIGRATION.

1785 Birth of Zwangendaba near St. Lucia Bay. 1818 Fought against Dingiswayo. 1819 Defeat by Tschaka. 1821 Secession from Natal. 1823 Zwangendaba at Delagoa Bay. 1826 In Makalanga country. 1833 Birth of Ntutu, Mpeseni I. 1835 November 19th. Crossing of Zambezi near Zumbo. Birth of Mombera. 1836 Occupation of Nsenga country at Mkoko, Petauke District. 1840 Ngoni in Rukuru Valley at Mawiri near Loudon Mission. 1845 Death of Zwangendaba at Mapupo in Fipa country, Tanganyika Territory. 1850 Occupation of the Henga Valley and Nkamanga Plateau by Mombera. 1856 Mpeseni in Wemba country. 1860 Mpeseni at Cheronga, summit of Muchinga Escarpment. 1865 Mpeseni at Mkoma Hill, Fort Jameson District. 1868 Mpeseni at Mpinduka Hill, Matambazi River, Petauke District. 1870 Mpeseni at Msipazi and Lutembwe Rivers, Fort Jameson District. 1881 Visited by Carl Weise. 1889 Visited by Sir Alfred Sharpe. 1891 Death of Mombera. 1892 Visited by Joseph Thompson. 1895 December. Rhodesia Concessions party under Hoste and Maloney establish Fort Partridge. 1895 December 31st. Defeat of Mwase Kasungu. 1896 March. British South Africa Company establish station at Chinunda under Cecil Warringham. June 13th. Evacuation of Fort Partridge by Rhodesia Concessions Company. July 5th. Occupation of Fort Young by North Charterland Exploration Company under Colonel Warton. September. Abortive visit by Major Forbes to Mpeseni. 1897 November. Mpeseni sends friendly overtures to Zomba. December 23rd. Warringham’s despatch asking for military assistance. 1898 January 10th. British Central African troops mobilised. January 18th. Arrival of troops at Fort Partridge. January 19th. Relief of Weise in Luangeni. January 20th-21st. Fighting continues. January 28th. Capture of Mpeseni’s village on Msipazi. January 30th. Capture of Singu. February 4th. Execution of Singu. February 9th. Surrender of Mpeseni, sent into exile at Fort Manning. October. Establishment of Fort Jameson. 1900 October 21st. Death of Mpeseni. 1901 September. Succession of Chiloa as Mpeseni II. 72

A ppend ix II. GENEALOGY OF THE JERE FAMILY. Lonyanda. Flor. circa 1700.

Magangati.

Hlatshwayo Mafu I Z wangendaba= Sosera ob. circa 1845 I ob., 1900

Mpeseni = Lupoko Mtwalu Mombera Mperembe Chikonyani, etc. ob., 1900 ob., 1890 ob., 1891

Singu = Nkuchwa Shikwayo ob., 1898 | ob., 1898 Mpeseni 11=1 Augustina Ngungu Chindandenga 1901 2 Shaiwe ob., 1920 3 Berita 73

Appendix III.

WIVES AND DESCENDANTS OF THE FIRST MPESENI.

Wives. Second Generation. Third Generation. Mpeseni ]. Tombiyimbi 2. Lupoko Singu m. Nkuchwa, ob.^ 1898 Mpeseni II Ngungu Chindandenga 3. Mtizwa Zamani, ob., 1920 Zamani II Mkombo 4. Faisako Maguya, ob., 1922 Maguya II 5. Ndawepe 6. Chipolo Madzimawi m. Lozimilo, ob., 1908 Madzimawi II 7. K ukuya Sairi, ob., 1919 Sairi II 8. Bidosi Jum be \ Mgidi 9. Magugu Mwere 10. Dambazo Mgogo 11. Lungwanya K ani 12. Zamilomo Ngoma Zulu 13. Ndaya Zondo 14. Chiseclie Zimema 15. Msachama Tunile and others 74

Appendix IV.

A TENTATIVE CHRONOLOGY OF SENGA CHIEFS.

Date Kambombo Tembwe Chikwa Chifunda Other Events 1780 Chiweza Mlowoka 1800 Kazolwe 1805 Kampala 1810 Chimwerampande 1815 Katangalika 1820 1825 Mwimba Chitimbi 1830 Kwinya Mpiana Chawala 1835 Mwila Chirutema Ngoni on Zambezi 1840 Matumba 1845 Cbimpamba .Zwangendaba, ob. 1850 Mwerekete 1855 Mazyewa Mwinemitondo Ngoni in Nkamanga 1860 Mamnga 1865 1870 Chiawi Mbuleni 1875 Chibere Kapalakonje 1880 Chimbunda Kamulibwe 1885 Chakompwa 1890 Musampeni Kasusulu 1895 Chimpundu Mbua F. Chiwowe B.S.A. Co. at Aber- corn 1900 Tewa 1903 Chadumuka 1913 Itua Galamala Chifunda 1918 Kapotwe 1919 Mwinenkonde 1922 Mchenche 75

Append ix V.

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE MASUMBA GROUP OF CHEWA CHIEFS. Mkulika

Kanjanja M. Chikwiri M. Female

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 I Mazengera M. Masakamika M. Ntanda F = Chituza Mwase Mwanya Ntemba 1 Chidote 1 1 1 1 Kamoto M. Masumba M. succ. 1923 succ. 1903 ob. 1923

Chiefs. Family name Chulu. Each in turn took the hereditable name of Masumba. 1. Mkulika. 2. Kanjanja. 3. Chikwiri. 4. Mazengera. 5. Masakamika. i 6. Masumba succ., 1903 ; ob., 1923. 7. Kamoto succ., 1923. 76

Appendix VI. GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF KAMBWIRI (WISA). Kunda Mando

I I Tumba Kanungwe Msengu Chiwungwe Mando F.

I ? Chitala Nkalawika Kamuvia F Chintu F Kambwiri Nzovwa Mkombwa ob., 1902 I

t i l l I Msolola M. Buliani M. Saidi Yona Chusi F. Kasali F. Mshanga

Salimu Nansoro Jumbe Kambwiri II Amina F. Jumbo Manyika F ob. ob. dep., 1921 ob., s.p.

Kunda F Nzovwa F A p p e n d ix V II.

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF SEFU (KUNDA).

Mambwe Mchacha Chikwawa F = Yoyo Mwase Chikuni F = Sakadola | ob. circ., 1875 (Jum be’s Branch)

1 1 1 1 1 1 Chuoleka K avim ba= Mkosa. Mulu Chinga F. = Chalindila Muzungu Chiziwa= Msenga 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 Chuaula Msimba=Nyanje F. Sefu Kavim ba Chalasa=Myaka F. . Chilelele ob. circ., 1904 j succ., 1898 I ' Chuaula K acham ba James Chuoleka (heir) dep. 1933

issue three A ppend ix VIII.

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF MKANYA (KUNDA).

?—Kamesi F.

I Mkanya I Mkanda=Tezina F. <1 00 I

Msengo=Kawa F. Kawindula Silongela Niamtanika

Mkanya II. Ap p e n d ix IX .

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF TINDI (KUNDA).

. I i Kongowala Female = Kachirika

Kawa F. = Kaviali

Sim am Tindi I=Ngoza F. Lumanda=Masunga F . *

1 1 1 1 Kambani Chakanka = Chipeta F. Ntimbansonjo Mtonsya=Mwenze F. (Tindi II.) 1 1 Lamek=Maggie F. Appe n d ix X.

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF KAKTJMBI (KUNDA).

Munga Kavundi Mkulamwendo Female

Mwanda Chikulanga= Mlungama F .

Luwewa=Kawela F. oo o

K akum bi I. Chipotera Mambwe=Mbawe F.

Komakoma Kakum bi • Komakoma Tembe F. K asunga F. (present Chief) (heir) 1

I I (issue five) (issue ?) 81

Appendix X I.

THE BOUNDARIES OF THE KUNDA COUNTRY AS DELIMITED BY MAMBWE AND THE DELIMITATIONS OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHIEFTAINCIES.

A. —Boundaries of the Kunda Country : ’ North : The Chisitu Stream and the Chichere Salt Pans. North-East : The Mpasala Stream (tributary of the Mwatizi). East : The headwaters of the Mwatizi Stream. South-East : The Chiwandampatike foot-hills between Katua and Chisulo. South : The Kabwanda Stream near Pomwa Hill. The Ngwambo Stream (tributary to the Lupande) north of Msoro, and south of Chikombwi. The headwaters of the Kamwanjiri (Chigowe) near Pend we. The Wengo Stream near Luwewa (Petauke District). West : The Luangwa River.

B. —Sefu’s Country : North : The Chisitu and the Chichere Salt Pans. East : A point on the Mwangazi between Malemia and Chembe. South : No boundary with Chuaula, whose country until the advent of the Administration was included in that of Sefu. With Kakumbi the Lupande was made a working boundary as far as Cliilelele at a later date, .Kakumbi being allowed to occupy the south bank. West : The Luangwa River.

C. —J umbe’s Country : North : The Mchinje range of hills as far as the Mpasala. The Chinjeronga was part of Chinunda’s country (?). East : The headwaters of the Mwatizi. South : Chiwandampatike Ridge. The Kabwanda Stream. W est: With Sefu on the Mwangazi as above. With Chuaula there was no boundary. With Mkanya a tree called Chiwovu near the old site of Kapuma’s village. With Tindi formerly Chikoa was in Jumbe’s country and the boundary was defined at Kapemba Hill.

D. —Mkanya’s Country : East : The Chiwovu tree near Kapuma’s old village. The Matula Marsh was in Mkanya’s country. South : With Tindi, the Kumvi Stream flowing to the east bank of the Lupande. The headwaters of the Kamwanjiri is claimed by both Tindi and Mkanya, and the lower course of that stream where it is known as the Chigowe is Mkanya’s burial ground. West : With £Iakumbi. The Chichere on the path between Kambwiri’s village and Kakumbi. North : Between Kambwiri’s village and Chundu the boundary was a small hill known as Kapiri.

E.—K akumbi’s Country : West : The Luangwa River. South : The Wengo Stream. E ast: With Mkanya, the Chichere. North : With Sefu, the Lupande. Ap pe n d ix X II. GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE AMBO CHIEFS. Chiwala Makumba (in Luapula)

O

Ka lua F. ? ? Lungo M. Nkundampande Nswi-Pande family I Mambwe M. Mukuni M. K unda M. Kawela F. | Dhulu family Tembo family Nydenwa family Chikwashya M. and K unda and Lenje and Ambo Dynasty Dynasty Dynasty Nswimpande family and line of Chikwasbya I Msukuni F. = Mambwe Chisaka M. Female

GO- Katiula=Mwape Nyamatola Chilimba M. Msonda Mumanga F. = Muushi Kalimbangoma F. Chisenga F. tO- (Mwape I. F.) | Changwe. j

Chikwanda=Mwape II (of Chuambira) | | I I I I [ I Chushi | Chiuye M. Luwembe I = Kalunga F. Chisenga Wasi M. Muwanga M. Female Luwembe II Mboroma Chinkwamba | C h i n g a l a ------and others. Chikunda=Chimona F. Mkushi M.

(Regent 1915-1924) Mboroma Kaundula M. Mkwemba M. (killed by Chimkoko M. Nachilashya F. Mwandu = Ntim ba M. Ngambwa) 06.1915 Mwape III = Mwanakolo (Mwape IV) |

Richard Dhimkoko Mwape V =(!) Chitumbi ob., 1928 Luwembe III, since 1924 Luwembe IV (Taulo) (Chisenga) = (2) Mpandika (Changwe) Dep. 1929. since 1930.

M wape Chinda CHEWA MtBEAT!ON VIA LAKE NYAAS EX L UBA ’

CHEWA

chewA 84 85

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

J ohnston, Sir H. H .—British Central Africa. J ohnston, Sir H. H.—Comparative Study of Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages. W erner, Miss Alice.—The Natives of British Central Africa. Soga, H enderson—The South-Eastern Bantu. W illoughby, R ev. W. C.—Race Problems in the Neiv Africa. Bryant, R ev. A. T.—Olden Times in Zululand and Natal. T heal, G. M. C.—History and Ethnography of South Africa. T heal, G. M. C.—Records of South-Eastern Africa. F raser, R ev. D.— Winning a Primitive People. Y oung, R ev. Cullen—Notes on the Speech and History of the Tumbuka- Henga Peoples. E lmslie, R ev. Dr .—Among the Wild Angoni. Owen—Narrative of Voyages. Livingstone, David—The Zambezi and its Tributaries. Livingstone, David—Last Missionary Journals. Livingstone, David—Missionary Travels in South Africa. Stanley, H. M.—Through the Dark Continent. Coxhead, J. C. C.—Native Tribes of Northern Rhodesia. Gouldsbury and Sheane—The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia. Lacerda—Lands of the Cazembe. (Burton’s translation.) Monteiro—0 Muata Cazembe. (Burton’s translation.) Smith, R ev. E., and Andrew Dale—Ila Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia. The British Central Africa Gazette.. Vols. I to IV. North Charterland Concession Enquiry, 1932. The Journal of the Geographical Society. The Journal of the African Society. The Aurora. A publication of the Livingstonia Mission. For original sources, reference should be made to the following Portu­ guese authors, from whose works extracts and summaries will be found in Theal’s volumes. Dos Santos—Ethiopia Oriental. Published at Evora, 1609. D e Conto—Of the Deeds which the Portuguese Performed in the Conquest and Discovery of the Lands and Seas of the East. Published at Lisbon in 15 Volumes. Sousa—ManoeUe Fariae ; Asia Portuguessa. Published at Lisbon, 1666. Bocarro, Antonio—Decade of Antonio Bocarro. Published 1897, by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisbon. Baretta, Manoel—Report on the State and Conquest of the Rivers of Cuama, 1667. Monteiro and Gamitto—0 Muata Cazembe. Published at Lisbon, 1854. Lacerda, Dr . de—Lands of the Cazembe. Translated by Burton and pub­ lished by Murray, London, 1873. Baptista, P edro (Pombeiro)—Rivers of Senna. Translated by R. F. Burton, 1873, and published with the above.

87

INDEX.

P age P age A G—(contd.) Abagaza 3 Abambo 1, 2, 57 Chawala Makumba ... 41, 49, 50, 51, 57, Abanguni ... 1, 2, 3 58 Abekoni ... 3 Cheronga ...... 10, 51 Abercorn ...... 23 Cheso ...... 42 Agoa ... 46 Chewa Chap. I ll, 8-12, 15, 21, Alala v. Lala 22, 25-29, 31-34, 36, 38, 40, 43, 46, 51-55 Alamba ... 57 Chiawi ...... 23 Amalala ... 1, 2 Chibandakazi ...... 18 n. Amalolo ... 61 Chibere ...... 24 Amanguni ... 1 Chibisa ...... 11 Ambala ... 41 Chidote ...... 32, 33 Ambois ...17n. Chidundu ...... 22 Ambo Chap.’VI, 12, 22, 43, 44, Chifuka ...... 46 49-51, 57-62, 67 Chifukuzi ...... 60, 61 Ambwela ... 18 n., 61, 62 Chifunda ...... 21, 27 Angoni v. Ngoni Chifungwe ...... 23 Arabs 9,28 Chigowe ...... 33, 54 Arangoa v. Luangwa Chikagona ...... 55 Aurura ...... 20 Chikandu ...... 11 Awetwe ...... 49 Chikoa ...... 55, 68 Chikompa ...... 26 B - Chikuleni ...... 46 Chikunda ...... 43, 62-64, 66, 69 Bakatanga ... 36, 37, 41, 42, 46, 47 n. Chikunda Mkushi ...... 64 Bakoni 2 Chikunto ...... 43,51,52 Banda 40 Chikusi ...... 6, 70 n. Bangweolu 9, 21, 22, 51 Chikw^b ...... 21, 24, 26 Baptista, Pedro ...... 31 Chikwanda ...... 65 Bapule ... 10, 18 n., 37, 41, 42, 47 n. Chikwashya ...... 65-67 Barbosa, Jose ... 31 Chikwatu ...... 44, 68 Baretta, Manuel ...... 38 Chilenje ...... 27 Basonga . 38, 47 n. Chilimba ...... 60, 61 Basutoland 1 Chiloa ...... 16 Bayeke ... 10 Chilumba ... 65, 66 Bechwana ...... 2 ,3 Chimalilo ...... 28 Bleek ... 3 Chimate ...... 10, 45 Bocarro, Antonio 47 n. Chimbunda ...... 23 Bocarro, Gaspar ...... 38 Chimkoko ...... 63 Boto ... 38 Chimpamba ...... 25, 26 Brake, Capt. ... 15 Chimpundu ...... 23 British Central Africa Company 11, 12, 14 Chimtanda ...... 10, 65, 66 British South Africa Company . . 11-16,23, Chimtunga ...... 9 26, 54 Chimwerampande ...... 24, 25 Brogden, Lieut. ... 15, 16 Chimwere ...... 11 Bropley ... 13 Chindeni ...... 52 Bryant ...... ' 2, 5 Chinguo ...... 68 Bua . 10, 16, 29 Chinkula ...... 33 Bulawayo 5 Chinunda ... 9;, 11, 12, 19 n., 26, 54, 55 Bunda ... 28 Chinsimbwe 43,44,67,68 Bushmen ...... 1, 3, 17 n., 35 Chipeta ...... 8 Chipiri ...... 10, 44, 46 G Chipota ...... 64, 65 Caperemera 29, 34 n. Chipotera ...... 56, 68 Carlotina ...... 29 Chipulabalume ...... 22, 23 Chadumuka ... 26 Chirimanyama ...... 45 Chagumuka ... 9 Chirumba ...... 24 Chalera ... 28 Chirutema ...... 25 Chalwe Cholola 52, 55 Chis'anga ...... 61, 62, 66 Chama ... 22 Chisani ...... 67 Changwe ...... 63 Chisapa ...... 55, 56 n. Chanji ... 52 Chisenga ...... 51, 67-69 Chapita 18 n., 37 Chitambo ...... 51, 57 Chasela ... 33 Chitapamkwa ...... 9 88

P age P age G—(could.) I Chitimbi ...... 23 Ilala 58,59 Chitungulu ...... 29, 33, 49 Inhambane ... 4 Chiutika ...... 61, 62, 64, 65 Itua ... 23 Chiuye ...... 61, 62, 64 J Chiuye Msonda ...... 60 J ere ...... 3, 4, 8 Chiiiy u ...... 47 Johnston, Sir H. H...... "1, 17 n. Chiwali ...... 20 Jumbe ...... 11, 53, 55 Chiwande ...... 28-33,53 Chiwekwe ...... 45 K Chiwezakunda ...... 22, 23, 33 Kachenga ...... 51 Chiwere ...... 8 Kachunda ...... 65 Chiweza ...... 22, 23 Kafue 17 n., 18 n., 37 Chiwilila 22 Kafyula ...... 44 Chiwowe ::: ::: 27 Kajumba ...... 22 Cliiziwa ...... 53 Kakumbi ...... 49, 55 Chongololo 45 Kakunto ...... 60 Chuambira ...... 43, 57, 61, 63-67 Kalanda ...... 35, 36 Chuaula ...... 11,50,54 Kalanga v. Makalanga Chulu ...... 49 Kalimbangoma ...... 61 Chumbi ...... 43 Kalindawalu 6, 35, 36, 39, 41-46. Chunguchumase ...... 44 51, 52, 68 Chuoleka ...... 53 Kalinku ...... 22 Chushi ...... 65 Kaluani 11,37,46,47 Congo ...... 17 n., 21, 36 Kalunga ...... 68, 69 Cooley ...... 34 n. Kama ...... 2 Coxhead ...... 27 n. Kambombo ... 21,22,23,27 n. Kambwiri ...... 11, 28, 32-34, 53 D Kamoto ...... 29, 33 Kampata ...... 23 de Solla 11, 12 Kampuzunga ...... 22 Dingeni ... 16 Kamulibwe ...v.Tembwe Dingiswayo 2, 4 Kanayilowe ...... 59, 60 Dombira Bay 8 Kango ...... 25 Doroba 25, 27 n. Kaombwe ...... 46 Dos Santos ... 35 Kapainzi ...... 11 Kapamba ...... 53 E Kapandula ...... 10 Ebunguni ... 1 Kapatamoyo ...... 11, 16 Ekwendeni 9 Kapetemira ...... 69 Elmslie, Dr. 18 n. Kapeza ...... 60 Kapirinkonde ...... 55 F Kapoche ... 11,38,39,46 Eipa 4, 23, v. also Ulipa Kapotwe ...... 26 Forbes, Major ...... 12, 14 Karonga ...... 21, 37, 38 Fort Alston ...... 12, 15 Kasanengwa ...... 55 Fort Hargreaves ...... 70 n. Kasense ...... 68 Fort Jameson ... 11, 12, 14, 15, 19 n., 51 Kasolwe ...... 23 Fort Johnston ... ‘ ...... 15 Kasungu ...... 11, 15, 26, 28, 32 Fort Partridge ...... 12, 14, 19 n. Kasusulu ...... 27 Fort Young ...... 12 Katawa ...... 66 Fraser, Dr...... 3, 42 Katemo ...... 54 F umbeni ...... 10 Katipa ... 64, 65, 67, 70 n. Katumbi ...... 23 G Kazembe ...... 21, 26, 27 n., 29, 30, 57 Kauluzi ... 52 Galamala ...... 26 Kaundi ...... 67, 68 Gama ...... 6, 8 Kavimba ...... 53 Gamitto ... 31,38,41 Kawa ...... 50 Gaza 3,4 Kawela ...... 58, 59 Genthe 11, 12 Kawelelo ... 55 Gomani ...... 6 Kawindula ...... 54 Gungunyana ...... 4 Kabrabasa ...... 6 .Kolimfumu ...... 22 H Kongowala ...... 55 Henga ...... 8, 9 Koni ...... 2, 3 Hlatshwayo 3, 17 n. Kotakota ...... 8,12,14,15,54 Hollentontes ... 3, 5 Kulikuli ...... 25 Hora ...... 9 Kunda (tribe) Chap. V, 11, 22, 32, 33, Hoste, Dr. ... 12,33,50 36, 41, 43, 49-57 Hottentots ...... 1, 3 Kunda (chief) 58, 59, 60, 67 89

P age P age K—(contd.) M—(contd.) Kweshi ...... 64 Manning, Col...... 15, 16 Kwinya ...... 23 Manukosi ...... 4 Manyanja ...... 37 L Mano ...... 38, 47 Lacerda 20, 21, 25, 27 n., 29, 30, 31, 34 n., Mapupo (place) 7 38, 41, 57 Mapupo (chief) ...... 9 Ladislaus Magyar 27 n. Marambo ... 9, 20, 28, 35, 49, 54 Lala 9, 39, 40, 57, 62, 65 Maranda ...... 31 Langenberg, Old ...... 8 Maravi ... 22, 28, 34 n., 37, 38, 39 Laws, Dr...... 18 n. Marozi ...... 5 Lenje ...... 18 n., 39, 40, 42 Marunda ...... 64, 67 Limpopo ...... 2, 4 Marunga ...... 26 Livingstone 5, 7, 8, 9, 20, 27 n., 29, 31, 32, Masengo ...... 45 35, 39, 57 Masekwa ...... 27 n. Livingstonia ...... 9, 20 Masumba ...... 29, 31, 32, 33 Lobengula ...... 4, 11 Mashonaland ...... 5 Lomagazi ...... 7 Mashyanga ...... 11 Lonyanda ...... 3 Masupi ...... 12 Lourenco Marques ...... 5 Matambazi ...... 10,44,45 Lua ...... v. Luba Matapwiri ...... 11 Lualaba ...... 21 Matekenya ...... 46, 64, 69, 70 n. Luangeni ...... 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 Matipa ...... 10, 21, 22 Luangwa ...... 6,9-11, Matumba ...... 23 passim. Mawanda ...... 45 Luapula 21, 22, 39, 49, 57, 58 Mawiri ...... 18 n. Luba ... 21, 26, 37, 39, 40, 41, 49 Mazingwa ...... 44, 59, 60, 61, 63 Luelo ...... 27 Mazimba ...... 2, 3 Lukonde ...... 44,68 Mazitu ...... 3, 31 Lukusbasbi ...... 57, 61, 65-67 Mazyewa ...... 23 Lumbira ...... 8, 18 n. Mbachunda ...... 23 Lumenzi ...... 24, 26 Mbachundu ...... 59 Lumimba ...... 32 Mbala ...... 35, 41, 42, 45, 51 Lunda ...... 21, 22 Mbalekwa ...... 9, 18 n. Lundazi ... 24, 25, 26, 27 n., 28, 33 Mbalo ...... 11 Lundu ...... 38, 67, 68 Mbangombe ...... 10, 44 Lungo ...... 58, 59, 67 Mb a wo ...... 43, 49, 55 Lungu ...... 26, 40, 41, 46 Mbewe ...... 40 Lunzi ...... 24, 25 Mboroma ...... 57, 60, 61, 62 Lupamazi ...... 23 Mbua ...... 26 Lupata ...... 6 Mbuleni ...... 23, ^4 Lupita ...... 33 Mchacha ...... 53, 54, 55 Lupoko ...... 11, 16 Mchinje ...... 54 Lupwizizi ...... 25 Mgai ...... 7, 18 n. Lusangazi ...... 36, 43, 49, 51, 52 Miezi ...... 47 Lusemfwa ...... 57,59,61 Milonga ...... 64 Lutembwe ...... 10, 11, 46, 53, 54 Miti ...... 46 Luwelezi ...... 10, 34 n. Mkanda 29, 34 n., 37, 38, 43, 45, 47 Luwembe ... 57, 60, 61, 63, 66, 67 Mkanya ...... 11, 53, 54, 55 Luwumbu ...... 22, 23 Mkazingoma ...... 26 Luwunda ...... 21 Mkoka ...... 23 Mkoko ...... 6, 18 n., 41,42 M Mkoma ...... 10, 44 Macambo ...... 31 Mkumpa ...... 51 Madzimawi ...... 11,53,55 Mkungule ...... 21, 22, 27 n. Mafu ...... 18 n. Mkushi ...... 62 Mafuta ...... 19 n. Mkuwamba ...... 47 Magangati ...... 3 Mkuzo ...... 9, 18 n. Magwangwara ...... 3, 6, 8 Mkwaila ...... 66 Makalanga ...... 2, 5, 6, 8, 17 n. Mkwemba ...... 62, 63, 66 Makololo ... 18 n., 37, 41, 42, 62, 70 n. Mlembo 57, 59-63, 64, 65, 67 Malalami ...... 9 Mlowoka ...... 22, 24, 25 Malama ...... 49-52, 55, 56 n. Mnguni ...... 2, 3 Malewa ...... 43 Moir, John ...... 20 Maloney, Dr...... 11, 12, 14 Mombasa ...... >...... 2 Malovia ...... 27 Mombera ... 5-9, 11, 18 n., 28, 32 Mambo ...... 47 Monde ...... 37, 45, 48 n. Mambwe ...... 36,43,45,49,50-53,55 Monematapa ...... 2, 38 Mambwe Chisaka ...... 60 Monteiro, Major 27 n., 31, 34 n., 38, 39, 41 Manda ...... 65 Moshesb ...... 2 Makambwe ...... 69 Mozambique ...... 12, 38 90

P a ge E age M—(contd.) N—(contd.) Mpalausenga 22 Ndaki ...... 46 Mpeta 43, 67 Ndwandwe ...... 2, 4 Mpalawe ...... 31 Ngambwa ...... 44, 61, 63, 66 Mpamazi ...... 32, 33 Nganjo ...... 21 Mpamvi ...... 24 Ngao ...... 52 Mperembe ...... 9 Ngolwe ...... 36, 43, 51 Mpeseni I ... 5, 7-16, 18 n., 42, 44, 46 Ngona ...... 32 Mpeseni II ...... 16 Ngoni Chap. I, 1-16, 17 n., IS n., 23, 24, Mpiana Chwala ...... 24, 25 26, 31, 35, 37, 41, 42, 44-46, 52-55 Mpinduka ...... 10 Ngonomo ...... 9 Mponda 64 Ngoshya ...... 45 Mpundi ...... 55 Ngoza ...... 58 Msanzara ... 36, 37, 44, 45, 63, 68 Ngoza Kamunga ...... 25 Mhamunye ...... 16 Nguluwe ...... 40, 44, 45, 49 Msipazi ...... 10, 11 Nguni (clan) ...... 2, 3 Msolola ... 33 Nguni (Senga) ...... 24, 25 Msoro ...... 44, 46, 51 Ngupo ...... 10j 44 Mteme ...... 65 Njoka ...... 25 Mtenguleni ...... 10, 19 n. Nkamanga ... 8,22,23,24,25,31,36 Mtukuzi ...... 44 Nkana ...... 58 Mtuna ...... 68, 69 Nkandu Chiti ...... 32 Mtwalu ... 8, 9, 18 n. Nkomaula ...... 53 M uata ...... 31 Nkuchwa ...... 16 Muchambwe ...... 26 N kunta ...... 4 4 ,6 8 ,6 9 Muchinga ... 10,22,32,51 Noloju ...... 4 Muchinka ...... 65, 70 n. North Charterland ... 11-14, 66, 70 n. Mvikuni ... 39-43, 45, 49, 58 Nquaba ...... 7, 18 n., 41 Mulopwe ...... 2 1 ,2 7 n . Nsenga Chap. IV, 6, 10, 11, 12, 20, 22, Mulilo (Senga and Ambo) 12,23,27n.,57,67,68 27 n., 35-43, 48-51, 59, 60, 61, 64, 67, 68 Mulu ...... 53, 54 Nsima ...... 41, 46 Mufiba 56 n. Nswi-Mpande ...... 58 Mumbos ...... 2, 57 Ntabeni ...... 7, 8 Mundala ...... 32 Ntem ba ...... 32, 33 Mundikula 41,42,44-46 Ntembwa ...... 25, 28 Munga Kavundi ...... 55 N tim ba ...... 63, 66 Mungwara ...... \ 6, 7 NtimbanSonjo ...... 55 Musampeni ...... 26 Ntombazi ...... 2, 4 Mushalila ...... 64 N tutu v. Mpeseni I ...... 7, 8 Mutumpa ...... 65 Nyachiwinda ...... 64, 65, 70 n. Muwole ...... 25 Nyamadzi (Kunda) ...... 43, 49, 52 Muya ...... 43, 46 Nyamadzi (Ambo) ...... 61, 67 Mvula ... 44, 45, 49, 55, 68 Nyamalua ...... 57,58,61,67 Mvuvye 36, 37, 41, 43, 46, 59, 67 Nyampande ...... 69, 70 n. Mwali ...... 22 Nyamwezi ...... 7 Mwale ...... 40 Nyandeka ...... 10 Mwangazi ... 44,52,53,55 Nyangu ...... 58, 67 Mwani ...... 50 Nyanji ...... 11, 44, 45, 49, 70 n. Mwanj awantu . • ...... 43, 44, 46 Nyasa ... 2, 3, 7, 8, 11, 15, 29, 37, 38, 46, Mwanya ...... 32 53, 54, 55, 59 Mwanza 40, 43, 48 n. Nyawa ...... 25, 26 Mwanza Ngoteka ...... 37, 46 Nyendwa ...... 58, 62, 63, 64, 67 Mwanzawamba . 29, 30, 31, 34 n., 38, 51 Nyimba ...... 6, 36, 41, 46 Mwape ...... 43, 57-66 Nyimbwe ...... 26 Mwase 11, 12 15, 25-32, 34 n., 37, 38, 53 Nyondwe ...... - ... 25, 26 Mwatayamvu 21, 22, 27 n. Nzovu ...... 46, 63 Mwatizi ... 25, 31, 34 n., 54 Mwelwa ...... 46 Mwerekete ...... 26 Mweru Lake ...... 30 Mwila ...... 23, 24 P Mwimba ...... 23 Pepe ...... 68 Mwinemitondo ...... 26, 27 Pakati ...... 4 Mwinenkonde ...... 21, 23 Pereira, Gonzalo ...... 34 n., 38 Mzenje 45 Pereira, Jose ...... 30 Mzaza ...... 62 Pereira, Manoel ...... 29 Petauke 6, 8, 11, 18 n., 20, 36, 39, 41, 42, N 43, 44, 45, 50, 57, 68 Nachilashya ...... 64, 65 Pinto, Fra. Jao ...... 31,88 Nansoro ...' ...... 33 Piri ...... 28, 29, 34 n., 40, 51 Nawalya ...... 26, 33, 49, 52 Poka ...... 8, 22, 23 91

P age P age P—(contd.) T— (could.) Pombeiros ...... 31 Tewa ...... 27 Porto, Silva 31, 34 n., 50 Thomson, Joseph ... 11,12,33 Portuguese 2, 3, 4, 6, 10-12, 21, Tindi ... r.. ... 11,53,55 29-31, 34 n., 35, 37, 46, 62, 64, 66 Tiputipu ...... 9 Tole ...... 3 Tonga 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14 Quillemane 32 Tschaka ...... 4, 6 Tschodhlodhlo 9, 18 n. R Tumbuka ... 6, 9, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 34 n., 36 Rhodesia Concessions Co. 11, .12, 14, 33 Rugaruga ...... 7 U Rukuru ...... 6 Ufipa ... 4, 7 Rukusuzi ...... 29, 32, 33 Ukwimi 43, 52 Rukuzi ... 11,25,26,28,29,31, 32,33 Ulanda 52, 53 Ruvuma ...... 7 Uluwa, v. Luba. Umsilikazi ...... 4, 5 Umtetwa ...... 4 Saidi ...... 33 Unzila ...... 4 Sakala ...... 46, 48 n. Undi 21, 29, 34 n., 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, Salimu 45, 46, 51, 60, 70 n. Sandwe 42,43,52 Uyoyo 27 n. Sangu ...... 44 Sasare ...... 45 Sefu 11, 32, 42, 52, 54, 55 Vatwah ... 3 Selby, Mr. P. H...... 16, 19 n. Victoria Nyanza, Lake ... 1, 7 Selous, F. C...... 5 Viranguni ;.. 2, 17 n. Sena ...... 2, 38 Viziwa ... 23 Senga, Chap. II ., 9, 19-26, 27 n. Vubwi ... 16 Serenje ...... 35, 51 Vunda ... 49 Sewa ...... 47 Sharpe, Sir Alfred ...... 11, 12, 69 W Sharpe, Lieut...... 15 Warringham, C. ... 11, 12, 14, 15 Shire ...... 6, 8 Wart on, Col. Gardner 11-14 Shirwa, Lake ...... 39 Shongonane Wasi ... 61 ...... 3, 4, 5 W atuta ... 3, 7 Sichiwendi 46 Watwa 3, 17 n. Simamumbu ...... 45, 46 Weise, Carl 11-15, 19 n., 66 Simatombo ...... 69 , 21, 22, 26, 39, 65 Singozi ...... 68 Wemba 9, 10, 18 n Singu ...... 13, 14, 16 Wisa Chap. Ill, 9, 11, 21, 22, 27. n., Sivwa 11, 47 28, 31, 32, 33, 34 n., 41, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53 Siziwiri ...... 68 Soga, Henderson ...... 2, 5, 18 n. X Songea ...... 8 Xosa ... 1, 2 Soongundava, v. Zwangendaba. Sosera ...... 16 Y Sousa, Manoele Faria de ...... 2 Speke ...... 6 Young, Rev. Cullen 3, 6, 7, 22, 24 St. Lucia Bay ...... 5 Stanley, H. H...... 3, 7 Z Sukuma ...... 7 Zambezi 2-8, 18 n., 19 n., 35-42, 46, 57 Swaziland ...... 5, 8 Zarafi ...... 11 Zeiti ...... 3 T Zimbas ...... 2 Tambala ...... 11 Zimbabwe ...... 2 Tanganyika, Lake 3 ,4 ,7 ,8 ,2 3 Zimwanda .7 ... 25, 26, 27 n. Taulo ...... 63, 67 Zomba 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 28, 35, 56 n. Tembo (clan) ... 40, 41, 45, 49, 58 Zumbo 1, 5, 30, 34 n., 42, 57 Tembo (chief) ...... 44 Zwangendaba 1-8, 11, 16, 17 n., 18 n., 41, Tembwe 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 n. 42, 44, 46 Tete ...... 2, 11, 12, 14, 30, 38, 57 Zwide 2, 3, 4, 5

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