Bortbern Bbobesia NATIVE TRIBES OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE OF NORTHERN RHODESIA {Notes on their Migrations and History) BY E. H. LANE POOLE (Former Provincial Commissioner) Price Is. &L WT 1949 PRINTED BY THE GOVERNMENT PRINTER ■8— Z14 5-49 LUSAKA 60536 IRortbevn IRbobeoIa 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.