Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Northern Rhodesia.

  • Colonial Office
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Northern Rhodesia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    History. The little that is known of the early history of Northern Rhodesia is very fragmentary and is gleaned from the accounts of the few intrepid travellers who penetrated into this unknown territory. The curtain of obscurity lifts for a moment when we read the diaries of the Portuguese Governor of Sena, Dr. Lacerda, who led an expedition in 1798 from Tete into Kasembe’s country, close to the eastern shores of Lake Mweru. He was followed in the early 19th century by two Portuguese traders, Baptista and Jose, who brought back stories of the great interior kingdom of the Balunda, which extended from Lake Mweru to the confines of Barotseland and included the whole of the country drained by the Upper Congo and its tributaries. This kingdom is reputed to have lasted from the 16th to the 19th century. Very few historical facts are known about it, but the name of Muati Yamvo, the dynastic title of the Paramount Chief, is associated, like Monomotapa, with many half-legendary stories. Neither of these expeditions was of any great geographical value and it was not till 1851, when Dr. Livingstone made his great missionary journeys and travelled through Barotseland and in 1855 discovered the Victoria Falls, that the civilized world had its first authentic information of Northern Rhodesia. Other and later ex¬ plorers who brought back stories of the barbarism of the natives, of the wealth of game, and of the glories of the Victoria Falls were Serpa Pinto, Cameron, Selous, and Arnot. From the very early days when the hordes of migratory Bantu swept southward from Central and Northern Africa, Northern Rhodesia has been subject to constant invasions from stronger tribes on its borders, so much so, that the vast majority of the present native population, though of Bantu origin, is descended from men who themselves invaded this country not earlier than 1700 a.d. One or two small tribes, numbering now only a very few thousand, such as the Masubia on the Zambezi, are all that remain of the inhabitants of Northern Rhodesia prior to that date. Though the story of these invasions has passed into oblivion, their traces remain in the extraordinary number and diversity of races and of languages in the country. At the present time statistics are available of seventy different tribes resident in the territory, of which the most important are the Awemba (113,506), Achewa (77,713), Angoni (53,989), Awisa (41,483) in the Eastern Districts ; the Marozi (commonly but incorrectly referred to as Barotse) (65,298), Batonga (78,623), Balenje (38,287), Malovale (61,375), Bakaonde (35,783), Baila (17,339) in the Western Districts ; and the Asenga (61,859) and Alunda (75,811) members of which are resident in both Eastern and Western Districts. There are said to be 50 distinct native dialects in use, of which Chiwemba and Chinyanja have been adopted for educational purposes in the Eastern Districts and Chitonga (closely allied to Chila) and Sikololo in the Western. In A 2 20006