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Board of Trustees, Boston University
Ingombe Ilede and the Zimbabwe CultureAuthor(s): C.S. Lancaster
and A. PohorilenkoSource: The International Journal of African
Historical Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1977), pp. 1-30Published by:
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND THE ZIMBABWE CULTURE1
C.S. Lancaster and A. Pohorilenko
Introduction
The external trade of the Zimbabwe culture, whose main
occupation at Great Zimbabwe dates from the twelfth to the
fifteenth centuries, was linked to world demand, especially from
India. Its primary exports were gold, ivory, and copper; its major
imports were cloth and beads, followed by ceramics.2 We do not know
whether Early Iron Age peoples practiced reef mining in the
Zimbabwe area of present-day Southern Rhodesia, but the presence of
small amounts of beads at inland sites and tenth- and
eleventh-century Arabic references to a gold trade from Sofala on
the southern coast of Mozambique suggest that at least some gold
washing
1This research was supported by a National Institutes of Mental
Health predoctoral fellowship, 5 FO1 MH28688-05, and a field
supplement. Lancaster conducted fieldwork in Zambia in the
Zambezi-Kafue confluence area from March 1967 through March 1969 as
a research affiliate, Institute for Social Research, University of
Zambia. He wishes to thank the Ingombe Ilede people and D.N. Beach,
B.M. Fagan, P.S. Garlake, and D.W. Phillipson for generous help at
various stages of work.
2P.S. Garlake, Great Zimbabwe (London, 1973), 131-135; T.N.
Huffman, "The Rise and Fall of Zimbabwe," Journal of African
History, 13 (1972), 353-366; S.I. Mudenge, "The Role of Foreign
Trade in the Rozvi Empire: A Reappraisal," Journal of African
History, 15 (1974), 373-391. Unless specifying the Zimbabwe
highlands of present-day Southern Rhodesia, where most known stone
buildings and early mines have been found, general reference to the
Zimbabwe culture or the Zimbabwe area should be read to include all
of the lesser known areas, both highland and lowland, in
present-day Southern Rhodesia and southern Mozambique known to have
been influenced or occupied by Shona-speaking peoples during the
era of long-distance trade and stone building. For southern
Mozambique see A.K. Smith, "Peoples of Southern Mozambique,"
Journal of African History, 14 (1973), 565-580, and P.S. Garlake,
"The Zimbabwe Culture in Southern Mozambique" (unpublished paper
presented at the African History Seminar, School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, 29 Oct. 1975). I am grateful
to Igor Kopytoff for calling this paper to my attention.
The International Journal of African Historical Studies, x, 1
(1977) 1
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
went on prior to the main occupation of Great Zimbabwe.3 Both
reef and alluvial gold mining were in full swing between the
twelfth and fifteenth centuries, however, and by the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries the Shona-speaking Zimbabwe peoples were
trading the metal with India. During this period Shona miners were
mining, washing, and milling gold, Shona traders were taking gold
to coastal ports, and coastal Muslim' Africans, whom the Portuguese
later called mouros, were coming inland to buy. Some of these
Swahili were light-skinned and spoke Arabic, but contemporary
sources describe most as either dark-skinned or black, apparently
distinguishable from other more-or-less Islamicized or traditional
Africans principally by their style of clothing.4
The gold trade was politically important because of its
diplomatic prestige value; on the other hand, both gold mining and
gold washing were nearly always seasonal and secondary occupations
carried on during the slack dry period in the annual Shona cycle of
subsistence cultivation.5 Patron-client relations between Shona
groups were often expressed through limited symbolic tribute in
agricultural labor, food, military service, slaves, gold, ivory,
cattle, wives, and other locally produced prestige items6 which the
leaders could then use in external trade, but basic control over
social and political groupings seems to have been exercised through
a belief in various levels of spirit cults, ranging from the system
of individual guardian spirits (sing., mudzimu) controlled by
village elders at the level of the extended family and descent
group, through a progressive hierarchy of ritually senior, loosely
territorial land spirits (mhondoro) holding sway over the
progressively larger realms of neighborhood leaders, petty
chieftains, chiefs, and paramounts. Leaders at each level
controlled a following of spirits and living people who were
interconnected, and the fluctuating network of alliances between
leaders
3G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, ed., The East African Coast (London,
1962), 14-17; Huffman, "Fall of Zimbabwe," 362; I.R. Phimister,
"Alluvial Gold Mining and Trade in Nineteenth-Century South Central
Africa," Journal of African History, 15 (1974), 445-456.
4A. da Silva Rego and T.W. Baxter, eds., Documents on the
Portuguese in Mozambique and Central Africa, V (Lisbon, 1966),
561-563; G. McC. Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa (9 vols.,
Cape Town, 1964), I, 94, 97-99. R.E. Gregson, "Trade and Politics
in South- East Africa: The Moors, the Portuguese and the Kingdom of
Mwenemutapa," African Social Research, 16 (1973), 413-446.
5R. Summers, Ancient Mining in Rhodesia (Salisbury, 1969);
Phimister, "Gold Mining"; Mudenge, "Foreign Trade."
6Theal, South-Eastern Africa, III, 357; VI, 271; VII, 398-399,
484-485; A. da Conceihao, "Tratados Dos Rios de Cuama," in J.H. da
Cunha Rivara, ed., O Chronista de Tissuary Periodico, II (1696,
reprinted Nova Goa, 1867), 66; A.A. de Andrade, Relacoes de
Mocambique Setecentista (Lisbon, 1955), 306, 310; A. Lobato,
Colonizacao Senhorial da Zambezia e outros Estudos (Lisbon, 1962),
128.
3
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4 C.S. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
was symbolized and held together by an intermittent traffic in
tribute, diplomatic missions, and religious congregations coming
to. the shrines at the various headquarters (pl., mazimbabwe) of
the confederacy. When the confederacy was large and not rent by
civil war and secession, the system sometimes culminated in a
unifying central cult devoted to a supreme spirit, such as Mwari
Nyadenga, Leza, or Mulungu, supporting a mambo, whom the Portuguese
called king or emperor.7
Some time after 1200, a Shona confederacy apparently grew up in
this general fashion at the nuclear site of Great Zimbabwe in
association with external trade. It reached its peak in the late
fourteenth century, had fallen by 1500, and been replaced in the
north, south, and west by the successor dynasties of Mwene Mutapa,
Torwa, and Changamira8 respectively. Parallel developments on the
East African coast saw the rise of cosmopolitan Swahili cities and
ports stretching south to Quelimane, Sofala, and Inhambane to serve
as links connecting the Shona and other inland groups with the
Indian Ocean trading system. These were largely eclipsed after 1500
by the Portuguese conquista. At approximately the same time as the
Portuguese coastal victories and the fall of Great Zimbabwe as a
trading center in the far interior, Shona trade with Sofala in the
south, where the Portuguese had focused their attention, was
increasingly deflected to northern routes by Swahili and Shona
traders passing through the Zambezi Valley and the recently
established Mwene Mutapa confederacy.9 This activity included the
area occupied by the well-known archeological site, Ingombe
Ilede.
Zambezi Valley trade routes had clearly been established before
the coming of the Portuguese. Eric Axelson believes that Swahili
penetrated as far up the Zambezi as the Cabora Bassa rapids near
Tete by the fourteenth century, where they developed a prosperous
inland distribu-
7Theal, South-Eastern Africa, II, 147; VII, 196-199; D.P.
Abraham, "The Roles of 'Chaminuka' and the Mhondoro Cults in Shona
Political History," in E. Stokes and R. Brown, eds., The Zambesian
Past (Manchester, 1966); G.K. Garbett, "Religious Aspects of
Political Succession among the Valley Korekore (N. Shona)," in
Stokes and Brown, eds., The Zambesian Past; C.S. Lancaster, "Ethnic
Identity, History, and 'Tribe' in the Middle Zambezi Valley,"
American Ethnologist, 1(1974), 717-720; C.S. Lancaster, "The
Zambezi Goba Ancestral Cult," Africa (forthcoming).
8Changamira is used rather than Changamire, in keeping with
early Portuguese sources and local African usage.
9A. Lobato, A Expansao Portuguesa em Mocambique de 1498 a 1530
(Lisbon, 1960), 23, 236; D.P. Abraham, "Maramuca," Journal of
African History, 2 (1961); D.P. Abraham, "The Early Political
History of the Kingdom of Mwene Mutapa," in Historians in Tropical
Africa (Salisbury, 1962), 6; M.D.D. Newitt, Portuguese Settlement
on the Zambesi (London, 1973).
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
tion center.10 The chief attraction, of course, was the
gold-producing areas of the Zimbabwe plateau, where there were
extensive surface deposits of both reef and alluvial gold, plus
copper. Indeed, the first trading fairs in the Zimbabwe highlands
were.established by Swahili from a Zambezi Valley base, probably in
the fifteenth century.11 After a reconnaissance by Antonio
Fernandes, the Portuguese responded to this northern move by
shifting their own attention northward to the Zambezi in an effort
to drive a wedge between the coastal Swahili and those in the
interior. They occupied the trade center of Sena in 1531, Tete a
few years later, and soon began establishing themselves at their
own fairs in the interior highlands, although African and Swahili
traders continued to compete with them.12 According to J.S.
Kirkman, inland competition in the Zimbabwe culture area had been
broken up by the latter part of the sixteenth century.13 M.D.D.
Newitt, on the other hand, claims that competition continued well
into the seventeenth century,14 and James Duffy notes that Swahili
merchants were never totally restrained north of the Zambezi.15
The Ingombe Ilede site, with which we are concerned here, is
important for a number of reasons. Archeologically it is the
richest and best-known site on all the Zambezi. It lies farthest
into the interior, some 615 river miles inland from the ocean and
115 river miles beyond the last Portuguese market on the Zambezi,
Zumbo-Feira. It is also early. Two radio-carbon dates give the rich
trade horizons at the site a mean age in carbon-14 years (based on
the 5568-year half-life) of A.D. 1410?60 years, or A.D. 1350-1470.
The single large sample of charcoal used for dating was divided
into two portions with the following results: A.D. 1340+85
10E. Axelson, South-East Africa, 1488-1530(New York, 1940),
8-10; Lobato, A Expansao, 103-104. 11 Newitt, "The Portuguese on
the Zambezi," Journal of African History, 10 (1969), 67-68.
12See Theal, South-Eastern Africa, I, 26, 66, 81, 83, 94;
Newitt, "Portuguese on the Zambezi"; A.D. Roberts, "Pre-Colonial
Trade in Zambia," African Social Research, 10 (1970), 727.
13J. Kirkman, "The History of the Coast of East Africa up to
1700," in M. Posnansky, ed., Prelude to East African History
(London, 1966), 121-122.
14Newitt, Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi, 38-41; and see
Theal, South-Eastern Africa, II, 362, 419.
15J. Duffy, Portuguese Africa (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 145; and
see Theal, South- Eastern Africa, IV, 443, which shows that Swahili
and others both competed and cooperated'with Portuguese in the
overland trade from the Zambezi to Mozambique Island as late as the
mid-seventeenth century.
5
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6 C.S. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
years and A.D. 1445?+85 years, or, taken together, A.D.
1255-1530.16 This time range raises the possibility that the site
may have been linked with the Zimbabwe culture trade, and with
Great Zimbabwe itself, in pre-Portuguese times. If this is so, its
history might yield information on the nature of early trade in the
interior, the ethnic groups involved, and something of the social
and political circumstances of the trade. Also of interest is the
extent to which the Portuguese actually replaced Shona- Swahili
trade, whether die-hard Swahili and their associates were able to
use such remote interior sites as Ingombe Ilede as a back door to
the Shona goldfields despite Portuguese efforts to the east, and
whether unofficial Portuguese interests did likewise. In order to
address such questions, this report will present a summary history
of the Ingombe Ilede area as it is presently known, using
archeological findings, Portuguese documents, and oral traditions
collected in the vicinity of Ingombe Ilede between 1967 and
1969.
Zumbo-Feira and the Gold Trade
Although it is some five hundred river miles inland from the
ocean, the confluence of the Zambezi and Luangwa rivers appears to
have been frequented by Portuguese traders as early as 1546.17 By
about 1720 and probably earlier, trading activity was centered
there at twin sites known variously or in combination as Zumbo, the
town, and Feira, the fair or market. In 1728 the town was fortified
by a stone wall nine feet high, three feet thick, and two miles
long.18 From early times the Luangwa confluence seems to have been
an important Portuguese trade center, and the site remained active
until 1836, when it was practically razed to the ground. F.V.B.
Miller notes that some traders stayed on after that,
16D.W. Phillipson and B.M. Fagan, "The Date of the Ingombe Ilede
Burials," Journal oJ African History, 10 (1969), 199-204.
Radio-carbon dates at this time level are invariably too recent.
The mean carbon-14 date of A.D. 1410?60 years (A.D. 1350-1470)
recalibrates to A.D. 1330-1440 under Switzur's method, while the
Applied Science Center for Archaeology at the University of
Pennsylvania Museum gives calendar equivalents of A.D. 1340-1410.
See V.R. Switzur, "The Radiocarbon Calendar Recalibrated,"
Antiquity, 47 (1973), 131-137, and E.K. Ralph, H.N. Michael, and
M.C. Han, "Radiocarbon Dates and Reality," Museum of the Applied
Science Center for Archaeology Newsletter, 9 (1973).
'7J.D. Clark, "The Portuguese Settlement at Feira," Northern
Rhodesia Journal, 6 (1965), 276. The Portuguese knew of alluvial
gold deposits at the mouths of the Hunyani (or "Panhames") and
Angwa ("Luam-guoa") rivers in the mid-sixteenth century; see Theal,
South-Eastern Africa, VI, 265. This is only eighteen miles from the
Luangwa-Zambezi confluence. The feira of Zumbo seems to have been
built in 1608, according to M.S. Alberto and F.A. Toscano, O
Oriente Africano Portuguese (Lourenco Marques, 1942), 40, 42.
18F.V.B. Miller, "A Few Historical Notes on Feira and Zumbo,"
Journal of the African Society, 9 (1909-1910), 416-423.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
though not much rebuilding seems to have been undertaken until
1863, after Livingstone's first visit and the intensification of
the colonial scramble for this part of Africa.
The early Portuguese at Zumbo-Feira sometimes grew food for
passing caravans but they were mainly interested in gold. Both J.D.
Clark and W.H. Reeve have noted the existence of precolonial gold
mines in the immediate vicinity; B.M. Fagan has published a map
showing numerous potential sources of copper and gold north of the
Zambezi in the hinterlands of present-day Zambia.19 A 1758 report
specifically tells of a rich gold-mining camp in Maravi territory
behind Zumbo-Feira, probably among either the Nsenga or Chewa. This
camp belonged to the famed Dominican, Frei Pedro da Trindade of
Zumbo. Similarly, a 1778 report mentions the excellent gold mines
of "Bitonga" somewhere near Zumbo-Feira.20 In addition, there were
a number of precolonial alluvial workings west of Zumbo-Feira along
the base of the high Zambezi Valley escarpments between the Luangwa
and Sanyati tributaries, according to local traditions, especially
south of the river. These traditions are supported by Luiz Ignacio,
Portuguese governor of Zumbo District in 1890, whose map showing
the gold workings Axelson has reprinted.21 Such workings probably
saw earlier service as well, as suggested by a
mid-eighteenth-century report.22
Despite an interest in local gold, ivory, and other goods,
Zumbo-Feira seems originally to have been most important as a
collection point for gold from the Zimbabwe highlands, often called
Mocaranga or Abutua,23
19Clark, "Feira," 277, 279-280; W.H. Reeve, "The Geology and
Mineral Resources of Northern Rhodesia," Ministry of Labour and
Mines, Bulletin of the Geological Survey, 3 (1963), 101; B.M.
Fagan, "Excavations at Ingombe Ilede, 1960-62," in B. Fagan, D.W.
Phillipson, and S.G.H. Daniels, eds., Iron Age Cultures in Zambia
(London, 1969), 136.
20Andrade, Relacoes, 166, 358. 21L. Ignacio, "O Zumbo, antes dos
ultimos tratados," Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia
de Lisboa (1891), 297-321; E. Axelson, Portugal and the Scramble
for Africa, 1875-1891 (Johannesburg, 1967), facing page 260.
22Andrade, Relacoes, 170. 23Oral traditions suggest that the
Abutua in Portuguese documents was an African
term representing areas lying beyond the sphere of the Mwena
Mutapa confederacy, or another confederacy of which the speaker was
a member, and that it was a derisive term inferring a remote,
poorly organized area of little importance to the speaker. From the
standpoint of early Portuguese gold seekers operating through the
Mwene Mutapa area in the Zambezi Valley, Abutua usually referred to
the gold-bearing highlands controlled by Changamira after about
1690, although it sometimes was applied to low-lying approach areas
controlled by the Changamira confederacy. These highlands were also
loosely referred to as Mocaranga or Manyika (Manica to the
Portuguese). Mocaranga still refers to Shona-speaking territory in
general. Manyika literally means many spirit realms or land-
7
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C.S. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
especially after earlier trade patterrns had been disrupted by
the late seventeenth-century expansion of the Changamira
confederacy, which closed collection points on the highlands. This
trade identification with the Zimbabwe highlands was so important
that a 1762 report goes so far as to claim that Zumbo-Feira's "true
name is Abutua."24 By this time Changamira was protecting the
Zumbo-Feira trade and the market was frequently under his
protection, so the identification with Changamira's Abutua was more
than literal. In 1768 it was from Zumbo "that comes the bulk of our
gold from the mines of Abutua 120 leagues from Tete deep in
Changamira's domains."25 In 1778, Zumbo was reportedly the center
of Portuguese commerce and more important than the larger
settlement of Tete on the lower Zambezi. The greatest portion of
gold was reportedly mined at Zumbo or its "immediacies," and
silver, lead, tin, and iron from Abutua were also mentioned.26
While no figures are available for earlier or later times, the
outlet through Zumbo-Feira is believed to have been the most
important Portuguese source of Shona gold in the eighteenth
century, producing between three hundred and five hundred pastas a
year. This annual flow would have been worth between ?60,000 and
?100,000 at 1960 prices.27
Trade Routes
Conceiqao's Tratados Dos Rios de Cuama, dated 1696, offers the
earliest known information on trade routes in the region of
Zumbo-Feira and Ingombe Ilede:28
shrine areas, in reference to the relatively dense populations
found on the tsetse-free highlands in peace time. The exact
location of Abutua and Manyika therefore varies situationally
depending on the attitude or location of the speaker. In the period
from 1967 to 1969, Lancaster heard the term Abutua used in scornful
reference to the plains northwest of Ila country and the Kafue
hook, an area said to be occupied by worthless empty bush and
backward people. It does in fact comprise one of the most sparsely
populated regions of the Zambian plateau. Similarly, the Soli area
on the Zambian plateau near Lusaka is still called Manyika wa Soli.
See H. Capello and R. Ivens, De Angola a Contra Costa (Lisbon,
1886), 274.
24Andrade, Relacoes, 593. 25Ibid., 334. 26Ibid., 358; A. Lobato,
Colonizacao Senhorial da Zambezia e outros Estudos, 131.
27According to E. Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa,
1600-1700 (Johannesburg,
1960), 209-210, a pasta was a sheet of gold weighing one hundred
mithqals. The mithqal was a weight of gold equivalent to about .155
ounces. In 1960 a mithqal would have been worth a little under ?2
(U.K.). At that price the annual flow of three hundred to five
hundred pastas through Zumbo-Feira in the eighteenth century would
have been worth between ?60,000 and ?100,000 (U.K.). See N.
Sutherland-Harris, "Trade and the Rozwi Mambo," in R. Gray and D.
Birmingham, eds., Pre-Colonial African Trade (London, 1970), 257,
259-260.
28Conceicao, "Tratados," 65, paragraph 40. The translation is
ours.
8
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
From the district of the silver mines the route goes to the
territory of the Anvuas, proceeding close alongside the Zambezi,
for a distance of thirty days, after which it [the Zambezi] is
crossed [to the north], and following a route into the hinterlands
inclined to the east, for eight days, one arrives at a place, which
is called Uroano, where the bulk of the trade is conducted; others
follow the Zambezi upstream for an additional four days, and close
to it conduct their business in a land called Umburuma, others
continue on for six or eight days, to arrive at Angoza, and finally
others reach Mozimo with an additional ten or twelve days of
traveling, all via the Zambezi or along its banks.
From this account it appears that several routes and
destinations were known at that time in the area that concerns us
here. A site known as Chicoa above the Cabora Bassa rapids has
usually been identified with the fabled Zambezi silver mines.29 If
we regard this site, known as Chicoa, as their point of departure,
it appears that caravans took thirty days to move upstream along
the Zambezi to the Luangwa River. As the mouth of the Luangwa is
only some 140 miles from Chicoa, this represents an average of only
four and a half miles a day. This is much too slow a pace even for
loaded caravans at the start of a long journey, so we must assume
that they made side trips and halts for trade, and the usual
courtesy visits to the Mwene Mutapa and various local leaders, and
perhaps encountered toll payments and hostilities along the way. In
contrast to this slow progress, Luiz Ignacio, governor of Zumbo in
1890, estimated that in his time the supply trip from Chicoa to his
headquarters at the Luangwa could be negotiated in eleven or twelve
days if there were no obstructions, an average of some eleven miles
a day, and that it could be done in six days' forced march
averaging twenty-three miles a day by soldiers carrying only the
mail.30 Similarly, the trip from Tete to Zumbo-Feira took only
sixteen days around 1766,31 though it took a month in 1762.32
Unfortunately, Conceiqao is vague about the location of the
starting point at the silver mines, which have never been found. He
writes that near the close of 1693 Changamira conquered the Shona
highlands, forcing the Portuguese and Goanese residents of the fair
at Ongoe to flee to the lowlands, though some Indians remained in
the region of the mines, including one man who had learned the
mines' secret location
29Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa. 30Ignacio, "O
Zumbo," 313. 31Andrade, Relacoes, 241. 32Ibid., 200.
9
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10 C.S. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
and was able to continue doing business in silver.33 This
suggests that the silver mines were in the mineralized areas
reasonably near the gold and copper workings serviced by the fair
at Ongoe on the Zimbabwe highlands. In that event the long trip
from the silver mines down to the Zambezi and then eight days to
the north-northeast up the Luangwa River to trade with the Anvuas
(most likely the Ambo or Nsenga), where "the bulk of the trade was
conducted," would have started in the general vicinity of Ongoe on
the Shona highlands. Having to visit the Mwene Mutapa and then
descend thousands of feet through many miles of broken Zambezi
Valley escarpment country might help account for the duration of
the trip. One could then speculate that Swahili, Shona, and even
Portuguese traders carried Zimbabwe gold and copper to the east
coast through a back-door route, using the middle Zambezi Valley
and the Luangwa Valley, west and north of the normal Portuguese
sphere of activity, rather than along the lower Zambezi where the
Portuguese were concentrated.34 Such guesswork is obviously
unsatisfactory, but Con- cei9ao's silence as to the location of
both the silver mines and the fair of Ongoe35 makes a more concrete
hypothesis impossible.
Another route from the silver mines continued on an additional
four days west along the Zambezi rather than branching north up
the
33Conceico, "Tratados," 65, paragraph 39. 34Clandestine overland
routes connecting the Zimbabwe gold trade with coastal
markets north of the Zambezi were quite old by Conceicao's time.
See Lobato, A Expansao, 236, and Theal, South-Eastern Africa, I,
66, 73, 83, for early sixteenth-century references to a back-door
overland trade to Angoche, Mozambique Island, and other places.
Portuguese were often involved with this. That such routes were
well known is also suggested by Bocarro's easy trip from Tete to
Melinde in 1616, when he encountered many cooperative "Moors"
between Lake Nyasa and the ocean. See Theal, South-Eastern Africa,
III, 415. This overland trade between the middle Zambezi Valley and
such northern ports as Mozambique Island seems to have continued
throughout the seventeenth century. See Theal, South-Eastern
Africa, II, 362; III, 477. The Ambo or Nsenga, who still occupy the
lower Luangwa Valley and the area north of the Zambezi and west of
the Maravi, clearly seem to be the same group the Portuguese knew
as anvuas. Theal, South-Eastern Africa, III, 481.
35Elsewhere Conceicao places the silver mines as five days'
march west from Tete and close to the Zambezi. See "Tratados," 64,
paragraph 37. Presumably this site was on the floor of the valley
where the silver had been stored for trade or shipment rather than
where it had actually been mined. Local Shona-speakers would have
referred to any such low-lying location as chigoba or chikoa
(chicova to the Portuguese), meaning "valley." See Lancaster,
"Ethnic Identity," 714. Lobato, EvoluCao Adminis-trativa e
Economica de Mocambique, 1752-1763 (Lisbon, 1957), 49, suggests
that the silver mines themselves were actually in the rocky,
mineralized escarpment country somewhere south of Tete paralleling
the right bank of the Zambezi, as seems likely. See Theal,
South-Eastern Africa, III, 412-413. A seventeenth-century report
indicates that there were silver mines in Butua, some distance west
of Tete, perhaps near Ongoe as suggested here. See Theal, South-
Eastern Africa, II, 414.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
Luangwa, taking traders on to Mburuma's territory, which in the
nineteenth century at least was headquartered at the confluence of
the Chakwenga tributary on the left bank of the Zambezi. This is
only sixty miles from Zumbo-Feira, and if there were no delays in
crossing the Luangwa the distance could reasonably have required an
average of fifteen miles a day for four days. Angoza, a third
destination mentioned by Conceiqao, appears to have been reached by
continuing west along the Zambezi for six to eight days beyond the
Luangwa; one would arrive there two to four days after passing
Mburuma's riverside headquarters. Local traditions associate Angoza
with the valley chieftaincy of Dandegoa, or Angoa, which appears to
have occupied the same general area on the south bank of the
Zambezi for some time. Like Mburuma, Angoa and other valley
chieftaincies from the mouths of the Sanyati to the Luangwa on both
sides of the Zambezi are pictured in oral traditions as having been
politically organized around active precolonial trade centers
located within a few miles of the river. If this identification of
Angoza is correct, Angoa was a hundred miles west of the Luangwa
confluence, as it is now, and Conceiqao's traders could have made
the six-to-eight day trip by averaging an easy fourteen miles a
day, with much of the cargo apparently following by boat.
A fourth destination mentioned by Conceiqao is Mozimo,
identified by our local sources as the chieftaincy of Mudzimu,
which also appears to have been in the same general area for a long
time. Mudzimu is some 135 river miles from the Luangwa and
according to Conceiqao the trip was made in ten or eleven days,
representing a reasonable average of twelve miles a day, probably
including short stops to visit the important chiefs at Mburuma and
Angoa. This estimate of travel time agrees with Axelson, who
reports that the 130-mile trip from Zumbo-Feira to the
nineteenth-century Portuguese trading station at Kasoko took twelve
days.36 Kasoko was roughly adjacent to Mudzimu and both are near
Ingombe Ilede. According to Conceiqao, the territories of Mburuma,
Angoa, and Mudzimu yielded up to two hundred bars of ivory a year.
With a bar equivalent to about 518 pounds, this would total 103,600
pounds a year. They also provided a good deal of copper.37
These are the territories of various chiefs, all well populated,
all naked, and only on their legs do the women wear some bracelets
of copper, which is abundant in these parts, and round their necks
and waists they
36Axelson, Scramble, 313; D.W. Phillipson, "K3soko, a Portuguese
Entrepot in the Middle Zambezi Valley," Zambia Museums Journal, 3
(1972), 35-48.
37Conceiqao, "Tratados," 65, paragraph 41.
11
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12 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
wear something called beads of Balegate, similar to large beads
and badly made; this trash, which comes from India, is what is used
in the trade; in return much ivory is obtained, up to 200 bars a
year, and a good deal of copper; in Muzimo there is also gold, but
the Portuguese do not bother with it because of the profits they
make from the ivory; there is so much ivory here that it suffices a
resident of the Rivers to make but two or three successful trading
trips for ivory to lift his head, as they say, and pass some years
in pure comfort.
Apparently only an insignificant amount of gold was obtained at
Mudzimu in the Ingombe Ilede area, and, as we now know, it may have
been washed from local alluvial fans at the foot of the escarpments
draining the southern goldfields (although this certainly was not
the case with the copper). This casts no light on major
gold-collecting routes radiating outward from Zumbo-Feira to the
mines on the Zimbabwe highlands, though some educated guesses
suggest themselves.
The Portuguese Fairs of Ongoe and Dambarare
As seems to have been true of all valley chieftaincies oriented
toward the Zambezi for the precolonial riverside trade, Angoa and
Mudzimu had cultural and trade links with the richer highlands back
from the river. Traditions concerning this trade tell of a constant
and apparently long-term pattern of movement between the lowlands
and highlands following the course of Zambezi tributaries,
especially those draining from the south. Along tributary river
valleys breaking through the rugged plateau escarpment, easy access
to the highlands, water, villages, and hospitality were found. In
addition, local traditions identify Angoa with trading sites both
in Dandegoa down in the valley (dande means "valley" in Shona) and
on the highlands above it in the vicinity of Urungwe Mountain. It
is therefore probable that a trade route to Angoa proceeded west
along the Zambezi from the Swahili, and later the Portuguese,
center at Tete to a point near Zumbo-Feira at the Luangwa
confluence, and then turned south along the Angwa River, which was
also known as the Luangwa, or. Aruangwa, of the South, for a total
of six to eight days to reach the precolonial mines in the Urungwe
mineral belt. Numerous trading sites and Portuguese earthworks have
in fact been found there.38 These upland sites include the
Portuguese trade fair of Ongoe, also known in the literature as
Hongoe, Damba, Urupande, or
38P.S. Garlake, "Seventeenth Century Portuguese Earthworks in
Rhodesia," South African Archaeological Bulletin, 21 (1967), 169;
Garlake, "Iron Age Sites in the Urungwe District of Rhodesia,"
South African Archaeological Bulletin, 25 (1970), 26.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
Aruangwa of the South.39 A Portuguese merchant "captain" trading
on his own account was stationed at Ongoe in around 1629, and the
site appears to date from the early 1600s.40 A six-to-eight-day
trip south, averaging fourteen miles a day, along the Angwa River
would have brought traders to the vicinity of these upland sites. A
roughly similar, though longer, hike south along the Hunyani River
to the Sinoia gold belt might have completed the major overland
gold routes from Zumbo- Feira. Such a route along the Hunyani would
have given access to the trade fair at Dambarare, which prospered
from approximately 1570 to 1690, operated on a lesser scale from
around 1720 to 1750,41 and opened at least briefly in 1769.42
Conceigao notes that while Dambarare was only seven days west of
the feira of Massequeca, or Manica, this direct route was seldom
taken in his day.43 He describes Dambarare and Ongoe in this
fashion:44
Dambarare is six days from the Zimbaue of Manamotapa: there we
have a feira with daub and wattle walls and very fine defensive
ditches, and its backcountrymen of low esteem, but inside there was
only a church with its Vicar and the captain, the others living
among the rebels and very much divided against one another, as in
Manica, and for the same reasons. Most of our gold has come from
Dambarare in recent times inasmuch as it is found in greater or
lesser quantities throughout the vicinity; and when a great deal is
found in one place it is called a Bar [an inland mining site].
39Abraham, "Maramuca"; F. Santana, ed., Documentacao Avulsa
Mocambicana do Arquivo Hist6rico Ultramarino (Lisbon, 1967), II,
330. When the Portuguese had a fair at Marambo in the Luangwa
Valley between 1827 and 1829, it was sometimes referred to as the
fair of the "Muisa" or Bisa peoples with whom they had trade
contact there, or as the new fair of Aruangoa of the North ("Feira
Nova de Aruangoa do Norte"). See F. Santana, ed., Documentacao
Avulsa Mocambicana do Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (Lisbon, 1964),
I, 463. For some two centuries the Aruangoa of the South had been
the fair at Ongoe or Angoa. Rupande instead of Urupande is shown in
Karl Ritters's 1826 map of Africa, located in the archives of the
National Museums of Zambia, Lusaka. He locates it accurately,
immediately southeast of the Zambezi-Kafue confluence, which would
have placed it in the Urungwe highlands near Urungwe Mountain. Also
see D'Anville's 1727 map in H. Tracey, Ant6nio Fernandes
Descobridor do Monomotapa 1514-1515 (Lourenco Marques, 1940), 78.
It seems likely that the sharp southerly bend in the Zambezi in his
map is a reference to a riverine route to the goldfields following
either the Angwa, Hunyani, or Sanyati rivers.
40Lobato, Colonizacao, 87; Alberto and Toscano, O Oriente, 42;
Summers, Ancient Mining, 145.
41P.S. Garlake, "The Value of Imported Ceramics in the Dating
and Interpretation of the Rhodesian Iron Age," Journal of African
History, 9 (1968), 24.
42Andrade, Relacoes, 330, note 1. 43Conceiago, "Tratados," 45,
paragraph 28. 44Ibid., 68, paragraphs 53 and 54. And see Theal,
South-Eastern Africa, III. 482-483.
13
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14 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
Dambarare is three days east of Ongoe, where we had no defenses
of any kind, and the life style of the residents was like that of
Dambarare and Manica, divided, with only the captain and Vicar
living together. This feira of Ongoe was always a lesser income
producer, and with fewer residents than Dambarare, but in 1691 a
very important gold mine was found there.
While there were probably direct overland routes following
rivers from Zumbo-Feira to such gold-collecting points on the
southern plateau as the feiras of Ongoe and Dambarare, the valley
chieftaincies of Angoa and Mudzimu themselves might also have
served as convenient Zambezi River way stations or collection
points for this southern gold, with Conceiqao or his sources either
unwilling to say so for reasons having to do with trade competition
or taxation, or because the local Zambezi shuttle trade with the
southern highlands had temporarily halted in his time due to the
disturbances caused by Changamira in the southern high country.
The highland gold areas that concern us here have been
identified by R. Summers as the Urungwe mineral belt, his Area 13,
and the Sinoia gold belt, his Areas 10 and 11. Though much
disturbed by more recent activities, both areas are known to have
contained exceptionally large precolonial workings whose open
shafts were sometimes as much as a thousand feet long and two
hundred feet wide. These are primarily copper areas, but there were
precolonial gold mines as well.45 The Sinoia gold belt is bisected
by the middle reaches of the Hunyani River. The Urungwe mineral
belt is just southeast of Urungwe Mountain, where it is intersected
by the upper Angwa River. According to Summers, the latter was one
of the most exploited areas of precolonial mining in all the
Zimbabwe region. He identifies the Angwa River and the Urungwe
mineral belt with the Portuguese site of Ongoe. Manuel Baretto
describes Ongoe as the source of some of the best gold.46 This was
alluvial or river gold, as the Portuguese called it, because it was
carried down by the rivers during the rains and later obtained by
washing. Bar gold, in contrast, was obtained from pit mines. Many
of these were hard-rock reef mines, though other pit mines in these
areas were sunk in soil to reach old deposits of alluvial or river
gold. In addition to Ongoe and a number of related Portuguese
earthworks, the Urungwe mineral area contains a number of unnamed,
presumably African or Swahili, sites.
45Summers, Ancient Mining, 83, 132, 135, 143-145. 461bid.,
145-146; Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa. 181-182.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
One of these has recently been found to yield pottery identical
to that found associated with the rich gold burials at Ingombe
Ilede, in the valley near the Zambezi-Kafue confluence.47
Ingombe Ilede
Fagan feels that Ingombe Ilede was originally occupied by
elephant hunters, because the remains of pachyderms have been found
in the lowest levels of the deposit and fragments of ivory
throughout. The settlement seems to have prospered, as shown by an
increase in trade goods in the upper levels, where unusually rich
finds of gold and copper jewelry, welded iron gongs, copper
crosses, and large quantities of beads were found. At these levels
are the rich grave goods associated with the Ingombe Ilede
ware.48
Although radio-carbon datings have ranged from A.D. 680-+40 to
A.D. 1464?87 years and there has been some difficulty in dating the
rich burials,49 none of the finds necessarily indicates an
unusually early date for the kind of Zimbabwe-related trade we have
been discussing here. For example, one of the burials was decorated
with a conus-shell disc from the Indian Ocean (ndoro in the local
Shona dialect) mounted with a delicately hammered gold backing cup.
This is reminiscent of the golden andoro which Diego Simoes Madeira
had made for the Mwene Mutapa in 1614;50 ndoro were still highly
valued as a sign of status in the early twentieth century. Wire
drawing implements found in the site are closely similar to those
described for nineteenth-century Venda of the Northern Transvaal.
Wire drawing, annealing, and soldering were observed at Sena and
Tete on the lower Zambezi in the mid-nineteenth century; similar
work in gold and silver has been reported at Zumbo- Feira as
recently as the late nineteenth century.51 An apparently
similar
47Summers, Ancient Mining, 123, 128, 158; Garlake, "Iron Age
Sites in Urungwe"; Garlake, Great Zimbabwe, 134, 160-162; M.S.
Alberto, "Old Portuguese Ruins in Southern Rhodesia," Proceedings
of the Rhodesia Scientific Association, 44 (1956), 13-16.
48B.M. Fagan, Iron Age Cultures in Zambia (London, 1967), I, 22.
49B.M. Fagan, "The Iron Age Sequence in the Southern Province of
Northern
Rhodesia," Journal of African History, 3 (1963), 168-173; Fagan,
"Excavations at Ingombe Ilede," 81-82; Fagan, "Ingombe Ilede: Early
Trade in South Central Africa," Addison- Wesley Modular
Publications, 19 (1972), 14; Phillipson and Fagan, "Date of the
Ingombe Ilede Burials."
50Fagan, "Excavations at Ingombe Ilede," 66; Theal,
South-Eastern Africa, III, 405; VII, 289.
51H.A. Stayt, The Ba Venda (London, 1931), 66; Fagan,
"Excavations," 105; R. Foskett, ed., The Zambesi Journal and
Letters of Dr. John Kirk, 1858-1863 (London, 1965), I, 103-104,
116; Ignacio, "O Zumbo," 299, 306.
15
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16 C.S. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
kind of wire drawing and alloying for the making of jewelry has
been described for the Shona of Mwene Mutapa in the mid-seventeenth
century.52 The ceremonial iron tools found at Ingombe Ilede could
also be relatively recent, some being remarkably like
nineteenth-century Soli material from the highlands immediately
north of the Zambezi-Kafue confluence, while similar hordes of
ceremonial iron objects south of the Zambezi probably date from the
sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.53 Two distinctly shaped types of
iron hoe blade were found. One type displayed heavy wear, evidently
from daily use, while the other was associated with the rich
burials and showed few signs of wear. A distinction between
ceremonial and working hoe blades has been important in recent
times and is not necessarily ancient. Ceremonial blades have
traditionally been received in marriage exchanges and adoption
ceremonies, and in former times important people were buried with
ceremonial blades as a symbol of their control over dependents.54
The only direct evidence of crops at the site is of sorghum, but
this is presently the staple in the area and apparently has been
for some time, according to tradition.55 Clay spindle whorls are
common and heavy cotton cloth was also found, but local traditions
refer to the weaving of small' white squares of cotton cloth in
what appears to have been nineteenth-century times.56 The weaving
of cotton cloth in sixteenth- century Sofala is described by
Barbosa, who notes that the people of Mwene Mutapa wore cotton loin
cloths, and this was still true among eighteenth-century Shona.57
Livingstone saw cotton plants in the immediate vicinity of Ingombe
Ilede, and Ignacio refers to cotton at Zumbo-Feira in 1890.58 The
flat tabular grindstones found in the site are of a type still used
by the local Goba people, and, while barkcloth
52A. Gomes, "Viagem que Fez o Padre Ant.o Gomes, da Comp.a de
Jesus, ao Imperio de de [sic] Manomotapa; e assistencia que fez nas
ditas terras de Alg'us annos," E. Axelson, ed., Studia, 3 (1959),
197.
53Fagan, "Excavations," 102. 54C.S. Lancaster, "Brideservice,
Residence, and Authority among the Goba (N. Shona)
of the Zambezi Valley," Africa, 44 (1974), 52-53, 55; Fagan,
"Excavations," 85. 55And see Fagan, "Excavations," 85; D. and C.
Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition
to the Zambesi and its Tributaries (London, 1865), 221. 56And
see B. Reynolds, The Material Culture of the Peoples of the Gwembe
Valley
(Manchester, 1968), 189. 57Freeman-Grenville, East African
Coast, 128; Andrade, Relacoes, 144; and see Theal,
South-Eastern Africa, VII, 261, for cotton growing and weaving
in the Zambezi Valley in the sixteenth century.
58D. and C. Livingstone, Narrative, 214, 325; Ignacio, "O
Zumbo," 299.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
fragments were found, this too is not unusual, as local
traditions report its manufacture as common throughout the
region.59
Therefore none of the finds associated with the rich burials
necessarily indicates any unusual antiquity, and nothing found
necessarily predates the Portuguese or could not have been
introduced by them or their agents, with perhaps two exceptions.
The majority, if not all, of the imported glass beads are closely
similar to those from highland Zimbabwe sites of the thirteenth to
fourteenth centuries.60 And two objects which may be Muslim-style
amulet holders were found, which also suggests Swahili influence.61
But until a bead chronology has been firmly established, this does
not necessarily indicate that the rich Ingombe Ilede horizon
predates a Portuguese presence, inasmuch as Swahili and Portuguese
trade activities in this region coexisted from early times, and in
any case were sometimes participated in by the same groups of
Africans, according to tradition.62 The confusion and overlapping
of trade interests is illustrated by Padre Jeronimo Lobo in Relacao
Historico da Abyssinia.63 Lobo gives an interesting account of an
interview with the Mwene Mutapa, the gifts brought to him, and his
stiff counterdemands at a time when guns were scarcer, Africans
were on better footing, and inland merchants needed permission to
do business. The two traders before the Mwene Mutapa were Paulo
Nogueria, a Portuguese, and a "Moorish captain," who traveled
together as ambassadors from an Arab trading center on the
coast.
Ingombe Ilede and Urungwe Mountain
Rather than beads, the dating of Ingombe Ilede has been linked
to its pottery. As noted, this ware and associated elements of
Ingombe Ilede material culture have also been found at a series of
sites located around the slopes of Urungwe Mountain on the
highlands of Urungwe District, Southern Rhodesia, as close as sixty
miles southeast of the original Ingombe Ilede site in the Zambezi
Valley.64 These upland sites are also associated with sophisticated
craftsmanship in ivory and metals, large
59Reynolds, Material Culture, 190, 206; T.J. Bent, The Ruined
Cities of Mashonaland (London, 1896), 53.
60Garlake, "Iron Age Sites in Urungwe," 37. 61Fagan,
"Excavations," 138. 62See Newitt, Portuguese Settlement on the
Zambesi, 40; Theal, South-Eastern Africa,
VIII, 371. 63Published in Paris in 1728, cited by D.J. de
Lacerda, Exame das Viagens do Doutor
Livingstone (Lisbon, 1867), 141. 64Garlake, "Iron Age Sites in
Urungwe"; and Garlake, Great Zimbabwe.
17
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18 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
numbers of copper ingots of Ingombe Ilede form, and clay spindle
whorls. Like those in the valley, the Ingombe Ilede people on the
Urungwe highlands lived in typical African villages and subsisted
by shifting cultivation and mixed husbandry. They probably also
relied heavily on hunting and gathering, especially as there is
some suggestion that cattle were reduced by tsetse flies, as was
true in the valley. In addition, these communities seem to have
specialized in working and trading copper. P.S. Garlake feels that
the copper ingots or crosses formed part of a flourishing trade
network centered on the Urungwe mineral belt. Zambian copper
deposits in the modern copperbelt bordering Katanga were probably a
prime source of copper in precolonial times, and early workings
have also been found in the area known as the hook of the Kafue,
south of the copperbelt. But the nearest cutcrops were in Urungwe
itself, and Summers, Fagan, and Garlake hypothesize this area as
the source of Ingombe Ilede copper, if not the gold.65 Many of the
Ingombe Ilede settlements in Urungwe were very large; apparently
none was defended by the kinds of fortifications usually associated
with later Portuguese activities in the goldfields, nor is there
any suggestion of Portuguese trade goods in these sites. Only
negligible evidence indicates coastal trade contacts of any kind,
suggesting that the bulk of the trade at these sites was
indigenous, that perhaps much of it was limited to transactions
within the Shona-speaking political system, and that the external
trade of the Ingombe Ilede people was also in African or Swahili
hands.
According to Garlake there is little doubt that the Ingombe
Ilede people were in contact with the stone enclosure people of the
Zimbabwe culture and with Great Zimbabwe itself.66 One of the
Urungwe sites, Chedzurgwe, was probably occupied in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, possibly extending into the eighteenth
century, while a related site, Mukwichi, was probably occupied in
the sixteenth or early seventeenth century.67 The earlier periods
of this Ingombe Ilede occupation would thus predate the Portuguese
and correspond with the era of Shona and Swahili trade.68 On the
basis of oral traditions in the
65Summers, AnCient Mining, 158; Fagan, "Ingombe Ilede," 25-26;
Garlake, "Iron Age Sites in Urungwe."
66Garlake, Great Zimbabwe. 67Garlake, "Iron Age Sites in
Urungwe," 37; Garlake, "An Iron Age Site on the
Mukwichi River, Urungwe," South African Archaeological Bulletin,
26 (1972), 151. 68Phillipson and Fagan, "Date of the Ingombe Ilede
Burials," date the rich trade
horizon to around 1400. Alberto and Toscano, O Oriente Africano
Portuguese, 33, refer to Portuguese missionary activity along the
Kafue River (sometimes known as Kafucue) in 1563. Assuming this
brought Portuguese near the mouth of the Kafue, it is the earliest
known reference to Portuguese activity near the Ingombe Ilede site
in the Zambezi Valley.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
Urungwe highlands, Garlake and J.D. White have suggested that
the Ingombe Ilede sites could be associated with the VaMbara
people. If so, the Urungwe area may be identified with the Swahili
fair of Ambar. It will be recalled that Ant6nio Fernandes tells of
Swahili traders from Ambar, near Zumbo and bordering Mwene Mutapa,
who did business in cross-shaped copper ingots.69 The latter phases
of Ingombe Ilede activity in Urungwe, possibly extending into the
eighteenth century, presumably paralleled contemporaneous
Portuguese activity at Ongoe and Dam- barare, which dates from the
late sixteenth century at Dambarare and the early seventeenth
century at Ongoe, extending to at least the mid- eighteenth
century. Although archeological work in this area has only begun,
the lack of Portuguese trade imports in later Ingombe Ilede phases
in the Urungwe highlands might be explained by the fact that
Portuguese-associated activity outside the fairs themselves was to
a large extent carried on by their African allies, who were often
widely scattered throughout the mineralized areas.70 These allies
would presumably be included among the "backcountrymen of low
esteem" and "rebels" who lived outside the fairs in Conceiqao's
time.71 Later, after the start of the eighteenth century, direct
Portuguese presence was rare in the Urungwe highlands, as we shall
see. Both of these factors suggest that at least some independent
Shona-Swahili trade in copper, gold, and other goods, as exhibited
by the Ingombe Ilede materials, may have continued relatively
unmolested in Urungwe while the Portuguese at Ongoe, Dambarare, and
later on the Zambezi at Zumbo-Feira wondered about the
disappointing volume of trade.
Ingombe Ilede and the KotaKota Tradition
This interpretation is supported by oral traditions collected in
the Ingombe Ilede area north of the Zambezi near the Kafue
confluence,
69A. da Silva Rego and T.W. Baxter, eds., Documents on the
Portuguese in Mozambique and Central Africa, IV (Lisbon, 1965),
289-291; Newitt, Portuguese Settlement on the Zambezi, 35,40; H.
Tracey, Antonio Fernandes, 24, 43; Garlake, "Iron Age Sites in
Urungwe, together with an appendix by J.D. White, "Oral Traditions
in Urungwe," South African Archaeological Bulletin, 25 (1970),
40-41; J.D. White, "Some Notes on the History and Customs of the
Urungwe District," Native Affairs Department Annual [hereafter
NADA], 10 (1971), 33-72. In addition to a map showing sites of
copper-cross finds and material on Mbara traditions, the latter
publication provides a series of fragmentary Zambezi Valley
traditions on a chiefdom-by-chiefdom basis, showing how diffuse
political charters can be in what has been an essentially
segmentary society. The political organization of the area is
discussed in a manuscript presently being prepared by the senior
author.
70Lobato, Evolucao, 46-47. 71Conceicao, "Tratados," 68.
19
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20 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
quoted below. In these traditions Swahili are referred to as
Barungu72 (sing., mulungu). According to tradition, Swahili were
active locally as traders "from the beginning." This is underscored
by the fact that even the semi-mythical hunters,73 the Madoma, who
formerly dominated the area reputedly knew the Swahili and obtained
food crops from them. The Swahili traders are mainly associated
with the Shona-speaking southern highlands occupied by the related
Korekore and Shangwe peoples, especially in the area of Urungwe
Mountain, and iron, copper, and gold are mentioned. The Korekore
are northern Shona. Korekore living in the Zambezi Valley are often
called Goba, or lowlanders. Originally they were the followers of
Mwene Mutapa when he moved his political center north from Great
Zimbabwe to the highlands overlooking the middle Zambezi Valley,
and the term Korekore includes those they assimilated in the
north.74 After the sixteenth century this seems to have included
the Ingombe Ilede or VaMbara people themselves, whose pottery
seems
72In traditions concerning the local past, Barungu generally
refers to Swahili and their African associates, although KotaKota
is also common. Makua or Magua tends to be used as a synonym for
Barungu, often in reference to Swahili coming up the Zambezi.
Nowadays it is also used in hostile reference to individuals who
are white or light-skinned. Basungu, or Bazungu, refers to
Portuguese and to Afro-Portuguese. Purer Portuguese or leaders may
also be referred to as senhorio, while lower-ranking Basungu are
sometimes called Chikunda. Today it is more prestigeful to use
KotaKota in reference to them all, thus making it hazardous to draw
hasty conclusions from fragmentary traditions.
73The first inhabitants of the area are said to have been
small-statured hunters and gatherers known as Madoma (or sometimes
as Bakamfwimfwi), pictured as capricious, magical, and hard to find
among the trees of the bush as they had no villages or gardens.
There seems to have been conflict with them after the migrations of
Shona refugees from the Zimbabwe highlands had begun. See
Lancaster, "The Economics of Social Organization in an Ethnic
Border Zone," Ethnology, 10 (1971), 455-462; Lancaster, "Ethnic
Identity," 712-714; Tamayi, "A Visit to the Vadoma Massif," NADA,
36 (1959), 52-57. Local sources sometimes gave the impression that
the Madoma were racially distinct, which is interesting since the
gold and copper traders Fernandes referred to in the Ingombe Ilede
area of the Urungwe highlands (Ambar or Mobara) were "not very
black." Although Swahili seems more appropriate, Tracey considers
that they were "Bushmen." See Tracey, Ant6nio Fernandes, 24, 43.
Khoisan-speaking peoples may well have provided the original basis
for the Madoma stories, since small groups of racially distinct
peoples were common throughout this part of Africa as late as the
nineteenth century; see J.D. Clark, "A Note on the Pre-Bantu
Inhabitants of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland," Northern Rhodesia
Journal, 2 (1950), 42-52. But other stories identify the Madoma
with local Shona-speakers variously engulfed either by the
Korekore, Shangwe, Ndebele, Chikunda, or the early British, or
hiding from each in remote corners of the spacious Zambezi Valley.
In this they may have resembled the so-called Dorobo scavengers of
Kenya. See J.G. Sutton, "The Interior of East Africa," in P.L.
Shinnie, ed., The African Iron Age (London, 1971).
74Abraham, "The Monomotapa Dynasty," NADA, 36 (1959), 59-84.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
to grade into that of the Korekore.75 The Korekore of Mwene
Mutapa are indistinguishable from Swahili in local tradition, and
'the term KotaKota applies to both Korekore and Swahili traders. In
the Zambezi Valley political system, KotaKota were heads of
residential compounds, sub-chieftains, and councillors in charge of
groups of unmarried men and young service husbands (masigarira),
who engaged in raiding and trade expeditions as part of their
personal bride-service requirements and as part of the tribute
their leader owed to his own patrons and allies.76 This implies
that trade and the presence of coastal Swahili trade links were an
intrinsic part of daily social and political life. That KotaKota
frequently were forced to take refuge in independent areas north of
the Zambezi suggests what we already know: that the center of
trade, political organization, and its associated turmoil lay in
Zimbabwe country south of the Zambezi. Presumably as a reflection
of later historical events in this area, the Swahili and KotaKota
of the traditions seem to merge imperceptibly with the Portuguese
and their African associates, who had a more formal relationship to
the local people:77
The Swahili understood chiKorekore spoken by the Madoma. They
brought spears and iron mined at Mashogangombe in Korekore country
over towards the Shangwe. They also came from Korekore chief
Nyakasikana in the hills behind Mudzimu and would come around
exchanging iron for ivory. The Madoma long ago knew these Swahili
and used to exchange with them. The Madoma were the ones who first
had banana and popo [pawpaw or papaya] and we have these from them.
These little Madoma people used to come here at night to our
villages, like stealthy spirits and steal our things as they had
nothing, and we would raid them when we could find their places.
But only magicians could manage to find them. They were the
guardians of the honey in the trees and would be angry if we would
take out honey by making too large a hole as the bees would fly out
and leave the place and make no more honey where men could find
it.
75Garlake, "An Iron Age Site on the Mukwichi River, Urungwe";
Garlake, "Excavations at the Nhunguza and Ruanga Ruins in Northern
Mashonaland," South African Archaeological Bulletin, 27 (1973),
107-143.
76See Lancaster, "Ethnic Identity," 717-720. 77The traditions
cited in this paper are extracts from edited field notes taken
in
response to questioning. Similar information had previously been
obtained unexpectedly in connection with the exploration of former
habitation sites, the collection of family histories, translations
of songs and religious symbolism, and discussions of artifacts such
as old muzzle-loading guns, marriage hoes, sea shells, and surface
scatter at archeological sites. These traditions were current among
adults between 1967 and 1969, though individual versions differed.
For numerous reasons connected with population move- ments,
changing ethnic identities, claims to the land, and former trade
activities, I have promised not to publish the names of individuals
as sources of particular information.
21
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22 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
The Swahili were mainly from across the Zambezi and all those
Swahili in the south were called KotaKota. They were really white,
like Arabs, and as they had mixed with Africans for a long time
they were African too. We called all of them the same name,
KotaKota, as that is their name in chiKorekore, where they came
from. Even now when we say KotaKota we mean Korekore and Goba too.
The Korekore were always involved with Swahili and with trading.
The name Korekore originally came from the name Magolegole and it
means "the people moving for years and years." Kare kare. This
means long, long ago and for a long time. So they are the people
always moving. And for us it also means those who were always
coming to the Zambezi.
They were always moving and they were not very many but they
were everywhere. Perhaps a year here and a year there but always
moving for there was always trouble in the south. Some came every
year. They came and traded and would return. When the KotaKota
crossed the Zambezi they did so only to sit at Chirundu78 and that
was the only place they stayed. They did travel to many other
places in Zambia to trade and get slaves but mainly they crossed
the Zambezi just to reach Chirundu and sit here. They were lazy to
cultivate and lazy to shift their fields. They would use the same
field year after year and not clear a new one. If they were near
water they would make river gardens and keep on using them.
Otherwise they would make a rains field but they would keep on
using the same one and be lazy. They were not interested in
cultivating and would just plant one time and then reap the wild
grain that always grew up after that. They were raiders looking for
slaves and trade. They brought beads, conus Shells, and iron,
copper, and gold. They brought blankets too.
The KotaKota came to Chirundu fleeing from troubles in the south
and for them Chirundu was mainly a refuge place because it was
fertile and because they could cross the river and be safe. They
had no chief here at first because they would leave when they
could. Their chief was Mambo across the Zambezi. Once across the
Zambezi the KotaKota would just wait until it was safe to return
south but while they were on this side [north] they would catch
anyone they could and make him a slave. These they would take away
and none would ever see him again.
78Chirundu, or Chundu, refers to the general area of the
Zambezi-Kafue confluence, extending as far as KotaKota Hill and the
lower Sanyati River to the west, about half-way to Zumbo-Feira to
the east, and including the lower Kafue River to its gorge and the
nearer portions of the Zambian plateau above the confluence, such
as the Ibwe Munyama area. The Zambezi was spanned by a bridge near
the Kafue confluence in the 1930s and the township at the bridge is
now called Chirundu. The focal point of this large area seems to
have been Urungwe Mountain south of the Zambezi.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
Some of the Swahili were really white and they were called makua
for the whiteness but mostly they were darker than Indians and some
were black. Some of the African allies would walk wi.th Swahili or
Portuguese and so the KotaKota are mixed in that way. Many of the
KotaKota came in boats from downstream though most came overland,
walking on top of the hills from the south. The Portuguese were
just a hit and run affair at Chirundu and they found the KotaKota
here when they came. There was no peace between them and the
Portuguese had no friends here the way the KotaKota had. As a rule
they did not set in selling at fixed places like the Portuguese did
but they traded in the villages as Africans do. The KotaKota of
Chirundu were mainly traders and bringers of good things. They
would take slaves and the unwary but they were also people to run
to if in trouble.
The Vazambi and Later Times
By the mid-1600s, if not earlier, the more powerful residents of
the towns of Sena and Tete on the lower Zambezi were going on
annual gold- seeking expeditions to Dambarare, Ongoe, and other
fairs in the Zimbabwe highlands.79 None of the Portuguese estate
holders in Mozambique could maintain themselves just from their
rental fees. Many led their trading expeditions personally, while
others ordinarily sent their African attendants or slaves.80 Not
all could compete in the gold market, and some of the weaker
merchants traded for ivory in Caronga north of the Zambezi among
the Maravi.81 Trade in ivory with the Nsenga (Anvuas) west of the
Maravi was also very profitable,82 and the poorer merchants of Sena
also made trips to Barue or the feira of Massequeca in Manica.83
But the great attraction was the Zimbabwe highlands, where frontier
Portuguese, canarins or Goanese, and African or Afro-Portuguese
representatives of the Portuguese merchants on the Zambezi
established private dominions among the goldfields, set up
stockades, raised armies, and battled against each other, the
merchants from the Zambezi, and the various dissident African
groups whom they disturbed and dispossessed.84
But after about 1700, direct Portuguese activity on the
highland
79Lobato, Colonizacdo, 89; and see Theal, South-Eastern Afiica,
II, 418, which suggests that the pattern dates from the early
1600s.
80ConceiCao, "Tratados," 43. 81Lobato, Colonizacao, 89. 82Ibid.,
90. 83Conceicao, "Tratados," 45. 84Lobato, ColonizaCao, 90;
Conceiqao, "Tratados," 68.
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24 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
goldfields declined sharply once Changamira destroyed the fairs
and banned non-Africans from his lands. As a result, the merchants
of eighteenth-century Sena, Tete, and Zumbo-Feira had to rely on
the intermediacy of their mussambazes to conduct the trade. In many
cases the mussambazes, as the Portuguese called them, were
evidently African or Afro-Portuguese members of the administrative
hierarchy on the Portuguese estates in the lower Zambezi Valley,
most probably senior "slave chiefs" whom the Africans called
vashambadzi or mwana mambo.85 These roving Portuguese agents became
a lasting institution and seem to have taken over the long-distance
trade in the interior, a situation which the Shona must have
preferred, as they protected the mussambazes and Zumbo-Feira at
times.86 The Portuguese often stressed the slave status of the
mussambazes. According to a mid-eighteenth- century account, for
example, Portuguese and Goanese merchants frequented Zumbo-Feira
"to exchange clothing and trade goods for gold exported at risk
from the mines of Changamira by their captives, known as
mussambazes, and the merchants themselves do not dare approach
these mining camps for fear the Changamira will catch them and take
them prisoner as he glories in doing."87 Writing of the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Lacerda describes the
mussambazes as cafres captivos"who trade in the interior for their
patron or their own account." As leaders of raiding parties and
trade caravans they exercised authority over the porters who
accompanied them.88 Sometimes the mussambazes apparently were
simply enterprising Africans who contacted Portuguese merchants
from time to time on their own initiative and obtained trade goods
from them when they wanted to mount an expedition.89 They seem in
some cases to have been independent and difficult for the
Portuguese to deal with and are described as disreputable itinerant
merchants who ruined business by mixing their gold with tin.90
The powerful Dominican, Frei Pedro da Trindade, who controlled
the trade of mid-eighteenth-century Zumbo-Feira, is reputed to have
been the only Portuguese or Goanese able to do business in
Changamira's
85Duffy, Portuguese Africa, 41; Abraham, "The Roles of
'Chaminuka,'" 31; A.C.P. Gamitto, King Kazembe and the Marave,
Cheva, Bisa, Bemba, Lunda, and Other Peoples of Southern Africa
(Lisbon, 1960), I, 31; A. Isaacman, Mozambique: The Africanization
of an European Institution, The Zambesi Prazos, 1750-1902 (Madison,
1972), 33-34.
86Andrade, Relacoes, 169, 334; Mudenge, "The Role of Foreign
Trade," 386-387. 87Andrade, Relacoes, 169; Lobato, Evoludco, 252.
88Lacerda, Exame dos Viagens, 9, 334-335. 89Andrade, Relacoes, 165.
90Ibid., 355.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
highland territories (Abutua) after the expulsions of the late
seventeenth century.91 He did so through his mussambazes. He
blessed them when they went out to trade for him, carrying beads,
cloth, arms, and strong liquor to exchange for gold and copper in
Abutua.92 It appears that some of the mussambazes established
independent settlements of their own along the Zambezi in the
Ingombe Ilede area and in the Shona highlands near the gold and
copper mines. Like the earlier Korekore-Swahili trading settlements
in Urungwe (the Ingombe Ilede sites), these probably resembled
ordinary African villages and should be distinguishable
archeologically from the Portuguese settlements of pre-Changamira
times.93 In the Ingombe Ilede area today, the mussambazes are
generally referred to as Vazambi (sing., muzambi) or Basungu,94 or
sometimes as Chikunda, a term usually restricted to their
lower-ranking African followers. They thus resembled the pombeiro
trading agents of Angola and their porters, or munenganas, who are
all sometimes loosely called Mambari. Given the telescoped nature
of local traditions and the considerable time depth of both African
and Portuguese-related trade activities, distinguishing Vazambi
from KotaKota is sometimes difficult.
In addition to their regular trips to the highland gold and
copper areas south of the Zambezi, the Vazambi working out of
eighteenth-century Zumbo-Feira enjoyed a substantial northern trade
throughout the region between the Lozi sphere in the west and
Kazembe's Luapula Lunda in the north, probably including the gold
and copper mines of the Kafue hook.95 During this period there were
important trade links with the Bisa, who played a leading role as
traders with the Luapula Lunda and Luba Lomani and penetrated deep
into the Congo, Portuguese East Africa, and Tanzania as the
Atlantic Coast slave trade ate its way east and the Indian Ocean
trade penetrated west. By around 1780 to 1800, Bisa were trading
with Yao on the Shire River, who in turn carried ivory and other
goods to the east coast. Throughout the nineteenth century, Bisa
traders continued to travel widely throughout Zambia; in local
traditions, they are said to have come overland from the north
and
91Lobato, Evoluabo, 139; Lobato, Colonizaao, 122. 92Andrade,
Relacoes, 200; Lobato, A Expansao, 218. 93Santana, Documentacao,
II, 443; Conceicao, "Tratados," 68. 94See note 72.
95Sutherland-Harris, "Zambian Trade with Zumbo in the Eighteenth
Century," in R.
Gray and D. Birmingham, eds., Pre-Colonial Afiican Trade,
231-242; Clark, "Feira," 275- 292; Roberts, "Pre-Colonial Trade in
Zambia," 728-729; A. Wilson, "Long Distance Trade and the Luba
Lomani Empire," Journal of Afiican History, 13 (1972), 575-590;
Santana, Documentacao, II, 443.
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26 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
northeast to trade with the KotaKota in the Ingombe Ilede
area.96 Groups of arabized Yao are also said to have traded there,
and some local people still proclaim Bisa and Yao ancestry.97
People from other northern groups, such as the Chokwe, Luvale,
Mbunda, Kaonde, Lamba, Lenje, Sala, Soli, Ila, and Plateau Tonga,
are also said to have come to the Ingombe Ilede area in the
nineteenth century as captives, fugitives seeking protection,
peaceful traders, or as raiders. The literature reports that by the
mid-nineteenth century Mambari from Angola and the Congo were also
frequenting the area of the Kafue hook and trading ivory .and
slaves along the middle Zambezi and the mouth of the Kafue.
East-coast Arabs from Zanzibar who could read and write were also
active in the area, and Lozi, or Makololo, are known to have traded
at the Kafue confluence.98
The Ingombe Ilede area has thus had a history as a trade center
and station on the way to Zumbo-Feira and the east. In the
nineteenth century, Livingstone heard of two "ancient" Tonga
travelers from Victoria Falls who went down to the Luangwa
confluence and came back with seeds.99 Sebetwane of the Makololo
dreamed of Portuguese guns and support down the Zambezi and sent a
Rotse official to the mouth of the Kafue, apparently looking for a
trade connection.100 Since the early nineteenth century, at least,
the Rotse felt the attraction of trade at Zumbo-Feira, as if it
were a wondrous place to visit. Livingstone was told that "many who
went there never returned because they like that country better
than this. They had even forsaken their wives and children; and
children had been so enticed and flattered by the finery bestowed
upon them there, that they had disowned their parents and adopted
others."101 It was well known that Vazambi from the east were in
the habit of kidnapping children in the hinterlands and selling
them for ivory. In some places people complained of seeing their
children
96And see D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in
South Afiica (New York, 1858), 608, 612, 614.
97In addition some Yao (pronounced locally Achawa) were found
living in Chilanga in the lower Kafue Valley when the 1914 Northern
Rhodesia census was taken. See the Chilanga Sub-District Notebook,
Zambia National Archives, Lusaka.
98Roberts, "Pre-Colonial Trade in Zambia"; E. Flint, "Trade and
Politics in Barotseland during the Kololo Period," Journal of
African History, 11 (1970), 76; Livingstone, Missionary Travels,
545-546; I. Schapera, ed., Livingstone's Missionaty Correspondence
(Berkeley, 1961), 182, 280-282, 300; E. Holub, Seven Years in South
Afiica (Boston, 1881), 152.
99D. and C. Livingstone, Narrative, 231. 'l?F. Debenham, The Way
to llala (London, 1955), 76. '01Livingstone, Missionary Travels,
571.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
forming powerful villages for the whites.102 The Vazambi also
obtained children in trade, especially in the hunger months of the
annual dry season, when they sent their Chikunda messengers on
ahead so villagers could have their ivory and children waiting when
the main party arrived up the Zambezi.103 Today Ingombe Ilede
traditions about this trade frequently take the safe form of
allegory about a past long dead and gone:104
The Kotakota or Korekore of long, long ago practiced charms at
Chirundu105 and so everybody came here and it was a thing of long
standing. There were magic places which drew people to Chirundu as
if they were being led. Lovale, Lenje and Soli saw this magic.
Lamba, Tonga, Ila. Everyone came. Some remained because of the
magic and could not ever get home and others did get home to tell
and the fame grew. It was known as a place to go. The Mambari also
would come to Chirundu from Angola and the Congo and meet the
Kotakota here. There were powerful men and large villages here then
with medicines and wealth from far places. Often those who came
here were those in trouble. They say a man would take medicines to
appear dead and a friend would not allow the body to be buried.
Then at night the man would disappear and escape to Chirundu.
People would just say the spirits had taken him to Chirundu.106
People from the Ingombe Ilede area were attracted in turn to
Zumbo- Feira and the east because it was the source of an even
greater array of trade goods, better terms of exchange, and the
home of more powerful Vazambi. Again, this part of the story is
often augmented by allegory and symbolism, as illustrated below. In
the following account, basangu are a class of spirit representing
members of chiefly descent groups:107
The spirits of dead chiefs who lived here so long ago that they
are forgotten are called basangu. They always lived in large
villages at mazimbabwe, the center of the country, and had their
grave soil taken there if they died outside the country. The
basangu are the spirits of the
102I. Schapera, ed., Livingstone's African Journal(Berkeley,
1963), 385-386. 03T.M. Thomas, Eleven Years in Central South Africa
(London, 1872), 380. 04See note 77. 05See note 78.
106In a personal communication, Miss Maud Mutemba, Livingstone
Museum, Zambia, reported much the same tradition among the Lenje
people of Kabwe and Lukanga. In this tradition Lenje began moving
south to Chirundu, or Chundu, soon after arriving in the Kabwe area
from the north, and continued doing so for a long time. See W.V.
Brelsford, The Tribes of Zambia (Lusaka, 1965), 74-75; Lancaster,
"Ethnic Identity," 725, and note 7.
l07See Lancaster, "Goba Ancestral Cult."
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28 c.s. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
land. They died so long ago that the spirit is no longer angry
nor is it known any longer who the spirit is. Now they can only
communicate with the living through the spirits of more recent
chiefs [mhondoro] whose names are still remembered. They themselves
have no links to living people and cannot speak out and tell you
who they are and what they want, so they are forgotten among the
numberless dead. They are simply known collectively as basangu and
while they may travel anywhere their home is only at
mazimbabwe.
Sometimes apparently for no reason the basangu may take people
away and they are never seen again. A kidnapping. They take them
away to a very far land where all good things are, having been
taken there. It is a land of plenty and few ever come back. The
person just vanishes. That is why it is not good to walk alone,
especially in the bush or at night, for you may be taken. We do
fear to be taken and then the people know that basangu have taken
another one as they used to long ago when they were the lions of
the land.
Sometimes it is only the spirit of the person that they take
away and the body is still here. What they take away is your
shadow. When you see a man who casts no shadow he is really a dead
man and the basangu have taken him off, using medicines. Basangu
can also take the recent dead away to their land and in a dream you
can sometimes see them. When you waken from the fright of dreaming
there is no one there. The people they take are alive though
buried. Sometimes the person will fall stricken, his spirit having
been taken away. Quickly you take a hen and slash its neck and let
blood fall over the body. If you are lucky the person returns to
his body and if you look in his hand you will see the grain
clutched there to show you where it has been taken. This is not a
possession of the body and no one speaks. Usually the entire
person, body and all, just vanishes.
Usually the basangu take strong lads and nubile girls whose
breasts are developing, never old people. And they vanish unseen to
the villages of the basangu. There there are many cattle and goats
and many people. These villages are far away in a deep cave near
Zumbo-Feira. And when they take you there they show you all the
things they have taken. There are large fields, much sorghum,
peanuts, pumpkins, millet, maize, and many, many people. If the
spirit can be made to come back the person is found to have seeds
clutched in his hand to show that he has been taken away to that
land of plenty.108
S108ee note 77.
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INGOMBE ILEDE AND ZIMBABWE CULTURE
Conclusion
The inhabitants of the Ingombe Ilede settlements in the Zambezi
Valley and high plains of Urungwe in roughly the fourteenth to
sixteenth centuries were probably either Swahili allies or
Shona-speaking members of the Mwene Mutapa confederacy, which left
Great Zimbabwe and moved its capital north to occupy part of the
middle Zambezi Valley and the highlands above it some time in the
first half of the fifteenth century. Swahili had probably been
operating in this area since at least the fourteenth century, with
trade contacts extending throughout the Zimbabwe culture region. In
the move north, the Mwene Mutapa's Shona-speaking followers,
together with those they assimi- lated, became known as Korekore
after the way they swarmed over the land like locusts.109 The
Korekore still comprise the major northern division of
Shona-speaking peoples, though those occupying the floor of the
Zambezi Valley have also been known as Goba or Valley Korekore.
From the beginning of remembered time, the Korekore seem to have
been traders and allies of the Swahili; the earliest Ingombe Ilede
traditions pertaining to KotaKota traders shuttling between the
Zambezi and the southern mining areas fail to distinguish between
Korekore and Swahili. In the late fifteenth century, at the height
of the Mwene Mutapa's influence, inhabitants of the southern half
of the Zambezi Valley, from roughly the Sanyati River to beyond
Zumbo-Feira in the east, were tributary peoples (BaNyai) in the
Korekore confederacy, while Shona-speakers north of the Zambezi
from Ingombe Ilede to areas east of Zumbo-Feira were independent of
the confederacy (Tonga).110 During this period the Ingombe Ilede
trade may have been largely confined to the interior, as Garlake
suggests,111 and much of it may have involved flows of tribute
between leaders (KotaKota or BaNyai) within the Mwene Mutapa
confederacy itself.
In the first half of the sixteenth century Portuguese began
moving up the Zambezi, competing with Swahili at Sena and Tete and
establishing their own fairs on the Zimbabwe highlands. Dambarare
was established around 1570 and Ongoe dates from the early
seventeenth century. By these times KotaKota merge with Vazambi in
local traditions. Given the independent nature of these indigenous
back-country traders and the
109Abraham, "The Monomotapa Dynasty"; Abraham, "Early Political
History of Mwene Mutapa."
' 1Lancaster, "Ethnic Identity." 1 Garlake, Great Zimbabwe.
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30 C.S. LANCASTER and A. POHORILENKO
private interests of their Portuguese and Swahili contacts,
there is every possibility that much of the trade that reached the
East African coast continued to evade official Portuguese hands. By
the late seventeenth century, the Mwene Mutapa's influence on the
Shona highlands and in the western Zambezi Valley had waned.
Ingombe Ilede people on both sides of the Zambezi were probably
known as Tonga (rebels or independents) at that time. In the early
eighteenth century the Changamira confederacy replaced Mwene Mutapa
in the area that concerns us here. With Changamira's support, Ongoe
was reopened, and Zumbo-Feira became a major trading center for
Vazambi operating on the highlands and along the Zambezi in the
Ingombe Ilede region.112 This expansion of the Changamira
confederacy probably incorporated the Ingombe Ilede people (as
tributary BaNyai and Korekore), while most of those who had taken
refuge on the north bank of the Zambezi, with the possible
exception of Zumbo-Feira itself, were probably more independent
(Tonga). The nineteenth-century destruction of the Changamira
confederacy by Ngoni and Ndebele groups returned the inhabitants of
the Ingombe Ilede area in the Zambezi Valley to independent status
once again. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, final
Portuguese efforts in the scramble for colonial territory brought
in new influences from the lower Zambezi, and for a time the local
people became known as Chikunda, or followers of the Portuguese.
For the first time, the indigenous political system was disrupted
and replaced, at least superficially, by Portuguese organization.
By this time local African trade with the Zimbabwe highlands had
become insignifi- cant.
12Garlake, "Seventeenth Century Portuguese Earthworks in
Rhodesia," 169, mentions the reopening of Ongoe under
Changamira.
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Issue Table of ContentsThe International Journal of African
Historical Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1977), pp. 1-184Front
MatterIngombe Ilede and the Zimbabwe Culture [pp. 1 - 30]Resistance
and Collaboration in Southern and Central Africa, c. 1850-1920 [pp.
31 - 62]The Antecedents of Nineteenth-Century Islamic Government in
Nupe [pp. 63 - 76]African Labor and Training in the Uganda Colonial
Economy [pp. 77 - 95]A Lost Man in Southern African History:
Kaliphi/Gundwane of the Ndebele [pp. 96 - 110]Book Reviewsuntitled
[pp. 111 - 112]untitled [pp. 112 - 114]untitled [pp. 114 -
116]untitled [p. 117]untitled [pp. 118 - 121]untitled [pp. 121 -
124]untitled [pp. 124 - 125]untitled [pp. 125 - 128]untitled [pp.
128 - 131]untitled [pp. 131 - 132]untitled [pp. 132 - 134]untitled
[pp. 134 - 136]untitled [pp.