INTRODUCTORY

The Nyamwezi are a Bantu-speaking people most of whom live in the Districts of Kahama, Nzega and Tabora in the Western Province of Tanganyika. In the official census of 1957 they were listed as the second largest tribe in Tanganyika with a total membership of 363,258 men, women and children. Of these some 251,902, or roughly 70 per cent, were living in the three Districts mentioned above. The large majority of the remaining 30 per cent were living in the Lake Province and in the coastal areas of the Territory. The reasons for this will become clear in the course of this chapter.

I shall use the term Unyamwezi in this work to refer to that area of the Western Province in which the Nyamwezi are, for the most part, both the politically dominant and the numerically preponderant tribe. This area consists of the Tabora and Nzega Districts and the eastern half of Kahama District (see Fig. 1). It is divided into thirty-one mutually independent chiefdoms under the control of Nyamwezi ruling families, and it is in this sense that the Nyamwezi may be said to be politically dominant in the area. The western half of Kahama District, though linked administratively with the eastern half, consists of Sumbwa chiefdoms with a mainly Ha and Sumbwa population.