Mlowoka
Tumbuka · mortal · mythic · mortal
Mlowoka, 'the one who crossed over', is the appellation of Kakalala Musawira Gondwe, the legendary ivory trader who, in Tumbuka oral tradition, crossed Lake Malawi from the east around the late eighteenth century and settled in the Nkhamanga plain. Through wealth in ivory, cloth and imported goods, and through marriage alliances with indigenous clan heads, he became the apical ancestor of the Chikulamayembe paramountcy. He belongs to legendary-historical rather than divine tradition, but stands as the founding heroic ancestor of the Tumbuka royal line and is remembered in dynastic ritual and oral history.
Children
Domains
- trade and exchange
Powers
- to confer legitimacy on his descendants as the remembered founding ancestor of the ruling line
Epithets
- Mlowoka
Relations
- father of: Gonapamuhanya
Sources
- T. Cullen Young, Notes on the History of the Tumbuka-Kamanga Peoples in the Northern Province of Nyasaland (London: Religious Tract Society, 1932)
- Leroy Vail, 'Suggestions towards a Reinterpreted Tumbuka History', in B. Pachai (ed.), The Early History of Malawi (London: Longman, 1972)
- John McCracken, A History of Malawi, 1859-1966 (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2012)