Msiri's father had been in the business of buying copper ore in Katanga and transporting it to the east coast of Africa for resale.

[1] In February 1886 the Scottish missionary Frederick Stanley Arnot arrived at Bunkeya unaccompanied and without food or trade goods.

[2] In 1887, William Henry Faulknor, a young Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario who had joined the Plymouth Brethren evangelical movement, arrived at Bunkeya.

[5] Although the territory had been ceded to Belgium under the Berlin Conference (1884), Cecil Rhodes began taking an interest and sent agents to Katanga.

The first, 300 people under Paul Le Marinel coming from Lusambo, crossed the Lualaba in March 1891, where they met a representative of Msiri.

Le Marinel spent seven weeks at Bunkeya, but was unable to persuade Msiri to formally accept Belgian authority.

At the age of 25 the Canadian-born engineer, soldier and mercenary William Grant Stairs had been second in command of Henry Morton Stanley's 1887 expedition to relieve Emin Pasha in Equatoria.

[12] Stairs had accepted Mukanda Bantu as Msiri's chosen heir, but restricted him to the territory immediately surrounding Bunkeya and removed all real power.

[11] The Belgians forced Mukanda Bantu and his followers to move to Lukafu, where they stayed for eighteen years before being allowed to return.