Chikulamayembe dynasty

These were thinly scattered over the plateau between the Luangwa valley and Lake Malawi, in small, independent communities with limited central organisation.

By the mid-18th century, traders dressed as Arabs although coming from the Unyamwezi region of what is now Tanzania were involved in trading for ivory as far inland as the Luangwa valley.

A son of Mlowoka, named Gonapamuhanya/Khalapamuhanya who was also (on his mother's side) the nephew of a leading Tumbuka clan head, is said to have become a paramount chief or king of the areas west and south of the Nyika Plateau around 1805 and founded the Chikulamayembe dynasty.

By the 1830s, this Chikulamayembe dynasty was in decline as Swahili traders in slaves and ivory entered the area and took over its trading system, reducing it to a state of political disorganisation, and its existence was ended by the Ngoni invasions in the 1860s and 1870s on.

[9][10] When the Chikulamayembe state ceased to exist, its people either fled or remained as unfree agricultural workers or enrolled in Ngoni regiments.

However, in the 1920s the colonial administration favoured the introduction of indirect rule and proposed that the north of Malawi should be divided into three districts, each with one predominant ethnic group, each one having a paramount chief.