[citation needed] The Ambundu nowadays live in the region stretching to the East from Angola's capital city of Luanda (see map).

Spoken in Luanda in the west, Akwaluanda (also referred to as Ambundu) developed from interactions between Kimbundu speakers and other ethnic groups in the region.

Samba gave birth to 8 children, who later begot the Ndongo, the Mbondo, the Pende, the Hungu, the Lenge, the Imbangala, the Songo and the Libolo people.

[4] The Pende people tell an oral tradition of a single ancestor named Ngola Kilanji, who ruled over hunters and warriors at Tandji in Milumbu near the Zambezi River.

[4] He later unified his people with another group that was led by a master blacksmith named Bembo Kalamba and his wife Ngombe dia Nganda.

This origin story maintains that Ngombe's daughters became the mothers of the Mbundu ethnic groups and that Ngola founded the Kingdom of Ndongo.

The treaty gave substantial trade and religious advantages to Portugal but delivered Mbandi the throne in Ndongo.

She became queen of Matamba, a kingdom which was traditionally led by women, and turned it into the most powerful state in the region, and a big exporter of slaves.

The rise of a new trade in ivory, rubber and wax, which avoided the old monopolies, reduced the power of central authority in the Ambundu states in this century.

To protect their interests, the Portuguese sent a number of military expeditions into the areas, which they considered to be their colonies, and brought them under actual control.

[7] Isaiah Washington, another American actor, has a genealogical DNA link to the Ambundu group through his paternal line.