Nyatsimba Mutota (c. 1400 - c. 1450) was a legendary member of the royal family of Great Zimbabwe in the mid-15th century who is credited with founding the Mutapa Empire to its north, over which he reigned as its first king.
However, at that time, Great Zimbabwe was already losing power to a rival with its capital at Ingombe, Ilede (near the Zambezi River in modern Zambia).
[5] Consequently, Nyatsimba Mutota lead a migration to the north-east to establish a new capital in the Daende area, between the Mazoé (now in Mashonaland Central) and the Huniani of the Panhame River (now on the border of Zimbabwe and Mozambique).
But based upon the location of Mutapa, its founding must have been linked to the royal interest in controlling inland trade coming from the Indian Ocean and competing with Ingombe Ilede on the Zambezi River.
Initially, the population of the Kingdom was largely composed of herders and elephant hunters, not farmers, which made livestock of enormous political importance to the Monomotapa rulers.
A geographical reconstruction of the conquests of Mutota and his son reveals a west–east route, the final goal being to seize the downstream part of the Zambezi River, near the sea, in order to be able to exchange salt and ivory with the Portuguese.
In 1861, a Portuguese officer named Albino Manoel Pacheco collected a series of oral testimonies on the origin of Monomotapa and on Mutota.
We only know that elephant hunters (Uajero) came from Changoé, led by a resolute black man named Mutota (from the Changamira family), and attracted by the fabrics and salt which were spread in the country… began the conquest of this large territory, without being able to complete it at the same time, because death took their leader from them at the top of the Chitacoxagonha mountain range on the outskirts of the promised land".
Furthermore, there is another oral tradition, collected by Manoel Pacheco from a noble woman "over a hundred years old" in the 19th century, which names him Nobeza, but which places him as the third ruler of the Monomotapa Empire rather than the fourth (counting from Mbire).