Kinga

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For the Hungarian saint and queen named Kinga, see Kinga of Poland.

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The Kinga are an ethnic and linguistic group based in southwestern Tanzania, in the Livingstone Mountains north-East of Lake Malawi. In 2003 the Kinga population was estimated to number 140,000.

By the 1920s the Kinga were thought to still number around 20,000 persons.

The Kinga were primarily agriculturists with millet, beans, some bananas, cultivated bamboo for a strong good beer, and finally in 1905, wheat and potatoes. They inhabited the Livingston Mountains to a height of 10,000 feet and maintained a moderate amount of cattle but many sheep and goats. Even though related, the Nyakyusa neighbors considered the Kinga to be distinct and different. They found them to be dirty, fawning, and submissive in their habits and manners, (not a marriage prospect but good enough to fight with in the Konde Revolt against the Germans), and were eager to acquire Kinga implements in exchange for food.

The Nyakyusa considered iron a scarce and precious commodity normally needing the secret skills of the Kinga smiths. With the invasion of the Ngoni the Nyakyusa found their wood tipped spears to be ineffective against tough shields and went to the Kinga for well-made iron tipped spears. Iron, melting at about 2,804°F, was heated to about 2,200°F and then layered in charcoal until the slag drained off. The remainder was a solid spongy mass called bloom, which was then reheated and hammered in a forge with no guarantee of success. Each operation required the building of a new furnace with demands on charcoal, labor, and skills. The production of only three hoes or spears may have needed a ton of charcoal and a long apprenticeship. It also took a vast amount of wood over time. The Nyakyusa made the shields.

Kinga priests claimed they belonged to a very old line, a line older than their chiefs. The priests also seemed to interpret subterranean water movement (much as a Rutengänger). The Nyakyusa would watch with fear and dismay as these pilgrims descended the mountain paths each year heading for 'Lwenbe's' shrine.

The Kinga were to be found in hidden areas, probably having been driven there by the Magwangwara Ngoni, and then the Wasangu, and even the Hehe, and were not easily located. They had little intercourse with their neighbors, and felt comfortable only in their mountains. While they provided early warning posts against invasion of the Nyakyusa territory from the south and east, the Nyakyusa were not thankful, and generally held the Kinga in contempt, there being certainly no love lost between the Kinga and Nyakyusa.

Merensky describes them as having no particular physical type, their facial features and physique all being different. He thought them a mixed group of runaway slaves hiding in the mountains. Merensky found only one common characteristic; due to their mountain climbing the muscles on their legs were very well developed and they had acquired a distinct type of jogging while going up and down these heights.

Merensky, like the Nyakyusa, found them personally dirty and their homesteads of cylindrical and conical shaped huts disorderly and surrounded by hedges of thorn. Seemingly they were adept only at navigating their mountains and skillfully creating beautiful hoes, knives, spears of iron, and a very pleasing beer from bamboo, which was plentiful in their area.

It must have been very difficult for the number of Kinga chiefs, who joined the Nyakyusa at Lwembe's shrine in the 1890s, to revolt against the Germans where they were then both on the losing side.