Chokwe

The Chokwe are Bantu people of north-eastern Angola, south-western Congo and north-western Zambia, in savanna between Kasai and upper Zambezi. Their chiefs trace descent from sixteenth-century Lunda migrations, and by the seventeenth century they were one of twelve clans of the Lunda Empire of the Mwata Yanvo.

After disputes and refusals of tribute, they broke from Lunda rule and built wealthy village societies, farming, hunting and trading wax, ivory and copper inland. Matrilineal lineages and mukanda boys' initiation schools ordered their life, and carvers won fame for ancestor figures, ceremonial chairs and masks: the female Mwana Pwo and the royal Chibinda Ilunga of the legendary hunter-prince who married the Lunda queen.

Their trade and numbers grew through the eighteenth century; by the 1830s, when Portuguese caravans first made contact, they were already a rising power amid collapsing Lunda authority.