Muchena

Muchena lies in the uplands northeast of Tete, in the country associated with the kingdom of Macanga. North of the Zambezi, Maravi rulers exercised authority through a network of chiefs, among them the ruler of Undi. In the later eighteenth century Gonçalo Caetano Pereira, a merchant from Goa, gained control of gold-bearing lands north of Tete and received territory from Undi. His kingdom of Macanga developed in this borderland of African and Portuguese power, with Muchena as its centre.