Mountain-forest hunter-gatherers and, unusually among forest foragers, potters, spread along the eastern rim of the Congo basin from the Kivu volcanoes to the Rwanda-Burundi highlands and the Lake Tanganyika shore. Reduced to a subordinate minority as Bantu farmers and then the Tutsi kingdoms took the highlands, they nonetheless held a recognised place at the royal courts.
Not an ending: Batwa communities endure in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the eastern DRC, still fighting for land recognition. The map hands off in 1885 to the Congo Free State in the west and German East Africa in the east.
The atlas holds 2 border frames for Twa (Batwa) of the Great Lakes — the shape you scrub through changes in 3000 BC · 499 BC.
Minority Rights Group International report and the standard accessible survey of Batwa history, land loss and status