Cluster of related peoples — Tumbuka proper with the Henga, Phoka, Nyika, Yombe, Senga and the lakeshore Tonga — spread thinly in autonomous villages across the plateau between the Luangwa valley and northern Lake Malawi. In the mid-18th century Balowoka ivory traders from the east founded the Chikulamayembe dynasty over a federation of Tumbuka chiefdoms at Nkhamanga; it decayed by the 1830s, and from about 1855 Mbelwa's Ngoni ruled much of the country.
Not an ending: the British Central Africa Protectorate was declared over the region in 1891 and the Ngoni overlordship was folded into it. Chitumbuka remains a major language of northern Malawi and the Chikulamayembe title still exists.
The dedicated early history of the Tumbuka-Kamanga peoples, recording the Balowoka arrival and the Chikulamayembe dynasty from oral tradition.
The Protectorate Commissioner's survey, which classifies the Ba-tumbuka stock and describes the Ngoni conquest of their country at first hand.