40 
TKIBES OF THE TANA VALLEY 
The Buu are a fairly large tribe occupying the district 
which contains the German (Neukirchen) Mission Station of 
Ngao, and consisting of eight clans. These, and more especially 
the Karya, trace their descent from one Vere, who, six or 
eight generations ago, according to the pedigrees given me, 
came into the TanaValley alone, no one knows whence. Some 
make him a supernatural being devoid of human parents, who 
produced, without a mate, the progenitor of the Buu tribe, but 
nothing in the account given me by Mpongwa (Government 
Elder of Ngao and himself a direct descendant of Vere) 
necessarily implies this : only that his parentage is utterly 
unknown, and though he eventually obtained a wife no one 
can now tell who she was. 
On the other hand there is a tendency, frequently observed 
among people whose history is entirely traditional, to date 
their legends at a period immediately before the earliest 
generation of which they have any certain knowledge ; so 
that, whether mythical or not, Vere may belong to an epoch 
several centuries earlier than could be inferred from the native 
chronology. Other people have supplied me with bits of the 
same story, but no one else seemed to know anything about 
the miraculous plate. 
Be that as it may, Mpongwa’s account is as follows : — 
‘ Vere came and appeared over there at Matsanzuni, and he 
first built (his house) on the north bank of the Tana ; 1 he 
lived alone, he had no wife or child. He also had neither 
food nor fire, and thus he lived a whole year. Then (one day) 
he saw food on a plate, together with meat and its gravy ; 
he took and ate, washed the plate, and went into his house to 
sleep. When he came out in the morning the plate was gone. 
(Another time) the plate appeared with hot cakes ( mikahe ). 
He took the cakes and ate them, and when he had finished 
eating, the plate rose (into the air) and disappeared, and 
1 Old Buu — Buu Ya Kae — is on the old course of the Tana (Tsana Ndeya 
= * the long Tana,’ or Tsana Ya Limotho), some distance to the north of the 
present Lake Sumiti. It can be reached in seven to eight hours from Mijeni, 
above Ngao. (The river has twice changed its course since then.) Matsanzuni 
is said to be in the same neighbourhood. Ngambwa and Kombeni still exist. 
