HISTORY 69 
Capt. Foot, R.N., went to Blantyre with his wife and children, taking with him 
Mr. D. Rankin as private secretary. 
During all these years the Makololo chiefs had become increasingly powerful. 
At first they had seemed disposed to welcome the British, but there were times 
when they became arrogant and exacting in their demands. Still, on the 
whole, they were a valuable counterpoise to the aggressive Yao, some of whom 
became highway robbers and rifled the Mission and African Lakes Company’s 
caravans. There were two of the Makololo chiefs specially prominent— 
Ramakukane and Chipatula. Ramakukane was seemingly of real Makololo 
origin, and had been the son of a chief or headman in the Barutse country, 
who had accompanied Livingstone back to Nyasaland, after his second visit 
to the Barutse country. Chipatula was one of Livingstone’s old porters. 
Ramakukane was established at Katunga on the Central Shire, and Chipatula 
at or near the modern Chiromo, where the river Ruo joins the Shire, and where 
the present Anglo-Portuguese boundary runs. Ramakukane was, on the whole, 
friendly to the Europeans. Chipatula chiefly concerned himself in repelling 
the attempts of the black Portuguese from the Zambezi to establish themselves 
as slave traders on the Shire. He not only kept these half-castes at bay, but 
even extended his rule far down the Shire towards the Zambezi. The George 
Fenwick of whom I have made mention, after leaving the service of the 
Mission had set up for himself as a trader and elephant hunter. He was a 
headstrong, lawless man, who inspired fear and admiration alternately, in the 
minds of the natives. He had had several commercial transactions in selling 
ivory for Chipatula, and visited that chief at Chiromo in 1884 to settle accounts 
with him. Both men had been drinking spirits; Chipatula refused to accept 
Fenwick’s version of accounts and applied opprobrious terms to him. Fenwick 
started up in a rage and shot Chipatula dead. Before the chief’s astonished 
followers could take any action he rushed out of the hut towards the river 
shore, and shouted to them, “Your chief is dead, I am your chief now,” but 
seeing that the natives were rather more inclined to avenge Chipatula’s death 
than to adopt his slayer as his successor, he got into a canoe at the river side, 
and paddled across the river to Malo Island. Here for three days he led a 
wretched existence attempting to defend himself from the attacks of the 
natives. He was at last overcome and killed, and his head was cut off. The 
Makololo chiefs then became quite inimical to the white settlers. They shot 
at and sunk the little steamer Lady Nyasa , and they sent an insolent message 
to Blantyre, demanding that Mrs. Fenwick, the wife of the adventurer, should 
be delivered over to them, together with an enormous sum as compensation 
for the death of Chipatula. Consul Foot finally succeeded, with the help of 
Ramakukane, in restoring peace, and Mr. John Moir recovered the Lady Nyasa. 
Consul Foot, however, died not long afterwards from the effects of the fatigue 
and anxiety he had undergone. Chipatula was succeeded by a man named 
Mlauri, also one of Livingstone’s men, but not friendly to the British ; and old 
Ramakukane died. The demeanour of the Makololo as the years went by 
became increasingly insolent and hostile towards the Europeans, English as 
well as Portuguese. 
In 1881 a fresh element of British influence had appeared on the shores 
of Lake Nyasa, in the arrival of the Rev. W. P. Johnson and Mr. Charles 
Janson, of the Universities Mission to Central Africa—that Mission whose first 
bishop, Mackenzie, had died near Chiromo on the Shire in 1862. It will be 
remembered that the Universities Mission had been founded at the instance 
