from the east, black men; some of them spoke ChiBemba and had been sold only a few years prior as slaves. Now, they also spoke the white man’s language. They asked about David Livingstone, told people of the new civilization promised to Africans, and of the schools that people should attend if they wanted to become part of this civilization. They spoke of Satan, who had possessed the rulers of the Bemba and caused them to act in evil ways. One of these black missionaries, David Kaunda, settled in Nkula’s area, near the Boma outpost established by the white men and called Chinsali.
The Roman Catholic White Fathers first set up a mission among the Mambwe, a small and politically marginal group north of the Bemba, in 1891. But they soon began to make overtures to the Bemba. In keeping with the policy of their founder, Bishop Lavigerie, who encouraged the conversion of kings instead of ordinary folk, the White Fathers imagined that the conversion of such a powerful kingdom would be the most effective way to spread their religion.191 At first Chitimukulu had warned the missionaries not to enter his kingdom. So instead, Moto Moto approached Makasa, Chitimukulu’s perpetual son and oftentimes rival. In 1895, Makasa invited Dupont to establish a mission station and then withdrew the invitation, apparently fearing the retaliation of his subjects or of Chitimukulu himself.192 Dupont persisted, and Makasa agreed eventually to the building of a mission on Kayambi hill. From there, Dupont went on tours, enticing Crocodile Clan royals with gifts, and promising British South Africa Company (BSAC) officials that he would help to end the Bemba slave trade with the Swahili. Through his diplomacy, Dupont hoped to make a claim for the White Fathers across the Bemba lands. Three years after his mission was established at Kayambi, an ailing Crocodile Clan lord, Mwamba, called for Dupont and allegedly named him as his successor before he died. While the BSAC dismissed Dupont’s claim to chieftaincy, Dupont was able to secure a second Bemba mission at Chilubula, and the BSAC recognized the White Fathers’ influence over a large part of Bemba highlands.193
The districts of Chinsali, as well as those to the north and south of the Catholic influence, fell under the control of the Presbyterian Livingstonia Mission.194 By the end of the century, the Livingstonia Mission had established the Mwenzo Mission (1894) and the Overtoun Institute to train teachers and craftsmen. They did not have the resources to open their own missions among the Bemba and observed the Catholic advance with frustration. But they did have a growing corps of trained African teachers and evangelists whom they could send westward to stall the Catholic advance. They thought the situation was desperate: “a veritable slumland—a seething mass of sinful humanity beyond all remedy save the ‘all-remedy,’ of the great physician. Jesus the Great Physician—His never-failing medicine for sin-sick souls—His accessibility.”195 In 1904, fifty students at the teacher training institute accompanied a European missionary to the Bemba area. They included David Kaunda and two Christian Bemba who had been rescued from a slave caravan. Upon their return, the group reported that “these Bemba are very ready to receive Christ as their King.”196 Livingstonia decided to open a mission at Chinsali. At first, there was no European available, and so in 1905, they instructed David Kaunda and his wife, Helen Nyirenda Kaunda, to open a school and to start mission work.
In contrast to the White Fathers’ emphasis on kings, Kaunda and the teachers encouraged the conversion of ordinary people; after all, many of the teachers were former slaves. The Presbyterian emphasis on egalitarianism and individual achievement cut against the hierarchical tendencies of both the Catholic Church and the Crocodile Clan rulers. Kaunda roamed the area, selecting young men whom he encouraged to come to his school. He reported that there was a great desire for education. By 1907, Kaunda had established a network of schools and a congregation of several hundred who gathered in churches and sang approximately fifty different hymns that Kaunda had translated into ChiBemba from the ChiNyanja and ChiNyamwanga languages. (Despite their proliferation, the Christian schools were clearly opposed by some—there was at least one instance of a chief of ancestors, mfumu ya mipashi, instructing girls to desist from going to school.)197 Helen Kaunda also attracted a following of enthusiastic women who advocated against beer drinking. Eight years later, in 1913, Rev. Robert D. MacMinn and his wife, Josephine Haarhoff, joined this small but growing community of young men and women.198
While Catholic and Protestant missionaries wanted to ensure that the converted were well-versed in their particular doctrines, they also wanted to ensure that their competitors did not gain a foothold in the villages. Thus, mission rivalries led to two distinct emphases in their ongoing efforts to create Christians: on the one hand, there was a vanguard of evangelists who were converted and trained; and on the other, a populace trained in turn by these evangelists who had only a loose affiliation to the mission and their doctrines.
The character of this evangelical vanguard depended on the mission. By 1904, the Catholic Kayambi Mission had expanded the recruitment of adult men to become a cohort of paid catechists. They were required to undertake schooling at the mission and annual retreats to ensure loyalty and discipline.199Their long period of official instruction was not a broad education and hardly touched on secular matters. Instruction was paternalistic and autonomous activities were discouraged.200 The Protestants, by contrast, relied on paid teachers who were literate and had received a broader education than their Catholic counterparts. Early Protestant educational efforts should not be exaggerated, however: James Chisholm, one of the first missionaries at Mwenzo, wrote to his superiors that “many of the natives are born teachers, and do not need to know much till they are fit to impart their knowledge.”201 Nevertheless, education was seen to be part of evangelization and “the most potent barrier against the inroads of Catholicism and Islamism.”202 In addition to secular school instruction, the teachers also offered church classes and Sunday school. In keeping with the vision of the Livingstonia Mission’s Presbyterian Kirk emphasis on self-governing and self-supporting churches, the teachers, the most faithful cohort of church followers, were granted greater autonomy than the Catholic catechists.203
The Catholic missionaries desired a break with “paganism” and, in return, promised the introduction of new rituals, such as communal prayer and the administration of sacraments of baptism, confession, and marriage. Candidates for baptism had to abstain from older practices, ranging from sacred dances to polygamy. They then had to memorize catechism in daily sessions during a three-week intensive training course, even if they could not understand the catechism. (Dupont’s Catéchisme en Kibemba, published in 1900, was, according to later missionaries, “full of nonsense and contradictions.”)204 The most popular aspects of Catholic conversion were the sacraments of confession and communion, perceived by the Bemba as a path to purification.205 As a result, the Catholics counted the large number of baptized Africans as their successful “converts”: in 1913, when the Bembaland mission separated from Nyasaland, there were 6,000 baptized Christians; in 1946 the number was about 180,000 of an approximate 500,000 total people in Northern Province.206
The White Fathers did not share the Protestant concern with a “civilizing mission.” They placed less emphasis on transformations in the domestic realm (with the exception of prohibiting polygamy), less emphasis on transformation in the moral order of society, and less emphasis on broader education and literacy. They did not seek to impose new temporal work regimens, such as those described by Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff in their study of Protestant missionaries among the Tswana.207 For the Protestants, education was key since conversion entailed the individual’s ability to approach and understand the scriptures. By contrast, prior to the 1920s, especially under the influence of Bishop Dupont, the White Fathers discouraged education that would lead to acculturation—they sought conversion without the “destructive” influences of “civilization.”208 There was more than a philosophical and theological difference: few of the White Fathers knew English, the colonial language, and hence the capacity for secular instruction was limited. Since services were still in Latin, there was also less of a religious need to learn English. Their pupils and catechists were thus at a marked disadvantage regarding secular education compared to those taught by predominantly English and Scottish Protestants, and at least a few Bemba abandoned Catholic schools for Protestant schools. Thus, while the Catholics counted the number of baptized Christians as evidence of their success, the Protestants counted the number of teachers and schools established. By 1925, Lubwa Mission had established 99 schools where 141
