Kintu, the first Kabaka

Kintu is remembered as the first Kabaka of Buganda, and many legends gather around him. Roscoe (1911) records that he was held to be descended from the gods, that he married a woman named Nambi of the Ngeye (Colobus Monkey) clan, and that tradition says he lived alone for a time before Nambi was given to him by the god Gulu. In old age he is said to have walked into the forest and disappeared: because it was unlawful to say that a Kabaka had died, the chiefs said instead that he had vanished. His burial was carried out in secret, and a temple for his jawbone was raised on the Magonga hill in Busuju, cared for by the Ngo (Leopard) clan, whose only official duty to the Kabaka was the keeping of that shrine. The Ngo clan also claims to hold the original plantain brought into the country when Kintu came, kept as a sacred plant. Roscoe records the succession after him: Cwa, Kintu's son, who was also said to have been lost as an old man; then Kimera, Cwa's grandson, raised in Bunyoro and brought back to be crowned after an interregnum governed by a prime minister. This page reproduces what the cited sources record, including where they disagree or call a thing a legend.