Nyangwe was a town in Maniema

Maniema

Maniema is a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Kindu.Following the 2005 Constitution , 25 new provinces were to be created from the 10 current provinces within 36 months . As of October 2010, this had not taken place...

, on the right bank of the Lualaba in the Democratic Republic of Congo (territory of Kasongo

Kasongo

Kasongo is a town and territory in Maniema Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It lies east of the Lualaba River, northwest of its confluence with the Luama River, at an altitude of 2188 ft . Kasongos population is approximately 63,000. The town is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese...

). It was one of the main slave trading

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 states in the region at the end of the 19th century.

The town was founded around 1860, and a first sultan

Sultan

Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...

 named Dougombi established in 1868. Munia Muhara was the sultan of the town by the time of the 1892-1894 war in the Eastern Congo.

David Livingstone

David Livingstone

David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr...

 was the first European to visit the town in 1871. On July 15, 1871 Livingstone witnessed approximately 600 Africans massacred by Arab slavers. It was the last known town for people coming from the East, and Livingstone thought that the Lualaba was the high part of the Nile River. Verney Lovett Cameron

Verney Lovett Cameron

Verney Lovett Cameron was an English traveller in Central Africa and the first European to cross equatorial Africa from sea to sea.-Biography:He was born at Radipole, near Weymouth, Dorset...

 visited the town in 1874. Both Livingstone and Cameron failed to follow the river downstream due to fiendish inhabitants, thereby missing a proof (or disprove, as it would turn out) of the statement that it was feeding the Nile. In 1877 Henry Morton Stanley

Henry Morton Stanley

Sir Henry Morton Stanley, GCB, born John Rowlands , was a Welsh journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. Upon finding Livingstone, Stanley allegedly uttered the now-famous greeting, "Dr...

 followed the river downstream from Nyangwe with local reigning Tippu Tip

Tippu Tip

Tippu Tip or Tib , real name Hamad bin Muḥammad bin Jumah bin Rajab bin Muḥammad bin Sa‘īd al-Murghabī, , was a Swahili-Zanzibari trader. He was famously known as Tippu Tib after an eye disease which made him blind...

, and as he arrived in Boma

Boma

The port town of Boma in Bas-Congo province was the capital city of the Congo Free State and Belgian Congo from 1 May 1886 to 1926, when it was moved to Léopoldville . It exports tropical timber, bananas, cacao, and palm products...

, he established that this was the Congo River

Congo River

The Congo River is a river in Africa, and is the deepest river in the world, with measured depths in excess of . It is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, though it has only one-fifth the volume of the world's largest river, the Amazon...

. Hermann von Wissmann visited Nyangwe in 1883.