Hehe

The Hehe (also Wahehe) began as a number of independent chiefdoms made up of mixed people who were in some instances related to one another and are a Bantu tribe who live primarily in the Iringa region of Tanzania, numbering around 192,000, with no chiefdom over 5,000 people sharing a common language and culture. The Wahehe had no political unity until in the mid-1800s, the were unified by Chief Munyigumba of the Muyinga dynasty and became the dominant tribe in the region, becoming famous for their remarkable success in war. Under the rule of Munyigumba's son, Chief Mkwawa, they encounted and fought fiercely with the colonising German Schuttruppe forces but had little bureaucracy or rituals, myths, or institutions of a civil nature (see German East Africa), and were ultimately defeated, and in 1898 Mkwawa committed suicide rather than suffer capture.