Much of documented pre-colonial history about the Kamba people revolves around Kivoi Mwendwa famously known as 'Chief Kivoi' (born in the 1780s). He was a Kamba long Distance trader who lived in the present day Kitui. He is best known for guiding first Europeans to reach the interior of the area of present-day Kenya where the German missionaries Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS), in 1849, discovered Mount Kenya.