At this time the European colonists who were pushing their way eastward came in contact with offshoots of the Xosa tribe, the southernmost section of the Bantu family. At the close of the sixteenth century this tribe, like the Tembus, Pondomsis and Pondos beyond, was either not yet in existence as a community distinct in government from others, or was insignificant in strength and numbers. In 1593 a party of wrecked Portuguese who passed through the territory between the Umtata river and Delagoa Bay found no chief of any note south of the Abambo horde, that then occupied the northern coast belt of Natal and extended inland along the Tugela river.

These Abambo were recent immigrants, who had come from some locality far away beyond the Zambesi river in a northwesterly direction, and had settled in a district where there were no communities strong enough to oppose them. It is possible that the Xosas may have been a clan of this great horde, or they may have formed a little independent community farther in advance to the southward, or they may have been fugitives and wanderers from various tribes broken by the invasion of the Abambo and not yet united under a new common head. Of these alternatives, the last named is the most probable, or perhaps a little community had already been formed of scattered wanderers, but was still in its earliest infancy.