This article examines memorial traditions and social identities in the Luapula Valley during the nineteenth century. In History on the Luapula, Ian Cunnison argued that most histories in the Luapula Valley were ‘personal’ renditions except for the ‘impersonal’ and general history of the Kazembe Kingdom. This article details how the impersonal history of the Kazembe Kingdom arose. Through the association of shrines and natural phenomena with the ancestral heroes that featured in the historical drama of the Kazembe conquests, a more general, universal and hegemonic history was rendered. The formulation and commemoration of this history sustained two Luapulan identities, a ‘Lunda’ migrant identity and a ‘Shila’ autochthonous identity, both of which proved to be solid foundations for the creation of ‘tribes’ in the colonial period.