The ama-Ngcengana of the Tembu tribe practiced water burial. As they committed their dead to the river they exclaimed: mThathe, Bawo [Take him, Father]. The name of the river is thus an anglicized version of the Xhosa word mThathe. It was the Ngangelizwe , the chief of the Tembu tribe, who in the 1860’s
offered land to the european settlers on the south bank of the river. Richard W. Calverley took up this offer in 1870 and established an estate. Around the same time Chief Nqwiliso offered similar conditions to encouage settlers on the northern banks of the river. Soon several Voortrekkers [Dutch pioneer farmers] began renting land in the area and eventually they corrupted to tribal word mThathe to Umtata.