In the beginning a long time ago, there were few people on this earth except for one man named Kindole Puu who lived at Lakaiyoko in the upper Lai valley. He had a beautiful house surrounded by gardens with all kinds of food and sambisambi grass. He had made the inside comfortable with possum skins, cassowary feathers and other birds’ feathers. He ate well, living from fresh possum meat, the meat of cassowaries and other birds as well as food from his gardens. Year after year he went on living this good life.

As described in the Malipini origin tradition, central Enga offered stretches of fertile garden land in the Ambum valley below 2100m along with an abundant of wild resources — cassowaries, possums, other marsupials, and highly nutritious pandanus nuts — in the adjacent high country of Sirunki and the Yandapo. The salt springs in the Yandapo drew traders from a hundred or more kilometers away.

Tribes with origin traditions in central Enga include Mai, Kaina, and Yandapo dialect speakers. Tribes of Malipini, Itapuni, Awaini, Apulini and Yakani occupied areas around Wabag and Lenge. Lyaini, Tia and Potealini lived in higher country to the west, while Pumane and Aiyele and Sene-Yokasa were settled in the Ambum Valley.

This situation was to change. According to historical traditions, Yanaitini –a brother tribe of Itokone in the mid-Lai — found that sweet potatoes grew well at Tetemanda when returning from salt-making in the Yandapo. Yanaitini chose to remain there. He told his brother Itokone that since the distance between Tilyaposa and the salt quarries in the Yandapo was long, he would make salt and send it to Itokone and that Itokone would send Yanaitini stone axes. Six Yanaitini clans then moved into Central Enga and another into the upper Ambum. The migration of Yanaitini to Central Enga extended ties with Eastern Enga and provided for the expansion of the Yae Tee Cycle.

Around the same time, the forefather of Sakalini and its four clans left the Mendi area in Southern Highlands after a dispute. They were welcomed by Potealini and later by Lyaini, who gave them land. Subsequently large-scale wars in the Ambum Valley broke out on two fronts. In the upper Ambum valley, Lyaini and Sakalini drove the tribes of Pumane and Aiele into the sparsely populated western Kompiam region. In the lower Ambum Valley, Yanaitini and Yakani expelled the tribes of Sene-Yokasa to the northwestern Kompiam area where they later became known as Kungu-Tiaka.

The Ambum wars resulted in 160 sq km of land taken as 21 clans were forced out of the valley. Twenty-two clans of the victors then moved into the vacated land. The Great Ceremonial Wars in Central Enga — described in chapter 2– and their massive exchanges rebuilt ties between the Lagaip, Lai, Ambum and Sau Valleys that were later subsumed by the Yae Tee Cycle.