In the oral narrative given by the Agwam Fantswam I, reported by a writer for
Sun Travels, the original home of the Fantswam (Kafanchan) people was traced to
Inkil, a settlement in the eastern part of
Bauchi State, 5 km from the modern city of
Bauchi. The people were said to have left Inkil to settle at a riverine settlement called Bunga, and later on at Karge to the south. Having discovered that there was not enough game around Karge, being hunters, they moved across Zalan to the
Jos Plateau, settling temporarily at the present abode of the
Anaguta and
Afizere (Jarawa) peoples, before proceeding through Rahama, Kauru and subsequently settling at Mashan in
Atyap Chiefdom. A need birthed their advancement down to Magata, Kacecere,
Zali (Malagum) and then to their present abode, Kafanchan, where they discovered enough games and protection from slave raiders, due to the thickly forested environment and thus chose to stay. In the early years of the Fulani Jihad of the early 1800s, the Fulani ran being annihilated by the
Kajuru Hausa chief. Usman Yabo led his people from Kajuru to settle in a place they named Jama'a Dororo meaning "people of Dororo" and founded an
emirate amidst the people who gave him and his people the portion of land where they stayed, south of
Fantswam territory. After the formation of the Plateau
province (1926), in 1933, the British colonial authorities encouraged the migration of the Hausa-Fulani community of about 955 from Jama'a Daroro to Kafanchan town. The new community settled in the area they called "Jama'a Sarari", a Hausa-Arabic phrase meaning "people of the plains". The Jama'a Emirate is a
vassal state of the
Zaria Emirate. In addition to the colonial officers and missionaries who came in the 1900s, the completion of the busy railway line linking the
Kaduna station with the
Kuru and the
Port Harcourt railway stations in 1927, enabled Kafanchan to experience a heavy influx of migrants from all over the country in search for job and trading opportunities, most notably, the
Igbo people from Nigeria's southeast, many of whom left before the
Nigerian Civil War in 1967, although some later returned.
Yorubas mainly from
Ibadan,
Ogbomosho and
Offa in the southwest also came and settled in considerable amounts in the expanding town, some of whom brought with them their handworks and trades. A good number of the Igbos were engine drivers or rail engine mechanics. A result could not be ascertained until the new democratic regime came into being. However, in the year 2001, the then-governor of Kaduna State,
Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, created the Fantswam and Nikyob-Nindem chiefdoms amidst over ten others in the
Southern Kaduna area, thereby partially ending the 20th-century imposition of the Fantswam people and her kins under emirate rule. However, the Jema'an emirate remains an institution of the Hausa-Fulani inhabitants. Today, Kafanchan is a
melting pot of many Nigerians from parts of southern
Kaduna such as the
Gwong and the
Ham, and other parts of
Nigeria. ==Geography==