The objects were given by Spring to Grand-Duke Adolphe with the help of Paul Eyschen, the Minister of State. They found their way to the collections of the Section Historique which had the aim of creating a small ethnographic museum complementing the historical collections of Luxembourg. The curator of the Section Historique, Nicolas van Werveke, mentions these objects for the first time in his yearly report of 1896, which confirms that they must have arrived in Luxembourg by 1896. He made a detailed inventory two years later, probably according to the information provided by Albert Spring. He mentions, for the most part, lances, javelins and other traditional weapons. He also lists civil objects such as drums, rattles, chairs, mats, charms, vases, snuffboxes, etc. The names of the people and the locations mentioned in the inventory as drafted by van Werveke indicated that the objects originated from East and Central Africa. They correspond to the regions that Spring travelled through in 1892-1893.

On June 1^st 1893, the Luxemburger Wort reproduced a letter written by the wife of a German officer stationed in Africa. It describes a punitive expedition against villagers who may have attacked a German caravan. Unable to find the chief of the village, they killed one of his allies along with the latter's wife and father. The chief who was executed by the Germans was called Mninitwana (or Mwinyi Mtwana, according to the most common spelling found in the scientific literature). This former merchant had fled his home region by the coast due to his inability to pay off his debts. He went to trade and fight farther in-land and allied with the Sultan of Zanzibar. He swore to protect the commercial caravans of the Arabs and became the undisputed chief of the region around the village of Mdaburu. However, as early as the 1880s, Chief Mwinyi Mtwana emancipated himself from Zanzibar's tutelage and began to collect passage rights for his own benefit, first from Arab caravans who then chose other routes to avoid Mdaburu, and then also from Europeans, whom he continued to welcome in a friendly manner. Having allied himself with the Hehe who were fighting against the Germans around 1891, Mwinyi Mtwana and his son—whose men raided all the caravans which were traveling in the area—had become targets for the Germans.

The opportunity to attack arose when Spring passed through the area on his way back to the coast. Under the military command of officers Tom von Prince and Alfred Sigl, the Germans and their allies reached Mdaburu in the middle of the night of March 10^th to 11^th, 1893. Their troops consisted of five European officers and 126 askaris from the regular German army (Schutztruppe), supported by Spring and his 24 African mercenaries, who were joined by around a hundred warriors hastily recruited from the surrounding area. They launched the attack on Mwiniy Mtwana's camp at around 3 a.m., while the village was asleep. The Hehe fighters and Mwiniy Mtwana's guard were quickly defeated. One by one, the village huts were systematically burned, forcing the occupants to leave and give themselves up as prisoners. In one of the first huts destroyed, the Germans captured the Sultan and his father.

According to Spring, the attack ended by 8 a.m., and the Germans first took the time to inspect the rich bounty they had amassed in the center of the village: rifles, a small cannon, a Mauser pistol looted from a German caravan, the flag of Mwiniy Mtwana, jewelry and Hehe shields - some of which are now at the MNAHA. The German officers then declared the Sultan and his father guilty and condemned them to death by gunshot, a sentence which was carried out immediately.