The Nupe occupied the region near the Niger–Benue confluence, at the southern edge of the central Sudan. Their location connected the savannah of the north with the forest regions farther south, making Nupe country a meeting point for influences arriving from both directions. Linguistic evidence and oral tradition suggest that the Nupe were indigenous to their present area rather than recent migrants from Hausaland or Bornu.

Before the era associated with Tsoede, also called Edegi among the Hausa, the Nupe were divided into five main subgroups: the Ebe, Beni or Bini, Ebagi, Bataci or Batache, and Dibo or Zitako. These communities formed the loose Beni confederacy. The sources also preserve the memory of kings who ruled before Tsoede, suggesting that the tradition concerns political unification rather than the creation of the Nupe people themselves.

Tsoede is described as a culture hero and mythical founder of the Nupe kingdom. One interpretation treats him as the personification of a chain of developments that produced a supratribal state. The process united sedentary Nupe communities represented by the Beni confederacy with riverine Kyedye or Kede groups, as well as other communities that included assimilated Yoruba, Gwari, Kanuri, and Igala immigrants.

Tsoede is believed to have flourished in the early sixteenth century, although the dating remains uncertain. Hausa references to the Nupe reach back to the fifteenth century, and from that period the Nupe expanded numerically through the settlement and assimilation of immigrants from Yoruba territory, Igala, Bornu, Gwari, and among the Kambari. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Nupe rulers also established diplomatic and commercial contacts with neighbouring states, especially the Hausa cities.