Peter Mwaura
3 October 2008
opinion
Nairobi — Champions of Maasai rights say the community was forcibly ejected from their land by the British.
History, however, shows that the Maasai, very much like the biblical Esau, sold their birthright to the British for a "mess of potage", and a little more.
The Maasai liaison with the British at a time when the community was at its weakest enabled them to increase their livestock by raiding neighbouring tribes with the help of the British. For the Maasai, the British came at an opportune time.
First, there was the legend about the ferocity of the Maasai. The legend, as opposed to reality, served them well.
Arab and Swahili traders had put off European explorers from the hinterland with exaggerated accounts of the Maasai fierceness, according to Gordon Mungeam's British Rule in Kenya 1895-1912 and other historical accounts.
Mungeam writes that the Maasai at one time or another roamed the great plains, terrorising other tribes -- from Lake Turkana to Mombasa.
But by the 1880s their power was already on the decline, and while they were still masters of the great plains, the Kikuyu and the Kamba kept them off the forested areas.
Second, outbreaks of smallpox and cholera, as well as quarrelling among themselves, had weakened the Maasai. Each section was headed by a war leader, the laibon.
By 1884, Mbatian, the laibon of the Purko sub-tribe, had established himself as the ruler of all the Maasai. But when he died in 1890, trouble broke out between his two sons, Lenana and Sendeyo, over succession.
Lenana and his followers were badly beaten by his brother and rival Sendeyo and were only saved by the intervention of the British, who offered Lenana and his broken remnants protection at Fort Smith, just outside Nairobi in Kikuyuland.
The British built up Lenana as the Maasai leader and allowed him to increase his herds by raiding the Kikuyu.
The Maasai were friends of the British. For example, unlike the Nandi, they allowed the railway to pass through their land in 1890. They even helped by supplying labour and food.
By March 1896, the British relationship with the Maasai was such that a station specially for the Maasai was set up at Ngong.
By the end of the century, the Maasai and the British had become good partners. Sir Charles Eliot, who became the commissioner and consul-general of the East African Protectorate (as Kenya was then known), noted with satisfaction in December 1900 that Lenana was in receipt of a government subsidy of Sh133.35 a month - a handsome sum in those days -- for his loyalty to the British.
He said Lenana had "proved our best friend among all natives". By 1904, when Lenana signed the treaty under which the northern Maasai were moved to Laikipia, Lenana had become to the British the "laibon of all Maasai".
And with the support of the British he could claim as much, for Sendeyo had in 1902 sued for peace.
The 1904 treaty, under which the Maasai were moved to make room for European settlers, was to "be enduring so long as the Maasai as a race shall exist."
And in 1911, they were moved again from Laikipia to make way for more settlers. Sir Percy Girouard, then the commissioner, claimed that Lenana, who died in March of that year, had left a dying wish that all the Laikipia Maasai move to the southern reserve.
Even though they lost substantial land to the British settlers, the Maasai were the only tribe that benefited directly from colonialism.
There were no punitive military expeditions mounted against them, unlike tribes such as the Kikuyu, Embu, Nandi, Sotik, Kisii, Marakwet and Somali.
On the contrary, the British invited the Maasai to join as levies in the military expeditions against the other tribes.
In the Nandi expedition of 1905, for example, about 1,000 Maasai morans joined the raid. The Maasai "enjoyed themselves thoroughly" in those expeditions, according to colonial administrators.
In those expeditions, the Maasai were often allowed a share of the loot, which invariably consisted of captured livestock. In the process, they grew immensely rich. In 1902-1907 alone, the Maasai are said to have collected about 28,690 cattle and 64,850 sheep and goats as loot. By September 1922, it was estimated that they had about 200,000 head of cattle and two million sheep.
Even though they lost land to the British settlers, the Maasai were still left with more land per head than any other tribe who had been affected by white settlement.
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