The broad outlines of the origins and early history of the present ethnic groups in Kenya appear to be well estab1ished.1 The Nilotic-speaking populations, including the "Nile-Hamites," entered the area from the north, coming from somewhere in northern Uganda or the southern Sudan. The Bantu groups in western Kenya entered from the west circling around the northern shore of Lake Victoria and extending as far as its eastern edge. The Gusii, for example, are a fairly recent offshoot of the Luhya who are in turn related to other Bantu groups to the west of them in Uganda. The Bantu-speaking groups in the central Kenya highlands, most prominently the Kikuyu-Embu-Meru and the Kamba, are thought to be descended from populations that dispersed from south- eastern Kenya or northeastern Tanganyika after entering East Airica from the west, south of Lake Victoria,

The differentiation of the early "Nile-Hamitic" speakers into the proto-Kalenjin and the equivalent ancestral Tatog groups occurred some time in "the early years of the Christian era" (Ehret l968:l68). The location of the proto-Kalenjin during the following several centuries was probably in the northern part of the Rift Valley, perhaps in the Lake Rudolf basin.

By 1000 A.D. the proto-Kalenjin can be placed with some certainty in the area east and northeast of Mount Elgon. This is the former location mentioned in the oral histories of each of the present Kalenjin-speaking groups. Shortly after 1000 A.D.. the ancestors of the Pokot separated from the other Kalenjin groups who then moved southward into the Rift Valley and adjacent highlands. This proto-Kalenjin group underwent a vast expansion between 1500 and 1700 which probably involved the imposition of their language and culture, "in many ways identical with modern Masai pastoral culture," on the previous inhabitants of the valley (Ehret l968a:70).

During this period the ancestral Maasai were a small group to the northeast. But in the subsequent centuries Maasai-speaking groups rapidly advanced southward through the high plains of the Rift Valley. sweeping other groups before them or assimilating them into Maasai~speaking tribes (and at the same time absorbing many cultural elements from these early Kalenjin peoples).

Estimates based on the genealogy of the laibons, or ritual experts, place the Maasai in the Kenya highlands by the late sixteenth century (Oliver 1963:200). By the middle of the nineteenth century the Maasai "occupied a stretch of country which covered some five hundred miles from north to south, and at its widest, one hundred and fifty miles from east to west" (Huntingford 1969:105).

This expansion undoubtedly caused major reorganizations in surrounding populations. The present tribal divisions of the Kalenjin are relatively recent, despite the early presence of Kalenjin speakers in Kenya, and most probably relate to the effects of this Maasai expansion.2

Having yielded the lower areas to the Maasai, the Kalenjin groups settled in the high forested areas west of the Rift Valley where they were able to maintain defensible settlements supported by horticulture, with most of their pastoral activities focused in the areas along the edges of the forests (see the discussion of the kaptich system in Chapter 1).

Some present Kipsigis consider a place on the western edge of the Rift Valley, south of Mount Londiani (about three miles northeast of the town of Molo) to be Sachang'wan, [the place of] division into fourths, where the four main groups, Nandi, Kipsigis, Tugen and Keyo went their separate ways. The Nandi and Kipsigis went to the northwest and southwest respectively. Nandi speakers were established along the southern edge of the Nandi escarpment by the early seventeenth century (Ehret 1968:170).3 Kipsigis identify Mount Blacket, near the northwestern corner of their present location as Tulwet ap Kigsigis, Mount Kipsigis, where they are said to have held their first male initiations as a distinct social entity.

During the later half of the nineteenth century the Maasai were wracked by internal strife. At the same time a series of human and cattle epidemics swept through East Africa. Cholera in 1869 was followed within a few years by smallpox and in the 1880: rinderpest and pleuropneumonia killed most of the cattle and vast amounts of game over the whole area. The most seriously affected were the Maasai, who, weakened by these plagues, suffered a series of military defeats. By 1883 the Uasin Gishu Maasai ceased to exist as a group (Middleton l965:343) as a result of several defeats at the hands of the Nandi and other surrounding tribes. The Sigilai Maasai in the Nyando valley between the Kipsigis and the Nandi, were similarly broken.4

The decline of the Maasai coincided with a growing power among the Nandi and the Kipsigis. By 1880 the Nandi were enjoying great military success against the several tribes around them, including intermittently other Kalenjin speakers: the Tugen and Keyo. At the same time the Kipsigis consolidated their gains against the Maasai, both in the north and the south (pushing them out of Sot), the Luo, and the Gusii, whom they drove out of the area of Bureti, Thus at the time of the establishment of colonial rule the Kipsigis were in control of a very large and fertile area which, despite the later alienation of extensive areas to European ownership, made them one of Kenya's wealthiest tribes in terms of natural resources.5

The primary objective of intertribal warfare was seizing cattle (control of land was a by-product of military success rather than a recognized goal). The various cattle epidemics, which greatly increased the scarcity of this most valuable asset, led to a great intensification of intertribal hostilities. Raiding became more frequent, and in many cases, led to major battles involving heavy losses.

Military organization functioned primarily on offense, with large scale raids organized by war leaders (kiptaiinik ap luget). Specific roles in the attack force were assigned by age grade, though older men were not excluded from joining a raiding party (see Peristiany 1939:161ff. for a discussion of the organization of military formations). Informants report that older uncircumcised youths also joined in raids (usually against their fathers‘ orders) and in some cases seized cattle and captured children who then had to be kept for them until after their own initiations.6

Defensive responses to aggression were much less organized, being basically ad hoc and involving all able-bodied men responding on a local basis, rather than according to age-set or boriet. Alarms were spread by women who shouted reports from hilltop to hilltop.7

The only exceptions to this spontaneous pattern of defense seem to have been between the Maasai and the Kipsigis. Informants describe several instances during this period in which these tribes arranged battles after exchanging challenges. In one instance a large force of Maasai penetrated the Kipsigis area as far as Chemagel (Sotik town) and seized a great number of cattle. A Kipsigis force rallied to the defense but hesitated to join battle until reinforcements from Bureti could arrive. The Maasai, encouraged by their success and outnumbering the initial Kipsigis defenders, waited for a decisive battle. When an overwhelming number of Kipsigis reinforcements arrived, some Maasai chose to withdraw, but others were determined to see it through, and several of them out off their ears (laden with ornaments), giving them to the others to take home as evidence of their bravery. All who remained were then surrounded and driven into a swamp and killed. Such stories about the Maasai were repeatd to me in the 1960s with emphasis placed not on the victory over the Maasai as an enemy group but on the bravery and determination of individual Maasai warriors.

Between hostilities brief periods of truce were arranged. Minor trade in cattle, agricultural products and iron tools and weapons occurred between individuals along the borders. Between the Kipsigis and Maasai there were even visits exchanged by small groups of young men who traded cattle.8 It was also recognized that such visits served as reconnaissance patrols to gather information for the next series of raids. A few men in each tribe were bilingual (some of them at least being naturalized captives). Members of the various 'Dorobo" hunting bands, some of whom spoke a Kalenjin dialect, and some Maasai, often served as intermediaries. Not having any cattle, they were safely outside the scope of the hostilities. It also appears that there were small numbers of people along the Maasai-Kipsigis border who were bilingual and bicultural, whose allegiances shifted with the exigencies of the moment, so that the cultural frontier between these two tribes was at once both distinct and continuous.9

There were also some Kipsigis who spoke the Gusii and Luo languages and some intertribal trade was conducted with these groups, particularly during times of famine. But, according to my sources (who admittedly did not live near those groups), there was no pattern of exchanging visits with these tribes nor any culturally or socially intermediate groups along their borders.

Only one instance of military cooperation between the Maasai and Kipsigis is remembered. Sometime in the late 1870s or early 1880s a large Kipsigis force joined the Maasai in a long march to the south but failed to find any other tribes to plunder. Finally, faced with starvation the campaign was cancelled, the two groups returning in mutual disgust. In the late 1880s the Kipsigis conducted a series of extensive raids against the Maasai ranging far to the south.10 The Kipsigis never allied themselves to either the Gusii or the Luo.

Because of the much greater population densities among the Gusii and Luo, campaigns against them were of shorter duration but often resulted in extremely large battles such as the battle of Ng'oino sometime shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century in which the Gusii killed large numbers of Kipsigis, and the battle of Mogori around 1889 in which a large Kipsigis expedition was caught between a combined force of Gusii and Luo (normally mutual enemies) and almost totally annihilated. One survivor estimated that the Kipsigis lost six hundred men at Mogori.11 Despite such dramatic reversals, the pressure of Kipsigis aggression led to the establishment of stockaded compounds among the Gusii (as Nandi aggression did among the Bugusu to the north).

The Kipsigis valued warfare against the Maasai not only because of the potential for greater spoils, compared to raiding the Gusii or Luo, but also because the Maasai shared the greatest number of conventions about the conduct of hostilities.12 Throughout the accounts of the few survivors of the precolonial period runs the feeling that battle with the Maasai was the purest form of combat. Stress is placed on the norms against killing older people or children (the latter were taken captive), against sexual assaults on captured women, and on the many signs of surrender or truce recognized by both sides. It is reported, for example, that any Maasai who, having lost his weapons, climbed a tree during the battle was considered to have retired from the field and was not attacked even if the rest of his group were defeated. similarly, although an enemy would be killed on sight if found near a Kipsigis settlement, a Maasai who performed an act of truce would be received as a guest and rarely threatened or molested.

In contrast to this, warfare against the Gusii and Luo was much less regulated. Although some signs of surrender were recognized, informants claim that men were not taken alive. Unlike the Kipsigis, the Gusii and Luo were extremely reluctant to move about at night because of the fear of supernatural agents, a difference which gave the Kipsigis a great tactical advantage. Kipsigis informants describe raids against Gusii compounds at night in which they set fire to the roofs and slaughtered people indiscriminately as they tried to escape their houses. The Kipsigis also enjoyed success against the Luo by raiding domestic settlements at night.

Accounts of warfare with these groups lack the ambivalence between hostility and respect used in discussing the Maasai. As far as I can determine, these tactics have given the Kipsigis a reputation among the Gusii and Luo, not as superior warriors, but as something akin to barbarians.

Nevertheless, the Kipsigis recognized the Gusii as extremely dangerous in open battle because of their large numbers. They do not, however, speak of individual acts of bravery by Gusii warriors. It has been reported that Gusii men sometimes entered battle with their women behind them chiding them to attack. This would have been an intolerable offense to any self-respecting Kipsigis warrior (i.e., a "graduate" of the initiations). The Kipsigis opinion of the Luo was much more disparaging. In discussing combat against them, the Kipsigis cite numerous instances of what they consider cowardice.13

Different attitudes toward each of these tribes can also be seen in the treatment of captives. It is widely recognized that certain clans are of Maasai origin and that throughout the Kipsigis expansion Maasai captives were incorporated into the Kipsigis tribe. Women and children were also taken in wars with the Gusii, as were Gusii individuals who had fled from witchcraft in their own tribe. During the Kipsigis expansion southward a large number of Gusii families were out off and isolated in the hills east of Bomet. This group was assimilated en masse. These Gusii were so numerous that in several cases they succeeded in re-establishing their own descent group identifications within Kipsigis society. Thus there are today several ortinwek recognized to be derived from Gusii descent groups, The most prominent of these are Boguserek, Kamurwachi, Kamogu, Motoborik, and Narachek. Members of some of these ortinwek, which are still heavily represented in the eastern parts of Bomet Division, today retain a few Gusii practices.14

No clans are recognized to be of Luo origin to my knowledge and, consistent with their general opinion of this tribe, my informants insisted that very few Luo, even women or children, were incorporated into the Kipsigis.

Incorporation into Kipsigis society was marked by the ng'woset ceremony performed by the captor on his return from battle or as soon thereafter as possible (in order to establish undisputed claim to the captive). Children were adapted as members of the captor's family and became part of his oret (specific cases are known in which a Gusii mother and her children were adopted into different Kipsigis families). Older girls and women were adopted with slight variations in the ceremony as wards so that although they were incorporated into a captor's household they could also be married by him.15 Once "naturalized" by ng'woset, the captive had full rights of membership in Kipsigis society. If the captive was a child, he or she was initiated at the appropriate time with other children. Once they had learned Kipsigis customs and language (even if never losing their original accents) they were not discriminated against.16

When first contacted by the British, the Kipsigis had thus secured a strong position in the area. The Maasai were receding before the superior numbers of the Kipsigis (supported by a mixed economy in the rich soil of the hills that allowed a denser population than did pure pastoralism), and the Gusii and Luo had been driven out of the natural boundaries of the local ecological zone (the Gusii confined to a separate plateau area, and the Luo limited to the lower, drier Kano Plain). Kipsigis successes against the Gusii and Luo were due to a series of factors: a high level of aggression on the part of individual Kipsigis warriors, superior military organization based on age-grades, a lack of the intra-tribal hostilities found in these other two tribes (which the Kipsigis did not know about), and a willingness among the Kipsigis to take advantage of Gusii and Luo trepidation about fighting at night.

Although some Arab caravans and a few Europeans passed through the southern part of Kipsigisland before the end of the nineteenth century, the Kipsigis were not on the main trade routes and did not experience any significant contact with people other than their immediate neighbors prior to the establishment of British colonial control (Manners 1967:22lff.).

The issue that precipitated major British action in the area was defense of the caravan route and railroad that passed along the northern edge of the Kipsigis area, ending at Kisumu on Lake Victoria. During construction of the railroad, Kipsigis and Nandi warriors repeatedly helped themselves to great quantities of building materials (track, spikes, plates, telegraphic wire, and so forth). These incidents, combined with other acts of violence by the Nandi against both Europeans and neighboring tribes, led to a series of punitive expeditions against that tribe between 1895 and 1905. In all, over 600 Nandi men were killed and 10.000 cattle and 18,000 sheep and goats seized during the final campaign (Moyse-Bartlett l956:203).

Through skillful diplomacy the British managed to keep moat of the Kipsigis out of the Nandi Wars. A British post was established at Kericho in 1903. Separate treaties were then negotiated with the Kipsigis. It is said that at one of the mass meetings with the British the Kipsigis cut a dog in half, a particularly outstanding example of the traditional practice of sealing an agreement with an unnatural act that would bring retribution on whichever party then broke the accord. This story provides a folk etymology (repeated by Manners 1967:224) for the misnomer Lumbwa which was often applied to the Kipsigis in the early colonial period (from mbwa, ‘Swahili for dog). More real was the lingeing feeling among some Nandi that the Kipsigis failed to support "their own people" against the British.

A major consequence of the location of the railroad and the ensuing hostilities was the separation of Kipsigis from Nandi to an extent never known before, whose significance was marked by the naming of a sub-set of Kipnyige age-set (se Chapter 2, footnote 10). Separated previously only by the limiting factors of local topology, these populations found themselves in the following years organized in different reserves, different administrative districts (in different provinces), and subject to different policies.

Although they did not incur heavy losses in the Nandi Wars, the Kipsigis did not totally escape the taste of British power. In l905, the Kipsigis raided the Maasai to the south of Sot, carrying off large numbers of cattle and captives. "The British thereupon assumed responsibility for exacting penance“ (Low l965:28).17 Four companies of the King's African Rifles (K.A.R.), 600 Maasai irregulars, thirty police and 300 levies (tribes unspecified) joined in a punitive expedition and swept the area around Sotik Post (Bomet), dispersing Kipsigis resistance, freeing Maasai captives, and seizing over 5,000 head of stock (Moyse-Bartlett 19561207). For reasons I was unable to discover, this incident appears to be almost totally forgotten today.

The primary aim of British policy in the following years was "pacification': the elimination of sovereign native military activities. District boundaries were established, and police and K.A.R. forces were used increasingly to suppress cattle raiding (though auxiliaries from one tribe were regularly used against the next and allowed a share of the spoils). Kipsigis-Luo hostilities were suppressed without great difficulty (general mobilizations to fight the Luo occurred in 1936 and several times in 1961-62 but were dispersed without major clashes ([Manners 1967:328]). One reason why armed competition with the Luo was less intense than with the Maasai and Gusii was the very distinct ecological transition between their areas. As Ogot comments for the precolonial period:

The Kipsigis-Gusii border proved more difficult. Shortly before World War I land along the Sondu River between the two tribes was alienated for British settlement (the Sotik estates) to establish a buffer zone, as well as to ‘depastoralise" the Kipsigis (Middleton l965:344). In 1912 the Kipsigis of Sot refused to contain their herds within the limits of the reserve. A brief clash with local police resulted in an armed patrol of seventy men being sent from Kericho. The Kipsigis avoided an open confrontation and 130 heifers were collected as a fine. The patrol then proceeded into Maasai and imposed a fine of 500 head of stock for Maasai raids against the southern Kipsigis (Moyse-Bartlett l956:208).

Over the years Kipsigis living in the adjacent reserve areas persisted in grazing their cattle in the Sotik estates, and strict enforcement of the prohibition against this led to sporadic incidents between these people and representatives of the government (this conflict has continued in recent years even after these estates have been resettled by other Kipsigis).18

Gusii-Kipsigis conflicts also occurred occasionally during the colonial period (as did the theft of cattle from the European estates established between them19), but these did not erupt into any major battles like those prior to pacification. The European settlers left the Sotik area around 1961, and this land has since been divided between Kipsigis and Gusii settlement schemes under government direction. The elimination of the “buffer zone“ was followed by an increase in small scale cattle theft along the new border. In 196? serious incidents prompted the Provincial Commissioners to call a public meeting of the Kisii-Kipsigis Border Committee..20

Persistent cattle raiding between the Kipsigis and the Maasai "caused such uncertainty in 1929 that troops were again called out.” A force of forty-four African soldiers and their European officers established a camp at Chemagel (Sotik town) "to ensure safety for the European population of the area and to restore order between the tribes" (Moyse-Bartlett 1956:447).

Kipsigis continued to settle south of the Nyangores River, in Narok District, some with the approval of the government but many in violation of regulations, Raiding on a small scale continued in the 1960s. In 1965 a series of raids escalated to a general mobilization of Kipsigis men from Sot and most of Bureti. Within twenty-four hours at least 10.000 Kipsigis were on the border. Quick government action, including the use of the General Service Unit (shock troops) restored order. Government reports placed the total number killed at twelve; the people I spoke with claimed over a hundred Maasai had been killed.

World War I pulled the Kipsigis into the wider realm of British East Africa. It has been estimated that in all some 200,000 Africans (including some from West Africa) were involved in the long campaign between the British and the German forces in southern Kenya, Tanganyika, and Portuguese East Africa. The overwhelming majority of the British forces were Africans, drawn from a wide range of tribes. Units of the King's African Rifles were organized on a local (tribal) basis. Nevertheless, this was the first major Kipsigis contact with other tribes in a nontraditional setting. Hundreds, if not a few thousand, Kipsigis men were recruited, starting a long history of service in the K.A.R by this tribe. After the war almost all of these veterans returned to their traditional communities (when the K.A.R. was drastically reduced in size), and it is difficult to determine at this date what effect they had among their tribesmen.

Perhaps the most important way in which the war affected intertribal contacts was indirect and can be seen in terms of the pattern of colonial development arising out of the organizational necessities of the campaign. The hut taxes, for example, which were first introduced in 1911, became increasingly heavy and were collected with increasing thoroughness. By 1916 significant numbers of Kipsigis men were being employed on European farms (in part to raise cash for taxes) to inspire an ibinda sub-set name (“Blu”, after the purple ink pads used to record their thumbprints on work contracts).

After World War I, European settlement in Kericho District developed rapidly under soldier-settler schemes. Increasingly, a major portion of the Kipsigis population became involved in working on these estates. Large numbers of single men as well as many families also moved to European farms and ranches in the Rift Valley. The average length of employment was probably no more than a few years. Here they came into contact with members of several tribes, including most importantly the Kikuyu who were spreading from their crowded reserve to the east of the valley. However, contact with other peoples was rather superficial in most cases as labor camps were generally organized on a tribal basis.

Following the war, tea estates were established in Kericho. By 1930 there were approximately 12,000 Africans employed on them; almost all of them non-Kipsigis (Manners 19671288). Prominent among this work force have been the Luo, Gusii, Kuria, Luhya, and Kikuyu. Colonial policy between the wars aimed at developing the Kipsigis, who were not experiencing the degree of land pressure found among these other tribes, as suppliers of farm commodities for these labor camps, rather than trying to promote direct Kipsigis participation in migratory labor. While this contributed to the relatively high rate of economic advance among the Kipsigis, it also maintained a certain degree of provincialism.

Although Kipsigis women in the 1960s still had much less contact than men with people outside their local communities (by the men's design), hundreds of Kipsigis and Nandi women chose to run away to the towns that were developing in the colonial period. There has thus been a small Kipsigis-Nandi quarter of Nairobi for several decades.

World War II transformed many of the institutions of the colony. Most importantly for the Kipsigis. the King's African Rifles was rapidly expanded. Although exact figures are not available, thousands of Kipsigis served in the K.A.R. Today veterans of the campaign in northern Kenya, the invasion of Somaliland and Ethiopia, and the expeditions in Madagascar and Burma can be found throughout the district. At the end of the war there were 50,000 troops from East Africa in Southeast Asia (Moyse-Bartlett l956|680). For many of these men the experience brought an awareness not merely of other Kenyan tribes, but of the social complexities of the world.20

The post-war period saw another increase in white settlement, and with it increasing contacts with the Kikuyu. Members of this tribe found employment as ‘squatters’ on the European farms north of Kericho along with the local Kipsigis and Nandi. Unlike the other non-Kalenjin peoples in the district, these Kikuyu were in effect homesteading in this area. The 1962 census reveals that "both the Kikuyu and Nandi age-sex structure show populations of long standing in the area" (Ominde 1968:177). Starting in 1961 this expansion grew with many European farms having been sold privately to consortiums of Kikuyu settlers.

Kikuyu shopkeepers and small businessmen have also expanded into the numerous trading centers in the district, often extending beyond the major "towns" dominated by their main competitors, the Asians. In 1965 attacks were made on Kikuyu shops by gangs of Kipsigis in an effort to drive the Kikuyu out or the smaller trading centers in the reserve. Hundreds of Kipsigis shops have also developed, though in some cases where they were in competition with Kikuyu shops the Kipsigis owners subsequently leased their businesses to Kikuyu tenants who were more successful at turning a profit. It is also significant that the first Kipsigis-owned hotel in Kericho (other African hotels are Kikuyu-controlled) was named after the most famous war leader of the nineteenth century, Arap Kisiara.

The other major influx of non-Kipsigis into the district is migrant labor on the tea estates. By 1961 34,00O Africans were employed on these estates, a great number of them with several dependents. The largest non-Kalenjin group in the district are the Luo: 33,144 in 1962 (Ominde 1968:l76). The non-Kalenjin people in the district who are involved in this migrant labor are overwhelmingly between the ages of twenty and forty-four.

Another development of great interest is the employment of individual Luo men on Kipsigis family farms. While the traditional stigma associated with one Kipsigis man working for another has lessened, such employment still carries a very low statue. The Luo employed in this way are usually landless. They are generally paid below the minimum wage levels and are given very substandard housing. This work, and others such as the employment of Luo men to load trucks, reinforces the Kipsigis view that the Luo are best suited to agricultural and manual work that a Kipsigis man considers beneath his dignity (among the Kipsigis such work is traditionally done by women). During my fieldwork [over a decade before Daniel Moi became Kenya's second President] I found the average rural Kipsigis man seemed almost totally unaware of the many prominent positions held by Luo individuals in national institutions. [Of course more recently they are all aware of Raila Odinga and national politics.]

During the 1950s Kenya was racked by the Mau Mau movement and the colonial response to it, the State of Emergency and the suppression of Mau Mau by military force. Although most Kipsigis did not perceive of themselves as being involved in the issues underlying the conflict, the scope of the hostilities and the nature of their position in the colony were such that they inevitably became involved. The British response to Mau Man terrorism included the organization of the Home Guard (a militia with minimal training and equipment), expansion of the various regular security forces (K.A.R., the General Service Unit, the Police constabulary, and the Prison Guards - to handle several mass detention camps), as well as the direct introduction of regular British troops. Although the Home Guard in Central Province, scene of almost all the fighting, was drawn from the local Kikuyu population (the 'loyalists"‘ having been moved into fortified hamlets), for obvious reasons the British drew heavily for military personnel on those tribes that were traditionally hostile to the Kikuyu, and were considered politically "safe" in the colonial context. These groups were primarily Kalenjin and Maasai. A great many more Kipsigis joined, or were conscripted, into the Home Guard in the Rift Valley that protected the “White Highland’ areas. Officers in these units were mostly local European settlers, the majority of whom had served in World War II.

Some Kipsigis maintain that a few Kipsigis individuals attempted to organize a Man Mau unit but were quickly reported to the colonial government. The majority of Kipsigis adults I knew took a view of Mau Mau that was not too different from that presented by the colonial government and the British press at the time. After independence, the Kenya Government countered this interpretation of Man Mau; those the British labeled terrorists were memorialized as freedom fighters. The extreme land shortages of Central Province did not exist in Kericho District, despite the extensive European settlement there, and consequently European farms were not molested by the Kipsigis. As the political events of subsequent years were to show, the Kipsigis had their own fears about the expansion of landless Kikuyu. Nor did the Kipsigis identify with the political issues. In addition to the effects of different degrees of impact on these two groups by colonial institutions, any explanation of the Kipsigis reaction to Man Mau must consider the great difference in the character or these two peoples. While it is beyond the scope of this study to consider the reasons for this difference, it was a commonplace observation in Kenya that on the whole the Kikuyu—speaking groups were much more motivated to political activism and achievement in the whole range of modern institutions than the Kalenjin.

A few years after World War II, a small number of students from the Kipsigis, Nandi, Tugen, and Keyo tribes were attending Alliance High School near Nairobi (then the country's leading African secondary school). Recognizing their common cultural and linguistic ties, and responding at least in part to the presence of a Kikuyu Student Association and a Luo Student Association,22 they fanned their own society. There was no traditional name for the set of "Nandi-speaking" tribes, a colonial term that had rankled the educated among more numerous Kipsigis. So after considering several terms, they chose to call themselves Kalenjin. It means, in each of the dialects, "I tell you/I say to you" and in used in speech much like the British "I say." It is significant that this term was recognized to be a parallel of the term Maasai which means in that language "I say" and is used as a label for a series of distinct jural communities, or "tribes," sharing a similar culture and language. The Alliance students were among the first educated members of their communities, and popularized the term through their later activities in the 1950s, founding the Kalenjin Language Committee (Whiteley 1969:116) which adopted a standardized orthography and promoted Kalenjin literature, and the Kalenjin Political Alliance, founded in 1960 (Bennet l969:77). By 1965 The term Kalenjin as a label of social identity was known by virtually every Kipsigis.

Another indicator of the growing unity of Kalenjin identity can be seen in the reorganization of administrative regions in 1962. The Kenya constitutional conference of that year established that the wishes of the local populations were to be considered as a guiding principle in the reorganization (Ominde l968:14). The Kipsigis chose to transfer Kericho District from Nyanza Province, composed primarily of Luo, Luhya, and Gusii populations, to the Rift Valley which then approximated the original “Nilo-Hamitic" corridor through Kenya (and included most of the areas settled by Europeans).

Although the events of the twentieth century have caused a major transformation of Kericho District and have brought the Kipsigis into contact with numerous ethnic (and racial) groups previously unknown to them, at the time of my research the stereotypes of their immediate neighbors still drew heavily on earlier times.

This is most obvious in the case of the Maasai where intertribal conflicts continued surreptitiously because of the limited control of the government, and where the traditional ambivalence led to attempts at political cooperation among the emerging elite simultaneously with hostilities involving rural border communities. Virtually no Maasai were involved in the major forms of employment in Kericho District. Those few Maasai individuals who were serving in the administration and the police in Kericho District were considered remarkable, not because they were "modernized" but because they seemed to maintain traditional Maasai patterns despite the incongruities that involved. Favorite stories about them included a Maasai government officer posted in Bomet who bought a cow to graze on the lawn by his government house "because he was lonely with only Kipsigis-owned cattle to look at" and who was said to have returned to a bar in Kericho one night after a quarrel with the bartender brandishing a spear fetched from his government residences. The story is an exaggerated example of the internalization of lessons taught in initiation, and at once seems to the Kipsigis to be awe inspiring and comical. Another incident, which occurred during my fieldwork and which I was able to verify, involved a Maasai warrior who was wounded in the larynx by a barbed arrow while raiding a Kipsigis settlement. He was taken by police to Tenwek Hospital near Bomet and was operated on the next day. The Police Inspector, having seen the man and having completed his investigations, waited for the mission doctor to sign the death certificate. The arrow was successfully removed, and after a night's rest at the hospital the young man left for home on his own before he could be charaged or billed.

For the majority of the Kipsigis, who with all their economic modernization do not reject the traditional values and traditional definitions of manhood, the Maasai are people to be admired, to be wary of, and perhaps occasionally to be pitied, not because they fail to live up to Kipsigis values, but because they insist on overdoing it.

The intensive contacts with the Luo, which many Kipsigis have experienced, have tended to confirm rather than contradict the traditional evaluation of this group. The lack of overt hostility toward the Kipsigis is appreciated, but even this is seen by some men as reflecting against the Luo ("they are easy going, but of course they are children”). Many Kipsigis insist that the Luo language is extremely simple, though I didn't meet any Kipsigis who knew more than a few words of greeting. And in many ways beyond the few patterns of employment mentioned above (for example, Luo male participation in Dini Ya Israel, a syncretist Christian movement), they seem by Kipsigis definitions to be lacking the proper dignity and personal strengths of manhood.

The Gusii present a more complex situation. The settlement of West Sotik by Gusii and the continued incidents along the border have led some Kipsigis to a conspiratorial interpretation oi the government's role in their relations with this tribe. Most of the Kipsigis I spoke with, on the farms, were confident that the matter could be settled once and for all by traditional weapons if it were not for government interference. In more modern settings, the Gusii have the reputation, not just among the Kipsigis, of being particularly difficult people to work with, and this again is not one of the Kipsigis virtues. A Kipsigis in charge of organizing soccer teams among tea estate workers told me how the Gusii were impossibly factious while the Kipsigis workers never had trouble building team spirit. Traditionally Gusii society was based on large patrilocal clans, intermarried by also in opposition to each other over land. This is in sharp contrast to the non-localized families, affinal ties, and age-set etiquette of the Kipsigis that allow for easy networking. the Gusii language is considered by many Kipsigis to be a hopeless cacophony. In sum, the Gusii do not fit easily into any of the usual Kipsigis categories of manhood, but increased contact with them has not gained them respect in most cases.

While it lies outside the main focus of this study, it is interesting to note the development of Kipsigis attitudes toward the Kikuyu. Prior to the colonial period, the Kipsigis knew of the Kikuyu but considered them too poor in cattle to bother with. As one man said, "The European brought us together." Today the Kikuyu are seen in terms of their participation in modern roles where they are most formidable competitors. They appear too clever by half for the average Kipsigis. And although the Kipsigis recognize the great economic superiority of the Kikuyu as a whole, they often attribute this to an underlying poverty in the traditional forms of wealth, cattle and land.

To the Table of Centents

To Chapter 5

1 For detailed discussions of precolonial historg see Huntingford (l963), Low (1963), Ogot and Kieran (196 ), Oliver (1963), Sutton (l966), and Weatherby (1967).

2 The Maasai expansion down the Rift Valley isolated small Kalenjin-speaking hunting groups, commonly called Dorobo, in the forests along the edge of Kikuyuland. Other Dorobo groups on the western side of the valley remained in contact with the main Kalenjin groups

3 This date was estimated by Huntingford (l95O:ll) using a fifteen-year span for each age-set.

4 The Sigilai Maasai were one of the remnant groups of the Uasin Gishu Maasai (Huntingford l950|l3).

5 This land base has enabled the Kipsigis to maintain traditional forms of kinship in the 1960s and 70s, as discussed in Chapter 2, while undergoing economic modernization and great population growth.

6 Although the age of male initiates is now lower, and all Kipsigis youth are now initiated by their late teens, this pattern of pre-initiation participation in warfare parallels the appearance during the major Maasai-Kipsigis border incident of 1965 of many "warriors" in their primary school uniforms.

7 Though such reports tend to be fantastically exaggerated as they spread, they are still today hours in advance of police short-wave radio communications,

8 A couple of old men even claimed that they had lent cattle to Maasai partners, though they did not know it the Maasai had a practice similar to the Kipsigis kimanagan loan arrangement. Huntingford (l969:l08) states that the Maasai do not.

9 Some men complained that such people still operated (in 1965) on the Maasai-Kipsigis border, stealing cattle from each tribe to sell to the other. Manners (l967:308) reports the recent development of a similar black market in cattle along all the intertribal borders in the area.

10 0n one campaign the Kipsigis went into the Rift Valley to Sugubo (Subukia?) and brought back many Maasai women and cattle. These women were infected with smallpox that quickly spread through the Kipsigis, killing great numbers of people. In another raid on the Maasai to the south at Maiturugu (?) some of the young Kipsigis men killed and mutilated Maasai women in order to take the brass wire coils from their arms and legs (a novelty at the time). It is indicative of Kipsigis organization that the older men and the “war leaders" (kiptaiinik) did not have the power to stop this. This was later considered one of the sins that brought defeat at Mogori.

11 An estimate of this sort should not be taken too literally. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Kipsigis losses were severe. Another eye witness said that by the afternoon of the battle the Kipsigis dead filled the Sondu River so that one could walk across them like a dam. Following Mogori, initiations were opened early (for Kipsiljoget sub-set of Kipnyige) in order to provide enough hueband-surrogates for the widows. The Mogori campaign was instigated by the men from Sot and that area suffered the greatest number of casualties. Following the loss, large numbers of widows in Sot moved back to Bureti fearing that the remaining men in their area were too few to protect them from the Maasai and Gusii.

12 The following excerpts from an interview with a survivor of the precolonlal wars illustrate the nature of the hostility:

13 This, of course, is the Kipsigis view. There is evidence to support the Luo claims to significant victories over the Kipsigis. Ogot (1967:236) comments about the Kipsigis "They were much better warriors than the Gusii, and it was only after a bitter fight that the Kipsigis were dislodged [by the Jo-Kano Luo] from Nyabondo," a hill near the northwestern corner of the current Kipsigis area.

14 Some families in Narachek clan still possess sets of the heavy iron rings that Gusii married women used to wear on the ankles. On the first night of his marriage, a Narachek man places these on his bride. They are removed the next morning before the bride goes out in public. Women married to Narachek men keep these rings to be used at their sons‘ weddings.

15 0ne informant related that he joined a raid against the Maasai as an uncircumcised youth (following after his older brothers in defiance of his father's orders). Whilethe men went after the Maasai cattle, he captured two young girls who had been hiding in a Maasai hut. His father performed the ng'woset adoption ceremony. Later, when they had been initiated, their captor (then a young man) married them as his first two wives. When I asked how he could marry both, since they were most probably sisters, he replied “They may have been sisters in Maasai, but they weren't sisters when they got to Kipsigis.”

16 One prominent Kipsigis politician was attacked by rumor because he was the son of a Gusii immigrant. Most people refused to give this any value and I do not think the charge has in any way affected the ups and downs of his career.

17 Low's statement here that the people of Bureti joined the British against the people of Sot (Sotik) must be mistaken.

18 The conflict now is not between the "reserve Kipsigis' and the "resettled Kipsigis" (though there are some discontents who grumble about "black Europeans"), but with the government officers from other tribes who enforce the law. Because the regulations are to promote the European strains of cattle, only native oxen are allowed in the settlement schemes. In 1966 one veterinary scout (a Bantu) started seizing and castrating native bulls grazed in the scheme by men from the reserve. A gang attacked his house one night and chopped off his hand and burned it while they forced him to watch. Another government employee was spared when he cried out in a Kalenjin dialect. (The police later made a series of arrests in this case.)

19 The European settlers in this area considered themselves gentlemen farmers. with very large dairy herds and a substantial income from the sale of cream, they distributed skimmed milk free to their workers. Many of them came to view the minor theft of cattle as something of a sport ("the native equivalent of rugby" was one man's phrase) and looked on the expenses involved in recovering the cattle (supplying the police Land Rovers with petrol) as a minor nuisance.

20 lt should be noted that most of these incidents are not instigated by the African settlers themselves, nor appreciated by them. Having signed fifteen-year loans to purchase a few head of grade cattle, they fully recognize that the odds of their being economically destroyed by such raiding are much greater than they are for people herding native cattle.

21 0ne of the most surprising events of the Burma campaign for the East African troops was meeting Black American soldiers who did not understand ‘Swahili.

22These larger, linguistically based, ethnic identities are, in turn, partially the product of the colonial experience.