well as it should (a ritual more elaborately ridiculous than carrying a wheelbarrow on one’s head). But in fact, although many aristocrats were attracted to Kenya in these early decades of immigration, they were not, among settlers, in the majority. Most new arrivals sweating up from the coast had little, if any, capital, and although earls and barons made news, far more settlers emerged from the middle classes. For them there was much hardship, and a crucifying reliance on the bank. When Henry Markham, *12 who moved to the Protectorate with his family in 1908, fell ill six years later, his farm was heavily mortgaged. He had an operation on his liver on the kitchen table and died, leaving his wife and sons with less than nothing.
When Denys first saw East Africa, scores of tribes and subtribes were still hunting and herding across the steppes and mountains, from the agricultural Bantu peoples of the Great Lakes to the tall and scarified cattlemen of the White Nile and the Congo Pygmies, who carried fire rather than made it. The land was trellised with their migration routes, both mythical and historical, and their past was rich with legends of lost cities and founding fathers who slid down to earth on the neck of a celestial giraffe. The majority were settled, including the most numerous, the Kikuyu, a central Bantu-speaking people who emerged as a single group in the fifteenth century and still lived in clusters of family-based villages, cleaving to many of the rituals of their ancient ways. Although most tribes in both Kenya and neighboring German East Africa had long before evolved some form of political superstructure over a kinship organization, and in some cases chiefs exacted tributes, there were no governments ruled by kings, as there were in southern Uganda. Governance in most cases lay in the hands of the heads of small clans, or of local councils composed of elders in an age-set system. But some tribes, such as the Hadza, secretive Bushmen who flitted around the crater highlands in the south firing arrows feathered with bustard vanes, had no chiefs or villages, and no concept of ownership. Hadza had little contact with other people, but most tribes had a hierarchical relationship with their neighbors. In the close papyrus marshes of the sudd—the dense, floating mass of vegetation that obstructs the White Nile—Nuer fought Dinka over cattle and land, and usually won; the Dinka took their revenge on the Bari, a small people who dwelled on the islands on the White Nile. But no tribe succeeded in intimidating the Maasai. For generations, they were invincible in East Africa.
According to their own mythology, the Maasai had migrated from an area north of Lake Turkana half a millennium earlier, reached the Ngong Hills in the seventeenth century, and continued south. Soon their land extended hundreds of miles in every direction. They were not the murderous savages of legend, though that image had been heavily promoted by Arab traders in their bid to keep Europeans off their pitch. It was true, however, that young Maasai men in black ostrich plumes used to raid cattle from the lakes to the coast and were feared by Arab, Bantu, and European alike. But in the 1880s the Maasai were weakened by civil wars, and then by drought and disease. By 1900, they languished in decline, and clans of Samburu, the most northerly group of Maa-speakers, occupied swathes of their lands. Other tribes at a historical low point included the Kipsigi, the most numerous of the pastoral Kalenjin-speaking groups of the western highlands. Their less populous Nandi relations were the most formidable people on the western side of the Rift Valley at the turn of the century, raiding freely and attempting to fend off the white man. Bands of Rendille regularly fought Somalis over camels, on which both were reliant. A Cushitic-speaking Galla people from the eastern deserts, the Rendille, when they did not feel inclined to be disputatious, wandered the
When Denys first saw East Africa, scores of tribes and subtribes were still hunting and herding across the steppes and mountains, from the agricultural Bantu peoples of the Great Lakes to the tall and scarified cattlemen of the White Nile and the Congo Pygmies, who carried fire rather than made it. The land was trellised with their migration routes, both mythical and historical, and their past was rich with legends of lost cities and founding fathers who slid down to earth on the neck of a celestial giraffe. The majority were settled, including the most numerous, the Kikuyu, a central Bantu-speaking people who emerged as a single group in the fifteenth century and still lived in clusters of family-based villages, cleaving to many of the rituals of their ancient ways. Although most tribes in both Kenya and neighboring German East Africa had long before evolved some form of political superstructure over a kinship organization, and in some cases chiefs exacted tributes, there were no governments ruled by kings, as there were in southern Uganda. Governance in most cases lay in the hands of the heads of small clans, or of local councils composed of elders in an age-set system. But some tribes, such as the Hadza, secretive Bushmen who flitted around the crater highlands in the south firing arrows feathered with bustard vanes, had no chiefs or villages, and no concept of ownership. Hadza had little contact with other people, but most tribes had a hierarchical relationship with their neighbors. In the close papyrus marshes of the sudd—the dense, floating mass of vegetation that obstructs the White Nile—Nuer fought Dinka over cattle and land, and usually won; the Dinka took their revenge on the Bari, a small people who dwelled on the islands on the White Nile. But no tribe succeeded in intimidating the Maasai. For generations, they were invincible in East Africa.
According to their own mythology, the Maasai had migrated from an area north of Lake Turkana half a millennium earlier, reached the Ngong Hills in the seventeenth century, and continued south. Soon their land extended hundreds of miles in every direction. They were not the murderous savages of legend, though that image had been heavily promoted by Arab traders in their bid to keep Europeans off their pitch. It was true, however, that young Maasai men in black ostrich plumes used to raid cattle from the lakes to the coast and were feared by Arab, Bantu, and European alike. But in the 1880s the Maasai were weakened by civil wars, and then by drought and disease. By 1900, they languished in decline, and clans of Samburu, the most northerly group of Maa-speakers, occupied swathes of their lands. Other tribes at a historical low point included the Kipsigi, the most numerous of the pastoral Kalenjin-speaking groups of the western highlands. Their less populous Nandi relations were the most formidable people on the western side of the Rift Valley at the turn of the century, raiding freely and attempting to fend off the white man. Bands of Rendille regularly fought Somalis over camels, on which both were reliant. A Cushitic-speaking Galla people from the eastern deserts, the Rendille, when they did not feel inclined to be disputatious, wandered the
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