Abstract
It is impossible to prove whether there were any, and if so how many, human casualties of the second move, besides the deaths from old age and other natural causes that might be expected during any large-scale migration. Yet there is an enduring conviction in the Maasai community that hundreds if not thousands of people died from starvation, disease, exposure or gunshot wounds — a claim which suits the current mood for reparations. This is refuted in oral testimony from elders who took part in the move as children. Also, there are apparently no written reports of casualty figures or descriptions of Maasai being deliberately shot dead by British forces or African askaris under their control. This chapter will begin by comparing different accounts of what happened, then and now, before returning to the story of Leys’s investigations and the resumption of the second move. It will end by speculating about the identities and motivation of other pro-Maasai whistle-blowers who may have supplied Leys with information.
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For heaven’s sake don’t think me a hero. I am only a cranky anachronism — a democrat in a country where every social, political and economic circumstance makes for slaver y … . Norman Leysl
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Notes
F. H. Goldsmith, John Ainsworth: Pioneer Kenya Administrator, 1864–1946, being the hitherto unpublished memoirs of Col. John D. Ainsworth (London: Macmillan, 1955), pp. 82–5. ‘Giddy Masai’ presumably comes from Kipling: ‘some share our tucker with tigers,/and some with the gentle Masai/(Dear boys!),/Take tea with the giddy Masai’, The Lost Legion (1895).
G. R. Sandford, An Administrative and Political History of the Masai Reserve (London: Waterlow & Sons, 1919), p. 33.
M. P. K. Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement in Kenya (Nairobi: OUP, 1968), pp. 207, 126–7; Girouard to Harcourt, Tel. 217, 7 Oct. 1911, in response to CO to Girouard, 5 Oct. 1911, CO 533/91. For the ongoing row, see Bowring for Gov., No. 57, 29 Jan. 1913, CO 533/116; Bowker to Stordy, 23 Oct. 1912, in No. 57 and sequentially.
K. King, ‘The Kenya Maasai and the protest phenomenon, 1900–1960’, JAH 12 (1971), pp. 120–31; Waller refers to Taki in Spear and Kimambo, Expressions.
K. Tidrick, Empire and the English Character (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), pp. 177–9, 188.
My thanks to Peter J. Ayre for finding additional information in antiquarian sources including Anthony Dyer, Men for All Seasons: The Hunters and Pioneers (Agoura, CA: Trophy Room Books, 1996). The others are not cited in the bibliography since I did not consult them directly.
Errol Trzebinski, The Kenya Pioneers (London: Heinemann, 1985), p. 139.
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© 2006 Lotte Hughes
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Hughes, L. (2006). In Search of the Truth. In: Moving the Maasai. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246638_3
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