Abstract
This chapter will explore in more depth the real and symbolic nature of relationships between leading settlers and Maasai. Little serious research has been done on the personal interactions between settlers and Africans in Kenya, let alone those specific to the Maasai. There is of course a genre of sentimental settler diaries and memoirs that talk fondly of relationships with domestic servants; they could be called the ‘my faithful boy’ genre. At the other extreme, scholars have made sweeping remarks about the innate brutality of relationships between employers and workers. My evidence, drawing heavily on Maasai and settler oral testimony, suggests relationships of greater complexity and nuance than have been previously acknowledged. The alleged blood-brotherhood pact may help to explain this. In exploring these relationships, one also finds more evidence of Maasai involvement in the labour market post-1913 than other studies have acknowledged, evidence that substantial numbers returned to the highlands from the Southern Reserve after the second move, and intriguing reports of criminal collusion between settlers and their favourite henchmen against the colonial state.
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Nasoore [Colvile] was a very good man to the Maasai. He was told by Delamere: ‘If you want your cattle to increase, employ the Maasai to take care of your livestock.’ And the cattle of Nasoore became ten million. Swahili Musungui, assistant to Gilbert Colvile
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Notes
See Elspeth Huxley, White Man’s Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1935), pp. 53–5. Her description of Laikipia, as shown through Delamere’s eyes, was mouth-watering.
Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was murdered near Nairobi in January 1941. The killer was never found. See James Fox, White Mischief (London: Penguin, 1984);
and Errol Trzebinski, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (London: Fourth Estate, 2000).
Kathryn Tidrick, ‘The Masai and their Masters’, Chapter 5 of Tidrick, Empire and the English Character (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990);
Kathryn Tidrick, ‘The Masai and their Masters’, African Studies Review, 23 (1980), 15–31.
G. R. Sandford, An Administrative and Political History of the Masai Reserve (London: Waterlow & Sons, 1919), p. 129; Narok District A/R 1925, KNA, p.19.
E. Cole, Random Recollections of a Pioneer Kenya Settler (Woodbridge: Baron Publishing, 1975), p. 46. The sheep were badly hit by heartwater in particular in 1919.
Bruce Berman, Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya (Oxford: James Currey, 1990), p. 62.
Also J. Lonsdale in Berman and Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley, Conflict in Kenya and Africa, Book 2: Violence and Ethnicity (Oxford: James Currey, 1992);
Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau (Oxford: James Currey, 1987).
A. Clayton and D. C. Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), p. 150. This percentage was much lower than that of other ethnic groups, e.g. 72 per cent of Lumbwa males were working, and 72.8 per cent of Kikuyu from Kiambu.
D. M. Anderson, ‘Policing, prosecution and the law in colonial Kenya, c 1905–39’, in D. M. Anderson and D. Killingray (eds), Policing the Empire: Government, Authority and Control, 1830–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991).
Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau (Oxford: James Currey, 1987), p. 13.
C. S. Nicholls, Elspeth Huxley: A Biography (London: HarperCollins, 2002).
Norman Leys, Kenya (London: The Hogarth Press, 1924), pp. 160–2.
D. M. Anderson, ‘Master and servant in colonial Kenya, 1895–1939’, JAH 41 (2000) describes the range of legislation affecting African workers in this period.
A. Clayton and D. C. Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), p. 151.
M. Merker, Die Mäsai (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1904, 1910), p. 70 of Spiritan translation.
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© 2006 Lotte Hughes
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Hughes, L. (2006). Highland Games: Settlers and Their Farm Workers. In: Moving the Maasai. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246638_7
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