798 MASAI, TURKANA, SUK, NANDI, ETC. 



clay. The more powerful of these divisions reverted to a wholly pastoral 

 life, a semi-nomad existence, and a devotion to cattle which caused them 

 to raid and ravish in all directions to obtain and maintain enormous herds. 

 The weaker Masai — subsequently to be known as the Burkeneji, Gwas' 

 Ngishu* (literally a contraction of Gwaso Engishu), Nyarusi (Enjamusi f), 

 Kwavi — lost the greater part of their oxen in the tribal war which took 

 place between the agricultural and pastoral sections. Some of the agricultural 

 Masai remained living on the Gwas' Ngishu Plateau (Eonata Nyuki) till 

 they were expelled by the Nandi and forced to take refuge among the 

 Bantu Kavirondo. A branch of them (Essegelli) settled in the upper half 

 of the Nyando Valley between the Nandi and Lumbwa country, only to 

 be finally wiped out by these fierce mountaineers. The Nyarusi clan of 

 agriculturists found a refuge at the south end of Lake Baringo. The 

 Burkeneji, who remain to this day the most primitive of all the Masai, 

 were driven by the Turkana-Siik some fifty years ago from the western 

 coast-lands of Lake Eudolf to the inhospitable country on the south and 

 south-east of that lake. 



Meantime the pastoral Masai had taken possession of the southern 

 half of the Eift Valley, of the Laikipia Escarpment (which bounds that 

 valley to the north-east), and, in fact, of the greater part of inner East 

 Africa, from Ugogo and the Unyamwezi countries on the west and south 

 to Mount Kenya and Galaland on the north, and eastward to the 

 hundred-mile strip of more or less settled Bantu country on the littoral 

 of the Indian Ocean. Prospering mightily and increasing in numbers by 

 reason of their valour and their dedication of all the young able-bodied 

 men of the tribe to fighting for at least twelve years of their manhood, 

 the pastoral Masai became the lords of East Africa about seventy or eighty 

 years ago. When they invaded Eastern Africa, they probably found the 

 Nandi-Lumbwa people in po-session of the plateau region west of the 

 Rift Valley; the Bantu in the plains and forests; and lingering remains 

 of the old Dwarf nomad tribes in the dense woods or more arid tracts, who 

 were allied to the South African Bushman or Hottentot. The ancestors 

 of the Nandi tribe to a great extent held their own against the Masai 

 invasion, but the Bantu only survived in the dense forests of Kikuyu and 

 in the lands bordering the Victoria Nyanza, the Indian Ocean, the slopes 

 of Kenya and Kilimanjaro, and in the somewhat arid Kamba country. 

 Not a few of these Bantu races, like the Wa-gogo, Wa-chaga, A-kikuyu, 

 and, to some extent, the A- kamba. have become thoroughly imbued with 



* This name in Masai- " Gwaso " or " Hwaso Engishu "—means "River (of) Cattle." 

 It is now taken to refer to the uninhabited plateau region due east of Mount Elgon 

 and north of Nandi. 



t Enja-musi means " wizards." 



