832 MASAI, TURKANA, SUK, NANDI, ETC. 



The Masai do not believe in a future life for women or common 

 people. Only chiefs and influential head-men possess any life beyond the 

 grave. It is thought that some of their more notable ancestors return 

 to earth in the shape of snakes — either pythons or cobras. The tribal 

 snakes of the Masai must be black because they themselves are dark 

 skinned. They believe that white snakes look after the welfare of 

 Europeans. These snakes certainly live in a half-tamed state in the 

 vicinity of large Masai villages, generally in holes or crevices. They are 

 supposed never to bite a member of the clan which they protect; but 

 they are ready to kill the enemies of that clan and their cattle. When 

 a Masai marries, his wife has to be introduced to the tutelary snake of 

 the clan and rigorously ordered to recognise it and never to harm it. 

 Even the children are taught to respect these reptiles. These snakes 

 sometimes take up their abode near water-holes, which, it is supposed, 

 they will defend against unlawful use on the part of strangers. The 

 fetish snake is often consulted by people in perplexity, though what 

 replies it is able to give must be left to the imagination. The snakes 

 are, however, really regarded with implicit belief as being the form in 

 which renowned ancestors have returned to this mundane existence. 



The Masai also have a vague worship of trees, and regard grass as a 

 sacred symbol. When wishing to make peace or to deprecate the hostility 

 of man or god, a Masai plucks and holds in his hand wisps of grass, or, 

 in default of grass, green leaves. The trees they particularly reverence 

 are the " subugo,'' the bark of which has medical properties, and a species 

 of parasitic fig, which they call the " retete." These figs begin as a small 

 seedling with a slender, whitish stem growing at the roots of some tall 

 tree — a Khaya, Vitex, or Trachylobiwm. Or the fig seedling may develop 

 from a crack high up in the tree-trunk from which it is to grow as a 

 parasite. Little by little the fig swells and grows, and throws out long, 

 snaky, whitish roots and branches, until by degrees it has enveloped the 

 whole of the main trunk of its victim in glistening coils of glabrous 

 root and branch. Gradually these enveloping tentacles meet and coalesce, 

 until at last the whole of the trunk of the original tree is covered from 

 sight and absorbed by the now massive fig-tree, the branches of which, 

 radiate in all directions, and sometimes in their loops and contorted 

 forms come quite close to the ground. The green figs, which grow 

 straight out of the trunk, are sometimes eaten by the boys and girls of 

 the Masai, and their seniors propitiate the tree by killing a goat, bringing 

 blood in a calabash, and pouring it out over the base of the tree-trunk, 

 about the branches of which also they will strew grass. Grass and leaves, 

 in fact, occupy a prominent place in the Masai category of sacred things. 

 I have already mentioned that when peace or peaceful measures are to be 



