800 MASAI, TUllKANA, SUK, XANDI, ETC. 



the ."Masai nietliods and customs of warfare, even thonq-h tliey may still 

 retain their n»'i,M'o features and ];antu languages. 



When the Maskat Arabs first commenced the trading operations which 

 led to tlieir ojjening up tlie interior of Eastern Africa (about 1835), they 

 already found that tlie INIasai were a serious obstacle. They were a proud 

 people, wlio would not stand the slightest bullying or maltreatment on the 

 part of the Aral)s or their l)lack mercenaries, and a few wholesale massacres of 

 Arab caravans by the ]\Iasai warriors gave the coast traders a dread (which 

 frequently degenerated into panic) of these lithe fighters, armed with 

 spears of great lengtli or great breadth. In the earlier 'fifties of the 

 last century the Masai raided to within sight of the Island of ^Mombasa. 

 Their successful progress in the north was checked by the Gala and 

 Somali, and by the aridity of the desert country north of the Tana Eiver. 

 Southwards the Masai might have carried their raids towards Tanganyika 

 and Xyasa. but they encountered a tribe as warlike as themselves — the 

 Wa-hehe, who had been virilised by a slight intermixture of Zulu blood, 

 the result of a celebrated return to Central Africa on the part of a small 

 section of the Zulu people in the first decades of the nineteenth century. 

 The Masai probably reached their apogee about 1880. Since that time 

 they have greatly declined in numbers, power, and pugnacity, owing to 

 the repeated cattle plagues that swept down through Eastern Africa and 

 destroyed so large a proportion of the cattle, which to the pastoral Masai 

 were the one source of food. Before this jjeriod, however, a section of 

 of them had, in raiding, returned to tiieir original home on the Xandi 

 highlands, and had sorely cut up the agricultural Masai — the Gwas' 

 Ngishu — who still remained there. Scattered bands of these vegetarian 

 .Masai took refuge at the south end of Lake Earingo and amongst their 

 Burkeneji brothers near Lake Kudolf, and even fled so far afield in their 

 panic as to reach parts of East Africa not far from the Indian Ocean, such 

 as Taveita, at the eastern base of Kilimanjaro. These settlements of 

 agricultural ]Masai in that direction were called by the Swahili traders 

 "Kwavi," a name that no ^NJasai can recognise or explain, but whicli has 

 been perpetuated owing to its adoption by Krapf. The furious attacks 

 of the N'andi and lAimbwa aided the extinction of the agricultural 

 Masai. That brancli of them called the " Segelli," wliich was established 

 in tiie I'pper Nyando ^'alley, was completely extinguished, and all the 

 villages on tlie Gwas' Xgishu Plateau were destroyed, the remnant of the 

 Gwas' Xgishu flying to the borders of Kavirondo.-^^" At the present day, 

 therefore, the .Masai are represented mainly by their pastoral section, which 

 still ranges over Eastern Africa from the equator to six or seven degrees 



* Tliey are now established in fiourishiiig settlements under the white man's 

 protection at tlie Kldania IJavine. 



