801. 



:\rAs.\i. rrnxANA, stjk, nandt, etc. 



444. TATTOOINC HULNJ) A MASAI WOJIAN ts EYES 



110 male Masai is ever seen 

 with beard and moustache. 

 The hair of the head is 

 shaved liy the women, and 

 by the married men who 

 have ceased to be warriors. 

 It is even removed in the 

 same way from the heads 

 of children; but when a 

 ]\lasai youth lias reached 

 2)u1:»erty, and is about to 

 become a warrior, he allows 

 the hair of his head to grow 

 as long as it will. Tugging 

 at the wool, and straighten- 

 ing it as far as lie is able, 

 he plaits into it twisted 

 bast or thin strips of leather. 

 In this way the hair, with 

 its artificial accoinjianiments, is plaited into a number of wisps, and these, 

 coated with red clay and mutton fat, are gathered into pigtails, or 

 ijiteues, the largest of which hangs down over the back, while another 

 droops over the forehead, and there may be one over each ear. The ends 

 of tliese queues are tightly bound round with string, which, like all 

 the rest of the coiffure, is thickly coated with grease and ochre. The 

 whole of the body in the young warriors is constantly anointed with the 

 same proportion of reddisli clay and fat, with the result that they have 

 quite a raddled appearance, and look like statues in terra-cotta; for 

 everything about them may be coated with this preparation of a uniform 

 yellowish red. The Masai practise circumcision, and the clito7ns in the 

 women is excised. Iloth tliese operations take place just before puberty, 

 between eight years and fifteen years of age. The circumcision of the 

 jNIasai has been described in Joseph Thomson's celebrated book. It may 

 be stated briefly that it differs from the same operation elsewhere in 

 Africa in that the frcenuw is also cut, and that a portion of the prcBputium 

 is drawn down below the gl an s, where it heals in a large excrescence of skin. 

 Tiiis is sometimes so tumid as to give the organ the ap}>earance of being 

 provided with a double glans. 



The Masai men do not mar or decorate their skins with patterns in 

 scdVH or in tatloolH;/; but I have noticed on the faces of the won)en in 

 the Naivasha District that ])arallel lines (see illustration) are apparently 

 burnt on the skin round the eves or on the forehead. I could not 



