800 MASAI, TURKANA, SUK, NANDI, ETC. 



the iMasai methods and customs of warfare, even though they may still 

 retain their negro features and Eantu languages. 



When the :Maskat Arabs first commenced the trading operations which 



led to their opening up the interior of Eastern Africa (about 1835), they 



already found that the IMasai were a serious obstacle. They were a proud 



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



part of the Arabs or their black mercenaries, and a few wholesale massacres of 



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



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



spears of great length 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 Grala and 



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



Southwards the 3Iasai might have carried their raids towards Tanganyika 



and Nyasa, 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 numbe--s, power, and pugnacity, owing to 



the repeated cattle plagues that swept down through Eastern Africa and 



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



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



of them had, in raiding, returned to their original home on the Nandi 



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 Baringo 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 Masai can recognise or explain, but which has 



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



of the J^andi and I^umbwa aided the extinction of the agricultural 



JSlasai. That branch of them called the " Segelli," which was established 



in the Upper Nyando Valley, was completely extinguished, and all the 



villages on the Gwas' Ngishu Plateau were destroyed, the remnant of the 



Gwas' Ngishu 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 



* They are now establisli«d in flourishing settlements under the white man's 

 protection at the Eldama Ravine. 



