In this blog mini-series, we've explored the journey of the Bantu people, from their West African homeland, as their culture spread across sub-Saharan Africa in a series of great migrations. Beginning no later than 2000BC and lasting at least three millennia. With our focus upon East Africa we have seen how indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures did not fare well with the rise of agricultural practices. We've also discovered more about how the Bantu culture diversified into distinct modern identities, such as the Chagga of Kilimanjaro.
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| Maasai - Photo: Stu Westfield |
We close this series with a look at another major group, the pastoralists. Their origins, beliefs and how they interacted with the early Bantu incomers. As well as in modern times, how the most iconic and recognizable of pastoralist tribes, the Maasai now struggle to retain rights to their traditional lands and culture.
Early Kushtic Pastoralism in East Africa
Ethiopia is the ancient home of the Kushtic language. Most of the present Bantu and Nilotic languages in Kenya and south east / central Tanzania reveal evidence of borrowing from Kushitc languages, including words relating to cattle keeping, circumcision initiation and aversion to fish. From the Horn Of Africa, these tall and relatively light skinned pastoral Kushtic people expanded southwards into the great savannah grasslands of Kenya and northern Tanzania, about 3000 years ago.
The Nilotes
Between 1000 and 500 BC, Southern Sudanese pastoralists moved east and south into the old Kushtic zone of Kenya and Tanzania, assimilating some of the previous Horn Of Africa diaspora population. Their arrival occurred shortly before the introduction of iron to East Africa.
The Bantu meet Nilotic Pastoralism
As the Bantu progressed eastward, they probably learned about sheep and cattle from Sudanic speakers living in north Uganda and Tanzania, near Lake Victoria.
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| Bantu and Nilotic migrations overlaid on a map of present day geography |
Around this time the climate turned drier and the existing lakeside aquatic fishing culture became less widespread. The more successful pastoral groups saw this practice as uncouth and unclean. Here, there is an interesting, but culturally unrelated, parallel to the British Neolithic farmers and keepers of domesticated livestock.
Stable isotope analysis has startled the archaeological community by showing a rapid and widespread change from a marine to terrestrial diet (ie from fish to domesticated plants and animals) as people moved from a Mesolithic to a Neolithic culture. This could be a consequence of domestication, or a kind of fish taboo. - Michael Richards, (Simon Fraser University) & Rick J Schulting (University of Oxford)
The pastoralists placed such an importance and value upon cattle that their geographic distribution was confined to regions of extensive grasslands. Eg: The Crater Highlands of North Tanzania, the Rift Valley and Kenyan highlands. It is probable that sorghum and millet were also cultivated, evidenced by pots and grinding equipment used in the preparation and storage of grain. This added a diversity of diet which helped to see the pastoral population through drought, crisis and epidemic.
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| Ngorongoro - Photo: Stu Westfield |
The arriving Bantu exploited areas unsuited to livestock grazing such as the fringes of coastal mangroves, which were avoided by the Kushitc and Nilotic tribes due to the presence of tsetse fly. To the west of a line from Mount Kenya to Kilimanjaro, Bantuization did not take hold until the period 1100-1600AD. Dominant in this region until 1500, were the Southern Nilotes. Expansions, assimilation and conflict between these tribes continued to ebb and flow, until ended by the Maasai invasion in the seventeenth century.
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| Inside the boma - Photo: Stu Westfield |
The Maasai
The Maasai trace their geographic origins back to South Sudan. They adopted neighbouring customs, such as age-set social organisation and circumcision. Their language, Maa, is part of the Nilotic family, related to the Dinka and Kalenjin, who also have strong pastoral origins. Most Maasai now also speak English and Swahili.
The proto-Maasai evolved into three separate groups:
- Samburu - settling in north central Kenya
- Tiamu
- Maasai - southern spread into Northern Tanzania
Early European Contact
Joseph Thompson is the 19th Century British explorer you likely haven't heard of, but actually have. As the Thompson's Gazelle is named after him. His expedition style was progressive and ahead of his time, avoiding hostilities and never killing indigenous people. His motto speaks volumes about his courage and restraint: "He who goes gently, goes safely; he who goes safely, goes far."
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| Tommys - Photo: Stu Westfield |
His book Through Masai Land documented his 1883 expedition from the Swahili coast, around the foothills of Kilimanjaro, within sight of Mount Kenya and onto the Victoria Nyanza (Lake Victoria). As he traversed the savannah, he had several tense encounters with fearsome Maasai warriors.
Thompson died far too young, at the age of 37 due to illness contracted from his travels. Another lesser known legacy is that Through Masai Land was the inspiration for H. Rider Haggard to write King Solomon's Mines.
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| Photo: Stu Westfield |
Colonial Displacement of The Maasai
During the 1940's many Maasai were displaced from their ancestral lands. They were moved away from the fertile grazing between Mounts Meru and Kilimanjaro and most of the the highlands near Ngorongoro. More land was taken in Kenya and Tanzania to create extensive wildlife reserves and national parks: Amboseli NP, Nairobi NP, Masai Mara, Samburu NR, Lake Nakuru NP, Tsavo, Lake Manyara NP, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tarangire and Serengeti NP's.
Pastoralists and the balance of nature
Pastoralism in the human story of evolution is relatively recent. The same could be said for almost every other activity conducted by modern humans. It reeks of double standards when people with far bigger carbon footprints and consumptive behaviours, ignorantly admonish indigenous peoples while still claiming to be conservationists.
About fifteen years ago I sat in on a lecture by an astronaut who was part of the 1970's space programme. In his presentation he showed aerial photographs of East Africa, where drought had devastated the environment and many people had died of famine. But he then went on to blame the pastoralists for being the cause of their own predicaments, in words that they pretty much deserved it.
He was playing to his mainly wealthy and middle-class audience, effectively saying global habitat destruction couldn't possibly be anything to do with your choices regarding plastics, pollution, consumption and waste. No, its all down to those goat herders! The audience loved it. Their palpable sense of validation and self-congratulation was repulsive.
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| Photo: Stu Westfield / Image: WikiCommons |
It is meddling with this ecosystem by outsiders that is the cause of habitat degradation. The prickly pear cactus is native only to the Americas. It was introduced to East Africa by colonialists as an ornamental plant. However, it is also a tasty fruit to elephants and baboons. With these additional wildlife vectors this invasive species has spread out of control to the extent it now threatens biodiversity, food security and human well-being.
In conjunction with the Northern Rangelands Trust, a solution is being implemented by the cattle herders. Cochineal bugs, which only eat prickly pear, are raised and multiply on cacti within greenhouses. When mature, the bugs are then placed next to uninfected prickly pear in the grazing areas. The aim is the complete removal of the prickly pear, so grasslands can recover. Thus reinstating a healthy environment, benefitting both pastoralists and wildlife.
Today's Challenges
Cattle are central to the Maasai identity and way of life, they meet all their needs for sustenance: Meat to eat, milk and occasionally blood to drink. But with displacement, the Maasai have become dependent upon carbohydrate staples and cabbage.
Despite co-existing with wildlife on savannah grasslands for hundreds of years, the Maasai are seen by some conservation organisations as incompatible with National Parks and Game Reserves. In April 2022, the Guardian reported that 150,000 Maasai face eviction by the Tanzanian government as their land has been allocated for conservation and commercial hunting.
Given that current wildlife conservation is fundamentally failing in its primary task of maintaining healthy habitat, wildlife populations and indigenous peoples. To evict the Maasai is either willfully or ignorantly turning a blind eye to the connection the tribe has with the land. A connection which has been sustainable for both them and wildlife, until the interference of others with their big ideas.
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| Moran - Photo: Stu Westfield |
But even worse is to evict and potentially destroy a people's culture to create a playground for very wealthy people to shoot animals for fun. In June 2022, thirty Maasai were injured and at least one killed while protesting against a 1500sq km land grab. Which is to be used for an elite luxury development and private game reserve by the Dubai Royal Family.
How many times have we heard that such developments will bring jobs and benefit local communities? In reality, obscenely powerful people will lie, deceive and betray to get all their own way, as it is their instinctive nature to do so. Meanwhile, traditional pastoral cultures are displaced, deep connections to the land are torn away, callously violated and forever spoiled.
And if 'money-talk' is the only currency on the table that is understood: Then further depopulation of the Maasai culture from their homelands will be of a bigger loss and do more damage to Tanzania's tourism revenue and reputation, than any amount of champagne and bullets replacing them.
Rightly, the final word here ought to come from a Maasai;
As a Maasai myself, I provide something of an insider’s perspective on the issue at hand. When it comes to land rights, the Maasai have suffered more than any other community in Tanzania. The community has lost more than 60 per cent of its pre-colonial territories to wildlife conservation in northern Tanzania. The famous wildlife sanctuaries like the Serengeti, Manyara, Tarangire, Arusha, Mkomazi and NCA were carved out of Maasailand. In public discourse and practice, there is both a patronizing attitude and treatment, a marginalization and othering that has turned our people into strangers in their own land. The indigenous Maasai lifestyle and mode of livelihood is often ridiculed and the Maasai people are viewed conservatives, relics of the past. The total sum of these discourses and practices is a Maasaiphobia that we are now experiencing in the wake of climate change-induced dispossession by conservation. - Leiyo Singo, Aug 3 2022, writing for The Republic
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| © Mdogo, The Republic Aug 3 2022 |
Stu Westfield
Ranger Expeditions
Sources
UNSECO General History Of Africa Vol III
Ch 22: The East African Interior. C. Ehret, University of California, Los Angeles
UNSECO General History Of Africa Vol IV
Ch 19: Between the Coast and The Great Lakes. C. Ehret, University of California, Los Angeles
UNESCO General History Of Africa Vol V
Ch 27: The interior of East Africa: The peoples of Kenya and Tanzania 1500-1800 W.R. Ochieng, senior lecturer, Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya.
Touch not the fish: The Mesolithic-Neolithic change of diet and its significance. Michael Richards, (Simon Fraser University) & Rick J Schulting (University of Oxford). researchgate.net
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/kenyans-find-unique-way-to-fight-invasive-cactus-plant/2470897
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jun/06/beetle-v-killer-cactus-kenyan-herders
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