How Lenana gave away Samburu land

By Amos Kareithi

The lush grasslands and beautiful glades of the Great Rift Valley, whose sons dictated the proceedings with their glittering spears, sent the colonialists giddy with excitement.

As soon as they finished constructing the Uganda railway, British officials proclaimed the undulating highlands a fitting winter home for London and Europe’s aristocrats.

They plastered advertisements declaring the magic of the protectorate’s big game, drawing more settlers bewitched by the pastures, as they plotted and schemed how to outwit the fearless Maasai morans who honed their battle skills by killing lions and raiding their neighbours.

Their legendary prophet, Batiany, was Maasai’s spiritual leader. His mystical powers had predicted a string of catastrophes, which were later to weaken his community’s fighting machine force, leaving them weak and vulnerable.

The first disaster, rinderpest epidemic, had come from Sudan in 1885 when the British authorities who were quelling the Madhist rebellion had imported some cows from Crimea, near Russia, to feed their troops.

The epidemic witnessed for the first time in the sub-Saharan region spread through East, Central and South Africa like bushfire, wiping out cattle and destroying the economies of pastoral communities.

The epidemic was compounded with small pox and sleeping sickness, crowning a string of disasters, which convinced some historians that at that time, the environment had gone mad.

When Batiany passed away in 1890, he ordered his son Lenana to be enthroned Laibon Kitok, much to the chagrin of his elder brother Senteu, who was the natural heir apparent.

Lenana started off on a confrontational mood, attacking his brother Senteu and Laikipiak Maasai residing in Laikipia, leading to a battle which splintered the community and cost it heavily.

Affixing thumbprint

It is against this background that victorious Lenana warmed up to whites in 1895, marking the start of a friendship that would elevate him into a Paramount Chief, but cost his community its most valuable heritage, pastures.

After receiving basketfuls of gifts, herds of cattle and a raft of sweet promises, Lenana and his council of 19 elders ratified an agreement on August 10, 1904 by affixing their thumbprints.

The British administrators were led by the commissioner of the East African Protectorate, Donald Stewart, and witnessed by deputy commissioner, C B Hobley, who sealed the treaty with the royal seal.

"We, the undersigned, being the Laibons and chiefs of the Maasai having, this August 9th, 1904, met Sir Donald Stewart, and discussed the question of a land settlement scheme for the Maasai, have, of our own free will, decided that it is for our best interests to remove our people and flocks from any land that may be thrown open to European settlement," reads the treaty.

The agreement also declared that the community had surrendered its claim to Rift Valley and gave away the Loroki plateau, which was at the heart of the Samburu Community.

"Lenana allowed the morans to accompany the Kenya African Rifles as auxiliaries in the expeditions across the country after the treaty. In return the Maasai were given part of the livestock seized by the troops. They used this to restock their herds," Peter Waweru, a Laikipia University college history lecturer explains.

Previously, Charles Eliot had advertised Maasai land abroad, convinced it was ‘immoral for any community’ to own so much land in a continent where the "... Africans were so lazy they did not care to be rich".

Following Lenana’s agreement, the Maasai were to vacate the Northern reserve encompassing Laikipia and Loroki, while the southern reserve was vested in the community "... for as long as the Maasai would exist as a community".

However, when Lenana died in 1911, the settlers claimed he had left a dying wish that all his people be amalgamated in the same reserve.

They produced a document complete with Lenana’s thumb print to justify their eviction of the Maasai from Laikipia plateau to Kajiado and Narok areas, which had been declared fit for human habitation in hurriedly compiled reports by white experts.

Residents protested

One of Lenana’s brothers, Legarishu, refused to move but he was summoned to Government House and threatened with detention and confiscation of his cattle if he incited people not to move.

A magistrate hearing a case protesting the eviction remarked there was nothing he could do as "this was an agreement between two independent powers, Britain and Maasai."

The occupation of Laikipia plateau by the settlers was, however, delayed by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 as all the white farmers were dispatched to the battlefront.

In the ensuing vacuum, Samburu herdsmen moved in to graze in the unoccupied Laikipia causing the government to send an expedition in 1921 led by Castle Smith that pushed them to Suguta Marmar where Northern Frontier Provincial Commissioner, Kittermaster, had established a boundary.

Castle also tried hard to drive out the Turkana who had strayed to Baragoi from Lodwar but they fled to Suguta Valley where all their animals were wiped out.

Devastated the Turkana returned to Samburu and pleaded with the local DC, Cairn, in 1922 to be allowed in Samburu, now that their livestock had perished in the valley.

In the meantime Edward Grigg, then the governor of the colony, declared that the white highlands had been surrendered to the settlers by the Maasai and extended to as far as Loroki as per Lenana Agreement of 1904. In a meeting in Kisima in 1929, Grigg ordered the Samburu to vacate Laikipia and Loroki plateau including Maralal town, where the administrative headquarters of Samburu is situated.

As the eviction campaign intensified, the Maralal based Samburu DC was forced to dismantle some dairy industries and factories in 1929, in a move calculated to enable white settlers occupy his area.

Violence engulfed Samburu as residents protested the removal from their ancestral land, as sympathetic administrators opposed the district’s annexation as part of the white highlands.

The DC wrote numerous petitions to the colonial secretary in London forcing the plight of the Samburu, whose development had been in limbo, to be put before a land commission which had been constituted.

When Carter Commission of 1933 started its work, it gave the Samburu a voice to challenge the settlers’ claim of Laikipia and Loroki plateaus, wondering why the area did not have a single European name in a stormy meeting at Kisima.

The settlers retorted that Loroki belonged to the Maasai, who had surrendered it to them, arguing that while the name meant a place for cattle, the Samburu were known as Loiborgeneji, people of white goat.

Ironic twist

The Carter Commission report asserted the right of the Samburu to Loroki plateau but with an injunction, so as not to destroy the ecosystem, the pastoralists would not be allowed to stock more than 40,000 head of cattle.

In an ironic twist of fate, Carter declared that no goats would be allowed in Loroki. Francis Lekolol, former Nairobi PC recalls: "Maralal, Poro and the whole of Loroki plateau was without goats. If a woman gave birth, her husband had to obtain a special licence from the DC to bring a goat for slaughterer as tradition demanded."

The licence (kardasi) was so treasured that it was wedged in a forked stick, hoisted in the air to serve as a visible explanation for the accompanying goat.

If one was found with a goat without the licence, it was safer to disown ownership or risk heavy punishment.

So as to make sure that only 40,000 animals were grazed in the plateau, grazing schemes were established and guards employed to keep count of the animals.

Each family was allocated a quota and all the animals in the plateau branded with letter J by the government, but the residents devised their natural brands, implemented through applying the sap of the sisal-like orpopongi tree.

Lekolol, 70, recalls how his father, Lekolol Nyibeyio had to migrate to Wamba, 110km from Maralal rather than live with draconian regulations.

He elaborates, "By then, Samburu was a closed district. Visitors had to get permits, which allowed them to be in Samburu for only three days. Goats were so rare in the area that some people mistook them for dogs."

Lekolol says that his family only returned to Loroki in 1964 after the rules were scrapped, adding that he and his community members now enjoy unrestricted grazing fields.

He and his age mates were luckier than morans who were initiated in 1920s, the Mekuri age group who became the laughing stock after the colonial government disarmed them.

The Samburu morans persistently invaded white farms in Laikipia killing labourers, prompting the government to deliver a crippling blow in 1935 when it sent levy forces to the area.

Battered board

"Every father with a son (moran) was supposed to surrender two spears. Those who refused had their animals confiscated, while others were slaughtered. The fathers were forced to disarm their sons," Letiwa Letimalo adds.

When the restrictions were lifted in 1959, the residents felt their hard fought independence had come four years before the rest of the country became free.

About 107 years after Lenana gave out Loroki plateau to settlers, relics of the bitter past still linger at Suguta Marmar, where a battered board warns that Samburu, home to over 150,000 people, is still a closed district.

—akareithi@standardmedia.co.ke