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Many ethnic groups that had already
formed settlements in the region were forcibly displaced by the incoming Maasai, while
other, mainly Southern Cushitic groups, was assimilated into Maasai society.
The Nilotic ancestors of the Kalenjin and Samburu likewise absorbed some early
Cushitic populations.
Settlement in East Africa
The Maasai territory reached its
largest size in the mid-19th century, and covered almost all of
the Great Rift Valley and adjacent lands from Mount Marsabit in the north to Dodoma in the south. At this time the Maasai, as well as
the larger Nilotic group they were part of, raised cattle as far east as
the Tanga coast in Tanganyika (now mainland
Tanzania).
Raiders used spears and shields, but were most
feared for throwing clubs (orinka) which could be accurately thrown from up to
70 paces (appx. 100 metres). In 1852,
there was a report of a concentration of 800 Maasai warriors on the move in
what is now Kenya. In 1857, after having depopulated the "Wakuafi wilderness"
in what is now southeastern Kenya, Maasai warriors threatened Mombasa on the Kenyan coast.
The period of expansion was followed
by the Maasai "Emutai" of 1883–1902. This period was marked by
epidemics of contagious
bovine pleuropneumonia, rinderpest (see 1890s
African rinderpest epizootic), and smallpox. The estimate first put forward by a
German lieutenant in what was then northwest Tanganyika, was that 90 percent of cattle and half of wild animals
perished from rinderpest.
German doctors in the same area
claimed that "every second" African had a pock-marked face as the
result of smallpox. This period coincided with drought. Rains failed completely
in 1897 and 1898.
The Austrian explorer Oscar Baumann travelled in Maasai lands between 1891 and 1893, and
described the old Maasai settlement in the Ngorongoro Crater in the 1894 book Durch
Massailand zur Nilquelle ("Through the lands of the Maasai to the
source of the Nile"): "There were women wasted to skeletons from
whose eyes the madness of starvation glared ... warriors scarcely able to crawl
on all fours, and apathetic, languishing elders. Swarms of vultures followed
them from high, awaiting their certain victims." By one estimate
two-thirds of the Maasai died during this period.
Starting with a 1904 treaty and
followed by another in 1911, Maasai lands in Kenya were reduced by 60 percent
when the British evicted them to make room for settler ranches, subsequently
confining them to present-day Kajiado and Narok districts.
Maasai in Tanganyika (now mainland
Tanzania) were displaced from the fertile lands between Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro, and most of the fertile highlands near Ngorongoro in the
1940s.
More land was taken to create
wildlife reserves and national parks: Amboseli National
Park, Nairobi National
Park, Maasai Mara, Samburu National
Reserve, Lake Nakuru National Park and Tsavoin Kenya; and Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tarangire and Serengeti National
Park in Maasai are pastoralist and
have resisted the urging of the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments
to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle. They have demanded grazing rights to many
of the national parks in both countries.
The Maasai people stood against
slavery and lived alongside most wild animals with an aversion to eating game
and birds. Maasai land now has East Africa's finest game areas. Maasai society
never condoned traffic of human beings, and outsiders looking for people to
enslave avoided the Maasai.
Essentially there are twelve
geographic sectors of the tribe, each one having its own customs, appearance,
leadership and dialects. These subdivisions are known as the Keekonyokie,
Damat, Purko, Wuasinkishu, Siria, Laitayiok, Loitai, Kisonko, Matapato,
Dalalekutuk, Loodokolani and Kaputiei.
Recent advances in genetic analyses
have helped shed some light on the ethnogenesis of the Maasai people. Genetic genealogy, a tool that uses the genes of modern populations to trace
their ethnic and geographic origins, has also helped clarify the possible
background of the modern Maasai.
Maasai society is strongly patriarchal in nature, with elder men, sometimes joined by retired
elders, deciding most major matters for each Maasai group. A full body of oral
law covers many aspects of behavior.
Formal execution is unknown, and normally payment in cattle will settle
matters. An out-of-court process is also practiced called 'amitu', 'to make
peace', or 'arop', which involves a substantial apology.
The Maasai are monotheistic, worshipping a single deity called Enkai or Engai.
Engai has a dual nature: Engai Narok (Black God) is benevolent, and Engai
Nanyokie (Red God) is vengeful.[31] The "Mountain of God", Ol Doinyo Lengai, is located in northernmost Tanzania. The central human figure in the
Maasai religious system is the laibon whose roles
include shamanistic healing, divination and prophecy, and ensuring success in war or adequate rainfall.
Whatever power an individual laibon
had was a function of personality rather than position. Many Maasai have also
adopted Christianity and Islam. The Maasai are known for their
intricate jewelry.
A high infant mortality rate among the Maasai has led to babies not truly
being recognized until they reach an age of 3 months ilapaitin. For
Maasai living a traditional life, the end of life is virtually without ceremony, and the dead are left out for scavengers.
A corpse rejected by scavengers is seen as
having something wrong with it, and liable to cause social disgrace; therefore,
it is not uncommon for bodies to be covered in fat and blood from a
slaughtered ox. Burial has in the past been reserved for great chiefs,
since it is believed to be harmful to the soil.
Traditional Maasai lifestyle centers on their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The
measure of a man's wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50
cattle is respectable, and the more children the better.
A man who has plenty of one but not
the other is considered to be poor. A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth,
leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back
what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.
All of the Maasai’s needs for food
are met by their cattle. They eat the meat, drink the milk and on occasion,
drink the blood.
Bulls, oxen and lambs are slaughtered for meat
on special occasions and for ceremonies. [Though] the Maasai’s entire way of
life has historically depended on their cattle... more recently, with their
cattle dwindling, the Maasai have grown dependent on food such as sorghum,
rice, potatoes and cabbage (known to the Maasai as goat leaves).
Influences from the outside world
Maintaining a traditional pastoral
lifestyle has become increasingly difficult due to outside influences of the
modern world. Garrett Hardin's article, outlining the
"tragedy of the commons", as well as Melville Herskovits' "cattle complex" helped
to influence ecologists and policy makers about the harm Maasai pastoralists
were causing to savannah rangelands.
This concept was later proven false
by anthropologists but is still deeply ingrained
in the minds of ecologists and Tanzanian officials. This influenced
British colonial policy makers in 1951 to remove all Maasai from the Serengeti
National Park and relegate them to areas in and around the Ngorongoro
Conservation Area (NCA).
The plan for the NCA was to put Maasai interests above all else, but this
promise was never met.
Due to an increase in Maasai
population, loss of cattle populations to disease, and lack of available
rangelands due to new park boundaries, the Maasai were forced to develop new
ways of sustaining themselves.
Many Maasai began to cultivate maize and other
crops to get by, a practice that was culturally viewed negatively. Cultivation
was first introduced to the Maasai by displaced WaArusha and WaMeru women who
were married to Maasai men; subsequent generations practiced a mixed
livelihood.
To further complicate their situation;
in 1975 the Ngorongoro Conservation Area banned cultivation practices. In order
to survive they are forced to participate in Tanzania’s monetary economy.
They have to sell their animals and
traditional medicines in order to buy food. The ban on cultivation was lifted
in 1992 and cultivation has again become an important part of Maasai
livelihood. Park boundaries and land privatisation has continued to limit
grazing area for the Maasai and have forced them to change considerably.
Over the years, many projects have
begun to help Maasai tribal leaders find ways to preserve their traditions
while also balancing the education needs of their children for the modern
world.
The emerging forms of employment
among the Maasai people include farming, business (selling of traditional
medicine, running of restaurants/shops, buying and selling of minerals, selling
milk and milk products by women, embroideries), and wage employment (as
security guards/ watchmen, waiters, tourist guides), and others who are engaged
in the public and private sectors.
Many Maasai have moved away from the
nomadic life to positions in commerce and government. Yet despite the
sophisticated urban lifestyle they may lead, many will happily head homewards
dressed in designer clothes, only to emerge from the traditional family
homestead wearing a shuka (colorful piece of cloth), cow hide sandals and
carrying a wooden club (o-rinka) - at ease with themselves.
The central unit of Maasai society
is the age-set. Young boys are sent out with the calves and lambs as soon as
they can toddle, but childhood for boys is mostly playtime, with the exception
of ritual beatings to test courage and endurance.
Girls are responsible for chores such as
cooking and milking, skills which they learn from their mothers at an early
age. Every 15 years or so, a new and individually named generation of
Morans or Il-murran (warriors) will be initiated.
This involves most boys between 12
and 25, who have reached puberty and are not part of the previous age-set.
Girls cannot be circumcised One rite of passage from boyhood to the status of
junior warrior is a painful circumcision ceremony, which is performed without anesthetic.
This ritual is typically performed
by the elders, who use a sharpened knife and makeshift cattle hide bandages for
the procedure. The Maa word for circumcision is emorata. The boy must
endure the operation in silence.
Expressions of pain bring dishonor,
albeit temporarily. Any exclamations can cause a mistake in the delicate and
tedious process, which can result in lifelong scarring, dysfunction, and pain.
The healing process will take 3–4
months, during which urination is painful and nearly impossible at times, and
boys must remain in black clothes for a period of 4–8 months.
During this period, the newly
circumcised young men will live in a "manyatta", a
"village" built by their mothers.
The manyatta has no encircling
barricade for protection, emphasizing the warrior role of protecting the
community. No inner kraal is built, since warriors neither own cattle nor
undertake stock duties. Further rites of passage are required before achieving
the status of senior warrior, culminating in the eunoto ceremony, the
"coming of age".
When a new generation of warriors is
initiated, the existing Il-murran will graduate to become junior elders, who
are responsible for political decisions until they in turn become senior
elders.
This graduation from warrior to
junior elder takes place at large gathering known as Eunoto. The long hair of
the former warriors is shaved off; elders must wear their hair short.
Warriors are not allowed to have
sexual relations with circumcised women, though they may have girlfriends who
are uncircumcised girls. At Eunoto, the warriors who managed to abide by this
rule are specially recognized.
The warriors spend most of their
time now on walkabouts throughout Maasai lands, beyond the confines of their
sectional boundaries.
They are also much more involved in
cattle trading than they used to be, developing and improving basic stock
through trades and bartering rather than stealing as in the past. One myth
about the Maasai is that each young man is supposed to kill a lion before he is
circumcised.
Lion hunting was an activity of the
past, but it has been banned in Southeast Africa—yet lions are still hunted
when they maul Maasai livestock, and young warriors who engage in traditional
lion killing do not face significant consequences.
Increasing concern regarding
lion populations has given rise to at least one program which promotes
accepting compensation when a lion kills livestock, rather than hunting and
killing the predator. Nevertheless, killing a lion gives one great value and
celebrity status in the community.
Young women also undergo excision ("female circumcision,""female genital
mutilation,"
"emorata") as part of an elaborate rite of passage ritual called "Emuratare," the ceremony that
initiates young Maasai girls into adulthood through ritual circumcision and
then into early arranged marriages .
The Maasai believe that female
circumcision is necessary and Maasai men may reject any woman who has not
undergone it as either not marriageable or worthy of a much-reduced bride
price. In Eastern Africa, uncircumcised women, even those highly educated
members of parliament like Linah Kilimo, can be accused of not being mature enough to be taken
seriously.
To others the practice of female
circumcision is known as female genital mutilation, and draws a great deal of
criticism from both abroad and many women who have undergone it, such as Maasai
activist Agnes Pareiyo. It has recently been replaced in
some instances by a "cutting with words" ceremony involving singing
and dancing in place of the mutilation. However, the practice remains deeply
ingrained and valued by the culture.
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