Misplaced Pages

#755244

73-514: In the Turkana language , Ateker means a distinct group with related customs, laws and lifestyle and who share a common ancestry. Members of one Ateker have a common character of mutual respect in their diversity. Each member group of Ateker occupies its own territory and exercises authority over its own land and people independent of each other. The word Ateker is a generic term for "related peoples" or "relatives" (the term also refers to clan). It

146-519: A Bantu word used by the Bantu peoples of the interior to refer to Iloikop pastoralists . Later writers noted other names used to refer to the same group of people. The Turkana , with whom the northern regions had significant interaction, referred to them as Kor . The present-day Samburu refer to themselves as Lokop (or Loikop), and the Turkana call the present-day Samburu Kor . Meru tradition notes

219-633: A base east of Lake Turkana on three fronts. Pushing southward from the country east of Lake Turkana the Loikop conquered a number of communities to occupy the plateaus adjacent to the Rift Valley . On the eastern escarpment, one front occupied the plateau now known as Laikipia and brought the Ogiek there under their patronage. Another front continued the southward expansion to the southern plateaus, as far as or even beyond Mount Kilimanjaro . The third front occupied

292-637: A community he refers to as Kor, a name by which the Turkana still call the Samburu in the present day. By the end of the Palajam initiations, the developing Turkana community was experiencing strong ecological pressures. Behind them, up the escarpment in Karamoja, other evolvig Ateker societies such as the Karimojong and Dodos were occupying all available grazing lands. Therefore Turkana cattle camps began to push further down

365-529: A distinctive type of long-horned black cattle. It was said that this community once held most of the surrounding country until the Kor and their allies came up from the south and took it from them. Most of the women of this community had an adornment of a single cowrie shell attached to a forelock. This dangling cowrie shell was referred to as esigirait, pl. ngisigira (Karamoja). The Turkana called them Siger and their home Moru Ang'issiger, (later Mt. Siger/Mt. Sekker). As

438-595: A dreamer among them saw strange animals living with the people up in the hills. Turkana warriors were thus sent forward to capture one of these strange beasts, which the dreamer said looked 'like giraffes, but with humps on their backs'. The young men therefore went and captured one of these beasts - the first camels the Turkana had seen. The owners of the strange beasts appear to have struck the Turkana as strange as well. The Turkana saw them as 'red' people, partly because of their lighter skin and partly because they daubed their hair and bodies with reddish clay. They thus gave them

511-410: A palatal consonant and another vowel. Voiceless vowels before a pause are lost after glides and nasals (after de-voicing them). Nonhigh voiceless vowels before a pause are furthermore often lost in general. Turkana has two tonemes , high and low, and one or the other is carried by every vowel. Most syllables carry a high tone, so that low tone is more marked. Some tones are "floating" and not carried by

584-482: A pause: Turkana features advanced tongue root vowel harmony . The vowels /i e o u/ and their voiceless counterparts are produced with an advanced tongue root, while /ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ/ and their voiceless counterparts are produced with a retracted tongue root. The advanced tongue root vowels are usually somewhat breathy in terms of voice. In most circumstances, vowels in any given word must either be all advanced or all retracted in their tongue root position. An exception

657-813: A people known as the Mu-Oko, Mwoko and Muoko/Ma-Uoko (paired variants found in one section). According to Imenti tradition, the Mwoko of that region were also known as Ikara (or Agira); in most other regions, the Ukara (in its variations) and the Muoko (in its variations) are seen as separate. The journals, letters and published articles of the first three missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in East Africa (Johann Ludwig Krapf, Johannes Rebmann and Jakob Erhardt), written during

730-450: A syllable at all. Minimal pairs for tone are rare, and so it is not important in distinguishing words, but it is used to distinguish verb tenses and noun cases, so that it is important in terms of grammar. Turkana is a verb-initial language with both verb–subject–object (VSO) and verb–object–subject (VOS) as basic, unmarked word orders. The single objects of transitive verbs and both objects of ditransitive verbs are unmarked, while

803-463: A tribal confederacy who inhabited present-day Kenya in the regions north and west of Mount Kenya and east and south of Lake Turkana . The area is roughly conterminous with Samburu and Laikipia Counties and portions of Baringo , Turkana and (possibly) Meru Counties. The group spoke a common tongue related to the Maasai language , and typically herded cattle. The Loikop occasionally interacted with

SECTION 10

#1732845423756

876-481: A tribe. Thompson writing in 1883 also recorded accounts of the conflict, stating; Grown bold, they attacked the Masai about fifteen years ago...The Masai were at first beaten, but fighting with the stubbornness of despair, they disputed every foot of the ground. They were driven from the whole of Naivasha and Kinangop, and their enemies still victorious, carried the war into Kapte. Matters now changed however. The Masai of

949-463: Is a tribe of that name. Lokkob is the Rendile corruption for Loikop. Thus it was the old Laikipia Masai, now no longer existing, who were originally called Lokkob by the Rendile. It has been suggested that the term Wakuafi was a Swahili term first used to represent all Iloikop peoples, and later narrowed to represent only the non-Maasai Iloikop. It is believed that the word Humba (or Lumbwa) was, likewise,

1022-429: Is derived from the root ker , which has two root meanings: fear and respect. Ateker, in its true sense, is a union of free people with mutual recognition and respect for each other. In the context of ethnic identity and nationhood, the Turkana language classifies different people with common characteristics as belonging to distinct ateker . The Maa people belong to Ateker a Ngi Maasa Maasai and so on. The Turkana and

1095-449: Is made for vowels that come after /a/ , which can be either advanced or retracted (while vowels coming before /a/ must be retracted). In parallel to this, vowels following the semivowels /j/ and /w/ can be either advanced or retracted, but vowels preceding them must be advanced. However, the semivowels and /a/ do not affect each other: either may occur before the other, despite conflicting in their tongue root position. Vowel harmony

1168-632: Is one of the Eastern Nilotic languages , and is closely related to Karamojong , Jie and Teso of Uganda, to Toposa spoken in the extreme southeast of South Sudan, and to Nyangatom in the South Sudan/Ethiopia Omo valley borderland; these languages together form the cluster of Ateker Languages . The collective group name for these related peoples is Ateker . There is a phonemic distinction with voiceless vowels, which only occur word-finally, and which are only realized as voiceless before

1241-406: Is said to have occurred at a river; ...as for this name,Sampur, there was a time we went somewhere like a river and there was no food, only wild food. So...everyone has to make a bag - sampur, to carry anything edible....it was during a certain mutai when people made those bags Samburu referring to a large, distinctive leather bag ( sampur ) which the Samburu carried: Lorere Lesampur ("people of

1314-471: Is usually controlled by the root of a word, so that the vowels of other morphemes assimilate to the root vowels' tongue root position. However, some suffixes are "strong" and instead assimilate the root along with any preceding suffixes. Prefixes are always weak and do not control other vowels. The vowels paired in such assimilations are /i/ vs. /ɪ/, /e/ vs. /ɛ/, /o/ (from earlier /ə/) vs. /a/, /o/ vs. /ɔ/, and /u/ vs. /ʊ/; either element of each pair will turn into

1387-672: The Kwavi communities (the latter itself later fragmenting into the Laikipiak and Uasin Gishu communities). Indeed, this was stated explicitly by McDonald when he writes that the "..Masai, Kwafi (or more properly Guash Ngishu, for Kwafi, is a Swahili term) and Sambur (or Kore) are three divisions of one tribe,the Eloegop..." Stigand (1913) made notes concerning "the old Laikipia, the Loikop" people and their territory. He stated that "according to (his) informants,

1460-610: The Cushitic , Bantu , and Chok peoples. The confederacy had dispersed by the 21st century. Johann Ludwig Krapf of the Church Missionary Society in East Africa arrived on the East African coast in December 1843. Krapf made his first trip into the interior the following month and encountered reports of the nearby Okooafee and their southern neighbors, the Quapee. He deduced that the two groups were

1533-556: The Iloikop wars . MacDonald noted that; Civil war broke out between the Masai and Guash Ngishu who were helped by their kinsmen of Lykipia. After some initial defeats, the Masai detached the Sambur of Lykipia from the hostile alliance and then crushed the Guash Ngishu so utterly that the latter could no longer hold their own against the dispossessed Nandi and their kindred, and ceased to exist as

SECTION 20

#1732845423756

1606-464: The Maasai territory extended from Naivasha to Kilimanjaro. The mythological rendition of this account as record by Straight et al. (2016) states that "three Maa clan clusters – Loiborkineji, Maasai, and Laikipiak – came out together...from the (baobab) Tree of Tangasa". From these accounts, it is possible to surmise that the society once referred to as Loikop fragmented into the Samburu , Maasai and

1679-494: The "poor Wakwavi ... [who,] having long since been robbed of their cattle by the Maasai, were compelled to turn their attention to agricultural pursuits". Charles New concurred in 1873 with his predecessors' assertion that the Maasai and "Wakuavi" called themselves Orloikob, which he translated as "possessors of the soil"; both groups were pastoralists. In his 1887 account, Through Maasai Land , Joseph Thompson made an observation which

1752-617: The 1830s resulting in recorded instances of famine in 1829 and 1835 in Ethiopia and 1836 in Kenya. Among Kenyan Rift Valley communities this arid period, and the consequent series of events, have been referred to as Mutai . A feature of the Mutai was increased conflict between neighboring communities, most noted of these has been the Iloikop wars. Earlier conflicts preceding the wars appear to have brought about

1825-419: The 1840s and 1850s, are the earliest documented evidence of Loikop history. Although the writings of the first missionaries were consistent in their descriptions of the Loikop, they have been widely disregarded in favor of later written and oral sources. It has been suggested that the reason is the difference between their views of the Loikop and those of later writers, and views held by 20th-century Maasai after

1898-929: The Ateker subdivisions of the Turkana/Ngiturukana and the Karimojong/Ngikarimojong, the Karimojong/ngikarimojong subscribe to Nakadanya which is believed to be the holly ground for Ngimatheniko/Ngikori (Moroto District), Ngipian/Ngimuriai (nabilatuk and Nakapiripirit Districts), Ngibokora (Napak District) and the Dodoth/ngikaleeso of Kaabong and Karenga Districts. the Turkana/Ngiturkana of Northwestern Kenya are subscribed to Moru-anayiece as their holly and Ancestral ground. However, they speak related languages and can hear each other. Among members of

1971-513: The Jie advanced eastward and entered the present Karimoja territory at Adilang, an area that was at this time occupied by the Maliri. The nature of contact seems to have been hostile for the Maliri retreated eastwards toward the region of Koten Mountain where they stayed for a while. This state of affairs did not hold for long, for the people from the hill of Turkan, now calling themselves Turkana, broke away from

2044-457: The Jie at Kotido and started advancing eastward. This brought extreme pressure to bear on the Maliri at Koten, causing this group to break in two. One group of Maliri, still known as such to the Karamojong but as Merille elsewhere, moved further eastward settling on the east of the Turkana escarpment. The other group, calling themselves Pokotozek moved south and arrived at Nakiloro, which lies on

2117-544: The Karamojong and Lango people belong to one Ateker . The ancestral cradleland of the Ateker communities is thought to lie in Longiro, 'the place of engiro' in the Sudan. According to Turkana traditions recorded by Emley (1927); the Turkana were originally members of a tribe called 'Dung'iru' (i.e Longiro), which was said to live between Turkana and the Nile river. The traditions state that

2190-423: The Loikop north of Nakuru...". Stigand gave a detailed account of the battle , one that has been retold since within a number Kenyan of communities. Thompson later recounts a trek past 'Giligili' where he noticed "an ernomous Masai kraal, which could not have held less than 3000 warriors, and then some distance beyond appeared another of equal, if not larger dimensions." On inquiry, Thompson learned that these were

2263-418: The Maasai were one of the three principal groupings that formed following fragmentation of the Loikop society. Samburu historians interviewed by Straight et al. (2016) concur that there was an initial fragmentation into three groupings and that the Maasai were one of these. An early instance of conflict is that recorded between the Masai and Engánglima tribe who were pushed out of the plateaus later known as

Ateker peoples - Misplaced Pages Continue

2336-604: The Masai, emerging from the west, swept over the open plains, smote the Wakwavi and scattered them to the winds, leaving however the Wataveta in the forest fastness in perfect security. The Wakwavi, robbed of all and completely broken up, some wandered this way and some that, while some turning to their friends the Wataveta, asked and found refuge with them. Ever since, the two peoples have lived together, assimilating more and more to each other's habits and modes of life... A similar account

2409-463: The Nyika in the 1820s and 1830s. This conflict is generally regarded as a prelude to the main Iloikop wars. Krapf writing in 1854, as the Iloikop wars raged, wrote about the conflicts that affected the 'Engánglima tribe which occupied the vast territory situated between Usambara, Teita, and Ukambani...'. He notes that they; ...first received a mortal blow from their brethren the Masai, and afterwards from

2482-605: The Oropom were at this time numerically superior and peaceful relations generally prevailed. While at Matheniko, the people now known as Dodoth separated from the rest of the Karamojong. They moved north to the vicinity of Loyoro which was on the fringe of Maliri held territory and here established themselves. Tradition relates that the encounter was peaceful and this appears to be borne out by relations between these communities in later times when they had by then moved away from each other. According to traditions recorded by Wilson (1970),

2555-489: The Rift Valley was seized by a terrible drought. The Ateker speak distinct languages which developed from one common language. While similar, the Ateker languages vary due to the regions they occupied and the communities around them, having borrowed some of their words from the assimilated minorities or neighbouring people. Despite their similarities all the Ateker languages are distinctive, naturally one can be able to identify

2628-519: The Tarash, which ran northwards below the foothills of the Moru Assiger massif on their right and the escarpment on their left. As they advanced, the Turkana came to realize they were not alone in this new land. At night fires could be seen flickering on the slopes of nearby mountains, including Mt. Pelekee which loomed up in the distance directly before them... Lamphear notes that Tukana traditions aver that

2701-597: The Turkana came east, as a sub-section of the Ngie (i.e Jie ) tribe, where there stayed for some time. This country was "occupied by that tribe to this day". Tradition indicates that the Karamojong ancestral territory was northeastern part of Uganda. From here, movements in a southern direction then east and finally northwards brought them to present Matheniko, located south of what was then Maliri territory. These movements appear to have displaced some Oropom whose territory then stretched into these areas, however traditions suggest that

2774-594: The Turkana escarpment just north of the Moroto mountain. According to Turkana traditions noted by Lamphear (1988) concerning the early Turkana community, the developing community "formed itself into two 'major parts', the Curo and the Monia". He also recorded traditions regarding an assimilation. Women of each major part could be distinguished by dress, and each group is said to have lived in its separate, but adjacent, territory and shared

2847-513: The Turkana owned part of the land on the west now occupied by the Karamoyo, whilst the southern portion of their land belonged to the Burkineji. The Karamoyo drove the Turkana further east, and the Turkana, in their turn, pushed the Burkineji towards Samburuland". According to Maasai traditions recorded by MacDonald (1899), the expansion of early Eloegop (Loikop) communities into a society occurred from

2920-474: The Turkana-Karimojong Ateker, it is prohibited to kill members of the same Ateker. Killing members of the same Ateker is like killing one's own brother. Other laws govern marriage ( akuuta ). On marriage, one is not allowed to marry front the same Ateker. Marriage also unites the "Ngatekerin (plural of Ateker). Divorce ( elakit or akilak ) is also handled by the Ateker and before divorce is accepted,

2993-480: The Wa-kwafi were in this unhappy plight,the Masai of the plains to the west fell upon them and smote them hip and thigh, and thus broke up and revenged themselves upon the most powerful division of the tribe. The narratives recorded by MacDonald state that at the time of fragmentation of the Loikop peoples, there was a certain internal jealousy that gradually developed into open conflict. The conflict now referred to as

Ateker peoples - Misplaced Pages Continue

3066-501: The Wakuafi referred to themselves as Iloikop . At this time, The Swahili name Wakuafi was used to describe all Iloikop peoples, although it was later narrowed to represent only the non-Maasai Iloikop. Accounts by missionaries and explorers during the 1870s and 1880s generally agreed with those of early missionaries, with distinctions among the Maasai, Wakwavi and Lumbwa beginning to appear. In an early account, Thomas Wakefield described

3139-506: The basis for laws and customs. In the Turkana Ateker, land is subdivided into regions or territorial sections, ŋiTela . Each Ekitela institutes its own common laws which are derived from the general laws of the whole nation or kingdom. Religious beliefs of one Ateker are similar. The supreme deity worshiped has one common name. Members of one Ateker have a common ancestral origin. Members of Ateker have different ancestral origin. within

3212-512: The big bag"). According to traditions captured by MacDonald (1899), the Uasin Gishu were one of the three principal groupings that formed following fragmentation of the Loikop society. Samburu historians interviewed by Straight et al. (2016) state that there was an initial fragmentation of Loikop society into three groupings and that one of these were 'the Laikipiak, who "went around Mount Kenya and northward"'. However, certain accounts note that

3285-565: The country north of Gilgil and extending from this place to the Borana was in the old days called 'Laikipia', a name which is now confined to the plateau between the north of the Aberdres ranges and the Lorogai Mountains. The Masai inhabitants of this tract were called 'Loikop' or 'the people of the country of Laikipia'." According to traditions captured by MacDonald (1899), the Samburu were one of

3358-461: The difference. Each Ateker has distinct laws and customs. The laws and customs of people of one Ateker are similar. Members of each Ateker live their lives in a similar lifestyle. Diversified groups within one Ateker usually have traces of laws and customs that can be traced to the original group. Land is one characteristic that helps in determining membership in an Ateker. Members of one Ateker usually occupy adjoining areas. Land adjudication forms

3431-540: The different parties from both Ngatekerin try to resolve the problem. Other laws govern grazing ( achok or akitwar ) lands, which elders precise over ceremonies (Akiriket) like rain making, peace, annual livestock blessings (Akero) etc. Turkana language Turkana / t ɜːr ˈ k ɑː n ə / is the language of the Turkana people of Kenya and Ethiopia . It is spoken in northwestern Kenya, primarily in Turkana County , which lies west of Lake Turkana . It

3504-482: The end of the 18th century approached, demographic pressure started being felt by the Turkana. All the available grazing lands to west - the direction the Turkana had come from, was occupied by other Ateker societies of the Karamojong and to the east lay the lands of the formidable confederacy of the Kor, Rantalle and Poran. The Turkana thus turned their gaze north to the territory of the weakened Siger, and, coveting their highland pastures, began to encroach on them, just as

3577-482: The entire region to the south gathered together and came to the assistance of their brethren of Kapte. Soon the tables were turned and the Wa-kwafi were gradually forced back. Stigand (1913) also made note of the decision and intention of the Laikipiak to "attack and completely overwhelm the southern Masai...that they might cease to exist as a tribe". However, "when the southern Masai heard that they were coming, they combined together and came forth to meet them. They met

3650-455: The land stretching out before the Turkana to the east. There were three Turkana 'adakari' (i.e ateker) during the early 20th century. Turkana tradition states that the expansion to Turkwel had been carried out by two of these ateker, the 'Nithir' and the 'Ngamatak'. At Turkwel, the Nithir split in two, one section retaining the original name while the other was known as 'Nibelai'. As of 1888, Ngamtak

3723-540: The linguistic, demographic and identity changes of the Maasai era. Krapf arrived on the East African coast in December 1843, and made his first trip into the interior in January 1844. He encountered reports of the nearby "Okooafee" and their southern neighbors, the "Quapee". Krapf deduced within a year that the two groups were the same people, and he began referring to them as Wakuafi in his writings. In 1852, he learned that

SECTION 50

#1732845423756

3796-546: The name 'Kor'. Lamphear states that Turkana traditions agree that the Kor were very numerous and lived in close pastoral association with two other communities known as 'Rantalle' and 'Poran', the names given to the Cushitic speaking Rendille and Boran communities. According to Von Höhnel (1894) "a few decades" prior, the Burkineji occupied districts on the west of the lake and that they were later driven eastwards into present day Samburu. He later states that "some fifty years ago

3869-547: The name 'Laikipiak' arose after their livestock were afflicted by rinderpest , after which they were called Lorere Lokipei ("people whose cattle have the disease"). At the dawn of the 19th century, the Uasin Gishu occupied the plateaus to the west and south-west of the Laikipia plateau. This group included small but notable sections of Loosekelai (i.e. Siger/Sigerai people ) According to traditions captured by MacDonald (1899),

3942-406: The occasional cultivatable oasis. This hard country was inhabited by communities that were radically different from any the Turkana had encountered before. There were three communities already resident, who lived in close association with each other, herding an array of livestock which included exotic creatures with long necks and humps on their backs - the first camels the Ateker had encountered. Of

4015-507: The other to match the tongue root position of the controlling morpheme. Vowel harmony does not cross word boundaries, and a phonological word can be defined as a unit across which harmony operates. Vowel harmony is also blocked at the boundary between roots in a compound. Long vowels occur phonetically, but are best analyzed as sequences of short vowels rather than phonemes in their own right. In roots, /ɔ/ and /ɛ/ may be realized as [wa] and [ja], respectively. High front vowels are deleted between

4088-413: The pressures that resulted in this period of conflict. Von Höhnel (1894) and Lamphear (1988) recorded narratives concerning conflict between the Turkana and Burkineji or at least the section recalled as Sampur that appear to have been caused by even earlier demographic pressures. Turkana narratives recorded by Lamphear (1988) provide a broad perspective of the prelude to the conflict between the Turkana and

4161-452: The respective camps of the Masai of Kinangop and Kapte, on the one hand, and the Masai (Wa-kwafi) of Lykipia on the other. He was told that this was; "During one of their long periods of deadly fighting, in which they thus settled down before all their cattle, and fought day after day, till one gave in". Krapf, Rebmann and Erhadt recognized that Iloikop society consisted of a number of sectional groups (which they called tribes), and each group

4234-497: The same people within a year, and began referring to them as Wakuafi in his writings. In 1852, Krapf learned that the Wakuafi called themselves the Iloikop. He published a vocabulary of the Engutuk Eloikob in 1854, speculating that Iloikop was an abbreviation of the word engob (land or country) combined with the article loi and defining Iloikop as "those who are of/in the country, to whom it belongs") Stigand (1913) noted that

4307-453: The standard interpretation, possibly as the result of changes on the ground brought about by the Iloikop wars whose net result was the absorption of Iloikop identity by the Maasai. Nile records indicate that the three decades starting about 1800 were marked by low rainfall levels in regions south of the Sahara. East African oral narratives and the few written records indicate peak aridity during

4380-425: The subject is morphologically marked by a change in tone when present after the verb, and is often omitted entirely. Subjects of intransitive and transitive verbs receive the same case marking. Thus, in terms of morphosyntactic alignment , Turkana is both a marked-nominative language and a double-object language . With ditransitive verbs, the recipient/indirect object is required to be animate, and it always precedes

4453-514: The term "Loikop" referred to "the people of the country of Laikipia" and that at the time it survived in the Rendille word "Lokkob". In Rendille the word Lokkob was used to "denote any cattle-breeding tribe, such as the Samburr or Masai, in distinction to a camel breeder". In another account, he notes; ...I might explain here what the word Lokkob means, as it has been assumed by former travelers that there

SECTION 60

#1732845423756

4526-497: The theme/direct object. Neither object can be promoted to be the subject of a basic sentence, so that Turkana has no real passive construction. Turkana features six cases: a nominative, an absolute, a genitive, an instrumental, a locative, and a vocative. This makes it typologically unusual as one of the only verb-initial languages attested to have more than two or three cases. Loikop people The Loikop people , also known as Wakuafi, Kor, Mu-Oko, Muoko/Ma-Uoko and Mwoko, were

4599-481: The three principal groupings that formed following fragmentation of the Loikop society. The Samburu historians interviewed by Straight et al. (2016) note that the Burkineji was one of the communities that arose from the separation. They do note that the 'Samburi Loiborkineji separated from the other Maa-speakers' in the wake of the 1830s mutai . This was just after the Lkipiku generation had been initiated. This separation

4672-432: The three societies, one appears to have made the most impact on the Turkana, they kept sheep, goats and camels like their associates but specialized in cattle. They had lighter-colored skin compared to the Turkana and they liberally smeared themselves with ochre - the Turkana called them the 'red people' and named them Kor . The Kor's kin were known to the Turkana as Rantalle and Poran . Together these allies controlled all

4745-434: The two major groups took on a common name 'Turkana' while some settlers abandoned the Tarash to move south to the area beyond Mount Elgon. He also notes that about the same time some far-ranging contingents of Bantu-speaking Meru were absorbed by several Turkana clans. In pushing eastward the Turkana had arrived at a dramatic ecological and cultural frontier. All the way to the shores of Lake Turkana lay arid land peppered with

4818-500: The united forces of the Wakamba, Wanika, Wasuahili and Wateita (and) in consequence of this disastrous catastrophe either disappeared, or retreated to the territory of other Wakuafi in order to escape utter destruction... New (quoted in Markakis) writing in 1873 recorded accounts of conflict between the Masai and a community he refers to as 'Wakwavi', he states that; In the course of time,

4891-414: The water of a common well . At the same time, family traditions present a picture of close association growing up between certain clans, often derived from frequent intermarriage, which sometimes transcended the distinctions between major parts. — John Lamphear, 1988 (Emley's paraphrase) Lamphear records population groupings that emerged from this assimilation and of population dispersal. He notes that

4964-423: The western escarpment, conquering the 'Senguer' people who dwelt on the plateau now known as Uasin Gishu and almost annihilated this community. This expansion was followed by the development of three groupings within the Loikop society. The Sambur who occupied the 'original' country east of Lake Turkana as well as the Laikipia plateau. The Guash Ngishu occupied the grass plateaus of the Uasin Gishu and Mau while

5037-463: Was a subtle but significant departure from previous accounts: "... However, we are including several isolated areas occupied either by tribes wholly different from the Masai, or by the agricultural Wa-kwafi, who are mere off-shoots of the Masai". This inverted the previous understanding of the Wakwavi-Maasai relationship. The inversion of the order laid out by Krapf, Rebmann and other explorers became

5110-461: Was divided into. He noted that individuals were generally designated by their native district. The districts he listed were; Sigirari, Njiri, Matumbato, Kapte, Dogilani, Lykipia and Guas' Ngishu. Later historical accounts and Samburu oral tradition refer to two principal groups in Loikop society: the Samburu and the Laikipia. The Maasai are noted in these later accounts as speaking the same language (known today as Maa), although they are perceived as

5183-491: Was generally named for the geographical area they inhabited. Iloikop tribes who were noted as existing (or recently dispersed) in the mid-19th century included the Parakuyo, Enganglima, Mao, Baringo, Ndigiriri, Tigerei, Laikipiak, Modoni, Kopekope, Burkineji (also known as Samburu) and the Maasai tribes (who had separated considerably from the rest of the Iloikop regions. Thompson (1893) recognized ten 'districts' that Masai country

5256-494: Was recorded by Thompson in 1883 as part of a broader account on the conflicts that had occurred. He notes that prior to the attack by the Maasai, the Kwavi whose original home comprised "the large district lying between Kilimanjaro, Ugono and Pare on the west, and Teita, and Usambara on the east" had suffered repulses in raids against the 'Wa-gogo' and later against the 'Kisongo', their land had also been afflicted by locusts and...; While

5329-408: Was the name of the south-western frontier of Turkana territory. The Nithir name was said to derive from 'ithiger' (i.e Siger), an 'ornament' and the Nithir were said to be so called for their love of decoration. Turkana folklore records that as their early settlements expanded north, they reached a hill which came to be known as Moru Ang'issiger where they met another group of 'red people' who herded

#755244