Mau Mau and the Kikuyu by Louis Leakey

Author:Louis Leakey [Leakey, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781136531088
Google: zfn7AQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T05:54:28+00:00

PART TWO

The Kikuyu Today and the Mau Mau Movement

VII

THE COMING OF THE EUROPEAN

The earliest contacts between Europeans and the Kikuyu tribe were made with the Kikuyu of the Kiambu district, which by reason of its geographical position lay nearest to the great caravan routes running up to Uganda. At first the contacts consisted of meetings outside Kikuyu country proper, and were confined to trading operations in which the Kikuyu brought in vast quantities of grain, beans, and sweet potatoes to the caravans which were halted at the springs of Ngongo Bagas below the Ngong Hills. This place was outside the forest fringe which separated the grassy plains of Masai land from the Kikuyu agricultural area, but which ranked as Kikuyu country and contained many fortified villages.

By the time the caravans had reached Ngongo Bagas, their supplies of food for the porters were often running short and the next stage of the long journey would be mainly through the Masai country of the Great Rift Valley, where there was no agricultural produce. The opportunity, therefore, to revictual the caravans by bartering cloth, wire, and beads for corn and beans from the Kikuyu was always taken. The Kikuyu in those days were very greatly feared; a few earlier purely Arab caravans that had tried to penetrate Kikuyu land had been wiped out and the Arab headmen, who accompanied all the early European caravans as guides and interpreters, always advised against any attempt to take a short cut by going through Kikuyu territory.

In 1890, however, the British East Africa Company decided to set up a post within Kikuyu territory, at Dagoreti, a post which was built by Captain (later Lord) Lugard and Mr. George Wilson. This station of the Company’s was twice attacked and destroyed by the Kikuyu in eighteen months and then a stronger fort was built at a better situation, four miles farther into Kikuyu territory at Fort Smith. In 1892 there was severe fighting with the Kikuyu round Fort Smith and again in 1893, but a little later peace treaties were made and the relations between the Kikuyu and the British improved.

The engineers surveying the line for the Uganda Railway had helped in the fighting against the Kikuyu at this time and were among the earliest white men to make contact with the tribe. An early traveller who was probably the first to make peaceful contact with the Kikuyu of Nyeri district was Professor J. W. Gregory, who had passed through Fort Smith on his way to study the geology of the Great Rift Valley and Mount Kenya in 1893. It is tempting to turn this chapter into a brief historical account of the early contacts between the British and Kikuyu, but I must not do so as it is outside the scope of this book.

The coming of the first Europeans of the British East Africa Company to Kikuyu land, and especially to the Kiambu district, was followed by the arrival of Christian missions, of which the first were the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.