Kalenjin prehistory

Origins

Linguistic evidence points to the eastern Middle Nile Basin south of the Abbai River as the ancient homelands of the Kalenjin. That is to say south-east of present-day Khartoum. They were not a distinct group of people at this time but part of a wider society today referred to as Nilotic peoples.

The Nilotic point of unity is thought to have occurred sometime between 3000 and 2000 B.C., although the form that this unity took and much of their way of life at this time still remains unclear.

Beginning in the second millennium B.C., particular Nilotic communities began to move southward into present day South Sudan where most settled. However the societies today referred to as the Southern Nilotes pushed further on, reaching what is present day north-eastern Uganda by 1000 B.C. The most northern area that is recognized as inhabited by these early Kalenjin lies in the present day Jie and Dodoth country in Uganda.

Early presence in Kenya

Beginning around 700 BC, the Southern Nilotic speaking communities, i.e. the proto-Kalenjin, whose homelands lay somewhere near the common border between Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia moved south into the western highlands and Rift Valley region of Kenya. Their arrival in Kenya occurred shortly before the introduction of iron to East Africa.

Contemporary studies, supported by a number of historical narratives from the various Kalenjin sub-tribes point to Tulwetab/Tuluop Kony (Mount Elgon) as their original point of settlement in Kenya. Of note is that these accounts come from the Southern Kalenjin while the Kalenjin closer to Kony, and in particular the Sebeii/Sabaot who live around Mount Elgon, point to Kong'asis (the East) and more specifically the Cherangani Hills as their original homelands in Kenya.

When the Southern Nilotic societies, moved into western Kenya, they settled next to and were deeply influenced by Southern Cushitic societies that had preceded them in Kenya. The impact was significant and resulted in the adoption of the practice of circumcision, and the cyclical system of age-set organisation. An old Nandi tradition that may contain elements of historicity states that circumcision was introduced by a man called Kipkenyo who came from a country called Do (Tto).

Interactions with the Luhya

Aside from the interactions with the Southern Cushites, who bordered them to the East, the proto-Kalenjin society also had notable interactions with the Luhya who bordered them to the West and South.

Linguistic studies indicate that there was highly gendered migration from the Luhya communities into Kalenjin-speaking areas during the proto-Kalenjin period, ca. 500-800 A.D., with Luhya women being the migrants.

The evidence for this lies in the words that passed from the Luhya language into the Kalenjin language during this period. In contrast to the wide variety of Kalenjin loanwords in Luhya, all but one of the words that were adopted from Luhya relate to cultivation and cooking, which were traditionally women's duties in ancient Luhya society.

It has been suggested that the social institution of marriage led to the select migration. In that, whereas the Kalenjin, strongly pastoral people since ancient times, contracted marriage through payment of cattle and other livestock by the grooms family to the prospective brides family. The Luhyia of 1500 to 2000 years ago on the other hand likely contracted marriage through bride service, whereby the prospective groom would work in the potential brides household for a period of time. This arrangement therefore served to make men the migrants in contrast to payment of bride price which made women the migrants.

The marrying of Luhya women to Kalenjin men would have conferred benefits to men of both societies at the time since for the Kalenjin, Luhya women would have contributed expanded agricultural variety and productivity to the homestead. On the other hand, a Luhya father, by marrying his daughter to a Kalenjin man could increase his own wealth and position within Luhya society. Over the long term such relations, by increasing men's wealth in cattle, undoubtedly helped bring into being new customary balance's between men and women's authority and status in Luhya society. These societies are today patrilineal unlike the ancient Luhya societies which appear to have been matrilineal.

Occupation of the Rift Valley lands

There is a consensus among historians and linguists that from about 500 to 1600A.D, the Kalenjin moved eastward and southward from a base near Mount Elgon occupying what would become their traditional lands. The movements themselves were complex and contemporary scholars present competing theories around them.

Narrative of origin

Among the Kalenjin, the most popular narrative of origin is often captured as a narrative of brothers, according to the account;

..the Kalenjin originated from a country in the north known as Emetab Burgei, which means, the hot country. The people are said to have travelled southwards passing through Mount Elgon or Tulwetab Kony in Kalenjin. The Sebeii settled around the slopes of the mountain while the others traveled on in search of better land. The Keiyo and Marakwet settled in Kerio Valley and Cherangani Hills. The Pokot settled on the northern side of Mount Elgon and later spread to areas north of Lake Baringo. At Lake Baringo, the Tugen separated from the Nandi and the Kipsigis. This was during a famine known as Kemeutab Reresik, which means, famine of the bats. It is said that during this famine a bat brought blades of green grass which was taken as a sign of good omen signifying that famine could be averted through movement to greener pastures. The Tugen moved and settled around Tugen Hills while the Kipsigis and the Nandi moved to Rongai area. The Kipsigis and Nandi are said to have lived as a united group for about a century but eventually were forced to separate due to antagonistic environmental factors. Some of these were droughts and invasion of the Maasai from Uasin Gishu.

Individual clan histories

A look at the individual clan histories however shows that the Kalenjin Narrative of Origin over-simplifies the complex formation of the different Kalenjin groups. The significance of tracing individual clan histories in order to get an idea of Kalenjin groups formation has been shown by scholars such as B.E. Kipkorir (1978). He argued that the Tugen first settled in small clan groups, fleeing from war, famine and disease, and that they arrived from western, eastern and northern sections. There is even a section among the Tugen that claims to have come from Mount Kenya.

The Nandi account of the formation of the tribe displays a similar manner of occupation of the Nandi territory. The Kalenjin clans that moved into and occupied the Nandi area, thus becoming the Nandi tribe, came;

It thus appears that there were spatial core areas to which people moved and concentrated over the centuries, and in the process evolved into the individual Kalenjin communities known today by adopting migrants and assimilating original inhabitants.

Pokot: The first offshoot

The Pokot are thought of as one of the first groups to break away from the main early Kalenjin group, a theory supported by their location. Being the most northerly of the Kalenjin groups its most probable they were the first offshoot, as the wider community itself came from the north.

Linguistic evidence as well indicates that the Pokot were one of the earliest offshoots of the early Kalenjin society. Pokot forms a distinct dialect-cluster among the Kalenjin, apart from the other two clusters, namely Elgon and southern Kalenjin. It has been suggested that the Pokot had a distinct linguistic history separate from other Kalenjin groups for at least a thousand years.

The Kalenjin historian B.E. Kipkorir, proposed that 'The early Kalenjin moved into Kenya's western highlands by following the Kerio and Turkwel Rivers. On their way, some migrants crossed west to Sekerr and Chemerongit hills while the rest moved on to Mount Elgon. The majority of the migrants moved through the Lake Baringo basin. In the neighbourhood of Mount Tiati, the Pokot established their most southern boundaries while some of the clans that would form the Marakwet moved west attracted by the numerous springs of the western Kerio escarpment.

Sirikwa era

For several centuries, the linguistic ancestors of the Kalenjin would be the dominant population of the western highlands of Kenya. At their greatest extent, their territories covered the highlands from the Chepalungu and Mau forests northwards as far as the Cherangany Hills and Mount Elgon. There was also a south-eastern projection, at least in the early period, into the elevated Rift grasslands of Nakuru which was taken over permanently by the Maasai, probably no later than the seventeenth century. Here Kalenjin place names seem to have been superseded in the main by Maasai names notably Mount Suswa (Kalenjin - place of grass) which was in the process of acquiring its Maasai name, Ol-doinyo Nanyokie, the red mountain during the period of European exploration.

Archaeological evidence indicates a highly sedentary way of life and a cultural commitment to a closed defensive system for both the community and their livestock during the Sirikwa era of Kalenjin prehistory. Family homesteads featured small individual family stock pens, elaborate gate-works and sentry points and houses facing into the homestead; defensive methods primarily designed to proof against individual thieves or small groups of rustlers hoping to succeed by stealth. A commitment to trade in this period is also highlighted by fact that the ancient caravan routes from the Swahili coast led to the territories of the Kalenjin ancestors.

The Maasai era

The innovation of heavier and deadlier spears amongst the neighboring Maasai led to significant changes in methods and scale of raiding bringing about the Maasai era. The change in methods introduced by the Maasai however consisted of more than simply their possession of heavier, and more deadly spears. There were more fundamental differences of strategy, in fighting and defense and also in organization of settlements and of political life. As cattle raiding increased - or as the methods and scale of raiding were transformed during the early part of the Maasai era - the traditional defensive methods, and the settlement system and social organization which were integrated with them, proved vulnerable. 'One might be tempted to imagine the Sirikwa, as they felt competition, cattle theft and military threats more keenly, redoubling their defensive efforts and developing an increasingly inward world-view'. The old settlement system, the archaeological 'Sirikwa holes' proved inadequate against larger, longer-distance raiding parties which, in rounding up cattle did not hesitate to smash or burn down fences. Therefore, far from being effective devices for livestock protection, they became veritable traps. They and the Sirikwa way of living had to be discontinued.

In the Maasai era, guarding cattle on the plateaus depended less on elaborate defenses and more on mobility and cooperation, both of these being combined with grazing and herd-management strategies. The practice of the later Kalenjin - that is, after they had abandoned the Sirikwa pattern and had ceased in effect to be Sirikwa - illustrates this change vividly. On their reduced pastures, notably on the borders of the Uasin Gishu plateau, they would when bodies of raiders approached relay the alarm from ridge to ridge, so that the herds could be combined and rushed to the cover of the forests. There, the approaches to the glades would be defended by concealed archers, and the advantage would be turned against the spears of the plains warriors.

By the close of the 18th century, the Sirikwa, an era that represented both a period and people with a distinctive way of living, had been abandoned and the Kalenjin period had begun. Some Sirikwa, especially in the south-east around Nakuru, were Maasai-ized, their cultural and ecological experience proving instrumental to Maasai pastoralism as it established itself in the fine high grasslands and then radiated southwards. Certain Sirikwa elements moved further afield, southwards, some appear to have been assimilated into Maasai sections in the Loita-Mara region and others in Tatog. Equally large, or larger numbers helped to form the Kuria and related peoples between the Mara and Lake Victoria where they adopted a Bantu language but retained the form and nomenclature of certain Sirikwa-Kalenjin social institutions. Northward again, more has been recorded about likely Sirikwa elements, now essentially assimilated into the Pokot, Karimojong and other peoples. Sometimes, they are linked to 'Oropom' memories in the region. the names 'Siger' and 'Sangwir', are usedboth of places and people considered semantically if not etymologically cognate with Sirikwa. For the most part however, the main body of the Sirikwa remained where they had always been and re-accultured to form the new Kalenjin communities all around the Uasin Gishu plateau and further south.

More than any of the other sections, the Nandi and Kipsigis, in response to Maasai expansion, borrowed from the Maasai some of the traits that would distinguish them from other Kalenjin: large-scale economic dependence on herding, military organization and aggressive cattle raiding, as well as centralized religious-political leadership. The family that established the office of orkoiyot (warlord/diviner) among both the Nandi and Kipsigis were nineteenth-century Maasai immigrants. By 1800, both the Nandi and Kipsigis were expanding at the expense of the Maasai. This process was halted in 1905 by the imposition of British colonial rule.

Resistance to British rule

In the later decades of the 19th century, at the time when the early European explorers started advancing into the interior of Kenya, Nandi territory was a closed country. Thompson in 1883 was warned to avoid the country of the Nandi, who were known for attacks on strangers and caravans that would attempt to scale the great massif of the Mau.

Matson, in his account of the resistance, shows 'how the irresponsible actions of two British traders, Dick and West, quickly upset the precarious modus vivendi between the Nandi and incoming British'. This would cause more than a decade of conflict led on the Nandi side by Koitalel Arap Samoei, the Nandi Orkoiyot at the time.

Until the mid-20th century, the Kalenjin did not have a common name known to the external world and were usually referred to as the 'Nandi-speaking tribes' by scholars and colonial administration officials.