Mount Kenya: Expulsion Of Earlier OccupantsThe rate and direction of migration inevitably brought each of the major Meru subtribes into contact and conflict with earlier occupants of the Mount Kenya region.[11] The traditions emerging from this period are told almost wholly from the perspective of single clans, as they advanced upward into the forests or across the Tigania Plain. In every instance representatives of the Mukuruma, Michubu, and subsequent
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age-sets (1730s–1860s) seem to have met with an initially bewildering variety of enemies, with whom they fought and over whom they won.
Existing evidence suggests, however, that most of these migrating communities encountered representatives of three non-Bantu cultures, scattered in small numbers along the mountain's lower slope and northeast into the adjacent Tigania Plain. Analysis of Meru traditions that spring from this area suggests the following patterns of occupation: (a ) small groups of Eastern Cushitic—speaking (Galla) peoples within the woodland zone, along the mountain's arid base and into the Tigania Plain; (b ) small groups of Kalenjin-speaking (Ogiek) peoples, inhabiting the higher star-grass zone and lower fringes of the montaine ("black") forest; (c ) somewhat larger communities of Maa-speaking (Maasai, Ogiek) peoples within the Tigania Plain and adjacent grasslands, north of the mountain itself.[12]
Cushitic Speakers: Mukuguru, Ukara, MuokoContact with Cushitic-speaking peoples occurred before the pre-Meru migrants had even reached the mountain. Informants recall these early occupants by names that vary among the major subtribes (table 5). Traditions from several regions and other evidence suggest that these groups belonged to one or more sections of the Oromo-speaking peoples (Galla-Boran, Oromo, etc.). Their language forms part of the Eastern Cushitic language cluster, which extends across the Horn of Africa into the Middle East.[13] Thus, Muthambi informants often pronounce "Ukara" as "Ugalla," blending the letters r and l into the intervocalic *d and g and k into a single sound. Mwimbi elders describe Ukara cattle, seized in warfare by their ancestors, as identical to those now herded by the Galla and Boran. Imenti traditions state that Ikara (or Agira) of that area were also known as Muoko (or mwoko).
Additional oral evidence is provided by descriptions of their burial customs. Traditions in each region describe Ukara, Agira, and Muoko (in various spellings) alike as having "buried their dead in a sitting position, covering each grave with stones." Pre-Meru found the custom both fascinating and repulsive, because their own tradition required that the dead be left for hyenas. The alien burial details became part of their fireside chronicles, thereby passing into oral history. After the British conquest an early colonial administrator confirmed the tradition by uncovering several alleged Muoko graves, pointed out to him by Meru elders, which substantiated the practice of burial in a sitting position.[14]
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TABLE 5 NAMES GIVEN CUSHITIC SPEAKERS (PRECONTACT)
Zone
Meru Subtribe
Muthambi
Mwimbi
Igoji-Imenti
Tigania
Igembe
Lower forest
—
Mukoko or Mukuru (hunters)
Mukuguru or Mu-Uthiu (hunters)
Mukuguru or Aruguru
—
Plains
Ukara (herders)
Ukara (herders) and Mu-Oko
Ikara or Agira and Mwoko
—
Muoko or Ma-Uoko
Ukara or Agira and Muoko
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In the 1920s a Methodist missionary noted the similarity between the Muoko burials and those still practiced by the Tana River Galla.[15]
Physical descriptions also support this possibility. Informants describe each of the cattle-keeping peoples as "taller and more slender" than themselves. Their shields were small and narrow; their spears, short and tipped with the leaf-shaped blade once used by the GallaBoran. More conclusive, perhaps, is that no fewer than three of these groups are described as linked to groups of forest hunters, in the same manner as the early Tharaka and Cuka. In Mwimbi, for example, the forest hunters were called Mukoko or Mukuru and were joined with livestock-owning Ukara. In Imenti, they are recalled as Mukuguru or Mu-Uthiu and linked with cattle-keeping Ikara or Agira. Tiganians describe Mukuguru (or Aruguru) as allied to the Muoko herders of their region.
Existing evidence thus suggests that the names of every group within the forest zone are variants of the Mokogodo, a contemporary Ogiek people, whose original language was part of the Cushitic cluster. Because the plains-dwelling Oromo, Galla, and Boran also speak Cushitic dialects, both forest and plains dwellers may have been able to communicate. This overlap, in turn, may have led to the creation of an intermittent hunter-herder symbiosis, based on trade and intermarriage, that benefited both sides.
Early Galla history also supports the possibility of hunter-herder symbiosis. After 1500, Oromo-speaking peoples (Galla, Boran, Oromo, etc.) began to migrate south from the Ethiopian highlands. Following their herds, they had reached deep into Kenya by the 1700s. The Boran, in particular, had moved into grasslands on both sides of the Tana River, while other Cushitic-speaking herders may have even penetrated Tanganyika. Bands of these herders were therefore probably attracted first by sight of the mountain, then the grazing opportunities at its forest base. Thereafter, they may have wandered in small groups along the lowest forest fringes, in contact with the Mokogodo, until the pre-Meru appeared.
Tradition states that both Ukara and Mokogodo fled the slopes of Mount Kenya soon after the migrants arrived. Unable to defend themselves, they are said to have "turned into birds and flown away." On the Tigania Plain, however, the more numerous Muoko chose to fight. Tiganian narrations from this era describe how men of the Mukuruma age-set (mid-1730s), sent ahead of the migrants to examine the plain, returned to describe an entire "sea of grass filled with few people and many cows."[16]
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To fulfill the prophecy that had sent them westward since the migration's beginning, their prophets ordered them to seize the herds. As the narration is retold today, Tiganian warriors took the Muoko by surprise, seizing "four great herds" in an initial skirmish, then moved livestock, women, children, and the aged into a single, defensible camp. The Muoko, perhaps initially outnumbered, reacted by barring the intruders from both water and salt, systematically burying salt licks and springs to prevent their discovery and use. The Muoko also had stabbing spears, a weapon Tiganians could not forge. They responded with bow and arrow, ambushing Muoko herders in the long grass ("they crept like rats" sang the Muoko of their foes) and stampeding their herds.
Tradition speaks of "decades" of war. More likely, there was a time of dry-season raiding on both sides. At some point the Tiganians mastered the art of forging spears. Thereafter, the Muoko found themselves forced steadily into the and northeast away from the fertile grassland region. In so doing, they evidently moved within the raiding range of the Il Tikirri (recalled in Tigania as Ngiithi) and Mumunyot (recalled as Rimunyo), two Maa-speaking (Maasai-speaking) Ogiek peoples who also herded—and coveted—cattle.
Both groups began to raid the Muoko from the north at the same time that Tiganian pressure intensified in the south. Consequently, Muoko communities gradually disintegrated as their herds were seized and absorbed by former foes. Early traditions record skirmishes between Muoko and Tiganian, Igembe, or even North Imenti warriors for many years. The later narrations, however, deal primarily with the seizure of Muoko children for Meru homesteads or the adoption of captive Muoko warriors into Tiganian clans.
The extent of such incorporation can never be known, because Meru elders swore oaths never to reveal that it occurred. Nonetheless, Mahner's (1970) research in Tigania suggests that the Muoko were incorporated into that region's "black" clans, the 11 Tikirri into the "red," and the original Meru (who trace their roots to Mbwaa) still predominated among the "white."[17] The absorption of former foes may have therefore significantly modified Tigania institutions and, indirectly, those of adjacent Meru regions as well.
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