The Kipsigis or Kipsigiis are a Nilotic group, contingent of the Kalenjin ethnic group and speak a dialect of the Kalenjin language identified by their community eponym, Kipsigis. It is observed that the Kipsigis and another original group native to Kenya known as Ogiek have a merged identity. The Kipsigis are the biggest sub tribe within the Kalenjin community. The latest census population in Kenya put the Kipsigis at 1,972,000 speakers, accounting for 45% of all Kalenjin speaking people. They occupy the highlands of Kericho stretching from Timboroa to the Mara River in the south and the Mau Escarpment in the east to Kebeneti. They also occupy parts of Laikipia, Kitale, Nakuru, Narok, the Trans Mara District, Eldoret and the Nandi Hills.
The Kalenjin is a group of tribes indigenous to East Africa, residing mainly in what was formerly the Rift Valley Province in Kenya and the eastern slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda. They number 6,358,113 individuals per the Kenyan 2019 census and an estimated 273,839 in Uganda according to the 2014 census mainly in Kapchorwa, Kween and Bukwo districts.
The Nandi are part of the Kalenjin, a Nilotic tribe living in East Africa. The Nandi ethnic group live with close association and relation with the Kipsigis tribe. They traditionally have lived and still form the majority in the highland areas of the former Rift Valley Province of Kenya, in what is today Nandi County. They speak the Nandi dialect of the Kalenjin language.
The Orkoiyot occupied a sacred and special role within the Nandi and Kipsigis people of Kenya. He held the dual roles of King spiritual and military leader, and had the authority to make decisions regarding security particularly the waging of war. Notable Orkoiik include Kimnyole Arap Turukat, Koitalel Arap Samoei and Barsirian Arap Manyei.
Kimnyole Arap Turkat was the Nandi Orkoiyot who predicted the arrival of Europeans and the railways ; two events that were to forever alter the history of the Nandi.
Nandi County is a county in Kenya in the North Rift, occupying an area of 2,884.4 square kilometres. Its capital, Kapsabet, is the largest town in the county while other towns include Mosoriot, Tinderet, Kobujoi, Kaiboi, Kabiyet and Nandi Hills. According to a 2019 census, the county has a population of 885,711, made up of a number of Kenyan communities, the majority of whom belong to the native tribe called Nandi.
Koitalel arap Samoei was an Orkoiyot who led the Nandi people from 1890 until his assassination in 1905. The Orkoiyot occupied a sacred and special role within the Nandi and Kipsigis people of Kenya. He held the dual roles of chief spiritual and military leader, and had the authority to make decisions regarding security matters particularly the waging of war and negotiating for peace. Koitalel was the supreme chief of the Nandi people of Kenya. He led the Nandi resistance against British colonial rule.
Traditional Kalenjin society is the way of life that existed among the Kalenjin-speaking people prior to the advent of the colonial period in Kenya and after the decline of the Chemwal, Lumbwa and other Kalenjin communities in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
The Nandi Resistance was a military conflict that took place in present-day Kenya between 1890 and 1906. It involved members of the Kalenjin ethnic group, mainly from the Nandi section, and the British colonial administration. The close of the 19th century, a time referred to as the "pacification period" by Matson, saw a number of local populations that resisted British colonial rule. Of these, the Nandi resistance would stand out for being the longest and most tenacious.
The Kalenjin people are an ethnolinguistic group indigenous to East Africa, with a presence, as dated by archaeology and linguistics, that goes back many centuries. Their history is therefore deeply interwoven with those of their neighboring communities as well as with the histories of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.
The Oreet is a kinship group among the Kalenjin people of Kenya that is similar in concept to a clan. The members of an oreet were not necessarily related by blood as evidenced by the adoption of members of the Uasin Gishu Maasai by Arap Sutek, the only Nandi smith at the time. His proteges would later be adopted into almost every other clan as smiths. More famously, the lineage of the Talai Orkoiik were adopted members of the Segelai Maasai.
Barsirian Arap Manyei was the last widely recognized Nandi Orkoiyot and Kenya's longest serving political detainee.
The Settlement of Nandi was the historical process by which the various communities that today make up the Nandi people of Kenya settled in Nandi County. It is captured in the folklore of the Nandi as a distinct process composed of a series of inward migrations by members from various Kalenjin ortinwek.
Kalenjin folklore consists of folk tales, legends, songs, music, dancing, popular beliefs, and traditions communicated by the Kalenjin-speaking communities, often passed down the generations by word of mouth.
Kamuratanet is a Kalenjin traditional process of teaching its members appropriate behavior, knowledge, skills, attitudes, virtues, religion and moral standards. Kamuratanet provides parameters that are used to determine what is acceptable and normal and what is not acceptable, and therefore abnormal. Though carried out throughout an individual's lifetime, it is formalized during yatitaet (circumcision) and subsequent tumdo (initiation).
Mutai is a term used by the Maa-speaking communities of Kenya to describe a period of wars, usually triggered by disease and/or drought affecting widespread areas of the Rift Valley region of Kenya. According to Samburu and Maasai tradition, two periods of Mutai occurred during the nineteenth century. The second Mutai lasted from the 1870s to the 1890s.
The Chemwal people were a Kalenjin-speaking society that inhabited regions of western and north-western Kenya as well as the regions around Mount Elgon at various times through to the late 19th century. The Nandi word Sekker was used by Pokot elders to describe one section of a community that occupied the Elgeyo escarpment and whose territory stretched across the Uasin Gishu plateau. This section of the community appears to have neighbored the Karamojong who referred to them as Siger, a name that derived from the Karimojong word esigirait. The most notable element of Sekker/Chemwal culture appears to have been a dangling adornment of a single cowrie shell attached to the forelock of Sekker women, at least as of the late 1700s and early 1800s.
The Siger people were a community commonly spoken of in the folklore of a number of Kenyan communities that inhabited regions of northwestern Kenya at various points in history.
The Lumbwa Treaty event took place on 13 October 1889, in Lumbwa in Kericho between the Kipsigis led by Menya Araap Kisiara and the British East Africa administration. It was based on a cultural practice of oath taking in Kipsigis called Mummek or Mummiat or Mumma. Mumma means "to do something impossibly disgusting". It involves two parties taking an oath and invoking a preemptive curse if the oath is to be broken by any party taking the oath. There usually would also be a performance of black magic; and on this particular event a coyote was savored in two halves with each party burying its part and making the oath never to harm each other in any way.
In June 1905, 1,850 ethnic Kipsigis men, women and children were killed in a punitive expedition dubbed Sotik expedition by the colonial British government forces led by Major Richard Pope-Hennessy. This was as a result of a raid by the Kipsigis on the Maasai which saw the Kipsigis part with Maasai cows, women and children to which the government demanded redress and return of the spoils of the raid but to which the Kipsigis returned in insults and turned down the warning. In effect, this led to alienation of tribal land to what would become part of Kenyan White Highlands.
