Related Research Articles
The Kipsigis or Kipsigiis are a Nilotic tribe in Kenya. They are contingent of the Kalenjin ethnic group and speak Kipsigis language, a tonal language which is closely related to a group of languages collectively known as Kalenjin language. It is observed that the Kipsigis and an aboriginal race native to Kenya known as Ogiek have a merged identity. The Kipsigis are the most numerous of the Kalenjin. The latest Census population in Kenya put the kipsigis at 1.972 Million speakers accounting for 45% of all kalenjin speaking people. They occupy the highlands of Kericho stretching from Timboroa to Mara River in the south, the west of Mau Escarpment in the east to Kebeneti in the west. They also occupy, parts of Laikipia, Kitale, Nakuru, Narok, Trans Mara District, Eldoret and Nandi Hills.
The Kalenjin are a group of tribes designated as Highland Nilotes and are descended from Maliri people (thus related to Daasanach of Ethiopia.) The Kalenjin are cousins with Datooga people of Tanzania. In contrast, their designation groups them with other Nilotes including Maasai, Luo, Turkana and Nuer, Dinka among others. They are indigenous to East Africa, residing mainly in what was formerly the Rift Valley Province in Kenya and Eastern slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda. Upon their arrival in the forest region of Mau, the Kalenjin assimilated the aboriginal hunter-gatherer people known as Okiek. They number 6,358,113 individuals per the Kenyan 2019 census and an estimated 300,000 in Uganda mainly in Kapchorwa, Kween and Bukwo districts. They have been divided into 11 culturally and linguistically related tribes: Kipsigis, Nandi (937,000), Sebei Keiyo, Marakwet, Sabaot (296,000), Pokots, Tugen, Terik, Sengwer, and Ogiek. The Kalenjin speak the Nadi-Marakweta languages but can also be inclusive of Akie language in Tanzania and Pokot language spoken in Kenya; all being classified collectively as Kalenjin Language; while in combination with Datooga languages of Tanzania, this cluster is called Southern Nilotic languages.
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.
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 had a population of 885,711, made up of a number of Kenyan communities, the majority of whom belong to the native tribe called Nandi.
Koitaleel Arap Samoei was an Orkoiyot who led the Nandi people from 1890 until his death 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. Arap Samoei 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.
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.
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 Uasin Gishu people were a community that inhabited a plateau located in western Kenya that today bears their name. They are said to have arisen from the scattering of the Kwavi by the Maasai in the 1830s. They were one of two significant sections of that community that stayed together. The other being the Laikipiak with whom they would later ally against the Maasai.
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 13th 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, between 900 and 1850 ethnic Kipsigis men, women and children were killed in a punitive expedition dubbed Sotik expedition by the colonial British government forces led by Major 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.
Oretab Talai is one of the ortinwek or clans of the Kalenjin, a Nilotic tribe living in East Africa. Nandi Talai elders gained particular notability during the 2022 Kenyan general elections when a blessing ritual they performed on then Deputy President William Ruto gained symbolism as an act perceived as bestowing not just community leadership but also future national leadership. Much was made in the commentary surrounding the event of the fact that Nandi Talai elders had performed similar blessing rituals for the late Kenyan Presidents Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki and even the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga before they ascended to national leadership positions. The perception of symbolism was heightened when Gideon Moi, former president Daniel Arap Moi's son and political heir, and William Ruto's primary competitor for regional political dominance at the time, attempted to have the blessings conferred upon him but was blocked. He later had the ceremony carried out by Nandi Talai elders from the Kapsisiywo family at Kabarak, the Moi family's seat of political power, both these events made national news and were widely commented upon.
References
- ↑ Hollis, A. C., The Nandi - Their Language and Folklore. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909, p. 48
- ↑ Huntingford, G. W .B. (1927). "Miscellaneous Records Relating to the Nandi and Kony Tribes". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 57: 421. doi:10.2307/2843712. JSTOR 2843712.
- ↑ Huntingford, G. W .B. (1927). "Miscellaneous Records Relating to the Nandi and Kony Tribes". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 57: 421. doi:10.2307/2843712. JSTOR 2843712.
- ↑ Huntingford, G. W. B. (1972). "Nandi Kinship and Clans (Kenya)". Anthropos. 67 (5/6): 821. JSTOR 40459536.
- 1 2 Genealogy of the Nadi Orkoiyot from Kipsegun to Samoei online
- 1 2 3 4 5 Hollis, A. C., The Nandi - Their Language and Folklore. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909, p. 50
- ↑ East African Standard, Why leaders seek blessings in a Nandi Village, Nov.2009 online
- ↑ EastAfrican, December 5, 2008: Murder that shaped the future of Kenya