The Kalenjin are 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.
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.
The Elgeyo are an ethnic group who are part of the larger Kalenjin ethnic group of Nilotic origin. They live near Eldoret, Kenya, in the highlands of the former Keiyo District, now part of the larger Elgeyo Marakwet County. The Elgeyo originally settled at the foothills of the Elgeyo escarpment, in the area between Kerio river to the east and the escarpment to the west. Due to drought and famine in the valley, the Keiyos climbed the escarpment and started to settle on the highland east of Uasin Gishu plateau. When the British came, the Keiyos were pushed to settle in clusters called reserves.
The Kwavi people were a community commonly spoken of in the folklore of a number of Kenyan and Tanzanian communities that inhabited regions of south-central Kenya and north-central Tanzania at various points in history. The conflicts between the Uasin Gishu/Masai and Kwavi form much of the literature of what are now known as the Iloikop wars.
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.
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 Lumbwa were a pastoral community which inhabited southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. The term Lumbwa has variously referred to a Kalenjin-speaking community, portions of the Maa-speaking Loikop communities since the mid-19th century, and to the Kalenjin-speaking Kipsigis community for much of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.
The Sengwer people are an indigenous community who primarily live in the Embobut forest in the western highlands of Kenya and in scattered pockets across Trans Nzoia, West Pokot and Elgeyo-Marakwet counties. The Sengwer are sometimes portrayed as a component of the Marakwet people but are a distinct ethnic grouping with a distinct language.
The Loikop people, also known as Wakuafi, Kor, Mu-Oko, Muoko/Ma-Uoko and Mwoko, were a tribal confederacy who inhabited present-day Kenya in the regions north and west of Mount Kenya and east and south of Lake Turkana. The area is roughly conterminous with Samburu and Laikipia Counties and portions of Baringo, Turkana and (possibly) Meru Counties. The group spoke a common tongue related to the Maasai language, and typically herded cattle. The Loikop occasionally interacted with the Cushitic, Bantu, and Chok peoples. The confederacy had dispersed by the 21st century.
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.
The Chok were a society that lived on the Elgeyo Escarpment in Kenya.
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 Iloikop wars were a series of wars between the Maasai and a community referred to as Kwavi and later between Maasai and alliance of reformed Kwavi communities. These were pastoral communities that occupied large tracts of East Africa's savannas during the late 18th and 19th centuries. These wars occurred between c.1830 and 1880.
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 Laikipiak people were a community that inhabited the plateau located on the eastern escarpment of the Rift Valley in 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 Uasin Gishu with whom they would later ally against the Maasai. Many Maa-speakers in Laikipia County today claim Laikipiak ancestry, namely those among the Ilng'wesi, Ildigirri and Ilmumonyot sub-sections of the Laikipia Maasai.
The Enganglima were a community that occupied and were said to dominate the southern and northern plains of present-day Kenya and Tanzania respectively. They were pushed out of their territory in the early 19th century by the Maasai.
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.
Kenya