Highland Games: Settlers and Their Farm Workers

Abstract

This chapter will explore in more depth the real and symbolic nature of relationships between leading settlers and Maasai. Little serious research has been done on the personal interactions between settlers and Africans in Kenya, let alone those specific to the Maasai. There is of course a genre of sentimental settler diaries and memoirs that talk fondly of relationships with domestic servants; they could be called the ‘my faithful boy’ genre. At the other extreme, scholars have made sweeping remarks about the innate brutality of relationships between employers and workers. My evidence, drawing heavily on Maasai and settler oral testimony, suggests relationships of greater complexity and nuance than have been previously acknowledged. The alleged blood-brotherhood pact may help to explain this. In exploring these relationships, one also finds more evidence of Maasai involvement in the labour market post-1913 than other studies have acknowledged, evidence that substantial numbers returned to the highlands from the Southern Reserve after the second move, and intriguing reports of criminal collusion between settlers and their favourite henchmen against the colonial state.

Nasoore [Colvile] was a very good man to the Maasai. He was told by Delamere: ‘If you want your cattle to increase, employ the Maasai to take care of your livestock.’ And the cattle of Nasoore became ten million. Swahili Musungui, assistant to Gilbert Colvile