Origin of the Kikuyu—The family—Circumcision—Marriage—Land tenure—Missionaries

It may be of interest to the general reader if I give, in a single chapter, a brief account of the manners and customs of the Kikuyu people, and some description of the country in which they live. It must be borne in mind that the information contained in this section is not the result of direct questioning of the people, as it is well known to all who have any real knowledge of the African native that to ask directly for information of this sort from him simply results in the acquisition of a large amount of information which, however interesting it may be to read, contains the smallest possible proportion of actual truth. Therefore, the account of the Kikuyu and their country given in the following pages is the result of my own personal knowledge and observation during the period of my residence among them. It may not be as picturesque as some other published accounts, but I am prepared to vouch for its accuracy.

Owing to the fact that no accurate map of this part of Africa has yet been prepared, it is a matter of some difficulty to give exactly the boundaries and dimensions of the Kikuyu country; but, roughly speaking, it is bounded on the north by a line which almost coincides with the Equator; on the west by the Aberdare Range, a range of bamboo-covered hills, uninhabited by any tribe; on the south by a kind of debatable land, forming part of the Athi Plain, extending from Nairobi to Fort Hall, to the south of which lies the Wakamba country; on the east, for a considerable distance by the Tana River, beyond which it only extends for a short distance towards the north-east. These boundaries may have been somewhat modified since the opening up of the country by the Government of British East Africa, but in the main they are still correct. The area of this district would be about four thousand square miles.

As I never attempted to take any sort of census during my “reign,” I can only give approximately the population, but I should say, as far as I was able to ascertain, that the total number of the tribe would be about half a million—rather more than less—of whom the women outnumbered the men considerably, the constant warfare tending to keep the number of the male population at a fairly steady figure.

The accounts given of the origin of the Kikuyu tribe vary considerably, and the nigger’s talent for fiction, and his readiness to oblige any one—particularly a white man—who asks for a legend, make it extremely difficult to distinguish where truth ends and fiction begins; but I will give the two principal accounts as they were given to me, and my own opinion of the credibility of both, and let the reader judge for himself.

The first story is that given me by Karuri, the chief who was my first friend among these interesting people, who was certainly one of the most intelligent natives I have ever come in contact with. His account was that the original inhabitants of the country, a tribe called the Asi, were hunters who took no interest in agriculture, and that the Kikuyu were a tribe who came into the country, and purchased tracts of land from the Asi for purposes of cultivation. Gradually more and more of the Kikuyu came in until they had cleared most of the forest land of which the country originally consisted, while the Asi were gradually absorbed into the Kikuyu tribe by marriage, or wandered farther afield in search of the game which the increasing population and the clearing of the forests had driven away to new retreats. Karuri himself based his strongest claim to his chieftaincy on the fact that he was a direct descendant of these Asi.

The other account, which was given me by a headman named Kasu, now a powerful chief under the new regime, reminds one somewhat of the story of Ishmael. The legend runs that a Masai warrior, living on the borders of what is now the Kikuyu country, but was then a vast forest, inhabited by a race of dwarfs, of whom the Kikuyu speak as the Maswatch-wanya, was in the habit of ill-treating one of his wives to such an extent that she used from time to time to take refuge among the dwarfs, returning to her husband’s kraal after each flight. Finally his treatment became so bad that she fled to the dwarfs and remained there, giving birth to a son shortly after her definite settlement among them. Later on, the story runs, she had children to her own son, which children intermarried with the Maswatch-wanya, and from their offspring the present Kikuyu race derive their descent.

Of the two accounts, my observation would lead me to look for the truth rather in the direction of the latter than the former. In the first place, as I think I have before pointed out, a strong physical resemblance exists between the Kikuyu and the Masai; the former, indeed, might almost be taken for a shorter, more stockily built branch of the latter race, while I could easily pick out a hundred Kikuyu who, mixed with an equal number of Masai, could not be told from the latter, even by an expert. Again, the weapons and war-dress of the two races are identical—a fact which to any one who is aware of the unique character of the Masai weapons is a strong point in itself. Further, when actually on the war-path—and only then—the Kikuyu are in the habit of singing a Masai war-song, in the Masai tongue, referring to a former noted warrior chief of the Masai named Bartion. Again, their manner of circumcising the young men is exactly the same as that practised by the Masai, which differs from the custom of any other race, as I shall show later on. The name for God, Ngai, is the same in both peoples, and they both have a similar custom of retiring to a so-called “sacred grove” in the bush, where they slaughter a sheep, which is afterwards roasted and eaten in honour of their god.

These points, to my mind, all go to show a connexion between the Kikuyu and the Masai, rather than, as some inquirers argue, between the Kikuyu and the Wakamba. Of course, in the districts bordering on the Wakamba country, where it has been customary for the two tribes to seize one another’s women in their frequent raids, many of the Kikuyu show traces of Wakamba blood, while on the Masai border the traces of Masai influence are stronger than in the districts more remote; but I am not arguing on the basis of the border districts, but from the race as a whole. Again, the Wakamba, though not now known to be cannibals, still follow the practice prevalent among cannibal tribes of filing the teeth to a sharp point—a practice unknown both to the Masai and the Kikuyu. The Wakamba also are eaters of raw meat, while the Masai, though blood-drinkers, always cook their meat, and the Kikuyu are practically vegetarians. In the manner of dressing the hair, too, the Kikuyu follow the Masai fashion of plaiting strands of bark fibre into the hair, which is then done up in a sort of pigtail, while the Wakamba wear the covering provided by Nature without any fancy additions.

Another custom common to both the Masai and Kikuyu, though not practised by the Wakamba, is that of wearing the most extraordinary ear ornaments, which, as mentioned earlier in the book, are sometimes as large as a condensed milk tin, and are worn passed through holes specially made in the lobe of the ear. The practice is to pierce the lobe of the boys’ ears some time in early childhood, and from that time onwards the aperture then made is gradually enlarged by the wearing of a succession of wooden plugs or discs of graduated sizes, until an object as large as a large-sized condensed milk tin can be easily passed through it. This operation extends over some years, and the natural result is to convert the ring of flesh into what looks like—and as far as feeling is concerned, might as well be—a leather loop, which sometimes hangs down far enough to touch the shoulder. It is the great ambition of every Kikuyu youth to be able to wear a bigger ear ornament than his neighbour, and, in order to attain the desired end, I have known them to pass a straight stick of wood through the hole in the lobe of one ear, across the back of the neck, through the lobe of the other, thus keeping them both constantly stretched.

The country itself is very rough, and it is often a matter of difficulty to find a level piece sufficiently large to pitch one’s camp on. It is situated at an elevation of some six thousand feet above sea-level, and consists of a series of ranges of low hills, divided by deep valleys, through most of which flows a stream of greater or less magnitude, none of which ever seem to become quite dried up, even in the driest of dry seasons. On account of the comparatively temperate climate, due to the elevation, and of the extreme fertility of the soil, the country is an ideal spot for the native agriculturist, who gets his two crops a year with a minimum of labour. Consequently the country is very thickly populated; in fact, I do not know any part where, on raising the tribal war-cry, I could not, in an extremely short space of time, gather at least a couple of thousand fighting men. The principal crops are the sweet potato, kigwa (a kind of yam of very large dimensions), and ndoma (a vegetable something after the fashion of a turnip, with leaves from three to four feet long and about eighteen inches wide at their widest part). Bananas are the only fruit that I ever came across, but they grow large quantities of sugar-cane, beans of various kinds (from my fondness for which in preference to sweet potatoes I got my native name of Karanjai, or “The eater of beans”) , and another vegetable, which seemed to be a cross between a bean and a pea and which grew on a bush; of grains they have several, of which the principal are maize, matama, which is the same as the Indian dhurra and is found all over Africa, umkanori, which resembles canary-seed in appearance, and mawhali, a somewhat similar seed to the umkanori, from which the fermented gruel known as ujuru is made. The Kikuyu seem to be possessed of a perfect mania for cultivation, their practice being to work a plot of ground until it begins to show signs of exhaustion, when it is allowed to lie fallow or used only for grazing stock for a period of seven years, new ground being broken to take its place in the meanwhile. All the Kikuyu keep stock of some kind, either sheep, cattle, or goats—sometimes all three—which are principally used as currency for the purpose of paying fines and buying wives, the quantity of meat eaten being very small.

The system of government is somewhat peculiar, but appeared to be a form of the feudal system, based on the family. A village generally consists of members of one family, the headman being the father, who had originally settled in that particular spot with his wives. Each wife has her own hut, her own shamba, or allotment for cultivation, and her own storehouse, in which the proceeds of her labour are kept. Each woman lives in her own hut, with her family round her, until the boys are old enough to marry, when they set up their own hut, or huts, according to the number of wives in which they are wealthy enough to indulge. The headman or patriarch of the family, in my time, ruled the village, and, within bounds, had the right of punishing any breach of discipline—even to the extent of killing a disobedient son and burning his huts. The women are well treated, and, as they perform all the work of the family, with the exception of clearing new ground for cultivation, prefer to marry a man with two or three other wives rather than a bachelor, as the work of keeping their lord and master in comfort is thus rendered lighter.

Marriage is, as in most savage tribes, by purchase, the usual purchase price of a woman being thirty sheep. There is no marriage ceremony in vogue among them, but after the handing over of the girl by her father in exchange for the sheep a feast is usually held to celebrate the event. Occasionally the husband is allowed to make the payments on the instalment plan, but this is not encouraged, as it is apt to lead to quarrelling and disagreements. The youthful marriages common among such tribes do not prevail among the Kikuyu, as no man is allowed to marry until he has been circumcised, which operation usually takes place about the age of seventeen or eighteen, and he does not generally take a wife until two or three years later; while the usual age for marriage among the women is eighteen, though the operation which corresponds to circumcision in their case is performed as soon as they reach the age of puberty.

This practice of circumcision of the males at such a late age appears to prevail only among the Masai and Kikuyu, all other African races, so far as I can learn, following the Jewish custom and performing the operation during infancy. The method of performing the operation in vogue with these two tribes also differs from that in use elsewhere, so that a description of it may be of interest. On the day fixed for the ceremony the boys all turn out some time before daylight and are taken down to the river, where they have to stand for half an hour up to the waist in the ice-cold water until they are absolutely numb with the cold. They are then taken out and led to the operator, who nearly severs the foreskin with two cuts of his knife, then, folding the severed portion back, secures it on the under side with a thorn driven through the flesh. The boy then returns to his village and rests for a few days until the wound is healed. No boy is supposed to utter a sound during the operation, and it is probable that the numbing effect of the icy bath prevents their feeling any or very much pain. In the case of the girls also the bath in the cold river is a preliminary to the operation, and neither boys nor girls ever seem to suffer any serious consequences from this rough-and-ready operation. In the case of the girls the operation, which consists of the excision of the clitoris, is performed by an old woman, whose special duty it is to perform the operation with one of the razors used for shaving the head.

The various sections of the tribe are ruled by chiefs, of whom the principal during my stay in the country were Wagombi, Karkerrie, and Karuri, but in addition to these there were innumerable petty chieftains, many of whom owed no allegiance to any higher authority in the country. Kingship, or chiefship, seemed to be decided mainly on the principle that might is right, though it was of great advantage for a candidate for the headship of any section of the tribe to have a reputation for magic—or medicine, as they call it. Wealth and intelligence also counted for something, and a chief who had proved himself a brave warrior and good administrator would generally be allowed to retain his headship of a district so long as he lived, though it did not follow that his son would succeed to his honours unless he were capable of taking hold of the reins of government with a firm hand. In spite of the apparent uncertainty of succession, there is seldom any trouble with regard to it, as it is generally pretty well known some time before a vacancy takes place who the next chief will be, although I never found that there was any sort of election to the office.

The chief, once accepted, is autocratic in the ordinary details of government, trying all cases himself and pronouncing sentence, from which there is no appeal; but in matters of moment affecting the general welfare of the people he is aided in coming to a decision by the counsels of the assembled elders of his district, a body something after the fashion of the old Saxon Witan.

For ordinary infractions of the law, or offences against his authority as chief, he pronounced such punishment as his discretion and judgment dictated; but for cases of wounding or murder a regular scale of fines was laid down—fining being the usual punishment, except in cases of open rebellion. Open rebellion generally entailed a descent on the offenders by the chief’s warriors, and the wiping out of the rebellious villages and their inhabitants. For an ordinary case of wounding the fine was ten sheep, while for the murder of a woman it was thirty sheep—the price which her husband would have had to pay for her on marriage—and for a man a hundred sheep. The tenure of land is very simple, the freehold being vested in the man who takes the trouble to make the clearing, and as there is plenty of space for all, and the wants of the people are few, anything in the shape of agrarian agitation is unknown; in fact, during the whole of my stay in the country I never knew any instance of a dispute over land.

It must be borne in mind that many great changes have taken place in the Kikuyu country, and in British East Africa generally, since the period, some ten years since, covered by this book. In the days when I started on my first contract for the conveyance of food to the troops engaged in the suppression of the Soudanese mutiny, the spot on which Nairobi, the present capital of the colony, stands was simply a patch of swampy ground on the edge of the plain which extends to the borders of the hilly Kikuyu country. Here the railway construction people pitched one of their settlements and put up a station, and from this has risen the town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants, of whom fully one thousand are white, a larger proportion than can be found in any settlement of the same age on the continent of Africa, while I may add that everything points to an increased rather than a diminished rate of progression!

Nairobi is no bush settlement, where one expects to “rough it” as part of the ordinary daily routine. On leaving the train one can engage a cab, or even a motor, to drive one to a good hotel; if you know any one in the town, you can be put up for an excellent club; while one’s commercial requirements are met by a fine post-office, banks of good standing, and stores where one may obtain anything that the most fastidious European or savage tastes can require.

Undoubtedly the colony of British East Africa has everything in its favour and, given ordinary luck, has a great future before it. The climate is everything that the European settler could desire. Being about six thousand feet above sea-level, the country is not subjected to the extremes of heat and wet which prevail in other parts of the continent, but has merely a good average rainfall, while the temperature seldom exceeds 75° in the shade, even in the hottest weather. The soil, particularly in the Kikuyu district, is extremely fertile, and will grow almost any European vegetable, and most European fruits, in addition to wheat, coffee, cocoa, tea, sugar, and tobacco, as well as cotton, rubber, sisal hemp, sansovera fibre, and, of course, on the coast, the ubiquitous cocoanut. On the whole, British East Africa presents as good an opportunity to the man of limited capital, with a capacity for work, as any spot to be found in the length and breadth of the British Empire. In addition to agriculture, such industries as cattle-farming, sheep-farming, pig-breeding, and ostrich-farming are already being carried on with great success. Under the wise administration of the present Governor, Sir Percy Girouard, the prospects of the country are improving by leaps and bounds. This is principally due to two important factors: the encouragement given by the Governor to capitalists willing to invest money in the colony; and his full and frank recognition, for the first time in the history of the colony, that the future of this valuable dependency lies in the hands of the settlers, rather than in those of the official caste.

The value of land is rapidly increasing, and estates which, ten years ago, could have been bought for 2s. 8d. an acre are now fetching 20s. an acre, though grants may still be obtained from the Government land office.

In the Kikuyu country itself vast changes have, of course, taken place in the ten years which have elapsed since I was supreme there. Four or five Government stations have been established, roads have been opened up in various directions, while many white settlers have come in, and are doing well, in addition to the swarm of missionaries of various sects who have settled all over the country; in fact, I gave my own house to one of the first, I think I may say the first—a Roman Catholic priest—who came into the country. The people themselves have settled down quietly under the new conditions, and pay the hut-tax regularly, which is a by no means inconsiderable item in the annual revenue of the colony. The Kikuyu are excellent workers, and are now to be met with in every part of the dependency, and in almost every trade, while the chiefs have taken to building stone houses in place of their native huts, and riding mules. In my opinion the Kikuyu will ultimately become the most important among the native races of this part of the continent, owing to their greater intelligence, industry, and adaptability.

Of course, at the present day, my name is little more than a legend among the Kikuyu, around which many wonderful stories have been built up by the people. In the nine years which have elapsed since I left the country many of the older men who knew me have died, while the rising generation, who, as children, only knew of me as the most powerful influence in the province, have only vague memories of actual happenings, which they have gradually embroidered until I should have great difficulty in recognizing some of the occurrences myself in their present form.

A book of this sort will probably be looked upon as incomplete without some expression of opinion as to the value of missions and the missionary influence. It must not be inferred from the various remarks scattered through the book that I am one of that fairly numerous body who, with considerable experience to back their opinion, profess to regard the missionary as the worst curse that can fall on a newly-opened country, but I do say that the whole system on which these missions are conducted requires to be thoroughly revised. The primary mistake, from which most of the trouble springs, is the assumption, to which all missionaries seem to be officially compelled to subscribe, that the African negro is, or can be made by education, the moral and intellectual equal of the white man, and that by teaching him to read and write and say the Lord’s Prayer by rote the inherent characteristics resulting from centuries of savagery can be utterly nullified in the course of a year or two. The deliberate and considered opinion of those best qualified to know, the men who have to live among these people, not for a year or two, but for a lifetime, brought into constant and more really intimate contact with them than the great majority of missionaries, is, that education in the narrow meaning of the term is a very doubtful blessing to the average negro compared with the enormous benefits to be conferred by a sound course of industrial training. As an instance in point, let us take the case of Uganda, where the missionary has had a free hand, such as he has probably had in no other part of the world, for the last twenty years. Yet, after all this time, there is hardly a single Uganda artisan to be found—and those of poor quality—in Uganda itself; British East Africa has to look to the native of India to find the skilled artisans required for the service of the community. And it must be borne in mind that the Waganda are undoubtedly the most intelligent of all the native races of East Africa, so that the settler may fairly consider himself justified when he charges the missionaries with neglecting, practically entirely, one of the greatest aids to the civilization of the native that he could possibly use. The native, properly trained to handicrafts, and able to understand the advantage of skill in his particular line, would be much more likely, as his means increased, to see the advantages of civilization, and to appreciate the benefits of that education which, as often as not, now lands him in jail; while the civilized negro, become a really useful member of the community, would also be much more likely to prove a satisfactory convert to Christianity than the material at present paraded as such, of whom the average white man with experience of Africa will tell you that he would not have a “mission native” as a servant at any price.

Let the missionaries turn their minds and funds to the industrial, as well as the moral and religious, instruction of the natives, and they will find every settler in the land prepared to support their efforts, while the Empire will, undoubtedly, benefit enormously in every way.

Finally, one of the greatest difficulties which hampers the development of our African colonies, and renders the task of the administrator who really does know something of the work he has taken in hand a heart-breaking one, is the utter inability of the good people at home to realize the absolutely irrefutable truth contained in Kipling’s statement that “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The average missionary and new-comer to Africa generally arrives with his mind stored with the statements contained in the reports of missionary societies or the books of well-to-do globe-trotters, and is firmly convinced that he knows all there is to be known about the country and its people. When he has been a year or two in the country he will, if he has any remnants of common sense left, begin to realize that it is about time he began to try to learn something of the people among whom his lot is cast; while at the end of ten, fifteen, or more years he will frankly confess the utter impossibility of the white man ever being able to, as an able African administrator once put it, “get inside the negro’s skin,” and really know him thoroughly. I question if there have ever, in the history of the world, been twenty pure-bred whites altogether who have really known the native of Africa, and if you hear a man boasting that he “knows the nigger thoroughly,” you may safely put him down as a man of very limited experience of the negroid races.

The ultimate solution of the negro problem lies, not in the “poor coloured brother” direction, but in training him in handicrafts, and thus making him a useful, productive member of the community; and as soon as this fact is recognized, and carried to its logical result, so soon will the “colour problem”- -which at present weighs heavily on the mind of every thinking white man who really realizes what it means—cease to be the ever-present bogey of our African Administration.

And here for the moment I will end my story. It was my intention, when I first started to write this account of my experiences among the Kikuyu, to have extended the period of this book to the times of my more recent adventures on the African continent. I found, however, that space would not allow me to include all I wished to put down in writing in one small volume. I have, I think, much more to relate which might be of interest to the general reader. I have spent the last ten years of my life either exploring in the wilds of the Dark Continent or have been occupied as a professional hunter of big game, and should this book of mine find any favour with the public, I hope in a short time to recommence my labours as an author again.

My next experience immediately after the facts related in this book was to take the Governor of British East Africa, Sir Charles Eliot, on a personally conducted tour to the scenes of my adventures and throughout the wilder parts of his domain. Later, many stirring adventures with lion and elephant have been my lot. My wanderings have led me across the desert from British East Africa into Abyssinia, into the Congo territory and elsewhere. I hope some of the adventures which befell me in these travels may, in the future, prove interesting to the public.