of Bantu agriculturalists to lay claim to a longer history of settlement. However, unlike Ogot, Were was harder pressed to create an overarching historical narrative out of the stubbornly diverse clan histories of these Bantu settlers, with no “Ramogi” common ancestor or common linguistic grounding. While Ogot could provide a unifying thrust to Luo migrations, Were was continually obliged to acknowledge the diverse origins of his subjects. At stake in these partisan histories were urgent concerns over land rights, community membership, and the future moral discipline of the history teller’s audience. Indeed, many of these early patriotic histories have been, unintended or not, transformed into evidence in contemporary land disputes and familial conflicts over custom.24
In the texts of Were and others, the diversity of the communities in this lake region refused to be aligned. The multitude of migratory routes visualized in their maps reflected the diverse linguistic and historical backgrounds of these new settlers (figs. 1.4, 1.5). Clan histories of these migrations varied over time and space and reflected the variety of social organizations and political objectives of their tellers. Under pressure from overcrowding, disease, warfare, and would-be state builders, migrations often followed localized and uncoordinated clan lines that gave birth to new community formations. Many Bantu clans told of their historic origin in Egypt (“Misri” among Bantu speakers), then traveling down through Bunyoro and Buganda, providing a mythic point of origin and hinting at a stated or royal past.25 Others emphasized their diverse migratory origins traveling through carefully recalled landmarks and difficult terrains to defend their cultural distinctiveness and political sovereignty. These “narrative maps” sketched a history of complex spatial relations, movements, and important sites such as forts and shrines along a migratory journey that strategically culminated in the construction of a regional homeland in their current settlements.26
The histories of these migrations and settlements, whether Bantu, Kalenjin, Luo, or Maasai, must be understood not as the forward march of coherent ethnic groups but rather as complex histories of social interaction and multiple movements over centuries. These small-scale migrations led to fluid regional patterns of interaction and integration across ethnolinguistic divides: as Were argued, “The Abaluyia owe their origin to the interaction of many diverse cultural and linguistic groups stretching back to over one thousand years.”27 Individual clans in the southern areas of Buhayo, Kisa, Marama, and Tiriki self-consciously trace their lineages to mixed Bantu, Kalenjin, Luo, and Maasai origins.28 The clans of the Tachoni claimed their roots among both the early Uasin Gishu settlers and the later arrivals of Bantu clans passing around Mount Elgon.29 In the space northeast of Lake Victoria, clans of various linguistic backgrounds formed strategic alliances through intermarriage and absorption, making every clan multiethnic from their very arrival. As Luyia historian John Osogo put it, “The history of our people has been at the local level, the story of the interaction of the clans.”30 The residue of this regional culture of exchange persisted in the systems of trade that developed, in shared linguistic features, and in the assimilation of cultural practices.
FIGURE 1.4. Migrational map by Günter Wagner. Bantu of North Kavirondo, 1:23.
FIGURE 1.5. Migrational map by Gideon Were. Western Kenya Historical Texts, back cover.
The uneven and varied environment encouraged niche settlements and the development of specialized agronomic practices according to environmental capabilities and regional patterns of exchange. In the south, rich soils and compact valleys proved ideal for the intensive cultivation of major crops such as sorghum, sweet potatoes, beans, and bananas. In the more expansive plains of the north, a mix of cultivation and cattle ranching provided a middle ground of trade and political interaction between agriculturalists and pastoralists. A small body of research on precolonial trade networks in western Kenya suggests the influence of interethnic interaction on the making of precolonial communities.31 Markets developed early in the eighteenth century to facilitate trade across economic specializations. In the 1930s German anthropologist Günter Wagner recorded a lengthy history of precolonial markets from a Logoli elder: “The people of many different tribes assembled there . . . and in those years everybody who wished to obtain anything he liked could go to that market.”32 Northern Bantu settlers frequented these markets in search of fish and livestock, while the Luo came for the grains brought by Bantu agriculturalists, mostly millet and sorghum. From their new agricultural neighbors, Kalenjin-speaking pastoralists adopted a number of terms involved in cultivation and food production, including words for “beans,” “flour,” and “to weed.”33 Northern Bantu populations similarly borrowed cattle-keeping terms and practices from their Kalenjin and Nilotic neighbors. As Jean Hay found, even between the divergent Bantu and Dholuo language groups, the terms for “homestead, wooden hoe, sorghum, maize, beans, and a number of other crops are essentially the same . . . suggesting extensive cultural contacts and influence in economic matters.”34 Economic interdependence and trade fostered cultures of exchange and integration across ethnolinguistic divides.
These complementary environments also fostered the development of specialized skills. The availability of great deposits of iron ore in the Samia hills prompted its settlers to specialize as blacksmiths, peddling their skills across the region. The Banyore, located in the well-watered hills of Bunyore, were recognized as rainmakers and consulted as experts throughout the region. The sharing of professionals and specialists across clans traced a regional network that further encouraged cultural exchange. In border regions, many informants pointed to the adoption of place names and linguistic features from their Kalenjin neighbors. The Tiriki adopted Kalenjin age-set names, arguably one of the defining features of male-community membership.35 The Tiriki, frequently at war with their Logoli neighbors in the nineteenth century, often allied with Nandi clans.36 The adoption of Kalenjin age-set names may have allowed young men to identify allies in warfare despite linguistic and cultural divisions. The relative practice of circumcision, both male and female, among these groups also attested to complex historical exchanges. The practice of circumcision varied greatly despite contemporary popular beliefs that all Bantu communities in this region practiced male circumcision, in contrast to their uncircumcised Luo neighbors, but not female circumcision, in contrast to their Kalenjin and Maasai neighbors. Early European explorers noted the falsity of such common beliefs, recording a variety of practices ranging from elaborate male circumcision ceremonies to the absence of any form of circumcision.37 These exchanges of experts and customary practices blurred the environmental and social lines seemingly dividing these groups. Ideas of community and production were not confined in this era by notions of enclosed ethnic communities but rather grew out of geographic interdependence, pragmatic comparative work, and strategic cultural borrowing.
OF CLANS AND TRIBES: TERRITORY, AUTHORITY, AND BELONGING
It was this “slippery ground,” this environment of rich diversity, interdependence, and fluidity that, in the words of one proverb, did not “recognize kings.”38 Alongside lessons in agronomy and social interdependence, this environment taught its first settlers to develop independent small-scale polities characterized by heterarchy, unique languages of political and social organization, and distinct cultural practices in land and authority.
Precolonial studies of eastern African societies often emphasized the flexibility of local identities as necessary for “establishing relative positions on the cognitive map of expanding frontier societies.”39 Early oral historians pinpointed the clan as the most stable and fruitful source of historical information and genealogical periodization: unlike the “invented” tribes of 1970s historians, clans were “out there,” in the words of Jan Vansina.40
