“SPLENDID FELLOWS” A MASAI ARMY FOR DARKEST AFRICA BY CHRIS PEERS
Even today, the Masai are among the best known of the tribes of Africa. The elegant, almost classical silhouettes of the warriors, with their togas and spears, are familiar from any number of books and TV documentaries about the East African plains. A hundred and thirty years ago, at the beginning of the period of European exploration, they already had an unsurpassed reputation as a warrior people. And yet from a wargaming point of view, they are still virgin territory. In a way this is not surprising: they never fought a full-scale battle against the British colonisers, and so their military profile is inevitably lower than that of, say, the Zulus; and no one else looks anything like Masai, so substitution or conversion of other figures would be difficult if not impossible. Fortunately, though, this is yet another army which is due to be covered in Guernsey Foundry’’s 25mm. Darkest Africa range, sculpted as usual by Mark Copplestone. At the time of writing their Masai figures have yet to be released, but several different packs are in the pipeline, reflecting the enormous variety of costumes worn by these individualistic warriors. So for those who may be interested in producing and playing with one of the most spectacular and colourful armies imaginable, this article aims to provide some background.
Origins and History Like a lot of African peoples the Masai have only vague traditions of their early history, making it impossible to reconstruct a coherent narrative. Physically, they tend to be tall and slender, graceful rather than muscular, like many of the cattle-herders of the upper Nile. They speak a language distantly related to those of tribes from the southern Sudan like the Latooka and Bari, and more closely to the Samburu of northern Kenya. Certainly both the appearance and language of the Masai are distinctively different from those of their Bantu-speaking neighbours in East Africa, and it is a logical conclusion that their original home was somewhere to the north, along the Nile valley. At some fairly recent time - perhaps as late as the 16th century - their forebears migrated into the Lake Turkana region of northern Kenya. Surviving legends tell how, forced onwards by drought, they then climbed the great Rift Valley escarpment onto the Kenya plateau, and proceeded to drive out or absorb the previous inhabitants of the highlands to the east. The heart of their newly acquired territory was the high plateau which lies between Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro, and continues from there southwards into modern Tanzania. It was mostly open grassland, and ideal for cattle. Whereas the previous inhabitants, the Sirikwa, had had a mixed pastoral and agricultural economy, the Masai brought with them a greatly increased emphasis on cattle-raising, and possibly a better-adapted strain of cattle. They scorned farming, hunting, metal-working - and in fact just about any way of life except herding and war - and considered themselves superior to those peoples who lowered themselves to such activities. (They referred derisively to the Swahilis, who often made their living as porters, as “donkeys”). Like the Nuer of the Sudan, the Masai had devised a creation myth according to which God had made all the cattle on earth especially for them. Over the next couple of centuries, they set about the
ambitious task of repossessing those beasts which had somehow fallen into the hands of other tribes. By the time they came to the notice of Europeans in the 1850s, they were the undisputed lords of the East African highlands. Unlike other great conquering peoples such as the Zulus, however, the Masai were not a united military power. They never acknowledged a paramount chief or king, although their “laibons” - sort of combined sages and medicine men - sometimes exercised limited authority over several of the dozen or so clans or sub-tribes which made up the Masai “nation”. (There were also “secular” chiefs called “beijanis”, but these seem never to have been as influential.) At various times different clans managed to achieve a vague predominance over the rest, but never maintained it long enough to establish a dynasty. The most powerful of these groups in the early 19th century were the Uasinkishu and the Laikipiak, later succeeded by the Purko in the north, and the Kisongo in the south. All of them frequently fought with each other over cattle and grazing grounds, and in the middle decades of the 19th century the whole Masai community became embroiled in a series of vicious civil wars, which left large stretches of the highlands virtually depopulated. The hitherto mighty Laikipiak were scattered beyond recall in the middle of the 1870s, when a combined Purko and Kisongo army overran their principal warrior village in a night attack. The allies, it is said, were able to achieve surprise with the help of spells cast by the most famous laibon in their history, Mbatiany. These wars have often been represented as a struggle between the “true” Masai and the Masai-speaking but semi-agricultural “Kwavi”, in which the latter, having somehow degenerated from the pastoral ideal, were defeated and driven to the edges of the plains. This sounds like the sort of interpretation which Masai traditionalists themselves would have put on
events, but it is probably wrong. The losers were not beaten because they were Kwavi; they became Kwavi - ie. mixed farmers - because they had to, having been defeated in battle and pushed off the best pasture land. Certainly there is little evidence that they looked or fought any differently from the so-called “true” Masai. In fact it is probable that the majority of long-distance Masai campaigns in this period were carried out by the defeated factions, seeking to recoup their losses at the expense of someone else. By the late 19th century Masailand was about the same size as Germany, and about as popular with its neighbours. Other tribes in the vicinity were terrorised by an ever-increasing spate of raids in search of cattle, women and glory. In the north the young Masai warriors, or “moran”, raided as far as Mount Elgon, and into the lands of the nomadic Boran and Redille around Lake Turkana. They also clashed with the Galla in the far northeast of what is now Kenya, and with the Somalis, whom they respected as warriors as proud as themselves. To the west, only the shores of Lake Victoria blocked their expansion. The tribes living there - such as the Luo and Nandi - fought back hard, having nowhere to run. In the south they victimised the Mbe, Nyika, Nyamwezi and Gogo, among many others, and clashed with the formidable Hehe of the Iringa Highlands, who had adopted Zulu-style tactics from the Ngoni. If any African army was a match for the Masai it was the Hehe, whose tradition describes a battle against the Masai in which everyone on both sides was killed! (Although it should be remembered that this much-lauded Hehe “victory” was not really a fair test. It was fought between a Hehe standing army under a royal princess on the one hand, and on the other a remnant of one of the Masai refugee groups already defeated in the civil wars - probably Parakuyo “Kwavi”, fleeing from the Kisongo.) The semi-Arabised Swahili farmers of the east coast were especially roughly handled, because despite their numbers and the guns with which they were well supplied, they lacked any sense of unity, and failed to organise themselves to defend one another’s cattle. The Masai despised
them as cowards, and wandered through their lands in small groups with impunity; it was said that the sight of one moran could frighten a thousand of the locals. The explorer Joseph Thomson was told that their scouts could sometimes be encountered strolling about the town of Mombasa in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, some other tribes managed to survive on the very fringes of Masai country. They could achieve this in three ways. One or two of them made themselves useful by working for the Masai as blacksmiths, like the Chaga, or as hunters of wild game and suppliers of buffalo skins for shields, like the Ndorobo. Others, such as the Kikuyu and Kamba, retreated into the inaccessible depths of their mountains and forests, where the terrain was unsuited to Masai tactics. A very few, like the Nandi, adopted Masai methods, and made themselves so formidable that it was no longer worth the warriors' while to attack them. A branch of the Chaga led by an extraordinary character called “Sultan” Mandara, although no more than 1000 fighting men strong, survived and prospered right through to the colonial period in the very shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro by a combination of diplomacy, fighting skills, deviousness and sheer nerve. There was no chivalry in Masai warfare, and for those were not able to escape or hide, the raids could be devastating. Their aftermaths were sometimes witnessed by Europeans, as for example by a Commander Dundas, who described the results in the Scottish Geographical Magazine of March 1893: “On our return through the Mbe country, a most harrowing sight presented itself: what only a few days before were prosperous villages, standing amid fields of grain, were now smoking ruins; bodies of old men, women, and children, half-burnt, lay in all directions... I was informed that the Masai had unexpectedly arrived one morning at dawn, spearing and burning all before them, and carrying off some 250 women, and large herds of cattle.”
The Arabs also fell foul of them on many occasions. The moran raided as far as Bagamoyo, the main Zanzibari settlement on the mainland and the starting point for many explorers’ expeditions, and terrorised the Sultan’s allies in the vicinity. In 1856 a party of 800 Masai actually managed to break into the coastal town of Mombasa. The garrison - a mere 25 Arab and Baluchi matchlockmen - appear to have got off only one volley before they were overwhelmed. John Hanning Speke refers to a two-day battle in the 1850s between cannon-armed Zanzibaris and 1000 Masai. On occasion - as if all this activity was not enough for them - the moran took temporary employment in other people’s wars. In 1882, for example, the Swahili warlord Mbarak recruited some Masai and other tribesmen as mercenaries to aid him in his unsuccessful revolt against the Sultan of Zanzibar. The Mombasa affair took place while Speke was in the area carrying out a survey of the coast. In general, however, the Masai remained aloof from the early European explorers. The first white man to mention them except in passing was the missionary Ludwig Krapf, who in 1860 reported that: “They are dreaded as warriors, laying all waste with fire and sword, so that the weaker tribes do not venture to resist them.” Europeans were seldom killed without a very good reason, but the Masai nevertheless felt that they were entitled to take anything they wanted from lesser breeds who dared to approach their territory. Favoured visitors were pestered to distraction by forceful demands for gifts, which often shaded imperceptibly into barefaced robbery, as well as by relentless intrusions on their privacy. If they liked you, they would spit on you: a “sign of respect and friendship”, according to Harry Johnston, who met them in the 1880s. Unlike most Africans, the moran at least were not in awe of white men. Joseph Thomson, who also travelled through their country in the 1880s, and made strenuous efforts to conciliate them and avoid provoking conflict, likened them to the flies which swarmed around their cattle. They took out Thomson’s false teeth to examine them, and then pulled his nose to see if that would come off as well. Despite this, Thomson could not help liking them. In a memorable passage in his “Through Masai Land”, he describes his first meeting with them: “The word was passed round that the Masai had come... Passing through the forest, we soon set our eyes upon the dreaded warriors that had been so long the subject of my waking dreams, and I could not but involuntarily exclaim, ‘What splendid fellows!’” But what happened to people they didn't like? Let the German explorer Carl Peters tell it: “...in the year 1887 they cut down, to the last man, an Arab caravan numbering two thousand guns, laid all the corpses in ranks and rows side
by side, and in scorn put each man’s gun across his shoulder.” On other occasions they made similar artistic arrangements with people’s severed heads. It was sometimes their habit to place a slightly more subtle “no trespassing” sign in the middle of a track (in one case this is described as “a bullet, over which they cross two twigs stripped of foliage, with the exception of a tasselled brush at the top”), and then wait in ambush to spear the first person who stepped over it. It is no wonder that as late as 1891 Mrs. French-Sheldon, on safari through southern Kenya, describes the panic which swept through her armed askaris at the sight of a handful of itinerant pedlars, whom they mistook at a distance for Masai warriors. Until towards the end of the 19th century, these methods generally succeeded in keeping outsiders away from Masailand. Take a look at any map showing the routes taken by explorers and traders in 19th century East Africa, and a strange pattern will soon become apparent. Caravans en route from the coast to the rich kingdoms north and east of Lake Victoria seldom took the obvious direct route via the cool and healthy Kenya Highlands, but would make a long detour southwards through the feverridden and often waterless bush of what is now central Tanzania, before striking north to the southern shore of the lake. On the way they had to deal with tribes like the Gogo, who had developed the extortion of tolls or “hongo” to a fine art; the unpredictable Watuta; and the Ha, whose reputation as “the Comanches of Africa” speaks for itself. Even H. M. Stanley, who was not easily diverted, used the terrifying reputation of the Kenya route as an excuse to take his Emin Pasha Relief Expedition via the Congo. It may be true that certain Arabs who had established perilous trading relations with the Masai spread exaggerated rumours of their ferocity in order to keep the northern route for themselves, but it is also clear that their reputation did not need much exaggerating. As late as 1895, when Kenya was already nominally under British rule, a party of 1000 Swahili and Kikuyu porters working for the government got into a scuffle with Masai warriors in the Kedong Valley, over some girls who had been abducted by the caravan leader. A cow was shot by accident, and the moran retaliated by massacring the porters. More than half of them were killed, and an English trader who intervened met with the same fate as soon as his ammunition ran out. (Surprisingly, the colonial authorities did not take the revenge which might have been expected, justly considering that the victims had been asking for trouble.) It took the amateur German imperialist Carl Peters to make people feel sorry for the Masai. This unpleasant young man was almost singlehandedly responsible for the German theft of Tanganyika from the Sultan of Zanzibar, and took the refusal of any Africans to kowtow to Europeans as a personal affront. He sems to have thought that Thomson’s peaceful approach was the cause of the Masai’s arrogance. Instead of presents, he took with him on his 1889 expedition a force of heavily-armed Somali
soldiers. He went out of his way to be even more overbearing and arrogant towards the Masai than they were to him. He insulted and threatened them, refused them gifts, and finally started shooting “stray” bulls, which were supposedly threatening his camp. To the Masai, their cattle were not just the only form of wealth, but almost sacred, and seldom slaughtered except for ceremonial feasts. Inevitably, the warriors attacked him. However, Peters’ repeating rifles came as a shock to them, and in several hard-fought battles they were repulsed with heavy losses. Peters then burned their villages and stole thousands of their treasured cattle. The Masai had learned a hard lesson, and never again tried conclusions with a well-equipped white expedition. (This was by no means the worst Carl Peters could do, however. He fancied himself as a philosopher, and at Christmas dinner 1889, still in the heart of Masai country, he “took the opportunity of delivering a short address to Herr von Tiedemann on Arthur Schopenhauer’s negativity of the perception of pleasure”. This much fun was obviously too much for von Tiedemann, who shortly afterwards came down with dysentery. Peters later went on to add to his list of friends by machine-gunning the Gogo when they came to demand tribute.) When the British took over Kenya in the 1890s, they employed Masai as auxiliaries in their campaigns against the neighbouring Kikuyu. The moran continued to raid into German-occupied Tanganyika, and had a last fling as late as the First World War, when their British and German masters were otherwise occupied, and they swept down to the shores of Lake Victoria to replenish their cattle herds at someone else’s expense. (In fact cattle-raiding still goes on today, if more discreetly.) But white settlers had already begun to move into the Kenya Highlands before 1900, and soon after the turn of the century the laibon Lenana - Mbatiany’s successor - had reached an agreement with the British, by which the Masai evacuated much of their traditional territory, but were allowed to keep a part of it as a tribal reserve. Inevitably a lot of this remaining land was soon stolen from them, but the people survived, and continued to lead their traditional way of life as far as they were permitted. They are still there today - a little less warlike perhaps, but as independently-minded as ever.
Masai Warfare The most distinctive feature of Masai military organisation was the age-set system, which in its essentials they shared with many other East African cattle-herding peoples. This was - and remains - a very complicated business, but the gist of it is as follows. At some time in their late teens, the youths were formally initiated en masse as “moran”, or warriors. The ceremonies were held only at intervals of about seven years, so that a
whole age group would go through the process together, and subsequently live and fight together. For the next 15 years they would form part of the military caste of the tribe, first as junior warriors and then graduating to seniors, as a new generation of juniors came forward. Each age-set had a specific name, generally meaning something along the lines of “Those who cannot be defeated”; and the Masai customarily dated events in the past according to which age-sets had constituted the moran at the time. Eventually another ceremony marked the transition of the senior age-set to the status of elders. The junior warriors at least were not allowed to marry, and had to live exclusively on beef, blood and milk, as vegetables were believed to make them soft. They slept in their own separate villages or “manyattas”, which were enlivened by visits from the young girls, or even (under cover of darkness) married women. The moran were not needed as an agricultural labour force - cattle-raising being fairly undemanding in terms of actual work - and so they spent their time protecting the herds, hunting lions and leopards, raiding and fighting neighbouring tribes, or, if all else failed, fighting among themselves. They developed their fighting skills by hunting wild animals - starting with giraffes, which although hard to kill were not particularly dangerous, before graduating to the most prestigious prey of all - lions. Lion hunting with spears and swords was extremely dangerous, and warriors were often badly injured by their quarry; the best way to gain kudos was by grasping the tail of the beast while it was still alive. There is a recorded case of two men, armed only with their short swords, who fought for an hour with a lion which was attacking their livestock. All three - men and lion - died. From the point of view of the rest of Masai society, this system of institutionalised hooliganism had several advantages: it directed the energies of the young men away from making trouble at home, and it provided the community with what was in effect a standing army, ready to take the field at a moment’s notice. (The older men also appreciated it because, as the youngsters could not marry, the elders got first pick of the young women.) The problem with the system, of course, was that you had a lot of warriors with time on their hands, living away from the moderating influence of their parents, armed to the teeth, and able to gain status among their peers only by fighting and cattle-rustling. It is no wonder that the tribe as a whole gained such an unsavoury reputation. Though widely admired by friend and foe alike for their courage and style, the moran were not really the sort of people you would want to invite to a party. They took themselves rather seriously, and did not indulge in music and dancing except as part of solemn rituals or as exercise for war. They
were seldom seen to laugh, and with foreigners they usually maintained an attitude of surly arrogance. They did have a sense of humour, though, even if it was of a knockabout sort which would not appeal to everyone. Thomson describes a warrior entertaining his comrades at the expense of some Swahili porters: “These he would dub “donkeys”, in allusion to their being burden-bearers like those interesting quadrupeds. He could keep the kraal in a roar of delight, as he described how he had frightened this one out of his wits, or spitted another on his spear, or smashed the skull of a third into jelly.”
Armament The elders and young boys might carry bows, and archery is described in some accounts of battles fought by the Masai - notably against Peters - but usually only when they were defending their villages. Arrows could be poisoned. The moran, however, used only spears, swords, and wooden or rhinoceros-horn clubs. The latter sometimes had rounded heads like Zulu knobkerries. The spear associated with them in the 19th century was not the slender, long-bladed type seen in modern photographs, but a distinctive weapon rather like a longer version of the Zulu stabbing assegai. Of a total length of about five and a half feet, some 30 inches were accounted for by the huge blade, and another 18 inches by a long, thin metal butt spike. Southern clans apparently used slightly shorter and broader spearheads than their northern relatives. The short sword (known as “simi”, or more properly “olalem”) had a blade which was narrow near the hilt, then flared outwards before curving back to a point - a design which must have been effective for cutting as well as for stabbing, in contrast to the bizarre and often impracticable shapes of many African bladed weapons. Shields were made of tough buffalo hide. Harry Johnston describes them as being about four feet long, but most 19th century and modern pictures show them as closer to three feet. They were stripped of all the hair, polished, then painted in various patterns of white, red, black, and occasionally grey (see illustrations for some examples). The patterns constituted a complicated system of Masai heraldry, the basics of which are roughly as follows. The ground colour of the shield was white. Running down the middle from top to bottom was a pattern in black or black and red, representing stylised cowrie shells, which were widely used in Africa as currency. On one half of the shield (usually the left, looking from the front) were elliptical designs painted in red, which were specific to a particular age-set and clan. On the other side might be a set of symbols in black, representing the lineage of the individual bearer. The latter did not always appear, and seem to have virtually died out by the beginning of
the 20th century, with the disruption of lineage groups by civil war and European conquest; where they were not used, the red patterns might be repeated symmetrically on both sides of the shield. Smaller designs at the top and bottom of a shield were sometimes added by the warriors engaged in a specific campaign, no doubt to aid identification when men from different clans or age-sets fought side by side. A small circular or semi-circular motif - usually on the right - was the equivalent of a military decoration, permitted only to a moran who had shown exceptional valour. It is very difficult to be more specific than this, but the symbolism of shield-painting varied from one clan to another, and also changed over time. The Masai themselves had forgotten a lot of it by the time anthropologists got around to asking them about it. From the point of view of painting wargames figures, it is reasonable to suppose that at least the red parts of the design should be uniform within each unit, and this is borne out by the battle illustrations in Carl Peters’ book. Elsewhere, however, both sketches and photographs often show warriors with differently painted shields standing side by side.
War Dress In their natural state, the Masai men did not look particularly frightening. One observer remarked that “The expression of some of the younger men is almost feminine in its gentleness”. Perhaps realising this potential moral disadvantage, the moran devised a costume which was intended to be as spectacular and intimidating as possible. They are usually described and illustrated as wearing a sort of short toga, made of hide and painted red, which was draped over one shoulder and extended to just below the waist (though one sub-tribe, the Kisongo, are associated with a longer version which covers the knees). However, in battle they usually tied the garment up around the waist as a sash, under which the sword and knobkerry could be thrust. Victorian writers often describe them as fighting naked. Strictly speaking this is not true - apart from their togas they wore leather sandals, sometimes capes or cloaks, and an abundance of ornaments - but no doubt what is meant is that the rolled up togas did not cover those bits which Europeans thought ought to be covered. Warriors’ bodies were painted red with a mixture of grease and ochre. Nowadays their legs are often smeared with white clay, and elaborate patterns drawn in the clay with the fingertips, but 19th century moran are not described as being painted in this way for war. Hair was usually dressed with a similar red-coloured substance, and worn in two or three plaits brought forward over the forehead. The war head-dress was made of black ostrich or vulture feathers, worn in a ring around the head. The occasional use of parts of lions’ manes and bits of colobus monkey fur to
decorate these is documented, but the tall busby-like lion's mane headgear often seen in modern photos was and remains basically ceremonial, and does not seem to have been worn in battle. Leg ornaments, and a short cape which was sometimes worn around the shoulders, were made from the skins of black and white colobus monkeys. Metal wire was used for bracelets and earrings; as children the Masai had their ear lobes pierced and stretched with enormous ivory plugs, so that they hung down almost as far as the shoulders. In battle, the warriors wore metal bells strapped around the thighs. Imported cloth, decorated with stripes, checks or other patterns in red and white, was sometimes used for cloaks, which were known as “nebaras” or “naiberes”. Richard Burton describes the Masai trading for cloth with the Gogo, who had probably acquired it from the Arabs. Several European explorers left eloquent descriptions of the overall appearance of these extraordinary warriors. This is Joseph Thomson’s: “Let us pause and in imagination watch some enthusiastic young ditto (an unmarried girl) buckling on the armour of her knight. First there is tied round his neck, whence it falls in flowing lengths, the naibere, a piece of cotton, six feet long, two feet broad, and a longitudinal stripe of coloured cloth sewed down the middle of it. Over his shoulders is placed a huge cape of kites’ feathers - a regular heap of them. The kid-skin garment which hangs at his shoulder is now folded up, and tied tightly round his waist like a belt, so as to leave his arms free. His hair is tied into two pigtails, one before and one behind. On his head is placed a remarkable object formed of ostrich feathers stuck in a band of leather, the whole forming an elliptically-shaped head-gear. This is placed diagonally in a line beginning under the lower lip and running in front of the ear to the crown. His legs are ornamented with flowing hair of the colobus, resembling wings. His bodily ornament is finished off by the customary plastering of oil. His sime or sword is now attached - it does not hang to his right side; and through the belt is pushed the skullsmasher or knobkerry, which may be thrown at an approaching enemy, or may give the quietus to a disabled one. His huge shield in his left hand and his great spear in his right complete his extraordinary equipment. For the rest you must imagine an Apollo-like form and the face of a fiend, and you have before you the beau-ideal of a Masai warrior. He takes enormous pride in his weapons, and would part with everything he has rather than his spear. He glories in his scars, as the true laurel and decorative marks of one who delights in battles.” It is unlikely that the entire panoply described here would have been worn by every warrior, and individuals obviously indulged in all sorts of variations on the basic theme. With their body paint, beads and feathers they must have looked as diverse and colourful as Plains Indians. Ludwig von Hohnel, writing of Count Teleki’s travels, regarded the appearance of the moran as an essential part of their psychological warfare: “There is really more pretension and impudence behind the self-consciousness of the moran than real courage, and they owe much of the dread in which they are held to their effective get-up. The short mantle of brown haired kidskin, which he generally wears fastened on the right shoulder, is twisted into a girdle and transferred to his waist. He leaves some of the gala ornaments at home, substituting for them an iron bell worn above the knee. His head and shoulders and also his spear are profusely smeared with red grease, which makes him look as if he were dripping with blood... Thus adorned he dashes on with diabolical cries, his shield in his left hand and in the right his uplifted spear. Such an apparition strikes terror into the hearts of the natives, and at its approach they flee without coming to blows at all.”
Mrs. French-Sheldon echoes von Hohnel’s opening comment in even more forthright terms: “With all their ferocity there is, as I have said, a great deal of sham and bluster about the Masai.” The rest of her description, dating from 1891, differs in some details from the others, but gives another vivid impression of the appearance of a Masai army - a spectacle which within a few more years would have vanished forever: “...I was afforded the extraordinary opportunity of seeing over one thousand Masai armed and ready to enter battle, having as an objective point Arusha-jue in the German territory which they had but recently been forced to evacuate by the Germans. The sight was certainly a magnificent spectacle, equipped, armed, and adorned with their picturesque paraphernalia, faces daubed with paint, splendid masks made of masses of ostrich and vulture feathers, plumed at the top with fine sweeping feathers, lions’ manes, and white bits of Colobus monkey hair; huge vulture feather ruffs about their necks, and even encircling their faces, and enormous feather panniers around their thighs; here and there a warrior with an entire Colobus monkey-skin, slit in the centre, through which he had thrust his head, and the tail and long hair blowing straight out in the wind; from his shoulders wildly floated in the breezes a ‘nebara’ made of stripes or figured red and white cotton cloth, and a long hyena tail decorated with a lion’s mane, and Colobus monkey tails swinging from his shoulders as an emblem of war, - forsooth the African shoulder chip! About the warriors’ waists was strapped goats’ hides, into which they thrust their knives; below their knees, and over long oval iron bells a strip of Colobus monkey-skin, with the long white hair standing straight out like a pennant, and similar adornments on their ankles; and the leaders wore strapped across their shoulders a leather quiver, containing a supply of ostrich feathers to refurbish their masks.” Sword belts and similar equipment could be decorated with elaborate beadwork, although old-fashioned belts made of ribbed leather, with just a scattering of white beads, were still more common than the multi-coloured, lavishly adorned varieties often seen today. In contrast to the profusion of colours in use nowadays, in the 19th century beads were generally red, blue, white or black. There are the usual complicated rules about the preferences of different clans, and the precise sequences of colours and patterns which distinguish the Masai from their neighbours. Only the Masai themselves can ever remember these, so I don’t think that there is much point in wargamers worrying about them. Elders might be present at a defensive battle, rather than on a raid, but only in relatively small numbers. They would probably not wear the moran regalia, but content themselves with just a toga or cloak, as they still do in daily life. Elders often shaved their heads, although unlike the moran, they were now entitled to wear their hair however they liked. Pieces of patterned cloth Pygmy Chief. Painting by Kevin Dallimore resembling nebaras are sometimes shown in 20th century photographs being used as flags, but it is not certain whether these had any military significance in earlier times. Mrs. French-Sheldon refers to a Masai “truce-flag”, but the usual sign of peace or truce was a bunch of grass held above the head.
Tactics The advent of muzzle-loading guns, which revolutionised warfare in most of Africa, made no appreciable impact on the Masai, who must often have come into possession of muskets after defeating the Arabs or Swahilis, but never bothered to learn how to use them. Carl Peters describes the tactics which they employed to deal with firearms:
“The Massai (sic) knows how to protect himself from the first shot by throwing himself on the ground, or sheltering himself behind a tree; and long before the muzzle-loader has been made ready for a second discharge, he has come bounding up, to finish the matter with a thrust of his lance.” Not surprisingly, as same author remarks: “Generally, in fact, the (Arab) caravans fire their guns once, and then immediately take to flight, whereupon they are regularly massacred to the last man by the swiftfooted Massais.” For fighting in the open against opponents armed in traditional fashion, the favoured formation was known as the “eagle’s wing”. This consisted of a central wedge formed by the bravest warriors, supported by flank guards on each side and a rearguard. The function of the wedge was simply to break through the enemy frontally, with the rearguard forming a rallying point in case of a repulse. To judge from Masai accounts, such reverses were rarely experienced in battles against other tribes, but despite all their boasting the moran were not reckless fanatics, and a rapid retreat if the circumstances required was a recognised option. They did not drink alcohol, but they did have a sort of soup made from bark and herbs which might be drunk before a hunt or battle, and which is variously said to have an effect similar to amphetamines or marijuana! The young warriors’ manyattas were deliberately left unfortified in order to encourage vigilance, but ordinary kraals or “engangs” were well protected with thorn hedges, within which the cattle were kept at night. At their peak the Masai may have numbered as many as 50000 warriors altogether, but individual armies rarely exceeded 1000 men. A complicated system of command was not required in battle, as the range of tactical options was fairly limited. Such a system would in any case have conflicted with the anarchic tendencies of the moran. Some laibons acted as charismatic war leaders; the most famous of these was Mbatiany, who in the early 1870s put together a large coalition of clans against the Laikipiak. At least for small raiding parties, however, the moran elected their own commanders. In addition, the age-set system provided a rough readymade hierarchy, and elders noted for their wisdom and experience were sometimes obeyed if the warriors felt like it. Each manyatta also had a group of “embikas”, or picked warriors, who acted as a sort of military police. The long, twisted horns of the kudu antelope are still used as musical instruments in ceremonies, and may once have had a command function. Drums were not used by the Masai. Various traditional war-cries and chants were known, and Carl Peters describes the “hyena-like battlehowl” of the warriors. Peters pays reluctant tribute to the way in which the Masai adapted themselves to facing the rapid fire of his breechloaders, advancing cautiously and in extended order from one patch of cover to another. Among the Masai themselves, the northern clans had a reputation for charging rashly, throwing their weapons instead of keeping them to thrust with, and simply trusting that their first rush would break the enemy. If it
did not, they would raise a cry of “Save the warriors by their feet!” and run away. The southerners, on the other hand, were said to be inclined to err on the side of caution. It is often said by 19th century writers that spears were never thrown, and certainly the old-fashioned type would be too heavy and unbalanced to be an effective missile, but the Masai do throw spears nowadays. Clubs and even swords, however, were sometimes hurled at the enemy in battle. The return to Masailand of a victorious army was not always the end of the bloodshed. The anarchy of the moran ethos was not restricted to the battlefield, and the accepted way of achieving a division of the captured cattle or other spoils was simply to fight over them. Thomson describes the sequel to one raid: “The raid was, of course, successful, and our savage friends returned in great glee. On reaching their homes, however, matters had to be squared up, and the spoil divided. So many head of the captured cattle were set apart as the portion of the lybon Mbaratien, who had directed them so well, and whose medicines had been so potent. Then followed a sanguinary scene over the apportionment of the remainder. There was no attempt at a fair division. The braver men and bullies of the party, consulting only their own desires, took possession of such cattle as pleased them, and dared the rest to come and seize them. The understood rule was that if any warrior could hold his own in single combat against all comers for three days, the cattle were his. And thus began the real fighting of the expedition, revealing sickening sights of savage ferocity. There were more warriors killed over the division of the spoil than in the original capturing of it. To kill a man in this manner was considered all fair and above board. Blood feuds were unknown, a man not being considered worth avenging who could not hold his own life safe. If, however, a man was murdered treacherously, the criminal had to pay forty-nine bullocks.” So there should be plenty of scenarios available for wargaming the Masai, ranging from skirmishes over cattle to full-scale battles against European expeditions, Arabs, or any one of countless other African tribes.
Further Reading Mrs. M. French-Sheldon, “Sultan To Sultan”. London, 1892. H. H. Johnston, “The Kilima-Njaro Expedition”. London, 1886. C. Peters, “New Light On Dark Africa”. London, 1889. J. Thomson, “Through Masai Land”. London, 1885. Numerous modern works, notably: T. Saitoti and C. Beckwith, “Maasai”. New York, 1980. A “coffee table” book, full of good modern photographs and drawings, with a sympathetic text by an educated Masai. T. Spear and R. Waller (eds.), “Being Maasai”. James Currey Ltd., 1993. There is a good section on the Masai and their fellow East African pastoralists, including some nice colour pictures of shield patterns, in: C. Spring, “African Arms And Armour”. British Museum Press, 1993.
