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Early History of the Meru of Mt Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Jeffrey A. Fadiman
Jeffrey A. Fadiman
Affiliation:
Eastern Michigan University
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Extract

The Meru are a people who live on and adjoining the N.E. slope of Mt. Kenya. Their oral traditions, collected from the oldest living members, suggest that the group originated on Manda Island, part of an archipelago off the Kenya Coast. During the early 1700s their ancestors were conquered by a neighbouring people, probably Arabs from one of the nearby trading principalities. In consequence, the Meru chose to flee.

Existing evidence suggests that their subsequent period of migration lasted approximately thirty years. During the initial stage, they crossed the River Tana, somewhere near its mouth, then followed its southern bank inland. Later, the group left the river and moved northwest through a basically arid region, where water was obtainable only from seasonal rivers or swamps. Initially, the migrants moved northward, crossing these wet areas. Subsequently, when changing ecological conditions forced them westwards, they followed one of the seasonal river systems to the foothills of Mt. Kenya.

Available data provides little to link the Meru experience with other migratory trends. There is no evidence, for instance, to connect it either with the Bantu migrations from Shungwaya (S. Somalia) or that of Kikuyu-speaking peoples towards Mt. Kenya. Further research will be required to resolve the problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , January 1973 , pp. 9 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 The traditions considered in this article were recounted by over sixty Meru elders, now in their seventies, eighties and nineties, as they learned them from their own grandparents. Many details, however, were recalled only by men of the oldest surviving age-set, less than half a dozen of whom remain. As these individuals were scattered throughout the region, and thus unknown to one another, it proved possible to obtain corroborative testimony regarding much of the material related here. Additional corroboration for the ‘Meru version’ of what had occurred was then sought from individuals engaged in geographic, linguistic, anthropological or oral-historical research in or near the areas suggested by traditional accounts, as well as from persons whose careers had made them intimately familiar with the physical characteristics of the terrain involved. Maps which have proved meful in the topographic portions of this study have been: SK 57 Kenya I:I M (Special), North Sheet, second edition, and Series Y503 (East Africa: I:250,000) sheets SA-37–1, SA-37–2, SA-37–3, SA-37–7, SA-37–11, and SA-37–12, which cover the full length of the Tana River.

2 The name ‘Meru’ was acquired after the era considered in this article. I shall therefore refer to the society as ‘pre-Meru’, using names subsequently acquired (e.g. Ngaa, Meru) only when required for clarity.

3 All dates given in this article are tentative. They are based on the correlation of traditional Meru age-sets with known events, whether those recalled in tradition or those learned from other (non-Meru) sources. Additional study will be required to permit final dating.

4 Dr John Sharman, Professor of African Linguistics, Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi. Personal communication, summer 1970. An example can be found in the word ‘Tharaka’. Before this century, the Tharaka peoples were known as ‘Thaka’ or ‘Thaaka’ to other African peoples with whom they were in contact. The ‘r’ was restored by European administrators.

5 On some recent maps, Mbwara Maganga.

6 Chittick, N., ‘Discoveries in the Lamu Archipelago’, Azania II, 1967, 84Google Scholar and Ogot, B. A., and Kieran, J. A. (eds.), Zamani: A Survey of East African History (New York, 1969), 109.Google Scholar

7 Tidal flows fill and empty the channel daily, in a manner similar to the traditional Meru descriptions, leaving an area of mud and tidal pools, across which one may easily pass to the mainland. Stigand, C.f. C., The Land of Zinj (London, 1913), 146, 148, 158.Google Scholar

8 Other peoples recalled as neighbouring Mbwa: Ndigu (Digo?), Nyengi, Ugoya, Thina, Ci (Baci). Neighbouring localities: Thonga, Muumwa. None of these have been identified.

9 Bunger, R., ‘Pokomo Political Organization and History’, discussion paper, IDS, University of Nairobi, 07 1970.Google Scholar

10 Hobley, Charles William, Kenya: From Chartered Company to Crown Colony (London. 1929).Google Scholar For discussion of possible northeast Bantu origins in Shungwaya, see Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., ‘The Coast, 1498–1840’, chapter V in Oliver, Roland and Mathew, Gervase, (eds), History of East Africa, 1 (Oxford, 1963), 130.Google Scholar Also see Lambert, H. E., The Systems of Land Tenure in the Kikuyu Land Unit, parti, ‘History of the Tribal Occupation of the Land’, chapter in, Communication of the School of African Studies, n.s. no. 22 (Cape Town, 1950).Google Scholar

11 Grottanelli, V. L., ‘A Lost African Metropolis’, Afrikanistische Studien (Berlin, 1955), 232–6.Google Scholar

12 Nguruntune variants collected by H. E. Lambert and J. G. H. Hopkins, former District Commissioners of Meru District, who took great interest in the area's historical traditions. Material now in Lambert's private papers, University of Nairobi.

13 It must be recalled that Swahili has always been a lingua franca, rather than a mother tongue, for many coastal peoples, including those of the Lamu archipelago. Meru traditions imply that the language used by the conquerors may have been a seventeenth century variant of Ki-Amu.

14 Ogot and Kieran, Zamani, 130. Oliver and Mathew, History of East Africa, 141 and Stigand, Zinj, 49–50.

15 Mahassin, A. Gh. El-Safi, ‘Some Contributions of Swahili Poetry to the Understanding of the History of the North Coast of Kenya’, unpublished paper, Department of History, University of Nairobi, 1970.Google Scholar

16 Linguistic interpretation by Dr John Sharman, personal communications, summer 1970. Sharman also suggested that the word ‘Ngaa’ might imply ‘aridity’, occurring through the disappearance (‘drying up’) of a river. One wonders if the application of this term and its derivative muku ngaa (people of aridity) to the group itself might not have referred to the ‘People of the river who had disappeared’. This might be a reference to their leaving it. It should be noted that the alternate term nkanga also carries the same implication of aridity in the sense of ‘drying up’.

17 The prophecy is in Ki-Igembe, a dialect of the Meru language.

18 For this and all subsequent information about the area between the River Tana and the upland fringes of Ukambani (the area currently inhabited by the Kamba), I am indebted to Mr Stephen Pownall, Nanyuki, Kenya, who became intimately acquainted with its topography through many years of game trapping and cattle buying in the area.

19 Informants list both animals among those hunted at this stage, describing the zebra as bearing ‘thin stripes’ (two fingers wide, and the giraffe as having ‘squares’ on its body. Zebras found in Kenya's central and southern regions are described by informants as having ‘thick stripes’ (five fingers). Giraffes found in the same areas are described by informants as bearing ‘ragged blotches’.

20 Information provided by Stephen Pownall, see note 18 above.

21 At one point, thick bush also appears just south of the River Lower Tula, leaving the river system itself as the only possible open route. Thus, a migrating band approaching that river from the direction suggested by Meru tradition would have had little choice but to follow the Tula-Nthunguthu river system in the manner described.

22 Linguistic suggestions by Sharman, see note 4 above. Map in Stigand, Zinj, end- papers, prepared about 1913. The hill in question appears as Orimba.

23 Like the pre-Meru, the pre-Tharaka of that era were organized into two smaller units, recalled by current Tharaka informants as ‘Thaicho’ (or ‘Mbugi’) and ‘Chagala’ (or ‘Murutu’). Similarities in Tharaka and Meru oral traditions suggest that they may once have belonged to the same group during the period at Mbwa, but separated immediately thereafter, the Tharaka having remained on the bank on the ‘Red Sea’ while the Meru crossed. Additional investigation of Tharaka traditions will be required to substantiate this.

24 The term used to refer to this process of dissolution is igairo in Tharaka dialect and kagairo in Meru. It should be noted that the latter phrase has no relationship to the kirao resettlement area, north of the Lamu archipelago, which has been mentioned in Digo, Segeju and Kilindini traditions concerned with migration from Shungwaya. Also, see B. McKintosh in Ogot and Kieran, Zamani, 9 and 204.

25 The identification and subsequent expulsion of these earlier occupants of the Meru region of Mount Kenya will form the substance of a later article. In general, however, it can be said that most of the migrating bands of pre-Meru encountered representatives of one Bantu and three non-Bantu language groups, scattered in small communities across the full length of the current Meru region, either just within or just below the lower fringes of the forests. These were: (a) Eastern Cushitic speakers: three groups (b) Highland Nilotic speakers: one group (c) Plains Nilotic speakers: three groups (d) Bantu speakers: one group.

26 E.g. Freeman-Grenville in ‘The Coast’, Chapter v of Oliver and Mathew, History of East Africa I.

27 Lambert, , The Systems of Land Tenure … part I, chapter III.Google Scholar