The Laikipiak people were a community that inhabited the plateau located on the eastern escarpment of the Rift Valley in Kenya that today bears their name.

[3] According to narratives told to Thompson in 1883, a community referred to as "Wa-kwafi"(Kwavi) fragmented following a series of misfortunes that befell them "about 1830...".

[1] Thompson notes that the original home of the 'Wa-kwafi' was "the large district lying between Kilimanjaro, Ugono and Pare on the west, and Teita, and Usambara on the east.

[2] According to Maasai traditions recorded by MacDonald, the territory of the Laikipiak extended over the plateau today known as Laikipia following the fragmentation of Loikop society.

Thompson (1883) noted that the 'Wa-kwafi' of Guas'Ngishu and those of Lykipia, having increased in numbers and grown bold, allied together to make war on the Maasai.

He states that "somewhere about the same period - at the time an old man can remember according to the native expression - the Masai dwelling on the Uasin Gishu plateau attacked those of Naivasha".

[6] Berntsen (1979) notes that elders of the Purko-Kisongo Maasai relate that it was warriors of the Il Aimer age-set (c. 1870–1875) who blunted the attack of their northern neighbours the Ilaikipiak and then destroyed them as a social unit.

Incensed, the Ilaikipiak warriors, guided by Koikoti, raided the Purko and the other sections around Naivasha, driving them completely from the region.

...they decided to attack and completely overwhelm the southern Masai...With this in view, they started down the Rift Valley, and as they feared being raided by their adversaries of the north whilst they were away, they brought the whole of their stock, women, children and belongings, with them.

One morning at dawn, (the Long'ole) were suddenly attacked by a powerful Maasai regiment which had escaped the sight of the unwary spies.

Finally, about midday we emerged from the shattered sides of the escarpment and stood on the billowy expanse of the plateau at a height of 8400 feet.

We camped shortly thereafter in a dense grove of Junipers, in which we found a deserted village of Andorobo - the hunting tribe of the Masai country.

The district is called Dondolè,which I am informed, means "everybody's (that is to say - no man's land) from the incessant quarrels for possession that have taken place between the Maasai of Kinangop and the Masai (Wa-kwafi) of Lykipia.

The Kwavi divisions that he recognized were; Straight et al. note that the Samburu by way of several landscape features, "understand their relationship to ancestors both victorious and assimilated".

"They Splashed" Many Maa-speakers in Laikipia County, namely among the Ilng'wesi, Ildigirri and Ilmumonyot claim to be descendants of Ilaikipiak today (although most identify primarily as Maasai).

Oral historical records suggested that these groups scattered into the forests of Mt Kenya and elsewhere following the defeat of the Laikipiak, where they subsisted through hunting and foraging until rebuilding their herds off the back of the ivory trade, as well as livestock theft.