First Mutai

[1] Prior to the first Mutai of the nineteenth century, much of the Rift Valley region in Kenya had been occupied by the Sirikwa societies - sedentary pastoralists who had developed an iron-age culture underpinned by raising livestock, complemented by grain growing, over a period of six hundred years.

[4] At the start of the 18th century, Eastern Nilotic-speaking societies began a dramatic expansion from points in north-eastern Uganda.

This is thought to have been set off by their acquisition of Zebu cattle, a hardier breed than they previously kept, allowing for longer distance transhumance and exploitation of drier areas of East Africa.

These communities had retained commercial relations with their kin in the land of the Jie, notably importing ironware made by the Luo-speaking Labwor blacksmiths of western Karamajong.

[6] Central to the Eastern Nilotic speaking societies’ worldview was the concept that all cattle on earth belonged to them as a divine gift.

[12] The various narratives, records and reports thus point to a long dry period starting about 1800 seemingly peaking with an intensely arid time during the mid-1830s.

[13] According to traditions recorded by Wilson (1970), a community known as Maliri were pushed eastward to the vicinity of Koten mountain by Jie incursion into their territory.

[14] The Merille who as late as 1970 were still known to the Karimojong as Maliri moved further eastward from their rest point at Koten, settling somewhere east of the Turkana escarpment.

[15] The Pokotozek moved south, arriving at Nakiloro which lies on the lip of the Turkana escarpment just north of Moroto mountain, where they stayed for a short while before moving further south, proceeding down the eastern side of the Chemorongit and Cherangani mountains before finally branching off in the direction of Lake Baringo.

Therefore Turkana cattle camps began to push further down the Tarash, which ran northwards below the foothills of the Moru Assiger massif on their right and the escarpment on their left.

Pelekee which loomed up in the distance directly before them... Lamphear notes that Tukana traditions aver that a dreamer among them saw strange animals living with the people up in the hills.

Lamphear states that Turkana traditions agree that the Kor were very numerous and lived in close pastoral association with two other communities known as 'Rantalle' and 'Poran'.

[9] According to Von Höhnel (1894) "a few decades" prior, the Burkineji occupied districts on the west of the lake and they were later driven eastwards into present day Samburu.

The Siger like the Kor, were seen as a 'red' people, they are also remembered as a 'heterogeneous, multi-lingual confederation, including Southern and Eastern Nilotic-speakers, and those who spoke Cushitic dialects'.

The Chok were a community assimilated by the Pokotozek, their traditions state that there 'always were two original Suk tribes living on the Elgeyo Escarpment'.

They further state that 'while the Suk nation was being evolved in the mountains of the Elgeyo escarpment the Kerio Valley was occupied by the Sambur.

They thereupon left the Kerio Valley and formed a large settlement at En-ginyang (This place is about thirty miles north of Lake Baringo)...From this event dates the origin of the pastoral Suk.

On arriving at Mt Elgon, the Sebei-Pokotozek found Tepes people who were originally from Mount Kadam in Karamoja residing at a place later known as Entepes (present-day Endebess).

Following a number of interviews, he was of the opinion that at the time of their collapse, the Oropom (Orupoi) were a late neolithic society whose expansive territory stretched across Turkana and the surrounding region as well as into Uganda and Sudan.

He observes that the corpus of oral literature suggested that, at its tail end, the society "had become effete, after enjoying for a long period the fruits of a highly developed culture".

However they were cowards and their elders had to force the young men to fight us; in doing this, they gathered them together in long lines, securing them one to the other by ropes, to prevent them running away.