Chapter X
Disaster Traditions: There Were Years When Men Ate Thorns

"The powers of the witchdoctors are enormous, and every witchdoctor is a member of a secret society."^[1]
F. M. Lamb
District Commissioner, Meru

Men of Meru recall the first decade that followed British conquest (1907–1917) as the time of Kangangi, so fully was it dominated by the will of E. B. Home. The second decade (1917–1927), however, is remembered as the time of Urogi, or "witchcraft," when growing numbers of the conquered turned to the supernatural to bring some sense of comfort to their lives. Men of Europe who lived and ruled in Meru also remember this second decade for its witchcraft. The chants of so-called witch doctors, however, were only one of what then seemed an endless sequence of disasters that struck Meru, threatening to destroy what whites and blacks alike had tried to build.

Disaster Years: When Men Ate Thorns

The first of these disasters began outside Africa.^[2] In 1914, England and Germany went to war. Six months thereafter the hostilities had extended to their East African colonies, where whites from both sides set out for what promised to be a glorious campaign. Their African subjects were less enthusiastic. None knew what the war was about, and few cared. The most, the command to mobilize was only one more of the incomprehensible requirements that whites had placed on them since they first appeared.

World War I reached Meru in mid-1915. The first news caused great excitement among the white population—then numbering twelve—and some bewilderment among the estimated 120,000 Africans. Their

initial indifference swiftly disappeared, however, as Horne and two assistant district officers turned their energies toward mobilizing the entire district to aid England and the king.

Within weeks vast numbers of warriors were willingly recruited from every region for service in the karia , or carrier corps. Initially, Meru enthusiasm for the project was quite genuine, as warriors scrambled to recover long-hidden weapons and spoke with satisfaction of the restoration of raiding.

Then, startled rumors spread through every war band that only whites could fight. Those Meru already sent off to the whites' war had been stripped of their shields and spears, then told to carry head loads, the function that tradition still reserved for women.

This first rumor was followed by one still more startling. It was said that Kangangi and his two white helpers had decided to round up "all" the Meru cattle, then send them off in one great herd to feed the whites at war. Resentful, angry, and afraid, warriors on every ridgetop reacted by deciding to devour every cow they owned. Huge bonfires, across the entire region, marked the sudden reestablishment of renta , the bull feast.^[3] For those attending, it must indeed have seemed as if the time before the conquest had returned, when whole regiments of warriors had prepared themselves for conflict by devouring bull after bull provided by their fathers' herds, symbolically drawing strength from their consumption. This time, however, the feasts proved all too brief as district officers, horrified at what was happening, galloped frantically from fire to fire denying the cattle would be taken and commanding them to stop.

The whites did not, however, deny their need for carriers. Sporadic attempts at flight and concealment were punished by collective livestock fines, imposed upon whole ridgetops, coupled with threats to shoot "shirkers" for desertion. In consequence the early recruitment of volunteers was quickly transformed into the seizure of involuntary labor, as long lines of newly disarmed warriors were roped together and marched off to war.

By 1916 they began to return, emaciated, stumbling skeletons, trickling back into their home districts in conditions ranging from exhaustion to approaching death. With them came the dysentery they had contracted while on the campaign, an illness that struck with a virulence no one in Meru had previously experienced.

Meru elders living at that time could recall the appearance of new illness only twice within the history of the tribe. Each had been directly

connected with the simultaneous appearance of whites. In the 1880s, European-led coastal caravans had appeared from Tigania to Mwimbi. Each had been accompanied by the appearance of jiga (chiggers), tiny insects that burrowed into toes and itched until removed with iron knives. In 1913, European entry into Mwimbi had been accompanied by an outbreak of what was later diagnosed as meningitis.^[4] The disease, marked by vomiting, fever, extreme lethargy, and finally seizures, proved terrifying to a population that had never experienced it, the more so since traditional forms of healing proved useless.

That outbreak, however, had been brief and limited to a single region. It had also struck primarily among small children, whom the Meru believed susceptible to illness in any case. The 1916 dysentery epidemic, however, broke out in every Meru region and among those of every age. Within three months after the first groups of karia returned, white administrators began to record scores, then hundreds, and finally thousands of deaths. Three thousand died that year in Igembe alone, despite its almost total isolation from the rest of Meru.^[5] Every other region followed in its path.

In 1917–1918 the rising tide of illness was intensified by famine. Both years were periods of unprecedented drought. During a normal agricultural cycle, all Meru regions experienced two rainy and two dry periods each calendar year and adapted their agricultural practices accordingly. In November 1917, however, the "short rains" failed entirely. Communities nearer to the forest salvaged a portion of their crops. Those in the lowland regions of Muthambi, Mwimbi, Igoji, Imenti, and Tigania are said to have gleaned nothing at all.

The problem intensified in March—April 1918, when the now desperately awaited "long rains" came too sporadically to provide the moisture needed to ripen standing millet, the basic Meru grain crop. By June 1918 even food reserves within the highland regions were exhausted, and people everywhere began to starve. Seeds disappeared from African markets in all parts of the mountain. Work on the roads was almost totally abandoned because of lack of food supplies for those who came to work.

By October—November 1918 the approaching season of short rains was universally looked upon as bringing life or death. But when the time came for weeding many were too weakened by hunger to work. "Nor could starving children successfully sling stones at the endless flock of birds that descended on the millet, nor hurl flaming torches at the baboons and bushbucks that crept through the crops to feed each night."^[6] Mission writings universally reflect the tenure of that time:

The event which eclipsed all others at the opening of the year was the terrible famine. Three successive rains had failed and starvation spread its horrors throughout the land. People died by scores daily. Desperation drove men to crime and violence. Wives were driven away and children sold. For many months our Missionaries were grappling with death. The effect of this condition upon the Mission may be imagined. The school was depleted for want of food. The chief business was to administer what little relief could be obtained.^[7]

In desperation the colonial administration moved to stave off total starvation by imparting two shiploads of yellow maize from colonies in southern Africa. They arrived without incident, only to be rejected by almost all of the elder Meru as inedible and unfit for human beings.

Under these circumstances, tax collection also became increasingly sporadic, a problem caused not only by the shortage of coins (the rupee) within the district but also by the drastic decline in livestock, particularly cattle. There were at least three reasons for this. One was a striking resurgence of cattle rustling in every region. It bore, however, little relation to the carefully regulated livestock raiding that had formed the core of precolonial warfare. Rather, many raiders were elders, because hunger forced men of all age-sets to seek food. In 1918, for example, a new district commissioner expressed his surprise at having run down and jailed a "large gang of elderly cattle thieves."^[8] No doubt his surprise decreased as the pattern grew common over time.

Livestock also declined in response to the Meru tradition of seeking shelter from catastrophe with distant kin. After mid-1918 hundreds of starving Meru, particularly from lower sections of the mountain, trekked raggedly away from their communities to seek shelter among kin within neighboring tribes. With them, as required by tradition, went their wives and children and only whatever sheep, grain, and cattle were required for them to survive. The clans who sheltered them would be repaid through acquisition of the young born to livestock that the famine victims had left behind. Yet what was tradition among Meru meant constant loss in taxes to the British, who watched whole herds move off the mountain with no promise of return.

The final blow, however, was yet to fall upon those herds that still remained. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in neighboring regions jarred the colonial administration into imposition of a quarantine upon all Meru cattle. This was followed by a rather too hastily organized campaign to inoculate all remaining herds. Not surprisingly, the concept of inoculation was opposed by Meru in every region, at least partially as a means of expressing a generalized resentment of the

British themselves. In Tigania, however, dissenters voted with their feet. Whole clans raced their cattle in darkness over the Meru borders and into adjoining regions, thus perhaps beyond the Meru commissioner's reach. Unfortunately, this brought at least a portion of the herds into the very areas from which the original disease had come. Once infected, they swiftly passed the sickness on to others still within Tigania. In time herds in every region felt its full effects, and the decline in livestock intensified.

The situation was further compounded by the worldwide influenza epidemic, which struck Meru in November 1918. Among a population already reeling from famine, dysentery, and drought, this final blow proved overwhelming. Colonial records suggest that more than ten percent of the population died in every region, and another ten percent fled the district seeking refuge with adjoining tribes.^[9]

The British administration, for all its goodwill, could do almost nothing to stem the tide. In early 1919 the whites made an initial effort to delay what they foresaw as regionwide starvation until the coming crop of millet could be harvested. Learning, through a messenger, of a successful maize harvest in the Gikuyu region of Nyeri, on Mount Kenya's eastern slope, the Meru district commissioner sent "almost every man in Meru" to fetch a portion of the crop.^[10]

Unfortunately, the influenza epidemic had already reached Nyeri. It spread immediately from the stricken Gikuyu to the arriving Meru porters, disabling them in such numbers that only a fraction of the anticipated surplus could be carried back. Some porters, of course, returned not only with maize but influenza as well, reaching Meru just before the virus struck them down. The disease therefore followed them back to their home communities, leaving many previously isolated regions worse off than before.

The whites responded with whatever resources were at hand. Over the next three years, collection of the hut tax was intermittently suspended in recognition of the Meru plight. Famine relief camps were established on the district's northern and southern boundaries, to which those in need could come for maize meal that might save their lives. Mission stations also evolved into oases for the starving, sowing land in their immediate locations to the limits allowed by their supplies.

In desperation the Meru administration began to send large contingents of the remaining able-bodied men to the European districts that by now had begun to encircle what had become the Kikuyu Native Reserve. By late 1919 no less than 10,396 former warriors and family

elders had been collected and sent off to settler farms. The intent of those officials who organized the program was almost certainly benevolent, since those transferred could work for the whites in exchange for food. That meant fewer mouths to feed at home and those who left it could survive.

Unfortunately those settlers to whom the former warriors were sent proved so strongly in favor of the innovation that they decided it should be permanent. Accordingly, as the work contract of various Meru contingents expired, a growing percentage found themselves indefinitely detained. A series of increasingly angry letters from the Meru district headquarters had no effect on either the government or the settlers concerned. In consequence the practice of exporting warriors in search of sustenance ground sharply to a halt.

By the early 1920s the worst was finally past. Conditions in the highland regions returned quickly to normal. Many of the lowland areas, however, remained dangerously close to a subsistence level, and elements of the Tharaka, trapped on their almost waterless plain, were reduced to stripping bark from the trees. No homestead in Meru escaped those years unscathed, and elders still recall them as "the time when men ate thorns."

Strife Between Age-Sets

The relentless drumfire of natural catastrophes took its toll upon the Meru and their conquerors alike. By the early 1920s these afflictions were intensified by a sequence of human conflicts that proved equally disruptive to both sides.

The first of these would have been apparent only to the Meru themselves. Traditionally certain types of ecological disaster led inevitably to the rise of social conflicts, usually between age-sets, that could be resolved only when environmental conditions improved.

Continued failure of the millet harvests, for example, meant different things to blacks and whites. The British thought solely of physical starvation. The Meru considered a social dimension as well. No millet harvest meant no millet beer. Without beer no Ndinguri could be circumcised, since tradition required its ceremonial consumption throughout the rituals.

Until circumcision, however, young men were still boys. Without proper ritual an entire generation was virtually forbidden entry into warriorhood and thus adulthood as well. Instead, regardless of their ac-

tual age, they remained Biiji, uncircumcised boys, locked into the status of childhood that grew less appropriate and more oppressive with each passing day.

The frustrations of youths placed in this position were fully shared by their fathers. These men had stayed for many years as family heads/apprentice elders. As junior members of their councils they had remained at every ruling elder's beck and call. Never did their rank permit them to share—or even speak—in the deliberations. For over a decade they had been silent, civil, and subordinate, their only achievements having been to father growing sons. Now, as these sons attained warriorhood, they too should have risen in power, taking on the prerogatives of rule.

These aspirations were opposed as a matter of course by the existing set of ruling elders, who had no wish to give up their prerogatives and enter retirement. Nor did their sons, still warriors in theory if no longer in fact, wish to be pushed "upward" into family head status by a new generation of just-circumcised youth.

It was a conflict long sanctioned in Meru tradition, one that set old against new. It lasted until the emerging group of fledgling warriors grew sufficiently numerous to physically expel the established generation from its war hut. Seizing the hut by physical force, they would proclaim their age-set triumphant throughout Meru and then begin their time of warriorhood. Soon thereafter the family heads would rise to authority as well, buying the status of ruling elderhood by presenting the retiring age-set with appropriate gifts.^[11]

By 1916, youths who were subsequently to form the age-set of Miriti had grown so numerous that they began to demand access to warriorhood. The demand was fiercely resisted by the men of the Murungi age-set, still proud of their status. By 1917–1918 the continued failure of each millet harvest provided warriors in every region with reasons for delay, an argument supported enthusiastically by their fathers, the ruling elders.

At this point the British unintentionally stepped forth with a decision that further delayed the impending age-set transfer. Still seeking ways to increase the district's revenue, they imposed a special poll (head) tax upon each circumcised male. The ruling elders were delighted. Logically, they argued, the fewer circumcisions, the less tax need be paid. The family heads were appalled, because the tax would draw livestock from the very herds they had so carefully preserved to use as gifts (fees) throughout their sons' impending circumcisions.

As the herds were taxed away or subsequently decimated by disease, both family heads and their grown sons were in despair. Raging at the delays put on them by nature, they turned their anger at those age-sets above them, relieving their frustrations by an endless stream of taunts and chants and petty brawls with those they felt were thwarting them. As always it was tradition that was most sharply damaged, as elder boy fought warrior and family head taunted senior; the age-set structure began to wear away.

A second source of Meru social unrest lay in the relentless rise of taxes, imposed at first by the administration during the years when every clan in the district was reeling from disaster. The concept of taxation was introduced in 1911, when Horne imposed a single tax on every hut in Meru. Initially it had been set at three rupees (later, shillings) per hut, to be acquired through labor or livestock sale. In consequence ridgetop risings had occurred in areas near the mountain's base, each of which had been broken by gunfire. Stunned, other Meru regions accepted the three-shilling tax without protest. Over time that amount had become "traditional" from a Meru perspective and was thus considered a reasonable sum for the British to demand.

This understanding, of course, existed only on the Meru side. From their perspective the arrangement they had made with Horne was unfairly and unexpectedly broken in 1919 by a British decision to raise the level of taxation throughout the entire colony. In Meru taxes were increased to five shillings in 1920, and again to eight shillings in 1921. In Nairobi the increases seemed economically justified as part of colony-wide efforts to help England's African subjects "rebuild" what war and nature had destroyed.

The Meru district commissioner knew better. He sent letter after letter of protest through appropriate colonial channels, asking that the intended increase be laid aside. His requests received some consideration, but were ultimately rejected. Dutifully, he mobilized his administrative staff, only to be faced with a windstorm of protests that seemed to come from every ridgetop in the region.

To the Meru each increase seemed particularly unjust, coming at a time when they were struggling to survive. Every single homestead in the district, without exception, simply declared themselves as livestock poor, thereby owning nothing with which the tax could possibly be paid. Many communities also claimed they had become population poor as well, whole clans having either migrated or withered away

under the ravages of famine and disease. ("And yet, the huts remained and each was counted, for who could prove whether someone still lived inside.")^[12]

Other protests seem to have been particularly irksome to the harassed district commissioner. Often his African staff tended to count the huts used to shelter goats or even store grain. There were also protests against counting the "huts of old women," usually widowed, of great age, and with no discernible means of support. Alternately, several of these aged women—each with her own hut—might be dependent on a single equally aged man, whose herds, flocks, and sons alike had been carried off by disease and famine.^[13]

In fairness it must be noted that both the Meru and their colonial administrators had been placed under impossible conditions. The British, pressed by demands from their own superiors, found it imperative to raise district revenues simply to maintain the existing colonial structure. The Meru, however, had no means whatsoever by which to raise the required sums.

In the past individual homesteads had coped with the taxes by selling their livestock and grain, usually to members of the neighboring pastoral tribes (Maasai, Somali, Galla, and others), who had paid fair market value for that period and place. Now they found it virtually impossible to sell either commodity at anything more than a fraction of the accustomed price, their traditional buyers having suffered as deeply as they. In near desperation successive Meru district commissioners put aside their moral scruples and forced whole communities to sell livestock at whatever prices they could fetch. Thereby, they achieved at least partial collection of the required revenues but drove elders in the more afflicted areas into unprecedented depths of despair.

Their feelings were shared for different reasons by men of the younger age-sets. By 1920 many family heads and former warriors had come to accept the money economy, through either their war or work experiences with Europeans. Consequently they chose to cope with British taxes by working for rupees, then standard currency in Kenya, and saving what they received. Over time many men had saved sums that for that era seemed substantial and had even begun to use the surplus to buy goods.

The rupee had been Kenya's standard monetary unit since 1898. Its value had always been one shilling and fourpence, British sterling. Suddenly, in January 1920 it rose to two shillings and fourpence, then

dropped to two shillings by March and to one shilling and fivepence in June of the same year.^[14]

Normally these fluctuations would not have affected the Meru population, even those who worked wholly for wages. They did, however, affect Kenya's Indian and European communities, both of whom began enthusiastically to smuggle vast numbers of rupees into the country.

The Kenya government was thoroughly alarmed. It had also brought in large amounts of one-rupee notes, intended as belated payments to the thousands of African ex-servicemen who had returned from the great war. Worse, the payout had actually begun in mid-1920, continuing throughout Kenya for seven days, to the accompaniment of great rejoicing and enthusiastic all-night dancing by the ex-servicemen involved. On the eighth day the government clamped down on every form of smuggling in the only possible way: it withdrew all one-rupee notes from circulation. Suddenly and dramatically, the wages of war were rendered useless paper in the hands of the hundreds upon hundreds of Africans who now possessed them.^[15]

In Meru the warriors and younger family heads now plunged into despair. Economic explanations proved totally useless, particularly because neither the district officers nor their sullen listeners had any grasp of the economic forces in which all were caught. What remained, among men of these younger age-sets, was a raging sense of betrayal, joined to feelings of rising despair as intense and poignant as those felt by their elders. For perhaps the first time in Meru history, neither the present nor the future offered hope.

From Pioneers to Pragmatists

Times were also hard, however, for the British. The war alone had impoverished the entire colony. The subsequent sequences of medical, climatic, and economic disasters had brought the entire colonial structure to the point of collapse. British administrators responded to each individual crisis with energy and determination, mobilizing whatever resources were at hand. Unfortunately Kenya colony possessed neither the funds nor personnel to cope with disasters of such magnitude. The best that the administrators anywhere could achieve was a series of stopgap solutions, shifting existing colonial officers back and forth among the various tribal districts like small boys rushing endlessly to stick their fingers into leaking dikes.

Stopgap administration was nowhere more apparent than in Meru, remote from colonial headquarters in Nairobi and thus perhaps low in its administrative priorities. Certainly, the Meru District tradition of long-term rule by a single administrator was snapped like a twig after 1918. Horne had ruled Meru for almost the entire decade of 1907–1917. During the next ten years, he was followed by no fewer than fourteen successors. Few of these stayed in the post for more than one year. Some left after six months; one, after three. Assistant district commissioners, district officers, and cadets were assigned along the same pattern. Tours were brief; transfers were frequent. Not one officer stayed.^[16]

The frequency of this turnover led to the total loss among the administrators of much that had been common knowledge about the Meru culture. Horne had been a gifted linguist who also took great pride in his increasing knowledge of the Meru social structure. He had, however, an outspoken distaste for written records, an antipathy that led him to set down as little as permitted in the required district annual reports and nothing at all outside them. The same applied, for different reasons, to other members of the pioneer administrative generation. Orde-Browne preserved his voluminous knowledge of the Cuka-Mwimbi peoples in private ledgers for publication on his return to England.^[17] Others disposed of their written materials on leaving Kenya, turning their energies wholly toward learning about other tribes.

Men of that first decade were the pioneers, priding themselves on their knowledge of and empathy with the peoples they ruled. Those of the next decade might be labeled the pragmatists. Collectively they had neither the time, linguistic skills, nor personal inclination to probe deeply and searchingly into tribal societies. Their pride lay not in knowledge and empathy but in administrative efficiency, a concept they defined in terms of inducing Africans to get tasks done. Thus, during the second decade, huts were to be counted in record time, taxes collected in record amounts. Roads were to appear. Living standards were to rise. British standards of law, religion, morality, and civilized behavior were to spring up in the wilderness. Above all, in exchange for this introduction to civilization, England's subject peoples were to be taught to show a profit.

The pragmatists relied on interpreters, not merely to convey orders but also to gain information on those they ruled during the first years of British rule. Few Meru learned Swahili (the colonial lingua franca) and none learned English. Thus, the first generation of interpreters to

appear in Meru were drawn initially from among Swahili and Kamba peoples and subsequently the Gikuyu.

None of these "aliens" loved Meru. The Swahili, Gikuyu, and Kamba alike felt themselves forced to live among savages. Members of all three groups identified wholly with the fortunes of England and felt themselves far above the peoples they now helped rule. The Meru fully reciprocated this hostility, having learned from their earlier experiences with the British that their interpreters were to be distrusted, hated, and feared. Several carved reputations for themselves that have become part of traditional lore. "Salimu the Small," for example, one of the Gikuyu who interpreted for Horne, distinguished himself both for his disregard of the intricacies of Meru culture and his unrelenting greed. "To see the white man [Horne]," informants recall, "Salimu demanded a goat. To argue your case in front of him [Horne], Salimu demanded a girl. He loved best eating other peoples' property and being bribed. When you complained, he asked his white man to put you into prison."^[18]

Although Horne had soon learned the Meru language, a long series of Gikuyu interpreters who worked for his assistants and successors are recalled as having "left no moment undisturbed to convince their employers that Meru social institutions were both primitive and dangerous."^[19] The institution of Njuri was no exception. Horne, absorbed in learning Meru ways, had actively sought out its meetings and members. His successors, lacking his linguistic and ethnological inclinations, sought information from their interpreters instead.

Tradition suggests that the interpreters often focused on those aspects of Meru life of which whites were least likely to approve. They had no need to lie, only to describe the requested customs while neglecting to explain their psychological and social context. The Meru traditions regarding execution provide an interesting example. Usually, newly appointed colonial officers were appropriately horrified to learn, from their Gikuyu interpreters, that acts of theft, adultery, and "bewitchment" (cursing) were punished in Meru by death through public stoning. In fact isolated instances of any antisocial act were usually punishable by livestock fines and then only after long deliberation by the elders.

Habitual offenders, however, whether thieves, adulterers, cursers, or other types, might indeed become more than the communities could bear. They could on order from an elders' council be put to death by stoning. An interpreter might neglect to mention, however, that such punishment was reserved for the incorrigibles. Nor did they often

bother to explain that each stoning was preceded by a "prayer song" sanctified by generations of use, imploring everyone who sympathized with the offender to come forward and "buy him." Should someone stand forth, he could shield the offender from execution by placing cows between the judged and his judges, in whatever numbers they might require.

The stoning could begin only when offense had been given so often that no one in the whole community stepped forward. The first stones were always cast by kin, the missiles symbolizing the dissolution of their common bond. Thereafter, each man in the community cast a stone in turn, symbolically proclaiming his commitment to the execution as the only way in which communal harmony could be restored. The Meru procedures were cautious, deliberative, and rational, and they differed only slightly from those of the Gikuyu. By emphasizing those differences, however, or omitting the more humane aspects, interpreters could cast doubt upon the entire Meru judicial process and, beyond it, upon Meru tradition.

This sense of alienation from Meru ways was transmitted, at least in part, from the first generation of interpreters to their successors. By the 1920s the series of Gikuyu interpreters had been replaced, in part, by men of Meru. Many of these, however, had spent long years outside the district, working for Europeans. Having mastered either Swahili or English, they had also become partially detribalized, having acquired sufficient interests in Western ways to abandon some of their own.

This was particularly true for young men who had begun to make both a career and the beginnings of wealth out of working for whites. By the mid-1920s, for example, the earliest Meru interpreters had worked for the British for at least ten years. Many had originally been plucked by Horne from warriorhood to become askari , or tribal police. Others had served as messengers, hut counters, porters, or guides. Still others had worked over long periods with other British, whether in wartime or on settlers' lands.

All of these men shared several perceptions in common. One was the belief that their fortunes lay with the British. A second was the feeling that they were "modern" men and as such disdainful of their own "primitive" traditions. A third was based on the desire to provide whites with only that information that might best enhance themselves. Often that corresponded with precisely what white administrators wished to hear.

If, for example, a newly appointed Meru district commissioner decided that his "natives" were "sunk in superstition . . . and . . . abominable practices," as one reported in 1923, or "backward due to their belief in witchcraft and curses," as recorded by still another new appointee in 1924, his interpreters did what was required to reinforce those beliefs.^[20] Small wonder, therefore, that colonial knowledge of Meru ways disappeared. What little was learned came either from aliens or the alienated, men either foreign to Meru or who had abandoned its ways.

Tinkerers And Destroyers: The Anglicizing Years

Given the distorting reports of the interpreters, it is not surprising that the new generation of administrative pragmatists turned enthusiastically to the task of anglicizing the Meru, particularly the ways they were ruled. Their approach to the Meru way of rule, as personified by the Njuri councils, was ambivalent. One group regarded the Njuri system as an ethnological curiosity, to be tinkered with and thereby anglicized in one's spare time. Others associated it with the "dark" aspects of Meru society, equating it primarily with witchcraft. The first group wished to turn Njuri meetings into replicas of English village councils and was concerned primarily with selecting Meru who had proved sufficiently anglicized to play by British rules. The second wished to replace it altogether, banning its gatherings, burning its huts, and transferring its functions to wholly British institutions, staffed by British educated youngsters.

Perhaps the most memorable of the "tinkerers" appeared in 1920. Soon after D. R. Crawford was appointed district commissioner, he proclaimed a "General Kiama" for all Meru, asking leading members of the regional Kiamas (actually, the Njuris) of Tigania-Igembe and Imenti-Igoji to meet at the Meru district headquarters. Dutifully, selected elders from the various ridgetop communities walked the many miles to appear. Having gathered, they sat down to begin deliberation while waiting for the new white man to appear.

They were initially amazed to learn that the discussions were, in fact, to be conducted by a number of younger men, handpicked by the district commissioner for their "administrative willingness and speaking skills." More disconcerting, the elders were informed that decisions were to be made in British fashion (i.e., by majority rule), with total dis-

regard for the intricacies of Meru debating tradition, the need for consensus, and the presence of meat and beer. To no one's surprise, the elders swiftly concluded that no Kiama had in fact been convened. They quietly drifted away—to the intense satisfaction of the district commissioner—who noted subsequently that his "handpicked" group had continued to function after the tribal elders proved unsatisfactory.^[21]

The "handpicked" group continued to meet as a General Kiama for the next two years. Its work was increasingly hampered, however, by the unwillingness of any other normal elders to bring any cases before it for judgment. Instead they universally continued to rely on the traditional system of Kiamas and Njuris. Starved for conflicts to resolve, the General Kiama for all Meru gradually collapsed.

The second type of administrator appeared in either 1921 or 1922 (tradition is unclear), with an alternative solution. His real name has been forgotten by informants, who refer to him only as Kivunja, "the destroyer."^[22] Kivunja proved unusually outspoken against the entire system of judgment by Kiama in general and the two Njuris in particular. From a colonial perspective he had excellent reasons. In keeping with the beliefs of many British throughout the period, Kivunja saw the Njuri as not merely unprogressive but reactionary, intent on dragging its people "backward" into a stagnant and unprogressive past. Nor could Njuri gatherings be dismissed as "dogs without teeth." By using curses to support their positions, the councils still retained the power to overawe the Meru and thereby paralyze each British effort to improve and anglicize their lives. The Njuris thus stood squarely in the path of England, in a conflict in which the prize was loyalty of the entire tribe.

Kivunja came to Meru, however, during what informants remember as among the last of the famine years, thus probably 1921–1922. During his first weeks in the district he is recalled as having grown particularly angry to learn of the Njuri practice of "feasting," that is, consuming the meat of bulls provided to the Njuri members by parties to the conflict they had assembled to resolve. Meru tradition sanctified such feasting because it affirmed that the conflict had been considered by the elders and resolved.

Kivunja, uninformed about the symbolic context of the feasting, accused the elders of Tigania's Njuri Nceke of accepting bribes. Worse, he proclaimed their consumption of so much meat in time of famine as an insulting and extravagant waste. His response was to ban "the Njuri organization" throughout Meru, enforcing the decision by burning several alleged Njuri huts. The ban proved unexpectedly effective;

members of the highest elders' councils in Igoji and South Imenti subsequently seem to have abandoned their meetings. The Njuri ya Kiama in North Imenti initially tried to ignore the ban, but found "informers too many and police posts too near."

Tigania's Njuri Nceke, however, sent a delegation of elders to Kivunja to protest. During their meeting they informed him that "it had been [they] who had first welcomed Kangangi [Horne] to Meru, and that . . . Kivunja's failure to cooperate would force [them], if further harassed, to bring him [Horne] back to rule [them] as before."^[23] Perhaps amused, the district commissioner replied by permitting the Tigania Njuri to meet "at the Boma [Meru district headquarters in Imenti] every Wednesday" to settle its affairs. He warned them, however, that a chief and a clerk would always sit with them during their meetings, to record their discussions and assure that nothing was said against England.

Kivunja's reply threw the elders into consternation. Initially they meekly agreed to his terms. Thereafter selected groups of spokesmen placidly appeared for a while "on Wednesdays" to satisfy the white man, but the actual Njuri deliberations continued in traditional fashion within Tigania, shielded from administrative interference by a conspiracy of silence. After a short time, however, the weekly delegations also ceased to appear at district headquarters, and subsequent administrators never realized they had come. From a British perspective the Njuri had passed into tribal history, quietly ceasing to exist.

It seemed reasonable, therefore, for subsequent district officials to follow Kivunja's path to its logical end, creating a series of wholly British administrative institutions to fill the void left by the demise of the more "primitive" indigenous ones. The first step, taken in 1919–1920, was to reorganize the African Native Courts that had initially been established after 1911 by Horne and Platts. Now almost moribund, the courts were rechristened Local Native Tribunals and established in each of the four major regions. The number of participants within each tribunal was reduced from sixty to thirty. More important from the British perspective, the entire corps of "senior" (i.e., ruling and above) elders was gradually "weeded out," to be replaced by an energetic group of younger men, drawn almost wholly from the ranks of colonial police, thus familiar with British colonial traditions.

In the early 1920s the Local Native Tribunals were each supplied with an administrative staff, intended not only to record and regulate their decisions but also to assist in their enforcement. By 1924, for ex-

ample, each tribunal had been "given" a president to guide its members, by this time reduced to twenty, in both their selection and judgment of cases. Court clerks, provided a year earlier, not only recorded evidence but also assisted in phrasing the language in which judgments were to be set down in final form, a position that gave them unusual power over the severity of sentences. Finally each tribunal was provided with five to ten process servers, chosen from the tribal police and charged to ensure swift implication of every tribunal judgment.^[24]

In July 1925 the Local Native Tribunals were formally supplemented by the creation of an all-Meru Local Native Council (LNC), which was opened by the acting governor of Kenya with great solemnity in what is now known as Meru Town. It was composed of carefully chosen nominees, young, British-trained, and loyal to England. Eight of the nominees were "elected" by contending with others, equally anglicized within their respective districts. Fourteen, however, were directly nominated by the district administration, which thereby assured itself a voting majority on every issue that might arise.

Local administrators of that time described the LNC as "unmistakably popular" with the Meru, judging by the enthusiasm with which its members were elected. This popularity, they felt, was because of the opportunity offered the "more advanced and perhaps restless young men of political tendencies" to share responsibility for the ruling of their people. It seems more likely, however, that the enthusiasm of both candidates and voters was grounded in the administration's willingness to release sizable funds for the new council to spend. Armed with an initial bankroll of 2,065 shillings that had been diverted from the hut tax, the council moved enthusiastically and rapidly to spend it.^[25]

Thus the era closed with the anglicizers in complete control. From the British perspective they were simply training the Meru ultimately to rule themselves in British fashion. To do so, they were following tactics used by colonizers throughout history, eliminating indigenous institutions, then filling the void with their own by training the young to assume the positions of the old. Beholden solely to the conquerors for its power, the new generation would thus forgo old ways and transform British rule into reality.

Urogi: Rumors Of Witchcraft

The commissioners' enthusiasm for their new governmental institutions, however, was short-lived. After the early 1920s almost every

aspect of colonial administration fitfully halted. This decline was particularly evident in the sphere of criminal justice, where the four British-sponsored native tribunals operated only in spurts, resolving smaller numbers of disputes each year, in vague approximation of what the members of each body perceived as British law.

The same pattern was apparent at every level of the administration. The Local Native Council, after its enthusiastic start, proved increasingly reluctant to pass laws on anything at all. Those that were passed proved impossible to implement, as chiefs, headmen, process servers, and even tribal police were curiously reluctant to carry out directives, even those, such as establishing medical stations, that administrators thought were clearly to the advantage of Meru everywhere.

Initially administrators attributed this singular reluctance to a combination of sullenness, backwardness, and passive resistance. "After six months' residence here," one wrote in 1923, "I have come to the conclusion that . . . hardly a single headman (of ninety-four) can be relied on to assist government in the detection of crime, . . . arrest of criminals, . . . or in putting down abominable practices."^[26]

Other Meru administrators wholly shared this view. In the 1920s the Meru became notable in colonial circles as a "backward" people, incapable of attaining either British administrative standards or the economic progress shown by their Gikuyu neighbors. This was also the era, however, when the administrators began to feel that Meru noncooperation might have another, deeper, cause. Eventually they decided the problem was witchcraft.

The British of that era were often fascinated with African witchcraft. Universal in their belief that it was based solely on deception, most administrators rather looked forward to chance encounters with the "witch doctors" of peoples whom they ruled. Never were they more pleased than when the witch doctors' magic seemed occasionally to work. Orde-Browne, within his private papers, related one such encounter with considerable glee. In the line of duty he had been forced to arrest a "little old fellow" for bewitching his workers. On arrest, the elder had "cursed him horribly." Subsequently Orde-Browne was stricken with an inflammation of his knee joints that left him incapacitated for several months. "The event," he later wrote, "was seen by every native in the district as a sign of the witchdoctor's revenge."^[27]

Unfortunately the second generation of colonial administrators knew much less about Meru witchcraft than the first. A report on the Meru written in 1911, for instance, meticulously described the differ-

ences between a Murogi ("poisoner who collects . . . medicines secretly at night"), a Muga ("medicine man [who] is a power of good . . . [with] more than twenty medicines . . . of vegetable-roots and leaves"), and a Muroria ("soothsayer [who] foretells the length of famine, war, . . . as revealed . . . in dreams").^[28] Ten years later, colonial administrators had lost all knowledge of their various ritualists, including their names. Reports from the 1920s tend to group all such practitioners under the title of "witch doctor," a figure to whom they attributed nothing but malice and evil. In 1924 an administrator declared: "the natives here remain backward and believe quite notably in witchcraft and curses. This is most noticeable in Tigania and Igembe, where the hold over natives by witchdoctors seems slightly on the wane."^[29]

In fairness, it would have been difficult to live among the Meru of that era and remain unaware of the supernatural aspects of their daily lives. Usually, a new administrator first learned of witchcraft through his reading (or observation) of cases in court. Although conflicts brought before the native tribunals concerned crimes against people or property, the parties invariably accused one another, at some point in the process, of having bewitched (cursed) their livestock, crops, kin, or themselves.

Less frequently, victims of an alleged bewitchment might seek a private meeting with an administrative officer. Most often this happened on tour, when newly appointed officers visited the hinterlands to familiarize themselves with more remote corners of the region. Usually the officer declared a public meeting, at each stop asking all who sought justice to step forward. No one did. Then, at the meeting's conclusion, footsteps shuffled before the officer's tent as darkness fell, and low voices accused others of bewitchment.

Enthusiastic officials tended to attribute almost every Meru ritual to witchcraft, often inferring satanic overtones that had no basis in Meru life. One example of this trend occurred late in the 1920s when one of the district's first medical missionaries began to construct a Methodist mission hospital in Igembe. After the first week or so he "became aware of sorcerers around the hospital, through continuously coming across three-inch strips of red raw meat impaled on sharpened six-inch pegs and stuck around hospital grounds."^[30]

In fact there were no "sorcerers," only workaday Meru, as concerned as the missionary with fighting illness and disease. One method, long sanctified by tradition, was for the community elders to gather at a single spot, slaughter a goat, slice the meat into three-inch strips, then

peg them into the ground to be eaten by spirits, ideally those that caused illness. What better place could be found for such ritual than a building wherein whites themselves claimed "disease was collected and illness could always be found"? The incident illustrates the evolution of colonial administration over the first two decades. Where the first generation of colonialists had come to learn, too many of the second wave came only to teach.

Nevertheless, successive administrators throughout the 1920s began to differentiate between three different types of Meru "witchcraft." The least offensive was represented by the individual "witch doctors"—a term used to cover every type of supernatural specialist—whom the vast majority of district officers dismissed as harmless tricksters. Most administrators knew several of them and usually joked with them during their occasional meetings.

However, a second form of witchcraft began to come to official notice after 1920, a type allegedly practiced by entire bands of sorcerers. A district commissioner first wrote them into an official record in late 1920. During the last months of that year he was called into a remote corner of Igembe to suppress the practices of what he referred to as: "the Kaiita, . . . a society which consists mostly of tribal elders. It includes medicine men as its most powerful members and among other objectionable customs is responsible for the seduction of many young unmarried girls with consequent abortion of children thus conceived."^[31]

Over the next four years similar "secret" societies seemed, to colonial officials, to proliferate throughout Meru. Certainly they occupied an increasingly large place in both official and private correspondence.

They [the Kaiita] have a great influence owing to proficiency in the art of pursuing. Kaiita in Igembe had a large rough hut in each location to which they called a lot of young girls. The girls were kept there and were not allowed to return to their parents. . . . At night they held dances naked and had sexual intercourse with the girls. [11 November 1920]^[32]

Aathi is the name of a secret society which exists in the middle of Meru. We know that it exists but it is impossible to find out what things they do. . . . Even members never speak of it. . . . They build large huts with long entrance corridors and stay in there . . . and eat and drink and do worse things. . . . They believe themselves invulnerable to any poisoning . . . and have great power to curse others. [November 1921]^[33]

Mbujo League—this league gained considerable power and has many adherents. [Its] object is the practice of witchcraft. The high priest, Mboro [sic : M'Mburi] was sentenced to a year [imprisonment] in January, 1924.^[34]

Illegal Tribunals And Secret Societies

During these years, colonial officials also became increasingly troubled by the emergence of a third type of witchcraft, which also seemed to have taken the form of a secret society. Labeled variously in official reports as "witchcraft tribunals," "illegal tribunals," "secret societies," or "witchcraft guilds," these groups were alleged to hold trials, pass judgments, and levy punishments in the form of cattle fines within remote areas of Tigania and Igembe. They were believed to enforce each decision by the threat of bewitchment through fearsome curses. District officers sent to investigate the initial rumors soon discovered that all Meru knew of them, but none was willing to divulge details. In consequence official reports over the subsequent five years suggest that the British learned little more about them than their names.

The Natives here [1923] are sunk in superstition. No headman can be relied upon to help government . . . [in] putting down abominable practices. . . . Njuricheke Kiama [sic ] is credited with supernatural power which makes . . . administration very difficult indeed.^[35]

Today [1925] the more educated [Meru] claim the Njoli [Njuri] must be abolished because it keeps the country in darkness, impeding the advancement and progress of their civilization.^[36]

District officials were also troubled by rumors of a large number of allegedly "secret" societies, each dedicated to the practice of witchcraft. Although most numerous in Tigania and Igembe, reports of similar groups emerged in every region. One, the Kiama Kia A-Athi, clearly referred to a council of forest hunters. The others, the Kiamas of the Kagita, Kaundu, Makuiko, Mwaa, and several like them, remained shrouded in mystery.

Over time, nonetheless, these scattered reports began to form identifiable patterns. Each of these societies was small. Several, however, notably those of the A-Athi and the Kagita, were alleged to have branches on almost every Meru ridgetop. Their meeting places were secret, protected in the traditional Meru fashion by lethal curses that could be placed by the elders of each society on any Meru who betrayed its trust.

The activities of these two most numerous groups seemed to take two forms. One was overtly sexual, in which members of each society were said to compel women from the surrounding communities to join them for feasts of meat and beer. The rumors also suggested that the

women were forced to participate in nude dancing, which continued the entire night. Male relatives who objected to a woman's participation in these practices found themselves either overawed by the threat of a society's curse or, worse, forced to join in themselves.

Such reports were extremely disturbing to British administrators only a few years removed from the Victorian age. The rumors paled, however, before subsequent allegations that added a political dimension to the problem. After 1924 at least two of the secret societies, once again the Kiama of the A-Athi and the Kagita, were reported to have taken on the roles of "illegal tribunals" and to have begun to dispense justice. Moving in small bands among villages in the more remote areas, both groups were described as having begun to resolve conflicts among local inhabitants in virtually the same manner as the other four "illegal" tribunals of the Njuri. As a result, it was said, large portions of the livestock in those areas had been transferred into the hands of these wandering judges.

Worse news, however, came in through reports that the "loyal" elders in these remote areas were immobilized by fear, daring neither to move against these societies in traditional fashion nor to appeal to colonial headmen and chiefs. Some colonial officers, although still groping for more accurate data, believed both secret societies had virtually absorbed the four "illegal" tribunals of the Njuri, "most of whose members belong [ed] to either Aathi or Kagita."^[37]

More serious still, these same societies were reported to have penetrated deeply into the ranks of the Meru African Colonial Service. Indeed, in several areas, chief, headmen, tribal retainers, police, and even members of the colonial Local Native Tribunals were said to have been forcibly incorporated into one or even both societies, thereby placing them in situations that might endanger the colonial structure itself.