Chapter XI
Resistance Traditions: Kiamas Underground

"There was no choice for an unmarried girl over going to the Kagita or not. A Kagita curse remover would just point at you with his smallest finger and say, "You, girl, come into [the hut of] Kagita." If a girl refused, she would become ill with their curse and perhaps die."^[1]
(Mrs.) Mwakireu Gikabu
Alleged former member,
Kiama Kia Kagita, 1920s

By the mid-1920s every British administrator in Meru was concerned with the rising power of local witchcraft. In colonial Nairobi the Meru region was now widely considered "witch ridden and backward," thus a particularly undesirable post at which to serve. Within the district, however, administrators and missionaries alike strove frantically to learn more about the forces with which they had to deal.

The Wall Of Silence

The efforts of the white administrators were met with a conspiracy of silence. No Meru wished to teach whites local customs lest the conquerors use what they learned to destroy the tribe. Certainly no Meru in those hostile years was willing to discuss the obviously contentious topics of "illegal" tribunals, "secret" societies, and local "witchcraft." The activities of Njuri Nceke, the traditional council-of-councils, were thus protected by a solid wall of silence. The practices of the Kagita, Aathi, and other deviant groups were shrouded by fear. White inquiries about any of these associations were met by protests that to mention them would cause the speakers' deaths.

The silence also kept whites from observing alleged "witchcraft" activity and collecting evidence to use against it: "At the mission, one consistently heard complaints concerning terrible acts of witchcraft by these Kiamas, but we could never actually observe [them] and thus gain proof of their existence."^[2] In 1925, for instance, a certain Catholic

father, G. Bondino, then stationed at a mission in Tigania, began to investigate complaints against what he subsequently described as the "Witchcraft Guild of Kagitha."^[3] Efforts to elicit information from local elders proved useless. His own parishioners, although potentially more pliable, were mostly children, too young to have learned what he needed to know.

Father Bondino therefore decided on direct action. Kagita feasts within his area were always accompanied by the beating of great drums, which coughed and rumbled until dawn. One night, having darkened his face and hands, he dressed entirely in black. Quietly leaving the mission, he followed the drumming into the darkness.

The drum led him toward an unusually large hut, built in the beehive style of warrior barracks. He crept to its side undetected and peered through the dry banana leaves that covered it. He saw very little, because the interior was dark except for a single tiny fire. Nor, through the hum of voices, could he at first discern what was being said. Straining forward to hear, he stumbled, falling heavily against the hut. Within moments, men poured from its doorway, and he was seized.

Boldly, Bondino demanded entry, stating truthfully that he had come to learn what went on inside. He was answered by a torrent of shouts, several of which threatened him with retreat or death. Meru versions of this incident suggest that the threats referred to ancestral retribution rather than immediate physical harm. Bondino, however, interpreting them as an attack on his person, left the way he had come. The next day, the hut in question was burned to the ground—whether by the Kagita or Catholic mission converts remains unclear. No European ever repeated Bondino's attempt to unmask the society, and the mystery remained.

Colonial officials proved more successful, however, in their efforts to learn more of Meru's traditional witchcraft. Several knowledgeable elders were willing to discuss the most positive aspects to their own system. Thus, by the mid-1920s the second generation of British administrators had begun to retrieve much of the data that had been common knowledge to their predecessors. Initially, they began once again to differentiate between "good" and "bad" witch doctors, separating them into those who cursed and others who claimed to heal. In consequence several administrators grew tolerant of the curse removers (Aga), whom they perceived as "silly old fellows who could do no harm."^[4] Others began to recognize parts of the witchcraft system as a means of social

control, most notably the stick-and-vine concept used by the Kagita, which was clearly intended as crop protection.

Nevertheless, even the most sympathetic of the second generation British firmly disapproved of the witchcraft system as a whole and worked continuously to ensure its swift demise. By the mid-1920s the "silly old witch doctor" might indeed have been a figure of fun. His "magic bag" might well have been filled with harmless twists of grass and chalk and clay. As a healer, whites might cheerfully regard him as a joke. In political terms, however, whites perceived all "witch doctors" as powerful, potentially rebellious, and implacably opposed to British rule.

In that era it seemed logical, for example, for colonial administrators to assume that "witch doctors" had been the former leaders of the Meru peoples, fulfilling roles akin to those of high priests they had found in other corners of the British empire. It seemed equally obvious that none would take kindly to British efforts to undermine the beliefs on which their power had been based. The provision of Western substitutes for ancestral spirits and ancient forms of healing could hardly go unresented and unopposed.

From the British perspective this opposition first manifested itself through the witch doctors' insistence on adhering to obsolescent and undesirable native customs, as well as their power to collectively impose their decisions on the entire tribe. The power to compel such obedience, according to colonial observers, invariably took three forms. One was the deliberate "misreading of omens" to predict inevitable calamity for anyone adopting British ways. The second was through imposing a curse on anyone departing from ancestral ways. The third—and most important to the British—was to make sure that the calamity implicit in every act of cursing actually occurred. Since this fulfillment could not be left to chance, practitioners were believed to create their own disasters by judicious use of poisons to ensure illness, infirmity, or even death: "should an actual . . . disaster fall upon these people, the witchdoctors continue to terrorize, . . . declaiming that the same fate will befall all others who stray from tribal teachings to those of Europe. The [tribal] location can thus be worked up to such a pitch of excitement that only the removal of all witchdoctors can cure it."^[5]

It seemed equally logical for British administrators to conclude that Meru witch doctors would band together in adversity, forming "witchcraft Kiamas" in the Meru manner to fight back against their conquerors. Certainly, the British themselves under the heel of invaders would

have formed groups to resist as they could. Thus the witch doctors of Meru could hardly be blamed for reacting in similar fashion. The correct colonial response, therefore, was to eliminate them both individually and as groups, to clear the way for both Christianity and colonialism.

The Case Against The Njuri Nceke

When the Njuri system was formally banned throughout the district in 1921–1922, the edict proved effective among every subtribe but the Tigania and Igembe. The highest elders' councils in Cuka, Muthambi, and Mwimbi had already ceased to meet. The Kiama Kia Njuri, the highest elders' council for both Igoji and Imenti, was unable to survive the ban.

In contrast the Njuri Nceke of Tigania and Igembe proved unexpectedly resilient. An initial public protest to the district commissioner had led to a government decision to allow monthly meetings of its members under supervised conditions at the Boma (Meru district headquarters). Sensibly, Njuri elders complied with this decision by sending spokesmen to meet at the times white men desired but continued to meet privately as they wished. In time, of course, these private meetings were reported to the district office. Colonial administrators responded with several well-planned raids into the two northern districts. Each time, the alleged "Njuri huts" were burned, and those within them were arrested on charges of "frightening people," "practice of witchcraft," or "extortion of cows."^[6]

This pattern of punitive raiding continued sporadically through the 1920s. In 1923, for example, a newly appointed district commissioner was informed within days of his arrival in Meru of an "illegal tribunal" operating throughout Tigania. The complaint, from an anonymous informant, declared that the tribunal was "extorting cows from villagers in the [field known as] Kathaka Kai." The district commissioner responded with a police sweep of the entire area in which large numbers of alleged "Kiama huts" were destroyed and four local elders tried, convicted, and sentenced for extortion.^[7] The tribunal, of course, was the Njuri Nceke. Kathaka Kai was its traditional meeting ground.

The Njuri responded to both the loss of its huts and arrest of its members with several explicit evasions. Initially the council abandoned its traditional gathering places. Instead members adopted a more flexible pattern, meeting in hidden glades at irregular times, hoping whites

would not anticipate their actions. The Njuri also divested itself of all visible symbols. Before the conquest, meetings had been publicly proclaimed by junior members, who walked from village to village carrying wooden staffs to display their status. The foreheads of such messengers were daubed with bright red clay, which wordlessly proclaimed that council elders should assemble. After the ban both wooden staff and clay were quietly abandoned, and meetings were announced by word of mouth.

Changes were also made to protect the Njuri's "sacred symbols," objects allegedly brought by the Meru on their first trek from the Kenya coast. Before the conquest these had been kept within a single sacred hut at the council's primary meeting place at Nciru (Tigania), their safety guaranteed by respect for the Njuri curse. After the ban, members feared that storage in any hut might lead to their destruction by fire. As a result the sacred symbols—like the Njuri itself—began to move, passing from region to region and hand to hand among its senior members.

Beyond these changes Njuri members soon learned to rely on what might be described as "cultural invisibility." Meetings held at points other than Nciru were difficult for whites to identify. A gathering of elders might well be the Njuri but might also be nothing more than several aged men who had assembled to drink beer. Knowing nothing of the culture and little of the language, the whites could never tell.

Of course, deceptions of this type were transparent to other Meru, including those who served the British. To thus avoid exposure by native informers, the Njuri relied on the protection afforded by its collective oath. The Meru oath, it will be recalled, is not a threat to other persons, but an affirmation of one's own innocent intent. Like the judicial oaths of England, it is directed "upward" toward a higher power—in Meru, the ancestral spirits. Thus, the chanted phrase "if I break [disobey], let this oath eat [devour, kill] me" simply records a person's willingness to obey both ancestral and Njuri tradition.

During the 1920s, however, Meru administrators interpreted these oaths in terms of the British curse. In England, as in Meru, the "curse" is defined as a verbal wish to harm, hurled directly at an antagonist. Without exception whites assumed that the core of Njuri power lay in its ability to threaten every man in Meru with a "collective curse." Further, they felt Njuri elders used this power to "extort" cattle and goats from other Meru. Finally, they assumed the Njuri used this fear to threaten anyone who accepted England. Thus, one administrator

wrote: "People are commended [sic : commanded] under penalty of being cursed . . . if they give information to government or bring their cases to be heard by government or give evidence against witchdoctors or report any extortions or injustice done by Kiamas."^[8]

British officials also believed that the Njuri "curse" had also been applied, without exception, to "loyal" African members of the colonial administration, from chiefs and members of colonial tribunals down to the tribal police, clerks, hut counters, and house boys that made the British system function. The curse, administrators felt, was directed against all civil servants who enforced English law.

Njuri members, had they been asked, would have been thoroughly bewildered by the charge. They perceived the sacred oaths—not curses—as intended solely to incorporate worthy individuals into their ranks. Traditionally these oaths were directed toward leading members of the age-set just below their own, as one by one the family heads/ apprentice elders were drawn into the fellowship of those above them, eventually to become ruling elders in their turn.

By the 1920s, however, the conquest had added a new dimension to this transfer of power. At that time the ruling elders—including all members of the Njuri Nceke—came from the Kiramana (in Tigania, Kilamunya) age-set.^[9] Family heads—the set below them—were men of Murungi, the group that had been warriors at the time of British conquest. Many men of Murungi had served colonialism from its inception, rising through administrative ranks from hut counters, bodyguards, and tribal police to headmen, tribunal members, and chiefs.

The British wished to pit these men—young, vigorous, and partially anglicized—against the ruling elders of the Njuri. From the colonial perspective it was simply a case of replacing the elderly with those young enough to have learned British ways, men who had been anglicized since early warriorhood and had now reached middle age. From the Meru perspective it was this same group—the family heads of Murungi age-set—whom the ruling elders of the Njuri wished to draw into their ranks. Both sides, ironically, intended the men of Murungi to assume control of tribal affairs. The question was in whose name they would rule, Meru or England.

By the mid-1920s both sides had carried out their plans. Many of the most prominent men of Murungi, now approaching the end of their period as family heads, had been incorporated into the Njuri as tradition required. Simultaneously, they had risen with the Meru colonial service to positions as headmen, chiefs, tribunal judges, and even members of

the Local Native Council. Such men thus served two masters, bending to the British as required while shielding the Njuri as they could. In practice this usually meant verbal acquiescence and token compliance with British administrative orders, combined with sporadic doses of prevarication, evasion, and delay.

By 1925–1926 most (if not all) leading Meru in the colonial administration had indeed entered their period of senior (ruling) elderhood, having joined either their ridgetop Kiama of elders or—if eminent—the Njuri Nceke. Most of the senior African colonial officials, cattle rich by virtue of their administrative post, were almost certainly Njuri members. Although superficially aware of "what" was happening, district officers had no idea of the cultural context within which these changes took place, a condition of ignorance the Meru took care to maintain. As one colonial official complained: "The Murungi Mwiriga [sic . "age-set"; Mwiriga is a ridgetop community] began to take on the status of Kiama [sic : "ruling"] Elders from the Kiramana, . . . impossible to find out what is taking place."^[10]

Njuri Underground

These limits on British power allowed the Njuri Nceke to continue certain aspects of its preconquest role. Its legislative function had been largely usurped by the conquerors. The executive function had also withered, as the traditional public proclamations had been formally banned. The judicial function, however, continued "underground," as the Njuri remained the court of last resort for Meru seeking legal redress in traditional ways.

As a judicial institution the Njuri even worked together with the British in at least three ways. At one level it struck out whenever possible against the very "witchcraft bands" that so worried the administration, sending little groups of former warriors to burn the huts of the A-Athi, Kagita, Mwaa, and other fringe societies, scattering their members in the same way as before the conquest.

The Njuri members also worked to alleviate the social tensions caused by witchcraft, a point of particular irony in an era when the British were convinced they practiced it. Fulfilling their judicial functions, the Njuri elders gathered to resolve each instance of bewitchment at the moment it disturbed communal peace. Livestock fines were levied as the causes of each conflict were unraveled and resolved. The peace that was thereby restored to each community clearly dovetailed with

British expectations of a harmonious tribal society, under the guiding hand of colonialism. The British remained unaware, however, of any contribution but their own.

The Njuri finally worked with the British to preserve the Meru lands against an outside threat. During the early 1920s a small but constant trickle of partially anglicized Gikuyu appeared in Meru, hoping to buy fertile cropland. The Gikuyu system of land ownership had begun to resemble that of England, in that individuals gained full title over specific plots of ground. Many Gikuyu had grown shilling rich in British service. Now they wished to invest their surplus wealth in land, to be worked for profit by the Meru.

Before the conquest Gikuyu settlement in Meru regions would have been met by clouds of warriors. During the early 1920s, however, famine-driven Meru elders proved far more willing to exchange what they still perceived as the temporary "use" of their communal holdings for the cash (or livestock) required for survival. In theory the process could have continued until all of Meru had passed into Gikuyu ownership, with its people working as herders and sharecroppers for the wealthy outsiders.

The British, on becoming aware of the problem, promptly passed laws to forbid it. They were ignored. Alarmed, Meru district officers made frantic efforts to learn which lands had actually changed hands. This also proved impossible, because no Meru would admit such sales took place. Where Gikuyu appeared, they claimed only to be working for Meru with whom they were distant kin.

In this instance, however, the power of Njuri proved stronger than England. Equally alarmed by the appearance of traditional enemies, it proclaimed that all land exchanges must cease. The response was universal. Gikuyu wanderers were turned away, and no other Meru lands passed into outside hands for the next forty years.

The British, of course, had no idea of the extent to which the Njuri Nceke worked to further colonial goals, and thus continued sporadically to burn the council's meeting huts and arrest its members. The irony of these actions was not lost on Meru elders, who would wait until British officers were in hearing distance and then sing: "Njuri-i-i, even when doing right, Njuri-i-i, it is doing wrong."^[11]

Kagita Underground

The 1920s was also an era of evolution for several of Meru's deviant groups. Among the most tenacious were the councils of Kagita. The

Kiama Kia Kagita had survived prior periods of famine by adopting the form of dancing societies. After 1900, Kagita bands had moved among the homesteads of every Meru region, trading song, dance, and the threat of bewitchment for porridge and beer.

By the 1920s many bands had begun to settle and take root, with at least one becoming permanent in every Meru region. Several bands, notably those along the montaine-forest fringes in Imenti and Igembe, grew relatively large. No longer willing to wander, they built huge, permanent huts modeled after the traditional war hut. These they protected in their own traditional fashion, placing three-foot tall Ndindi sticks and the customary vines around them to form their zone of safety.

Once established, each ban began to extend its influence over those homesteads nearest their own. Before the conquest they would have acquired foods for feasting through visits ("by singing") to each homestead in its turn. Now, feeling increasingly secure, several Kagita councils developed new tactics to ensure that regular supplies of beer and grain would be brought directly to them. Historically, Ndindi sticks and vines had always been set in a circle around the growing crops of those who sought protection against thieves. In the early 1920s they were placed with equal care across the public paths, especially those used by the wives and daughters of wealthy homesteads to fetch wood and water.

Women who crossed these areas and caught sight of the sticks would visibly sicken, developing the specific afflictions associated by tradition with the Kagita. Attempts to consult one of the mainstream ritualists were fruitless; they would simply "take [the victim's] goats, then 'divine' that she had been cursed by the Kagita." The women had no choice but to approach the hut of Kagita itself and ask it to alleviate the symptom ("remove the curse"). Its healers would agree to do so, once the women provided the society with foods for a feast: "Thus, Kagita would achieve its true goal, the goal of every stomach Kiama, to reach in and eat [devour] the rich man's property."^[12]

Each woman, of course, was to carry the large gourds of millet porridge, beans, and beer to the Kagita assembly. Her illness was then ceremonially removed by the appropriate elders. But because the final aspect of the rituals of curse removal invoked the "kinship clause," each victim was bound in "sisterhood" to every member of the group. Thereafter, they were "invited" to remain and partake of the feast, beer, and dancing: "There was no choice for an unmarried girl over going to the Kagita [hut] or not. A Kagita curse remover would just point

at you with his smallest finger and say, 'You, girl, come into [the hut of] Kagita.' If a girl refused, she would become ill with their curse and perhaps die."^[13]

Colonial officials of this era made much of this element of compulsion, using it to justify their efforts to stamp out the society completely. They were particularly angered by reports that akenye (unmarried girls, virgins) were coerced into Kagita huts "in defiance of tribal custom in regard to sexual amusements, including all-night orgies of nude dancing. Parents were prevented from taking vengeance through their terror of a fearsome curse invoked against those who interfered."^[14]

Once again colonial officials were wholly unaware of the cultural context within which these events occurred, as well as the history of the Kagita itself. Former members of the society, for example, uniformly declared that the unmarried girls most likely to be chosen for their feasts were those who had lost fathers in the years of plague and famine. Their incorporation into the Kiama, therefore, was little more than an extension of the Kagita's normal practice of offering refuge to those in distress. More hostile informants declared that the women were deliberately chosen for the wealth of their homesteads and the abundance that could thus be provided for feasts. Whatever the case, the society's primary focus was not on sex but on feasting, an emphasis wholly in keeping with its prior history.

Nonetheless, by the mid-1920s the Kagita's unprecedented inclusion of unmarried women had two unexpected consequences. One was the rising anger of family heads, whose teenage daughters were increasingly involved. A second grew from the equally unprecedented appearance of "strangers" at their feasts, for the inclusion of unmarried girls drew single men as well.

These strangers were drawn from the Miriti age-set, the group immediately below that of the family heads (Murungi) and ruling elders (Kiramana). At the time of British conquest they had been youths. Had no conquest occurred, they would have spent the decade of 1912–1922 as warriors, forbidden by tradition from contact with women. Instead they had left Meru to serve the British as plantation workers, safari porters, or members of the Carrier Corps. These experiences had steadily eroded their respect for warrior traditions, especially those that required a decade of sexual abstinence.

Thus, when the drums of the Kagita rumbled at sundown, many began to join its older members at the dancing huts, seeking relief from hunger and excitement from the dance. For over a century Kagita tra-

dition had restricted its membership to the married of each sex. These strangers, however, were often shilling rich and came with gifts of goats and beer. By the 1920s, custom had crumbled, and no former warrior was turned away. Nor, as growing numbers of young men appeared, was compulsion needed to recruit single women. Often they simply slipped away from their parents' gaze to join the dancers.

Including the unmarried, however, caused an internal division within the Kagita itself. Many of its older men and women, especially in the southern regions, objected to the appearance of unmarried persons as a violation of ancestral ways. At some point in the 1920s these more conservative members responded in typically Meru fashion, forming a new and more select council within the old, a "higher" stage to which only the most eminent among them could belong. Appearing first in Igoji, it spread south into Mwimbi-Muthambi and then north into the other Meru regions, usually under the name of Kiama Kia Kaundu, the "council of darkness."

The Kaundu may have been ineptly named. Contemporary informants suggest that it meant nothing more than implying that the groups would meet at night. The word was picked up by the British, however, as indicative of "dark" intent:

The Kagita is a secret society . . . said to be expert in vegetable poisons. No one can refuse to comply with a demand for food or toddy from a member. Should he do so, he is likely to be bewitched. . . . Within this society, a new order sprang up five years ago [1922], known as the Njuri a Kaundu. . . . So far as can be learnt a Kaundu [sic: man of Kaundu] uses . . . a poison of white powder.^[15]

Once again colonial investigators lacked historical context. The term Kaundu had long been used, particularly in southern Meru, as one of several names given to the ad hoc splinter groups that formed when one of the larger councils failed to resolve a specific conflict. By tradition the smaller body would retire into the "darkness" until the issue that concerned the larger assembly had been resolved. The Kagita's selection of the term may therefore have simply reflected their adherence to that tradition.

There is no doubt that the 1920s represented an era of Kagita expansion. Existing groups grew steadily, not only by incorporating "victims" but also by offering a refuge for the hungry and the bored. New groups also hived off from existing ones, either as more select Kiamas (Njuris) or simple duplicates. The rate of increase, however, should not be overstated. British sources of the period frequently imply that all

Meru were under the sway of the witchcraft groups. The claim is exaggerated. The Kagita remained what it had been for generations, a fringe society—composed of many tiny branches—at the geographic and social edges of Meru communal life. Despised by the mainstream, it survived the 1920s as it had always done, by providing a permitted deviation from the behavioral norm.

The Kagita did, of course, incorporate African members of the colonial administration. Chiefs, headmen, police, messengers, and even hut counters (census takers) may have entered its ranks. The British perceived these contacts as systematic, forming part of a districtwide effort to subvert colonial rule. Kagita elders saw the same actions as nothing more than an extension of their normal quest for food. Before the conquest "wealthy elders," men with the largest herds and fields, were those whose many wives had sired warrior sons. By the 1920s, "wealthy elders" were those who worked for Europeans. Inevitably, these men became the favored targets of groups like the Kagita. Initially sought out as food providers, they then entered the society itself. Having done so, they were bound by oath to conceal it from the whites.

The Evolution Of A-Athi

The mid-1920s also proved favorable to the various bands of A-Athi hunters who had survived the numerous restrictions imposed upon their way of life by British conquest. Before the colonial period A-Athi hunting bands in every Meru region had been driven gradually up Mount Kenya's slopes, forced into retreat before the migration of far larger numbers of the Meru mainstream—herders, cultivators, and above all, destroyers of forest.

Until 1900 the A-Athi had sporadically delayed this uphill migration, defending their alleged hunting zones with "automatic" curses, symbolized by the placement of the previously described Ndindi ("bones") or Nguchua ("claws") to delineate their hunting zones. Trespass beyond such markers triggered conditions of ritualized illness (Mugiro) that could be removed only by petitioning the A-Athi themselves. More serious violations, such as the intrusion of entire clans into a hunting area, were met with collective action in which whole bands of A-Athi would march around the newcomers' homesteads, carrying the corpse of a gazelle while chanting phrases meant to cause listeners to sicken.

Hunters armed with such supernaturally lethal weapons should have had little difficulty in defending their terrain as long as needed, but the

A-Athi were handicapped in two ways. One was their economic dependence on the very cultivators they attempted to expel. The A-Athi boasted they lived wholly from the forest, on a diet of little more than meat and honey. In fact all hunting clans traded forest produce to people of the mainstream, exchanging surplus honey, meat, skins, and other items for grain, usually in the form of millet porridge. On festive occasions such exchanges would "turn liquid," as the A-Athi would trade uuki , a honey wine, for marua , a fermented millet beer. The A-Athi were also handicapped by their dependence on an abundance of wild game. An occasional intrusion by mainstream Meru wanderers was not disruptive. Most cultivators still held to the generations-old taboo against consumption of wild animals. Their occasional incursions, therefore, were usually meant to search out either grazing areas or firewood.

During the 1880s, however, such incursions had come often and with new intent. Responding to economic pressure from Swahili, Somali, and Kamba traders, whose caravans reached Meru from both the north and the east, individual Meru began to comb the lowest sections of the black (montaine) forest zone in search of ivory. On occasion, particularly in Mwimbi, mainstream Meru formed "partnerships" with local A-Athi to whom they were distant kin, inducing them to hunt down elephant and return with tusks to trade. Cultivators then stored the tusks beneath their huts until new caravans appeared.

Hunting of this nature gradually increased throughout the 1880s, supplemented by the first European-led caravans, which passed through portions of the lower forest from Mwimbi to Igembe, each time with unprecedented and continual slaughter of game. In response the elephants in particular began to drift away from areas in which they were most threatened, moving to higher, colder, and often impenetrable sections of the mountain and thus beyond the A-Athi reach.

The buffalo went next. The 1890s brought a series of natural catastrophes, both to the forested and cultivated sections of the mountain. The rinderpest epidemic of 1890, for example, exterminated not only most of the Meru cattle but also many of Mount Kenya's buffalo, despite the isolation of their forest. This epidemic was followed by drought and famine (1891), locust invasions (1894, 1895), a second drought (1898), a cattle (and buffalo) plague (1899), and a widespread period of semifamine that stretched over the next two years.

One consequence of these disasters was a rapid erosion of the Meru tradition that prohibited hunting and consumption of wild game. The

1890s saw ever greater numbers of mainstream Meru, driven by hunger and lack of alternatives, combing the lower forest areas in search of sustenance. As a result the various species of antelope, wild pig, mountain zebra, and even monkey also began to disappear.

Left alone, the A-Athi might have eventually succeeded in repelling the mainstream invasion, using both "automatic" and collective" curses to strike a balance between themselves and the advancing cultivator-herders. The year 1906, however, was the time of conquest, as men of the mainstream submitted to England and the populated star-grass zone came under colonial control.

By 1907 the impact of England began to be felt in the forests as well. A series of colonial proclamations, intended to preserve wildlife, declared Mount Kenya's entire montaine forest region to be crown land and forbade both native habitation and hunting game. At one point "native inhabitants" were even forbidden to enter the lower forest fringes to cut wood. Those found violating the ban were subject to imprisonment.^[16]

In 1908 the Crown Land Ordinances were supplemented by the imposition of a "native pass system," similar to that used in England's South African colonies. All natives were officially restricted to their designated tribal reserves. In Meru this meant restriction to the star-grass zone, below the montaine forest, and within that, to one's own ridgetop community. Those wishing to go elsewhere required colonial permission in the form of a chiti (chit, pass) from an appropriate authority. Any native found outside his reserve was subject to arrest.^[17]

The pass system was enforced with increasing success during the following years. Its original intent had been to stop the movement of warrior bands as they set out on traditional raids. Subsequently, it was applied to both family heads and ruling elders, fleeing newly imposed hut tax obligations by moving their threatened flocks, herds, and often entire families into remote forest regions. Almost incidentally, it restricted the A-Athi as well, cutting them off from long-established trading patterns with their mainstream kin and thereby isolating them within the forests.

The next blows fell in 1909–1910. As the implications of hut-tax collection began to sink in, small bands of warriors decided to defend their cows. One result was the sporadic sequence of "ridgetop rebellions," in Muthambi-Mwimbi and Tigania. In each instance the colonial tax collectors were met by warriors in battle dress, shouting defi-

ance. A volley of shots by the collectors swiftly broke their resistance, but the victorious colonial police then seized far larger numbers of livestock than were required for taxes, often leaving entire ridgetops totally impoverished.

In consequence elders throughout Meru were gripped by increasing panic. The actual loss of cattle was less important than the fact that the invader could seize them in numbers beyond those allowed by tradition, while simultaneously forbidding counterraiding in return. The thought of total and permanent destitution, predictably, sent ridgetops into action. Entire herds were shifted uphill, into the forests where whites would never find them. With them moved the warriors, intending both to guard the animals and drive them higher into the forest zone to escape detection. They were accompanied in turn by sufficient numbers of women to cook and care for the men. The impact of these migrants on the game was inevitable. Barred from water and open grazing, animals moved away.

The smallest of these refugee bands moved continually, seeking forage in the forest. Most, however, sought more permanent quarters, settling their herds and constructing new homesteads near adequate sources of grazing and water—in total disregard of the Ndindi sticks that warned of A-Athi hunting. Worse, by 1910 the colonial administration had begun responding to what it perceived as either cattle rustling or tax evasion by sending military expeditions to search the lower regions of the forest for "illegal occupants." In consequence, "whenever natives were found occupying unalienated crown land, they were compelled to move into the nearest reserve."^[18]

Once more, laws aimed at mainstream Meru caught the A-Athi as well. Often their communities were totally disrupted—women and children taken into custody, food stores impounded, bee hives plundered, and huts burned to the ground. Those forced downslope into the nearest native reserve, in compliance with the British order, could always return to the forests, but the abundance of game that had sustained them depended on isolation, and that was passing away.

As a result the A-Athi way of life began to pass away as well. As Europe's wars, pandemic diseases, insect plagues, and recurrent famine took their toll upon the flocks and herds of mainstream Meru, ever greater numbers of the survivors scoured the forests for sufficient protein to survive. In consequence as wildlife nearest to the populated (star-grass) zone gradually disappeared, some A-Athi followed the

game into the higher, colder regions of the forest. Others, however, unable to withstand the constant cold, began to look downhill into the populated zone for other means to keep their way of life.

Pre-1920s: Migration Downhill

The A-Athi way of life was centered on the meat feast, the times made joyful by collection of a surplus, when entire bands could gorge on meat and honey wine, then sing and dance through the night. Between the time of conquest and the early 1920s, band after band of A-Athi hunters abandoned the now silent montaine forest zone, drifting downhill to resettle along the highest fringes of the star-grass regions, where meat might still be found in the remaining Meru flocks and herds.

Contemporary A-Athi informants, now among the oldest men in Meru, recall this transition as a time of terror, an era when they were forced to live among far larger numbers of mainstream Meru, deprived of the psychological protection offered by the forest. As always they fought their insecurity with magic. The first step, repeated throughout Meru, was to reestablish the traditional protective zone, within which they could continue to function as A-Athi. There were several variants. In Igembe the zone was established around a mukiitia tree; in Imenti, around the traditional Nkima (skull) of beeswax and antelope skin.

The outer boundaries of each zone were then delineated by Ndindi, notched, reddened, and topped with the feathers of carrion eaters, as in the days when the slender three-foot sticks protected massive hunting zones. By the 1920s, however, they often guarded little more than the area around a single shabby hut; yet for the Meru they had lost nothing of their potency. To intensify the impact of the sticks, the area between them was sprayed with liquid dung ("of an unhealthy goat"). Thereafter, both sticks and dung were verbally enjoined to place a specific curse on any man of the mainstream who penetrated the protected zone.

The next step was to construct a central lodge—the normal beehive hut made of banana leaves—where the A-Athi could assemble for their rituals and feasts. On its completion each band chose a spokesman, most often the senior ritualist among them (the Muga wa A-Athi), who gathered other elders into the group's Kiama. British sources of that period believed that A-Athi elders were organized into a hierarchy of ranks and grades. In fact the only "junior" members were their male children, often gathered into small Kiamas of their own in imitation of their elders. A-Athi boys often built tiny huts of tree limbs and banana

leaves. Their protective symbols were the skulls of little birds and tiny twigs daubed with red clay. Their "feasts" consisted usually of millet porridge, which they renamed "buffalo" for each occasion. Known as the "wings [messengers] of A-Athi," they would strap wooden bells upon their hips, then race pellmell through surrounding villages, their clattering passage serving to proclaim an impending A-Athi feast.

The third step, a challenge faced by A-Athi bands across Meru, was to provide meat for these intended feasts. Tradition prohibited hunters from consuming the meat of domestic livestock, just as the mainstream Meru were forbidden to devour wild game. Faced with the progressive elimination of their original meat supply, however, the A-Athi resorted to ritual. Beef, when provided for A-Athi consumption, was referred to only as magara , an ancient name for buffalo. Goat and mutton, once in A-Athi hands, became nkurungu , or bushbuck.

The acquisition of buffalo or bushbuck was referred to as "hunting." A "hunt" began with a decision by assembled A-Athi elders on which homestead would be chosen to provide the needed animals for an impending feast. Thereafter, the entire group "hunted" the flocks and herds of the selected homestead by moving openly and as a single body into the main compound.

Tradition suggests that A-Athi ritual once again evolved within this decade, now giving an expanded role to the Ndindi sticks. In the past the wooden markers had always been placed at irregular intervals in the ground as passive warnings against intrusion. Now, as the family head emerged to greet his "guests," his eyes moved first to an Ndindi, notched, reddened, and befeathered as required by custom, but held high in the hand of an A-Athi elder rather than set in the ground.

The elder, usually a ritualist, approached the homeowner with great deliberation, raised the reddened stick, then slowly passed its feathered tip around his victim's head, bringing it to rest inches from his eyes. Having thus symbolically "bound" the victim by focusing his attention, the ritualist chanted the curse by which he would be bound should he fail to heed (i.e., feed) A-Athi. After each phrase the ritualist paused as if asking a question. The assembled A-Athi would respond with one voice: "Mb-u-u-u, mbu!" (Danger!)^[19]

The ritual that surrounded the A-Athi Nguchua ("claw") had also evolved. The tiny curved, clawlike sticks, used during the hunting era as final warning to those ignoring the Ndindi, served the same purpose in colonial times. In theory the mere sight of an Ndindi should have caused family heads to provide whatever livestock the A-Athi required.

In fact, many promised, later only to evade, delaying actual delivery in hope that fewer or inferior beasts would be accepted.

In such instances the Nguchua sticks once more served as final A-Athi warnings. Filled with "magic" powder and topped with the tail of a mongoose, the Nguchua had traditionally been placed before the huts of offenders who dared to cultivate in A-Athi regions. In the 1920s, although their purpose remained unchanged, the manner of use evolved along lines similar to those of the Ndindi.

A family head who evaded or delayed his promised livestock gift to the A-Athi could expect a second visit from its spokesman. Host and visitor would sit opposite one another on the ground, the hunter holding a tiny Nguchua clenched in his hand. If displeased with the subsequent discussion, he would simply open it, holding it palm up for the elder to see.

The mere sight of the little claw stick was believed sufficient to cause the host to sicken. In most instances, however, A-Athi members intensified the initial effect ("sharpened the Mugiro") by planting other Nguchua at various points within the homestead—near gates, granaries, and so forth—where their subsequent gradual discovery could steadily reinforce the initial impact and thus compel the stricken victim to comply.

Mid-1920s: A-athi Mbuju (The "Poisoners")

The two traditional forms of A-Athi warning were eventually supplemented by a third, drawn from outside Meru tradition. This was known among the northern A-Athi as Mbuju (or mbujuju), the "fat one." The concept of Mbuju may have appeared among the A-Athi in Tigania-Igembe as early as 1909. The original term was said to have been derived from a poison of that name, brought into Tigania by a man known as Mutiga wa Leria, a hunter from the Kamba region.^[20]

Mbuju poison was believed much stronger than that used by the hunters of Meru. A-Athi poisons were vegetable based, drawn from plants found in neighboring Tharaka, where they were gathered by ritualists of that region. Once collected, they were reduced to powder, mixed with substances (e.g., bile or blood) taken from wild animals, then sold "uphill" into the Meru regions. Although the mixtures may well have been unpleasant, their toxicity almost certainly came more from the power of suggestion than from the ingredients themselves.

The Kamba poison, however, was a mineral, with the appearance and consistency of powdered salt. British administrators were unanimous in their belief that it was deadly, with ingestion leading to "vomiting, diarrhea, passage of blood . . . and death within hours."^[21] Meru informants sharply disagree, declaring that the poison was never meant to kill, because the antidote was always close at hand.

If true, this assertion would have been entirely in keeping with other aspects of Meru supernatural belief, in which victims were expected to avert death by taking remedial (although ritualized) actions to resolve whatever conflicts had been engendered. Both British and Meru sources record the "antidote for Mbuju" as composed of honey, sheep's blood, and (sheep's) liver.^[22] These three ingredients, however, form the basis of most of the Meru cleansing rituals, used to cast out the equally ritualized illnesses caused by traditional forms of witchcraft. In those instances the three ingredients were consumed as part of an oath through which the victim verbally cast out feelings of hostility ("If I feel anger, let this oath kill me") along with any physical symptoms. Because the antidote was entirely symbolic, it seems reasonable to assume that Mbuju "poison" was symbolic as well, deriving its alleged power from equal parts of suggestibility, faith, and fear.

By the early-1920s, therefore, practitioners of the Mbuju rituals, operating along lines entirely consistent with Meru tradition, had begun to form identifiable subgroups within several of the A-Athi Kiamas operating in Tigania, Igembe, and at least two regions of Imenti. Within these areas the most senior elders periodically withdrew from their larger associations to "buy" (learn the rituals of) Mbuju from one of their members who had traveled in distant regions. Among the A-Athi these gatherings were known as "Njuri a Mbuju" (council-of-councils to learn the rituals of Mbuju), a term eventually made known to members of the colonial administration.

By the mid-1920s, existing evidence suggests, several of these Mbuju gatherings carried A-Athi patterns of extortion to new extremes. Meru informants remember Mbuju practitioners as "carrying wooden staffs and marking lips and foreheads with red ocher," in direct imitation of the traditional Njuri Nceke. Thereafter, these bands "went around the villages demanding payments . . . or making threats to people. The songs they sang as they moved about were abusive and distasteful. At the same time, they danced, stamping their feet and thick sticks [staffs] on the ground and singing of the illness to come."^[23]

Colonial reports corroborate this pattern, one in 1924 describing "Mbujo" (sic ) as a "witchcraft league" of considerable power and many adherents. It was allegedly led by a certain "Mboro" (probably M'Mburu), believed by the British to be the group's "high priest," who was sentenced to prison in that year in an effort to check its growth.^[24] Reports in subsequent years describe the Mbuju, with somewhat more accuracy, as a "higher grade" of the A-Athi organization, led in part by the previously mentioned Mutiga wa Leria. It was the Mbuju, one administrator declared, "who served Athi when victims evaded its demands. In such cases, two Mbuju would visit their compounds to bury pairs of Nguchua near their . . . dwelling huts and water sources."^[25]

Obviously, most elders did capitulate, providing Mbuju A-Athi bands with whatever livestock was required to remove the (ritualized illness of) Mugiro, as well as other animals as "gifts" (fees) for their subsequent initiation into one of the groups themselves. Oral evidence suggests the number of livestock was subject to inflation. In 1909, for example, an elder visited by A-Athi in Igembe paid one bull and a single goat to remove his ritualized affliction, as well as a second goat to serve as his initiation fee. By the 1920s such demands had reached two bulls, two goats, one ram, seven gourds of millet beer, and (in Igembe) seven bundles of miraa (Cathulis edulis , or qhat), a mild narcotic that produced euphoria when chewed. Thereafter, as each new initiate became "kin" to all members of the group, he was required to provide one additional gift (e.g., a goat) for each subsequent A-Athi feast.

There is no doubt that incorporation into the A-Athi occurred most often through compulsion. There were, notwithstanding, several equally compelling reasons to join freely. In times of famine, of course, the A-Athi served along with other stomach Kiamas to provide society's only alternative to hunger: "Some married elders [family heads] joined just to find food. In those days the poor were the largest part of A-Athi membership. They simply sought a place where they could feed enormously on meat."^[26]

Mid-1920s: A-athi Justice

By the mid-1920s, however, the A-Athi had become so powerful and widespread that many bands grew rich in surplus livestock. With one need satisfied, A-Athi tactics were extended to meet others. The most dramatic extension occurred in the judicial sphere, where A-Athi bands

began to grope their way toward an alternative system of justice, different from that of either the Njuri or the crown.

Before the conquest, of course, A-Athi elders had used the Kiama to resolve conflicts among their own members, as well as those between hunters and the mainstream Meru. Cultivators and herders could not approach their own Kiamas (or Njuri) to resolve a dispute with A-Athi. In such cases elders refused their services, in keeping with their own tradition of ignoring the existence of fringe communities.

By the 1920s, however, mainstream Meru in every region had begun to appreciate the value of having A-Athi "kinsmen" resolve disputes between themselves and other cultivator-herders. A canny cattle keeper, for example, deciding to collect the livestock debts owed him by others, might actively solicit membership in an A-Athi band. Having paid the required animals as fees, he gained the right to ask his newly acquired kinsmen to assist in prompt collection of his debts, preferably by an immediate communal visit to the debtor. Such visits were always effective. Later in the decade, debts of this type were even collected en masse, with the A-Athi from a specific band passing from homestead to homestead in search of what they felt was due to any of their members.

Often the tactic used to guarantee collection was little stronger than a song. The A-Athi would assemble inside an alleged debtor's compound, then sing variations of the phrase "yai wega nokunenkerwa," which suggests that it is better to "be given." The implication, however, is that it is better to receive than to compel payment. The single song often sufficed. Because alleged victims had no recourse to their own Kiamas, they had no alternative but to submit.

Inevitably, A-Athi bands developed ways to extend their influence, in this instance over the local Kiamas themselves. When local elders had assembled to deliberate a matter of concern to local A-Athi, members of their band would slowly circle the field in which the council met, chanting variations of the phrases: "U-u-u-u, wikiri. Twengwa wikiri. Twengana wikiri. U-u-u-u-u-u-u-u." (O-h-h, woe to you. If we lose, woe to you. If we win, woe to you. O-h-h-h-h-h-h.)

The last sound, chanted with infinite menace, implied that the A-Athi would win regardless of how the conflict was resolved. In certain instances the bands left no doubt as to their wishes. If displeased with Kiama deliberations, they circled the assembled elders, chanting in the most abusive manner: "U-u-u-u, uronuka ja mai ja kuru. U-u-u-u, nyurunguru ja mai. U-u-u-u." (O-h-h, smell(s) like dog waste. O-h-h, drip(s) like feces. O-h-h-h.)

Kiama elders could scarcely fail to be influenced. Each knew that A-Athi bands, if sufficiently displeased, could visit every one of their homesteads, requesting "gifts" that would eventually lead to their incorporation into the society itself. Although tradition required they ignore the intrusions and, indeed, the fringe group's very existence, more and more of their decisions came to conform to A-Athi expectations as larger and larger numbers of them were drawn into the society itself.

Late 1920s: A-athi Versus England

By 1927 colonial administrators were thoroughly alarmed. Most agreed that the society had become a threat to the crown itself. One district officer, having made extensive inquiries, wrote that

membership of the [A-Athi] society has become enormous. So large have they become that they have become rulers of the country [i.e., Meru]. No member dare sue one another before the [Local Native Tribunal] Kiama. All disputes have to be settled by the elders of the [A-Athi] lodge. Any Mwathi [Mu-Athi: man of A-Athi] wishing to force anyone who is not a member to pay a debt, has him seized and brought to the [local branch of] Athi who force him to pay under penalty of being bewitched, and he has also to pay a "mara" [corruption of magara , or "buffalo"; actually, a bull] and "ngurugu" [corruption of nkurungu , the old term for "bushbuck"; actually, a goat] and become a member.^[27]

This and subsequent reports argued persuasively that the ruling elders of the A-Athi, usually designated as the "Njuri a Mbuju," were at least partially composed of Meru's leading colonial chiefs and headmen. To the British this increasing convenience suggested nothing less than systematic subversion of the colonial African administration, with no other goal than the eventual overthrow of British rule.

Such claims would have thoroughly surprised the elders of the A-Athi. The gradual extension of their influence into the higher ranks of Meru's African colonial service was unquestioned. As with both the Njuri Nceke and the Kagita, however, A-Athi motives were much less dramatic than the British supposed. Like other stomach Kiamas, the A-Athi initially perceived chiefs, headmen, and other African members of the administration simply as wealthy men. Obviously the steady receipt of wages from their British overlords led, without exception, to an equally steady increase in their livestock. As a result requesting such surplus animals to atone for having wronged one of their members seemed nothing more than the continuation of a tradition that

had endured for more than two hundred years. Inviting men of power to contribute for a feast was clearly not the same as moving toward political rebellion.

Thus, by the late 1920s many chiefs, headmen, tribunal judges, and other cattle-rich members of the colonial administration had, in fact, been recruited into the A-Athi. Having entered their ranks, they were prohibited by oath from imposing government obligations on those who were now ritually kin. This was particularly apparent when they were commanded to seize livestock, particularly for such universally resented levies as the hut tax. In such cases government servants, from hut counters to chiefs, found themselves forced to fill their quotas by drawing solely from those flocks and herds owned by members of the mainstream. This use of substitutes to meet colonial obligations engendered violent opposition from the mainstream Meru. Their resentment deepened as A-Athi immunity extended over time from livestock levies to labor quotas and indefinitely beyond. To be A-Athi, in some regions, meant freedom from England.

Three Contenders For The Crown

In fact members of the African colonial service were caught between three fires. Throughout the 1920s no fewer than three coherent social forces contended for allegiance within the Meru tribal regions, and it can easily be argued that each one ruled its share. The Local Native Tribunals, Local Native Council, and district office were all clearly creations of the alien administration, as were each of the tiny "chief's headquarters" that had emerged across the district in their image. In theory this network ruled all Meru. In fact they controlled only Africans within the tiny towns, most of whom lived around the smaller regional headquarters and a rising number near the missions. Beyond these points colonial influence was like a radio wave, strongest and most compelling at its source, but progressively weaker as it moved into the more distant hinterlands.

Within these outlying regions, from the forest fringes to the arid plains, the traditional Kiama system continued to survive. Every ridgetop community in Meru retained its local Kiama, available for consultation on request. In Mwimbi, Muthambi, and Igoji, the Njuri system had dissolved, the regional council-of-councils having failed to survive the onslaught and repeated arrest by district officers and fervent chiefs. In the north, however, the Njuri Nceke still functioned in its decentralized, deliberative fashion, meeting to resolve the conflicts of

those who sought justice in traditional fashion. Its legislative and executive functions had been usurped by the British, because neither its collective decisions nor public proclamations could be enforced. Nonetheless, its judicial power remained essentially intact, providing easily understood alternatives to those bewildered by the complexity of British justice. As such, despite its formal dissolution by the British, it retained the allegiance of the hinterlands, where "every [mainstream] man in Meru obeyed it when they dared."^[28]

Not all Meru, obviously, were men of the mainstream, and it was along the upper forest edges that the authority of the Njuri Nceke was challenged in its turn by the expanding fringe societies. There was nothing supernatural about this challenge. A-Athi, Kagita, Wathua, Mwaa, and others like them may well have been "secret" to the British, but they were perfectly well known in Meru, as variants among the shifting cluster of fringe Kiamas that had formed part of Meru tradition since the original migration from Mbwaa.

Men of the fringes had shared in the major events of Meru history, including its darkest moments. The plagues and famines of the 1890s had struck at cultivator and hunter alike. Mainstream and fringe Meru had waged war together, and both had passed through the traumatic shock of British conquest, which had undone so much that gave life meaning. Both groups had been forced to adapt to the excesses of the Njama, colonial appointees who had set the precedents for mass extortion on a scale the fringe groups could never hope to match. Finally, the massive dislocations brought on by world war, global pandemics, universally imposed forced labor, and recurrent starvation had forced mainstream and fringe communities alike to adapt sharply if they intended to survive.

In retrospect it can be argued that the adaptations chosen by the fringe Kiamas proved most effective in adjusting to the reality of British rule. Faced with the demands of an outside power they could neither resist nor wholly comprehend, the men of Meru took three separate paths. With exceptions, those who were warriors (the Murungi age-set) at the moment of conquest opted gradually to join with their conquerors, whether by passive acquiescence to a labor draft or active assistance in enforcing British demands. In consequence many prospered, finding new forms of security and status as they rose within colonial ranks.

In contrast the significant minority of those who were family heads at the time of conquest (Kiramana) attempted to evade its consequences.

Abandoning mainstream tradition as inadequate against the British, men and women were drawn to the smaller, more tenuous, but nonetheless traditional points of refuge offered by the many fringe groups. Similarly, the ruling elders (Kaburia) chose to passively resist the conquerors. They gave token verbal compliance, while clinging steadily to whatever customs they could still uphold. Thus the entire Kiama system, that of Njuri (in the north), and the traditional forms of witchcraft all survived the first decades of British power, essentially through the loyalty of elders, whose steadfast use of these institutions permitted them continued life.

Interestingly, however, although the Njuri did survive as an alternative to British justice, it failed to evolve into an alternative center of command. At no time in its history did it attempt to marshal its supporters to expel, resist, or even evade the British occupiers. Rather its members proved content to take the role of "communal safety valve," indirectly supporting the colonial administration by providing an alternative to its judicial excesses. It did little else to offer refuge from the stress of alien rule.

The same cannot be said for the fringe Kiamas. Faced with identical stresses, they not only maintained tradition but also continued to evolve. The responses of each group remained firmly rooted in their individual customs, thus were largely restricted to either protecting or acquiring supplies of food. Yet each unprecedented extension of a formerly traditional ritual increased the security of its membership, thereby offering a sense of refuge from the reality of enduring foreign conquest.

Throughout Meru, as the ancient ways were legally forbidden, people turned toward ritual to relieve their rising insecurity. No ritual proved more effective than those of the fringe groups, initially in providing grain and meat, then offering beer, song, the lure of dancing, and the promise of forgetfulness through sex. Small wonder that those who joined the fringe groups came initially from men (and women) of the Kiramana age-set, the family heads deprived of their flocks and herds by plague, drought, famine, taxes, and direct extortion, thus eager to seek refuge from their insecurity. Small wonder that those who joined soon found themselves in search of status and security as well as food. Deprived of wealth in every traditional form, yet unable to lash out at England, they struck at other Meru instead, seeking both food and feelings of power. Ultimately they succeeded, for it was those of the fringes who suffered least from the demands of colonial rule.