Njuri Versus The "Little Whites"

Meru colonialism did not lack African defenders. By the late 1930s and early 1940s an entire age-set had grown up within the colonial service, many of its members having carved satisfying careers in the service of England. Lambert, although always attuned to the beliefs of traditional elders, was less sensitive to the feelings of Meru in colonial service. In consequence, completing his investigations of the Njuri in 1935, he began to consider ways to reintegrate the institution into colonial government.

His concern was enthusiastically reflected by his successor, Capt. Victor M. McKeag. McKeag's background was military, including several years' service in the King's African Rifles. He had neither Lambert's linguistic talent nor his anthropological inclination. He did, however, take a lively interest in the peoples he was asked to rule and spent much time studying their traditional institutions. McKeag thus found himself thoroughly caught up in the spirit of Lambert's earlier research and eager to carry out the latter's goals.

During his first months in office, however, he found that members of the Meru colonial service from Igembe to Cuka objected to the integra-

tion of the Njuri in the strongest possible terms. Chiefs, headmen, clerks, translators, and tribunal members who had served colonialism for years, occasionally decades—had become estranged from certain aspects of their tribal past. Many had spent the previous ten years working actively to suppress the Njuri system. Now they protested heatedly against integrating its operations with their own.

McKeag was therefore initially faced with what he subsequently described as a dual government.^[18] During his early tours of the district he found that Lambert's administrative legacy included two sets of regional institutions, indigenous and colonial, operating continuously while scrupulously ignoring the other's existence.

Perhaps the best example of this dualism appeared in the judicial sphere, where an unspoken but identifiable competition had begun to appear between each of the regional Njuris and the colonial Local Native Councils for Imenti, Tigania, and Igembe. At one level each competed for litigants. Those who wished to seek legal judgments now weighed the comparative merit of local tradition versus English law. Simultaneously, each institution began to serve as a court of alternate appeal, as elders dissatisfied with judgments rendered by either the colonial or traditional body could try their luck once more with its competitor. In essence that meant each conflict required two decisions, a situation McKeag found both redundant and pointless.

The district commissioner moved to integrate the two systems at several points. He had least success in coordinating the work of chiefs and headmen with Njuri spokesmen. In contrast to Hopkins, McKeag began at the top, asking the appropriate higher councils to appoint as many spokesmen as were required to work with each colonial chief. He intended both sides to consult with one another while implementing colonial commands, but they refused to share authority. Chiefs insisted the spokesmen carry out their orders; spokesmen argued they were not tribal retainers. With few exceptions, McKeag's integration of the administrative structure failed to take root.

His efforts in the judicial sphere, however, were more successful. Here McKeag began to integrate Njuri spokesmen into the Local Native Tribunals. As vacancies occurred within each region, he filled them with "elected" members of the appropriate Njuri. Each "election" was preceded by conversations with Njuri elders until consensus was reached on their selection. Thereafter, McKeag proclaimed an election, requesting the regions' elders to assemble. Gravely he solicited "nominations" for each vacancy. With equal gravity one member of the

regional Njuri would propose the preselected nominee. A unanimous vote followed, and both Meru and British electoral customs were thus satisfied.^[19]

McKeag and Lambert were also able to restore the traditional Njuri oaths. Lambert was particularly concerned by the suppression during the previous decade of every form of oathing. His objection was ecological, based on the rapidly expanding numbers of livestock throughout every section of the Meru reserve. Before the conquest, he argued, every major moment of decision within the lives of every male Meru was marked by the sacrifice of a sheep, goat, or cow. At one level the slaughter and subsequent communal consumption of the animals were meant to symbolize contact with the ancestors, who were believed to share in the feast. Their attendance alerted them to the decisions faced by their living descendants, providing opportunity to approve or interfere with the accompanying oaths.

Both the oath and livestock sacrifice were thus central to each meeting of an elders' council. The death of an animal was the point of contact between elders and ancestors, as the slaughtered beast's spirit passed between the living and the dead. In spiritual terms, the system provided the living with a sense of steady contact with their ancestors. Ecologically, it resulted in a periodic reduction in the numbers of livestock, thereby maintaining an appropriate balance between grazers and grazing.

By abolishing every form of traditional oath, the Europeans had inadvertently cut off a major means of contact with the supernatural. More important, Lambert argued, they had simultaneously cut off the continual slaughter of livestock that had maintained a normal ecological balance. Thereafter, herds had increased at unprecedented rates until existing grazing areas were near exhaustion.^[20]

Lambert's initial steps to restore the traditional forms of oathing, and accompanying animal sacrifice, were similar to those used in legalizing the Njuri itself. He followed a period of early inquiry into the social purposes of each type of oath with continual public discussion of those oaths most appropriate, both at regional mass meetings (baraza ) and with selected groups of ruling elders. In so doing, Lambert symbolically proclaimed government acceptance of both the oaths themselves and the accompanying livestock sacrifices as essential elements of Njuri justice. That in turn signified an end to three decades in which district officers had regarded each cow, sheep, and goat brought to Njuri elders as living evidence of bribery, thus illegal under British law. Instead,

those assembled to resolve conflicts were once again allowed their communal feasting, as symbolic evidence that harmony had been restored.

McKeag and Lambert finally tried to "give Njuri teeth" by restoring the council's power to enforce its collective decisions.^[21] This proved more difficult than previous reforms, for the traditional power of enforcement conflicted sharply with British law. Before the conquest potential violators of Njuri proclamations had been deterred from noncompliance by fear of the council's collective curse. Alternatively, Njuri elders could call upon the weapons of their warrior sons to enforce their will.

Neither curses nor warriors were available to Njuri elders in the 1930s. To replace them, and thereby integrate indigenous authority into the British administration, each of the regional Njuris were "permitted" to seek enforcement of their decisions through appeal to the Local Native Tribunal of their respective regions. Each tribunal could call on the services of tribal police. If requested, it could send them out to enforce Njuri decisions as well as its own. Before doing this, however, the tribunal was required to retry the Njuri proceeding from its own perspective and essentially to find the violator guilty once again.

The decision to enforce such rulings lay solely with the tribunal, since only the colonial body could command tribal police. The method of enforcement, however, followed Meru rather than European tradition. Enforcers worked in pairs, one representing each of two adjacent age-sets. Direct proclamations to the violators were made only in the name of the appropriate Njuri. Most important, fines were levied in livestock rather than money, with a specific percentage of the animals passed on to Njuri elders to provide the basis for their subsequent feasts of reconciliation with the violators themselves.^[22] From the British perspective it was a successful example of how indigenous and colonial institutions could be blended both to protect the present and preserve the past. Most Meru elders grudgingly agreed. There were younger men, however, who did not.