Njuri Versus Gikuyu: The Meru Golden Age

For a while the alliance deepened and thrived. Lambert quickly countermanded the Dutch priests' proclamation, visiting each Catholic mission in the district to explain it had been written by mistake. He then began negotiations with Catholic missions in Imenti—now directed by an Irish priest—for admission of their converts to the Njuri. The priest posed no objection, and a small number of Catholic converts entered the Njuri in January 1941.

In later years both Lambert and McKeag took great satisfaction in the completion of their alliance. Symbolically, the entry of Meru's powerful Catholics into the "pagan" institution of Njuri marked the culmination of a dream shared by "nativist" administrators across Kenya: a colonial golden age in which indigenous and British institutions would join hands, working together to implement decisions made to benefit the entire tribe.

To a degree and for more than a decade the dream did flicker into life, as a revived and newly confident system of regional Njuris joined British administrators to protect the tribe against potential enemies. Perhaps the most striking example of the councils' vigor during this period can be found in their struggle against the threat posed to Meru by its traditional enemy, the Gikuyu.

The Gikuyu inhabit nearly seventy percent of Mount Kenya, neighboring Meru to both its west and south. Their system of land tenure, initially communal, had moved closer to that of England as individual ownership became increasingly widespread. In Meru, Gikuyu land-holders were known as "tree eaters" because of their propensity to clear land of all tree cover prior to cultivation. In contrast the Meru held all trees in common, except those planted by individuals, and cutting down a tree required communal permission from an appropriate local Kiama.

British officers and Meru elders thus shared a common concern when, during the late 1930s, small bands of Gikuyu moved into the border region between the star-grass (populated) and "black" (montaine) forest zones and began to farm. Beginning in Cuka these settlements multiplied steadily, fed by a continuous trickle of new immigrants, and gradually expanded north into Muthambi and Mwimbi.

Many of the new arrivals were adopted, in traditional fashion, into existing Meru clans, accepting the use of land from local Kiama elders in exchange for gifts of livestock. Others, however, refused any type of cultural integration, creating a series of minisettlements, organized agriculturally and socially wholly along Gikuyu lines. The resulting destruction of the trees threatened to extend along the entire forest rim. Before the conquest the Meru would have responded to this devastation with warriors. During the 1930s they accepted payments of livestock and shillings from a people who seemed to have both in abundance.

In 1941 one of the more aggressive of these settlements appeared along the lower boundaries of the Ngaia forest in Igembe. Its appearance shocked district administrators and Njuri elders alike, for it was the first time Gikuyu had dared to penetrate the Meru north. Igembe elders initially approached the settlers with offers of adoption into their respective clans, a decision that would have placed them both within tradition and under control. They were contemptuously spurned.

The elder's anxiety deepened when members of the Ngaia settlement began to cultivate the very land that the Njuri Nceke had set aside as a protected zone. In Meru strips of land immediately beneath the lower forest rim had traditionally been protected, by Njuri proclamation, from cultivation, wood cutting, grazing, or any other activity that might harm trees. The result was the creation of an unmarked but universally respected buffer zone between human activities and the forest.

It was this zone, no doubt still highly fertile, that the Gikuyu chose to farm. In January 1940 a delegation of Njuri elders ordered them to leave. The Gikuyu refused. The Njuri Nceke then appealed to the district commissioner. In February 1940, Lambert personally visited the settlement, heard claims from both sides, then ordered the Gikuyu to depart within twenty days.

Initially they agreed. During the subsequent weeks, however, they worked day and night to plant every inch of the buffer zone with millet. In so doing, they followed both Gikuyu and Meru tradition, establishing the right to remain ("by their seed") on the disputed land until the harvest.

Had the incident occurred during the 1800s the Njuri Nceke would have sent warriors to expel the intruders at the moment they appeared. Had they come in the 1920s it would have done nothing, stripped of its powers and officially banned. Its decision in the fall of 1940 illustrates the degree to which the institution had recovered both its traditional authority and self-respect.

In October 1940 Njuri elders appeared in scores along the entire length of the Gikuyu fields. Singing, dancing, and waving tufts of grass as the traditional sign that they came in peace, the elders reaped the entire crop. Furious, the Gikuyu appealed en masse to the district commissioner. Completely aware of the symbolism behind the Njuri actions, Lambert dismissed their suit and expelled them from the district.^[34] This became a symbolic act in itself, setting a precedent of which every elder soon became aware: if the Njuri reaped what aliens had sown, the government would support them.

For Lambert the incident must have proved a quiet triumph, a moment marking the culmination of his work, McKeag's, and perhaps Hopkins's before him: the restoration of the dignity of indigenous authority so that it could once more take up its work, then stand side by side with England to administer the tribe. The fragile alliance, colonial and Meru, had come to life. Ruling elders from the missions, regional Njuris, and district headquarters were in accord. To Lambert, it must indeed have seemed the dawn of a golden age.

If so, the new era would be brief. The sense of compromise that now joined the senior age-sets did not include the young. Even as Lambert sought to draw mission converts into the tribal mainstream, others were leaving the missions, thereby drawing beyond his reach. In the years to come, young men from Mwimbi and Muthambi, deeply influenced by the spirit of revolt among the Gikuyu, would form "independent" churches at the Meru social fringes. Their goal was less to worship than to use the pulpit as a zone of safety from which to preach against both England and the African past. Still later, they would form "independent" schools, devoid of mission teachings, where children could be taught to strive for freedom.

In time the independent churchmen, teachers, and pupils alike would find themselves increasingly involved in political actions as the oaths and promises of Gikuyu politicians drummed ever more loudly across the land. Some would respond by forming patriotic groups, such as the "Meru Helping Country Association" of 1950, which swore loyalty to England while hoping to escape it.^[35] Finally, the peoples of Mount

Kenya would revolt, and the men of Meru—driven apart by what would become a Gikuyu civil war—would fight on both sides, their tribal unity destroyed.

All this, however, lay in the future. In 1940, with much of the world approaching war, the leading men of Meru—pagan and Christian, English and African, Njuri elder and colonial chief—all marched as one. For the next ten years the Njuri system would dominate much of Meru's political arena, together with an African colonial service with which it would increasingly share a loyalty to England. Most mainstream Meru would remain content. Only on the fringes, as had been the case throughout Meru history, would the new ways emerge. This time, however, the new generation of fringemen would win Meru its freedom.