Closing the Plateau: A Colonial Letter of 1905

By William Kiptoo

First shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group on 27 October 2023.

In 1905 the Uasin Gishu Plateau was closed to new settler applications while land was surveyed. This letter, from the East Africa Protectorate correspondence of November 1905 (file No. 42493), recommends that it stay closed until the whole area had been surveyed and divided into farms of 5,000 acres, "to avoid a rush similar to that in case of Rift Valley." It reads in part:

November 1, 1905. Sir, In reference to your telegram of October 9th 1905, instructing me to entertain no applications for grants of land on the Uasin Gishu Plateau… negotiations with Mr. Goldman for… Eldama… I have the honour to state that as this portion of the Protectorate has again been closed for the settlers owing to the trouble in Nandi (via my telegram No. 188), it would in my opinion not be wise to reopen it until the whole area has been surveyed and divided up into farms of five thousand acres similar to the plan survey for the Rift Valley. If this is not done, I fear…

The "trouble in Nandi" was the Nandi resistance led by Koitalel arap Samoei, killed in October 1905. The plateau was reopened after the survey, and in 1908 the van Rensburg trek arrived to take up farms.

See also The Zionist Inspection of the Uasin Gishu, from around the same time.

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