The Emergence of Keiyo Society

Shared by William Kiptoo. A summary of a chapter from Isaac Tarus's study, The Keiyo of Kenya During the Early Colonial Period, 1902 to 1939. The traditions it draws on are oral.

First shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group on 27 October 2021.

The Keiyo, Tarus writes, are among the smallest Kalenjin communities and historically the least known. The earliest inhabitants of the Keiyo country are remembered as the Kapchegrot and Kimnegei, followed by the Kurut, and other early peoples included the Terngeny, the Okiek and the Sirikwa. Out of the meeting of the arriving Keiyo clans with these peoples, a distinct Keiyo society took shape.

The Clans

The Keiyo are divided into sixteen patrilineal clans: Talai, Terik, Tungo, Toiyoi, Targok, Kimoi, Kong'ato, Kabon, Kabilo, Soti, Saniak, Siokwei, Sokome, Kure, Mokio and Mokich. Most acted independently, though the Tungo and Kobil formed alliances. Tradition places the clans at Tulwop Kony (Mount Elgon), from where population pressure and drought pushed them out. The ancestor of the Kobil settled at Kipkono to hunt and was joined by a Tungo ancestor; they divided the hunting grounds so that game belonged to whoever held that territory, and so the Kobil and Tungo clans began, the Kobil being the most widespread of all.

Routes of Migration

Some clans came by way of Riwo in West Pokot. Traditions speak of an origin in "Misri," a passage through Sudan, and a long stay at Mount Elgon, where other Kalenjin taught them circumcision. Drought (ilchet) drove them to Riwo, and the Pokot may have pushed them south to Lake Baringo, where they met the Tugen and Marakwet. The three tried to follow the Nandi and Kipsigis southwards, but at the Sageri hills found those groups already settled. The Marakwet then followed the Kerio north to their present home, the Tugen stayed in the Baringo hills, and the Keiyo crossed the Kerio near today's Kabirirsus in Metkei and took to the sheltered ledges of the escarpment from Tambach to Metkei. On the plateau above lived the Kipwob Maasai, who, tradition says, named them il-Kerio or Ilkeiyu, "those who live along the Kerio."

Another tradition points to Kong'asis, the east, and most who claim this origin trace descent from the Tugen. The Kapng'eno section of the Kobil clan says it came from Tugen country, some settling at Metkei and others at Muskut, where they remain.

Drought was the main reason for moving, with livestock driven to fresh pasture near Lake Baringo and the Kerio. Pressure from larger neighbours, the spirit of adventure, deaths of people and stock, witchcraft and family quarrels also played a part. The escarpment's three zones shaped settlement: the hot, mosquito ridden Soin of the valley floor, where no one lived; the Korget; and the cool Mosop, where most hamlets stood, easy to defend against raiders and wild animals.

Neighbours and Newcomers

Keiyo oral sources say they met no resistance, because the land was held by a small people they called the Terngeny, who had no fixed home, lived in holes in the ground, and, if one fell, could not rise without help and would whistle for a companion. Whether they were real or a tale to amuse children, no one can say.

The Okiek, wrongly called "Dorobo," a Maasai word for a poor person without cattle, were very real and shaped Keiyo life for two centuries or more. They lived by honey, meat and forest plants, and traded honey, herbs, weapons and beehives for Keiyo grain and pots. In famine, Okiek women married into Keiyo families and whole Okiek clans settled among them, and Keiyo and Nandi women are said to have exchanged infants for grain. From the mid nineteenth century, as forests were cleared and game declined, many Okiek became herders and farmers and merged into Keiyo society. Traces remain in the Chepkorio, Sabor and Metkei forests.

The Sirikwa are the hardest to place. The archaeologist John Sutton concluded they were probably Kalenjin, "the vanished people of Kalenjin tradition," and Keiyo tradition holds they were of the Keiyo cluster itself, perhaps the same people at another time and in another zone, linked by their ironworking, around Chepkorio, Kaptarakwa and Sabor. When the Keiyo clans arrived in the late seventeenth century, Sirikwa were already living at Muskut and Tambach. They were said to be stockless smelters of iron, despised by some, and some fled towards Tanzania. Those who stayed supplied the Keiyo with cattle bells, hoes, weapons and bracelets in exchange for grain and livestock, used the livestock to pay bride price, and by the mid nineteenth century had been absorbed into the Keiyo clans.

Raids among the Tugen, Nandi, Maasai and Keiyo brought women into new clans. Maasai women married among the Keiyo are said to have introduced the practice of mixing charcoal into soured milk to make mursik. Famine refugees were taken in, Tugen and Keiyo boys were sometimes circumcised among their neighbours, Tugen women married into Keiyo families as insurance against hunger, and Keiyo who fled famine to Nandi often stayed. From all these streams, within the Kerio Valley and the escarpment, the idea of being Keiyo emerged from the seventeenth century.

See also The Cliff Dwellers of Kerio and The Stone Holes of the Uasin Gishu.