The Maasai once ranged across the Rift Valley, then lost most of their herds
By the mid-1800s Maasai herders controlled nearly the whole Great Rift Valley from Mount Marsabit to Dodoma, and in 1857 their warriors menaced Mombasa. Within a few decades a disaster they call Emutai, a combination of cattle plague, smallpox and drought, killed by one estimate two-thirds of their people.
The Maasai are Eastern Nilotic speakers of Maa, a language related to Dinka and Nuer, who reached East Africa by way of South Sudan. Their migration made them the southernmost of all Nilotic speakers. Along the way they absorbed customs from Cushitic-speaking neighbours, including age-set organisation and a share of their vocabulary, and assimilated some Southern Cushitic groups while displacing others. Warriors carried spears and shields but were most feared for the orinka, a throwing club said to be accurate at up to 70 paces.
The Emutai ran from 1883 to 1902. Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and the rinderpest epizootic of the 1890s swept through the herds; one German officer estimated that 90% of cattle died, along with half the wild animals. Smallpox followed, and the rains failed in 1897 and 1898. Later, colonial and national authorities took fertile lands around Mount Meru, Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro and carved out reserves such as the Maasai Mara and Serengeti. Many Maasai still resist government pressure to settle and press for grazing rights in the parks.
Genetics records that layered history. A 2009 study by Sarah Tishkoff and colleagues found the Maasai had kept their culture despite extensive genetic mixing, consistent with Nilotic peoples absorbing Cushites over some 3,000 years and sharing an East African mutation for lactose tolerance. A 2019 study of ancient remains modelled the Maasai as about 47% ancestry related to Cushitic Pastoral Neolithic herders and 53% related to the Dinka.
Maasai religion centres on one god, Enkai, with a dual nature: the benevolent Black God and the vengeful Red God. Ol Doinyo Lengai, the 'Mountain of God' in northern Tanzania, is visible from Lake Natron. Spiritual leaders called laibons traditionally healed, prophesied and sought rain, their influence resting on personality rather than office. The community has twenty-two sections, each with its own customs and dialect, and Kenya's 2019 census counted 1,189,522 Maasai, up from 377,089 in 1989.
Source: Maasai people
