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Abstract
This paper examines the role that laibons (diviners and ritual healers) played and continue to play in warfare among Samburu pastoralists through their use of divination and sorcery to defeat external enemies. The paper focuses on the 1931 death of Theodore Powys, a white ranch manager in northern Kenya whose death was, in time, attributed to murder by five Samburu warriors. The event and trial occurred as conflicts increased among Samburu pastoralists, white settler ranchers of Laikipia District, and the Kenya colonial administration in the early 1930s. Although the warriors eventually were acquitted of murder charge, their laibon, Ngaldaiya Leaduma, was arrested before the trial under the Witchcraft Ordinance and deported for intimidating witnesses and interfering with the investigation. The larger Samburu community also faced harsh fines and disarmament and was incorporated into the settler-dominated Rift Valley Province. This paper focuses on three themes – conflicts over grazing land between the Samburu and the settlers; colonial responses to local ritual leaders such as the laibon; and Samburu conceptualizations and use of spiritual power in political conflicts. It demonstrates that ethnographic approaches and methodology can complement historiographical methods of archival research to present a multivocal account of a period of conflict and disruption.
Acknowledgments
I wish thank Kordidi Leaduma (1920–2010) for sharing his version of the Powys events and his exposition about the laibon's powers of divination, prophesy, and sorcery among Samburu people, and to Daniel Lemoille for his long term assistance in the interviews. I am grateful to Richard Waller and Peter Waweru for sharing copies of original archival documents of the Powys investigation, and to Jon Holtzman, G. Lawrence Simpson, Bilinda Straight, and Richard Waller for sharing unpublished manuscripts of their own work on the Powys case. I appreciate the comments of my colleagues Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, Ralph Faulkingham, Holly Hanson, Jon Holtzman, Ella Kusnetz, Caroline Melly, Bilinda Straight, Sean Redding, Mwangi Wa Githinji, and particularly Richard Waller to earlier versions of this article. Finally I am grateful to the helpful comments and suggestions by the editors of the Journal of Eastern African Studies and the two anonymous reviewers. The views expressed in the paper are, of course, mine alone. Funding was provided by multiple agency grants including National Geographic Society, Social Science Research Council, and the Smith College Faculty Compensation and Development (CFCD) funds.
Notes
1. Laibon is the anglicized spelling of l-oiboni (s.). il-loibonok (pl.) from the verb i-bon to predict. This spelling is used widely in popular and academic literature.
2. Among Samburu, age-sets are incorporated every fourteen years where young men undergo initiation by circumcision and ascend through collective status changes from warriorhood through various stages of elderhood. Each age set has a particular name, and history is marked by events that occurred during the period of warriorhood of particular age-sets. For Samburu age-set chronology, see Spencer, Nomads, 150–165.
3. Interview with Kordidi Leaduma, Marsabit town, Kenya, 10 July, 1996.
4. Atieno-Odhiambo, “The Song of the Vultures”; Duder and Simpson, “Land and Murder”; Simpson, “Gerontocrats and Colonial Alliances”; Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court”.
5. Holtzman and Straight, “Echoes of the Vulture”; Straight, “Violence in the Shadows”; Waweru, Continuity and Change in Samburu.
6. Anderson, “Black Mischief”; idem., “Visions of the Vanquished”; Anderson and Johnson, Revealing Prophets; Johnson, Nuer Prophets; Luongo, Witchcraft and Colonial Rule; Waller, “Kidongoi's Kin”; Waller, “Witchcraft and Colonial Law”.
7. Ashforth, Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy; Comaroff and Comaroff, Modernity and Its Malcontents; Fratkin, “Loibon as Sorcerer”; idem., Laibon: An Anthropologist's Journey; Geschiere, Modernity of Witchcraft.
8. Duder and Simpson, “Land and Murder”, 456.
9. Simpson, “Gerontocrats”, 68, 71; Spencer, Nomads, 158–159.
10. William Morris Carter, Kenya Land Commission, Evidence and Memoranda, Volume II, 1459.
11. For a detailed discussion of the 1904 and 1911 Maasai moves, see Hughes, Moving the Maasai.
12. William Morris Carter, Kenya Land Commission, Evidence and Memoranda Volume II, 1449.
13. William Morris Carter, Report of the Kenya Land Commission, point 868; also Kenya Land Commission, Evidence and Memoranda II, ‘Northern Frontier District’, 1445–1716.
14. Between 1928-1934 there were 28 murders of African workers and squatters on white estates in Laikipia District and North Nyeri District. Sixteen Samburu warriors had been charged with murder but only four had been convicted for lack of conclusive evidence. Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court”, 24.
15. East African Standard, 11 January 1934.
16. Fratkin, “A Comparison of Roles of Prophets”; Fratkin, “The Laibon as Sorcerer”; Fratkin, Laibon: An Anthropologist's Journey.
17. Duder and Simpson, “Land and Murder”, 453.
18. Statement by Kiberenge to H. H. Trafford, District Commissioner; Kenya National Archives, Nairobi [hereafter KNA] PC/RVP.6A/17/1, Ref. C.R. 74/10/31.
19. Statement by Kiberenge to H. H. Trafford, District Commissioner; Kenya National Archives, Nairobi [hereafter KNA] PC/RVP.6A/17/1, Ref. C.R. 74/10/31.
20. Duder and Simpson, “Land and Murder”, 454; Waller, Bringing Murder to Court, 3.
21. Waller, ibid., 5.
22. Waller, ibid., 10–11.
23. Dorrobo are Maa-speaking hunter-gatherers living in a loose symbiosis with Samburu and Maasai cattle keeping communities.
24. Statement by Marire Ole Legada to H. H Trafford, DC, 2 December 1933, Rumuruti Cr.Case 55/1932, KNA PC/RVP.6A/17/1.
25. Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court”, 5–7.
26. East African Standard, 4 December 1934.
27. ‘Laibon in the Box’, East African Standard, 4 December 1934
28. ‘The Powys Case – Judgment This Morning’ East African Standard, 4 December 1934; Powys trial summary statement, 4 December 1934, KNA PC/RVP/6A/17/1.
29. Report by J. Byrne, Brigadier-General to Major Sir Phillip Cunliffe Lister, Secretary of State for the Colonies, February 24, 1935, 8, KNA PC/RVP/6A/17/1.
30. Richard Waller, personal communication, 26 July 2014. The Collective Punishments Ordinance (1909) allowed magistrates the power to apply fines to communities for the offences of the individual; see Anderson, “Black Mischief”, 865, 40.
31. Straight, “Violence in the Shadows”, 11; Waweru, Continuity and Change.
32. Spencer, Nomads, 158.
33. Report by Byrne, 8.
34. Chenevix Trench, Men Who Ruled Kenya, 94.
35. Statement by Vincent Glenday, Rex vs. Laibon Ole Odumu, accused. Criminal Case No. 153 of 1933, 6 December 1933, KNA AP 1/12/4.
36. Statement by Leratia Ole Dorumet, 29 November 1933, for Rex vs. Laibon Ole Odumu.
37. Ngaldaiya is stating that his family are originally from Laikipiak Maasai and not Samburu. See Fratkin, Laibon: An Anthropologist's Journey, 20–21.
38. Statement by Ole Odumu, Rex vs. Laibon Ole Odumu, KNA AP 1/12/4; Letter from PC Central Province to PC Rift Valley Province, 26 April 1946, KNA PC/RVP.6A/17/23, Ref. no LO.23/1/11/290.
39. The death of Mr. T. L. Powys; and Ole Odumo [Leaduma], The Samburu laibon, deported by Gov's Deputy and Exco, Minute No. 56, Minute of meeting held at Government House, Nairobi, 26 January 1934, National Archives of the United Kingdom, Colonial Office [CO] 534/42.
40. Samburu Laibon Ole Odume (Naduma- Kagaiya), Letter from PC Central Province to PC Rift Valley Province, 24 April 1941, KNA PC/RVP.6A/17/23, Ref. no LO:23/1/II/127; Letter from PC Central Province to PC Rift Valley Province, 26 April 1946, KNA PC/RVP.6A/17/23, Ref. no LO.23/1/11/290. I am grateful to Peter Waweru for sharing copies of these archival documents.
41. Unlike the Witchcraft Ordinance, the Deportation Ordinance did not require witness testimony, which would have been difficult to obtain in the case of a laibon. Richard Waller, pers. comm. 8 July 2011.
42. Waller, “Witchcraft and Colonial Law”, 245.
43. Luongo, Witchcraft and Colonial Rule, 15.
44. Waller, “Witchcraft and Colonial Law”, 244.
45. Anderson, “Black Mischief”, 853–56, 862.
46. Anderson, “Black Mischief”, 854, 5.
47. Waller, “Kidongoi's Kin”, 36–37.
48. Rex vs. Laibon Ole Odumu.
49. Berntsen, “Maasai Age-sets”, 135.
50. In Maasai, ntasimi are called entalengoi, pl. intalengo ; sorcery substances are known as e-setan, i-setani. Mol, Maasai Language, 364, 380.
51. Fratkin, “Loibon as Sorcerer”, 320–21; Waller “Kidongi's Kin”, 28.
52. Spencer, “Loonkidongi Prophets”, 336.
53. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 20. The terms are now used more interchangeably, Geschiere, Modernity of Witchcraft, 12–13.
54. Fosbrooke, “An Administrative Survey”, 13.
55. Waller, “Kidongoi's Kin”, 28, 54.
56. For Nandi and Kipsigis see Anderson, “Visions of the Vanquished”; for Turkana see Lamphear, Scattering Time.
57. For Kikuyu see Ambler, “What Is the World”; for Meru see Bernardi, Mugwe Prophet; Fadiman, When We Began.
58. Ambler, “What Is the World”, 229.
59. For descriptions of Maasai laibons, see Berntsen, “Maasai Age-sets”; Hodgson, Church of Women, 41, 44; Hollis, The Masai, 325–26; Spencer, Masai of Matapato, 219–221; Spencer, “Loonk'idongi Prophets”; Spencer, Time, Space and the Unknown, 71, 98–123; Waller, “Kidongoi's Kin”.
60. Berntsen, “Maasai Age-sets”, 142.
61. For Laikipiak, see Sobania, “Defeat and Dispersal”.
62. Fratkin, “A Comparison of the Role of Prophets”.
63. Fratkin, Laibon: An Anthropologist's Journey, 20–21. An earlier paper [Fratkin, Loibon as Sorcerer, 331, 3] incorrectly described Sharrar (Charrar) as a member of the Kiteku age-set (initiated c. 1851); he was a member of the Kepeko age set (initiated c.1837).
64. West, Kupilikula, 19–21.
65. Anthropologists formerly distinguished sorcery and witchcraft, the former being manipulation of manufactured substances and the latter referring to an innate power (e.g., Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 20). The term is now used more interchangeably (e.g. Geschiere, Modernity of Witchcraft).
66. Tying as ritual protection, for Samburu see Fratkin, “Loibon as Sorcerer”, 326; for Maasai, see Spencer, Time, Space and the Unknown, 101. Ntasim is similar to mitela substances described by West, Kupilikula, 43.
67. Mary Douglass, Purity and Danger, 39–40
68. Fratkin, Laibon: An Anthropologist's Journey, 83–85.
69. Harry West describes ‘constructive’ sorcery as a ‘countermeasure’ (kupilikula) against sorcery (uwavi). West, Kupilikula, 7–8.
70. Luongo, Witchcraft and Colonial Law, 6.
71. Interview with Kordidi Leaduma, 17 July, 1999, Marsabit, Kenya.
72. The police record listed seven arrested suspects: Bari Leaduma, Langoi Lesoipa, Lerono Majero, Maritim Lolobiala, Mbari Laigitile [Lesoipa], Laiteti Lesori and LepedIbido Lesemeto; the last two offered King's evidence in exchange for a drop in charges. Kiberenge named Bari Leaduma, Majero Lerono, Lelangu Leipa, Kiseger Lageteli, and Latuman Lolobiala. Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court”, 9.
73. For an example describing the laibon's role in predicting and protecting warriors, see Fratkin, Laibon: An Anthropologist's Journey, 116–17.
74. Interview with Kordidi Leaduma, July 14, 1996, Marsabit, Kenya.
75. Statement by Marire Ole Legada to H. H Trafford, DC, 25 November 1933, Rumuruti Cr.Case 55/1932, KNA PC/RVP.6A/17/1.
76. Statement by Marire Ole Legada to H. H Trafford, DC, 25 November 1933, Rumuruti Cr.Case 55/1932, KNA PC/RVP.6A/17/1. Samburu witnesses told anthropologists Jon Holtzman and Bilinda Straight (2004) seventy years later that the events described by Kiberenge were not true and that people agreed his statements were true out of fear. Holtzman and Straight, “Echoes of the Vultures”.
77. Marire Legada testified, ‘We all know that the Leroghisu when they kill a man do not mutilate the body or castrate, they are too clever, they have been warned by their elders not to do so’. Statement by Marire Ole Legada to H. H Trafford, DC. Spencer reported that some Samburu follow the Rendille custom of castration of dead enemies. Spencer, Nomads, 97.
78. Interview with Kordidi Leaduma, 16 July 1999, Marsabit, Kenya.
79. Spencer, Nomads, 112–113; Straight, Miracles, 100–102.
80. Hodgson, Church of Women, 41.
81. Spencer, The Samburu, 184–191.
82. Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court”, 15–16.