Mark Twist Thuo
Member since Oct-4-01
530 posts, 46 feedbacks, 18 points Jan-14-02, 06:31 PM (CST)
60. "RE: No surprise"
In response to message #59
LuoDamu
Your analysis is not far off the mark. Even the early European settlers after meeting little resistance from Kambas who led them to Mt. Kenya and Maasai's whosold out through Lenana's treaties, were quite shocked at the reception they got from Kikuyus and exclaimed that possibly the Kikuyus were the most treacherous tribe they had ever met.(See Flame Trees of Thika)
It is thus that the Kikuyu Chief Waiyaki wa Hinga of Dagoretti came to be our first freedom fighting hero to die at the hands of the British in 1898. There was no way the Kikuyus were giving up their lands or signing treaties and it took major fights as well as Kikuyu demonization in British Media and toother Kenyan tribes to paint the kikuyu as the devils incarnate.
As you can see from this report even before the British could settle down the Kikuyus were being mercilessly mowed down.
Upon his arrival in mid-May of 1902, Meinertzhagen was at first repulsed by the brutal flogging given an African hireling, but quickly acquired the proper frontier spirit after an attack by Kikuyu warriors killed a policeman. His diary describes in blunt detail the retaliatory raid he led in its aftermath:
'The village had bonfires burning and the Wakikuyu were dancing round them in all their war-paint. It was really rather a weird sight. The alarm was given by a native who tried to break through our rather thin cordon. He refused to stop when challenged and was shot down. There was then a rush from the village into the surrounding bush, and we killed about 17 niggers. Two policemen and one of my men were killed. I narrowly escaped a spear which whizzed past my head. Then the fun began. We at once burned the village and captured the sheep and goats. After that we systematically cleared the valley in which the village was situated, burned all the huts, and killed a few more niggers ...'
http://www.africa2000.com/IMPACT/drought0611.html
That was in August of 1902. Meinertzhagen's next big engagement came one week into September, when word reached him that a white settler had been killed by another branch of the Kikuyu people. In his diary, Meinertzhagen wrote, 'I shall teach the offending village such a lesson at dawn tomorrow as will be long remembered among the Wakikuyu.' By his own account, he ordered the entire settlement killed, except for children. 'Though the war drums were sounding throughout the night we reached the village without incident and surrounded it,' Meinertzhagen wrote the next day. 'By the light of fires we could see savages dancing in the village, and our guides assured me that they were dancing round the mutilated body of the white man.' Needless to say, the no-survivors order was carried out