1/17 #HistoryKeThread: The Lost Clan Of The Agîkûyû: 
2/17 The original inhabitants of Kikuyu-land, it is said, were the Thagicu, who practised iron-working, herded cattle and sheep and goats, and hunted. The similarity in name between Thagicu and Gikuyu would suggest that they were in fact the Agîkûyû’s earliest...
3/17 ...known ancestors, if not their primary lineage.
4/17 They may indeed have been the ‘tenth’ of the ‘fully nine’ clans, though admittedly that that is merely speculation. Sources differ on the ethnic identity of the Thagicu – some say they were Bantu-speaking, others that they came from Cushitic peoples.
5/17 As the land was fertile and ideally suited to agriculture, the population increased rapidly, causing further waves of migration which lasted until the eighteenth century: west into the Aberdares (Nyandarua Mountains), south to the present site of Nai
6/17robi, and north to the Nyeri plains and the Laikipia Plateau, where the Agîkûyû came into contact with the cattle-herding Maasai (who were evicted from the area by the British early in the twentieth century).
7/17 Unusually in contacts with the Maasai, the Agîkûyû were neither conquered nor assimilated by them, but instead engaged in trade (as well as sporadic cattle raiding), which led to a deep and long-lasting social interaction which especially affected the...
8/17 ...Kikuyu.
9/17 During the Maasai civil wars at the end of the nineteenth century, hundreds of Maasai refugees were taken in and adopted by the Agîkûyû, particularly those in Kiambu. More than half of the Agîkûyû of some districts are believed to have Maasai blood in...
10/17 ...their veins (including Jomo Kenyatta himself, whose paternal grandmother was Maasai).
11/17 From other peoples came loanwords for ceremonial dances, plants and animals, and the concept of irrigation as an agricultural technique.
12/17 Although the Agîkûyû had a formidable warrior force, the agricultural nature of their lives meant that violence was generally only used for defence, for they lacked the mobility of pastoralists such as the Maasai and Samburu, who lived to the north and...
13/17 ...west.
14/17 Geographically, the Kikuyu were relatively well protected, with the Ngong Hills so the south, the Nyandarua Mountains to the west, and Mount Kenya to the northeast.
15/17 To the east, also, were the related Meru, Embu and Kamba people, with whom relations were generally friendly, relying as they did on their trade with the Agîkûyû.
16/17 Defence was thus a primary concern only in the west, where the Agîkûyû were wary of settling or venturing out onto open plains for fear of the Maasai, who were interested in controlling the widest possible areas for their herds.
17/17 Greater defence was necessary only close to the Maasai border, with the result that villages there were in effect forts and were built for maximum protection.
