¹ F.O. to IBEA Coy., 8 Sept. 1894.Google Scholar

² Hobley, C. W., Kenya—From Chartered Company to Crown Colony, 77–8.Google Scholar

³ Central Nyanza (area c. 1750 sq. miles) is one of the six administrative districts forming the Nyanza Province of Kenya. Out of a total African population of c. 700,000, about 70,000 are Bantu in origin (1962 Kenya Population Census).Google Scholar

⁴ See Hobley, Kenya, Chap. VII, 109–24.Google Scholar

⁵ Matson, A. T., Uganda's Old Eastern Province: Uganda Journal, XXII (1958), 48.Google Scholar

⁶ Sir Eliot, Charles, The East Africa Protectorate, 186.Google Scholar

⁷ Meinertzhagen, Kenya Diary (1902–1906), 132.Google Scholar

⁸ Eliot, op. cit., 3. He wrote: ‘We have in East Africa the rare experience of dealing with a tabula rasa, an almost untouched and sparsely inhabited country where we can do as we will…. This lessens the difficulty of administration, but it increases responsibility and the need for reflection’.Google Scholar

⁹ Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘Luo Tribes and Clans’, The Rhodes–Livingstone Journal, VII (1949), 24–40.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Southall, A., Lineage Formation Among the Luo (1952).Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² A Location is an administrative unit—a sub-division of the District.Google Scholar

¹³ The difference between ‘Indirect’ and ‘Direct’ Rule is thus really a difference of degree not of kind. As Lord Hailey has said: ‘The use of these terms conveys the erroneous impression that there are two opposing systems of rule. This is not the case…. All African administrations are dependent to a greater or lesser extent on the use of native authorities as agencies of local rule’. Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa. Report 1940–2, 13.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Watts, T. A., Memorandum on Dr Wilson's ‘The Luo Customary Law of Land Tenure’, submitted to the P.C., Nyanza. Political Records, Kisumu District Archives.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Quoted in Buell, R., The Native Problem in Africa, I, 363–4.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Annual Report, Central Nyanza, 1913, Kisumu.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Proceedings of the C.M.S. for Africa and the East (1907–1908), 79.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid. 1905–1906, 99.

¹⁹ Ibid. (1905–1906), 100.

²⁰ Ibid. (1922–1923), 16–17.

²¹ Ogot, B. A., An African Prophet—the Life and Teaching of John Owalo, an unpublished MS.Google Scholar

²² Nyangweso, , ‘The Cult of Mumbo in Central and South Kavirondo’, Journal of E.A. and Uganda Natural History Society, x, No. 38, 13–17.Google Scholar

²³ Political Records, District Archives, Kisumu. Ref. to Chilembwe Rising in Nyasaland —see Shepperson and Price, Independent African.Google Scholar

²⁴ Much of the material incorporated in this paper was collected during field work in 1961 as a Research Fellow of the British Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa. Mumboism continued to be a force until the late 30's, opposing such things as innoculation against smallpox. I was assured by the few Mumboites I met that there are still at least 500 members of the Cult scattered in Central and South Nyanza.Google Scholar

²⁵ District Annual Report, 1917, Kisumu.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid. Cf. ‘The people of Central Kavirondo … helped the British forces in the war in the most practical way possible to them, by making them a present of 3000 goats’. Proceedings of the C.M.S. for Africa and the East, 1922–1923, 16–17.

²⁷ Goldsmith, Ainsworth, 94.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., 94.

²⁹ See Groves, C. P., The Planting of Christianity in Africa, IV, 72: ‘After the formation of the Carrier Corps in the East Africa Protectorate a total of 162,578 were recruited …. Of these 23,311 or nearly 15 per cent were known to have died while a further 25,695 were returned as deserted or missing, of whom half might be presumed to have died’.Google Scholar

³⁰ Mitchell, Philip Sir, African Afterthoughts, 48–9.Google Scholar See also Lucas, C. P., The Empire at War, IV, for more figures.Google Scholar

³¹ Mitchell,Google ScholarIbid., 46.

³² Letter to The Times, 16 April 1918—quoted in Groves, , The Planting of Christianity in Africa, IV, 74–5.Google Scholar

³³ Philp, H. R. A., A New Day in Kenya (1936), 32–3.Google Scholar

³⁴ District Annual Report (1918), Kisumu.Google Scholar

³⁵ When Lord Moyne visited the District in 1932, he found that only one-sixth of the revenue obtained from the Africans in the District ‘was expended on native services in the District.’ Annual Report, Central Nyanza (1932).Google Scholar

³⁶ District Annual Report (1921).Google Scholar

³⁷ ‘He (Harry Thuku) went by train to Kisumu and had immense meetings of Kavirondo natives. A polyglot nation was beginning to emerge from among certain of the highland and lake tribes—and it was a hostile nation’, Ross, Kenya From Within, 228. After his successful visit to Nyanza, Thuku tried to form a militant E.A. Association, but the Government gave him no time to organize it. Note the Kikuyu-Luo axis in Kenya politics, which is still important. Throughout the inter-war period, members of Piny Owacho communicated with the Kikuyu Central Association until 1940, when the latter body was proscribed.Google Scholar

³⁸ A prominent leader of K.C.A., and later of K.A.U. He was detained during the emergency in Kenya.Google Scholar

³⁹ Annual Report, Central Nyanza (1922).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Cf.Ross, Kenya From Within, 87. Civil Case No. 626 of 1922. Chief Justice Sir Jacob Barth's judgment.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Cf. Richards, C. G., Archdeacon Owen of Kavirondo, Nairobi, 13–14.Google Scholar Also Ross, Kenya From Within, 236.Google Scholar

⁴² The Native Catholic Union was started in Oct. 1924 with exactly the same objects as the K.T.W.A., which was under C.M.S. auspices.Google Scholar

⁴³ Annual District Report (Kisumu, 1932).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Bennett, G., ‘The Development of Political Organizations in Kenya’, Political Studies, v, No. 2 (06, 1957), 121–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ingham, K., A History of East Africa (1962), 281.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Annual District Report (1920), Kisumu.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid. 1937.

⁴⁸ Cf. the traditional system.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Annual District Report (1924).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Hannigan, A., What is Local Government?, Nairobi (1958), 29.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Report on Summer Conference on Local Government in Africa (Cambridge, 1961), 5.Google Scholar

⁵² Unlike the K.C.A. leaders, who remained permanent outsiders, most of the leaders of Piny Owacho had been absorbed into the colonial régime as teachers, pastors, councillors, and civil servants. New leaders who did not depend on the colonial administration for their livelihood were therefore needed in the District.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ker means chiefship or the symbol of chiefship.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Corfield Report, 216.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ K.A.U. had been proscribed on 8 June, 1953, and up to 1955 all African political organizations were prohibited. From 1955, Africans were allowed to form District political organizations.Google Scholar