But more of your
men came in always, and there were no more Wakamba to come in and take
the places of those who were killed. We are not afraid. If we should war
with you, we would undoubtedly kill a great many of you, and you would
undoubtedly kill a great many of us. But there can be no use in that. We
want the ranges for our cattle; you want a road. Let us then agree."
The result is that to-day the Masai look upon themselves as an
unconquered people, and bear themselves--_towards the other
tribes_--accordingly. The shrewd common sense and observation evidenced
above must have convinced them that war now would be hopeless.
This acute intelligence is not at all incompatible with the rather
bigoted and narrow outlook on life inevitable to a people whose ideals
are made up of fancied superiorities over the rest of mankind. Witness,
the feudal aristocracies of the Middle Ages.
With this type the underlying theory of masculine activity is the
military. Some outlet for energy was needed, and in war it was found.
Even the ordinary necessities of primitive agriculture and of the chase
were lacking. The Masai ate neither vegetable, grain, nor wild game. His
whole young manhood, then, could be spent in no better occupation than
the pursuit of warlike glory--and cows.
On this rested the peculiar social structure of the people. In perusing
the following fragmentary account the reader must first of all divest
his mind of what he would, according to white man's standards, consider
moral or immoral.
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