The Maasai believe that in the beginning, the earth and sky were one. Ngai, the creator of all things and husband of the moons, resided atop Mt. Kilimanjaro. Then the earth and sky were seoerated, Ngai went to live in the sky and gave the Maasai people their cattle to live off of. To this day the Maasai thank Ngai for the cattle and the blessings of children.

The Maasai are a group of clans that migrated from the upper Nile area in the 17th and 18th centuries. They herded their cattle freely across the Great Rift Valley in East Africa and were a free, nomadic peole until European colonization in Africa began during the 1840�s. The Maasai struggled to fight the Europeans but failed, and were forced to settle down in one area. Then during the 1880�s and 1890�s the Maasai suffered severe drought, famine, and disease (including smallpox). Their beloved cattle herds were decimated by rinderpest, a highly infectious febrile disease. The Europeans wanted farmland and obtained large quantities of Maasai land in treaties of 1911 and 1912. The loss of land to European settlers confined Maasai to reserves and gave Europeans fertile land.

The Maasai culture is known throughout Africa for being great warriors with strength. The warriors, called the �moran�, wore soft bundles of aromatic leaves under their armpits to act as a deodorant. In the past they would go into battle bearing fifty-pound buffalo-hide shields and carrying eight-foot spears.

Today the Maasai people number approximately 250,000. The primary spoken language is Maa, an Eastern Nilotic language. Both males and females undergo circumcision ceremonies to initiate them into adulthood. Males are divided into five basic age groups: child, junior warrior, senior warrior, junior elder, and senior elder. Both men and women spend hours decorating themselves and adorning their bodies with large necklaces, headbands, metal armlets and bracelets. Marriages are often arranged and polygamy is practiced.

The cattle are the backbone of the Maasai culture as far as necessities go. The dung is used to build huts, and the meat, cheese, milk and blood are everyday meals. The Maasai depend entirley upon the products obtained from the cattle.

Each Maasai clan lives in a village of small huts arranged in a circle that is surrounded by a thorn fence. These villages are called �kraals� or �bomas�. The fence is devised to protect the cattle from predators. The boys take the cattle out of the kraals every morning to graze until dusk.

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