Achunku: Nguu Ntune ACHUNKU : NGUU NTUUNE TO MERU The whites first came as guests and later leaders of the Kamba, Swahili, Somali, or Zanzibari-Arab caravans that habitually journeyed to Mount Kenya every dry season, exchanging cloth, trinkets, and coastal beads for tusks, honey, and sufficient goats and grain to feed their porters. Collectively, the Meru labeled all of these peoples as chomba men of the coast. Having once offered what they considered adequate goods for grain and livestock, they expected the offer to be taken and the requested commodities to appear. Any delay in negotiations or, worse, any refusal to trade, was taken as an act of hostility akin to declaring war. With the survival of their expeditions dependent on continued resupply, most Europeans felt no qualms in seizing what they required. Accordingly, they plundered cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, and occasionally women, leaving a trail of burned-out villages to mark their passing. Meru ambivalence toward the Europeans was perhaps most clearly demonstrated with the arrival of William Astor Chanler, an American, in 1892. His caravan was composed of two Europeans, four Somali guardsmen armed with rifles, and about sixty Swahili porters. He was nicknamed LITHARIKE by the Merus because of atrocities that followed his conquests. Chanler was not the first white to reach Meru. He had been preceded by two Germans, Karl Peters and Herman Tiedemann, who passed briefly through the Tharaka region in the autumn of 1889. Peters, later to become known both for exploration and for his mistreatment of Africans, reacted to the Tharaka in his customary manner. Brushing aside initial attempts at trade, he plundered six hundred head of cattle, successfully repulsing Tharaka attempts to retrieve them as he fought his way out of the district. The peoples of adjoining Tigania had better fortune, attacking and overwhelming a Swahili-led caravan that entered their district the following year. Chanlers caravan then appeared to the north of these regions, penetrating the foothills of todays Igembe. In view of the regions obvious fertility, the whites decided to ensure the success of their trading venture by seizing two old men as hostages. In so doing, they violated Meru military conventions, which restricted hostilities to men of warrior age and imprisonment to women. When a unit of fifty outraged warriors appeared, Chanler instantly seized four of them, scattering the rest with gunfire. He then demanded trade. The Igembe contingent reacted predictably by calling in reinforcements from the adjoining communities. By the next morning Chanler found his group ringed by more than four hundred spearmen, all sounding a war cry and spoiling to fight. In this moment of crisis they were overruled by the elders, who to Chanlers amazement permitted the caravan to leave in peace, merely redirecting it to an adjacent community in Tigania.
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 12:47:52 +0000
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