One might think that a traditional society was a fixed and immobile society. Quite the contrary, traditional societies tend to have resources for dealing with changes by constantly reformulating their political, economic and social systems to adapt them to new needs. The Maasai, who today consist of some 350,000 individuals living in Kenya and Tanzania, are one example of this adaptation. In recent years Maasai society has seen its territory enclosed for purposes of wildlife preservation or privatised to build private ranches or to sell to the large plantations. The Maasai have confronted these changes through their political and social culture, which contains mechanisms and forms of cohesion of its own allowing it to adapt to new situations.

The Maasai, a spuriously warmongering society [1]

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Maasai were described as the warmongering tribe par excellence, "irreducible, blood-drinking warriors". However, this is a stereotyped image, a myth which Maasai history itself refutes. According to Xavier Peron, the Maasai, despite their dominant position in Africa in the nineteenth century, had no wish to colonise their neighbours or organise bloodthirsty raids. In the area under Maasai domination it is inaccurate to speak of self-contained ethnic groups; in fact, from as early as the nineteenth century, a complex network of economic and social relations between neighbours can be observed in the Rift Valley, without any loss of identity by each of the existing communities.

In actual fact, three complementary forms of production exist side by side in the Rift Valley-stockbreeding, agriculture and hunting and gathering-, and they are related in a pattern of cooperation rather than competition, involving coexistence rather than conflict. Even amongst the Maasai themselves these three forms of production can be found. The term Maasai refers essentially to the fact that they all speak the same language, Masao, and that if geographical and weather conditions allow it they prefer stock-raising to any other kind of production.

So where does the "bloodthirsty warrior" stereotype come from? The Maasai grazing lands bordered on the territory of the Loikops, semi-shepherds who dominated an area suitable for agriculture but not for cattle-raising, as it was an area where rinderpest was endemic.

In the nineteenth century it was the setting for several wars caused by the Loikops' wish to take over the Maasai grazing lands. Large-scale wars were exceptional events among the Maasai, who often stuck to small cattle raids as an initiation for the young moran.[2] The beginning of these wars between the Loikops and the Maasai in competition over grazing land coincided with the arrival of Europeans on the East coast. The Arabs, who dominated trade in the interior of the continent, seeing a competitor arrive, wanted to create an atmosphere of danger in the area to prevent the European traders from penetrating. Gradually, they put the blame on the Maasai for any bloodletting that took place in the area. This was the birth of the myth of the fiercely warlike and aggressive people who had to raid their neighbours' herds to survive.

The colonists, though, fascinated by these "fierce warriors", perpetuated this myth. This, along with the idea that the Maasai were nomads (another false stereotype, as the Maasai are transhumants with fixed winter and summer pastures), was the pretext for one of the largest appropriations of land to take place during colonisation. These stereotyped ideas about the Maasai were used to justify the annexation of their land by the colonial administrators for the European farmers, who used it for commercial ends.