ABSTRACT
Small-scale societies were a dominant feature of East African society in the years prior to the imposition of the colonial state. The mosaic of complementary subsistence patterns included cattle and camel pastoralism, rain-fed and flood-retreat agriculture, hunting, gathering and fishing. The fifty-five year period under examination encompasses roughly that period of time in which the colonial state, and then the post-colonial state, was imposed and came to influence the traditional herding practices of pastoralists in northern Kenya. The mosaic of complementary subsistence patterns included cattle and camel pastoralism, rain-fed and flood-retreat agriculture, hunting, gathering and fishing. The earliest administrators found the pastoralists of northern Kenya occupying lands which in varying degrees were different from those they had occupied in the nineteenth century. The arrival at Marsabit in 1909 of the first colonial administrator in northern Kenya led to significant changes in the traditional patterns.
