ABSTRACT
Emutai is imprinted on the collective memory of the Maasai as one of the formative experiences of the society. This chapter focuses on the diversity of sources; and describes biographical material to bring out the contrasting experiences of different families and individuals and to give something of the flavour and immediacy of events. The crisis, which was general in East Africa, was in some ways a watershed in the history of pastoralism in Maasailand. Two explanations are put forward in tradition to account for the cattle epizootics in Maasailand: that they were brought in by diseased cattle captured in raids; or that rinderpest specifically was spread by the movement of game. Inter-sectional warfare had as deep an effect on the Maasai community as the losses of stock and population themselves. To set the disasters in Maasailand in perspective it is necessary to go beyond the conventional accounts, from both Maasai and European sources, of misery and death.
