ABSTRACT
Primitive pastoralism has perhaps attracted the attention of European observers more than any other type of native economy and culture pattern. There is something about the pastoral way of life and those who follow it which appeals to the romantic in the Englishman. The Bedouin Arabs, the Masai, the Fulani and others are possibly the most widely known African peoples. However little an Englishman knows of East Africa, he is almost certain to have heard of the Masai, photographs of whom seem inevitably to form frontispieces to books on the region. The independent character of the warrior-herdsman raises greater admiration than the less exotic agriculturalist. In East Africa, too, it so happens that many of the pastoral peoples are of the Nilo-Hamitic strain, which tends to give them a more striking physique than their Bantu neighbours. In addition, these pastoralists have tended to be the slowest to adopt the white man's ideas and techniques. They have come to represent very often the romance of an Africa now fast disappearing.
