East African nomadic people speaking the Maasai Sudanic language. Probably at the height of their power in the mid-19th century, they suffered from the British colonization of Africa and the resultant ecological and political changes. The weakened Maasai attacked rather than cooperated with the new rulers. In 1904 and 1912-13 the British government relocated the Maasai population to distant southern Kenya and Tanzania, where they now live. Maasai males are rigidly classed by age into boys, warriors, and elders.
Girls often have their marriages negotiated by their fathers before they are born.
Older women enjoy the same status as male elders. The Maasai, most of whom are nomadic throughout the year, live in kraals, small clusters of cow-dung huts constructed by the women. Today the Maasai number approximately 250,000. They remain a pastoral people. T he Maasai believed that God originally gave all cattle to them.