History
The Early migrations
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- Published on Saturday, 30 June 2007 23:13
The Gusii, together with the Kuria and Luhya, are among the earliest Bantu groups in Kenya, with at least part of their ancestors having arrived in the southwest of Kenya near Lake Victoria (Nyanza) at the beginning of the first millennium AD. Their subsequent history is somewhat confused, as it seems to involve two separate migrations of apparently unconnected people, who eventually merged with the original Bantu-speaking inhabitants of the lakeshore to become the Gusii.
One version has the bulk of the Gusii coming from Uganda (see Misri - myth or reality? below). Once in Kenya, they settled in the foothills of Mount Elgon, before moving south some five hundred years ago. The causes of this migration are said to have been either due to drought, or to conflict with the Nilotic-speaking Kipsigis, who are now part of the Kalenjin.
On the way, two generations stayed at Goye Bay on Lake Victoria, after which they headed to the Kano Plains, the disablingly hot, humid flatlands that lie between Kisumu and the western highlands. Here they lived for over a century in scattered homesteads over the plains, and it is was in Kano that the clan structure of the present-day Gusii began to take shape, in the form of four large families headed by warriors who led the migration south, and which became the Bassi, Girango, Sweta and Wanjare clans.
Then, presumably to flee the advance of the Nilotic-speaking Luo, they finally moved to their present location in the Gusii (Kisii) Hills.
The other version suggests that the Gusii came from the south of Lake Victoria, settled for a while in the Kano Plains where they presumably merged with the Gusii that had come from Mount Elgon, and together they then moved into the Gusii Hills.
