Agumba people

The Agumba (also Gumba) people were an ethnic group who inhabited the plains of what is now central Kenya, but are now either extinct or assimilated.

They are known only through the oral tradition of the Kikuyu and Ogiek peoples, who credit them as being the original inhabitants of the territory; the Agumba are described as being hunter-gatherers, and pygmies. According to Kikuyu descriptions, they worked with iron and made pottery, and were beekeepers.

The Agumba, along with several other groups, were sometimes called the Dorobo by the Maasai and other cattle-herding groups. This derogatory term was also used in much of the early academic anthropological literature on the area.

References

• Distefano, John A. (1990) 'Hunters or hunted? Towards a history of the Okiek of Kenya', History in Africa, 17, 47–57.

External links

• Ogiek.org article on hunter-gatherers in the Kenyan plains
• Ecological and sociological history of the Kenyan plains