The Southern Kikuyu before 1903

About the book

This impressive work is a complete record of the ways of the Agĩkũyũ before and during the period of European influence that came with road and railway building and the political and economic changes of the late 19th century. It is the major anthropological achievement of the late L. S. B. Leakey, and the culmination of his lifelong study of the people among whom he was born and raised.

Written in the graceful, readable style of scholarship in the 1930s, it draws on the memories of the elders whose confidant Leakey became. That rich source of tradition, passed on intact from generation to generation, was in danger of drying up without trace. Revised and published some forty years after it was first undertaken, the study secures it for posterity.

Thanks to Leakey, and to the collaborators who worked on the manuscript after his death, Kikuyu custom has been set down: the daily work of digging, planting, harvesting, caring for animals, trading, marriage, raiding, dancing, and lawgiving, and the customs tied to sex, rites of passage, religious belief, magic, and medicine. It pictures a successful self-regulating community in which a strict set of rules and punishments kept order.

The study makes no comparisons with other cultures, which makes it an important primary source for social anthropologists, ethnologists, and social scientists, and of great value to anyone interested in Africa and its history.