It is an historical fact that the British had no trouble with this warlike people when colonizing the country [Kenya]. The reason, according to the local story, which Mr. Stoneham heard on the spot, was a warning given to his people by Lyanasha, the greatest witch-doctor chief, or hereditary Lybon, the Masai ever had.

He died about the middle of last century [i.e. the 19th] at more than a hundred years of age. "Before his death," says Mr. Stoneham, "he called the people together and said: 'I see a great snake stretching right across the country of the Masai. Huge birds will fly over, and the shadow of their wings will be on the veldt. These things the white men will bring.' He warned them that if they shed white blood there would be a great pestilence, half the tribe would die, and almost all the cattle would be exterminated.

The British were allowed to build the Uganda Railway unmolested by the Masai, "for the chiefs recognized this as the 'Great Snake.' In about 1896 Dick King raided Masai cattle. He was pursued, and after a fight, was killed. Smallpox broke out among the Masai; half of them died. Rinderpest swept over Africa, almost wiping out the cattle."

Since then the Masai have revolted several times and killed Indians and Blacks, but no other white man. And as Mr. Stoneham adds, the big air-liners that now cross Masai-land are the "Giant Birds" visioned by the Lybon.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This laconic third-hand account is still an impressively long-term prediction. In the 1850s, the laibon could I suppose have heard of railroads, but not planes; as unthinkable to the British of the time as to the Maasai. Even visionaries who imagined human flight mostly pictured dirigibles, or shiplike 'clippers of the air' as in Jules Verne's Robur the Conqueror. It was not until after World War One that planes much resembled birds, some 65-70 years after this prophecy. That span vies for the longest on record, rivaling North American shaman Aleek-chea-ahoosh's Buffalo Person.

SOURCE: The Dream World by Rodolphe L. Megroz, 1939, p.35. Modern spellings would be Layanasha or Laianasha, laibon and Maasai.

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