Koitalel’s fierce resistance was sparked by the construction of the Kenya-Uganda Railways in the 1890s.
The Nandi are a subgroup of the larger Kalenjin tribes; their warriors responded by launching deadly ambushes on colonial convoys along the railway line.
In October 1905, Richard Meinertzhagen, a British military intelligence officer, killed Koitalel after inviting the leader to a truce meeting.
According to Nandi oral history, Meinertzhagen decapitated Koitalel. Elders believe he transported the slain leader’s severed head, along with several of his possessions, back to the United Kingdom.
Two days after Koitalel’s killing, on October 19, the British launched the “final Nandi campaign”, said Chomu, in which they slaughtered hundreds of Nandi men of fighting age and expelled them from the Nandi Hills. Like other Africans in the colony, the Nandi were corralled onto a “native reserve” on the tribe’s drier pasture land.
