The name is absent

on oath criminalization. Leakey’s account picks up on internal African struggles
which show that oathing took on varied meanings.

In Defeating Mau Mau, Leakey devotes a chapter, “Mau Mau Oath
Ceremonies,” to describing some of the practices, statements, and other details
associated with oathing. He records about eight different types of oaths with
emphasis on the first oath type. He states, “...the first oath was so arranged as
to include all those magical and ritual elements which were known to have the
most binding effect upon the minds of members of the tribe.”¹⁵ Unlike many other
colonial accounts of the time, Leakey did not feel that Mau Mau was an “atavistic
reversion to traditional savagery, but rather a perversion of civilized Kikuyu
tradition.”¹⁶ Even though many were not convinced of this civilized continuity
point of view, both of Leakey’s works were well received by Europeans
attempting to understand the mindset of the Kikuyu as portrayed through the
activities of Mau Mau.

Leakey offered rational explanations of the violence attributed to Africans
who were, in recent history, docile and peaceful. However, Leakey was not
completely praised by many Kikuyus and was not viewed as a representative or
authority on Kikuyu culture, even though he positioned himself as a friend of the
Kikuyu. Nevertheless, Leakey’s contribution to the historiography on the Mau
Mau oath can be primarily linked to his position as a European with an intimate
African connection, which provided him with the ability to translate his African

¹⁵ Leaky, Defeating Маи Mau, 78.

¹⁶ Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, “Louis Leakey’s Mau Mau: A Study in the Politics of Knowledge,”
History and Anthropology 5 (1991): 146.

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