Muteori, Kikuyu Chief, Kenya, ca.1920

“Muteori – Kikuyu Chief”. Portrait of an indigenous man sitting on the ground in front of a thatched roofed hut. He is wrapped in an animal hide and sports jewellery in the form of necklaces, anklets and earrings, a short spear stands next to him. ❧ Good relationships with local chiefs was an important part of the missions work and each village would have a chief or elder. There were three indigenous tribes in the area; the Kikuyu, the Kamba and the Masai. ❧ Kikuyu Mission was established, in 1898 in the Thogoto district of the Central Highlands, by Rev. Thomas Watson after the first site at Kibwezi was abandoned. After Rev. Thomas Watson’s death in 1900 the mission was handed over to the Church of Scotland from the East Africa Scottish Mission, an arm of the Imperial East Africa Company. Dr David Clement Ruffelle Scott (1853-1907) ran the mission for seven years [1901-1907]. His nephew was Dr John William Arthur (1881-1952), in Kikuyu from 1907-1938, who would have been running the mission at the time of this photograph. ❧ This image belongs to an album of photographs collected by Dr. Stevenson and includes images from India, China and Africa