The Maasai culture consists of nomadic pastoral groups in the Great Rift Valley of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. Land and cattle are central to the Maasai, and all Maasai life and culture are structured around them; they travel throughout the region in search of good, nourishing land for themselves and their cattle. Livestock provide the Maasai with food in the form of their milk and meat; with shelter and clothing in the form of their leather; and with tools in the form of their crafted bones. The cattle also serve as currency, and the number of cattle a family group has reflects their wealth and status.

Despite Western European intervention into Africa, through the 20^th century the Maasai successfully avoided assimilation and continued their nomadic lifestyle and practices of traditional dress, ornamentation, and artforms. While they continue to uphold their traditions as much as possible, today the Maasai face challenges to their traditions because of widespread Westernization in Africa and issues such as the privatization of land, climate change, and conservation efforts. Displacement from their traditional lands and relegation to smaller areas, as well as an increasingly globalized market, has left the Maasai with inadequate wealth and the inability to use their cattle as currency. In addition, because of Maasai resistance and the important symbolism of Maasai weaponry as status symbols for Maasai men, many harmful, romanticized, and racist stereotypes have developed about Maasai culture, casting Maasai men as wild “proud warriors” symbolic of “the spirit of Africa,” while also ignoring the contributions of women in Maasai culture.

In the 21^st century, the Maasai have decidedly continued to follow important aspects of their traditional culture, but they have also adapted to their changing world in creative ways. Maasai men continue to proudly embrace traditional shields and spears along with traditional dress as important cultural symbols of a historically nomadic lifestyle, and this perseverance has increased tourism to the Maasai homeland; the Maasai now monetize their culture and educate the public by sharing their cultural ceremonies and traditions with tourists. This stalwart resilience to Westernization by the Maasai has also inspired other Africans, and Maasai weapons have now become international African symbols of resistance, further popularizing Maasai culture.

Maasai women also continue to follow traditional cultural practices, but they also now create both traditional Maasai beadwork jewelry and objects and simplified, tourist-trade adaptations of Maasai beadwork for the international market. These artforms provide crucial income for the Maasai while also increasing autonomy for women and helping them to contribute to the support of their families. Maasai men, meanwhile, have begun to produce wooden masks and sculptures depicting Maasai people for sale to tourists; while these types of carvings were not previously produced by Maasai cultures, they do accurately reflect Maasai imagery and traditions. As a whole, the embrace of tourism, the tourist trade, and the global market have allowed the Maasai to survive in the modern world while allowing them to perpetuate their traditional cultural practices.

 

The Sirate — the individual design that appears on Maasai shields — is highly symbolic to the Maasai. While each design is personalized to the owner, the Sirate must also conform to traditional imagery, and the motifs used are generally pulled from a pool of typical images. The line down the center of this shield, for example, is a common motif that represents a belt given to a Maasai man by his girlfriend that acts as a symbol of their love.

The color combination of red, white, and black on this shield, meanwhile, is highly respected in Maasai culture because the contrast among these colors represents balance, an important component of the culture; these colors also relate to Narok Enkai, a benevolent Maasai god. Finally, the well-distributed geometric motifs also serve to create visual balance in the overall design on the shield.

 

Unlike in most African traditional cultures, masks were seldom used by the Maasai. Instead, the Maasai have developed a much larger tradition of carving wooden masks specifically for the tourist trade, mainly due to the Western expectation that African cultures make and use masks.  Nevertheless, these masks do reflect traditional culture, as they not only depict Maasai images and themes, but they are likely based on Mara masks, a traditional mask that was worn by Maasai men to scare opponents during battles.

Nevertheless, the Elongated, Unpainted Mara Mask is a bit unusual, even for Maasai masks made for the tourist trade. While as is typical, the mask illustrates the stylized face of a Maasai man with traditionally stretched earlobes, it is not painted, and it does not have an elaborately carved headdress incorporating brightly colored plants and animals, which are often added to Maasai tourist-trade masks to appeal to Western tastes.

 

With its short metal blade and dark leather handle carved with geometric designs, the Sword With Carved Handle is a male weapon of war — although not a critical component of the traditional warrior ensemble. This short sword would be worn on the hip, typically in a sheath, as not only would a sharp, bare blade be physically hazardous when in such close proximity to the body, but it would also likely be seen as a threat because it is unsheathed.

 

When glass trade beads were first imported into Africa from Czechoslovakia, the Maasai people immediately recognized and embraced the artistic possibilities of these beads for creating beautiful variations in traditional Maasai beadwork art. The truncated conical shape of this beadwork bowl was likely inspired by traditional Maasai beaded caps; it was adapted to be a bowl in order to appeal to tourist trade preferences, while still preserving and sharing Maasai standards of beauty.

The colors for Maasai beadwork art are highly significant and symbolic for the Maasai. The yellow beadwork on this bowl symbolizes fertility and growth, which is essential for the land to sustain life. The white beads, meanwhile, symbolize cow’s milk, and owning healthy cattle are an extremely important feature of traditional Maasai culture. Finally, the black beads symbolize the Maasai people as well as life’s hardships.

 

Although the wooden shaft of this spear is broken, the shape and length of the metal blade identifies it as a lion spear, which would have originally had long shaft and a smaller blade at the other end. Lion spears form part of the traditional ensemble of adult Maasai men, as they are important components of proving oneself as a warrior, which was essential for self-defense in a nomadic lifestyle. Despite the name of this spear, a popular test of courage for young Maasai men is to kill a rhinoceros alone with a spear and to obtain the animal’s horn; this required bravery, strength, and speed, all of which illustrate the Maasai man’s abilities in both hunting and in war.