Sirikwa people

The Sirikwa people were a historically attested community in the western highland regions of present-day Kenya, remembered primarily through oral traditions and early colonial-era ethnography. While their name has since been applied to a broader archaeological horizon—the so-called Sirikwa culture—the Sirikwa themselves seem to have been a clan or sub-tribe within the larger East African Pastoral Iron Age complex, and may not have been the sole bearers of that material tradition.

Oral traditions consistently place the Sirikwa on the Uasin Gishu plateau and adjacent highlands prior to their dispersal in the mid-19th century. Many of these traditions—particularly those preserved by the Pokot and neighboring Kalenjin-speaking groups—emphasize that the plateau was never inhabited by a single people, but was instead shared by at least two distinct communities. This suggests a multi-ethnic or segmented settlement pattern, with the Sirikwa forming just one of several culturally related groups that once inhabited the region.

Their legacy survives both in oral tradition and in the archaeological nomenclature that continues to bear their name.