The Nandi will never forget Colonel Richard Meinertzhergen, one of Kenya's most cruel colonial officers who doubled up as an accomplished cattle rustler.
He lured and shot dead Koitalel arap Samoei, their Orkoiyot (Supreme Chief), at the turn of the 19th century.
Koitalel, who was leading the 11-year Nandi Resistance against the construction of the Uganda Railway passing through his people's land, had to be killed.
The objective was to disrupt the command structure of Nandi warriors then waging guerrilla warfare in the Nandi Hills.
Col Meinertzhergen tricked Koitalel into a meeting to negotiate a truce and end the resistance, but, instead shot the Orkoyoit and his henchmen that October 19 of 1905. The Nandi Bears Club stands next to Koitalel's mausoleum where he was killed in cold blood.
In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence of Arabia wrote of Col Richard: "Meinertzhergen knew no half measures. He was...so possessed of his convictions that he was willing to harness evil to the chariot of good. He was a...silent laughing masterful man; who took blithe pleasure in deceiving his enemy (or his friends) by some unscrupulous jest, as in spattering brains of a cornered mob of Germans one by one with his African knob-kerri. His instincts were abetted by an imposing powerful body and a savage brain...!"
The dashing, well-built, six-foot, five-inch soldier named after Meinertzhergen, a German town (where a distance relative lived), came to Kenya on military duty as part of the Kings African Rifles in 1902. But the soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist shortly became part of punitive expeditions in the Rift Valley, cattle raids in Maasai land and Central Kenya in four years to 1906.
In fact, the ruthless one he led against Kikuyu warriors later led to the establishment of a police station on a hill that became Nyeri town.
In Kenya Diaries: 1902-1906, Meinertzhergen noted that the Kikuyu would be the first natives to cause the British problems over land. But of the over 1,500 Kikuyus murdered during his killer raids, he didn't care two hoots.
Col Richard Meinertzhergen (who died in 1967) admitted that he never believed "in the sanctity of human life or in the dignity of the human race."
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