Tatoga

The Datooga, also called Tatoga, are a Southern Nilotic people of north-central Tanzania, closely related to the Kalenjin of Kenya. Linguistic evidence places their remote origins in the Middle Nile basin, and Southern Nilotic communities had reached north-eastern Uganda by 1000 BC, absorbing from neighbouring Cushitic peoples circumcision and the age-set system.

Around the fifth to sixth centuries BC the proto-Datooga split from the proto-Kalenjin and settled the Mara and Loita plains. Late in the first millennium AD they were living around Mount Elgon, and remained there until about the mid-1700s, when their sections began drifting south along the Rift Valley into the plains around Mount Hanang.

Nomadic pastoralists with no paramount chief, they are divided into at least ten sub-tribes, among them the Barabaig, Gisamjanga and the blacksmith Gidang'odiga, each tracing descent through exogamous clans.