created the "Nandi legend." The Nandi were undefeatable. Porters could not be hired and expeditions could not be launched into Nandi for nearly forty years. The Nandi warriors stood proudly aloof from the events that were swirling around them confident to defend their independence. Late 19th-century Nandi resistance By the later decades of the 19th century, at the time when the early European explorers started advancing into the interior of Kenya, Nandi territory was a closed country Thompson in 1883 was warned to avoid the country of the Nandi, who were known for attacks on strangers and caravans that would attempt to scale the great massif of the Mau. Matson, in his account of the resistance, showed "how the irresponsible actions of two British traders, Dick and West, quickly upset the precarious modus vivendi between the Nandi and incoming British". This would cause more than a decade of conflict led on the Nandi side by Koitalel Arap Samoei, the Nandi at the time. The conflict would end on 19 October 1905, when Col Richard Meinertzhagen called for a peace meeting. Instead, Meinertzhagen and his men killed Koitalel and his entourage on the grounds of what is now Nandi Bears Club. Sosten Saina, grand-nephew of one of Arap Samoei's bodyguards notes that "There were about 22 of them who went for a meeting with the mzungu that day. Koitalel Arap Samoei had been advised not to shake hands because if he did, that would give him away as the leader. But he extended his hand and was shot immediately". Shortly after this event, the Nandi Resistance ended and Nandi was incorporated into the British East Africa Protectorate. 20th century World War I (1914-1918) Official records of the K.A.R show that a total of 1,197 Nandi were recruited during the war. At the time the Nandi population is estimated to have been about 40–50,000 individuals. Most of those recruited were of the Nyongi age-set which had been initiated during the four-year period immediately preceding the war. Greenstein (1978) following interviews with veterans of the war found that participation in the war made little impact on the Nyongik, as or as agents-of-change, as regards adapting western methods. Neither did the earned wages seem to engender an affection for the formal economy nor was any effort made towards participation in the political process. Socially, the Nyongik had been initiated just prior to the wars,