No tattooing or scarring is performed on the men, but Sir Harry Johnston noticed women with parallel lines burnt into the skin round the eyes. In both sexes the lobes of the ears are distended into great loops, through holes in which large disks of wood are thrust. Bead necklaces, bead and wood armlets are worn by men, and before marriage the Masai girl has thick iron wire wound round her legs so tightly as to check the calf development. The women wear dressed hides or calico; the old men wear a skin or cloth cape. The warriors wind red calico round their waists, a circle of ostrich feathers round their face (or a cap of lion or colobus skin) and fringes of long white fur round the knee. Masai houses are of two kinds. The agricultural tribes build round huts with walls of reeds or sticks, and conical, grass-thatched roofs. The true Masai nomads, however, have houses unlike those of any other neighbouring negro tribe. Long, low (not more than 6 ft. high), flat-roofed, they are built on a framework of sticks with strong partitions dividing the structure into separate compartments, each a dwelling, with low, oblong door. Mud and cow-dung are plastered on to the brushwood used in the roofing. Beds are made of brushwood neatly stacked and covered with hides. The fireplace is a circle of stones. The only furniture, besides cooking-pots, consists of long gourds used as milkcans, half-gourds as cups, and small three-legged stools cut out of a single block of wood and used by the elder men to sit on. The Masai are not hunters of big game except lions, but they eat the eland and kudu. The domestic animals are cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and dogs. Only women and the married men smoke. The dead are ordinarily not buried, but the bodies are carried a short distance from the village and left on the ground to be devoured by hyenas, jackals and vultures. Important chiefs are buried, however, and a year later the eldest son or successor recovers the skull, which is treasured as a charm. The medicine men of Masai are often the chiefs, and the supreme chief is almost always a medicine man.
The Masai believe in a nature-god as a supreme being--Ngai ("sky")--and his aid is invoked in cases of drought by a ceremonial chant of the children, standing in a circle after sunset, each with a bunch of grass in its hand. They have creation-myths involving four gods, the black, white, grey and red deities. They believe there is no future for women or common people, but that such distinction is reserved for chiefs. Pythons and a species of snake are revered as the reincarnated forms of their more celebrated ancestors. A kind of worship is paid to the hyena in some districts: the whole tribe going into mourning if the beast crosses their path. The Masai also have a vague tree-worship, and grass is a sacred symbol. When making peace a tuft is held in the right hand, and when the warriors start out on a raid their sweethearts throw grass after them or lay it in the forks of trees. But the oddest of their superstitious customs is the importance attached to spitting. To spit upon a person or thing is regarded as a sign of reverence and goodwill, as among other Nilotic tribes. Newly born children are spat on by every one who sees them. Johnston states that every Masai before extending his hand to him spat on it first. They spit when they meet and when they part, and bargains are sealed in this way. Joseph Thomson writes, "being regarded as a wizard of the first water, the Masai flocked to me ... and the more copiously I spat on them the greater was their delight." The Masai has no love for work, and practises no industries. The women attend to his personal needs; and trades such as smelting and forging are left to enslaved tribes such as the Dorobo (Wandorobo). These manufacture spears with long blades and butts and the peculiar swords or _simés_ like long slender leaves, very narrow towards the hilt and broad at the point. Most of the Masai live in the British East Africa Protectorate.