Prehistory Arusha Region is home to
Laetoli and
Olduvai Gorge national archaeological sites both locations with discoveries of prehistoric
hominids.
First Communities The first communities in southwestern Arusha Region's
Arusha District,
Arusha Rural District and
Meru District, were the now extinct
Koningo people, an ancient
hunter-gatherer group that lived around the slopes of
Mount Meru for centuries. The second community to settle in the region is the Meru People, whom immigrated there from the
Usambara Mountains in
Tanga Region. They settled on the southeastern slopes of the mountain and started to farm the land. The third wave of settlers were the
Arusha people a subgroup of the
Pare people migrated from
Arusha Chini in
Kilimanjaro Region. Some Parakuyo
Masai in the west, who were the last group to immigrate to Arusha Region in the 1830s, assimilated into the Arusha community and influenced the Arusha into adopting the Masai language. In the 1880s a pandemic of
rinderpest killed thousands of cattle and forced a large section of the Masai people in the west and integrated into Arusha agriculturally based society. In southeastern portion of the region in
Karatu District and southern
Ngorongoro District is the ancestral home to the
Hadzabe People, who are the only surviving hunter gather communities left in the country. Moreover, most of the Ngorongoro District,
Monduli District and
Longido District of the present area of Arusha Region are home to the
Maasai, who immigrated from South Sudan, started moving southward around the 16th century CE toward Kenya, and finally reached the northwestern Arusha Region in the 1830s. The Masai were the last precolonial community to settle in the present-day Arusha Region.
Colonial period Prior to German arrival in 1895, the years between the 1880s to 1900, Arusha Region was plagued by
rinderpest,
Smallpox, droughts and famine that came after the devastating plagues. The first German to visit Arusha territory was Kurt Johannes, and he was antagonistic towards the Arusha people and on occasion he survived an attack that cost the lives of two German missionaries in 1895. On 19 October 1896 he went to visit Chief Matunda and was attacked by Arusha warriors. Johannes survived the attack and returned to his post in
Moshi and organised
Chagga warriors for a retaliatory attack and defeated the WaArusha on 31 October 1896. Johannes then decided to conduct the
scorched earth doctrine on the WaArusha people, leading to a famine and collapse of Arusha society. In 1899, Johannes forced the defeated Arusha warriors to build the German Boma next to today's Arusha Region Headquarters. The Arusha Region was under German military rule and in 1902, one hundred
Afrikaners fleeing the
Boer War in South Africa, are resettled in Arusha by German authorities, with each family given 1,000 hectares of land. For various reasons, many of the white settlers moved to Kenyan highlands or back to South Africa in a few years before the advent of
World War I. During the great war, the British capture Arusha Region from the Germans in 1916. They expelled all the Germans and confiscated their farms and redistributed the farms to Greek and British settlers. The Meru and Arusha's
Chagga wives were repatriated back to Kilimanjaro. The British started growing coffee in 1920. The administrative region of Arusha existed in 1922 while mainland Tanzania was a British
mandate under the
League of Nations and known as
Tanganyika. In 1948, the area was in the Northern Province, and shortly afterwards, the British appointed the first WaArusha community leader Chief
Simeon Laiseri in 1948.
Post-Independence period In 1966, under the newly independent Tanzanian government, Arusha was given its own regional status. == Geography ==