Here kitty!: Many railway workers were killed by the pair of mane-less male lions during the 1890s. The story is such a famous episode of Kenyan history that the government wants the museum specimens back.

Credit: Wikipedia

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NAIROBI: Kenya is demanding that a U.S. museum returns the remains of two lions that killed at least 140 Indian workers in the 1890s before being shot by a famed British railway engineer.

The killing of the railway workers by the infamous maneaters of Tsavo over a nine month period briefly halted the construction of the Kenya-Uganda line, a project so perilous it was dubbed the "Lunatic Express."

Railway engineer Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson – whose adventures formed the basis of the Oscar-winning 1996 movie The Ghost and the Darkness starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer – shot the cats in December 1898.

Rinderpest outbreak

Researchers now believe an outbreak of rinderpest reduced the lions' normal food supply and led them to develop an unusual appetite for people in the Tsavo East National Park, 300 km southeast of Nairobi. Poor burial practice among railroad workers, many of who died of injuries and disease, also may have given them easy access to human flesh.

Twenty-six years later Patterson sold their remains, consisting of the lions' skulls and hides, to Chicago's Field Museum for US$5,000.

Now, however, Kenya wants the remains back and hopes for them to be part of an upcoming exhibition in the U.S. on Kenyan history.

"We realise that these artefacts are part of our Kenyan heritage and we will use international protocols to repatriate them," National Museum of Kenya (NMK) spokeswoman Connie Maina said on Monday.

The Kenya Tourism Board agreed: "We will follow the right channels to get the remains of the our maneaters back to us. They are part of our heritage and history and it is good to have them back," said spokeswoman Rose Kwena.

However, as yet, the Field Museum said it had received no message or request from the National Museum of Kenya regarding the lions. A spokesperson added that the two museums recently renewed a memorandum of understanding which outlines a broad array of collaboration between the two intuitions in research, exhibits and training.

"[We] cannot discuss the National Museum of Kenya's position until we know exactly what it is," spokesman Greg Borzo said. "We are proud of our excellent relationship with [them, however] and look forward to continued collaboration on future projects."

Colonial-era souvenirs

In 2006, heirs of colonial-era British officer Colonel Richard Henry Meinertzhagen returned a walking stick, authority baton and v-shaped prayer rod belonging to an ethnic Nandi traditional chief that had been in Britain since 1905.

The chief, Kiotalel arap Samoei, was decapitated for leading a fierce opposition to the construction of the "Lunatic Express" from the Indian Ocean Port of Mombassa through the Rift Valley to Lake Victoria. In 2005, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki vowed to find the missing skull of Samoei so he could be properly honoured as an early hero of the independence movement.

Last year, Illinois State University and Hampton University returned two memorial wooden statues known as "vigango" that were stolen from the coastal Mijikenda tribe. Researchers have tracked down 294 "vigangos" at 19 American museums. The Hampton University Museum alone is reported to be holding 98 of them.

Other African countries, notably Ethiopia and Kenya, have launched drives to recover some of artefacts that were taken home by foreign travellers and colonialists.