The central Maasai claim about Engai is that he gave all the cattle in the world to the Maasai. The tradition, recorded in several versions, describes cattle descending to the first Maasai, and it establishes a relationship in which the herd is not property acquired but a trust received. The practical consequence was well understood by everyone in the region: if all cattle are Maasai by divine grant, then cattle held by others are, in a certain reading, recoverable. Whether the tradition drove Maasai raiding or was invoked afterwards to explain it is not something the sources can settle, and it is a question historians have raised without resolving.
Religion is conducted largely in cattle. Sacrifice, blessing, the settlement of disputes, marriage and the ceremonies that move an age-set from one grade to the next are all transacted in animals, and an obligation stated in cattle is the ordinary form a religious obligation takes.
The laibon is the ritual specialist: a diviner and prophet, drawn from particular lineages, who reads and addresses Engai on behalf of others, blesses the warriors, and is consulted before undertakings of consequence. The office is hereditary in the Il Aiser and related lines, and its holders have at times exercised political influence well beyond ritual, most visibly in the nineteenth century. What a laibon does in the course of divination belongs to the laibon and to those who consult him, and is not set out here.
Ol Doinyo Lengai, in northern Tanzania, is the Mountain of God. It is an active volcano, and it is a place of pilgrimage and prayer in times of trouble, which is a rather more direct arrangement between a sky god and a mountain than most traditions maintain.