 Writing in 1854, Krapf portrays a previously powerful community that was under significant Maasai pressure, accounts from later writers would show that the Kwavi community was collapsing under Maasai attacks at the time Krapf was writing about them.Krapf notes that the Kwavi had previously been "the terror of the agricultural tribes of Jagga, Ukamabani, Teita, Usambara and on the sea-coast".Thomson, on his journey through Masai land in 1883, wrote of a series of misfortunes that befell and seriously enfeebled the Kwavi people.