John Hanning Speke unjustifiably incited by Speke's publisher to stimulate book sales. John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and was the first European to reach Lake Victoria. He is also known for propounding the Hamitic hypothesis in 1863, in which he supposed that the Tutsi ethnic group were descendants of the biblical figure Ham, and had lighter skin and more Hamitic features than the Bantu-featured
Hamites language, culture, and much of their physiognomy as they intermarried with the local Bantus. The British explorer John Hanning Speke recorded one such account from a Wahuma governor in his book, "Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile". According to Augustus Henry Keane, the Hima King Mutesa I also claimed Oromo (Galla) ancestors and still reportedly spoke an Oromo idiom, though such Hamitic-Semitic language had long since died out elsewhere in the region. The missionary R. W. Felkin, who had met the ruler, remarked that Mutesa "had lost the pure Mhuma features through admixture of Negro blood,