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THE 
 NATIVE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
Bushman Childrkn. 
 From a Photograph. 
 
Bushman of the 'Gakiei-. 
 From a Photograph. 
 
 if 
 
 I'otUispiece. 
 
THE NATIVE RACES OF 
 SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 A History of the Intrusion of the Hottentots and Bantu 
 
 into the Hunting Grounds of the Bushmen, 
 
 the Aborigines of the Country 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 By 
 GEORGE W. STOW, F.G.S., F.R.G.S. 
 
 Edited by 
 GEORGE McCALL THEAL, Litt.D., LL.D. 
 
 Formerly Keeper of the Archives of the Cape Colony and at present Colonial Historiographer 
 Author of ^^ History of South Africa" in seven volumes 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 New York : THE MACMILLAN CO. 
 
 1905 
 
 I) 
 
'H 
 
 X 
 
 
Editor's Preface 
 
 The author of this volume died before it was ready for 
 the press. The illustrations had, most fortunately, been 
 carefully prepared, and they are reproduced by chromo- 
 lithography, so that they are indistinguishable from the 
 originals, except that most of them have been reduced 
 in size. The manuscript was purchased by Miss Lucy C. 
 Lloyd from Mr. Stow's widow, with the intention of hav- 
 ing it published, but other work has prevented that lady 
 from bestowing upon it the time and care needed for its 
 arrangement. 
 
 In 1904 Miss Lloyd, feeling that a work of such im- 
 portance ought to be placed before the public without 
 further delay, did me the honour of submitting the manu- 
 script for my inspection and advice as to what should be 
 done in the matter. It needed only a hasty look through 
 the packets to impress me with the conviction that no 
 production of such value upon the native races of South 
 Africa had yet appeared, and I was therefore most anxious 
 that it should be published. I may add that the draft 
 of Mr. Stow's intended dedication of the result of his 
 researches to that highly gifted and justly esteemed 
 governor, Sir Bartle Frere, whose aid and encouragement 
 were also extended to me in a special manner, had no 
 little influence in stimulating me to undertake the task 
 of seeing the work through the press. 
 
 Miss Lloyd, who is the greatest living authority upon 
 the Bushmen, attested the accuracy of much in Mr. Stow's 
 description of the customs and mode of life of those 
 people, though she doubted whether his division of that 
 race into the two branches of painters and sculptors 
 could be maintained, thinking it probable that this matter 
 
vi EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 was determined by locality and convenience. The 
 accuracy of his accounts of the Barolong and Bakuena 
 tribes I can myself confirm, as, independent of researches 
 in books and manuscript records, I was on several occa- 
 sions directed by the high commissioner. Lord Loch, to 
 investigate territorial claims between rival chiefs of those 
 branches of the Bantu family, and have been for weeks 
 together engaged in taking evidence from the disputants, 
 their counsellors, and antiquaries, upon their history as 
 far back as tradition reached, which I find correctly given 
 in these pages. It appears also, from Mr. Stow's manu- 
 script, that he had the assistance of the late Charles Sirr 
 Orpen, Esquire, a gentleman whose researches into the 
 history of^various native tribes extended over a very 
 long period, and were carried on with diligence and care- 
 fulness never surpassed. 
 
 On the other hand, it is only right to mention that 
 Mr. Stow never had an opportunity of research in the 
 colonial archives, and was dependent entirely upon other 
 authors, chiefly Lieutenant-Colonel Sutherland, for in- 
 formation concerning the Hottentot tribes at the time of 
 the settlement of the Dutch in South Africa. Those 
 tribes certainly extended farther along the coast to the 
 eastward than he describes them to have done. For the 
 same reason his account of the early career of Jager 
 Africaander is not quite accurate. But these are very 
 small blemishes, and detract only in a shght degree from 
 the value of his work. 
 
 The manuscript when it came into my hands was in 
 an unfinished state. It was not divided into chapters 
 and the paragraphs were often of great length. It was 
 clogged with a vast number of extracts from almost pvery 
 English book previously published upon South Africa 
 some of which were given to corroborate the author's 
 statements, others that their inaccuracies might be shown 
 To have retained these would have swelled the book t ' 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE vii 
 
 such a size that no publisher would have undertaken to 
 issue it, and they really added very little to its value. 
 With Miss Lloyd's consent, I therefore struck nearly all 
 of them out. The remainder of the manuscript I divided 
 into chapters of convenient length for readers, and I broke 
 up the long paragraphs into short ones. I added nothing 
 whatever to the text, and, except in a very few instances, 
 I retained the author's spelling of proper names, though 
 often differing from that in my own history. The date 
 on the draft of Mr. Stow's preface is the latest given by 
 him, but would probably have been altered had he lived 
 to complete the work himself. 
 
 The photographs of Bushmen were supplied by Miss 
 Lloyd from her large collection. They show the striking 
 features of the people of this race : the hollow back, the 
 lobeless ear, the receding chin, the sunken eye, the low- 
 ness of the root of the nose, the scanty covering of the 
 head with little knots of wiry wool, and the low angle of 
 prognathism as compared with negroes. 
 
 Having, jointly with Miss Lloyd, corrected the proofs 
 and revises, I added an index, which is indispensable for 
 a work of reference, and with this completed what was 
 no more than the duty of one holding the appointment 
 of colonial historiographer with respect to a work of such 
 importance for both ethnological and historical study as 
 this of Mr. Stow, who has been long in his grave, and 
 whom I never had the pleasure of meeting, though my 
 researches in the same field were well advanced in one 
 part of South Africa before his ended in another. 
 
 GEO. M. THEAL. 
 London, May, 1905. 
 
Preface 
 
 On my arrival in the Cape Colony in 1843, having settled on the 
 extreme border, I was not long in discovering that, although the 
 settlers were in daily contact with races entirely different from 
 their own, no reliable information could be obtained of the manners 
 and customs, much less of the early history of these strange 
 people. 
 
 The struggle for existence among the settlers themselves was 
 of too keen and earnest a character to allow of the leisure neces- 
 sary to carry out such an inquiry systematically, from the con- 
 stant state of hostility which existed between them, owing to the 
 almost unchecked depredations of the frontier tribes. As was 
 natural, such a condition of affairs fostered a feeling that was 
 altogether antagonistic to the development of that frame of mind 
 which alone can enable us to judge dispassionately and impartially 
 of men whose savage and untutored instincts urged them to 
 plunder the more peaceful and well-disposed colonists, and to 
 glory in the excitement of continuous raids upon the herds of 
 their white neighbours. Thus a state of chronic warfare was 
 entailed upon both parties, with intermittent periods, of greater 
 or less duration, of armed truce. 
 
 Under such circumstances, few took sufficient interest in the 
 obnoxious tribes by which they were surrounded to attempt to 
 collect any of the traditionary history connected with them, and 
 the works of those travellers who had visited the country before 
 the war of races had assumed its subsequent proportions and 
 intensity, were at that time unobtainable. The greater number 
 of the missionaries who were then residing among them, and who 
 might have collected many of the traditions which are now lost 
 for ever, considered the past history of a race of savages as a 
 matter of little moment in comparison with making converts to 
 their own special ideas of salvation, and even when any facts 
 regarding their new proteges were recorded by them they in 
 general gave such a biassed and distorted description as'to render 
 their evidence so untrustworthy as to be perfectly valueless in 
 carrying out any impartial philosophical or ethnological inauirv 
 
 The simple fact that certain tribes were found occupying some 
 given tract of country at the time of the missionary's arrival was 
 of Itself, without further question, deemed irrefragable proof that 
 these particular natives must have been its rightful owners from 
 time immemorial. Thus erroneous statements and unfounded 
 claims were not only promulgated, but upheld with a holy fervour 
 
 viii ' 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 a positiveness of assertion, and acrimony of feeling, which were 
 only equalled by the profound ignorance of the disputants with 
 regard to the real state of the case. The white nations were 
 looked upon, and spoken of, as the only intruders into the ancient 
 domains of the " poor natives," and the only race which had 
 trodden under foot, with a remorselessness and cruelty deserving 
 universal execration, the rights of the ill-treated aborigines. 
 
 Each of the men of this school confidently asserted that his 
 own special tribe, or the one he had taken under his own special 
 protection, was the true representative of the original possessors 
 of the soil. Such was the spirit in which inquiries were made into 
 tribal history from 1843 to 1853, if such dogmatic assertions can 
 be called inquiry. How then can it be a matter of wonder that 
 so many unfounded theories were circulated, giving rise to a multi- 
 tude of erroneous opinions, many of which are current at the 
 present day ? One fallacious statement backed up another, and 
 they were so often reiterated that they not only gained implicit 
 credence, but, from the character of their promulgators, were 
 considered to carry with them an authority which ought not to 
 be doubted ; and thus, ultimately, the claims of the true aborigines 
 of this portion of the continent were lost sight of entirely. 
 
 For some years after my arrival in the Colony I was impressed 
 with the idea that the Hottentots were the aboriginal inhabitants 
 of the western, and the Kaffirs of the eastern portion of the 
 country, and that the Bushmen were waifs possessing no parti- 
 cular claims to territory, nor any fixed place of abode. My ideas, 
 however, upon this point underwent a considerable change as my 
 notes accumulated, for as I gained more and more information 
 regarding the native tribes, I became gradually impressed with 
 a firm conviction that the Bushmen alone were the true aborigines 
 of the country, and that all the stronger races, without exception, 
 were mere intruders. Traces of Bushman cave-paintings were 
 still to be found in every direction, and even in localities where 
 for a generation or two no Bushmen had been seen. In the first 
 instance the existence of these primitive artistic productions 
 suggested the idea of gathering materials for a history of the 
 Bushmen, as illustrated by themselves. 
 
 In carrying out this design, every additional item of informa- 
 tion but tended to establish the fact that they were once thickly 
 spread over the whole country, and that their occupation could 
 also be traced far towards the north, even into the tropics ; and 
 the evidence proved, in as equally conclusive a manner, that there 
 was doubtless a time when they were the sole proprietors of the 
 country. This conclusion brought me face to face with the ques- 
 tion of " the Intrusion of the Stronger Races." Such queries as, 
 whence could they have come, and what could have been the 
 order of their arrival, thus presenting themselves, naturally 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 aroused a desire to obtain, if possible, some information upon so 
 interesting a subject. I then commenced collecting data upon 
 this particular point, although I did so with many doubts as to 
 the probabihty of accompHshing such a task, intending if I suc- 
 ceeded to devote a section of the contemplated work to its con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Although I ultimately, after some years' perseverance, effected 
 my object beyond my most sanguine expectations, nevertheless 
 at the commencement difficulties, even from unexpected quarters, 
 were ever presenting themselves : such as the apathy displayed 
 upon the subject by far the greater number of people appealed to, 
 even of educated men, who from their position were most advan- 
 tageously situated for gleaning the scattered traditions of the 
 various tribes ; ^he suspicion with which some of the old natives 
 themselves looked upon such inquiries also frequently baffled every 
 effort to obtain reliable evidence from them, as they imagined 
 there must be some ulterior motive in seeking for information 
 with regard to their early movements, having no idea that such 
 a thing could be done from a simple desire of acquiring historical 
 knowledge. On many such occasions, therefore, they feigned 
 profound ignorance and obliviousness, while the younger men of 
 the rising generation, instead of troubling themselves about the 
 ancient traditions of their tribes, seem, as a rule, desirous of for- 
 getting and even obliterating, if possible, the recollection of the 
 antecedents of their savage forefathers^ 
 
 Under such adverse conditions several years were spent almost 
 profitlessly, in vain attempts to procure the desired data. Still, 
 during this time a sufficient number of ghmpses were obtained, 
 which clearly demonstrated the fact that traditions of this migra- 
 tory movement were to be found among all the tribes of the 
 stronger races. 
 
 At length more favourable circumstances brought me im- 
 mediately in contact with a great number of various tribes, or 
 fragments of tribes, when, as the evidence upon the point at issue 
 accumulated, it proved with every addition more convincing and 
 overwhelming. It was during this period that I became indebted 
 to the zealous co-operation of Mr. Charles Sirr Orpen, of Smith- 
 field, Orange Free State, and much of the success in the ethno- 
 logical researches I have since carried out has been due to his 
 untiring energy. I received important assistance also from the 
 investigations of Captain Blyth, chief magistrate of the Trans- 
 keian Territory, the Rev. H. Moore-Dyke, of Morija, British 
 Basutuland, the Rev. Roger Price, of the Northern Bakuena, the 
 Rev. Richard Giddy, of the Native Reserve, Herschel, and the 
 Rev. F. Maeder, of the Bataung mission, which they readily and 
 heartily entered into at my suggestion. I have also to thank 
 Miss Lucy C. Lloyd, Judge Buchanan, and Mr. Alfred Barlow for 
 
PREFACE 
 
 XI 
 
 the valuable aid they afforded me in supplying me with works 
 of reference, which under other circumstances it would have been 
 impossible to have obtained so far in the Interior. From 
 among the multitude of native authorities, I am especially be- 
 holden to the Basutu chief Mapeli, and Lipatsane, the last chief 
 of the Bakulukwa (a branch of the Baputi), for their vivid word- 
 pictures of numerous stirring episodes in the history of the tribes 
 with which they were acquainted. The descriptive powers of 
 Mapeli are seldom equalled, even among the natives, although 
 many excel in the figurative and poetic style of language which 
 they employ when relating the exploits of their chiefs. 
 
 After my investigations had arrived at this stage, the long- 
 desired information almost poured in from every quarter, until 
 the materials upon the early migrations of the races now residing 
 in South Africa attained such proportions that it became neces- 
 sary to modify the original plan, and arrange them as a distinct 
 work under the present title. 
 
 Such then was the origin of " The Races of South Africa " ; 
 but, after aU the time expended in collecting the materials, it 
 has necessarily been made up of shreds and patches, so much so 
 that one cannot help being painfully impressed with its many 
 shortcomings and imperfections, and must ever regret that such 
 an attempt was not made some fifty years ago. Since the com- 
 mencement of the present century how many of the old tribal 
 chroniclers, men who were the great repositories of the tradi- 
 tionary lore of the country, have not been suddenly cut off in the 
 merciless native wars which have intervened. The few survivors 
 are now old, most of them very old men, widely scattered and 
 hidden in the nooks and corners of the land, and are fast dis- 
 appearing from the face of the earth ; while the quasi-educated 
 native looks with contempt upon the tribal traditions of his fore- 
 fathers, and thus as each one of these ancients passes away, so 
 much knowledge with regard to the tribes of South Africa is lost 
 for ever. It is certain that before another quarter of a century 
 has elapsed, the opportunity of rescuing any portion of it from 
 oblivion will have irrevocably glided from our grasp. 
 
 Even those native authorities of the present day who profess 
 that they have preserved some portion of the history of their 
 tribes have so mutilated and adulterated the traditions, modify- 
 ing them to suit the altered conditions of the nation or tribe to 
 which they belong, that the originality and authenticity of these 
 narrations have at length in many instances become so com- 
 pletely obscured or destroyed that they are rendered nearly value- 
 less as affording material whereon to build a reliable and veracious 
 tribal history. 
 
 This was seen in a marked manner in gathering materials for 
 the memoirs upon the Frontier Hottentots, Griquas, and Basutu. 
 
xu 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 With regard to the last, the discrepancies between the evidence 
 given by Nehemiah Moshesh, a younger son of Moshesh, in 1880, 
 and that of Mokoniane, a great fighting captain of the Bamokoteri, 
 a clan of the Basutu, to M. Arbousset, in 1834-6, as well as that 
 of Mapeli, a brother of Moshesh, and contemporary of Mokoniane, 
 in 1878 to myself, are striking instances of this fact. The state- 
 ments of Nehemiah evidently embody all the additions and modi- 
 fications which have been made to the original tribal history. 
 This tampering has been clearly intended to show that from the 
 commencement Moshesh had a rightful claim, both by descent 
 and inheritance, to the paramount chieftainship of the Basutu 
 nation, as well as to the territory over which he subsequently 
 attempted to exercise sovereignty ; while, on the other hand, those 
 of Mokoniane and Mapeli give the history of the rise of the clan 
 of Moshesh with a clearness which is unmistakable as to the in- 
 significance and second-rate position of the Bamokoteri at the 
 outset of Moshesh's career, before his ambition led him to lay 
 claim to every inch of country over which his marauding parties 
 had pushed their cattle raids. Again, their evidence is equally 
 distinct upon the point of the Bamonaheng chiefs being acknow- 
 ledged as the paramount power at the time when the Bamokoteri 
 were nothing more than a miserable sept occupying a most cir- 
 cumscribed piece of country among the rugged ravines near the 
 sources of the Caledon. The two other narrators spoke of what 
 they had themselves witnessed ; the younger gave the tribal 
 traditions after they had been trimmed up and modified so as to 
 support the more ambitious schemes and ideas of the dynasty 
 of Moshesh. 
 
 The knowledge of such facts indicated the necessity of em- 
 ploying considerable caution in collating the evidence ^ihus 
 obtained from witnesses swayed by different interests, and who 
 therefore viewed the occurrences they narrated from different 
 standpoints. To arrive at impartial and trustworthy conclusions 
 has been the consummation I have striven to achieve in the com- 
 pilation of the present work ; viz. to separate as much as possible 
 the reliable from the fictitious, so that if it does not reveal the 
 whole truth (an accomplishment which is an impossibility, since 
 so much of it has been irrecoverably lost), it may at any rate 
 shed some additional hght upon the Races of South Africa, and 
 possibly be the means of rescuing some portion of their traditions 
 from the oblivion which threatens them ; while their diffusion 
 may lead to more correct opinions being entertained with regard 
 to them. 
 
 GEO. W. STOW. 
 
 Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, 
 6th September, 1880. 
 
To 
 
 HIS EXCELLENCY 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR H. BARTLE FRERE, 
 
 K.C.B., G.C.S.L, F.R.S., etc., etc.. 
 
 Governor of the Cape Colony 
 
 AND Her Majesty's High Commissioner for South Africa, 
 
 j THIS work is respectfully dedicated, 
 
 as a token of appreciation of the encouraging interest 
 
 ( HE has shewn, since HIS ARRIVAL 
 
 /' IN the ethnological studies of the author. 
 /' Geo. W. Stow. 
 
 '' in the country. 
 
 xiu 
 
Illustrations. 
 
 To 
 
 1 Portrait of a Bushman . . . ■ • 
 
 2 Bushman Rock Chipping ....•• 
 
 3 Stone Implements for making Ostrich Eggshell Beads . 
 
 4 Portraits of Bushman Children . . . . . 
 
 5 Bushman Pipes for smoking Dacha 
 
 6 Bushman Quiver and Poisoned Arrows 
 
 7 Bushman Painting showing Disguised Hunter 
 
 8 Bushman Painting of Gnus and other Animals . 
 
 9 Bushman Musical Instruments 
 
 10 Bushman Painting of Elands and Lions 
 
 11 Carved Stone Bowl of Bushman Hookah 
 
 12 Hottentot Woman (from Le Vaillant) 
 
 13 Basutu Wall Decorations 
 
 14 Batlapin Weapons .... 
 
 15 A Copper Casting by Bakuena . 
 
 16 Two Copper Castings by the same Tribe 
 
 17 Wooden Vessels of the Bakuena . 
 
 18 Bachoana and Basutu Spoons 
 
 19 Bamangwato Weapons 
 
 20 Bamangwato and Mashona Implements 
 
 21 Bakuena Wall Decorations 
 
 22 Bamangwato Implements . 
 
 face page 
 I 
 
 28 
 
 46 
 
 48 
 
 52 
 
 70 
 
 82 
 
 102 
 
 108 
 
 172 
 
 230 
 
 288 
 
 434 
 458 
 
 518 
 S18 
 522 
 528 
 
 532 
 542 
 546 
 558 
 
 Map showing Lines of Migration of the various Races. 
 
 562 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Ancient Abatwa or Bushmen ..... i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Great Antiquity of the Bushmen in South Africa . 22 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Habits of the Bushmen . . . . . . -41 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Weapons and Implements of the Bushmen .... 62 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Bushmen's Methods of Hunting and Fishing . . 80 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Social Customs of the Bushmen ...... 95 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Mode of Burial of the Bushmen — Heaps of Stones — Some of 
 
 their Beliefs ......... 125 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Various Groups of Bushman Tribes . . . -137 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 The Various Groups of Bushman Tribes (continued) . . 155 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Various Groups of Bushman Tribes' {continued) . . 178 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Bushmen of the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony . 198 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The Struggle of the Bushmen for Existence . 213 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Encroachment of the Stronger Races . . . 232 
 
 XV 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XIV PAGE 
 
 The Tribes of the West Coast 249 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 The Koranas .... ^. ... . 267 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 Account of Various Korana Clans ..... 289 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 The Griquas 316 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 Barend Barends, the Original Chief of the Sept of the Bas- 
 
 TAARDS .......... 339 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 The Griquas of the Early Settlement .... 362 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 The Griqua Chiefs ........ 378 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 ' The Agricultural and Pastoral Bachoana and Basutu Tribes 
 
 of the North ■■....... 404 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 The Tribes of the Second Period of the Bachoana Migration . 432 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 The Career of the Mantatee Horde ..... 460 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 The Barolong •••■•.... 488 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 The Bakuena or Bakone Tribes .... -jg 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 The Bakuena of the North . ,^^ 
 
 544 
 
 Index ,^, 
 
 • 503 
 
RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 Chapter I 
 
 THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 
 
 It is frequently found that the descriptions given by various 
 travellers of the same country differ very considerably the one 
 from the other, and yet each writer, as far as we can judge, 
 appears to be an accurate observer and reliable in noting correctly 
 whatever came under his observation. This diversity has arisen, 
 not from want of ability in describing, or any error occasioned 
 from negligence, but rather from their limited experience, from 
 having made the examination at different periods, and under 
 different aspects. Each described what he saw, and described it 
 correctly ; but then he had only examined its features in one 
 particular light, and therefore his delineation conveyed only a 
 portion of the truth. Thus one travelling on the western side of 
 a certain mountain range may tell us that a particular crest is 
 capped with enormous precipices, which are perfectly inacces- 
 sible ; another approaching it from the east, and who has seen it 
 only on its opposite face, informs us that instead of being pre- 
 cipitous, the mountain in question slopes to the very top, with the 
 exception of a few insignificant fringing precipices detached from 
 one another, while the mountain summit may be easily gained 
 through the open spaces. The fact is both were right, but in 
 either case each writer had only an opportunity of examining 
 one side of the object described : a mountain presenting the 
 features of " crag and tail," often met with in different portions 
 of Southern Africa. And as such writers differ in their topo- 
 graphical descriptions, so they frequently disagree in their 
 deductions, not only in regard to the country itself, but also the 
 people who inhabit it, giving rise to erroneous ideas, which, at 
 length, by being repeated by others even less informed than 
 themselves, become accepted as verities, and thus, instead of 
 progressing in knowledge, the fallacies become stereotyped and 
 
2 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 perpetuated, without further questioning, the one to the others. 
 
 This has certainly been the case with regard to the aborigines 
 of South Africa. Much has been said and written about them, 
 but much error still exists on the subject among those who have 
 discussed it. Most appear to have entered upon the topic with a 
 foregone conclusion in their minds, and thus their examinations 
 have been confined to one side of the mountain, and stopped 
 short at the very point at which they would have become the 
 most interesting. The writer trusts that a residence of thirty-six 
 years in the country, during which time he has been animated 
 with the desire of obtaining reliable data upon so important a 
 question, has given him an opportunity of inspecting at leisure 
 the typical mountain on every side, and thus enabled him to 
 speak of it in its entirety ; and that, on the present occasion, by 
 attempting to describe it in its different aspects and from different 
 points of view he may succeed in clearing away some of the 
 mists which have for so long a time hidden or obscured its true 
 outlines. 
 
 In this attempt he is duly impressed with the difficulties 
 which must be encountered in carrying out such a design, and 
 also with the imperfections which must naturally cling to any 
 endeavour to work out the primitive history of a country which 
 never possessed a history of its own, and where sources of infor- 
 mation can only be derived from scattered and fragmentary 
 tribal traditions and obscure and sometimes apparently con- 
 flicting myths ; but which, doubtless, possess a germ of truth 
 that may possibly be discovered by careful comparison and an 
 almost microscopical examination. Such, then, has been the 
 somewhat presumptuous endeavour of the writer ; but he can' 
 assure those who may study the following pages that, whatever 
 shortcomings may be found in them, and their name must be 
 legion, it was only after long years of close investigation and 
 research that he felt himself competent, or was justified, in 
 making the present effort to remove some of the mystery and 
 misconception which have so long clouded from view the true 
 aborigines of Southern Africa. Previously, in most instances, 
 they have been described differently from what they really 
 were, or set altogether on one side by obtrusively thrusting 
 others into their place who never possessed the least right or 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 3 
 
 title to be classed among the primitive inhabitants of the 
 country. 
 
 In carrying out this design we will consider in the first place — 
 
 1 . The widely extended occupation by the Bushmen in former 
 
 times ; 
 
 2. Their probable origin in the North ; 
 
 3. A comparison of other races with them ; 
 
 4. Their great antiquity in South Africa ; 
 
 5. The Bushmen of Southern Africa ; 
 
 6. Their struggle for existence ; and 
 
 7. The encroachment of the stronget races. 
 
 I. The widely extended Occupation by the Bushmen in Former 
 
 Times. 
 
 r 
 
 A considerable number of native traditions, obtained from 
 widely separated sources, are almost unanimous with regard to 
 the direction of the early migrations of the South African tribes, 
 viz. from the North to the South. 
 
 They state, as a rule, that as their forefathers migrated 
 southward, they found the entire country unoccupied, except 
 that the plains swarmed with vast herds of game. They ac- 
 knowledge, however, that the Bushmen were always to be found 
 where the game was, and in their old myths of the origin of man 
 they declare that when the Great Father brought men out of 
 either the split reed or the fissure of a rock, the Bushmen had 
 nothing to do with these ; he existed already ; therefore in speak- 
 ing of a country as being uninhabited or unoccupied, the hunter 
 race of the Bushmen was never taken into account. Other 
 tribal traditions, again, state that when their forefathers 
 migrated to the south, they found the land without inhabitants, 
 and that only the wild game and the Bushmen were living in it, 
 evidently classing the Bushmen and the game in the same cate- 
 gory as wild ammals_j^ „^ I^.At, »..!«,«/,. 
 
 The portion of the continent with which we are now more 
 especially interested is that part which has been defined as a 
 f one-shaped mass of land terminating in the promontory of the 
 Cape of Good Hope. This cone may be divided into three 
 irregular concentric zones or belts, each being marked by dis- 
 tinct peculiarities in its physical features, climate> and popula- 
 
4 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 tion. Advancing from the coast-line to the centre, these appear 
 to rise in successive steps or terraces, the outer edges of each 
 being fringed with ranges of mountains of greater or less eleva- 
 tion, the older rocks forming a rim around the great central 
 plateau, which towards the middle forms a vast depressed, 
 although still elevated basin, through which the great rivers 
 'Nu and 'Gij Gariep take their course. 
 
 The eastern or coast zone is often furnished with mountains, 
 well-wooded with evergreen trees ; its seaboard gorges are clad 
 with gigantic timber. It is abundantly watered with streams, 
 meandering through every valley and ravine, while its inhabit- 
 ants, such as the Amaxosa and Amazula, are taU and weU-made. 
 The next is that which embraces the more central portion of the 
 continent, the greater portion of which was once occupied by 
 the Great Lake region of Southern Africa, but now represented 
 chiefly by immense slightly undulating plains, interspersed with 
 a few scattered outhers and depressed ridges. It contains 
 comparatively few springs, and fewer streams; the impervious 
 water-bearing rocks, which are nearly horizontal, lying in most 
 instances considerably below the surface. Rain also is far from 
 either frequent or abundant, and periodical droughts visit the 
 country. The present inhabitants are Bachoana and Basutu, 
 a race of men inferior to the coast tribes both in physical develop- 
 ment and warlike energy. Interspersed among these are a few 
 insignificant and scattered remnants of the aboriginal occupiers 
 of the country, but who are rapidly diminishing in numbers. 
 
 The western zone, which includes the great plain of the 
 Kalahari Desert, is stiU more level, and represents portions of 
 the uplands of the old lake districts whose drainage supplied 
 the streams which ran into the basin before mentioned. Here, 
 mixed with scattered remnants of other broken tribes, are found 
 those of Hottentot and Bushman origin, the former being the 
 most numerous along the western coast, the latter scattered 
 over the more sandy and arid plains of the interior. 
 
 There can be, however, little doubt but that at one time the 
 Bushmen were, as they are described in the native traditions, 
 the sole occupants of the entire country here indicated. We 
 have not only traditions in support of this, but we have positive 
 proof of this occupation, which the ancient Bushmen them- 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 5 
 
 selves have recorded upon the rocks, in their paintings, their 
 sculptures or chippings, and stone implements, which are as 
 much their imquestionable title-deeds as those more formal 
 documents so valued among landowners in more civiUzed por- 
 tions of the earth. Their paintings are still to be seen in 
 Damaraland, their sculptured rocks are found on or near the 
 banks of the Mariqua and Malopo, and in different portions of 
 the present Batlapin country. Numerous evidences of the 
 same kind are found among the hills of Griqualand West, along 
 the banks of the Vaal, and throughout the Free State territory, 
 the Malutis, the Witte and Storm Bergen. Their chippings or 
 sculptures were found spread over the present Division of 
 Beaufort West, and the caves and rock-shelters of the Sneeuw- 
 berg were filled with their paintings. 
 
 Until the latter part of last century their clans were still in 
 undisturbed possession of the present colonial divisions of 
 Somerset and Cradock, the Tarka and Winterberg, Hanglip and 
 the Bongolo, and throughout the entire country from the Bonte- 
 bok Flats to the banks, and even the sources, of the Tsomo. 
 Traces of their paintings are not only still found in the Trans- 
 keian Territory, but existed until very' recently at Salem, near 
 Grahamstown ; while some fifty years ago numerous paintings 
 were preserved in many of the rock-shelters of the Kroome 
 river, Lange Kloof, and George mountains, a few being still 
 left as near Capetown as the hills in the neighbourhood of 
 Worcester, Ceres, and Stellenbosch ; while the remains of their 
 less perishable stone implements are scattered over the entire 
 area from one end to the other. Traces of these people were, 
 in fact, to be found a quarter of a century ago in almost 
 every direction, both in the Colony and in Kaifirland. '^ven 
 in the land of the irrepressible Zulu, although no paintings have 
 yet been noticed, remnants of Bushman tribes are still found 
 in the most inaccessible portions of the country, some of whom, 
 reduced to the lowest stage of existence, have from their peculiar 
 habits obtained the name of Earthmenj^ ' 
 
 Mr. Moffat and some other writers have considered that the 
 Hottentots were the original possessors of the soil ; abundance 
 of evidence will be found in the present work to prove most 
 satisfactorily that the Bushmen, and not the Hottentots, were 
 
6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the true aborigines of the country, the latter being, in com- 
 parison with the former, intruders of a recent date. It is only 
 of the Bushman race that it can be truly said that they were 
 robbed by every other race with which they came in contact, 
 and compelled by them to abandon for ever the land of their 
 ancestors. 
 
 From the evidence of the early colonial records, Moffat, 
 Arbousset, and other writers with opportunities of observa- 
 tion, each corroborating and upholding the other, there cannot 
 be any reasonable cause to doubt that from a remote period to 
 a comparatively recent date Southern Africa was solely in the 
 possession of the Bushman race. As we proceed in our investiga- 
 tion we shall find this position still more strongly substantiated 
 by the testimony to be brought forward, when we come to con- 
 sider the subject of the intrusion of the stronger races. We 
 will now take under consideration the second point of our in- 
 quiry. 
 
 2. Their Probable Origin in the North. 
 
 It seems almost as certain that even the aboriginal Bushmen 
 migrated to the south as that they, at one time, were the sole 
 possessors of the country. It seems somewhat surprising that 
 so many writers have continued to class these people with the 
 negroes and other dark-skinned, woolly-haired species of men ; 
 whereas if we are to judge from their physical appearance,^ith 
 the sohtary exception of the hair, no two sections of the human 
 race could be more divergent. Their closest affinities in this 
 respect are certainly more frequently to be found among those 
 now inhabiting the Northern Hemisphere than in any other 
 portion of the world-i It is possible that the character of the 
 hair may point to the fact that they hold a kind of intermediate 
 station, a kind of connecting link, but still one more nearly 
 related to the men of the north than the splay-footed, swarthy 
 races of Central Africa. 
 
 Even the bones of the Bushmen show a marked difference 
 from those of a large number of the negro type. The writer in 
 his long and frequent wanderings has had many opportunities 
 of examining the striking characteristics which they present. 
 This is particularly noticeable in the almost perfectly cylin- 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 7 
 
 drical shape of the bones of the extremities, and the extreme 
 smallness of their hands and feet. Every observant traveller 
 who has come in contact with any of these people has been 
 struck with their remarkably diminutive proportions. " The 
 stature of both sexes," writes Harris, " is invariably below five 
 feet." " Their complexion is sallow-brown." " The women, 
 who were much less shy, are of small and delicate proportions, 
 with hands and feet of truly Lilliputian dimensions. Their 
 footprints reminded us of Gulliver's adventures, and are not 
 bigger than those of a child. Whilst young they have a very 
 pleasing expression of countenance." One of these Bush- 
 people was seen by this enthusiastic traveller, whose foot 
 measured barely four inches in length. It is, therefore, un- 
 deniable that their diminutive size of limb gives their bones a 
 delicacy of shape entirely foreign to those of the larger and more 
 robust races alluded to, in some of which the projecting and 
 uncouth-looking os calcis becomes a wonderful development. 
 
 As there are few in the present day who would hazard the 
 opinion that the Bushmen were " a special creation," adapted 
 peculiarly to South Africa, and as they are now cut off from the 
 more northern birthplace whence they probably sprang, by a 
 zone of nations more ferocious than themselves, we are led to 
 suppose that the impetus which caused these old primitive ^ 
 hunters to migrate farther and farther to the southward was in a 
 period of such remote antiquity that it must have been previous 
 to the occupation of the country by the savage black races which 
 now form, and must have ever formed since they have taken 
 possession of the intervening area, an impenetrable cordon of 
 barbarism, which the weaker hunter tribes, with their puny 
 shafts, could never have forced their way through. The original 
 habitat of the negro is clearly involved in this but that is a sub- 
 ject which must be left for future discussion. It is however 
 almost self-evident, if we consider but for a moment the condition 
 of Central Africa, even at the present day, as described by 
 the most recent travellers, that these stronger nations must 
 have presented the impregnable barrier we have alluded to, 
 through which such a race as the Bushmen never could have 
 broken. 
 
 What Stanley and other enterprising travellers describe the 
 
8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 bla ck tribes to be now has doubtless been, with such unprogressive 
 nations, their condition for unknown centuries. Had the remote 
 ancestors of the Bushmen commenced their southern migration 
 after the occupation of the central lands by these hordes of savage 
 men, the smaller and weaker hunter race, as is evident from their 
 subsequent history, could never, as we have before stated, have 
 broken through such a cordon of fierce barbarity. All the evi- 
 dence we have been able to collect tends strongly to prove that 
 Ihe Bushman race alone, in their southward migrations, moved 
 through a perfectly unoccupied and uninhabited country^ The 
 other and stronger races closed in upon their southern retreat 
 and followed" their footsteps at a later period. 
 
 It would seem from the present researches into the con- 
 struction of the Bushman language that its northern origin will 
 be fully established. The labours of the late lamented Dr. Bleek 
 threw much new hght upon this important subject ; and it may 
 be looked upon as one of the most primitive forms of language 
 which has survived to the present day. And the striking manner 
 in which it has preserved what may be termed its purity and 
 individuality is evidently owing to the long continued isolation 
 of the race to which it belonged. Unhappily, by the untimely 
 death of the eminent philologist, inquiry was suspended just at 
 the crisis when the origin of grammatical forms of gender and 
 number, the etymology of pronouns, and kindred questions 
 seemed likely to be solved. One of the great objects was to 
 examine the lower or more primitive forms of speech, so as to 
 exhibit thoroughly and fundamentally the relations in which 
 the Hottentot language stands to some of the northern languages, 
 such as the Egyptian, the Semitic, and those of the Indo-Euro- 
 pean family; in fact, to establish that kinship which had been 
 indicated by the Rev. Dr. Adamson, long resident at the Cape. 
 
 This question of the Bushman language, its nearer affinity to 
 those of the northern hemisphere than to those of Central Africa, 
 and its freedom from any foreign intermixture, are points of the 
 greatest importance in support of the position which we, upon 
 other grounds, have taken up. One cannot imagine any two 
 sections of the human race coming intimately in contact with 
 each other, without one or both adopting in a greater or less 
 degree a number of words and expressions taken from each other, 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 9 
 
 and tinderstood by both, thus becoming indestructible and 
 indeUble records of this mutual intercourse. 
 
 South Africa affords a very apt illustration of the manner 
 in which this process takes place. Thus in what is styled by 
 some " the Landstaal," or language spoken by the frontier Boer 
 population, there is a sprinkling of Bushman and Hottentot words, 
 marking the time when they first came in contact with the in- 
 habitants of the country ; after which a few Kaf&r words were 
 introduced, and during the last fifty or sixty years a number 
 of English expressions have been grafted on it. Again, during 
 the last sixty or seventy years a considerable number both of 
 colonial Dutch and native words have been anglicized in the lan- 
 guage spoken by the colonial English, such as, for example — 
 Spruit, for a river or valley ; Lager, for a camp ; 
 
 Vlei, for a pond ; Inspan, to yoke oxen ; 
 
 Flat, for a plain ; and many others from the Dutch. 
 
 Kloof, for ravine or glen; Kerie or Keerie, a club,) 
 
 Poort, for a pass ; Karee or Karree, a tree,/ 
 
 Drift, for a ford; from the Hottentot. 
 
 Spoor, for a trail; 
 
 The natives, on the other hand, have in a number of in- 
 stances availed themselves of both English and Dutch words 
 to express objects and ideas with which they were not before 
 acquainted. 
 
 The same rule governs the intercourse of the English with 
 the inhabitants of India, AustraUa, New Zealand, etc., native 
 words in each dependency becoming gradually anglicized and 
 grafted into the parent language. They thus become indubit- 
 able memorials of close contact with the various races inhabiting 
 these countries, and we may feel convinced that what we see 
 going on in the present day must have been in operation, under 
 similar conditions, during all past time. For this reason, there- 
 fore, we cannot imagine that the Bushman race, had they come 
 into contact with others speaking languages differing from their 
 own during the long series of generations which must have been 
 occupied in their migration towards the south, would have 
 formed any exception to this law, but that such contact must 
 have left its impress upon them. The vanguard of the great 
 westerly migration of the tribes of Coast Kaffirs acquired a 
 number of clicks, after coming in contact with the aboriginal 
 Bushmen, which are not to be found in use among the tribes 
 
10 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 that followed in their rear, and therefore only came in contact 
 with such diminished numbers of the aborigines that their pre- 
 sence could make no impression upon the advancing tide of the 
 stronger race. 
 
 The inference therefore, if not the positive conclusion, to be 
 drawn from the foregoing facts is that the ancient Bushmen 
 must, as we have before intimated, have gradually worked their 
 way through a really unoccupied country, and that they were 
 the primitive inhabitants of Southern Africa and the forerunners 
 of every other race, a conclusion which is upheld by the most 
 ancient traditions of every intruding tribe now found in the 
 southern portion of the continent. 
 
 The conviction of Mr. Moffat that the Bushmen (included by 
 him among the Hottentots) were the true aborigines was evi- 
 dently forced upon his mind from some of the considerations 
 which have been advanced. This appears when he writes : " It 
 may not be considered chimerical to suppose that the Hottentot 
 progenitors took the iead, and gradually advanced in proportion 
 as they were urged forward by an increasing population in their 
 rear, until they reached the ends of the earth." That this was 
 the case is a demonstrable fact, which will be found enlarged upon 
 in another portion of the present work. Their history during the 
 last century and a half has too clearly proved that had the cen- 
 tral portions of the continent been already occupied by any of 
 the stronger races, similar to those which have been for the last 
 few generations opposed to them, they could never, with their 
 primitive weapons, have broken through such a barrier of sav- 
 agedom as must thus under such circumstances have been placed 
 in opposition to their southern progress. 
 
 It seems also certain that 'as the main body of the race moved 
 on in front, detached clans lingered behind in sequestered and 
 isolated spots, until they were overtaken, surrounded, and cut oif 
 for ever from their migrating countrymen by the advancing tide 
 of the stronger races, which after driving them for refuge into 
 dense jungles and nearly impenetrable forests, or the rocky 
 fastnesses of abnost inaccessible mountains, rolled on beyond 
 them, making their isolation still more complete by the increase, 
 in succeeding generations, of the surrounding hostile population ; 
 and thus it is that enterprising travellers penetrating into the 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN ii 
 
 interior of the Dark Continent still hear traditions of communities 
 of untamable dwarfs, who, even in the present day, hide them- 
 selves in the mysterious recesses of the primeval forests_j 
 
 Such, in all probability, was the dwarf race described by 
 Schweinfurth ; and such those of whom Stanley writes : " In 
 the unknown region west of Nyangwe, a region which Living- 
 stone panted to reach but could not, and which Cameron intended 
 to explore but did not, all is involved in mystery ; the intense 
 superstition of the Africans has enshrouded it with awesome gloom. 
 It is peopled in their village stories with terribly vicious dwarfs, 
 striped like zebras, who deal certain death with poisoned arrows, 
 who are nomads, and live on elephants. A great forest stretches 
 no one knows how far north, certainly no one has seen the end 
 of it." 
 
 Du ChaiUu also alludes to traditions of a race of wonderful 
 dwarfs inhabiting some portion of the country which he visited ; 
 and it is highly probable, when the evidences of Bushman 
 occupation are better known, — such as his chippings on the 
 South African rocks — than they are at present, that similar 
 traces of his migrations will be found even still farther to the 
 north. 
 
 Mr. Moffat considered that the Bushmen have descended from 
 the Hottentots, and gives what he supposes to be a parallel case, 
 in the Balala, a tribe to be noticed in the sequel ; but so much 
 evidence has since been obtained which proves this hypothesis 
 to be untenable, that we should only be led into error should we 
 adopt it in pursuing our inquiry. The Korana traditions appear 
 conclusive on the point of the prior existence of the Bushmen 
 in the country, at the time their forefathers migrated from tropical 
 Central Africa to the western coast, and thence to the Cape. 
 
 That both Hottentots and Bushmen may have descended 
 from the same original stock seems more likely. " In that case, 
 however, such a length of time elapsed between the migration 
 of the two offshoots that the language had completely changed, 
 and when they again came in contact they were not able to under- 
 stand one another. With regard to the language of the Hottentot 
 race, Mr. Moffat remarks that "genuine Hottentots, Koranas, 
 and Namaquas meeting for the first time from their respective 
 and distant tribes could converse with scarcely any difficulty," 
 
12 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 while the Bushmen " speak a variety of languages " (? dialects) 
 " even when nothing but a range of hills or a river intervenes 
 between the tribes, and none of these dialects is understood by 
 the Hottentots." Again, this writer considers the present con- 
 dition of the Balala will explain the difference. It may explain 
 the difference of the variety of dialects among the Bushmen them- 
 selves, but not the wide gap between the language of the Hotten- 
 tots and that spoken by the Bushmen. 
 
 We have also another proof of the length of time which must 
 necessarily have elapsed between the two migrations. Not only 
 had the language completely changed, but the tribes of the later 
 migration had advanced from the purely hunter to the nomadic 
 pastoral stage of existence, while a noticeable alteration had taken 
 place in their physical development. They were no longer tribes 
 of diminutive dwarfs, but they had become a taller race of men, 
 although still inferior to the more robust and manly Kaffir. A 
 period, however, of no ordinary duration must have intervened 
 to have effected changes of so marked a character. 
 
 From the foregoing one cannot doubt but that we are author- 
 ized in drawing the following deductions, viz. — 
 
 1. That the Bushman is not a development of the south, 
 but that he must have had his origin somewhere in the distant 
 unknown north. 
 
 2. That his language, his artistic talents, and even his physical 
 characteristics, have closer affinities to some of the northern 
 races than to that of the negro type. 
 
 3. That he migrated from the north to the south at a remote 
 period. 
 
 4. That that period was so remote that the stronger black 
 races could not then have occupied Central Africa. 
 
 5. That therefore the Bushman was the true aborigine of 
 the country. 
 
 We can advance still a step further. The Bushman tribes, 
 with regard to their artistic talents, were divided into painters 
 and sculptors. This difference marks two distinct divisions 
 of the Bushman race, and judging from the relics which they have 
 left of their former ownership, they entered the widespread 
 territories of Southern Africa by two different lines of migration. 
 The sculptors moved to the southward through the more central 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 13 
 
 portions of the country, crossing the Zambesi and traversing the 
 country by the Lake Ngami, theMariqua, and the upper Limpopo, 
 thence to the Malalarene and the 'Gij Gariep or Vaal. In the 
 valleys of these two rivers and in that of the Gumaap or Great 
 Riet river they appear to have established their headquarters. 
 Some of them spread to the westward and occupied the mountains 
 of Griqualand West, others extended to the east, and left the 
 records of their occupation upon the rocks of the Wittebergen, 
 a branch of the Maluti range projecting into the Free State. 
 Others again pushed farther to the south, and sculptured over 
 the rocks and boulders as far into the Cape Colony as the present 
 division of Beaufort West, whence some of them migrated as far 
 as the Sneeuwberg. 
 
 The painters, on the other hand, appear to have advanced 
 through Damaraland along the western coast. On arriving at 
 the great mountain ranges in the south, they turned to the east- 
 ward, in which direction they can be traced as far as the mountains 
 opposite Delagoa Bay. The main body of them, however, 
 settled in the country now occupied by the Divisions of George, 
 Uitenhage, Albany, Beaufort, Victoria East, Somerset, Cradock, 
 Graaff Reinet, Queenstown, and the Transkeian Territory, thence 
 to the Stormberg and the 'Nu Gariep or Upper Orange river, 
 occupying the whole of the Colesberg and Aliwal districts, and 
 crossing the river, filled every rock shelter to the east and north- 
 east with their cave paintings. 
 
 They do not appear to have penetrated as far to the north 
 as the Vaal river : that valley was already thickly peopled by 
 clans of the other division of the family. They also came into 
 contact with the sculptors of the north along the line of the 
 Sneeuwbergen, where some of the clans appear to have amal- 
 gamated, as their artists combined both styles of art for the orna- 
 mentation of their rock shelters. A small clan of these painters 
 appears to have penetrated as far as to the hiUs to the north of 
 Griquatown, where a few isolated caves were filled with paintings, 
 while chippings or sculptures alone are found in the country 
 round. This was probably a fugitive clan, that had fled so far 
 to the north whilst their countrjTnen were being ruthlessly 
 hunted like wild beasts in the southern portions of the country. 
 
 Besides these there were numerous clans who lived in the centre 
 
14 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 of the great plains, thus fiUing up the intervening spaces with 
 inhabitants, and who were neither painters nor sculptors. The 
 painters were the true cave-dwellers, and delighted in ornamenting 
 the walls of their rock shelters ; the sculptors lived in large com- 
 munities, but they preferred the stony hills covered with project- 
 ing rocks and boulders, which they sculptured over with their 
 carviings. Their great places were permanent residences, from 
 which they started on their hunting expeditions ; their huts were 
 small spherical structures, opening to the east. The occupants 
 of the plains lived in, fragile portable shelters, constructed of 
 withes and small rush mats, which they rolled up and moved 
 as fancy and the game might lead them. 
 
 3. Comparison of other Races with the Bushmen. 
 
 It appears a remarkable coincidence that we should find that 
 all the representatives of the smaller races of men have been, as 
 a rule, driven into the extremities of the various continents in 
 which they are found, and that although they differ considerably 
 from each other in many particulars', there is still a kind of general 
 resemblance which is somewhat remarkable. A number of them 
 seem to have inherited the germs of similar arts, and in some 
 instances even similar modes of thought. They evidently 
 started on their migrations when the hunter state was the most 
 advanced stage of existence, when the use of metals had not been 
 discovered, when language was still in its infancy and shackled 
 with its early imperfections, and bone, flint, and horn afforded 
 the only means of giving point to the weapons which they 
 employed in the chase. 
 
 If we can imagine such a people emanating from a common 
 centre, it must have been at some immensely remote period, 
 before the development of the stronger races, who as they gradu- 
 ally came upon the scene, as gradually drove the smaller and 
 weaker ones before them in various directions, until the latter 
 became imprisoned for a vast cycle of ages in the uttermost 
 comers of the earth ; each race becoming, through a variety of 
 degrees, more and more adapted to the requirements of its own 
 peculiar position, until they became so widely divergent from the 
 original type in language and physical features, that all trace of 
 connecting links which once probably bound them together have 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 15 
 
 been destroyed, and only a certain general resemblance, such as we 
 have suggested, has escaped the ravages and changes of time. 
 
 We will now, for the sake of comparison, give a rapid sketch of 
 such of the races of man which, although in the present day 
 widely separated from each other, still possess certain affinities 
 that appear to be common, and would, therefore, seem to indicate 
 a closer relationship in a remote past than that which they bear 
 to one another in our time. In doing this we wish to avoid assert- 
 ing anything dogmatically, but merely desire to point out, from 
 a South African point of view, the direction we imagine such 
 inquiries wiU have to take if the great problem of the true descent 
 of the Bushmen of this country is to be correctly solved. 
 
 One very striking feature in the pure Bushman race is their 
 remarkably dwarfish stature. Judging from the descriptions of 
 various trustworthy authors, there appear to be many seeming 
 affinities between them and some of the branches of the Mongo- 
 lian race, the only marked difference being in the hair, the one 
 having black, straight, strong, and thin hair ; whilst in the other 
 the hair, although black, is in small tufts at distances from each 
 other, but when • sufEeted to grow it hangs in twisted tassels. 
 This twisting is frequently increased by artificial means, as it 
 was looked upon by some of the clans as a type of beauty. 
 
 The Mongolian, Dr. Pickering states in his Races of Men, "is 
 pre-eminently a beardless race, the chin often remaining perfectly 
 smooth, even to extreme age." The same might be stated of the 
 Bushmen; and even when a few scattered patches do appear, 
 they never attain more than the fraction of an inch in length, 
 like a curly mop. 
 
 It is surprising how little notice appears to be taken of the 
 Bushman, and how seldom the race is mentioned by many of the 
 later European writers. This may arise from two causes : first, 
 that the term Hottentot and Bushman have frequently been used 
 synonymously, an error which even the writers of the earlier 
 Dutch records seem to have constantly fallen into, giving rise to 
 a confusion of ideas which has certainly led to erroneous impres- 
 sions ; and in the second place, because for the last two or three 
 generations these unfortunate people have been so harried and 
 hunted like wild beasts, by every race of men who have intruded 
 themselves into their ancient hunting-grounds, driving them into 
 
i6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the most inaccessible portions of the country, and treating them 
 with far less consideration than the most viciously outrageous 
 of condemned criminals, that little opportunity has been afforded 
 to visitors from other lands of studying them from any point 
 except that permitted by their bitterest enemies. 
 
 With regard to the Bushmen, however, it can be confidently 
 stated that there is no characteristic feature indicative of 
 a certain affinity between the Hottentot and Mongolian tribes, 
 which is not even more sti;ongly marked in them. There appears 
 no reason to doubt but that the Bushmen belong to a more 
 primitive, and therefore purer stock, than the tribes of Hottentot 
 origin ; and, as a- consequence, it is amongst such a people that 
 we may expect to be able to discover signs of closer connection be- 
 tween these at present widely geographically-separated branches, 
 by striving to trace them back as near as possible to that point 
 where the stream of life separated, than between the same original 
 stock and the later w anderers who followed on the trail of the 
 hunter race and occupied the intermediate area. With regard to 
 the Bushmen this would be rendered more easy from the remark- 
 ably isolated existence into which they were forced by their 
 southern migration, which thus, for unknown centuries, kept 
 them unmixed from the stronger races that pressed upon their 
 rear, until the former found themselves hemmed in by the southern 
 ocean. This isolation, however, enabled them to retain un- 
 changed not only their primitive habits and customs from a 
 very remote antiquity, but also their original and special physical 
 characteristics, in a degree of purity seldom met with in other 
 races. 
 
 If the prehistoric artists alluded to by various authorities 
 on the A merican Indians were of the old Mongolian stock, it 
 is certainly a most remarkable coincidence that this early 
 tidewave of human migration to the east and south carried with 
 it the same artistic tastes as that which was carried along with 
 a similar wave which spread itself more directly to the south, 
 and which went on developing itself in productions of a kindred 
 nature, until they ultimately arrived at the perfection displayed 
 in some of the Bushman paintings and sculptures in South Africa. 
 
 We are not aware of any of the ancient negro race who ever 
 excelled in artistic productions of this kind ; such efforts appear 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 17 
 
 to have been foreign to their nature, and this fact would seem to 
 give us an additional assiu"ance that we must look to some other 
 source for the origin of the primitive artists of the earth. This 
 idea is strengthened when we consider that there were, as has been 
 demonstrated, ancient races possessing not only many of the 
 physical characteristics which are common to the Bushmen, but 
 also that they seemed to have inherited similar art germs, of 
 so identical a description that they shadow forth the possibility 
 of a common parentage in some remote period of the past. 
 
 Surprising as such coincidences as these appear, they are still 
 more so when we learn that there are among the descendants 
 of other primitive races which possess, not a similarity in artistic 
 talents, but a wonderful identity in their respective modes of 
 thought, although for unknown time the vast expanse of the 
 Indian ocean has most effectually separated them. This fact 
 is clearly evinced by Dr. Bleek's remarks upon Resemblances 
 in Bushman and Australian Mythology. He says that African 
 researches have given the most emphatic confirmation to the 
 idea that mythological notions, or the outward forms of religious 
 beliefs, are primarily dependent upon the manner of speech, a 
 fact which was first pointed out by Professor Max Miiller in his 
 Essay on Comparative Mythology, and which is now generally 
 allowed to be one of the most fertile and efficient for the purpose 
 of understanding rightly the natural history of religion and 
 mythology. These African investigations " have especially 
 drawn our attention to the fact that the modes of thought, and 
 among them the religious ideas, are dependent upon the forms 
 of the language, and upon the stimulus which these forms give 
 to the poetical faculty, etc." The sex-denoting languages 
 possess mythologies, whUe the prefix-pronominal languages, 
 where no distinction is made, are merely addicted to ancestor- 
 worship. The first filled the heavens with objects of adoration — 
 the sun, the moon, the stars, and other natural objects ; whilst 
 those nations whose languages are clearly different, and never 
 have been sex-denoting (such as Kaffirs, negroes, etc.), are almost 
 entirely devoid of the myth-forming faculty, and possess hardly 
 any mj^hs or true fables, excepting where, by contact with sex- 
 denoting nations, these have, to a small extent, been adopted 
 from the latter. The knowledge of this fact advances us another 
 
i8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 step, by learning that the languages of the negro, Kaffir, etc., 
 and that of the Bushman, differ radically in their construction, 
 thus affording us further proof that their origin must have been 
 derived from different sources. 
 
 Where myths are found among nations whose language is 
 at present non-sex-denoting, it would seem to indicate that they 
 had been derived originally from more remote languages of that 
 character, and thus may afford evidence of the former state of 
 the language. 
 
 " In fact, upon the evidence of the mythological notions which 
 are found to exist among the nations speaking them, the great 
 mass of those genderless languages which Profes^r Max Miiller 
 calls Turanian (from which, however, the Malay-Polynesian as 
 originally prefix-pronominal are at all events to be excluded) 
 must be concluded to have lost the sex-denoting character, just 
 as the Persian has done in more modern times." 
 
 " The mythological conceptions of certain aborigines of Aus- 
 tralia offer some curious points of resemblance to those enter- 
 tained by the Bushmen of South Africa, as is pointed out in the 
 following comparisons." In giving them Dr. Bleek says that 
 it is not the special coincidences of belief between the Bushmen 
 and the Australians, which he should conclude to have been 
 derived by them from a common source, " but rather the spirit 
 of mythological conception in both nations, due probably to 
 similar causes. Both these nations are generally considered 
 the lowest of the low in many points of human civiUzation, as, 
 for example, in their very imperfect numerical system, the 
 Bushmen having no numerals beyond two or three,^ and the 
 Australians generally none beyx)nd three or four. Yet by their 
 mental and physical characteristics they lay claim to a nearer 
 kindred with ourselves than do many far more civilized nations, 
 
 1 These simple numerals were (that is, among the Central and Eastern 
 Bushmen) xa, one ; t'oa, two ; 'quo, three ; any higher numbers were 
 expressed by repetitions, thus : 
 
 T'oa-t'oa _ four. 
 
 T'oa-t'oa-t'a _ five. 
 
 T'oa-t'oa-t'oa = six. 
 
 T'oa-t'oa-t'oa-'ta = seven. 
 
 T'oa-t'oa-t'oa-t'oa = eight. 
 
 T'oa-t'oa-t'oa-t'oa-'ta — nine. 
 
 T'oa-t'oa-t'oa-t'oa-t'oa — ten. 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 19 
 
 especially those of the Kaffir and negro type. And certainly 
 the possession of similar mythological notions, of which both 
 Kaffirs and negroes are, generally speaking, destitute, is of no 
 small moment in gauging their real affinities." 
 
 It is certain, however, that the constant repetition of the 
 numbers three, five, and seven, their 'quo, t'oa-t'oa-'ta and t'oa- 
 t'oa-t'oa-'ta in their symbolic representations in the valleys of 
 the Gumaap and the Vaal evidently indicate that they had a 
 mystic or sacred meaning, now lost, but known and under- 
 stood at the time by the initiated. 
 
 " The aborigines of Victoria (especially the Booroung) 
 believe/that the earth was in darkness until an emu's egg was 
 prepared and cast into space, when the earth became light. 
 This was effected by one who belonged to^n earlier race of 
 people, who then inhabited the earth, but who were translated 
 in various forms to the heavens, before the present race of men 
 came into existence_J,' 
 
 " The Bushmen believe that there was a very dim light over 
 the earth, and that the sun (who was a man) only shone round 
 the place where he lay sleeping (the light proceeding from one 
 of his armpits) ; so two women (of the old race who inhabited the 
 earth before the Bushmen *) sent some children to lift up the 
 sleeping sun unawares and throw him into the sky, where he, 
 becoming round, thenceforth remained, rendering the earth light 
 and warm." 
 
 " The Bushmen say also that the moon was made by a being 
 who is both mantis and man, who, being inconvenienced by the 
 darkness, threw up one of his shoes into the sky, and ordered 
 the shoe to become the moon and to make hght for him." 
 
 " These Victorian aborigines term Jupiter the Foot of Day, 
 while the Bushmen call it Day's Heart. The Australians say 
 that (either the whole, or part of) the Milky- Way is the smoke 
 of the fires of the old race of people who preceded them. The 
 Bushmen say that a girl belonging to the ancient race made the 
 Milky Way by throwing wood-ashes into the sky.^J 
 
 " The Australians say that the star Arctufus is the dis- 
 
 ' The Bushmen believe in an ancient race of people who preceded 
 them, some of whom possessed magic powers, and some of whom have 
 also been translated as stars into the sky. 
 
20 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 coverer of the larvae of the wood-ant, of which they are very 
 fond, and their teacher when and where to find it. The Bush- 
 men say that Canopus is the rice-star, who comes carrying 
 ' Bushman rice.' ^ By appearing it shows them when to seek it." 
 "The Magellan clouds are, in this Australian mythology, 
 believed to be male and female birds called 'Native Com- 
 panions,' and by some of the Bushmen they are considered to 
 be a male and female steenbok." 
 
 Some of these coincidences are very remarkable, especially 
 that of the belief in the existence of an earlier race of men. 
 Some of the Bushmen, however, still assert that remnants of 
 this race yet exist in the deep and almost unknown recesses of 
 the Kalahari. In corroboration of this latter assertion, an old 
 traveller, Mr. A. A. Anderson, who has spent a number of years 
 in the interior, assured the writer that in one of his expeditions 
 into that portion of the country he came upon a small clan of 
 very diminutive and degraded people, who declared that their 
 forefathers had inhabited this part of the world before the Bush- 
 men came into it. At the time Mr. Anderson encountered 
 them they acknowledged subjection to the Bushmen of the 
 Kalahari, who are said to treat them not only as degraded vassals, 
 but as an inferior grade of beings. Their habits, as described 
 by this traveller, certainly approach nearer to those of wild 
 animals than to those of the most abject people yet known in 
 South Africa. They build no huts of any description, but 
 shelter themselves under bushes or projecting rocks, or the lee- 
 side of large boulders, while their food is frequently of the most 
 loathsome description, as, with the exception of these people, 
 it is only among the lower animals that the placenta is devoured 
 after giving birth to their offspring. Further information with 
 regard to this race would certainly be most interesting, and 
 might possibly supply one of the missing links which are being 
 so eagerly sought for in the world of science. 
 
 From the facts advanced in this chapter we would seem 
 justified in concluding that the Bushman race belongs to a type 
 of humanity altogether distinct from that of the negro or the 
 Kaffir; that the races which display the closest afl&nities to 
 
 1 " Bushman-rice " is what is commonly called ants' eggs but which 
 are really the pupas or chrysaUdes of the ants. ' 
 
THE ANCIENT ABATWA OR BUSHMEN 21 
 
 them are some of the earlier races whose migrations radiated 
 f^-om the northern hemisphere as from a common centre ; that 
 at the time of their separation from the main stock these races 
 had arrived at the hunter state, and carried with them, into 
 widely separated countries, similar germs of primitive art, and 
 there, by means of their kindred artistic talents, they were 
 enabled severally to leave memorials upon the rocks of the 
 country, thus recording for future ages the different portions 
 of the earth's surface which they had respectively occupied. 
 
chapter II 
 
 THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN IN 
 SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 We are fortunately able to obtain evidence upon the great an- 
 tiquity of the Bushman race in South Africa from several inde- 
 pendent sources, viz. the subsequent Hottentot migration, the 
 geological evidence afforded by exhumed relics, and that which is 
 demonstrated by some of their most ancient sculptures and 
 paintings. 
 
 The subsequent southern migration of the Hottentot hordes 
 clearly proves that such an enormous period had intervened 
 between their onward movement and that which led to the 
 original Bushman occupation, that the Hottentot tribes had 
 advanced from the purely hunter state of their remote progenitors 
 to that of the nomadic-pastoral ; their language had also under- 
 gone such a complete transformation that the new-comers were 
 no longer able to understand the more primitive and therefore 
 original tongue of the kindred race which had preceded them ; 
 while they had also, in the interim, progressed in physical 
 development, until, by the side of the taller Namaqua and 
 Koraqua, the aboriginal Bushmen appeared a veritable race of 
 pigmies. 
 
 A vast cycle of ages would doubtless be required to bring about 
 radical changes of this kind. With this fact we must be duly 
 impressed, if we consider but for a moment the extreme slowness 
 with which such extensive modifications from their original tj^pe 
 must necessarily have been accomplished, especially among races 
 which were naturally unprogressive. 
 
 The second source of evidence with regard to the antiquity 
 of the Bushman race in South Africa is from the geological record. 
 From the mass of testimony which might be brought forward 
 
 22 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 23 
 
 under this head we shall merely notice such a number of instances 
 as must fully establish the point under consideration. Thus, on 
 a farm in the Bloemfontein District a very finely shaped stone 
 armlet was found embedded in situ, in digging out a reservoir 
 four feet below the surface in undisturbed clay. 
 
 In excavating the superficial diamondiferous deposits at Du 
 Toit's Pan, in Griqualand West, numerous Bushman beads made 
 of ostrich eggshell were found at various depths ranging from 
 six to eight feet, and in several spots resting on the bed of 
 calcareous tufa. These local accumulations had evidently been 
 very gradual in their formation. Multitudes of minute land shells 
 were interspersed throughout them, the animals which inhabited 
 them having evidently perished and been entombed whilst 
 traversing the arid sand. This place had evidently been a great 
 station for the Bushmen, in the midst of the ostrich country, 
 and had in aU probabiUty been a locality where the manufacture 
 of ostrich eggshell beads had been carried on for generations, thus 
 the abundance of them frequently met with in patches, as well 
 as their having been foimd in various stages of manufacture. 
 Some of those dug out from the lowest depths had become per- 
 fectly fossilized, and adhered to the tongue. 
 
 These mounds at one time formed a portion of the margin of an 
 ancient lake, whose waters had drained away, the pan of the 
 present day being its degenerated representative. The extent of 
 this ancient lake is stiU well defined by a zone of sandy marls and 
 calcareous deposits, and it was in some of the former and the 
 more superficial red sandy clay that these relics of the ancient 
 Bushmen were found. 
 
 Again, a stone hammer and another well-formed chipped 
 stone implement were found by the writer in a bed of river- 
 gravel on the banks of the Vaal, near Pniel, about fifty feet above 
 the present stream, and which was evidently laid down at a time 
 when the level of the river was much higher than the Vaal of 
 to-day. 
 
 Near the mouth of Kleinemond, on the farm Fairfield, in 
 the Division of Lower Albany, a number of pieces of rude Bush- 
 man pottery, stone implements, and semifossUized bones were 
 found at a depth of sixteen feet, embedded in interlaminated 
 and undisturbed beds of sand and marine shells. 
 
24 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 In 1869 several Bushman maal-stones, stone implements, and 
 an awl made of ivory were found at Poplar Grove, in the Division 
 of Queenstown, in a bed of subangular gravel, embedded in a 
 clayey matrix fourteen feet below the surface, and underlying 
 three or four other undisturbed beds of clay and gravel. As- 
 sociated with these were found the scapula and some of the ribs 
 and grinders of a wart-hog. These bones had become so fossilized 
 that, like some of the oldest fragments of ostrich eggshell at Du 
 Toit's Pan, they adhered to the tongue. 
 
 In 1874, when the writer was examining the calcareous zone 
 at the western end of the Roode Pan basin, about five or six 
 mUes from the great Kimberley Diamond Mine, he dijs covered in 
 a bed of sandy marl a number of finely formed chipped imple- 
 ments, made of lydite. These implements must have been 
 dropped there at the time the marl bed was in process of forma- 
 tion ; portions of it were interlaminated with belts of calcareous 
 tufa, it was also capped with a layer of this rock of considerable, 
 although varying, thickness, as shown below. 
 
 _^ I. Red sandy clay, one to three 
 
 feet thick. 
 2. Bed of calcareous tufa, two 
 to four feet thick. 
 fS^^s^^^^'^^M^-z "' 3- Bed of light coloured sandy marl 
 
 containing stone implements. 
 4. Interlaminated belts of light 
 coloured sandy marl and 
 calcareous tufa. 
 
 This calcareous zone, similar to others surrounding so many 
 of these great pan basins, and which evidently mark the margins 
 of extensive lakes which once filled them, must have been de- 
 posited at a time when the level of the water was at least sixty 
 feet higher than that of the present pan, and when a magnificent 
 lake spread itself, for a considerable number of miles, over the 
 intervening valley. The hunters, therefore, who manufactured 
 these stone weapons must have lived in a period so remote that 
 the physical features of the country were vastly different from 
 what we see at the present time. Numerous extensive lakes were 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 25 
 
 dotted over it, and, as is proved by geological evidence, the Vaal 
 itself did not flow in the same channel in which we now see it, 
 as it has in two or three places cut through some of these very- 
 basins, which therefore proves that the makers of these imple- 
 ments must have existed before the river adopted its present 
 course. 
 
 This period represents the second or minor lake-period of 
 South Africa, but which nevertheless must have been so far 
 removed from the present that the intervening years would not 
 have to be represented by thousands only, but tens of thousands, 
 if we would form an approximate idea of their probable duration. 
 
 The evidence, therefore, here brought forward proves that 
 the Bushman race must have occupied South Africa, continuously, 
 for an enormous period. It is not necessary to suppose that all 
 their tribes arrived at the same time : it is more than probable, 
 judging from the migrations of other races, that they arrived in 
 this portion of the continent by degrees, accelerated, more or less, 
 by the pressure of other clans in their rear, a process which may 
 have continued for a number of ages before they were overtaken 
 by the stronger races. 
 
 We wiU now proceed to examine the next series of evidence, 
 afforded by the remains of their rock sculptures or chippings, and 
 their paintings. The latter, being of a more perishable nature, 
 we cannot expect to find escaping the ravages of time, caused 
 either by exposure to the atmosphere or the disintegration of the 
 rock itself, where the paintings have been executed upon the 
 somewhat friable sandstones of the upper Lacustrine or Karoo- 
 formation, as long as the more durable chippings, which have 
 generally been worked into the surface of some of the hardest 
 igneous rocks. - 
 
 An opportunity was offered in examining some of the paintings 
 in a large cave in the Boloko or Vecht Kop, near the southern 
 border of Basutoland, of making an approximate calculation as 
 to the probable age of the most ancient artistic productions of 
 this kind found there. The most recent of the paintings repre- 
 sents an attack of a commando upon a cdnsiderable body of 
 Bushmen. The writer was fortunate enough to obtain the 
 history of this picture. The attack had been made upon this 
 cave some forty years previously by a combined force of Boers 
 
26 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 and Basutu, with the intention of driving out the old inhabitants 
 of the place ; and immediately afterwards this drawing was made 
 by one of the Bushman artists, evidently with a view of com- 
 memorating the event. 
 
 The painting, like most of their last productions, which were 
 executed at a time when they were constantly harassed and driven 
 about by their enemies, was rudely done, but still the action of the 
 figures was well marked. Several of the Bushmen are armed with 
 guns ; one or two are shouting out, defying the attacking party 
 to come on. The rock upon which it is painted is a soft friable 
 sandstone, and a certain amount of disintegration has taken 
 place since the representation was finished, amounting in places 
 to the eighth of an inch. 
 
 The most ancient paintings preserved depict a group of elands, 
 beautifully and artistically finished, showing that the artist had 
 both time and leisure at his command to finish them with an 
 amount of care which is admirable, thus affording a striking 
 illustration of a state of rest enjoyed by the Bushmen during the 
 halcyon days of undisturbed occupation, compared to the season 
 of turmoil and tribulation which fell upon them after the invasion 
 of the stronger races. Portions of the animals have disappeared 
 from the same natural decay, we have spoken of, of the rock 
 surface. The process of disintegration, from the sheltered position 
 of the walls of the cave where the paintings are found, defended 
 as they are against rain and similar atmospheric agencies, must 
 have been tolerably uniform. Such being the case, if we calculate 
 the depth of the erosions and destruction to have progressed at the 
 same ratio as in the preceding instance, it would give a probable 
 antiquity of about four hundred years to this last group of ani- 
 mals. It is quite certain that the same cause of destruction 
 would have entirely obliterated any earlier paintings. 
 
 At a rock shelter on the banks of the Imvani, in the Queens- 
 town Division, as many as five distinct series of paintings were 
 found, one over the other. The old Bushmen assert that the 
 productions of an artist were always respected as long as any 
 recollection of him was preserved in his tribe : during this period 
 no one, however daring, would attempt to deface his paintings by 
 placing others over them. But when his memory was forgotten, 
 some aspirant after artistic fame appropriated the limited rock 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 27 
 
 surface of the shelter, adapted for such a display of talent, for his 
 own performances, and unceremoniously painted over the efforts 
 of those who had preceded him. If we calculate that the memory 
 of any artist would be preserved among his people for at least three 
 generations, as every Bushman tribe prided itself and boasted of 
 the wall decorations of its chief cave, it would give a probable 
 antiquity of about five hundred years to the oldest found in the 
 Imvani rock shelter. Many of them are doubtless of a very much 
 greater age, but they afford no means by which their greater 
 antiquity can be gauged. 
 
 The case, however, is different with the rock chippings or 
 sculptures on the banks of the Gumaap and the Vaal. Strangely 
 enough Mr. Moffat has ascribed these productions to the Ba- 
 choana, and employs their existence as an evidence of the 
 extended occupation of his favoured tribe in early days ! He 
 informs us that they are called Lokualo, a word from which the 
 one used to express writing and printing is derived. He further 
 states, in describing those which he examined, that these Lokualo 
 are various figures chipped upon stones with fiat surfaces. 
 " These marks," he says, " are made by striking one stone on 
 another till curved lines, circles, ovals, and zigzag figures are 
 impressed upon its surface, exhibiting the appearance of a white 
 stripe of about an inch broad, like a confused coil of rope." 
 These, Mr. Moffat imagined, were done by Bachoana herd boys, 
 and that as they were to be found to the vicinity of the colonial 
 boundaries of those days, that is, to the present District of 
 Victoria West, therefore these Bachoana tribes must have 
 extended much farther to the southward than their present 
 limits. 
 
 In these deductions Mr. Moffat is clearly mistaken, for there 
 can be no question but that these relics are all of undoubted 
 Bushman origin. All those examined by the writer, and they 
 have been a multitude, in the valley of the Lower Vaal and in 
 Griqualand West beyond Daniel's Kuil towards Kuruman, are 
 also unmistakably the work of Bushmen ; they therefore fall to 
 the ground as an evidence of early Bachoana occupation, proving 
 the very opposite to such a position. It is quite possible that Mr. 
 Moffat may have seen some imitations by the Bachoana, the 
 same as attempts at painting are sometimes found in Bushman 
 
28 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 caves, the handiwork of ambitious Kaffirs ; but in such cases the 
 practised eye can never be deceived for a moment. The inac- 
 curacy of outhne, the perfect caricature of the thing represented, 
 and the crudeness of the materials stamp at once the nationality 
 of the artist. As it is with the imitation paintings, so it is with 
 the copies of chippings, the want of meaning and design at once 
 shows their spurious origin ; while the imitations are always, 
 without exception, the most recent productions of that nature. 
 
 Copies of Bushman chippings have been obtained as far north 
 as the Mariqua and branches of the Limpopo, while from the 
 evidence of the earlier Koranas and Griquas the Bachoana had 
 only arrived as far to the southward as about Kuruman when the 
 former first came in contact with them, the entire intervening 
 country being occupied alone by Bushmen. 
 
 In examining these primitive works of art, we find that they 
 have been done, similar to the paintings, at different periods, 
 from the most recent, which exhibit the whitish coloured outlines 
 described by Mr. Moffat, to those ancient ones where the lines of 
 chippings have, from length of time, become so oxidized that they 
 have once more assumed the original colour of the exposed rock. 
 On the banks of the Gumaap and the Vaal the rocks which have 
 been utilized for this kind of ornamentation have been, almost 
 universally, the igneous and highly f elspathic Vaal variety, which 
 is frequently associated with beds of an amygdaloidal character. 
 These rocks are amongst the hardest and most durable in the 
 country, possessing such power of resistance to the effects of the 
 atmosphere that the most recent of the Bushman chippings 
 found upon them, and which are now from forty to fifty years old, 
 look as fresh as if they had been worked into the surface of the 
 rock but a few weeks ago. As it is with the paintings, so it is 
 with these rude attempts to sculpture, the more ancient, as a rule, 
 can be distinguished by the boldness and correctness of their 
 outlines, which clearly evinces that the labour of chipping out 
 such delineations with merely a piece of pointed stone must have 
 been one of considerable time and patience. 
 
 At Blaauw Bank, on the Gumaap, and at several places in 
 the valley of the Vaal, these same Vaal rocks are found perfectly 
 poUshed and striated, the effect and indubitable proof of a remote 
 glacial period in the geological history of the country ; and it is 
 
si£!# 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 29 
 
 a remarkable fact that, although these spots must have doubt- 
 lessly passed for years unheeded by men calling themselves civi- 
 lized, their wonderful and unwonted appearance had evidently 
 produced a strong effect upon the Bushman mind, for, struck 
 with their unexplainable smoothness, he has covered the space 
 with mystic symbols. This is especially the case at Blaauw Bank, 
 where hundreds of such symbolic designs are found. They are, 
 however, of so ancient a character that the re-oxidization of the 
 engraved rock is complete. 
 
 This is strikingly noticeable in the last named locality, where^, /^•■'"'^ 
 hundreds of hieroglyphical emblems are foundj They may be' 
 divided into two distinct series, the oldest of which are evidently 
 of great age. There is a marked difference between them and 
 the paintings : in the latter one is frequently found superimposed 
 upon the other, while in the former no two figures are ever found 
 overlapping one another, or even touching. The figures thus 
 engraved on the rock have evidently been held sacred by the 
 generations which followed the original designer. There is very 
 little doubt but that many of them conveyed a mystic meaning 
 to the initiated ; this seems confirmed by the frequency of certain 
 forms, and the repetition of particular numbers. When the first 
 series of figures were finished, it would appear as if no additions 
 were for a long period made to them. Then copies, or reproduc- 
 tions of the original symbolic forms, were sparingly introduced, 
 filling up the intermediate spaces, by a generation of artists 
 living at a period infinitely more recent than that of those who 
 had gone before, as the lines of which their productions are com- 
 posed are only semi-oxidized. After this no other figures were 
 added, except a few insignificant ones at widely scattered inter- 
 vals, belonging to the most recent period of Bushman art, and 
 evidently after all the mystic lore embodied in the ancient sym- 
 bols of their remote ancestors had been lost to their race. 
 
 Unfortunately in this instance we have no sufficiently satis- 
 factory data to make an approximate calculation as to the prob- 
 able age of the oldest of these designs, but if we are to be guided 
 by the slight change in those which we know to be the most recent, 
 many centuries must have elapsed since the primitive Bushmen 
 first engraved their antique symbols upon these ancient polished 
 and striated rocks. The extreme antiquity of some of these 
 
 \u- 
 
30 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 designs is, however, clearly evinced by the fissures which have 
 been formed in the apparently impenetrable rocks sinct the 
 earliest designs were chased upon them, thus, upon the large 
 island in the Vaal opposite Riverton, which is formed of an ancient 
 roche moutonne stretching across the channel of the present river, 
 there are a number of various chipped figures, some of them very 
 boldly executed. One of the oldest was that of an eland, done on 
 a larger scale than any other representation of an animal found ; 
 but since its completion a large fissure has been worn through the 
 rock, upwards of nine inches in breadth in its broadest part and 
 about eighteen inches in depth. 
 
 When we consider the astonishing hardness of these rocks, and 
 the capability which they evince of resisting atmospheric and 
 other influences, and also that they are allied in some portions of 
 the Vaal basin to similar porphyritic rocks to those employed in 
 the construction of the ancient palace temples of Egypt, whose 
 ruins have withstood the ravages of some twenty-five centuries, 
 we cannot help but imagine that we are justified in giving at 
 least an equal antiquity to the great eland of the Riverton island 
 of the Vaal. 
 
 Many other instances might be brought forward, but we have 
 already produced sufficient evidence from ethnological, geological, 
 and artistic points of view to prove the position advanced as the 
 subject of this section of our inquiry, viz. the great antiquity of 
 the Bushman race in South Africa. We have already learnt from 
 native traditions that they believed a still earlier race preceded 
 them, and that up to within a short time ago there was a miserable 
 remnant which professed to belong to that race, but if such were 
 the case it is quite certain that they were of so degraded a type 
 that they left no more impression upon the country than the wild 
 animals which inhabited it ; and that the Bushmen, although 
 they magnified them in their traditions as excelling in power 
 and wisdom, nevertheless in actual hfe looked down upon them 
 as a race of inferior beings. 
 
 The Bushmen of Southern Africa. 
 Having arrived at these conclusions, we will now treat of the 
 Bushmen more particularly as a South African race, together 
 with such fragments of their local history as have been rescued 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 31 
 
 from oblivion, and the reminiscences of the desperate struggle 
 they made for existence after their ancient southern domains 
 were invaded by the stronger races. 
 
 MThe Bushmen of Southern Africa have been described by their 
 enemies, not only as being " the lowest of the low," but as the 
 most treacherous, vindictive, and untameable savages on the face 
 of the earth : a race void of aU generous impulses, and little 
 removed from the wild beasts with which they associated, one 
 only fitted to be exterminated like noxious vermin, as a blot upon 
 nature, upon whom kindness and forbearance were equally mis- 
 placed and thrown awayj Such being the sweeping charges made 
 against them, we will under the present head, among other 
 things, inquire how far these allegations are justified ; and 
 whether the doom which followed was such as they merited from 
 their own inherent and unendurable viciousness. 
 
 These people, who were severally known to the old colonists 
 and early writers as the Bosjesmans, the Boschismans, and Bush- 
 men, appear to have adopted among themselves the name of 
 'Khuai, which is also the same as that given to the natural apron 
 for which the women of pure Bushman and Hottentot races are 
 distinguished ; and it was thus probable that the appellation 
 'Quae-'quae, or perhaps more properly ' Khuai- Khuai or 'Khuai- 
 ^quae — the people of the Apron, was derivedj 
 
 From the evidence of 'Kwaba, alias Toby, a very old Bushman 
 of 'Kou-'kou or Bethulie, the Bushmen of his tribe were called 
 'K'ay (? possibly 'kwa or 'qua, the men or the people). 'Kue was 
 the designation of a single Bushman. Hottentots, such as the 
 Koranas and Griquas, were known by the name of 'Kuara. 
 
 With regard to the names by which the Bushmen are known 
 to the tribes of the interior, according to Backhouse, some of the 
 Bachoana call the Bushmen Ba-roa, which he explains as " The 
 men or people of the bow." The Basutu also, so M. Arbousset 
 informs us, use the same term, Ba-roa, the meaning of which he 
 gives as " the men of the Bushes," while Miss L. E. Lemue writes,*^ 
 " A strange fact is that among all the tribes of Central Africa the 
 Bushmen are called Ba-roa, which means " of the South ; " 
 Baroa signifying the south. It is certain, however, from the evi- 
 
 ^ Private Notes of Charles Sirr Orpen, from letter of Miss L. E. Lemue, 
 daughter of the French missionary of that name. 
 
32 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 dence collected from native sources, that the Bushmen are styled 
 Ba-wa by some of the Basutu clans, and Mur-ra by the Bataung. 
 Stanley states that the dwarf-race of the far interior is called 
 Watwa or Batwa ; and as a remarkable coincidence the Bushmen 
 of the south are called A-ba-twa by the Tambukis, which, they 
 assured the writer, was not derived from their own language, but 
 was of Bushman origin. 
 
 The Bushman chiefs of the great tribes had their distinctive 
 tribal emblems, which seemed to answer the same purpose as the 
 Siboko of the Bachoana and Basutu, and from which it is not 
 improbable that the custom of such Hottentot tribes as Koranas 
 of taking the names of various animals such as the Zeekoes (hip- 
 popotami), the Cat-people, the Scorpions, the Rats, the Spring- 
 boks, etc., was derived. But the difference between the artistic 
 hunter and the nomadic pastoral Hottentot was that the former 
 employed positive emblazonment or representation of the emblem 
 which distinguished the particular branch of their race, con- 
 spicuously painted in some central part of the great cave of the 
 chief of the clan. These tribal paintings were held sacred, and 
 it was only occasionally that some profane artist would venture 
 to place any other upon them. Unhappily most of these, together 
 with the other cave paintings, have been ruthlessly destroyed ; 
 fortunately, up to a short time ago a few striking illustrations were 
 preserved, of most of which the writer was able to secure copies. 
 Thus he found — 
 
 The Cave of the Python, near the Gwatchu, on the banks of 
 
 the Zwart-Kei ; 
 The Cave of the Serpent, (a drawing upwards of seven feet 
 
 long), on the banks of the Klip-plaats river, near 
 
 Whittlesea ; 
 The Cave of the Eland (almost Hfe-size), in the Stormberg, 
 
 near Dordrecht ; 
 The Cave of the Red Serpent, near Bad Fontein, Orange 
 
 River ; 
 The Cave of the White Rhinoceros and Serpent, near Wash- 
 bank Spruit ; 
 The Cave of the Hippopotamus, on the farm Lichtenstein, 
 
 Orange River; 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 33 
 
 The Cave of the great Black Serpent and Elephant, in Rock- 
 wood Glen, Orange River ; 
 
 The Cave of the one-horned Rhinoceros, in Eland's Kloof, 
 Orange River ; 
 
 The Cave of the White Hippopotamus, in Knecht's Kloof, 
 Koesberg ; 
 
 The Cave of the Ostrich, near Oliphant's Been ; 
 
 The Cave of the Puff- Adder, near Junction Hotel, Division of 
 Queenstown. 
 
 Others could be mentioned, but the above will be sufficient to 
 illustrate what has been asserted. The writer has been informed 
 by several old Bushmen that all the great caves, that is those 
 which were the residences of the head chiefs, were, at one time, 
 thus distinguished ; and that in speaking of the people who in- 
 habited them, or all those who acknowledged the authority of 
 the same ruler, they were designated according to the tribal 
 emblem with which the cave itself was ornamented. 
 
 Many have stated that the Bushmen were entirely without 
 any form of government. This is altogether an erroneous idea ; 
 and was probably formed from what the writers saw of the broken, 
 scattered, and half-annihilated tribes which were to be met with 
 along the exposed frontiers, after their fathers had been driven 
 about and hunted for a couple of generations, and when each 
 miserable fugitive group was forced to look after its own individual 
 safety without reference to any other portion of the persecuted 
 tribe. The Bushman race was evidently, at one time, divided 
 into a number of large tribes occup5nng tolerably well-defined 
 tracts of country, which they looked upon as their own ancestral 
 hunting-grounds ; and any intrusion upon these was sure to be 
 resented. These branch-tribes were again divided, although they 
 had but one chief, who was looked upon as paramount over the 
 whole territory belonging to the tribe. The subdivisions, or 
 minor clans, were under the guidance of lesser captains, who, 
 nevertheless, seemed to possess almost uncontrolled authority 
 over their respective kraals. The great cave represented the 
 dignity and glory of the entire tribe, and it formed the grand 
 centre around which they congregated when the different clans 
 were threatened with a common danger. 
 
 As we proceed with our investigation we shall discover that 
 
 D 
 
34 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 they showed a devotion to their chief (a feeling which appeared 
 to be ahnost entirely wanting among the purely Hottentot 
 tribes) which could not be excelled, as they invariably gathered 
 round him in the hour of danger, and fell to a man rather than 
 desert him in his extremity. Nor was it only for their attach- 
 ment and loyalty to their chiefs that they were distinguished, but 
 for an almost passionate fondness for the rocks and glens in whose 
 caves they and their fathers had lived probably for generations. 
 
 Many instances might be mentioned where a few wretched 
 fugitives, after their tribe had been mercilessly butchered, have, 
 after hopelessly wandering about for a time, stealthily returned 
 to their ancestral cave, hiding themselves among the rocks by 
 day and stealing out in the early morning and evening to gather a 
 few roots and tubers to prolong their wretched existence, obtaining 
 a little water from a neighbouring spring, and occasionally a little 
 honey from some wild bees' nest among the fissures of their rocky 
 asylum ; and have thus existed for years, tenaciously clinging to 
 the spot, until feeble and tottering with age, they have sunk from 
 sheer exhaustion and passed away in some hidden nook near where 
 they were bom ; or too feeble to defend themselves, they have 
 been torn to pieces by the ravenous beasts which had made their 
 lairs amid the romantic retreats which had once resounded with 
 the noise of revelry and moonlight dancings of their forefathers. 
 
 In judging of their character, there are imfortunately few 
 records left of them in their undisturbed state, and most of the 
 intelligent writers who have treated of this subject visited them 
 after the fierce and cruel crusade had commenced against 
 them, and which, having once been taken in hand, was not 
 allowed to cease until their extermination was rendered a 
 certainty. 
 
 It was when their precarious means of subsistence failed that 
 the Bushmen of the frontiers were driven to the necessity of 
 hazarding a toilsome and dangerous expedition of plxmder across 
 the colonial boundaries. Such a mode of life naturally leads to 
 cruelty. ' Although it is a crime in the eyes of pohtical justice for 
 a starving family, driven by imperious want to the necessity of 
 takmg the property of another, still in the law of nature the offence 
 must be venial ; but the Bushmen for their conduct had not only 
 the plea of nature and humanity, but that also of retributionj 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 35 
 
 They were driven out of their own country, the vast herds of 
 game which once afforded them abundance of food were ruthlessly 
 destroyed, their children were seized and carried into slavery by 
 the people upon whom they subsequently committed their 
 depredations, and on whom they almost naturally took every 
 occasion for exercising revenge. 
 
 That the Bushmen were not always as barbarously ferocious 
 as they were afterwards charged with being is proved by the fact 
 that forty years previous to Barrow's visit, as was shown by the 
 testimony of men then Hving, they frequented the colony boldly 
 and openly, begged and stole, and were troublesome, just as the 
 Kaffirs were afterwards, but they never attempted the life of any 
 one. They proceeded not to this extremity until the Govern- 
 ment unwisely and unjustly suffered the colonists to exercise an 
 unlimited power over the lives of those who were taken prisoners. 
 It failed at the same time to fix any bounds to the extent of the 
 expeditions made against them, which certainly ought not to 
 have gone beyond the limits of the colony. 
 
 When these circumstances are viewed impartially, it would 
 almost appear that even their cruelty admitted of some palliation. 
 Their studied barbarity, however, which ultimately extended 
 itself to every living creature that pertained to the farmers, 
 indicated a very altered disposition from that of their nation at 
 large. Thus when they seized a Hottentot guarding his master's 
 cattle, not content with putting him to immediate death, they 
 tortured him by every means of cruelty their invention could 
 frame, as drawing out his bowels, tearing off his nails, scalping, 
 and other acts equally savage. Even the poor animals they stole 
 were treated in the most barbarous and unfeeling manner, 
 driven up the steep sides of mountains, where they were allowed 
 to remain without any kind of food or water till they were either 
 killed for use or dropped for want of means of supporting 
 nature. 
 
 Had a humane course of action been adopted from the begin- 
 ning, instead of ruthlessly hounding them out of their country, how 
 different might have been the history of this primitive race ; but 
 '"'the greed for increasing pasturage was paramount, every available 
 fountain was seized and occupied, and every right of the ancient 
 owners unceremoniously trampled oiy When aU this is taken 
 
36 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 into consideration it is not to be wondered at that they should 
 become brutish and miserable, that they should make their home 
 in the desert, the unfrequented mountain pass, or the secluded 
 recesses of a cave or ravine. 
 
 That in the deep hatred which was ultimately aroused against 
 all those who were gradually, yet still most surely, despoiling 
 them of their cherished hunting grounds, the Bushmen were fre- 
 quently hurried into deeds of violence, at which humanity shud- 
 ders, cannot be doubted ; but, as we have stated, the rights of 
 this ancient hunter race were entirely ignored by the intruders of 
 every race and colour. Each appears to have asked with Lich- 
 tenstein, " What right has the Bushman to land, of which he does 
 not know the value ? " And then these stronger races of men 
 considered that all the blessings of life were summed up in the 
 possession of sleek herds of cattle, with plenty of grass and water 
 to pasture them, never troubling their heads for a moment to 
 reflect whether it might not be possible for others to exist who 
 cared for none of these things, and whose only glory was their 
 wild, but cherished, freedom to follow over their boundless hunting 
 grounds the swarming game which inhabited them, and who 
 prized the rocks and caves where their fathers had dwelt above 
 all the waving com lands in the universe. 
 
 It was, therefore, in the never-ending war of races which 
 ensued, where all, however much they differed from one another, 
 were against the Bushman, that it merged into one of the fiercest 
 intensity, in which an irrepressible determination was shown, on 
 the one hand, to maintain, at whatever cost, and by every means 
 their untutored minds dictated to them, the lands they considered 
 unquestionably their own ; while, on the other hand, as the old 
 race were stumbling blocks to the coveted possession, an equal 
 determination was exhibited to exterminate, if possible, the last 
 vestige of those who so resolutely opposed their unjustifiable 
 usurpation. The struggle ended, as all such conflicts ever do, in 
 the ultimate triumph of the strongest, while in its course httle 
 forbearance or mercy was shown on either side. 
 
 Notwithstanding the Bushmen have been charged by their 
 enemies with a total want of all kindness of feeling towards any 
 other race than their own, and that every one that fell into their 
 hands, even from the earliest times, was put to death without 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 37 
 
 mercy, it is quite certain that this was not the case when the 
 Bushmen held undisturbed possession of their ancient territories. 
 The evidence on this point is clear and distinct, and it was not 
 until later times that they evinced that merciless and blood- 
 thirsty disposition which so many have been eager to ascribe to 
 them. The imanimous testimony of the old Kaffirs, Bachoana, 
 Leghoya, and Basutu, as well as of the Bushmen themselves, 
 affirms that this was far from being the case. 
 
 On the contrary, during the murderous native wars, when so 
 many of the Bachoana and other tribes were half annihilated 
 and scattered, in many instances the few unhappy outcasts that 
 escaped destruction fled into Bushman territory, where they not 
 only received protection and an asylum, but conforming to the 
 Bushmen's habits and customs, wives were given to them and 
 their daughters intermarried again with the Bushmen, and it was 
 doubtless such infusions of foreign blood which gave a different 
 physical character to some of the families of their leading captains, 
 in contradistinction to those of pure Bushman type. This good 
 understanding continued until these refugees, increasing in 
 numbers, and some, at last, bringing the remnants of their herds 
 of cattle with them, began to band together and assume a sove- 
 reignty over portions of the country. Then, as they grew in 
 strength, they turned upon those who had first given shelter to 
 them when they were helpless and miserable fugitives, and strove 
 by every means in their power to dislodge the ancient 
 owners, who were at once deemed wild and untameable 
 animals when they attempted to prevent the invaders from 
 doing so. 
 
 As soon as the Bushmen saw these strangers beginning to 
 intrude themselves in large bodies in every direction, with a 
 determination to make permanent settlements, a spirit of oppo- 
 sition was aroused within them. The game, which was as pre- 
 cious to the old hunters as herds of tame cattle were to their 
 aggressors, was destroyed or driven away ; and cattle-lifting 
 almost as a natural consequence took the place of stalking the 
 eland, the quagga, or the elephant. Capture and recapture, 
 injuries and retaliation, soon grew into a war of extermination 
 against the weaker and smaller race, whose unconquerable spirit 
 might be crushed and annihilated, but seldom taught to submit 
 
38 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 to the trammels which the invading and conquering races were 
 desirous of imposing upon them. 
 
 From all the evidence that can be obtained, the Bushmen in 
 their undisturbed state appear never to have been aggressors. 
 This doubtless arose from the fact of their having been the pri- 
 mitive inhabitants of the land, and therefore having never dis- 
 placed any other race of men from its still more ancient posses- 
 sions. The only rivals they had to contend with for dominion 
 and supremacy were such animals as the mailed rhinoceros and 
 lordly lion. From the traditions of some of their clans they 
 appear to have believed that, from an unknown time, they were 
 the only men upon the earth. Some of the more isolated tribes 
 retained this belief until a very recent period, for in the early 
 days they seldom trespassed beyond the confines of their re- 
 spective hunting grounds, and the same traditionary creed was 
 handed down, unaltered, for many generations. 
 
 The gradual intrusion of the Hottentot tribes along the western 
 coast, the pressure of the Bachoana tribes from the central 
 north, the eruption of the more warlike Kaffirs from the east- 
 ward and along the south-eastern coast, the advent of the still 
 more formidable pale faces from the very sea itself, rudely dis- 
 pelled these long-cherished ideas wherever the original inhab- 
 itants of the soil came in contact with the invading races. 
 " Bushman depredations " were unheard of as long as their 
 ancient hunting-grounds were unmolested. Their oldest paint- 
 ings are chiefly representations of the excitement of the chase or 
 the joys and pleasures of their numerous dances. 
 
 They appear never to have had great wars against each other ; 
 sudden quarrels among rival huntsmen, ending in hvely skir- 
 mishes, which owing to their nimbleness and presence of mind 
 caused little damage to life or limb, appear to have been the 
 extent of their individual or tribal differences. Even an habi- 
 tually quarrelsome man was not tolerated amongst them ; he 
 became an intolerable nuisance, and his own friends assisted in 
 putting the obnoxious individual on one side ; while their very 
 enemies acknowledge them to have been, when left to them- 
 selves, a merry, cheerful race. 
 
 Their evening feast being ended, dancing during the first 
 watches of the night followed as a matter of course. But when 
 
THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF THE BUSHMEN 39 
 
 their ancient hionting-grounds were invaded from various quar- 
 ters, great changes came over their social condition, and at 
 length a determined opposition was shown by them against 
 further encroachments. Finding, however, that they were un- 
 able to repel their invaders, while their chief means of subsistence 
 was being destroyed, they levied, in their turn, unconditional 
 blackmail upon the possessions of those they no longer looked 
 upon with friendly eyes. Then it was that resistance, and cap- 
 ture, and recapture followed. Bushmen fell under the clubs, the 
 assagais, or the bullets of the pursuers ; and these, in their turn, 
 frequently experienced the fatal effects of the poisoned darts 
 that were discharged at them. Organized attempts were made 
 to dislodge the obnoxious Bushmen from their native strong- 
 holds ; sometimes these attacks were repelled, at others the cave 
 dwellers were overpowered, and a considerable portion of a tribe 
 would be destroyed. 
 
 Driven from the fastnesses in one range of mountains, those 
 who remained fled for refuge to another, mingling with other 
 tribes already in possession. One piece of country cleared, the 
 encroachments steadily continued, with a continually intensifying 
 animosity on either side. Again dispossessed, again driven back, 
 the marauding parties of the survivors would penetrate again 
 into the old himting-grounds which had been so violently wrested 
 from them, to make reprisals upon the flocks and herds of those 
 who had so unceremoniously monopolized them. These raids 
 were pushed for a considerable distance into the old country once 
 occupied by them. It was a never-ending war of encroachment 
 on the one hand, and retaliation on the other. This unswerving 
 determination on the part of the Bushmen was put down to 
 their wild animal propensities and untameableness, and it was 
 considered as a necessary part of civilization to look with leniency 
 on the wholesale purloining of territory on the one side, yet still 
 to paint the character of the weaker and much-wronged race in 
 the blackest possible colours. 
 
 Their incomprehensible attachment to their original mode of 
 life, their strong love of the wild freedom they had ever possessed, 
 were considered as unquestionable evidence of their unimprov- 
 able nature, and the members of the formidable expeditions that 
 were from time to time launched against them seemed impressed 
 
40 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 with the idea that the cause of humanity would be best served 
 by annihilating a race with such pecuHar tendencies ; and thus 
 they were driven from stronghold to stronghold, rendered more 
 and more desperate, until the last remnant of their most powerful 
 tribes found a temporary asylum in the most inaccessible portions 
 of the Maluti and Quathlamba mountains. 
 
Chapter III 
 
 HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 
 
 To a Bushman, his mode of living, as long as he could obtain 
 plenty of food, was in reality no more miserable than that of 
 other savage races. He had no invidious object of comparison 
 to place against his condition. When one feasted, they all par- 
 took ; and when one hungered, they aU equally suffered. They 
 took no thought for the morrow. With them it was either a 
 feast or a famine. Their power of endurance, as weU as that of 
 digestion, was quite wonderful. Yet many instances of longevity 
 are to be found at the present day among those who are stUl 
 living with the Boers. 
 
 Notwithstanding their forbidding appearance, they possessed 
 a number of savage virtues, which showed that they were not so 
 utterly worthless as many have delighted in depicting them. 
 Not the least noteworthy of these was their implicit faithfulness 
 in any trust imposed upon them. We have already noticed their 
 loyalty to their chiefs, 'their strong attachment to the place of 
 their birth, their hospitahty to strangers, their unselfishness in 
 their division of food, their self-sacrifice and devotion in their 
 attempts to rescue their wives and children from a life of bon- 
 dage which they abhorred, their unflinching bravery, and their 
 love of freedom^ 
 
 Having thus gained some insight as to what was their true 
 character in their originally undisturbed state, and what they 
 doubtless would have remained under a more just and generous 
 mode of treatment than that which was mercilessly meted out 
 to them, we will now proceed to make some inquiry into such of 
 their more domestic habits as may give us a better view of their 
 inner life, when, devoid of fear from outer enemies, they were 
 isolated among the rocks and plains of their ancestors. 
 
42 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 In commencing this portion of our investigation, it may be as 
 well to notice that from the evidence of Kwaba, alias Toby, the 
 language spoken by that division which we may call the Sculp- 
 tors or kopje-dwellers, from the fact of their selecting a hill or 
 mound as their permanent place of residence, whence they ob- 
 tained an extensive view of the surrounding country, but which 
 contained no caves or rock shelters, in contradistinction to the 
 Painters, or true cave-dwellers, was so different from that spoken 
 by the latter, that it was not understood by them. Upon this 
 subject he says : " I can speak the Bushman language well," 
 that is, the language of the branch of painters, " but," he con- 
 tinues, " I cannot understand the language of the Bushmen of 
 the Gumaap or Riet river," — who belong to the tribes of sculp- 
 tors. " Their language is too double." 
 
 From this it would appear that this division of the Bushman 
 family has, in all probabihty, retained the more primitive form 
 of their original language in their southward migration, while 
 with those who moved more to the westward the language had 
 become so modified that when the two streams again met in Cen- 
 tral Southern Africa, so long a period had elapsed that they had 
 become unintelligible to one another. This, however, is a ques- 
 tion which must be left to some future philologist to decide. 
 
 We have already noticed the difference in the habitations of 
 the two main branches of the Bushmen. Those who were the 
 cave-dwellers and painters arrived at a higher degree of artistic 
 talent than any other portion of their race, while their cave 
 dwellings afforded more comfortable shelters from the weather 
 than the fragile structures used by those tribes living on the more 
 i.'bpen kopjes. HThe towns, for so the stations of the large tribes 
 ^ might be termed in comparison with the movable dwelling-places 
 ■^ of the small nomadic clans of the hunters of the plains, contained 
 from one to two hundred huts^ Two excellent examples of 
 stations of this kind are to be found between Kimberley and 
 Klip Drift or Barkly, on the Vaal, in Griqualand West. The 
 one is on the outlying kopje near what is termed the Half -Way 
 House on the road to Pniel, the other on the kopje immediately 
 behind the Mission Station at Pniel itself. One or two others are 
 to be found in the neighbourhood, but these were evidently the 
 headquarters of this particular tribe. At both places there are 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 43 
 
 a number of chippings, chiefly representations of animals : the 
 head and neck of a giraffe at the Pniel kopje is remarkably fine, 
 both on account of its large size and the correctness of its outline. 
 It was evidently the grand figure of the tribe, and the spot might 
 fitly be named from it — after the fashion of the caves we have 
 mentioned — " the Camp of the Giraffe." 
 
 The position of most of the huts which covered the crests of 
 both these hills is marked by a semi-circle of stones with the 
 opening towards the east ; while that which formed the residence 
 of the chief can also be distinguished from the rest, not only 
 because it is larger, but the rocks also around it are very much 
 more ornamented than any in the immediate neighbourhood of 
 the others, while two or three smaller ones are placed close 
 against it, forming probably the sleeping apartments of some of 
 his wives. An open space was left around this, and here it is 
 that the carvings on the rocks are the thickest. Beyond this the 
 huts of his people evidently formed an irregular ring around him ; 
 while detached from the main body, the sites of several smaller 
 groups of huts are still marked on the flanks of the kopje, appar- 
 ently so placed for the purpose of acting as out-posts, so that the 
 town itself should not be exposed to sudden attack either from 
 the multitude of lions which once swarmed over the plains, or, in 
 later years, from more formidable foes who then invaded the 
 country. 
 
 These semicircles of stones show that the diameter of the 
 general huts was about four feet, and of those of the chiefs nearly 
 five. Their framework was formed of a few bent withes, and this 
 again was covered with rush or grass mats. These were most 
 commonly made of rushes laid longitudinally side by side and 
 then sewn neatly and closely together with either a twine made 
 of the back-sinews of an antelope or a kind of cord composed of 
 rushes bruised and closely twisted together. The holes through 
 which the twine or cord was passed were perforated through the 
 body of the rush by means of a bone awl made for the purpose. 
 These huts were more in the shape of magnified Dutch ovens 
 than that of anything else. 
 
 The huts used by the men of the plains differed somewhat 
 from those just described. They were not strengthened at the 
 bottom with the row of stones used in the more permanent 
 
44 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 dwellings. They were taken down in the morning, the mats 
 rolled up, the sticks tied into a bundle, and carried from place 
 to place after the game, and again pitched at night at their fresh 
 halting place. Campbell describes these dwellings as the most 
 primitive of any of the nations he had visited. Moffat, who met 
 some of the fugitive clans after so many of those on the frontier 
 had been destroyed by the colonists, found some who did not 
 possess even this flimsy shelter against the winds and storms. 
 
 Their mode of sleeping exhibited their primitive stage of ex- 
 istence, as instead of stretching themselves out like most other 
 races, they coiled themselves up into as small a space as possible. 
 Mr. Jan Wessels, who resided north of the Orange river at the 
 time the country was filled with Bushmen, informed the writer 
 that on visiting any of their caves, it was possible, although all 
 the inhabitants were absent at the time of the visit, to tell the 
 exact number of men, women, and children who lived in it, as 
 each of them made a small round hollow hole, like a nest, into 
 which they individually coiled themselves, each man, woman, 
 and child having his or her own allotted form, to which they re- 
 tired when they wished to sleep. In cold, rainy, or snowy wea- 
 ther, they would not make the least attempt to get up or alter 
 their position for a day or two together, but would remain in 
 a state as if of semi-torpor until an amelioration of the inclement 
 weather took place, which apparently revivified them. Then 
 first the men would be seen creeping out, with their never-for- 
 gotten bows and arrows, and after a little time the women and 
 children would make their appearance. Certain connubial rites, 
 and other operations of nature which in more civilized com- 
 munities decency taught men to reserve for the strictest privacy, 
 were performed openly among them. 
 
 The wife constructed for herself a fireplace with three roiuid 
 stones ; she also fashioned, varnished, and baked the few earth- 
 enware pots she had to use, manufactured the frail rush mats, 
 under which her family found shelter from the wind and heat of 
 the sun ; she suckled her infants and decked them with care ; in 
 fine weather she was seen going in haste to the fields to gather 
 roots, especially a small round white bulb called uintje (iris 
 edulis), which together with locusts that she gathered and dried 
 in the summer, the chrysalides of the ants which she took from 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 45 
 
 the ant-hills, constituted with the game taken by her husband 
 their only subsistence. The man generally cooked by himself, 
 and the woman for herself ; but whenever a pot was to be emp- 
 tied, all the kraal gathered round it and partook of it. Thus 
 they went from hut to hut until there remained nothing more to 
 be consumed. 
 
 Sometimes the men, who would be absent hunting on the vast 
 plains the whole of the day, would there eat to their hearts' 
 content of the game they had kUled, and only bring food to their 
 wives when they had had their fill. On such occasions, when 
 they returned in the evening with empty hands, they generally 
 put on sulky faces, and pretended to be knocked up or annoyed. 
 The cunning wife, however, soon detected from her husband's 
 appearance that he was not hungry ; besides the woman was 
 always on the watch, and saw the smoke rising on the distant 
 flats when the meat was cooking ; and so she received him very 
 angrily, pulled and threw down the hut in her rage, and would 
 not suffer him to partake of the ants or whatever supper she had 
 made.^ But in their undisturbed state this condition of 
 affairs did not often exist, during that period there was not only 
 an abundance of game, but, as a rule, an abundance of food also - 
 and the spoils of the chase amply rewarded the fatigues of the 
 huntsmen. Then it was, as soon as supper was over, the women 
 with the children and the young men commenced some of their 
 numerous dances, which were continued until deep into the 
 night, when, at length weary, they retired to their little hollow 
 nests lined with grass or straw, in which they coiled themselves 
 to sleep. 
 
 The vanity of the Bushwomen was just as great as that which, 
 characterizes women in all ages and aU lands. They evinced 
 with their ostrich eggshell beads and springbok kaross as much 
 desire for decoration and display as any others. Their heads 
 were always uncovered, sometimes even shaven, but a quantity 
 of hair was left and arranged as a tuft on the crown, and always 
 plastered with ochre, fat, and the powder of an aromatic plant 
 called buchu. This they carried in a little skin bag or small pot 
 or box made of the segment of a horn, slung to the waist for ordi- 
 nary use. They speckled their faces and breasts with red and 
 1 Memoir of Miss L. C. Lemue, from Notes of Charles Sirr Orpen. 
 
46 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 yellow paint and white clay. The men also indulged in this 
 fashion of painting their bodies, sometimes in zebra-like parallel 
 lines, sometimes the lines were drawn diagonally across their 
 bodies, at others they covered themselves with a series similar to 
 chevronels, and again others employed a combination of these 
 different modes of ornamentation. 
 
 Besides painting, the women adorned their foreheads with a 
 narrow band of thread, not very closely plaited, but elegantly 
 covered with rings made from ostrich eggshell ; and in addition 
 to these fillets, bracelets, girdles, and long fibrous aprons, which 
 in some cases hung down from their waists to their feet, were 
 made and ornamented with the same. Their industry was clearly 
 illustrated in the manufacture of these shell beads and rings, 
 upon which an infinite amount of labour, patience, and time 
 must necessarily have been bestowed in their production. Nor 
 did they, besides these, despise any other ornament they could 
 obtain. They further adorned themselves, as do the Orientals, 
 with a lace or cord of threaded ostrich eggshell beads, which passed 
 through the nostril and was tied at the back of the head, thus 
 forming a festoon over either cheek.* Above their ancles and 
 wrists they fastened little oblong bells, made of the skin of the 
 springbok well dried, and which, by means of pebbles enclosed 
 in them, produced a sound very agreeable to their taste. 
 
 The men, besides the custom of painting their bodies with 
 various patterns (a custom which necessarily fell into disuse when 
 their invaders commenced breaking up their clans and hunting 
 them from mountain to mountain), wore a small piece of skin for 
 a girdle, a very scanty springbok cloak, frequently cut and orna- 
 mented in different patterns, together with sundry anklets, arm- 
 and bracelets, and sometimes necklaces, these ornaments seeming 
 to indicate respective rank. 
 
 After their territories had been invaded and much of their 
 game had been destroyed or driven away, they were sometimes 
 
 1 The Coast-Kafiir and other kindred tribes, and even the Hottentots 
 themselves, do not appear to have ever arrived, before their contact [with 
 the European, at that stage of mechanical skill which enabled them to 
 manufacture ornaments of this kind for themselves, in lieu of which they 
 used such natural productions as the briUiant coloured red seeds of the 
 Kaffir-boom and different kinds of sea-shells, especially such as the 
 Nerita, Bulla, and Cowrie. 
 
/ 
 
 h 
 
 .r-X 
 
 -■/ 
 
 ^>«s 
 
 A. TO I— SERIES OF STONE IMPLEMENTS, DRILLS &■ SCRAPERS 
 
 For making Ostrich Egg-shell Beads. 
 
 Found near Zwart Modder, in the Kalahari, 
 
 I TO 6. — Shell Beads in different stages of manufadure, from ditto. 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 47 
 
 reduced to such extremities as to be obliged to cook and eat old 
 skins. Sometimes they were afraid to go into the plains to hunt, 
 on account of their enemies. They had a great dread of being 
 captured or shot by the Koranas or the Dutch, and there were 
 critical times when nothing would induce them to leave their 
 retreats. The very sight of a white face threw them into an agony of 
 fear. Every time M. Arbousset managed to get near them, they 
 raised loud cries, and sought to flee or conceal themselves. 
 
 It was at this time, and under these circumstances, that this 
 earnest missionary foimd some of their huts constructed of 
 branches of trees, and others of another kind among the rocks, 
 with which they might at a distance be readily confounded. AU 
 these consisted of three sticks stuck in the ground, and of two 
 small mats, one of which served as a screen behind the stakes, 
 the other as a roof ; and under these poor shelters the unfor- 
 tunates reposed, huddled peU-mell together. ^Vhen asked why 
 they did not buUd better huts like the Basutu, they answered 
 that such huts attached them too much to one spot, that 
 their enemies might bum them all alive in these huts, or kiU them 
 in some way before they could get out ; that they would not be 
 able to put them aside during the day to prevent them being 
 seei^ 
 
 They assured M. Arbousset that, since their country had been 
 invaded, they slept with their feet out of their kaross, that they 
 could more readily spring up and escape in case of an alarm ; 
 that they did not long remain in one place, partly owing to the 
 migration of the game, and partly that no one might know where 
 they were to be found. For this last reason they went in very 
 small companies, without dogs, and with the least noise and 
 bustle possible. The Bushmen who, through their friendly 
 intercourse with the Leghoya, the first of the Bachoana tribes 
 with whom the aborigines of the Vaal river came in contact, had 
 in the early part of the present century become possessed of smaU 
 herds of cattle, and were gradually passing from the hunter to 
 the pastoral stage, had long before the time of M. Arbousset's 
 visit in 1836 been reduced to a state of destitution ; and many 
 of them had been wantonly butchered by the marauders who had 
 invaded their country from different quarters. 
 
 By this time also an additional calamity had befallen them. 
 
48 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 f~ 
 
 The Koranas, finding that they could exchange them for guns, 
 
 ammunition, and brandy with the old colonists, commenced kid- 
 napping their children ; and a few years after the commence- 
 ment of this traffic, some of the wandering Boers, following the 
 example of their fathers along the Bushman borders of the Old 
 Colony, made forays upon them for this express purpose, seizing 
 almost all their children, dishonouring them if they were girls, 
 and sometimes making eunuchs of the lads ; and thus it was that 
 the Bushmen became greatly exasperatedj Such however was 
 the attachment of these Bushmen to their native rocks and plains 
 that, j^ung as these captives were, many of them attempted to 
 escape as soon as a favourable opportunity presented itself. 
 They have been known to travel for many days through a wild 
 country infested with beasts of prey, and yet at las,t have, after 
 escaping many perils, succeeded in discovering the retreat of 
 their friends. Many doubtless wandered into the far wilderness, 
 and were never more heard of. 
 
 These unhappy little wretches, after effecting their escape 
 sought the wildest parts of the country to travel through, in order 
 more effectually to avoid detection. When they neared the part 
 of the country where they believed their friends were staying, 
 they commenced making a series of signals in the following 
 manner : selecting a spot where they could see over a consider- 
 able extent of country, they would make a Uttle fire on the highest 
 point, and cover it with a small pile of damp grass, just sufficient 
 to form one long slender column of smoke ; as this rose in the 
 air the little wanderers watched intently to see if any answering 
 sign could be detected. Failing to see this, they would again 
 proceed onward, and would again and again repeat the experi- 
 ment on some other favourable spots, continuing to advance in 
 the intervals until at last they saw another slender column of 
 smoke rising in answer to their own ; then they would ^eed on- 
 ward in the direction where the answering signal was given. 
 Should the Bushmen prove to be strangers, to show that their 
 meeting was a friendly one all those who were armed, and there 
 were few who were not, would during the interview lay their bows 
 and arrows upon the ground. Thus the fugitives proceeded until 
 they were fortunate enough to encounter some of their countiy- 
 men who knew their tribe and the position of their country, when 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 49 
 
 they obtained the necessary information which enabled them 
 to direct their footsteps, with greater certainty, in the direction 
 of their home. 
 
 A sign of peace or a flag of truce among the Bushmen of the 
 Karoo was displayed by exhibiting a jackal's tail fastened to the 
 end of a stick, which was held aloft in the air and waved re- 
 peatedly ; and then, as they approached nearer, their bows and 
 arrows were laid aside in the usual manner.^ 
 
 Fugitive families were, after the dispersion of the tribes, met 
 with all over the country. Campbell in his travels in 1812-13 
 encountered one of these, consisting of a Bushman, his wife, a 
 younger brother, two daughters, eleven and twelve years of age, 
 and a child of about eighteen months, which the mother still 
 continued to suckle. They were on their way for a supply of 
 water. The man had a bow and quiver full of poisoned arrows. 
 The mother had a stroke of dark blue, like tattooing, from the 
 upper part of her brow to the nose, about half an inch broad, and 
 two similar strokes on her temples. The man had several cuts 
 on his arms and smaller ones on his temples, and so had the chil- 
 dren, which they said was done to cure sickness. The dark 
 colour of these cuts was produced by rubbing ground charcoal 
 into the wounds when they were green. They had part of the 
 entrails of a zebra filled with water, from which they frequently 
 drank, and then filled five ostrich eggshells with water to carry 
 home. The paunch of the 'gnu or wildebeest was frequently 
 used as a water-bottle among the Bushman tribes. The open 
 end or mouth of this was fastened with wildebeest-hair ; when 
 they wished to pour out the water this was loosened sufficiently 
 to aUow the required quantity to escape, without being entirely 
 unfastened. A tortoise shell was used as a drinking cup, or the 
 orifice of the watersack itself was introduced into the mouth of 
 the drinker. 
 
 Their most convenient water-bottles, however, were un- 
 doubtedly the shells of the ostrich egg. A kind of neck was made 
 to them with the black wax employed by the bees to stop the 
 
 ^ Evidence of David Swanepoel, an old farmer of considerable intelli- 
 gence, one of those who in the early days used to cross the Orange river 
 for the purpose of hunting, when the entire country was still in the undis- 
 turbed possession of the Bushmei^ 
 
 E 
 
50 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 crevices in their hives, and the mouth was closed with a plug. 
 The women could carry a considerable number of these at a time, 
 in a rude kind of net slung across their shoulders ; and the shell 
 bottles, when filled, were packed away in a cool place ready for 
 use. Some of the Sculptor tribes used to ornament the surface 
 of these shells in a most elaborate manner, covering them over 
 with etchings of various animals, and sometimes even with hunt- 
 ing and other scenes. The delineations stood out boldly from 
 the white ground, from the engraved lines having been blackened 
 with charcoal or some other pigment. Gemsboks, giraffes, gnus, 
 zebras, elands, and various kinds of antelopes, lions, and ser- 
 pents, men and women, were in many instances engraved upon 
 them with admirable skill. Unfortunately from the fragile 
 materials of the water-bottles, very few of these works of native 
 talent are now to be met with. Their pots of earthenware were 
 also sometimes ornamented with patterns raised upon the surface 
 when the clay was being fashioned ; but these are now only found 
 in detached fragments, as it appears to have been the universal 
 practice of their enemies, when they took possession of one of 
 their caves, to destroy everything which could remind them of 
 its former owners. 
 
 The Bushmen have been frequently charged with gross in- 
 humanity towards their children. We have already seen that 
 it was a virtue among the Bushmen to love one's own father, and 
 that mothers were known to deprive themselves of food that they 
 might give it to their children. We are therefore led to imagine 
 that these instances of cruelty were the exception rather than the 
 general rule. 
 
 The women seldom had large families. They carried their 
 children in a different manner from that adopted by the Basutu, 
 or Kafar race, among whom they are bound to their mother's 
 backs in the fold of a kaross, while the Bushwomen carry their 
 little ones on the left side, in a lying posture, the child's feet being 
 towards its parent's back, and its head towards her chest, sup- 
 ported in the skin of a springbok.^ 
 
 Moffat, who from his long contact with other races, seems 
 
 1 The peculiar way of carrying their children astride on the left hip 
 
 employed by many of the South African Dutch peasantry has probably 
 
 been derived from the Bush and Hottentot nurses that they employed 
 
 in the early days. 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 51 
 
 sometimes to write somewhat severely about Bushmen, states 
 that these people " take no great care of their children, and never 
 correct them except in a fit of rage, when they almost kill them 
 by severe usage. In a quarrel between father and mother, the 
 defeated party wreaks his or her vengeance on the child of the 
 conqueror, which in general loses its life. Tame Hottentots 
 seldom destroy their children except in a fit of passion ; but the 
 Bushmen will kill their children without remorse on various 
 occasions, as when they are ill-shaped, when they are in want of 
 food, when the father of a child has forsaken its mother, or when 
 obliged to flee from the farmers or others, in which case they will 
 strangle them, smother them, cast them away in the desert or 
 bury them alive rather than they should fall into the hands of 
 their hated enemies. There are instances of parents throwing 
 their tender offspring to the hungry lion, who stood roaring be- 
 fore their cavern, refusing to depart till some peace-offering was 
 made to him. In general the children cease to be the objects of 
 a mother's care as soon as they are able to crawl about in the 
 field." 
 
 Terrible as this list of charges appears to be, and to which 
 another has been added, viz. that of bur5dng the living infant 
 with the body of its mother, who may have died whilst it was still 
 in its infancy, from the hopelessness of attempting to rear it upon 
 their primitive fare without the aid of maternal care, they were 
 evidently aggravated by the cruelty and wrong which was heaped 
 upon them by those who looked upon themselves as members of 
 a superior race, who so relentlessly seized the last acre of their 
 territory and destroyed their only means of subsistence, until all 
 the horrors of famine dogged the steps of this ill-fated race, and 
 many perished from hunger. Still in their direst extremity no 
 instance has been recorded that the Bushmen resorted to canni- 
 balism to prolong their lives, in a similar manner to the Bacho- 
 ana, Basutu, and some of the Kaffir tribes, who threw away their 
 children by scores in their flight from their enemies, and beyond 
 this, as soon as they had found an asylum among the mountains, 
 had recourse to the horrid practice of feeding upon human 
 flesh, devouring not only their children but their wives also, as 
 weU as every one else who had the misfortune to fall into their 
 hands. 
 
52 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 In addition to what has already been said with regard to their 
 ornaments, it may be added that the men were the great manu- 
 facturers of beads. Their most valued ornament was that which 
 passing through the nostril was looped up at the back of the head. 
 As a rule in the earher days they did not pierce the ears, and it 
 was only after they obtained small copper rings from other tribes 
 that the men did so. 
 
 They calculated time by wet and dry seasons and by moons, 
 and the period of the day by the course of the sun. After a 
 time, as they became accustomed to the use of horses, they be- 
 came expert and fearless horsemen. This was shown in a striking 
 manner in their mode of hunting the quagga, being light-weights 
 they would dash into a herd of quaggas, and when in full career 
 amid the maddened throng single out such victims as they marked 
 for death. 
 
 Much has been said by many writers about the evil effects 
 brought upon the native races since their contact with white 
 men, by the introduction of tobacco and ardent spirits ; but, 
 strange as^. it may appear, aU the tribes now found in South Africa 
 were smoking and drinking races ages before they knew of the 
 existence of Europeans. The Bushmen were almost passionately 
 fond of smokingj Their pipes were made either of wood, reed, 
 stone, or a bone of an antelope. They were generally made in 
 the shape of a tube rather wider at the one end than the other. 
 Joints of the mountain bamboo were also used, as weU as bowls 
 of baked clay. Some of them were of rather elaborate construc- 
 tion, and answered the purpose of a rude or rather a primitive 
 hookah ; they were made of a large horn of an eland, a hole 
 was made in this about one-third from the pointed end, into which 
 was inserted a tube about nine inches in length, on the top of 
 which was fitted an elongated clay bowl, from six to eight inches 
 in length, either made of baked clay or cut out of a soft stone. 
 One of the latter, which the writer saw in the hands of a Basutu 
 who had obtained it from an old Bushman cave, was very beau- 
 tifI^ly and elaborately carved with a pattern in relief. 
 
 When these pipes were used, a certain quantity of water was 
 put mto the horn, the mouth was applied to the large orifice of 
 the horn, and the smoke, after being drawn through the water, 
 was mhaled quickly three or four times into the lungs, from which 
 

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HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 53 
 
 it was again thrown off in a violent fit of coughing, the tears at 
 the same time rolhng down from the eyes ; this was considered 
 the height of ecstasy to the smoker. This process continued for 
 a Httle time, when the fumes of the dacha produced a kind of 
 intoxication or dehrium, and the devotee commenced to recite 
 or sing with great rapidity and vehemence the praises of himself 
 or his chief during the intervals of smoking and coughingj The 
 Zulus and some of the other tribes use a similar hookah, substi- 
 tuting, however, the horn of an ox or a calabash for the more 
 primitive eland's horn used by the Bushmen. 
 
 As it is evident that the hunters were addicted to smoking, 
 and used these pipes generations before they came in contact 
 with the stronger races, it becomes a question whether the latter 
 did not copy the idea from the older inhabitants. "The plant 
 used for smoking was a species of wild hemp, called dacha, which 
 was generally carried in a small skin-bag. Pieces of a narcotic 
 root were also strung like a necklace and worn round the neck ; 
 these were lit at the fire and brought to the nose, so that they 
 snuffed the smoke into their nostrils. 
 
 The Kanna-bosch was also dried and powdered, and used both 
 for chewing and smoking. When mixed with dacha it was very 
 intoxicating. 1 
 
 The great happiness of the Bushman was however in his honey 
 harvest, when the combs of the wild bees' nests were dropping 
 with honey. It was then that he brewed his primitive mead, with 
 which a certain root was mixed which rendered the beverage 
 more intoxicating. This root however was kept a profound 
 secret, except to a few chosen members of the ruling family. It 
 was at such seasons that he could pour out the libations in which 
 he deUghted, and it was then, before the intrusion of his enemies, 
 that he could eat, drink, and be merry. 
 
 But when his enemies came upon him, all this was changed 
 in the evil days which followed ; and because he was the pos- 
 sessor of the land, he was accused of every crime, and as every 
 opportunity was sought by the usurpers to rid themselves of his 
 inconvenient presence, few of his race escaped a tragical end. 
 
 Having thus made some inquiry into the character and 
 habits of the Bushmen of South Africa, we shall now take into 
 consideration their means of subsistence. There seems very little 
 
54 . THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 reason to doubt that before mankind arrived at the higher grade 
 of a hunter race, before they were able to construct weapons 
 sufficiently effective to secure a supply of animal food for them- 
 selves, the primitive savage must have been compelled to live 
 upon such food as he could procure with his hands alone, with the 
 assistance of such improvised missiles as whatever sticks or stones 
 chance threw into his way. In such a state he must have existed 
 for an immense number of ages before such an advance was made 
 as to arrive at the perfection of a sling or a bow, during which 
 period he must have subsisted upon what in South Africa has 
 been termed veld host, and which consists of such edible roots, 
 bulbs, and tubers, such plants or wild fruits, insects, and small 
 animals, birds, or reptiles, as can be secured without the aid of 
 any artificial weapon, beyond those afforded by Nature herself. 
 Such then was the condition of life from which the remote an- 
 cestors of the Bushmen emerged when they entered into the rank 
 of true huntsmen armed with, what to them must have been a 
 wonderful invention, a bow and arrow. But in becoming 
 hunters (a change which must have come over their race by slow 
 degrees) they still r-etained their original mode of living, and the 
 veld-kost remained, especially in times of scarcity, one of their 
 mainstays to support existence. 
 
 This kind of food may, as we have seen, be divided into two 
 kinds, vegetable and animal. We wiU therefore enumerate, in 
 the first place, such productions of the former class ' as are known 
 to have been utiHzed by them as articles of food, after which we 
 shall notice those which they obtained from the animal kingdom. 
 
 Hunger, writes Moffat, compelled them to feed upon every- 
 thing edible. Ixias, wild garhc, mesembryanthemums, the core 
 of aloes, the gum of acacias, and several other plants and berries, 
 some of which are extremely unwholesome, constituted their 
 fruits of the field ; while almost every kind of Hving creature was 
 
 1 The writer had hoped, during the time he was engaged upon the 
 geological survey of the Orange Free State, to have obtained a correct 
 and exhaustive hst of such things as had been used by the early Free State 
 Bushmen, but although he made strenuous efforts to do so he failed— 
 as owing to some unaccountable reason the Boers who had old Bushmen 
 living on their farms used every means of persuasion to prevent them 
 accompanying him, and the Bushmen across the border declared they 
 dared not cross it on account of their fear of the Boers. 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 55 
 
 eagerly devoured, lizards, locusts, and grasshoppers, the poison- 
 ous as well as innoxious serpents not excepted, the head of the 
 former being carefully cut off, and then all roasted and eaten 
 together. 
 
 The Bushmen of the more wooded portions of the sea-coast 
 were able to obtain a number of additions to their vegetable 
 supplies, which their brethren of the interior could not procure. 
 The bulbs of many Ixias and other plants of the same tribe con- 
 stituted with ants and locusts the chief food of the Bushmen and 
 Koranas, when they could not procure game or milk. The in- 
 side also of the enormous roots of the Testudinaria elefhantipes, 
 or elephant's foot, and the soft pithy interior of the stems of the 
 Zamid, the latter being known to the colonists as Hottentot- 
 bread, were extracted, reduced to a pulp, and after being baked 
 in some primitive fashion, served the purpose of a kind of coarse 
 bread or cake. The flowering tops of the Aponogeton distachys, 
 a pretty white-flowered floating plant frequent in pools in many 
 parts of the colony, and sometimes used even by the settlers as 
 a pickle, and asparagus, were cooked by them.^ 
 
 The young shoots of several shrubs were also used as articles 
 of food. One of these was said to possess special nourishing pro- 
 perties, viz. the Methyscophyllum glaucum (Mac-Owan), growing 
 on the banks and in the ravines of the Kei. These shoots when 
 chewed have a slightly bitter, yet pleasant flavour, combined 
 with a strong sweet taste of licorice. It is said to contain such 
 life-sustaining powers that during its season the Bushmen were 
 not only able to subsist for a considerable time upon its nourish- 
 ment alone, but, as they termed it, they became " strong and 
 fat " upon the invigorating diet. 
 
 The Bushmen of the North, again, were able to procure sup- 
 plies from the vegetable kingdom which were denied to those 
 
 ' " The TJyntje, called Monakaladi in Sesutu, is one of their principal 
 means of subsistence ; it is abundant in the Free State, the Interior, 
 and in Basutoland, and in fact this little bulb is found in the whole of 
 South Africa. They eat it any way, either raw, roasted under the ashes, 
 or ground, or rather it is crushed on a stone ; when crushed it is dried, 
 in which state it will keep a long time." " The Sekeng-keng in Sesutu is 
 a fat plant that grows on the hills and in very dry places, they also eat 
 it raw. The black tribes use this plant also to improve their snuff, by 
 mixing a little of its ashes with the snuff." — Notes by C. S. Orpen, 
 Memoir on Bushmen, by Miss L. E. Lemue. 
 
56 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 living on the great central plains. To the travellers Chapman 
 and Baines we are indebted for whatever description of them we 
 possess. The first noticed is a tree with heart-shaped leaves 
 called Toa by the Bushmen, Onganga by the Ovambo, and 
 Mafura by the Bachoana. Its wood is used principally by the 
 natives for making wooden vessels, troughs, etc., and combines 
 softness with closeness of grain and durability. All the natives 
 make a strong intoxicating drink out of its fruit, which is very 
 like a lime in appearance, of a pleasant acid taste, thick rind like 
 the lime, and with a large nut inside. The elephants are very 
 fond of it. The trunk of the tree is generally several feet thick 
 and straight for about twenty or thirty feet, when it branches out 
 into a beautiful crown. 
 
 The Baobab, Adansonia digitata, is another tree connected 
 with the Bushmen of the interior. Its Bushman name is 'Bo, it 
 is called Moana by the Bachoana and Makololo tribes, and 
 Boana or Boyana by those of the Makalaka and Batonga. Its 
 fruit hangs attached to a strong stem, and has a woody gourd-like 
 capsule, sometimes from ten to twelve, but generally about six 
 inches in length, and from three to four thick. In this capsule 
 numerous kidney-shaped seeds are imbedded between fibrous 
 divisions in a white pulpy acid substance, somewhat resembling 
 cream of tartar in taste. The Bushmen convert the fibrous bark 
 into a kind of matting, which is sometimes used in lieu of a blan- 
 ket or a kaross. They look as if made of a material like coir. 
 Bags, ropes, etc., are also made of it, but the wood, being soft 
 and spongy, is useless, excepting as tinder when in a state of 
 decay. 
 
 In the decayed hollows of the uppermost branches bees build 
 their nests in fancied security from the ravages of the Bushmen, 
 who nevertheless scale its castle-like walls by means of two rows 
 of pegs driven deep into the bark to serve as a ladder. ^ From the 
 pulp of the fruit a very pleasant and wholesome drink may be 
 made with boiling water, in cases of fever, especially with the 
 addition of a Httle honey or sugar. The Bushmen made a kind 
 
 iThe writer has seen places where the Bushmen, by a similar method, 
 have climbed the face of a dizzy precipice where even a baboon could not 
 have obtained a footing, to secure the much coveted honey of a bees' nest. 
 The pegs were still in the face of the precipicej 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 57 
 
 of porridge by boiling it, which was however very acid. The 
 fruit ripens when the leaves have fallen, generally in March and 
 April. The difficulty of throwing them down with sticks and 
 stones ensures a pretty constant supply throughout the winter 
 season. Chapman found in some of these trees large excava- 
 tions made by the Bushmen, in which ten or twelve men could 
 sleep, with a fire in their midst. In others large caverns were 
 discovered, the resort of numerous owls and bats. 
 
 Another fruit of great value to the Bushmen of this part of 
 Africa was a species of Anona, which these people called Bododo. 
 It was found by Chapman, in 1854, in the Kalahari, near the 
 Chobe It is a perennial, thriving in moist sandy places, such 
 as old river-beds ^ and hollows. It is from fifteen to eighteen 
 inches high, and grows in beds and clusters. The leaves are 
 oblong, alternate, and one inch apart, their upper sides smooth 
 and glossy, and their lower strongly reticulated. The fruit is 
 divided into sections, each of which encloses a brown seed, in 
 shape like that of the castor-oil plant, but larger. The fruit 
 hangs downward by a short stem, under the leaves. It emits a 
 very sweet odour when ripe, by which it may be easily traced in 
 the field. Mr. Chapman states that it was the most luscious 
 fruit he ever tasted, and that when ripe it is of a pine-apple 
 colour. In its green state it is used as a vegetable. In favour- 
 able seasons the Bushmen gathered large quantities, and became 
 fat upon it, but it is almost too luscious for a white palate. Some 
 seasons, however, it does not bear at all. The Bushmen of the 
 Kalahari frequently obtained for two or three months together 
 their water supply from the wild water-melon (Cucumis caffer) 
 found so plentifully in the desert at certain seasons. Making a 
 hole in one side of the melon, they pound up its contents, the 
 rind forming a natural mortar, and then drink the water thus 
 obtained. 
 
 The Bushmen of the 'Gariep, or Great river, make use of a 
 species of Stipelia, which they call 'Guaba. The writer found 
 this growing on the rocky ridges of the great southern bend of 
 this river. It is eaten both by the Bushmen and the Dutch 
 hunters to assuage their thirst. It has a sweetish taste, somewhat 
 1 The old dry river beds found in the Kalahari region are called 'Dums 
 by the Bushmen, Omaramba by the Damaras, and Malopo by the Bacho- 
 ana. 
 
58 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 approaching licorice, mingled with a permanent bitter which 
 clings to the palate for a long time after it has been eaten. The 
 Bushmen assert that it acts as a tonic, both strengthening them 
 and increasing their powers of endurance. 
 
 Besides these things, 'some of the Bushman tribes collected 
 considerable quantities of grass-seeds, which were pounded, 
 boiled, and eaten like grain. It would appear that the practice 
 of collecting these seeds for winter store was almost universal 
 before the peace of the country was destroyed by the irruption of 
 the stronger races into itj Several of their mortars, hollowed 
 out of the solid rock, and which are worked out in perfect shape 
 and smoothed and finished inside with a care which is surprising 
 when we know that the only chisel at their disposal was a chipped 
 and sharpened piece of lydite, are still found near several of the 
 old caves in the Free State, and which were used in the prepara- 
 tion of this kind of food. It was doubtless the use of grass-seeds 
 as an article of food which induced some of the earlier races of 
 men to attempt its growth to increase the quantity of their winter 
 food, a practice which formed the germ whence by slow degrees 
 and step by step the knowledge of cultivating the soil was gained, 
 and from which the science of agriculture ultimately sprangj 
 
 The most abundant supplies of insect food were derived from. 
 the innumerable ant-hills found in the country, and in the early 
 days the almost periodical visits of vast swarms of locusts. The 
 arrival of the latter was hailed by the Bushmen as a glorious time 
 of harvest, as they were esteemed excellent and nourishing food. 
 Immense numbers of them were caught, deprived of their legs 
 and wings, dried in the fire, and then either ground with a maal- 
 klip, that is a flat stone, or one which has been slightly hollowed 
 in the centre, upon which the dried locusts were reduced to 
 powder by means of a smaller round one worked with both hands, 
 or pounded in one of the mortars which have been described as 
 hollowed out of the solid rock and used in the preparation of 
 grass-seeds. 
 
 The finest specimen of one of these mortars which the writer 
 met with, he discovered hollowed out of a large boulder in front 
 of a cave in the Koesberg. It was six inches in diameter and 
 eight in depth, of excellent shape, and perfectly smooth inside. 
 The labour required to have made this with the rude stone im- 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 59 
 
 plements they possessed must have been immense. Unfortun- 
 ately the boulder was too large to be removed, and doubtless 
 remains in the same position until the present day. 
 
 The locust-powder' was stored in a dry place, in skin sacks, 
 and kept for future use, when it was made into a kind of por- 
 ridge, and also, when mixed with honey, into a sort of cake, 
 which was said by those who have tasted it to have been far 
 from unpalatable. The nutritious properties of this food were 
 proved by the fact that during the locust season the Bushmen 
 increased in flesh, and became rotund and well-conditioned. 
 
 The Bushman-rice, as it was termed by the Dutch, or chry- 
 salides of white ants obtained from the ants' nests, was merely 
 gathered in such quantities as sufficed for daily use. This 
 Bushman rice was called 'Kasu by the Bushmen themselves. 
 To obtain a supply, the nest was opened with a digging stick , 
 called 'Ktbi. The " eggs " were then taken out and placed 
 upon a small grass mat, made expressly for the purpose, and 
 which was used as a sieve. The " eggs " were then properly 
 sorted, and placed in a small grass basket or skin bag, and the 
 process was continued until a sufficient quantity was obtained. 
 They were then taken to the cave or camp, when they were 
 placed on the fire, on a flat stone with a little fat, and roasted 
 until they were brown, when they were considered fit for use. 
 
 Among the reptiles most esteemed as food were the great 
 frog and the iguana, both of which are said by epicures to possess 
 a most delicate and chicken-like flavour. The enormous frog 
 (Pycicephalus adspersus) (Dr. Smith), called the brul-pad, or 
 bellowing toad, from the noise it makes resembling the bellow 
 of a bull, by the Dutch, and matlameto by the Bakuena, is 
 supposed by the natives to fall from the thunder-clouds, on 
 account of their sudden appearance during rain, as frequently 
 when the rain is falling a sudden chorus is raised on all sides, 
 which seems to strengthen the belief. The Bushmen, how- 
 ever, found out that in times of drought it makes a hole at the 
 
 ' The method of baking the locusts was by hollowing out and heating 
 beforehand a deserted anthill. They were poured into this primitive oven 
 through a hole at the top, and when sufficiently dried, which was in a short 
 time, were raked out through another at the bottom. — Memoir of Miss 
 L. E. Lemvie, C. S. Orpen's Notes. 
 
6o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 root of certain bushes. And as it seldom quits its hiding-place, 
 a large variety of spider takes advantage of the hole, and makes 
 its web across the orifice, and thus it is discovered by them. 
 
 Savage as they were deemed to be, they had several modes of 
 cooking, viz :— boihng, roasting or broiling, and baking. The 
 last, as we have seen, was sometimes accomphshed by the help 
 of a deserted ant-heap. Meat was sometimes prepared in this 
 manner ; but the chmax of Bushman cookery was reached in 
 the mode they adopted in preparing the foot of the elephant or 
 hippopotamus, a delicacy supposed to be the portion of their 
 great chiefs. After an elephant or hippopotamus had been 
 kiUed or captured, the tribe gave itself up to feasting and fes- 
 tivity. A hole was dug in the ground, in which a large fire was 
 made. When it was thoroughly heated, and the coals and 
 ashes were raked out, the great foot of the animal was placed 
 in the centre, and it was then covered in with the ashes which 
 had been abstracted. In this position it was allowed to remain 
 until the following morning, when, according to the testimony 
 of old hunters, these wild men produced a dish fit for an em- 
 peror ! 
 
 They obtained fire by using fire-sticks. The Bushmen 
 employed several kinds of wood in making them ; one was a 
 small thorny bush abundant in some parts of South Africa, and 
 called Mosukutsoane by the Basutu, another that of the wild 
 fig, and a third that sometimes called Melkbosch by the Dutch, 
 a species of Asclepias, the " wild cotton " of the Settlers. Two 
 small pieces of one or other of these woods were taken ; the one 
 was round, and pointed at one end, the otherhad been flattened, 
 with a small rounded hollow in the centre of it, into which the 
 pointed end of the former was introduced as in a loose socket, 
 which by being rubbed briskly between the palms of the hands 
 was made to revolve rapidly. In a few seconds, under their 
 skilful manipulation, fire would make its appearance. A small 
 groove was cut from the socket in the lower piece to allow the 
 ignited particles to escape. 
 
 Mr. Octavius Bowker, who has frequently in his hunting 
 expeditions been accompanied by some of these wild huntsmen, 
 has assured the writer that he has been perfectly astonished at 
 the readiness and rapidity with which he has seen them obtain 
 
HABITS OF THE BUSHMEN 6i 
 
 fire to cook any game that may have fallen in the chase. On 
 one sjjecial occasion, during a halt, one of his Bushmen attend- 
 ants imdertook to broil some steaks for him from an eland that 
 had been shot. His volunteer cook first collected a quantity 
 of dry wildebeest dung, and with a sharp stick dug up a number 
 of grass roots ; these he placed in a smaU circle, putting the 
 meat in the centre. He produced his fire-sticks, and with a few 
 rapid whirls obtained the necessary fire to set the whole in a 
 blaze, and in a short time produced as savoury a repast as any 
 genuine hunter could desire ; and this, he assured his master, 
 was the method of cooking game adopted by his countrymen. 
 
Chapter IV 
 
 WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF THE BUSHMEN 
 
 Having thus obtained a slight insight into their means of sub- 
 sistence, we will now proceed to make some inquiry with regard 
 to their Weapons and Poisons. 
 
 In entering upon this portion of our subject we find our- 
 selves confronted with the important and interesting fact that 
 the Bushmen were not only cave-dwellers, but also the manu- 
 facturers of the stone implements which are found scattered 
 all over the surface of the country ; and, moreover, it is equally 
 certain that implements of this kind were still manufactured 
 and used by some of their more isolated clans until within as 
 recent a period as the last fifteen or twenty years. This circum- 
 stance was so well known that when any of these implements 
 have been presented to old Koranas or Bachoana, with an 
 inquiry as to what they were intended for, they have invariably 
 answered, " They are Bushman knives ! " 
 
 Some have questioned the authenticity of these stone relics 
 of South Africa, asserting somewhat emphatically that the 
 whole of them were merely natural exfoliations from the parent 
 rock. It is quite possible that exfoliations of this kind might 
 have first taught primitive man the benefit to be derived from 
 a sharp-edged tool, and that he subsequently learnt the method 
 of striking them off himself when no others were to be found, 
 and, finally, of improving the efficiency of their edges by chip- 
 ping and grinding them, varying their shapes according to the 
 uses for which they were intended. The proofs, however, of 
 their having been shaped by human hands are too overwhelm- 
 ing to be gainsaid. The writer has found them in all parts of 
 South Africa which he has visited. Numerous chipping places 
 are to be found where the flakes are scattered round, and the 
 cores lying amongst them. He has seen these places near the 
 
 62 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 63 
 
 banks of rivers, on the tops of kopjes, whence an extensive view 
 of the country could be obtained, and especially near their 
 caves, where among the refuse belonging to the larger ones 
 immense numbers are still frequently to be found. 
 
 The favourite rock for making them was Lydite, although 
 any other hard rock was frequently employed. These materials 
 must in most cases have been brought from long distances, as 
 no similar rocks Could be found for many miles. Arrow-tips 
 and small drills were generally formed of flint, agate, or chalce- 
 dony, which in many instances could only have been obtained 
 from distant tribes. As an illustration of this, the following 
 were the results of the examination of a small Bushman cave 
 in the kloof near the native location at Smithfield, which had 
 evidently been only an occasional residence of an insignificant 
 family or clan. The rocks of the surrounding country are com- 
 posed exclusively of those of what are termed the Karoo or 
 Lacustrine formation, with igneous dykes protruding through 
 them, while the micaceous-sandstone, schistose and jaspideous 
 rocks here spoken of are only to be found among the older forma- 
 tions which formed its ancient coast-line or boundary, the 
 nearest known point of which must be at least some one hundred 
 and fifty to two hundred miles from Smithfield. The agates, 
 chalcedony, etc., could have been obtained from the Vaal, the 
 Orange, or Caledon rivers. 
 
 The examination of this cave was made through the ener- 
 getic aid of Mr. Charles Sirr Orpen, who pointed it out to the 
 writer and accompanied him to it, taking with him a man and 
 the necessary implements for a vigorous search. The floor of 
 the cave was then gradually cleared out, and the soil and refuse 
 ashes thus obtained carefully sifted and sorted, with the follow- 
 ing interesting results. They were found to comprise from the 
 animal kingdom fragments of bone, pieces of ostrich eggshells, 
 and fresh-water shells ; from the mineral numerous stone imple- 
 ments and chips, together with some relics of native manu- 
 facture. They were as follows — 
 
 Animal remains, among numerous small fragments of bone :— 
 
 Leg bones, broken fragments, various antelopes ... S 
 
 Small scapula, animal unknown i 
 
 „ clavicle ,, „ .... ... i 
 
64 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Fragments of various small skulls, among which two 
 
 under-maxillary bones of small rodents .... 6 
 
 Teeth, antelope 4 
 
 wild-boar ^ 
 
 — 6 
 
 I rib, antelope ^ 
 
 Fragments of Ostrich Shell : — 
 
 Fragments comparatively recent I2 
 
 „ ancient, slightly damaged I2 
 
 ,, ,, almost fossilized 5 
 
 — 29 
 
 Some of these had evidently been broken up with the in- 
 tention of manufacturing beads. 
 Fresh-water Shells : — 
 
 Fragments probably used as scrapers — 4 
 
 Total of animal remains 53 
 
 Stone Implements, etc. : — 
 
 Knives and drills (Lydite) 8 
 
 Scrapers ,, 12 
 
 „ (Micaceous sandstone) 4 
 
 ,, (Schistose-rock) i 
 
 Chipped agates, drills and scrapers u 
 
 Quartz and chalcedony — chipped fragments .... 13 
 
 Fragments — j aspideous-rock 5 
 
 Total of implements — 54 
 
 Native manufactures, pottery, etc. : — 
 
 Plain pottery, fragments 4 
 
 Pottery, showing bordering edge, one with worked pattern 
 
 upon it 2 
 
 — 6 
 
 Bone shaft of arrow, fragment made of ostrich leg bone . i 
 
 Stem of clay-pipe, fragment i 
 
 Found in upper surface : — 
 
 Fragment of iron shaft of assagai much corroded . . i 
 
 — 3 9 
 This was the only indication of metal discovered. 
 
 One small fragment of fossil reptiUan-bone, derived from 
 
 karoo-formation ' 
 
 Total of contents of cave ii7 
 
 The interesting results afforded by the above examination 
 of such a small cave clearly indicate the important discoveries 
 which might be made could time and leisure be obtained to sift 
 the accumulations on the floors of the greater caves which have 
 been inhabited for many generations by some of the large tribes. 
 Besides the writer's own personal and somewhat extended 
 experience, the following extracts will tend to show the wide 
 field which still remains unexplored : " The presence of many 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 65 
 
 chips of implements, and a coarse kind of pottery, in some of 
 the Stormberg caves," says a writer in the Cafe Monthly Maga- 
 zine, " leads us to hope that explorers may yet bring to light as 
 startling facts from discoveries to be made there as have been 
 elicited from the thorough search in the haunts of the so- 
 caUed cave-men in England and elsewhere." 
 
 The prevalence of stone weapons in Basutoland and in the 
 neighbourhood of Aliwal North, and also in the caves of the 
 Stormberg range, is referred to in a very interesting communica- 
 tion inserted below from Mr. Alfred Brown, of Aliwal North. 
 Mr. St. Vincent Cripps also discovered during his visit to Basuto- 
 land a collection of arrow-heads and flakes near Stephenson's 
 Drift, Orange River, in the Native Reserve. The implements 
 were Ipng on the undisturbed surface, along the terraced ridges 
 of the river-bank. 
 
 With regard to the ancient mounds and stone implements 
 occurring in the vicinity of Aliwal North, and more especially 
 some parts of Basutoland recently annexed to the Orange Free 
 State, Mr. Alfred Brown writes : " I presume that a short note ^ 
 on these localities will not be unacceptable to the readers of 
 your useful publication, as general conclusions are often affected 
 by a more extended range of observations. About ten miles 
 south of Koesberg, lately Poshuli's country, is an extensive 
 plain, intersected by a valley nearly five miles in length and 
 five hundred yards in width, which is the site of a very interest- 
 ing series of ancient mounds or refuse heaps. The rocks form- 
 ing the sides of the valley consist of coarse gritty and quartzose 
 sandstone. Underneath the terrace band of sandstone, which, 
 in general, considerably overhangs the valley, and affords secure 
 shelter from the weather, are numerous caves, whose floors are 
 covered with the refuse deposits and mounds, varying from 
 two to eight feet in thickness. The mounds are now over- 
 grown with a coarse rough grass, which binds them so firmly 
 together that the rains and rush of water over the ledge of rocks 
 have scarcely any effect upon them. Their uppermost surfaces 
 are strewn with numerous fragments of stone implements, made 
 of materials obtained from rocks which do not exist within 
 many miles of the spot. They are composed of a mass of ashes, 
 1 Article in Cape Monthly Magazine. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 charred wood, fragments of implements, and numerous com- 
 minuted bones ; many of the bones have not only lost a large 
 percentage of their animal matter, but sometimes occur in a 
 subfossil condition." 
 
 Having thus shown some of the evidence which exists upon 
 the connexion between the Bushmen and the stone implements 
 found in the country, the foUowing incident will tend to prove 
 that the knowledge of their manufacture and use stUl exists 
 among some of the Bushmen of the present day. When Mr. F. 
 H. S. Orpen, the Surveyor-General of Griqualand West, was on 
 one of his tours of inspection in the western portion of the pro- 
 vince, accompanied by his son, the latter whilst out shooting 
 with a Bushman after-rider, happened to kill a springbok in the 
 middle of a large plain. When they wished to lighten the buck 
 by disembowelling it and depriving it of its head, it was dis- 
 covered that neither had a knife in his possession. In this 
 dilemma the Bushman said that it was all right, and looking 
 round selected a couple of stones. Giving a smart blow with 
 one piece above one of the angles of the other, he immediately 
 struck off a long flake found to possess a sharp cutting edge; 
 with this he set to work, and in a short time opened the buck, 
 dressed it properly, cut the sinews of the legs, and brought it 
 into a state fit to place behind the saddle. He then threw away 
 the stone implement which had proved so useful. This manu- 
 facture of a stone flake, merely for temporary use, seems to 
 explain the reason why so many of this kind are found thickly 
 strewn over different portions of the old game country. 
 
 The Bushmen, however, manufactured a large number of 
 other implements intended for permanent use, which were 
 formed upon certain patterns, and fashioned with considerable 
 care. These comprised spear-heads (?), rubbers, wood and 
 bone-scrapers, hammers, arrow points, drills, etc. One of their 
 most valued implements was " the poison-stone," made of a 
 smooth flat oval pebble about two and a half inches long, with 
 a deep groove along the centre. This was kept for the purpose 
 of working the poison upon the heads of their arrows, without 
 the necessity of touching it with the fingers. This stone was 
 so highly prized by them that it is said they would never part 
 with it, except with their life. A highly valued implement was 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 67 
 
 a cylinder of sandstone about two and a half inches in diameter 
 and three in length, with about five rather deep longitudinal 
 grooves on its sides. These were intended for forming the 
 round bone shafts of their arrows, and also for rounding the 
 edges of their ostrich eggshell beads. The stone bowls for pipes 
 we have already mentioned. 
 
 Still another valued and important implement was the large 
 round perforated stone used to give weight and impetus to the 
 'Kibi or digging stick, which was said also to have been occa- 
 sionally used as an offensive weapon or a club. The stone itself 
 was called ^T-koe or ^Tikoe,^ signifying " the strong hand," 
 because they were enabled to dig into hard surfaces and make 
 excavations which it would have been impossible for them to 
 have accomphshed without its assistance. It was therefore 
 their veritable strong hand, and thus it was that they achieved 
 labours in excavating such numerous pitfalls in some parts of 
 the country that intelligent travellers have been astonished at 
 these unquestionable proofs which they have given of their 
 untiring industry. 
 
 The rock selected for making these stones was either a fine 
 crystalline igneous one, or a tough close-grained sandstone. 
 They were first, with infinite labour, rounded into the required 
 shape, either a spherical or oblong ball, which varied from three 
 to six, eight, or nine inches in the diameter of their longest axis. 
 The smaller were generally of the former, the larger of the latter 
 shape. The process of making a hole through the centre, or in 
 those of an oblong or egg-shape through the longest axis, must 
 have been a work of much time and patience, and was per- 
 formed with a sharp-pointed piete of! black stone which they 
 called T'wing (Lydite). At first a slight indentation was made 
 at each end of the stone, in which a few drops of water were 
 alternately placed and allowed to stand all night, and the next 
 morning a little more was worked out, when a little more water 
 was placed in the hollow. This process was repeated day after 
 
 1 With regard to this stone, the 'Tikoe, Miss L. E. Lemue writes 
 that it was considered " such a valuable article with the Bushmen, 
 that it was never left behind or thrown away." Notes of Charles S. 
 Orpen. This, therefore, would seem to indicate that when these im- 
 plements are found scattered over the country, their unfortunate owners 
 must either have been suddenly slain, or they must have been acci- 
 dentally lost in their panic and flight from their enemies. 
 
68 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 day, and thus by slow degrees a large hole was at last worked 
 through the hard stone, which was then smoothed, and was fit 
 for use. A strong stick of hard wood, rather more than two feet 
 long, was then procured, which was sharpened at one end, the 
 other pushed through the hole in the stone until it protruded 
 about six inches, when it was firmly wedged in its place. This 
 formed the Bushman's celebrated 'Kibi, or digging stick, upon 
 which he had solely to depend in times of scarcity for a means 
 of subsistence. Its origin, therefore, in aU probability, is one 
 of remote antiquity. 
 
 The flat stones used for roasting the ants' " eggs " were 
 slightly hollowed in the middle, which was formed by chipping 
 out the hollow with another hard stone. Small tortoise-shells 
 were sometimes used as drinking-cups, and the large ones as 
 dishes for their different kinds of porridge, etc. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Stormberg, the Orange {'Nu-Gariep), 
 and Caledon rivers used very short bows, while the tribes north 
 of the Vaal {'Gij 'Gariep) and to the westward used bows of a 
 much longer kind. Any one unaccustomed to the use of weapons 
 of the former description was unable to draw them to their full 
 strength. This was done by holding the bow itself firmly in 
 the left hand, and placing three fingers of the right upon the 
 string, steadying the end of the arrow between the thumb and 
 first finger, then drawing the arrow up to the head. This could 
 not be done with one straight pull, but with three jerky move- 
 ments ; the first drew the string out of line, the second about 
 half the length of the arrow, and the third up to its head, when 
 the missile was immediately freed for flight. This extension 
 gave great impetus to the poisoned shaft, and sent it not only 
 to a considerable distance, but with sufficient force to pierce the 
 thickest hide. A bow, however, thus drawn, when incautiously 
 managed by a novice, was very apt to strip the .flesh from the 
 tips of the fingers of the uninitiated one who ventured to try 
 the experiment. 
 
 The Bushmen used two kinds of arrows, one of which had 
 a very sharp bone point or pile. In making these, or the heads 
 of their fishing harpoons, awls, and other similar bone imple- 
 ments, the bone of the ostrich leg was always preferred to any 
 other, on account of its superior hardness and toughness. These 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 69 
 
 piles were fitted carefully into the end of the reed, which was 
 neatly bound round and strengthened with a narrow band of 
 sinew. The arrows were from fifteen to eighteen inches in 
 length, of which two-thirds were composed of the reed, the other 
 of the pointed bone shaft ; in some cases they were tipped with 
 sharp horn points. The second kind was exactly like the first, 
 with the exception of the head, which originally was made of 
 a triangular chipped piece of flint, agate, chalcedony, etc, fitted 
 into the bone, which instead of having a sharp point was cut 
 off square, into which a groove or notch was cut rather more 
 than the eighth of an inch in depth, into which the triangular 
 head was fitted, and held in its place either with a little tough 
 well-tempered clay or the milky sap of a plant called by the 
 Basutu Setloko. 
 
 About an inch and a half from the head a small piece of 
 quill was so fixed as to act as a barb, and was neatly fastened 
 in its place with a binding of sinew. All this portion of the 
 head was carefully covered with the poison, which had some- 
 thing of the consistency of black wax, and which by firmly 
 adhering to the sinew binding tended also to keep the head in 
 its place. An arrow of this kind, having struck an animal and 
 penetrated beyond the quill barb, would have no chance of 
 falling out ; and even if in the efforts of the animal to escape the 
 reed portion should become separated, the bone part of the 
 shaft with its poisoned head remained behind, rankling in the 
 wound with every motion which it made. 
 
 After the Bushmen came into contact with the stronger 
 races which were acquainted with the use of metals, they 
 adopted small triangular pieces of iron for their arrow points, 
 instead of the more primitive materials used by their fathers ; 
 many of the more isolated clans, however, still retained them 
 to within a few years of the present time. Mr. W. Coates Pal- 
 grave informed the writer that at the time of his first visit among 
 the Bushmen of the lower portion of the 'Gariep or Great river, 
 they used invariably small chips of chalcedony, etc., probably 
 obtained from some of the agate gravels of the river, for making 
 the sharp points of their poisoned arrows ; but that after travellers 
 had passed through their country and scattered a number of old 
 bottles about in various directions, he found when he again 
 
70 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 visited them that they were using chipped pieces of glass m 
 preference, having found that they could give a sharper edge to 
 the new material than to that which they had before employed. 
 
 Mr. Palgrave sent one of the stone-headed arrows to Cape 
 Town. This interesting specimen has been described by the 
 same writer, in the Cape Monthly, as the one previously men- 
 tioned, and as it differs slightly from those which the writer 
 himself personally examined, we cannot do better than compare 
 it with the details of those already given. It came from the 
 northern borders. " The construction of it," says its describer, 
 " is highly interesting as a key to the method of fixing stone 
 arrow tips in the shaft. The workmanship is wonderfully neat 
 and effective. The shaft consists of two lengths of fine reed, 
 between which (for strength and weight) is socketed a bone of 
 three inches in length. The joints are firmly secured by tightly 
 bound strips of the sinews of animals. Into the end of the reed 
 shaft is inserted a small leaf -shaped arrow-head of quartz crystal, 
 the fissure is narrow, and the arrow-head, excepting the very 
 tip and edges, is embedded in a fine cement, apparently clay, 
 and evidently dressed with some poisonous matter. The stone 
 arrow-head is sharp at the edges and the point. A horn barb 
 is spliced on about an inch from the arrow-head. There is a 
 coating of clay along the shaft for about three inches, securing 
 the barb, and giving weight, as well as preventing the splitting 
 of the reed. This constitutes a formidable weapon." 
 
 "It is remarkable," he further writes, " that in my col- 
 lection I have a well-shaped arrow-head, found on the Cape 
 Flats, of the same size and material as the one fixed in this 
 Bushman arrow." The present writer has himself found a 
 considerable number in the vicinity of the different Bushman 
 caves he has visited in the Free State and elsewhere. 
 
 Some of the tribes carried their arrows in a leathern bag 
 slung over the shoulder, but by far the greater number pre- 
 served them in a quiver, sometimes of leather or bark, but when- 
 ever procurable the bark of the Koker-boom, or Quiver-tree, a 
 species of aloe widely spread over South Africa, and called 
 Aloe Dichotoma by Paterson. This was frequently ornamented 
 round the top with a band of snake or iguana skin, and con- 
 tained from sixty to eighty arrows. Besides these they fre- 
 
BUSHMAN QUIVER AND POISONED ARROWS. 
 
 3 
 
 
 — / 
 
 2, 2, 2. — Poison. 
 
 3. 3. 3- — Bone Shaft. 
 
 i_ I. — Quill or Horn Barb, 
 j Showing Joint before 
 I covered with poison. 
 
 5, g, 5.— Reed Shaft. 
 6. — Snake's Skin. 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 71 
 
 quently carried a number in a fillet round their heads, for rapid 
 use as well as to strike their enemies with terror. Some wore 
 them sticking out like rays all around ; others again had eight 
 or ten on each side, so arranged as to represent horns, and others 
 fixed these arrows in such a manner that the ends alternately 
 crossed each other until they formed a kind of ridged roof or 
 helmet over the head of the warrior-huntsman. They were 
 able to shoot one of these arrows to a distance of two hundred 
 paces, and could hit a mark, some with unerring precision, and 
 all with a tolerable degree of certainty, from fifty to a hundred. 
 
 Besides their bows and arrows the Bushmen made use of 
 other weapons in the chase or in war. We have already noticed 
 that the 'Kibi occasionally served as a mace or club ; they also 
 employed small darts, or assagais, which were thrown by the 
 hand. Their construction differed from those belonging to the 
 Kaffir races. They had remarkably short lance-shaped blades, 
 and the heads, before their intercourse with the stronger races 
 who were acquainted with the use of iron, were formed of chipped 
 and sharpened pieces of lydite, etc. They were also poisoned 
 in a similar manner to their arrows. The shafts of these weapons 
 were about three feet long. They were never employed except 
 at short distances, or at close quarters, and when hunting such 
 large animals as the elephant, hippopotamus, etc. 
 
 The force with which an expert hunter could hurl one of 
 these primitive missiles is well illustrated by an incident which 
 Campbell recorded in his first journey into the Interior, when 
 a Bushman showed his dexterity in using even a common stone 
 with fatal effect. A quagga being wounded, but still attempt- 
 ing to escape, this Bushman threw off his skin kaross, ran towards 
 it, and with great exertion threw a stone which sank into its 
 forehead, on which he drew out a knife which had been given to 
 him and stabbed it. 
 
 The Bushmen near Lake Ngami, who are great elephant- 
 hunters, use a strong broad-bladed assagai attached to a thick 
 shaft about five feet in length ; this is not intended for throwing, 
 •but is used as a spear simply for thrusting at close quarters, and 
 is employed by them in their attacks upon the great pachyderm. 
 These blades, being made of iron, are obtained from the neigh- 
 bouring tribes, the chiefs of which claim the tusks of all the 
 
72 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 animals they kill. But long before the southern Bushman 
 tribes had the slightest knowledge of the value, or even the 
 existence of iron, a very large kind of harpoon or spear was used 
 by them for the purpose of hamstringing the larger game, such 
 as the elephant or hippopotamus. The blade or head was 
 made of a sharp stone, generally poisoned, and attached to a 
 long strong shaft. This weapon was evidently the forerunner 
 of the broad-bladed assagai of the Ngami Bushmen of the 
 present day. 
 
 Upon certain occasions some of their clans used shields 
 made of eland's hide, such as are depicted in their own paintings, 
 especially in some of their methods of hunting the lion, when 
 this piece of defensive armour was fastened on their backs, so 
 that should the brute spring upon them, they threw themselves 
 on the ground and drew themselves up under it after the manner 
 of the tortoise, and thus afforded their companions an oppor- 
 tunity of rescuing them. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing, the Bushmen of the 'Nu and 
 'Gij 'Gariep and their tributaries, all of whose streams abounded 
 with fish, made very ingenious harpoons to enable them to 
 capture them. These weapons were made with long, sharp, 
 barbed points of bone. This portion of the harpoon was valued 
 so very highly by the owners that, although the shafts after use 
 might be thrown away, the bone points were always carried with 
 them when they migrated from one spot to another, with the 
 same care as that which they bestowed upon the preservation 
 of the " poison stone " and their " strong hand," the Tikoe of 
 their digging sticks. The shafts were made of the stems of the 
 mountain bamboo, to which a long line made from the back 
 sinews of an antelope was attached. 
 
 Mr. Jan Wessels has assured the writer that he has many 
 times watched the Bushmen using these weapons, and has been 
 astonished at the dexterity and unerring aim with which they 
 struck and landed fish of a considerable size. The use of this 
 weapon must necessarily have been confined to such tribes as 
 lived along the course of the great rivers mentioned and their 
 affluents, and possibly some of those inhabiting the sea coast. 
 Those which were seen and examined were in the possession of 
 Bushmen belonging to the valleys of the 'Nu or 'Gij 'Gariep. 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 73 
 
 Another bone implement much valued by the Bushmen was 
 the awl, made out of a piece of the leg bone of an ostrich, some- 
 times also of ivory, although the former kind appears to have 
 been in more general use. They were about four inches in 
 length, the thickness of a moderately sized porcupine's quill, 
 and tapering gradually towards both ends to a sharp point. A 
 Bushman generally carried two or three of these of different 
 sizes in his velzak, which he used when required after the fashion 
 of a modem cobbler, by first boring the hole and then intro- 
 ducing the thread of sinew, and although this was a slow and 
 tedious process, it was remarkable with what neatness and 
 regularity they were able to place the stitches into the work 
 upon which they were engaged. This was especially seen in 
 some of the caps they manufactured of jackal's skin, very much 
 in the shape of a Turkish fez. 
 
 The stone scrapers were of two kinds, one employed in clean- 
 ing and rounding not only their bows, but also the handles and 
 shafts of their kerries, darts, and harpoons, which was generally 
 a thin and nearly flat flake of stone, with a deep semicircular 
 notch in one side, with a sharp edge, and varying in size accord- 
 ing to the required thickness of the shaft to be manufactured. 
 This was used as a kind of primitive spokeshave. The other 
 was also a tolerably flat, but thicker stone than the last, about 
 two and a half to three inches across the broadest part, and of 
 a rudely circular shape, but such as could be conveniently gripped 
 by its outer edge between the fore-finger and the thumb. It 
 was used in the preparation of their skin mantles and bags, in 
 scraping and clearing away any extraneous matter adhering to 
 the skin under manipulation, which after undergoing a course 
 of scraping, rubbing, and stretching with the hands and tramp- 
 ling with the feet, was at last reduced to the required degree of 
 softness. The skin of the springbok was the one which was 
 preferred in the construction of these mantles. In summer one 
 only was worn, suspended from the shoulders with the head 
 downward, forming a kind of ornamental appendage ; when 
 cold they wore two, one hanging on each side. Their favourite 
 bags for hanging at their waists were made of meer-kat skins. 
 It was in a bag of this description that they carried the lump of 
 deadly poison which they applied to their fatal arrows. 
 
74 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Having thus gained some insight into the description of 
 weapons and implements used by the primitive Bushmen, we 
 will now attempt to make a further advance by taking mto 
 consideration the means they adopted to render these appar- 
 ently rude and, to modern ideas, almost useless weapons efficient 
 and formidable. 
 
 From all the evidence which can be obtained from Korana 
 and other native sources, the Bushman race alone of all the 
 South African tribes used poison to render the effects of their 
 weapons more fatal. We shall discover, as we proceed, that the 
 early Hottentot tribes were ignorant of its use, and did not adopt 
 the practice until after their retreat from the Cape districts, 
 when they came in contact with the Bushman tribes of the valley 
 of the 'Gariep or Great river. The same may be said with 
 regard to the Bachoana and Basutu, whose ancestors were also 
 armed with bows and arrows from a remote period, with the ex- 
 ception that their bows, as might have been expected, were much 
 larger, and frequently more elaborately poUshed and strengthened 
 with strips of sinew bound round different portions of them. The 
 border tribe of the Batlapin, however, was the only known one 
 of their race who made use of poison, a mode of warfare which 
 they adopted to enable them to compete with the Koranas 
 and Bushmen ; but for a long time after doing so they still re- 
 mained ignorant of its mode of preparation, and had to depend 
 solely upon whatever chance supply they could obtain from one 
 or other of these people. 
 
 With regard to the antiquity of the use of the bow among 
 the Basutu tribes, in an ancient Bushman painting in a cave in 
 the Wittebergen of the Orange Free State, which represents a 
 battle scene between the Bushmen and these people, the latter 
 are armed with long bows, exactly similar to those employed by 
 the Bamangwato and Mashoona tribes living between the Lim- 
 popo and Zambesi of the present day. The last-mentioned 
 tribe manufacture the most elaborate iron barbed points for 
 their arrows, the shafts of which are not only fledged with the 
 greatest neatness, but the shaft itself is often etched over with 
 zigzag patterns. Such elaborations in their structure evidently 
 shew that they have been manufactured by experts, and 
 are not the experimental trials of novices, while their bows, as 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 75 
 
 above noticed, are much stronger, longer, and more highly 
 finished. In speaking with some of the old natives of these 
 tribes, the writer has been assured that none of their 
 weapons in the older times were poisoned, and yet the bow 
 and arrow were the weapons of their fathers. 
 
 The origin of the old hunter race poisoning their darts and 
 arrows was doubtless occasioned from the fragile materials of 
 which they were made, and the necessity of rendering the wounds 
 inflicted by their bone and flint-pointed arrows more certainly 
 fatal than it was possible for them to be in the primitive state 
 of their manufacture. 
 
 Witnessing the fatal effects of the bite of many of the 
 venomous snakes which infested the country would, in all proba- 
 bility, be the first thing which suggested to the dawning inven- 
 tive faculties of the human mind the potency of such an applica- 
 tion to their arrows, and which would also at the same time 
 point to the source whence the means could be procured of 
 rendering their weapons equally dangerous ; and experience 
 would ultimately teach them that different poisons, more or 
 less virulent, were required to secure the different kinds of game 
 which they hunted. 
 
 Those of the stronger races using more powerful and for- 
 midable weapons of the same class would not have to resort to 
 the same expedient, but would naturally rely upon the greater 
 penetrative powers of their well-fledged and cruelly double 
 barbed arrows for equally fatal results. That such races may 
 have, at a remote period, fashioned their weapons after the model 
 of still more primitive hunters need not be questioned, as well as 
 that of using at one time or the other poisoned points. At any 
 rate, from aJl the evidence the writer has been able to gather 
 upon the subject, the more advanced Basutu tribes for a length- 
 ened period used bows with unpoisoned arrows, while the Bush- 
 men, on the other hand, employed shafts whose fatal potency 
 was attributable to the virulent poisons with which they were 
 armed. 
 
 The Bushmen of the same locality used different kinds of 
 poison on different occasions, according to the description of 
 game they were hunting. Poisons sufficiently strong to destroy 
 the springbok and smaller kind of antelopes were not equally 
 
76 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 successful with the wildebeest and the quagga ; the lion also 
 required poison of considerable strength, while the buffalo and 
 the ostrich required the most potent of all. Different tribes 
 .used different ingredients and modes of preparation, even with 
 the poisons deemed the most virulent ; thus, according to Living- 
 stone, the Bushmen of the North, Uving at Rapesli and Kama- 
 Kama (Pools of Pools, or Pools of Water) used for their strongest 
 poison the entrails of a caterpillar called 'N'gwa, half an inch 
 long. 
 
 By a lucky accident Mr. Chapman discovered the antidote 
 for this poison. The Bushmen were most unwilling to give any 
 information upon the subject, denying the existence of an anti- 
 dote at all. From the researches of the writer, he is convinced 
 that there were certain secrets among many of the tribes which 
 were not known to every member of them, but which were kept 
 as heirlooms in a certain branch or family, and which gave them 
 a superiority over the rest, thus laying the first foundations of 
 " caste." This seems to have been especially the case, not only 
 in the manipulation and preparation of poisons, and the anti- 
 dotes suited thereto, but even in a more marked manner among 
 those tribes that produced the great artists of their race, the 
 proper mixture and employment of colours was only known to 
 the few, and not to the many. This exclusive knowledge natur- 
 ally gave rise to an amount of reticence on the part of those who 
 were the guardians of these special secrets, that was most difficult 
 to overcome. 
 
 It is not at all unHkely, however, that when one tribe after 
 the other was broken up, and the fugitive members dispersed 
 in all directions, after they were harried and hunted like so many 
 wild beasts by the grasping invaders of their ancient hunting 
 grounds, the knowledge of the composition and preparation of 
 the various poisons employed by them, and so necessary to 
 their preservation, became more widely diffused ; but as far as 
 can be ascertained, in the days of their undisturbed possession 
 this was not so, such secrets being retained exclusively in the 
 famiUes of the ruling chiefs, the knowledge being rigidly with- 
 held from those outside this sacred circle, an illustration that 
 even among the Bushmen the truth of the axiom was recog- 
 nized that " Knowledge is Power." Thus it is that frequently 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 77 
 
 so much difficulty is experienced in obtaining information from 
 this old-world race. Acting up to the traditions of their fathers, 
 they often either profess a profound ignorance, evade the in- 
 quiries, or maintain a mysterious silence. 
 
 However, in discovering the antidote alluded to, Mr. Chapman 
 states that he had asked the question again and again, but 
 could never obtain the desired information, untU one day hap- 
 pening to hear some Bushmen expatiating on the wonderful 
 powers of the white men, especially having with their own eyes 
 seen them consulting the stars by means of a glass, he took the 
 opportunity of a lad's coming in with a collection of insects, 
 among which were the poison grub and beetle, to ask them 
 abruptly, just as if he had known all about it, " What do you 
 call that plant with which you cure the poison of the ^Th-a ? " 
 The Bushmen answered at once " ' Kalahetlue," its Sechuana name, 
 adding, " But who told you about it ? " and concluded with the 
 remark, " These white men are children of God, they know 
 everything ! " In making further inquiries on the subject from 
 different Bushmen, he found they were reserved about this 
 antidote, and as he heard, had even preferred death to divulging 
 the secret ; but although they all professed ignorance of the 
 antidote for the 'Th-a, yet finding that Mr. Chapman knew a 
 great deal about it, these men corroborated everything he had 
 before heard. 
 
 This 'Kalahetlue grows wherever the grub is found. It is 
 a tuber, which he discovered was the favourite food of steenboks 
 and duikers ; the leaves are long, thick, narrow, pulpy, and 
 lanceolate, with a strong indentation down the middle, and in 
 colour a dull green. The mode, however, of appljdng this anti- 
 dote seems still to remain a secret. 
 
 There is, so Mr. Chapman asserts, a creeping tendrilous 
 plant, called " eokam " by the Bushmen, which they consider 
 a specific against snake-bites. It is with the root of this that 
 the Bushmen are said to cure themselves of the most venomous 
 bites. About eight or ten grains, either eaten or taken as a 
 decoction, act as an emetic. The dose is repeated about three 
 times, when the patient is cured. They also tattoo and scarify 
 their bodies, and make an incision near the wound, which they 
 suck with some of the root chewed in their mouths. This is 
 
78 THE BiACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 evidently to prevent the poison from acting upon the gums in 
 case of bleeding. The sucking out of the poison is not neces- 
 sary, but is done by way of precaution. Bushmen having a 
 piece of this root strung among their charms and medicines 
 around their necks " laugh at snake-bites." But still so difficult 
 is it to obtain information from Bushmen with regard to this 
 poison and these antidotes, that Mr. Chapman states it was 
 only after waiting ten years that he succeeded in gaining the 
 knowledge here detailed, and he considered it quite a triumph 
 that he at last succeeded in extracting so much of the secret 
 from them. He believes that to become an expert naturalist 
 one ought to turn Bushman and conquer the language, when 
 one would learn more about the natural history of many things 
 than from books and years of study and experiment. They live 
 and depend for existence on animals and insects, and therefore 
 are obliged to know all about their habits and instincts. 
 
 Another poison used by them was extracted from the 
 Amaryllis distichia (Paterson), which was called " mal gift," or 
 mad poison, by the Dutch and Namaqua Hottentots, from the 
 effects usually produced on the animals which were wounded 
 by the weapons impregnated with it. It was thus prepared : 
 the bulbs were dug up about the time they were putting out 
 their leaves, and cutting them transversely, a thick fluid was 
 extracted, which was kept in the sun until it became quite of 
 the consistence of gum. It was then kept fit for use, and laid 
 on the arrows near the points. This poison was used chiefly for 
 animals which were intended for food. The milk of one species 
 of euphorbia was also used both for their arrows and for poison- 
 ing water. 
 
 The Bushmen of the West used a poisonous insect for one of 
 their most virulent preparations. This was the most horrid^ 
 looking of all the African spiders, commonly called the trap- 
 door spider.^ This appears to have been pounded and mixed 
 with the extract of the amaryllis. 
 
 1 The following anecdote is sufficient to show the venomous character 
 of this spider. Dr. N. Rubidge, F.G.S., was collecting insects near the 
 Van Staade's river, Uitenhage, and after having filled all his boxes, Jound 
 a very rare specimen of a tree frog of a beautiful green colour, and for 
 want of a better receptacle placed the captive in a wide-mouthed pickle- 
 
WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS OF BUSHMEN 79 
 
 The Bushmen of the East (the present Queenstown division 
 and beyond) principally used the venom of snakes, the milk of 
 the euphorbia, and the extract from the poison amaryllis. 
 
 The poisons most relied on by the Bushmen of the 'Nu 'Gariep, 
 the Caledon, and the 'Gij 'Gariep were the venom of snakes, 
 together with scorpions and spiders crushed up, the poison 
 amaryUis, and the milk of a small plant found growing in many 
 parts of the Free State and British Basutoland, called Motlatsisa 
 by the Basutu. So poisonous do some of the natives believe this 
 latter plant to be that they refuse to touch it, lest any of the 
 milk should get upon their fingers. 
 
 These Bushmen adopted the following method in the pre- 
 paration of their poisons. A fiat, smooth, stone was procured, 
 very similar to the one used for roasting the " ants' eggs " ; this 
 was placed on the fire, and the milky juice of the Motlatsisa or 
 of the amaryllis was set upon it. This was then worked up with 
 a wooden spatula imtil it began to attain a certain consistency, 
 when the venom of the snake or other poisonous ingredient was 
 gradually added, and the mixing continued until the whole mass 
 had acquired a dark wax-like appearance, when it was worked 
 up into a lump and reserved for use. The season for making 
 this preparation was during the summer months. It was kept 
 in a little bag until required for use. In employing it a small 
 portion was placed upon a " poison-stone," and the part of the 
 arrow to be anointed pressed upon it and worked round and 
 round until it had acquired the proper shape. It was never 
 touched with the fingers, and great care was taken that none 
 adhered to the hands or nails during these processes. 
 
 bottle. Shortly afterwards he discovered one of these spiders of large 
 size, which he also consigned to the same prison. As soon as the spider 
 reached the bottom, the frog seemed to recoil with horror, and pressed 
 itself close to the side of the bottle. When the spider recovered it turned 
 upon its feUow-captive, darted savagely at it, and gave it two savage bites 
 in quick succession. The frog, although larger than the spider, did not 
 attempt to move. A few seconds after it was seized with trembling, 
 followed by a convulsion, and it expired immediately. 
 
chapter V 
 
 THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING AND FISHING 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Hfe of the wild hunters of old 
 must have been one which would necessarily tend to develop in 
 a very high degree habits of endurance, and of both bodily and 
 mental activity unknown to those whose occupation was con- 
 fined principally to pastoral pursuits. 
 
 taution and strategy, coolness and presence of mind were 
 qualities which must have been steadfastly cultivated through 
 many generations to have enabled a race like the Bushmen to 
 arrive at the degree of excellence which they attained, and 
 which has made their swiftness, their keenness of sight, their 
 ready resource in cases of emergency, the marvel of all those 
 who have taken the trouble to examine these striking traits of 
 their characterj 
 
 In the days of undisturbed occupation by the early Bushmen, 
 the country literally swarmed with game, both large and small. 
 The Bushmen state that in the days of their fathers a number 
 of large animals lived in the country, which afterwards became 
 extinct and disappeared from the face of the earth. Some of 
 these extinct species are still to be found depicted in their caves ; 
 and it is certain that animals still living had a much wider dis- 
 tribution in South Africa than they have been known to have 
 since the advent of Europeans. The gemsbok {Oryx capensis) 
 was once found on the plains drained by the Zwart Kei (t'Nu- 
 t'Kay and 'Neiba), and the giraffe browsed on the trees of the 
 Tsomo and other portions of the lower country ; while pythons 
 must have been abundant along the banks of the rivers. Im- 
 mense herds of buffalo must have frequented the brakes, and 
 thousands of elephants roamed through the forest glades, not 
 only of the coast line, but also in every other portion of the 
 
THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING 8i 
 
 country where a sufficiency of succulent food could be procured ; 
 while the abounding hippopotami laved their broad sides in 
 every deep pool to be found throughout the land. Instead of 
 the deep chasms now found cutting through and draining the 
 water from the plains, the result of excessive sheep-farming, 
 chains of deep zeekoegats, or hippopotamus' pools, occupied 
 their place, and wide spreading beds of reeds not only surrounded 
 them, but frequently linked them together in one unbroken line. 
 Innumerable herds of gnus, quaggas, zebras, ostriches, elands, 
 and various other antelopes were scattered over the plains in 
 countless myriads. This state of things existed in many parts 
 of South Africa up to the middle of last century, and survived 
 to the north of the 'Nu 'Gariep until the exterminating fire- 
 arms of the Griquas and the Dutch were introduced. 
 
 In such a country, and endowed with the activity which it 
 is known they possessed, it is not at all likely that the Bushmen 
 would be the starving miserable people which some have de- 
 lighted to depict them, before the stronger races invaded their 
 hunting-grounds. Their powers of vision were extraordinary. 
 They were able not only to descry, but to describe, objects at a 
 distance, which were almost invisible to Europeans except with 
 the aid of a telescope. This wonderful keenness of sight, the 
 unerring manner in which they could follow upon the trail of 
 either men or animals, gave rise to a tradition among the old 
 Hottentots that there was once a race of men in South Africa 
 who, instead of having eyes in their head, had them placed in 
 their feet, so that it was impossible for any one to escape from 
 their pursuit, on account of their quickness in discovering the 
 trail. 
 
 Every precaution was taken not to alarm the game more than 
 possible, and for this reason the Bushmen as a rule never drank 
 of the water nearest to their cave or kraal. This was on account 
 of the strong odour which they always, from their peculiar habits, 
 carried about with them, and which they would certainly leave 
 behind if they daily frequented the neighbourhood of the foun- 
 tain ; thus the scent would frighten away the game, and tend to 
 lessen their means of subsistence. To prevent this, they dug 
 holes at a distance, from which a supply could be obtained. 
 
 A number of devices and disguises were constantly employed 
 
 G 
 
82 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 by the old hunters to facihtate approach to the objects of their 
 attack, 'when taking the field against the elephant, the hippo- 
 potamus, or rhinoceros, they appeared with the head and hide 
 of a hartebeest over their shoulders, and whilst advancing to- 
 wards their quarry through the long grass, would carefully 
 mimic all the actions of the animal they wished to represent. 
 They appeared again in the spoils of the blesbok, with the head 
 and wings of a vulture, the striped hide of the zebra, or they 
 might be seen stalking in the guise of an ostrich. Sometimes a 
 large tuft of grass like an enormous rayed crown was tied round 
 their heads, and then none but the most practised eye could 
 detect anything besides a slight rustling in the grass as they 
 stealthily moved along^ 
 
 Among the various modes that they adopted in watching 
 game or their enemies, without exposing themselves to view, 
 was to lie on their backs, with their feet towards the object they 
 wished to look at, then throwing the head well backward, they 
 gradually raised it until they could look under their eyelids, 
 just over their cheeks, in such a manner as not to expose the 
 forehead above the line of sight, their nose alone being higher 
 than the level of the rock or grass over which they were peering. 
 Doubtless such a mode of observation would be a difficult opera- 
 tion to any except an adept ; but they from constant practice 
 rendered themselves such proficients that they were able to 
 descry, in this position, objects at a considerable distance with 
 the greatest accuracy. In this position also the foot was some- 
 times used in drawing the bow, whenever they wished to give 
 increased force and impetus to their arrows. 
 
 ^n their paintings we constantly find both huntsmen and 
 warriors using the disguises we have here mentioned. They are 
 shown with the heads and horns of various animals, or else with 
 heads and beaks of different birds ; they evidently prided them-j 
 selves upon the correctness of the representation. These draw- 
 ings would appear to any one not acquainted with the habits 
 and customs of this old hunter race to be intended for symbohc^ 
 or supernatural deities, around which some ancient myth was. 
 embodied. 
 
 As it is quite certain that the custom of representing various 
 deities with the heads and coverings of birds and animals must 
 
/I 
 i 
 I 
 
 .a 
 
 3 
 
 Q S 
 
 '^ I 
 
 o «> 
 
 . 8 
 
 I % 
 
 a: 
 
 U 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING 83 
 
 date back to a very remote antiquity, such a misconception 
 is suggestive that all elaborations of this description had their 
 origin in the fact that among the primitive hunter tribes dis- 
 guises of this kind were constantly usedj and we can easily 
 imagine that in those early days, when all history was mere 
 verbal tradition, that any of their number rendering themselves 
 more famous than their fellows, by their superior strategy, 
 would after they had passed away have their deeds and suc- 
 cessful daring recounted over and over again, and that these 
 would be handed down from generation to generation. Their 
 modes of attack, the disguises they had worn, their appearance 
 and their arms, the great achievements they had accomplished, 
 and the mighty victories they had won, would be again and 
 again recited. 
 
 According to the descriptive powers of the ancient narrator, 
 would the recital of their prowess be more and more elaborated 
 and intensified, until the magnitude of their reported deeds would 
 be considered something more than human, proving, as it would 
 be said, the degeneracy of the men of their race then living. The 
 extraneous disguises that they wore would become identified with 
 their own personality, as indicating some great attributes with 
 which the growing veneration of their descendants invested 
 them, until, in process of time, their human origin would be lost 
 in the obscurity of an almost unknown past, and; only the dei- 
 fied recollections of them would remain. 
 
 Men whose memories were capable of retaining the largest 
 amount of this cherished folk-lore, who could display the greatest 
 energy in its recital, would naturally be looked upon with more 
 admiration by their fellows than others less gifted, while an 
 innate and natural desire to still further arouse the enthusiasm 
 of their auditors would incite their vivid imaginations, at each 
 declamatory repetition, to wilder flights of rude oratory, until 
 the admiration of their hearers grew into awe ; and the narrators, 
 as a necessary sequence, in the course of time were themselves 
 looked upon as men possessed of superior power, denied to their 
 less gifted co-patriots, until they became reverenced as the 
 special keepers of those traditions which were ultimately deemed 
 as possessing some mysterious and sacred authority, thus giving 
 rise to the germ and the development of a priestly caste. 
 
84 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Many, or rather all, the Kaffir tribes, before they came into 
 contact with more civihzed races, thought the spirits of their 
 great chiefs were the paramount power of the universe. They 
 had no ideas of a deity beyond this. 
 
 The Bushman representations of the disguises of their great 
 huntsmen and warriors would seem to point to the true origin 
 of many of the bull, eagle, and other headed divinities, and much 
 of the human element which we find introduced into ancient and 
 modern religions. In this progression from the natural to the 
 supernatural, the Bushmen shew in their paintings the earliest 
 stages of the process of exaltation ; while the sculptured and 
 pictured remains of the ancient Hindus, the Assyrians, and the 
 Egyptians display, among the other creeds, its highest elabora- 
 tion and development. 
 
 When the Bushmen wished to prevent the game from passing 
 a certain line, and yet were not numerous enough to form a 
 cordon along it, they employed the device of planting stout 
 wands about their own height, dressed with ostrich feathers, 
 and a tuft of them fastened to the top. These were planted at 
 short distances from one another along the line they wished to 
 mark out. The game appeared more terrified at sight of these 
 than of the Bushmen themselves, and generally rushed from 
 them in the greatest alarm. Even the lion himself very rarely 
 approached them, but would skulk away whenever possible. 
 In places where the lions were more daring, a strong sharp point 
 ■was made at the end of them, which was rendered still more 
 dangerous by being poisoned ; in later days a small blade of an 
 assagai was fastened and concealed among the feathers, so that 
 when the indignant animal sprang upon it, it was so placed as 
 either to impale him or inflict a deadly wound with its poisoned 
 point. 
 
 In stalking the quagga the Bushmen generally disguised 
 themselves in skins of the ostrich, with a long pliant stick run 
 through the neck to keep the head erect, and which also enabled 
 them to give it its natural movement as they walked along. 
 Most of them were very expert in imitating the actions of the 
 living bird. When they sighted a herd of quaggas which they 
 wished to attack, they did not move directly towards them, but 
 leisurely made a circuit about them, gradually approaching 
 
THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING 85 
 
 nearer and nearer. Whilst doing so the mock bird would appear 
 to feed and pick at the various bushes as it went along, or rub its 
 head ever and anon upon its feathers, now standing to gaze, now 
 moving stealthily towards the game, until at length the appar- 
 ently friendly ostrich appeared, as was its wont in its natural 
 state, to be feeding among them. 
 
 Singling out his victim, the hunter let fly his fatal shaft, and 
 immediately continued feeding ; the wounded animal sprang 
 forward for a short distance, the others made a few startled 
 paces, but seeing nothing to alarm them, and only the apparently 
 friendly ostrich quietly feeding, they also resumed their tran- 
 quillity, thus enabling the dexterous huntsman to mark a second 
 head, if he felt so inclined. 
 
 But as these primitive hunters never wantonly slaughtered 
 for the mere sake of killing the game, hke those who boast a 
 higher degree of civilization, they generally rested satisfied with 
 securing such a sufficiency as would afford a grand feast for 
 themselves and their families, quite content with knowing that 
 as long as the supply lasted their feasting, dancing, and rejoicing 
 would continue also. 
 
 That these huntsmen, as long as the game was comparatively 
 undisturbed, had an abundance of food is proved by the testi- 
 mony of every observant traveller, some of whom have also 
 noticed that the very dogs among the Bushmen were invariably 
 fat and in good condition, whereas among both Kaffirs and 
 Hottentots the dogs were never more than a pack of wretched- 
 looking, half-starved curs. Captain Harris, who travelled 
 through the country with the eye of an intelligent sportsman, 
 is conclusive upon this subject : " In many places," he writes, 
 " the ground was strewn with the blanched skeletons of gnus 
 and other wild animals, which had evidently been slaughtered 
 by Bushmen, and traces of these troglodytes waxed hourly more 
 apparent as the country became more inhabitable. The base of 
 one hill, in particular, in which some of their caves were dis- 
 covered, presented the appearance of a Golgotha ; several hundred 
 gnus and bonteboks' skulls being collected in a single heap." 
 
 As the ostrich was one of the most wary of the inhabitants 
 of the South African plains, the Bushmen adopted several methods 
 of hunting it, but all depending on imitation or strategy. 
 
86 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Somewhat allied to hunting was their searching for bees' 
 nests, and they showed not only their dexterity in the manner 
 of discovering their retreats, but also their daring in securing 
 this much coveted spoil. They would watch for the laden bees 
 as they were returning to their hives towards the evening, at 
 which time they fly straight to their habitations ; and with their 
 keenness of vision the Bushmen would be able to detect the 
 direction which the industrious insects took. This they would 
 follow, still watching for returning bees, until they at last came 
 to the spot where the nest was hidden. Should they pass it in 
 their first attempt, they would soon perceive that the bees were 
 coming from the opposite direction, when they would try back 
 until the place was found. A beehive of this kind in the moun- 
 tains when once discovered became the sacred property of the 
 finder. Woe to the man who carried off the honey from a marked 
 hive, which was usually distinguished by stones heaped up before 
 it as a beacon. There have been instances where such an en- 
 croachment was punished with death. 
 
 They had also a most useful ally and assistant in carrying 
 out this work in the honey-bird — the " Bee-cuckoo " — {Cuculus 
 indicator), of Sparrman, and called " honing wijzer," the honey- 
 guide, by the Hottentots and Dutch. As soon as a Bushman 
 heard its well-known and alluring cry of " cherr, cherr, cherr," 
 he was immediately on the alert, as he knew by experience that 
 the bird was desirous of attracting attention. Finding that it 
 had been successful in doing this, it flew a short distance in 
 front, repeating the cry. As the Bushman followed, it again 
 went a little farther, slowly and by degrees towards the quarter 
 where the swarm of bees had taken up their abode, all the while 
 repeating its cry of " cherr, cherr." The Bushman answered it 
 now and then with a low gentle whistle, to let the bird know 
 that its call was attended to. Approaching the bees' nest, it 
 flew shorter distances, and repeated its note with greater earnest- 
 ness. On arriving at the cleft of the rock, the hollow tree, or 
 cavity in the ground, it hovered over the spot for a few seconds, 
 and then perched in silence on some neighbouring tree or bush, 
 awaiting results. A small piece of comb containing young bees 
 was generally left on the ground as a reward to the bird for its 
 information. Bushmen searching for honey say that the bee- 
 
THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING 87 
 
 hunter must not be too generous at first, but merely give enough 
 to stimulate the bird's appetite, when the shrewd little thing will 
 show a second hive if there be another in the neighbourhood. 
 
 Up to a few years ago, in portions of the country visited by 
 the writer, the miserable remnant of scattered Bushmen who 
 still clung to the land of their fathers returned regularly during 
 the summer to their old haunts, for the purpose of examining 
 and taking as much honey as they required from the swarms of 
 bees which had occupied the same hollows and crevices from 
 time immemorial. On their departure they always left certain 
 private marks by which they could at once detect any attempt 
 that might be made during their absence to pilfer from the hives, 
 which, they considered, had descended from their ancestors to 
 themselves. Some of these krantz-nests, as they are termed, 
 were reached, as before mentioned, by a kind of rude ladder 
 formed of sharpened pegs of hard wood driven into the 
 cracks and crevices in the face of the precipice, and often to 
 a height that none except Bushmen or baboons would ever 
 have dreamt of climbing on such a precarious footing ; but the 
 writer has been assured by those who have witnessed them 
 that they not only ascended without the least hesitation or 
 symptom of fear, but also with a rapidity that was perfectly 
 astonishing. 
 
 The writer has seen the remains of some of these ladders still 
 sticking in the face of the krantz, in positions where, without 
 the evidence of the projecting pegs, it could never have been 
 believed possible for any human being to have scaled and driven 
 in these holdfasts as he ascended to such heights upon such a 
 perilous foothold. In some cases, where even they found it 
 impossible to reach the spot from below, on account of over- 
 hanging rocks, they were frequently let down by their com- 
 panions, with a long leathern thong, from some projecting ledge 
 to the level of the nest below, and here, while dangling in mid- 
 air, they would drive in a line of apparently fragile wooden sup- 
 ports, and thus form a sort of narrow platform, upon which they 
 could either sit or stand whilst they abstracted the honey from 
 the nests. This was transferred to one of their leathern sacks, 
 made of the skin of an antelope which had been flayed without 
 any incision being made along the belly. The bags as they were 
 
88 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 filled were let down by another thong to the foot of the precipice, 
 where another Bushman was in waiting to receive them. 
 
 In 1870 there was still a small platform of this kind to be seen 
 just under a bees' nest in the face of a precipice above the open- 
 ing of Madolo's cave, the Cave of the Python, on the Zwart Kei. 
 This was still visited every year by a small party of Bushmen, 
 who up to that time had sheltered themselves in some of the 
 fastnesses of the Great Kei, in their annual rounds, when they 
 let themselves down in the manner described to secure their 
 harvest of honey. 
 
 One of the disguises very frequently used by the Bushmen, 
 both in attacking an enemy and stalking game, was to bind a 
 large tuft of long grass round their heads with a band, the ends 
 of the grass covering not only their foreheads, but forming a 
 mask for their faces, leaving only apertures through which they 
 could look. In this manner they could gently raise their heads 
 and securely survey from among the tall grass whatever 
 might be approaching, without fear of being discovered when 
 moving from one position to another. They could rapidly 
 wriggle along, with a snake-like movement on the ground, until 
 they again raised their heads to see what progress they were 
 making and the position of the game or their foe. Thus pre- 
 pared, they would with great coolness and daring approach, 
 totally unperceived and unexpected, within a very short distance 
 of their enemies, and there remain watching their movements 
 until a favourable opportunity presented itself of making an 
 attack. 
 
 When it was their intention of attacking under such dis- 
 guises, they generally divided themselves into two parties, one 
 remaining out of sight at a distance until they knew that those 
 advancing under cover of the tufted grass had attained their 
 appointed position. The reserve party would then make their 
 appearance at a considerable distance, and would commence 
 endeavouring to draw their opponents towards the ambuscade, 
 by flying long shots at them. In all probability their enemies,, 
 supposing that the only party of Bushmen attacking was that 
 in front of them, would freely expose themselves in the attempt 
 to drive them off, until on a sudden they found themselves 
 assailed almost at close quarters with sharp flights of poisoned 
 
THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING 89 
 
 arrows, whizzing apparently from what seemed to be merely the 
 long grass around them. 
 
 Although the great plains and many other places were fre- 
 quently so infested with lions, that they were met with hunting 
 about the country in packs of eight and ten together, and it 
 would have been dangerous for others to traverse them, yet the 
 little Bushmen were able to do so with impunity. It has been 
 already pointed out that many of the small clans spent their 
 lives in the midst of these wilds, with no other protection at 
 night than their frail mat-huts, and yet, notwithstanding this, 
 they slept in security, whereas multitudes of fugitives who fled 
 into their country at various times were devoured when attempt- 
 ing to sleep in the same exposed situations. It is said that the 
 safety of the Bushmen depended upon a certain powder, long 
 kept as a most profound secret, which they sprinkled at night 
 upon their camp fires, and to which the lions showed such an 
 antipathy that they would not approach the spot. The writer 
 has been assured that this powder was composed of the spores 
 of a peculiar fungoid plant, which grows exclusively upon the 
 ant-hiUs of the country. 
 
 Daring as the Bushmen were in their attacks upon the lion, 
 they were very cautious in their attacks upon the wild boar (Sus 
 larvatus, Harris). " We would rather attack a lion on the 
 plain," so they informed Sparrman, " than an African wild boar ; 
 for this, though much smaller, comes rushing on a man as swift 
 as an arrow, and, throwing him down, snaps his legs in two and 
 rips up his belly before he can strike it and kill it." The lions, 
 on the contrary, seemed to have a dread of the Bushmen. When 
 the latter discovered evidence that one of these beasts had made 
 a full meal, they followed up his spoor so quietly that his slumbers 
 were not disturbed. One of them then discharged a poisoned 
 arrow at the savage sleeper from a distance of a few feet, while 
 another threw his kaross over the animal's head. The surprise 
 caused the lion to lose his presence of mind, and he bounded 
 away in terror. In a short time the effects of the poison on the 
 lion were terrible, and he was heard moaning in distress, while 
 he bit the trees and ground in his agony and fury. 
 
 In hunting the larger game, such as the hippopotamus, the 
 elephant, and the rhinoceros, three methodsj were employed. 
 
^0 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The first was by attacking them openly with their arrows and 
 <iarts, when 'the animal was assailed on every side until it sank 
 from its wounds, or it was disabled by being hamstrung, the 
 tendons of its legs being severed by one of their large stone- 
 headed harpoons. 
 
 •a second method was catching them in pitfalls, and a third 
 by constructing a trap, which has been called " the harpoon- 
 ■trap." Pitfalls were at one time found along the banks of every 
 stream and around almost every large pool in the country, and 
 in many of the bush paths made by the wild animals^ 
 
 Some of the tribes, where wood was procurable, made long 
 fences, fiUing up the open spaces so that the only passages were 
 those which were occupied by these treacherous traps, others 
 again, where trees were scarce, erected long stone fences for the 
 :same purpose. Some of these were of such great length that 
 after the tribes were broken up and they became a race of fugi- 
 tives, travellers who saw them believed that works which dis- 
 played so much labour and perseverance could have only been 
 accomplished by some pre-Bushman people. In later years the 
 most extensive series of these works were found along the banks 
 <of such rivers as Zak River, Beer's Vley, the 'Nu 'Gariep, Caledon, 
 Gumaap, 'Gij 'Gariep, Kolong, and their tributaries. In 1801, 
 along the valley of the 'Gariep or Great river, pitfalls, with 
 isharp stakes of hard wood in the bottom, and covered with 
 jgrass, were numerous in the neighbourhood of the river. The 
 points of these stakes were frequently poisoned. The spaces 
 between the several holes were obstructed with fences, and thus 
 the deer coming to the river for water, by striving to avoid the 
 fences, fell into the pitfalls. 
 
 At the time of Governor Van Plettenberg's visit to the Bush- 
 man country on the northern frontier. Colonel Gordon, who 
 accompanied him, narrowly escaped with his life, by being pre- 
 cipitated with his horse into one of these small abysses. They 
 •were even to be found in the country which was said by the 
 friends of the Griquas to have been uninhabited when they first 
 took possession. In 1820, at the time of Mr. Campbell's second 
 visit, although the game had then become very scarce owing to 
 the increase of muskets among the Griquas, a number of pitfalls 
 -were yet to be found at Kogelbeen Fontein and other places 
 
THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING 91 
 
 beyond Griquatown, which had been dug by the Bushmen for 
 catching game. These were so spread round the pools that it 
 made it hazardous to approach them in the dark. 
 
 Some of the large pitfalls intended for catching hippopotami 
 were nine feet deep and proportionately large at the top. The 
 labour, therefore, of making a number of such excavations with 
 an implement of so primitive a description as the 'kibi must have 
 been immense. The capture of a hippopotamus was the signal for 
 feasting for the whole tribe, and nothing but gormandizing, 
 dancing, and boisterous revelry continued as long as the supply 
 lasted. 
 
 The exaggerated expressions of triumph employed by some 
 of the Bushmen on returning from a successful hunt, either with 
 their bows or the pitfall, showed the intense and somewhat 
 extravagant joy with which they contemplated such an approach- 
 ing feast, which may have followed after one of their enforced 
 periods of fasting. This feeling was well illustrated in the 
 hyperbolic address made by a successful Bushman on his return 
 to the waggons of the traveller Baines, after making a few success- 
 ful shots. " Behold me ! " he shouted, " the hunter ! Yea, 
 look on me, the killer of elephants and mighty bulls ! Behold 
 me the Big Elephant ! the Lion ! Look on me, ye Damaras and 
 Makalaka ! Admire and confess that I am a great bull-calf ! " 
 
 It was this same feeling which made the Bushmen, before 
 they were driven from their country with such inhuman bar- 
 barity, welcome any party of hunters that came amongst them 
 merely for that purpose. Thus it was when Messrs. Chapman 
 and Baines passed one of their Kalahari villages, that the whole 
 female community ran out after them in all possible stages of 
 dress and undress, joyfully clapping their hands and singing the 
 praises of the " flesh-givers " who had made them thick and 
 sleek. And it was not long before the greater number of them, 
 laden with their household gear, took the road ahead of the 
 hunting party, with the intention of keeping company to the 
 next water. 
 
 Nor did hippopotami and antelopes alone fall into these 
 treacherous pits ; the lion, with all his activity and strength, 
 has been found impaled in them, and even the wary and prudent 
 elephant thus fell into the hands of the Bushmen. These animals 
 
92 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 with their superior sagacity have been known to attempt to 
 assist their unfortunate companion out of his difficulty by aiding 
 him with their trunks, and cases are upon record where they 
 have succeeded in doing so when the animal has been young. 
 
 The third method employed by Bushmen for capturing large 
 game, such as the hippopotamus, was that which has been called 
 the harpoon trap. This ingenious contrivance consisted of a 
 great block of wood, to which a poisoned blade was attached, 
 which was suspended by a line over a bough that hung immedi- 
 ately over one of the foot-paths used by the animals on leaving 
 the water ; the line was brought down and so placed across the 
 path that when the victim struck his foot against it, it set loose 
 the great block immediately above him, which falling with its 
 weight and impetus drove the poisoned barb deep into its flesh. 
 Some of the Bachoana adopted a similar method for entrapping 
 these great brutes, but it is probable that in this, as in so many 
 other methods which they employed in securing game, they 
 have merely imitated the plans of the older race of hunters. 
 
 The Bushmen on some occasions, in order to ensure a supply 
 of food, resorted to the expedient of poisoning the water of some 
 of the drinking places. The substances principally used were 
 the bulbs of the poisonous Amaryllis and branches of the tree 
 Euphorbia, the latter when procurable appearing to be the most 
 powerful. These poisons were also more fatal in their action 
 upon some animals than others. This practice proved an 
 additional danger to travellers who were unacquainted with the 
 circumstance, though the natives generally used the precaution 
 of leading off the water which was to be poisoned to a small 
 drain, covering up the principal fountain. 
 
 The Bushmen had discovered several methods of capturing 
 fish. One of these was that in which the national weapon was 
 employed. The shaft was fastened to a long light line, and was 
 used to strike the smaller sized fish as they came near the surface, 
 when their dexterity in the use of the bow enabled them to ply 
 their arrows with wonderful precision and success. For the 
 larger fish the harpoon, such as we have already described, was 
 used with a certainty of capture which astonished all those who 
 were fortunate enough to witness these piscatory exploits. 
 
 A third, and equally ingenious device, was in the employment 
 
THE BUSHMEN'S METHODS OF HUNTING 93 
 
 of fish-baskets, which have been called by some, as they answered 
 the same purpose, Bushman fishing-nets. They were constructed 
 upon the same principle as the eel-baskets of Europe. They 
 were about six feet long, and from one and a half to two feet in 
 diameter. Their manufacture displayed a wonderful amount 
 of neatness and ingenuity. They were composed of reeds and 
 twigs of the taaibosch, a wood noted for its toughness, placed 
 alternately side by side, so that this alternation of dark and 
 light bars gave the structure a pretty appearance. They were 
 bound together with cord made either of bruised rushes or inner 
 bark of the mimosa. These were placed at intervals in proper 
 positions along the reedy margins of the rivers, and near passages 
 through which at certain seasons of the year the fish passed in 
 great numbers, when ascending the streams before the spawning 
 and rainy season. Similar to the fences so frequently placed 
 between the spaces of the pitfalls, the reeds and rushes were so 
 interlaced as to form a net-work which prevented the fish from 
 passing in any other direction than through the openings left for 
 baskets, to which they were further directed by the erection of 
 small weirs, built of stones, leading to them. The quantity of 
 fish caught in this manner was sometimes very considerable, and 
 added much to the f eastings of the old Bushman race. 
 
 A plan identical with the above appears to have been adopted 
 by the natives living on the banks of the Albert Nyanza. Sir 
 Samuel Baker states that he went to the water side to examine 
 the fishing arrangements, which were on an extensive scale. 
 " For many hundred feet the edges of the floating reeds were 
 arranged to prevent the possibility of a large fish entering the 
 open water adjoining the shore without being trapped. Baskets 
 were fixed at intervals, with guiding fences to their mouths. 
 Each basket was about six feet in diameter, and the mouth about 
 eighteen inches." 
 
 This remarkable identity between the methods adopted by 
 wild tribes so widely separated as the banks of the Albert Nyanza 
 and those of the 'Nu and 'Gij 'Gariep is particularly interesting, 
 and would seem to indicate that, as they are strikingly identical 
 in every detail, the palm of invention must be awarded to the 
 more primitive hunter race, which carried its discovery along 
 with it in its southern migration, and that those farther to the 
 
94 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 north are mere copyists, having possibly acquired their know- 
 ledge from some of the scattered remnants of the rear-guard of 
 the former, who were cut off in their retreat by the intervention 
 of the stronger races. 
 
chapter VI 
 
 SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 
 
 It win be well now to describe the social customs of the Bushmen^ 
 such as may be included under the following heads : — 
 
 1. Marriage, 
 
 2. Games, 
 
 3. Music and Musical Instruments, 
 
 4. Dances, 
 
 5. Burial, heaps of stones, and some of their beliefs. 
 
 I. Marriage. 
 
 From the evidence we can gather upon this subject, it would 
 appear that there was no uniform custom with regard to either 
 marriage or polygamy which governed the Bushman race, but 
 that the different tribes were each ruled by the more or less 
 primitive ideas which they severally entertained. No degrees 
 of relationship appear to have barred unions of this description, 
 except those of parent and child, brother and sister, although 
 it has been declared that among some of the isolated clans evert 
 this restriction did not exist. It is said that owing to the extreme 
 jealousy and passionate disposition of the women, some of the 
 tribes never took more than one wife ; but it is certain that 
 among the greater portion of them a pluraHty of wives was 
 allowed, the number being mainly regulated by the force of 
 circumstances, such as the abundance or otherwise of food, the 
 position and influence of the man, and his power of attaching a 
 number of women to himself. The young men frequently con- 
 tented themselves with one, while few of middle age had less thaa 
 two, a young and an old one. 
 
 The tie could be dissolved whenever the incompatibility of 
 the pair became insupportable, and women sometimes deserted 
 
96 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 their husbands for a more alluring mate, but in such cases 
 vengeance often fell upon the head of the abductor. 
 
 With regard to marriage ceremonies, they were generally no 
 ■other than such as were inevitably necessary and agreeable to 
 nature, viz. the consent of the parties. 
 
 Miss Lemue writes,' " Their marriage is not a bargain, like 
 those which take place among the other native races, but a 
 fight. When the young people have settled it between them- 
 selves, they tell the parents, who fix a day for the marriage. 
 The Bushmen then come from everywhere, and bring as much 
 meat as they can get. The women smear themselves with red 
 clay and put on their beads, when they all eat and are jolly. In 
 the middle of this feast the young man catches hold of his bride ; 
 her relations at once set on him with their ' kibis,' or digging 
 sticks, and beat him on the head and ever5rwhere ; aU the Bush- 
 men then begin to fight together, during which the young fellow 
 must hold his bride fast and receive all the hammering they 
 choose to give him, without letting his treasure escape ; if he can 
 hold out they at length leave him, and he is a married man ; if 
 not, and his charmer escapes from him, he will have to undergo 
 a second ordeal some other time before he can again claim her." 
 
 According to M. Arbousset, adultery was less common amongst 
 the Bushmen with whom he was acquainted than amongst any 
 other natives of the country. It appears certain, however, that 
 all their quarrels which did not originate from trespass upon one 
 another's hunting grounds arose about their women, the greater 
 portion considering it " great fun " to inveigle away one another's 
 wives. 
 
 It is very probable that they were similar to the old Koranas 
 in this respect. The writer has been assured by some of the 
 ancients of the latter people that they did noHbeUeve there was 
 a single Korana woman who had not a favourite lover, besides 
 ber husband. And the strangest feature in the case appeared 
 to be that, although the inamorato was known to all the kraal, 
 the husband was the only one who was kept in profound ignor- 
 ance of his favoured rival. This fact shows the universality of 
 the custom, for as soon as the husband was absent from the kraal, 
 
 1 Notes of Charles S. Orpen ; Memoir of Miss L. E. Lemite, " upon Bush- 
 men." 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 97 
 
 the whole of the community at once resolved themselves into 
 a kind of guard of vigilance to prevent surprise, while the lovers 
 could indulge in their stolen interviews without fear of interrup- 
 tion. Should the husband be seen unexpectedly returning, 
 some met him to attract his attention and delay his progress, 
 while others hastened to warn the faithless pair of the approach- 
 ing danger ; and yet these husbands, who assisted in thus hood- 
 winking one unfortunate and knew every other woman was 
 frail, frequently had the infatuation to believe that their own 
 wives were vestals. Thus it was that, should the amour of the 
 wife be discovered by any unlucky chance, the enraged husband 
 frequently inflicted condign punishment upon her gallant. 
 
 Thus among the wide-spread Bushman tribes different stages 
 in the development of the marriage tie were to be found, from 
 that most primitive form of simply pairing by mutual consent, 
 to an elaborate contest, when on a fixed wedding-day the endur- 
 ance and sincerity of the bridegroom were tested to the utter- 
 most ; while we must at the same time be struck with the 
 consideration which these so-called untamable savages evinced 
 towards the widows found in their community. No piece of 
 game was ever eaten without their receiving a share. 
 
 2. Games. 
 
 At one time, in the days of their prosperity, the Bushmen 
 had many games, in which they indulged in their leisure hours 
 to diversify the dance. Some of these pastimes were intended 
 for the da3d:ime, others again were set apart for the evening. 
 Most of them, however, are now lost, although there are still 
 enough rescued from oblivion to show that they might be divided 
 into three classes, of which the following may be given as illustra- 
 tive specimens : — 
 
 I. The 'Nadro, or disguise. They appeared to have had 
 an almost passionate fondness for dressing themselves up in 
 masquerading fashion, in the guise of some animal or other, so 
 that it was not only in hunting and war that they simulated the 
 wild animals by which they were surrounded, but even in their 
 amusements, their games, and dances. 
 
 One of the latter kind, the most popular and frequently 
 
98 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 resorted to, was that in which the older women of the horde 
 indulged, and which was specially called 'Nadro. They dis- 
 guised themselves by fastening the head and horns of some wild 
 animal upon their own, and so painting and enveloping the rest 
 of their body in the hide of the beast, that they looked more like 
 some wild or supernatural monster than a human being. Figures 
 of this kind were frequently represented in their paintings, which 
 have led some to imagine that they were representations of 
 supernatural personages who shadowed forth an ancient tribal 
 myth. That such may have been the case with some of them 
 is undoubted, but it is equally certain that the old Bushmen 
 who inhabited the rock-shelters containing the cave-paintings 
 in question have been unanimous in asserting that it was the 
 'Nadro alone which was there represented. The painting was 
 originally intended to be a matter-of-fact delineation of the 
 leading figure in a game, to which some m5rthological interpreta- 
 tion has afterwards been given. 
 
 This particular disguise was generally adopted in the evening, 
 when one so dressed and carrying a small stick with which to 
 make a rattling noise, would suddenly and unexpectedly come 
 upon the assembled group of the horde, which always had the 
 effect of startling the yoimger people, while even the old members 
 would in the first impulse of the moment get out of the way of 
 the rather unearthly looking apparition with no small degree of 
 trepidation. As the alarm subsided, it was succeeded by bursts 
 of merriment at the consternation and confusion which had been 
 occasioned. They also disguised themselves in the same manner 
 in some of their grand masquerade dances, when each impersonated 
 some different animal and acted his or her part accordingly. 
 
 II. Other games were such as required both skill and presence 
 of mind, and were generally, if not exclusively, manly games. 
 One of these might be termed the training game, although only 
 experts would dare to join in it. All who have witnessed the 
 Bushmen use their apparently fragile weapons have expressed 
 astonishment at the dexterity with which they handle them, as 
 well as the certainty of their aim and the rapidity with which 
 one arrow is sped after the other.- They were not only true in 
 their aim, but they were equally dexterous in avoiding any 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 99 
 
 hostile shafts that were launched at them. The game in question 
 would therefore seem to be intended as a necessary training to 
 enable these warrior-huntsmen to attain the desired degree of 
 proficiency in this latter particular. 
 
 Two Bushmen, each with a certain number of arrows, would 
 take up a standing, sitting, or l5dng position opposite to one 
 another, and then at a given signal let fly at one another, one 
 after the other, with as great rapidity as possible, each with 
 equal rapidity trying to avoid the shafts of his opponent. Some- 
 times the arrows were arranged in a row before them, or, as worn 
 in war or hunting, in a fillet bound round the head. The younger 
 and more inexperienced were matched one against the other, 
 whilst the oldest and most proficient members of the tribe would 
 try their skill upon one another. 
 
 When we consider that this game was played, not like some 
 modem tournaments with half severed and mock lances, but 
 with genuine poisoned arrows, we may form some idea of the 
 peril which accompanied it. Every Bushman engaging in it was 
 furnished not only with his bow and arrows, but also a kind of 
 small horn bottle slung at his belt, in which he carried a powerful 
 remedy against any unfortunate wound he might receive in the 
 friendly encoimter. 
 
 During the trial of the younger ones, one or other was 
 occasionally struck by an arrow, when some of the antidote was 
 immediately swallowed. An accident of this kind never occurred 
 when the more experienced Bushmen encountered one another. 
 Sometimes they sat upon the ground opposite to each other, and 
 then with the greatest coolness a simple inclination of the head, 
 or a rapid twist of the body, enabled them to avoid the well 
 aimed shaft launched against them, and which in all probability 
 passed within an inch or two of their bodies. At other times 
 they were ever on the move, now springing on this side, now on 
 the other, now prostrate on the ground, now leaping from it on 
 aU-fours with extended arms and legs high into the air, with aU 
 the agility of an excited baboon that would avoid the unpleasant 
 missiles that are thrown at it. 
 
 This was a favourite game among them, and from being 
 looked upon as a proof of vigorous manhood, was frequently 
 depicted by their artists among their cave paintings. 
 
100 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 in. A third class of games also showed skill, but in these it 
 was accompanied with a certain amomit of legerdemain. One 
 of these became so universally popular that it has been adopted 
 and perpetuated among other tribes, by whom it is known as 
 Bushman cards. 
 
 Sparrman saw them playing this game about 1775 in the 
 Zuurveld, and the writer during the time he was engaged in the 
 geological survey of the Orange Free State in 1877-8 saw some 
 of his attendants amusing themselves round their evening camp- 
 fires with the identical pastime. Sparrman calls it a peculiar 
 game, which was played not only by these people but the Hotten- 
 tots also. " Two or four sit on their hams, facing each other. 
 The game always appears to be played with ardour, and seems 
 to consist of an incessant motion of the arms upwards, down- 
 wards, and across each other's arms, without seeming (at least 
 on purpose) to touch one another ; they appear in certain 
 circumstances mutually to get the advantage over each other, 
 as each of them at times would hold a little peg between his 
 forefinger and thumb, at which they would burst out into 
 laughter, and on being asked the reason said they lost and won 
 by turns. One grew weary after playing two hours, others kept 
 • on the sport from evening untU break of day, during the whole 
 time continually pronouncing, or rather singing, the following 
 words, ^Hei pruah pr'hari'ka, 'hei fruah fhei, 'hei pruah 'ha. 
 Of the words they did not know the meaning, but said that 
 some of their tribe, together with the game, had learnt them from 
 the tribes a great way to the north." ^ 
 
 M. Arbousset, who saw some Basutus playing this game in 
 1836, gives the following explanation. " Two or three people 
 sit side by side or opposite each other, one of them picks up a 
 stone, or small piece of wood, all move their arms about in an 
 excited manner, the one with the small piece of wood passing 
 it with as much rapidity as possible from one hand to the other, ' 
 so as to bewilder the other players, and then presents his clenched 
 hands to his companions to guess where the wood is. If the 
 guesser is mistaken, the holder of the wood exclaims triumphantly, 
 
 1 A game very similar to Bushman Cards appears to have been played 
 by the ancient Egyptians ; and is represented in paintings, a copy of 
 which will be found in Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's Egyptians, p. 17. 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN loi 
 
 ' Ua ya incha, kia ya khomo,' in a kind of song or cadence, 
 meaning, ' You eat the dog, I eat the beef.' In the opposite 
 case, the player declares himself vanquished, when the guesser 
 touches the hand ^containing the wood, sajdng ' Kia ya incha, 
 ua ya khomo,' ' I eat^ the dog, you eat the beef,' and delivers 
 the wood to his companion to do the same. The players 
 will sometimes keep up this game for hours at their evening 
 fires." 
 
 It wiU be observed that the rhythm of the iwo sentences given 
 by Sparrman and Arbousset is very similar, great stress being 
 laid upon the penultimate syllable ; and it is highly probable 
 that the meaning of both is very much ahke. That heard by 
 Sparrman was probably a corruption of the language of the 
 northern Bushmen, of which the players, although they had 
 retained the cadence, did not know the meaning. This would 
 be a case exactly similar to that which came under the writer's 
 own observation. Among his attendants he had a tame Bush- 
 man, who had never learnt the language of his fathers, and a 
 Motaung. These two would play at this game for hours almost 
 every evening ; they used two sentences, which sounded like . 
 corrupted Bushman. The rhythm was exactly similar to that 
 given by M. Arbousset, whUe the cadence might be rendered by 
 the following notes : — 
 
 D. C. ad lib. 
 
 _ . / ^ f p 
 
 i 
 
 - ^ d w- 
 
 "^^ ' ' ' ;^=E^= H->P^ =^E^^ 
 
 When asked the meaning of the words they used, both said 
 they could not tell, but it was said they were Bushman. As a 
 pleasing coincidence, whilst in the conquered territory of the 
 Orange Free State, the writer found in two widely separated 
 caves pictorial representations of two groups of Bushmen playing 
 this very game. The action of the arms and position of their 
 bodies were unmistakable ; so strikingly natural were they that 
 upon the Bush-boy first seeing them he exclaimed at once, " Oh ! 
 sir, here they are playing at Bushman cards." Both paintings 
 were very old, and had certainly been done before the Basutu 
 
102 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 occupation of that portion of the country, thus giving an un- 
 expected confirmation of the Bushman origin of the game/ 
 
 3. Music and Musical Instruments. 
 The Bushmen in their undisturbed state might have been 
 termed the most musical people in South Africa, as in both the 
 -^ number of their tunes for dances and the variety of their musical 
 y^ instruments they were unsurpassed by any other native races. 
 (J It seems certain that the Coast Kaffirs were totally Xinacquainted 
 with any kind of instrument whatever except those which were 
 ^ of undoubted Bushman origin, and it is a question whether 
 ^ most of those in use by the Bachoana and Basutu tribes were 
 not derived originally from the same source. Some of them were 
 undoubtedly so. The songs also of these stronger races, which 
 accompanied their dances, showed little variation, and dwelt 
 almost entirely on two or three notes, while the Bushmen, on the 
 contrary, not only had a multitude of dances, but each dance 
 had its own special tune adapted to it, which, although con- 
 fined to five or six notes, were capable of much modification. 
 In fact, in comparison with the other races the Bushmen might ' 
 have been termed passionately fond of music, and from the 
 writer's experience some of their simple refrains had as much 
 effect upon their feelings as our own more perfect and elaborate 
 compositions have upon civilized men. 
 
 This the writer had fortunately an opportunity of witnessing, 
 whilst exhibiting a portfolio of copies of their own cave-paintings | 
 to some old Bush-people. The old man, whose name was 
 'Ko-rin-na (called Danster by the Boers and Basutu), was appar- 
 ently between seventy and eighty years old, while his wife, 
 
 1 Since writing the above, Miss Lucy C. Lloyd has given the following 
 description of a game of skill played by the Bushmen living to the north- 
 east of Damaraland : " It is played with a kind of shuttlecock, i.e. with a 
 short stick with two or three feathers tied to its upper end, and weighted 
 at its lower extremity by a berry or a button attached to it. This is 
 thrown into the air, and beaten with another stick, to keep it up, time 
 after time, much as a shuttlecock should be kept up (in the game of battle- 
 dore and shuttlecock)." Miss Lloyd's Bushman authorities assured her 
 that this is one of the old games played by members of their tribe in theii 
 own land. This discovery is an interesting one, as tending to prove that 
 this popular game of English children is probably one (by being thus 
 known to so primitive a race as the Bushmen) of high antiquity. 
 
I 
 
 s 
 
 8 *. 
 
 *- -I 
 
 O 
 
 i 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 103 
 
 'Kour-'ke, was about ten years younger. The meaning of his 
 name was flat-stone, probably derived from the place of his 
 birth. ^ He originally belonged to the tribe which inhabited the 
 Bushmanberg on the Caledon. When his tribe was attacked 
 and driven thence, he fled to 'Co-ro-ko, the last great Bushman 
 captain of the 'Kou-we, i.e. the Mountain, the present Jammer- 
 berg of the Orange Free State and Basutuland. Here he married 
 'Kou-'ke, who was the niece of the chief 'Co-ro-ko. His father's 
 name was 'Gou-roun-'ko, and his mother's, ^Tuk'rm-ku-kuba. 
 Although all the rest of the 'Kou-we tribe had been annihilated^ 
 he and his wife were stiU clinging to their old haunts and caves 
 in the Mountain, under the protection of a petty Basutu or 
 Bataung captain, named Ramanape, that is the father of 
 Manape. 
 
 The old man stiU retained his bow^ and arrows, together with 
 a number of other Bushman implements. He was very proud to 
 show how he worked with his bone awls, etc. His wife was very 
 intelligent, and was evidently well versed in the folk-lore of her 
 tribe. Unfortunately the time was too short to permit the writer 
 to avail himself of the knowledge she possessed ; and such was 
 the dread of the Boers which animated these unfortunates, that 
 no offer that could be made would induce them to stay even for 
 a short time within the Free State border. 
 
 This interesting old couple expressed their delight continu- 
 ously, as with twinkling eyes they were shown the different copies 
 of their cave-paintings, explaining all they saw, and emphatically 
 terming them " their paintings," " their own paintings," " the 
 paintings of their nation." Coming at length to the copies of 
 some dances, old 'Kou'ke immediately exclaimed, " That, that 
 is a grand dance. It is the 'Ko-'ku-curra ! " " This," she said, 
 " had gone out of fashion when she was a little girl, but used 
 always to be danced in the days of her grandmother's grand- 
 
 * Kwa-ba, alisis Toby, in his evidence (Notes of Charles S. Orpen) says : — 
 " Bushman children are named from the place where they were bom. 
 I have four ; and all are called T'kout-'koo, from BethuUe, the Bushman 
 name of which was T'kout-'koo. The oldest is T'kout-'koo-'tn'goi, or 
 the eldest T'kout-'koo, the second is called Middle T'kout-'koo, and so on. 
 Children were not called after their father, but from some cave, river, 
 bush, or tree where, or near which, they were born." 
 
104 
 
 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 mother. I know it ! I know the song ! " And at once, moving 
 her head and body to the time, commenced the following :— 
 
 WOMBM. 
 
 D.C. ad lib. 
 
 ?=^ 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 'Ke -'ka -'ki - 'koo-'ka 'ta - 'ta 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 'Ke -'ka - 'ki -'koo -'ka 'ta-'ta 
 
 -*- 
 
 ^=3 
 
 Men Um 
 
 Um 
 
 Whilst 'Kouke was singing the upper line, the old man be- 
 came visibly affected, and kept continually touching her arm, 
 saying, " Don't ! Don't ! " She, however, continued, when he 
 again said, almost pitifully, " Don't ! Don't sing those old 
 songs, I can't bear it ! It makes my heart too sad ! " She 
 still persisted, with more animation than before, evidently warm- 
 ing with the recollection of the past, until at length the old man, 
 no longer able to resist the impulse, broke into the refrain shown 
 in the second line. They looked at each other, and were happy, 
 the glahce of the wife seeming to say, " Ah ! I thought you 
 could not withstand that ! " One was not prepared to meet with 
 such a display of genuine feeling as this among people who have 
 been looked upon and treated as such untamably vicious animals 
 as this doomed race are said to be. It was a proof that " all 
 the world's akin," and was certainly a Bushman edition of 
 " John Anderson, my Jo, John." 
 
 Upon looking at another painting which represented a number 
 of Bushmen hunters with their bows in their hands and their 
 arrows filleted around their heads dancing, she said that was a 
 dance for huntsmen, and that it was called the 'Kahoune ; to 
 this she gave the following tune and refrain : — 
 
 Huntsmen. D.C. ad lib. 
 
 w^t 
 
 TJ 
 
 ^r^= 
 
 'Tat 
 
 'ta 
 
 ye ya ye - ya 
 
 'Tat 
 
 'ta 
 
 ye - ya ye - ya 
 
 As an additional proof of the powerful effect which the sight 
 
 representation of their 
 
 of these paintings, together with the 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 105 
 
 dances and the wild music with which 'Kouke accompanied them, 
 old 'Ko-rin-'na, whilst the recital and song was going on, the ice 
 having once been broken, disappeared behind the waggon, and 
 shortly afterwards reappeared with his head arrayed with a 
 perfect coronet of barbed arrows, most artistically arranged, 
 swa3dng at the same time his old grey head, in evident glee, 
 backwards and forwards to the cadence of the tune, as he came 
 towards us, and continued the dance as long as his wife continued 
 singing, sa3dng that " now he was a young man again " ! 
 
 A third dance, she said, was the 'Kou-coo. It was the grand 
 dance of the Bushmen. The dancers were always in full dress 
 of skins cut into various patterns ; they also wore head-dresses 
 and large hollow balls made of dry hide fastened to their upper- 
 arms or shoulders. These hollow instruments contained a number 
 of small pebbles, and were shaken with a sudden jerk in the 
 measured time of the refrain which accompanied the dance ; 
 this she gave as follows : — 
 
 D. C. ad lib. 
 
 jszzjv: 
 
 i 
 
 at±:S: 
 
 'Kou - coo 'Gou-'keng 'ta - ba - 'keng. 'Kou-'coo 'Gou-'keng ta - ba - 'keng 
 
 We have already given the music of the song which accom- 
 panies the playing of the game of Bushman cards, and which 
 evidently proves itself to be of Bushman origin, if we compare 
 it with the foregoing and the monotones in which most of the 
 Kaffir compositions are chanted. 
 
 Having thus gained some little insight into the Bushman's 
 talent for music, we wiU now pass on to the consideration of the 
 instruments which have been found in his possession or repre- 
 sented in his paintings. This is a subject of great interest, as it 
 enables us to learn, from a Bushman point of view, the probable 
 primitive germ of many of the complicated and beautiful instru- 
 ments of a more advanced stage of civilization. 
 
 Among the early races of men, the first attempt at a musical 
 accompaniment was in all probability the regular clapping of hands 
 to the time of the dance or the song. By such sounds its move- 
 ments might be regulated, and the multitude of dancers be brought 
 into uniform action. In their war dances the men danced and 
 
io6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 sang, or rather vociferously chanted, while the women accom- 
 panied them with the clapping of hands, and perchance, similar 
 to some of the present Kaffir tribes with a long, droning, hum- 
 ming undercurrent of a refrain : — 
 
 D.C. ad. Kb. 
 
 i 
 
 s 
 
 ^ *<- 
 
 Urn 
 
 swelling and dying away as the excitement and vehemence 
 increased or diminished. To this, after a time was added, to 
 increase the effect, the beating of sticks in measured time, and 
 still advancing, the beating on shields for the same purpose was 
 introduced, a custom continued among the frontier Kaffirs until 
 a very few years ago, and which may perhaps be still continued 
 in some of the more isolated portions of the country, where the 
 use of the shield has stiU been retained. 
 
 These nomadic warrior-herdsmen, who were far ruder and 
 more warlike than the Bachoana and Basutu clans of the 
 interior, had nothing among the arms they carried — their javelins, 
 clubs and shields — which could suggest to their untutored minds 
 any ideas of harmonious sounds, except the harsh rattle of their 
 weapons upon the piece of dry hide which formed their means 
 of defence ; and hence it was (from all the most reliable evidence 
 which can be gathered bearing upon the subject) that they never 
 had, until after they came in contact with the Bushman race, 
 any knowledge of any other musical accompaniment than the 
 clapping of hands, the beating of kerries and assagais, and the 
 barbarous noise of their sounding shields. 
 
 A hunter race, however, armed with a bow and arrow pos- 
 sessed a considerable advantage over such tribes as these ; and 
 the tinkling sound of his bow-string must have attracted his 
 notice and aroused his attention. He discovered that by striking 
 it with the shaft of his arrow, or a small wand, he could re- 
 produce the pleasant sound a:t will, and, doubtless, by degrees 
 he was led from this to use it as an instrument of music, and thus 
 made an important advance beyond his more primitive accom- 
 paniments of the clapping of hands and the beating of sticks. 
 All these three methods were frequently found depicted in their 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 107 
 
 cave-paintings, and amongst some of the most ancient yet pre- 
 served, Bushmen are represented as beating on their bowstrings 
 while engaged in some of their numerous dances. Such then 
 was doubtless the first musical instrument of the Bushman race, 
 and such, in aU probability, was the original germ which, com- 
 mencing with the dawning ideas of prehistoric man, when the bow- 
 strings of the mammoth hunters gave out the first musical sounds 
 derived from an artificial source that ever fell upon the human 
 ear, ultimately arrived at the perfection of the stringed instru- 
 ments which have since been developed in the world. 
 
 HappUy the Bushmen afford us decisive information upon the 
 early stages of this progressive development. Thus in Madolo's 
 cave, on Lower Zwart Kei, we find a Bushman playing upon a 
 bow to which an additional string has been added, so as to give a 
 double harmony. Again, in another place, a bow is represented 
 with four strings, evidently a primitive harp, being used as a 
 musical instrument to accompany a dance. This may be the 
 reason why, on account of its origin, the harp in ancient times 
 was considered a more fit instrument for the hands of men than 
 of women. Le Vaillant, during his visit to this country in 1781-2 
 met with an instrument among some of these people, which was 
 called a Rabouquin, made of a triangular piece of wood with 
 three strings fastened with pegs, so that they could be tightened 
 at pleasure and which when played were twanged with the fingers. 
 
 A cave, in a deep ravine, forming one of the sources of the 
 Eland's river, on the north-east face of the Malutis, furnishes 
 us with another illustration of the progress of development in 
 stringed instruments. It is the representation of a dance in 
 which a great number of Bushmen are engaged ; the musician 
 sits opposite to the centre of the line of dancers, whose bows have 
 been collected and fixed in the ground before him so that the 
 strings are aU on a level and inclined towards him, upon which 
 he is playing by striking with a bow-stick ; thus we are unex- 
 pectedly presented with the idea of a primitive dulcimer, com- 
 posed of a combination of bows. 
 
 After a time it appears to have been discovered that by press- 
 ing the bow upon something hoUow, the sound of the instrument 
 was improved and increased. The Bushman used a tortoise- 
 shell for his primitive sounding-board. This instrument became 
 
io8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 popular among the intruding tribes, and was called 'Kopo by 
 some of the Coast Kaffirs, and 'To-mo by the Basutu. By them 
 a calabash was substituted instead of the more primitive shell 
 used by the Bushmen. It was played by grasping the bow 
 near the lower end with the left hand, the open mouth of the 
 calabash was placed on the left breast, the notes from the string 
 were varied by pressures of the left thumb and forefinger upon it 
 whilst it was tapped with a small wand in the right hand. It was 
 generally accompanied by the singing of the player, who frequently 
 gave a kind of recitative performance whilst doing so. 
 
 Le VaUlant saw an instrument of very similar construction, 
 which he said the Bushmen of the south called a 'Joum-'joum. 
 It was generally played by a woman in a sitting posture. Placing 
 the bow before her perpendicularly like a harp, holding the bottom 
 firm with her foot, without touching the cord, she grasped the 
 bow with her left hand about the middle, and whilst blowing 
 upon the string, where a quill feather was attached, she struck 
 the string with a wand about five to six inches long. This 
 'Joum-'joum would almost appear to have been a combination 
 of the 'Kopo, and of another instrument called the 'Goura, of 
 which we shall speak presently. 
 
 Another and more elaborate variety of the instrument we 
 are speaking of was seen by Thompson. He states that he 
 observed a Bushman playing on a Ra-ma'kie, which he describes 
 as being about forty inches long by five broad, and having half 
 a calabash affixed to one end, with four strings somewhat re- 
 sembhng those of a violin. Here then we find a further advance 
 of a quadruple-stringed bow, joined with a calabash sounding- 
 board, the nearest approach to a harp that the inventive faculty 
 of the old Bushman race was capable of arriving at. 
 
 Another stringed instrument copied from the Bushmen was 
 that called a 'Kan'gan by some of the Coast Tribes. It was made 
 of a kind of compound bow, formed of three pieces, the centre being 
 a strong piece of bamboo, about twelve inches in length. Two 
 pieces of tough wood were then inserted, one into each end, 
 about eighteen inches long and tapered off towards the tips 
 like the extremities of a bow, giving it the appearance of some 
 of the old classical bows of the northern hemisphere. This was 
 then tightly strung with a fine line made of an antelope's sinew, 
 
SHOWING THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRINGED INSTRUMENTS 
 FROM THE BUSHMAN BOW. 
 
 1. The Bushman Bow, 
 
 2. Do. do. with two strings. 
 
 3. Do. do. with four strings. 
 
 4. The Bushman 'Kopo, with Tortoise- 
 
 shell Sounding Board. 
 
 5 The 'Kangan. 
 
 6. Compound Group of Bows. 
 
 7. Kopo, with four strings and Calabash. 
 
 8. The 'Goura or 'Gora. 
 
 8a. The Quill Mouth-piece of do. 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 109 
 
 which was again so braced down to the central piece of bamboo 
 that the string was divided into two unequal lengths. In playing 
 upon the instrument, a portion of the bamboo was held in the 
 mouth, and the string played upon with the forefinger of the right 
 hand, in which it was held. The music, however, obtained from 
 the ^Kan'gan was more for the performer's own private delecta- 
 tion than for the amusement of the general public. 
 
 The next instrument was the fGoer-ra, ^Goura, or Gora, called 
 also Sesiha by the Basutu. It has been appropriated by both 
 the Coast Kaffirs and the Basutu. This also is another invention 
 which has, evidently, had its origin from the bow. In fact it is 
 simply a bow in which one end of the string, instead of being 
 fastened to the bow itself, is attached to a broad, thin, flexible 
 tongue-shaped piece of quiU, which is firmly fixed and spliced to 
 the end of the bow. It is this piece of quill which acts as a kind 
 of mouth-piece, in a somewhat analogous manner to the soft reeds 
 of the old-fashioned clarionets. The instrument was played by 
 taking the quill in the mouth, and causing it to vibrate by strong 
 inspirations and expirations of the breath, and therefore might be 
 termed a wind-stringed instrument. The sounds produced 
 are frequently very wild, harsh, and discordant. It is said that 
 "with its help the Bushman could imitate the noise of a belli- 
 cose ostrich to perfection."^ 
 
 Sometimes several musicians would perform on the 'Goura 
 together, raising an unmelodious and unearthly din which how- 
 ever delightful it might prove to a native audience, would 
 certainly be more suggestive of a dance of witches round an infernal 
 cauldron, to ears more refined and cultivated, than anything 
 else. Campbell who in his last journey heard an old man 
 playing upon one of them, likened its sound to the word " dum- 
 wharry, dum-wharry," pronounced in a hoarse hollow tone. 
 
 Another wind instrument was a kind of reed flute, or pipe, 
 and was especially used in their old favourite dance called 
 'Ko-'ku-curra. The reeds were cut at a particular season, and the 
 flutes made of different sizes and lengths, so as to obtain a variety 
 of notes. They were made by one or two of the men who were 
 skilled in their manufacture, but their use was reserved ex- 
 clusively for the women. The Koranas esteemed this the most 
 
 1 Miss L. E. Lemue, Memoir on Bushmen. Notes by Charles S. Orpen. 
 
no THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 beautiful of all the native music, and introduced its use into several 
 of their dances. 
 
 Beyond these we find that the inventive faculty of the Bush- 
 men, in their desire to increase their musical accompaniments, 
 had enabled them to produce an instrument of percussion in the 
 shape of a kind of tambour or drum, called by different writers 
 a Romelpot (Le Vaillant), 'Tam-tam (Arbousset), and T'koi-t'koi 
 (Sparrman). The two last were probably Bushman appellations 
 derived from the sound emitted by iL' Some of them were formed 
 of a portion of the shell of the great bush-tortoise, the bottom 
 being cut away, and its place supplied with a skin stretched over 
 it. This was probably the most ancient invention, and where such 
 shells were not procurable, they were driven to the necessity of 
 substituting earthen pots, and these again, from their liability 
 of being easily broken in the excitement of the dance, were dis- 
 placed by a hollow block of wood, or even a large calabash after 
 their contact with the stronger races. All these modes of con- 
 truction, however, were retained among one or other of their 
 tribes till within the memory of the present generation. 
 
 Those of earthenware were sometimes made of a pot in the 
 form of a quoit, and covered with the skin of a springbok after 
 being well softened and stripped of its hair. This therefore was 
 more a kind of tambourine than a drum. Those made of a hollow 
 block were from two to three feet in height, whilst the heads of 
 the smaller kind were made of the skin of a steenbok, and those 
 of the larger were sometimes formed of a piece of zebra skin. 
 These were veritable drums, and were beaten with the hand or 
 a stick. 
 
 The last instruments we shall notice were those which have been 
 termed " Bushman bells." The larger kind were formed of a 
 
 ^ There are a number of Bushman words which, like many found in all 
 primitive languages, are discovered to be, when analyzed, imitations of 
 natural sounds : thus the above word T'koi-t'koi is an evident imitation 
 of the beat of their drum. Hurroo (Barrow) was another word used by 
 some of their coast tribes to indicate the breaking of the sea on the 
 shore ; while 'Ka-boo (Barrow) and 'Khoo (Arbousset), both being pro- 
 nounced with a strong palatal cUck, for a gun ; the click representing the 
 striking of the hammer of the old flint-locks before the explosion ; hence 
 also a white man was called by some of them a 'Khoo — i.e. the carrier 
 of a gun, while Le Vaillant gives us 'Kgaap, a bow ; with a dental click 
 in imitation of the twanging of the bow itself. 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN in 
 
 piece of dry hide, from which the hair had been scraped. They 
 were in the shape of a large hollow sphere, and were fastened to 
 either the upper arm or shoulder. The smaller ones were 
 generally made of prepared springbok skin, and were either round 
 Uke the others, or cup-shaped. This latter kind was fastened 
 round the ankles and wrists : they were from two to three inches 
 in diameter. Sometimes a belt of small ones, the size of a pullet's 
 egg, encircled the waist, or was worn across the shoulders. They 
 all contained small pebbles, and made a noise in the agitation 
 of the dance like the shaking of peas in a bladder. The effect 
 of this was heightened when a number of Bush people were 
 dancing and keeping regular time together. 
 
 Their Dances. 
 
 We have already seen the fondness of the Bushmen for dis- 
 guising themselves in masquerading dresses, representing various 
 animals,, birds, and imaginary monsters, either with the aid 
 of paint or the skins, heads, and horns of the objects to be repre- 
 sented. Beyond this, however, their powers of mimicry were 
 wonderfully striking, and thus they were able not only to assume 
 the appearance, but the action, manner, and cries of the animal 
 they wished to personify, with extraordinary accuracy.' It was 
 this talent which enabled them to give such variety to their dances, 
 an amusement of which they were passionately fond, and in 
 which they indulged upon every fitting occasion. The univer- 
 sality of this custom was shown from the fact that, in the early 
 days, in the centre of every village or kraal, or near every rock- 
 shelter, and in every great cave, there was a large circular ring 
 where either the ground or grass was beaten flat and bare, from 
 the frequent and constant repetition of their terpsichorean 
 exercises. It was when food was abundant, after having eaten, 
 that they gave rein to their favourite amusement. Feasting 
 and festivity were ever accompanied with continuous dancing 
 and irejoicing from the close of eve to the dawn of the returning 
 day. 
 
 1 A Bushman once travelled with the writer, who was able to imitate 
 on the sand the spoor of every animal, from an elephant to a steenbok, 
 with such exactitude that it required a most practised eye to detect the 
 counterfeit. 
 
112 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 They had also their special seasons when the dance was 
 never neglected, such as the time of the new and full moon. 
 Dancing began with the new moon, as an expression of joy that 
 the dark nights had ended, and was continued at the full moon, 
 that they might avail themselves of the deUcious coolness after 
 the heat of the day, and the brilliancy of the moonlight in this 
 portion of the southern hemisphere. It is probable that similar 
 practices in a remote period gave rise, among some of the nations 
 of antiquity, to their feasts and festivals of the new and fuU 
 moon, which, as they emerged from the primitive barbarism 
 of their ancestors, became connected in their observance with 
 a number of religious rites and ceremonies. 
 
 Another marked time with the Bushmen was the approach of 
 the first thunderstorm of the season, when it is stated that they 
 were ever particularly joyful ; as they considered it an infallible 
 token that the summer had commenced. In the midst of their 
 excessive rejoicing they tore in pieces their skin karosses, threw 
 them into the air, and danced for several nights in succession. 
 On these occasions the 'Gariep Bushmen made great outcries, 
 accompanied with dancing and playing upon their drums. 
 
 As the first thunder-storm was hailed with joy as a sign of 
 returning warmth, so as the season advanced and some of the 
 tremendous outbursts of elementary fury, which sometimes 
 visit the country, made their appearance, their superstition and 
 dread were aroused, which among some of the tribes culminated 
 in fits of impotent rage, as if the war of the elements excited 
 their indignation against the mysterious power which they sup- 
 posed was the cause of it. 
 
 A desire to repel the storm, as they would a dangerous enemy, 
 may have arisen from the fact that occasionally some of their 
 caves have been destroyed in these storms, when the greater 
 portion of the horde have been buried in the ruins, the projecting 
 rocks jutting far over their rock-shelters appearing to have 
 acted as more powerful conductors on these fatal occasions 
 than the smoother face of the precipice on either side of the 
 locality where the cave was situated. In 1877 and '78 the writer 
 visited two spots where the caves had been destroyed by catas- 
 trophes of this kind, and where, in both instances, it was said 
 that a number of Bush-people lost their lives. 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 113 
 
 Thus it was in all probability that a germ of the religious 
 element sprang up in their breasts, and their superstition created 
 the idea of, as he has been styled by Arbousset, the Chief of the 
 Sky, whom they named 'Kaang, and who was also called ^Kue- 
 A'keng-'teng, the Man, that is to say, the Master of all things, 
 who according to their expression one does not see with the eyes 
 but knows him with the heart, and who is to be propitiated in 
 times of famine and before going to war, and that throughout the 
 whole night by performing a certain dance. From this we seem 
 to learn something of the primitive ideas, which became more and 
 more elaborated until dancing was looked upon as a religious 
 ceremony, which, however licentious we may deem the 
 greater portion of these ancient religious performances to have 
 been, were nevertheless at the time earnestly entered into with 
 a view of propitiating some fancied deity. 
 
 The dances of the Bushmen were carried out with an energy 
 only equalled by that which they displayed in the chase. In 
 many of them, as well as in their great hunts, they painted their 
 bodies, some covering them with red, white, and yellow spots ; 
 some entirely with red, others in parti-colours, as one portion of 
 the body black, for instance the legs and arms and the lower part 
 to the waist, the remainder white ; or the colours might be re- 
 versed, or red or yellow might be substituted for either the black 
 or white or both. Another fashion was to adorn one side of the 
 body with one colour, the other with another, by way of con- 
 trast ; sometimes the whole would be painted black, red, or some 
 other colour, and these again ornamented with spots, or straight 
 or zigzag lines, or a combination of all these devices. These 
 were evidently intended for their gala costumes, and were only in- 
 dulged in before their enemies began to vent their remorseless 
 rage upon them. 
 
 Some of their dances required considerable skill, such as that 
 which may be called the baU dance. In this a number of women 
 from five to ten would form a line and face an equal number in 
 another row, leaving a space of thirty or forty feet between them. 
 A woman at the end of one of these lines would commence by 
 throwing a round ball, about the size of an orange, and made of a 
 root, under her right leg, and across to the woman opposite to 
 her, who in her turn would catch the ball and throw it back in 
 
 I 
 
114 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 a similar manner to the second woman in the first -row ; she 
 would return it again in the same way to the second in the second, 
 and thus it continued until all had taken their turn. Then the 
 women would shift their positions, crossing over to opposite sides, 
 and again continue in the same manner as before ; and so on until 
 the game was over, when they would rest for a short time and 
 begin again. 
 
 Another ball dance was played merely by the men. A ball 
 was made expressly for this game out of the thickest portion of a 
 hippopotamus' hide, cut from the back of the neck ; this was 
 hammered when it was perfectly fresh until it was quite round ; 
 when finished it was elastic, and would quickly rebound when 
 thrown upon a hard surface. In this performance a flat stone 
 was placed in the centre upon the ground, the players or dancers 
 standing around. One of them commenced by throwing the 
 ball on the stone, when it rebounded ; the next to him caught it, 
 and immediately it was thrown again by him upon the stone in 
 the same manner as by the leader, when it was caught by the next 
 in succession, and so on, one after the other passing rapidly round 
 the ring, until the leader or one of the others would throw it with 
 such force as to send it flying high and straight up into the air, 
 when during its ascent they commenced a series of antics, throw- 
 ing themselves into all kinds of positions, imitating wild dogs, 
 and like them making a noise " che ! che ! che ! " but in the 
 meantime watching the ball, which was caught by one of them, 
 when he took the place of leader, and the game was again re- 
 newed. 
 
 The play was sometimes varied by two players being matched 
 against each other, each throwing and catching the ball altern- 
 ately, until one of them missed it, when it was immediately caught 
 by one of those in the outer ring, who at once took the place of 
 the one who had made the slip, and thus the play continued.' 
 
 Some of the dances were intended for the women alone, others 
 for the men ; sometimes the men and women danced together, 
 but in separate fines facing each other, hke the old country dance, 
 at others intermingled alternately in a large circle. 
 
 The 'Ko-ku-curra, or as it might be termed from the instru- 
 ment played during its performance, the reed or flute dance, 
 1 Notes by Charles S. Orpen. 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 115 
 
 was exclusively for women. This was also a kind of competition 
 dance, as the women of one cave or kraal would send a challenge 
 to those of another, informing them that on a certain day they 
 intended to come and " flute " with them. Both parties then 
 prepared for a feast, by lajang in as large a stock of provisions 
 as possible. On the appointed day the challengers, who had pre- 
 pared, in addition to the provisions which they carried with them, 
 a large supply of various sized reed flutes, left their kraal in a 
 kind of rude procession, leaving all of the men of the place behind, 
 and started for the rendezvous whither the challenge had been 
 sent, fluting as they went along. Had any of the men attempted 
 to foUow them it would have been resented as a gross breach 
 of privilege, for it was the day of the women asserting the 
 prerogative of unlimited freedom. Their approach was heralded 
 to their expectant hosts by the sound of their flutes, which could 
 be heard in fine weather at a great distance. As they drew 
 near their friends turned out to meet them, and gave them a 
 joyful welcome. A feast was prepared, and when all were satis- 
 fied, they made ready for the friendly contest. 
 
 The women of the two kraals then drew up in two opposing 
 lines, when the rival fluting and dancing commenced ; this was 
 taken up alternately, first by the representatives of the one kraal 
 and then by the other, though occasionally both joined together. 
 This was sometimes continued for hours. Feasting again fol- 
 lowed, and the dance was renewed, the women ever and anon 
 throwing themselves into a variety of positions intended to 
 excite the feelings of the male spectators. This feasting and 
 revelry was continued for three or four days, or until all their 
 provisions were exhausted, during which time the lady visitors 
 abandoned themselves to every species of hcence, and had no 
 cause for missing the absence of their husbands. They then 
 returned to their own kraal in the same frolicsome manner 
 as they had left it. In a short time the women of the kraal they 
 had visited returned the compliment, and came in the same kind 
 of procession, bringing, in their turn, their flutes with them, 
 when the dancings and flutings were repeated, the same feastings 
 and orgies were reacted, and the men of the kraal were consoled 
 for the departure of their wives on the former occasion. 
 
 The song which accompanied this dance has already been 
 
ii6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 given. The Koranas had a dance which was identical with 
 the one described, but as the Bushmen of the north practised 
 it for generations before the Koranas made their appearance 
 on the banks of the 'Nu 'Gariep, it is not improbable that the 
 latter derived their knowledge of it from the older race. 
 
 The 'Kahoune was one in which none but men were 
 allowed to join, and of these, only such as were distinguished 
 for their manly qualities. Thus it was when old 'Ko-rin-'na 
 heard his wife singing again the wild refrain which accom- 
 panied the dance of huntsmen, that the recollections of 
 olden times rushed over him, and impelled him to array his head 
 once more as he doubtless before had done in the days when he 
 himself had joined the wild hunters of his tribe in dancing and 
 singing the 'Tata-'ta-yeya, yeya of the 'Kahoune. The accom- 
 paniment has already been given. The men danced in line, 
 with their arrows filleted round their heads, which they, rolled 
 about in a rollicking manner as they advanced, shaking their 
 bows aloft at the same time, while their movements were regulated 
 by a leader. 
 
 Unfortunately the writer was not able to discover the names 
 of a considerable number of their other dances, nor the refrains 
 by which they were accompanied. There was another dance of 
 huntsmen, when as they danced alone they were tapping on their 
 bowstrings with a small wand, and every alternate one had a 
 large-sized Bushman bell attached to his shoulder. Another 
 might have been termed a Bushman country dance, where the 
 men and women were in two opposite lines, waving their kerries 
 frantically in the air, and loudly vociferating as they proceeded, 
 while a conductor in the centre, but a little in advance of the two 
 lines, led them. Another might be called the chain-dance, in 
 which a mixed company of men and women formed an open 
 column four deep, with a considerable space between each file ; 
 all the dancers standing with their arms extended holding a long 
 wand upright between them, thus forming rows of arches, through 
 which a couple (a man and woman) setting to each other, danced 
 in and out, whilst a leader standing at the head of the colunm 
 directed their movements. 
 
 In many of the dances the conductor who superintended 
 and guided the movements of the performance wore the dis- 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 117 
 
 guise of the 'Nadro, in some the dancers themselves were so 
 decorated ; in others they were so dressed as to represent a 
 particular animal, when the dance was called by its name ; 
 such was the t'Gorld'ka, the Mdn-nia, or Baboon dance, in which 
 the performers imitated all the actions and droll grimaces ol 
 rival baboons, springing, gambolling, and running upon all 
 foursy chattering and grimacing like a troop of excited simiadse.^ 
 Another, and one which also appeared a favourite amongst them, 
 was the ^Kloo-rou-o, or Frog-dance, in which they squatted, 
 and leaped, and rolled about like a lot of inebriated batrachians. 
 A third of this kind was the fOi, or Bee-dance, when the com- 
 pany transformed themselves into a swarm of bees, and per- 
 formed their evolutions with a buzzing chorus. 
 
 1 It is quite possible that some of these dances may have had, at one 
 time, a mythical signification attached to them, which would only 
 be understood by the initiated. This idea is suggested by a myth which 
 Mr. Joseph M.Orpen obtained from a Maluti Bushman named 'Qing (.'kign 
 Bleek) who said Cagn (the 'Kaang of Arbousset and Callaway and kaggen 
 of Bleek) sent Cogaz to cut sticks to make bows. When Cogaz came to 
 the bush the baboons (cogn) caught him. They called all the other baboons 
 to hear him, and they asked him who sent him there. He said his father 
 sent him to cut sticks to make bows. So they said, " Your father thinks 
 himself more clever than we are, and he wants those bows to kill us, so 
 we'll kill you," and they killed Cogaz, and tied him up in the top of a 
 tree, and they danced round the tree, singing (an intranscribable baboon 
 song) with a chorus saying, " Cagn thinks he is clever." Cagn was asleep 
 when Cogaz was killed, but when he awoke he told Coti to give him his 
 charms, and he put some on his nose, and said the baboons have hung 
 Cogaz. So he went to where the baboons were, and when they saw him 
 coming close by they changed their song so as to omit the words about 
 Cagn, but a httle baboon girl said, " Don't sing that way, sing the way you 
 were singing before." And Cagn said, " Sing as the little girl wishes," 
 and they sang and danced away as before. And Cagn said, "That is the 
 song I heard, that is what I wanted, go on dancing until I return ; " 
 and he went and fetched a bag full of pegs, and went behind each of them 
 as they were dancing and making a great dust, and he drove a peg into each 
 one's back, and gave it a crack, and sent them off to the mountains to Hve 
 on roots, beetles, and scorpions, as a punishment. Before that baboons 
 were men, but since that they have tails, and their tails hang crooked. 
 Then Cagn took Cogaz down, and gave him canna, and made him alive 
 again.'' From the above it is quite possible that this dance may have 
 been instituted in honour of some festival dedicated to 'Kaang or his son 
 'Qing informed Mr. J. Orpen that there were certain dances which only 
 certain men were allowed to dance : men who had been initiated, and under- 
 stood the meaning of them. Some of these animal dances may belong to 
 this class. 
 
ii8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 On special occasions, they held a general masquerade, when 
 each took the disguise or head-dress of some particular bird or 
 animal, and upheld the character during the performance. This 
 appears to have been considered one of their grand national 
 dances, and was reserved for their high festivals ; it was one 
 which even their greatest artists delighted to depict, and pro- 
 bably it had some hidden meaning known to the initiated. 
 
 They also had a very singular one, which might appropriately 
 be named the dance of acrobats. In this, in hopping and jump- 
 ing about in a ring, it appeared as if aU their efforts were directed 
 to place themselves in every possible position and contortion, 
 the leader taking his place in the centre, and occasionally joining 
 in the posture-making going on around him, while the dancers 
 moved on in a circle writhing, twining, and twisting their bodies 
 in whatever droll and uncommon attitude their fancy suggested; 
 now balancing themselves on their hands and throwing their 
 legs upwards until their heads were in the position of a clown's 
 looking through a horse-coUar at a circus, now standing on their 
 heads, and again balancing and walking upon their hands with 
 their legs thrown high in the air, in true acrobatic style. The 
 changes from one posture to another were rapid and continuous, 
 and the entire circle was ever in ceaseless motion. The women, 
 as it was among ancient dancers and tumblers, were the chief, 
 if not the only, performers. The conductor was, however, 
 generally one of the male sex.' 
 
 Another very similar one might be termed the dance of the 
 Chief, or the Wise Man of the Tribe. This was one of the licentious 
 group of dances, but which, nevertheless, may have also had 
 its hidden meaning, in which the women appear to have offered 
 themselves up to sexual congress ; and which therefore may have 
 had some reference to 'Kaang, who they believed was the originator 
 or creator of things. In this the women formed themselves into a 
 circle similar to the preceding one, the chief took up his position 
 in the centre, and frequently hopped and sprang round on all 
 fours like some animal, the women in the meanwhile dancing 
 
 1 Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson in his Egyptians gives a copy of one of their 
 paintings, where a group of women are performing a number of similar 
 evolutions. The head-dress of the Bushwomen on these occasions was, 
 hiQwever, the ears of a spring or a steen-bok. 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 119 
 
 and placing themselves in every possible lascivious position, 
 until the great man in the centre pounced upon one of those 
 who had most distinguished themselves and performed that 
 in the sight of all which in more civilized communities is reserved 
 for the strictest privacy, amid the applauding clatter of the 
 excited dancers forming the enclosing circle. After this the 
 chief again took up his original position, and the dance continued 
 with the same repetitions until all engaged in it were wearied 
 and exhausted. 
 
 The most famous dance, however, among the Bushmen was 
 that called Mo'koma, or the dance of blood, a name which M. 
 Arbousset informs us is derived from the same word Mo-koma 
 which signifies blood from the nose, from circumstances which 
 frequently arose during its performance. They believed that 
 their ancestors derived their instructions with regard to this 
 dance direct from 'Kaang himself, and that in times of famine, 
 war, scarcity, or sickness, this dance, Mo'koma, was to be con- 
 tinued throughout the whole night, in his honour. 'Qing or 
 'King informed Mr. J. Orpen that Cagn gave them the song 
 of this dance, and told them to dance it, and people would die 
 from it, and he would give charms to raise them again. It is a 
 circular dance of men and women following each other, and it is 
 danced all night. Some fall down, some become as if mad and 
 sick, blood runs from the noses of others whose charms are weak, 
 and they eat charm medicine, in which there is burnt snake 
 powder. 
 
 M. Arbousset, who saw the Bushmen dancing it, says, " The 
 movements consisted of irregular jumps, as if, to use a native 
 expression, one saw a herd of calves leaping. They gambolled 
 together until all were fatigued and covered with perspiration. 
 The thousand cries which they raised, and the exertions which 
 they made were so violent, that it was not unusual to see some 
 one sink to the ground exhausted and covered with blood, which 
 poured from the nostrils, and it was on this account that the dance 
 was called Mo'koma or the dance of blood. When a man thus 
 falls in the middle of a ball, the women gather round him and 
 put two bits of reed across each other on his back. They care- 
 fully wipe away the perspiration with ostrich feathers, leaping 
 backward and falling across his back. Soon the air revives 
 
120 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 him ; he rises, and this in general terminates the performance." 
 M. Arbousset states that the use of the two bits of reed 
 appeared most obscure to him, but it is evident that they were 
 a portion of the charms alluded to by 'Qing ; but why they 
 should be put in the form of a cross is not so easily explained. 
 The cross singly, or in groups of three, was one of the most 
 ancient of the Bushman symbols. M. Arbousset, however, 
 could obtain no further explanation of it than that they con- 
 stantly had recourse to it in cases of extreme sickness, and that 
 they say it exerts a salutary influence over a sick person. He 
 considered that it might be mixed up with something of a religious 
 rite. That such was really the case, and that the mystery hidden 
 in such symbols was only known to a select few called the in- 
 itiated, is rendered almost a certainty from the statements of 
 'Qing, who informed Mr. J. Orpen that when a man was sick 
 the Mo'koma was danced round him, and the " dancers put both 
 hands under their armpits and press their hands upon him, and 
 when he coughs the initiated put out their hands and receive 
 what has injured him, secret things. The initiated who know 
 secret things are 'Qogn'qe ; the sick man is hang'cai." 
 
 The women were the great upholders of these dances, and 
 always prepared for them by putting on their gala costumes. 
 It is said that some of the men ruined themselves by too frequent 
 indulgence in some of these licentious performances, or as ^Qing 
 expressed himself, there were people who were " spoilt " by 
 the Mo'koma. It was believed that such transgressing in- 
 dividuals were carried off by 'Kaang to some mysterious retreat 
 beneath the water, where they were transformed into beasts, 
 and had constant chastisement administered to them as a 
 punishment for their excesses.^ 
 
 The writer, whilst examining one of the sources of the Eland's 
 river, in the Malutis, discovered a rock-shelter where the whole 
 of this myth was most wonderfully and clearly depicted. It 
 was in two groups, one a short distance removed from the other. 
 In the uppermost a number of women of different ages were 
 
 1 'Qing stated to Mr. J. Orpen that " there were three great chiefs, Cagn, 
 Cogaz, and 'Qwanciqulchaa, who had great power, but it was Cagn who 
 gave orders through the other two." The cartoon that will now be 
 described clearly sustains this statement. 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 121 
 
 engaged in performing the Mo'koma, or this very dance of blood. 
 The figures were full of life, and their actions plainly suggested 
 the result which would naturally follow from an indulgence 
 in such a questionable pastime. Near at hand were three of the 
 most demoniacal-looking satyrs that could be imagined, with 
 the heads and horns of beasts, shaggy loins, and long tails — with 
 thick legs and monstrous splay-feet. One of them had captured 
 two unfortunate delinquent Bushmen, whom he was carrying 
 away, the one on his back, the other by dragging him along 
 the ground by a leather thong tied round the culprit's neck. 
 
 The other two demons are evidently rej oicing at the capture that 
 had been made, and are hurrying to the assistance of their com- 
 panion. The second representation, some feet removed from the 
 upper one, depicts where the two sinners have been transformed 
 into beasts, that is they have the heads of animals placed on their 
 shoulders, instead of their own ; they are securely pinioned with 
 a couple of ^kibis, or digging sticks, and 'Kaang has seized one of 
 them in a most painful position, and is administering to him 
 a sound thrashing with another heavy 'kibi or digging stick 
 of the same kind, thus making " the strong hand " an instrument 
 of punishment. 
 
 This discovery was an important one with regard to our present 
 subject, for it unmistakably proves that a certain amount of 
 religious belief was connected with some of their dances ; and 
 that, in the painting here described, we are furnished with a 
 positive representation of their fancied deities ; and more- 
 over it clearly demonstrates, as was before suggested, that the 
 'Nadro and hunting disguises of their remote ancestors had 
 become so identified with some great, but primitive hero of their 
 race, upon whom they looked in process of time as not only the 
 first man, but the originator of all things, and who they at 
 length believed was not only superhuman, but that the very 
 disguises which he wore were transformed into a living portion 
 of himself, until their lively imaginations depicted him as a 
 being endowed with enormous power, as denoted by the strength 
 of his limbs and possessing not such a head as belonged to com- 
 mon humanity, but one similar to some great homed beast. 
 Hence it seems as if through the despised Bushman we obtain a 
 knowledge of the true germ whence the more elaborate, yet 
 
122 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 fabulous and symbolic animal-headed deities of the more polished 
 nations of antiquity were developed. 
 
 Some writers have suggested that a large number of Bushman 
 paintings are merely, especially where the Bushmen are shown 
 in their hunting disguises, the pictorial representations of some 
 hidden myth. This, however, after having carefully studied 
 the subject for a long number of years during which period 
 the present writer has examined the remains of their paintings 
 in hundreds of caves, obtaining also at the same time the opinion 
 of every trustworthy Bushman he encountered, he cannot be- 
 lieve ; nor does he consider that, with a very few exceptions, these 
 paintings as a rule were ever intended, originally, to convey a myth- 
 ological meaning, any more than those more finished productions 
 found in the northern hemisphere, which represent the victorious 
 career of some Egyptian king, or the sculptures that show those 
 of Assyria in the act of hunting the lion or the wild buU. They 
 are purely historical. 
 
 It is, however, not improbable that after the history of some 
 of these paintings had been forgotten and the names of the 
 heroes who were intended to be depicted had been lost, then it 
 might have been, at least so we can imagine from what has been 
 previously advanced, that some mythical description may have 
 been occasionally connected with them ; or some Bushman of 
 the present day, deeply learned in the folk-lore of his tribe, may 
 upon examining them imagine that he can detect a similarity 
 between some myth with which he is acquainted and the pictorial 
 representation before him, and he forthwith may cleverly join 
 the one with the other. He may probably belong to a tribe 
 rich in myths, and now looks for the first time upon a painting 
 by an artist of a distant tribe, of which previously he had not 
 the slightest knowledge. Clever as they undoubtedly are, his 
 natural shrewdness enables him to patch the myth and the 
 scene represented in the painting together. 
 
 The knowledge of myths, \vhich are passed from mouth to 
 mouth, and handed down by tradition, must naturally be far 
 more widely spread than that of an individual painting, which 
 can only be known to the inhabitants who once occupied the 
 cave and those of the immediately surrounding country. Such 
 would seem to be the probable connexion between the interesting 
 
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE BUSHMEN 123 
 
 myths communicated to Mr. Joseph Orpen by 'Qing and the 
 Bushman paintings, or copies of Bushman paintings which were 
 shown to him. As a proof of this, a copy of the same painting 
 was submitted to an old Bushman who had been bom in a cave, 
 where from his childhood he had been surrounded by both the 
 ancient and recent paintings belonging to his tribe, for his 
 examination. Without any hesitation, he explained it as 
 representing two Bushmen hunters who had painted their bodies 
 in their hunting disguises, chasing a jackal. This man was a 
 matter-of-fact observer. 
 
 'Qing, who was inspired with all the learning of his race, 
 described the same two men, adorned with the heads of rheboks, 
 as mythological characters named Hagwe and Canate, and that 
 the animal which they were catching was a snake ! " They are 
 holding out charms to it," he said, " and catching it with a long 
 riem. They are all under water, and those strokes are things 
 growing under water. They are people spoilt by the Mo'koma 
 dance, because their noses bleed." The old Bushman, as we 
 have stated, gave a simple description of its real and literal 
 historical meaning. Its elaboration and mythical interpreta- 
 tion given by 'Qing arose from the fact that the latter was deeply 
 versed in the folk-lore of his people. 
 
 The writer has since then had opportunities of questioning 
 a number of other old Bushmen upon the same subject, and they 
 have aU agreed in their explanations with the opinion of the ancient 
 above given. From this we may therefore learn that in looking 
 at any of these paintings, if we find that they represent scenes 
 of actual Bushman life, and yet that a myth is attached to them, 
 we must look behind and beyond the myth for their true his- 
 tory. The myth was the after-thought, and never the intention 
 of the artist who painted it. 
 
 Still, however, it is admitted that in such a case such a repre- 
 sentation may become a valuable adjunct in arousing in the minds 
 of others, by a fancied, though it may be, as in the present in- 
 stance, forced resemblance to some almost-forgotten myth, 
 a vivid recollection of its existence, and thus prove the means of 
 further illustrating the imaginative faculties and mental powers 
 of the race. Where such a matter-of-fact interpretation cannot 
 be put upon it, and from the experience of the writer they are 
 
124 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 few in number, then in all probability it represents some ancient 
 myth in a pure, simple, and unadulterated state ; and such is 
 the one we have described, which was discovered on a flank of 
 the Malutis, where 'Kaang is seen to be unquestionably inflicting 
 punishment upon two unfortunate delinquents, who have out- 
 raged the Bushman ideas of prudence in their excessive indulgence 
 in the licentious yet mystic dance of blood. 
 
Chapter VII 
 
 MODE OF BURIAL OF THE BUSHMEN— HEAPS OF 
 STONES— SOME OF THEIR BELIEFS 
 
 These subjects in Bushman ideas are closely associated the one 
 with the other, thus the heaps of stones are connected with 
 their burials, while their superstition forms the connecting link 
 between these and some of their beliefs. 
 
 As a precaution against sickness the Bushmen carried their 
 medicinal roots ^ and charms strung on a cord of sinew, and worn 
 as a necklace. Some of the initiated were more skilful in the use 
 of these remedies than any one else, and for this reason were looked 
 upon in the light of medicine-men or doctors. Such individuals 
 generally belonged to the ruling famil5^or its branches, and thus 
 a kind of caste or rank was recognized, aniong whose members all 
 the secret mysteries of the tribe were jealously preserved. 
 
 In cases of severe illness, when all their remedies and 
 charms alike proved unsuccessful, they would sometimes seize 
 the dying man and attempt to arouse by roughly shaking him, 
 scolding and reproaching him with his evident intention of 
 leaving them ; but when they saw that their reproaches and 
 remonstrances were as unavailing as their charms and their 
 medicines, they became visibly affected and gave way to their 
 grief, making lamentations over him, and continued doing so 
 for several days. 
 
 ^ The Bushmen certainly are acquainted with a number of very valuable 
 medicinal plants ; some of them are specifics in the cure of several diseases 
 which have frequently bafSed the skill of the most eminent medical 
 practitioners ; and it is a matter of astonishment that no effort has been 
 made to discover such important secrets. Thus they were able to effect 
 certain cures in cases of snake-bite, taenia, dysentery, and calculus, besides 
 the rapid removal of gonorrheal affections. 
 
126 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 M. Arbousset, who availed himself of the frequent opportuni- 
 ties he possessed of studying the manners and customs of this 
 people, states that as soon as a man had breathed his last, his 
 relatives rolled him up in his kaross and carried him out, by 
 removing the back of his hut, as it was considered unlucky to 
 take out the dead through the regular door or opening used by 
 the living. His body was placed temporarily in a round hole, 
 he was then blessed and revered by his family, and looked upon 
 as one of their tutelar guardian spirits. " The dead were first 
 anointed with red powder mixed with melted fat, and then they 
 were coarsely embalmed. The friends of the deceased attended 
 the funeral, and laid the body on its side in an oblong pit, where 
 all the friends and relatives assembled to make their lamenta- 
 tions." 
 
 His bow and staff were deposited in the grave by his side. 
 His face was placed towards the rising sun, as they believed 
 were they to put his face towards the west, it would make the 
 sun longer in rising the next day. At last they threw into the 
 pit the materials of the hut in which he died and burnt it over 
 him, and the grave was then filled with earth to the level of the 
 ground. Arbousset says that the Bushman clans with which 
 he was acquainted placed no heaps of stones or monument over 
 the graves, as other native tribes do. It is certain, however, 
 that the greater portion of the Bushmen did so, as well as surround- 
 ing the spot with a hedge. "The funeral over," Arbousset 
 continues, " all the inhabitants left the place for a year or two, 
 during which time they never spoke of the deceased but with 
 veneration and with tears." ..." These interments were never 
 so precipitate as among the Kaffir or Bachoana tribes, where 
 unfortunate people have been known to recover from their state 
 of lethargy, and manage to work themselves out of their graves 
 again," appearing once more among their horrified friends as 
 unexpected visitors from another world. 
 
 The graves were dug with the 'kibi. It is most probable that 
 the custom of placing stones over the graves of the dead amongst 
 primitive tribes originated from the desire of protecting the bodies 
 of their relatives from the ravages of hyenas and other ravenous 
 beasts. By degrees these heaps were looked upon as associated 
 with the memory of the dead, and as their superstitious ideas 
 
MODE OF BURIAL OF THE BUSHMEN 127 
 
 became more and more developed, and the belief arose that 
 the shades or spirits of the departed could be either propitiated 
 or offended, it was at last looked upon as an imperative duty 
 to avoid the evil consequences which might follow should it be 
 neglected, for every passer-by to make some addition to the 
 sacred heap, with the assurance that by so doing he secured 
 prosperity to himself and his family. In course of time heaps 
 of stones, the Gilgals of old, were raised, which had a certain 
 phaUic significance. These were altogether unconnected with 
 the burial of the dead, and are still found on the brows of many 
 hills in different parts of South Africa, of which we shall have 
 to speak when treating of the stronger races. Heaps of this 
 description appear to have been instituted after the southern 
 migration of the Bushmen, as they had no traditions concerning 
 them ; therefore from our South African point of view the evi- 
 dence seems strongly to favour the idea that the primitive heaps 
 of stones were primarily intended merely as a protection to the 
 bodies of those buried beneath them. 
 
 The Bushmen, however, had got beyond this stage, and con- 
 sidered that in order to propitiate the favour of their departed 
 friends it was necessary to make an offering to the consecrated 
 heap upon their graves whenever they passed.' Enormous lines 
 of stones were noticed in some parts of the country by some of 
 the old travellers, but these have evidently been the ruins 
 of the stone fences which had been made by some of the ancient 
 hunters, monuments of the numerous tribes which inhabited it 
 at the time of their construction, as well as a testimony of the 
 wonderful energy and industry possessed by a race which has 
 been long deemed one of the lowest of the genus homo. 
 
 1 A writer of a letter to the Graham's Town Journal, February, 1865, 
 in describing some of the stone heaps, states that two of them are to be 
 found in the vicinity of the missionary institution of Hankey, on the 
 Gamtoos river. " One of these ancient heaps," he continues, "stands a 
 little above the junction of the Zuurbron and Vley Plaats road, in the 
 Zaat Kloof, on the hne of road from Hankey to the Zuurveld, via Zuur- 
 bron." It consists of a vast heap of stones, few of which are larger than 
 a man's fist, intermixed with fragments of boughs plucked from the sur- 
 rounding bushes. The other is to be found in the neighbourhood of Han- 
 key, in a narrow gorge of the Klein or Palmiet river. These he attributes. 
 incorrectly to Hottentots. 
 
128 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Sparrman in his travels met with heaps which evidently 
 belonged to both classes. He writes : " Heaps of stones were 
 found near the Great Fish river similar to those near Krakeel 
 river. They were from three to four and four and a half feet 
 high, and the bases of them measured six, eight, and ten feet in 
 diameter. They likewise lay ten, twenty, , fifty, two hundred 
 paces, and even farther asunder, but constantly between two 
 particular points of the compass, and consequently in right lines, 
 and those always running parallel to each other." He " likewise 
 found these heaps of stones in a considerable number in more 
 open portions of the country," and knew from the account 
 received from the colonists on this subject, that they extended 
 in this manner several days journey from this spot in a northerly 
 direction through uncultivated plains, into the Sneese^ Vlakten 
 where they were said to be met with in still greater numbers 
 of parallel lines. 
 
 Sparrman attempted to dig into one of these isolated heaps,^ 
 but after penetrating about two feet with great labour, he dis- 
 covered nothing but what appeared to be " some rotten bits 
 of trees and something that seemed to be a piece of bone quite 
 mouldered away." 
 
 From other travellers we obtain more definite information 
 upon this interesting subject ; thus Borcherds found near the 
 drift which he crossed in the upper portion of the 'Gariep, on 
 the right bank, a grave of a Bushman captain or chief, which 
 consisted of a large cairn of stones and branches of trees ; and 
 every " Bushman on passing the pile was in the habit of adding 
 a stone to the heap, as a mark of respect for the deceased." 
 Thompson says : " In the Hantam there is a narrow defile 
 between two mountains, called Moordenaar's Poort (or the 
 Murderer's Pass) on account of several colonists having been killed 
 there by Bushmen. Near the same spot were six large piles of 
 stones, or cairns, which had been raised, so his guide asserted, 
 to commemorate a bloody conflict between two tribes of either 
 
 ' Cineeze, Cineese, or Chinese, from the appearance of the Bushmen 
 Hving upon them. 
 
 ^ The use of these laborious works of the early Bushmen has already 
 been explained, of which Sparrman was evidently ignorant. 
 
MODE OF BURIAL OF THE BUSHMEN 129 
 
 Hottentots or Bushmen, before Europeans intruded into the 
 country." 
 
 From the foregoing evidence both with regard to their mode 
 of burial and the veneration paid by some of the tribes to the 
 dead, and the heaps of stones placed upon their graves and 
 sacred to their memory, we are assured that the Bushmen had 
 some vague belief in a future state of existence. This becomes 
 a certainty when we inquire into some of their beliefs. 
 
 The custom of cutting off the first joint of the little finger 
 was almost universal amongst the Bushman tribes.^ The opera- 
 tion was performed with a sharp stone, and they believed that 
 by this act of self-mutilation they secured to themselves a long 
 continued career of feasting after death. The 'Gariepean Bushmen 
 have the following myth upon the subject : " one of them stated 
 that not only his own tribe, but many others also, believed that 
 at some undefined spot on the banks of the Gariep,' or Great river, 
 there is a place called 'Too'ga, to which after death they all will 
 go ; and that to ensure a safe journey thither they cut off the 
 first joint of the little finger of the left, or right hand, one tribe 
 adopting the one fashion, another the other. This they con- 
 sider is a guarantee that they will be able to arrive there without 
 difficulty, and that upon their arrival they will be feasted with 
 locusts and honey, whilst those who have neglected this rite 
 will have to travel there upon their heads, beset the entire dis- 
 tance with all kinds of imaginary obstacles and difficulties ; 
 and even after all their labour on arriving at the desired destina- 
 tion they will have nothing given to them but flies to live upon. 
 
 Another belief of these Bushmen was somewhat similar to 
 that of 'Qing of the Maluti tribes. They imagined that in the 
 beginning of time all the animals, as well as the Bushmen them- 
 selves, were endowed with the attributes of men and the faculty 
 of speech, and that at that time there existed a vicious and 
 quarrelsome being named 'Hoc-'hi'gan, who was always quarrel- 
 
 1 A similar custom was prevalent among the old Tambukis, but we 
 shall find when we inquire into their history that there is every reason 
 to believe they derived it from their intimacy with the Bushmen. 
 
 ' Obtained from an old Bushman near Fraserburg by Mr. Turner, 
 Junior, of Draai Hoek, Vaal River. 
 
 ' Some of the Bushmen believe there is a deep mystery hanging over 
 that portion of the river called the Falls. 
 
 K 
 
130 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 ling with every animal he came near, and trying on that account 
 to injure it. He at length disappeared, but they state that none 
 of their race was ever able to discover what became of him, nor 
 is there any tradition to tell when or where he went. But upon 
 his disappearance he committed, as a parting gift, a deed of 
 vengeance ; for immediately afterwards all the animals forsook 
 the abodes of men, ,and were changed into their present condi- 
 tion, while the Bushmen alone .retained the faculties of human 
 beings and the power of speech. 
 
 When these Bushmen were asked how they knew this, they 
 replied, "It is what they had learnt from their fathers, and it is 
 what their fathers' great-great-grandfathers had told them." 
 
 Some of the tribes living in the regions around the lower 
 portion of the Gariep have another version of a primitive state 
 of friendship between Bushmen and the lower animals, and 
 their subsequent dispersion.^ According to this myth their 
 remote forefathers came out of a hole in the ground, at the 
 roots of an enormous tree, which covered a wide extent of 
 country. Immediately afterwards all kinds of animals came 
 swarming out after them, some kinds by twos and threes and 
 fours ; others in great herds and flocks ; and they crushed, and 
 jostled, and pushed each other in their hurry, as if they could not 
 get out fast enough ; and they ever came out swarming thicker 
 and thicker, and at last they came flocking out of the branches 
 as well as the roots. But when the sun went down, fresh ones 
 ceased making their appearance. The animals were endowed 
 with the gift of speech, and remained quietly located under and 
 around the big tree. 
 
 As the night came on, the men, who were still sitting at the 
 foot of the tree, were told that during that night, until the 
 sun rose again, they must not make a fire. Thus they remained 
 for many hours, with all the animals sleeping peacefully around 
 them. And the night grew not only very dark, but cold, and the 
 cold went on increasing until it became bitterly cold, and then 
 cold almost beyond endurance ; and the men at last, not being 
 able to withstand the extreme severity any longer, in spite of 
 
 ' Communicated to the writer by Mr. William Coates Palgrave, Special 
 Commissioner to the Tribes on the West Coast, and obtained by him many 
 years ago, in one of his first visits to that part of the country. 
 
MODE OF BURIAL OF THE BUSHMEN 131 
 
 the warning that had been given to them, attempted, and at 
 last succeeded in making a fire. As soon as the flames began to 
 shoot up, the startled animals sprang to their feet in terror, 
 and rushed off panic-stricken to the mountains and the plains, 
 losing in their fright all powers of speech, and fleeing ever after- 
 wards from the presence of man. Only a very few animals re- 
 mained with the fire-makers, and these the men domesticated 
 and kept about them for their service ; but the great family 
 of animals was broken up, and could never again be re- 
 united. 
 
 Dr. Bleek states ^ that among the Western Bushmen the most 
 prominent object in their mythological tales is 'Kaggen, whose 
 mundane representative is the Mantis, and that this Mantis 
 ('Cagn — ^Kaggen), according to the myths of his Bushmen 
 informants, was very far from being represented as a beneficent 
 being, but on the contrary is a fellow full of tricks, getting into 
 scrapes, and even doing purely mischievous things, so that in 
 fact it was no wonder that his name has sometimes been trans- 
 lated by that of the devil. 'Kaggen's wife's name was 'Hunntu 
 or 'Hunu, the hjnrax ; and he had an adopted daughter j^o, 
 the porcupine, who married ^Kwammanga, by whom '^0 had 
 a son called Wi, the ichneumon, who was the constant adviser 
 and admonisher of his grandfather ^Kaggen, the mantis. 
 
 The Bushmen of the east — that is, of the conquered territory. 
 Orange Free State, Basutuland, and the Malutis — declare that 
 there were at one time a number of animals living in the country 
 in the days of their forefathers, which are now extinct and no- 
 where to be found in Southern Africa. Some of these are 
 described as great monstrous brutes, exceeding the elephant or 
 hippopotamus in bulk, others enormous serpents, such as are 
 neither seen nor heard of in these degenerate days. Upon this 
 point 'Kou'ke stated, upon looking at the copy of a picture of a 
 great black reptile of this description, taken from the cave of the 
 Great Black Serpent and the Elephant, in Rockwood glen. 
 Orange River, that this was an enormous brute which was found 
 in the very early days in the country, and that they were so large 
 and powerful that they would attack and crush to death a full 
 
 ' Remarks by Dr. Bleek on a " Glimpse into the Mythology of the 
 Maluti Bushmen," by J. M. Orpen. 
 
132 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 grown hartebeest. She described it as more than twenty, or 
 nearly thirty feet in length. 
 
 The homed serpent of the Brakfontein cave, Koesberg, she 
 pronounced to be the 'Koo-be-eng, a monstrous creature of equal 
 size with the former, that lived in the water, and sometimes 
 lurked near its edge in the reeds. 
 
 The great animal which was the distinctive symbol of Klein 
 Aasvogel Kop cave, Lower Caledon, a second representation 
 of which was found in a rock-shelter many miles distant, at 
 Miaputte, on the banks of the 'Nu-Gariep or Upper Orange, 
 near where the river disengages itself from the gorges of the 
 Malutis, she called the ' Kou-teign- Koo-rou, which she explained 
 .-t as meaning ' the Master of the Water.' This she stated was an 
 animal of enormous size, that lived in the country in ancient 
 timesj The Bushmen of the olden days used to hunt them ; 
 but they have long, long ago disappeared. It was far larger and 
 more formidable than the hippopotamus, and lived always in or 
 near the great waters and rivers, amongst swamps and reeds. 
 The Bushmen captured it by making a very strong enclosure 
 with reeds and poles, so strongly interwoven and bound together 
 that it could not break through. This fence was also masked 
 with reeds. When they succeeded in getting one of these brutes 
 within the toils, as soon as the monster found he was entrapped 
 his fury appeared to know no bounds ; he made desperate attempts 
 to free himself, and lashed the water about, in the impotence of 
 his rage, until he raised such clouds of spray around him that the 
 rainbow appeared upon them, as if crowning him. Hence his 
 name, and this circumstance the Bushman artists attempted 
 to depict in their paintings. But even after thus imprisoning 
 him, it frequently happened that three or four Bushmen would 
 be sacrificed to his uncontrollable fierceness before he was finally 
 conquered and killed. He generally seized them by the middle of 
 the back, crushed them with a single crunch of his teeth, and then 
 pounded them to a shapeless mass beneath his feet. These and 
 others she declared were animals that once lived in the land in 
 the days of her father's fathers, but they had long since dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 With regard to their religious beliefs, M. Arbousset informs us 
 that the Bushmen of the mountains believed in an unknown being 
 
MODE OF BURIAL OF THE BUSHMEN 133 
 
 they called 'Kaang, or the chief, or great chief. He is to be 
 addressed in times of famine, or before going to war, and when 
 performing the dance of the Mo'koma. AU the beasts of the field 
 have their marks which he has given them, for example this eland 
 obtained from him only a stump of a tail, that a folded ear, this 
 other a pierced ear. 'Kaang causes to live and causes to die ; 
 he gives or refuses rain, when there is a deficiency of game they 
 say, 'Kaang 'ta-kago go si- ho 'kaa 'kuaing," 'Kaang refuses them 
 beasts. 
 
 Dr. Bleek, as we have seen, identifies 'Kaggen ('Kaang) with 
 the Mantis. These Bushmen appear to apply the same word 
 to the caddisworm as to the mantis, to which the name of N'go 
 vide fj^o of Dr. Bleek) is also given. The N'go, or caddisworm, 
 which is frequently met with at certain seasons in some parts of 
 the Free State, constructs a case for itself with pieces of straw, 
 and it was probably its peculiar appearance, as well as that of 
 the mantis, which first attracted the superstitious attention of 
 the Bushmen towards these remarkable insects, which were 
 subsequently held in high veneration by some of them. The 
 Bachoana consider the N'go to be very poisonous, and are 
 afraid of them should they meet them among the grass when the 
 cattle are grazing. The Bushmen of the East addressed them as 
 an outward representation of 'Kaang. When asked by M. 
 Arbousset whether they did not pray to their deceased fathers, 
 like other tribes of the land, the Bushman addressed answered, 
 No ! to which he added that his father had taught him other- 
 wise, and had solemnly said before dying, " My son, when thou 
 goest to the chase, seek with care for the N'go, and ask food from 
 him for thyself and children. Mark after thy prayer if he moves 
 his head, describing an elbow, which signifies that he has heard 
 thee graciously, and that very evening thou wilt bring to thy 
 mouth a portion of game, which thou shalt hold fast between 
 thy teeth, and shalt cut it with thy knife, and with thine arm 
 bent describing an elbow like our N'go." 
 
 The words of the petition to be offered to this emblem of 
 'Kaang were : 
 
 " 'Kaang 'ta ha a ntanga e 9 
 
 'Kaang is it that thou dost not like me ? 
 
 'Kaang 'ta 'gnu a 'kua a s'e'ge. 
 
134 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 'Kaang lead me to a male gnu. 
 
 rtanga i 'kogu 'koba hu ; 
 
 I like much to have my belly filled ; 
 
 I'kontS, i'kage, itanga i'kobu koba hu ; 
 
 My oldest son, my oldest daughter, hke much to have their bellies filled ; 
 
 'Kaang 'ta, 'gnu a 'kua a s'e'gi. 
 
 'Kaang bring me a male gnu under my shafts." 
 
 —'Qing. 
 
 'Qing, when questioned by Mr. J. Orpen, with regard to 
 'Kaang, replied, " Cagn made all things, and we pray to him." 
 Being asked whether he was good or malicious, he answered, 
 •' At first he was very good and nice, but he got spoilt through 
 fighting so many things." When questioned as to the manner in 
 which Bushmen prayed to him, he responded in a low imploring 
 tone " O Cagn ! O Cagn ! are we not your children ? Do you 
 not see our hunger ? Give us food ! " and he gives us both our 
 hands full." When an inquiry was made whether he could tell 
 where 'Kaang was, he said, "We don't know, but the elands do. 
 Have you not hunted and heard his cry, when the elands sud- 
 denly started and ran to his call ? Where he is, elands are in 
 droves like cattle." Having stated that 'Kaang was the first 
 being, and that his wife's name was Coti, he was asked where Coti 
 came from, when he replied, " I don't know, perhaps from those 
 who brought the sun ; but," he added, " you are now asking 
 secrets that are not spoken of," secrets with which he asserted 
 he was not acquainted, and which were only known to the 
 initiated men of that particular dance. 
 
 'Kwaha stated to Mr. Charles Sirr Orpen ^ that the Bushman 
 name for the Superior Being was T'koo — vide 'Tikoe and T'koe, 
 the Bushman's " strong hand," or round stone of the 'Kibi or 
 digging stick — and that his ('Kwaha's) father used to say that 
 when they killed game they were not to waste the flesh, or T'koo 
 might not favour them again by giving them any more. They 
 considered T'koo was good for all. There was also a wicked spirit 
 T'ang (? 'Kaang), but although they called T'koo the father, 
 they did not like to speak of T'ang. 
 
 ^ From this several Kaffir words appear to be introduced into the old 
 Seroa language, thus itanga (Bushman) I love ; — uku tanda, — ^itanda 
 (Kaffir). 
 
 ^ 'Kwaha had been staying for a long time at the Bethulie Mission 
 Station, under missionary instruction. 
 
MODE OF BURIAL OF THE BUSHMEN 135 
 
 We have now in our study of the Bushmen attempted to obtain 
 some insight, imperfect however as it must necessarily be, of 
 the probable lines along which the tribes first penetrated into 
 South Africa. We have discovered that they were divided into 
 two great branches, each of which possessed artistic talents of a 
 distinct order ; and that they had been so long separated that, 
 although they still retained certain myths which seemed to 
 indicate from their great similitude a common origin, the lan- 
 guage of each of the two branches had, in the interim, become 
 so modified that when some of the advanced clans again came 
 in contact, they were not able to understand one another, or as 
 'Kwaha, who belonged to the painter tribes, said, he could not 
 understand those of the 'Gumaap or 'Gij-Gariep, who were of 
 the sculptor branch, as " their language was too double," that is, 
 in all probability, it had retained a greater number of primitive 
 clicks, and therefore more of its primitive character than the 
 other. The painter tribes came earlier in contact with the 
 races that followed upon the Bushman's trail. 
 
 We have learnt also something of their government, their 
 character and domestic habits, their means of subsistence, their 
 weapons and modes of hunting. We have passed under view 
 what is known of their marriage rites, their games, music and 
 musical instruments, and we have not only made the interesting 
 discovery that their artistic talents far surpassed those of all 
 other South African races, but that they had made greater 
 advances in primitive music than any of the intruding tribes ; 
 they had invented a greater variety of musical instruments, 
 and there was a greater compass and variation in the refrains 
 which accompanied their dances. We have, however, no- 
 thing in the Bushman language, as far as our own inquiries 
 have carried us, which can compete with the energetic composi- 
 tions found in some of the Kaffir or Basutu war-songs.* 
 
 1 The only fragment of a Bushman poem which has been preserved 
 belonging to the eastern tribes is that given by M. Arbousset {Voyage 
 d'Exploration, p. 249), and by a strange freak it is in Sesuto, and not Seroa. 
 But as it is unique as a specimen, we repeat it here : 
 " Raselepe u tlula yuale-ka puri 
 
 Raselepe (i.e. the father of Selepe) bounded like a kid ; 
 U tlula yuale-ka pokoa " 
 He bounded like the kid of a goat." 
 The rest is lost. 
 
136 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 When we come to study the nature of some of their dances, 
 their funeral rites, and some of their leading myths, we find that 
 they possessed a traditionary belief that at some remote period 
 the connexion between man and the lower animals was much 
 closer and far more intimate than at present, that they paid a 
 certain amount of homage to some mysterious and powerful being, 
 who was by turns generous or vindictive, that they reverenced 
 the memory of their departed friends and sought to propitiate 
 their manes by adding to the sacred heaps which covered their 
 graves, that they believed in a future state of existence wherein 
 Bushmen would be punished or rewarded according as they per- 
 formed or neglected certain rites while upon earth, and that they 
 preserved among their tribes certain mysteries and mystic rites 
 which were revealed to none but a privileged class called the 
 initiated, who alone were allowed to join in certain dances 
 whose hidden meaning was jealously withheld from those who 
 were uninitiated, or the profane vulgar among them. 
 
 Unfortunately whole tribes have been annihilated by the 
 stronger races which seized their hunting grounds, and the wise 
 men of their race perished with them, thus the knowledge and 
 the key of many of these mysteries, which could they have been 
 rescued from oblivion might have explained to us the first stages 
 of the development of more elaborate systems of religious 
 mysticism, have perished also ; and we are only able to attempt 
 to grope our way in a very unsatisfactory manner through the 
 gloom, the fragmentary ruins, and the few scattered and obscure 
 traditions that have survived the desolation of past ages. 
 
 Having thus far endeavoured to obtain a knowledge of the 
 Bushman race, taken in its entirety, we wiU now strive to gather 
 as much of the history as may have been preserved of the various 
 groups of tribes which once inhabited different portions of the 
 country. 
 
Chapter VIII 
 
 THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES. 
 
 In reviewing the various groups of tribes, we will commence with 
 those to the north, and pass from them to the western 
 portion of the country, following up the inquiry through the 
 Karoo and Middle Veld, thence to Griqualand, the Southern 
 Bachoana territory, the valleys of the Kolong and the Vaal, 
 the present Free State, the 'Nu-Gariep, Basutuland, and the east ; 
 and finally noticing those of the Zuurveld, concluding with as 
 much as is known of the life of the last great Bushman captain 
 who ruled over that portion of their ancient territory before the 
 Kaffir tribes attempted to obtain possession of it. To avoid 
 repetition as much as possible, we will in every case where the 
 Bushman history is intermixed with that of the intruding races, 
 defer its consideration until we treat more particularly of the 
 tribes with which they came in contact. 
 
 In pursuance of this plan we will begin with 
 
 The Bushmen of Damaraland. 
 
 These tribes or clans were visited by the traveller Chapman 
 several times. In 1861 he was accompanied by Baines ; and 
 from them we are able to glean a considerable amount of informa- 
 tion. Some of these people joined Messrs. Chapman and Baines' 
 hunting party and were glad to perform small services for a few 
 charges of powder and ball. They showed no timidity, nor in 
 fact any distrust or want of confidence. Living, as they did, 
 between the Bachoana tribes and the Hottentots, and so far 
 distant as to be subservient to neither, they had more independ- 
 ence of character than their less fortunate countr5anen. Occa- 
 sionally, however, the Namaqua Hottentots penetrated as far 
 as this portion of their territory on hunting expeditions, and 
 
138 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 what with scouring the country by day and watching the water 
 at night, they destroyed such immense numbers of game that they 
 almost exterminated the animals for miles around them. Mr. 
 Baines in his description of them added that he had not a little 
 pleasure in being able to state that the behaviour of the Bushmen 
 who visited them was civil and respectful, and they were not 
 annoyed by the constant attempts at theft so common whilst 
 they were travelling through a country occupied by other native 
 tribes. 
 
 Some of the women were particularly diminutive, being a 
 very few inches above four feet in height. Their real colour was 
 a light yellowish brown, but they were generally nearly black 
 with accumulated dirt. The general stature of the men seemed 
 to be below five feet, but some of them were tolerably well made, 
 and in good condition. The only one of the first party they 
 met with who exceeded that height was a stout fellow, with well- 
 developed muscles, the son of the old chief. At another place, 
 however, some Bushmen were met with who were nearly five 
 feet five or six inches in height. This variation in height was 
 in all probability owing to some intermixture between these 
 particular Bushman families and some of the Namaqua hunters 
 who occasionally penetrated into their country, in the same manner 
 as we shall find that half-castes of a similar description, more 
 or less numerous according to the number of the intruders, 
 sprang up in many portions of the Bushman territory. It seems 
 an established fact that wherever we find such a marked deviation 
 from the pure Bushman type, the modification can always be 
 traced to the intercourse alluded to. 
 
 Baines noticed that one of these Damara Bushmen had a 
 tinge of red in his cheeks, while a number of white feathers, 
 cut short and stuck in his hair like curl-papers, gave him almost 
 an effeminate appearance. One of them had the front of a 
 secretary bird's head fastened in his crisp locks, with the beak 
 projecting over his forehead ; and another wore the spoils of a 
 crow in the same manner. In the general contour of their bodies 
 they were similar to all other Bushmen. " The peculiar line of 
 beauty formed by the protuberance behind, and the necessity of 
 throwing back the shoulders to support the stomach, unnaturally 
 distended by quantities of roots, melons, and other non-nutritious 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 139 
 
 food, has been often remarked." " In some the hair was shaved 
 round the temples, ears, and back of the head, what remained 
 on the scalp being felted with red clay and grease into a thick 
 mat, to which ornaments of various kinds, such as beads and bits 
 of ostrich eggshell of the size of shirt buttons, were attached 
 behind and before." " A bit of sinew from the backbone of a 
 beast formed a necklace, and small bands of giraffe's or elephant's 
 hair were tied about their limbs, the tail of the former serving at 
 once as a sceptre and a fly-brusher to the old headman." Some 
 of them had rather longer hair than the Bushmen of the Cape 
 Colony, a small portion of which was drawn out into cords which 
 formed a fringe or curtain three inches long behind. 
 
 A belt from three to six or seven inches in width, which was 
 worn by some of the young women, consisted of small circular 
 pieces of ostrich eggshell bored in the centre, strung like buttons 
 with their flat sides together, the cords were then laid side by side 
 until they formed a belt of the required width ; and to support 
 them in its proper shape, stiff pieces of leather were stitched 
 behind like whalebone in a corset. In making one of these 
 an immense amount of time and labour must have been ex- 
 pended, as the shell, which is naturally very hard, had first to be 
 boiled and softened in cold water, then cut into small pieces through 
 which a hole was pierced with a little flint or agate drill, then rubbed 
 into small rings like beads and polished, which were afterwards 
 threaded in the manner described. 
 
 No other race except that of the Bushmen had either the skill 
 or the patience to manufacture these beads, which is certainly a 
 mark of their indomitable industry and perseverance when any 
 occasion called them forth. After the stronger races came in 
 contact with the Bushman bead-makers, they used to purchase 
 these pierced discs of eggshell from the latter for small pieces of 
 iron. 
 
 Besides these bead-belts the other portion of the Damara 
 Bushwomen's dress consisted of a fringed apron in front arid a 
 small piece of soft skin behind. It was remarked that they 
 " were much cleaner in their food than the Damara or Bachoana, 
 the facility of obtaining fresh meat freeing them from the neces- 
 sity of eating everything that came to hand." Those seen by 
 these travellers not being smeared with grease, except in " their 
 
140 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 matted hair, were far less unpleasant to sit near than the 
 Damara." 
 
 The arrows were carried in neat quivers of bark served round 
 with sinew, the whole with the bow being carried in a buck-skin, 
 the neck of which was bound tightly round the quiver, while the 
 legs served as belts to sling it round their shoulders. Baines 
 states that there was a " manly bearing about these fellows 
 which he could not help but admire." Besides their bow and 
 quiver, the Bushmen carried in their velzak their fire-sticks, 
 sucking-reed for drinking water, sinew for thread, bone -awls, 
 and a number of other implements. 
 
 In 1861 these Bushmen not only headed their arrows with 
 bone, but also with iron.^ The latter, however, was only a recent 
 innovation, as the fact has already been pointed out that Mr. 
 Palgrave found at the time of his first visit quartz and agate chips 
 were used by the northern tribes for this purpose. To preserve 
 the points from injury, the bone heads were reversed while carry- 
 ing them in the quiver, that is, " the sharp envenomed point 
 was inserted into the end of the reed forming the shaft," and 
 replaced in its proper position immediately before being used. 
 Thus when a beast was hit, the reed shaft fell off, like that of a 
 harpoon, leaving the poisoned head fast in the victim. The 
 iron head on the other hand, " with a sharp chisel edge a quarter 
 of an inch broad, was carefully wrapped up by itself in bark 
 or sinew, and was said to be specially reserved for the giraffe." 
 The bow was strung with neatly twisted sinew, looped at one 
 end and rolled round it at the other in such a manner that by 
 merely turning it in the hand, as if it were the thread of a screw, 
 it could be tightened or relaxed at pleasure. The bow was 
 three quarters of an inch thick, and httle, if at all, more than 
 three feet long. It looked more like a plaything than a formid- 
 able weapon, but it required, nevertheless, a stronger pull than 
 those of the Damara to bend it. In obtaining fire two sticks of 
 moderately hard wood were chosen, in one a little thicker than 
 a pencil a small notch was made, and into this the point of another 
 somewhat harder and thinner was inserted. This was made 
 
 1 We have already shown that the Bushmen obtained such iron as 
 they used by barter, as they never appear to have possessed the know- 
 ledge of smelting it from the ore and working it themselves. 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 141 
 
 to revolve rapidly between the palms of the hands, until suffi- 
 cient heat was gained to ignite a small tuft of carefully selected 
 dry grass.' When one failed to produce fire in this manner, 
 another sat opposite, and as the hands of the first came to the 
 bottom of the stick the second caught it above and kept up the 
 motion until the first one had raised his hand again. 
 
 It appears that the Bushmen had a distinguishing appella- 
 tion for every pit and spring of water. This was noticed to be 
 especially the case in the Kalahari region : thus the one named 
 " Stink Fontein " by Anderson was called 'Thouncehy the Bush- 
 men, and by the Bachoana Letje-piri, both signifying " the 
 Fountain of the Hyena." It is to be regretted that so many 
 travellers attach names of their own to a multitude of localities, 
 instead of ascertaining wherever practicable the one by which 
 it is designated by the natives, as their modem nomenclature 
 cannot possibly assist those who may follow their footsteps, 
 the natives being ignorant of the new titles thus given to them 
 by the foreign visitors. 
 
 Chapman found the Bushmen of this part of the country 
 extending into Ovambo-Land, and Bushmen alone occupied the 
 intervening country to Lake Ngami. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Ngami Region. 
 
 The country to the north of the Kalahari, and between 
 Damaraland and Ngami, was a region fuU of pans and plains, 
 very similar to those which form the great central portion of the 
 
 ^ Mr. Palgrave informed the writer that during his first journeys along 
 the west coast and the west interior, the sight of fire suddenly bursting 
 from the end of a lucifer match created the greatest astonishment, and 
 the possession of two or three of them they looked upon as an invaluable 
 treasure. , On one occasion, being encamped near the kraal of a chief, 
 he thought that he would amuse and surprise them by firing off a rocket 
 in the evening. He did so, and immediately there was a hubbub, con- 
 sternation, and panic among the terrified inhabitants, succeeded in a 
 few moments by a death-like stillness. In the morning he found the 
 place abandoned, every soul, man, woman, and child, had fled, leaving 
 all their worldly gear behind them. For three days no trace of them could 
 be discovered, when a few stragglers were seen, and the retreat of the rest 
 found out ; but even then it was with dif&culty they could be persuaded 
 to return, and not before Mr. Palgrave had given a promise to the chief 
 that he would not again attempt to knock any more stars out of the heaven 
 as long as he was in the country. 
 
142 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 old lacustrine formation in part of Griqualand West and the 
 Cape Colony, and to which in the latter their brethren gave 
 the general name of Karoo, a designation which by a coincidence 
 the northern Bushmen have also given to the country which they 
 inhabit. These people, as was probably at one time the case 
 in the lower country, have given special names to all the great 
 pans, three of which are 'Goo-i-naw, Sa-ba-'tho, and 'Karoo 
 
 (Dry)- 
 
 Mr. Baines found Bushmen as far as he travelled to the north- 
 west of the lake, they were known by the name of Ma-'kow-'kow 
 to the lake people who live to the north-west of the Bataoana, 
 or Batauana, the Men of the young Lions. Most of them are 
 armed with the large assagai, or rather spear, as it is not intended 
 for throwing, as well as the bow and arrow. The former appear 
 to be used principally in elephant hunting. Large weapons of 
 this character were manufactured for this express purpose, and 
 called elephant spears by the Bamangwato and Mashuna tribes, 
 who are considered the great blacksmiths of the interior. Those, 
 ■however, possessed by these Bushmen were not of the same 
 gigantic dimensions as some of the others belonging to the 
 tribes alluded to, having a blade of only some eight inches in 
 length and two in breadth, with a strong shaft of five or six 
 feet. They had also kerries, or knobbed sticks, of hard black 
 wood like the Ovambo. 
 
 When they had a desire to show that they were friendly, many 
 of them would lay down their weapons and sandals a long way 
 off before approaching those they were visiting. A similar 
 custom was observed among the painter-tribes, and is found 
 depicted in some of their paintings representing friendly inter- 
 views. They carried sticks for producing fire. Their cookery 
 was simple, yet not without method. Their favourite plan was 
 to dig a hole with a sharp stick under the fire, and in this to cover 
 up the food with hot ashes. Thus one of them placed " several 
 good-sized prickly melons like ostrich eggs in a nest, and though 
 they are generally bitter before they are cooked, yet after it 
 they came out very juicy and agreeable." Another method was 
 to roast, or rather broil, the meat on a stick, which acted as a 
 temporary spit. 
 
 These Bushmen could work very tastefully with beads, and wore 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 143 
 
 their medicines and roots as necklaces round their necks. One 
 of them had a spiral tuft made of the ends of black ostrich feathers 
 with short pieces of the stems tied together, the filaments radiat- 
 ing from them so as to form a perfect globe of jetty hue, which he 
 wore as an ornament on his head. Their colour was a light sienna 
 brown, very different from the sallow dry-leaf colour of the Bush- 
 men of the Cape Colony. All the large game pits near the lake were 
 exclusively the work of the Makobas and Bushmen, as it is in 
 some parts of the Kalahari. Their spade was the national 
 digging-stick of the Bushmen. The water at which any chief 
 or headman of these Bushmen drank was soon known by his 
 name, and his successor in the post, as a matter of convenience, 
 continued to bear it. 
 
 " In this manner, perhaps," says Mr. Baines, " a series of 
 stations along the pools in a river will have separate names, 
 and thus a European arriving at one of them, if not aware of the 
 custom, applies to the stream the name given to him where he 
 strikes it ; another in like manner applies, as a general name, 
 the word he hears at the' next post ; and in this manner contra- 
 dictory and confused statements are made upon the maps, and 
 the new comer who uses these in conversation to the natives 
 will be guided not where he wants to go, but to the spot where 
 the word he happens to use is properly applicable." 
 
 The watering-place called Kobis and Koobie by Chapman and 
 Baines was named after a Bushman formerly living there, and 
 his son afterwards bore the same name. Some of the Bushmen 
 were in a state of vassalage to the neighbouring Bachoana 
 tribes, and were supposed to form a sort of outposts around the 
 territories of the latter, to give the alarm in case of any mar- 
 auders making their appearance in the direction in which they 
 were stationed. Leshulatibi, the chief of Lake Ngami, claimed 
 a kind of sovereignty over some of the clans living nearest to 
 the country in which he resided, and although, as we have seen, 
 many of these northern Bushmen were living in a state of isolation 
 and perfect independence, those living on the borders of this 
 territory, and who were thus brought into contact with stronger 
 races, were treated by the latter with the same merciless barbarity 
 as elsewhere. The chief we have just mentioned not only asserted 
 a kind of sovereignty over them, but demanded of them as a 
 
144 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 species of tribute the tusks of all the elephants which they killed 
 in hunting ; those near his great place were held in a state of 
 abject servitude, and subjected to the greatest cruelty. 
 
 On one occasion, two horses having been suffocated in a quag- 
 mire, he ordered the two Bushmen who had charge of them to be 
 bound to them and thrust back again into the morass, with an 
 injunction not to lose the horses again. 
 
 Again, in 1854, when this chief was attacked by Sekeletu, 
 the son of Sebitoane, and the last of the Makololo chiefs, the 
 Bushmen on this side thought it was a good chance to sweep off 
 a lot of his cattle. His people could neither pursue, nor dare 
 engage these " black serpents " of the desert, so after a while he 
 dropped a hint that he supposed they thought he was dead 
 and the cattle without a master, that they were hungry, and that 
 now the affair was forgotten. He then sent a man with tobacco 
 to buy skins of them, and having by a long course of deceitful 
 kindness lulled their suspicions, he proclaimed a grand battue. 
 Of course the quarry was the Bushmen themselves, who were 
 surprised, disarmed, and brought before him where he was sitting 
 on his veld-stool. He superintended the deliberate cutting of 
 their throats, embittering their last moments by every taunt 
 and sarcasm his imagination could supply. One of the 
 actors in this bloody drama was afterwards in Chapman's 
 service, and " related with great gusto the part he had sus- 
 tained in it." 
 
 Baines states that some of these Bushmen in the immediate 
 vicinity of the Lake were fine fellows, six feet high. Livingstone 
 also visited these people, and tells us that he found many Bush 
 families living at a place far to the north called Matlomaganyana 
 or the Links, a chain of never-failing springs, who unlike those 
 of the plains of the Kalahari, who are generally of short stature 
 and light yellow colour, were tall strapping fellows of dark com- 
 plexion. Heat alone does not produce blackness, but heat with 
 moisture, says the doctor, " seems to insure the deepest hue." 
 Baines, however, considered they were half-castes, like the Bas- 
 taard Hottentots of the Colony, while Moffat says that the Bush- 
 men who are " the most northerly, exist among the inhabited re- 
 gions, where they remain perfectly distinct, and what is very 
 remarkable, do not become darker in their complexion, as 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 145 
 
 is the case with all the other tribes that inhabit the torrid zone." 
 
 The explanation of this apparent divergence is doubtless to 
 be traced, as in other well-authenticated cases, to an admixture 
 of foreign blood, rather than to mere variations of climatical 
 conditions upon such nomads as some of the branches of this old 
 hunter race, especially as we find such an admixture taking place 
 upon other border lines, where other Bushman tribes have been 
 thrown in contact with the stronger races that were being im- 
 pelled upon them. 
 
 In Livingstone's second visit we obtain some further par- 
 ticulars about this half-caste tribe. He met them at Rapesh, 
 under a captain named Haroye. " He and some others were at 
 least six feet high, and of a darker complexion than the Bushmen 
 of the south. They frequented the Zouga, and had always plenty 
 of food and water. They were a merry laughing set." From 
 some of their observances they appeared to regard the dead as 
 still in another state of living, for they requested one whom they 
 were burying " not to be offended, even though they wished to 
 remain a little longer in the world." These Bushmen killed 
 many elephants, which they hunted by night when the moon was 
 full, for the sake of the coolness. They chose the moment 
 succeeding a charge, when the animal was out of breath, to run in 
 and give him a stab with their long-bladed spears. 
 
 The Bushmen of Ngami reported that others of their race 
 existed much farther to the north. Some of these men joined 
 Mr. Baines' expedition, and one of his attendants, " though he 
 knew one dialect of the Bushman language, could not understand 
 theirs. At length a Damara was found who could carry on some 
 sort of conversation with them, when they stated " that their 
 chief lived very far to the north and hunted elephants with dogs 
 near a very great water, the distance of which seemed to increase 
 every time they were asked about it." 
 
 We have already seen that the Bushmen of the north apply 
 the same appellation to a portion of the country in which they 
 live as do those of the Middle Veld of the Cape Colony, viz. 
 Karoo. Livingstone met with another instance among those in 
 the far interior where a name was used which was identical with one 
 employed by the tribes of the south. The spot aUuded to was 
 called 'Kama-kama, or Pools, Pools, that is, 'a chain of pools,' 
 
146 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 while we find Kisi 'kama on the Vaal, near 'Gong-'Gong, ' 'Keis 
 or Khais-kama in British Kaffraria, ' Kragga-' kama near Port 
 EHzabeth, ' Ziet-zei-kama on the border of the district of George, 
 and a number of others. Now as it is certain that no Hottentot 
 tribes ever hved in the country where the Bushman 'Kama-' kama is 
 found, the name could not have been derived from them, but 
 must have been of pure Bushman origin. We have therefore 
 reason to conclude that Kama was originally a Bushman, and not 
 a Hottentot word ; and that therefore the names given above, 
 belonging to these widely separated localities, were of Bushman 
 nomenclature also. 
 
 This similarity of words used by distant tribes that have been 
 cut off and isolated for unknown generations from each other, 
 is another link in the chain of corroborative evidence of the 
 southern migration of the old hunter-race. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Kalahari. 
 
 The Kalahari extends from the Orange river, 29° south 
 latitude, to near Lake Ngami in the north, and from 24° east 
 longitude to near the west coast. It is intersected by beds 
 of ancient rivers, yet it contains no running waters, and very 
 little in wells. Most of the latter are in the ancient river-beds, 
 but the water never rises now to the surface. The ancient Mokolo, 
 found towards the north of this region, must have been joined by 
 rivers lower down, as it becomes broad and expands into a large 
 bed, of which the present Lake Ngami forms but a very small 
 part. Large salt pans are also met with in this portion, one of 
 which, visited by Dr. Livingstone, was fifteen miles broad and 
 one hundred long ; in another there was a cake of salt and lime, 
 an inch and a half thick. Some of the pans were covered with 
 shells identical with those found in Lake Ngami and the Zouga. 
 This traveller therefore considered it probable that the salt was 
 the leavings of slightly brackish lakes of antiquity, large portions 
 of which must have been dried out in the general desiccation. 
 
 The Kalahari proper is covered with grass and creeping plants, 
 
 ^ Gong-Gong is the Bushman name for a waterfall, over which all the 
 waters of the Vaal rush ; and is explained by them to imitate its noise 
 Gong-Gong, Gong-Gong, Gong-Gong. 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 147 
 
 and in some parts patches of bushes and even trees. It is re- 
 markably flat, and prodigious herds of antelopes wander over 
 its surface. Here the Bushmen live from choice, and the 
 Bakalahari from compulsion. ' " The Bushmen," writes Living- 
 stone, " are distinct in language, race, habits, and appearance, 
 and are the real nomads of the country. They never cultivate 
 the soil, or rear animals save wretched dogs. They are inti- 
 mately acquainted with the habits of the game, and chiefly sub- 
 sist on their flesh eked out by the roots, and beans, and fruits of 
 the desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy plains have 
 generally thin wiry forms, and are capable of great exertion 
 and severe privations. Many are of low stature, although not 
 dwarfish." " That they are," continues the doctor, " to some 
 extent like 'baboons is true, just as these are in some points 
 frightfully human. '^ 
 
 The inhabitants of the Kalahari frequently " hide their 
 supplies of water, by filling the pits with sand." In the olden 
 times the Bushmen who inhabited those portions of the country 
 * now comprised in the Cape Colony used to do the same, merely 
 leaving a small reed pipe through which they sucked up their 
 supplies. One reason given by the Colonial Bushmen for this 
 custom of covering up the springs was that there might be fewer 
 places for the game to drink, and thus they were able to 
 watch the more easily the remaining drinking places when 
 hunting. Ostrich eggshells furnished them with water-bottles, 
 in which to carry the fluid to the place of their haUnt. At 
 Kanne, beyond Letloche, Livingstone found one of these " suck- 
 ing-places," around which were congregated great numbers 
 of Bushwomen with their eggshells and reeds. At one of the 
 stations in the desert, named Boatlanama, were deep wells, in 
 the neighbourhood of which was an abundance of pallahs, spring- 
 boks, guinea-fowl, and small monkeys. 
 
 The game which frequented these wilds in large numbers were 
 elands, duikers, steenboks, gemsboks, and porcupines, all able 
 to exist without water for a long time, living on bulbs and tubers 
 containing moisture. The koodoo, springbok, and ostrich can 
 live where there is moisture in the vegetation on which they feed. 
 The rhinoceros, buffalo, gnu, giraffe, zebra, and pallah are never 
 seen except in the vicinity of water. There were likewise two 
 
148 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 species of jackals, the dark and the golden, a small ocelot, the 
 lynx, the wild-cat, and others, besides lions, leopards, panthers, 
 and hyenas. 
 
 The desert was a refuge for many a tribe when their lands 
 were overrun by the ferocious Matabili. 
 
 The natives of the Kalahari, the Bushmen and Bakalahari, 
 eat some of the snakes which are found in their country, such as 
 the python. The largest of these are from fifteen to twenty feet 
 in length. They live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia, 
 although occasionally steenboks or pallahs fall victims. They 
 are harmless to man. One was shot by Dr. Livingstone about 
 eleven feet ten inches long and as thick as a man's leg. The 
 flesh, he states, was much relished by the Bakalahari and the 
 Bushmen, each carrying away his portion on his shoulder hke 
 a log of wood. The Kaffirs, on the other hand, hold these ser- 
 pents in superstitious dread, believing they are animated by the 
 spirit of some great chief ; and in former days any person destroy- 
 ing one was punished with death. 
 
 In rainy seasons. Chapman informs us, there is an abundant 
 supply of water in the Kalahari, but frequently when the super- 
 ficial moisture has dried away, its existence is only known to the 
 Bushmen, who suck it from the damp sand several feet below 
 the surface by means of a tube of reed buried in it, having a 
 sponge-like tuft of grass inserted at the end. 
 
 At one of their camps, where they appeared to have nothing 
 to live upon but water, they were asked how they managed to 
 be so fat. It proved that their principal article of diet was the 
 iguana, which happened to be very plentiful in the neighbourhood. 
 The Bushmen trace them by their spoor or trail to the hole they 
 inhabit, and then dig them out, after which they stew the flesh 
 nicely, stamp it fine, and mix it with the fat and eggs of the 
 reptile, which makes a savoury and nourishing dish. These huge 
 land lizards are from three to four feet long, while another larger 
 kind is about six. They are quite distinct from the water kind, 
 which are of a darker and lighter colour, and have the tail 
 laterally compressed hke the crocodile to aid them in steering under 
 water. These Kalahari lizards are of a pale raw sienna ground- 
 colour, irregulariy marked down the back with brown lozenge- 
 shaped patches, with small spots between. They ascend and 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 149 
 
 descend trees with great rapidity. When irritated they not only 
 defend themselves, but attack and give chase to man, when they 
 erect their tails and expand their cheeks, which are of a pale 
 cobalt blue. They dart out their long forked tongues with great 
 rapidity like a snake, and inflict severe blows with their tails, 
 or bite ; but their bite is not venomous. 
 
 The precarious hfe led by the Kalahari Bushmen was strikingly 
 shown by the vast difference in the appearance of the inhabitants 
 of the various encampments ; some were fat and plump, others 
 the most pitiable objects imaginable, men, women, and children 
 shrivelled with hunger. The conditions of their existence and 
 the sudden vicissitudes to which they were exposed, must doubt- 
 less have rendered their life one that was constantly veering 
 between a feast and a famine. 
 
 "When food is plentiful," says Chapman, "the Bushmen 
 seem to be the happiest of mortals in their simple state, and in 
 their parched wilds, which just give what life requires, but give 
 no more." The wide desert with its life of comparative freedom 
 imparts even to the civilized white man a degree, not exactly of 
 happiness, but of freedom from care and anxiety, which it is 
 hardly possible to obtain in a civilized state of society. 
 
 This sense of freedom, however, was not the only enjoyment 
 which these Bushmen possessed ; for the excitement of the chase 
 was their greatest gloryj The huntsmen of the Kalahari con- 
 structed great lines of fences and a continuous series of pitfalls, 
 which, when we consider the primitive and imperfect tools at 
 their disposal to carry out such extensive works, requiring so large 
 an amount of labour to accomplish, must excite our wonder, 
 if it does not arouse our admiration of their perseverance and 
 enduring energy, which such achievements unquestionably 
 demonstrate. 
 
 These fences and pitfaUs, which were called telle- kello by the 
 Bushmen, were formed by long funnel-shaped fences converging 
 towards a certain point, in the gorge or apex of which a large 
 pitfall of a particular construction was placed. When these 
 works were completed and a grand battue was decided upon, the 
 Bushmen commenced to watch in shelters adjacent to the telle- 
 'kello fences, in which during the daytime a large fire of hard 
 wood was made. In the evening the hunters covered up the 
 
150 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 burning embers, and a gentle warmth for a certain distance 
 within their influence was imparted to the iatmosphere around. 
 During the day large clubs of touchwood were prepared, generally 
 from some decayed baobab, and when at night the game poured 
 down to the water, the huntsmen rushed out on either side from 
 their places of concealment, extending themselves towards either 
 end of the funnel-shaped fences, at the entrance they threw the 
 clubs which they had previously ignited at the panic-stricken 
 animals as they tried to avoid entering between the two fences. 
 The burning brands caused them to change their course, until 
 at last the startled animals rushed between the fatal fences, which 
 gradually narrowed as they advanced, increasing at the same 
 time in height and strength. 
 
 The demoniac yells and blazing firebrands of their pursuers 
 added to the terror and consequent speed with which the hinder- 
 most were impelled onward, until at length, when their terror 
 was at its height, between the highest part of the fences an escape 
 seemed at hand, by the opening in front. Men on either side 
 guarded the fences so that they did not break through, and with 
 one terrific bound they leaped the low fence fronting the pit and 
 were swallowed in the treacherous abyss into which they were 
 precipitated one upon another, until the whole presented an 
 indescribable chaos of writhing, smothering, tortured animals. The 
 pit was fiUed with probably from fifty to a hundred head of game, 
 and the living made their escape by trampling over the dying, 
 while the delighted and triumphant Bushmen rushed in, spear in 
 hand, and slew the uppermost as they were struggling to escape. 
 
 Chapman states that there was a sociability about these 
 Bushmen which was not always found among the members of 
 tribes of other native races, thus when the larger game was scarce 
 they would hunt all day for roots, bulbs, tortoises, etc., and then 
 in the evening meet together to share and devour the spoils. 
 
 He also mentions another trait in their character, that few 
 who know the special weaknesses of the Hottentot race would be 
 inclined to give them credit for. He states that the Bushmen 
 generally were less corrupt in their morals than any of the larger 
 congregated tribes, excepting when they had been long in close 
 contact with them. They lived comparatively chaste hves, 
 and their women were not at all flattered by the attention of their 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 151 
 
 Bachoana lords. Instead of an honour, they looked upon in- 
 tercourse with any one out of their tribe, no matter how superior, 
 as a degradation. 
 
 As the Kalahari tribes have been occupying a country, 
 probably from a remote past, which has been removed from the 
 great lines of migration of the stronger races, they have remained 
 more perfectly isolated than any other portion of the Bushman 
 family, and have probably, in consequence, retained their habits 
 and modes of thought with less alteration and innovation than 
 any others. 
 
 The Bushmen of the West. 
 It would appear from the frequent occurrence of stone im- 
 plements used by the Bushmen and the scattered remains of 
 some of their paintings, that, until the intrusion of the pastoral 
 Hottentots, the entire coimtry to the shores of the Atlantic was 
 occupied by them, and that after that intrusion, although many 
 retired more to the eastward, a considerable number clung to the 
 mountain strongholds of their old land, and kept up a continuous 
 warfare against the invaders, which ever increased in intensity 
 until, from the exasperation which it engendered, it became a 
 struggle characterized by peculiar vindictiveness. Some of the 
 weaker clans in like manner sought an asylum among the rocks 
 and sohtudes of the sea coast. 
 
 Some of these last still survived in 1779, and were then visited 
 by a party of travellers composed of Colonel Gordon, Lieutenant 
 Paterson, Sebastian and Jacobus van Reenen, and a Mr. Pienaar, 
 while fortunately Lieutenant Paterson put on record what they 
 saw of them. He states that they reached the Great river after 
 being nine days in crossing the arid and desolate country they 
 had travelled through, and frequently being more than two days 
 together without obtaining a drop of water. On the banks of 
 the river they observed several old uninhabited huts, where there 
 were numbers of baboons' bones with those of various other wild 
 beasts. Colonel Gordon launched his boat, hoisted the Dutch 
 colours, first drank to the States' health, then that of the Prince 
 of Orange and the Company, after which he gave the river the 
 name of Orange, in honour of that prince. 
 
 Crossing the river near its mouth, they came upon a great 
 
i52 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 number of huts which were uninhabited. They were much 
 superior to those built by the generaUty of the Bushmen, they 
 were loftier and were thatched with grass and furnished with 
 stools made of the back bones of the grampus. The tribe that 
 inhabited them must have at one time been numerous,^ although 
 at the time of Paterson's visit only eleven members of it were to 
 be found there. A Namaqua woman was living among them. 
 They were styled Shore-Bushmen, and were living under a chief 
 called 'Cout. Their mode of Uving was wretched in the highest 
 degree, and they were apparently the dirtiest of all the Hottentot 
 tribes. They had all cut off the first joint of the little finger. 
 Their dress was composed of the skins of seals and jackals, the 
 flesh of which they ate. 
 
 Their principal food appeared to be fish, which was found 
 suspended from poles. When a grampus was cast on shore, they 
 removed their huts to the place, and subsisted upon it as long as 
 any part of it remained, and in this manner it sometimes afiorded 
 them subsistence for several months, though in a great measure 
 decayed and putrified in the sun. They smeared their bodies 
 with oil or train, the odour of which was so powerful that their 
 approach was perceived some time before they presented them- 
 selves in sight. They carried water in the shells of ostrich eggs 
 and the bladders of seals, which they shot with bows. Their 
 arrows were the same as those of other Hottentot Bushmen. 
 
 When they were first seen they took to flight. They were 
 evidently perfectly unacquainted with Europeans, and it was 
 only after considerable persuasion that they made their appear- 
 ance. This was probably a remnant of a similar tribe to the people 
 called strandloopers by the early Dutch. They were certainly 
 a more primitive race than the nomadic pastoral Hottentots 
 which followed them. 
 
 ^ Sometimes great havoc was committed among the Bushmen and 
 other native tribes by the occasional visitation of a severe epidemic, 
 which has sometimes swept off whole tribes, as if before the blast of a 
 pestilence. Chapman informs us that a raging sickness of this kind having 
 decimated some of the Kalahari tribes, an old Bushman named Casse 
 emphatically passed his hand before his mouth and blowing against it 
 strove thus to indicate the clean sweep the extensive mortality had made 
 amongst them. " There are no people left," he said," only stones." He 
 was equally as figurative when speaking of the unseasonable weather, 
 declaring that " the cold wind was cutting off the summer from the winter." 
 
THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 153 
 
 The Bushmen who clung to the mountain fastnesses were 
 still numerous at the time of Barrow's visit in 1796-7. He says 
 that formerly the kloofs of the Khamiesberg abounded with 
 elands and hartebeests, gemsboks, quaggas, and zebras, and were 
 not a little formidable on account of the number of beasts of 
 prey that resorted thither ; but at the period when he wrote, 
 although the lion was stiU troublesome, the country was almost 
 deserted by beasts in a state of nature, and the Dutch, who in their 
 turn had almost entirely superseded the original Hottentot 
 intruders, were too much in dread of the Bushmen to range far 
 over the country in quest of game. 
 
 He found a Bastaard chief (old Cornelius Kok) living near 
 the foot of the mountain, with a mixed horde of Bastaards and 
 Namaquas. In his younger days this man had been a great 
 lover of the chase, and the inside of his matted hut stiU showed 
 trophies of his prowess. He boasted that, in one excursion he 
 had killed seven camelopards and three white rhinoceroses. 
 But although the intruding races had almost annihilated the 
 game, the Bushmen were still in considerable numbers along the 
 borders, and the same continued state of unrest and alarm pre- 
 vailed. They were said to be particularly vindictive to any of 
 their own countr5anen who had been taken prisoners and con- 
 tinued to live with the Dutch farmers. Should any of those 
 unfortunates again fall into their hands, they seldom escaped 
 being put to the most excruciating tortures. 
 
 In the Kaabas mountains, not far from Pella, a narrow pass 
 winds through. It is, says Thompson, a remarkably bold and 
 picturesque defile, cutting its way apparently through the bowels 
 of the mountains, which rise on either hand in ; abrupt precipices 
 at least a thousand feet in height, giving a grand and solemn effect 
 to the scenery, with its rocks and caverns rising round in dim 
 perspective. This poort, or pass, received an appellation which 
 signified in the Namaqua and Bushman languages the Howling 
 of the Big Men, from an event which took place there in the early 
 days. A party of Boers had left the Colony to survey the banks 
 of the 'Gariep, probably in hopes of discovering in these remote 
 regions a land flowing with mUk and honey, with no one to dis- 
 pute their occupation of it but the feeble and famished natives. 
 Whether they committed any aggressions on the route upon the 
 
154 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Bushmen is not now known, but they were waylaid in this defile 
 on their return by the crafty savages, and many of them slain by 
 showers of stones and poisoned arrows ; and from the dismal 
 howhng they made in their flight the pass received its name. 
 
 Many other simUar traditions were connected with other 
 portions of the country, which have in like manner been marked 
 by some tragedy in the determined and desperate struggle that 
 was made by these aborigines to maintain the independence 
 of their country, and they are evidence of the feelings which were 
 excited in the breasts of the tribes of the desert by the cruel op- 
 pressions and arrogant usurpations of the white men. 
 
chapter IX 
 
 THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 
 (Continued). 
 
 The Bushmen of the Western Karoo. 
 
 Up to the middle of last century the Bushmen of the Karoo on 
 the borders of the Dutch settlements were living on good terms 
 with the colonists. They roamed about the border districts 
 in a friendly way ; petty thefts now and then occurred, but " Bush- 
 man atrocities " were unheard of. It was about this time that 
 some Dutch elephant hunters penetrated into the long kloof 
 to the eastward, and began to make a permanent lodgment there. 
 The moxmtains at that time were thickly peopled by Bushman 
 clans, who held the key of all the passes leading to the eastward. 
 Doubtless the newcomers, who were successful huntsmen — 
 as the country hterally swarmed with great troops of elephants 
 and every pool and river teemed with hippopotami, — were 
 welcomed as " flesh-givers." This was but the first phase of the 
 contact of the two races. 
 
 The case however was altered when, either to escape the grip 
 of the law or the oppressive restrictions of their own government, 
 or from a desire to live a free and untrammelled life in the wilder- 
 ness with an unlimited extent of land around them, the colonists 
 began to cross the great mountain ranges in considerable and 
 ever - increasing numbers, carrying their numerous flocks and 
 herds with them, invading the Bokkeveld, seizing the fountains^ 
 making permanent settlements, destroying or driving away the 
 game, the Bushmen's means of subsistence, treating the inhabi- 
 tants, the " zwarte schepsels," with menace and contumely, and 
 reducing all those who fell into their grasp to a condition of 
 abject slavery. Then a spirit of resistance was aroused in the 
 breasts of the Bushmen of the Karoo, and this feeling of hostility 
 gradually increased, as the voortrekkers pressed on, extending 
 themselves wherever water and herbage were to be found, to 
 
156 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the Roggeveld in one direction, and to the Camdeboo (or Green 
 Elevations) and De Brujoi's Hoogte, including all the sources 
 of the Sunday's river and the abundant springs of the Sneeuw- 
 bergen. The Bushmen resented this unjustifiable usurpation 
 of their ancestral hunting grounds, this wanton destruction of the 
 game which they looked upon as their property, and the forced 
 servitude of many of their number captured when others were 
 hunted and shot down like wUd beasts of the field ; and they rose, 
 from one end of the border line to the other, en masse, and made 
 a desperate effort to drive back the intruders. 
 
 The details of the actions of the periodical commandos which 
 followed for the express purpose of totally subduing and extirpat- 
 ing the obnoxious race form a portion of the history of the 
 Dutch settlement ; we shall therefore defer their consideration 
 until we arrive at that section of our subject. Suffice it here to 
 say the Bushmen were pursued and destroyed with a relentless 
 and almost savage ferocity, clan after clan was annihilated, the 
 men were shot down without mercy, and the surviving women and 
 children were dragged into a state worse than slavery. Sometimes 
 they were destroyed in their caves, and no survivors were left ; 
 all, men, women, and children, perished in a heap ; and men, 
 nominally Christians, boasted, as if they had been engaged in 
 some meritorious act, of the active part they had taken in these 
 scenes of slaughter. 
 
 Before any of the history of the Bushmen of the Western 
 Karoo was recorded, their clans had been broken up and scattered, 
 and the miserable remnant, with scarcely the means of sub- 
 sistence, was reduced to the most deplorable condition of want 
 and wretchedness. 
 
 Cruelly as they had been treated by the vast majority of 
 Europeans who invaded their country, some two or three farmers 
 living upon this border stand out as a bright example to the 
 remainder of their countrymen, for the zealous and humane 
 endeavours they made to ameliorate the wretchedness of the un- 
 happy aborigines. They obtained by pubHc subscription a 
 considerable number of sheep and homed cattle for their use, 
 hoping thus to reclaim them from their wandering life ; and by 
 their means, with the co-operation of one of the captains, 
 several hordes of these outcasts were brought together, while an 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE WESTERN KAROO 157 
 
 equally zealous missionary, named Kicherer, volunteered to 
 attempt to establish a mission among them. 
 
 Among this small knot of right-minded philanthropists, the 
 name of Floris Fischer is undoubtedly pre-eminent. He it was 
 who first attempted to rouse a better feeling in the Bushmen, 
 With other farmers he made a treaty between the Bushmen 
 and themselves, who had suffered terribly in their flocks and herds 
 from depredations. The Bushmen were struck with the solemn 
 appeal to heaven made by Fischer to witness the transaction. 
 After satisfying some of their enquiries, he, at their request, 
 took some of the principal of them to Cape Town. The mis- 
 sionary, who had newly arrived, returned with them, and the 
 farmers loaded them with things necessary to commence the 
 station, whUe some accompanied them to the spot first selected, 
 and Zak river became a finger-post. Many farmers exerted 
 themselves with commendable liberality in favour of the object 
 in view. 
 
 Unhappily the company and countenance of the Bushmen 
 could not be commanded without a daily portion of victuals and 
 tobacco, of which Mr. Kicherer had received an ample supply 
 from the farmers. The country in which the mission was fixed 
 was sterile in the extreme, and rain so seldom fell that they were 
 obliged to depend upon foreign supplies. It was doubtless to 
 these insurmountable and adverse circumstances that the failure 
 of the mission was chiefly owing. At Mr. Kicherer's departure 
 the station was left in charge of Mr. and Mrs. A. Vos and a Mr. 
 Botha, a farmer, who had sold all he had to aid the mission. 
 These men, not having equal resources with its founders, though 
 distinguished for exemplary patience, after suffering great priva- 
 tions and hardships from drought and the plundering Bushmen, 
 were compelled in 1806 to abandon the station. 
 
 The Bushmen, as a people, could never appreciate the effort 
 that had been made for their welfare, their wild life and its un- 
 trammelled freedom had too many fascinations for them, and they 
 continued to harass and impoverish those of their countrjmien 
 attached to it. A few only followed their teacher to Graaff 
 Reinet. 
 
 In the above account, which is quoted from Mr. Moffat, the 
 cause of failure in this laudable attempt is attributed principally 
 
158 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 to the Bushmen themselves ; but there were certainly other 
 causes which from its very commencement entailed an improb- 
 ability of success. The character of the tract of country set 
 apart for their use was sufficient of itself to mar the entire project. 
 It was the most arid and sterile of all the countless acres of the 
 land of their forefathers. Every fountain and every stream 
 had been appropriated by the insatiable greed of the intruders, 
 and a piece of ground upon which none of them could live them- 
 selves was allotted for the regeneration of the owners of the soil. 
 How could they leam the advantages of a more settled hfe on a 
 spot where nothing could be cultivated, and scarcely a sufficient 
 supply of their own primitive roots and tubers could be obtained ? 
 There could be no luxuriant crops, no loaded fruit-trees flourishing 
 before their eyes, to serve as an ocular demonstration of the 
 benefits to be derived from well-directed industry. Even the 
 cattle that were given to them could scarcely obtain sufficient 
 nourishment in a country where there were more stones and sand 
 to be seen than blades of parched and withered grass. 
 
 Placing these unfortunate creatures in such a position was 
 enough to confirm them in the idea that their former mode of life 
 was infinitely superior to that to which they were to be condemned 
 by their new friends. This doubtless was the rock upon which 
 the good ship was wrecked. We shall find also from other evidence 
 that at the time this effort was made the entire border was in the 
 utmost anarchy and confusion. The north-western districts 
 were being pillaged and kept in a state of terror by the daring 
 and unchecked exploits of the notorious freebooter Africander 
 and other lawless bands of savage banditti that followed in his 
 wake and professed to act imder his inspiration. A spirit of 
 insubordination still smouldered in the breasts of the more tur- 
 bulent of the white population, and violence and rapine were 
 ever5where indulged in in open day. Thus it was that in every 
 part of the country where the Bushmen made an attempt to 
 settle, and we shall discover as we proceed that this was not an 
 isolated case, it was not so much from the marauding disposition 
 of their own countrymen that they were impoverished as from 
 the utter lawlessness of the intruders. 
 
 They were cajoled out of, or driven by force from, every useful 
 fountain by the whites ; they were dispossessed upon paltry and 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE WESTERN KAROO 159 
 
 unsubstantial excuses of the only flourishing mission stations 
 which had been established among them ; and the fountains 
 and lands they were learning to cultivate were most iniqui- 
 tously granted to the interested complainants, a too palpable 
 proof of the reasons for the charges that were made against these 
 members of a cruelly treated race. They were attacked and 
 plundered by marauding Griquas and Koranas and some of the 
 other stronger robber pastoral tribes, while the remnant that 
 escaped were driven once more to seek a precarious mode of sub- 
 sistence, under far more disadvantageous circumstances than 
 their forefathers, the greater part of the game having been 
 destroyed. 
 
 Under such circumstances, what could we expect as the 
 natural consequence ? Can we wonder that such well-meaning 
 and meritorious attempts became failures, or that they soon be- 
 came too late ? " Past sufferings, and past offences on both 
 sides," writes Moffat, " had produced a feeling of hatred so 
 universal that it was of no avail to pacify one party," while in 
 other directions, upon the smallest provocation, their co-patriots 
 were being shot down like wild beasts without pity, and men, 
 women, and children frequently, as we have before mentioned, 
 indiscriminately slaughtered, thus arousing in the breasts of 
 thousands a thirst for revenge and plunder. It was doubtless 
 this state of affairs which greatly militated against the success 
 of the first missionaries in their attempts to influence them. The 
 few they were able to gather round them were ever in a state of 
 unrest and uncertainty, while their more untamed countrymen 
 were being harried out of the surrounding country, writhing 
 under the wrongs inflicted upon them, or mercilessly butchered 
 whenever they fell into the hands of their pursuers. 
 
 From Borcherds we learn that up to the time of his visit some 
 of the Roggeveld Bushmen strenuously defended themselves in 
 several of the strongholds of the country ; thus a defile between 
 two steep hflls beyond the Riet river formed one of their 
 great retreats, to which they retired after their forays, and especi- 
 ally to that portion called the Bonteberg, which was too rocky 
 and steep to be ascended with horses. 
 
 Mr. Kicherer gives the following description of the wretched 
 condition in which he found these Bushmen of the Karoo. 
 
i6o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Their manner of living, he says, was extremely wretched and 
 disgusting. They delighted to besmear their bodies with the 
 fat of animals, mingled with ochre, and sometimes with grime 
 (probably the black sooty paint with which they frequently 
 painted their bodies). They were utter strangers to cleanliness, 
 as they never washed their bodies, but suffered the dirt to accu- 
 mulate. Their huts were formed by digging holes in the earth 
 about three feet deep, and then making a roof of reeds, which 
 was, however, insufficient to keep off the rains. Here they lay 
 close together. They were extremely lazy, so that nothing 
 would rouse them to action but excessive hunger. 
 
 We have abundance of evidence, however, to show that this 
 was not their natural character in their undisturbed state. The 
 torpor of despair had seized them. They would continue, he 
 adds, several days together without food,^ rather than be at the 
 pains of procuring it. When compelled to sally forth for prey 
 Ihey were dexterous in destroying the various beasts which 
 abounded, and they could run almost as well as a horse. They 
 were total strangers to domestic happiness. The men had 
 several wives, but conjugal affection was little known. 
 
 Thompson, who visited these tribes nearly twenty years 
 later, says that after the larger game was driven out of the 
 country by the guns of the Boers and the Griquas, the Bushmen 
 were reduced to the most wretched shifts to obtain a precarious 
 subsistence, living chiefly on wild roots, locusts, and the larvae 
 of insects. Even in 1823 the wandering hordes of this people 
 were scattered over a territory of very wide extent, but of so 
 barren and arid a character that by far the greater portion of it 
 was not permanently habitable by any class of human beings. 
 Even as it was, colonists were perpetually pressing in upon their 
 -territory wherever a fountain or even a temporary pool of water 
 was to be found. Had this territory been fertile, there can be 
 little question but that it would have been years before entirely 
 occupied by the Christians. They were continually soliciting 
 ^rom the government fresh grants beyond the nominal boundary, 
 and were, in the year above mentioned, very urgent to obtain 
 possession of a tract l5nng between the Zak and Hartebeest 
 
 1 This in all probability must have been after rains, to which, as we 
 have seen, they had a great aversion. 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE WESTERN KAROO i6i 
 
 rivers. In defence of these aggressions, they maintained that 
 the Bushmen were a nation of robbers, who, as they neither 
 cultivated the soil nor pastured cattle, were incapable of occupjong 
 the country advantageously ; that they would live much more 
 comfortably by becoming the herdsmen and household servants 
 of the Christians than they did on their own precarious resources, 
 and finally that they were incapable of being civilized by any other 
 means. 
 
 Field Commandant Gert van der Walt communicated his 
 experiences with regard to these Karoo Bushmen to Mr. Melville, 
 the Government Agent among the Griquas, who thus wrote in 
 1825 : — Van der Walt stated that both he and his father had 
 been for many years at war with them. From the time he could 
 use a gun he went upon commandos, but he owned that he could 
 now see that no good was ever done by this course of vindictive 
 retaliation. They still continued their depredations, and retained 
 an inveterate spirit of revenge. He was in constant danger of 
 losing his cattle and of being murdered by them. Having seen 
 the effects of war and cruelty, he had for a few years past tried 
 what might be done by cultivating peace with them, and ex- 
 perience had convinced him that his present plan was most con- 
 ducive to his interest. He said the Landdrost Stockenstrom 
 was also friendly to pacific measures, and encouraged the plan 
 he had adopted. This was to keep a flock of goats to supply 
 the Bushmen with food in seasons of great want, and occasionally 
 to give them other little presents, by which means he not only 
 kept on good terms with them, but they became very service- 
 able in taking care of his flocks in dry seasons. 
 
 He said that on occasions when there was no pasturage on his 
 own farm, he was accustomed to give his cattle entirely into the 
 care of a chief of a tribe who lived near him, and after a certain 
 period they never failed to be brought back again in so improved 
 a condition that he scarcely knew them to be his own. 
 
 Mr. Melville gives another example of faithfulness in the 
 character of these Bushmen. A farmer who had been residing 
 at a place called Dassen Poort (the pass of the rock rabbit or 
 coney) and had built a hut and raised some wheat, but had 
 been ordered away from it by the Landdrost on account of its 
 being beyond the boundaries of the colony, left the wheat he had 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 sown, when he removed from the place, in charge of two Bush- 
 men ; and when Mr. Melville passed the spot these two men were 
 still at the post of duty, carefully watching and guarding the 
 crop from harm : another proof that had the conquering race 
 been desirous of doing so, it would not have been so difficult 
 to have cultivated peace with these oppressed people, if measures of 
 real kindness had been in the first instance adopted towards them. 
 
 Further evidence upon this point was gained by Thompson 
 from an old man of about sixty. This man stated that he had lived 
 aU his life upon the Bushman frontier. He could recollect the 
 time when few or no murders were committed by Bushmen, 
 especially upon the Christians. The era of bitter and bloody 
 hostility between them commenced, he said, about fifty years 
 before, or about 1770-73, in the following manner. The burgher 
 Coetzee van Reenen had an overseer who kept his flocks near 
 the Zak river, this man was of a brutal and insolent disposition 
 and a great tyrant over the Bushmen ; he had shot some of them 
 at times out of mere wantonness. The Bushmen submissively 
 endured the oppression of this petty tyrant for a long period, 
 but at length their patience was worn out, and one day when he 
 was cruelly maltreating one of their nation another struck him 
 through with his assagai. This act was represented in the 
 Colony as a horrible murder. 
 
 A strong commando was sent into the Bushman country) 
 and hundreds of innocent people were massacred to avenge the 
 death of this unhappy wretch. Such treatment roused the 
 animosity of the Bushmen to the highest pitch, and eradicated 
 all remains of respect which they stiU retained for the Christians. 
 The commando had scarcely left the coimtry when the whole 
 race of Bushmen along the frontier simultaneously commenced 
 a system of predatory and murderous incursions against the 
 colonists, from the Khamiesberg to the Stormberg. These depre- 
 dations were retaliated by fresh commandos, who slew the old 
 without pity and carried off the young into bondage. The acts 
 of the commandos were again avenged by new robberies and 
 murders, and mutual injuries were accumulated and mutual 
 rancour kept up to the present day. 
 
 The evidence which Thompson obtained from Field Command- 
 ant Nejj will form a fitting conclusion to our remarks upon these 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE WESTERN KAROO 163 
 
 Bushmen of the Karoo. He informed our traveller that in the 
 last thirty years (that is, from 1793 to 1823) he had been upon 
 thirty-two commandos against Bushmen, in which great numbers 
 had been shot, and their children carried into the Colony. On 
 one of these expeditions no less than two hundred Bushmen were 
 massacred^ In justification of this barbarous system, he 
 narrated many shocking stories of atrocities committed by 
 Bushmen upon colonists, which together with the continual 
 depredations upon their property had often called down upon 
 them the full weight of vengeance. Such was to 1823, to a great 
 extent, the horrible warfare existing between the Christians 
 and the natives of the northern frontier, and by which the process 
 of extermination was still proceeding against the latter, as in the 
 days of Barrow. 
 
 This Field-Commandant was in many other respects, so 
 Thompson assures us, a meritorious, benevolent, and clear-sighted 
 man ; and it was a strange and melancholy trait of human nature 
 to see one with so many excellent points in his character so 
 seemingly unconscious that any part of his proceedings, or those 
 of his coimtrjTmen, in their wars with the Bushmen could awaken 
 in the breast of a right-minded man a feeling of horror and abhor- 
 rence. The massacre of many hundreds of these miserable 
 creatures, and the carrying away of their children into servitude, 
 seemed to be considered by him and his companions as perfectly 
 lawful, just, and necessary, and as meritorious service done to the 
 public, of which they had no more cause to be ashamed than a 
 brave soldier of having distinguished himself against the enemies 
 of his country ; while, on the other hand, he spoke with detesta- 
 tion of the callousness of the Bushmen in the commission of 
 robbery and murder upon the Christians, not seeming to be aware 
 that the treatment these persecuted tribes had received from the 
 Christians might in their apprehension justify every excess of 
 malice and revenge they were able to perpetrate^ 
 
 The hereditary sentiments of animosity and the deep-rooted 
 contemptuous prejudices sear the better feelings, in such cases, 
 of those who come under their influence ; and thus it has been 
 that the conduct of the farmers towards the iU-fated race was 
 rather of a description to render them more barbarous and 
 desperate than to conciliate or civilize them. 
 
i64 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The Bushmen of the Camdeboo and Sneeuwberg. 
 
 The tribes of these two locahties belong to the same group, 
 the former being the name of the country occupied by the pro- 
 jecting buttresses which extend far from the foot, and support 
 the Snowy mountains, and which on that account are mostly 
 covered with verdure. They were styled 'Cam'deboo, or the 
 Green Elevations, by the old inhabitants ; while the Sneeuw- 
 bergen form the higher and central ridges, culminating in the 
 crest of the Compassberg, the highest point in Southern Africa, 
 with the exception of the ridge of the Drakensberg. In treating 
 of the one, we shall therefore be describing the other. 
 
 Sparrman, who is the oldest writer who notices the Bushmen of 
 this part of the country, and who visited it after they had been har- 
 ried by commandos, had evidently imbibed a little of the colonial 
 prejudice against them. He states that the Sneeuwbergen, 
 which lie to the north of the Camdeboo, were so called from the 
 snow with which in winter time the highest of them were covered, 
 and which even remained on them during part of the summer. 
 The Lower Sneeuwbergen were inhabited the year throughout, but 
 on the higher range of hills the winters were severe enough. 
 This circumstance compelled the colonists who settled there 
 to remove during the winter into the plains below Camde- 
 boo. 
 
 The inhabitants, who had only forced themselves into, and 
 located themselves in that portion of the Bushman territory 
 a short time before Sparrman's arrival, in the more distant parts 
 of this range were obliged to entirely relinquish their dwellings 
 and habitations, on account of the savage plundering race of 
 Bushmen, who from their hiding places, shooting forth their 
 poisoned arrows at the shepherd, killed him, and afterwards drove 
 away the whole of his flock, which perhaps consisted of several 
 hundred sheep, and formed the chief, if not the whole, of the 
 farmer's property. What they could not drive away with them 
 they killed and wounded as much as the time allowed them while 
 they were making their retreat. 
 
 It was in vain to pursue them, they being so very swift of foot, 
 and taking refuge in the steep mountains, which they were able 
 to run up almost as nimbly as baboons or monkeys. From these 
 they rolled down great stones on any one who was imprudent 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE CAMDEBOO 165 
 
 enough to follow them. The approach of night gave them time 
 to withdraw themselves entirely from those parts, by ways and 
 places with which none but themselves were acquainted. They 
 then collected together again in bodies numbering some hundreds, 
 from their hiding places and clefts in the mountains, in order to 
 commit fresh depredations and robberies. 
 
 Neither Sparrman nor anyone else of the time thought for a 
 moment of the grievous wrong which had been done by the land- 
 robbers who had seized upon all their hunting grounds, sur- 
 rounding the mountains of their ancestors, the ancient men who 
 had adorned their numerous cave dwellings with innumerable 
 paintings showing the history and hunting achievements of their 
 race for unknown generations. The hundreds of whom he speaks 
 had been most unceremoniously dispossessed of their country, and 
 all their mountain streams had been appropriated to gratify 
 the territorial greed of a few score men, who called themselves 
 civilized because they had guns in their hands. 
 
 One of these colonists, who had been obliged to flee from the 
 defenders of the mountains, informed Sparrman that the Bushmen 
 grew bolder every day, and seemed to increase in numbers since 
 people had with greater earnestness set about extirpating them. 
 ' This is but another proof of the determination of their resistance ; 
 they rallied at the point of greatest danger, as it was doubtless 
 this cause which occasioned them to collect in large bodies, in 
 order to be the better able to withstand the encroachments of 
 the colonists, who had already taken away their best dwelling 
 and hunting places. An instance was related in which these 
 Sneeuwberg Bushmen had besieged a peasant with his wife and 
 children in their cottage, till at length he drove them off by 
 repeatedly firing ^mong them. 
 
 Not long before this, however, they had suffered a consider- 
 able defeat in the following manner. Several farmers, who per- 
 ceived that they were not able to get at the Bushmen by the 
 usual methods, shot a sea-cow, and took only the prime part of 
 it for themselves, leaving the rest by way of bait ; they them- 
 selves in the meantime lying in ambush. The Bushmen with 
 their wives and children now came down from their hiding-places, 
 with the intention of feasting sumptuously on the sea-cow that had 
 been shot ; but the farmers, who came back again very unex- 
 
i66 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 pectedly, turned the feast into a scene of blood and slaughter.^ 
 Pregnant women and children in their tenderest years were not 
 at this time, neither indeed were they ever, exempt from the 
 effects of the hatred and spirit of vengeance constantly harboured 
 by the colonists with respect to the Bushman nation, excepting 
 such indeed as were marked out to be carried away into bondage. 
 
 Did a colonist at any time get sight of a Bushman, he took 
 iire immediately, and spirited up his horse and dogs in order to 
 hunt him with more ardour and fury than he would a wolf or 
 any other wild beast. On an open plain a few colonists on horse- 
 back were always sure to get the better of the greatest number of 
 Bushmen that could be brought together, as the former always 
 kept at a distance of a hundred or a hundred and fifty paces, 
 as they might find it convenient, and charging their heavy fire- 
 arms with a very large kind of shot, jumped off their horses and 
 took rest in their usual manner on their ramrods, in order that 
 they might shoot with greater certainty, so that the balls dis- 
 charged by them would sometimes, as Sparrman was assured^ 
 go through the bodies of six, seven or eight of the enemy at a time, 
 especially as these latter knew no better than to keep close to- 
 gether in a body. It was true, on the other hand, the Bushmen 
 could shoot their arrows to the distance of two hundred paces, but 
 with a very uncertain aim, as the arrow must first necessarily have 
 made a curve in the air, and should it even at that distance have 
 chanced to hit any of the farmers, it would not have been able 
 to go through his hat or his ordinary linen or coarse woollen coat. 
 
 In the district of the Sneeuwberg the landdrost appointed one 
 of the farmers, with the title of Field-Corporal, to command in 
 these wars, and, as occasion might require, to order out the 
 country people in separate parties for the purpose of defending 
 the country against its original inhabitants. The government, 
 indeed, had no other part in the cruelties exercised by its subjects 
 than that of taking no cognizance of them ; but in this point 
 it was certainly too remiss, in leaving a whole nation to the mercy 
 of every peasant, or in fact every one that chose to invade 
 their land, as of such people one might naturally expect that 
 
 ^ We shall find as we proceed that this treacherous mode of attack 
 was carried out on a more extensive scale by one of the large commandos 
 under the guidance of a Field-Commandant. 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE CAMDEBOO 167 
 
 interested views and an unbridled spirit of revenge would prevail 
 over the dictates of prudence and humanity. Sparrman declares 
 that he was far from accusing all the colonists of having a hand 
 in these and other cruelties, which were too frequently committed 
 in this quarter of the globe. While some plumed themselves upon 
 them, there were many who, on the contrary, held them in abom- 
 ination and feared lest the vengeance of heaven should, for all 
 these crimes, fall upon the land and their posterity. 
 
 In 1782J Le VaiUant travelled through this portion of the 
 country. In his time the Bushmen, notwithstanding all the 
 attacks which had been made upon them, still resolutelymaintained 
 themselves in the more inaccessible parts of the range. On 
 approaching it, a kraal of Hottentots was found near the foot of 
 the mountain, who had migrated from some of the western dis- 
 tricts. On approaching it, the children no sooner saw the new- 
 comers than they ran to hide themselves, screaming horribly. 
 It contained about one hundred and thirty men, and they pos- 
 sessed about one hundred head of cattle and treble that number 
 of sheep. They were busily engaged in drying locusts on mats, 
 having previously pulled off the wings and legs. 
 
 The colonial method of attempting to conciliate the unfortunate 
 Bushmen is weU illustrated by an incident in which Le Vaillant, 
 a professed philanthropist, was personally engaged. One of the 
 keepers of his stock, he informs us, came and reported to him that 
 several Bushmen had descended from the mountains and drew 
 near to them, but had been kept in awe by a few discharges of 
 their muskets. Immediately he and his chief attendant got on 
 horseback, and accompanied by four good marksmen, went in 
 quest of such dangerous plunderers, and soon discovered thirteen 
 of them. The Bushmen seeing the pursuing party advancing 
 resolutely, and hearing their bullets whistle through the air, 
 presently took to flight, and though the traveller and his men 
 followed at full speed, they could not get near enough to hit 
 them. They presently regained and hid themselves in the 
 mountains. Le Vaillant confesses that he could not help admir- 
 ing the address with which they climbed like monkeys the most 
 craggy and steep parts of the rock, where he did not pretend to 
 follow, as it would have been imprudent to attack them in their 
 inaccessible retreats. As it was, it was certainly one of the most 
 
i68 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 unprovoked attacks on his part, a mere traveller through the 
 country, but from the way he speaks of it, he evidently considered 
 it a very dashing and meritorious action. 
 
 ""Le Vaillantj states that he considered the Bushmen were a 
 different nation from the Hottentots. In some cantons they were 
 called Chinese Hottentots, because their complexions resembled 
 the Chinese seen at the Cape, and like them too they were of 
 middling stature. He imagined that they were a peculiar race 
 of Hottentots, distinguished by the savages of the desert, who had 
 no communication with the Dutch settlements, by the name 
 Houswaana. He further states that this branch of the Bushman 
 family formerly inhabited the Camdeboo, the Bokkeveld, and the 
 Roggeveld ; but the usurpation of the whites, to whom, like the 
 other savages, they had fallen victims, obliged them to seek 
 refuge at a distance from their country, inhabiting in his time 
 the vast space that lies between Kaffraria and the country of the 
 Namaquas. 
 
 Of all the nations, he adds, who have been illtreated by the 
 Europeans, none remembered their wrongs with so much bitter- 
 ness. They never forgot the treachery of the colonists or the 
 infamous return made for the many signal services they had 
 rendered them, and such, he says, was the resentment of these 
 people, that the terrible cry of vengeance was ever in their mouthsj 
 
 The Bushmen of Achter De Bruyn's Hoogte and the Great Eastern 
 
 Plains. 
 
 Of these tribes and the country which they inhabited, Sparr- 
 man affords the following interesting particulars. These were 
 the tribes which were called by the voortrekkers the Cineese or 
 Snese Hottentots, i.e. Chinese Hottentots. The clans which 
 inhabited De Bruyn's and Achter De Bruyn's Hoogte Hved peace- 
 ably with the first Christians who migrated there. The latter 
 were then few in number, and doubtless found it expedient 
 to adopt, as aU isolated voortrekkers ever did, a conciliatory pohcy 
 towards the aborigines, instead of the arrogant and overbearing 
 treatment meted out as soon as their number was sufficiently 
 augmented to enable them to dictate terms to those who in the 
 first instance had welcomed them as friends. 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PLAINS 169 
 
 In the days of their weakness the Bushmen were accustomed 
 to perform the kindest offices for them, and would frequently go 
 unasked in search of a stray lamb or the like belonging to the 
 Christians, and take it home to them ; but at length, after their 
 countrjmien had been harried by the relentless commandos, and 
 massacred in their caves, they withdrew themselves and lived 
 concealed in the holes and crevices of the rocks in different parts 
 of the country, like the other Bushmen. Yet, being fewer in 
 number, they were not altogether so bold and daring. Their 
 complexions being rather of a yellowish cast, they were considered 
 by the early Dutch settlers as a different nation, and were con- 
 sequently called Chinese or Snese Hottentots. The chief abode 
 of these fugitives was on each side of the two Fish rivers. Another 
 and more considerable part of this yeUow-skinned nation was 
 dispersed, in 1776, over a tract of country eleven days' journey 
 in breadth, and situated more to the north than to the north-east 
 of the Fish rivers, near a river called Tsomo, where some of them 
 were said to be occupied in grazing and rearing cattle. 
 
 One of these tribes was called 'Tambu'ki, and there seems no 
 reason to doubt that frequent intermarriages took place between 
 them and some of the pioneer clans of the Abatembu. From this 
 friendly intercourse the two races would assimilate gradually to 
 each other, as we shall discover that the Ghonaquas did with the 
 foremost struggling clans of those Kaffir tribes which during 
 their migrations continued to hug the coast, just as a similar 
 partial amalgapiation took place between them and the pioneer 
 clans which formed the van in the southern migration of the 
 Bachoana tribes. In all these cases, isolated fugitives from the 
 various advancing branches first came in contact with the ab- 
 original Bushmen occupying the country, then came small 
 detached clans far in advance of the main body, too few in number 
 to appear in any other guise than that of friends and suppliants. 
 
 During this phase of the intercourse between the various 
 races, while the Bushmen were still the more numerous and stron- 
 ger party and the masters of the situation, friendly relations were 
 maintained, and a half-caste race with various gradations of 
 intermixture sprang up at the different points of contact. Some 
 of the Bushmen, obtaining in exchange for their furs or beads 
 a few cattle from their new friends, thus became semi-pastoral, 
 
170 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 while the latter, in their turn, adopted, or rather grafted upon 
 their own customs, a few of those of their entertainers. 
 
 The old Bushman tribe of the 'Tambu'ki was a striking ex- 
 ample of this.^ They appear to have occupied the valley of the 
 Tsomo, and were described 'to Sparrman by the Chinese Bushmen 
 as being like themselves in complexion, but more powerful and war- 
 like. They said that beyond them was another nation still more 
 warhke and intrepid, whom they called the Mambukis, apparently 
 the Abatembu. When treating of this latter tribe, we shall 
 learn that Lieutenant Paterson also states distinctly that these 
 'Tambu'ki were originally a Bushman tribe, with the members of 
 which the advanced Abatembu contracted marriage, and that 
 upon the occasion of a civil war breaking out between two 
 rival branches of this Kaf&r tribe, the weaker of them fled and 
 sought a refuge among the 'Tambu'ki Bushmen, with whom they 
 amalgamated, and were ever after known by the sobriquet of 
 Tambuki. The Bushman element became absorbed, and ulti- 
 mately overwhelmed, by the increasing numbers of the stronger 
 race. The high cheek-bones, the moderate stature of many, 
 the remarkably small feet and hands of some of their chiefs, 
 being a striking divergence from the pure Kaf&r type, and finally 
 the adoption by this division of the Abatembu of the Bushman 
 custom of mutilating the hand by cutting off the first joint of one 
 of their fingers, are all unquestionable proofs of this friendly amal- 
 gamation of the advanced tribes of the two races. 
 
 With regard to the amicable disposition of these Bushmen, 
 
 Sparrman informs us that stnall parties of Christians had travelled 
 
 all through this country, and shot elephants there unmolested, 
 
 yet they thought it necessary for their greater security to shut 
 
 themselves up at night in their waggons as in a castle. The 
 
 more considerable rivers which ran through the country of the 
 
 Chinese Bushmen were the following : t'Kamsi-fkay, or the 
 
 White Kei ; t'Nu-t'kay, the Black Kei, and the Little 'Zomo 
 
 and Great 'Zomo or the Tsomo. Beyond the last, in 1776, 
 
 another country belonging to a different nation commenced. 
 
 ^ This fact is established by the evidence obtained from native and 
 other sources during his travels among their countrymen in the north, 
 and from the corroborative information collected when among some of 
 the Amaxosa Kafifirs in the south, by Lieutenant Paterson. Witnesses 
 so far removed and isolated from one another must needs be independent. 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE BAMBOESBERG 171 
 
 Sparrman states that although up to his time no attempt had 
 been made to improve the condition of the Bushmen and make 
 them better men and more useful to the colonists, still, judging 
 from the disposition of those who had been hired in the colonists' 
 service or made slaves of, it did not seem impossible to be effected, 
 although he saw that the sentiments commonly entertained to 
 their disadvantage, as well as the cruelties which had hitherto 
 been practised upon them, could not but lay many impediments 
 in the way of an attempt of this nature. 
 
 These Chinese Bushmen made delineations upon the smooth 
 surface of the rocks, though in as uncouth and artless a style as 
 might be expected from so rude and unpolished a people. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Bamboesberg. 
 
 The Bamboesberg is a portion of the great Stormberg, which 
 in this particular locality forms a double range that in the early 
 days presented such an impenetrable and insurmountable barrier, 
 with its intricate and precipitous fastnesses, that up to the year 
 1797 it was considered so completely impassable either with 
 waggons or on horseback, that no one had ever penetrated into it. 
 These strongholds, as they had ever been, were still in the hands 
 of formidable Bushman clans. The Bamboesberg, Stormberg, and 
 Tarka tribes appear to have belonged to the same group, and fre- 
 quently to have acted in conjunction with one another in their 
 efforts to repel the invaders of their ancient hunting-grounds. 
 
 In Barrow's time a portion of the Bamboesberg was occupied 
 by a formidable horde about five hundred strong, under a captain 
 named by the colonists Lynx. This traveller informs us that 
 caverns full of their drawings were found in some of these 
 mountains, such as elephants, hippopotami, and among the rest 
 one camelopard.^ In the course of the journey he saw several 
 thousand figures of animals, but none had the appearance of 
 being monstrous, none that could be considered as works of the 
 imagination ; they were generally as faithful representations 
 of nature as the talents of the artist would allow. 
 
 ' The writer has found several drawings of the giraffe in the Zwart Kei 
 and Tsomo caves, also in the Wittebergen of the Orange Free State, in- 
 dubitably proving that this animal was found in the early days over a far 
 wider area of country than at present. 
 
172 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 An instance of this was shown in one of the caves visited, 
 and one which clearly demonstrates the efforts the leading Bush- 
 man artists made to copy nature, efforts which were crowned 
 with such success that some chef d'ceuvres, the productions of 
 their native Landseers, must from their correctness of outline, 
 their action, their shading, and their finish, fill every impartial 
 beholder with astonishment. Barrow found the back shell of a 
 particular tortoise, the testudo geometrica, lying on the floor of the 
 cave. The artist had evidently been disturbed, and thrown 
 down his model in his flight, for on the smooth side of the 
 cave the regular lines with which it is marked, and from which 
 it takes its name, had been very recently and very accurately 
 copied ! 
 
 The struggle of these mountaineer Bushmen was a long and 
 desperate one ; the fact has been recorded, but most of the 
 details are lost, and those which have been preserved are so inter- 
 woven with the border history of the Colony that we shall defer 
 their recital until we treat upon that subject. Sometimes the 
 commandos committed frightful massacres amongst them, and 
 ranges of mountains would appear cleared for the time ; but sud- 
 denly they would rally again in renewed strength, and the 
 avengers of blood would drive the intruders from their home- 
 steads, from the mountain-rills and picturesque nooks they had 
 chosen, to seek a more secure retreat in the open plains. Thus 
 had the Tarka been abandoned at the time of Barrow's visit. 
 The paintings found in the Bushman caves of the Tarka 
 mountains proclaimed the rights and title deeds of the aborigines, 
 while the deserted farms in the glens at their foot, where vineyards 
 loaded with grapes, and peach trees, and almond, apple, and pear 
 trees full of fruit were found, and no hands to pluck them, made 
 known the temporary defeat of the invaders. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Tooverberg and the Northern Plains. 
 
 We have chosen the Tooverberg, or Mountain of the Wizard, 
 as the representative centre of this group, as much has been 
 recorded of the Bushmen who lived in its neighbourhood, in con- 
 sequence of a Bushman mission station having at one time 
 existed there. This mountain received its distinguishing appel- 
 lation from the Boers who first discovered it, from the fact of its 
 

THE BUSHMEN OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS 173 
 
 being seen from a great distance, and which from its size and 
 the flatness of the country to the south of it, they imagined 
 was much nearer than it really was. It therefore appeared to 
 keep receding as they advanced, hence they gave it the name of 
 the Mountain of the Wizard. 
 
 In 1820 there were many Bushmen in the country surrounding 
 it. When Mr. Backhouse visited them some of them informed 
 him that their forefathers had dwelt there from time immemorial. 
 In the year mentioned they were living under a chief named 
 'Na'na'kow by his own people, and Uithaalder by the Dutch. 
 His territory extended from the Zeekoe river to Van der Walt's 
 Buffels Fontein, and in describing it 'Na'na'kow used to say that 
 he drank of the Zeekoe river and of Van der Walt's Fontein. 
 The whole of his country swarmed with elands, gnus, and spring- 
 boks. 
 
 The first mission station appears to have been established 
 by Mr. Kolbe, a German missionary, but the honour of having 
 first pleaded the cause of these Bushmen certainly belongs to the 
 Rev. A. Faure, a minister of the Dutch Reformed church, who 
 had long resided on the exposed frontier of Graaff Reinet. His 
 evidence is both valuable and conclusive on the character of 
 these Bushmen for fidelity in any trust imposed upon them. 
 The farmers, he writes, are entirely dependent on the Bushmen 
 for their welfare. Few, if any, have either slaves or Hottentots, 
 consequently they have no means of getting their cattle properly 
 tended without their assistance. Such farmers as possess Bush- 
 men have been in the habit of committing to them the charge 
 of their flocks, and they have proved such faithful shepherds 
 that the farmers have not hesitated to give them some hundreds 
 of ewes and other cattle to sojourn with them beyond the limits 
 of the Colony. 
 
 The Bushman, having received a reward of some tobacco, 
 dacha or wild hemp leaves, for smoking, and perhaps two or three 
 ewes, left the habitation of the colonist, drove the cattle into 
 distant parts, with the fertility of which he was well acquainted, 
 and after an absence of some months returned to the farmer his 
 cattle in such improved condition that had they not had his 
 particular mark upon them, he would with difficulty have credited 
 that they were the same animals which on account of their lean- 
 
174 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 ness the Bushman could with difficulty remove from his farm. 
 Facts of this kind prove not only the individual honesty of the 
 Bushman thus trasted, but also the general honesty of all those 
 of his race with whom he must have, of necessity, come in con- 
 tact during the long period of his wanderings. Sometimes the 
 farmer, Mr. Faure continues, put the fidelity of the Bushman to 
 the test by sending one or two of his acquaintances to try whether 
 they could not obtain a sheep by promising some reward, but 
 the instances were rare in which such messengers succeeded. 
 Many farmers on the frontier assured Mr. Faure that had it not 
 been for the Bushmen they saw no means of breeding cattle. 
 
 Bearing upon this subject. Colonel Collins, in his report (1809) 
 upon the native tribes, recommended that the Bushmen should 
 be introduced into the colony, collected and instructed in in- 
 stitutions, and then dispersed among the colonists. He pointed 
 out such positions as he considered most eligible for the formation 
 of stations under proper regulations. The Bushmen, he stated, 
 often suffered extreme misery, but seldom robbed except to satisfy 
 their wants, and afforded the fairest hope of becoming in time 
 useful to themselves and to the colony. Humanity and policy 
 therefore combined to prompt the adoption of every measure that 
 could tend to alleviate their unhappy lot and attach them to the 
 settlers. He pointed out the necessity of some steps being 
 immediately taken, lest the inhabitants becoming tired of their 
 importunities, the Bushmen should return to the mountains 
 and recommence their former predatory mode of life. 
 
 From the above it would appear that there was a short lull 
 about this time in the war of extermination which had raged for 
 upwards of thirty years with vindictive violence, sweeping over 
 the fated Bushman territory in a pitiless storm of blood ; and it 
 would have been well for the cause of humanity and the honour of 
 the British name had this warning voice been listened to, and 
 this opportunity of arresting the extinction of this cruelly 
 treated and unhappy race been seized and utilized, as was 
 so earnestly recommended in Colonel Collins' valuable report. 
 But alas ! this fitting opportunity was allowed to pass, and a 
 second period of war and extermination was entered upon as 
 remorselessly and pitilessly as the one which had preceded it, 
 and which every right-minded man must look upon with humilia- 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS 175 
 
 tion and abasement, when he considers that although it was 
 accomplished by the same agency as before, it was carried out 
 under the auspices of a government whose proud boast was that 
 it ever upheld the cause of justice and right, defended from their 
 oppressors the weak, and struck off the fetters from the slave. 
 
 In 1814 a mission was established at Tooverberg, near the 
 site of the present town of Colesberg, and another was founded 
 at Hephzibah at a subsequent period. In about a month's 
 time there were collected at the latter place no fewer than eight 
 hundred and eighty-seven Bushmen, exclusive of chUdren ; 
 and the Bushmen belonging to the two stations at this period 
 amounted to seventeen himdred. The Bushmen having once 
 settled at the station, generally went out to invite others of their 
 nation to join them, and when they succeeded, these were in- 
 troduced to the missionary, and after staying a few days at the 
 institution, usually returned to bring their families with them. 
 During the continuance of these institutions they committed no 
 depredations in the Colony, or an37where else. Not only were 
 there no depredations, but no pretext [was found for the visita- 
 tion on the part of the colonists of those terrible armed parties 
 which had caused so much havoc among the hapless aborigines. 
 But the Bushmen were not allowed to remain long in peaceful 
 possession of the lands which they were learning to cultivate 
 with the inherent energy of their race. Too many greedy eyes 
 were set upon the fountains which watered the fertUe fields 
 they had been taught to sow. In 1816 some differences arose 
 between the resident missionary of Tooverberg and some of the 
 neighbouring farmers who had appropriated the country respect- 
 ing the seizure of some children belonging to the station. This 
 disagreement became the pretext for the suppression of the 
 missions ; the fieldcomet Van der Walt was against the 
 missions, and had reported unfavourably about them to the 
 landdrost. No specific charges appear to have been made, nor 
 was any investigation instituted. A kind of general assertion 
 was advanced that the collection of so many savages so near the 
 colonial border was a menace to the peace of the colony. 
 
 Poor Bushmen ! the colonial border advanced upon them, 
 not they towards the frontier line. This however mattered not, 
 Lord Charles Somerset merely stated that he was under the 
 
176 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 obligation of recalling the missionaries within the limits of the 
 colony, as these Bushman institutions were detrimental to its 
 interests. The manner in which they were detrimental can only 
 be decided by the action which was almost immediately initiated. 
 About 1819-20 the greater part of the mission Bushmen were 
 either killed or frightened away by the great influx of Boers in 
 that year. 
 
 How it could be for a moment imagined that this arbitrary 
 and continual seizure of land, without the slightest reservation 
 being made for the unfortunate outcasts whose fathers had 
 occupied it unchallenged from time immemorial, could be carried 
 into effect without outraging every sense of justice, seems almost 
 marvellous ; yet still more so on our finding that when a hapless 
 Bushman, not only deprived of his ancient covmtry but also of 
 the very game which had been to him as much his means of sub- 
 sistence as the flocks and herds of the intruders who were super- 
 seding him were of theirs, happened to steal a sheep to keep himself 
 and his family from starving, if apprehended and taken alive, he 
 was publicly flogged under the scaffold, branded with a hot iron, 
 put in irons, and condemned to hard labour. 
 
 'Na'na'kow, the last Bushman captain of the Tooverberg, 
 still clung to the old haunts of his fathers, notwithstanding the 
 bloody fate of most of his tribe, to the year 1825, when he was 
 seen there by Dr. Philip. He stated that many years before 
 his father's kraal, without the least provocation, had been suddenly 
 attacked by a party of Boers from the Colony ; and that his 
 father and many himdreds of his people, men, women, and 
 children, had been killed ; that afterwards ten waggons were laden 
 with the surviving children and driven off to the colony by the 
 attacking party ; that since that time many commandos had 
 come against his people, that multitudes of them had been shot, 
 and the children carried away ; that when the missionary came 
 he ploughed and sowed land for them, and when the harvest was 
 ripe, he taught them how to cut down the com, and divided it 
 among them ; and they were happy, for no more commandos 
 came upon them ; that some moons after the missionary had 
 left them the Boers came and took possession of the fountains 
 and chased them from the land of Tooverberg, the land of their 
 fathers, and made them go and herd their sheep and forced their 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS 177 
 
 children into perpetual servitude ; and that he, without people, 
 with only his wife and four children, was hiding amongst the 
 mountains and subsisting on roots and locusts ; that whenever 
 sheep or goats or cattle strayed, or were stolen, the Boers said 
 that the Bushmen had stolen them, and they were flogged and 
 shot on suspicion only, for the cattle and sheep which had been 
 taken by others or destroyed by hyenas, lions, or panthers. 
 
 Such was the statement of a Bushman when heard in his own 
 defence, and it seems to contain a large amount of truth, when 
 compared with whatever collateral evidence can be obtained upon 
 the subject. It seems also a significant fact that Fieldcomet 
 Van der Walt, the very man who was the most active in raising 
 the outcry against the institutions intended for the benefit of 
 the Bushmen, was the one who profited most by their suppression, 
 by possessing himself of a large portion of the lands attached to 
 them and forcing some of the people into his service, even 
 Uithaalder himself, imtil the treatment he received determined 
 him to escape once more to his native mountains. For several 
 years longer he tenaciously clung to the home of his fathers, 
 until the same tragical fate overtook him as had befallen the rest 
 of his tribe. He and a few faithful followers who had rallied 
 round him were shot by a commando under the same^Van der 
 Walt, who was then Field-Commandant, about the year 1827-8, 
 and thus perished the last ruler of the Tooverberg Bushmen. 
 
 N 
 
Chapter X 
 
 THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES 
 
 {continued) 
 THE BUSHMEN OF REYNER MOUNTAIN 
 
 It has been said by the supporters of Griqua claims that 
 when the missionaries first took possession of Klaarwater, the 
 country was unoccupied. The fallacy of this assertion will be 
 fully proved as we proceed with our investigation. In 1820 
 a considerable number of Bushmen were still living scattered over 
 the country between Griquatown and Lithako, the great place 
 at that time of the Batlapin. They appear, however, to have 
 congregated principally about the locality called Re57ner Mountain 
 and from Koing Fontein and Alers plain on the west to the 
 Malalarene and Kolong on the east. They were often met with 
 in small parties, in miserable huts, on the open flats. These all 
 belonged to the sculptor tribes, and few of them, as we have 
 already pointed out, appear to have lived in caves, owing doubt- 
 less to the peculiar formation of the country, in which any large 
 numbers of rock-shelters are seldom met with. 
 
 As in every instance where the stronger races have come in 
 contact with these aboriginal hunters, the Koranas, Griquas, 
 and Batlapin displayed the utmost vindictiveness towards 
 them. It seemed a strange perversion of ideas in aU these tribes, 
 which were accustomed to condemn the Bushmen with such 
 vehemency as rogues, that they should themselves be professional 
 thieves whenever they had an opportunity. The only difference 
 between them as to roguery was that the Bushmen stole in small 
 companies and the others in large parties like an army. The same 
 way of judging, however, is as common in Europe, the crime and 
 the charge seem both lost where the perpetrators are numerous. 
 
 Mr. Campbell states that upon one occasion when with their 
 accustomed hatred, some Batlapin could scarcely be restrained 
 from dispatching a couple of Bushmen who had been made 
 prisoners by his Hottentot servants, he attempted to point out 
 
 178 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF REYNER MOUNTAIN 179 
 
 to them that the only difference between the crime of the Batlapin 
 and the Bushmen was that the former did it upon a larger scale 
 than the latter. While the Bushmen contented themselves 
 with what was necessary to supply present wants, the Batlapin 
 in their commandos took from one another hundreds and thou- 
 sands of cattle. When the Batlapin were reasoned with on the 
 cruelty of their disposition towards the Bushmen, they justified 
 themselves by the bad qualities they ascribed to them. 
 
 These Bushmen seldom attempted to seize many cattle at 
 once, and their raids were made more to supply the cravings of 
 hunger than to gratify any desire for the accumulation of large 
 herds, such as impelled the neighbouring Hottentot and Bachoana 
 tribes to make continuous forays upon one another. As soon as 
 they had succeeded in securing a small quantity of cattle, they 
 generally signalled to their brethren from the top of some hill, 
 that they might know from the ascending smoke that a capture 
 had been made and that they had better get out of the way. 
 
 One of the great places of refuge for the Bushmen in this 
 part of the countty was about three mUes to the south of Neale's 
 Fontein, on an elevation in the plain where there was a remark- 
 able excavation in the solid rock. It was about a quarter of a 
 mile in circumference. The rock was perpendicular all round, 
 and about one hundred feet high, excepting a declivity in one 
 part of it which was easUy ascended. This was covered with trees, 
 while no other trees were found in that part of the plain. At 
 the bottom was a deep pool of excellent water. Almost on a 
 level with the surface of the water was a cave, which had a narrow 
 entrance, and was frequently used by Bushmen as a refuge from 
 their pursuers when they had stolen cattle, because here they 
 could feast in safety, for though the Batlapin would sometimes 
 pursue them to the mouth of the cave, they never had courage 
 to follow them into that dark abode. 
 
 That these Bushmen under different treatment would have 
 been capable of improvement, and were not altogether the irre- 
 daimable savages that their enemies, the Griquas and Batlapin, 
 delighted to depict them, is illustrated by a fact mentioned 
 by Mr. Campbell, of a Griqua who had been able with great labour 
 to cut a canal near the source'of a stream, by which he could lead 
 .a sufficient supply of water over aU his land, and this he had been 
 
i8o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 enabled to accomplish through the assistance of the Bushmen. 
 
 One of their chiefs was Uving in 1820 in' a district at the 
 south end of Re3Tier Mountain, about half-way between Griqua- 
 town and Lithako. His name was 'Hon'ke, or the Little Lamb, 
 and he was the son of 'Hon'ke-yeng, the Very Little Lamb. He 
 informed Mr. Campbell that he and his forefathers had always 
 lived at the same place, and that his people were formerly more 
 numerous than at that time, their number having been reduced 
 by disease and by attacks of the Bachoana. 'Hon'ke stated that 
 he had never travelled farther to the north than Koening Fontein, 
 a place about twenty miles from his kraal, except once when he 
 carried a letter to Lithako, or farther to the east than the 'Gij- 
 'Gariep or Vaal river, where he went to steal cattle. He con- 
 fessed that he had killed five men, either in fighting about game 
 or in revenge for their having murdered some of his friends. 
 Common report, however, gave him credit for having killed a 
 much larger number. In all his combats he had only received 
 two wounds from poisoned arrows, one in his right arm, the other 
 in his side, either of which would have proved mortal had not 
 the flesh been instantly cut out. Although in earlier times 
 there were frequent skirmishes among Bushmen, he said that the 
 men of other Bushman tribes never attacked him then, being 
 afraid because they knew that he was a brave and resolute man. 
 
 Like all their countrymen, these Bushmen were exposed to 
 great hardships, being often destitute of food for several suc- 
 cessive days during seasons when both roots and game were 
 scarce. When flesh was plentiful they had a mode of drying it 
 and then pounding it to powder, in which state it kept many 
 days. One of the Bushmen of this tribe was pointed out who 
 had an aged mother-in-law, and it was stated that one day during 
 his absence from home her own daughter, his wife, dragged the 
 old woman into the veld and left her alive among the bushes, 
 where she was torn to pieces by the hyenas the sartie night. 
 The chief said, in speaking of such matters, that the Bushmen 
 did not think they had souls ; they died one after the other, the 
 young people were buried and the old thrown to the wild beasts. 
 
 The greater number of these Bushmen were subsequently 
 hunted down and destroyed by the Griquas and Batlapin, who 
 never allowed an opportunity to escape of venting their feelings 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE MALALARENE i8i 
 
 of hatred upon them ; the miserable remnant the Griqua chief 
 Waterboer took under his protection. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Malalarene and 'Kolong. 
 
 The branch of the Vaal now generally marked on maps as 
 the Hart river appears in former days to have been distinguished 
 by three different names, each indicating a particular portion 
 of the stream. The Lower Hart near its junction with the Vaal 
 was known as the ^Kolong, the central portion as the 'Hhou, while 
 the upper had received the appellation of the Malalarene, the 
 two first being of Bushman origin, the last of Bachoana. 
 
 Bushmen were at one time very numerous in this locality, 
 hunting as far to the north as Kuruman, and even in 1820, 
 between this place and T'shopo numerous pitfalls were to be 
 seen, which had been excavated by them. To the eastward their 
 hunting grounds reached to the Vaal, and the great chief of their 
 clans was looked upon as the most powerful Bushman captain in 
 that region. They, like those of Reyner Mountain, belonged to 
 the sculptor branch of the Bushman family. Much of the little 
 history which has been preserved about them is so intermingled 
 with that of the neighbouring tribes that we shall reserve its 
 details until treating of the latter. 
 
 In 1820 the name of their great chief was Ma'ku-une ; his 
 father's name was 'Kama'cha, and that of his mother 'Ab. His 
 father died before he was bom, when his mother married 
 another Bushman, named 'Ta'ku. He informed Mr. Campbell 
 that when he was young the Bushmen of those parts were far 
 more numerous than they were at that time. Many of them 
 had been destroyed in attacks by the Batlapin and Koranas. 
 The first raid in which he had been engaged was against the 
 Batlapin, in which, though many oxen were captured, the whole 
 were eaten in two days. His second was undertaken against the 
 Ta-ma-has, but in this they were frustrated, as their design 
 had been discovered, and his party returned without booty. 
 Only one woman, who was found concealing herself, was killed. 
 Another foray in which he was engaged was directed against the 
 Baharara, another portion of the same tribe, when they were 
 more successful ; but again on this occasion the cattle which 
 
i82 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 were captured only furnished a sufficiency for a feast of two days. 
 His last expedition was when his people united with the Koranas 
 against the Batlapin. He had raised his fame among his tribe as 
 a great hunter, having killed during his lifetime four Hons, one 
 panther, two leopards, three camelopards, seven buffaloes, two 
 rhinoceroses, two gnus, one hippopotamus, and numberless quag- 
 gas, besides other game. 
 
 A few years previously he had about one hundred people 
 with him in his kraal ; murders and disease had, however, so 
 thinned their ranks that in 1820 they were reduced to a small 
 number. He had still a few people at three different places 
 who acknowledged subjection to him. 
 
 The Bushmen of this part were all of diminutive size, and did 
 not paint their bodies like many of the other tribes, except on 
 special occasions. However wretched and starved they appeared 
 in times of scarcity, with a change to good living they fattened 
 in a few weeks, like cattle when translated from barren heaths 
 to good pasturage. 
 
 The Bushmen of the 'Gij 'Gariep or Vaal. 
 
 There can be no doubt but that the portion of this river valley 
 between the junction of the Vaal with the 'Gumaam or Vet and 
 the 'Kolong was thickly inhabited by the sculptor branch of the 
 Bushman race from a very remote period. Some of the evidences 
 of this lengthened occupation have already been referred to ; 
 similar proofs upon this point might be advanced, but those to 
 which we have alluded will be sufficient to substantiate the fact. 
 Their headquarters appear to have been at the kopje behind the 
 Pniel mission station and the one situated half-way between that 
 place and the Kimberley diamond mine. Scattered around these, 
 the traces of a number of minor outstations are to be found. 
 
 It is here and at the 'Gumaap, or Great Riet river, that the 
 finest specimens of their sculptures are to be found, and it was 
 here also that Bushmen had made the greatest advances towards 
 a more comfortable state of existence. This was especially the 
 case with those clans occupying the country towards the 'Gu- 
 maam, or Vet river, where the friendly intercourse which had 
 sprung up between them and the Leghoya, an emigrant tribe of 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE 'NU 'GARIEP 183 
 
 the Bachoana who had settled amongst them, had been beneficial 
 in advancing them in the scale of comfort and civilization far 
 beyond that found among any of the more western tribes. They 
 had become semi-pastoral, possessing comparatively many cattle, 
 some of the kraals being the owners of as many as five himdred head. 
 This progress, however, proved the very means of ensuring 
 their speedy destruction as soon as their country was invaded 
 by the more lawless, yet stronger races, with whose history their 
 extermination was so interwoven that it will be necessary for 
 us to postpone the investigation of this portion of our subject 
 until we treat of the career of such tribes as the Koranas, 
 Griquas, and Basutu. It is the same story of injustice, oppression, 
 and cruelty as that which we have related about the Bushmen of 
 the Tooverberg, aggravated towards its close by the advent of 
 the men who for the last century had been the bitterest perse- 
 cutors of this ill-fated race. 
 
 The Bushmen of the 'Nu 'Gariep, or Upper Orange. 
 
 The Bushman tribes inhabiting the basin of the 'Nua 'Gariep 
 may be divided into several groups. One of these occupied the 
 country from the Makaleng or Komet Spruit to beyond Thaba 
 Bosigo, including the 'Kheme, and to Platberg on the right bank 
 of the Noka Mogokare or Caledon. They acknowledged a Bush- 
 man captain, Lekomnetsa by name, as their great chief, who was 
 an old man in 1820,^ and who was succeeded by 'Khiba, or 
 'Kheba, who was the paramount chief over the men of the caves 
 from Matlakeng, or the Place of the Vultures, to the Great Hang- 
 lip in the Genadeberg. These Bushmen were called Baroa ba 
 Makhoma Khotu by the Basutu, as some of the kraals had cattle 
 in their possession. M. Arbousset mentions a second group called 
 Mamanchou, who took their name from one of the great women 
 of the tribe, but he does not mention the locality in which they 
 lived. He also states that 'Kheme,'Rhosatsaneng, 'Ku'ku, and 'Koes 
 (Koesberg) are some of the oldest Bushman names in the coimtry . 
 
 Another powerful group of clans occupied the right bank of 
 the 'Nu 'Gariep from its junction with the Noka Mogokare or 
 Caledon, up along the course of the stream beyond Lotter's Kop, 
 
 * Notes of Charles Sirr Orpen. Letter from M. Arbousset in 1859. 
 
i84 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Lichtenstein, and Riebeeksdal ; and in the opposite direction as 
 far as Badfontein to Bosjes Spruit, while towards the north the 
 caves in Mononong or Great Aasvogelkop were included in their 
 territory. The paramount chief at the beginning of this century 
 was Ow'ku'ru'keu, or as he was called by the Bastaards and Dutch, 
 Baardman the elder. 'Kwaha,' who was a petty captain of his 
 tribe, says that although Ow'ku'ru'keu, who was his mother's 
 uncle, was a true Bushman, he was a big man and fat. He and 
 different members of his family had obtained the sobriquet of 
 Baardman, or the bearded man, on account of a marked peculi- 
 arity which they possessed. They were not only, like the other 
 Bushmen of their tribe, short and well-built, but they had thick 
 heavy beards and large moustaches, which marked them at once 
 from the ordinary Bushmen, whose faces, as a rule, are destitute 
 of any such hirsute appendages ; and which in this case arose in 
 all probability from some intermixture of blood. His great place 
 or cave was lower down the Caledon than that of 'Kwaha, a little 
 above its junction with the 'Nu 'Gariep. The cave, or as it 
 might be called from the beauty and number of its paintings, the 
 palace-cave of his father, however, was the one which from its 
 symbolic figure was termed the Cave of the Hippopotamus, in 
 the rocky gorge or ravine running to the Orange river on the 
 farm Lichtenstein. 
 
 Ow'ku'ru'keu, although he did not live there himself, was 
 proud of this grand representation of the large charging hippo- 
 potamus as well as the other paintings which adorned the home 
 of his fathers. He was already a very old man in 1839, when he 
 was first met by one of the voortrekkers named David Swanepoel,^ 
 
 ^ 'Kwaha informed Mr. C. S. Orpen that his father was a Ghona 
 Hottentot, who was born at the Sea-cow river, in the district of Colesberg, 
 and therefore in the territory of 'Na'na'kow, the last chief of the Toover- 
 berg. His mother, whose name was Candass 'Khou'kuha, belonged to a 
 clan living in the Kraamberg, near the present Aliwal North, and was a 
 niece of Ow'ku'ru'keu. The influence therefore of this chief extended to 
 the left bank of the 'Nu Gariep. 'Kwaha was born in a cave on the right 
 side of the Caledon, opposite Tweefontein, and a Uttle distance above the 
 junction of this river with the 'Nu Gariep. 'Kwaha was a young man, 
 and had not taken a wife, when the first missionary came to T'kout'koo, 
 now Bethuhe. He was known by the name of Aerk, and was followed by 
 Mr. Kolbe. 
 
 ^ David Swanepoel, an old farmer of considerable intelligence, was one 
 of those who in the early days were in the habit of crossing the Orange 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE 'NU 'GARIEP 185 
 
 to whom he frequently boasted of the beautiful paintings which 
 ornamented the wall of the great place of his father, saying that 
 when he had seen them he would be able to say that he had seen 
 paintings. In those days all the rivers abounded with hippo- 
 potami, and troops of elephants were found in every kloof and 
 near every vlei, which extended, in some parts, in great chains 
 of reed-fringed pools for miles in the hollows of the vast plains. 
 
 Ow'Ku'ru'keu was always desirous of maintaining peace with 
 his neighbours. The number of his subjects was considerable, 
 and 'Kwaha affirmed that he was loved very much by them and 
 always gave advice towards peace. Living so near the banks of 
 large rivers, these people were great and successful fishermen. 
 The voortrekkers termed them Friendly Bushmen, but their 
 peaceful disposition did not save them ; the tribe was broken up 
 by the intruders, and they were dispossessed of their land. 
 
 Ow'ku'ru'keu escaped the dismemberment of his tribe caused 
 by the intrusion of the Boer squatters into the country originally 
 occupied by his people, yet, although he abandoned the place 
 himself, a small clan stiU clung to the grand retreat of their 
 ancestors in the Lichtenstein gorge ; but their end was a tragical 
 one. They fell, together with Knecht Windvogel and his tribe, 
 by the treachery of a notorious and still more infamous free- 
 booter, called Danster by the Dutch. His vindictiveness was 
 directed against Windvogel and his people, when the Bushmen 
 from Lichtenstein accompanying them fell likewise into the 
 snare. 
 
 What the cause of the offence was is not known, but having 
 resolved upon his diabolical scheme, he gave a grand feast and 
 beer-drinking for the express purpose of entrapping these people, 
 towards whom he had always previously expressed great friend- 
 ship. He sent therefore an invitation to them, informing them 
 that on a certain day he intended to give this great feast, de- 
 siring them to be present. Not having the slightest suspicion 
 of any sinister design, the proffered hospitality was accepted 
 without hesitation ; and on the appointed day the whole of both 
 the clans attended. Their host was lavish both in demonstra- 
 tions of friendship and in supplies of beer. Not suspecting the 
 
 river for the purpose of hunting, when the Bushmen were still in undis- 
 turbed possession of the country. 
 
i86 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 least evil or danger, they gave themselves up to conviviality and 
 the indulgences of the banquet ; feasting and dancing were the 
 order of the day, but when his too confident guests, whom he 
 plied steadily for that purpose, were muddled with the heavy 
 potations or lying helpless with the intoxication which followed, 
 suddenly, without notice, at a given signal — a shrUl whistle — 
 the entertainers with assagai and shield sprang upon their un- 
 suspecting victims, and murdered men, women, and children 
 without mercy. Not a soid escaped ! 
 
 Ow'ku'ru'keu survived until the year i860, and although at 
 that time he was in extreme old age, he was still energetic and 
 active. He then occupied a small kraal with his wives and a 
 few of his sons, near the junction of the Riet and Modder rivers, 
 on a farm in the possession of one Joubert. His eldest son, 
 Baardman the younger, whom he had not seen for some fifty 
 years, he had sold for three she-goats to a wandering hunter 
 named Hans Pretorius, who, according to Bushman tradition, 
 was the first Boer that ever crossed the Orange river. 
 
 This fact was corroborated in the following manner : In i860 
 the locality above mentioned was visited by Mr. Jan Wessels, 
 who saw the old Bushman captain there. Mr. Wessels had with 
 him at the time a Bushman who had been a number of years in 
 his service. This man was about sixty years of age, and also 
 possessed a thick bushy beard and moustache. He was called 
 Baardman the younger, and had always declared himself to be 
 a son of the great Bushman captain Baardman, who had some 
 fifty years before sold him to a Boer. Since that time he had 
 never seen his father, but had always remained in the service of 
 the Boers, one of whom he had accompanied to Natal. 
 
 Long as the intervening time had been since the parent and 
 child had seen each other, the younger Baardman immediately 
 recognised and pointed out his father, and went up and accosted 
 him. So little had the old man aged, that there appeared to be 
 hardly any difference between them. The meeting was a very 
 cool one, and the son immediately upbraided his father, charged 
 him with having sold him to the Boers, and demanded as a matter 
 of right and justice the same number of ewe goats as his pro- 
 genitor had obtained by selling him. After some altercation, 
 the parent agreed to hand over to his descendant the spoil he 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE GENADEBERG 187 
 
 had obtained for him. This was accordingly done, and they 
 parted never to meet again. 
 
 The date of old Ow'ku'ru'keu's death is unrecorded ; but the 
 son stUl continued, as he had always done before, whenever 
 slightly elevated, to proclaim the extent of his father's former 
 dominions, his numerous subjects, and the power which he 
 possessed as one of the greatest Bushman captains of the 'Nu 
 'Gariep. In his later years' he added to his former declarations 
 that as soon as he possessed the means he would go to Victoria 
 and show her how imjustly he and his father had been dispos- 
 sessed of their lands. He died about 1875 in Rouxville, at an 
 advanced age, being last in the service of Mr. J . C. Chase, of that 
 town ; and thus perished the last representative of the great 
 chiefs of the Bushmen of the 'Nu 'Gariep. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Genadeberg and the Mountains around 
 
 Champagne. 
 
 The caves and fastnesses of these mountains formed the 
 strongholds of a very powerful and numerous tribe, or rather 
 group of tribes, as there were a number of outstations which 
 were occupied by smaller clans, but who acknowledged the 
 paramount authority of the chief of the great cave in Poshuli's 
 Hoek. They for a long time maintained their independence, 
 and kept the country round them clear of intruders. Beyond 
 this bare fact, very few traditions have been preserved regarding 
 them, with the exception of a disaster which befell them and the 
 story of the final annihilation of their tribe. 
 
 The circumstances of the latter we shall detail when we speak 
 of the Bushman struggle for existence ; the former, however, 
 which forms a portion of their earlier history, occurred at the 
 time when a number of emigrant Kaffirs belonging to the coast 
 tribes attempted to settle in portions of the country afterwards 
 taken possession of by some of the Bakuena clans. This was 
 about 1806-12, when the latter were still north of the Intaba e 
 Muthlope, or the Wittebergen of the Orange Free State. Upon 
 these Kaf&r intruders the Genadeberg Bushmen made a foray. 
 They succeeded in capturing a number of cattle, and not only 
 kept their pursuers at bay, but beat back the large body of 
 Kaffirs that followed them. These, finding out the direction 
 
i88 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the Bushmen were likely to take, dispatched a party by short 
 footpaths to waylay them near a nek on the farm now called 
 Hoogeland. Here they succeeded in concealing themselves 
 among the reeds and grass on either side of the pass. The Bush- 
 men, imagining that in defeating the body which had pursued 
 them all chance of further danger was at an end, approached the 
 spot just as evening was closing in, carelessly and with gleeful 
 confidence driving their captured spoil before them. Before 
 they were aware of it, however, the Kaffirs were upon them, 
 and knowing that the Bushmen's arrows were nearly expended 
 during the day's fight, rushed in upon them, dashing out their 
 brains with knobkerries or clubs, before the latter, who were 
 taken completely by surprise, had time to make any defence. 
 Very few escaped, and the Kaffirs returned in triumph to their 
 kraals with the recaptured cattle. 
 The Bushmen of the ^Kouwe {the Mountain) or Jammerberg. 
 This isolated range formed another of the great centres 
 around which a considerable number of Bushman clans con- 
 gregated ; but as usual, except the fact that they once existed, 
 and that traces of many of their paintings are still to be found 
 in its caves and rock-shelters, little has been preserved of their 
 history. The name of the last great or paramount chief was 
 'Co-ro-ko or 'Koroko, the uncle of 'Kou'ke. He was termed 
 the chief of the 'Kouwe, or the Mountain. There were secondary 
 chiefs under him : Palare, who occupied the caves in the ravine 
 of the mountain near Ramanape's kraals, and Ma'khema, the 
 chief of those in a deep gorge in the range towards the poort 
 leading to Hermon mission station ; besides petty captains or 
 the heads of detached caves. Another powerful Bushman cap- 
 tain, named Ma'kla, inhabited the Spitzkop in Basutoland, 
 opposite Leeuw River. 
 
 'Kou'ke stated that all the men of these tribes were shot 
 without mercy by the different commandos that came to attack 
 them. When the writer was trying to persuade her and her 
 husband to accompany him on his travels for a short time, that 
 he might have an opportunity of learning more of their history, 
 she said : " Do you see where the mountain comes down to the 
 river ? " pointing to where its steep shoulder formed the left 
 bank of the Caledon, in the Jammerberg Poort. " There," she 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF KORANABERG 189 
 
 continued, " were all the best of our tribe shot down ; there all 
 our brave men's bones were left in a heap : my captain's, my 
 brothers', and those of every friend that I had. Do you think 
 I could live in the land of the men who did me that evil ? No ! 
 not for a single night would I sleep on their accursed ground ! " 
 Her reasons were unanswerable. She departed, and the oppor- 
 tunity to obtain their unrecorded history was lost. 
 
 The Bushmen of Makwatling or Koranaberg. 
 
 This grand old mountain with its table-topped precipitous 
 crown, its steep and rocky gorges, afforded a home and secure 
 retreat for a powerful group of tribes for unknown generations ; 
 yet, notwithstanding this acknowledged fact, the writer when 
 visiting the locality was unable to learn the name of a single 
 one of their great chiefs. They were still, however, very numer- 
 ous, and held possession of their caves up to the time of the last 
 Free State and Basutu war. At that time they were attacked 
 by a commando under Commandants Fick and Dreyer, and 
 although rifles, hand-grenades, and cannon were employed 
 against them, — the marks of bullets and cannon shot are still to be 
 seen round some of their shelters, attesting the vigour with which 
 the siege was prosecuted, — they were able to keep their enemies at 
 bay, and forced them to retire without dislodging them from 
 their strongholds in the mountain. The besiegers, however, 
 succeeded in killing a number of Bushmen who held advanced 
 positions, although they defended themselves with desperation 
 to the very last. 
 
 During these operations an incident occurred, which was 
 related to the writer by a Korana who was an eye-witness of 
 it, and which illustrates in a marked manner the intrepid daring 
 so frequently displayed by men of the Bushman race. A large 
 patrol had just returned to camp. It was towards evening, and 
 having knee-haltered their horses, they turned them out to graze 
 in the neighbourhood, at about one hundred yards distance. 
 Here, without the least indication of his presence, a solitary 
 Bushman was lying concealed among the long grass, over which 
 but a few minutes before the patrol must have ridden, but where 
 he had well hidden himself beneath the spreading tuft with which 
 he had disguised himself. He had evidently placed himself there 
 
igo THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 to spy out the position and movements of the people in the camp. 
 Without being noticed, he worked himself among the horses, 
 and after selecting one, fastened a thong of leather round one of 
 its fore legs, and then by slowly moving along on his belly, he 
 gradually led it off some short distance from the others, hoping 
 by this means to get it sufficiently far to be able to mount it 
 with impunity. After a time the owner of the horse, seeing what 
 appeared to him to be his horse straying away, ran after it to 
 turn it, shouting to it as he ran. The horse, now becoming 
 alarmed, struggled to free himself ; but the Bushman, still con- 
 cealed, held on with a tenacious grip. The horse's terror in- 
 creased, and struggling more fiercely, he sprang round and round, 
 plunging and snorting, until at last with a more desperate effort 
 than before he reared over, and with the sudden jerk swung the 
 persistent Bushman into the air at the end of the thong, 
 while the pursuing Boer was astonished at the apparition of a 
 great tuft of grass with the arms, body, and legs of a Bushman 
 attached, flying round as if in an infernal waltz with the 
 maddened horse. 
 
 Seeing at last all chance of success had gone, the Bushman 
 relinquished his hold, with a bound sped away like a racer, and 
 before any alarm could be given placed a safer distance between 
 himself and the camp of his enemies. Before disappearing, he 
 turned to give a last look at those who were now in pursuit of 
 him, and with upraised hand and bitter voice he cursed them as 
 the destroyers and ruin of his country. 
 
 Upon the retreat of the commando, the Bushmen, after their 
 dauntless resistance to the fearful odds brought against them, 
 determined to abandon for ever the time-honoured strongholds 
 of their forefathers. They evacuated them in a body, and with- 
 drew unobserved and safely to the most rugged parts of the 
 Malutis. Here some years afterwards they were again attacked, 
 but on this occasion by the Baputi, under their chief Mogorosi, 
 or as he was afterwards called, Morosi, and in the conflicts which 
 ensued the tribe was annihilated. Most of the men were either 
 shot or assagaied, whilst all the women and girls were made 
 captive and became the wives or concubines of the victors. 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF DI-TSE-THLONG 191 
 
 The Bushmen of Di-tse-thlong or Platberg on the Caledon. 
 
 These mountains seem to have formed a species of nucleus, 
 around which a number of Bushman clans congregated, over 
 whom one chief was acknowledged as paramount, although the 
 subsidiary captains exercised a large amount of independent 
 authority over their respective hordes. Upon all occasions 
 affecting the common weal, or in times of public danger, they at 
 once acted in union, submitting to the command of the great 
 chief of the mountain. The head or palace-cave of the Di-tse- 
 thlong Bushmen was the great cavern among the domed rocks 
 of the mountain opposite Tennant's Kop. Its walls were at one 
 time covered with paintings, depicting the history of the 
 aboriginal inhabitants of the mountain, their manners, and 
 customs ; but these, alas ! have now been destroyed by the 
 goats and cattle of the Basutu and the Boers, who have 
 turned the ancestral abode of the Bushmen into a cattle and 
 sheep kraal. 
 
 The name of the last great Bushman captain of the moun- 
 tain, who lived in this cave, was 'Kabasisi. The informant of 
 the writer was a half-caste Mosutu belonging to the clan of the 
 petty Basutu captain Ramanape. He stated that his grand- 
 father, whose name was Rama'kale, was a solitary fugitive who 
 sought refuge among these Bushmen long before any of the other 
 Basutu were in this part of the country. 'Kabasisi not only gave 
 him shelter, but also SHe'gou, his daughter, to wife. Rama'kale 
 lived under this captain all his life, and all his children, among 
 whom was the father of the narrator, were born in this cave. 
 This was long before Moshesh's time, and when Bushmen alone 
 occupied all the land. The Bushman chief was very old at the 
 time, and died a few years afterwards in a small cave in a neigh- 
 bouring ravine. Many years after this, long after his father had 
 grown up to manhood, and these Bushmen had acquired a few 
 cattle, they were attacked by Moselekatze's people, when some 
 of the inhabitants of the cave fell under the assagais of the in- 
 vaders, and the remainder fled towards Kopje AUeen, in the 
 great central plains towards the 'Gij 'Gariep or Vaal, where his 
 grandfather died. His father afterwards returned to the old 
 cave, and he and several other children were born there. Here 
 
192 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 they all remained in right of their father's descent until they were 
 driven out by the Boers in the last Basutu war. 
 
 'Koroklou was the last great chief of the Bushmen of the 
 Middle Veld, near Kopje Alleen. After many of them had been 
 shot and their children seized and sold to the Boers as slaves, 
 and the Boers themselves began to take possession of the land, 
 he left the open country and sought refuge in the Jammerberg, 
 where he was captured by the last commando sent against the 
 Bushmen of the 'Kouwe, and carried to Bloemfontein, where he 
 was kept as a kind of state prisoner on parole, and was still living 
 there in 1877. 
 
 The Bushmen of the 'Koesberg. 
 
 Traces of Bushman occupation are to be found on every side 
 of this extensive mountain and its outlying branches. Several 
 large caves and rock-shelters, such as those of Tienfontein Nek 
 to the east, Knecht's Kloof on the south, and Brakfontein on the 
 west, are illustrations of this. There were also several important 
 caves under the precipices of the neighbouring Matlakeng, Mool- 
 man's Hoek, and other places, showing that at one time the 
 whole of this part of the country was densely populated with 
 Bushmen. Some of the great caves were adorned with innumer- 
 able paintings, of which a number were of remarkable excel- 
 lence, showing that the captains or chiefs to whom they belonged 
 were men of considerable rank and importance. The banks of 
 every watercourse and pool in the surrounding country were 
 fringed with pitfalls. This was especially the case in Deve- 
 naar's Spruit, where the remains of them are still to be seen. 
 
 No record has been preserved of any paramount chief who 
 asserted sway over the entire district, and from the evidence ol 
 the caves it would appear not improbable that there were several 
 great chiefs ruling over groups of clans in different parts of it. 
 One of these was the head of the clan which inhabited the rock- 
 shelter on Tienfontein Nek, before they were driven to seek a 
 securer shelter in the more rugged and nearly inaccessible fast- 
 nesses of the mountain. This chief, on account of his deter- 
 mined daring, was known among the Dutch squatters by the 
 name of Kwaai Stuurman. Little else has been preserved of 
 his career. Several of the fertile valleys surrounding the moun- 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE 'KOESBERG 193 
 
 tain were seized upon by some emigrant Amaxosa Kaffirs, 
 while fugitives from the north, of Basutu origin, appropriated 
 others in the same unceremonious manner. Hence the seeds of 
 discord were thickly sown around the ancient abodes of the 
 primitive inhabitants. These rival races lived in a state of con- 
 tinual hostility ; stragglers and wayfarers were waylaid, robbed, 
 and murdered. 
 
 During the early days of this Kaffir intrusion into the Bush- 
 man hunting grounds, a constant series of skirmishing and fight- 
 ing, of robbery and murder, went on, not only with the Bushmen, 
 the original inhabitants of the mountain, but between the petty 
 robber chiefs who had located themselves in its vicinity. The 
 law of might was the law of right, and no one retained his pro- 
 perty longer than he had the power of defending it successfully. 
 Any imhappy native, not allied to one or other of the swarthy 
 bandits, who had the misfortune to possess a small herd of cattle, 
 was sure sooner or later to faU a victim to the lawless rapine and 
 violence that was rampant throughout the country. As an ex- 
 ample of this, a fugitive Fingo, who obtained the name of Knecht, 
 established his kraal, by permission of the Bushman captain of 
 the great cave in the precipitous glen of Knecht's Kloof — the 
 cave of the White Hippopotamus — near the mouth of the ravine. 
 He had not been long there, however, before he found his huts 
 set on fire in the night and his cattle driven off by a party of 
 these marauders, who, not satisfied with this, massacred the 
 unfortunate Knecht and all his family in cold blood, as they 
 attempted to escape, or threw them back into the flames to meet 
 an equally terrible death. In the morning, when day broke, 
 pools of blood and the charred ruins of the dwellings alone re- 
 mained to mark the spot, and thus it was that the locality 
 obtained the name of Knecht's Kloof. 
 
 Besides these there were several other Bushman tribes, 
 such as those of the Mogokare and Bushmansberg, but, although 
 almost every rock shelter contains the remains of their paintings, 
 proving how numerous they must once have been, nothing has 
 been preserved of their history except that most of them were 
 shot down by the sons and grandsons of the men who were so 
 active in the extermination of the Bushman hordes of the Karoo, 
 the Tooverberg, and the Northern Plains. 
 
194 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The Bushmen of the Upper Modder River and Rhenoster Spruit. 
 
 At one time a powerful tribe inhabited the ridges above the 
 junction of these streams, near a place called Keerom. These 
 Bushmen made a raid upon some of the Batlapin who had 
 migrated towards the Vaal river. The latter determined not 
 only to recapture the cattle, but to revenge themselves by follow- 
 ing up and destroying the entire horde that had robbed them- 
 A large party sent in pursuit of the Bushmen for this purpose 
 arrived at the ravine in which their stronghold was situated- 
 The Bushmen, however, were prepared for them. A few of these 
 wily hunters, intended as a decoy, took up a conspicuous position 
 at the head of it with some of the cattle ; the main body, how- 
 ever, had in the meantime thickly lined the rocks on either side 
 of the gorge, where they were entirely hidden from the view of 
 the advancing Kaffirs, while another strong party concealed 
 themselves in the long grass around the mouth of the vaUey, 
 and closed up its entrance as soon as the unsuspecting Kaffirs 
 were sufficiently within the toils which had been laid for them. 
 
 It was not until they were well entangled in this cul-de-sac 
 that they discovered, when too late, the manner in which they 
 were entrapped. Assailed by flights of arrows from every side, 
 in flank, in front, and rear, a panic seized them ; they made no 
 attempt at defence or resistance, but merely in desperation cut 
 away pieces of flesh from their bodies wherever the poisoned 
 barbs fixed themselves. There was scarcely one of them who 
 was not hit in several places, and many bled quickly to death 
 from the ghastly wounds they thus inflicted upon themselves. 
 Only one or two of the entire party managed to burst through 
 the encircling lines unscathed ; all the rest perished in the fatal 
 glen. This desperate affair was remembered by the Bushmen 
 as " the Battle of Blood," from the frightful quantity that was 
 shed by the self immolation of their panic-stricken enemies. 
 The informant of the writer was a youth at the time, and was 
 within a mile or two of the spot when it occurred. 
 
 When first examining some of the Bushman paintings repre- 
 senting battle scenes between themselves and Kaffirs who had 
 invaded their country, the quantity of blood flowing from the 
 wounds appeared somewhat exaggerated ; but this the writer 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE WASHBANK 195 
 
 discovered from facts similar to that just related, was not the 
 case, as it appears from all native evidence that the Kaffirs and 
 Basutu in their encounters with the Bushmen were almost uni- 
 versally in the habit of excising the piece of flesh containing the 
 poisoned barb of the arrow, cutting through without hesitation 
 any vessels or sinews in the neighbourhood of the wound ; and 
 thus numbers, in the desperate hope of saving their lives, inflicted 
 such terrible wounds upon themselves that they bled to death 
 before any effort could be made to stanch it. Thus it was that 
 whenever any combat took place, numbers of the Kaf&r warriors 
 were seen covered with streams of their own blood, while great 
 pools of it were found every here and there saturating the ground, 
 thus also proving that the observant Bushman artists were in 
 this respect, as in many others, true to nature. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Washbank and Wittebergen, Cape Colony. 
 
 Many caves are to be found in this mountainous region, 
 several of them of immense size. In some of these the large 
 amount of rock surface adapted for painting enabled the native 
 artists to revel in the exhibition of their talent. Thousands of 
 groups once adorned their walls, which have been since their 
 expulsion wantonly defaced by the so-called civilized intruders, 
 There is every evidence that at one time densely populated 
 centres were sprinkled through the whole of these mountain 
 glens, where, whilst the tribes remained in their undisturbed 
 state, both game and fish abounded. This was notably the case 
 in the valleys of the Washbank, along the tortuous and precipi- 
 tous course of the Kraai river and its branches, in New England 
 and the present district of Herschel. 
 
 But if the extent and number of the caves and paintings con- 
 tained in them make known the numerous clans which once 
 occupied these picturesque glens, and the surprising degree of 
 excellence at which some of their leading artists arrived, so also 
 do these spots proclaim in an equally unmistakable manner the 
 tragic fate which befell their former inhabitants ; they tell us 
 but too plainly of the infernal storm of lead which was poured in 
 upon them by their vindictive and remorseless pursuers. 
 
 The sides of the great cave of the White Rhinoceros and 
 Serpent, in a rocky ravine on the right bank of the Washbank 
 
196 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Spruit, are so thickly bespattered with hundreds of the bullet 
 marks of their assailants, that one could almost write an account 
 of its siege and point out where in their desperate struggle the 
 intrepid defenders were forced back from point to point, where 
 they from time to time turned at bay in their attempts to keep 
 back their enemies, and where, behind a great heap of piled 
 rocks at the end of the cave, they turned for the last time, over- 
 powered but unsubdued, and resolutely continued the conflict 
 until the shout and the turmoil closed with the final discharge 
 of the echoing musketry, in the silence of death. 
 
 It was considered that when a Boer or Mosutu, armed only 
 with the old-fashioned flint firelock, met a Bushman in single 
 combat, his chance of success, or even of escape, was not very 
 great. In such a case there was no possibility of obtaining a 
 steady aim, as the Bushman always kept in a state of rapid 
 movement, jumping and springing from side to side, now here, 
 now there, in a most uncertain manner, but always advancing, 
 and as soon as a baU was fired at him, knowing that his oppo- 
 nent's gun was empty, he ran in upon him and shot him, almost 
 at close quarters. One Boer, however, is said to have possessed 
 such coolness that when he found himself face to face with a 
 Bushman, he drew his ramrod, and with surprising dexterity 
 was able to parry every shaft that was sent at him, until he came 
 within a few paces, when no chance of a mis-shot could exist. 
 
 In the attacks of the Boer commandos upon the Bushman 
 caves, some of the most daring of the invading force would ad- 
 vance upon the stronghold, under cover of rudely extemporized 
 shields, such as a few thick branches plaited together, or one 
 of their great duffel coats, such as were then in fashion with 
 them, or else a closely woven Kaffir mat. 
 
 Their mode of attack used to be as follows : three or four of 
 their best marksmen were told off, who took up the most com- 
 manding position they could obtain, in order to cover the ad- 
 vance of the storming party, when the greater part of the force 
 kept up a continuous fire from a more respectful distance. Thick 
 branches were obtained, where available, and plaited in such a 
 way that the arrows became entangled in them or glanced off ; 
 when these were not to be had, their great duffel coats were 
 stretched on two cross sticks, one of which was thrust through 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE WASHBANK 197 
 
 the sleeves, thus keeping them extended as widely as possible ; 
 arrows striking these would drive their points into the thick 
 material of which they were composed, and then hang harm- 
 lessly. Such a shield, which gave shelter to a couple of men, 
 would frequently be struck twenty or thirty times during the 
 advance. Where Kaffir mats were employed, a large one was 
 extended upon sticks, and carried carefully forward, while several 
 marksmen advanced under the cover. In this case, owing to 
 the pliancy of the rushes of which the mat was made, most of 
 the arrows rebounded on the outer side ; a few would occa- 
 sionally penetrate the shield, but it was a rare occurrence that 
 one burst through with sufficient force to do any harm. 
 
 An advance of this kind, over the rugged ground that had 
 generally to be traversed, was one which was not only made with 
 great caution, but considerable slowness also. In the meantime, 
 when any of the Bushmen exposed themselves too much in taking 
 aim at their advancing enemies, they generally feU under the 
 bullets of those who had been told off for the express purpose. 
 But even with all their precaution, the attack sometimes ended 
 in the confusion and flight of the Boers. When successful, how- 
 ever, the slow advance continued until the Bushmen's arrows 
 were expended ; then, when they were no longer able to defend 
 themselves for want of weapons, a rush was made, and they were 
 shot down indiscriminately, some of the women and children 
 occasionally escaping or being made captives. 
 
Chapter XI 
 
 THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE OF THE 
 
 CAPE COLONY 
 
 Under this title we shall notice the groups along the more 
 northern portion of the eastern frontier, of which any recollec- 
 tion has been preserved. We have already mentioned those of 
 the Bamboesberg and the Tarka and the old Tambuki tribe of 
 Bushmen which once occupied the valley of the Tsomo and the 
 land farther to the eastward ; those of the Great Winterberg 
 and the Konap we shall have occasion to treat of in a later 
 portion of our investigation. Most of the names of the great 
 captains of these tribes, who were certainly the patriotic de- 
 fenders of their country, have long since been lost sight of. Even 
 in the traditions which have survived of a few, most of them are 
 known only by the names given to them by the Boers, and the 
 writer could only discover two or three whose native names have 
 been preserved. 
 
 One of the former class was Lynx, the chief of the Bamboes- 
 berg. Another was Koegel-man, alias Koegel-been, who had 
 his headquarters among the rocky ledges of a hill in the Queens- 
 town district, now named Koegel-been's Kop after him ; and it 
 was in defending this stronghold that he received the wound — a 
 bullet lodging in his leg, from which it could not be extracted — 
 which gave him the name he subsequently bore. Little is now 
 known of him, except that he offered a desperate resistance to 
 the Abatembu and Boers who invaded his country. 
 
 Another captain who rendered himself conspicuous was called 
 Windvogel. He was chief of the Bushmen around the mountain 
 which was named Windvogelberg after him, in the same district. 
 His territory extended from the Wa'cu, or Wa-'ku, to the Thorn 
 river on the Bontebok flats. 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE 199 
 
 Of the numerous and powerful tribes which once inhabited 
 the Stormberg and neighbouring ranges, the writer was not able 
 to discover the trace of a single name having survived, although 
 in their day they were as determined and daring in their resist- 
 ance to the encroachments of the stronger races as their co-patriots 
 who were spread over the territory now forming the Free State 
 and the basin of the Orange river and its tributaries, with regard 
 to whom a number of traditions might be obtained, could some 
 of the ancient survivors be questioned upon the subject. 
 
 Mada'kane, one whose native name has escaped oblivion, 
 was chief of the Bushman tribe inhabiting the country from the 
 Zwart Kei Poort below Tylden to the Gwatyu and Indwe, and 
 along the valley of the 'Neiba, or Lower Zwart Kei, to a little 
 below its junction with the 'Ca'cadu or White Kei. This and the 
 one under Madura, of which we shall speak presently, were con- 
 sidered to be, at one time, the most powerful tribes in this part 
 of South Africa. The last retreat and stronghold of Mada'kane 
 was in an almost inaccessible glen, still bearing his name, about 
 the junction of the two Keis. The surrounding country is of the 
 most difficult character. One footpath leading to it, along which 
 the writer rode when he visited the spot in 1869, was along a kind 
 of elevated backbone, nearly half a mile long and from one 
 hundred and fifty to two hundred yards in width, above a preci- 
 pice of some five hundred feet on the one hand, while one, of at 
 least eight hundred feet, with the 'Neiba rushing over the rocks 
 at its foot, was on the other. 
 
 An old brother of Mada'kane, with two of his wives and their 
 children, and one or two followers, still hid themselves among the 
 precipices, and although several messengers were sent to them, 
 nothing would induce the old man to grant the visitor an inter- 
 view. One of his excuses was that if he did so, the man in the 
 leather jacket (the writer), who visited aU their houses and copied 
 their paintings, would be asking him questions, when the ques- 
 tioner would become as wise as himself. The resident Kaffirs of 
 these deep glens were, to add to the difficulties of the journey, 
 angry with the writer's Kaffir guides for bringing a white man to 
 examine the secret recesses of their fastnesses, which they termed 
 their hidden war-paths, that during the wars of 1835, 1846, and 
 1850 had afforded a secure retreat for all their women, children, 
 
200 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 and captured cattle, and that no colonial force had ever attempted 
 to enter, declaring that the writer was the first European who had 
 ventured to penetrate so far into this mysterious region. 
 
 Every obstacle was thrown in the way of the exploring party, 
 almost impassable roads were pointed out to them. They had 
 to camp out under a rock-shelter, the sides of which were barri- 
 caded with fallen trees, and lest the horses should be seized in 
 the night by the irate natives, who had threatened to dismount 
 the unwelcome intruders, they were securely fastened. Two 
 great fires were made in front, and with the aid of a watchful and 
 faithful dog, which had fortunately accompanied them, they 
 passed the night without further molestation, although the loud 
 voices of the Kaffirs in a kraal, about a quarter of a mile distant, 
 were heard the greater part of it. Early the next morning they 
 were again in the saddle, and after climbing, and occasionally 
 driving the horses in front of them for several hours, they arrived 
 at Mada'kane's last retreat. Here he died, amid his native rocky 
 glens, but whether of wounds or of old age, as he must have been 
 a very old man at the time, the writer was not able to learn. 
 
 His brother 'Gcu-wa, the old Bushman already mentioned, 
 was the painter of the family, and in 1869 still carried two or 
 three of his horn paint-pots swung at his belt. He was the artist 
 who painted the representation of a Boer commando, which 
 adorned the wall of his brother's rock-shelter, and it was said 
 that it was intended to commemorate the first attack the Boers 
 ever made upon their tribe. 
 
 The palace cave of the Python, on the bank of the 'Neiba, 
 belonged to a minor chief named Madolo, who acknowledged the 
 supremacy of Mada'kane. Madolo was a name given to this 
 chief by the invading Kaffirs, and signified Knees. Up to the 
 last days of the undisturbed rule of the Bushmen, all the deep 
 pools of the surrounding rivers swarmed with hippopotami. The 
 Kaffirs not only drove out the greater number of the Bushmen 
 from the more open country, but soon exterminated the great 
 pachyderms which had lived in the rivers. The last hippopo- 
 tamus of the 'Neiba was killed in the large pool opposite Madolo's 
 cave. The once powerful and formidable tribe of Mada'kane, 
 attacked on the one hand by the intruding Abatembu and 
 Amaxosa Kaffirs, and subsequently by Boer commandos on the 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE 201 
 
 other, was at last reduced to a miserable remnant, consisting of 
 the old man 'Gcu-wa, the brother of Mada'kane, a younger man, 
 a nephew of the same chief, three women, and about five little 
 children. These unfortunates never ventured into the open 
 country, but always remained in the wildest parts of the river 
 valleys, migrating from spot to spot, according to the seasons, 
 sustaining a precarious subsistence Ijy eel-fishing, digging roots, 
 and obtaining honey from the various krantz nests, inaccessible 
 to any men less nimble than themselves. 
 
 Even after they had been conquered and nearly destroyed 
 by the intruding Kaffirs, the survivors looked upon these rock 
 nests as their peculiar and rightful property, and not only 
 jealously guarded any interference with them, but promptly 
 revenged themselves upon the kraals of those who were suspected 
 of tampering with their contents. So certain was retaliation to 
 follow any such misdemeanour that the Kaffirs at last looked 
 upon these nests with considerable dread, and would neither 
 touch them themselves nor allow any one else to do so upon any 
 pretext whatever. 
 
 Madura, or Madoor as he was styled by the colonists, to whom 
 we have before alluded, was the chief of the second powerful 
 tribe living on this portion of the border. He was the great chief 
 of the Bushman clans in the country around the Klipplaats and 
 Upper Zwart Kei rivers. His great cave was originally a few 
 miles from the present village of Whittlesea, in the Division of 
 Queenstown. Here he was living when he was visited by Dr. 
 Van der Kemp ; and there was at one time a painting in it, which 
 Madura used to state was the likeness of this zealous but eccentric 
 missionary. It had the figure of a 'Nadro close behind it, looking 
 very much like the mediaeval conception of the devil, which made 
 some of the colonists believe that Madura's artist had attempted 
 to depict not only the worthy missionary, but also the evil being 
 whom he had attempted to introduce to their notice. 
 
 About the time of, or shortly after, the Kaffir war of 1835 
 he retired from the more immediate border, and located himself 
 near the spot afterwards called Bushman school, near Glen Grey, 
 in the same division. Here, about 1839, a mission was established, 
 and hence the name of Bushman school. When visited by Mr. 
 Backhouse, he said that he had been brought up among the 
 
202 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 mountains, that he had not seen his mother for a long time, 
 although he hoped that she was still living, if she had not been 
 devoured by the great serpent, or by the tigers of the mountains. 
 That the reptile to which Madura alluded was not a mythical 
 idea of the native mind is certain, and it is equally certain that at 
 no distant period pythons of considerable size^ were not uncommon 
 in the valley of the 'Neiba, or Zwart Kei, as is proved not only by 
 the traditions of the natives respecting them, but by the accurate 
 Bushman drawing in the cave of the Python ; and as a coincidence 
 there is a representation of this great serpent, some seven feet 
 long, in one of Madura's rock-shelters on the Klipplaats. 
 
 The great serpent spoken of by the natives of South Africa 
 is supposed by some to have been extinct in the Cape Colony for 
 a long period, but thirty or forty years ago the Kaffirs declared 
 that it was then to be met with in some of the rocky and woody 
 glens towards the coast, and in 1849 ^^e writer himself saw one 
 some seven or eight miles from Grahamstown, near Broekhuisen's 
 Poort, which was from fifteen to eighteen feet in length, and much 
 thicker than a man's arm. There are several other well-authen- 
 ticated instances of this reptile having been met with since 1820, 
 the date of the arrival of the British settlers. Not only had the 
 Kaffirs of the coast tribes a superstitious reverence for it, allowing 
 no one to kill it under pain of death, but some of the old 
 Hottentots also imagined that it possessed miraculous and magic 
 powers. 
 
 In 1849 Madura's station consisted of a few huts and a small 
 chapel. In the war of 1846 he took part with the government 
 against the Abatembu and Amaxosa Kaffirs. In 1849 he had 
 still about three hundred men under his jurisdiction, including 
 Bushmen, Hottentots, Fingos, and several others who had fled 
 to him for an asylum from adjacent tribes, on account of charges 
 of witchcraft brought against them by their own people. There 
 were still occasional invasions and occupations of his country by 
 the tribes in his vicinity, for the sake of the grass and water found 
 there. He then appeared to be about sixty years of age, and 
 would consequently have been born about 1789. His people all 
 cut off the first joint of the third finger of the right hand. 
 
 The regulations enforced upon this chief certainly tended, 
 in no inconsiderable degree, to accelerate the extinction of his 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE 203 
 
 tribe, and to prevent, by the imposition of a most unreasonable 
 impost, any chance of their improvement. 
 
 His country was proclaimed to be within the bounds of the 
 Cape Colony. He pleaded that the land belonged to his fore- 
 fathers, and that the Tembus were intruders who had forcibly 
 taken possession of a large portion of it. His remonstrances were 
 unavailing, his country was absorbed, without the slightest 
 reservation being made for the ancient owners, and instead of 
 encouragement to induce them to settle down to the peaceful 
 occupations of quiet citizens, a demand of one pound a year was 
 made upon the head of each family as a quitrent ! They were not 
 a conquered people, they were living in a country which, as Madura 
 said, had belonged to Bushmen from time immemorial. They 
 had not made war upon the Colony as the frontier tribes of Kaffirs 
 had done, on the contrary they had done good service in defence 
 of colonial territory and in retaking cattle and other stock which 
 had been captured by the enemy, and now they were rewarded 
 for those services, in what way let the old chief Madura describe. 
 He said the land was the land of his fathers, and that now, 
 although he and his people had served the government for three 
 years, they were told they must pay for living upon it ! Where was 
 the money to come from ? Such a thing, if forced upon them, 
 must entirely ruin them. 
 
 These reasonable representations met with no response, and 
 this wrong certainly formed the first step towards the final ex- 
 pulsion of himself and his people from a territory which had 
 descended to them from their remote ancestors. Madura's 
 case appears a particularly hard one. A demand was made, 
 for the miserable allotment of land marked out for himself and 
 his followers, of a sum which was equivalent to three hundred 
 pounds per annum, being at the rate of one pound for each of his 
 male followers. Had the same quantity of land been granted 
 to a farmer, the sum would not have exceeded fifty pounds. 
 
 About the time of the Kaffir war of 1850 he retreated from the 
 Glen Grey portion of the country to a great cave on the banks of 
 the 'Ca'cadu or White Kei, opposite the site of the present St. 
 Mark's mission station. It might well have been termed the 
 cave of the Springbok, from its symbolic painting, which con- 
 sisted of a troop of about one hundred and fifty beautifully 
 
204 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 painted springboks. Here he was living when Archdeacon 
 White estabUshed the mission at St. Mark's. In 1856, when the 
 chief was about eighty years old, he again fell back with the 
 shattered wreck of his once powerful tribe towards the fastnesses 
 of the Drakensberg, since which time he has been lost sight of, 
 and his ultimate fate is buried in oblivion. 
 
 The Bushmen of the Zuurveld. 
 
 Before the first Dutch elephant hunters crossed the mountains 
 that bound the long kloof, the inhabitants of the tract of 
 country which they called the Zuurveld were numerous 
 Bushman tribes, a number of clans of a mixed race called 
 Ghonaqua, whose various sections showed different grades 
 of intermixture according as the Kaffir, Hottentot, or Bushman 
 element predominated, and a few straggling parties of fugitive 
 Kaffirs, who seemed generally to fraternize with one or other of 
 the different hordes of Ghonaquas. As we proceed with our 
 investigation these points will be made perfectly clear, especially 
 when we treat of the eastern advance of the early Dutch settlers, 
 when we shall be able to clear up the mystery of the origin of 
 the Ghonaquas. 
 
 All the travellers of the last century are unanimous in stating 
 that after passing the Gamtoos no other people were met with 
 than Bushmen, Ghonaqua, and wandering or emigrant Kaffirs. 
 If numerous Hottentot tribes ever existed there they had certainly 
 most mysteriously disappeared before these travellers visited the 
 country, without the aid of either Dutch oppression on the one 
 hand or Kaffir intrusion on the other. Lieutenant Paterson, who 
 travelled through it in 1779, is explicit on thesubject, as he informs 
 us that the Zuurveld was then called Bushmanland. He says that 
 when at the Zwartkops, he was overtaken by a Boer, an old 
 German named Kock, who was on his way to this portion of 
 Bushmanland, and who was well acquainted with the country and 
 the manners of the natives. He therefore became a welcome com- 
 panion, as the place where he lived lay in their way. Near the 
 Koega they were visited by two Kaffirs, who very seldom ven- 
 tured so far out of their own country. 
 
 Several Boers had already in 1779 squatted near the Sunday 
 river ; they were possessed of numerous herds of cattle, but 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE 205 
 
 seldom troubled themselves either to build houses or cultivate 
 land. Jan Kock lived on a place called Sand Flat. This was 
 then a portion of Bushmanland. 
 
 When Sparrman travelled through the country a few years 
 previously, no Boers had attempted to settle in it, with the ex- 
 ception of one Gert Scheepers, who had located himself on the 
 site of the present town of Uitenhage. The only Europeans who 
 then visited it came for the ostensible purpose of elephant 
 hunting, and also, according to the evidence obtained by Sparr- 
 man, to indulge in their old and favourite amusement of kidnap- 
 ping Bushman children whenever a favourable opportunity 
 offered. Thus at the Lower Sunday river, or t'Nuka-fKamma, 
 i.e. Grassy Water, three old Bushmen came to visit the travellers ; 
 they distinguished themselves by the name " good Bushmen," 
 probably from the circumstance of their grazing a few cattle and 
 not living by rapine like others of their countrymen. They com- 
 plained of the Boers having been with them, and having carried 
 off all their young people, so that now they were left alone in 
 their old age to look after themselves and their cattle. Sparr- 
 man also tells us that when other food failed these Zuurveld 
 Bushmen, they lived on the gum arable from the mimosa for 
 many days together. 
 
 In those days all the rivers and other watering places had 
 Bushman names. PitfaUs excavated by them were frequently 
 met with, while Sparrman procured Bushman guides at t'Nuka 
 t 'Kamma to take him through the country. He gives us a num- 
 ber of names of various localities now known only by their modem 
 colonial designations ; thus, 'Kensi 'kunni aati (let not the ugly 
 drink here !) was that of the Little Bushman's river. 
 
 After passing the Bushman's river, they came to Muishond 
 Kloof, near which was a valley with good water called fKur- 
 fkeija-fkei-fkasibina ; leaving Assagai Bush and crossing 
 Nieuwjaars Drift, they came to f Kurekoi-t' Ku ; two hours from 
 this they arrived at 'Quamma^dacka, then passed the Little Fish 
 river, and afterwards the fKau t'kay or Great Fish river. 
 
 The Zuurveld Bushmen in Sparrman's time appear from some 
 cause to have congregated along the course of this last river, and 
 especially towards its mouth, or the portion now called Lower 
 Albany ; and thus formed a cordon of so formidable a character 
 
2o6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 that the Kaffirs for a considerable time could not break through 
 it in any large numbers. The gathering along this particular 
 line may have been occasioned by a desire to remove as far as 
 possible from the Boers on the west, with their kidnapping pro- 
 pensities, and from the Kaffirs, who were steadily crossing the 
 Kei and occupying the country between that river and the 
 Keiskama. 
 
 The last Bushman captain who ruled over this portion of the 
 country was named 'Kohla, who was termed by the colonists 
 Ruyter. In 1775 he had his great kraal near the mouth of the 
 Great Fish river. Sparrman during his visit was able to collect 
 a considerable amount of information about him, from which we 
 are able to extract the following outline of the history of this 
 chief. What his fathers were, whether he was one of their 
 hereditary chiefs or a patriot leader who rose by his own energy 
 and enterprise, is now lost, none of his earlier history having 
 been recorded. He was at one time in the service of a farmer 
 in the Roggeveld, where, having a quarrel with a companion, he 
 killed him, and then, apprehensive of the consequences, as 
 according to the laws of the colony his certain fate would be the 
 gallows, he fled from justice. 
 
 After a variety of adventures he arrived at length in the 
 country near the Bushman's river. His principal home there- 
 after was between this river and the fKau-VKay, or Great Fish 
 river. Here, by his intrepidity, he was raised to the chieftainship 
 of a horde of Bushmen. The cave paintings near Salem are 
 probably the productions of the artists of this tribe. At the head 
 of these people he subdued several other tribes, and afterwards 
 made them take arms against the Kaffirs. He inspired his ad- 
 herents with such confidence in his leadership that they never 
 questioned any order which he issued, while the conquests he 
 made supplied them with plunder. 
 
 The respective methods of fighting of the Kaffirs and Bush- 
 men differed considerably. The Kaffirs used assagais, which they 
 could not employ with any certain effect at a greater distance than 
 twenty or thirty paces. Of these weapons they did not carry 
 into the field more than three or four, so that they were soon 
 disarmed in case their antagonists were bold and nimble enough 
 to pick up these weapons as soon as the Kaffirs had hurled them. 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE 207 
 
 They used a shield of ox hide large enough to cover their bodies 
 completely, on shrinking themselves into a smaller compass. 
 When they were in actual engagement they shifted their 
 bodies continually from one side to the other, so that they could 
 not easily be hit, taking care aU the time to keep their assagais 
 in readiness to throw at any unguarded part of their antagonists. 
 The Bushmen, on the other hand, who were without shields, 
 were more than a match for the Kaffirs in the open countrj' as 
 long as they could keep at a good distance by reason of their bows 
 and poisoned arrows, which, although they did not immediately 
 make so painful a wound as the assagai, were more dangerous in 
 the end, and it was in consequence of this circumstance that 
 'Kohla's Bushmen beat the Kaffirs for so long a time. 
 
 While his daring rendered him formidable to the Kaffirs, 
 he took care, by inflicting the punishment of death on his subjects 
 for the least fault, or even on the suspicion of a fault, to exact, 
 and for a considerable period to enjoy, the most servile sub- 
 mission and implicit obedience from the simple uncultivated 
 mortals he had gathered together. He used frecjuently with his 
 own hand to put to death one or more of these slavish vassals, 
 and would immediately throw his javelin through the body of 
 any of his attendants that hesitated, at his nod, to dispatch the 
 man whom he had marked out as the victim of his revengeful 
 and cruel disposition. When the Christians reproached him with 
 his barbarity and bloodthirstiness, he replied, " It was in a lucky 
 hour when I conveyed myself out of your authority. You would 
 have hanged me for having killed an antagonist, as if I had com- 
 mitted a crime, whereas to kiU an enemy is reckoned a laudable 
 and manly action." 
 
 To the colonists he always behaved as a true and faithful 
 ally, and in return for the tobacco and other articles which they 
 presented to him, used to help them to make slaves of such 
 straggling Bushmen as did not live under his jurisdiction. By 
 keeping the Kaffirs at a proper distance, he not only served his 
 own turn, but was likewise extremely useful to the colonists. 
 But, however cautious he was to maintain peace with his more 
 powerful neighbours the Christians, yet when he was in the 
 meridian of life and at the zenith of his power he received 
 them with an uncommon degree of pride and arrogance, which 
 
2oS THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 they could not easily brook from a man they looked upon as a 
 vagabond. He succeeded, however, in keeping up his importance 
 with them as well as with his own people for many years. 
 
 But ultimately the despotic conduct and daring that had been 
 the stepping stones by which he had made himself so famous 
 and for some time so powerful and so much feared, led to his 
 downfall. His subjects, weary of the ambition and severe dis- 
 cipline of their chief, took an opportunity of deserting him at 
 a time when he was gallantly marching at their head against the 
 Kaffirs. He was deserted almost in the very face of his enemies. 
 Being no longer so swift of foot as he had been in his youth, 
 he was not able to make his escape, and was consequently taken 
 prisoner, but being recognized as a chief, his life, according to 
 Kaffir custom, was spared, and he was sent back to his people, 
 yet not without menaces of having his eyes put out if he should 
 rise against them in arms in future. 
 
 This misfortune and the salutary lesson given to him by his 
 enemies were not so efficacious however as to divert his hostile 
 intentions against the Kaffirs, as soon as he had collected together 
 a number of his people. The recollection of the days of his former 
 victories, when he had pushed his attacks upon them to the east- 
 ward of the 'Kaisi-kamma, still inspired him. In 1776 he 
 endeavoured to incite another petty Bushman chief against them, 
 and had received from him promises of assistance as soon as he 
 could get iron to head his arrows with and make the other neces- 
 sary preparations. Nbtwithstanding this proof of his indomit- 
 able resolution, many were apprehensive, and not without reason, 
 that the old warrior and tyrant would meet his death in this 
 expedition, which, tired of himself and his adverse fortune, he 
 seemed to be in search of. 
 
 The tract of country situated near the mouth of the fKau- 
 t'kay, or Great Fish river, was the situation which he preferred 
 for his principal residence. In 1776, at the time of Sparrman's 
 visit, he was old and infirm, and barely a director of some two 
 hundred people. He was wont, at this time, to receive his 
 Christian acquaintances in the most friendly manner, and with 
 tears in his eyes to ask for tobacco, no longer by way of tribute, 
 but as a present which he was willing to receive from their bounty. 
 In 1779 the old Bushman chief had fallen back from the 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE 209 
 
 advanced position he held near the mouth of the Great Fish river, 
 in Sparrman's time, to near the Bushman's river, where Paterson 
 found him. The fire of the old warrior was not yet altogether 
 extinguisl^ed, he had still some two hundred Bushmen and 
 Kaffirs in his service, and a few hours before Paterson's arrival 
 he had fought against a number of Kaffirs, beaten them off the 
 field, and taken a number of their cattle. The exact date of his 
 death is not known. According to custom he had appointed the 
 youngest of his three sons to be heir to his possessions 
 and chieftainship. None of them, however, inherited the 
 father's talents and abilities in a sufficient degree to enable 
 him to establish himself in the succession at his father's 
 death. 
 
 In 1813 Mr. Campbell was visited during his stay at Bethels- 
 dorp by Benedictus Platje Ruyter, who said that he lived a day's 
 journey off. He was dressed in a short blue jacket and white 
 trousers, and had a white lace epaulette on his right shoulder. 
 He held in his hand a formidable staff, about six feet long, with 
 a brass head on which were His Majesty's arms, presented to 
 him by Government. He said that aU that country and also 
 the Zuurveld belonged to his grandfather, but they had been 
 deprived of it by the Boers and Kaf&rs. He complained bitterly 
 also of the Boers for the cruelties they had perpetrated upon 
 his countr5miien. 
 
 The decline of the power of the Bushman chief 'Kohla most 
 decidedly marks an epoch in South African history with regard 
 to the intrusion of the stronger races. With all his faults, he 
 must ever be looked upon as the last great chief of the Coast 
 Bushmen, the one who made the last expiring effort to maintain 
 the independence of his race in that part of the ancient hunting 
 grounds of his forefathers which bordered on the sea-coast ; 
 and his name, as a consequence, is worthy of preservation in the 
 history of the country. 
 
 True, he was a savage ; true, he committed many atrocities 
 and lavishly shed the blood of his own people ; but for a time 
 he strenuously endeavoured, and successfully, to beat back the 
 wave of barbarism which on several occasions, since he gave up 
 the struggle, has threatened to sweep the entire country from the 
 Urazimvubu to the Cape. It was only when he disappeared 
 
210 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 from the scene that another and more terrible feature was given 
 to the struggle which followed. 
 
 It was no longer a struggle between the advancing Kaffirs 
 and the repelling Bushmen, for the latter, at least those of the 
 Zuurveld, were numbered among the men of the past. The 
 two great rival races, the black and the white, met for the first 
 time in that portion of South Africa face to face, and from that 
 moment it became, with little intermission, a continuous struggle 
 between the bullet and the assagai, which even in the present 
 day is not decided. 
 
 Along the coast the Bushmen were crushed ; and the Kaffir 
 clans, after one or two weak and unsuccessful attempts to pene- 
 trate to the north-west, in the direction of De Bruyn's Hoogte, 
 poured over the Great Fish river, when the Zuurveld became for 
 upwards of a generation the battle-ground of the two intruding 
 races. 
 
 By some it has been asserted that the country above described 
 was a portion of the possessions of the Hottentot race from time 
 immemorial. This assertion is purely mythical. The Hottentot 
 was not an aborigine. It is true that broken tribes of them were 
 found scattered through many parts of the eastern districts 
 at the commencement of the present century, when they were 
 first visited by missionaries, but they were driven there by the 
 emigrant Boers. It is also true that a considerable number of 
 them, who had managed to evade the thraldom of their hard 
 taskmasters, were roaming over some portions of the country 
 towards the close of the last century, leading the same kind of 
 unsettled, nomadic, life as they and their forefathers had before 
 done in the western districts, and as was their wont, not only 
 plundering one another when occasion offered and making 
 depredations upon the Dutch colonists who were gradually filling 
 up the country and obtaining farms by the usual method of self- 
 appropriation, but also making raids upon such of the Kaffirs 
 as they thought they might be able to reUeve of a few head of 
 cattle with the least risk to themselves. 
 
 That the Hottentots were treated with great cruelty by many 
 of the old colonists few will be prepared to deny, outrage begat 
 outrage, and atrocity atrocity, but on the other hand many 
 abhorred the treatment which these miserable people received, 
 
THE BUSHMEN OF THE EASTERN PROVINCE 211 
 
 and did what was in their power to ameUorate the condition of 
 compulsory servitude to which all those who lived within the pale 
 of the law were reduced. It was thus that a considerable exodus 
 of them occurred as soon as a door of escape was opened for them, 
 but this was not until after the Bushmen of the Long Kloof 
 mountains were subdued, many clans of them exterminated, 
 and the remnant enslaved. 
 
 In 1775 Kabeljauw river was the last place to the eastward 
 where Christians were permanently established, near the Gamtoos 
 was a small kraal of natives under a captain named 'Kees ; but 
 it seems open to question whether these were of pure Hottentot 
 blood or not. In 1776 a small society of Gunjeman Hottentots 
 was found on the Zwartkops, either on or in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the farm of Gert Scheepers. The ancestors 
 of these Hottentots at the time the Dutch first invaded this part 
 of the continent inhabited the tract of country about Table Bay, 
 and therefore in all probability were nearly connected with the 
 'Koraquas, the progenitors of the present Koranas. They were 
 without any chief or captain, and lived on friendly terms with the 
 farmer and most likely were in a state of semi-vassalage under 
 him. 
 
 From this point to the banks of the t'Kau-t'Kay, or Fish river, 
 as before pointed out, there were a few scattered kraals of 
 Ghonaqua and Bushmen, and thus it seems certain that in the 
 middle of last century no large Hottentot tribes existed in the 
 country. Had this been the case, such close and accurate 
 observers as Sparrman, who'passed through it twice, and Paterson, 
 who followed him, would doubtlessly have recorded the fact. 
 
 In favour of an earlier Hottentot occupation, it has been 
 advanced that these natives make a sort of general declaration 
 that the country was theirs. Such claims were afterwards set 
 up for Waterboer, Moshesh, and others, to the exclusion of the 
 aboriginal Bushman owners. Another argument brought for- 
 ward has been that some of the leading captains being able to 
 trace their lineage back several generations, they have been in 
 possession of the land they occupy for at least that length of 
 time. The same reasoning has been adopted by some writers 
 with regard to the proprietorship of areas of country occupied 
 by some of the Kaffir and Basutu chiefs, but to state that because 
 
212 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 a man has a lengthened pedigree his remotest known ancestors 
 must have been the owners of the soU occupied by him is an 
 absurdity too transparent to need serious refutation. The writer, 
 when he first entered upon this enquiry thirty years ago, never 
 met an old Hottentot who did not assert that his forefathers 
 came from the west, or the Cape. 
 
 In the year 1776 Baron Van Plettenberg, governor of the Cape 
 Settlement, rescinded the order forbidding the inhabitants 
 settling in portions of the country east of the Kabeljauw, and 
 several Boers in consequence removed to the Sunday river in 
 order to settle there, while some farmers trekked with their 
 wives, children, and cattle into the 'Krake-kamma, on account 
 of the government having given them permission to do so. 
 Thus it was that the two streams of migration were already com- 
 mencing to overlap. A small kraal of Kaffirs, the forerunners of 
 the great host which was to follow, had even at this early stage 
 penetrated as far to the west as the Zwartkops, and established 
 themselves a short distance from Gert Scheepers. 
 
 The elements of future strife were therefore gathering, which 
 at no distant period were to burst into a flame, whose violence 
 caused for many years an immense amount of misery and 
 suffering. 
 
Chapter XII 
 
 THE STRUGGLE OF THE BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 
 
 We have attempted to obtain a view of most of the leading 
 groups of Bushman clans which once held possession of the 
 country. Several have been omitted, such as those of the 
 Langekloof, the Tarka, Great Winterberg, and Koonap, as it 
 will be necessary to treat of these more fully when we come to 
 speak of the eastern advance of the Dutch colonists and the later 
 English occupation. In the same manner we have deferred con- 
 sidering the breaking up of the clans of the Middle Veld of the 
 present Orange Free State by the intrusion of the Koranas 
 and other invading tribes. There were also a number of minor 
 groups intervening between the larger ones which we have 
 mentioned, but of which little now is known except that they 
 once existed, and that most of them were shot down by those 
 who seized their country, because they resented the unjustifiable 
 wrong and attempted to resist. 
 
 Such was the fate of those who once inhabited the rocks of 
 Thaba Nchu and the caves in the surrounding mountains. 
 Harris, when passing through this country, found the slope of 
 a hill near the present site of Bloemfontein besprinkled with the 
 mouldering bones of Bushmen, and a few years ago there were 
 numerous spots in the Free State which told the same melancholy 
 tale of the fate of the aborigines. These unhappy fugitives 
 at last became so terrified at the sight of any human being that 
 there were portions of the country where they concealed them- 
 selves so effectually that a traveller might pass through its length 
 and breadth without seeing a single sovil, or even, if he were not 
 aware of the fact, suspecting that it was inhabited. Harris 
 informs us that when he passed through the 'Kolong basin, 
 once the home of a powerful group of tribes, such had become 
 
214 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 their general distrust of visitors that the males would never 
 approach them, except when forced to do so, and then always 
 evincing great trepidation, no object being more unwelcome to 
 their sight than a troop of horsemen on the plain. 
 
 We shall now collect such evidence as is available to illustrate 
 some of the closing scenes in the terrible drama in which they 
 had to fill so important a part of the role in their struggle for 
 existence, when they found the hand of every man was against 
 them, when a civilized government sanctioned the policy of 
 extermination, when the subjects of that government, fleeing 
 from their own supposed wrongs, seized the vast country beyond 
 the borders and there followed the example of their fathers, and 
 acting up to their traditions forced the unfortunate Bushmen into 
 the position of pirates of the desert. 
 
 As Moffat describes them, they ascended the mountain's brow, 
 or peak, with an acuteness of sight'superior perhaps to our common 
 telescopes, and surveyed the plains beneath, either to discover 
 game or cattle, or to watch the movements of those whose herds 
 they had stolen. If danger approached, they ascended almost 
 inaccessible cliffs, from which nothing but the rifle ball could dis- 
 lodge them ; when closely pursued they would take refuge in 
 dens and caves, in which their enemies have sometimes smothered 
 scores to death, blocking up the entrance with brushwood, and 
 setting it on fire. 
 
 Such deeds as this, and the carrying off of their women and 
 children into bondage, raised the bitterest feelings of revenge 
 in their breasts, until they seemed at times animated with a desire 
 to wreak their vengeance not only upon their relentless perse- 
 cutors and oppressors, but upon every living thing belonging to 
 them which fell into their hands. Thus when they had taken a 
 troop of cattle, their first object was to escape to a rendezvous, 
 a cave or overhanging precipice, or some sequestered spot, 
 difficult of access to strangers for want of water. As soon as 
 they perceived any of the cattle too fatigued to proceed, they 
 stabbed them ; and if the pursuers came within sight and there 
 was the slightest possibility of their being overtaken, they would 
 thrust their spears or arrows, if time would permit, into every 
 animal in the troop. This habit, which obtained universally 
 among these unfortunate people, exasperated their enemies to 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 215 
 
 the last degree, and vengeance fell on every man, woman, and 
 child, whenever they came within reach of their missiles. 
 
 It is somewhat surprising after the remorseless butchery 
 and indiscriminate slaughter of the unhappy Bushmen, that their 
 enemies should charge them with fighting " without conscience " ; 
 yet the writer has heard numbers of the old voortrekkers express 
 this opinion. Their conflicts with the farmers themselves had 
 taught them this lesson so frequently, that in their wild and des- 
 perate struggles to maintain the birthright they had inherited 
 from their fathers, and which, as we have seen, must have been 
 in their possession from a very remote period, they neither showed 
 nor expected mercy. Every race of man, savage or civilized, 
 that came in contact with them, appropriated their land without 
 a single pretext of justification, and waged a war of extermination 
 against them as soon as they resisted or resented the wrong that 
 was done to them. 
 
 The pastoral tribes of natives and colonial flock owners could 
 not appreciate the feelings of attachment which those who lived 
 by the chase alone had to their hunting-grounds, while the con- 
 stant encroachments which were made upon them impressed 
 the untutored minds of the hunter race with the idea that the 
 whole world was arrayed against them. Their almost fierce 
 love of independence, their almost equally unalterable determina- 
 tion to maintain and die in their primitive modes of life, utter 
 contempt — at least of the majority of them — for all pastoral or 
 agricultural pursuits, made them to be looked upon by all the 
 larger and more robust of the African races as a species of wild 
 animal which it was praiseworthy to exterminate whenever an 
 opportunity offered. 
 
 But in this struggle for existence, their bitterest enemies, 
 of whatever shade of colour they might be, were forced to make 
 an unqualified acknowledgment of the courage and daring they 
 so invariably exhibited. Even when surrounded and borne down 
 by a host of enemies, the Bushman seldom or never asked for 
 mercy from his hated foes. Wounded and bleeding as he might 
 be, he continued obstinately fighting to the last. Shot through 
 one arm, he would instantly use his knee or foot to enable him to 
 draw his bow with the one remaining uninjured. If his last arrow 
 was gone, he still struggled as best he might, until finding death 
 
2i6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 remorselessly upon him, he hastened to cover his head that no 
 enemy might see the expression of death agony upon his face ! 
 
 Many instances of vengeance have been recorded against them, 
 in which uncontrollable feelings of revenge have hurried them into 
 the committal of terrible atrocities. One or two examples will 
 suffice to show the nature of these. A considerable tribe of Bush- 
 men once inhabited the rock-shelters which are found at the foot 
 of the low precipices surrounding Bushman's Hoek, near Bastaards 
 Drift, on the Noku Mogokare or Caledon river. After the Boers 
 had commenced settling in the country, one of them began to 
 build a small house in the Hoek, and cultivate land about it. 
 At first things went on quietly between the intruder and the old 
 inhabitants, but after a time for some real or pretended depreda- 
 tions the caves were cleared, and their owners driven from the 
 neighbourhood. Enraged at this ejectment, they formed a plan 
 to revenge what they considered an unjustifiable intrusion into 
 their ancient possessions. The house was attacked and set on 
 fire in the night, all the older members were shot as they tried to 
 escape from the burning building, while the younger children 
 were thrown back into the flames. The ruined walls where this 
 fearful tragedy was enacted are standing at the present day. 
 
 Many charges of acts of equal cruelty and revenge have been 
 heaped upon this hunted race, some being of the most terrible 
 description, such as the disembowelling of unfortunate women 
 who have fallen into their hands and leaving them to die in the 
 most frightful agonies. On one occasion they surprised a party 
 of five, the wife and daughter of a Dutch farmer who had rendered 
 himself obnoxious to them, and three native women, one of whom 
 was a tamed Bushwoman, at a washing place, and treated them 
 aU in this horrible manner. 
 
 All the available evidence, however, with regard to the vin- 
 dictiveness of the Bushmen proves that it was not a part of their 
 natural character, but rather a developed feeling which gradually 
 took possession of their breasts : it was the outcrop of despera- 
 tion and despair. 
 
 As the encroachments of the stronger races increased, the 
 Bushman was kept in a perpetual state of alarm, not merely for 
 the security of his little property, but for his personal safety and 
 that of his family. He was obliged to inhabit rocks almost 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 217 
 
 inaccessible to any foot but his own, and was perpetually called 
 upon to remove from place to place lest the colonists should 
 discover his abode. When he ventured forth in quest of game 
 or roots, he was in the utmost fear of discovery, and had con- 
 sequently leisure for nothing but the necessary regard to his 
 own personal safety. 
 
 In the first days of his intercourse with white people these dis- 
 turbing influences did not exist, and therefore no such vindictive 
 feelings were manifested. In the beginning the strangers were 
 looked upon as beings of a superior order, endowed with super- 
 natural powers, men who had thunder and lightning at command, 
 and who could slay the swiftest and most ferocious animals 
 by some invisible means, even at a distance from them. In those 
 days, instead of looking upon them as pernicious enemies, the 
 hunting parties of the whites were welcomed, from the abundant 
 supply of food which they furnished, the spoils of the numerous 
 elephants and hippopotami they killed affording means of feasting 
 and festivity. 
 
 In 1824 there were men still living who could remember this 
 state of things in the Cape Colony, and in 1876 there were voor- 
 trekkers who could recollect when the hunting parties that first 
 crossed the 'Nu 'Gariep were received in a similar manner north 
 of that river, when the men of the old hunter race hailed their 
 advent as visitors bringing in their train days of plenty and re- 
 joicing. But when their land was in question, the case was 
 altered. Depredations commenced on the one hand, and com- 
 mandos on the other, retaliation followed, and commandos, until 
 they became a portion of an established system, which left absolute 
 power in the hands of the very men who most benefited by their 
 continuance. The grown up people were therefore shot down 
 without mercy, and the children were dragged into a state of 
 perpetual servitude ; injuries were inflicted on both sides, and 
 mutual hatred, as a natural consequence, increased in intensity. 
 
 Little is now known of the final struggle of the clans that once 
 occupied the present Cape Colony. The actors therein have with 
 few exceptions passed away, and the only remembrance preserved 
 is that in every instance they maintained the hopeless conflict 
 with an unconquerable spirit, fighting " without conscience " to 
 the very last against the men who had predetermined to destroy 
 
2i8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 them utterly. The tragic fate of the last clan of all the numerous 
 tribes which once inhabited the extensive range of the Sneeuw- 
 berg will give an apt demonstration of this, and will vividly 
 illustrate the relentless manner in which they were followed up to 
 the bitter end. This touching episode was related to the writer 
 by Dr. R. Rubidge, F.G.S., who spent the greater portion of his 
 youth in wandering about the rocks and crags of those moun- 
 tains. 
 
 He stated that after committing some depredations, the clan 
 was surrounded by a commando which had pursued them and 
 succeeded in cutting them off among the rocks of a projecting 
 shoulder of a great precipice. Here the retreating Bushmen 
 turned for the last time at bay. Their untiring enemies were on 
 one side, a yawning gulf without any chance of escape on the other. 
 A dire but hopeless struggle for life commenced. One after another 
 they fell under the storm of bullets with which their adversaries 
 assailed them. The dead and dying were heaped upon the 
 dizzy projecting ledge, many in their death struggle rolled and 
 fell over among the crags and fissures in the depths which en- 
 vironed them. Still they resisted, and still they fell, until one 
 only remained ; and yet, with the bloody heap of dead around 
 him and the mangled bodies of his comrades on the rocks below, 
 he seemed as undaunted as when surrounded by the entire band 
 of his brave companions. Posting himself on the very outermost 
 point of the projecting rocks, with sheer precipices of nearly a 
 couple of hundred feet on either side of him, a spot where no man 
 would have dared to follow him, he defied his pursuers, and amid 
 the bullets which showered around him he appeared to have a 
 charmed life and plied his arrows with unerring aim whenever his 
 enemies incautiously exposed themselves. 
 
 His last arrow was on the string. A slight feeling of com- 
 passion seemed at length to animate the hostile multitude that 
 liemmed him in ; they called to him that his life should be spared 
 if he would surrender. He let fly his last arrow in scorn at the 
 speaker, as he replied that " a chief knew how to die, but never to 
 surrender to the race who had despoiled him ! " Then with a 
 wild shout of bitter defiance he turned round, and leaping head- 
 long into the deep abyss was dashed to pieces on the rocks beneath. 
 Thus died, with a Spartan-like intrepidity, the last of the clan. 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 219 
 
 and with his death his tribe ceased to exist. Dr. Rubidge 
 assured the writer that on his last visit to the spot, only a few 
 years previously, some of the bleached bones of this exterminated 
 tribe were stiU to be seen on the inaccessible ledges where the 
 bodies had lodged in their fall. 
 
 Not content with destroying these unfortunate creatures 
 to the|south of the 'Nu 'Gariep or Upper Orange river, commandos, 
 long before the emigrant farmers moved in a body across that 
 stream, were sent to scour the country to the north of it and to 
 destroy as many of the hordes as they could discover. Three 
 commandos of this kind carried havoc amongst them in the year 
 1830/' One of these, consisting of one hundred and nine mounted 
 " Christians," under the command of A. L. Pretorius, passed one 
 of the fords near the present town of Aliwal, in order to attack the 
 caves in the mountains along the course of the river. It was of 
 this commando that an old Bushwoman who had made a kind 
 of hut under some overhanging rocks in the neighbourhood of 
 Wepener, gave the following reminiscences, when questioned upon 
 the subject of their artists by the writeij " She said that her 
 name was S4 -hha, that her father's name was 'Koot-seli, and that 
 he was stiU living at Thaba 'Nchu. 'When asked if she remem- 
 bered any of the traditions of her tribe, and who were the painters 
 in the caves, she replied, " We know nothing of our grandfathers, 
 we do not know who painted our pictures ; the Dutchmen shot 
 them aU down at the great slaughter, and carried us, the children, 
 away. I was a little girl, six or seven years old, at the time.j 
 
 Mr. Jacobus du Plessis, who acted as interpreter to the com- 
 mando under Louw Pretorius, gave the following description of 
 the operations of the division to which he was attached, at the 
 time that the Bushmen of the Genadeberg were exterminated. 
 He informed the writer that about the year 1830, from the fre- 
 quent complaints made by the Boers of robberies and other 
 outrages committed by Bushmen to the various fieldcomets, 
 strong representations were made by these officers of the necessity 
 of repressing the marauders and driving out the thieves. The 
 thefts were principally of horses, in or about the Cradock district. 
 These were immediately driven long distances and exchanged for 
 others obtained in different directions, and thus Bushmen living 
 even at as great a distance from the scene of depredations as 
 
220 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the Genadeberg were said to be implicated in them. The govern- 
 ment apparently, without any further examination, acceded to 
 the strong representations, and recklessly issued orders which 
 proved the death-warrant of several hundred unhappy wretches, 
 many of whom must have been perfectly innocent of the crime 
 so sweepingly ascribed to them. 
 
 Accordingly, armed with these letters of marque, three com- 
 mandos were marshalled in the above year to be sent against the 
 distant clans of Bushmen, with the intention of attacking their 
 strongholds simultaneously at three different points. One moved 
 through the country south of the Stormberg ; the second through 
 the present Burghersdorp arid Wodehouse districts, through the 
 Washbank, attacking all the known caves up to the branches 
 of the Drakensberg ; the third, to which Mr. Du Plessis was 
 attached, moved along the Orange river towards the site of the 
 present town of Aliwal North, where, crossing the river, they 
 pushed on and attacked the tribe that occupied the caves of 
 the Genadeberg. 
 
 This division consisted of one hundred and nine Dutch 
 burghers, under the old commandant Pretorius, and Nicolaas 
 Erasmus, as fighting commandant, second in command. The 
 attack commenced by an attempt to drive out the Bushmen from 
 the caves and strongholds on the western side of the mountain- 
 The principal of these were near and under the waterfalls, in the 
 two principal ravines running into the main range, the approaches 
 to which were covered with enormous loose masses of rock, large 
 trees, and thick brushwood, making an advance upon them 
 an extremely hazardous undertaking. Here the hunters defended 
 themselves very determinedly, and it was only with great difficulty 
 that they were driven from point to point, until they fell back to 
 an almost inaccessible position under the great waterfall. They 
 were, however, forced at last to abandon this post, probably owing 
 to the failure of their supply of arrows, when they effected their 
 retreat through the thickly wooded and precipitous glen that 
 forms a narrow pass to the opposite side of the mountain, to the 
 great cave of their chief in Poshuli's Hoek. 
 
 This cave is one of great extent, affording secure shelter to its 
 inhabitants. It has deep ramifications on either side, with an 
 enormous arch of rock stretching across the entire breadth of 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 221 
 
 the ravine. Over the far projecting edge of this, during the rainy 
 season a torrent of water precipitates itself into the chasm below, 
 which is choked up with great masses of rock that have rolled into 
 it, whUe its mouth is stiU more shielded by trees, which spring up 
 in the interstices of the loosened crags. These barriers not only 
 made the stronghold a difficult and formidable position, but the 
 weU-known daring of the chief, who now in his last retreat had 
 turned upon his pursuers to defend it, rendered it prudent to try 
 to induce its defenders to come to terms and surrender them- 
 selves, without the hazard which any attempt to take it by force 
 would necessarily involve. 
 
 For this purpose the attacking commando occupied both sides 
 of the ravine, thus closing up all the approaches to the cave and 
 cutting off any chance of escape should its occupants attempt 
 to get away. From these points the more central portions of 
 the cave were exposed to the invaders' fire. After thus beleag- 
 uering the place, three attempts were made to parley with the 
 Bushman chief. 
 
 On each occasion he allowed the interpreter, Du Plessis, then 
 a boy of fourteen years of age, to enter his rock-fort to deliver 
 his message, and then depart unharmed, without any attempt 
 to molest him. It is well worthy of notice that the Bushmen, 
 wild and untamed savages as they were considered, almost in 
 every instance respected the person of an envoy sent to them ; 
 and it was not until after due notice had been given to him three 
 distinct times to depart, that they considered the truce at an 
 end, and that any further delay was at his own peril. This 
 intimation was given by the repetition of the word 'Kamans ! 
 Be gone ! with a short interval between each. 
 
 'Korel was the name of the Bushman chief on this occasion. 
 He was rather larger in stature than any of his tribe, but had 
 a defect in one eye, that rendered it useless. Notwithstanding 
 this, as a bowman he far surpassed any other Bushman. His 
 bow was larger than those in common use by the men of his 
 tribe, and his arrows were longer, which enabled him to project 
 one of his shafts with fatal effect to a distance of one hundred and 
 thirty yards. 
 
 On Du Plessis' admittance into the cave, he found this wUd 
 hunter chief seated in the middle of a circle of his followers. 
 
222 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 'Korel was urged to surrender, and promised safe conduct for 
 himself and the people of his tribe if he would submit ; the hope- 
 lessness of resistance against the strong armed force by which he 
 was surrounded was pointed out ; but the chief, although told 
 by the messenger that to ensure his safety they would walk hand 
 in hand until they came into the presence of the commandant> 
 had no confidence in the promises made to him. At last, be- 
 coming impatient, he said, " Go ! be gone ! Tell your command- 
 ant that I am not a child, and that (striking his hand upon his 
 breast) I have a strong heart here ! Go ! be gone ! My eyes 
 cannot bear the sight of you longer ; and tell your 'Gousa my 
 last words are that not only is my quiver full of arrows, but they 
 are filleted also round my head, and that I shall resist and defend 
 myself as long as I have life left ! 'Kamans ! Go ! be gone ! " 
 
 The envoy departed, and was allowed to return to the com- 
 mandant in safety. Then commenced the attack and resistance 
 in earnest, and showers of arrows flew whizzing around any and 
 every one of the besiegers who exposed himself too much, or 
 approached too near. Storming parties were organized, and 
 attempted to advance under cover of their rudely improvised 
 shields ; now they advanced a little, now they were brought to 
 a sudden stand by the difficulties of the ground, or driven back 
 in confusion by the killing or wounding of one of their companions. 
 The shafts of the chief were shot with unerring precision, and thus 
 seven of the attacking party were struck by them. 
 
 Commandant Pretorius became most anxious for the safety 
 of his men. The resistance was of the most determined char- 
 acter, and the position was critical. Erasmus, seeing that the 
 only chance would be to form a lodgment in the cave, called for 
 volunteers to carry this design into execution. Thirty of the 
 burghers responded to the call. This time a kind of great 
 shield or screen was made, by extending their long duffel cloaks 
 upon cross sticks, these being found impervious to the slender 
 reed arrows of the Bushmen, their points merely becoming 
 entangled in the texture of the extended garments, and then 
 hanging down like enormous elongated bristles. Under this cover 
 they advanced cautiously in a column. A chosen marksman, 
 named Myburgh, was told off to make a flank movement, so 
 that from his ambush he might shoot down any of the defenders 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 223 
 
 of the cave when they exposed themselves in aiming at their 
 advancing foes. 
 
 The Bushmen, determined to the last, made a desperate effort 
 to beat back their assailants, who although slowly were now 
 steadily advancing upon them, until the undaunted 'Korel, 
 too frequently showing himself at the same point, made himself 
 too prominent an object to the concealed marksman, when he 
 received a shot and fell back dead among his faithful and equally 
 undaunted followers. They fell to a man, and although their 
 enemies lost seven of their number in killed and wounded, not 
 a soul among the Bushmen escaped the snare that was spread 
 around their cave. Thus perished the Bushmen of the Genade- 
 berg, and thus ended the Bushman occupation of the great cave 
 in Poshuli's Hoek. 
 
 Among other places which this commando attacked were 
 several caves in the mountains near Matateng, or Komet Spruit 
 Poort, also called Roode Poort. Here at one of the strongholds 
 where all the defenders were shot, a Bushman, although his leg 
 was shattered by a bullet, continued to defend himself, and suc- 
 ceeded in keeping his enemies at bay as long as his arrows lasted, 
 when a second ball through his head put an end to his existence. 
 'Kou'ke stated that in addition to this there was another 
 Bushman captain, whom the Boers called Uithaalder, who had 
 been driven from point to point between the Orange and Caledon 
 rivers by this commando, until he and the remnant of his tribe 
 were hemmed in by their pursuers among the rocks and krantzes 
 of the same Roode Poort. Here, finding himself at bay, he 
 resolved to make a final stand ; and although an almost incessant 
 fire was maintained upon himself and his doomed band, he 
 determinedly and successfully repulsed every attack that was 
 made upon him during seven long days. By the evening of the 
 seventh day, scarcely one of his men had an arrow left. Feeling 
 the hopelessness of further resistance, and knowing that they 
 must be overcome the next day, when he was certain to meet the 
 same fate that had overtaken so many of his countrymen, he 
 during the night successfully carried out a plan that those ac- 
 quainted with the locality would have deemed impossible. 
 
 In the dead 'of night he and all that remained of his tribe, 
 men, women, and children, silently scaled the steep precipitous 
 
224 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 cliffs that overhung his position, along ledges and small project- 
 ing points where even a baboon could scarcely have obtained 
 a footing, carrying with them whatever they valued, yet so 
 cleverly was this desperate and daring enterprise carried out that 
 not the least alarm was given to the camps of those who be- 
 leaguered them. In the morning his enemies woke up to find a 
 deserted cave, with nothing more than the bare and silent rocks 
 about them, while long before dawn the Bushman captain and 
 all his people were many miles away, making good their 
 retreat until they found a secure asylum in the rugged fastnesses 
 of the Drakensberg. 
 
 After this commando crossed the Orange river, others were not 
 long in following ; others again penetrated into the glens of the 
 Washbank, and Commandant Greyling was sent as far to the east- 
 ward in 1835-6 as the noted Gatberg. In 1836-7 the emigrant 
 farmers began to flock into the country north of the 'Nu-'Gariep, 
 when the more systematic extermination of the Bushmen com- 
 menced ; and there are many localities scattered over the present 
 Free State where terrible tragedies were enacted, but which 
 have been hidden from the eyes of too prjdng curiosity. The 
 Bushmen who lived in the caves in Knoffel Spruit and Rie- 
 beeksdal were all shot in the year 1836, by a commando sent to 
 root them out. 
 
 It was thus that the Bok-poort Bushmen perished ; and the 
 fate of the last survivor affords another instance, among many 
 of the personal intrepidity of the men of this race. His name 
 is unknown, but he was the captain or leader of a party that 
 was attacked by a strong patrol on the rocky ridge formed by the 
 great dyke that runs from the present homestead near the poort, 
 towards the Caledon. All his companions had fallen under the 
 buUets of their assailants, and now he alone was left to withstand 
 the entire brunt of the attack. This he did, nothing daunted, 
 by sheltering himself behind three or four oxen that the Bushmen 
 had with them, now shooting over their backs, now launching 
 his arrows from between their legs. This he managed so adroitly 
 that he never once exposed himself to the fire of his enemies, 
 while at the same time the steadiness of his aim kept them all 
 at such a respectful distance that they began to fear that he would 
 ultimately escape. 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 225 
 
 To prevent this, they commenced a parley with him ; at 
 first he would not listen to them, and only replied by letting fly 
 an arrow or two to prevent approach. At length, probably from 
 the diminishing number of his arrows, and under strong assurances 
 that his life would be spared, he consented to capitulate. He left 
 his cover, and advanced amongst them ; but immediately he 
 was in their power, in utter violation of the promises that had 
 been made, one of his enraged captors treacherously shot him 
 through the head, and a heap of stones was hastily thrown over 
 his body. Thus ended the career of the last of the Bok-poort 
 Bushmen. 
 
 From year to year the same system was continued, and year 
 after year some horde or other was exterminated. In 1849 
 the Boers made a commando to destroy some Bushmen that were 
 on a hUl in Oliver's Kloof, on the Caledon. 
 
 Under the rule of the Sovereignty the same ruthless policy 
 was perpetuated. The last of their strongholds wSre attacked, 
 and the unhappy occupants shot down when they could not 
 manage to escape. These operations were sometimes carried 
 out under the personal superintendence of the British Resident. 
 
 The great caves of the Matlakeng or Aasvogelberg were taken 
 by storm, and the clans that inhabited them disappeared from 
 the face of the earth. The Bushmen of Thaba Patsoa had retired 
 for safety to the precipitous table crest of their mountain, but 
 their fancied security proved their ruin. In the dead of night, 
 the force of the Resident climbed to the top of the mountain by a 
 craggy path, and then as the dawn was breaking, by a coup-de- 
 main the sleeping horde was overpowered and the greater portion 
 of them slain. 
 
 The last Bushmen of Boloko or Groote Vecht Kop were under 
 a chief who had obtained the name of Danster and was living 
 with his people in one of the great caves there. There is no 
 evidence to show whether this man was the same individual 
 as the treacherous murderer of the Windvogel and Lichtenstein 
 people or not, but this Bushman of Boloko was slain and his people 
 destroyed by a Mosuto of the name of Raphotho.^ 
 
 Mapaya was the last captain of the Bushmen inhabiting the 
 caves of the neighbouring range called Mapayasberg. He 
 ^ Memoir by Miss L. E. Lemue. Notes by Charles S. Orpen. 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 repulsed the commando that was sent to drive his people out of 
 their caves, notwithstanding that they attempted to do so by the 
 use of hand grenades, a number of which exploded in the stronghold 
 of the chief himself, which he had fortified by the addition of a 
 small parapet waU of rough stones piled together ; but although 
 the assailants succeeded in lodging a considerable number within 
 this enclosure, their explosion seemed to produce no other effect 
 than that some bleeding and wounded women made their appear- 
 ance and came crawling towards them. One of the besiegers, an 
 Englishman, was killed on the spot with a poisoned arrow. 
 They found it impossible to obtain a position whence they could 
 command the cave, while the defenders kept up a determined 
 resistance, not only with flights of arrows, but by rolling down 
 great masses of rock upon their assailants, aided by a few bullets 
 from some muskets which they had managed to get into their 
 possession. This storm of missiles effectually checked the ad- 
 vance of the attacking party, and they were ultimately obliged 
 to retire, baffled and beaten by the resolution of this Bushman 
 chief. No other attack was made upon them, but after a time 
 the mountain was found abandoned. 
 
 When the chief and his clan evacuated the mountain no one 
 knew what had become of them, nor was any further information 
 ever obtained, although it was beUeved that they had made a 
 secret march to their fugitive countrymen who had sought a 
 refuge in the depths of the Malutis. 
 
 Although the Basutu tribes invaded the mountainous parts 
 of the old Bushman territory, the original inhabitants, who 
 escaped the rapacious jaws of the cannibals, tenaciously held, 
 in most instances, their mountain strongholds until the great 
 Basutu war with the Free State, when the Basutus, retreating 
 themselves to these mountains, seized and fortified aU the avail- 
 able caves and ejected the ancient owners. 
 
 In this struggle, these scattered remnants of Bushman tribes 
 in many instances made common cause with the Basutus, and 
 frequently their individual bravery did much to check the superior 
 forces of the Free State, and even on some occasions turned the 
 tide of battle. Numerous incidents of this kind are related even 
 by those who were opposed to them. 
 
 One of the great caves of the Langeberg is situated in a pre- 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 227 
 
 cipitous ravine in the rear of the kraal of Lacoa, a son of MoHtsane, 
 chief of the Bataung. It is of great extent, and its innermost 
 ramifications are lost in darkness, with dripping springs in several 
 parts of it. A great number of cattle might be driven into it. 
 This cave had been from time immemorial one of the strongholds 
 of the Bushmen of the mountain, but as the stronger tribes of 
 natives kept forcibly filling up the country, they had gradually 
 disappeared, either under the clubs, the battleaxes, or the assagais 
 of the invaders, until its sole inhabitants were one solitary 
 Bushman with his two wives. 
 
 At the commencement of the war the cave was occupied by 
 the Basutus, and fortified by them with a strong stone breast- 
 work. It certainly might have been made a formidable position, 
 for the greater portion of the cave was completely bomb-proof.. 
 It was attacked by a large commando supplied with artillery. 
 The numerous marks both of bullets and cannon shot testify, even 
 at the present day, how heavy was the fire directed upon it, 
 A storming party had gradually worked its way up the almost 
 precipitous ascent, they had gained a footing near the breastwork 
 itself, a young man named Massyn had already leaped upon it, 
 revolver in hand, the Basutu defenders were shrinking back into 
 the deeper recesses of the cave, when a kind of panic seized the 
 almost victorious, but breathless storming party, and on a sudden 
 they feU, some almost rolling, back in confusion, leaving their 
 comrade alone on the breastwork to escape as best he could. 
 
 This sudden change was occasioned by the old inhabitant of 
 the cave, who having concealed himself behind some rocks 
 commenced plying his whizzing arrows amongst them with such 
 rapidity, while they were unfit after the severe climbing they had 
 performed, to take steady aim, that they saw no safety from the 
 Bushman's poisoned shafts except in prompt retreat. After this 
 no other storming party had the courage to make a second attempt, 
 and the siege of the cave was raised. At the close of the war, 
 when he was asked why he defended that spot so determinedly 
 for the Basutus, he replied that he did not fight for them, but to 
 protect his ground and the dwelling of his father. 
 
 A somewhat similar instance occurred of a Bushman defending 
 the old cave of his tribe after the Basutus had taken possession 
 of and fortified it, as a shelter during the same war. When this 
 
228 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 place, which was situated near the Leeuw river, was attacked, 
 he took up his position on a projecting but nearly inaccessible 
 ledge immediately above it, where he had erected a small breast- 
 work for his own special occupation. From this coign of vantage 
 he positively kept for a considerable time the whole commando at 
 bay, and entirely prevented them from making any decisive 
 movement against the cave, until at length a chance shot put an 
 end to his resistance and his life at the same time. 
 
 The tenacity with which isolated survivors of once powerful 
 tribes of these Bushmen stuck to their old caves is astonishing. 
 They preferred to linger out their Hves in abject misery, so long as 
 they could remain in their neighbourhood, rather than follow those 
 of their race who had removed to a distance, a step which would 
 have forced these unhappy outcasts to abandon them for 
 ever, an idea which they could not endure. Much pity is often 
 expressed for the poor natives, the descendants of tribes of savages 
 who but two or three generations ago so ruthlessly invaded and 
 appropriated to themselves the hunting grounds of this most 
 primitive race ; but little commiseration has been expressed 
 towards the ancient owners of the land, who even now have left 
 evidence behind them that they must have remained in undis- 
 turbed possession of it for thousands of years. 
 
 Numerous instances might yet be collected of this devotion 
 and passionate attachment of the ancient aborigines to the homes 
 of their fathers and their ancestral caves, of which the painted 
 walls at one time formed their pride and their glory. 
 
 The last remnants of the painter tribes took tefuge in the 
 Malutis, where their numbers gradually increased until they were 
 able to muster some hundreds of fighting men. Some of their 
 clans were scattered through all the fastnesses of that most pre- 
 cipitous range, and here their artists once more adorned their 
 caves with the latest productions of their talents. Here the last 
 of the elands had attempted to find an asylum, and the sole surviv- 
 ors of the hippopotami, which once swarmed in all the great 
 rivers around, tried to hide themselves in the deep black pools 
 of almost inaccessible glens which so deeply serrated with chasms 
 and tortuous windings the very heart of the lofty range. Their 
 principal mountain fortress was formed of the projecting shoulder, 
 fitly named the Giant's Castle, whose towering crags rise, like the 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 229 
 
 castellated ruins of some old-world Titanic fort, thousands of 
 feet above the hills and plains below which form the coast belt 
 of land and stretch away in the distance in dim perspective till 
 lost in the haze of the great southern ocean. 
 
 This formed their last retreat, a fitting one for a race of cave 
 dwellers, after they were harried out of the western portions of 
 the range by the Basutus. Here, their game having been destroyed 
 and a mountainous region yielding few of the roots and tubers 
 necessary for their subsistence, they were forced to levy continuous 
 blackmail upon the stronger races which had seized their country 
 and had thus become their hereditary enemies. This portion of 
 the struggle, however, was not of long duration. 
 
 On the one hand the Basutus slew them without mercy, 
 whenever any of the marauders fell into their hands. The Ba- 
 phuti chief Morosi, who was himself a half caste by his mother's 
 side, destroyed the men of entire clans in order that he and 
 his people might possess the women and girls, and only a few 
 years before his death he made a grand final raid upon their 
 remaining strongholds, when some hundreds of them perished, 
 all the surviving females were captured, and the remnant 
 of the unhappy fugitives was forcibly amalgamated into his 
 tribe. Up to the time of the breaking out of the colonial 
 war with this old mountain chief, a great number of Bushmen, 
 some of them very old people, were residing in the territory 
 which he had seized and claimed as his own. 
 
 While the work of extermination was being thus carried on 
 by the stronger natives, the forays of the Bushmen into the lower 
 country were followed with equally severe chastisement. Fre- 
 quent patrols were sent in search of them, who sometimes pursued 
 them to the caves in which they had taken shelter. 
 
 It was on an occasion like this that the last known captain of 
 the Maluti Bushmen met his tragic fate. His name was Sweni, 
 or 'Zweei, " the Knife." He had been followed up to his strong- 
 hold, where he was besieged in his cave by Allison's people. 
 He had a few guns, and he defended himself vigorously both with 
 these and his poisoned arrows. At length the arrows were ex- 
 pended, but he still kept up his musketry fire, until it was noticed 
 by the besiegers that his firing was without effect, and that the 
 unfortunate Zweei had been for a considerable time firing merely 
 
230 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 with powder. He had no bullets, and he had imagined that the 
 noise alone would be sufficient to keep his pursuers at bay. 
 It certainly succeeded until all his arrows were finished ; but 
 when his enemies found out the harmless character of his appar- 
 ently desperate resistance, a rush was made upon his position 
 without further delay, and the last stronghold of the last Bush- 
 man captain of the Malutis was taken by storm. Even then he 
 was not overcome until his native weapons failed him and he had 
 nothing left as a means of defence but a few miserable guns and 
 some powder which he had obtained from the invaders. 
 
 The last known Bushman artist of the Malutis was shot in the 
 Witteberg Native Reserve, where he had been on a marauding 
 expedition, and had captured some horses. He was evidently a 
 man of considerable repute among his race. He had ten small 
 horn pots hanging from a belt, each of which contained a different 
 coloured paint. The informant of the writer told him that he 
 saw the belt, that there were no two colours alike, and that each 
 had a marked difference from the rest. This relic, which un- 
 fortunately appears to have been lost, proved the advance some 
 of these native and self-taught artists had made in the manu- 
 facture of various shades of colour. 
 
 Thus perished the last of the painter tribes of Bushmen! 
 Thus perished their chiefs and artists ! after a continuous 
 struggle to maintain their independence and to free their hunting 
 grounds from the invaders who pressed in from every side for 
 upwards of a couple of centuries, a period which commenced with 
 the southern migration of the Hottentot hordes, and did not end 
 until the last .surviving clans had been exterminated with the 
 bullet and the assagai, and their bones were left to bleach amid 
 the rugged precipices of the Malutis. 
 
 The undying attachment which many of these people dis- 
 played to locahties where they and their fathers had lived has 
 been too frequently and clearly demonstrated to admit of refuta- 
 tion. In this feeling, and in their attachment to their tribal 
 hunting grounds was shown their love of country; and their 
 determination to hold and defend it— savage as they may have 
 been, degraded as their enemies ever delighted to depict them— 
 evinced their patriotism in a no less unmistakable manner. 
 Had they been men of any race except that of the despised and 
 
Exa<a size. 
 
 CARVED STONE BOWL OF ANCIENT BUSHMAN HOOKAH. 
 
STRUGGLE OF BUSHMEN FOR EXISTENCE 231 
 
 often falsely maligned Bushman, the wrongs which were heaped 
 upon them, the sufferings they endured, their daring and intre- 
 pidity, their unconquerable spirit, and the length of the hopeless 
 struggle they maintained when every other race was arrayed 
 against them, coveting their land and thirsting for their blood, 
 would have placed them, notwithstanding the excesses into which 
 they were betrayed, in the rank of heroes and patriots of no mean 
 order. 
 
Chapter XIII 
 
 THE ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 
 
 In entering upon this portion of our subject we may observe that 
 in the foregoing chapters we have shown that there is every reason 
 for beheving that the origin of the .Bushman race was far north 
 of the equator, and that at a very remote period they followed 
 the migration of the game to the southward. The men of this 
 hunter race remained for unknown ages in apparently undis- 
 turbed possession of Central and Southern Africa, their retreat 
 farther being prevented by the ocean, and there, notwithstanding 
 aU the social convulsions to which most of the other portions of 
 the world were subject, a remnant remains until the present 
 day, standing out clear and strong as a relic and memorial of a 
 past stage in the world's existence. 
 
 It was here in this remote comer of the world, isolated and 
 unchanged, the ancient Bushman remained, roaming over his 
 broad hunting fields, and struggling ever and anon with the Uon 
 for the ownership and sovereignty of the countless herds that 
 covered the mighty plains of the South. And this while in other 
 parts of the world civilization was developing from its earliest 
 germs, while ancient empires grew up, and flourished, and decayed, 
 and became again nothing but a memory of the vanished past. 
 While their grandest structures were crumbling into ruins, and 
 the ruins were becoming silently entombed in the drifting sand, 
 here he, the associate of the rhinoceros and giraffe, sculptured 
 the rocks over with the primitive designs of art, and covered the 
 walls of his cave dwelling with paintings, many so closely copied 
 from nature that they would seem to prove that he himself, 
 before his isolation, must have formed the first rippling wave of 
 that advancing tide of civilization which was thrown off from the 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 233 
 
 grand centre of its birth, and of which he, after his enforced 
 separation, became the stereotyped representative. 
 
 Thus it was that driven onward before the development and 
 advance of races stronger than himself, he still fostered and 
 carried with him this art-germ, until he found himself land-locked 
 in the silent parts of the earth, while far in his rear, and severed 
 from him by a migration of still darker negro barbarism, which 
 must have subsequently forced itself across the path he had taken, 
 the northern nations, of which he was a distant link, were carried 
 onward by a steady after-flood of progress. 
 
 It was this very progress, however, which ultimately, by 
 hemming in the seething mass of equatorial savage life, checked 
 its expansion in that direction, and turned towards the south the 
 tide of intervening barbarism represented by the ancestors of the 
 present stronger native races in Southern Africa. This move- 
 ment, though possibly slow at first, gradually gained strength 
 and impetus with the increase of population, and now creeping 
 on, now surging forward under the guidance of ambitious chief- 
 tains, pressing tribe on tribe like great pursuing waves, then 
 possibly a pause, that may have lasted for generations, until 
 amid internal heavings and internecine war another storm-wave 
 rose which, beaten from the north, would naturally expend its 
 fury in the opposite direction, sweeping at various points over 
 the weaker opposing tribes, or hurr5dng them on in front ever 
 farther and farther, and ever encroaching more and more upon 
 the domains of the primitive himter race. 
 
 While here a single fugitive tribe advanced, there they pressed 
 forward in various streams, to the west, the east, or over the 
 central plains, until they met and struggled, and in every struggle 
 always still encroached. The hapless hunters formd themselves 
 opposed at every point, isolated and hemmed in, the hate of every 
 intruder being turned especially against them. Their greatest 
 crime being that they were the original possessors of the soil, a 
 war of extermination was waged against them, until at last the 
 miserable remnants of their once numerous race had to struggle 
 for a precarious existence in a few almost inaccessible mountain 
 fastnesses or in the wilds of the Kalahari desert. 
 
 In following up this inquiry we shall find, from South African 
 evidence, that after the original Bushman migration, the Hot- 
 
234 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 tentot tribes, at a comparatively recent period, were the first to 
 follow them. These people were themselves driven from the 
 more central portions of the continent by another race still 
 stronger than themselves. They then retreated in a south- 
 westerly direction, until arrested by the Atlantic, when they 
 turned towards the south. /We shall find that in the meantime 
 the tribes before whom the Hottentots fled were themselves 
 pressed farther into Central Southern Africa, and away from the 
 eastern coast, by stiU stronger and fiercer hordes from the north. 
 The men who pressed forward the Hottentots were the Ba- 
 choana and Basutu hordes, who were not only a pastoral but an 
 agricultural people, who were occasionally impelled by their lust 
 for cattle to attack their neighbours ; but their devotion to agri- 
 cultural pursuits must have prevented them from making rapid 
 conquests. Their migrations, therefore, from one place to another 
 would be a matter of time, that took generations in their accom- 
 plishment ; while the men who were slowly but surely advancing 
 upon them were almost purely pastoral, and as a necessary con- 
 sequence more warlike. 
 
 We shall find that when these last, who wielded the club and 
 the assagai, discovered more luxuriant and more permanent 
 pasturage for their herds within a specified zone along the coast, 
 they, after turning the flank of the Bachoana migration more 
 into the interior, adhered strictly to the seaboard, and engrossed 
 for their own use the broad belt of land that runs for an immense 
 distance with the ocean on one hand and the great range of 
 mountains that stretches itself almost parallel to it on the other. 
 Here tribe followed tribe, the stronger as in every other case 
 pressing the weaker before it ; again they were like successive 
 waves, the one behind urging forward the one immediately in 
 front, the Abatembu, the Amaxosa, the Amampondo, and the 
 Amazulu, ever advancing from the eastward. 
 
 The great shields adopted by the foremost Kaffirs proved 
 impervious to the tiny reed shafts of the Bushmen, who had 
 until then been in undisturbed possession of that part of the con- 
 tinent, but who from that time forward were driven from one 
 retreat to another until the survivors retired to their fellow 
 countrymen inhabiting the more open plains to the north of the 
 rugged ranges which skirt the sea-coast zone, thus leaving the 
 
 ) 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 235 
 
 victorious Kaf&r race to advance towards the west/ until they 
 came in contact with strange white-faced men still more invincible 
 than they had imagined themselves to be, against whom, with 
 many minor fluctuations, the tidal wave of rude barbarism beat / 
 in vain. 
 
 In examining the evidence that has been collected upon the 
 migrations and history of the tribes above alluded to, it will be 
 better to follow the sequence in which they came upon the South 
 African scene. We shall therefore consider — 
 
 I. The Hottentot tribes, a nomadic pastoral race, armed 
 with bows and arrows, originally without poison, and 
 sometimes shields and miserably small javelins. 
 II. The agricultural and pastoral Bachoana and Basutu 
 tribes from the north, also armed with bows and 
 arrows, small shields, assagais, clubs, and battleaxes. 
 
 III. The pastoral and more warlike Coast Kaffirs, the Amaxosa 
 
 and other frontier tribes, armed with javelins or assa- 
 gais and immense shields cut from an entire ox hide. 
 
 IV. The Abatembu and Amampondo tribes, with assagais, 
 
 clubs, and oval shields. 
 V. The Amazulu, MatabUi, and Natal tribes, with large 
 oval shields and short broad-bladed stabbing assagais, 
 with which they charged at close quarters. 
 VI. The tribes of Basutuland, with assagais, battleaxes, and 
 
 deeply indented shields. 
 VII. The men of the Dutch settlements. 
 VIII. The English occupation. 
 In these sections we shall make such additional remarks upon 
 the manners and customs of the native races as may tend to throw 
 a clearer light upon their probable migration and origin. 
 
 The Hottentot and other Kindred Tribes. 
 
 These tribes have ^ a special interest in connection with the 
 subject of our inquiry, from the fact that they were the first 
 people with whom the daring navigators of the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries came in contact at the southern extremity of 
 the African continent. For a long time they were considered 
 the aborigines of the country and the ancient owners of the soil, 
 whose forefathers had possessed the same from time immemorial. 
 
236 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Some writers described them as a very numerous race, whose 
 teeming hordes were spread over the length and breadth of the 
 land. From the evidence collected in the present work, we shall 
 find that such statements are far from giving a correct representa- 
 tion of the case : that instead of being the rightful possessors of 
 the soil, they had intruded into territories which had previously 
 for an unknown period been the hunting grounds of the Bush- 
 man race ; that these Hottentots, in the earlier days of their 
 migrations, came from the far interior in the north-east, and 
 moved towards the south-west until they were arrested by the 
 Atlantic a few degrees south of the equator ; that after this they 
 gradually spread themselves along the western coast, dispossessing 
 the original occupiers of the country, until they reached the 
 southern limit at the Cape of Good Hope, around which point 
 and between this and the lower portion of the Orange river their 
 principal tribes congregated. 
 
 We shall find also that although a few tribes penetrated a 
 little farther to the eastward along the coast Hne, it would appear 
 that for a long period they did not make any serious lodgment in 
 that direction, being kept back not only by the formidable 
 difficulties presented by the physical features of the country, but 
 also by terror of the poisoned arrows of the fiery race of pigmies 
 who occupied all the mountain barriers to the eastward, and who . 
 at last roused themselves to repel the further unceremonious 
 invasion which threatened their hitherto undisputed domains. 
 
 Some few of this more ancient race had become half dependent 
 upon the nomadic herdsmen who were gradually attempting to 
 usurp possession of all the best pasturage of the western and 
 open portions of the country, but by far the greater majority 
 of them tenaciously clung to the mountain strongholds of their 
 fathers, and refused to come to terms with men whom they con- 
 sidered as intruders, who were gradually spreading themselves 
 over the broad pastures of their heMs of game, and whose presence 
 scared away the animals which afforded them the means of sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 The relative condition in which the Hottentots and Bushmen 
 were found in the middle of the seventeenth century may be 
 received as confirmatory evidence of the fact that the former had 
 not long been settled in those parts of the country. The Bush- 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 237 
 
 men were still living in most of the mountainous and wooded por- 
 tions of it, — even Table Mountain was occupied by them, — and 
 although they lived in a condition of comparative dependence on 
 the Hottentots and acted as their light troops, taking care of 
 their outposts, and performing the duties of messengers and spies, 
 in the more inaccessible portions of the country to the east and 
 north-east the Bushmen were living without the slightest tram- 
 mel, ruled by their own chiefs, and under a rude form of govern- 
 ment, which, however primitive it might have been in its details, 
 was entirely their own ; and there appears little probability that 
 either under the Hottentots or Kaffirs these Bushmen would ever 
 have fallen into a lower degree of servitude. 
 
 Such then was the position of these two races when other and 
 still stronger men appeared upon the scene : a race of white 
 faces, shaggy and bearded as the native lions of the land, a race 
 that appeared to come out of the sea, who dwelt upon floating 
 islands, and who had the lightning and the thunder of the storm- 
 cloud at their command. These were the Portuguese, who came 
 and went away ; and again the Dutch, who made a permanent 
 settlement. At first the new arrivals appeared a great gain, 
 but after a time the gain gradually turned all on one side, and 
 upon the excuse of some alleged offence or other encroachment 
 followed encroachment, until those who had dispossessed the old 
 hunter tribes and appropriated their grounds for pasture lands, 
 found themselves not only almost stripped of their cattle, but 
 dispossessed of the land they themselves had taken ; and once 
 more a migration of their tribes commenced. 
 
 One portion pushed on towards the east, followed by the 
 stronger race who had dispossessed them, until they were stopped 
 by the great mountain barriers which barred their further pro- 
 gress in that direction, and whose rugged and precipitous passes, 
 strongly garrisoned as they were by the intrepid and imtamed 
 dwellers of the caves and forests, they dared not attempt to force, 
 until they were overtaken by their pursuers and became absorbed 
 and made serfs to the white race that was ever on their heels. 
 Another portion of the retreating Hottentots pressed towards the 
 north until they reached the valley of the Great river, and pene- 
 trated along its course far into that portion of the Bushman 
 territory, some settling down for a time in that part of the 
 
238 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 country now occupied by the division of Victoria West, where they 
 spent their time in petty quarrels with one another, each separate 
 kraal trying to appropriate the cattle of those richer than them- 
 selves. This and encounters with the Bushman owners of the 
 land filled up their time, until the increasing inroads and atroci- 
 ties of the restless bandit Africaander on the one hand, and the 
 pressure from the extension of the colonial boundaries on the 
 other, once more set them on the move, when they again continued 
 their onward migrations until they reached the Orange river near 
 its junction with the Vaal. 
 
 Here the Korana tribes were the first that crossed. After 
 doing so, they advanced along the valley of the Vaal, seizing the 
 country and driving back, or annihilating whenever possible, the 
 Bushman tribes that strove to check their advance. Pressing 
 still towards the north, they at length met, near the present 
 Kuruman and Lithako, the first of the Bachoana tribes, who had 
 in the meantime advanced from the north, and who, notwith- 
 standing the almost irrepressible predatory habits of the yellow- 
 skins, were able after a time effectually to check their further 
 progress in that direction. 
 
 For a long series of years after this collision the nomadic 
 clans indulged their love of plunder, in making forays and raids 
 upon one another, or, as restless as the Arabs of the desert, they 
 attacked any other tribe in the neighbourhood that they con- 
 sidered sufficiently weak to fall an easy prey to their lawlessness. 
 All these tribes were purely nomadic-pastoral, never making the 
 least attempt at cultivation, except a few of their clans who raised 
 a little dacha. Their condition constantly fluctuated between 
 the extremes of plenty and famine. 
 
 In following out this inquiry, we shall therefore, for the sake 
 of precision, do so under the following heads — 
 
 1. The Hottentots of the early Dutch Period, 
 
 2. The Tribes of the West Coast, 
 
 3. The Koran as, and 
 
 4. The Griquas. 
 
 The Hottentots of the Early Dutch Period. 
 
 In studying this portion of our subject we soon discover that 
 the difficulties of investigation are greatly increased, and con- 
 siderable confusion is occasioned, both from the indiscriminate 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 239 
 
 use by the early writers of different names, and employing 
 different modes of spelling, when giving the appellation of any 
 particular tribe ; and also from their classing all under the 
 common term of Hottentots, where other tribes such as the Bush- 
 men are intended. 
 
 From the only reliable evidence which can now be obtained, 
 it would appear that the title Hottentot is not of native origin, 
 but a sobriquet given to them by the early Dutch traders from 
 the almost unpronounceable character of their language. The 
 almost constant termination of qua to the Hottentot tribal 
 names is asserted by Korana authorities to be synonymous with 
 the Ba and Ama prefixes of the Bachoana and Kaffir families, 
 meaning the people, sons, or men of. Thus the Cochoqua would 
 be the men of Cocho, the Gora (or more probably Kora) choqua, 
 the men of Kora. A traveller of the last century tells us that 
 Auteniqua signified " the men loaded with honey," from the 
 immense number of wild bees which swarmed in the country 
 they inhabited. Most probably the other names would be found 
 to possess equally significant meanings, could they be rightly 
 interpreted. 
 
 This nomadic people had arrived at a stereotyped stage of 
 existence, and doubtless woiild for many ages more have remained 
 unprogressive, retaining all their primitive modes of life, had it 
 not been for the outward pressure which was brought to bear 
 upon them about the middle of the seventeenth century. Van 
 Riebeek among a number of other epithets describes them as 
 " stinking and greasy," and it is quite certain that wherever 
 they continued sufficiently isolated they remained perfectly 
 unaltered to the end of last century, and even to a much 
 later period in numerous instances. So much so that the sketch 
 of their habits and customs given by Barrow in 1797 is a correct 
 reflex of what they actually were nearly a century and a half 
 before. All the Hottentots were evidently of the same low type 
 as those which this accurate observer described. 
 
 The Hottentots and Bushmen had two remarkable faculties 
 in common : that of quickness of sight and power of endurance 
 in withstanding the cravings of hmiger. It was remarked that 
 they could distinguish objects scarcely visible to other men. 
 This faculty was well illustrated in their expertness in watching 
 
240 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the flight of bees through the air, and by this means discovering 
 their nest, although at a considerable distance ; the certainty 
 also with which they followed the spoor or trail of animals through 
 a difficult tract of country was another illustration of the same 
 fact, they being frequently able to follow the pursuit at a full run, 
 tiring out horse and rider who accompanied them. With regard 
 to their endurance, if they possessed wonderful power in with- 
 standing the pangs of hunger, their voracious appetites enabled 
 them to make up for long fasting. 
 
 In preparing their meals, their meat was put upon the embers 
 in long strings, and when just warmed through, the ashes serving 
 as salt, it was seized and one end applied to the mouth, when 
 they appeared to devour it in a consecutive piece. During this 
 operation, while the meat was passing through their hands, 
 these were occasionally cleaned by being rubbed over different 
 parts of their bodies. The grease from these smearings would 
 accumulate for years, and form a thick black coat of dirt over 
 their skin, hiding its true colour, with the exception of their 
 faces and hands, which they kept somewhat cleaner by rubbing 
 them over with the dung of cattle. 
 
 Their dress was simple, consisting of a belt made of a thong 
 cut from the skin of some animal. From this was suspended a 
 pouch made in the shape of a ninepin cut longitudinally of jackal 
 skin, the convex and hairy side being outermost. From the 
 back part one or two small flaps of leather were dependent, 
 covering no particular portion of the body. This constituted 
 the whole of their summer dress. The Hottentot women of those 
 days wandered about in the same state of comparative nudity as 
 that of their lords and masters. 
 
 At an early period of life, immediately after the birth of the 
 first child, the breasts began to grow loose and flaccid, and as old 
 age approached these became distended to a great length ; the 
 posterior parts at the same time swelled out to enormous dimen- 
 sions. 
 
 They lived in portable huts constructed of rush mats, which 
 could be taken down, rolled up, and made into btmdles with 
 their sapling supports and carried from place to place on their 
 pack oxen during their migrations. 
 
 Such were the tribes of wandering herdsmen found by Van 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 241 
 
 Riebeek at Table Bay at the time of his landing. The principa 
 of these were the Cochoqua and the Gora or Kora-choqua, 
 from whom, as we shall discover in the sequel, the present Korana 
 clans appear to have descended. 
 
 The Cochoqua were those who frequently resided in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of Table Bay. They generally occu- 
 pied the coimtry from False Bay to Saldanha Bay and from Table 
 Bay to the mountains in the east, never sta5dng long in one place, 
 but moving about for change of pasture. There appear to have 
 been constant jealousies and quarrels between the tribes, with 
 occasional raids upon each other's cattle and eloping with one 
 another's wives. This latter amusement seems to have been a 
 common occurrence among them, and thus became an endless 
 cause of turmoil and tribal feuds. 
 
 In 1652 the Cochoqua were divided into two branches, the 
 elder one being under a chief named Oedasoa, who considered 
 himself the paramount chief, the other under a secondary captain 
 named Gonnema. It is recorded that this Oedasoa had carried 
 off the wife of 'Goeboe, the son of Sousa, chief of the Chainouqua. 
 There appear to have been several tribes which at one time acknow- 
 ledged their supremacy, but subsequently threw off their alle- 
 giance. Amongst others, they were generally at variance with 
 the Namaqua, who were Hottentots like themselves. Oedasoa 
 said that although these people had many cattle, they had not 
 so many men as he had ; and that when he was joined by the 
 Korachoqua, the Goringhaiqua, and the Cochoqua under the 
 chief Gonnema. he need not be afraid of any attempt the Namaqua 
 might maKe upon him. From this fact it appears very probable 
 that the Cochoqua, the Korachoqua, and the Goringhaiqua were 
 kindred tribes of so recent a separation that they speedily re- 
 united when a common danger threatened them. 
 
 The following recorded facts appear to support this position. 
 The Gorachoqua were a people described to be rich in cattle. 
 The name of their chief was 'Choro ; he took away the wife of 
 Gonnema, kinsman of the chief of the Cochoqua. This tribe was 
 discovered in 1657 by a party of the Dutch a day's journey 
 north-east of Tygerberg ; they were then possessed of large herds 
 of cattle, and were supposed to be able to muster from six to seven 
 hundred men. They were supposed to belong to, or to be closely 
 
 R 
 
242 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 allied to the Cochoqua. They arrogated to themselves the title 
 of 'Khoeque, or chief over other tribes, and thus often got into 
 war with them. This is the very assumption made by the 
 Taaibosch branch of the Koranas at the present day. 
 
 As the early writers could not be expected to detect the fine 
 variations sometimes distinguishable in the clicks forming such 
 a prominent feature in this class of languages, it would appear 
 as if in the name of this tribe G has been employed to represent 
 the initial click found in it, whereas 'K is more probably the one 
 which ought to have been used, when the word would be as a 
 consequence 'Kora instead of Gora, the former being the one 
 from which the present Koranas derive their tribal appellation. 
 All the native traditions uphold this position. In fact it is more 
 than probable that the descendants of both these tribes would be 
 found amongst the Koranas of the present day, and thus it is that 
 the history of the first peopling of the Cape by white men is so 
 cleaily preserved among the traditions of this tribe. 
 
 The Charingunqua were another tribe that had renounced the 
 authority of the Cochoqua, and had removed to the Oliphant's 
 river in consequence. 
 
 The Cochoqua were the people who sold the Cape peninsula 
 to the Dutch in 1672. The first hostilities between the Dutch 
 and these Hottentots broke out the following year. Oedasoa 
 was then dead, and Gonnema had succeeded to the chief authority 
 in the tribe ; hence it was that this tribe was subsequently called 
 Gonnemas. The Cochoqua under Gonnema were defeated with 
 the loss of nearly all their cattle. The state of unrest which 
 ensued from the vain endeavours of the vanquished Hottentots 
 to regain a portion of their cherished cattle, caused the governor 
 Goske to issue in 1675, three years after their defeat, orders that 
 every male of the tribe who fell into the hands of the Dutch was 
 to be destroyed. Van Riebeek stated that the united tribe of 
 the Cochoqua, twenty years before, were able to muster three 
 thousand men capable of bearing arms, and that they often 
 migrated a considerable distance inland with their large herds of 
 cattle, carrying all their movables with them on their pack oxen. 
 
 Besides these tribes there was another called Goringhaiqua, 
 under a chief named 'Go'gosoa. These people appear to have 
 leagued with the Dutch in their attack upon the Cochoqua. The 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 243 
 
 strength of the tribe is stated by one writer to have been about 
 three hundred men, exclusive of women and children. 
 
 The Chariguriqua, subsequently called Grigriqua, lived towards 
 the north, in the country intervening between the Cochoqua and 
 the Namaqua. They were said to possess large herds of cattle. 
 It was also stated that they were without any hereditary chief, 
 and that the tribe itself had revolted or separated from the 
 Cochoqua. In 1658 a portion of them migrated as far to the 
 southward as Saldanha Bay, but they evidently shortly after- 
 wards returned again to the north, as in 1661, when Van Meerhof 
 undertook an expedition to the Namaqua, he found the latter in 
 the country round the Khamiesbergen, while the Grigriqua were 
 occupying that portion along the lower course of the Oliphant's 
 river. At this time the Bushmen inhabited the country from the 
 Drakenstein mountains to the Quathlamba, while they were met 
 with as far as the Okavanga towards the north. 
 
 The Hancumqua and the Chainouqua were either different 
 titles for, or subdivisions of, one great tribe. The former appears 
 the more probable. Their chief claimed to be paramount over all 
 the other Hottentot tribes. His title was 'Choe-baka or 'Khoe- 
 baka, which is described as meaning 'Khoe a mountain, Baka 
 the highest of all or king. The name of this ruler, in the days of 
 Van Riebeek, was Sousa or Sausoa. The name of his son was 
 'Goe-boe, who married the daughter of Gogosoa. She was carried 
 off by Oedasoa. Her sister's name was Osingkuina. It would 
 appear that previous to the landing of the Dutch, this tribe never 
 migrated from place to place. He and his people dwelt in the 
 national mat huts of their race ; they bred cattle, and also sub- 
 sisted by the cultivation of the plant dacha, of which all these 
 tribes were very fond. They were said to be far richer both in 
 men and cattle than the Cochoqua. They were divided into a 
 number of dependent hordes, all of which acknowledged Sousa 
 as their paramount. In 1660 they were located some four days' 
 journey from the fort in Table VaUey, in 1663 they were found 
 about thirty-one miles from it, behind the mountains of Hotten- 
 tots Holland. 
 
 Sousa was held in such awe by those of other clans that neither 
 Oedasoa nor any of his subjects dared come to trade so long as 
 he remained near the fort. They made way for him, and waited 
 
244 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 upon him with presents of many cattle, to show the respect they 
 owed to the highest king. That his authority was not merely 
 nominal was shown by the fact of his interference in a quarrel 
 between Choro, the chief of the 'Kora-choqua, and Gonnema, the 
 captain of a branch of the Cochoqua. They had parted in anger, 
 the former having cunningly taken away the wife of the latter. 
 War was imminent between them, until Sousa, the paramount 
 chief, interfered, and threatened to degrade the one who was in 
 the wrong. Such an acknowledgment of his supremacy by the 
 chiefs of the other Hottentot tribes would make it seem highly 
 probable that the one over which he ruled represented the main 
 trunk of the Hottentot race, from which all the others have been 
 offshoots. In that case the Koranas and Griquas of the present 
 day represent the descendants of the Cochoqua group of clans, 
 and the Colonial Hottentots the remains of the other tribes 
 mentioned. 
 
 Another powerful tribe was the Hessequa, living farther north, 
 but to the westward of the present division of Swellendam. 
 Their language was so different from that of the Cochoqua that 
 they could only communicate through Chainouqua interpreters. 
 This fact is significant, and would certainly suggest that these 
 Hessequa were not true Hottentots, but rather either a mixed race 
 in which the Bushman element so much predominated that its 
 language had been adopted by them, or else a purely Bushman 
 tribe. The additional fact that these people were frequently 
 threatening to drive the Chainouqua and Goringhaiqua out of the 
 land would seem to indicate that the latter is the most probable. 
 
 The tribes living to the eastward were said to be the Chamaqua, 
 the Omaqua, the Attaqua, and the Cauqua. AH these, like the 
 Hancumqua or Chainouqua, were rich in cattle, planters of dacha, 
 and lived in mat huts. They extended from the north-east of the 
 Hancumqua to the sea coast. Their cattle were those called the 
 Namaqua, or long-horned breed, together with fat-tailed sheep. 
 They used pack-oxen : men and women frequently rode together 
 on the same ox. The Attaqua lived On both sides the Langeberg, 
 above Mossel Bay, and near the present town of George, hence 
 Attaqua Kloof. 
 
 It appears certain that these tribes were not sufiiciently 
 numerous to occupy the whole country ; they seem rather to have 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 245 
 
 formed certain centres around which they migrated, with con- 
 siderable tracts of land between them which were still held by the 
 original owners of the soil. Thus in 1662, when Cruythof, during 
 Commander Wagenaar's time, tried to reach Vigiti Magna and 
 was driven back by the Namaqua, he found the Sonqua living 
 between these tribes, and roving about like banditti, inhabiting 
 mostly the mountains and doing much damage to their neigh- 
 bours. By the description of their usage of bows and arrows 
 there can be no doubt that they were Bushmen. This tribe of 
 Sonqua was subdued by the Namaqua in 1662. 
 
 Besides these there were a number of tribes, such as the 
 Strandloopers, or as they called themselves Goringhaicona, who 
 subsisted only by fishing on the sea-rocks. It seems, however, 
 almost certain that these different hordes were the representatives 
 of tribes living in the country previous to the arrival of the 
 pastoral Hottentots, and were therefore more nearly allied to the 
 Bushmen than to them, even if some of them were not the rem- 
 nants of old Bushman tribes that had been dispossessed by the 
 intruders. 
 
 From the description given of the Goringhaicona by Oedasoa, 
 the chief of the Cochoqua, and quoted in Van Riebeek's journal, 
 these people would seem to have been a tribe of Bushmen still 
 clinging to the rocks of the Cape peninsula. He stated that they 
 never remained long at peace with any one, and could not live 
 without robbing and murdering ; their object was to surprise 
 one tribe or the other when at the weakest. They had so served 
 him when he had been defeated by other tribes from the interior, 
 and when he lay with his few remaining people and cattle in his 
 houses, wounded and helpless, his people scattered in flight and 
 concealed here and there, then it was that they carried off his 
 cattle as well as crueUy murdered all who could not offer any 
 resistance, even women and children. 
 
 The habits here described are so at variance with the more 
 indolent mode of life in which the normal Hottentot was so prone 
 to indulge, that one feels almost forced to the conclusion that 
 these marauders must have belonged to the more energetic 
 Bushman race, who harboured a feeling of revenge against the 
 pastoral intruders into their ancient territories. 
 
 Assertions have often been made regarding the teeming 
 
246 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Hottentot population of the southern angle of the African conti- 
 nent at the time of the arrival of the first Dutch settlers. Such 
 assertions certainly appear very wide of the mark. It has been 
 stated that when Van Riebeek landed Oedasoa's kraal was 
 about half a day's journey from the fort, that its position could 
 be seen across the bay, and that he was encamped there with 
 many thousands of people. The number both of the people and 
 cattle of these tribes seems frequently much exaggerated, a 
 thing not to be wondered at when we know the indefinite ex- 
 pressions used by them to express large numbers. Many 
 thousands of a purely pastoral people, whose sole means of 
 subsistence was their cattle, could not have lived together in one 
 spot in such a country. The immense size of the herds which 
 would be required for their support would destroy the pasturage, 
 by treading it under foot, before it could be grazed off. South 
 Africa has afforded fit and numerous illustrations of this destruc- 
 tion of the herbage in the formation of expeditionary camps or 
 lagers, and the loss of live stock which follows from the cause 
 alluded to almost as a necessary consequence. 
 
 There is not in fact the slightest reliable evidence to be dis- 
 covered that the Hottentots were ever a very numerous race. 
 They were certainly congregated more densely from the Cape 
 to the northward, along the western coast, than to the eastward 
 of that promontory ; but even here there does not appear to 
 have been a single tribe or clan capable of bringing two or three 
 thousand men into the field. 
 
 The idea of a powerful nation in the Hottentot mind was 
 exemplified in 1874, when they boasted of their ability to drive 
 the white man from the Diamond Fields. The most powerful 
 of the Korana clans never exceeded a thousand, and they con- 
 sidered themselves invincible when they spoke of their entire 
 tribe being able to marshal nearly three thousand fighting men. 
 A few hundred warrior-herdsmen appears to be the maximum 
 that the majority of the Cape tribes cotild muster. 
 
 The following is an estimate of the probable strength of the 
 various Hottentot tribes near the Cape at the time of the landing 
 of Van Riebeek : — 
 
 The Cochoqua, in two divisions, one under Oedasoa, the other 
 under Gonnema, 1,000 men. 
 
ENCROACHMENT OF THE STRONGER RACES 247 
 
 The 'Gora ('Kora) chouqua, under 'Choro, 600 or 700 men. 
 
 The httle Chariguriqua or Grigriqua, 300 men. 
 
 The Goringhaiqua, under Gogosoa, 300 men. 
 
 The Goringhaikona, under Captain Harry, 18 men. 
 
 These estimates are exclusive of women and children. 
 
 Of the other tribes mentioned in the early records, the 
 numerical strength is not given, but the Hancumqua are stated 
 to have been the greatest and most powerful of all the race of 
 greasy Hottentots, whom Van Riebeek described as dull, stupid, 
 lazy, stinking people. The above, however, is sufficient to 
 enable us to arrive at some approximate conclusion with regard 
 to their total number. The five Cape tribes mentioned could 
 furnish 2,268 men, who would represent a mixed population of 
 some thirteen or fourteen thousand souls ; and if the remaining 
 tribes averaged as many, the total Hottentot race did not exceed 
 thirty-five or forty thousand people. As it is more than probable 
 that in the confusion of the descriptions given of these people 
 by the early settlers some Bushman tribes are included in the 
 list of names quoted by them, forty thousand may be above, 
 rather than below the real number. 
 
 From a review of the foregoing facts, it would seem that the 
 following deductions may be drawn : 
 
 ist. That these nomadic tribes were few in number, and 
 were evidently constantly on the move from place to place in 
 search of water and pasturage. These very migrations prove 
 that they could not have been so numerous as some writers have 
 stated, or they would necessarily have come into frequent 
 collision with one another ; but the fact was they wandered 
 about, and still it was found that there was always plenty of 
 room to spare, showing that the country, except in a few favoured 
 localities, was very sparsely populated. As an illustration of 
 this constant habit of migrating, Oedasoa removed from Table 
 Bay to Saldanha Bay, in search of pasture, and on his arrival 
 there found the Grigriqua and Korachoqua had migrated thence 
 to the interior for the same purpose. 
 
 2nd. That at the time of their discovery the Hottentot 
 tribes had only comparatively recently arrived at the southern 
 extremity of the continent, which is demonstrated by the fact 
 that the original inhabitants not only still remained a distinct 
 
248 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 people, but were not yet conquered, even in the Cape district 
 itself. Thus we find that there were continual hostilities between 
 them and the Bushmen, or Sonqua. Van Riebeek, in his Journal, 
 writmg of these Bushmen or Sonqua, says they never had any 
 other means of subsistence than plunder, their stock was not 
 their own, but robbed from the Cochoqua and others, who on 
 that account pursued them on every opportunity, and on coming 
 up with them put them to death without mercy. They also 
 plundered many people, not only of their cattle, but of their 
 women, which robbery and abduction were much practised in 
 war by aU these tribes. 
 
 3rd. That the migration of these Hottentots through such 
 a country, and with such inhabitants, must have been a very 
 slow onward movement, and that no rapid acquisitions of terri- 
 tory could have been made by them, both their own character 
 and the formidable obstacles presented by the natural features 
 of the coimtry forbidding any other conclusion. It is quite 
 certain that all the great mountain passes and fastnesses were 
 in the hands of the aboriginal race at the time of their arrival, 
 and there must have been a long struggle before even the barrier 
 of the Hottentots Holland mountains could have been passed 
 to the eastward. When we reflect upon the great stress which 
 is ever5nvhere laid upon the mildness and amiability of the 
 Hottentot character in the olden time, we shall at once recognise 
 how little fitted these herdsmen must have been, trammelled as 
 they were with the safe-keeping of their flocks and herds, to have 
 broken through such cordons of energetic and intrepid Bushmen 
 as those who held the formidable and almost impregnable moun- 
 tain barriers. The difficulty they had in overcoming these 
 obstacles will become more and more apparent as we proceed 
 with our investigation. 
 
 And now before proceeding to the second head of our inquiry, 
 the fourth conclusion to which we are led is that these Cape 
 tribes were neither all annihilated, nor reduced to serfdom, but 
 that a considerable number fled from the danger which threatened 
 them and migrated to the north and north-east, and that their 
 descendants are now to be found amongst the present Koranas 
 and Griquas. 
 
Chapter XIV 
 
 THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 
 
 It is quite evident that when the Hottentot race commenced 
 its southern migration along the western coast about the end of 
 the fourteenth century, the tribes did not move onward in a 
 dense body, but, as in every other native migration we have 
 been able to trace, one tribe or group of clans followed the other 
 in a straggUng, scattered manner, some lingering in the rear 
 while others were pushing on in front like the advanced guard 
 of the main body ; and we find from the report of the voyage of 
 the Bode in 1677 that some of these loiterers were still to be 
 found as far to the north as 12° 47' lat. S. 
 
 We will on the present occasion only consider those tribes 
 which are now found along the west coast, viz. {a) the Namaqua, 
 (i) the Berg Damaras, (c) the Ovaherero or Damaras, and {d) the 
 Ovambo. 
 
 The Namaqua. 
 
 This tribe of Hottentots was at one time found much farther 
 to the southward than at present, as in the first days of the 
 Dutch settlement they were the neighbours of the Grigriqua and 
 Cochoqua. The latter people informed the Commander Van 
 Riebeek that they were Hottentots like themselves, dressed in 
 skins, hving in mat huts, and subsisting on cattle. They were 
 described as being men of tall stature, they were armed with 
 bows and assagais, and their breasts were protected by a large 
 piece of dry hide like a gorget or breastplate, which neither 
 assagai nor arrow could penetrate. They also used shields in 
 war, and thus in defensive armour had made a considerable 
 advance upon the more primitive mode of fighting still retained 
 by the Cape tribes. They were at that time advancing towards 
 the south, but such was the niunber of their fiocks and herds 
 
250 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 that they could, although divided into four camps, migrate but 
 slowly. 
 
 Their near approach gave rise to a succession of disputes and 
 skirmishes between themselves and the Cochoqua. After this 
 they appear again to have fallen back, for in 1659 a bartering 
 party of the Dutch advanced as far as the lower Oliphant's 
 river, when they heard of the Namaqiia living seven or eight 
 days' journey north of where they then were. In 1661 Van 
 Meerhof visited them. The foremost of them he met near the 
 site of the present town of Clanwilliam, the greater part of the 
 remainder were then located around the Khamiesbergen. He 
 described them, after seeing tribes of smaller made Hottentots 
 near the Cape, as half giants. Their chief Akembi treated both 
 him and his party very kindly, and Van Meerhof succeeded in 
 negotiating a peace between them and the Cochoqua. This was 
 done from no particular love for the natives, but in order to 
 facilitate their own trade. 
 
 The lucrative character of this bartering may be surmised, 
 and the anxiety of the Dutch to extend it will be understood 
 when we learn that in the early days of this traffic a bottle of 
 brandy worth sixpence was considered the fair value of an ox 
 in their exchanges with the natives. AU the Dutch sought for 
 in those days was the cattle of the natives, with which the 
 latter, who had but few wants and loved their herds, were fre- 
 quently very reluctant to part. Whatever expeditions were 
 undertaken into the interior were to carry out this one object, 
 and none other. The same one-sided way of bartering appears to 
 have continued until 1685, when the Governor, Van der Stel, 
 visited the Namaqua clans himself, hoping in his progress to 
 discover gold or silver, and to reach Vigiti Magna. But he failed 
 to attain either of these objects. He displayed such an amount 
 of overbearing cruelty towards the victimized Namaqua that 
 they rose in self-defence, and he was forced to make a somewhat 
 hasty retreat. 
 
 This uncalled for ill-treatment laid the foundation of future 
 troubles, and in 1689 the Namaqua came down frequently with 
 hostile intentions as far as the Berg and Twenty-four rivers. 
 No other inhabitants were then found in the wide extent of 
 country between the grazing grounds of the Cape tribes and the 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 251 
 
 Great river except these Namaqua hordes and the groups of 
 Bushmen who were its original proprietors. Even as late as 
 1797, when the boundary of the Colony extended as far as the 
 Onder Bokkeveld, Barrow found that the wild and almost iin- 
 known country beyond was inhabited by Bushmen alone, showing 
 that the Hottentots in their southern migrations always kept 
 within a certain zone, extending parallel with the coast line. In 
 travelling through the country beyond this, a strong escort was 
 required as a protection against the irate savages. 
 
 In 1797 the Namaqua were found to be possessed only of 
 flocks of sheep and goats, their great herds of cattle had already 
 disappeared. At one time in the country between the Khamies- 
 berg and the Orange river numerous tribes of Namaqua possessing 
 vast herds of cattle used to live, who dug deep wells in the beds 
 of the periodical streams, and covered them over to prevent 
 evaporation. But at the time of Barrow's visit the country was 
 desolate and uninhabited. In less than a century the original 
 inhabitants had dwindled to four hordes, who were in a great 
 measure subservient to the Dutch. 
 
 The Namaqua like the Kaffirs always paid the greatest 
 attention to their cattle, and like the latter had a fashion of 
 giving artificial directions to the horns of their oxen, the 
 Namaqua, however, confining the shape of the horns to a spiral 
 line something like those of the koodoo. This custom seems to 
 have been a very wide-spread one, not only among these tribes 
 of Hottentots, but also among the Amaxosa, Amampondo, Ama- 
 zulu, and even some of the tribes to the north of the Kalahari 
 and towards Ngami. The same method of ornamenting their 
 cattle was practised by some of the inhabitants of Northern 
 Africa in very ancient times, a fact which is found depicted in 
 some of the old Egyptian paintings. 
 
 The Namaqua women were remarkable for the same promi- 
 nences of body as those before noticed belonging to other tribes. 
 Some of the younger women, although they had figures which 
 might have been considered elegant, had the same conformation 
 of certain parts of the body as the Bushwomen and the other 
 Hottentots, yet it was in a less degree than is usual in the 
 former, though more so than in those of the latter. In women 
 who had borne children the breasts were disgustingly large and 
 
252 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 pendent, the usual way of giving suck to a child when carried 
 on the back was either by throwing one of them over or under 
 the shoulder. In this way they agree with the Latin satirist's 
 description of Ethiopian women on the borders of Egypt. In 
 the women of ancient Egypt enormous protuberances of body 
 were very common, and have been attempted to be accounted 
 for by various authors from a variety of causes. The men of 
 this particular tribe, however, were taller in stature than the 
 tribes farther to the south, and less robust. 
 
 The ancient weapons of the Namaqua were like those of the 
 other Hottentot tribes, the bow and arrow. The country for- 
 merly abounded with elands, hartebeests, gemsboks, quaggas, 
 and zebras, together with the giraffe, rhinoceros, and great 
 numbers of beasts of prey. In allusion to the great diminution 
 in the quantity of their game, and the loss of their cattle, an old 
 Namaqua woman who was asked by the traveller Thompson if 
 she could remember the first arrival of the Christians amongst 
 them, replied that she had good reason for remembering it, for 
 whereas before they came she knew not the want of a fuU meal, 
 it was now a difficult thing to get a mouthful ! This individual 
 was the oldest woman met with among the natives, and produced 
 a daughter who headed five generations. 
 
 In 1797 the Namaqua in their reduced condition were in great 
 dread of the Bushmen. They represented these as such a cruel, 
 bloodthirsty race of people, that they never spared the life of 
 any living thing that feU into their hands. And the Namaqua 
 stated that even to their own countrymen who had taken up 
 their residence with the Dutch, they behaved with atrocious 
 cruelty. These poor wretches when retaken by their countrymen 
 were generally put to the most excruciating tortures. A party 
 of Bushmen, so the Namaqua informed Barrow, living in that 
 part of the country, having captured a Namaqua Hottentot, set 
 him up to the neck in a deep trench, and wedged him so fast with 
 stones and earth that he was incapable of moving. In this 
 position he remained the whole night and part of the next day, 
 when he was discovered and liberated by some of his companions. 
 The unfortunate fellow declared that he had been under the 
 necessity of keeping his eyes and mouth in perpetual motion the 
 whole day to prevent the vultures from devouring him. 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 253 
 
 From what can be gathered of the condition of the Bushmen 
 in an undisturbed state, one cannot help suspecting that fearful 
 cruelties must have been frequently committed by the intruding 
 Hottentot tribes upon the aboriginal inhabitants of this portion 
 of South Africa, and thus roused in their breasts this feeling of 
 bitter revenge. 
 
 In 1813, at the time of the Rev. J. Campbell's first visit to the 
 country, few of these people were left in Little Namaqualand 
 except such as had congregated in the neighbourhood of PeUa, 
 near the left bank of the Orange river. Here the principal 
 inhabitants of the place were the Namaqua, of whom one hundred 
 and seventy-four were men, two hundred and three women, 
 twenty-two young men, forty-six young women, and one hundred 
 and ninety-one children. They lived in low circular huts, like 
 the Koranas, composed of long rods, or withes, stuck into the 
 ground at both ends, with mats made of rushes fastened over 
 them. They differed from the Koranas in this, that in the inside 
 they dug about a foot or a foot and a half into the ground, in 
 which they slept, to protect them, as they said, from the wind. 
 They lived entirely on their cattle, and having no trade and few 
 wants, seemed to spend most of their time in groups conversing 
 together. These people were under two captains, named Owib 
 and his son Bundelzwart ; there was also another called Vleger- 
 muis (the Bat). Few of them were tall. They were generally 
 of slender make, and were a timid people. 
 
 The Namaqua country extended along the sea coast as far as 
 the Damara. 
 
 The tribes to the north of the Orange river possessed in 
 abundance homed cattle, sheep, and goats, which were assigned 
 to the care of the children and boys. The women made the mats 
 of rushes for covering their huts, milked the cows, the same as 
 with the Koranas, built the huts, and dug roots for food. When 
 they married, the husband gave cattle to the parents of the 
 female and also slaughtered some for a feast. They danced to 
 music from flutes made of reeds and roots of the camel-thorn 
 tree, and used drums made of skins. Two parties often had a 
 set fight, those who conquered seized the cows of their opponents 
 and drank their milk, after which they returned them. The 
 men manufactured wooden vessels for holding milk, and bowls. 
 
254 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 assagais, rings, axes, and knives ; they also dressed hides and 
 dug wells. Their numbers had been reduced by wars of former 
 times and broils among themselves. 
 
 Their wars generally originated in disputes about cattle, in 
 which their chief wealth consisted, and frequently in one tribe 
 boasting its superiority over another, which rousing the pride 
 and rage of the party insulted, they flew to arms to ascertain 
 which tribe was the strongest. Their object in war was to rob 
 each other of cattle, and this gave rise to their fighting ; their 
 battles were almost always in the vicinity of their cattle-kraals. 
 If they took prisoners, some of these were killed, others liberated. 
 It was rarely that a Namaqua left his own country even on a 
 temporary visit to another. Those who lived in the neighbour- 
 hood of the Great river in 1813 were in a state of perpetual 
 terror of that irrepressible marauder Africaander, the least rising 
 of dust or sand excited great consternation, as they felt sure that 
 Africaander was coming against them. In 1823 the number of 
 the Namaqua had stiU further diminished to the south of the 
 Orange river ; by that time all who could escape across the 
 stream had done so, and were then living to the north of it. 
 
 The Namaqua, like the rest of their race, were divided into a 
 variety of separate clans governed by a chief whose authority 
 was very circumscribed and precarious. The existence of such 
 a number of subdivisions to the north of the Orange river would 
 suggest the idea that in addition to those who managed to escape 
 from the pressure of the advancing Europeans by recrossing it, 
 some portion of them had in all probability always remained 
 there, and thus preserved the herds of cattle which were so much 
 coveted by the Dutch. 
 
 In the south, those who had remained behind in the kraals 
 bordering on the Colony had been long ago exterminated or 
 reduced into servitude by the Boers. Thompson found only one 
 independent tribe of these people living to the southward of the 
 Orange at a place called t'Kams, near Pella. This Pella, which we 
 have before mentioned, had become one of the landmarks in the 
 history of the Koks and their Griqua followers, as it was from 
 this spot that they started upon their migrations to the eastward 
 along the valley of the Orange river. The features of the locality 
 were striking and characteristic. Pella was described as standing 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 255 
 
 at the foot of the Kaabas mountains, which rose in frowning 
 grandeur ahnost perpendicularly to the height of about two 
 thousand feet. It was about half an hour's walk from the 
 'Gariep, which flowed through a narrow rocky pass, forming a 
 rapid between the two opposing ranges. 
 
 It was here that Thompson visited the last of the Namaqua 
 tribes left to the south of the river. They were called Obseses,. 
 i.e. the Bees, from a species which associates amicably with the 
 common sort, a name probably adopted from the fact that this- 
 horde was formed by the association of the fragmentary portions 
 of a number of those which had been previously broken up and 
 scattered. ^ 
 
 These people, in common with every one else who unfortu- 
 nately fell within the reach of the ruthless Africaander, suffered 
 many atrocities at his hands and were plundered of much of 
 their cattle. We will however defer our remarks upon this- 
 point until we examine more fully into the career of the notorious. 
 Africaander himself, and the influence his advent into the country 
 had in giving an impetus to the migrations of several other 
 tribes. The sufferings however which the Namaqua endured 
 both on this and on previous occasions had no effect in teaching 
 them forbearance to those whom they found weaker than them- 
 selves, and whom they attacked in their turn ; and it cannot be 
 questioned but that they were guilty of acts of equal barbarity, 
 not only upon the Bushmen, but also upon the Ovaherero, or 
 Damara clans, living to the north of them. 
 
 The Namaqua, like the kindred Korana tribes, were ever 
 making forays upon their weaker neighbours, and of the deliberate 
 cruelty practised by them in some of these cattle raids upon the 
 unoffending Ovaherero there is abundant evidence. In one 
 that has been recorded, an unfortunate Damara lad stated that 
 these Hottentots, after shooting his parents, had invariably 
 mingled his scanty rations of milk with wood ashes before they 
 allowed him to drink it. This treatment was continued to the 
 last possible stage of starvation, when he managed to escape by 
 crawling away. Baines gives other instances of still greater 
 atrocity. In a foray near Bokberg, a Herero cattle herd having 
 
 ^ One of the Namaqua clans north of the Orange was called Kanna- 
 maparrisip, or the veldschoen wearers. 
 
256 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 been caught in the kraal by them, these Namaqua marauders 
 cut off both his hands_at the wrists. At Barmen Baines saw 
 several hapless women, who had been mercilessly crippled in 
 some of these cattle raids by the same inhuman wretches, who 
 had cut off their feet'as the easiest way of obtaining their iron 
 anklets ! 
 
 As the Namaqua have always clung to the zone of coast land 
 into which their forefathers migrated, and as they retreated 
 northward along the same line when the irresistible pressure 
 from the south prevented aU further progress in an opposite 
 direction, their movements did not have such an effect in 
 accelerating the annihilation of the old Bushman race as those 
 of the tribes that sought an asylum in the interior of the country 
 and therefore invaded the very heart of the widespread domains 
 of the ancient aborigines. This retrograde movement of the 
 Namaqua, which they were able to carry into effect without 
 trenching upon the claims of any other emigrant tribes, seems 
 to demonstrate the additional fact that a considerable interval 
 of time elapsed between the southern migration of the Hottentot 
 hordes and those who followed upon their trail, and that for a 
 long period an extensive tract of unusurped Bushman territory 
 intervened between them, until the receding wave of the nomadic 
 Namaqua rolled over the space and broke in restless depredations 
 upon the once distant boundaries of the Ovaherero. 
 
 The following tribes, although they do not belong to the 
 Hottentot family, may yet be conveniently considered in this 
 place, as these tribes on the western coast afford us a clearer 
 illustration of the sequence in which the migration of the various 
 tribes to the south took place than those of the central, eastern, 
 and south-eastern portion of the continent, where they have 
 been frequently huddled together and mixed up most confusedly 
 by the occurrence of wide extended native wars. 
 
 The Berg-Damaras. 
 These people most probably represent the pioneer tribes of 
 the dark-coloured races that first followed upon the trail of the 
 yellow-skins. They seem to possess a mixture of affinities, the 
 counterparts of which among other people are only to be found 
 in distinct races that have no present connexion with each other 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 257 
 
 Thus, whilst they possess the physical characteristics of the 
 Bantu nations, and are as a rule even blacker than the Ovaherero, 
 and although they are as different in colour and stature from the 
 Hottentots as it is possible for two races to be, still we find the 
 remarkable fact that one language is common to both peoples. 
 The territory which the Namaqua inhabit is entirely separate 
 from that of the Berg-Damara, still none the less is the language 
 of both nations the same. The difference between the Namaqua 
 and Korana dialects is greater than that between the language 
 of the Namaqua and Berg-Damara. 
 
 But these people are neither pastoral like the nomadic Hotten- 
 tot hordes, nor are they agricultural like many of the more 
 advanced of the Bantu nations ; they inhabit the rock-shelters 
 of the mountains, or build small temporary huts in concealed 
 positions like the Bushmen. They carry the same weapons as the 
 Bushmen, a bow and quiver of arrows ; the iron points for war 
 and poisoned arrows are quite like those of the Bushmen. Besides 
 these, they have arrows without iron points for kiUing guinea 
 fowls and other small game. These are the weapons of those 
 who remain unsubdued in the Waterberg, and therefore in all 
 probabiHty the ancient arms of their race ; while the men of the 
 clans that have been partially subjugated by the neighbouring 
 tribes are mostly armed with a miserable spear with an iron point, 
 which is often only about the length of a finger, and a stick hardly 
 four or five feet long, together with one or two rude kerries, i.e. 
 a stick a foot and a half long with the thick root end as the knob. 
 These are chiefly employed as throwing weapons. Here then 
 we find in this one race distinctive features which characterize 
 the other three, stiU, notwithstanding these separate points of 
 similarity, the Berg-Damara are a nation by themselves, and 
 apparently quite distinct from the Ovaherero, the Namaqua, and 
 the Bushmen. 
 
 Their number is estimated at about thirty thousand. They 
 inhabit the mountainous parts in the south-west, west, and north- 
 west of Hereroland, that is to say the mountains between Reho- 
 both and Otyimbingue, to the westward as far as is habitable, 
 the Erongo mountains, the Etyo mountains, and the Waterberg, 
 and to the north and north-west half way to Ondonga ; how far 
 they live in the interior is unknown. They have not, however, 
 
 s 
 
258 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 been found in the hunting veld of the Bushmen to the east. Of 
 their pohtical condition very httle is known. In individual 
 families the house-father is the natural head, but for the rest it 
 appears that every one who can provide for his sustenance can 
 have his own way of doing and leaving undone what he likes. 
 To the north of the Waterberg, however, a few chiefs have 
 apparently authority over several thousand people. 
 
 From the extremely slight cohesion of this nation, it is also 
 to be Explained why it hardly ever comes forward as acting 
 independently. Although enslaved, robbed, and murdered on 
 all sides, somehow it never gathers its strength to go against its 
 enemies. And yet such an undertaking might prove very dan- 
 gerous to its oppressors, for the nation is numerous, and in 
 possession of the mountains, the natural strongholds of the 
 country. Instead, however, of thus combining for defence, at 
 most a family when attacked will attempt resistance. In the 
 wars between the Namaqua and Ovaherero, the Berg-Damara 
 are found on either side, being employed on that of the Namaqua 
 as spies and accomplices, following for the sake of booty. Dacha 
 smoking seems to have sapped the last vestige of energy out of 
 these people in the Waterberg. 
 
 As regards the mode of living among the Berg-Damara, it is 
 to be remarked that it is the very meanest imaginable. Few of 
 them possess cattle of any description, at most they try to get a 
 few goats, all the remaining cattle which falls into their hands is 
 eaten up at once, on which occasions they can consume a very 
 large quantity of meat. Although they are as little herdsmen as 
 hunters, they kill all the game they can, and for this purpose 
 spare no trouble in making pitfalls, immense abattis into which 
 they drive the game, as well as now and then organizing a chase. 
 Such is only the case, however, when game fortunately happens to 
 be in the neighbourhood of their dweUing places. They do not, 
 like the Bushmen or Hottentots, follow up the game with any 
 earnestness, or undertake distant hunting expeditions for the 
 sake of capturing it. Veld-kost, i.e. everything which is eatable 
 and procurable in the desert, is their ordinary sustenance. All 
 these things are sought for and gathered, and, whenever possible, 
 a considerable store for bad times is kept on hand. 
 
 Their principal nourishment is locusts and uintjes. When the 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 259 
 
 locust season comes, their time of harvest arrives, and when the 
 country is being devastated by locusts the Berg-Damara rejoices, 
 for the time has arrived when he is able without much trouble or 
 exertion to fill his belly to his heart's content. The locusts which 
 are caught are roasted at the fire, and crushed into powder, 
 which can be preserved in this state for a long time. Besides 
 these two chief articles of food, there are many other things 
 which afford a Uving to the Berg-Damara ; here he finds a nest of 
 wild bees, there he digs up an anthiU to rob the industrious little 
 creatures of their winter provision of grass seeds ; the thorn 
 tree offers its gum, all sorts of berries, which chiefly consist of 
 skin and kernel, aU kinds of thick caterpillars are collected, 
 mouse holes are dug up, and in general all that can be chewed or 
 digested forms the food of the omnivorous Berg-Damara. 
 
 They Uve in bush huts of a very peculiar form, somewhat in 
 the shape of a cone. A few long poles whose points meet together 
 form the framework, and over and through these as much bush- 
 work is put as wiU form at least a shelter just big enough for a 
 fire near the entrance and sleeping places for the family. The 
 household furniture is likewise simple. Earthen pots are manu- 
 factured by rolling out clay to slender sausage-like sticks and 
 laying them in a spiral form so as to construct the sides, then the 
 half dried wall is stroked smooth with the hands. They may have 
 a few wooden buckets and bowls, the last always of an oval shape, 
 and probably a wooden mortar, i.e. the tnmk of a tree hollowed 
 out, in which the locusts and uintjes are pounded with a wooden 
 pestle. 
 
 Although it would be incorrect to say that they, like the 
 Bachoana and Basutu tribes, were agriculturists, they seem to 
 display incipient germs in the art of cultivation, as wherever a 
 secure spot offers suitable soU and water for a smaU garden, they 
 take advantage of the situation and plant tobacco, dacha, pump- 
 kins, and melons. In this respect they far surpass the Ovaherero 
 and the Namaqua. 
 
 The covering of the men is a belt, with a piece of skin in front 
 and another behind like an apron. The aprons of women are 
 generally adorned with small strings, aU kinds of beads, buttons, 
 and small bones. A peculiar custom is that the women, even 
 during the greatest heat of the summer, carry about with them 
 
26o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 all the skins and skin rugs they possess, so that they may be 
 always prepared for flight. It is from this cause that the women 
 of even the poorest class amongst them are wrapped in furs, as 
 among the Greenlanders. Similar to most of the Bushmen, the 
 Tambukis, and a few other tribes, these people mutilate their 
 hands by cutting off the first joint of one of their Uttle fingers. 
 There are certain families among them that cut out one testicle 
 of every male child. 
 
 The Ovaherero take away the children of the Berg-Damara. 
 The revenge which the Berg-Damara takes is to seize and slaughter 
 the cattle of the Ovaherero. The first is a very trifling error in 
 the eyes of the Ovaherero, whereas they look upon the second 
 as a grievous crime, quite like murder. In these thefts the Berg- 
 Damara have a great advantage over their pitiless enemies the 
 Ovaherero, in being accustomed to the rough life of mountaineers, 
 and thus easily escaping from the pursuing commandos which are 
 sent after them. As mountain climbers they are not excelled 
 by any other tribe in the country, and thus with their hard feet 
 they pass rapidly over the rocks and leave their disappointed 
 persecutors far in the rear. From the smaUness and bushlike 
 appearance of their houses, and as their situation is not betrayed 
 by the lowing of cattle, it is no easy task without the assistance 
 of a special guide to discover their position, especially as they are 
 generally concealed in some nook of the mountains. The 
 Ovaherero make short work with those who fall into their hands : 
 the full-grown are murdered, and the children are reduced to 
 abject slavery. 
 
 Notwithstanding they omit no opportunity of plundering 
 their bitter enemies, no particular malignity of character is 
 ascribed to them. Much, however, cannot be said in praise of 
 their morality. Polygamy is the order of the day, and each has 
 as many wives as wiU stay with him. The man has undoubtedly 
 the same right to put away the wife as the wife has to leave the 
 husband, and if one person feels himself stronger than another he 
 wiU consider himself perfectly at hberty to take away by force 
 any female to whom he takes a fancy. 
 
 Among their peculiar customs, the men, although such 
 universal feeders, do not eat hares. The reason given for this is 
 an old story of the hare and the moon. If, to wit, they were to 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 261 
 
 eat the hare, they would become like the hare, which dies and does 
 not return to life ; but if they do not eat the hare, they will 
 become like the moon, which dies, but again becomes alive. 
 Women and children, however, eat the hare, but on such occasions 
 they must bury the animal's fur. The Berg-Damara bow to the 
 stone-heaps of Heitsi Eibib, in the same manner as the Hottentots. 
 This custom they may have copied from them, as many of the 
 Ovaherero do the same. The Berg-Damara of the Waterberg 
 speak of a large black stone situated at a certain spot in the 
 Kaoko mountains, which they term their great-grandfather, and 
 say that they and every other living thing came from it. 
 
 The Ovaherero like the Namaqua despise the Berg-Damara 
 as heartily as possible. These, they declare, stand quite on a 
 level with the baboons which inhabit the rocks, and dig up 
 uintjes like the Berg-Damara. Nothing excites the laughter of 
 the Ovaherero so much as to say that the Berg-Damara are as 
 good men as themselves. 
 
 The Ovaherero or Damara. 
 
 It is stated upon good authority that the name Herero is an 
 attempt to reproduce the whirring sound of the broad-bladed 
 assagais used by the Ovaherero in their passage through the air, 
 a name which was bestowed upon them by the Ovambo, who had 
 good reason to remember this formidable weapon. Va is one of 
 the forms of the plural prefix of personal nouns common to all 
 South African Bantu languages, which may be rendered the men, 
 sons, or those of, so that the meaning of the name Ovaherero, 
 although not its Uteral translation, is the men of the whirring 
 assagais. 
 
 These Ovaherero are known to have migrated from the north 
 or north-east, but the period of their migration is not known. 
 It cannot, however, be less remote probably than two hundred 
 years. The name Damara is of comparatively recent origin, and 
 is applied alike to Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Ovatyimba. 
 The Ovambanderu were originally Ovaherero, but on separating 
 themselves either acquired or assumed the name by which they 
 are now known. Many Ovaherero and Ovambanderu are desti- 
 tute of cattle and sheep, and live apart from the others, existing 
 very much by the same means and in the same manner as the 
 
262 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Bushmen. These, strangely enough, are not called either 
 Ovaherero or Ovambanderu, but Ovatyimba. We may be allowed 
 then to conjecture that of the three names these people are 
 designated by, that of Ovatyimba, or Watyimba, as it is un- 
 doubtedly the oldest, is that they were originally known by, and 
 we are at once led to consider that the cradle of the race is in the 
 land by the waters of Muta Nzige, in the country of the Wazimba 
 recently traversed by the intrepid Stanley. 
 
 The Ovaherero, or Damara as they are more commonly called, 
 are the first of the black tribes we meet after passing through 
 the yeUow races scattered over that wide tract of country which 
 extends for two himdred miles north of the Orange river, and 
 includes Great Namaqualand and a large portion of the Kalahari 
 desert. They belong, as has been shown, to the Bantu family, 
 are a purely pastoral people, possessing great wealth in cattle and 
 sheep, and are not the less interesting because so much has still 
 to be learnt respecting them. The country they occupy is of vast 
 extent and varying richness, admirably adapted to their require- 
 ments. Their neighbours to the north are the group of tribes of 
 which]^the Ovambo is the most familiar to us. 
 
 In 1797 these Ovaherero lived, as now, to the north of the 
 Namaqua. In 1813 the southern boundary of their country was 
 some twenty-five days' journey to the north of the mouth of the 
 Orange river. They were then a numerous people, divided into 
 five principal clans. Their riches consisted in cattle ; while the 
 poor Damaras, who lived in the vicinity of the ocean, frequently 
 entered the service of the Namaqua. 
 
 Their chief amusement was dancing to music from a reed, and 
 they also beat on an instrument made of skin resembling a drum. 
 They were often at war with the Namaqua, generally in conse- 
 quence of their stealing women from each other. Their endeavours 
 were directed to obtaining each other's cattle. The prisoners 
 taken by the Damaras were not put to death, but were made 
 either servants or interpreters. On the death of a rich man they 
 covered his grave with the horns or bones of the cattle he had 
 killed when he was alive, as a proof, from their number, that he 
 was rich. 
 
 They appear to have been ever in the same degraded state as 
 that in which they were described in 1861 by the traveller Baines, 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 263 
 
 who then visited them. They were not able to manufacture 
 iron, and the assagais which they used were obtained in barter 
 from the Ovambo, till the incursions of the Hottentots forced them 
 to call their energies about them. The men of this tribe are of 
 moderate height, and generally weU made, of a rich brown colour 
 like the Kaffir ; their hair is generally straightened out and 
 matted in strands three or four inches long with fat and red clay. 
 Their dress consists of from fifty to eighty fathoms of thin 
 leather thongs coiled round the hips, and a small piece of skin 
 between the legs, with the ends brought up and tucked under the 
 cord. Beads, iron rings, and strips of tin and brass are used 
 for ornaments. 
 
 The headdress worn by the women of the tribe is of a peculiar 
 description. It is formed of stout hide, bent while still soft to 
 fit the head, and kept in form by rows of ornamental stitching. 
 To this is attached three large ear-shaped appendages, one at 
 each side and one at the back, which are also stitched in such 
 patterns as to give them the proper hollow. Long strings of 
 iron tubing, which like their assagais and ornaments of metal 
 were formerly obtained from the Ovambo, are worn pendent 
 down the back. The weight of such a headdress cannot be 
 trifling, but for a Damara woman to appear without it, with her 
 shaven head uncovered before her husband, would be considered 
 such a gross and unwarrantable breach of etiquette that even her 
 discovered infidelity would sink into insignificance in com- 
 parison. 
 
 These people are about the most heartless under the sun. 
 The aged and helpless are left to perish by several tribes, but that 
 a mother should refuse to pull a few bundles of grass to close up 
 a sleeping hut for a sick daughter, until she was threatened with 
 personal chastisement if she neglected it, is almost beyond belief, 
 yet Baines assures us that this was one of the occurrences which 
 he witnessed during his travels among them. He also relates 
 another case of an even more diabolical character. A Damara 
 was found robbing his sister, a blind girl, of the food apportioned 
 to her. When this was forbidden, he, in revenge, enticed his 
 sister to a distance in the veld and there abandoned her in her 
 helpless condition to be devoured by hyenas. 
 
 Cruel as was the treatment these Ovaherero received at the 
 
264 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 hands of the Namaqua, they made forays of an equally unjust 
 character upon the Bushmen. Those who beheve, writes the 
 observant Baines, in the Arcadian innocence of the savage state, 
 and fancy the poor natives know no ill till it is taught them by 
 wicked Christians, ought to have a few weeks' experience of these 
 people. Heaven knows some of us are bad enough, but the utter 
 want of decency, and even of common humanity, apparent here 
 seems to be the rule, and not the exception. 
 
 The Ovambo. 
 
 The Ovambo are living still farther north than the Ovaherero, 
 and belong to a group of tribes that should be called the Avare , 
 but from white men having first made the acquamtance of this 
 branch we call the whole Ovambo. 
 
 They are described by Mr. Henry Chapman, F.R.G.S., as a 
 very hospitable people, who must have been — before they were 
 phmdered by the Namaqua Hottentots — a rich and industrious 
 nation, capable not only of working in metals, but also of under- 
 taking works of no small importance, such as sinking wells of 
 ninety or a hundred feet in depth, with a spiral path cut round the 
 sides to enable people to descend to the water. Their villages 
 were also fenced in with considerable care, and the huts and out- 
 houses erected by a family have as imposing an appearance as 
 those of a populous village among other tribes. 
 
 They trade with the Portuguese. Their oxen constitute the 
 staple on their part, and in consequence of this one of their 
 chiefs, when a foray was made upon his herds, allowed his cows 
 to fall into the hands of his enemies and devoted all his energies 
 to the preservation of his oxen. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that so little is known with regard 
 to this interesting series of tribes. Their position on the western 
 coast is an isolated one, cut off from the great lines of commercial 
 traffic ; they have been seldom visited, and consequently only 
 a very few facts have been recorded about them. But even these 
 scattered fragments reveal to us the rich ungamered field that 
 awaits future investigation. We find there the representatives 
 of races still remaining distinct, which in other parts of South 
 Africa have been so rudely intermingled that the entanglement 
 has become almost chaotic ; and therefore, although we know 
 
THE TRIBES OF THE WEST COAST 265 
 
 but little about these western tribes, the teachings of that little, 
 if rightly read, have an important bearing upon the subject of our 
 inquiry. 
 
 Here in considerable portions of this western coimtry, as far 
 north as our present researches carry us, we find tribes or clans 
 of the aboriginal hunter race still persistently maintaining their 
 independence, treated with the same contumely and imreasoning 
 harshness as they have been treated by every other race with 
 which they have ever come in contact, yet amid all the oppressions 
 which have been heaped upon them, stiU clinging with the same 
 steadfast tenacity to the ancient strongholds of their forefathers, 
 as did their compatriots to the south. Here we find repre- 
 sentatives of the yeUow-skinned pastoral nomads, who, driven 
 themselves from the intra-lacustrine regions of Central Africa, 
 fled before the southern advance of the more strongly built men 
 of the darker race. Here again we find representatives of these 
 latter, whose pioneers pressed into the rear of some of the retreating 
 Hottentot tribes, and became so far amalgamated with them 
 that their descendants acquired the language of those with whom 
 they had fraternized to the extinction of their own. We find 
 that after acquiring the language of the Hottentots, their numbers 
 so increased that their own physical characteristics were thor- 
 oughly inherited by the tribes which now represent them, the 
 Berg-Damara of the present day. 
 
 We discover that this intermixture of races, giving rise to a 
 seeming paradox, namely that of a dark-skinned people speaking 
 a language aUied to that of the Bushman, or the Hottentot, took 
 place at every point upon which the hordes of stronger men 
 advanced. We shall find as we proceed with our investigations 
 that this fact forces itself prominently forward, especially in the 
 migrations of the Amaxosa and other Coast Kaffirs, as well as 
 those of the pioneer Bachoana tribes and some of the advanced 
 clans of the Leghoya, which gave rise to the formation of such 
 Bushman speaking peoples as the Masarwa and others. 
 
 We have here also a Bantu race still retaining the primitive 
 hunter stage of existence, yet carrying with them the latent 
 germ which developed in other branches of the family into that 
 wonderful fondness for agriculture for which they have made 
 themselves celebrated. Here we find in the Ovaherero a tribe 
 
266 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 of men wearing the staart-riem, a mode of covering which dis- 
 tinguishes the agricultural tribes of the Bachoana and Basutu 
 from the more semi-agricultural Coast Kaffirs, still remaining in 
 a partly pastoral condition ; while, superior to aU these, we have 
 the industrious Ovambo, skilled in the working of metals, dis- 
 playing an energy in overcoming the difficulties of nature unparal- 
 leled in any other native tribe of South Africa, exhibiting also in 
 the neatness and extent of their dwellings and in their passionate 
 love for agricultural pursuits, all the characteristic traits of the 
 most advanced of the Basutu tribes, such as the Bakuena, the 
 Bamangwato, and others. 
 
 From the foregoing resume we seem to obtain a glimpse of 
 the migratory movements of the two races here brought into con- 
 tact. In the first place we find amongst those of the yellow- 
 skins the old cave-dwellers who have occupied this portion of 
 the world from a period of such remote antiquity that the advent 
 of the nomadic pastoral Hottentots is perfectly recent. Again 
 we have different phases of the stronger race of dark-coloured 
 men who followed on the trail of the Hottentot hordes. These 
 phases represent the different waves of migration thrown off like 
 sequent ripples from a common centre, each carrying with it and 
 preserving in a stereotyped manner a facsimile of the social con- 
 dition and the modes of thought and action of the main central 
 body from which it was derived at the time of its separation ; 
 and each in succession showing the advance which had been made 
 in the conditions of life by the parent stock during the interval 
 which succeeded the previous separation, and by this means 
 affording a reflex view of the various stages through which the 
 parent stem itself had passed, from the time when its people 
 subsisted upon veld-kost until they gradually merged into the 
 hunter stage, whence they became developed from tamers of 
 animals and cultivators of grass-seeds into the pastoral and 
 agricultural tribes of the present day. 
 
 Having thus noticed the principal tribes along the eastern 
 shore of the Atlantic, we shall now proceed to gath|fer further 
 particulars about those which proceeded to the south, and of 
 which remnants exist until the present time. The principal of 
 these are at present known under the titles of Korana and Griqua, 
 and as the Koranas are certainly the purest of the Hottentot tribes 
 which still survive, we will commence our investigation with them. 
 
Chapter XV 
 
 THE KORAN AS 
 
 In commencing our examination of the traditions which have 
 been preserved among the Korana clans, we soon discover that 
 they have been able to preserve a more consecutive history than 
 that known of any other branch of the Hottentot race. It is for 
 this reason therefore that its study sheds a clearer and more 
 definite light upon the early migrations of these nomadic hordes 
 than is to be obtained from any other source, and it cannot be 
 doubted but that this elucidation of their wanderings furnishes 
 a key to those of many others. 
 
 The earliest traditions of their race were secured bj' Mr. 
 Kallenberg, for many years a missionary at the Pniel station on 
 the Vaal, which was established especially for the benefit of these 
 people. He was fortunate enough to obtain them from the old 
 people of the tribe who were looked upon as the repositories and 
 guardians of their tribal lore. He says that the traditions of 
 these Koranas are very clear upon the point that their forefathers 
 came from the far north-east interior, where they had dwelt in a 
 land which, from its abundance of water and every good thing 
 requisite for a pastoral people, was described as being almost an 
 earthly paradise. This description seems to point to the great 
 lake country of Central Africa. They knew nothing of how long 
 their remote ancestors had remained there. From the descrip- 
 tions given, it would appear that they were driven thence about 
 the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century 
 by tribes which they describe as Bachoana, a stronger race of men 
 than themselves, armed with the bow and battleaxe, and who 
 were themselves pressing down from the north and driving the 
 weaker Hottentot tribes before them as they advanced. 
 
 The fugitive tribes fled towards the setting sun, and continued 
 their flight until their progress in that direction was checked by 
 
268 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the great waters in front of them, when they turned towards the 
 south, following the shore of the great waters, which always 
 remained on the right hand. The country through which they 
 passed was either unoccupied, or inhabited only by enormous 
 herds of game and scattered tribes of primitive Bushmen. Thus 
 they slowly migrated along the coast-line until they reached the 
 Cape districts, where they settled and lived for some genera- 
 tions. 
 
 Such then are the Koran a traditions with regard to the migra- 
 tions of their forefathers, and such doubtless was the line of 
 migration of all the other Hottentot tribes of which we have 
 treated. As we are now confining our research more especially 
 to the Korana branch of that race, we will for greater explicitness 
 pursue our inquiry under the five following heads, viz. — 
 
 (a) The Koranas at the Cape, 
 
 (b) The Koranas of the great valley of the Orange river, 
 
 (c) The clans of the Middle Veld, 
 
 (d) Their migrations along the valley of the 'Gij 'GarieporVaal 
 and towards the north, 
 
 (e) Their migrations to the eastward in the basins of the Orange 
 and Caledon rivers. 
 
 {a) The Koranas at the Cape. 
 
 All the traditions of this tribe unhesitatingly affirm that their 
 forefathers were at one time settled in the present Cape district, 
 and that they took their title from a chief named 'Kora. With 
 the knowledge of this fact in our possession, we cannot help 
 suspecting that the orthography of Van Riebeek in his rendering 
 of Hottentot proper names was incorrect, and that 'Kora and not 
 'Gora was the word which ought to have been used, and which 
 we have advisedly adopted in a previous section when writing 
 of the 'Gorachoqua and the kindred tribe of Cochoqua, which 
 from Korana tradition would appear to be merely, as we have 
 suggested, subdivisions of one and the same tribe. These Cape 
 traditions of theirs carry them back not only to the time of the 
 Dutch occupation, but also to some of the visits of the Portu- 
 guese. 
 
 With regard to their great chief 'Kora, they state thathe^^was 
 the first one with whom the Europeans who settled there made 
 
THE KORANAS 269 
 
 a treaty. The strangers, however, soon began to encroach upon 
 the lands of the natives, and war followed as a natural consequence. 
 'Kora was then alive. It is not known whether he was slain in 
 battle or not, but it is known that he died young. He left as a 
 successor a son called Eikomo. He also had to defend his terri- 
 tory against the daily encroachments of the new colonists, but 
 he could not long resist them, and he was ultimately driven back 
 to the Brak river. 
 
 From that place he went still farther north, until he arrived 
 amongst a numerous tribe of Bushmen who were wandering on 
 the banks of the 'Gariep. Here he entered into a treaty with 
 these people, and settled in the country. Doubtless in this retreat 
 he avoided traversing the country occupied by the Namaqua, 
 the old rivals of his tribe, and in that case would first strike the 
 river between its mouth and the faUs. 
 
 It was from this point that the Korana clans began to separate 
 and spread themselves, some continuing along the river-valley, 
 others migrating into the Middle Veld, near the present Richmond 
 and Victoria West, where they remained until they appear to 
 have lost all tradition about the Great river. 
 
 The early history of the Dutch settlement furnishes some 
 interesting coincidences, which tend to prove the correctness of 
 these tribal traditions. Thus the Koranas give a pedigree of 
 six generations between 'Kora and a chief living in 1836, a period 
 of one hundred and eighty-four years after the landing of 
 Van Riebeek, a length of time which would be about equivalent 
 to the six generations indicated. In 1659 Van Riebeek, 
 having made a distribution of land among the Dutch colonists, 
 the Hottentots and they were involved in war. In 1669 
 peace was concluded, and the Dutch were permitted to occupy 
 a piece of land stretching three miles along the shore. And in 
 1673 they were again at war with the Hottentots. 
 
 Mr. Backhouse also obtained confirmatory e\adence upon this 
 point from a source independent of that from which the above 
 traditionary testimony was obtained. Some of the members of 
 a Korana clan living at Mira-Matchu informed him that the 
 great tribe of the Koranas took its name from 'Kora, an ancient 
 chief under whom they had formerly lived, and that they had 
 descended from a people who inhabited the Cape when the Dutch 
 
270 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 first took possession of that part of the country. The unanimity 
 of these traditions seems thoroughly to substantiate the points 
 now under examination, and to establish as historical facts, as 
 firmly as such facts can be established upon native testimony, 
 that the Koranas derived their appellation from a chief named 
 'Kora, and that their ancestors formed part of the group of tribes 
 which in the days of Van Riebefek occupied the country around 
 Table and Saldanha bays. 
 
 (6) The Koranas of the great valley of the Orange river. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that almost in every instance the names 
 assigned to the various rivers and mountains by the natives were 
 more lucid and distinctive, and therefore less likely to lead to 
 erroneous ideas with regard to the several localities indicated, 
 than those bestowed upon them by their more civilized successors. 
 Thus instead of the entire stream being called by one name, that 
 portion of the Orange river between its mouth and its junction 
 with the Vaal was designated by the former the 'Gariep, the river 
 op-great river, in contradistinction to the 'Gij-'Gariep, the yellow 
 river or Vaal, and the 'Nu-'Gariep, the black river or Orange. 
 In speaking therefore of the Koranas of the Orange river, it is 
 the first portion of this great water system, or as we have styled 
 it, the great valley of the Orange river, of which we now speak, 
 and of the Korana tribes which emigrated in that direction. 
 
 The backward condition in which many of these Koranas 
 were with regard to a knowledge of metals, even to a very recent 
 period, is not generally known. A considerable number, how- 
 ever, of the migratory clans of the early Koranas equally with 
 the Bushmen were unacquainted with the use of iron, and em- 
 ployed pieces of sharpened bone, flint, and crystal as points with 
 which to tip their arrows. They also used pieces of split reed as 
 knives for the purpose of cutting their meat ; moreover, these 
 Koranas were also unacquainted with the use of poison to render 
 their arrows more efficacious and fatal, until they acquired this 
 knowledge from the Bushmen, from whom they first obtained 
 their supplies, but who for a long period retained the secret of its 
 manufacture ; and it was only after fraternizing with the Bush- 
 men of the 'Gariep for many years that they discovered the 
 
THE KORANAS 271 
 
 method of mixing it for themselves.' Even to as late a period 
 as 1823 all the Korana clans of the 'Gariep were stiU armed only 
 with their ancient bows and poisoned arrows. Thus it was that 
 such men as Africaander, Barends, and the Koks became in early- 
 days, by the possession of firearms, so formidable, and rose to 
 such importance in the estimation of the surrounding natives. 
 
 A number of these old-fashioned Korana clans appear to have 
 clung more especially to the tract of country immediately above 
 and below the great falls of the 'Gariep. They continued here 
 so tenaciously that this section of them might well have been 
 called the Koranas of the Falls, until the ruthless forays of Afri- 
 caander drove them higher up the river. These falls are at a spot 
 where the entire volume of the waters of the great river precipi- 
 tates itself over a ledge into a yawning abyss several hundred feet 
 in depth. They were graphically described by the traveller 
 Thompson as early as the year 1823. These falls possess features- 
 of so grand a description that even the Koranas were im- 
 pressed with a superstitious dread concerning them. 
 
 The great waterfall was surrounded by dangerous precipices, 
 where the whole volume of the river was compressed into a channel 
 not more than fifty yards in breadth, whence it descended at an 
 angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and rushing tumultuously 
 through a black and crooked chasm, among rocks of a frightful 
 depth, escaped in a torrent of foam. This, however, was only 
 the prelude, the commencement of the scene. Continuing its 
 way through this deep chasm for about a mile, the entire body 
 of water, confined to a bed of scarcely one hundred feet in breadth,, 
 descends at once in a magnificent cascade fully four hundred feet 
 in depth. 
 
 The grandeur and sublimity of this scene, however, made little 
 
 impression upon the Koranas. To them its surroundings only 
 
 clothed it, amid the gloom of evening, with supernatural terrors., 
 
 Fortunately, these acted upon the minds of their enemies as well 
 
 as their own, so that it became a kind of guardian spirit to them ;, 
 
 while the fastnesses and dens of the surrounding woods and rocks 
 
 became their strongholds and places of asylum when too closely 
 
 pressed by their pursuers. 
 
 ' Evidence of 'Goggum' Toovenaar, an old Korana interpreter, up- 
 wards of eighty years of age, who was born on the banks of the Taba-Tae- 
 boep, or Kat river, mnning into the 'Gariep or Great Orange river. 
 
272 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The clans which remained wandering upon the banks of the 
 river were the more insignificant ones of the main tribe ; all the 
 leading branches appear to have migrated to the Middle Veld at 
 a ver}^ early period. Of these smaller river clanSj none of their 
 history has been preserved from the time of their first migration 
 northward until the commencement of the troublous times which 
 agitated, at the beginning of the present century, the native world 
 of South Africa. The deplorable condition to which they were 
 reduced shortly after that time we shall more fully enter upon 
 when treating of the freebooter Africaander and his exploits. 
 
 We will now, before proceeding with the account of the migra- 
 tions of these people, attempt to draw such a picture of their 
 social economy and character as may give additional life and 
 reality to our study of their further movements, remembering 
 that the description of the habits and customs of one of their 
 clans is a description equally applicable to all, and that in the 
 early portion of the nineteenth century these were the same condi- 
 tions of life as those which had been handed down to them from 
 their remote ancestors. For long ages they had evidently been 
 an unprogressive race, and what they were in 1800 was but a 
 reflection of what they had been previously, and what they would 
 almost certainly be in the days which were to follow. 
 
 The countenances of the Koranas exhibited a total absence 
 of mind, combined with an indescribable habit of drowsiness. 
 The women were complete sovereigns over the cows and milk. 
 Their children seemed playful and active, but in their progress 
 to manhood they lost this disposition. As a rule they lived in 
 separate kraals, each independent of the other, in each of which 
 they had a captain or chief, but his power was only nominal. The 
 rank was hereditary, but the richest man, or he who possessed 
 the greatest number of cattle, had always the greatest influence 
 in the community. With regard to their cattle, it was the duty 
 of the boys to watch them during the day, unless there was danger 
 of an attack from enemies, when the young men assisted. The 
 cattle were considered so much the property of the husband and 
 wife that the former could not dispose of any of them without 
 the consent of the latter. The women milked the cows, and some 
 of the cattle were killed entirely for their use ; the men had noth- 
 ing to do with the disposal of the flesh, but the husband in his 
 
THE KORANAS 273 
 
 turn had a similar privilege. In the first case only women par- 
 took, in the latter only men. The instance was rare when men 
 and women ate of the same ox or cow. 
 
 They had no rite of circmncision like the Bachoana and Kali&rs, 
 but when a boy entered upon the state of manhood a feast was 
 held, and, according to the circumstances of the father, eight or 
 ten oxen were killed in honour of the event. The Koranas were 
 timid and cautious when opposed to Bushmen, but bold in their 
 attacks upon any of the Bachoana tribes. As the different clans 
 assisted each other when attacked, it was rare for any other nation 
 to become the assailants. 
 
 Mr. Sass, a missionary who resided for some time among them, 
 states that most of them did not milk their cows in the morning, 
 because their rest would be disturbed by early rising. After a 
 long night's sleep, they would stretch their hands to the warm 
 ashes of the fire to light their pipes, and smoke for a few minutes, 
 and when the heat of the sun increased they crawled to the nearest 
 shade again to indulge in sleep. About noon the cattle returned 
 from the fields to drink, when with great exertion they bestirred 
 themselves to rise and milk them ; they then drank as much of 
 the milk as they could, after which they smoked and composed 
 themselves to sleep till the coolness of the evening seemed to 
 arouse them a little. This was their ordinary mode of living, 
 except when on journeys, for which they prepared by killing a 
 sheep and eating as much of it as they were able to devour. They 
 then set off, and were sometimes absent five or six days without 
 tasting a morsel more. Like most of the savage tribes, if desti- 
 tute of food they tied a skin cord around them, which they drew 
 tighter and tighter as they felt .the attacks of hunger. 
 
 The Koranas, though superior to the other Hottentots in 
 .stature and muscular strength, were greatly inferior to them in 
 moral character. Excessively vain and impudent, they had a 
 great deal more effrontery than true bravery. To a love of 
 plimder they joined an excess of idleness. All the work was done 
 by the women. The only time they shook off their apathy was 
 when they were engaged in the chase, or cattle-lifting, or at one 
 of their dancing festivals. Capricious and insubordinate, they 
 tolerated their chiefs, rather than obeyed them, each recognizing 
 his own will as his only law. They were irreconcilable in their 
 hatreds. T 
 
274 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The bodies of the women were loaded with beads, — they wore 
 them on their necks, their arms, their loins, and their ankles. 
 Their dress consisted of an apron of small cords, which descended 
 to their feet, and a kaross made from the skins of sheep or other 
 animals sewed together. They anointed their bodies with sheep- 
 tail fat, mixed with a reddish coloured ochre. They consumed 
 a great part of the day in smoking, and left their children covered 
 with vermin and their rush houses in a state of most disgusting 
 filth. All their energy and vigour appeared to be reserved for 
 their monthly dances. When the moon entered her first quarter 
 the kraal assembled on some favourite elevation, danced to the 
 sound of the tang-tang all night long, and sometimes for eight 
 nights in succession. In this amusement they placed no control 
 on their passions, but abandoned themselves to excesses of which, 
 writes M. Arbousset, it would be a shame even to speak. 
 
 One of the most singular customs of these people was that 
 which related to the succession of their chiefs. The eldest son of 
 the captain of the kraal while a lad was hardly allowed to walk, 
 but was kept constantly in his hut, and compelled to drink milk 
 frequently in order that he might grow up a strong man. The 
 milk was handed to him, for he was not allowed to wait upon 
 himself. When the father considered that he had arrived at the 
 age of manhood, he took two kerries, and presenting one to his 
 son, reserved the other for himself. With these the father and 
 son often fought, but immediately the son managed to vanquish 
 his father by knocking him down upon the ground, the parent on 
 rising commended him, and from that time acknowledged him 
 as the captain of the kraal in his stead. 
 
 Like the Bushmen, the Koranas exposed the aged to be 
 devoured by wild beasts, alleging in defence of this cruelty that 
 such people were of no use, and only consumed food which ought 
 to fall to the lot of others. 
 
 Having thus obtained a few glimpses of the inner life of-one 
 of these Korana kraals, we will once more take up the thread 
 of our investigation with regard to their continued migrations and 
 the[influence those migrations had in dispossessing the more primi- 
 tive Bushmen of their long inherited territories. 
 
 (c) The Korana Clans of the Middle Veld. 
 From the traditions preserved among some of the members 
 
THE KORANAS 275 
 
 of the Katse and other dans of this tribe, it would appear certain 
 that some of them at any rate migrated direct from the Cape 
 districts to the tract of country in which they for a time first 
 located themselves, that is in or near the present Division of 
 Victoria West. These traditions prove also that they did not 
 arrive there in a body, but as in all other native migrations 
 they joined their new settlement one after the other in a kind of 
 straggling manner, until they became at length a formidable 
 people. 
 
 According to the evidence of Hendrik de Katse, an old Korana 
 living on the bank of the Vaal near Pniel, his portion of the tribe 
 came from the old colonial districts about four generations before 
 his time.i The Bushmen in those days, he said, inhabited all 
 the land : there were neither Griquas nor Kaffirs, and the Bush- 
 men lived alone in it. They lived by hunting, and if they had 
 quarrels with one another, they soon made friends again, as is 
 the custom of those who belong to the same people. The Bush- 
 men of those parts called themselves T'hors-qua, but the Koranas 
 •styled them Sana. The Bushmen were also called by them 
 'Tua-'kne — the Krantz or Cave dwellers. 
 
 It was the main stem of their tribe which settled here, origi- 
 nally called the Great Koranas, from which aU the offshoots or 
 <;lans were derived. Here they remained for some two or three 
 generations, slowly moving about from place to place, dividing, 
 and subdividing, until they formed about thirty distinct septs, 
 distinguished by different appellations indicative of some peculiar- 
 ity of their dress or mode of subsistence. Their only occupations 
 were those of making war upon the aboriginal inhabitants, follow- 
 ing the chase, or making forays upon one another's kraals for the 
 purpose of cattle lifting. Some of their kraals possessed large 
 herds of cattle, and also some sheep and goats. Their flocks 
 of the latter, however, were not numerous. The difficulty of 
 driving them from place to place and of protecting them from 
 
 ^ The narrative of Hendrik de Katse was obtained from him in 1874 
 by the writer whilst engaged on the geological survey of Griqualand West. 
 He was then about seventy years of age, which would give about one hun- 
 dred and eighty years since his forefathers migrated into the interior. His 
 information related not only to the origin of the Korana tribe, but took 
 up the thread of the tribal history at the point where that of Mr. Kallen- 
 berg ended, and treated also of the disappearance of the primitive inhab- 
 itants of the country. 
 
276 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 wild animals doubtless operated against augmenting their flocks 
 to any considerable amount. Many kraals possessed neither 
 sheep nor goats, but only cattle ; some of the weaker clans had 
 been pltmdered of all, and had retrograded in consequence from 
 the pastoral to the hunter state. 
 
 In personal appearance these Koranas, similar to those pre- 
 viously described, were superior to any other race of Hottentots, 
 many of them being taU and possessing an air of ease and good 
 humour about them. They bore an inveterate animosity towards 
 the Bushmen, on account of continual depredations on their flocks 
 and herds. Their wars with the Bushmen were prosecuted with 
 so much rancour that quarter was seldom given on either side, 
 either to old or young. Though possessing similar weapons to 
 the Bushmen, those of the Koranas were superior in size and 
 workmanship, and their po'^oned arrows were occasionally 
 feathered. Their only manufactures were mats, arms, karosses, 
 some coarse earthenware, and a few wooden vessels carved with 
 much labour out of solid blocks of wood. In their earlier days, 
 as before stated, they possessed no iron at all ; their arrow points 
 were made of crystal, or flint, while the sharp edge of a split reed 
 answered the purpose of a knife for cutting flesh. They did not 
 work in iron, such things as knives and hatchets were afterwards 
 obtained either from the Bachoana or the Boers. 
 
 Like the rest of their countrymen they were fond of singing 
 and dancing by moonlight, and of amusing each other by relating 
 fictitious adventures around their evening fires. True to the 
 instincts of their race, whenever they could procure honey they 
 made a very intoxicating sort of mead or hydromel, by fermenting 
 it with the juice of a certain plant, the secret of which was always 
 retained amongst them with great strictness. Either by copying 
 from their brethren, the Namaqua, or urged thereto by constant 
 hostilities with the Bushmen, or equally frequent squabbles and 
 skirmishes among themselves, these clans of the Middle Veld 
 had made an advance in their mode of warfare, by adopting the 
 use of defensive armour in the shape of shields, which were enor- 
 mously large and so thick that an arrow or an assagai could not 
 penetrate them. One which Barrow saw was made of the hide 
 of an eland, and measured six feet by four. Their regular attacks 
 were made in large parties of four or five hundred. Though very 
 
THE KORANAS 277 
 
 good friends among each other while poor, the moment they 
 obtained a quantity of cattle by plunder they began to quarrel 
 about the division of the spoil. On some of these occasions this 
 was carried to such an excess that they continued to fight and 
 massacre each other till very few remained on the field. 
 
 Such then remained the conditions of life among these Korana 
 hordes of the Middle Veld, until some of them had so entirely 
 forgotten the traditions of their race that when one of their hunt- 
 ing or marauding parties, on a reconnoitring expedition penetrated 
 as far as the banks of the Great river, or 'Nu 'Gariep, they returned 
 to their friends and told them they had reached the end of the 
 world,, where the water went all round its borders ; and it was not 
 until a much later period that any of the Koranas were found 
 hardy enough to cross to the opposite bank of the stream, and 
 discovered that the world continued on the northern side and 
 that a country existed there similar to the one in which they lived. 
 
 This discovery had an important bearing upon the future 
 destinies of the Korana race. Their increasing clans began grad- 
 ually to spread themselves in the direction of the river, moving 
 slowly from stage to stage through the present Richmond Division. 
 At this time the principal branches of their tribe were the Taai- 
 bosches, who represented the main stem of the Great Koranas, 
 and whose chiefs were acknowledged to be paramount over all 
 the others. The first great offshoot from the main trunk was 
 that of the Lynx clan, after which followed the Toovenaars, who 
 ■again threw off a clan called the 'Gaap or Katse people. 
 These, or portions of their clans, took the lead in the northern 
 migration. At first only a portion of the 'Gaap or Katse moved 
 onward, the older people belonging to it still lingering behind in 
 the Middle Veld. Even in 1797 a large portion of the Korana 
 tribe was still on the left bank of the 'Nu 'Gariep, but by that time 
 they had commenced congregating more thickly along the banks 
 of the river itself. They were then a very formidable tribe. 
 Their pioneers had struck the 'Nu 'Gariep a little below the present 
 Hopetown, and their advanced parties crossed somewhere between 
 that and the junction of the 'Nu and 'Gij 'Gariep, or Vaal, migra- 
 ting over the country diagonally until they struck the 'Gij 'Gariep 
 itself near the present Backhouse drift. These people were princi- 
 pally the 'Gaap or Katse and the Toovenaars. 
 
278 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Another body seems to have crossed the river lower dowTi, 
 near where the great escarpment and plateau of the 'Kaap fringes 
 upon the 'Gariep or Great river. These penetrated, in aline of 
 march in the rear and to the westward of the advance of the others, 
 as far as Klaarwater, the site of the present Griquatown, then 
 called 'Gatee t'Kamma. The whole country was then inhabited 
 by Bushmen, and was covered with thick groves of the wild olive 
 tree. The place of their crossing was at the Presala, Prisoca, or 
 Prieska drift. 
 
 The Toovenaars and Katses, on their arrival at the 'Gij 
 'Gariep, turned and continued their migration up the stream, 
 extending not only as far to the westward as the ridge of the 
 'Kaap, near Upper Campbell, where one of the clans made a 
 temporary halt, but also along the valleys of the Kolong (the 
 present Hart) and the 'Gij 'Gariep itself, some of them stretching 
 to the north along the former until they came in contact with the 
 Bachoana tribes advancing from the opposite direction. This 
 collision took place about the same time with the advanced parties 
 of both the Taaibosches and the Toovenaars, and thus once more 
 the Koranas came face to face with the very tribes before whom 
 their fathers had fled some centuries previously from the far 
 north-east interior. 
 
 In the interval, however, the Koranas had made advances in 
 the art of war, they no longer used the puny stone or bone tipped 
 reed shafts of their forefathers, but had acquired the mystery of 
 rendering their arrows fatal with the deadly poison of the Bush- 
 men. They were no longer a few fugitive hordes, but an advan- 
 cing formidable tribe of hunter herdsmen, who had been accus- 
 tomed for several generations to lord it over all with whom they 
 came in contact. The more confirmed agricultural pursuits of 
 the Bachoana, on the other hand, appear to have deprived them 
 of a portion of the warlike fire which had in earlier ages enabled 
 their forefathers to conquer ; while the Koranas had become more 
 cruel and more daring than any other tribe of their nation. Very 
 soon, therefore, these Bachoana, or Briquas as some writers have 
 called them, found to their cost that they were great sufferers 
 from the proximity of such restless and daring neighbours. Large 
 herds of their cattle were carried off, and their children were also 
 seized and forced into slavery, while in the conflicts which took 
 
THE KORANAS 279 
 
 place between them the assagais of the Bachoana had Uttle chance 
 against the poisoned arrows of the Koranas. 
 
 Such, however, was the innate love of plunder which possessed 
 these Koranas, that they were not content with looting the herds 
 of the rich Bachoana tribes, but they frequently turned back to 
 rifle the kraals of their own countrymen whom they had left be- 
 hind in the old camping grounds south of the Great river. This 
 was especially the case after the advent of the Griquas, and when 
 both they and the Koranas began to possess themselves of fire- 
 arms. This acquisition so increased their rage for plunder, that 
 they carried their devastating freebooting expeditions to an ex- 
 tent never before thought of, until their names became a terror 
 to the native tribes, and they were not unfitly styled by one writer 
 the Southern Arabs of the Desert. It was during this period 
 of imrest that the remaining clans of the Middle Veld were fre- 
 quently exposed to forays made upon them by the more hostile 
 and poorer branches of their own tribe. 
 
 A graphic description of one of these attacks was given to the 
 writer, which may form a characteristic ending to our remarks 
 upon these clans of the Middle Veld. The narrator was one 
 Leonard Jagers, a counsellor of the Katse clan, who was present 
 at the time of the attack made upon his parents' kraal. What 
 he remembered of this affair was that at the time he was rather 
 more than three years old, when one morning at day-break his 
 friends suddenly found their camp surrounded. Their assailants 
 opened a heavy fire upon the huts and kraal, which as quickly 
 as they could seize their arms was returned by the inhabitants. 
 The firing on both sides continued without intermission, or, as 
 Jagers expressed himself, they fired and fired until the smoke was 
 so thick you could not see through it. This was continued all 
 the day, the women and children in the meanwhile remaining con- 
 cealed in the huts. Nearly the whole time Jagers was lying with 
 his head on his mother's lap, as she was seated on the ground. 
 Late in the afternoon, as the fire was gradually slackening, a stray 
 buUet entered the hut and struck his mother on the breast, pierc- 
 ing her heart, when she immediately fell dead upon him, covering 
 him with her blood. This was the only life sacrificed, no one 
 else was killed on either side. 
 
 From this peculiar plan of attack a.nd wonderful waste of 
 
28o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 powder, it would seem as if the design of the assailants was to 
 make as much noise as possible, and then amid the din and terror 
 inspired by it upon the minds of those who were as yet somewhat 
 unaccustomed to firearms, to get possession of their cattle with as 
 little risk to themselves as possible ; for their intention was evi- 
 dently to capture and to feast, and not to fight and die. This 
 instance, however, will give a very good idea of what some of the 
 natives have described as the desperate wars which were waged 
 between Korana and Korana for cattle. 
 
 Shortly after this, the increasing depredations of the banditti 
 of the Lower 'Gariep, the frequent forays of their own country- 
 men, and the steady but ever-continued advance of the Whites 
 beyond the colonial boundarj', compelled the last of these clans 
 to break up their camps and rejoin once more the different por- 
 tions of the tribe to which they severally belonged ; and a few 
 years afterwards only a few very insignificant kraals were to be 
 found to the south or on the left bank of the 'Gariep and 
 'Nu-'Gariep. 
 
 These rivers formed the Rubicon of the Korana race. Passing 
 that, they steadily grew in power and daring, pursuing a course 
 of devastation, until tribe after tribe was impoverished or ruined 
 by them, and the terror of their name spread far into the interior, 
 even as far to the northward as the great town of the Batlapin ; 
 and to the eastward until they made the Basutu around Moshesh 
 tremble in their mountain strongholds. 
 
 Having arrived thus far with our subject, we will in the next 
 place take their northern migrations into consideration. 
 
 {d) Their Migrations along the Valley of the 'Gij-'Gariep and to- 
 wards the North. 
 
 Before the intrusion of the Koranas into the country north 
 of the Great river in the latter half of the last century, an almost 
 boundless expanse of territory was stiU in the hands of its primi- 
 tive owners. To the east and west the stronger races had already 
 passed it, but in doing so had merely skirted its opposite borders 
 along the coast lines. From the north, the Bachoana and Basutu 
 tribes had pressed in like two long sand banks jutting into the 
 broad bosom of an extensive lake ; but we shall find that even 
 the portion of the country into which they had intruded was only 
 
THE KORANAS 281 
 
 partially occupied by them, while in the midst of these wilds 
 there were stiU numerous clans of Bushmen who had never before 
 the arrival of the Korana intruders seen the face of any other 
 men than those belonging to their own race. Fortunately the 
 native evidence upon this point is clear and definite. 
 
 In 1874 when the writer was employed in a geological survey 
 of that portion of the Orange river vaUey through which these 
 migratory tribes had passed on their northern route, he met, 
 among the precipices of the great 'Kaap plateau, at a spot be- 
 tween the two points where these nomadic Koranas had crossed 
 the river, an ancient Bushman whom the Griquas had named 
 Oude Timiiierman. He was found among his ancestral rocks of 
 the 'Kaap, about halfway between the jimction of the Orange 
 and Vaal rivers and the black precipitous gorge through which 
 the united streams run, near a place called Bang Hoek, whidi 
 may be interpreted The Glen of Terror, where the river, hemmed 
 in by great precipices, dashes over a siaccession of rocks. He was 
 the oldest looking man the writer had ever seen, and he certainly 
 at the very least must have numbered a hundred years. He had 
 more the appearance of a skeleton with a shrivelled parchment 
 skin drawn over it than anything else. He looked like a man of 
 past ages again revisiting the earth, a fossil man, who bore all 
 the signs of antiquity about him, and was a veritable relic of the 
 past. His legs were covered with the most frightful scars, from 
 the bums he had received whilst cowering over a small fire to 
 impart some warmth to his withered limbs during the severity 
 and frosts of the chilling winters. 
 
 He said that he was now living alone, that his wife had gone 
 away to see his two daughters, who were stajdng at the nearest 
 pohce camp, that he had descended from a race of Bushman 
 captains, and he then gave the names of the five last descents. 
 
282 
 
 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 'Nambe, 
 a great chief, who was the ather of 
 
 'Nam-an-'gan, 
 who was the father of 
 
 Maar-man, 
 who was the father of 
 
 'Cin-'qua 
 
 'Ka'sa-'kan 
 
 'Te to, 
 who died at the spot where 
 
 my informant 
 lived, and was the father of 
 
 'Nam-u-'go-'te 
 
 OuDB Timmerman, 
 
 the ancient Bushman 
 
 captain, my informant, 
 
 and the last of his tribe, 
 
 who had 
 
 Two daughters. 
 
 He stated that when he was a child the Bushmen of that part 
 believed that the only people in the world were Bushmen and 
 Lions. We fought, he said, the Uons, and hunted the great game, 
 and all the game was our cattle ! In those days the country 
 swarmed with lions and large game ; they were there, and there, 
 and there, wherever you see ! He said when a boy of, as he de- 
 scribed it, about ten or twelve years of age, ^ the first Koranas 
 crossed the Great river, and came into the country where his 
 father and his tribe lived. The Koranas began to destroy the 
 Bushmen's cattle, and drive them away ; it was after this that 
 the sight of the herds belonging to the strangers became too 
 strong a temptation for them to withstand, and then, he said, we 
 saw that they would kill us aU, annihilate us from the earth, for 
 we were not as they, our houses are among the rocks, we are free 
 men, we love the sun ! 
 
 A war of extermination was commenced against them by the 
 Koranas. Many of the Bushmen, he said, were shot ; others fled 
 from the country ; a few like himself tenaciously clung to their 
 
 ^ The statement of Timmerman would show that the Koranas first 
 crossed the Great river about 1785-90, a date which, although the exact 
 year is not known, must be nearly correct. 
 
THE KORANAS 283 
 
 old haunts, the place of their birth, where they lived out of the 
 usual track, , and could hide themselves in the krantzes. The 
 bees' nests, he said, were to him what cows were to other men, 
 as he could fill his leather sacks with the honey whenever the 
 nests were full. The place where he and his fathers lived is now 
 called Timmerman's Fontein, and was one of the spots reserved 
 by the Griqua chief Waterboer as a farm for himself. This ancient 
 added with an expression of sorrow that now he was very old, 
 and his only wish was that they would not drive him away, but 
 let him die and leave his bones where his fathers had laid theirs 
 before him. 
 
 Such was the somewhat pathetic account of the former con- 
 dition of the country and its prior occupants, a statement thor- 
 oughly substantiated by every old Korana whose evidence could 
 be obtained upon this point. Hendrik de Katse was most em- 
 phatic in asserting that the country when they came into it was 
 unoccupied, that it was only filled with the wild game and the 
 Bushmen. The Koranas, he said, after crossing the Great river, 
 traversed the coimtry without hindrance until they arrived on 
 the hiUs near the present farm Backhouse. At this place a 
 number of Bushmen gathered together, and a large body of them 
 attacked the cattle whilst they were grazing in the veld. 
 
 The Bushmen had concealed themselves among the hiUs, 
 and after the Koranas had finished milking and were driving the 
 cattle out, the Bushmen suddenly attacked them in large num- 
 bers. They were all armed with bows and arrows, and some 
 carried also a kind of assagai. They immediately commenced 
 driving off the cattle, wheii the alarm was given in the camp of 
 the Koranas, who were armed in those days in the same manner 
 as the Bushmen. The Koranas, some hvmdreds in number, 
 seizing their weapons, followed over the fiats, where they over- 
 took the Bushmen and the cattle. Here a great battle com- 
 menced between them. The Koranas, after two or three hours' 
 fighting, succeeded at last in driving the Bushmen away from 
 the cattle. Seven Koranas were woimded. Then the Bush- 
 men fled towards the drift near Backhouse, and here again the 
 Koranas overtook them, and a great slaughter followed. The 
 bank of the river leading to the drift was covered with dead 
 Bushmen, who fought and struggled until they gained the oppo- 
 
284 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 site side, when the Koranas ceased from pursuing them. From 
 that day the drift was called 'Go-'koo-ltmie, ^ from the great 
 destruction of the enemy there. This, said Hendrik, was the 
 first Bushman war. 
 
 A kind of peace was then made. During this peace the 
 division of the Koranas called 'Gaap or Katse settled at the top 
 of the kloof, where Campbell was afterwards built, but after 
 remaining here a short time they again removed, and after a 
 year's absence returned. Three years afterwards another war 
 broke out between them and the Bushmen, who on this occasion 
 came from the Langeberg. The remnant of those they had 
 first come in contact with were at this time living intermingled 
 with the Koranas, subsisting on the honey of the 'Kaap. 
 
 This statement evidently confirms that of the old Bushman 
 captain, and shows that the Bushmen with whom the Koranas 
 were first at war were those inhabiting the rocks of the 'Kaap, 
 which would include the clan of 'Nambe, and of which Maarman 
 must have been the captain, so that he obtained his name from 
 some Dutch-speaking Korana or some of the Bastaards who 
 followed shortly afterwards. 
 
 The Langeberg Bushmen, continued De Katse, came down 
 in a great commando upon them, and surrounded their camp in 
 the night. In the morning the Koranas were perfectly unaware 
 of their danger, and after milking their cows, sent the cattle out 
 as usual. As soon as they arrived at the great vlei (Upper 
 Campbell) the Bushmen sprang out of the long grass and reeds 
 upon them, seized the herds, and drove them rapidly off. Three 
 of the Koranas were killed in the vlei, and three were wounded ; 
 but the alarm being given, they overtook the raiders before they 
 got clear away. An obstinate struggle took place, and they 
 fought for some time, but at last succeeded in driving the Bush- 
 men clear of the cattle and] into some deep kloofs near the 
 high ridge where the road passes. Here the Bushmen stood at 
 bay, but a great number were slain. ^ The remnant fled, and 
 
 ^ The drift was thus named by the Bushmen themselves, from the 
 merciless way in which they were shot down. The meaning of the word 
 is equivalent to the expression, You showed us no mercy. 
 
 ^ This advantage was very Ukely obtained from the large shields, 
 which we have already learnt these Koranas carried, and which enabled 
 them to approach the Bushmen with comparative safety. 
 
THE KORANAS 285 
 
 the Koranas taking up their spoor, followed on it, but did not 
 overtake them. They found the skulls of seven of them in one 
 spot, however, and a much larger number at a place farther on. 
 These were evidently men who had died during the flight from 
 their wounds and the poison of the arrows, and who had been 
 afterwards devoured by the hyenas which abounded in those 
 parts. The routed Bushmen succeeded in gaining the Langeberg 
 without being again overtaken by the pursuing Koranas. 
 
 In those days, and in that battle 'Ku-'nap-soop was the great 
 captain of the Koranas, and his children are Uving now. This 
 was the second war. After that there was peace, and the Kora- 
 nas moved away from Campbell and occupied the land near the 
 KUp drift (the present Barkly), and made their kraal near the 
 great camel thorn there.' It was the great tree on the ridge 
 near the poort, on the right bank of the river. ^ They had en- 
 joyed a long time of peace, when after some years the Bushmen 
 east of the Vaal gathered all their tribes together, and seizing 
 the favourite pack ox of the Koranas, upon which they rode, 
 drove it to the hills and there slaughtered it. The Koranas, in- 
 dignant at this insult, followed on the spoor, and discovered the 
 Bushmen at their place of feasting. The Koranas came there 
 in the night, surrounded the place, and lay stiU until morn- 
 ing. When the day broke, the Koranas called out to the Bush- 
 men, and asked them to give up the ox, but when they found it 
 had been slaughtered, they attacked the Bushmen so warmly 
 that three fell and the others fled, and no Korana was wounded 
 that day. This was the third and last war of the Katse clan 
 with the Bushmen of the Vaal. It was called the War of the 
 Pack Ox. 
 
 There was peace from those days, and many of the Bushmen 
 came and mixed with the Katses and lived under them. Thus 
 it is that the Katses understand the Bushman tongue, and the 
 Bushmen the Katse's, although they are two languages. After 
 
 ' This tree escaped the ruthless axe of the diamond diggers until late 
 in 1876. It was a landmark which could be seen many miles. 
 
 ^ In 1874 the writer visited this spot, and found on the hill on the 
 opposite side of the river, near the site of the old Korana camp, the place 
 where the Bushmen on the look-out had formed two or three screens of 
 loose stones, from which they could watch whatever was going on in the 
 camp without exposing themselves to view. 
 
286 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 that there was war between the Koranas, one clan with the 
 other. Many years afterwards other Bushmen came from the 
 mountains and fought with the Koranas, but they were alto- 
 gether destroyed, and then the missionaries came into the land, 
 and the Katse people have dwelt at Pniel unto this day. The 
 captain of the Katses in 1874 was Andries Kats — his father was 
 a great captain, but he was killed and devoured by a lion. 
 
 Thus ended Hendrik de Katse's somewhat quaint description 
 of the early movements of that portion of the Korana tribe to 
 which he belonged. We wiU now revert to the second division, 
 which, passing the river at Prieska drift, advanced through the 
 country rather more to the westward, until they made a tem- 
 porary halt at 'Gatee-t'Kamma, afterwards chosen by the 
 missionaries as the site of their Griqua station, to which the name 
 Griquatown was subsequently assigned. 
 
 At this time the nearest of the Bachoana tribes appears to 
 have been the main branch of the Barolong, then staying at 
 Taung, the -place of the Lion, under their chief Tao or Tau, the 
 Lion. This place was situated on the Upper Hart river, then 
 called the Malalarene, while the lower portion of the same stream 
 was distinguished as the Kolong. The Koranas were then under 
 'Kunapsoop or Taaibosch the Elder, the paramount chief of the 
 Great Koranas. The Barolong chief, upon hearing of their ad- 
 vance into that part of the country, came to pay them a visit, 
 and after an apparently friendly interview departed. After a 
 lapse of time Tau paid them another visit, accompanied by a 
 large number of his people. The old Korana captain, thinking 
 they had come in the same friendly manner as before, hastened 
 to meet them, and offered to the chief, according to their custom, 
 sundry articles of food for himself and his people. 
 
 The chief Tau however was meditating treachery, and his 
 followers had concealed under their skin karosses assagais broken 
 short. Noticing a convenient opportunity, they suddenly dis- 
 played their perfidy, and most treacherously murdered 'Kunap- 
 soop, with a large number of his people. 
 
 After this dastardly attack Jan Taaibosch the Elder, or 
 'Knon-bil, was unanimously declared chief. He rallied the 
 Koranas, and crossed the Malalarene in pursuit of Tau and his 
 people, who were on the way back to their own country. The 
 
THE KORANAS 287 
 
 Koranas overlook them, and a battle ensued in which the Baro- 
 long were defeated and driven away. Following up this advan- 
 tage, they pursued the retreating Barolong to the great place of 
 Tau. Here he turned at bay, four battles were fought with him 
 and some of the Batlapin, who were then in a state of vassalage 
 under the Barolong, and who had contracted intermarriages with 
 the Bushmen. In the end they forced the Barolong to leave the 
 country, when they retired as far as Setlagole for refuge, a place 
 nearly one hundred miles farther to the north. The chief Tau, 
 it is said, died of his wounds. 
 
 After fighting and defeating the Barolong, most of these 
 Koranas removed and settled in the conquered territory. Rijt 
 Taaibosch occupied Patuni or 'Nukuni, and the Korana captain 
 'Khammakose died at 'Nukuni. It was long subsequent to these • 
 Korana victories over the Barolong that the Griquas came and 
 settled with their missionaries at Klaarwater. 
 
 These Koranas attempted at various times to push their 
 predatory inroads far to the north, attacking not only the differ- 
 ent branches of the Batlapin, but also of the Batlou, the Bakuena, 
 the Bangwaketse, the Leghoya, the Bataung, and others. These 
 attacks were carried on so pertinaciously that some of the 
 branches of these tribes lost aU their cattle, and were reduced to 
 the greatest extremities. In all their settlements cattle lifting seems 
 to have been their chief employment and amusement. Never 
 before in the history of their tribe had they possessed such an 
 opportunity of developing their powers of acquisitiveness, and 
 it certainly cannot be said that they did not avail themselves of 
 it to the utmost. Some of their kraals depended entirely upon 
 these raids as a means of support. As long as the captured 
 cattle lasted, there was feasting and dancing, rejoicing and sing- 
 ing, but as soon as the supply was exhausted a preparation of 
 bows and poisoning of arrows commenced for another foray. 
 
 As a demonstration of the deplorable effects of these con- 
 tinuous depredations upon many of the surrounding tribes, we 
 learn that Intshe, the Ostrich, a son of Inkwane, who at one time 
 possessed a great many cattle, lost them all in one of these attacks, 
 and was reduced to such utter distress that he and the remnant 
 of his people were obliged to seek shelter among the wild and 
 much despised Bushmen, in order to obtain subsistence. This 
 
288 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 fact illustrates at the same time that these wild Bushmen could 
 not have been the remorseless and bloodthirsty creatures they 
 have been so frequently depictured, seeing that we find them not 
 only in this case, but in numerous other instances, affording an 
 asylum to many fugitives under similar circumstances. 
 
 In all these attacks the principal weapons of the Koranas 
 appear to have been the ancient bows and arrows of their race, 
 which continued to be used until the settlement of the Griquas 
 at Griquatown, about which time firearms were introduced by 
 the Koks and their guardian missionaries. 
 
RAGEL, 
 
 A Female Hottentot of the last century. 
 
 According to Le Vaillant. 
 
Chapter XVI 
 
 ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 
 
 During this early period the formidable character of the Koranas 
 was augmented by the accession to their ranks of a powerful aUy 
 in the person of a fugitive or outlaw from the Cape Colony named 
 Jan Bloem, variously described as a German and a fugitive 
 Dutchman. Little more is known of the origin of this man than 
 that he was of the same name as his father, Jan Bloem, who was 
 a German by birth, and who with his son lived successively in 
 four parts of the Colony. This son, Jan, left or fled from the 
 Colony with Piet Pienaar, who was afterwards murdered by the 
 Africaanders. His avowed object in leaving the Colony was to 
 tend some cattle belonging to Piet Pienaar on the Great river. 
 Some time after removing thither, hearing of the multitude of 
 cattle possessed by the Bachoana and the Koranas, and the 
 defenceless state of these people, he resolved to make an attack 
 upon them in order to carry off their herds, and so become rich 
 in a single expedition. 
 
 By some means or other he prevailed on many Hottentots to 
 accompany him on this plundering expedition. He and his 
 people killed many of the inhabitants against whom they went, 
 and captured a great number of their cattle ; indeed the number 
 was so great that a thousand are said to have fallen to the share 
 of Pienaar, which no doubt was the largest. When Pienaar 
 transported his ill-gotten property to the Colony, Jan Bloem 
 remained behind and continued to make plundering expeditions 
 against the Koranas. 
 
 His first attemptvwas attended with a shocking event, for 
 besides those who fell by means of his firearms, which greatly 
 terrified the Koranas, many of the defenceless women and children 
 ran for refuge from their murderers into the Great river, where 
 they perished. After crossing the river, the first place where he 
 
 289 u 
 
290 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 formed his kraal was near the strong spring or fountain which 
 now supphes the town of Bloemfontein with water, and hence its 
 name, which it retained after he had abandoned that part of the 
 country. He afterwards went higher up the 'Gij 'Gariep, and 
 took up his residence near the mouth of the Kolong river. 
 There he commenced his ravages by attacking the Bachoana, many 
 of whom were slain, and much cattle taken. He found means to 
 prevail upon many Bushmen and Koranas to join his standard, 
 which they did probably to save their own lives. 
 
 He received much assistance from Jacob and Karl Kruger, 
 two Boers who fled from the Colony for some crime of which they 
 had been guilty. These supplied him with additional muskets, 
 ammunition, and people, and shared in the plunder which he 
 obtained. He then estabhshed himself at another fountain, 
 which subsequently had the name of Jan Bloem's fontein bestowed 
 upon it, situated between Ongeluk Fontein — the Fountain of 
 Misfortune — and T'Goay'pa, afterwards called Blink-klip, the 
 shining rock or stone. This place he made for a long time his 
 headquarters. He was then elected by a clan of the Taaibosches 
 called the Springboks, their chief, or captain, and from among 
 them he took the greater number of his wives, by whom he had 
 seven sons besides daughters. He continued carrying on his 
 cattle raids to a considerable distance into the interior, living on 
 the plunder of every kraal he could surprise. He died from the 
 effects of poison shortly after his repulse by the Bangwaketse, 
 and was buried at Taung, about 1799, when his son, Jan Bloem 
 the younger, succeeded to the chieftainship of the Springboks. 
 
 It was this man who led the Koranas in one or two of the most 
 furious attacks which they made on Lithako. Under his com- 
 mand, and with the firearms he had acquired, they obtained 
 victory after victory, plundering aU the tribes within their reach, 
 and spreading dismay through a wide extent of country. At 
 length he determined to attack the Bangwaketse, a tribe of 
 Bachoana which their fellow-countrymen had learnt to look 
 upon as invincible, and whose warlike chief, Makaba, had spread 
 his fame throughout aU the surroimding nations. The Koranas 
 and Bloem were warned of the hazards they would run, but 
 nothing daunted, the expedition started with the full assurance 
 of an easy victory and an abundance of spoil ; but in this they 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 291 
 
 were disappointed. They met with nothing but discomfiture 
 and defeat, and here it was that a check was put to the iniquitous 
 career of their reckless leader. 
 
 The Bangwaketse made a timely discovery of the danger 
 which threatened them, and the energetic Makaba proved him- 
 self a warrior worthy of their steel. Both he and his people 
 manifested considerable military skiU and courage in the resist- 
 ance they made against the attacks of Bloem. They raised high 
 walls across the passes between the mountains, leaving small 
 openings in them like gates, which could easUy be closed at the 
 approach of an enemy. Many lay in ambush, while others were 
 stationed on the tops of the mountains, and roUed down great 
 stones upon their assailants. So effectual was the resistance 
 which they made that he did not capture a single beast from the 
 Bangwaketse, though he took thousands from the Batlapin and 
 others. 
 
 The chief of the Springboks died shortly after this repulse, 
 in consequence, it is said, of drinking from a fountain, the water 
 of which was supposed to have been poisoned by the Bangwa- 
 ketse ; and when d5dng he declared his belief in this being the 
 cause of his death. He could neither read nor write, and not- 
 withstanding the many atrocities which he committed, and the 
 scenes of rapine and bloodshed in which he seemed to take such 
 dehght, he presented one of those strange contradictions of 
 character sometimes met with, by pretending to have consider- 
 able respect for religion, and by an occasional indulgence in 
 devotional exercises. 
 
 In this disastrous expedition the Koranas lost many of their 
 people, among whom was 'Kuri'ke, the^father of 'Hanube, chief of 
 the clan residing at 'Tshopo. 'Hanube was about twenty years 
 old at the time of his father's death. This lesson appears to have 
 been" sufficient for them, and there is no record of any second 
 attempt being made on the herds of the Bangwaketse by the 
 Koranas for a long series of years. 
 
 Molehabangwe, the great chief of the Batlapin, informed 
 Messrs. Truter and Somerville that a few years before their visit, 
 in 1801, he and his people had been attacked by Bloem and his 
 party, armed with muskets, that their habitations had been burnt 
 and destroyed, and most of their women and children cruelly 
 
292 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 murdered, some sacrificed in the flames, and the greater part of 
 their cattle captured. They were compelled to succumb, though 
 those who attacked them were fewer in number, owing to the 
 irrferiority of their arms. Muntch, the son of Intshe, the 
 Ostrich, was engaged in this combat, and was nearly surrounded. 
 He fled, and was closely pursued by the Koranas, but although 
 their arrows flew thickly round him he managed to escape. He also, 
 Uke his father, sought refuge among the Bushmen for a short time. 
 
 During this period another outlying branch of the Batlapin 
 was attacked and despoiled by some of the Korana clans. The 
 Mutsheng, at that time, occupied a tract of country near the 
 Langeberg, three days' journey to the south-west of Lithako. 
 They possessed a considerable number of cattle until they were 
 attacked by the Koranas on this occasion, who deprived them at 
 one stroke of aU their means of subsistence, and obliged them to 
 live on roots, wild berries, gum, locusts, white ants, and other 
 insects. They occasionally caught a koodoo, but the toil was 
 great, the chase before they could capture it sometimes occupying 
 two or three days. Sitlori, who gave this information, was 
 twelve years old when Kok, the old Griqua captain, first came 
 in their neighbourhood. He then lived far down the Great river, 
 and had come up to the Langeberg on a hunting expedition. He 
 visited Sitlori's father's hut, and noticing their great poverty, 
 invited some of the members of the family to go with him to 
 assist in herding his sheep, a fact which would seem to indicate 
 that Kok's retainers at the time could not have been very 
 numerous. 
 
 It is authoritatively asserted that since the early days of the 
 Korana occupation of the portion of the country we are now 
 speaking of, a great alteration has taken place in its water supply. 
 Then, the Kuniman is declared to have been a great river, which 
 sometimes rose and continued high so long that women who 
 happened to be on the other side at the time of its rise frequently 
 lost all hope of being able to recross it, and in their despair 
 married other men. It is also asserted that great quantities of 
 reeds grew in it. Much water is said to have come down from 
 the Malopo, which formed a junction near the Korana village, 
 as well as down another river called Misari. The Koranas stated 
 that the Batlaru dried up the rivers by witchcraft. 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 293 
 
 The Korana clans which penetrated farthest to the north 
 were portions of the Taaibosches and the Scorpions. So success- 
 ful had they been in their forays that they were obliged, in 1820, 
 to separate themselves into three divisions, the most numerous 
 of these residing at Mobati with their chief. This place and 
 Malapitze were their two great centres in those days, while minor 
 clans were spread all over the country through which they had 
 passed. The restless members of the tribe gathered along this 
 frontier, and strengthened the clans which had taken up their 
 position there. It was here that they could indulge in their 
 national proclivities for raiding and feasting with least risk to 
 themselves and the almost certainty of success. They were at 
 this period at the height of their fame ; the Griqua power and 
 territorial assumptions had scarcely germed, much less developed 
 sufficiently to overshadow, as it subsequently did, many of their 
 clans. But it was not this growth of Griqua power alone which 
 contributed to and hastened their decadence. Virulent disease 
 shortly afterwards decimated them, and committed greater 
 havoc in their villages than either the muskets or assagais of 
 their enemies. 
 
 In 1820 parties of Koranas had established themselves along 
 the eastern border of the Kalahari, as far north as a place called 
 Mutshuana, on the Kuruman river. The people of this place 
 were under one of their own captains, called Hanno 'Kano, " no 
 cattle." A second kraal, a short distance from the above, was 
 under another captain, called 'Tky, possessing also the sobriquet 
 of Moriakotu, or Korana medicine. The people ur\der these 
 captains were once as numerous as the Batlapin themselves, 
 but the measles came among them and proved so fatal that they 
 were reduced to a very small number. Thirty-four men, who 
 were nearly all the males that survived this terrible visitation, 
 went against the Batlou, Tamahas, and Toimans, by invitation 
 of the Batlapin, between 1806 and 1808. The Batlaru or Lahize's 
 people joined also in the expedition with the Batlapin. When 
 the battle was at its height, the Batlapin and Batlaru fled, 
 leaving the Koranas nearly surrounded by the enemy. Thirty of 
 them were cut off, and only four escaped. One of the latter 
 managed to do so before his party was completely surrounded, 
 the others remained together, defending themselves to the last. 
 
294 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 There was also in these parts another considerable kraal at 
 'Tshopo, to which allusion has already been made. Besides these, 
 kraals were spread along the Vaal river between the Maquassies' 
 spruit and the embouchure of the Kolong, as weU as between the 
 latter and the junction of the 'Gij 'Gariep with the Great river. 
 At Modderfontein, kraals of Koranas and Bushmen were living 
 in apparent friendship, although in close proximity to one another ; 
 the name of the captain of the former was Ilapaim and of the 
 latter 'Caricoup. Near the banks of the river another Korana 
 horde was met with, near a spot named t'Jokohama, under a 
 captain called Slaparm, who in 1801 offered himself as a guide 
 to Mr. Borcherds' party as far as Jonker's-fontein. Between this 
 last place and the Karee mountains these travellers met no more 
 Koranas, but several hordes of Bushmen, some of whom, as their 
 sugar was consumed, supplied them with beautiful honey. The 
 travellers thus gained their confidence and some of them followed 
 the waggons, a fact which showed that even at that time, when 
 they were most maligned, a fair reward would secure the willing 
 services of these wild huntsmen. 
 
 The foregoing shows that by 1801 the clans of the Middle Veld 
 had entirely evacuated their old camping grounds, and were now 
 spread over an immense extent of country, from the t'Keys drift, 
 where several hordes and kraals of Koranas were found, to the 
 eastern border of the Kalahari, north of the Kurimian river. 
 
 As the race thus extended, the subdivision of their clans 
 continued to increase, but in the present day the names of many 
 of them appear to be lost, and the following is the most extensive 
 list which could be obtained from reliable sources. Some of the 
 old Korana authorities assert that the ancient name of the Great 
 Koranas was a word signifying the Toovenaars, or the Wizards 
 or Sorcerers, and that all the other clans or offshoots sprang from 
 them ; that afterwards the eldest branch of these Toovenaars or 
 Great Koranas, or rather that of the paramount chief, obtained 
 the name of the Taaibosches or 'Gou'naap's Koranas, from the 
 sobriquet of one of their great chiefs, although they still remained 
 and considered themselves Toovenaars. 
 
 The next in rank to them came the Links stem, those of the 
 left stem, or those standing to the left. These people had also 
 a chief named Links ; the name therefore might mean those of the 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 295 
 
 stem of Links. If asked, however, to what part of the Korana 
 tribe he belongs, a Links Korana will always call himself a Too- 
 venaar, proving that he does not consider his branch as com- 
 pletely severed from the parent stock. 
 
 The same may be said of the next great branch, called the 
 'Gaap and 'Twua-'kne or Katse people. This last title is said to 
 have been given on account of these people having pursued a 
 hartebeest across a ford called the Kat ford on the 'Taba-'Taepoep, 
 or Kat river. 
 
 The next powerful branch of the old stock was the Springboks, 
 so called on account of their being numerous like that animal. 
 
 5. The Scorpions. The reason for this name and those which 
 follow has not been given. 
 
 6. The 'Kow-'kais, 'Kow-'cu'ga, or the Zeekoes, i.e. the 
 Hippopotami. 
 
 7. The Zee-koes dragers, the Bearers of Sea-cows or Hippo- 
 potami. 
 
 8. The Regt-Staanders, those who stand for the right. These 
 people have obtained the name of the Goliaths, from one of their 
 chiefs. 
 
 9. The Oo-'kena or Scar-june. 
 
 10. The Gomtena. 
 
 All these appear to be the nearest branches of the main stem, 
 those which follow are probably more distant, as the connecting 
 link has not been preserved. 
 
 11. The Hooge-Staanders, those who stand high. 
 
 12. The Papieren, i.e. the Papers. 
 
 13. The 'Cabus'que, the Stabbers. 
 
 14. The Kaross Dragers, the Carriers or Wearers of Karosses. 
 
 15. The Naauwe Wangen, the Narrow-cheeks. 
 
 16. The Boek brieven, the Book-letters. 
 
 17. The Snyers, the Cutters, or Tailors. 
 
 18. The Hoogten, the Heights. 
 
 19. The Koker-boomen, the Quiver-trees, from the species of 
 aloe from which the Bushmen make their quivers. 
 
 20. The Spinnekop Zoekers, the Searchers for Spiders. 
 
 21. The 'Kannis-geis, and 
 
 22. The Ratten, or the Rats. 
 
 In the titles of the foregoing clans we at once perceive that 
 
296 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the contact of the Koranas with Dutch speaking people is clearly- 
 made manifest, but in 1812-13 personal names, or those of indi- 
 viduals, stm remained of pure Kora origin, as the following ex- 
 amples wiU show. 
 
 'Ka-een-de-hare, meaning lively sunshine. 
 'Koo-'rhe, meaning a white stone. 
 Moo-'que, meaning to see a thing right. 
 'Che-be-a, meaning ? 
 'Keis-se-'cha, meaning foremost. 
 'Te-oon-havel, meaning an unsuccessful hunt. 
 Moo-'kha, meaning sharp sight. 
 
 From the above we find the effect which their intercourse 
 with Dutch-speaking Bastaards, alias Griquas, and such colonial 
 outlaws as took refuge among their clans, had upon their tribal 
 nomenclature, while with regard to the names of the great mass 
 of the people it had exercised little or no^infiuence at all. This 
 is interesting, as it so well illustrates how such additions and 
 variations in names become a powerful evidence and proof 
 of contact between races speaking different languages, and thus 
 frequently afford means of unravelling the true history of a 
 nation, even in times far removed from the present. The Griquas 
 wiU be found to afford another instance of the case in point, but 
 as their connection was of a closer character, and of long dura- 
 tion, the impress of the Dutch influence is more marked and 
 decided. 
 
 In the same manner, should we meet a Kaffir priding himself 
 in the name of Klaas, Piet, or Jantje, we should imagine that 
 either he or his friends who gave him the cognomen had been in 
 the service of the Dutch ; whereas if he were known as Tom, 
 Dick, John, or Jim, we should say that he must have been at one 
 time under an influence decidedly English. This is a fact which 
 it will be well to bear in mind when treating of some of the other 
 South African races. 
 
 THE TAAIBOSCH FAMILY. 
 
 Frequent intermarriages took place between the Koranas and 
 Batlapin during the period of the ascendancy of the former, not 
 only among the commoner people, but some even of the Batlapin 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 297 
 
 chiefs selected their wives from among the daughters of the 
 Korana captains. These intimate relations gave rise to the 
 introduction of a number of words of mixed origin into the 
 vocabularies of both people, which was the more noticeable in 
 proper names, whether of individuals or of localities. This 
 partial blending among the border clans may have been encou- 
 raged by the less formidable and victimized Bachoana from 
 motives of policy, while on the side of the Korana any efforts 
 at conciliation were deemed almost supererogatory. It was 
 however during this period of Korana exaltation that the race 
 of their paramount chiefs, both from their matrimonial alliances 
 and the extent of their conquests, rose to the highest pinnacle 
 of their greatness, and that the influence of their people, the 
 Toovenaars and their branches, extended over a greater expanse 
 of country than at any other time. 
 
 From the accompanying genealogy it will be seen that it can 
 scarcely be doubted but that these Taaibosches were in reality 
 the lineal descendants and representatives of their ancient chief 
 Kora. Their early history at the Cape has already been de- 
 tailed. Their career in the Middle Veld is lost in obHvion, but 
 was doubtless filled up with internecine feuds and petty cattle 
 raids upon their neighbours' kraals, such as have been described ; 
 and it was only after their passage of the 'Gariep that they once 
 more emerged from the obscurity in which they had been en- 
 veloped for several generations. 
 
 After the treacherous attack of the Barolong chief upon 
 them, and their rapid and victorious advance into the Bachoana 
 country, they appear to have fixed their headquarters on the 
 Ma'kaab river, at a place called Malapeetze or Malapitze (the 
 Quagga's placenta) by the Batlapin, and Ma-kholoyank or 
 Taaibosch's kraal by the Koranas. It appears to have been 
 from this centre that the tribe threw off, from time to time, so 
 many offshoots, which the increase of population or the develop- 
 ment of rival assumptions rendered imperative and inevitable. 
 It was from this point also that aU their great expeditions against 
 the peace and property of the interior tribes emanated. 
 
 By 1812-13 the nimiber of inhabitants at the great kraal of 
 the Taaibosches, owing to subdivisions of the tribe and the fatal 
 visitations of measles before alluded to, had commenced declining 
 
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ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 299 
 
 considerably. The kraal was then composed of some fifty-six huts, 
 and contained about three hundred inhabitants. They, however, 
 possessed two thousand cows at this, and as jmany more at 
 two outstations. They were then living, like their forefathers, 
 almost entirely on their cattle, more especially on their milk ; 
 so that such a state of affairs, although they were then small 
 in numbers, was to them a Korana paradise, they having Httle 
 else to do than to milk their cows. Many of them at this time 
 had become possessed of firearms and horses, which, notwith- 
 standing their diminished numbers in men, rendered some of 
 their clans even more dangerous and formidable than they were 
 before to their Bachoana and Basutu neighbours. Their old 
 national indolence stuck to them, and even at this date they 
 obtained their assagais and skin karosses from the Batlapin. 
 
 These Koranas were formerly under the government of two 
 brothers, who, not agreeing, separated, one removing and taking 
 possession of the old Barolong station at Taung. Here, for- 
 getting the lessons of the past, one of the sons of old Taaibosch 
 determined, although strongly advised against so hazardous an 
 attempt, to make another raid against the Bangwaketse ; but, 
 upon reaching their destination, he and his party fell into an 
 ambuscade and were slain to a man. 
 
 With disaster and repulse the bitterness of their mutual 
 feuds increased. At a later period the advance of the formidable 
 Mantatee horde spread terror amongst them and scattered many 
 of the smaller clans ; others took to flight until the storm was 
 over, and then returned to their former camping-grounds. Among 
 these were such petty captains as 'Chu'deep and Ban'tze, 'Chuboo 
 and 'Keideboo'kei, living on the banks of the Vaal or'Gij-'Gariep 
 a little below the junction of Maquassie's Spruit. 
 
 Notwithstanding their discomfiture and their subsequent 
 troubles, upon the advance of the Matabili into the old country 
 of the Bakuena between the Magaliesberg and the Limpopo, 
 the enormous herds of cattle in their possession proved too great 
 a temptation to the acquisitiveness of these restless marauders ; 
 they therefore made one or two daring attempts to seize some 
 of the much coveted booty at the most exposed outstations of 
 the Great Elephant, as Moselekatze delighted to be called. On 
 a few occasions they were successful, but on two or three others 
 
300 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 they were suddenly overtaken in their retreat, their bivouac, 
 when they were most confident of success, was surprised and 
 stormed in the dead of night, and the ruthless Matabili assagais 
 weltered in Korana blood until scarcely one escaped to teU the 
 terrible tale. 
 
 Taung was then occupied by the Great Koranas under their 
 chief Jan Taaibosch, afterwards generally called Jan Kaptein. 
 He was still a great chief, and his people hved in the country to 
 the left of the Malalarene or Kolong. It was with his permission 
 that several large kraals of Batlapin belonging to Mothibi settled 
 in portions of the same country. Some ten or twelve miles 
 lower down the Barolong, after abandoning Maquassie, had 
 located themselves in the neighbourhood of Great Platberg. 
 Lower down the 'Gij 'Gariep or Vaal there were many petty 
 Korana chiefs of the clans called the Ratten, Zeekoes, Scorpions, 
 and also the Springboks, of which last Jan Bloem the younger 
 was captain. The Bushman chief 'Kousop, and afterwards his 
 son Scheel Kobus, lived on the southern side of the Vaal river, 
 while their acknowledged territories extended far to the right 
 of the Riet and Modder rivers in the south. 
 
 Such then was the position of the various tribes who were the 
 immediate neighbours of the great clan of the Taaibosches, when 
 a complication of circumstances, such as a long series of severe 
 droughts, the increasing turbulence of the country, the threatened 
 attacks of the Matabili on the one hand and the Bergenaars on 
 the other, tended to accelerate a general migration towards the 
 more mountainous parts of the country in the east, although 
 some vague expressions were beginning to be used, styling it 
 Moshesh's country. Few Basutus were living in it, principally 
 in consequence of the devastating wars occasioned by Mosele- 
 katze, Sikoniela, the Amazulu, and others. In the midst of 
 this, not only Moroko with his Barolong left the Platberg, accom- 
 panied by his missionary, the Rev. Mr.Archbell, and stationed 
 themselves at Thaba Nchu, but even the Korana chief Jan 
 Taaibosch migrated in the same direction. 
 
 This, however, was not so much in consequence of the causes 
 above mentioned, as from the continuous feuds which were ever 
 raging, except when some common danger threatened the entire 
 tribe, among the rival clans of which it was composed. On this 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 301 
 
 occasion a quarrel had arisen between the paramount chief and 
 the GoUaths, or as they boastfully styled themselves the Hooge- 
 Staanders, or those who stood high, under the captain Goliath 
 Ysterbek, his cousin. The rivalry was at length carried to 
 such extremes that a civil war broke out between them, when in 
 a battle which ensued the paramount chief Jan Taaibosch was 
 defeated, and his clansmen were put to flight. In his retreat he 
 evacuated Taung with the greater part of his followers, and 
 moved with them in the direction of the present Koranaberg, 
 settling first at Umpukani, afterwards at Merumetsu, leaving the 
 captain Rijt Taaibosch behind him to look after that portion of 
 the clan that did not remove. It was after this that Rijt Taai- 
 bosch assumed the title of Korana chief of Mamusa. 
 
 Moshesh, in those days, was only too satisfied to see other 
 tribes, even under their own chiefs and government, flocking 
 into the country and forming a kind of cordon around the thinly 
 populated and circumscribed tract which could then with any 
 show of reality be styled the territories of the chief of the moun- 
 tain ; and as he well knew that they would form an outer shield 
 against the depredations of the Bergenaars on the one side and 
 the more dreaded attacks of the Matabili on the other, they were 
 welcome to fix themselves in any position of comparative danger 
 they chose to occupy. 
 
 If we refer for a moment to the foregoing account of the 
 migrations of these Koranas to the northward, we shall observe 
 that after the first few years of their intrusion, no further notice 
 is taken of the Bushmen : they had either become absorbed by 
 some of the invading clans, or had been nearly annihilated by 
 others. The attention of these northern Koranas had been more 
 immediately bestowed upon the acquisition of cattle, and of 
 course upon those races possessing them. We shall find, how- 
 ever, that along the eastern line of migration the case was 
 different, and that the work of extermination was being carried 
 on with cruel and stem activity. 
 
 Even among those whose movements we have now been 
 discussing, there were three different modes of treatment which 
 the Bushmen received at their hands. Thus the one, such as 
 the Katse people^ fraternised and intermarried with them after 
 their first wars had ended ; others again, such as the t'Keys, 
 
302 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 although hving distinct, still kept up a kind of friendly alliance 
 with them ; but, by far the greater portion, especially among the 
 richer clans, there was a deep-rooted and never-dying animosity 
 evinced against them. 
 
 Leonard Jagers was a fit representative of one of this class, 
 and with his evidence we will close this section of our subject. 
 From it, however, we shall see that the old hunter race was stiU 
 unconquered, and that although the war of races had become 
 intensified and hereditary, as is but too clearly shown by the 
 tone of bitterness which runs through Jagers' descriptions, still 
 true to the traditions of their nation, the descendants of the 
 ancient cave dwellers remained resolute and undaunted to the 
 last. Harassed and driven from one part of their ancient hunt- 
 ing-grounds to another, they seemed as if, finding that they 
 could not drive the intruders back again, a wild and uncontrol- 
 lable spirit of revenge was taking possession of them, while the 
 greater portion of their enemies appeared to have formed the 
 determination to extirpate them from the face of the earth. 
 
 When I was a boy, said the old Toovenaar, I was herding 
 the cattle of the Gohaths, and whilst in the veld the Bushmen 
 of the mountains gathered themselves together. They were the 
 men who fought with the short bow and little arrows, and not 
 like the Bushmen of the Langeberg, who carried a long bow for 
 hunting or for war. 
 
 The Koranas do not always go out with their cattle, but 
 drive them to the field in the morning, and at noon send their 
 youths to look after them. At this time when they sent, thfe 
 cattle could not be found, more than half had been seized and 
 carried off by the Bushmen. This was from the banks of the 
 'Gumaap,"^ or Great Riet river, a confluent of the 'Gij 'Gariep ; 
 thence the Bushmen drove them off to the mountains, where a 
 spitzkop rose above the others. On the top of this high moun- 
 tain the Bushmen drove the cattle. Here they commenced 
 slaughtering, and feasting on the carcasses. And when the cattle 
 
 1 Leonard Jagers stated that the Koranas and others call this river, 
 below the junction of the Modder and Riet, the 'Gumaap, or Great Reed 
 river, 'Gumaap signifying Reed or Reeds. The name is far more appro- 
 priate than that put down in EngUsh maps, viz. the Modder or Mud, as 
 there is not a single bank of mud to be found between the junction and 
 its mouth. 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 303 
 
 were missed the people (Koranas) took up the spoor, and follow- 
 ing it got upon the trail of the Bushmen, and traced them to the 
 mountain. Then the Koranas got together their fighting men. 
 In those days the Koranas had guns, and some had horses, and 
 they got together horsemen and footmen and went towards the 
 mountain. 
 
 In the night they saw the fires of the Bushmen, and heard the 
 noise of the feasting. Those that had horses left them at the 
 foot of the mountain, and in the stillness of the night they 
 climbed up the sides and concealed themselves in the rocks 
 around the edge of the flat top until the day began to dawn. 
 Then the Bushmen were aroused by the Koranas firing upon 
 them. There was a large camp of the Bushmen, and they had 
 lived upon the top of the mountain for a long time with their 
 wives and their children, and it was a great town. 
 
 When the firing began, the Bushmen arose and tried to drive 
 the Koranas back, and they fought and fought, but it did not 
 help them. And when they would have fled, they found they 
 were surrounded, and there were slain that day a great number, 
 and few escaped. The women and children were killed together, 
 and but few men escaped. The Koranas found that all their 
 cattle were stabbed and shot to death, and none remained for 
 them to recover. On that day no Korana was injured or slain, 
 but the Bushmen fell in great numbers. 
 
 After this there were two other wars ; and the Bushmen 
 caught two young Koranas ia the field and murdered them. 
 When it was discovered, the Koranas followed after them, and 
 overtook and surrounded them. On that day a Korana was 
 slain ; he was a man of great size, and a Bushinan ran and shot 
 him in his side, and he fell dead, for the poison was so strong 
 that he remained on the spot. After this there was yet another 
 war. The Bushmen seized the cattle and the Koranas followed 
 after them ; and again another Korana was shot. The arrow 
 struck him on the cheek, and he died there from the poison upon 
 the arrow as soon as he was shot. 
 
 In those days the land was full of quaggas, and the Koranas 
 "when they saw them were alarmed and hastened to the plains, 
 for they knew that the Bushmen must be amongst them ; and 
 they hunted the Bushmen and destroyed them when they came 
 
304 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 upon them, for they were a wild and perverse race that could 
 not be tamed. ' ^ , 
 
 The Bushmen used disguises, and sometimes they appeared 
 as wild bucks and sometimes as birds ; they fastened the heads 
 of bucks upon their shoulders, and covered themselves with the 
 skins of the ostrich. They walked as if the ostrich were walking, 
 and they carried their bows and arrows ready with them. When 
 the Koranas went out into the field, if they were alone, the Bush- 
 men would waylay them. And if a Korana did not return home 
 in the evening they knew that the Bushmen had killed him and 
 that they would find him dead in the morning. 
 
 Three Koranas, armed with guns, rode out into the plains 
 to look for the horses of the kraal, and when they had found them, 
 one turned to drive them back to the kraal and the other two 
 continued in the plain to hunt quaggas. A Bushman who was 
 concealed, seeing that one Korana was returning alone with the 
 horses, hastened to hide himself in the path. The Korana that 
 was with them, when he saw the horses were turned out of the 
 path and that a Bushman was before him, was seized with a 
 deadly fear, and when he saw the Bushman he turned his horse 
 and fled as hard as he could ride, with the gim in his hand. When 
 the Bushman saw that the Korana had turned and fled, he 
 quickly caught a grey riding horse that was a swift nmner, and 
 mounted upon him and pursued the Korana ; and they both 
 rode as hard as they could, and the Bushman overtook the 
 Korana, for the grey riding horse was the swiftest one of the 
 kraal. The Bushman seized hold of the gun of the Korana, and 
 they rode and struggled together, and the Bushman wrenched 
 the gun from the hand of the Korana, and such was the fear of 
 the Korana that he forgot to put his finger on the trigger of his 
 gun to shoot the Bushman. 
 
 When the Korana found that the Bushman had taken his 
 gim from him, he threw himself from his horse and ran towards 
 the mountain, hoping to hide himself among the rocks away 
 from the Bushman ; but the Bushman threw himself also from 
 his horse. The Korana dodged round a bush to escape the 
 Bushman, and the Korana was on one side of the bush and the 
 Bushman on the other. He shot the Korana with his own gun, 
 and the ball went through his head. When the Korana's two 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 30 
 
 friends returned from following the quaggas they found him 
 dead, and the Bushman had escaped with the gun. 
 
 But a short time after, the Bushman, rendered presumptuous 
 and daring by the possession of the gun, went to steal the horses 
 of a Boer^ by night, and the great dogs of the Boer attacked 
 him and tore him to pieces, and in the morning his body was 
 found torn to pieces and the gun by the side of it. 
 
 In those days the Bushmen were very vicious, and the 
 Koranas had to hunt them down as they would any other wild 
 animal, that there might be some quiet in the land. They were 
 like wild animals which nothing could tame. Thus it was, con- 
 tinued Jagers, when I was a young man, and I but just escaped 
 from the hands of a Bushman myself. One of the horses having 
 strayed, I went in search of it, and saw it near the side of a 
 neighbouring hill. When I was getting near it, I saw the head 
 of a Bushman rise suddenly above the long grass, right in the 
 path I had to go. It was but for a moment that I caught sight 
 of him, and I at once saw that he was one of the smaU kind that 
 wore their arrows sticking out from a fillet round their heads, 
 and who are aU wild and untamable. 
 
 I knew at once that he intended to waylay me as I approached 
 the horse, and would shoot me as soon as I got nearer ; and also 
 that if I allowed him to think I had caught sight of him I should 
 have no chance of escape, for they are swift rimners. They run 
 like a horse, and in broken rocky ground no horse has a chance 
 of overtaking them. They bound along, and when once among 
 the rocks are like the khpspringers or baboons ; they spring from 
 rock to rock without fear of falling. Therefore to turn and rvm 
 away at once I knew would never do, as he would certainly over- 
 take me. I therefore went on a few paces before I hesitated ; 
 I then stopped, and felt my pouch, and then looked on the ground 
 as if I had dropped something, then went a short distance back 
 and looked about on the ground as if I were still searching for 
 something I had lost. Then I went a few steps towards the 
 Bushman again, then I retreated again on the road a little farther 
 than before. I continued this a number of times, each time 
 
 * This is the first mention made by a native of the intrusion of Boer 
 squatters into the old hunting grounds of the Bushmen north of the 
 'Nu-'Gariep or Orange river 
 
3o6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 getting farther away. This I did, so that I should not alarm the 
 Bushman with the idea that I had seen him and wished to escape 
 from him, but that he might think that I had merely lost some- 
 thing and was looking for it, and when I had found it I should 
 again return by the same path for the horse ; thus he would lie 
 quiet in the same place, and not follow me. 
 
 When I thought that by these means I had got far enough 
 from him to have a good start, I stooped down and fastened the 
 veldschoens tightly on my feet, and tightened my girdle firmly 
 round my waist. I was then young, and could run as fast as 
 any young man of my tribe, but I knew that when I once started 
 I should have to run for my life, for a Bushman who wore arrows 
 round his head would not spare me if I were overtaken. When 
 I rose up I sprang forward at once, and ran with all my might in 
 the direction of the Korana camp. The Bushman, as soon as 
 he saw that I fled, sprang up and came down after me like the 
 wind, and I ran as fast as I could get my feet to the ground, 
 and exerted all my strength, but I found that the Bushman was 
 gaining upon me and that it would be hard for me to escape. 
 The Bushman still pressed me and gained upon me, and I felt 
 that he intended to come close before he shot at me, to make sure 
 that his arrrow would strike me and there should be no fear of 
 missing his aim. I began to feel faint, but still I ran, for I knew 
 that my hfe depended upon my swiftness ; and the Bushman 
 was still gaining upon me, and getting nearer and nearer, but 
 still I ran. 
 
 Just as I felt hope was getting less, the men of the camp, who 
 were on the look-out, saw me, and saw that the Bushman was 
 following closely after me, and they rushed forward with their 
 guns in their hands to meet me as I came on. They shouted, 
 and ran towards me, and the women and children when they 
 heard the alarm came streaming out of the camp, cr57ing out 
 and shrieking as they ran towards me. But the Bushman still 
 pressed me closely, evidently determined to overtake me and 
 kill me before they could help me. But when I saw my friends, 
 I sprang forward towards them with all the strength I had; 
 but he followed me, and it was not until they were close to me 
 that he left off pursuing me. Then he turned and fled, and 
 soon left the Koranas that followed far behind, for they had no 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 307 
 
 horses near at hand, and he ran faster than a horse, and thus, 
 he escaped. 
 
 After that, continued the Toovenaar, they hunted the Bush- 
 men and shot them that there might be peace in the land, for 
 the wild beasts and the Bushmen were ahke, they could not be 
 tamed. And the Koranas cleared the land, and then there was 
 quiet. 
 
 Here we have a vivid and graphic picture of the treatment 
 a large portion of the Bushmen received at the hands of the 
 northern Koranas after their intrusion into the Bushman terri- 
 tories of the Vaal. The evidence of this one man would have 
 been the evidence of hundreds had it been obtainable. The 
 quiet he speaks of was the quiet of annihilation. It was the 
 peace of death ! 
 
 The Migrations of the Koranas to the Eastward, in the basins 
 of the Orange and Caledon rivers. 
 
 When the Korana hordes first crossed the 'Gariep and 'Nu- 
 'Gariep, almost all their migrations were in a northerly direc- 
 tion, especially along the vaUey of the 'Gij 'Gariep to the mouth 
 of the Kolong, thence along the valley of the latter river to its 
 sources and that portion of it called the Malalarene. Up to a 
 comparatively recent period they appear never to have made 
 an effort to penetrate to any distance eastward of this Une, and 
 even as late as 1820 Mr. Campbell assures us that no Koranas 
 lived higher up the 'Nu 'Gariep than 'Kon'nah, and there were 
 none on the banks of the 'Gij 'Gariep higher than about four 
 days' journey above its junction with the Kolong ; while to the 
 northward they extended as far as Mo-ba-ti. In a westerly 
 direction they were not found far beyond the falls of the Great 
 river, near the point where some of the early Korana clans first 
 struck it, or about halfway between the junction of the 'Gij 
 and 'Nu 'Gariep and Namaqualand. As a rule the Koranas 
 were not desirous of leaving the banks of the Great river. 
 
 We shall find, however, that they made exceptions, not only, 
 as we have seen, in their expeditions and their settlements to 
 the north ; but at a subsequent period also, after the great wars 
 of Matiwane and the Matabili, when so many branches of the 
 Basutu tribes had been broken up and dispersed, or had fled 
 for refuge towards the mountainous district along the great 
 
3o8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Maluti range in the east. It was shortly after this time that 
 the Koranas commenced to extend their marauding inroads in 
 that direction. The expeditions and ravages of the savage 
 banditti, called the Bergenaars, whose bands were joined by 
 several of the Korana clans, especially by a considerable number 
 of the Katse people and the Zeekoes, doubtless gave an impetus 
 to this movement, which continued until they had not only 
 estabUshed , themselves at Makwatling, the present Koranaberg, 
 but even attempted on several occasions to seize the cattle of 
 the Bakuena, who then held the noted stronghold of Thaba 
 Bosigo, under Moshesh. Much of this portion of their history 
 is so involved with that of other tribes with which they came 
 in contact, such as the Griquas, the Leghoya, and Basutu, that, 
 in order to avoid useless repetition, we shall defer detailing such 
 exploits until treating of the several tribes connected therewith. 
 
 With regard, however, to the earliest of these eastern ex- 
 peditions, we are told that in 1820 there was perhaps no part 
 of Southern Africa less known than that situated between the 
 jimction of the Riet and Modder rivers and the high ridges of 
 the Drakensberg towards the Indian ocean. Any information 
 therefore throwing light upon such darkness as this Uttle ex- 
 plored region presented at that time, must needs be interesting. 
 That the entire country had been occupied by Bushman tribes 
 from time immemorial cannot be doubted, the evidence upon 
 this point is too strong to admit of refutation. It seems equally 
 certain that in the year just mentioned {1820) the Koranas had 
 pushed so far to the eastward that they had formed a settlement 
 on the banks of the Gum-Gariep, now called Vet river, which 
 runs into the 'Gij-'Gariep, or Likwa, as one portion of it was 
 called by the early emigrant Basutu. 
 
 Here the Links stam had their kraals, and they were then 
 the farthest to the eastward of any of their race. The largest 
 kraal was under a chief named 'Harina. It contained seven or 
 eight hundred Koranas and a great number of Bushmen who 
 could speak the Korana language. Mr. Campbell, who visited 
 them, states that Korana men frequently married Bushwomen, 
 but 'Harina assured him that he could not remember a single 
 instance of a Korana woman marrying a Bushman. 
 
 The Bushmen occupying this river valley were said to be 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 309 
 
 more civilized than that part of the nation which inhabited the 
 more western parts of Africa, for at this time they possessed an 
 abmidance of cattle and were inclined to live at peace with their 
 neighbours. This improvement in their condition we shall dis- 
 cover as we proceed was mainly, if not entirely, attributable to 
 the friendly intercourse that had existed for a considerable time 
 between themselves and the Leghoya, the only tribe which ever 
 intruded itself into Bushman territory that from the very com- 
 mencement of their intercourse attempted to establish just and 
 friendly relations between themselves and the aborigines. The 
 wisdom of the experiment was proved, for they not only gained 
 the goodwill of the Bushmen by such treatment, but also good 
 neighbours who under their friendly influence became more 
 civilized and adopted a more improved state of existence than 
 any of their race had previously attained. The Leghoya them- 
 selves then hved near' the junction of the Vet river with the 
 Vaal, and spread thence about two days' joiimey farther to the 
 eastward. 
 
 The Links Koranas had no intercourse with any tribes as far 
 north as the Tamahas, but they exchanged skins with the 
 Bachoana and Leghoya for Kaffir com and tobacco. 
 
 From their accounts, up to a very short time before 1820, the 
 greater part, if not the entire country between the Leghoya 
 settlements and the ridge of the great mountain barrier of the 
 Drakensberg was " imoccupied," that is, it must still have been in 
 the possession of its original owners, the Bushmen, and not in 
 that of the stronger and intruding races. 
 
 Shortly after this period, urged probably by the growing 
 dread of the Mantatee hordes to the north of the Vaal, a number 
 of other Korana clans pressed into this portion of the country, 
 and the very first victims of their restless lawlessness were these 
 more advanced Bushmen. Different writers have put upon record 
 the atrocities which were committed upon them, nor did their 
 oppressors cease from harrjdng them until entire kraals were 
 annihilated and the survivors were deprived of the last hoof of 
 cattle which belonged to them, and which under the more just 
 and generous mode of treatment they had experienced at the 
 hands of the friendly Leghoya, they had leamt to accumulate. 
 , The following instances will sufficiently explain the remorse- 
 
310 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 less conduct to which they were subjected by these grasping 
 intruders. In August 1825 some Koranas living upon the 'Nu 
 'Gariep, about twenty miles from Ramah, made attacks upon 
 two Bushmen kraals, one situated about eighteen miles from 
 them, between their own place and Paardeberg, the other near 
 the deserted mission station of Hephzibah, between Tooverberg 
 and the 'Nu 'Gariep. 
 
 At the first the marauders killed several men and captured 
 twenty-three head of cattle, thirteen goats, five sheep, and 
 eighteen children. At Hephzibah the same band of plunderers 
 killed many of the people and took away one child and all their 
 smaU flocks of cattle, sheep, and goats. The Bushmen of these 
 kraals were the remains of the people who had once lived at the 
 mission station of Hephzibah. Mr. Sass states that when he first 
 •commenced his mission in 1814, at the suggestion of the Rev. 
 A. Faure, at Philippolis, the Koranas had been engaged from 
 time immemorial in the most rancorous hostilities with the 
 Bushmen, and it was a long time before they could be persuaded 
 to look at a Bushman without attempting to murder him, so 
 •deep was the inveterate hatred between the two races. 
 
 In 1825 'Krieger, chief of a large Korana kraal, with his 
 people attacked two Bushman kraals in the neighbourhood of 
 the 'Koma, about halfway between Philippolis and the 'Gij 
 ■'Gariep, when they committed a number of cruel murders and 
 robberies, killing and driving away the men, and seizing the 
 women and children who survived the attack as prisoners. 
 
 As their numbers increased, so these Koranas extended the 
 field of their ravages. As the vultures, high circling in the air, 
 •detect carrion from afar, and come flocking from all quarters 
 to their horrid banquet, so it was with these inveterate marauders, 
 whom Dr. Casahs not inaptly styled "the Bedouins of South 
 Africa." They rapidly gathered along the borders whenever the 
 irresistible temptation of plunder was made known to them. 
 The loot seized from the unhappy Bushmen was soon insufficient 
 to satisfy their desire for cattle ; the sleek and numerous herds 
 of the pacific Leghoya presented too strong an allurement for 
 them to withstand. 
 
 A series of cruel depredations was commenced upon them, 
 which soon extended also to the herds of the emigrant Basutu. 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 311 
 
 They even launched into a number of expeditions into territories 
 remote from themselves ; thus we are informed by J. Montgomery, 
 an authority in matters of native history, that two of their noted 
 captains, 'Karapan and Witte Voet, started upon what they 
 termed a hunting expedition ; and having reached the borders 
 of the MatabUi country, and wishing to make their trip a pa3nng 
 one, captured, near one of Moselekatze's outstations, a large 
 herd of cattle belonging to him, and beat a retreat with as great 
 rapidity as possible. Moselekatze in hot haste sent a large 
 commando in pursuit, with orders to overtake the marauders at 
 all hazards and recover the cattle which had been seized. 
 
 The Koranas, expecting the avengers would be upon their 
 trail, continued their flight, and overtook, on the way, a party 
 of poor Basutu migrating from the north to join Moshesh, who 
 had established himself among the mountains of what is now 
 British Basutoland. With these unfortunates, the cunning and 
 treacherous Koranas, in order to deceive them and their pur- 
 suers, whom they supposed were now close upon their heels, 
 left some of their plunder. The Matabili, overtaking the unsus- 
 pecting Basutu, and finding a portion of the stolen cattle in their 
 possession, butchered in cold blood some ten to twelve hundred 
 of these wretched victims to the baseness of the Koranas, and 
 returned in triumph with the recaptured cattle and the spoils of 
 the annihilated tribe to the great place of their master. 
 
 In the opposite direction these cattle raids were extended as 
 
 ar as the kraals of some of the Abatembu, who were gradually 
 
 pushing their way towards the Orange river, in which a number 
 
 of these Kaffirs were kiUed and a considerable quantity of cattle 
 
 captured. 
 
 From the time of their advancing towards the east, they were 
 almost always at war with their neighbours. No tribe in their 
 vicinity enjoyed a moment's repose, and after they were fur- 
 nished with firearms and mounted on good horses, they pillaged 
 aU the tribes around them in succession, until their chiefs inspired 
 their neighbours with such terror that they spoke of them as 
 wolves. They even reduced some of the fragmentary Bachoana 
 and Basutu tribes to a state of vassalage, obhging them to become 
 herdsmen and servants. In 1836 the most notorious and for 
 midable of these marauding leaders were Piet Witte- Voet, Sarles, 
 
312 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 and Voortouw. It was during this period that the Koranas 
 spread themselves over the widest extent of Bushman territory 
 which they ever possessed. Their power as a tribe was then at 
 its height ; the possession of guns for a time made them more 
 daring, but as the Griquas on the one hand and the Basutu on 
 the other increased in strength, their decline of fortune com- 
 menced, and it continued ever dwindling until they sank into the 
 insignificant position they have attained in the present day. 
 
 As the influence of Moshesh began to extend and make itself 
 felt by his weaker neighbours, the robber-chiefs of these untama- 
 ble clans established their strongholds on the tops of precipitous 
 and almost inaccessible mountains. Their headquarters were 
 at that time on the rugged yet terraced sides of a magnificent 
 mountain which forms a landmark in the scenery of the Con- 
 quered Territory, some eighteen or twenty miles from the old 
 station of Beersheba, called Boteta, the Rolling Mountain, or 
 the Elandsberg, whose rising rocks, step after step, were hke the 
 successive ramparts of an enormous, and what would in the 
 hands of resolute men have been an impregnable, mountain 
 fortress. An industrious people would soon have converted the 
 fertile valleys of this mountain into a beautiful place of residence, 
 but the pillaging Koranas only saw in it a rock citadel, whence 
 they could conveniently spy out and pounce upon their unsus- 
 pecting victims, and like the vultures which frequented it, they 
 built their shelters on its loftiest ridges. 
 
 This was the point from which they made so many of their 
 excursions upon the Basutu and other surroimding tribes. They 
 were said to be the only people inhabiting a large extent of 
 country at the time the French mission at Beersheba was founded 
 on the banks of the Caledon. The country was then stated to 
 be uninhabited, that is, merely in the occupation of wild game 
 and tribes of the Bushman race, whose sole means of subsistence 
 was the chase. Hence their presence was always ignored, al- 
 though there is overwhelming evidence that the country was 
 then, and for a long period afterwards, thickly populated by them. 
 But in this case, as in every other, with the honourable exception 
 of the Leghoya, the true aborigines of the country were never for 
 a moment taken into consideration when an eligible spring or 
 fountain was required by the intruders of the stronger races into 
 their territories. 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 313 
 
 The founding of this mission marked the date of a terrible 
 act of vengeance on the part of the Basutu, which convinced the 
 Koranas that their reign was over and that their mountain strong- 
 hold could no longer be a secure retreat to shield them after 
 their depredations. An emigrant Xosa Kaffir, named Jalusa, 
 had established himself on one of the outljdng branches of the 
 'Koesberg, and shortly afterwards began to intercept travellers, 
 lay violent hands upon them, and enrich himself with their 
 booty. Complaints of these outrages were made to Moshesh, 
 who was then beginning to assert his authority over a broad 
 expanse of the surrounding country, and he determined in a 
 summary manner to put an end to the outrages of the stranger. 
 Suddenly, when they least expected it, the guilty horde was 
 surrounded by some thousands of men, commanded by two of 
 the sons of Moshesh, and was cut to pieces. The smoke of the 
 burning villages was seen from Beersheba. Some of the fugitives 
 who escaped from the slaughter fled towards the mission station, 
 where they were found by the missionary RoUand a prey to 
 hunger and despair, and thus their lives were saved. 
 
 The Koranas, surprised at the daring blow that had been just 
 struck by Moshesh at so short a distance from their own abode, 
 and seeing the assurance of the inhabitants of Beersheba, upon 
 whom they had been accustomed to levy a species of blackmail, 
 increase from day to day, quitted that portion of the country 
 altogether. 
 
 We have already seen that after the domestic feuds of the 
 Taaibosches, the main branch of the Toovenaars separated, and 
 that the chief Jan Taaibosch and his retainers fell back towards 
 Koranaberg, the Thaba Mekuatling of the Basutu ; first however 
 pitching their huts at Umpukani, or as it was more commonly 
 called Tlotlolane, near Thaba Cheu. Tlotlolane was a hill of 
 considerable magnitude, in the form of a tongue, the summit of 
 the crest being towards the west and the inclination towards the 
 east. In 1836, when M. Arbousset visited the locality, two 
 European houses, belonging to the missionaries, were standing 
 near the top of the hill, and to the right of them a kraal of about 
 two hundred and fifty Korana huts, while some of the detached 
 hills in the neighbourhood were inhabited by a few Bachoana. 
 
 Gert Taaibosch, son of Jan, gradually migrated towards the 
 
314 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 eastward, and occupied a piece of country between Sikoniela and 
 Moshesh. These chiefs endeavoured to drive him out without 
 success. It was after he had estabhshed himself in this territory 
 that he encountered the Bataung chief Mohtsane in a state of 
 abject poverty. He was then upon a hunting expedition towards 
 the Orange river, when the Korana captain engaged his services 
 to look after his cattle in the country he had taken possession of, 
 during the frequent absences which his own wandering predatory 
 habits induced. 
 
 These Koranas, however, never rose again to any great power, 
 and their descendants are now to be found scattered among the 
 Bataung, the Basutu, and over portions of the Free State. 
 
 Some of the fragments of these Korana clans fraternized 
 with the Bushmen, and became mixed up with their raids in the 
 State. These were the Ratten, Scorpions, Zeekoes, and others, 
 and were either killed or dispersed on the death of Scheel Kobus, 
 the last Bushman captain of the Vaal. Others fled, and the 
 survivors of the Springboks, the Scorpions, the Hooge Staanders, 
 the Katse, and the Papieren now live low down the 'Gariep or 
 Great river. 
 
 A myth current among the Koranas of the Links stam, and 
 which Mr. Campbell was fortunate enough to obtain from their 
 chief 'Hari'na in 1820, concerning the origin of their race, will 
 serve as a fitting conclusion to this necessarily imperfect memoir 
 concerning them. He stated that from what they had leamt 
 from their forefathers they believed that there were at first only 
 two men in the world, a Korana and a Bushman, that a woman 
 came out of the ground whom the Korana married, and that from 
 this connexion the country was peopled. The Korana employed 
 the Bushman to kiU game. One day this Bushman came to a 
 large cave where the Korana kept his calves, for there were no 
 cattle kraals in those days, when he shot one of the calves with an 
 arrow, and skinned it and brought it to the Korana as if it had 
 been game. 
 
 On tasting the flesh, the Korana was surprised, and inquired 
 where the other obtained it. The Bushman only replied that 
 he had shot it. The next time the Bushman went to search for 
 game, the Korana, suspecting aU was not fair, followed him 
 secretly, and saw him go to the cave and shoot another calf, and 
 
ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS KORANA CLANS 315 
 
 thus his roguery was detected. The artifice of the Bushman led 
 to a disagreement between them. A little before sunset one 
 evening they agreed to a separation, and also a division of the 
 cattle, which had been before considered their mutual property. 
 The Korana inquired of the Bushman which of the cattle he 
 would choose for his share, who repUed those which had sparkling 
 eyes, not reflecting that their lustre arose from the evening rays 
 of the sun. The Korana chose the dark-eyed cattle, but put off 
 making a division until the sun went down. On examining the 
 herd the Bushman could find none with shining eyes, and sup- 
 posed they had strayed ; he therefore went in search of them. 
 After an unsuccessful search he returned with his body severely 
 scratched by thorns. In the meanwhile the Korana, having 
 smeared his face and legs with butter, which he had obtained by 
 accident from the milk, looked so well that the Bushman was 
 ashamed to remain longer with him, and went away without the 
 cattle to subsist entirely on game, leaving his share to the 
 Korana. 
 
 Although this myth does not point out how the poor Bushman 
 obtained a wife, it seems to indicate, if the myth be at aU ancient, 
 that the Hottentot race must have been in early times occupying 
 territory where Bushmen alone were found from a period so 
 remote that the ancestors of these Koranas believed that no other 
 men existed on the earth except the Bushmen and themselves. 
 This therefore would point to a period long prior to their having 
 been driven southward by the fathers of the Bachoana tribes. 
 
Chapter XVII 
 
 THE GRIQUAS 
 
 We have now arrived at the last tribe connected with the Hotten- 
 tot race which it will be necessary for us to notice ; but their 
 history forms nevertheless a subject of considerable interest, 
 from the notice into which both Griquas and Griqualand have of 
 late years been brought by the wonderful discovery^ of diamonds 
 in the valley of the Vaal, and the diverse land claims connected 
 therewith. 
 
 We have already pointed out that among the old Hottentot 
 tribes in the days of the early Dutch settlement there was a clan 
 belonging to the Cochoqua group which was variously called 
 Chariguriqua and Grigriqua. In 1653 they were said to be 
 without any hereditary chief, and sixty-one years later, or in 
 1713, Kolben states that their descendants were Uving near St. 
 Helena Bay. There does not therefore appear any reason for 
 doubting that it was from this tribe the modem Griquas derived 
 their name. 
 
 There is however a vast difference between the tribe we are 
 now treating of and those of the Namaqua and Korana. In 
 these last we had the pure descendants of the old tribes with 
 which the early Dutch settlers carried on their profitable barter- 
 ing, but in the case of the Griqua it is very differeiit. Although 
 since 1813 the whole of them have adopted the appellation of 
 Griqua, a large majority of them were not only descendants of the 
 Hottentot tribe we have mentioned but of the Dutch colonists 
 I also. They were, in fact, a race of mixed blood, many of them 
 i being half-castes, the offspring of Hottentot and Bush women 
 by the old colonists. This mongrel breed afterwards intermixed 
 with the miserable remnant of the true Grigriqua, who appear 
 to have principally occupied their time, for a considerable period 
 
THE GRIQUAS 317 
 
 previous to their great migration to the eastward, in wandering 
 about in the neighbourhood of Piquetberg and along the borders 
 of the present Division of Clanwilham. 
 
 While these latter have always considered themselves 
 Griquas, the larger portion of those now included under this 
 designation were formerly called Bastaards, a name which, 
 however distasteful to European notions, was one of which they 
 were originally particularly proud. The preponderance of the 
 Dutch element amongst them was shown by the Dutch language 
 being spoken by the more influential majority and by its super- 
 seding that of the purely Hottentot minority. 
 
 We shall find as we proceed, that at the commencement of 
 their career the purer Griqua element seemed to congregate 
 around the elder Kok, whilst those of mixed descent formed the 
 principal following of the Bastaard chief Barend Barends ; and 
 that these two diverse elements only combined when from the 
 force of circumstances their leaders entered into a kind of mutual 
 bond for the purpose of strengthening themselves, and that they 
 might defend themselves against a common danger. 
 
 From the records which have been preserved it would appear 
 that the early condition of the Griquas who first gathered round 
 Kok, as their chosen captain, was on a lower level in the scale of 
 civilization than even that of the Koranas. In a report of the 
 Select Committee of the House of Commons on Aborigines, they 
 are thus described : In 1800, when their first missionary, Mr. 
 Anderson, went among them, they were a horde of wandering 
 naked savages, subsisting by plunder and the chase. Their 
 bodies were daubed with red paint, their heads loaded with 
 grease and shining powder, with no covering but the filthy 
 karo'ss over their shoulders. Without knowledge, without morals, 
 or any trace of civilization, they were wholly abandoned to 
 witchcraft, drunkenness, licentiousness, and all the consequences 
 which arise from the unchecked growth of such vices. With his 
 fellow labourer, Mr. Kramer, Mr. Anderson wandered about with 
 them for five years and a half, exposed to all the dangers and 
 privations inseparable from such a state of society, before they 
 could induce them to locate where they afterwards settled. 
 
 The missionary Anderson, writing of this period, states : 
 When I went among the Griquas, and for some time after, they 
 
3i8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 were without the smallest marks of civUization. If I except one, 
 who had, by some means, got a trifling article of colonial raiment, 
 they had not one thread of European clothing among them, and 
 their wretched appearance and habits were such as might have 
 excited in our minds an aversion for them, had we not been 
 actuated by principles which led us to pity them and served to 
 strengthen us in pursuing the object of our missionary work. 
 They were in many instances little above the brutes. It is a 
 fact that we were among them at the hazard of our lives. This 
 became evident to us from their own acknowledgment to us 
 afterwards, they having confessed that they had frequently 
 premeditated to take away our lives, and were prevented only 
 from executing their purposes by what they now consider an 
 Almighty power. When we went among them, and for some 
 time after, they lived in the habit of plundering one another, 
 and they saw no moral evil in this, nor in any of their actions. 
 Violent deaths were common, and I recollect many of the aged 
 women told me their husbands had been killed in this way. 
 Their usual manner of living was truly disgusting, and they were 
 void of shame ; however, after a series of hardships which re- 
 quired much faith and patience, our instructions were attended 
 with a blessing which produced a great change. 
 
 The old Griquas were clad in the earUer days much in the 
 same fashion as the other wild races by whom they were sur- 
 rounded, viz. a bunch of leather strings about eighteen inches 
 long hung from the woman's waist in front, and a prepared skin 
 of a sheep or antelope covered their shoulders. The men wore 
 a patch of an apron, as big as the crown of a hat, and a mantle 
 exactly like that of the women. To protect the skin from the 
 sun by day and the cold by night, they smeared themselves with 
 a compound of fat and ochre ; the head was anointed with 
 pounded blue mica mixed with grease. The particles of shining 
 mica, as they fell upon the body and on the strings of beads and 
 brass rings, were considered highly ornamental. 
 
 The present Griquas, however, are clearly, as we have pointed 
 out, an aggregation of individuals of comparatively very modem 
 origin, whose homogeneity consisted only in the sameness of 
 their wandering and plundering proclivities, and who could cer- 
 tainly lay no claim to being the descendants of the more ancient 
 
THE GRIQUAS 319 
 
 tribe called Grigriquas in the time of the eariy Dutch settlement. 
 At the period when the elder Kok commenced his wanderings 
 they could only have been few in niunber, a weak sept, consisting 
 principally of the members of his own family and their adherents. 
 The Koranas started as a compact body on their north-eastern 
 journey, at a time when they still retained a considerable degree 
 of their original tribal organization, and carried with them their 
 tribal traditions and hereditary leaders. This movement com- 
 menced, as we have seen, at a much earlier date than that of the 
 Koks, for we find that although Cornelius Kok, the elder, was an 
 old man, he had never heard of the Koranas within the limits of 
 the Colony. In his time, however, the means of communication 
 were rather difficult, and he and his embryo Griqua tribe moved 
 diagonally across the Bushman country, and struck the 'Gariep, 
 or Great river, much lower down than where ^the main body of 
 the Koranas first came in contact with it. 
 
 Differing so greatly as these Griquas did from the earlier 
 Korana emigrants, we can easily understand why such a mongrel 
 and miscellaneous collection of people had neither hereditary 
 chiefs nor hereditary traditions. This of course cannot be won- 
 dered at when we take into consideration the diverse and almost 
 antagonistic elements of which this tribe was composed. 
 
 When Waterboer came to the head of affairs, the following 
 elements were added to the original material : Korana, Bushmen,, 
 and refugees from the Bachoana, chiefly of the Batlaru, Batlapin, 
 and Basutu tribes ; while as his power increased, and the fame 
 of it spread into the Colony, the loose materials of the colonial 
 sweepings were powerfully attracted towards this new centre, in 
 the shape of great numbers of other half-caste Hottentots, 
 representatives of every remaining tribe and from every quarter 
 of the old Colony, refugee slaves, especially after their emancipa- 
 tion, and men of every shade of mixture between these various 
 races. 
 
 The newcomers brought with them not only some notions 
 about European clothing, but, what was stiU more important to 
 Griqua progress, a large number of them came possessed of 
 horses and firearms. The very names which many of them bore 
 marked the closer connexion between them and the old European 
 colonists than had existed in the time of the Korana exodus. 
 
320 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Many of the latter, even in 1874-5, retained names which plainly 
 indicated their Hottentot derivation, intermingled with a few 
 others, such as Jager, Stuurman, Wildeman, Kwaaiman, Platje, 
 January, August, April, September, October, November, and the 
 like, evidently obtained while in temporary service among the 
 neighbouring Boers or Griquas ; while among the others, who 
 gloried rather than otherwise in being called Bastaards, we meet 
 frequently with the following easily recognized colonial surnames, 
 which at once explain their own history — 
 
 Kleinhans, Pienaar, Van Rooyen, 
 
 Coetzee, Cloete, Potgieter, 
 
 Kruger, Gousen, Swanepoel, 
 
 Jansen, Buiskes, Lombard, 
 
 Marais, Van Wijk, Greef, 
 
 and many others, together with a few names showing English 
 descent, such as Read, Bartlett, etc. 
 
 It is certain that sometimes slaves and other retainers took 
 the names of their master's families ; but in those of the Bastaards 
 or Griquas bearing these names, their physical appearance 
 admits of no question as to their mixed origin. These half- 
 caste people were induced to migrate from the Colony, not only 
 by their own desire to escape from the thraldom in which they 
 had lived and to settle in a spot where they believed they would 
 be subject to less restraint, but also to set up, as some of their 
 friends fondly hoped, an independent state free from any ex- 
 traneous interference. 
 
 Several causes led to this. By such a clearance the civil 
 authorities imagined that they would rid themselves of an 
 element which they saw growing and accumulating, and which 
 they feared might, if not got rid of in time, ultimately prove 
 exceedingly troublesome in the colony ; they were the debris 
 of the tribes which had almost ceased to exist, the waifs of colonial 
 life thrown upon society, and apparently, from a natural inertness 
 of disposition, unable to compete with the more energetic races 
 in the struggle for existence. It was, therefore, considered by 
 some that by collecting and placing them on one side, the difficulty 
 would be reduced to a point, and thus rendered more manageable ; 
 while, from a negrophilist point of view, it afforded the long 
 desired opportunity to start a politico-religious community 
 
THE _^GRIQUAS 321 
 
 freed from the trammels of outside control, to build up a separate 
 national existence under purely missionary influences under the 
 patronage of a Society, whose well-meaning but frequently, 
 through ignorance and inexperience, misguided interference has 
 entailed an unmitigated increase of evil in almost every portion 
 of the globe where they have intermeddled. To attempt to 
 establish a history for a race which, from the remotest ages, has 
 been unable to build up a history for itself, must, one is inclined 
 to believe, always prove a failure ; and to expect to turn men 
 who have just been emancipated from the oppressions of genera- 
 tions, and from the debasement and degradation of serfdom 
 and slavery, suddenly into a race of noble-minded patriots, can 
 be an idea entertained only by enthusiastic visionaries, who 
 hope for miracles in utter defiance of all the experience of past 
 history. 
 
 In following out our investigation with regard to the migration 
 of these Griquas, we wUl do so under the separate heads given 
 below, that we may thereby obtain a clearer and more definite, 
 and therefore more satisfactory view, of the race of people now 
 under consideration. 
 
 A. The Founders of the Modem Griquas, 
 
 B. The Family of the Africaanders and the Clan of the Jagers 
 
 (the Hunters), 
 
 C. Barend Barends, the original Chief of the Sept of the 
 
 Bastaards, 
 
 D. Causes which forced the migration to the Eastward, 
 
 E. The early Griqua Settlement, 
 
 F. The Griquas of 1813, 
 
 G. The Griquas of 1820 under the rule of Waterboer, 
 H. The Griqua Chiefs, 
 
 (a). Adam Kok, of PhilippoHs, 
 (b). Cornelius Kok, of Campbell, 
 (c). Barend Barends, of Boetsap, 
 (d). Jan Bloem, the Younger, 
 I. Concluding Remarks. 
 
 A. — The Founders of the Modern Griquas. 
 The name Kok, i.e. Cook, was said to have been derived from 
 the circumstance of one of the progenitors of the family having 
 sen'ed as a cook to one of the old Dutch governors. Old Adam 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Kok, however, who may be termed the founder of this family, 
 and who was the great-grandfather of Adam Kok, the chief of 
 Philippohs, and afterwards of Nomansland, was born about 
 1710. Although of mixed descent, he was originally a slave, 
 but by dint of industry he was able to collect a sufficient sum 
 to purchase his freedom and subsequently to procure a farm 
 among the colonists of the Cape. This farm appears to have been 
 somewhere near the Piquetberg, where his son Cornelius was 
 bom. He also seems to have possessed property at the Khamies- 
 berg, where his family sometimes resided. Here a number of 
 Bastaards and many Hottentots and people of colour gathered 
 around him. He is spoken of as a man superior to most of his 
 fellows, and received a wand of office with the appointment of 
 captain, or chief over the natives who had congregated around 
 him. The Chariguriquas or Grigriquas were then living to the 
 south of Little Namaqualand. We can easily imagine the reason 
 why one with a preponderance of white blood in his veins, and 
 a man of substance also, was recognized as a leader among the 
 Bastaards, who were drawn towards him by the fame of his riches, 
 while the government wand ensured him the allegiance of the 
 down-pressed serf-like Hottentots. 
 
 After a time this Adam sold his little domain and migrated 
 to the country of the Namaquas. In this movement many of 
 the Grigriquas, in the neighbourhood of whom he hved, connected 
 themselves with him. In Namaqualand his subjects were 
 again increased by the addition of a considerable number of 
 Hottentots. After this he recrossed the river and settled at 
 Pella, with one Mr. Albertse as his missionary, and from this 
 point he made long hunting expeditions into the interior. Kok 
 and his Griqua retainers pushed their excursions as far as the 
 country where Campbell, Griquatown, and Boetsap are now 
 situated. Here they found an abundance of all kinds of game, 
 but no people occupying it except some stray Bushmen. No 
 Kaffirs whatever were found. 
 
 It was in those days that these Griqua hunters first discovered 
 and visited the strong fountains at Klaarwater and other places 
 in what is now called Griqualand West, and when they or their 
 friends years afterwards moved up the Great river and took 
 possession of them, they did so without let or hindrance from 
 
THE GRIQUAS 323 
 
 any one, for the simple reason that neither the Batlapin tribe 
 nor any other of the Bachoana was there to dispute their right, 
 and the Bushmen as a matter of course made no resistance, 
 the greater portion of them having been cleared out of the 
 country by the Koranas or the previous hunting parties of the 
 Griquas and Bastaards. 
 
 In 1788 Adam Kok, then a very old man, was still living 
 near the Great river, and in 1795, finding himself too old and 
 feeble for the cares of government, he transferred his chieftain- 
 ship and staff of office to his eldest son Cornelius, who obtained 
 great influence among all the natives, Koranas and others, with 
 whom he came in contact. 
 
 This Cornelius was bom in 1746 at the Piquet mountain. 
 When he was a boy, he said, no Boer lived farther north than 
 Oliphant River. The Bushmen to the eastward of Namaqualand 
 were always at war both with the Colony and the Namaquas, 
 but his father, by gentle treatment, was the means of bringing 
 them to live in peace. At that time both Bushmen and Namaquas 
 were much more numerous than at present. Many of the 
 former were carried off by disease, others removed higher up the 
 river to the eastward, while a considerable number of the latter 
 crossed the river and took up their residence in Great Namaqua- 
 land. No person beyond, or to the north of, the Oliphant 
 river at the time of his living at Piquetberg possessed a waggon, 
 except his father and himself. 
 
 When his father removed to the north, Cornelius remained 
 behind at the Khamiesberg. He could read and write, and had 
 to a certain degree been civilized by intercourse with missionaries 
 and colonists, and through frequenting Capetown and the 
 Colony. He commanded great respect among his people, and 
 by their aid and the services of the neighbouring Bushmen and 
 Koranas had so far prospered that he had become the possessor 
 of immense flocks of sheep. Kok had the good sense to secure 
 to himself the services of these native tribes, by giving them a 
 certain number of sheep in charge, allowing them half the lambs 
 for their trouble of herding. Their true and faithful accounting, 
 annually, was proverbial, and thus he prevented both poverty 
 in his neighbourhood and the consequence of want. By all 
 accounts he lived in a style similar to that of the colonists on the 
 
324 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 border, and exhibited a good example to those about him by 
 introducing ideas of regularity, comfort, necessary conveniences, 
 and social duties, which raised his immediate followers far above 
 the tribes around him. 
 
 This Cornelius Kok was not only a great flock-master, but 
 a great hunter ; and apparently tired of the somewhat monotonous 
 life of a Dutch burgher and actuated doubtlessly in the first 
 instance more by ardour for the chase and love of hunting than 
 anjrthing else, he inspanned his waggon and left the Khamiesberg. 
 Ranking, as we are informed he did, as a burgher, we presume 
 that he and his immediate relatives, at least, had guns, which 
 they took with them when he commenced his wanderings like 
 his father before him. He was acknowledged by the existing 
 government as the successor of his father, and thus entrusted 
 with the staff of office, possessing horses and firearms and flocks 
 of almost patriarchal size, one of the primitive tokens of immense 
 wealth, he must undoubtedly have appeared as a great man 
 in the eyes of the natives among whom he travelled. 
 
 The country abounded in game, large and small, gemsboks 
 and elands, giraffes, white rhinoceroses, and many other large- 
 animals were numerous. In such a country, besides those whO' 
 had adhered to the fortunes of his father, the expert and enthusi- 
 astic huntsman would soon get a considerable following around 
 him, ready to assist him in the chase, and to feast and make 
 merry upon the superabundance of flesh which its spoils afforded.. 
 This in all probability was the time when his " faithful Griquas " 
 first gathered round him in any considerable numbers. 
 
 Finding the wild life of the huntsman more congenial to his 
 nature than following his sheep, which he seems in a great measure 
 to have entrusted to the care of others, he continued his pursuit 
 of game, wandering from place to place until he arrived on the 
 banks of the 'Gariep or Great river. 
 
 A description has already been given of the degraded condition 
 of the Griquas at this period. 
 
 In their early days, with the exception of their leader and his 
 family, and the few Bastaards who were associated with him„ 
 the whole of the horde still used the bow and arrow, the ancient 
 weapons of their race. The nucleus of the future tribe was then 
 composed of the half-caste family of the Koks and their purely 
 
THE GRIQUAS 325 
 
 Hottentot adherents ; after this date these were joined from 
 time to time by scattered groups of other Bastaards, and thus the 
 hands of Comehus were gradually strengthened, and with the 
 feeling of growing strength a little cattle lifting and marauding 
 sprang up among his followers when game was difficult to procure. 
 Mixing up a little conquest on his own part with his sporting 
 occupations, he subdued and absorbed into his own tribe most 
 of the wandering Koranas with whom he came in contact. 
 
 Having fixed upon a sort of central station on the Great river, 
 he sallied out from this point upon hunting or other expeditions, 
 some of which were extended to considerable distances. In one 
 of these he came in contact with the Batlapin, who were then 
 found at a place called Kama-piri, on the Kuruman river, not 
 far below the present mission station. Some writers have stated 
 that he was the first, proceeding from a southerly direction, who 
 discovered the Batlapin ; but we know now, as we have previously 
 shown, that long before his arrival the Korana clans had invaded 
 and settled in that part of the country, and had carried their 
 marauding expeditions much farther to the northward than 
 Kuruman ; and that they had been, according to the most orthodox 
 manners of the times, on some occasions on friendly terms with 
 the Batlapin, while on others they had relieved, or attempted to 
 relieve, them of any number of superfluous cattle they could lay 
 their hands on. 
 
 Molehabangwe, father of Mothibi and Mahura, and grand- 
 father of Mankoroane, was the great chief of the Batlapin at 
 the time of this visit of Kok, which appears to have been a most 
 opportune one for these people, as it proved to be the means of 
 saving them from the grasping clutches of their quondam friends 
 and neighbours the Koranas. 
 
 At this time no Bachoana were found in the country south of 
 the Kuruman river. The greater portion was, with the exception 
 of those localities which had been appropriated by the invading 
 Koranas, still in the occupation of its earliest known inhabitants, 
 the Bushmen. The report of the Select Committee upon the 
 Aborigines, already referred to, explains by whom these unfortu- 
 nate people were eventually deprived of by far the largest tracts 
 of their hunting grounds. In this report it is stated that the 
 Griquas have been accused, and with much probability of truth, 
 
326 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 of having whilst in a savage state treated the Bushmen with 
 barbarity, and expelled them from the greater part of their 
 country. This however was before the missionaries went to 
 them ! 
 
 It is difificult to reconcile the statement in the last paragraph 
 with the fact that the missionaries had been wandering with the 
 Griquas on the left, or south side, of the Orange river for several 
 years before they crossed it, a part of the Bushman country in 
 which they, the Griquas, never made any permanent settlement, 
 and that it was after these missionaries had themselves selected, 
 and appropriated, the country around Klaarwater as a home for 
 their Griqua proteges that the great extension and permanent 
 usurpation of the Bushman territory by these Griquas commenced ! 
 We are assured that the Griqua chiefs of the infant settlement 
 always treated the Bushmen with consideration and kindness. 
 Of this we shall have better means of judging as we proceed, and 
 shall discover that this kindness was strikingly exemplified by 
 depriving the latter of the last vestige of their lands and giving 
 them in exchange a few cattle to live upon, as if the men of this 
 wild hunter-race, who rejoiced m the untrammelled freedom of 
 the mighty plains by which they were surrounded, could be 
 suddenly turned, by a feat akin to legerdemain, into mere cattle- 
 herds ! Be this as it may, it is quite certain that they at the same 
 time must have received very different treatment from the hands 
 of a large portion of the Griqua people, and that, up to a very 
 recent period, for in 1820 the hatred of the Bushmen was so 
 intense against the Griquas that they never lost an opportunity 
 of killing one, could they catch him alone in the veld. 
 
 In 1 80 1 Africaander and his banditti were spreading terror 
 through the entire country, and had carried their depredations 
 as far as the Korana kraals in the neighbourhood of t'Keys, or 
 'Kheis. The Griquas were at that time living scattered from 
 t'Koubahas (Bitter Dacha), then the headquarters of Cornelius 
 Kok, and some distance below 'Kheis, on the Great river, to 
 a little above its junction with the Vaal or 'Gij-'Gariep. Another 
 portion of the Kok family, Jan Kok with his family and retainers, 
 were living at t'Karaap, not far from Modder Fontein to the 
 right of these rivers, while the missionaries Kicherer, Anderson, 
 and Kramer were found at t'Aakaap, or Rietfontein, with 
 
THE GRIQUAS 327 
 
 their followers. A few Koranas were also encamped at the same 
 place. Such then appears to have been the position of the 
 Griquas who acknowledged the authority of the Koks. The 
 country to the north and north-west of this was still in the sole 
 and undisturbed possession of the Bushmen. 
 
 Having thus traced the career of the elder Koks, the real 
 founders of the modem Griquas, to this point, we wUl now 
 pass on to the consideration of the next section, especially as 
 the latter part of the life of Cornelius being connected with the 
 early Griqua Settlement, it will be better, to avoid unnecessary 
 repetition, to defer any further remarks which we may have to 
 make with regard to his actions and his wanderings until we treat 
 upon that subject. After a lengthened life he died at 'Kou'nou- 
 sop's drift on the Vaal, after nominating his son Adam as chief 
 of the whole Griqua nation, while Cornelius Kok of Campbell 
 was appointed chief of the family branch of the Koks. 
 
 B. — The Family of the Africaanders and the Clan of the Jagers 
 
 or Hunters. 
 
 The Africaanders belonged to a large tribe of Hottentots who 
 were at one time called Jagers or the Hunters, and who lived 
 within a hundred miles of Capetown, near the rugged Witsenberg 
 range of moimtains. Unfortunately the original native name has 
 been lost, and it is therefore impossible to identify them with any 
 of the old tribes of the early Dutch Settlement. Being unable 
 to maintain their ground against the continual encroachments 
 of the Dutch, they were at length driven back from one point to 
 another farther in the interior, while those who lingered behind 
 were compelled to become the submissive serfs of the farmers. 
 
 The Africaanders were the ruling family. The father of Jager 
 Africaander, the most prominent and notorious member of it, 
 had succeeded by hereditary right to the chieftainship of the 
 diminished remnant of the tribe, which he resigned to his eldest 
 son Jager, afterwards called Christian Africaander. In his 
 younger days he had pastured his own flocks and hunted his 
 own game not only over the Witsenberg but the Winterhoek 
 mountains, once the strongholds of his clan. He had a dash of 
 European blood in his veins. For a considerable time he lived 
 in the service of a farmer in the district of Tulbagh, part of his 
 
328 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 time being employed in tending the farmer's cattle, which were 
 sent at certain seasons to the vicinity of the Great river. 
 
 It was about this time that the Cape first came into the 
 hands of the English, when a report was industriously circulated by 
 evil-minded persons that all the Hottentots were to be forced 
 into the army, with the design of sending them out of Africa. 
 This report induced Africaander and his sons to resolve to leave 
 the colony altogether, or to live near its limits, to escape being 
 forced into the army. 
 
 Their master, Piet Pienaar, who appears to have been in- 
 vested with the authority of a fieldcornet, trekking about the 
 same time, they removed with him to the extreme border beyond 
 the Oliphant river. 
 
 Here, Africaander and his sons, Jager, Titus, Klaas, David, 
 and Jacobus, together with the remains of his tribe, which 
 had now dwindled to a few families, took up their abode. On 
 account of the increasing age of the father and the shrewdness 
 and prowess of the eldest son, Jager, the latter had obtained 
 the reins of government of his tribe at an early age. Pienaar 
 found in him a faithful and intrepid shepherd, while his valour 
 in defending and increasing the herds and flocks of his master 
 enhanced his value, at the same time that it rapidly matured 
 the latent principle which afterwards recoiled on the devoted 
 family and carried devastation to whatever quarter he directed 
 his steps. He and his brothers were for a considerable time 
 employed by Pienaar in commandos against the Bushmen, 
 Namaquas, and other defenceless natives of the interior, and 
 were furnished with muskets and powder for that purpose. In 
 this way they were taught to rob for their master, which ulti- 
 mately led to their setting up for themselves. 
 
 On these occasions the unhappy victims of their attack were 
 generally surprised in their villages at night, the men were shot, 
 and the surviving women and children, together with the cattle, 
 were captured. When these commandos were undertaken, the 
 practice was for a few Boers to unite their separate strength, 
 and the principal part of the booty was divided among themselves, 
 a fractional share only being given to the slaves or Hottentots 
 who were in their service. There were at that time a few Boers 
 in that district who were noted for the cruelties and murders 
 
THE GRIQUAS 329 
 
 they committed upon the defenceless natives in these marauding 
 and plundering expeditions, and among these the name of 
 Pienaar was not the least notorious. We have already seen the 
 success which attended some of these unjustifiable forays, and 
 the lion's share which fell to Pienaar upon such occasions. Not 
 only avaricious, but licentious and cruel, his conduct towards the 
 females on his farm at length aroused the jealousyof Africaander 
 and his brothers. 
 
 On expeditions where plunder was |the object, Pienaar 
 generally accompanied the party, but when they were not 
 engaged in such serious matters they were often sent from home 
 under circumstances which confirmed the suspicions to which 
 allusion has already been made, the wives and daughters of the 
 chief and his brothers being the principal objects of these illicit 
 attentions. The Africaanders had been trained to the use of 
 firearms, and to act not only on the defensive, but the offensive 
 also, and now they, who had been signally expert in recapturing 
 stolen cattle from the Bushmen, refused to go on any more such 
 expeditions. A tempest was brooding in their bosoms. They 
 signified their wish, with the farmer's permission, to have some 
 reward for their often galling servitude, and to be allowed to 
 retire to some of the sequestered districts beyond, where they 
 might dwell in peace. This desire was however sternly refused, 
 and followed by severity still more grievous. 
 
 Had Pienaar treated his subjects with common humanity, 
 not to say gratitude, he might have died honourably and prevented 
 the catastrophe which befell the family and the train of robbery, 
 crime, and bloodshed which quickly followed that event. An 
 incident, however, shortly afterwards occurred which brought 
 matters to a climax. Information having come to Pienaar 
 that the Bushmen had carried off some cattle from a Boer belong- 
 ing to the district over which he was fieldcornet, he in his official 
 capacity commanded them to pursue the Bushmen, in order to 
 recapture the cattle. This order they positively refused to obey, 
 alleging that his only motive for sending them on such an expedi- 
 tion was that they might be murdered, and he thereby get 
 possession of their wives. Order after order was sent to 
 their huts to summon them into the presence of their master, 
 but which, in a dogged manner, they left unheeded. 
 
330 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 In the evening Jager, with his brothers and some attendants, 
 being again summoned by the exasperated farmer to appear 
 at the door of his house, moved slowly up towards it. Titus, 
 the next brother to the chief, dreading the farmer in his wrath, 
 took his gun with him, which it being night he easily concealed. 
 On reaching the front of the house, Jager, the chief, went up the 
 few steps of the stoep leading to the door, to state their complaints, 
 when Pienaar with his gun in his hand rushed furiously on the 
 chieftain, and with one blow precipitated him to the bottom of 
 the steps. Jager at the same moment seizing the gun, which 
 was loaded with small shot, lodged the contents in his master's 
 body. 
 
 As soon as Pienaar fell, the Africaanders entered the house, 
 when the wife, who had witnessed the murder of her husband, 
 shrieked and implored for mercy. They told her not to be 
 alarmed, for they had nothing against her. They asked for the 
 guns and ammunition which were in the place, which she promptly 
 delivered to them. They then charged her not to leave the 
 house during the night, as they could not ensure her safety if 
 she and her family attempted to take to flight. This admoni- 
 tion was however disregarded, for overcome with terror two 
 children who attempted to escape by the back door were imme- 
 diately shot by a couple of Bushmen who were lying in wait. 
 Mrs. Pienaar herself succeeded in reaching the nearest farm in 
 safety. 
 
 Immediately after the fatal occurrence, Africaander rallied 
 the remnant of his tribe, and with his family and the Hottentots 
 in the service of Pienaar fled with as much expedition as possible 
 towards Great Namaqualand, carrying with them whatever 
 spoil they could secure, as well as all the muskets and ammuni- 
 tion which formerly belonged to their master. Having suc- 
 ceeded in effecting his retreat across the Great river, he fixed 
 his abode on the opposite bank. From this point the formidable 
 chief commenced his daring exploits against both the colonists 
 and the neighbouring tribes, filling the borders of the colony to 
 an extent of not less than three hundred miles with the terror 
 of his name. 
 
 Attempts were made both on the part of the colonial govern- 
 ment and the Boers themselves to avenge this outrage upon the 
 
THE GRIQUAS 33i 
 
 Pienaar family, but the attempts were futile, and Africaander, 
 notwithstanding their commandos and the rewards they offered 
 for his apprehension dead or alive, maintained his position, and 
 dared them to approach, his territory. In the meanwhile he 
 and his brothers were not long in commencing offensive opera- 
 tions, and making reprisals upon the Colony. In their first 
 expedition they took the farmers by surprise, and murdered a 
 Boer named Engelbrecht, and likewise a Bastaard-Hottentot, 
 from whom they carried off much cattle. 
 
 Immediately the missionaries arrived at Warm Bath in the 
 Great Namaqua country, Africaander with his family came and 
 took up his residence near them. For a time he behaved in an 
 orderly and peaceable manner, but a circumstance occurred 
 which led to the ruin of the settlement. Jager and Titus, as 
 they dared not visit Capetown themselves after the murders 
 they had perpetrated, employed a Hottentot named Hans Dreyer 
 to take three spans or teams of oxen thither ; with two spans 
 of these he was desired to purchase a waggon for them, and 
 with the third to bring it home. On the way to Capetown Hans 
 met a Boer to whom he was in debt, for which the Boer seized 
 the whole of the oxen, upon which Hans returned to Namaqua- 
 land, and refused to give any account of the oxen_^entrusted to 
 his care. This conduct of Hans so exasperated the sons of 
 Africaander that they attacked his kraal and murdered him. 
 
 Not long after this occurrence the friends of Hans, with the 
 assistance of some Namaquas, in their turn attacked the kraal 
 of Africaander, and he, to be revenged on the Namaquas for 
 aiding them against him, fell upon their kraal. These, finding 
 themselves too weak to resist him, implored assistance from the 
 Namaquas at Warm Bath, who, complying with their request, 
 sent out a large armed party to defend them, which so enraged 
 Africaander that he threatened destruction to the settlement. 
 He accomplished his threat in part, for he came against them 
 and carried off a great number of their cattle. A numerous 
 party of Namaquas pursued him to his kraal, where they carried 
 on a kind of war, shooting at each other from behind bushes, 
 none of them possessing sufficient courage to meet in the open 
 field. However the Namaquas at length devised a prudent 
 scheme for regaining _their cattle, by taking possession of the 
 
332 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 watering place. In spite of Africaander's people, the cattle 
 when thirsty made their way to the water, and were carried off 
 in triumph by the Namaquas. 
 
 Africaander, renewing his threatenings against the Nama- 
 quas at Warm Bath, so intimidated them that they with the 
 missionaries removed over the Great river to a place in Little 
 or South Namaqualand. He commenced his operations by 
 spreading devastation around the settlement ; for a whole month 
 the missionaries were in a state of terror, hourly expecting the 
 threatened attack. The natives likened him to a lion, whose 
 roar made the inhabitants of even distant hamlets fly from their 
 homes. Yes, said one of their chiefs, I have for fear of his 
 approach fled with my people, our wives, and our children to 
 the mountain glens or wilderness, and spent nights amongst 
 the beasts of prey, rather than gaze on the eyes of this Hon and 
 hear his roar. On one occasion the missionaries dug square 
 holes in the ground, about six feet deep, that in case of an attack 
 they might escape the balls ; there they remained for the space 
 of a week, having the tilt sail of a waggon thrown over the mouth 
 of the pit to keep off the burning rays of an almost vertical sun. 
 
 At length this life of suspense and anxiety became insup- 
 portable, and they retreated with their people to the south of 
 the Great river. Scarcely had they departed when Africaander 
 made his appearance before the place. Finding it abandoned, 
 his followers commenced a rigid search for any spoils which 
 might have been concealed in the earth, and in this they were 
 but too successful. One of the chieftain's attendants strayed 
 in the burying-ground, where already a few mounds distinguished 
 it from the surrounding waste as a place for the dead. Stepping 
 over what he supposed to be a newly-closed grave, he heard to 
 his surprise soft notes of music vibrate beneath. He stood 
 motionless, gazing over his shoulder with open mouth and eyes 
 dilated, hesitating whether to stand still and see the dead arise, 
 which he had heard the missionaries preach about, or take to 
 his heels. After no little palpitation of heart, he mustered 
 courage to make another trial, for the tones he had heard had 
 died away. His second leap again aroused the sepulchral harp, 
 which now fell in soft but awful cadence on his ear. Without 
 casting an eye behind, he darted off to the camp, and with 
 
THE GRIQUAS 333 
 
 breathless amazement announced to Africaander the startling 
 discovery he had made of life and music in the grave. 
 
 The appearance of the man convinced Africaander that he 
 was in earnest, for reason seldom reels in that country. The 
 chief, fearless alike of the living or the dead, was not to be scared 
 by a supposed spectre in a tomb. He arose, and ordering his 
 men to follow him, went straight to the spot. One jumped 
 and another jumped, and at each succeeding leap succeeding 
 notes of the softest music fell upon the ear. Recourse was 
 instantly had to exhumation, and the mysterious musician was 
 soon dragged to light in the shape of the piano of the wife of 
 the missionary Albrecht, which being too cumbrous to be taken 
 with them in their hasty flight, had been buried in the spot 
 where Africaander and his bandit followers found it. The 
 triumphant chief and his adherents revelled in their iU-gotten 
 spoils, and at their departure the fire-brand was stuck in the 
 houses and huts and the entire place reduced to ashes. 
 
 Africaander now became a terror not only to the colony in 
 the south, but also to the tribes on the north. The original 
 natives of the country looked upon him as a common enemy. 
 This led to pilferings and provocations on their part, which were 
 sure to bring upon themselves a swift vengeance, with consider- 
 able interest. The tribes fled at his approach, and his name 
 carried dismay even to the solitary wastes. 
 
 The success which in almost every instance followed the 
 arms of such a small body of banditti as that of Africaander 
 in the beginning of his career may be ascribed to his mode of 
 warfare. The native method of carrying on hostilities was ever 
 to keep themselves under cover, occasionally discharging their 
 missiles, or firing an occasional shot, as any of the enemy ex- 
 posed themselves. If both parties were of the same mind, this 
 desultory skirmishing would be continued day after day, until 
 one or other of the parties was weary. Africaander, on the 
 other hand, always endeavoured to attack his enemy on the 
 plain, or if they were entrenched among rocks or bushes, he 
 instantly attempted to drive them from their sheltering places. 
 By these tactics the conflict was soon decided. Africaander 
 proved himself to be a man of prowess and capable of studying 
 the results of the primitive method of native warfare, hence his 
 constant victories. 
 
334 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 His brother Titus was still more fierce and fearless than 
 himself, and though a little man, he was an extraordinary runner 
 and able to bear unparalleled fatigue. He has been known single- 
 handed to overtake a party of twenty possessing firearms, and 
 only to retire when his musket was shot to pieces in his hand. 
 At length by incursions into the Colony and robbing the Boers, 
 not only of their cattle, but of their muskets and powder, Afri- 
 caander became very powerful. He was joined also by a 
 European outlaw, as well as by some Bushmen and people of 
 other tribes, and his horde grew into such formidable propor- 
 tions that it was a standing menace to the whole of that portion 
 of South Africa. 
 
 He commenced a regular system of depredations both upon 
 the Namaquas and the Koranas. He pushed his forays against 
 the latter so far to the eastward that he attacked the small clans 
 which had settled in the neighbourhood of 'Kheis. Mr. Bor- 
 cherds, who travelled through the country at the time, after 
 crossing this ford to the left bank of the river, agairrTieard re- 
 ports of the cruelties committed by Africaander's brother Klaas. 
 Danster, a petty chief of some emigrant Kaffirs, said that on 
 one occasion he cut tobacco in small pieces, and spreading it close 
 on a skin, induced some of the [natives to 'pick it up, and 
 while thus occupied they were attacked by a number of Afri- 
 caander's men and cruelly put to death, and those who attempted 
 to escape were shot. Fearful stories were also circulated about 
 the atrocities committed by these banditti upon the Namaquas. 
 Many had been murdered, women and children had been tied 
 to trees, and after being ill-treated, kiUed ; whole communities 
 had been robbed of their cattle, so that many of the tribes, not 
 being able to defend themselves with inferior weapons, were 
 wandering about in a state of want and privation, many perish- 
 ing from hunger ; while the immense number of cattle thus 
 obtained were exchanged again with some unprincipled colonists, 
 who believed more in illicit bartering than fighting, for further 
 supplies of arms and ammunition. 
 
 It is thus from the tragical fate of Pienaar we find a chain 
 of events following one another with considerable rapidity, which 
 must have had a marked influence upon the eastward migration 
 of the clan of the Koks and the main body of the emigrant 
 
THE GRIQUAS 335 
 
 Bastaards and Griquas, as at an early date they became involved 
 in a series of disputes and conflicts with the redoubtable chief- 
 tain of the Trans-Gariepine bandits. The farmers finding that 
 they had failed to capture the outlawed Africaander, bribed 
 those then living on the banks of the Great river under their 
 chief Barend Barends to make the attempt. This gave rise to 
 a bitter and deadly feud between them, resulting in numerous 
 severe and bloody encounters between the Africaanders, who 
 were urged by motives of self-defence and a desire to wreak 
 vengeance on their enemies, the farmers and their allies, and 
 the Griqua chief Barend Barends, who was impelled to the 
 conflict both by the desire of reward and the hope of obtaining 
 additional loot in the shape of captured cattle. Neither, how- 
 ever, gained any decided advantage over the other, although 
 they dreadfully harassed one another and intensified the feeling 
 of hatred and hostility which had sprung up between them. 
 
 In 1812-13, at the time of Mr. Campbell's first visit, he 
 states that in every kraal he came to the very mention of Afri- 
 caander's name caused a trembhng amongst the inhabitants. 
 From PeUa he dispatched a conciliatory letter to this notorious 
 brigand. Increasing years, doubtlessly, made him begin to feel 
 weary of a life of disquiet and rapine, and he forwarded a favour- 
 able reply. Missionaries were sent to him, when he and some 
 of his brothers became converts. He accompanied Mr. Moffat 
 to Capetown, and had an interview with the governor. Lord 
 Charles Somerset, and ultimately died in the odour of sanctity. 
 During these few evanescent years there was a lull in the stormy 
 region of the Gariepine valley, and for a time there was rest 
 and quiet for its inhabitants. 
 
 Scarcely, however, had his death taken place when the 
 majority of his followers reverted to their former career of 
 plundering and murder. Being able to muster some three 
 hundred men, with two hundred stand of arms in their posses- 
 sion, they soon became as formidable and destructive as ever 
 to the comparatively helpless tribes around them, while they 
 extended their marauding expeditions as far north as the Ova- 
 herero, until they became, as Africaander had been before them, 
 the scourge and terror of the whole of this part of Africa. Some 
 of the smaller Korana clans were reduced to a state of famine, 
 when numbers perished from hunger. 
 
336 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 In 1823 Mr. Thompson met some of these unfortunate 
 wretches near the junction of the 'Gham'ka or 'Ga'ma (the 
 Lion's river) and the Hartebeest river. These fugitive Koranas 
 were mere skin and bone, the women perfectly naked, walking 
 skeletons, who had for many days lived entirely on gum and a 
 little brackish water. One, a young woman, but a cripple, was 
 sitting on the earth, her eyes fixed on the ground, which she 
 did not attempt to raise even when spoken to. An infant lay 
 in her naked lap, wasted like herself to a skeleton, which every 
 now and then applied its little mouth alternately to the shrivelled 
 breasts of its dying mother. Near by stood a wooden vessel 
 with a few spoonfuls of muddy water. She and an old woman, 
 who was in the same condition by her side, had been left by 
 their relatives to perish, because they were helpless when famine 
 pressed sore upon the horde. A little farther on were several 
 more Korana women and children, in a condition not much 
 better than those just left. The men belonging to the party 
 had been absent several days in quest of game, and the women 
 had been left to subsist on gum until their return. 
 
 These Koranas, like the rest of their nation, had once pos- 
 sessed cattle, but had been reduced to these extremes by being 
 plundered by their neighbours. They lived on the banks of the 
 Hartebeest river, and were reduced to exist in precisely the 
 same manner as the Bushmen, killing game by poisoned arrows 
 and by pitfalls with a sharp stake fixed in the centre ; but 
 although they had constructed so many of the latter along the 
 banks that it was dangerous to travel along them, the extreme 
 drought had not only driven away all the game from that part 
 of the country, but had also destroyed all the edible bulbs upon 
 which they might have existed, thus reducing them to extreme 
 destitution. It is worthy of remark, however, that no instance 
 of cannibalism was heard of, either among the Hottentots or 
 the Bushmen, even in their direst extremities. 
 
 It was not only in this locahty that extreme wretchedness 
 was to be found : the state of the entire country along the whole 
 course of the 'Gariep or Great river was most deplorable. It 
 had become a place of resort for numerous bands of banditti, 
 consisting chiefly of Bastaards, Hottentots, and runaway slaves. 
 Open war had broken out amongst the different factions in 
 
THE GRIQUAS 337 
 
 Griqualand. A large number of the disaffected had removed 
 to the mountains east of the Zeekoe river, and had betaken 
 themselves once more to the lawless and bandit Ufe from which 
 the missionaries after years of danger and difficulty had happily 
 reformed them. They had plundered the helpless Bachoana 
 and Basutu clans in the most unprovoked and cruel manner. 
 They had destroyed or dispersed whole tribes, by robbing 
 them of their cattle and even of their children, emulating the 
 atrocities and augmenting the miseries inflicted by the savage 
 Mantatees. 
 
 At that time the Bastaard population was spread along the 
 banks of the 'Gariep for an extent of at least 600 miles. Their 
 numbers, estimated altogether, amounted to about five thousand 
 souls, and they had in their possession at least seven hundred 
 muskets. They readily obtained constant supplies of ammuni- 
 tion, notwithstanding aU the proclamations to the contrary, 
 from the Boers, whom great profits tempted to carry on this 
 traffic in defiance of the colonial regulations and the claims of 
 humanity. The profits of this smuggling traffic were immense, 
 as for every pound of powder sold to the banditti an ox or a 
 cow was given in exchange. Such then was the chaotic state of 
 affairs in 1823, and it was only around the contracted centre of 
 Griquatown, under the inunediate control of Mr. MelviU and 
 the missionaries that any signs of peace could be found. 
 
 We learn from the foregoing facts that the influence exerted 
 by this brigand chief over the people who had gathered round 
 him was similar for good or evil to that of every other native 
 ruler, who has by his own personal daring and achievements 
 brought himself into note. It was of a purely personal character, 
 and ceased to operate when he himself ceased to exist. Thus, 
 when in the fuU flush of victory he led his followers from one 
 scene of rapine and bloodshed to another, they followed him 
 with loud acclaim and without questioning ; when from in- 
 creasing age he became weary of strife, the recollection of his 
 power was sufficient to keep them aU in a state of superficial 
 submissiveness to his will and desires ; but no sooner had he 
 passed from the scene than among his late followers years of 
 painful missionary labour appeared thrown to the winds in a 
 moment, and they returned apparently with renewed zest and 
 
338 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 eagerness to their old occupation of plunder and violence, which 
 would have appeared astonishing, did not history teach us that 
 such a sudden revulsion is but a natural reaction in the un- 
 tutored mind of the savage when he finds himself released from 
 a control the beneficial effects of which he can neither appreciate 
 ■nor understand. 
 
Chapter XVIII 
 
 BAREND BARENDS, THE ORIGINAL CHIEF OF THE 
 SEPT OF THE BASTAARDS. 
 
 The exact origin of this man and his family does not appear to be 
 known. It is, however, certain that they were leaders among the 
 Bastaard emigrants who were then flocking into the Gariepine 
 valley, before the missionaries first visited, in their perplexity 
 and distress, the elder Cornelius Kok at the Khamiesberg. 
 
 Barend Barends was in those days so far a chief that he had 
 received a staff of office, similar to that bestowed upon the 
 Koks and other native captains, showing that his position was 
 recognised by the constituted authorities of the period. While 
 the purer Griqua portion of the future tribe was gathering about 
 the great flock-master Kok, Barend and his family seem to have 
 formed the centre aroimd which the Bastaard element of the 
 same infant community congregated. This fact will make itself 
 more clearly apparent when we come to treat of his rule at 
 Boetsap and his migrations from that point. 
 
 The Barendses, as we have already seen, were sufficiently 
 powerful to cope for a considerable time with aU the difficulties 
 of their exposed position. The Bastaards under them, or 
 acknowledging their leadership, approximated more nearly in 
 their customs and ideas to the border colonists, the backwoods- 
 men of South Africa, than any other, and with whom they 
 evidently retained friendly relations, as we find that after the 
 Pienaar tragedy the latter solicited the cooperation of Barend 
 Barends in their vain attempts to arrest the brigand chief of 
 the Africaanders. This proposition, as we have already learnt, 
 was agreed to, and thus both he and his brothers were brought 
 into hostile collision with the most formidable native leader to 
 be found in the history of the Lower 'Gariep. 
 
 His brother Nicholas Barends is described by Mr. Moffat as 
 
 339 
 
340 i THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 being a very superior man, both in appearance and intellect, 
 with an excellent memory, and good descriptive powers. In 
 the conflicts which ensued between themselves and Africaander, 
 on one occasion Barends' party, who were far superior in num- 
 bers, and were headed by Nicholas Barends, unexpectedly carried 
 off every ox and cow belonging to Africaander, only a few calves 
 being left in the stall. After a desperate, though very unequal, 
 contest for a whole day, having repeatedly taken and lost their 
 cattle, the Africaanders returned home, slaughtered the calves 
 which were left them, and rested a couple of days in order to 
 dry the flesh in the sun, ready for an intended campaign. 
 
 For several days they pursued their course along the northern 
 bank of the Great river, and having by spies found out the 
 rendezvous of the enemy on the southern side, they passed 
 beyond them, in order to attack them from a quarter on which 
 they fancied themselves safe. They swam over in the dead of 
 night, with their ammunition and clothes tied on their heads 
 and their guns on their shoulders. The little force thus pre- 
 pared seized their opportunity, and when all the enemy were 
 slumbering in fancied security, aroused them by a volley of 
 stones falling on their fragile huts. The inmates rushed out, 
 and were received by a shower of arrows ; and before they 
 could fairly recover their senses and seize their guns, the dis- 
 charge of musketry convinced them that they were besieged by 
 a host in a most favourable position. They consequently fled 
 in the greatest consternation, leaving the captured cattle as well 
 as their own in the hands of the Africaanders. 
 
 It was about this time that on the invitation of Barend 
 Barends the missionaries joined the Bastaards on the banks of 
 the 'Gariep, and it was from these again that a select party, 
 though a mixed multitude, finally terminated a migratory life 
 by settling at the spot afterwards called Griquatown, in 1804, 
 with Messrs. Anderson and Kramer. They were members of 
 distinct tribes, having different languages, customs, and grades 
 of honour, from that of the descendant of the colonial farmer 
 to the very lowest state of degradation in the Bushmen. Their 
 government was of a mingled character, comprising the patri- 
 archal, despotic, monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic, each 
 party having its claims, either of birth, power, numbers, or 
 
BAREND BARENDS 341 
 
 hereditary right, exhibiting all the phases of a tropical thunder- 
 cloud, which roUs on in wild and black confusion tiU it bursts 
 forth scattering terror and death. 
 
 We have already seen that in 1801 these people had so far 
 advanced to the eastward, in detached parties, that the one 
 more directly under the care of the missionaries, which appears 
 to have formed the vanguard of this movement, was then found 
 some twenty hours of waggon travelling beyond the drift at 
 Prieska, which would be probably some fifty or sixty miles ; 
 the family clan of the Koks, which still remained on the southern 
 side of the river and considerably to the westward, bringing up 
 the rear. 
 
 We will now proceed to the next section of our subject, and 
 consider the causes which governed the direction of the Griqua 
 migration. 
 
 D. — Causes which forced the Migration of the Griquas to the 
 
 Eastward. 
 
 From what we have already gathered concerning the turbu- 
 lent career of the Africaanders and the bitter hatred existing 
 between them and their rivals the Barendses, these circum- 
 stances of themselves would form an almost sufficiently strong 
 motive to have impelled the Griqua leaders in an easterly direc- 
 tion. Nothing was to be gained in the west, the road in that 
 direction was in a great measure barred by the armed bands 
 acting under the inspiration of the notorious Africaander, who 
 had guns in their hands and ammimition in their pouches, from 
 whom little was to be expected but hard blows and dangerous 
 wounds ; while beyond them, at no great distance, was the 
 impassable barrier of the Great Waters which, centuries before, 
 had turned the forefathers of the Hottentot race from their 
 original course towards the setting sun. 
 
 To the west then all was repellent, but to the eastward 
 another prospect appeared. In that direction an apparently 
 virgin country spread out before them, watered by a stream 
 surpassing, according to their knowledge, all others in magnitude ; 
 plains swarming with game, and pools of water teeming with 
 hippopotami ; a race of people whose puny shafts were of little 
 avail against the unerring buUet ; and still beyond them, instead 
 
342 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 of the Great Waters, as in the opposite direction, with the dread 
 and mystery which overshadowed them, were tribes of unknown 
 numbers, equally or even more defenceless in point of weapons 
 than the dwarf hunters of the plains, possessors of countless 
 herds, promising endless spoil, which some of them had al- 
 ready, as the companions of the Koks, or the marauding Bloem, 
 gazed upon. The missionaries who were leading the way were 
 probably in their simplicity and ignorance dreaming of con- 
 ducting their proselytes far away from the haunts of wicked 
 men, and founding a place of eternal peace and quiet in the 
 depths of the wilderness. 
 
 There were other causes, doubtless, which gave additional 
 impetus to this eastward movement, besides the unceasing 
 depredations of Africaander and his ruthless banditti, and 
 the feuds which rose up between themselves and the Bastaards 
 of the Gariepine valley in consequence of them. A general 
 insurrectionary movement of the Hottentot race seemed to have 
 spread itself even into that remote portion of the country. We 
 learn from Mr. (Barcherds that, on the 20th of December 1798 the 
 landdrost of Stellenbosch received information that the Hottentots 
 of Little Namaqualand were turbulent, had assembled in large 
 bodies, and had seized five farms, murdered one man, taken 
 twenty muskets, and carried off a number of cattle ; when 
 immediate orders were dispatched to the fieldcornet Van der 
 Westhuyzen to call upon the inhabitants of his ward to render 
 assistance to those in Little Namaqualand. These proceedings 
 of the landdrost were approved of by the governor, who directed 
 that no violence should be committed against the Hottentots 
 except in self-defence. 
 
 Fortunately for the moment the commando had the desired 
 effect ; the Hottentots were again quiet, no one had been shot 
 nor any violence exercised, and onty one person, Gerrit Owies, 
 who had imprudently parted from the commando, was killed, 
 not by a Hottentot, but by the arrow of a Bushman. Part of 
 the stolen cattle and muskets was recovered, but the chief dis- 
 turbers had retired to the Great or Orange river, and scarcity of 
 grass and weakness of the horses had prevented further pursuit. 
 There was no time for congratulation upon this partial success, 
 for thirteen days after the receipt of the above intelligence, J. A. 
 
BAREND BARENDS 343 
 
 van Wyk, fieldcornet of the Hantam, reported that Africaander 
 with a band of more than one hundred followers had murdered 
 a farmer named Hermanus Engelbrecht, and had carried off 
 3,700 sheep and goats, 446 head of cattle, eight horses, three 
 muskets, and other property, besides two waggons, and had 
 retreated with his booty to the Orange river. 
 
 Again orders were issued to raise a commando and pursue 
 the marauders ; but before the results of this expedition could 
 be learnt, the disttirbances at Graaff-Reinet had come to a head, 
 and the governor had ordered General Vandeleur to march to 
 the rebellious district with a sufficient force to afford protection 
 to the weU-disposed inhabitants, and thus the disturbances and 
 outrages on the northern border remained unchecked. 
 
 In December 1801 Fieldcornet Jacob Kruger reported that 
 Floris Langman, his wife and three children, and five or six of 
 his domestics had been cruelly murdered ; while the fieldcornet 
 of Cedarbergen sent intelligence that the Hottentots were refusing 
 to take service and preparing to congregate with arms as far»as 
 behind Hantam. Upon receipt of this report, the lieutenant- 
 governor General Dundas promptly authorized a commando to 
 pursue the murderers, but recommended cautious treatment and 
 forbearance to be shewn to the Hottentots, so as not to cause 
 aversion by uncalled for severity to make them dangerous enemies 
 instead of useful servants. 
 
 Thus the entire northern border, as well as the eastern, was 
 in a state of anarchical confusion, and we find one atrocity follow- 
 ing the other in quick succession, for scarcely had the last intelli- 
 gence been received when an express came from Gerrit Maritz, 
 the fieldcornet of the Roggeveld, stating that Cornelius Coetzee, 
 together with his two sons, a butcher named Frederik Werner, 
 and his servant Frans Scherpenaard, had been murdered by his 
 own slaves and Hottentots, that the house had been plundered 
 and the money with a waggon and oxen had been taken, and also 
 that the wife of one of Coetzee's sons was missing. In this case 
 a commando immediately pursued the murderers and captured 
 the greater number of them ; although Fieldcornet Jacob Kruger 
 stated that the marauding party was still about sixty-eight 
 strong, some of them being armed with muskets. 
 
 The Koks also, who were then living at their camp of t'Kow- 
 
344 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 bahas, became involved in this surging whirlpool of bloody strife, 
 Barend Barends appears by this time to have given up the struggle 
 and retired with his flocks and herds farther to the north in com- 
 pany with the missionaries, but they, at the time Mr. Borcherds 
 visited their kraal in February 1801, were engaged in hostiUties 
 with Africaander. Cornelius, the elder, was absent on an expedi- 
 tion against him, and Adam, his son, had been left in charge of 
 the kraal. A detachment of the Bastaards, mounted and armed, 
 had come down the river from T'Karaap for the purpose of joining 
 him in this attack, when they succeeded in capturing thirty-six 
 head of cattle, although both Africaander and Stephanus, his 
 European associate, escaped. 
 
 With this evidence] before us of the turbulent state of Little 
 Namaqualand and the lower Gariepine valley, it can be no matter 
 of wonder that there was a general movement towards the east 
 amongst the Bastaards and Griquas under the Koks and Barend 
 Barends. We wiU therefore proceed to the next stage of our 
 investigation. 
 
 E. — The Early Griqua Settlement. 
 
 In or about 1800 the missionaries Anderson and Kramer dis- 
 covered the springs at Klaarwater, the spot where Griquatown 
 sprang up after they had induced the Griquas to settle there and 
 relinquish their wandering propensities. 
 
 With regard to this occupation of Klaarwater, we glean the 
 following from the Report before referred to. I never, says the 
 writer, understood that when the missionaries discovered the 
 fountains there were any tribes occupying the place. They found 
 that part of the country empty, and took possession of it. Upon 
 this point it is only necessary to remark that any one who has 
 studied the habits of the Bushmen knows that many of the small 
 tribes wander about from fountain to fountain, according to the 
 migrations of the game and the varying seasons, and that stiU, 
 although these tribes were widely scattered and sparsely sprinkled 
 over the country, it was none the less their own. To whom else 
 could the claim possibly belong ? The writer during several 
 years' residence in Griqualand West was informed both by old 
 Koranas and Bushmen that when the former arrived in the 
 country that portion of it now under discussion was fuUy occupied 
 by Bushmen. 
 
BAREND BARENDS 345 
 
 We know also from Korana evidence that the Koranas had a 
 kraal or town at the springs at Campbell, and also an encampment 
 at Klaarwater itself for a considerable time, long before the alleged 
 discovery of this water. We know further that the Bushmen 
 resented their occupation of the place, and a large body of the 
 latter attacked them there in consequence ; and that these same 
 Koranas retreated subsequently from it, not on account of the 
 water failing, but from these very attacks which the owners of 
 the soil made upon them. In addition to this, as a further proof 
 of Bushman occupancy, during one of the writer's visits to Griqua- 
 town he discovered some Bushman paintings on some rocks in 
 the Griquatown hills, which were certainly done before the mission- 
 aries took possession of the place, and not afterwards when the 
 vaUey was occupied by men with guns in their hands ever ready 
 to hunt down the Bushmen upon the shortest notice. The evi- 
 dence therefore is conclusive, that instead of the country being 
 without owners when these pioneer-missionaries arrived at the 
 springs, its real possessors had just about that time wandered 
 to some other portion of their hunting grounds. The twang of 
 the bow and the cry of the wild hunter had been the only sounds 
 which had echoed among the rocks and groves of its hills, covered 
 as they were at that time with virgin forests of the wild olive tree. 
 
 One is surprised to learn from a letter from the Rev. Dr. 
 Philip to Lieutenant-Colonel Wade, that after all the agitation 
 about Griqua claims the missionaries Anderson and Kramer took 
 possession of the springs, not in the name of any individuals, but 
 in that of the London Missionary Society, thus assuming to them- 
 selves the power of ejecting any person from their infant dominion 
 who was not subservient to their rule. This power, we shall find 
 in the subsequent career of the people under them, was not a mere 
 technical fiction, but one upon which they acted. Not only was 
 the land to be in their name, but the chiefs themselves must be 
 men of whom they approved. In the letter above referred to 
 is the following sentence bearing upon this subject : " the only 
 chief the Griquas had among themselves at this period was old 
 Kok, and he was so far from being an independent chief that he 
 had the staff of a Hottentot captain, which he had received from 
 the colonial government, and he did not then accompany them 
 to the new territory, but retired to the Khamiesberg." 
 
346 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 From what follows one cannot help suspecting that the old 
 man, both shrewd and wise in his generation, finding that his 
 own influence was gradually being undermined and lost in the 
 growing influence of the missionary teachers, became weary of 
 the sham, and that the reason of his not being an independent 
 chief arose not so much from the fact of his having inherited and 
 accepted a bauble in the shape of a wand of office which he carried 
 with him into the wilderness, as the trammels which were gradu- 
 ally being spread around him by the men who were assuming 
 the guidance and governance of his tribe. 
 
 Seeing that up to the time the missionaries induced these 
 Griquas to settle at Griquatown, they were a mere set of miserable 
 nomads, without home and without territory, it is quite certain 
 that their claims commenced after this settlement, and therefore 
 not under the elder Cornelius Kok. We have seen that this chief 
 obtained great influence among all the natives, whom he con- 
 ciliated and subdued more by kindness, that is by the method 
 which most quickly reached the natives' hearts when half-starved 
 and pinched with hunger, viz. supplying them with plenty of 
 flesh, the spoils of the chase, than by proving the strength of his 
 powder in shooting them down. In this he doubtless shewed his 
 wisdom, but at the same time we cannot discover that he set up 
 any great land claims : that phase of Griqua occupation came 
 afterwards. 
 
 Under the powerful patronage of the London Missionary 
 Society, whose members in those days could do no wrong, the 
 power of annexation displayed by their Griqua proteges seems 
 to have been amazing. In the course of a few years they claimed 
 the sovereignty of any or every tract of country over which they 
 had either hunted or where their cattle had trekked. This was 
 certainly not the pohcy adopted in the days of their old chief 
 Comehus Kok, as we are informed by a most rehable authority, 
 the Rev. J. Campbell, that he always evinced a more friendly 
 and conciliatory spirit towards the Bushmen than many others ; 
 and on one occasion, when he intended to send cattle to feed in 
 their part of the country, he first asked the Bushman captain 
 what he should give for permission to do so. Having once heard 
 some person mention twelve thousand rixdollars, without know- 
 ing its value, the captain demanded that sum. Kok told him 
 
BAREND BARENDS 347 
 
 that rixdollars would be of no use to him, he would therefore 
 give him a sheep for every two thousand rixdollars, and the 
 captain was highly pleased with the six sheep instead of the twelve 
 thousand rixdollars which he had asked. 
 
 After the departure of Cornelius Kok, the Griquas who re- 
 mained certainly did not display, although more immediately 
 under the rule of their religious guides, the same spirit of concilia- 
 tion. That the Bushmen resented the despotic occupation of 
 their country is certain ; this is proved even by the scattered 
 incidents which have been recorded by those who travelled 
 through it during that period. Thus we learn that a short dis- 
 tance from Griquatown there is a spring called Kogel-been (Bullet- 
 leg) Fontein, so called from a Bushman captain who wels wounded 
 in the leg near the place by a Griqua, after having stolen some 
 cattle. The Griquas, we are told, about the mission, were much 
 exasperated against the neighbouring Bushmen. 
 
 The poor Bushmen say in defence of their conduct that the 
 country was originally theirs, that the Griquas have seized the 
 fountains of water and shot almost all the game, and that they 
 are forced to steal or to starve. The Griquas, on the other hand, 
 urge in their defence that their chief dependence for subsistence 
 is on their cattle, that it is hard to be deprived in one night of 
 their principal means of support by those savages who will neither 
 sow nor rear cattle. Mr. Campbell, however, who saw much of 
 these Bushmen during the course of his journeys and is certainly 
 no mean authority upon the subject, considers, notwithstanding 
 all the charges brought against them, that these Bushmen, wild 
 as they undoubtedly are, are nevertheless more docile than any 
 of the other native nations, and more grateful for kindness shewn 
 to them. 
 
 In almost every instance, as we have seen and shall see 
 more fully as we proceed, their territory was forcibly taken posses- 
 sion of. Now and then, in a few isolated cases, when they pro- 
 tested against the intrusion, some trivial recompense was offered 
 to them, which thus, at some subsequent period, formed the pre- 
 text of purchase, and thus step by step, either by force or fraud, 
 the unfortunate Bushmen found themselves driven from all the 
 available springs in the country. 
 
 That such a people as the early Griqua emigrants should have 
 
348 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 acted in this manner is not surprising, for they were described as 
 being, for years after Mr. Anderson joined them, a people who 
 not only neither planted nor sowed, but who never exercised any 
 sentiment of either justice or mercy to their neighbours. But 
 that men who had adopted " the rights of the Aborigines " for 
 their watchword should have been so obtuse as not to be able to 
 distinguish who were the true aborigines to whom those rights 
 belonged, seems certainly rather surprising. 
 
 There appeared at the time a disposition on the part of the 
 friends of the Griquas to put down every thing to their penetra- 
 tion and powers of observance, thus we have been told the springs 
 at Klaarwater were discovered by the missionaries with the 
 Griquas, although it is quite certain that they had been occupied 
 for generations before by the Bushmen, that the Toovenaar 
 Koranas under 'Kunapsoop halted there for a time, in their migra- 
 tions to the Malalarene, and that the Koks in their hunting ex- 
 peditions visited them. Again, the springs at Campbell were 
 said to be discovered by the same enterprising natives, although 
 we know that they were in the occupation of the Bushmen for 
 centuries before, after which they were seized by the Koranas, 
 who held them for about a year and then left them, when the 
 Bushmen once more returned to the spot. 
 
 This last discovery was said to have been made by the Griquas 
 in 1805, after which they took possession of them, and commenced 
 cultivation before any arrangement was ever thought of with the 
 previous owners of the ground, although we are told that a Bush- 
 man called October Balie was found living there, and was sup- 
 posed to have some right to the land. Much has been said and 
 written about one hundred and . fifty rixdoUars given as purchase 
 money to the said Bushman, on account of which the claim to 
 the so-called Campbell Lands, a tract of country extending many 
 miles, has been built up ; as if this one man could dispose of the 
 independent rights of his countr5niien, men living in different 
 portions of the wonderful range of the 'Kaap, and of clans different 
 from his own. 
 
 Besides, from the observations of Cornelius Kok the elder, 
 dollars were not very plentiful among the Griquas in those days, 
 and Mr. Campbell in 1820 gives us a slightly different version of 
 this land transaction. He tells us that finding the Griquas in- 
 
BAREND BARENDS 349 
 
 tended making a permanent settlement at the spot, the captain 
 of the Bushmen who resided there complained to ComeHus Kok, 
 the chief of the Griquas at Campbell and the eldest of all the 
 Griqua captains, that he was cutting down a wood and digging 
 out the roots of the trees that belonged to him and afforded him 
 and his people a shade during the summer. 
 
 Mr. Campbell states that after this Cornelius gave him as a 
 recompense two oxen and ten goats. He also ploughed land for 
 him, in which he sowed a bushel of wheat, that in the harvest 
 produced six sacks full. The Bushman being so successful in 
 his demand upon the father, was encouraged to ask something 
 of the son, Abraham, for the ground he had ploughed up, and he 
 obtained from him six sheep. These payments were evidently 
 intended by the Bushman captain as compensation on account 
 of the Griquas settling at the springs at CampbeU and for the 
 right of ploughing there, but he never dreamt for a moment that 
 such a transaction was to deprive him and his countrymen of 
 their ancient territorial rights over a large extent of country. 
 This transaction, however, was evidently looked upon by the 
 Griquas as an act of generosity on the part of the Koks, for, adds 
 this writer, these were freewill offerings, as the poor Bushman 
 had no means to enforce his demand. The Bushman's right to 
 make it was never once taken into consideration. As we have 
 said, the original intention evidently was that this arrangement 
 conveyed the right only to the cultivated grounds, together with 
 the privilege of cutting down necessary timber, and also allowed 
 a fair and reasonable amount of grazing ; but in lieu of this, this 
 paltry purchase was made the foundation of the Griqua claim 
 to the much-spoken-of Campbell grounds, equal to several Eng- 
 lish counties in extent. Thus we shall find in all and every case 
 of the same kind, the rights of the true aborigines were trampled 
 under foot without hesitation, although the ground had been in 
 the possession of their forefathers from time immemorial. 
 
 How different would have been the case, and how great the 
 outcry that would have been raised by the same class of men, had 
 any attempt been made to dispossess these proteges of theirs, the 
 par excellence in their sight, " poor natives," after comparatively 
 but a few years' occupation of their easily obtained and ill-gotten 
 territory ? No wonder then that the hatred of the despoiled 
 
350 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Bushmen was so intense, that urged, as they felt themselves to 
 be, by a stem lex talionis, they were, as Mr. Campbell teUs us, 
 pleased when one of these Griquas had been killed, with the reflec- 
 tion that they had thereby lessened the number of those who 
 oppressed them. 
 
 Returning once more to the thread of Griqua history, we find 
 after the departure of old Cornelius upon the estabUshment of 
 Griquatown, that the missionaries for a time took the entire 
 management of the affairs of the tribe into their own hands. Upon 
 this point we gain some information from the letter of the Rev. 
 Dr. Philip to the Hon. Lieutenant-Colonel Wade, before referred 
 to. He therein states that when the missionaries saw proper to sep- 
 arate civil from religious affairs, they recommended to the people 
 to make choice of a chief as a civil magistrate, and Adam Kok 
 was the person chosen on that occasion. 
 
 About this time several writers speak of the Griqua chiefs, 
 and Adam Kok is called the paramoimt chief. The probable 
 explanation of this appears to be that Adam was the mission 
 chief, whUe the others were heads or chiefs of independent out- 
 stations or kraals not acknowledging the jurisdiction of Griqua- 
 town, and therefore not under the entire control of the mission- 
 aries. Adam's more energetic successor, doubtless for the pro- 
 motion of rehgion and morals, endeavoured to force all these 
 discontents under the pohtico-religious government of the centre, 
 of which he was the representative. Adam, however, does not 
 appear to have been as docile a feudatory of the church as was 
 anticipated. He was stiU animated by the old hunter spirit of 
 his father, and found more invigorating exercise in the pursuit 
 and excitement of the chase, and that of a wandering life, than 
 in mere spiritual exercise and practice of hymnology. 
 
 From the time of his accession to the chieftainship until 1816 
 matters did not work smoothly between the resident missionaries 
 and himself, but still at that time he evidently possessed too much 
 influence among his fellow Griquas to allow the former to con- 
 sider it prudent to break with him. In 181 1, however, a native 
 catechist, named Andries Waterboer, joined the mission in Griqua- 
 town. In 1816 old Cornelius Kok, seized once more with a fit of 
 wandering and a desire to see the remainder of his family in his 
 old age, left his farm at the Khamiesberg, whither he had retired. 
 
BAREND BARENDS 351 
 
 and made his reappearance among the Griquas. On his return, 
 we learn from the letter of the Rev. Dr. Philip that he wished to 
 be recognised as chief of the place, but, he adds, his pretensions 
 were rejected by the missionaries and the people. 
 
 From this we can trace the gradual development and assump- 
 tion of power by their spiritual guides, and can .see that the mission 
 party by this time had sufficient influence to reject the father, 
 although they were not then able to get rid of the son ; it required, 
 as we shall discover, several years longer to upset the pretensions 
 of the younger and more popular man. We are told, however, 
 as a preparation for that event, that during the long absence of 
 his father, from his frequent contact with Bushmen, Koranas, 
 and other predatory tribes, he had lost more or less the civihzed 
 habits of his relatives. In this retrogression he must nevertheless 
 have been supported by a considerable portion of the old followers 
 of his father, who still looked back with a lingering regard upon 
 the feastings and fleshpots of former and more stirring times. 
 
 An instance has been given in the reminiscences of another 
 tribe of an old reclaimed cannibal, whose mouth watered as he 
 was conversing in his old age with a too tempting individual. 
 We therefore caimot be surprised, especially when we remember 
 the teachings of colonial experience, how " school Kaffirs," girls 
 and youths who have undergone years of training and been accus- 
 tomed to European clothing, return to the more orthodox blanket 
 and red-clay at the earliest opportunity, to find that these once 
 still more degraded Griquas, forgetting the famine and fasting 
 fretting under the tightening restraints imposed upon them by 
 their teachers, the novelty of the new modes of Hfe having worn 
 off, should remember only the brighter spots of their former exist- 
 ence and long once more for the wild freedom they enjoyed under 
 their old chief, and gradually become more and more averse to 
 peaceable pursuits and a settled life. The sjnnpathies of their 
 present chief Adam encouraged them, while he is charged by 
 the friends of the mission party with winking at the marauding 
 expeditions engaged in by his people, and even joining in them 
 himself. As we know, however, that some of the charges then 
 brought against him for a purpose were capable of contradiction, 
 we are inclined to beheve that this last was one of them. 
 
 We wiU now, to obtain a clearer view of the further develop- 
 
352 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 merit of the Griqua " nation," pursue our inquiry, by making 
 an examination of two distinct periods of its growth, viz. the one 
 commencing in 1813, the other in 1820. 
 
 F. — The Griquas of 1813. 
 
 It is a fortunate circumstance for the purposes of the investiga- 
 tion which we are now pursuing that such a thoroughly reliable 
 and observant traveller as Mr. Campbell visited the country at 
 the period above indicated. His imimpeachable impartiality 
 placed him above all local or tribal prejudices, and for this reason 
 we are able to accept the evidence which he brings forward with 
 unmixed and hearty satisfaction. 
 
 Having traversed two different lines of country during his 
 progress to and his return from the Interior, his observations are 
 spread over a wider range of surface than they otherwise would 
 have been. To avail ourselves fully of the information he has 
 thus afforded us, we wiU, for the sake of a clearer comprehension 
 of it, arrange the items contained therein in two separate portions, 
 viz. : — 
 
 a. — The Bushmen of the'Period, and 
 
 h. — The Griquas of the Early Settlement. 
 
 a. — The Bushmen of the Period. 
 
 In commencing this subject, we will preface our remarks with 
 the observation that the route taken by Mr. Campbell was 
 through Graaff Reinet, across the Bushman country to Read's 
 drift on the 'Gariep or Great river, thence to Lithako, the chief 
 town of the Batlapin, via Griquatown, returning by the sources 
 of the Malalarene, again passing Griquatown, to the ford on the 
 'Gariep at t'Keys or Kheis, after which he continued down the 
 left side of this river valley until he arrived at Khamiesberg, from 
 which point he once more visited Capetown. 
 
 The Bushmen met with in this journey of 1813 were found 
 more thickly congregated along the valleys of the Malalarene 
 and Kolong ('Hhou as they themselves called it), the 'Gij-'Gariep 
 (the Yellow river or Vaal), and the 'Nu-'Gariep (or the Black or 
 Upper Orange river), than in any other portion of the country 
 through which Mr. Campbell travelled. Some were also found 
 along the banks of the 'Gariep or Great river from the junction 
 
BAREND BARENDS 353 
 
 of the four rivers which composed it down to its mouth, where a 
 tribe of these people, called 'Navi-i-I'kaa, were then hving ; while 
 at the same time Bushmen occupied in a scattered manner the 
 entire territory as far to the eastward as the Tambukis, i.e. the 
 Abatembu. 
 
 In passing through the Bushman country, after leaving Graaff- 
 Reinet, although the journey occupied the space of twelve days, 
 only a single family of Bushmen was met with, and that on the 
 first day on which the travellers visited the territory. All the 
 farmers along the border had Bushman servants, principally, 
 however, women and children. On this journey they on several 
 occasions came upon Bushman huts and other evidences of the 
 existence of the inhabitants, and also saw on some of the emi- 
 nences columns of smoke rising, which were employed by the Bush- 
 men as signals, and which showed that although these people 
 remained invisible, the movements of the caravan were being 
 narrowly watched ; but during the whole time, so cautious were 
 these wily hunters, that not one of them sufficiently exposed 
 himself as to appear in sight. 
 
 Of those they met, a child that a woman carried had a string 
 of berries, as a substitute for beads, interspersed with circular 
 pieces of ostrich eggshell. The oldest of the party, who appeared 
 at the head of them, was called Old Boy in their language. Each 
 of them carried a jackal's tail on a stick to wipe the perspiration 
 from their faces in hot weather. Each of them also carried a 
 quiver of poisoned arrows. These people looked upon the month 
 of May as their harvest, for jthe groimd being softened by rain, 
 they could easily dig up roots not only for present use, but if they 
 chose for future provision also. In the summer they were sup- 
 plied with locusts, which they dried and pounded into powder, 
 which served them as a substitute for flour. 
 
 The hons at that time were very numerous in that portion 
 of the country, and it was asserted that these unfortunate people 
 sometimes threw their children to the savage brutes in order to 
 preserve themselves from their clutches, and it was from this 
 circumstance, together with the slaughter committed amongst 
 them by the colonial commandos, that the desire of these animals 
 for the flesh of Bushmen had of late years greatly increased, 
 until in 1813 it was said that these ferocious creatures killed more 
 Bushmen than sheep. 
 
 A A 
 
354 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 A young Bushman who accompanied the travellers for a few 
 days said that aU their quarrels arose about their wives. He 
 said they often quarrelled, and when any of their quarrels ended 
 in killing one another it was considered a display of courage. 
 They often attempted to take one another's wives, which he did 
 not think was bad ; he said it was fine to take others' wives, but 
 if any of the kraal were to take his wife whilst he was away, that 
 would not be fine. 
 
 On arriving at the Brak river, this yoimg Bushman, who evi- 
 dently belonged to the painter tribes, left them suddenly without 
 notice. It was afterwards discovered that the Bushman tribes 
 of that portion of the country whence he came were always at 
 variance with those in the mountains which he saw the travellers 
 were approaching, and therefore dreading to visit any of these 
 hostile kraals he had embraced a favourable opportunity of leav- 
 ing them. Near the Brak river the waggons had several narrow 
 escapes from being precipitated into the pitfalls made by the 
 Bushmen for catching game. They were five or six feet deep, at 
 the bottom of them a poisoned stake was fixed, while the mouth 
 was carefully concealed by a slight covering of branches strewn 
 over with grass. 
 
 Below Read's drift, but near the 'Nu 'Gariep, they came to a 
 Bushman kraal under a chief named Bern. Another captain, a 
 brother of his, had his kraals on the opposite side of the river. 
 Bern was the paramount head, whose sway was acknowledged 
 by the people of aU these kraals. Some Koranas appear to have 
 been intermingled with them. Pitfalls, one of which was seven 
 or eight feet deep, were found on the banks of the river. On 
 crossing to the other side, a short distance from the drift, another 
 Bushman kraal was met with, the people of which were employed 
 by one of the Griqua captains to watch his cattle, for which serv- 
 ice they were allowed to use the milk of the cows ; and it is stated 
 Bushmen were generally found to be faithful herdsmen. Their 
 huts were similar to those seen on the south side of the river, 
 low, shaped Uke an oven, and covered with mats made of rushes. 
 
 Leaving Griquatown for Lithako, between the former place 
 and Ongeluk Fontein a number of Bushman pitfalls were again 
 passed. Ongeluk Fontein, or the Fountain of Misfortune, ob- 
 tained its name from an accident which occurred there whilst a 
 
BAREND BARENDS 355 
 
 hunting party of Griquas was resting under a camel-thorn tree 
 standing by it, the gun of one of them going off whilst he was in 
 the act of sharpening his flint, and shooting his neighbour. In 
 1813 a small kraal of fugitive Bachoana were found to have located 
 themselves there. In the intervening country beyond T'Goaypa 
 or Blinkklip, and towards Kuruman, no other inhabitants were 
 found than kraals of Bushmen and Koranas thinly and indis- 
 criminately scattered throughout it. 
 
 On the return journey, after leaving Malapeetze many Bush- 
 men were still found along the banks of the Malalarene river. 
 Crossing into this valley, the travellers approached a Bushman 
 kraal. Seeing strangers approaching, the Bushmen supposed 
 they were enemies coming to attack them ; they therefore hastily 
 turned out and drew up in battle array. The chief, whose name 
 -was 'Ma'ko-on, by brandishihg his bow and jumping into the air 
 endeavoured to intimidate them. The guides, however, made 
 signs that they were friends, and on a nearer approach the Bush- 
 men were so far convinced of it that they laid aside their bows 
 and poisoned arrows, although the women still concealed them- 
 selves in their huts ; but, after a time, seeing some tobacco distrib- 
 uted among the men, they came out from their concealment. 
 ■'Ma'ko-on's two wives, who were only about four feet in height 
 and not in the least deformed, had each a very small baby tied 
 to her back. They had never seen white people before, neither 
 had they heard of Klaarwater or the missionaries. 
 
 The faces of these people were frightfully daubed with red 
 paint, put on apparently with a view to terrify those who were 
 their enemies. This 'Ma'ko-on, although besides his bows and 
 arrows he did not seem to possess anything else than the skin 
 cloak which covered him, was evidently a clever man. He was 
 the chief captain of all the Malalarene clans. He said that he 
 had many people towards the east, that they were peaceable 
 Bushmen, as was his father and his grandfather before him ; 
 they never stole,Jie continued, anything from their neighbours, 
 and ended by sajTing " We have plenty of game and water." 
 
 A number of Bushman pitfalls were found in different parts 
 of this valley. Proceeding down it several Bushmen were met 
 with, but although they were pleased with the presents of meat 
 ■which were made to them, while cutting it they held their bows 
 
356 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 and poisoned arrows in their hands, as if jealous of their safety 
 among such strange visitors as they had never seen in their part 
 of the world before. , 
 
 The journey of Mr. Campbell along the valley of this river has 
 a very important bearing upon the subject of our investigation, 
 as it firmly estabhshes the fact that even up to 1813 the Bushmen 
 were the sole proprietors of this tract of country, and that land 
 claims had not been extended so far by the mission party of 
 Griquatown. This fact becomes more significant when we ascer- 
 tain that Adam Kok, the Griqua chief, accompanied the explor- 
 ing expedition, and it is certain that he never once advanced 
 such an idea, for we may feel convinced that had he done so, the 
 observant Mr. Campbell would certainly have made a note of 
 it. 
 
 No other people than Bushmen were then inhabiting the 
 wonderful 'Kaap, or Campbell Rand as it was afterwards called, 
 standing out for many miles on either hand as far as the eye could 
 reach like a great sea-cliff, diversified with precipitous gorges and 
 bold, abrupt, projecting bluffs, a very paradise for a race of cave 
 dwellers. Abundance of game swarmed over the river plains, 
 innumerable hippopotami peopled the reedy banks and the deep 
 waters of the Vaal, springs of crystal water trickled through 
 the crevices of the rocks, which abounded more with honey 
 than almost any other portion of South Africa. The writer, in 
 the winter of 1872, counted twelve or fourteen rock hives swarm- 
 ing with bees in a distance of less than a hundred yards. These 
 were in the fissures of some overhanging rocks, while the indefati- 
 gable workers made the air resound with their busy humming. 
 
 With regard to these, Mr. Campbell informs us that the Bush- 
 men marked the hives in the rocks, as farmers marked their 
 sheep, and should they find on their regular visits that any hive 
 had been robbed, they were sure to carry off the first sheep or 
 cow they met. They said that the Koranas, Batlapin, and Baro- 
 long had cows and sheep to five upon the grass of the land, that 
 they had none, wherefore they had a right to the bees that hved 
 only on the flowers. Their right in this respect was seldom in- 
 vaded, as all found it to their interest to let the Bushmen obtain 
 the honey and then to purchase it of them. 
 
 It appears evident that at this time there were no outstations 
 
BAREND BARENDS 357 
 
 of either Griquas, Koranas, or fugitive Batlapin, owing allegiance 
 to the Griquatown government in any portion of this country 
 between the 'Gij 'Gariep and the great escarpment of the 'Kaap, 
 itself a worthy monument to mark the ancient coast line of the 
 great lacustrine region of South Africa in a remote period of 
 geological time. 
 
 Shortly after this they arrived at the first Griqua village 
 which was attached to Klaarwater, and which had lately been 
 called Campbell. There were stiU some of the original Bushmen 
 living there. These hved by themselves on the east side. Four 
 different languages were spoken at the village, Dutch, Korana, 
 Sechuana, and Bushman. The Bachoana were also living sepa- 
 rate, farther to the eastward than the Bushmen. They were 
 only staying temporarily as servants. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Campbell in 1813 there was addi- 
 tional evidence which showed how recent was the claim to 
 territorial rights and exclusive jurisdiction on the part of the 
 Griquas over any extent of country except a small tract imme- 
 diately surrounding the station at Griquatown itself, and perhaps 
 Campbell. At the time of this visit there was hving on the 
 banks of the Vaal, nearly opposite to the Campbell kloof, an 
 independent kraal of Koranas. The kraal consisted of sixty or 
 seventy persons ; they were not, however, confined to any 
 particular spot, but moved up and down the river as provision 
 for their cattle was plentiful or scarce. 
 
 So little had the Griquas penetrated to the eastward that it 
 was only a short time before the arrival of Mr. Campbell that 
 they had discovered the existence of the 'Gumaap or Great 
 Riet river and the Upper Orange or 'Nu 'Gariep. In 1813 Bush- 
 men were still occupying the broken country below the junction 
 of the Orange and Vaal, between the river and the great rand. 
 A Bushman and his wife and his brother's wife came to visit 
 the travellers while they were encamped there. As this is the 
 part of the range which the clan under Oude Timmerman occu- 
 pied, these people were in all probability a portion of them, if 
 not the old captain himself, as he must then have been at least 
 forty years of age. 
 
 That these Bushmen were susceptible of the feelings of 
 jealousy was illustrated by a tragical incident which took place 
 
358 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 amongst some of them about this time. A Bushman had' a 
 dispute with his brother as to which of them should obtain a 
 certain woman for wife, to whom both were equally attached. 
 His brother succeeded in obtaining her, but afterwards in pass- 
 ing the hut in which the couple lay fast asleep, the unsuccessful 
 suitor strung his bow and shot his brother through the heart 
 with a poisoned arrow. 
 
 Besides the Bushmen already mentioned, Mr. Campbell 
 learned that there was another very large kraal of them, a day 
 and a half's journey higher up the 'Gij 'Gariep than its junction 
 with the Kolong. These would therefore be living somewhere 
 in the broken country about Klip Drift and the present Pniel 
 mission station, while the numerous chippings which were dis- 
 covered in that part of the coimtry in 1874 by the writer prove 
 how thickly they must have inhabited it before the stronger 
 races intruded upon them. 
 
 In his return journey to Capetown Mr. Campbell traversed 
 the country to the Langeberg, the south-eastern boundary of 
 the Kalahari. Here they were met by some Bushmen under 
 their chief named Owl. On clearing the mountains they entered 
 a desert of sand, which they were more than a day in crossing, 
 when they came to the Great river. 
 
 Departing from the ford, which the travellers crossed about 
 the 26th of August, they came to some Koranas who had just 
 arrived at that spot ; the women were busUy employed erecting their 
 huts. No other inhabitants were met until the end of the second 
 day, when they arrived at two other Korana kraals containing 
 about one hundred and fifty people. They possessed many 
 hundred oxen, cows, sheep, and goats. They neither sowed 
 nor planted, but depended entirely on their cattle for subsist- 
 ence. They appeared to be a dull, gloomy, indifferent people. 
 
 Again the expedition travelled four days without meeting 
 any inhabitants, when they arrived at another Korana kraal, 
 belonging to Hans Human, a Bastaard Hottentot. It contained 
 six huts and about forty inhabitants, who possessed many cattle 
 and had plenty of milk. They seemed to have nothing to do 
 but like their dogs to He upon the grass, enjojdng the sunshine 
 until the next meal. 
 
 About three days' travelling from this place brought^them to 
 
BAREND BARENDS 359 
 
 a kraal of people under the command of Cornelius Kok the 
 younger, son of old Cornelius, who was then living at Silver 
 Fontein. The majority of the inhabitants called themselves 
 Orlams ; there were some there also who had forsaken Griqua- 
 land quietly to enjoy a plurality of wives and to live in every 
 other respect without restraint. A number of them spoke the 
 Dutch language. They were composed of Orlams 215, Koranas 
 180, and about thirty Bushmen, making a total of four hundred 
 and twenty-five. Such then was the independent clan which at 
 this time acknowledged the chieftainship of the younger Cor- 
 nelius Kok, whose authority was in after years called in question 
 by Waterboer and his supporters, who declared that he had 
 never been the head of any people at aU, much less of an inde- 
 pendent clan, until Waterboer himself, in the plenitude of his 
 power, had graciously bestowed the office of a provisional field- 
 comet upon him. This point, however, will be further explained 
 under the heading of Griqua chiefs. 
 
 At this time Cornelius, being hke his father a great hunter, 
 had just returned with a large party of his people from a hunt- 
 ing expedition against the elephants on the other side of the 
 river. They had journeyed five or six days to the northward 
 without finding a single fountain, when like the Batlapin under 
 similar circumstances they lived without water except that 
 obtained from the wild melons found scattered everywhere over 
 the ground, which after being roasted on the fire yielded a good 
 supply. These G'riquas stated that between their kraal and the 
 Colony to the south there were scattered Bushmen living through- 
 out the coimtry. 
 
 Proceeding onwards, the travellers met a httle below the 
 Falls a party of Bushmen, who captured aU their oxen while 
 grazing, wounding at the same time one of the herdsmen with a 
 poisoned arrow. An armed party started in pursuit, with the 
 intention of endeavouring to get between them and the Great 
 river, and thus to take them by surprise. Some of the people 
 imagined that these marauders had been watching the motions 
 of the travelling party the whole way down the river, and had 
 chosen to make their attack at that place as the farthest from 
 assistance ; others that the Bushmen who had made this attack 
 were in connexion with Africaander, the plundering chief who 
 was the terror of that part of the country. 
 
36o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 It appears that the herds had driven the cattle to the Great 
 river, a distance of twenty miles, to drink. Near the river they 
 observed four Bushmen at a distance, lurking in the bushes. 
 On leaving the river the Bushmen followed them, and as it grew 
 dark they managed to take aim at the tallest of the party in 
 charge of the cattle. Finding himself wounded, he ran to one 
 of his companions, and desired him to puU out the arrow. He 
 did so, but two pieces remained in the wound, which he had 
 the fortitude to pick out with a native awl, while another young 
 Hottentot kept off the Bushmen with his musket, which he 
 fired towards the place whence he thought the arrow proceeded. 
 They then left the oxen that they might help their wounded 
 companion to the waggons, where he died in great agony. The 
 Bushmen, alarmed at the few well-directed shots which had 
 been fired at them by the Hottentot, fled also in an opposite 
 direction, httle dreaming that the oxen had been abandoned. 
 They were found the next day quietly grazing near the spot 
 where the catastrophe had taken place, by the armed party sent 
 in quest of them. 
 
 It was afterwards discovered that the Bushmen were numer- 
 ous in this neighbourhood, and that those who had occasioned 
 the mischief had followed the travelling party from the Falls, 
 watching for an opportunity to plunder. They were in alliance 
 with Africaander, giving him a share of whatever booty they 
 captured, especially if they found powder. 
 
 Two days after this occurrence the travellers arrived at Pella, 
 situated in a wild nook of the Kaabas mountains, about three 
 or four miles from the Great river. On the 23rd of September the 
 travellers left Pella, and arrived on the 26th at Silver Fontein, 
 the residence of old Cornelius Kok. Here Mr. and Mrs. Sass, 
 a missionary and his wife, were staying. All the people lived 
 in huts made of rush mats, the same as the ordinary Hottentot 
 houses, only those belonging to Cornelius Kok and Mr. Sass 
 were much larger than the others. This station was only a 
 temporary one, the missionaries having, as we have seen, pre- 
 viously resided at Warm Bath, on the other side of the Great 
 river, but had been driven thence by the freebooter Africaander. 
 
 By thus following Mr. Campbell through his journey, we 
 have discovered several important facts connected with Griqua 
 
BAREND BARENDS 361 
 
 history in the year 1813. We find that up to that time a very 
 considerable portion of the country shortly afterwards called 
 Griqualand was still in the possession of the true aborigines, 
 and that in some localities they were congregated together in 
 no insignificant numbers, living a life of freedom under their 
 own independent chiefs ; and this in the so-caUed " unoccupied 
 country " taken possession of for the benefit of the " poor 
 Griquas." We find also that the Griquas themselves formed 
 distinct clans under chiefs, some of whom certainly did not 
 acknowledge any allegiance to the governing power centred in 
 Griquatown. It is this centre, now that we know the condition 
 of the territory surrounding it, and the very contracted influence 
 which it at that time exercised, to which we will direct our 
 attention ; and which thus brings us to the next step in our 
 inquiry. 
 
Chapter XIX 
 
 THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT. 
 
 It was at the time of Mr. Campbell's first visit that the people 
 of Klaarwater determined to call themselves Griquas, instead of 
 Bastaards. It was also during this visit, and at Mr. Campbell's 
 earnest recommendation, that they agreed to adopt certain fixed 
 laws for the protection of life and property, and that judges or 
 magistrates should be chosen to put them in execution. He 
 commended them for relinquishing a wandering life, and assured 
 them that the longer they remained at Klaarwater the more 
 they and their children would be attached to the spot and be 
 desirous of promoting its prosperity. 
 
 Griqualand West then consisted of Griquatown and two 
 principal outposts, Campbell and Hardcastle, together with a 
 few minor kraals. The western limit of the new territory was 
 then fixed at the present Langeberg, which the visitors called 
 Vansittart mountains ; there is no mention of any eastern 
 boundary. In those days it is evident that these few hundred 
 newly-arrived Griquas had not set up any claim to an extent of 
 territory equal to a respectable kingdom, nor had they com- 
 menced dictating terms of occupation to those who were older 
 occupants of the soil than themselves. They were something 
 in the position of the Boers in Namaqualand whose case we have 
 just noticed ; first their modest requirements were merely to 
 sit still and sow a httle com, then to build a mill, ending how- 
 ever in a dictatorial demand for the entire country. 
 
 The morality of the affair, whether a large territory was 
 seized for the benefit of a few kraals of Griquas, or a farm un- 
 justly appropriated for the sole use of a farmer and his family, 
 is exactly the same. If we unhesitatingly condemn the Boer 
 for his unprincipled conduct in dispossessing a kraal of Hotten- 
 tots, how can we heap praise upon the Griquas and their sup- 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 363 
 
 porters, who in an equally unjustifiable manner despoiled a 
 considerable number of independent clans of the aborigines of 
 their ancient territorial possessions ? At the commencement 
 they merely took possession of the localities they positively 
 occupied, they felt that others had still some right to occupy 
 the intervening tracts of country. It was only as they began 
 to feel the strength which their superior weapons gave them, 
 that more ambitious ideas dawned upon the minds of the Griqua- 
 town authorities, and they began to lord it over the territories 
 and persons of their weaker neighbours. 
 
 On the present occasion it was decided that their two captains 
 or chiefs, Barends and Adam Kok, should continue to act as 
 commanders in affairs requiring the public safety against 
 foreign attacks. It was also resolved for the future that wilful 
 murder should be in every case punished by the death of the 
 murderer ; that housebreaking should be punished by pubUc 
 whipping, for the second offence whipping and hard labour ; 
 that stealing a bull, ox, cow, horse, sheep, or goat should be 
 punished by restoring double, or more, as should be decided by 
 the court, for a second similar offence whipping and restoring 
 double ; for stealing from a garden either whipping or a term 
 of labour for the person in whose garden the robbery was com- 
 mitted ; for allowing cattle to feed near growing com, or allow- 
 ing them to trespass therein, the proprietor of the cattle to pay 
 double the loss sustained ; that if a Bushman, Korana, or any 
 stranger should be murdered, the murderer should receive the 
 same punishment as for murdering a Griqua ; that any going 
 upon commando for plunder should be punished by a term of 
 labour, and the property taken should be restored to its owners ; 
 that if a Bushman, Korana, or other stranger should commit 
 murder, theft, or any other crime, within the limits of the Griqua 
 country, the punishment should be the same as if he had been a 
 Griqua ; and that no person should be permitted to inflict per- 
 sonal chastisement upon another, but should submit his case to 
 the court. 
 
 The eleventh and twelfth of the laws enacted were to prevent 
 bribery in the administration of justice, the thirteenth ordered 
 the delivering up of all offenders fleeing from justice in the 
 Colony, and the fourteenth provided that any person endeavour- 
 
364 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 ing to obstruct the course of justice should be punished as the 
 court should deem proper. 
 
 It was further resolved that nine magistrates should be 
 chosen to act as judges at Griquatown, and one at each of the 
 two principal outposts ; but all serious cases were to be remitted 
 to the court at Griquatown ; that the two captains, Barends 
 and Kok, with the missionaries, Messrs. Anderson and Janz, 
 should form a court of appeal ; and that the limits of the country 
 should be marked out in the course of one month, and magistrates 
 be chosen. 
 
 At this time, whilst they were enacting wise laws and de- 
 ciding about marking out the boundaries of their new kingdom, 
 the entire number of the " Griqua nation " consisted of 291 men, 
 399 women, 310 boys, and 266 girls, or 1,266 aU told, while of 
 the neighbouring Koranas about 1,341 had entered into an 
 alliance with the Griquas for the sake of mutual protection. 
 The church, or Christian society, at the same time consisted of 
 twenty-six men and sixteen women. 
 
 AU the endeavours of the missionaries to persuade these 
 people to fix upon a permanent place of abode were in vain till 
 they gained over to their sentiments the two captains and a few 
 of the principal men. During his stay among the Griquas Mr. 
 Campbell frequently urged them to build better houses for 
 themselves, as calculated to wean them more effectually from a 
 wandering life, to which they still felt a propensity ; and as an 
 ox could carry on its back any of the houses in which most of 
 them then lived, they were encouraged by this facility of re- 
 moving often to take long and needless journeys with their 
 cattle. 
 
 The natives of warm climates have a remarkable attachment 
 to the manners and customs of their forefathers. The Chinese, 
 Hindoos, and many others dress and build their houses in the 
 very way their progenitors did two thousand years ago. In 
 South Africa it is the same. If you see only one Batlapin, 
 Korana, or Bushman house, you see an exact model of every 
 house belonging to that particular nation. 
 
 Upon leaving Griquatown Mr. Campbell determined to travel 
 along the course of the Great river to Namaqualand. Along 
 this route we have already followed him. It was. a journey 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 365 
 
 which up to that time no European traveller had ever accom- 
 plished, and, as we have before said, it was well for the subject 
 of our enquiry that one so observant as this zealous and single- 
 minded missionary succeeded in carrying out what was then 
 deemed so hazardous an undertaking. 
 
 At Hardcastle, which at that time was occupied by the 
 special partizans of the captain or chief Barend Barends, the 
 new laws of Griqualand were read to the people and to those 
 of one or two Korana kraals in the neighbourhood, and the 
 names of those were entered who gave in their adhesion to them. 
 It was for this reason that Cornelius Kok the younger, who was 
 not present at the promulgation of the Griqualand laws and in 
 fact was not a party to them, he being acknowledged as an 
 independent chief of his own clan at the time, repudiated in 
 after years the authority which the Griquatown government 
 determined to assert over him and his people, whether they 
 desired it or not. Besides Hardcastle and the two Korana 
 kraals mentioned, there was still another kraal belonging to the 
 same people in a vaUey near the foot of Paardeberg (the Horse 
 mountain), and at six hours' waggon travelling from this place, 
 or about fifteen miles, there was another small Griqua village, 
 where Nicholas Barends, of Africaander renown, the brother of 
 the captain, then resided. 
 
 From the foregoing facts we learn that not only were Corne- 
 lius the younger and his clan still far removed from the new 
 Griqua centre, but the Barendses also, with their special follow- 
 ing of Bastaards, were living in an isolated position to the west- 
 ward, and it was evident that no cordial fusion had taken place 
 between them and the growing power under purely missionary 
 control. 
 
 Having arrived at this stage, we can now proceed with 
 advantage to the next portion of our investigation. 
 
 G. — The Griquas of 1820 under the Rule of the Chief Waterboer. 
 
 From what has already been advanced, we feel justified in 
 drawing the following positive conclusions, viz. — 
 
 I. That the Griquas were a mixed race, having almost the 
 same manners as the Bastaards, speaking the same language, 
 and intermarrying with them ; that the characteristics of Hot- 
 tentots predominated in the former, and those of the Dutch in 
 
366 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the latter ; that for what African blood the Bastaards have 
 they are indebted entirely to the natives of the Cape Colony, 
 and that the Griquas trace theirs to the same source, notably 
 to the old Grigriquas, but in later days in part to the Hottentot 
 tribes of the Namaquas and Koranas. 
 
 2. That from the very commencement they were divided 
 into two distinct communities, one composed chiefly of the 
 Bastaard element, adhering to the fortunes and leadership of 
 the Barendses, the other composed of a more unmixed native 
 population congregating around the Koks as their chosen centre ; 
 that these latter became again subdivided into what might be 
 termed the missionary party of Griquatown, and that portion 
 which followed old Cornelius in his retirement, and then, as he 
 became weakened by age and increasing infirmity, followed the 
 guidance of his younger son, afterwards called the chief of Camp- 
 bell. This section of the Griqua people has not been inappro- 
 priately styled " the family clan of the Koks." 
 
 We have already noticed that on the departure of old Corne- 
 lius, the people of the mission station elected, upon the recom- 
 mendation of the resident missionaries, his eldest son Adam to 
 the office of chieftain in his father's stead ; that after the acces- 
 sion of Adam, the missionaries became dissatisfied with the selec- 
 tion they had made, that disagreements arose between them, and 
 that in i8r6, although they had influence enough to reject the 
 father, the elder Cornelius, upon his return to the settlement, 
 they were not able to displace the son, owing to his continued 
 popularity among the great mass of the people. When the old 
 man was repulsed at Griquatown, he retired to Campbell and 
 settled down there, when he was joined by his sons Cornelius and 
 Abraham and other members of his family. 
 
 Whilst residing in the west he was spoken of by every one in 
 the highest terms of praise, his house and farm became a halting 
 place for the missionaries to and from the Interior, where they 
 received counsel, comfort, and assistance, and when driven out 
 from their more advanced stations by gangs of ferocious desper- 
 adoes, his house became their ark of refuge and their place of 
 asylum ; but with the missionary authorities of Griquatown the 
 case was different. There both he and his family fell into dis- 
 favour, for they were stumbling blocks in the way of carrying out 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 367 
 
 pet schemes that were cherished. The Koks possessed too much 
 independence of spirit to be used simply as obedient tools in the 
 hands of their would-be spiritual rulers, therefore every little fail- 
 ing, every little bagatelle was immediately seized hold of, exagger- 
 ated, and multipUed as a witness against them, causing irreconcil- 
 able estrangements and, as a natural consequence, a feeling of 
 lasting and deep hostility. Thus it was that in 1819 affairs had 
 so ripened that a coup d'etat in the interest of missionary influence 
 was possible. 
 
 By that time the differences between the chief and his spiritual 
 masters had reached a crisis. A useful man in a long-tried cate- 
 chist named Andries Waterboer had considerably strengthened 
 their hands, while the recalcitrant chief Adam had become a very 
 Saul, who had turned his back upon the prophets. He was now 
 threatened with deposition ; but such a revolutionary measure, 
 even if carried out by ruling missionaries and their converts, 
 would nevertheless have sounded to outsiders something like a 
 scandal ; he was therefore induced to go through the farce of an 
 abdication. He then finally abandoned Griquatown, with, so 
 we are informed by the friends of the coming man, the more turbu- 
 lent of his followers to embrace a life of rapine and plunder. This 
 last charge is another of those exaggerated misstatements which 
 we shall find were unjustly made against the irreligious Adam, 
 and was evidently intended to serve as a palliation for the eccle- 
 siastical severity which had been doled out to him. 
 
 After his departure those left behind were the more settled 
 portion, many of them being of mixed race, who adhered to the 
 mission of Griquatown. The missionaries, following the example 
 of some of the old Theocracies in the amusement of making and 
 unmaking kings, induced this portion to elect another to the now 
 vacant seat of their dethroned chief. A great meeting was held 
 for that purpose about the end of 1819, and, as we are informed 
 by the dominant party at Griquatown, the unanimous choice fell 
 upon Andries Waterboer. Subsequent events however prove 
 that this was not the unanimous choice of all the Griquas, for a 
 considerable number of their hearts were with the departing 
 Adam, and many, as we shall see, " rebelled," as it was termed, 
 against the newly-exalted Waterboer, and were sufficiently 
 strong, though subsequently defeated, to attack him in his own 
 
368 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 capital. These Griquas, who denied the authority of Waterboer 
 and sympathized with Adam Kok and Barend Barends, at whom 
 the blow was struck equally with the former, although termed 
 " rebels " in Griquatown, emphatically styled themselves " the 
 Patriots," and left Waterboer to rule Griquatown with his party 
 of adherents. The conditions under which the new chief assumed 
 his limited sovereignty are clearly explained in his own letter to 
 the Rev. P. Wright, dated in 1832, in which he states that the 
 chieftainship of Adam Kok was not from hereditary right but 
 from the choice of the people and the recommendation of his 
 appointment by Mr. Anderson to the colonial government. " I 
 consider," he adds, " the chief of the Griquas responsible to the 
 people and the London Missionary Society." In this assumed 
 power lies the whole gist of the matter. " Responsible," he 
 continues, " in every thing that has relation to the weU-being of 
 the missions and the promotion of religion and morals among the 
 people." With regard to his own right to the chieftainship he 
 explains that, " owing to Adam Kok abandoning Griquatown, on 
 going to the Black river " ('Nu 'Gariep), " I was chosen chief in 
 1820 by the people in his stead. This choice was recommended 
 by the missionaries, and approved of by the Directors of the 
 London Missionary Society." 
 
 In the face of this it seems absurd to maintain that the chief 
 of the politico-religious government of Griquatown, which this 
 Society sought to set up, could be, or was ever intended to be, an 
 independent chief. The ruling missionaries were to be indepen- 
 dent, but the chief himself was to be nothing more than the repre- 
 sentative of their power and a mere puppet in their hands. Their 
 first selection, Adam, had proved restive. In the present instance, 
 Waterboer's previous missionary training and proclivities evi- 
 dently marked him as a man fit to carry out the missionary 
 Utopian idea of laying the foundation, under their own special 
 priestly guidance, of a model kingdom of " regenerated natives." 
 
 The choice they made, in Waterboer's case, appears to have 
 been a judicious one, as he proved himself possessed of energy 
 and a certain talent for governing the opposing elements by which 
 the mission of Griquatown was surrounded ; but as he himself 
 acknowledges that he owed fealty to his spiritual superiors, and 
 as it is an admitted fact that at that time their influence was 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 369 
 
 brought to bear upon all matters, not only of church but of state 
 also, they cannot be held blameless for the great acquisitions of 
 territory that were made during this period, without the slightest 
 reference to the existing rights of others, until the territory thus 
 claimed had become expanded to almost inordinate bounds, not 
 to meet the requirements of the Griqua nation, for they, when 
 most numerous, would not have exceeded the population of many 
 an English market town, but apparently to gratify the lust of 
 conquest and the pride of empire on a small scale. 
 
 Waterboer's first exercise of authority was to subdue the still 
 unconquered Bushmen of the territory, and to suppress brigand- 
 age. We remember it was stated by the missionary friends of the 
 Griquas that they had been fortunate enough to obtain an un- 
 occupied piece of country to settle down in with their proteges. 
 It has been already proved that this was entirely a misconception 
 on their part ; and some eighteen or twenty years after their settle- 
 ment Mr. Thompson, who rode through the country between 
 Campbell and Griquatown, says of this intervening bush-covered 
 tract : " These coverts enable the Bushmen to lurk here, in spite 
 of all the efforts of the Griquas to root them out. They are a 
 great annoyance to the latter, as well as to the other pastoral 
 tribes in their vicinity, and they are consequently pursued by 
 them, equally as by the Boers, with the utmost animosity." 
 
 Thus we find, even after such a lapse of time, the true owners 
 of the so-caUed unoccupied country were still numerous and 
 strong enough to resent the intrusion and to keep up a struggle 
 for their independence. Even when Mr. Thompson arrived at 
 Griquatown, Waterboer was away on a commando against these 
 Bushmen. And not long before, he and his followers had been 
 engaged in a war against these same unhappy outcasts. It 
 appears that a Bushman captain named the Owl had maintained 
 peace with the Griquas for twenty years after their first settle- 
 ment in the country, but finding that his hunting grounds were 
 daily becoming more curtailed, he determined to be no longer 
 controlled by them but to make war upon his enemies as he chose. 
 
 He had therefore attacked a Korana kraal in alliance with 
 the Griquas, and carried off some of their cattle. The Koranas 
 complained to their Griqua patrons, and Captain Waterboer 
 went out with his men, surprised Owl and his kraal, forced him to 
 
 B B 
 
370 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 make restitution, and fined him a tribute of beads. He, how- 
 ever, speedily made another foray upon the Koranas, and not 
 only carried off some of their cattle, but also some belonging 
 to the dominating Griquas. This conduct was considered the 
 height of insolence and ingratitude ; and Waterboer again went 
 forth with his band and surrounded the robber in his den. Two 
 messengers (tame Bushmen) were sent to require him to surrender 
 at discretion, for his retreat was surrounded by men with 
 muskets and not a soul could possibly escape. But old Owl like 
 so many of his race, finding himself at bay, turned a deaf ear to 
 all overtures, and resolved to fight it out manfully, the envoys 
 themselves being scarcely spared in his wrath. 
 
 The unequal conflict commenced, poisoned arrows against 
 powder and ball, but it was not until eight of his followers had 
 fallen and he himself had been mortally wounded that the old 
 chief would permit his sons to surrender. Seventy men, women, 
 and children were found in the kraal, and carried prisoners to 
 Griquatown, where the sons having expressed contrition and 
 promised to remain peaceable for the future, were allowed to 
 depart with their people. To win their confidence and friendship 
 Mr. Melvill made them a parting present of some goats. This 
 kindness was not misplaced, for Mr. Melvill informed the traveller 
 Thompson that instead of seeking to avenge the death of their 
 father, they had ever since remained on friendly terms with the 
 pastoral tribes around them. 
 
 Up to this point it would seem that with the exception of 
 persuading their Griqua followers to settle down and adopt a 
 certain amount and style of European clothing, with all the 
 missionary zeal which had been expended not much genuine 
 advance had been made among the mass of the people. For 
 this the missionaries are not to be blamed, for all who have studied 
 the idiosyncrasy of the native character must have noticed 
 that their determined conservatism and the tenacity with which 
 they cling to old forms and habits present gigantic obstacles to 
 anything like rapidity of progress. Numberless instances could 
 be cited in proof of this. 
 
 A marked one is doubtless still fresh in the remembrance of 
 some, where a zealous missionary, following the teachings of his 
 own particular persuasion, strove by every means in his power 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 371 
 
 to make religion attractive to the native eye with crosses, em- 
 broidered cloth, burning candles, processions, processional banners 
 and processional hymns, matins, vespers, and midnight services. 
 At one of the last, amid grand ceremonial, they were to attend 
 the departure of the old and the birth of the coming year, doles 
 of mealies were to be dispensed to all the invited worshippers, 
 but savoury meats were forgotten. The eventful night arrived, 
 the high festival was celebrated, and the multitude departed 
 But in the early morning no cheery cock announced the day and 
 aroused the teacher to his accustomed matins ; a number of the 
 departing devotees, believing the lesson they had been taught 
 that man could not live on bread (mealies) alone, had stripped 
 his well-stocked hen-roosts, and thus secured the necessary 
 addition to their food ! 
 
 It was not therefore that the missionaries to the Griquas 
 were to be blamed for want of success ; but it is the mistaken 
 system which they have ever adopted that has proved to be per- 
 nicious and useless in producing any permanent results for good. 
 Notwithstanding therefore the conversions which they professed 
 to have brought about, they felt there was a considerable amount 
 of insecurity in the claims they had put forth. To give assurance 
 therefore to a more rapid spread of " the Word " in the future, 
 it was determined to enforce argument with a little application 
 of physical force, after the manner of the sword of the Prophet. 
 Of course this was to be done through the agency of their new 
 chief ; it was therefore determined shortly after he was raised to 
 office as far as possible to suppress the almost universal custom 
 of brigandage. There appears to have been a lull in this practice 
 during the presence of the elder Kok. Under the independent 
 rule of this great hunter, amid the abundance of game, there was 
 always a sufficiency of food among the people ; but the old invet- 
 erate habit had evidently broken out again under his son Adam. 
 Possibly it had never been entirely suppressed, as we are informed 
 by Livingstone that the old Griquas had as little scruple about 
 robbing farmers of cattle as the Kaffirs themselves. 
 
 However that may be, it was now declared that under the 
 new regime no marauding should be allowed. Notwithstanding 
 these decisive orders, we learn from the authority of Dr. Living- 
 stone that some of Waterboer's principal men disregarded the 
 
372 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 injunction and plundered some Korana villages. He seized six 
 of the ringleaders, summoned his council, and tried, condemned, 
 and publicly executed them all. This produced an insurrection, 
 and the insurgents twice attacked Griquatown. 
 
 According to Jan Pienaar, who gave evidence before the court 
 of arbitration at Bloemhof, those engaged on these occasions 
 against Waterboer were that portion of the Griquas calling them- 
 selves " the Patriots," together with Jan Bloem the younger, 
 Jan Kockman, Hendrik Hendriks, Kora, and all the Koranas 
 with the exception of Jan Taaibosch and Gert Links. They 
 all " shot at Andries Waterboer," he said, " but he conquered 
 all those who rebelled against him." By such means as these 
 he strove to bring under his own rule not only those whom he 
 punished as marauders, but those who needed his protection, 
 and thus he absorbed into his own tribe many wandering hordes 
 of Koranas and Bushmen, besides Bachoana. 
 
 We now approach the period when an impetus was given to 
 the development of the power of the Griquas until the successful 
 Waterboer raised it to the highest pinnacle which it ever attained, 
 but it as rapidly collapsed as soon as his personal influence ceased 
 to be exerted upon it. As early as 1822 strange reports had 
 reached the Griquas about hordes of invading tribes. It was 
 said that they consisted partly of white men with long hair and 
 beards, led on by a giantess with one eye in her forehead. At 
 first they were looked upon as fables by the missionaries, but it 
 was soon discovered that these supposed fables had emanated 
 from a serious foundation. 
 
 In 1823 intelligence was brought to the mission that the 
 Mantatees, or Ma-Ntatis, were advancing, plundering and slaugh- 
 tering in every direction. They were at that time pressing upon 
 the great place of the Batlapin, near Kuruman. It was said that 
 they had come from the south, from the neighbourhood of the 
 Likwa or Upper Vaal, that they had conquered or driven before 
 them numerous tribes of the Bakuena nation, had invaded the 
 territory of the Barolong, and now, in its turn, threatened that 
 of the Batlapin. 
 
 Mothibi, the paramount chief of these last, had appealed, in 
 the name of the other chiefs of his tribe, to the missionary at 
 Kuruman for advice, when it was decided that as the Bachoana 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 373 
 
 in that quarter were entirely unable to withstand so powerful 
 and destructive an enemy, help should be immediately asked for 
 from the Griqua chiefs. 
 
 It was fortunately at this very juncture that Mr. Thompson 
 was on his visit to Griquatown. In passing Campbell he had an 
 interview with the Griqua chiefs then staying there, brooding 
 over their wrongs in a kind of sullen isolation. Their principal 
 ground of complaint against Mr. Melvill was his making a chief 
 of Andries Waterboer, and wishing through him to rule them, 
 the real hereditary chiefs. This they considered as a sort of 
 usurpation or infringement of their privileges not to be tolerated, 
 and to which they resolved not to submit. He endeavoured as 
 much as possible to allay the irritation which they expressed at 
 the treatment they had received, and ultimately persuaded Adam 
 and Cornelius Kok to accompany him to Griquatown, in the hope 
 that some accommodation might be effected between the opposing 
 parties ; and thus it was that, at this important crisis, the other- 
 wise rival chiefs had already assembled in Griquatown when 
 the startling intelligence was made known to them. 
 
 On Mr. Moffat's arrival to soHcit assistance from the Griquas, 
 he informed them that fugitives who had escaped from places 
 that had been attacked by the invading tribes, described them 
 as an immense army of plunderers led by several chiefs, consisting 
 of people of various complexions, the majority black and almost 
 naked, others a yeUow or Hottentot colour, and some perfectly 
 white, with long hair and beards. Their weapons were said to 
 be clubs and javelins, and a short crooked instrument like a 
 scimitar. They were considered almost irresistible from their 
 numbers and warlike ferocity. They were accompanied by their 
 wives and children, and finally they were confidently affirmed 
 to be cannibals. 
 
 A meeting of the Griqua chiefs was at once held, including 
 the disaffected captains. Messrs. Moffat and Thompson were 
 also admitted, and after long and serious deliberation the Griquas 
 came to the resolution of mustering their forces with all speed, 
 and of marching towards Kuruman to join the Batlapin in repel- 
 ling the invaders. Messengers were instantly dispatched to all 
 their settlements to caU out men and arms ; and Mr. Thompson 
 states that he was pleased to see that all parties cooperated cor- 
 
374 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 dially and unanimously in these energetic measures, and that the 
 urgency of a great common danger dissipated, at least for a time, 
 their internal broils and jealousies. The Griqua chiefs calculated 
 they could muster about two hundred men, mounted and armed 
 with muskets, and had sufficient time been allowed, they could 
 have brought into the field double that number. They promised 
 to be in Kuruman in ten days ; and to prevent Mothibi and his 
 people from retreating until the Griquas could arrive, it was 
 arranged that Messrs. Moffat and Thompson should return im- 
 mediately to Kuruman to encourage them with their presence. 
 
 The commando was promptly assembled, and within the 
 specified period marched in considerable force to the assistance 
 of the Batlapin and Kuruman mission station. On their arrival 
 at their destination, Waterboer, at the recommendation of his 
 friends was chosen Commandant-General. The superiority of 
 the weapons in their possession over the inferior ones used by the 
 enemy proved irresistible, and the formidable horde of marauding 
 savages was driven back with considerable loss. The effect of 
 this staggering blow upon these swarming hordes, flushed as they 
 had been by recent successes, was fatal to them ; and the divisions 
 which followed their defeat led to their final dispersion. 
 
 The prominent position in which Waterboer was placed at the 
 time of this achievement laid the foundation of his fame, and 
 made his name more widely known than any other occurrence in 
 his long rule of thirty years. The prestige afforded by this vic- 
 tory added much to his authority throughout the surrounding 
 country, and increased very considerably the extent of territory 
 over which he and his supporters claimed jurisdiction, while those 
 Griquas who from the first refused to acknowledge his authority 
 as paramount chief were now broadly termed rebels by him and 
 his admirers. 
 
 The portion of the Griquas who thus opposed him were those 
 who, as we have seen, represented the old Griqua element, the 
 followers or descendants of the earliest retainers of the great 
 hunter Cornelius Kok. The chief support of Waterboer was 
 the later Bastaard portion of the community, the members 
 of which had migrated from the Colony to the mission-grounds 
 after the establishment of Griquatown, and who came for the 
 express purpose of settling and were as a natural consequence 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 375 
 
 under missionary authority. Those of the former class, looking 
 back to the marauding expeditions of their earlier days and the 
 more lenient rule of the Koks, were naturally disgusted at the 
 tight rein with which Waterboer, under the inspiration of his 
 missionary friends, expressed his intention of governing them. 
 Their jealousy was further aroused by his apparent connection 
 with the colonial government. 
 
 Another cause of dissension and offence was the ever extend- 
 ing absorption of new territory. From time to time boundary 
 lines were marked out, presumably on similar authority to that 
 which first awarded Klaarwater for mission purposes, and all 
 those who came within these self-constituted limits were treated, 
 whether they wished it or not, as the subjects of the missionary 
 chief Waterboer. 
 
 It was this despotic assumption of authority to which the 
 old Griqua party, the Patriots, objected ; and though their chief, 
 under the pressure of the influence of Griquatown, had gone 
 through the farce of a forced abdication, this section of the Griquas 
 refused to throw off their allegiance to him, a chief, they did not 
 forget, under whose father and grandfather they and their fathers 
 had lived. After having fallen under missionary displeasure, it 
 was soon evident that not only he himself was a marked man, but 
 aU those who continued faithful to his leadership, or who from 
 time to time subsequently joined him ; all these came immediately 
 under the same potent ban, and were known to their more docile 
 countrymen by the mild appellation of lawless banditti, being 
 classed at once, as we have before pointed out, with the Bergen- 
 aars or robbers living in the mountains. 
 
 For a number of years a harassing kind of guerilla warfare, 
 or a long continued series of cattle-raids, was carried on between 
 these Griquas, the Batlapin, and the Bergenaars until, on account 
 of the losses they had sustained, the Batlapin were driven from 
 Kuruman. This occurred in 1828, when Mr. J. Hughes was 
 missionary there. Waterboer was again called to the succour of 
 the Batlapin. He visited Kuruman, and advised the people to 
 remove to a more convenient locality. Acting upon this sugges- 
 tion, they retreated in two divisions, one under Mothibi, who 
 went to the south-east and settled along the banks of the Kolong 
 or Hart and the Vaal, near the junction of the two rivers, the 
 
376 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 portion of the Bushman territory visited by Campbell in 1813, 
 where they and their descendants remained until Griqualand 
 West was made over to the British Authorities ; the other division, 
 under Mahura, migrated in a northerly direction, and settled even- 
 tually at the old Barolong station of Taung (the place of the Lion), 
 which had afterwards been occupied for a considerable time by 
 a clan of Toovenaars under one of the Taaibosches, on the Mala- 
 larene or Upper Hart river. These people were to be under a sort 
 of Griqua protectorate, and it was thus that Waterboer claimed 
 as his feudatories a large section of the tribe of the Batlapin. 
 
 We are assured by the friends of Waterboer that all the war- 
 like expeditions in which he engaged were undertaken solely for 
 the purpose of suppressing crime and punishing evil doers. It is 
 certain that he never involved himself, like every other native 
 chief of his time, in a series of expeditions for the express purpose 
 of augmenting his herds of cattle, and thus at the close of each 
 successful campaign we find him with more numerous subjects 
 and a wider extent of territory. 
 
 The Mantatee hordes, after their repulse at Lithako, spread 
 themselves over the country of the Barolong and ravaged it 
 from one end to the other. One of the divisions, composed 
 principally of Bataung, the people of the Lion, under Molitzane, 
 remained in it for more than twelve months, until he attacked 
 the great place of the Barolong chief Sihunel, and not only drove 
 out the terrified inhabitants, looting and burning down the 
 town, but entirely destroyed the neighbouring mission station 
 of the Maquassie. Sihunel in his distress sent messengers im- 
 ploring aid from Waterboer. A commando was raised by Water- 
 boer, assisted by Cornelius Kok, the chief of Campbell. In 
 crossing the great plains considerable time was lost in hunting, 
 and when they at last arrived in the neighbourhood of the fugi- 
 tive Barolong all trace of the enemy had disappeared. 
 
 For some unexplained reason a most unwarrantable charge 
 was brought against Sihunel, and he was accused of pillaging 
 and destroying his own town, together with the Wesleyan mis- 
 sion station attached to it, and then to screen his guilt, of raising 
 a false alarm about the invading hordes having made a swoop 
 upon it. Waterboer proceeded forthwith to levy a fine, as com- 
 pensation from Sihunel, the Griquas stating that by joining this 
 
THE GRIQUAS OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT 377 
 
 commando they had lost the season for elephant hunting, besides 
 the expense entailed upon them in carrying it out. Six hundred 
 head of cattle were therefore demanded as restitution and punish- 
 ment for what was termed the atrocious conduct of the Barolong 
 chief. Knowing that resistance would be useless, the unfortunate 
 Sihunel paid the number of cattle so unjustly demanded 
 of him, when they were divided among the Griquas and 
 Koranas composing the commando. The carrying out of this 
 expedition gave the missionary chief an opportunity of extend- 
 ing his conquests to the north-east, setting up a claim to all the 
 intervening territory over which he had passed, and adding the 
 Old Platberg mission station and its lands to the West-Griqua 
 dominions. 
 
 At this period wherever the Griqua conquests had spread 
 missionary influence was paramount, and whenever necessary 
 a certain amount of salutary physical force could be brought 
 to bear upon the too flagrantly disobedient, by means of the 
 converts under the direction of the Christian chief of Griqua- 
 town. The Griqua power was then at its highest, and extended 
 over the greatest area which it ever attained of lands belonging 
 to the ancient inhabitants, the Bushmen. 
 
 But it was this very extent combined with the sparseness of 
 its population which proved fatal to its stability, while the dis- 
 cordant elements of which the population was composed could 
 not be welded together so as to form a united and homogeneous 
 tribe, but constantly gave evidence of crumbling to pieces from 
 its own inherent weakness. A circumstance, however, which 
 appears to have been accidental in the beginning, ultimately 
 led to the solution of the difficulty by the formation of a second 
 centre, which at last afforded means for the antagonistic and 
 repellent particles of which the body corporate was composed 
 to segregate themselves in a more peaceable nianner and gather 
 around the point most congenial to their own proclivities, thus 
 leading to the establishment of the distinct territories of East 
 and West Griqualand ; and if justice had been done to the claims 
 of Cornelius Kok, of Campbell, there would have been a third 
 also, viz. of Central Griqualand. The consideration of this 
 necessarily brings us to the next stage of our subject. 
 
Chapter XX 
 
 THE GRIQUA CHIEFS. 
 
 In carrying out this portion of our enquiry we will, for the sake 
 of convenience and distinctness, do so under the following heads, 
 viz. — 
 
 a. Adam Kok, of Philippolis, 
 
 b. Cornelius Kok, of Campbell, 
 
 c. Barend Barends, of Boetsap, and 
 
 d. Jan Bloem the younger. 
 
 a. Adam Kok, of Philippolis. 
 
 We have already seen that this chief after his departure, or 
 we might say expulsion from Griquatown, for three years lived 
 quietly with his brothers at Campbell, a village which the Koks 
 had founded, and that in 1823 he and his brother Cornelius 
 accompanied Mr. Thompson to Griquatown, with the hope that 
 some adjustment might be arrived at of the differences and 
 grievances of which they complained. We have also seen that 
 whilst there they readily and energetically responded in co- 
 operation with Waterboer to the urgent appeal of the Batlapin 
 for assistance in repelling the overwhelming invasion which 
 threatened them, that they proceeded with their following of 
 armed retainers to the scene of action and took a conspicuous 
 part in the battle of Lithako, which ended in a victory which 
 must be ever memorable in the annals of the country. Shortly 
 after his return from this expedition, finding that no redress 
 was to be obtained from the rulers of Griquatown, and evidently 
 disgusted with his position, he abandoned Campbell to his 
 brother, and commenced to lead a precarious, wandering life, 
 without a habitation and without an aim. He crossed to the 
 left bank of the Vaal, and settled for a time near Backhouse. 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 379 
 
 He did not, however, remain here many months, but was found 
 by Dr. Philip in 1825 wandering about in the valley of the Modder 
 river, after which he settled at Philippolis. 
 
 In order to understand the terms upon which this settlement 
 was made, it will be necessary to learn something of Philippolis 
 itself. In earlier times missions among the Bushmen had been 
 established at Tooverbjerg and Hephzibah on the southern side 
 of the 'Nu-'Gariep. They were afterwards most unjustifiably 
 suppressed, and the country in which they were was given to 
 the Boers. The excuse for this arbitrary and iniquitous pro- 
 ceeding on the part of the colonial government was the alleged 
 danger of allowing these hapless outcasts to congregate in any 
 considerable number upon the immediate border, and thus were 
 these unhappy and cruelly treated people unceremoniously 
 driven from the last vestige of the enormous territory which 
 had once belonged to their fathers to the south of the Great 
 river, and without a place of asylum to fly to, their lives were 
 left to the caprice and vindictiveness of the people for whose 
 sole benefit they had been so unrighteously dispossessed. 
 
 Naturally indignant at such unworthy treatment, we can 
 imagine many of the strong and manly returning once more to 
 their rocks and caves, while a considerable number of the old 
 and infirm were turned at once by this despotic mandate home- 
 less into the wilds, and reduced to the greatest distress for the 
 means of subsistence. Seeing this sad state of affairs, the mis- 
 sionaries at the earnest recommendation of the Rev. A. Faure, 
 the minister of the Dutch reformed church at Graaff Reinet, 
 exerted themselves worthily to obtain another home for them 
 to the north of the river. It was then that the site of PhUippolis 
 was selected, and its establishment sanctioned by the govern- 
 ment, out of compassion, we are told, for these people, and as 
 some compensation to the missionaries for the deprivation of 
 their former stations. 
 
 The Bushmen were the original possessors of the district of 
 Philippolis, and it was with their approbation that the mission 
 was commenced in it. We shall remember that Mr. Campbell 
 in his visit in 1820 found that the Bushmen occupying this 
 portion of the tract between the 'Nu 'Gariep and the Vaal had 
 made greater advances towards comfort and a settled life than 
 
38o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 any others he met with in Southern Africa, having advanced 
 from the hunter to the pastoral stage of existence. 
 
 The energetic missionary found Adam Kok, the ex-chief of 
 Griquatown, wandering about with a few followers in the valley 
 of the Great Reed or Gumaap river. Adam pressed very much 
 to be allowed to settle with his people at the mission station of 
 Philippolis, and Dr. Philip consented to his occupation of the 
 grounds of that institution on certain conditions. These were 
 that he was to be allowed to occupy the country as long as it 
 should be found that he protected the mission and was a safe 
 neighbour to the Colony. To this a rider was added that he 
 should also protect the Bushmen. 
 
 After Adam's settlement at Philippolis a considerable number 
 of people joined him, and the scattered remnants of his adherents 
 flocked to their old chief once more. Jan Pienaar informs us, 
 in his evidence at the Bloemhof arbitration case, as to the manner 
 in which the original proprietors were disposed of. " The Bush- 
 men," he says, " inhabited the country about Philippolis. We 
 exterminated the Bushmen, and Dr. Philip gave us the country. 
 We exterminated the Bushmen and the Koranas between the 
 Hart and Vaal rivers, and occupied the country." 
 
 That this was no mere figure of speech appears plainly from 
 the following extracts taken from the Graham's Town Journal, 
 written by the Hon. Robert Godlonton, M.L.C., from which we 
 shall find that these unfortunate Bushmen suffered great atro- 
 cities not only at the hands of the Koranas, but equally from 
 those of the Griquas who followed them. In one portion of the 
 country where two or three thousand of these people formerly 
 lived, in 1843 but five small kraals of them were left. Piet 
 Krankuil, a Bushman captain, stated that " the greater part of 
 the country then occupied by the Bastaards was previous to 
 the encroachments of these people inhabited from time im- 
 memorial by his own nation, that he had to flee to the Colony 
 and work for his food, because the Bastaards took away all 
 their cattle and murdered their people, that he himself had 
 been attacked several times and his people had been attacked 
 and murdered, that the Bastaards perpetrated the most horrid 
 cruelties upon his nation, that when they had overpowered a 
 Bushman kraal they would make a large fire and throw in all 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 381 
 
 the children and lambs and kids they could not take away with 
 them, and if they could by any chance lay hands on a grown-up 
 Bushman they would cut his throat ; that before the arrival of 
 the Bastaards in their land there were more Bushmen residing 
 in it than there were Bastaards in 1843, and that then there 
 were only two kraals of his people left, containing a very incon- 
 siderable number of inhabitants." 
 
 Mr. James Howell quotes another authority, who affirmed 
 that in travelling through the Bastaard country a few years 
 previously, he came upon a heap of bones, and on inquiring of 
 a Griqua named Abram Jager the cause of their being there, 
 this man informed him that he and others of his countrymen 
 had caught thirty Bushmen at that spot and had cut their 
 throats ! Such then was the protection which the hapless 
 aborigines obtained from the Griquas of the new settlement of 
 Philippolis. As the number of the original inhabitants dimin- 
 ished, the Griqua subjects of Adam Kok continued to increase, 
 until the latter became installed as the chief of Philippolis, and 
 was appointed also chief of the scattered Bergenaars. 
 
 These people were a motley horde of savages, composed not 
 only of some of the most turbulent of the Korana clans and of 
 Griquas who refused to acknowledge Waterboer as chief, but 
 their ranks were recruited by Bastaards from every part of the 
 Colony. When at the height of their power, these miscreants 
 spread dismay through all the tribes within their reach. 
 
 A Basutu chief who was despoiled by them gives the follow- 
 ing account of the ruin of his clan. His town was suddenly 
 attacked by a large party of men on horseback. Being a people 
 they had never seen before, and not knowing the destructive 
 nature of their weapons, the Basutu attempted to defend them- 
 selves, but seeing a great number of their people falling down 
 dead and the enemy in spite of all they could do driving away 
 their cattle, they at last gave way and ran off in aU directions, 
 leaving nearly all their cattle in the hands of the plunderers. 
 
 Some time after this, while removing to another part of the 
 country where they hoped to be more secure, the same kind of 
 people were discovered coming towards them. In a state of 
 despair at the prospect before them, the chief desired his people 
 to sit down, and said, " We shall all now be killed ! " The 
 
382 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 enemy then approached within about thirty yards of them, and, 
 halting, asked them whether they would fight, to which the 
 Basutu replied, " No ; come and take us all away with you ! " 
 They were then desired to put away their weapons, which they 
 did, when the enemy dismounting came in among them and 
 selected such of the boys as were strong enough to go with them 
 and carried them away. One woman resisted having her child 
 taken from her by one of the band, who became so enraged that 
 he took the infant from her back and killed it by dashing it upon 
 the ground. 
 
 They then attacked another kraal in the neighbourhood, and 
 took away a great number of cattle. Being thus deprived of 
 their cattle, many of them ventured to follow on the trail of the 
 marauders, hoping to get some food from those who had plun- 
 dered them. Arriving near the spot where the Bergenaars 
 lived, they met a number of others belonging to plundered tribes 
 who were returning to their country, and who declared they 
 would all be killed if they went on. Upon this hundreds went 
 back reduced to the condition of wild Bushmen, or to obtain a 
 subsistence by plundering other tribes. 
 
 Such then being the men by whom the hands of the chief of 
 Philippolis were strengthened, the enormities which they com- 
 mitted upon the Bushmen of the neighbouring country cannot 
 be a matter of surprise, for men who during their previous train- 
 ing were accustomed to disembowel their prisoners to gratify 
 their vindictiveness could not be expected to show much mercy 
 to the wretched Bushmen who came within their grasp. But of 
 liowever questionable a description a considerable number of 
 Adam Kok's new subjects may have been, the constant acquisi- 
 tions that flocked to his standard from different quarters at 
 length so far established his position that a convention was 
 entered into between the Griquatown chief and himself. The 
 former was at last obliged to acknowledge the reality of the 
 claim set up by the rival Griquas, while his authority was still 
 further strengthened by the treaty which was entered into 
 between himself and one of the governors of the Cape Colony. 
 
 It will be unnecessary for our purpose to follow the career 
 of this chief or that of his people further than to note that when 
 his death took place at the end of 1837 or beginning of 1838, his 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 383 
 
 oldest son Abraham assumed the chieftainship ; but the bulk 
 of the old Griqua party objected to this self-assumption, and 
 elected his brother Adam, the second son of the old chief, to rule 
 them. Civil dissensions and quarrels broke out between the 
 rival brothers and their several partizans, which ended in Abra- 
 ham being ousted, when his younger brother Adam became 
 thoroughly established in the office of chieftain. This is the 
 Adam who migrated, not only with his own Griquas but also 
 with a considerable number of those belonging to Waterboer, to 
 a new land of promise, then called Nomansland, disposing of 
 the territory of Griqualand East to the Free State authorities. 
 
 Cornelius Kok, Chief of Campbell. 
 
 We have already noticed the manner in which the Griquas 
 profess to have discovered the springs at Campbell, and also the 
 way in which the Koks acquired the right of cultivating land 
 there. In addition to this, Waterboer, in his letter to the Rev. 
 P. Wright, states that " Mr. Janz took possession of the foun- 
 tains and valley in 1811 in the name of the London Missionary 
 Society." 
 
 We must confess that it seems remarkably strange that an 
 agent of a Society, the members of which have ever set them- 
 selves up as champions of the poor oppressed aborigines, could 
 thus cooUy annex a piece of territory for the behoof of another 
 set of natives under their charge, without mentioning a single 
 word about the Bushman proprietors, who we now know were 
 living there. Waterboer also informs Mr. Wright that Mr. Janz 
 and the other missionaries made an arrangement with a party 
 of the Koks to make a settlement there as an outstation of Griqua- 
 town. It would be difficult for any unprejudiced person to 
 discover by what right this was done by men who declared their 
 express mission was to benefit the natives, the place being still 
 occupied by a Bushman captain and his people, against whom 
 no cause of offence was ever alleged. Who were the real natives 
 in this case ? 
 
 Waterboer tells us that these people (the Koks) removed to 
 Knoffel Valley agreeably to the recommendation of the mis- 
 sionaries. It might have been added, who in this case usurped 
 the rights of the true aborigines, as they did at Klaarwater, 
 
384 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 except that this was a more glaring and certainly a greater 
 violation of justice than the former, for in this they had not the 
 excuse of the country being unoccupied at the time of the 
 seizure ; the original inhabitants were still residing there. It 
 matters not whether there was only one or a thousand, they 
 were there. And all right principle must surely teU us that the 
 wrong inflicted on these poor people, for the benefit of their 
 own proteges, was as great in the one case as the other. No 
 idea of compensation was evidently ever thought of, until it 
 was demanded of the Koks by the Bushman captain himself, 
 and the purchase of the right to cultivate by them certainly 
 would not entitle all the Griquas of Griquatown to do the same. 
 How these men, philanthropists by profession, could have allowed 
 themselves to have been so blinded to the rights of men of 
 another and weaker race than those belonging to their own 
 mission, must appear to any disinterested person marvellous. 
 
 Dr. Philip, writing upon this purchase, gives as an instance 
 " that at a very early period the Griquas (the Koks rather) had 
 imbibed some principles of justice towards the Bushmen, from 
 the missionaries." The exemplification of these principles of 
 justice, Waterboer has informed us, was that one of their number 
 had taken possession of Knoffel Valley without the slightest 
 reference to its legitimate owners at all ! 
 
 The Koks, on the other hand, who we have been told were 
 sufficiently civilized even under the old Dutch regime to be 
 classed as burghers, and who possessed landed property in the 
 Cape Colony, knew that the proper way to obtain a just right 
 was by purchase, and therefore advanced no objection to the 
 demand made by the Bushman. The land undoubtedly belonged 
 to the Bushman race, certainly not to the London Missionary 
 Society, although it had been taken possession of in its name. 
 If we refer to this transaction critically, we shall find that the 
 Bushman's intention was evidently to give an individual right, 
 certainly not a national one. 
 
 From the very heterogeneous materials of which they were 
 composed, the Griquas were not a united people, but were from 
 the very beginning broken up into several sections, that were not 
 only jealous, but almost hostile to one another. The original 
 adherents and hunting companions of the ex-burgher Kok and 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 385 
 
 his family and connections and their descendants formed one 
 portion. These people were of much purer Hottentot blood 
 than most of the others, having very much the same habits and 
 customs as the Koranas and other Hottentot tribes. Among the 
 Koranas, although all joined for general defence, each kraal or 
 settlement had its own special head or captain, while each kraal 
 considered itself perfectly independent of the others ; the bond 
 of union was the appearance of a common enemy, which forced 
 all those threatened to act in unison. The old Griqua party 
 represented this phase of ideas. 
 
 Another section was composed of the more recent additions 
 from the old colony, the new-comers bearing names which left 
 very little doubt about their origin, and in addition to them 
 emancipated slaves. The former of these formed the great 
 strength of the Griquatown party, who were ever striving, openly 
 or secretly, to undermine the authority of every one opposed to 
 their favourite ideas. 
 
 A third section might be termed the foreign, or imported 
 element, composed of Koranas, Bachoana, and others taken 
 under protection. The Koranas had their sympathies strongly 
 attracted towards the old Griqua party ; the Bachoana appear 
 never to have had their independence called in question, and 
 would certainly side with the winning party. 
 
 This throws some light upon the point why the Koks and 
 their adherents became obnoxious to those in power in Griqua- 
 town : they were stumbling-blocks in the way of the universal 
 dominion of Griquatown, and must be removed. For many years 
 attempts were made at short intervals by the missionary party 
 to deprive Cornelius Kok of his authority, and frequent misrepre- 
 sentations were made to the colonial government concerning him 
 by the partisans of Waterboer ; but he managed to hold his own 
 as an independent chief, and before his death transferred his 
 rights unimpaired to his nephew Adam, then residing at Philip- 
 polis. 
 
 Bar end Bar ends, the Chief of Boetsap. 
 
 We have already traced the early career of this Griqua chief, 
 and the feuds which sprang up between him and the notorious 
 Africaander. This life, affording little gain to either party, at 
 
 c c 
 
386 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 length became unendurable to Barend Barends, who, wearied 
 with the never-ending conflicts, migrated far from his undaunted 
 antagonist, in which movement he was followed by Cornelius 
 Kok of the Khamiesberg. Proceeding along the course of the 
 river, he at length crossed it with his followers at its great southern 
 bend, and settled for a time at Hardcastle and its neighbourhood. 
 It was whilst staying here that Kok passed him and joined the 
 missionaries, who by this time had pitched their tents at Klaar- 
 water. 
 
 He had not, however, taken up his abode at this new settle- 
 ment for any length of time before he discovered that the maraud- 
 ing excursions of his old and inveterate enemy were likely to 
 become once more a source of annoyance. He therefore migrated 
 stiU farther to the north-east, and passing Griquatown, finally 
 settled at 'Tlaka-lo-tlou, or as it was afterwards called Daniel's 
 Kuil. He was living at this place when Adam Kok left Griqua- 
 toVm, and was, as we have seen, an acknowledged chief of the 
 Griqua people. In 1820 he was spoken of by Mr. Campbell as 
 " another Griqua captain, though a man of better principles and 
 morals than the others." 
 
 This Griqua chief became an ordained native teacher, as was 
 the elder Waterboer, hence it will be easily understood that jeal- 
 ousies arose between them, and that as soon as it was found that 
 he was not an upholder of the ambitious projects of the Griqua- 
 town party, he should be considered a stumbling-block in their 
 way and pointed out as a Bergenaar by them. The cause of the 
 ill feeling and opposition wiU be better understood when we 
 learn that it was contrary to the wishes and remonstrances of 
 the missionaries of Griquatown that he removed to Daniel's Kuil, 
 where they state somewhat contemptuously, " a few disaffected 
 individuals " joined him. But, fortunately for the cause of truth, 
 we have been able to discover that he was chief of the most in- 
 fluential portion of the Griquas, viz. the Bastaards, for a con- 
 siderable time before any of them crossed the Great river. 
 
 The great and real cause of offence, but one which they could 
 not bring openly against him, was that he had invited Mr. Arch- 
 bell, a member of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, to come and 
 reside with him at Daniel's Kuil ; thus it was that in a short 
 lime a controversy arose between the two rival Societies, the 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 387 
 
 London and the Wesleyan, as to which had the right of teaching 
 at Daniel's Kuil. 
 
 Mr. Archbell, the Wesleyan missionary at Boetsap, complained 
 that although his mission had already established an outstation 
 at Daniel's Kuil, after this arrangement had been made a mission- 
 ary of the London Society had been sent to hold worship there. 
 Dr. Philip assured the Rev. W. Shaw, the Superintendent General 
 of Wesleyan Missions in South Africa, that the only right Barend 
 had at Daniel's Kuil was the right of sowing com there. A docu- 
 ment was at last signed by Dr. Philip, the Rev. W. Shaw, and 
 Mr. Archbell, that any dispute about the land should be decided 
 by the chiefs and not by the missionaries. Under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances this proposition would appear fair, but in the present 
 instance, as far as the Griquatown party were concerned, it might 
 just as well have been left in the hands of their missionaries them- 
 selves, as the chief Waterboer had already acknowledged to his 
 friend the Rev. P. Wright, that he considered himself responsible, 
 not only to the people, but also to the London Missionary Society 
 in every thing which had relation to the well-being of the (i.e. 
 iheir) missions. Under such circumstances how could he be any 
 other than their mouthpiece and the mere exponent of their 
 wishes ? 
 
 The dominion of the belauded Griquas of Griquatown had 
 been built up by zealous members of the London Society, its pres- 
 ent ruler had not only been selected, but reared and trained by 
 them, they were in possession of the only real authority, both 
 religious and political, and could they, who had in their own 
 hands and in their own special keeping the strings which guided 
 every movement in the Griqua destinies, allow any encroachment 
 on their self-defined domains, without an effort on their part to 
 prevent it ? Mr. Shaw appeared to realize the position, and 
 stated that under such peculiar circumstances there was nothing 
 surprising that Barend and his friends, the Wesleyan missionaries, 
 " should feel jealous and uneasy at the political chicanery of the 
 chief and court at Griquatown." 
 
 In 1823 Barend accompanied the other Griqua chiefs with his 
 retainers on their expedition to the rescue of the Batlapin, and 
 aided in the victory gained by them over the Mantatees at 
 Lithako. In the following year he and his followers had the glory 
 
388 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 of a second victory, single-handed, over a portion of the same 
 great invading host. 
 
 Mr. Moffat, accompanied by a party of mounted Griquas 
 under Barend Barends, who were upon a hunting and bartering 
 expedition, came suddenly upon the advanced body of these 
 invaders when in the Barolong territory. Mr. Moffat and his 
 party narrowly escaped with their lives, the enemy having suc- 
 ceeded in surrounding them. On this occasion the small party 
 of Griqua horsemen, being mounted and armed, succeeded not 
 only in freeing itself, but in protecting from destruction a large 
 clan of Barolong that must otherwise have been annihilated by 
 the Bataung section of the Mantatee horde, which was still 
 wandering about in a famishing condition. This victory gave 
 an impetus to the ideas of Barend, which ultimately culminated 
 in one of the greatest disasters that ever befell the Griqua arms. 
 The entrance of the Wesleyan missionaries into this part of 
 the country was in 1822. Their first attempt to estabUsh a 
 mission in the Bachoana country failed, in consequence of the 
 severe illness of one of the missionaries, but soon afterwards 
 Mr. Archbell settled at Boetsap. This was at the time when 
 Messrs. Hodgson and Broadbent were enabled to commence a 
 mission at a large native town called Maquassie with the Barolong 
 tribe. Sihunel, the father of Moroka, was the chief of this portion 
 of the Barolong nation. The people belonging to this mission 
 were soon afterwards driven away and scattered by powerful and 
 warlike tribes, but they rallied again and finally settled at Thaba 
 Nchu, the Black Mountain, or the Mountain of Gloom, where 
 they still reside. 
 
 During the stay of the missionaries at Boetsap the chief 
 Barend Barends continued his hunting expeditions into the in- 
 terior, principally for the purpose of procuring ivory. Mosele- 
 katze having in the meanwhile fixed his great place in the heart 
 of the desolated country of the Bakuena, Barend on one of these 
 occasions visited the den of this terrible Lion of the North, at 
 the time that Mr. Moffat had his first interview with the great 
 despot of the Abaka-Zulu or Matabili. 
 
 What he then saw, in traversing this war-stricken land, the 
 ravaged cornfields, the blackened ruins of a multitude of towns, 
 and the signs of indiscriminate slaughter of the wretched inhabit- 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 389 
 
 ants, made such an impression upon his mind, and so worked 
 upon his imagination that he at length laboured under the strong 
 delusion that he was destined to sweep Moselekatze and his gang 
 of blood-guilty warriors from the fine pastures and glens of the 
 Bakone country, an idea to which the comparatively easy and 
 bloodless victory he had gained single-handed over a portion of 
 the Mantatee hordes in their attack upon the Barolong, in all 
 probability gave rise, and which possibly made him imagine that 
 could he inflict a similar crushing defeat upon the Matabili 
 warriors, he would be able to emancipate the remnant of the 
 subjugated tribes from the state of miserable thraldom to which 
 they had been reduced by their pitiless conquerors. 
 
 FiUed with this holy furor he determined to enter upon a 
 crusade against them, and thus set himself up as the champion 
 of the weak against the strong, of the oppressed against their 
 oppressors. His aspirations were praiseworthy, but the natural 
 instincts of his cattle-accumulating co-patriots frustrated the 
 great object of his ambition, and covered his project with con- 
 fusion and disaster. 
 
 A heterogeneous multitude of Griquas from every party 
 except that of Waterboer, Koranas, and other tribes were col- 
 lected, with sentiments as varied as the costumes they wore, but 
 unanimous in their enmity to the Matabili king, and thus rein- 
 f0rced Barend sallied forth on what he considered a noble and 
 daring enterprise. A long cavalcade of waggons and horsemen, 
 with their magazines of destruction, moved up along the course 
 of the Vaal towards the dominions of the haughty tyrant, while 
 the company as they proceeded received fresh accessions from 
 the Barolong and others who expected to come in for a share of 
 the spoil. 
 
 Having arrived at the nearest point on the river to their des- 
 tined goal, the expedition halted. Spies were sent out, who 
 returned with the most glowing descriptions : the hills were living 
 with the immense herds which grazed upon them, they were too 
 numerous to be kraaled, the Matabili warriors were all far away, 
 attacking some of the distant tribes to the north, none but old 
 men and boys were left behind, and the cattle kept guard over 
 themselves. The chance was too dazzling to be allowed to let 
 slip. A thousand mounted Bastaards and Koranas dashed across 
 
390 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the Vaal river, armed with guns and well provided with ammuni- 
 tion. This was in 1831. 
 
 A rapid, yet stealthy march was made, principally by night, 
 until they arrived within a short distance of the much desired 
 object of their enterprise. Halting the expeditionary force in a 
 portion of the country favourable for concealment, their scouts 
 were again sent forward to reconnoitre the positions of their un- 
 suspecting foe. Barends himself was detained at the main camp 
 on the Vaal, from the shattered state of his health, and was there- 
 fore compelled to remain in the rear when the advance was finally 
 made. The scouting party quickly discovered the various posi- 
 tions of the enemy, and again the confident horsemen advanced, 
 as much under cover as possible ; and then with the swoop of an 
 eagle they were, almost before an alarm could be given, in the 
 very centre of the vast herds of the Matabili chief. 
 
 Moselekatze was taken by surprise, and made ready to take 
 refuge in his own jungle. The men who defended his outposts 
 teeming with cattle either fell or fled in consternation, tiU the 
 mass of captured cattle became too numerous to be guarded even 
 by such a force ; while the sight of fat oxen and the lowing of kine 
 captivated the souls of the invaders. Their retreat was as rapid 
 as the encumbrance of their spoil would allow. The first and 
 second day passed, and they were still hurrjdng homeward ; and 
 by the end of the third day many miles intervened between them 
 and their daring capture. They now believed themselves beyond 
 all danger of pursuit. That night there was slaughtering and 
 feasting and rejoicing in the camp. The jubilant warriors ate 
 to their fuU. The female prisoners warned them of their danger, 
 but elated with their success, they encamped in straggling detach- 
 ments. " Shall a Kaffir dare to fight with a Griqua ? " was the 
 evening's watchword. About midnight, without a picket or 
 sentinel on the watch, all self -secure, they rolled themselves in 
 their karosses around their camp-fires, and fell asleep. 
 
 But before the day broke, just as the waning moon emerged 
 from behind the mountain peak, a chosen band of veteran Mata- 
 bili rushed upon the slumbering host, scattering confusion, terror, 
 and death. An exultant yell first startled the stillness of the 
 dawn, and their dreaded enemy was upon them. Hundreds 
 were transfixed with the broad blades of the grim warriors ere 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 391 
 
 they could throw off their cloaks, many never rose from the 
 ground at all, those who did died heaped on one another, the blood 
 of the dead and dying, running like streams, was trodden into 
 mud. Horses and riders were butchered together. Such was 
 the panic that even among those who could seize their weapons, 
 many fell by the guns of their own comrades. Three alone, who 
 formed a kind of outer horse-guard, managed to ensconce them- 
 selves in a thick bush, whence they kept up an incessant fire while 
 their ammunition lasted, and then jumping on the first horses 
 they could catch, rode for their lives, and were soon far from their 
 pursuers. 
 
 The sun rose upon a field red with blood, the accompanying 
 stillness was the stillness of death, while a thousand corpses lay 
 stark and gory, piled over the ground in hideous heaps. The 
 cattle again feU into the hands of the remorseless victors, and 
 none of the expeditionary force ever returned to boast of the herds 
 of cattle which had been captured from the Matabili chief. The 
 scene of carnage was visited by Moselekatze, and as he viewed 
 the carcases of his foes, his exultation knew no bounds. 
 
 In a few days Barend, infirm in years, who as we have seen 
 remained behind with the waggons several days' journey from 
 where the catastrophe occurred, heard the tale of horror, and, 
 half-convinced that he was not the man to give redemption to 
 the Bakone, returned to his station to be greeted with the widows' 
 wail. A conical mountain seen from a considerable distance in 
 every direction, and near the Makakokan river, points to the spot 
 where this terrible overthrow took place. Captain Harris, who 
 visited it five years afterwards, describes it at that time as " a 
 perfect Golgotha, thickly strewn with the whitened bones of men 
 and horses, broken guns, and tattered clothing." 
 
 The immediate effect of this disaster was to spread a panic 
 among the inhabitants of Boetsap, the Kolong valley. Great Plat- 
 berg, and the surrounding country ; and dreading the vengeance 
 of the implacable tyrant of the Matabili, tribe after tribe, Baro- 
 long, Bastaard, and Korana, gradually migrated to the more moun- 
 tainous districts to the eastward. Barends himself retreated 
 from Boetsap with a number of his followers to Namaqualand, 
 where he wandered from place to place for a couple of years. In 
 1833 the Bastaards who had joined the station at Great Platberg 
 
392 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 left that place with the missionaries, and moved towards Basutu- 
 land. A body of Koranas who had also been for some time under 
 the care of the missionaries accompanied them. In 1834 Barends 
 himself rejoined them. The mountain near the present town of 
 Ladybrand was called New Platberg by these emigrants, after 
 the old station they had left. 
 
 The Griqua-Bastaards under Barend Barends settled between 
 Makwatling and New Platberg, on a place called Groenkloof, near 
 Mr. Daumas' mission station. Moshesh, who asserted some rights 
 over the lands taken possession of, was glad to receive them, as 
 the Griquas and Koranas possessed firearms and knew how to 
 use them. He was well pleased at the prospect of having near 
 neighbours in friendly alliance, who might aid in the general 
 defence from any future attacks of the fierce Kaffir races that 
 had so recently overrun the country. 
 
 Barend Barends remained the acknowledged chief at New- 
 lands until just before his death, when, being taken ill, he travelled 
 over to his old station at Boetsap for change of air. Here, how- 
 ever, bowed down with infirmity, and fuU of years, he ended his 
 eventful career, shortly after his arrival. 
 
 Jan Bloem the Younger. 
 
 We have already seen that the Koranas took possession of the 
 country, and that Jan Bloem the elder was elected chief of the 
 numerous tribe of Springboks long before the advent of the Gri- 
 quas, and therefore certainly antecedent to their unjustifiable 
 claims to such an immense tract of Bushman territory. His son, 
 Jan Bloem the younger, always declared his right to independence 
 of action, but from beginning to end it was a grand scramble for 
 land among these Griquas, each striving to obtain as much as 
 possible. As it was with the Koranas and Kaffirs in their 
 struggles for cattle, so it was with these people in their endeavours 
 under missionary guidance to obtain great tracts of country. 
 In both cases eventually the strongest kept possession of the 
 coveted prize. The abstract matter of right never once inter- 
 fered in the decision of the question. 
 
 Concluding Remarks. 
 During all these squabbles for land, it will be interesting to 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 393 
 
 inquire how the original Bushman proprietors were benefited by 
 the appropriation of their country by the intruders. The entire 
 land was undoubtedly their primitive possession. They wandered 
 about, where water was scarce, from fountain to fountain in small 
 scattered bands, especially so on the great limestone plateau end- 
 ing in the Griquatown valley, called the 'Kaap or Campbell Rand. 
 They were numerous in the Kolong and Malalarene basin, and 
 along the banks of the 'Gij-'Gariep and 'Gumaap, while in the 
 large central plains between these two rivers they were not only 
 more numerous, but they had commenced a more settled mode 
 of existence, having adopted pastoral pursuits in conjunction 
 with their hunter life. Some of them possessed considerable 
 herds of cattle, and were more civilized than those met with in 
 any other part of South Africa. 
 
 The Bushmen of this portion of the continent were more docile, 
 more teachable, and more grateful for kindnesses done them than 
 some of the other races. What then became of this, certainly, 
 improvable race ? What benefit did they derive from their con- 
 tact with races who looked down upon them as beings of an inferior 
 grade ? Jan Pienaar has told us what was done with them in 
 the country around Philippolis, and with those living between 
 the Hart (Kolong) and Vaal rivers. " We exterminated them, 
 we shot them down and occupied the country." The Griquatown 
 people were exasperated against the Bushmen of the country 
 around their mission station, and the Rev. J. Philip assures us 
 that "hatred, in such a country, is always accompanied with 
 danger to the object to whom it is directed." We need not there- 
 fore be surprised to discover that the cause of exasperation in the 
 present instance disappeared. 
 
 Some millions of acres of their ancient hunting fields were 
 thus absorbed by the intruding tribes of whose career we have 
 been attempting to give a sketch, when another and still stronger 
 race appeared in the field. The effect of their coming will neces- 
 sarily be treated more fully when we consider the influence of 
 the immigration of the European races. It will be sufficient here 
 to allude to one incident connected with them, and thus prevent 
 the necessity of returning to this portion of the country again, 
 while at the same time it will give us rather a vivid idea of the 
 manner in which land was obtained when, as was too frequently 
 
394 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the case, it was not seized by mere brute force, and what sort of 
 conditions were made in ,land transactions with the Bush- 
 men. 
 
 Already in 1837, in the nineteen years which had elapsed since 
 Mr. Campbell's visit, the kraals of the semi-pastoral Bushmen 
 had disappeared. These portions of the Bushman race, which 
 were said to be more civilized than others that were met with, 
 were no longer to be found ; a few detached remnants of tribes, 
 hunted about like wild beasts, were all that remained. Still 
 notwithstanding the guns of the Korana, the Griqua, and the 
 Boer had proved such terrible instruments of destruction, it was 
 some few years before the last relics of the old race were dis- 
 possessed of the last acre of their ancestral possessions. The 
 Blue book of the Bloemhof Arbitration affords us some light 
 upon the subject. In it we find a copy of a deed of sale by a 
 Bushman called therein David Danser to a Boer named Stephanus 
 Fourie, of all the rights inherited from his father to the land from 
 the Modder river to the Vaal upward to the Sand river, which 
 he engages never to reclaim, and undertakes to remove with his 
 people beyond the Vaal, for which he acknowledges the receipt 
 as payment of a riding horse and seventy sheep. 
 
 We can imagine this unfortunate Bushman, surrounded by 
 armed men, signing away of his own free will the birthright of his 
 tribe for a riding horse and some threescore sheep ! 
 
 As a sequel to this we find Major Warden addressing the high 
 commissioner on the 3rd of August 1850 upon this very purchase, 
 as follows :— " Upon reaching Van Wyk's Vlei I found the farmers 
 assembled at the house of the fieldcomet Fourie. Their com- 
 plaints were solely against a Bushman, Captain 'Kousopp. This 
 man has by means of some agent addressed letters to most of the 
 farmers residing in Fourie's ward, stating that the country belongs 
 to him ('Kousopp), and desiring them immediately to quit their 
 farms. I sent for the Bushman, and the following day he made 
 his appearance with some twenty of his followers. The Bush- 
 men who acknowledge 'Kousopp as their chief have within the 
 last few months committed several thefts of cattle from the Boers 
 on the Modder river. I therefore dealt with 'Kousopp in a sum- 
 mary manner, and threatened to lodge him in gaol if he caused 
 any more trouble to the farmers. The Van Wyk's country was 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 395 
 
 purchased by the Boers many years ago from the Bushman David 
 Danser, and now comes another claimant for the same, stating 
 that he was ever considered a greater chief than Danser, and that 
 his father had all the Bushmen of that part of the country under 
 him for many years. I told 'Kousopp that His Excellency's proc- 
 lamation had long ago settled aU such matters, and given the 
 land to the Boer occupants. I beg to recommend that twelve 
 miles along the Vaal river and six towards the Middle Veld, ad- 
 joining the country allotted to David Danser and the Korana 
 captain Goliath, be given to the Bushman 'Kousopp." 
 
 Such then were some of these astounding purchases of land. 
 The land was purchased from the Bushmen was of course the 
 declaration. Yes ! purchased, a riding horse and seventy fat- 
 taUed sheep, valued in those days at some four shillings and six- 
 pence each, for upwards of two and a quarter millions of acres of 
 land ! What a premium for fraud and forgery ! There can be 
 but very little doubt that at that time there were many documents 
 of a simUar class that were pure forgeries in existence, which 
 professed to be deeds of sale of extensive pieces of land, which 
 had they been critically examined, bore the stamp of fraud upon 
 the very face of them. 
 
 Even in such instances, where a document was drawn up in 
 the Bushman's presence, what did the unfortunate who put his 
 hand to the cross know of the actual contents of the paper in 
 front of him, or the extent of the land which it proposed to alien- 
 ate ? The witnesses around him were all men possessed of an 
 insatiable land-hunger. If disputes afterwards arose, as the real 
 truth dawned upon him, and he became troublesome, an acci- 
 dental ricochet would give a quietus to an inconvenient dispute. 
 Men thus hungering after land, and only too eager to grasp it on 
 any conditions, did not trouble their heads about the rights of the 
 man who professed himself willing to make it over to them ; and 
 thus entire tribes were wrongfully dispossessed by the machina- 
 tions of one evil designer. 
 
 Land, once taken possession of, was taken over without recur- 
 rence, and no errors were allowed or acknowledged after the trans- 
 action was completed, whoever might have been the parties con- 
 cerned. What justice could be expected to be shewn to such a 
 race as the Bushmen, when, as we have seen, even missionaries 
 
396 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 apportioned out their country to the very men who afterwards 
 confessed that they annihilated its old possessors ? 
 
 The closing scenes in the history of this tribe have been pre- 
 served, and the writer was fortunate enough in 1874 and 1879 
 to obtain a narrative of them, and thus to be able to rescue them 
 from the oblivion which threatened to overtake them in a few 
 years. These Bushmen have left many evidences of their former 
 occupation of this portion of South Africa. And even after this 
 questionable sale it was not until many a desperate struggle had 
 taken place that their annihilation or expulsion was achieved. 
 Several places are yet pointed out where, under some of their 
 more daring leaders, they attempted to rise and expel the in- 
 vaders, and others where they turned at bay upon their pursuers, 
 and standing back^to back neither asked nor expected quarter, 
 until the last man fell in his death throes upon a heap of his 
 slaughtered compatriots. 
 
 'Kousopp, the Bushman chief mentioned by Major Warden 
 as protesting against the alienation of his country by the fraudu- 
 lent action of David Danser, was in reality the acknowledged 
 paramount Bushman chief of the entire country. He was called 
 Scheel Kobus by the Dutch emigrant farmers. He was the son 
 of 'Twa'goup, who was killed by a lion whilst out hunting in the 
 days of the elder Bloem, at the pan a little to the north-west of 
 the present Hebron, on the left side of the Vaal. 
 
 'Twa-'goup was one of the great Bushman captains. He 
 ruled over the clans of the 'Gij-'Gumaap or Modder river proper, 
 the 'Nu-'Gumaap, or the Riet river above its junction with the 
 Modder, as well as of the 'Gumaap itself or the Great Riet river, 
 and thence stretching across the Middle Veld to the 'Gij-'Gariep 
 or Vaal. After his father's death, the headquarters of 'Kousopp 
 were at the two spitzkopjes to the left of the 'Gumaap and oppo- 
 site Koedoesberg, which was known to the Bushmen by the name 
 of 'Kun-'kgoap. It was when the captain 'Kousopp fell back 
 towards the Vaal, that another clan or portion of the tribe re- 
 treated to the stronghold amid the rocky islands of the 'Gumaap. 
 
 On a knoll near the eastern end of the great pan at Alexander 
 Fontein some old ruins were pointed out to the writer in 1872, 
 by Mr. Wessels, the proprietor of the farm. These ruined walls 
 were the remains of a flat-roofed tenement belonging to some 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 397 
 
 of the early emigrant Boers ; and it was here also that these Bush- 
 men determined to make one more effort to clear the country of 
 their obnoxious presence. At this place therefore some three 
 hundred of them surprised and beleaguered a party of seven 
 Boers, who managed to ensconce and defend themselves from 
 behind the parapet of the fiat roof. The besiegers tried to set 
 fire to the building, but failed in the attempt. For three days the 
 little garrison was vigorously besieged, and as determinedly 
 defended themselves, their elevated position preventing their 
 assailants from taking it by storm, although several times they 
 essayed to do so. One of the defenders of the place was shot, 
 when on the third day they were relieved by the approach of a 
 commando which came to succour them. The Bushmen now in 
 their turn fled, and were closely pursued for many miles to their 
 retreat, the stronghold among the rocky islands spoken of. This 
 place, near the present homestead of the Wildemans, had long 
 formed, among their rocky fastnesses, a secure retreat, which 
 for a considerable time proved an impregnable fortress, where they 
 had been able to repel successive attacks made upon them by the 
 Koranas, the Griquas, and the Boers. 
 
 Hunted like wild beasts whenever they were found wandering 
 over the wide spreading plains which they had inherited from 
 their fathers, their extinction became a mere matter of time in 
 an unequal struggle between the primitive bow and arrow, with 
 which they fought, and the deadly gun in the hands of their 
 invaders. Wherever there was cover, there they tenaciously 
 clung to their favourite haunts, and when attacked, fearlessly 
 and courageously defended their rock citadels ; but at the time 
 when they made the retreat to which we have alluded, 'Kousopp 
 with the main portion of the tribe had migrated towards the 
 Vaal, while many of the other tribes of their countrymen had 
 been annihilated or driven from the country. 
 
 A few rock chippings of great antiquity are found scattered 
 about on some of the flat rocks of this island-refuge, and although 
 only representing animals of the chase, these rude works of art 
 are the ancient title-deeds of their race to the wide-spread plains 
 around them, which had been occupied not only by themselves, 
 but by their remote ancestors. 
 
 But the grand testimonials of the great antiquity of their 
 
398 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 occupation are to be found some miles lower down the same 
 river, recorded on the pohshed and striated rocks of the Blaauw 
 Bank. This latter place affords us an instance not of a grim 
 rock-fortress amid precipitous gorges, where the death struggle 
 of a tribe has taken place, but a spot that must have been, during 
 the time of their undisturbed sovereignty, a place memorable 
 to their race, where thousands of square feet of the highly polished 
 rock surface are covered with innumerable mystic devices, inter- 
 mingled with comparatively few animal figures. This must have 
 been a palace residence of the most highly mystic of their race, 
 of men who held something more than the mere chieftainship of 
 a tribe. It must have been a high place, where they gathered 
 for their festivals of dancings and mysterious rites or counsel, 
 a place where for generations their leaders who were the most 
 skilled in the emblematic lore, the symbols of which were en- 
 graved around, awed their less initiated brethren with frantic 
 orgies, or vehement recitals of the traditions of the renowned 
 and daring hunters from whom they themselves had sprung, or 
 stiU more ancient myths of times yet more remote, when, as 
 they believed, men and animals consorted on more equal terms 
 than they themselves, and used a kindred speech understood 
 byaU! 
 
 The sculptors of the innumerable symbols here found cover- 
 ing the rocks were in all probability the ancestors of the tribe of 
 'Twa'goup, while he himself was possibly descended from the 
 great mystic of mystics who designed them, and who lived at 
 the time when they believed that they and the lions shared the 
 world between them. 
 
 Far other was the character of the retreat among the rocky 
 islands. Here was no place adapted for festive meetings, but 
 rather one to which they could retire as their pitiless invaders 
 pressed closer and closer round on every side, outnumbered but 
 still not beaten. This doubtless became the great stronghold 
 of the ancient 'Gumaap tribe, to which they fell back when they 
 made the dread discovery that there were other and stronger 
 races of men upon the earth than themselves, and that these 
 strangers, who must have appeared to them like giants, were 
 gradually invading and possessing themselves of the best of their 
 country. 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 399 
 
 Soon the dire struggle for very existence commenced around 
 them, and this became their last and only place of refuge. It 
 was a struggle that was to be maintained until this hapless 
 remnant of untamed and primitive hunters was hemmed in by 
 their restless pursuers, fiUed with implacable hate and thirsting 
 for their blood. It was here that, finding no hope of escape, 
 they turned upon their insatiate foes for the last time, and then 
 feU one after the other beneath a storm of buUets, until the last 
 man had let fly the only arrow left, and then, alone, disarmed, 
 but stiU imconquered, and taunting his enemies, he saw the mur- 
 derous guns all levelled at him ; then, muffling his head in his 
 kaross, that none might see a death-pang on his face, he stood 
 erect, and with a dauntless front received the deadly fire that 
 had been poiired upon his tribe, and falling back without a 
 groan, he marked with his blood the extinction of his clan. 
 
 Nor, as we shall see, was the fate of 'Kousopp and the re- 
 mainder of his tribe less tragical than that of those who chose 
 the 'Gumaap as their place of refuge. Had these men belonged 
 to a more civilized race, the determined struggle which they 
 made for their country and their freedom would have been 
 deemed heroic, and such a place as the rocky islands of the 
 'Gumaap would have been held sacred as having witnessed one 
 of these closing scenes, and remained for ever a landmark in 
 the history of a nation of brave and fearless men. 
 
 'De'coie, called by the voortrekkers De 'Goep and David 
 Danser, was, as we have seen, the petty captain who sold the 
 ground to the Boers. When 'Kousopp heard of this transaction, 
 he protested vehemently against it, and a quarrel took place 
 between them. Shortly after this a son of 'De'coie died rather 
 suddenly, when his father imagined that his death had been 
 caused by witchcraft, and that one of the Goliath Koranas was 
 the sorcerer who had worked the evil. 'De'coie demanded the 
 alleged offender from Goliath, that he might be put to death, 
 when Goliath denied the accusation, and refused to comply with 
 the demand. War then broke out between the Goliaths and 
 'De'coie's Bushmen, and a great battle took place between them 
 near Platberg, 'Ker-by-'kaam or Red Krantz. 
 
 'De'coie was assisted by some of the hyax Koranas. They 
 succeeded in defeating the Goliaths, and depriving them of 
 
400 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 everything they possessed. 'De'coie then fell back with the 
 spoil he had secured to the 'Gu-maam, i.e. Spruit, or as they 
 sometimes called it 'Gum-'Gariep, the Little river, now known 
 as Vet river. Finding out that their enemy had fled, the Goliaths 
 rallied and followed on the trail of the Bushmen, and overtook 
 them at 'Gum-'Gariep. Taking them by surprise, they re- 
 captured the cattle, but they had not proceeded far when they 
 were again overtaken by the Bushmen, and fell into an ambus- 
 cade prepared for them, when they once more lost their cattle, 
 and were obliged to return with a single ox, the only hoof they 
 had managed to keep. Irritated with this second repulse, on 
 their way back they fell upon the remaining L5tix Koranas out 
 of revenge for the part a portion of their tribe had taken, seized 
 their cattle, and returned with them to Goliath's stronghold, 
 a large island in the 'Gij-'Gariep, below 'Ker-by-'kaam or Plat- 
 berg. A short time after this 'De'coie, the traitor who fraudu- 
 lently sold the country, died. 
 
 'Kousopp, indignant that his land was thus unjustly and 
 unceremoniously seized, determined to carry on a war of re- 
 prisals to the bitter end. No inducement could prevail on him 
 and his people to cease from the depredations they carried on 
 against the intruding Boers. Horses, cattle, sheep, alike fell 
 into the hands of the angry chief, houses were destroyed, and 
 several of the farmers and their servants lost their lives. Fre- 
 quent demands were made upon him for the restitution of the 
 stolen property. His invariable answer was, " Restore my land, 
 and I will cease from troubling you ! Give me back the land 
 of my fathers, and there shall be peace ! " 
 
 The climax, however, at length arrived. Having seized the 
 entire flocks of one Jan Venter, he drove them to his retreat in 
 the great islands in the 'Gij 'Gariep or Vaal, below Hebron. 
 Here they were demanded, and refused as before upon the same 
 plea. The Bushmen feasted and danced, the sheep disappeared, 
 the lambs only were left. Venter sent him word that he was 
 coming to fetch them. A strong commando was assembled, 
 when finding that his enemies were coming in force, he retreated 
 from his islands to the precipitous portion of the river lower 
 down. Here the Boers surrounded his position. A few Griquas 
 who had joined 'Kousopp managed to fight their way out, hut 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 401 
 
 he would not deign to retreat farther. He defended himself 
 desperately ; but his determined courage availed him nothing, 
 he and his people fell to a man. Men, women, and children were 
 alike shot down, not one was spared, not a soul escaped. Thus 
 perished the last great captain of the Bushman tribes of the 
 Vaal, and since then there has been, as the Koranas described 
 it, peace in the land. 
 
 We have now traced the movements of aU these Hottentot 
 tribes as far as we are able, and the bearing their migrations 
 have had upon the destinies of the Bushman race. We will now 
 in conclusion take a short review of the character of the favoured 
 Griquas, who had been under such special care and training for 
 a considerable period, gathering our data from those who can 
 throw some light upon the cause of their rapid decadence and 
 the complete collapse of the Utopian scheme of a regenerated 
 kingdom of " poor natives " under the fostering care of their 
 politico-religious guardians. 
 
 We have already pointed out that the Griqua power was at 
 its height about 1825-6, at the time when Waterboer had made 
 the (iriquatown influence felt as far as Sannah's Poort, now 
 Fauresmith. It will not be necessary to trace the various stages 
 of its decline, as the very materials of which the commonwealth 
 was composed were unstable and worthless, and the principles 
 adopted by those at the helm were not only visionary, but in 
 direct opposition to the teachings of past history. 
 
 In the portion of Southern Africa now under consideration, 
 where the upholders of the old missionary system were able to 
 carry out for a long period of years their pet schemes perfectly 
 untrammelled, where they appropriated lands at their 
 pleasure, built up tribes and made and unmade chiefs at their 
 discretion, taking for their example the priests and prophets 
 of old who anointed or denounced the petty kings of their time 
 as they excited their displeasure or pandered to their priestly 
 assumptions, the outcome has been miserably unproductive ; 
 for if we calmly and dispassionately ask the question, what have 
 been the results ? there can be but one truthful reply, failure, 
 utter failure ! 
 
 We have already expressed astonishment that men who 
 could speak so pathetically of " the poor natives " could not see 
 
 DD 
 
402 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 the inconsistency of upholding the fictitious rights of their pro- 
 teges at the expense of another race, whose land had been coolly 
 appropriated because it was weaker than themselves. We have 
 seen both at Klaarwater and Knoffel Valley that Bushman 
 rights were never for a moment thought of. It was never con- 
 sidered whether such a primitive race had a right to any country 
 at all, that, in the opinion of these simple-minded gentlemen, 
 must be reserved for " the poor native," frequently, however, 
 rich in cattle ! So that when land, more land, was required, 
 the original and rightful owners were treated as mere ciphers 
 in the calculation. 
 
 Much has been said about the cruel treatment the Griquas 
 have received with regard to their land. They apquired it 
 simply, as we have seen, by the law of might. The Korana 
 testimony upon this point is conclusive. Their right was estab- 
 lished by the extinction of the ancient race, to whom it originally 
 belonged. They seized it by violence, and retained it by blood- 
 shed. 
 
 The habit of marauding was persisted in up to a very recent 
 period, and whenever an opportunity offered, they endeavoured 
 to enrich themselves by the plunder of weaker tribes. As it 
 was with the Koranas, so it was with many of the Griquas, 
 feasting and revelry so long as the supply afforded by the last 
 capture lasted, then, like our own borderers of old, " boot and 
 saddle " as soon as the store of beeves required replenishing. 
 Being armed with guns, they considered themselves a great 
 power among the natives, and were generally successful, although 
 the terrible disaster which befell the expedition against the herds 
 of Moselekatze proved that they could sometimes meet with 
 reverses. 
 
 As we now know that during the Hottentot rebellion of 1850 
 several parties of Kat river and Theopolis Hottentots held prayer 
 meetings before they proceeded to attack or attempt to murder 
 their old masters, so we can imagine that a good supply of cheap 
 beef would not interfere with any energetic devotional exercises 
 in which they from time to time engaged to hoodwink their 
 spiritual teachers, while the excuse of hunting gave a plausible 
 reason for every expedition in which they might engage. 
 
 Much as we deplore the cruelty of the Bergenaars, what shall 
 
THE GRIQUA CHIEFS 403 
 
 we say of the so-called mild and unoffending Christian Griquas, 
 under a missionary chief, when we learn that in 1839 some Bush- 
 men had been lately destroyed by a party of them in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Griquatown. " A party of Bushmen who had taken 
 refuge in a cave refused to surrender ; they were destroyed," 
 says Mr. Backhouse, " by setting on fire fuel collected at the 
 cave's mouth ! " 
 
 During one of the writer's visits to Griquatown, the man 
 under whom these atrocious instructions were carried out was 
 pointed out to him. He was one Joubert, a field captain or 
 commandant of Waterboer. Some 120 or 130 men, women, and 
 children, the entire remnant of the tribe, had fled to the cave 
 for refuge. Fearing to come out and surrender themselves to 
 the tender mercies of those who summoned them, they refused 
 to obey, when great piles of brushwood were heaped before the 
 cave, and the last of the unfortunate wretches within was suffo- 
 cated by order of this monster. Not a soul escaped ! 
 
 It wiU not be necessary to pursue the history of these tribes 
 further. Their decline was even more rapid than their exalta- 
 tion. When the writer first visited Griquatown in 1872, with 
 the exception of the chief's residence with its enclosures and two 
 or three other houses, Griquatown was in ruins, and the winds 
 were gradually blowing holes even into the roof of their sanctuary. 
 The missionaries for some cause or other had long deserted the 
 station, and when Waterboer the younger made over the country 
 to the British authorities, a few hundred Griquas of all sizes 
 composed the dilapidated nation. But to the true aborigines 
 of the country the evil had been done. Oppressed, defrauded, 
 hunted down like wild beasts, the Christian bullets and the suffo- 
 cating smoke had accomplished the task imposed upon them, 
 and the numerous tribes of aborigines that once filled the valleys 
 of the Kolong, the 'Gij and 'Nu 'Gariep all had vanished from the 
 face of the earth. A few miserable fugitive outcasts were alone 
 to be found here and there, while the rocks their great ones had 
 sculptured were the only testimony of their former occupation. 
 
• Chapter XXI 
 
 THE AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL BACHOANA AND 
 BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH. 
 
 We have now arrived at a portion of our inquiry when we have 
 to treat of men of a widely different race from those whose 
 history we have passed under review, men of more robust build 
 and of a fiercer and more warlike appearance, speaking a language 
 altogether different in its construction, and therefore indicating 
 an independent origin from that of the Bushman branch of the 
 human family. It was the pecuhar construction of their language 
 which led the late Dr. Bleek to term those speaking it the Bantu 
 group. Upon this subject Professor Sayce makes the following 
 remarks : " If we turn our eyes to South Africa, there too we 
 shall find a clearly marked group of tongues spoken by Kaffir 
 tribes from Mozambique to Sierra Leone, and termed Ba-ntu by 
 Dr. Bleek. It is to this scholar that we owe our present know- 
 ledge of the family, and his untimely death must be deplored 
 by every student of language." 
 
 Mr. H. Charles Schunke states that " the Ba-ntu extend a 
 few degrees north of the equator, that is in the north-east to the 
 country of the GaUas and the northern part of the Lacustrine 
 regions, in the north-west to the Gaboon territory, and even the 
 inhabitants of Fernando Po belong to this class. The most 
 northern tribes are the Wakuafi, Wapocomo, Wacamba, Benga, 
 Bakeli, and Femandians. The most southern the Amamfengo, 
 Basuto, Ovaherero, and Ovambantieru. The whole of the Ba- 
 ntu may be divided into a South-Eastem, Middle, and Northern 
 branch." 
 
 Belonging to the northern branch we have the Bakeh, Benga, 
 and the inhabitants of Fernando Po. 
 
 The middle branch consists of — 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 405 
 
 1. The Mozambique tribes, the Makua, Ma-'syao, and the 
 Sena and Tete tribes on the Zambesi. 
 
 2. The Zanquebar or Zangian tribes, Wakumba, Wanika, 
 Wasuahih, Wasambara, Wa'nyamuezi, Wajiji (of Ujiji), Warua, 
 etc. Probably all the tribes on the Lualaba found by Living- 
 stone and Cameron may, judging from the nature of their names, 
 belong to this division. 
 
 3. The tribes of the Interior, Bayeyi and Baukxoba. 
 
 4. The Bunda tribes, Ovaherero (with Ovambantieru), 
 Ovambo, Okavangari, Ovakuambi, Ovakuandyera, the Vanano 
 (of Benguela), and the tribes of Angola. 
 
 5. The Congo and JVIpongwe tribes. 
 
 The southern branch is divided in its turn into Kaffirs, Zulu, 
 Bechuana with Batlapin and Basutu. and the tribes near Delagoa 
 Bay. 
 
 It is with this last branch that we are concerned in our 
 examination of the intrusion of the stronger races into the 
 hunting grounds of the Bushmen of Southern Africa. Numerous 
 and wide-spread as these tribes are at the present day, there 
 appears but little doubt that they have all descended originally 
 from the same stock ; the greater or less diversity in the different 
 dialects spoken by them marking the various periods when the 
 offshoots separated from the main trunk ; and these again sub- 
 dividing into minor branches, which will, when carefully ex- 
 amined, be found to mark, although in a less degree than the 
 great offshoots, by certain degrees of divergence from one another 
 the sequence in which the tribal divisions took place. 
 
 The Rev. W. B. Boyce writes that " in the present state of 
 our information, it appears probable that the languages of South 
 Africa may be classed under two divisions or families. The 
 second division comprises the sister dialects spoken by the Kaffir 
 and Bechuana tribes to the east and north of the Cape Colony. 
 That the relationship subsisting between the Kaffir and Sechuana 
 is that of descent from a common parent is evident, not only 
 from the many words common to both, but from an almost 
 perfect identity in the leading principles of grammatical con- 
 struction. Of the two sister languages the Sechuana appears to 
 be by far the most extensively spoken, comprising a variety of 
 dialects only slightly differing from one another. It appears to 
 
406 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 be a branch of an extensive language spoken through all South 
 Africa from the north-eastem boundary of the Cape Colony to 
 the equator." 
 
 " There is reason," writes the Rev. H. H. Dugmore, " from 
 the affinity of language and the similarity of national customs, 
 to believe that the Kaffirs, Fingos, and Bechuana are the off- 
 shoots of some common stock ; but the stock itself can be Uttle 
 more than a matter of conjecture until the interior of Eastern 
 Africa shall have been more fully explored and ethnographical 
 researches more extensively prosecuted in relation to this region. 
 The variations in dialect among the tribes above mentioned 
 appear generally to have followed the rule of relative geograph- 
 ical situation, the chain of mountains which separates the 
 various tribes of Bechuana from those of Kafiraria marking the 
 respective boundaries of the two great divisions of the language. 
 Each of these comprises several varieties of dialect, which appear 
 to favour the theory that the languages have diverged from their 
 original point of separation in about the same degree that the 
 tribes themselves have done. Taking the dialect spoken by the 
 Kaffir border-tribes as the starting point, and proceeding east- 
 wards through the Abatembu and Amampondo till we reach 
 those spoken by the Zulus and Fingos, we find a gradual approxi- 
 mation to some of the dialects of the Basutu and Bechuana 
 tribes. Nor is it an extravagant supposition that the languages 
 may be substantially blended among tribes yet to be discovered." 
 
 The Rev. Richard Giddy, who has spent his life among the 
 native tribes, gives the following outline of the divergent char- 
 acter of the language spoken by these natives : " All the pure 
 Kaffir tribes have on the whole the same language, although the 
 variations are so many and so wide as almost to render it a hope- 
 less task to identify the words, or to trace them up to a common 
 origin. The construction of the various dialects is the same. 
 The concord, or alliteration, or harmony of euphonic sound is 
 foimd in all, the language being modified or shaped according 
 to sound. The farther north the traveller goes, the rougher and 
 more rugged he finds the language ; the nearer he approaches 
 the southern coast the more musical it becomes, the Sesuto 
 being more musical than the Serolong, and the Kaffir more 
 musical than the Sesuto. The southern sounds are deeper and 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 407 
 
 more bass-like than the northern. In the north the 5 is used, 
 in the south Z. The hghter sounds are in the north, the heavier 
 in the south. Metsi, water, in the north, becomes Manzi in the 
 south. The language is an exceedingly regular one, accommo- 
 dating itself to the harmony of sound, hence the concord where 
 the noun repeats its prefix in the pronoun, thus giving to the 
 speech a pleasant, mellifluous, and somewhat rh3nning character. 
 Where a letter, or a letter-sound, interferes with the musical 
 beauty of the word, it is cast out or eUded." 
 
 The different clans of the two great branches of this southern 
 family of the Ba-ntu group may be distinguished by the prefix 
 to their tribal appellations, thus those of the Bachoana and 
 Basutu tribes are known by the prefix Ba, while the coast tribes, 
 such as the Amazulu, Amampondo, Amaxosa, etc., have that 
 of Ama, both, however, having the same meaning, viz. those of, 
 the sons of, or the men of. 
 
 The northern tribes, of which we shall now treat, belong to 
 the former division, which, although frequently spoken of by 
 some writers under the collective name of Bachoana, or the men 
 who are aU equal, is again subdivided into two or three minor 
 groups of tribes, viz. the Bachoana proper, including the Batla- 
 pin, Barolong, etc., speaking the Sechoana and Serolong, and 
 the Basutu whose dialect is called Sesuto. It is to the former 
 of these subdivisions that our present remarks are directed. 
 They lived to the north of the Vaal, and a multitude of their 
 tribes at one time filled the territory of the present province of 
 the Transvaal with a dense population, stretching westward to 
 the border of the Kalahari and in a northerly direction to the 
 lake Ngami. 
 
 Before the commencement of the great wars which broke 
 cut among these tribes about 1820-21, and subsequently devas- 
 tated the entire country, numerous groups of tribes were occupy- 
 ing it whose very name long before their close was blotted from 
 the face of the earth, and aU their traditions had been lost. 
 Fortunately in the year 1820 the observant Campbell travelled 
 through the Batlapin territory, and noted down the position in 
 those days of the various tribes which surrounded it, and which, 
 if compared with a list of those at present existing, will show 
 how many of them have disappeared ; thus in the more imme- 
 
4o8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 diate neighbourhood were the Tamaha, the Barolong, the Batlou, 
 the Bakuena, the Bahurutsi, the Bangwaketse, the Bamangwato, 
 the Batlaru, and the Mampua, to the south-east of the Kalahari. 
 
 To the north-east and east the Makalaka, Bapalangi, Ma- 
 shoona, Bapula, Bapuana, Bapiri, Baadtpu, Muhle, Matshakwa, 
 Morimuzane, Ba-a-tshou, Ba-pugi, Ba-pu, Ba-kohe, Maribana, 
 Babuklola, Maheheru, Baperi, Bachacha, Omaribe, Bamuhopa, 
 Bapuhene, Selutana, Ma-ko-ti, Sebatya, Ba-ha-tya, and Basia. 
 
 To the south-south-east the Bapo, Bamatou, Bahciana, 
 Bahoba, Bapiri, Baklokla, Muhhe, Muhubilu, Mumanyana, 
 Bahoupi, and Bamahti. 
 
 Besides these there were also the Bataung, Bakatla, Batau- 
 ana, Banoga, Bakaa, Batoka, Batlokua, Bakhahela, and Baputi, 
 besides many others. 
 
 All these tribes had a distinguishing sign, or emblem, which 
 was called Siboko, from which they derived their various tribal 
 appellations. Thus among the Bachoana, the Fish is the siboko 
 of the clans of the Batlapin, the Crocodile that of the tribes 
 under Sechele and Moshesh, the Lion that of the people under 
 Molitsane, and the Wild Cat those of Sinkoniella, called Ma- 
 Intateesi, from the mother of the last-named chief. 
 
 These symbolic emblems in more advanced stages of civih- 
 zation would doubtless have become the emblazonments on their 
 tribal standards. Even now each tribe prides itself upon the 
 emblematic sign thus adopted by their remote forefathers. 
 
 Mr. Charles Sirr Orpen, who has paid considerable attention 
 to matters connected with these tribes, informed the writer tl\at 
 the general name Bachoana signifies the men who are equals, 
 those who are all the same, and seems to have arisen from the 
 behef that they are all offshoots of one common stemj Early 
 travellers who made inquiries with regard to the various branches 
 of this section of the Bantu race received the answer that they 
 were men who were all equal, or as the natives themselves ex- 
 pressed it, we are all the same, i.e. descended from the same 
 stock. The prefix Ba, as we have before explained, signifies 
 they or those of, the men, sons, or children of, 
 
 Frequently the chief, under whom the separation took place, 
 had for his name that of the animal which afterwards became 
 the siboko or glory of his tribe. As native chiefs were in the 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 409 
 
 habit of changing their names at different periods of their lives, 
 it is not clear whether the chief adopted the name of the siboko 
 his people had chosen for their great glory, and thus became far 
 excellence the Mo-kuena or Motaung, the man of the crocodile or 
 the man of the lion, as the case might be, titles of which the 
 great chiefs boast ; or whether the tribe took their siboko from 
 the accidental name of their leader at the time of their separation 
 from the parent branch. If we are to judge from their other 
 ideas and customs, the former appears the more probable solu- 
 tion of the mystery. With all the head or main tribes the pre- 
 fix Ba was placed before the name of their siboko, which thus 
 became that of the tribe itself, as — 
 
 Ba-letsatsi = the Men of the Sun ; 
 
 Ba-pula = the Men of the "Rain ; 
 
 Ba-pulana ^ the Men of the Showers ; 
 
 Ba-fukeng = the Men of the Dew, or Mist ; 
 
 Ba-tlapin = the Men of the Fish ; 
 
 Ba-kuena := the Men of the Crocodile ; 
 
 Ba-noga = the Men of the Serpent ; 
 
 Ba-tlaru = the Men of the Python ; 
 
 Ba-taung = the Men of the Lion ; 
 
 Ba-tlo-kua = the Men of the Wild Cat ; 
 
 Ba-tlou = the Men of the Elephant ; 
 
 Ba-piri = the Men of the Hyena ; 
 
 Ba-kha-tla := the Men of the Baboon ; 
 
 Ba-nyati. = the Men of the Buffalo ; 
 
 Ba-nuka = the Men of the Porcupine ; 
 
 Ba-kubuon=: the Men of the Hippopotamus ; 
 
 Ba-haole = the Men of the Rhinoceros ; 
 
 Ba-tauana := the Men of the Young Lions ; 
 
 Ba-morara = the Men of the Wild- Vine ; 
 
 Ba-puti = the Men of the Little Bluebuck ; 
 
 Ba-kuru := the Sons of the Comcleaners or Cornshellers^; 
 
 whUe the Ba-rolong take tsipe, iron, for their glory, and are 
 accordingly called Ba-bena-tsipe and Bena-tsipe, the sons of the 
 dancers of iron and the dancers of iron. 
 
 We have already seen that the great cave of a Bushman 
 tribe, and the tribe also hving in it, took their name from the 
 great symbol which was therein depicted, and although this 
 representative figure was their pride and their boast, Hke the 
 flags of more civilised nations or like the war-standards of our 
 Saxon forefathers, the writer has been unable to discover that 
 
410 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 they evinced towards it any superstitious regard similar to that 
 shown by these northern tribes to their special " glory." 
 
 The origin of these observances of the Bachoana is involved 
 in much obscurity and mystery. The natives have either lost 
 the traditions concerning them, or they are known only to a few 
 initiated who will not divulge the hidden mysteries of their race. 
 To swear by the siboko of his tribe is the most solemn oath a 
 native of this group can take. These names also, which are 
 those of their great tribes or families, do not change, while those 
 of the minor subdivisions or clans, but still frequently called 
 tribes, are very variable. 
 
 The latter are formed from the names of petty chiefs, who only 
 ruled over portions of one of the great families of the special 
 group to which they belonged, generally from the names of the 
 chiefs under whom the separation from the parent stock took 
 place ; while the former include all the minor subdivisions which 
 are descended from a common parent. The one, the name for 
 the minor subdivisions, is called Sechaba, and would be applied 
 to such sections of a great sept as the people of Sechele, chief of 
 the northern Bakuena, those of Moshesh, chief of the Bakuena 
 of Basutuland, of Sikoniella, chief of the Batlokua, a branch of 
 the Bapiri, or of Molitsane, the chief of the Bataung, a portion 
 of the Leghoya. If, on the contrary, they speak of the ancient 
 families to which they respectively belong, the word siboko 
 would be used, which signifies literally the Glory, and in such a 
 case the caste, tribe, or family of a people ; thus the name 
 Bamokotedi, the clan to which Moshesh belonged, does not give 
 the title of the great tribe from which they sprang, but merely 
 the name of the chief under whom they became a separate clan. 
 
 To speak of their great tribal siboko, it would be necessary 
 to say the glory of the crocodile (kuena), for this was the reptile 
 which they and their forefathers, before any division of the tribe 
 took place, revered, that is they sang the praises of the crocodile, 
 from which circumstance they designated themselves the men 
 of the crocodile. The name of this animal is the greatest oath 
 by which any of their tribe can swear. They say also, without 
 being able to give a reason why, that it is one of them, their 
 master, their father ; in fact they represent the elongated form 
 of its mouth in marking the ears of their cattle, not only as a 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 411 
 
 distinctive mark for their cattle, but in some measure as a family 
 coat of arms. 
 
 Dr. Casalis says that " the Bakuena call the crocodile their 
 father, they celebrate it in their festivals, they swear by it, and 
 make an incision resembling the mouth of this animal in the 
 ears of their cattle, by which they distinguish them from others. 
 The head of the family which ranks first in the tribe receives the 
 title of ' Great Man of the Crocodile.' No one dares to eat the 
 flesh, or clothe himself with the skin of the animal, the name of 
 which he bears. If this animal is hurtful, the lion for instance, 
 it may not be kiUed without great apologies being made to it 
 and its pardon being asked. Purification is necessary after the 
 commission of such a sacrilege." 
 
 Should any of the Bakuena of the north, who reside in a 
 country where many of the rivers swarm with crocodiles, happen 
 to approach one of these great reptiles, Livingstone informs us 
 that they immediately " spit on the ground, and indicate its 
 presence by saying Boleo-kibo, there is sin ; and if a man, either 
 among the Bakuena or Bamangwato, is bitten by a crocodile, or 
 even has had the water splashed over him with its tail, he is 
 expelled his tribe." Mr. Thomas Baines whilst hunting through 
 that country had the misfortune to lose one of his companions, 
 who died from the bite of one of these monsters which had seized 
 him by the thigh. Mr. Baines had to carry the corpse of his 
 friend a long distance before he could find a spot where he was 
 allowed to bury it. They imagine that the mere sight of one of 
 these creatures wiU give inflammation of the eyes, if some charm 
 is not immediately used to prevent its evil influence. 
 
 Livingstone also mentions another strange aversion these 
 people have, viz. that though they eat the zebra without hesita- 
 tion, if a man be bitten by one he is obliged to take his family 
 away to the Kalahari. He imagines that the adoption of tribal 
 sibokos may indicate that in former times they were addicted 
 to animal worship, like the ancient Egyptians. When wishing 
 to ascertain what tribe they belong to, the question is asked, 
 " What do you dance ? " from which it may be inferred that 
 dancing was also a part of their ancient rites. From this Dr. 
 Livingstone evidently imagines that they have degenerated from 
 some higher type, but to pursue our enquiries from such a point 
 
412 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 of view would only lead us to unsubstantial and unsatisfactory 
 conclusions, and prevent us from arriving at any correct solu- 
 tion of the question. 
 
 All nature tells us in the most unmistakable language that 
 both through long past geological time, as well as the present, 
 everything has been in a state of development and progression ; 
 some forms have become obsolete and extinct, but they have 
 been superseded by others of a higher grade in the scale of exist- 
 ence. AU that we know of the human race from positive facts 
 shows that from the very beginning they have been in this 
 gradual state of progression from the most degraded condition, 
 with a language even more uncouth than that of the Bushman, 
 when they could only exchange the few ideas they possessed by 
 the attempted imitation of natural sounds. All the most eminent 
 students of philology inform us that such must have been the 
 condition of the speech of primeval man, and all history demon- 
 strates to us, if we will but read it rightly, that all the modes of 
 thought, and even religious beliefs, of the present day are but 
 the elaborations and development of others more ancient. Thus 
 if we would pursue our inquiry with the least hope of arriving 
 at a solution of any portion of the problem of past life upon our 
 earth, we must dismiss from our minds the old idea of the savage 
 races found on it being a degenerated portion of humanity, who 
 have fallen from some previous state of excellence. 
 
 The only safe and philosophical course for us to pursue is to 
 take up the reverse of such a position. We shall then see in 
 them people who have been groping darkly onwards for un- 
 known ages, and that, while the more intellectual races of man- 
 kind have been progressing in the arts of civilization, they have 
 preserved in an almost stereotyped form the ideas and super- 
 stitions of their remote ancestors at the time when they were 
 first separated from the main current of life and became embayed 
 in the remote portions of the earth, preserving relics of the dif- 
 ferent stages of progress by which the rude superstitions of 
 the savage became gradually developed to the more elaborate 
 system of animal worship of such nations of antiquity as the 
 Egyptians. We have already suggested that in all probability 
 it was in a similar manner that the animal- and bird-headed 
 deities of such races had their original germs in the hunting dis- 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 413 
 
 guises of some primitive race which had manners and customs, 
 mystic dances, and mysteries known only to the initiated, analo- 
 gous to those of the Bushmen of South Africa in their undis- 
 turbed state. 
 
 The Bahurutsi, although an offshoot of the Bakuena, do not 
 dance to the Crocodile or Kuena, but to the Baboon. The Rev. 
 Roger Price writes as follows upon this subject : " Tradition says 
 that about the time the separation took place between the 
 Bahurutsi and the Bakuena, baboons entered the gardens of 
 the former and ate their pumpkins before the proper time for 
 commencing to eat the fruits of the new year. The Bahurutsi 
 were unwilling that the pumpkins which the baboons had broken 
 off and nibbled at should be wasted, and ate them accordingly. 
 This act is said to have led to the Bahurutsi being called Ba- 
 chwene, Baboon-people, which is their siboko to this day, and 
 their having the precedence ever afterwards in the matter of 
 taking the first bite of the new year's fruits." " If this story be 
 the true one," continues Mr. Price, " it is evident that what is 
 now used as a term of honour was once a term of reproach." 
 
 The Bakuena too are said to owe the origin of their siboko 
 to the fact that their people once ate an ox which had been killed 
 by a crocodile. Mr. Price is strongly inclined to think that the 
 siboko of aU the tribes was originally a kind of nickname, or term 
 of reproach, but, he adds, " there is a good deal of mystery 
 about the whole thing. The siboko of the Bangwaketse, another 
 branch of the Bakuena, is stiU the Kuena or Crocodile. The 
 BamangwE^to, another offshoot of the same parent stem, how- 
 ever, changed their siboko at the time of the separation from 
 the Bakuena. The chief Mathibe, under whom the separation 
 took place, had for his head wife a woman of the tribe of Seleka, 
 living near the Limpopo. The forbidden animal or siboko of 
 that tribe being the Phuti or Duiker, the Bamangwato adopted 
 that instead of the Kuena." 
 
 The greatest oath natives can take is, as already pointed out, 
 that of swearing by the siboko, and also by the great chief or 
 the representative man of the siboko of their tribe. Thus the 
 great oath of the Malekutu, or Banuka, is " ka nuka," by the 
 porcupine, because the majority of them sing, to use the con- 
 secrated phrase, intimating that they feast, or revere that animal. 
 
414 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 From this comes the common designation Banuka, those, or the 
 men of the Porcupine, applied to one branch of the Bapiri. 
 When they see anyone maltreat that animal, they afflict them- 
 selves, grieve, collect with religious care all its quills, if it has 
 been killed, spit upon them, and rub their eyebrows with them, 
 saying, " they have killed our brother, our master, one of ours, 
 him whom we sing." 
 
 They fear they wiU die if they eat the flesh of one. Neverthe- 
 less they believe it to be beneficial for a nursling to introduce 
 near the joints of its body certain parts of the stomach of the 
 porcupine, mixed with the juice of plants, said to possess some 
 virtue equally occult. The mother then gives the child the re- 
 mainder of this setlari, or medicament, to drink. AU the Male- 
 kutu venerate their ancestors almost to devotion. 
 
 Instead of the porcupine, another branch of the Bapiri, the 
 Bakhabo, revere the monkey, a species however only found to 
 the north, whence their ancestors originally came, and the Ba- 
 khatla swear by the baboon. At the new moon the Bapiri stop 
 at home, and do not go out to the fields, acting in this respect 
 like those who sing the sun. This probably indicates some 
 ancient connection between the two tribes. They believe that 
 if they should set about their labour at such a season, the millet 
 would remain in the ground without sprouting, or that the ear 
 would fail to fill, or that it would be destroyed by rust. 
 
 The Ba-letsatsi, or the men of the sun, when the brilliant star 
 of day rises in a cloudy heaven do not work, saying that it afflicts 
 their heart. The food prepared the night before is all given to 
 the matrons, or aged women, who alone may touch it, and who 
 give part to the children under their care. On such mornings 
 these people go down in a crowd to the river, there to wash their 
 whole body. Every one casts to the bottom of the water a stone 
 which they have carried from their hut, and which is replaced by 
 another taken from the bed of the river. On their return to 
 the town after their ablution, the chief kindles a fire at his house, 
 and aU his subjects go to get fire from it. This therefore repre- 
 sented a consecrated, or sacred fire, that is the sun, from which all 
 receive their warmth. After this ceremony begins a general 
 dance in a public place. He who has lost his father raises his 
 left hand towards heaven, on the contrary he who has lost his 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 415 
 
 mother raises his right, while the orphan who has lost both 
 raises neither, but crosses both his hands upon his breast. 
 
 This dance is accompanied by a monotonous song, when 
 every one says — 
 
 Pina ea Morimo, u ee gae ! 
 Song of the Shades of the Departed {Morimo) go home ! 
 
 Ki lema ka leje ? 
 Which is it that I raise ? (i.e. which hand) 
 
 U ee gae ! U ee gae ! 
 
 Go home ! Go home ! 
 
 The word gae, translated "home" in the above, is strictly 
 speaking where one has dwelt or where one dwells, thus cor- 
 responding with the English word employed. 
 
 Some old men belonging to a branch of the Baputi, the men 
 of the duiker, called Maputi-Maloi, informed the writer that 
 their name had special reference to their tribal siboko, the 
 duiker, in allusion to a custom which they observed at the burial 
 of the great chief of their portion of the tribe. They said, as 
 soon as his death was made known a hunting party was sent in pur- 
 suit of one of these representative animals. When a duiker was 
 thus obtained, it was carefully skinned, and the hide was brought 
 to the place where the dead chief lay ; his body was then enfolded 
 in the skin of the tribal siboko, and in this state committed to the 
 grave with the usual solemnities. One of the chief informants, 
 when questioned as to whether the same customs obtained 
 among those tribes which had a different siboko, stated that 
 he believed they ought to do the same ; but upon the subject 
 being mentioned to the Bakuena chief Mapeli, he affirmed that 
 as far as he knew none of the others had a similar custom. 
 
 This therefore must be one exclusively confined to this 
 branch of the Baputi, or if ever such a custom existed among the 
 others, it had evidently fallen into disuse from the impossibility, 
 in many cases, of obtaining the special hides which were necessary 
 for the ceremony. The remainder of the Baputi, if by accident 
 they touched a piece of the skin or bones of a dead duiker, 
 immediately spat upon the ground, and then wiped the eyes both 
 of themselves and every member of their family who was within 
 reach, to prevent them from losing their sight. 
 
 The ancestors of Makuana and Molitsane selected the lion 
 
4i6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 as the object of their reverence, which is still held in the same 
 estimation by their descendants ; hence comes the ancient and 
 celebrated designation of Bataung, or the men of the lion, but 
 commonly called Leghoya, a denomination which came from a 
 powerful chief, whose subjects did him the honour to assume 
 his name, although by doing so they did not change their tribal 
 siboko. 
 
 Among these people, as among other tribes, there were many 
 who revered some other animal, instead of the lion, but the 
 majority of the nation were Bataung, and of course did not recog- 
 nize as sacred any other animal than the king of the forest. 
 They never killed one except with extreme regret, with the false 
 fear of losing their sight should they look towards him when he 
 was dead ; but if the thing must be done, they carefully rubbed 
 their eyes with a piece of his skin, in order thereby to avert 
 the imaginary danger as well as to perpetuate a superstitious 
 reverence. They carefully abstained from touching his flesh 
 as other people did, for they said how could one think of eating 
 his ancestor ? Whilst the powerful chiefs of other tribes were 
 proud to clothe themselves in his skin, which they ostenta- 
 tiously threw over their shoulders by way of a royal mantle, at 
 Entikoa, the great place of this tribe, and throughout the ter- 
 ritories of the Leghoya and Bataung, no one would have dared 
 to use it as fur. 
 
 The chief branch of the Bafukeng, itself the royal tribe of 
 the southern Bakuena, was called the Bapatsa, also Mangole 
 and Ba-morara, the first being derived from the name of the 
 great chief under whom they separated from their parent stem, 
 the last from their tribal siboko, hence they were styled the 
 Ba-morara, or the men of the wUd vine. M. Arbousset informs 
 us that they were recognized for their veneration of the rietbok, 
 and above all for that which they displayed for the wild vine, 
 called by them morara. This plant grows without culture in 
 the woods of the Malutis, the stalk, which does not exceed a few 
 inches in diameter, climbs to the top of the highest trees, and 
 overspreading them with its branches, sometimes seems to smother 
 them in its embraces. The Mangole, the Bapatsa clan of the 
 Bafukeng, although they do not disdain to take advantage 
 of its shade, always do so without touching its grapes, still less 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 417 
 
 using its wood for any purpose. Should any other person 
 employ any of it for fuel, although they would not hke to go and 
 make application for the fire, they gather the ashes and cinders 
 religiously together, and place them on their fordieads and tem- 
 ples in sign of grief. 
 
 From the foregoing facts it would seem possible that the origin 
 of the siboko among these tribes arose from some sobriquet that 
 had been given to them, and that in course of time, as their 
 superstitious and devotional feelings became more developed, 
 these tribal sjTiibols became objects of veneration and super- 
 stitious awe, whose favour was to be propitiated or malign 
 influence averted by certain rites and ceremonies, more or less 
 elaborate, with ablutions and purification, with solemn dances 
 and singing, the kindling and distribution of the sacred fire, 
 and placing ashes on the forehead as a sign of grief. 
 
 Although at the present time all the great coast tribes are 
 distinguished by the name of some renowned ancestor, there are 
 still traces to be found which seem to indicate that a similar 
 custom once existed among at least a portion of those with the 
 Ama-pre&K, of which Ama-langa (the sons of the sun), Ama-zulu 
 (the sons of the heavens), Ama-geba (the sons of the shadows 
 of the setting sun), will be sufficient examples. 
 
 It was not only, however, that these tribes of the Bachoana 
 group were distinguished for this peculiar mode of nomenclature 
 combined with superstitious observances, but they were equally 
 characterized by intense love of agricultural pursuits, which 
 formed such a striking trait in the occupations of the Bachoana 
 and Basutu tribes that the early travellers were filled with admira- 
 tion and astonishment at the wonderful proofs of industry which 
 the extent of the cultivated land surrounding their great towns 
 exhibited. Some of the latter contained a teeming population 
 of some eight to ten thousand inhabitants, some, in fact, being 
 stated to have held double that number. At the time of 
 Mr. Campbell's visit to Lithako, the great place of the Batla- 
 pin, he remarks that on approaching the town they passed 
 through extensive cornfields spreading out on both sides of 
 the road. Even the Hottentots who accompanied him were 
 amazed at the extent of land under cultivation, never having 
 seen so much before in one place. 
 
 E E 
 
4i8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The only vegetable productions cultivated by the Bachoana 
 and their forefathers were varieties of the native grain, holcus 
 sorghum, the sweet-reed, the sorghum saccharatum, pumpkins, 
 a small kind of kidney bean, and watermelons, which appeared 
 to be a cultivated variety of the cucumis caffer. Maize or Indian 
 corn was perfectly unknown to them, and was introduced from 
 the east coast (the Portuguese settlements) through the Matabili 
 invasion. 
 
 From native tradition, as well as from positive evidence, 
 there can be little doubt that when their fathers first migrated 
 into the country, it was one which was highly adapted for agri- 
 cultural pursuits, and therefore formed a fitting home for such 
 tribes to settle in. The Batlapin declare that in ancient times 
 there were great floods in the country, and incessant showers 
 which clothed the very rocks with verdure ; and they speak of 
 giant trees and forests which once studded the brows of the 
 Hambana hills and neighbouring plains. They boasted of the 
 Koeromanie (Kuruman of the English) and other rivers, with 
 their impassable torrents, in which the hippopotami played. 
 In addition to these traditions handed down by their fathers, 
 they had before their eyes at the time of Mr. Moffat's arrival 
 amongst them the fragments of more fruitful years, in the 
 immense number of roots and stumps of enormous trunks of the 
 Acacia Giraffe, which requires an age to become a tree. Some 
 of the trunks met with were of such enormous size that he sup- 
 posed if the time were calculated necessary for their growth, 
 as well as their decay, one might be led to conclude that they 
 must have been in existence several thousand years. ' ' Now, one," 
 Mr. Moffat adds, " is scarcely to be seen raising its stately head 
 above the shrubs." 
 
 As according to geological evidence the last extreme in our 
 South African climate was the very opposite to that recorded 
 in the northern hemisphere, viz. a tropical and subtropical one, 
 in lieu of the Arctic severity of the last glacial period of the latter, 
 it may therefore be possible that these traditions may be from 
 some vague recollection of the times when the last tropical 
 rains still lingered about the regions to which their ancestors 
 migrated. 
 
 It is certain that the country in question was such as would 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 419 
 
 develop and foster their agricultural proclivities, and therefore 
 induced more settled habits and a concentration of population 
 around favourable localities, which led to the formation of their 
 great agricultural settlements or towns, showing a more advanced 
 state of society than that exhibited by the more primitive kraals 
 of the coast tribes, who, until their contact with the white race, 
 appear to have placed their chief dependence for subsistence on 
 pastoral occupations. 
 
 Such an improved mode of life, combined with the industrious 
 habits which are inculcated by the necessary regularity in labours 
 of the field, enabled them to apply their leisure profitably in 
 improving their manufactures, and thus it is that among these 
 tribes not only were their habitations larger and more comfort- 
 able, their towns laid out with greater regularity as well as exceed- 
 ing all others in magnitude, but the most skilful smiths of all 
 South Africa were found amongst them ; they far excelled aH 
 others in their pottery, and their wood-carving, as displayed 
 in the ornamentation of their spoons and various wooden vessels, 
 was unequalled, while even their superstitions had become more 
 elaborated and defined, they having instituted certain symbolic 
 representative figures, called Madula and Setswantu, which 
 they preserved in their huts as their tutelar deities, which were 
 to ensure to their possessors prolificness to their household 
 and general prosperity in their affairs. 
 
 There can be little doubt, however, but that this very im- 
 provement in their mode of life from the more purely pastoral 
 pursuits of their ancestors tended in the course of long generations 
 to modify very considerably their wandering and warlike pro- 
 pensities ; and as the benefits of peace became every generation 
 more and more apparent, as essentially imperative to enable them 
 to carry out successfully their favourite agricultural pursuits, so 
 it became more and more cultivated by them until ultimately 
 by making a decided impression upon their national character 
 they became, in comparison with the more robust coast tribes, 
 a timid, pusillanimous, vainglorious race, while the latter, although 
 they had not made the advance towards social comfort the 
 Bachoana had done, still retained much of the martial fire and 
 savage energy of their common ancestors. Thus numerous 
 as the Bachoana had become, they fell an easy prey to every 
 
420 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 enemy who chose to invade their country, while their accumulated 
 herds afforded the most insatiate marauders ample spoil. 
 
 As soon as we commence to investigate the history of these 
 tribes minutely, we discover that they, similar to every other 
 native race we may have to study, are divided into various groups 
 of tribes, and that the members of these groups migrated in a 
 certain sequence, somewhat akin to that we have described in 
 the early movements of the border tribes of the west coast. 
 The pioneers appear to have been comparatively insignificant 
 tribes, the advanced guard of the still greater body which was 
 following, and which, when it overtook them, swept over them, 
 and reduced the greater portion of the fugitives to a state of 
 vassalage. In order therefore to obtain a clearer view of 
 our subject, we shall divide it into the three following heads, 
 viz. : — 
 
 (a) The Pioneer Tribes of the Bachoana in the migration to 
 
 the Southward. 
 
 (b) The Tribes of the Second Period of the Bachoana migra- 
 
 tion ; and 
 
 (c) The great Bakuena Branch, or the Bakone Tribes to the 
 
 East and North. 
 
 The Pioneer Tribes of the Bachoana in their Migration to the 
 
 Southward. 
 
 Before entering upon an inquiry with regard to the more 
 powerful and numerous tribes of the Bachoana group, it may be 
 as well to investigate, as far as the available materials at our 
 disposal will allow us, the probable relation between several 
 minor tribes which were found fifty or sixty years ago not only 
 along the western border of the area then occupied as Bachoana 
 territory, but scattered in small communities throughout the 
 country itself. They were evidently in a far more defenceless 
 state than the stronger tribes, and generally in a more degraded 
 condition, many of them being reduced to such a state of abject 
 serfdom that they were perfectly at the command of their exact- 
 ing and more powerful neighbours. Such a condition would 
 appear to indicate that they are the descendants of a conquered 
 race, who having formed the vanguard of the great southern 
 migration of the Bantu, had occupied the country previous to 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 421 
 
 its invasion by the main body of the Bachoana hordes, who, 
 after a considerable interval, must have followed them, and by 
 whom they and their fathers were brought into the state of 
 subjection in which they were discovered by the early travellers. 
 
 These tribes therefore in all probability represent the phase of 
 the earliest intruding Bachoana tribes into the ancient Bushman 
 hunting grounds. And as in every similar instance where other 
 pioneer tribes, comparatively small in number and less warlike 
 in character than those who followed them, have first come in 
 contact with the old hunter race, we shall find that they frater- 
 nized more closely with the aboriginal occupiers of the soil, 
 who extended to them a sort of rude hospitality and showed to- 
 wards them a friendliness of disposition in marked contrast 
 to the hostile and vindictive feelings which were subsequently 
 aroused by the monopolizing and grasping appropriation of 
 the finest portions of their country by the formidable multitudes 
 of armed warriors who followed with their numerous herds upon 
 the trail of the pioneers. 
 
 These last may now be considered under the following sub- 
 divisions, viz. : — 
 
 I. The Leghoya, called by different writers and authorities 
 Ba-coija, Gohas, Goes, Coija, and Lehoya. Of this tribe we shall 
 treat more fully when speaking of the migration of the tribes 
 to the south of the Vaal. They evidently retained possession 
 of their herds of cattle for a longer period than any of the earlier 
 tribes, gradually migrating to the southward and crossing the 
 Vaal with them, until they were attacked there by the emigrant 
 Bakuena, and reduced to a state of extreme want and misery. 
 
 2. The Bakalahari, occupying the eastern confines of the 
 Kalahari, whither they retired upon the intrusion of the more 
 powerful Bachoana tribes. 
 
 3. The Balala, scattered through the less inhabited portions 
 of the Bachoana territory. 
 
 4. The Bachoana Bushmen, living in the same manner. 
 We will therefore now, omitting the consideration of the 
 
 Leghoya for the present, pass to that of the second tribe above 
 enumerated. 
 
 2. — The Bakalahari. 
 These are supposed to be the oldest of the Bachoana tribes, 
 
422 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 and are said to have once possessed enormous herds of cattle. 
 They were driven into the desert by a fresh migration of their 
 ovra nation, who were evidently stronger and more warlike than 
 themselves. Here, living for centuries on the same plains with 
 the Bushmen, subjected to the same influences of climate, enduring 
 the same thirst, and subsisting on similar food, they seem to supply 
 a proof that locality is not always sufficient to account for differ- 
 ence in races. Amid all their poverty these Bakalahari retain 
 in undying vigour the Bachoana love for agriculture and domestic 
 animals. They are a timid race, and in bodily development 
 often resemble the aborigines of Australia. They have their 
 legs and arms, and large protruding abdomens, caused by the 
 coarse and indigestible food they eat. 
 
 The Bushmen live in the Kalahari from choice, the Bakalahari 
 from compulsion. Livingstone, in comparing the two races, 
 states that the Bushmen are distinct in language, race, habits, 
 and appearance ; and are the only real nomads of the country. 
 They never cultivate the soil, or rear any animals save wretched 
 dogs. They are intimately acquainted with the habits of the 
 game, and chiefly subsist on their flesh, eked out by the roots 
 and beans and fruits of the desert. Those who inhabit the hot 
 sandy plains have generally thin wiry forms, and are capable of 
 great exertion and of severe privations. 
 
 Such then are the companions of the Bakalahari, whilst the 
 Kalahari, which affords them shelter and protection, is also one 
 of the last places of refuge for the hapless and fast disappearing 
 Bushman race. This great area has been called a desert because, 
 though intersected by beds of ancient rivers, it contains no 
 running water and very little in wells. Far from being destitute 
 of vegetation, it is covered with grass and creeping plants. 
 The quantity of grass which grows in this remarkable region 
 is astonishing, even to those who are familiar with India. It 
 usually rises in tufts with bare spaces between, or the intervals 
 are occupied by creeping plants, the roots of which, being buried 
 far beneath the soil, feel little the effects of the scorching sun. 
 The number of these which have tuberous roots is very great, 
 a structure which is intended to supply moisture during droughts. 
 Besides there are large patches of bushes, and even trees. It is 
 remarkably flat, and prodigious herds of antelopes, which require 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 423 
 
 little or no water, roam over the trackless plains. The beds 
 of the former streams contain much alluvial soil, which being 
 baked hard by the burning sun, rain water in some places stands 
 in pools for several months of the year. 
 
 In 1813 the name of the chief of the Bakalahari was Leevekue, 
 who resided principally in the vaUey called Chue. They neither 
 had, nor in the situation in which they were placed, could have 
 cattle or sheep. They acknowledged themselves dependent 
 to a certain degree on the neighbouring chiefs. They hunted 
 with dogs belonging to them, and the skins of the animals they 
 killed they were obliged to bring to them. If they killed an 
 elephant, the tusks had to be carried to their feudal masters. 
 They not only used the assagai in hunting, but also like the 
 Bushmen dug deep holes in the ground to take animals. They 
 were at that time under the protection of Mothibi and Lahesi, 
 the chief of the Batlaro, in case of an attack ; but they were dis- 
 countenanced from having intercourse with any tribes nearer 
 the Cape Colony who brought articles of trade. When called 
 out to assist in plundering expeditions against their neighbours, 
 all they captured was handed over to their superiors, who 
 bestowed upon them what they thought proper. They were not 
 permitted to wear jackals' skins, or any dress which indicated 
 rank or fortune ; they could only use such skins as were not 
 worn by the rich. Though numerous, they lived in a scattered 
 manner. A considerable number however remained with their 
 chief. 
 
 In 1820 these natives were found to be more numerous than 
 was expected, although they lived in a very scattered way over 
 the desert, and generally fled upon the approach of strangers 
 intruding on their realm. The animals which they hunted 
 were principally elephants, giraffes, elands, steenboks, and 
 quaggas, while the bow and arrow were their principal weapons. 
 
 These natives, according to Mr. Freeman, have a daring 
 method of capturing lions. He says that he was assured by 
 the missionary Lemue that they have been known to seize a lion 
 bodUy and stab him to death. The lions were not unfrequently 
 extremely dangerous, and from having become accustomed to 
 human flesh they would not willingly eat anything else. When 
 a neighbourhood became infested by these man-eaters, the 
 
424 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 inhabitants would determine on the measures to be adopted 
 to rid themselves of the nuisance ; then forming themselves into 
 a band, they would proceed to search for their royal foe, and 
 beard him in his lair. Standing close to one another, the lion 
 would make a spring upon one of the party, every man of course 
 hoping that he might escape in the attack, then others would 
 instantly dash forward and seize his tail, lifting it up close to the 
 body with all their might, thus not only astonishing the animal 
 but rendering his efforts powerless for the moment, while others 
 closed in with their spears and stabbed the monster through and 
 through. This was done not for the exciting pleasure of a lion 
 hunt, or as an exhibition of prowess, but merely to rid the vicinity 
 of their villages of a dreadful enemy. 
 
 Water was frequently very scarce in this inhospitable region, 
 and the women as frequently had to carry it considerable dis- 
 tances. When they wished to draw water they put it into ostrich 
 eggshells, twenty or thirty of which were carried upon their 
 backs in a bag or net. It was however the great scarcity of 
 surface water which rendered this vast wild such a bulwark of 
 defence against any chance of successful invasion from without. 
 But when befriended by either the Bushmen or the Bakalahari, 
 this so-called desert, besides supporting multitudes of animals, 
 has proved a refuge to many a fugitive tribe, when their lands have 
 been overrun by the ravaging hordes of Matabili warriors. 
 
 This fraternizing of the Bushmen and Bakalahari, without 
 amalgamating by intermarrying, is certainly very interesting ; 
 and it is here therefore, in the still almost unknown region of 
 the Kalahari, that these distinct relics of a long-forgotten past are 
 still found in juxtaposition, viz. the scattered tribes of ancient 
 Bushmen, who are undoubtedly the representatives of the true 
 aborigines of the southern portion of the African continent, 
 and who must have gradually migrated thitherward as the 
 severity of the last Antarctic climate which visited this part of the 
 world, equally as gradually ameliorated ; and these Bakalahari, 
 who are the descendants of the remnants of those tribes which 
 formed the first wave of Bachoana emigration in the same 
 direction. 
 
 The reality of the previous migration of these earlier tribes 
 is proved not only by the existence of the Bakalahari and of those 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 425 
 
 presently to be mentioned, the Balala, but also that of two well- 
 marked grades — they might almost be termed castes, so clearly 
 and so strongly defined are these two divisions — into which the 
 members of the va:rious tribes are separated, that distinctly 
 indicate the presence of the descendants of not only a conquering 
 but a conquered race also amongst them. Natives of the lower 
 grade were despised by those of the higher, and one of the latter 
 intermarrying with one of the former would certainly have lost 
 caste in the eyes of his more exclusive countrymen. 
 
 This therefore accounts for the kind of feudal system which 
 Moffat states prevailed among the Bachoana tribes. There are, 
 he writes, two grades, the rich, who are hereditary chiefs, and the 
 poor. The latter continue in the same condition, and their lot 
 is a comparatively easy kind of vassalage. Their lives are some- 
 thing hke those of their dogs, hunger and idleness, but they are 
 the property of their respective chiefs, and their forefathers have 
 from time immemorial been at the mercy of their lords. Keeping 
 this in view, we shall better understand the true condition of 
 the scattered remnants of the people who come next under con- 
 sideration. 
 
 3. — The Balala or Poor Ones, or the Sons of Slaves. 
 
 These people, Moffat considers, were once inhabitants of towns, 
 and have been permitted or appointed to live in country places 
 for the purpose of procuring skins of wild animals, honey, and 
 roots for their respective chiefs. The number of these country 
 residents was increased by the innate love of liberty, and the 
 scarcity of food in towns or within the boundaries to which they 
 were confined by want of water and pasture. These again 
 formed themselves into small communities, though of the most 
 temporary character, their caUing requiring migration, and they 
 having no cattle of any description. Preferring the liberty of 
 the desert, they would make any sacrifice to please their often 
 distant superiors rather than be confined to the irksomeness of a 
 town Hfe, to which such is their aversion that, as Mr. Moffat states, 
 he has known chiefs take armed men and travel a hundred miles 
 into desert places, in order to bring back Balala whom they wished 
 to assist in watching and harvesting the gardens of their wives. 
 In such seasons they will frequently wander about, and fix their 
 
426 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 domiciles in the most desert and unfrequented spots, to escape 
 this easy but to them galling duty. 
 
 Though in general they are able to state to what chief or tribe 
 they belong, yet from want of intercourse and from desolating 
 wars, great numbers have become from their isolated position 
 independent. They lead a hungry life, being dependent on the 
 chase, wild roots, berries, locusts, and indeed everything eatable 
 that comes within their reach ; and when they have a more than 
 usual supply they will bury it in the earth from their superiors, 
 who are in the habit of taking what they please. 
 
 Resistance on their part would be instantly avenged by 
 the deadly javelin. When hunting parties go out to kill game, 
 the Balala men and women are employed to carry grievous 
 burdens of flesh to the rendezvous of the hunters, in return for 
 which they receive the offals of the meat, and are made drudges 
 as long as the party remains. They are never permitted to wear 
 the furs of jackals and other animals they obtain. The flesh 
 they may eat, but the skins are conveyed to the towns, for which 
 they obtain a small piece of tobacco or an old spear or a loiife. 
 Indeed all the valuable skins of the larger animals, which they 
 sometimes procure by hunting and pitfalls, as well as the better 
 portions of the meat, they have to yield to their masters, except 
 when they succeed in secreting the whole for their own use. 
 From the famishing life to which they are exposed, their external 
 appearance and stature are precisely to the Bachoana what the 
 Bushman is to the Hottentot. 
 
 Their sole care is to keep body and soul together ; to accom- 
 plish this is with them their chief end. They are compelled to 
 traverse the wilds often to a great distance from their village. 
 On such occasions fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a 
 burden, often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children 
 to the care of two or more infirm old people. The infant progeny, 
 some of whom are beginning to lisp, while others can just master 
 a whole sentence, and those still further advanced, romping and 
 playing together, the children of nature, through the livelong 
 day, become habituated to a language of their own ; and thus 
 from this infant Babel proceeds a dialect composed of a host of 
 mongrel words and phrases joined together without rule, and in 
 the course of a generation the entire character of the language is 
 changed. 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 427 
 
 Their servile state, their scanty clothing, their exposure to 
 the inclemency of the weather, and their extreme poverty, have, 
 as may be easily conceived, a deteriorating influence on their 
 character and condition. They are generally less in stature, 
 and though not deficient in intellect, the life they lead gives a 
 melancholy cast to their features, and from constant intercourse 
 with beasts of prey and serpents in their path, as well as exposure 
 to harsh treatment, they appear shy and have a wild and fre- 
 quently quick suspicious look. Nor can this be wondered at, 
 when it is remembered that they associate with savage beasts, 
 from the lion that roams about by night and day, to the deadly 
 serpent which infests their path, keeping them always on the 
 alert during their perambulations. 
 
 The Tamahas, or the Red People. 
 
 Mr. Campbell informs us that in his first journey in 1812-13 
 from Lithako to Malapitze, the first people he met with after 
 passing a couple of Batlapin outstations were some wandering 
 Bushmen. Then at a place called Marabe they met a small kraal 
 of Bachoana Bushmen, which had the appearance of extreme 
 wretchedness. On the fourth day's journey they came to the 
 hills which divide the Bachoana from the Korana countries. 
 Immediately at the mouth of the pass was a small kraal of the 
 Tamahas, or red people, who on the approach of the travellers 
 fled to the top of a hiU behind the kraal ; but seeing Batlapin in 
 the company, the men came down and spoke with them. Their 
 appearance indicated wretchedness in the extreme. Their 
 dwellings were so low as to be hardly visible among the bushes 
 till quite close to them. They were the shape of half a hen's 
 egg, with the open part exposed, an arrangement which must 
 have occasioned considerable inconvenience in rainy weather, 
 unless they were able to turn the enclosed side to the storm. 
 They were so covered with dirt, mixed with spots of very red 
 paint, that it appeared probable none of them had any part of 
 their bodies washed since they were bom. 
 
 These people appear to have intermarried so much with the 
 Bushmen, that at the beginning of the present century they 
 were described as a mongrel race between the Bachoana and 
 Bushmen, and they painted themselves red, from which circum- 
 
428 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 stance they in all probability obtained the distinctive name of 
 red people. Their houses were made of rushes hke those of the 
 Koranas, but were better constructed and kept cleaner. They 
 were not so tall as the Batlapin of Lithako. They had cattle, 
 sheep, and goats, and lived together in towns, but not so large as 
 those of the Batlapin. They planted miUet and pumpkins. 
 The nearest of their kraals in 1812-13 to the Batlapin were at a 
 distance of four days' journey from Lithako. At that time 
 the name of their chief was Keebe. 
 
 Such then is a description of these people, who were a branch 
 of the Balala, and who were at one time found scattered over 
 different portions of the country. Molehabangwe, the chief of 
 the Batlapin and father of Mothibi, used to employ them on 
 his marauding commandos for the capture of cattle, when they 
 became so well trained to this employment that they commenced 
 capturing cattle on their own account. These, Molehabangwe 
 allowed them to keep, after which they became an independent 
 tribe, but remained faithful allies of the Batlapin. They lived 
 on the banks of a river which ran into the Vaal from the north- 
 ward, and which was probably either the present Schoon Spruit, 
 or Mooi River. In 1820 they were so noted for their boldness 
 and fierceness that no other nation dared to attack them ; they 
 were nevertheless reported to be friendly to strangers. They 
 spoke the Sechoana language, but many of them could speak 
 those of both the Korana and Bushmen. They possessed abun- 
 dance of cattle, but sowed no corn like the other Bachoana tribes, 
 which deficiency, however, they supplied by their great expert- 
 ness in hunting. With the skins of the animals killed they were 
 able to purchase grain from their neighbours. 
 
 They were formerly a poor scattered people like the Bachoana 
 Bushmen, but they formed a union with each other, probably 
 under the guidance of some more warlike and gifted chief than 
 ordinary, whose name has been lost. They joined their neigh- 
 bours, as we find was the case with the Batlapin chief Moleha- 
 bangwe, in their cattle-lifting expeditions, and as on these occa- 
 sions they acted with courage and fierceness they were often 
 invited to lend assistance to others. Thus from their continued 
 successes they acquired in the end more cattle than most of the 
 other surrounding tribes. At one time, however, the Koranas 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 429 
 
 attacked one of their captains, named Inkapetze, and carried off 
 all his cattle. In 1820 they were under several chiefs, the prin- 
 cipal of whom was named Takiso. 
 
 To assist them in securing game, extensive series of pitfalls 
 used to be excavated by them. One of these consisted of twelve 
 pits, arranged in the form of a crescent, each being about twenty 
 feet long, ten broad, and five deep, besides the height of the earth 
 thrown out of them. At the bottom of each large pit, there were 
 two rows of smaller ones, nearly filled up. The design of these 
 large excavations was to ensnare game. Laborious they must 
 have been, considering the feebleness of the instruments em- 
 ployed, a sharpened stick of hard wood and a wooden dish. It 
 is probable that in 1820 they had been dug forty or fifty years, 
 as a karree tree of that age was growing from the bottom of one 
 of them. 
 
 Up to the present time the writer has been unable to trace 
 what became of the remnant of this particular branch of the 
 Balala after the Mantatee invasion, or still more terrible and 
 devastating irruption of the Matabili. During the entire time 
 in which he was engaged in the Free State he was not able to dis- 
 cover a single representative of this tribe, and all native tradition 
 with regard to them appears to have been blotted out of the 
 memory of those who fled across the Vaal to seek refuge in the 
 rugged mountain ranges to the south. It is therefore not im- 
 probable that the Tamahas were entirely broken up, and the 
 scattered fugitives have since found shelter by amalgamating 
 with other branches who were fortunately living farther to the 
 westward, and nearer the confines of the Kalahari. 
 
 4. — The Bachoana Bushmen. 
 
 These people would seem to differ from the Balala in having 
 a greater admixture of Bushman blood, caused doubtless by more 
 frequent intercourse with the original proprietors of the soil than 
 any of the other tribes of Bachoana origin. 
 
 Travelling as far to the northward as 26° south latitude, 
 Mr. Campbell found in 1820 that there was a mongrel race called 
 Bachoana Bushmen, whose little kraals were scattered over the 
 countries through which he passed. This circumstance explains 
 the fact mentioned by Livingstone in his travels, when he states 
 
430 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 that at a place called Mathlo-ganyana, which appears to be still 
 farther north, he found many families of Bushmen unlike those 
 on the plains of the Kalahari, who are generally of short stature 
 and hght yellow colour, that is of purer breed. These were tall 
 strapping fellows of dark complexion. In making these remarlts 
 he has evidently either been unaware of the existence, or lost 
 sight of this mixed race mentioned by Mr. Campbell, and puts 
 down the great physical dissimilarity not to its true cause, the 
 intermixture of blood, but to heat with moisture, insuring the 
 deepest hue. 
 
 We have already seen that a mixed breed sprang up between 
 the advancing Abatembu and the Tambuki Bushmen on the 
 north-eastern frontier of the Cape Colony, and as we proceed we 
 shall discover that another similar mixed race originated in the 
 Zuurveld from intermarriages between the pioneer Coast Kafiirs 
 and the aboriginal inhabitants whom they found occupying the 
 country. And this we shall find has ever been the case at all 
 points where the stronger races have come in contact with the 
 Bushmen, and as long as the latter remained in the ascendency 
 fraternization and intermarriage ensued, but the case was 
 reversed as soon as the intruders gained the upper hand, when 
 persecution and annihilation followed. 
 
 Mr. Campbell informs us that some of these Bachoana Bush- 
 men were subject to Mothibi, the Batlapin chief, and were bound 
 to bring him all the jackal-skins they could procure, while all the 
 rest of the game they could use as they pleased. 
 
 On the 30th of April 1820 this traveller passed many old 
 cattle enclosures built of stone, some parts as neatly done as if 
 they had been erected by European workmen. From this descrip- 
 tion of the skill shewn in the erection of these walls, it would seem 
 probable that the town which once stood on the spot mentioned 
 of which the remains of the ruined kraals marked the different 
 divisions, may have belonged to the old Leghoya race, as some 
 of the ruins of their ancient towns are to be still seen near' the 
 Marikwa. The one mentioned by Campbell must have been very 
 -extensive, the ruins occupying a length of two miles, and they 
 were also of considerable breadth. 
 
 In the same locality two or three villages of Bachoana Bush- 
 men were found, " a people greatly despised by all the surrounding 
 
BASUTU TRIBES OF THE NORTH 431 
 
 tribes." Sometimes these unfortunates were reduced to such 
 straits for food, that their children were met collecting gum from 
 the mimosa trees in order to sustain life. During the return 
 journey several other villages of these poor people were passed. 
 The inhabitants met with were complete exhibitions of starvation, 
 and seemed to be under considerable apprehensions for their 
 safety. Their men had been absent on a hunt for three weeks, 
 and of course the situation of the unfortunate females left behind 
 must have been very distressing. Their black fingers appeared 
 as hard as bones, and were probably rendered so by digging roots 
 out of the ground for food. 
 
 These Bachoana Bushmen must at that time have been very 
 numerous, from the number met with where there was no beaten 
 track. Hence it may be inferred that whatever direction had 
 been chosen, an equal number of their villages would have been 
 found. One of these contained seventy huts. They spoke the 
 same language as the surrounding nations, by whom they were 
 despised on account of their poverty. Like most of the Bushmen 
 of the south, they literally possessed nothing. 
 
 Having thus drawn together as much information as we have 
 found at our disposal upon the subject of the condition of the 
 minor pioneer tribes, we wiU pass on to the consideration of those 
 more powerful clans which appear to have followed on the trail 
 of the former, thus forming what might be termed the second 
 tidal wave of the Bachoana emigration. 
 
Chapter XXII 
 
 THE TRIBES OF THE SECOND PERIOD OF THE 
 BACHOANA MIGRATION. 
 
 There is much obscurity not only between the connection of the 
 tribes forming this group, but also between them and those of 
 the previous one, as well as between either the one or the other 
 and those which follow of the great Bakuena or Bakone group. 
 
 The first intruders would appear to have come in three bodies : 
 the Leghoya in successive stages, passing the sources of the 
 Marikwa, the site of old Lithako, and thence to the south-east 
 towards the 'Gij-'Gariep ; the Bakalahari appear to have kept 
 more to the westward of this line ; while the ancestors of the 
 Balala and Tamaha seem to have followed the steps of the Le- 
 ghoya, and spread over the more central portions of the same area. 
 
 All these migrating clans fraternized in a more or less intimate 
 degree with the primitive inhabitants, and the scattered hordes 
 of Bachoana Bushmen were the result of this connection. And 
 still the way in which these kindred tribes are connected is lost, 
 and no inquiry has enabled us to discover the missing connecting 
 links, nor the relation between them and those of which we are 
 about to treat. 
 
 AU native traditions, however, affirm that the whole of these 
 tribes came from the north, and there seems little room to doubt 
 that they actually did so. Some of the Basutu clans have a tradi- 
 tion to the effect that in the land whence their remote ancestors 
 came the sun shone on the opposite shoulder to what it does in 
 the present day, evidently indicating a shadowy recollection of 
 the remote period when their forefathers were still north of the 
 equator. But what is stiU stranger, all those native authorities 
 of whom the writer has sought information upon the subject have 
 declared that before coming from the north, the place whence 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 433 
 
 the first people came was the east, some indefinite place towards 
 the sun-rising. 
 
 And by a striking coincidence the Basutu, when they were 
 first visited by Europeans, were found manufacturing and wear- 
 ing the same conical-shaped hats as those worn by some of the 
 nations of the east, and cultivating the Imphi {Sorghum sacchara- 
 tum), which they say was given at the same time as the millet to 
 the first man and woman, a plant which has also grown from 
 time immemorial in China. Some of the manners and customs 
 of these people are identical with those of members of the Papuan 
 race now inhabiting isolated island groups in the eastern seas. 
 They also maintain that when the first man and woman made 
 their appearance, Bushmen were already in existence, and were 
 found in every country through which their forefathers migrated. 
 
 The traditions of these South African tribes are supported 
 both by those of Central Africa, quoted by Mr. Stanley, and those 
 obtained from the old Korana people. These last assert that 
 their forefathers were driven from the central intra-lacustrine 
 regions of Africa by tribes similar to if not the identical Bachoana 
 tribes with whom they again came in contact when they and 
 their fathers once more migrated to the north-east, to the north 
 of the Vaal ; and Stanley states that there is one special tradition 
 among the central tribes, in which it is affirmed that they migrated 
 into that region some centuries ago, when their forefathers found 
 it unoccupied, that is, we should presume, there was nothing 
 found in it but herds of game and very probably a few scattered 
 hordes of the pigmy hunters, of whom, as usual, no account was 
 taken. 
 
 The concurrent testimony thus afforded by these several tradi- 
 tions, obtained from widely separated and independent sources, 
 would seem to shadow forth that in Central Africa also there were 
 successive waves of migration, the one being formed by the Bantu 
 tribes, which drove the Hottentots before them, until the latter 
 diverged towards the ocean on the side of the setting sun. This 
 after an apparent lull was succeeded by a second, which brought 
 the present intra-lacustrine tribes into the country they now 
 occupy ; while the foremost wave was continuing its onward 
 progress towards the south. This wave broke again into others, 
 at first dividing into two great branches, one rolling impetuously 
 
 FF 
 
434 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 along the coast line, and driving farther and farther into the more 
 central regions the other, which reached as far south as the Vaal 
 in successive wavelets. The first of these we have already con- 
 sidered ; and the second, like the first, might be divided into 
 minor sections, which were afterwards again subdivided into 
 several branch tribes, the most ancient divisions being those of 
 the Barolong and Batlapin. 
 
 It has been asserted by some that the pioneer tribes, the 
 Batlapin, and the Barolong, are all offshoots of the same stem, 
 viz. of the Bachoana proper. If this be in reality the case, the 
 separation must have been an ancient one, as the dialects of the 
 language vary considerably. It is therefore probable that when 
 the pioneer and Batlapin tribes parted from the main trunk and 
 proceeded onward, a separation had already taken place, at a 
 still more remote date, between that trunk and the one of the 
 great Bakuena family speaking another variety of the original 
 anguage, called Sesuto. 
 
 The tribes we have at present to consider are the Batlapin 
 and the Barolong. 
 
 I. — The Batlapin, or the Men of the Fish. 
 
 The Rev. Richard Giddy imagines that the name Batlapin, 
 or as they are sometimes called Batlapi, the men of the Fish, 
 perhaps the Fishers, was probably derived from the fact of their 
 living at some former time near the lakes in the interior. 
 
 The first European visitor to this tribe appears to have been 
 one weU calculated to impress the native mind with feelings of 
 terror at the apparition of a white face among them. This man 
 was Jan Bloem the elder, who made his appearance with his 
 adherents for the purpose of plunder. Previous to this time the 
 Koranas had given these people the name of Briquas. Shortly 
 afterwards old Adam Kok, the original founder of the Griquas, 
 arrived during one of his hunting expeditions at Lithako, and 
 checked for a time the atrocities of the freebooter Bloem and his 
 Korana followers. 
 
 In 1801 the Batlapin were visited by the government com- 
 missioners Truter and SomerviUe, accompanied by Mr. Bor- 
 cherds, for the purpose of establishing friendly relations between 
 them and the Cape authorities, with the hope of opening up a 
 
Basutu Wall Decoration (External), Rama-roke's Kraal, British Basutoland, Oct. lo, 1877. 
 
 Basutu WaU Decoration (External), Rama-roke's Kraal, British Basutoland, Oct. 10, 1877, 
 
 Basutu Wall Decoration (External), Rama-roke's Kraal, British Basutoland, Oct. 10, 1877. 
 
 Basutu Wall Decoration (External), Rama-roke's Kraal, British Basutoland, Oct. 10, 1877. 
 
 /'\AA/\A 
 
 m^jrjZ^JSLjL^SZJr T T 
 
 Ution (Interior), by a ti^ve woman, near Genadeberg, O.F.S. 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 435 
 
 trade with them by means of bartering in cattle. About the same 
 time Messrs. Edwards and Kok settled there for the same pur- 
 pose, under the cover of missionary enterprise. Dr. Lichtenstein 
 seems to have been the first who entered their country for the 
 sole purpose of scientific exploration. Dr. Cowan and Captain 
 Donovan were the next to follow, but although Moffat states 
 that the whole party perished of fever in the region of the Lim- 
 popo, a considerable amount of mystery hangs over their fate. 
 In 1812 Mr. BurcheU extended his scientific researches to the 
 north of the Batlapin, and in 1812-13 the Reverend J. Campbell 
 travelled as far as Old Lithako, at that time the great place of 
 Molehabangwe, and in February 1816 the missionaries Evans, 
 Hamilton, and Edwards arrived among them. Mr. Campbell's 
 second visit followed in 1820, and Mr. George Thompson was 
 fortunately present amongst them in the eventful year 1823. 
 
 The weapons of the Batlapin at this period were a bow and 
 quiver of poisoned arrows hanging from the shoulder, a shield 
 with a number of assagais attached, and a club or battle-axe. 
 These people were found to be more advanced than the Kaffir 
 nations east of the Colony. Their huts were not only larger and 
 more carefully constructed, but the walls were painted and adorned 
 with various patterns. Mr. Campbell found that the wife of 
 Salakutu had decorated the walls of her house with a series of 
 paintings, being rough representations of the camelopard, 
 rhinoceros, elephant, lion, tiger, and steenbok. These were done 
 in white and black paint. On the occasion of his second visit 
 Mr. Campbell saw some similar paintings among the Bahurutsi, 
 in one of the chief houses at Kurrechane ; and recently a similar 
 instance of wall decoration has been seen among the Basutu, in 
 Basutuland, where a house was at one time ornamented with 
 the figures of animals in like manner. 
 
 As these cases are unique in the several tribes where they 
 occur, viz. among the Batlapin, the Bahurutsi, and Bakuena of 
 Moshesh, aU widely separated from each other, and whose national 
 mode of painting, when they indulge in it, is confined to the repre- 
 sentations of lines, spots, lozenges, curves, circles, and zigzags, it 
 becomes an interesting subject of speculation whether the attempt 
 to represent animal life in these isolated cases was a spontaneous 
 development in the artists whose handiwork they were, or 
 
436 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 whether, as was frequently the case in those days, these men had 
 taken Bushman wives, or were half-caste descendants of Bushman 
 mothers, and thus the hereditary talent displayed itself in their 
 new domiciles among people of either the Bachoana or Basutu 
 race. 
 
 The Batlapin, as well as the other kindred tribes, were in the 
 habit of painting their bodies, each tribe having adopted some 
 particular fashion or colour of its own. The fashionable colour 
 of the Batlapin being red, their faces were frequently painted 
 red, and sometimes streaked with white in a regular way. Their 
 hair, after being anointed with grease, was thickly powdered 
 with titaniferous iron ore, which made their heads shine with 
 a bright metallic lustre, that was greatly admired. 
 
 They obtained copper and iron from some nation beyond them. 
 The people of Lithako proved themselves ingenious, from the 
 articles they manufactured from these metals, such as axes, adzes, 
 knives, spears, and bodkins from iron, and rings for the legs, 
 arms, fingers, and ears from copper. Their cloaks were made 
 and sewn as well as could be done by Europeans, being formed 
 of about forty cat-skins most dexterously put together. The 
 immense amount of ground brought under cultivation around all 
 their towns characterized them as an agricultural people. 
 The plants which they principally cultivated were the millet, a 
 particular kind of bean, and an insipid sort of watermelon, which 
 was probably the wild melon of the country cultivated. Zealous, 
 however, as they were in the cultivation of their lands, it was 
 difficult, owing to their attachment to the customs of their an- 
 cestors, to persuade them to adopt any improvement, and when 
 urged to plant wheat by some of the early missionaries they repHed 
 that their fathers were wiser than themselves, and yet were con- 
 tent to do as they did, and for this cause they regarded any inno- 
 vation as an insult to their ancestors. 
 
 As an illustration of the prevailing sentiment even among 
 such an agricultural people as the' Bachoana, and much more so 
 in the pastoral races of South Africa, the following answer given 
 by one of these Batlapin to Mr. Campbell on his inquiring what 
 they thought man was made for ? will serve. To go on plunder- 
 ing expeditions against other people was the ready reply. The 
 history of not only the Batlapin, but of all the other stronger 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 437 
 
 native races, is but one continued demonstration of this creed. 
 
 The pedigree of the Batlapin chiefs takes us back eleven gener- 
 ations from the present paramount chief. They are aU said to 
 have descended from the race of Phuduhuchoana. This Phudu- 
 huchoana, or the Steenbok, was the great ruler of their tribe at 
 the time when they separated from the parent stem. The names 
 of the chiefs, however, who formed the connecting links between 
 him and Moduana are now lost, and the old chroniclers of the 
 tribe are only able to assert that all their great families have 
 descended from him. 
 
 All that is now known of the first five chiefs after Moduana is 
 that they succeeded one another. Mpete, the son of Mamai, who 
 ought to have assumed the tribal authority upon the death of his 
 father, was deposed by his younger brother Morakanela, who 
 made himself chief in his stead. We find that similar occur- 
 rences constantly took place in the hne of succession of the para- 
 mount chiefs of the Batlapin. Mpete's descendants feU into the 
 rank of secondary chiefs, while Motole succeeded his father 
 Morakanela. Nothing has been recorded of the reign of either 
 the one or the other, but upon the death of Motole there was 
 another disputed succession. A civil war broke out between the 
 rival claimants, Seatle, the rightful heir by tribal custom, and 
 Mokgosi (the War-cry or Alarm), when Seatle was conquered and 
 deposed by his younger brother, who after the birth of his son 
 Mashoe obtained the cognomen of Ra-Mashoe (the Father of 
 Ugliness) on that account. 
 
 From the history of the tribes at this period it would seem 
 that the Barolong considered themselves higher in rank, and 
 consequently an older tribe than the Batlapin. The latter had, 
 however, evidently commenced their migration towards the south 
 before the others ; but in the days of Motole or Mokgosi they 
 had again been overtaken by the Barolong, who being of higher 
 rank claimed tribute of these native voortrekkers. During the 
 chieftainship of Mokgosi, the Barolong chief demanded from him 
 the breast of every ox killed by his people, the brisket being con- 
 sidered among the native races as food which ought to be set 
 apart for the special use of chiefs, a demand, therefore, which if 
 complied with would have been a virtual acknowledgment of the 
 dependence of himself and his people on the Barolong. It being 
 
438 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 persisted in, the indignant Mokgosi at length replied, "Am I 
 then your servant ? " 
 
 As a necessary consequence a war followed this refusal, in which 
 the Batlapin chief and his people were defeated and so broken 
 up that they were scattered and driven to three different places 
 at considerable distances from each other. It was after this 
 victory that the Barolong moved to the southward, and 
 finally settled at Taung. 
 
 There seems little doubt that before this time the Batlapin 
 must have been both small in numbers and insignificant in in- 
 fluence, as no other tradition previous to their dispersion by the 
 Barolong has been preserved. From the time of their defeat to 
 the death of Mokgosi they evidently remained in a most depressed 
 condition. Even during a part, at least, of the rule of his suc- 
 cessor they had no fixed place of residence, but roamed about in 
 search of grass and water. The fear of the encroaching Barolong 
 kept them ever on the alert, and prevented them from making 
 any permanent settlement. 
 
 Mashoe ^ (Ugliness), who succeeded to the chieftainship upon 
 the death of his father, seems to have lived about 1750-1760. 
 From his time the history of his tribe is tolerably complete. It 
 was during one of his migrations that he and his people arrived 
 unexpectedly near the great place of Tao, the Lion, the warlike 
 chief of the Barolong, who was then residing at Taung, or the 
 Place of the Lion, from which circumstance it has ever since re- 
 tained the name, although its inhabitants have since changed 
 several times. The Batlapin, finding themselves thus suddenly 
 and so undesirably in close proximity to their formidable neigh- 
 bour, naturally felt alarmed lest some treacherous attack might 
 be made upon them. 
 
 Ever on the qui vive, as it was necessary for all natives to be 
 in those days, Mashoe, their chief, determined to discover if 
 possible by an ingenious artifice whether any such intention was 
 entertained against him. For this purpose, putting on a common 
 kaross and feigning deafness and a certain degree of mental im- 
 
 1 The names given to their children by the -Batlapin, or assumed by 
 the latter at the time of undergoing the rite of circumcision or upon arriving 
 at the age of puberty, had frequently reference to some occurrence at the 
 time of the birth of the child or conditions which surrounded it. 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 439 
 
 becility, he entered the Barolong town as a common Motlapin to 
 discover whether the Barolong were friendly or not. To avoid 
 the possibility of detection, he took advantage of the absence 
 from their own camp of all the young Batlapin warriors, who had 
 been sent away for the purpose of hunting. On arriving at the 
 enclosures of the great-place, several of the Barolong met him, 
 to whom on their addressing him as they led him to their chief, 
 he merely replied with a vacant stare, shaking his head and point- 
 ing to his ears. By retaining wonderful imperturbability of 
 countenance, and never appearing to notice them unless they 
 put their hands upon him or shook him, they were completely 
 thrown off their guard, and looking upon him as a nonentity, 
 amused themselves with his apparent stupidity ; and then at last 
 commenced discussing their plans in his presence without reserve. 
 
 By this means he learnt that Tao and his people had formed 
 the resolution of massacring both him and his tribe during the 
 course of the following night. The Batlapin quarters were to 
 be surrounded by the Barolong braves, and ere the day broke 
 their camp was to be stormed and all its inhabitants were to be 
 indiscriminately butchered. Having possessed himself of this 
 important information, he carelessly sauntered back to his own 
 encampment. On the return of the young men of the tribe he 
 informed them of the meditated treachery. Immediately after 
 nightfall, he ordered a bleating goat to be tied fast to one 
 of the bushes, that its continued restlessness might delude the 
 Barolong. Then, according to his orders, his people at once 
 packed up their baggage with secrecy and dispatch, and he and 
 they, together with their coveted cattle, cautiously set out on a 
 long night march, leaving the bleating goat and the deserted 
 cantonment behind them. 
 
 They were already some miles on their way when the Baro- 
 long, ignorant that the place was already evacuated, surrounded 
 it, taking up their appointed positions, and awaited the dawn of 
 day as the signal for the general assault. The patiently looked- 
 for sign at last made its appearance, already in imagination 
 their sleeping victims and the spoil of cattle were in their grasp, 
 the preconcerted rush was made, when to their dismay the restless 
 goat alone was found, while every other portion of the camp 
 was deserted and empty ! Determined however not to be 
 
440 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 thwarted, they pursued the retreating Batlapin with all possible 
 speed. Mashoe, anticipating such a result, laid a strong am- 
 buscade in their path. Into this, in their eagerness to overtake 
 their despised but sharp-witted foes, they heedlessly feU, and 
 suddenly found themselves attacked on every side. Taken thus 
 unawares, they were defeated with heavy loss, and in their turn 
 had to take to flight. In the pursuit many of the fugitive 
 Barolong were slain ; and Tao, the Lion, abandoned his great- 
 place Taung shortly afterwards. 
 
 This success was the first step which raised the Batlapin from 
 the state of depression and semi-subjection to which they had 
 been reduced by the more powerful and victorious Barolong. 
 Mashoe died without leaving any male issue by his great wife 
 or the wife of the first house. Manaka,his eldest daughter of 
 that house, therefore asserted her right to appoint his successor. 
 In doing so she disinherited his eldest son Lekoe, the offspring 
 of the second house, by passing him over and selecting Mole- 
 habangwe, the eldest son of the third house by Mashoe's wife 
 Pikwane, to rule in his stead, declaring that her choice had been 
 guided by the fact that when Lekoe had persistently treated her 
 with disrespect, Molehabangwe had ever shown her a brotherly 
 regard. 
 
 The selection of Manaka appears to have been a judicious 
 one, as Molehabangwe is said to have been, as a native chief, 
 superior as a statesman and a warrior to many of his compeers, 
 and he was also noted for his kindness to strangers. He appears 
 to have been the first Batlapin chief who established himself at 
 Lithako. As his government became more settled, the scattered 
 remnants of his tribe gathered round him, and notwithstanding 
 that they were on several occasions nearly ruined by the per- 
 tinacious attacks of the marauding Koranas, they had never- 
 theless increased so in number that the commissioners Truter and 
 Somerville, when they visited him at Lithako in 1801, were not 
 a little astonished to find so large and populous a town in such 
 a remote part of the world. The number of houses they esti- 
 mated to be between two and three thousand, and that of the 
 population, men, women, and children, from ten to fifteen thou- 
 sand. The place was surrounded by several large tracts of 
 land, laid out and cultivated Hke so many gardens. 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 441 
 
 The house of Ihe chief was built in a circular form, and was 
 about sixteen feet in diameter. The bottom part to the height 
 of four feet from the ground was of stone laid in clay, and wooden 
 spars were erected at certain distances. On the east side of the 
 circle about a fourth part of the house was open, the other three- 
 fourths entirely closed. A round pointed roof covered the whole 
 in the form of a tent ; it was well thatched with long reeds or 
 the straw of the holcus. From the centre to the back of the 
 house there was a circular apartment with a narrow entrance 
 into it, where the head of the family took his nightly rest, the 
 remainder occup57ing the more open portion. AH the houses 
 were surrounded with palisades, and the space between these 
 and the dweUing served as a granary and store for their grain and 
 pulse. The receptacles for com were constructed in the form of 
 enormous oil jars of baked clay, the capacity of each being at least 
 two hundred gallons ; they were supported on tripods composed 
 of the same material, which raised them about nine inches from 
 the ground. The upper edges of the jars were from five to six 
 feet from the ground, and they were covered with a round straw 
 roof erected on poles. 
 
 Old Lithako took its name from the numerous ruins of cattle 
 kraals and stone fences on the neighbouring hills, the word meaning 
 walls. They are supposed to have been built about the days of 
 Tlou (the Elephant), one of the greatest of the Barolong chiefs. 
 The Batlapin were not the builders. They were at the time of 
 Tlou a comparatively insignificant tribe, which had been forced 
 to become tributary to him. It was at his death that they 
 threw off the Barolong yoke, and gradually rose to influence and 
 fame. 
 
 Mr. Campbell, who visited Old Lithako in 1820, believed that 
 the ancient Bahurutsi once lived in the neighbourhood of this 
 town, although he was unable to discover the cause of their 
 removal, and he considered that the several ancient cattle 
 enclosures of stone were relics of this occupation. At the 
 time of his residence there the Batlapin had no tradition 
 concerning them, only they felt certain that they could not 
 have been built by their ancestors, as the Batlapin enclosures 
 are all formed of thorn bushes, and one generation adheres 
 strictly to the customs of that which preceded it. The Bahurutsi 
 
442 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 and other nations in that direction build their enclosures of stone, 
 exactly similar to these ruins. 
 
 According to other native authorities, however, there appears 
 every reason to believe that these fenced ruins and fortified huts 
 were constructed by the pioneer tribe of the Leghoya, which eyer 
 pressed forward in the van to the southward, and which was the 
 first to cross the 'Gij 'Gariep or Vaal, near its junction with the 
 Vet, or as it was called by the aborigines of the land the 'Gij 'Goup 
 and 'Gum-'Gariep, or Little River. From their own traditions 
 they passed through this line of country, and it is said that they 
 were not only the first to adopt the practice of fortifying their 
 huts and kraals, but also finished these constructions with greater 
 care and neatness than any other tribe. 
 
 Shortly after 1790 the Batlapin were nearly ruined by the 
 Koranas carrying off the greater part of their cattle. Accord- 
 ing to Mr. Campbell, old Cornelius Kok, who was still living in 
 1820, happened to be hunting with some of his people, and found 
 them in this forlorn condition. He remained with them nearly two 
 years, protecting, and also assisting them with food by shooting 
 game, till he had recovered many of their cattle from the Koranas. 
 On this account, even to the time of Mr. Campbell's visit, these 
 Batlapin styled Cornelius Kok " their father." It was about 
 this time that the northern clans of Koranas were reinforced 
 by the Springboks, who ultimately elected Jan Bloem the elder 
 as their captain, from among whom he took the wives by whom 
 he left at his death seven sons besides daughters. 
 
 At this period the Batlapin had extended themselves as far 
 to the southward as the valley of the Nokannan, on the confines 
 of the Kalahari. Batshwawas the captain of the outlpng kraals 
 in that direction. This Batshwa had married Pikwane, the wife 
 of Mashoe, whose son had been raised to the chieftainship by 
 Manaka after the death of the great chief. From this union 
 Pikwane had a son who was named Munametse. He was an old 
 man in 1820. Her second husband Batshwa was killed by a 
 Bushman near Nokannan, while on a hunting excursion. It 
 was soon after Batshwa's death that the Koranas first made war 
 upon these Batlapin outposts. The two Korana clans which 
 thus pushed on to the northward were the Taaibosches and 
 Scorpions, until they penetrated and settled as far as Malapitzi, 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 443, 
 
 to the east of Lithako. On this occasion they drove the Batlapin 
 from Nokannan to Katuse, and afterwards to the source of the 
 Koeromanie, capturing almost the whole of their cattle, which 
 were their chief means of support. A famine ensued, and they 
 were reduced to the necessity of living on roots and whatever 
 game they could occasionally kill. 
 
 During this famine Pikwane, the mother of Munametse, 
 died, when the latter was taken under the protection of Mole- 
 habangwe, the paramount chief of the tribe and the father of 
 Mothibi, who had him circumcised, paying for him the cattle 
 expected from a captain on such an important occasion. He 
 became one of his half-brother Molehabangwe's great fighting 
 captains ; the first warlike expedition, however, in which he was 
 engaged was a disastrous one. The Batlou and Batlapin tribes 
 entered into an alliance to attack a neighbouring nation. A 
 place of meeting was agreed upon, but owing to some mistake 
 the junction was not effected. The Batlapin, although disap- 
 pointed at this mischance, resolved to attack the nation single- 
 handed, without waiting for the Batlou. In their first assault 
 they carried everything before them, defeating the people and 
 capturing many of the cattle, the sole object of their enterprise. 
 Next day, however, their opponents rallied, attacked them in 
 their turn, and gained a complete victory over them. All the 
 cattle were recaptured, and the Batlapin were pressed in their 
 flight so warmly that most of them threw away their karosses, 
 that they might be able to escape with greater speed. Eight of 
 the chief captains and many young chiefs fell in the battle, or 
 were overtaken and slain in their rapid retreat. After the pur- 
 suit was abandoned, the fugitives nearly perished from the cold- 
 ness of the weather and the want of provisions. 
 
 Some time afterwards a party of this tribe went to purchase 
 cat-skin karosses from the Bakalahari, who lived at some dis- 
 tance to the north-east of their territory. During three days 
 journey in the Kalahari they found no water. A short time 
 before finding it they were attacked by Madraka, the chief of 
 a clan of Barolong that had taken the title of Bataung,' who 
 
 1 This is not the great Bataung tribe of which the Leghoya were the 
 elder branch, but a small clan of the Barolong, that was afterwards 
 annihilated in the native wars, which led Dr. Livingstone to imagine that 
 the Bataung had become extinct. 
 
444 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 succeeded in cutting off the whole party. As soon as the news 
 of this unprovoked attack reached Lithako, the Batlapin sent an 
 expedition against these Bataung to revenge it, and succeeded 
 in taking many of their cattle. Elated, but not satisfied with 
 this success, these Batlapin marched a second time against the 
 Bataung, and again defeated them, burning their great-place 
 and slaying many of its inhabitants. 
 
 After this signal defeat and the destruction of their town, 
 the remnant of the Bataung fled for protection to a nation beyond 
 the Bangwaketse, probably a portion of the Bakuena. But 
 even here the Batlapin would not allow them to remain in peace, 
 but started a third expedition after them. 
 
 On the road thither they fell in with Makaba, the chief of the 
 Bangwaketse, who was engaged on a hunting excursion, and who 
 on hearing the object of their expedition tried to divert them 
 from it, and in lieu thereof to unite with him in an onslaught 
 on one of his neighbours. They refused compliance, proceeded 
 onward with their original determination, and attacked Madraka 
 and the tribe with which he had taken refuge. Here they met 
 with such a severe repulse that they were obliged to make a 
 hasty retreat. In the meantime Makaba had determined to 
 intercept them upon their return, and placed his warriors in 
 ambush for that purpose. Upon their near approach Makaba's 
 men took them by surprise, and slew many of them, thus giving 
 a disastrous ending to their expeditions against the Bataung. 
 
 Notwithstanding the numerous forays that were being con- 
 tinually made by these tribes for the sake of capturing one 
 another's cattle, such was the natural timidity of many of the 
 Bachoana that if a party of them was attacked by a superior 
 force, and there did not appear any prospect of escaping, they 
 made no resistance, but calmly allowed themselves to be butch- 
 ered. This trait in their character will explain the sudden 
 reverses and collapses in which so many of their expeditions 
 ended, as well as the facility with which more determined and 
 warlike invaders overran the country from whatever direction 
 they made their appearance. 
 
 About the beginning of the present century the Batlou sent 
 envoys to the Batlapin, inviting them to join in an attack upon 
 the Leghoya, with whom the former had a quarrel. The Batla- 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 445 
 
 pin sent a strong party, of which Munametse was one. The 
 united attack was successful, and many cattle were captured 
 and carried off from the Leghoya. On their return, this com- 
 bined force of marauders attacked a kraal of Bachoana-Bushmen, 
 to seize the few cattle which they possessed. In the struggle 
 Munametse was wounded in the leg. At this time the Leghoya 
 lived on the left bank of the 'Gij-'Gariep or Vaal, as Munametse 
 in his narrative mentioned the fact of their crossing it. He also 
 stated that the Batlapin made an attack upon the Bakuena, but 
 omitted mentioning the result. 
 
 The following occurrence, which took place shortly after the 
 commencement of the rule of Molehabangwe, may serve as an 
 illustration of the manners of his times. A party of Bastaards 
 from the Falls, or Pella, on the Great river, then the headquarters 
 of the embryo-Griquas, paid a visit to Lithako to improve their 
 fortunes in the usual manner of the natives of those days. They 
 were all well armed and mounted on oxen, and had some women 
 with them. When they left they resolved not to return without 
 a fortune. Pursuing their course a great distance along the 
 western boundary of the Kalahari, and favoured with a rainy 
 season, they directed their steps east and south-east until they 
 reached the Mosheu river, thus coming into the Bachoana terri- 
 tory from a quarter in which they were least expected. 
 
 Here they found some cattle outposts belonging to the Batla- 
 pin under Molehabangwe, who was then residing at Lithako. 
 They soon supplied themselves with what they liked, took some 
 of the cattle, dispatched those who resisted their depredations, 
 and pursued their course for some days along the river. They 
 reached the great town of Molehabangwe, where the tidings of 
 the robbery had arrived before them, and the inhabitants had 
 the mortification of beholding two or three of their pack oxen 
 in the possession of the marauders. No notice was taken, and 
 more than usual courtesy was shown towards them. In order 
 to keep up an appearance of an abundant quantity of ammu- 
 nition, they fiUed some bags with sand, to deceive the Batlapin. 
 
 When the appetites of the guests had been whetted, and the 
 whole party were anxious for a revel in beef, two oxen were pre- 
 sented to them. One of them, being extremely wild, which was 
 part of the stratagem, took fright at the appearance of the motley 
 
446 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 group, and darted off, when all pursued, eager to secure their 
 fat and tempting prey. This was the moment for revenge, 
 and at a given signal several were speared at once. Others 
 rallied, and retreated to one of the stone folds, but having scarcely 
 any powder or shot they made but a feeble resistance. Mercy 
 in vain was asked, no quarter was given, and night put a close 
 to the struggle, when the Bachoana lay down by fires, surround- 
 ing their intended victims, as they usually do even on the field 
 of battle, and slept. Those of the travellers who were not 
 wounded, aided by the darkness of the night, made their escape, 
 and directed their course to the southward, as the Cape Colony 
 was in that direction. At daylight the women and wounded 
 were all dispatched, and those who had escaped were pursued 
 for three successive days, with the determination to exterminate 
 the whole party. They had well-nigh succeeded, for one alone 
 of about fifty, covered with wounds, returned to the Waterfall 
 on the 'Gariep, there to relate the fearful catastrophe which had 
 befallen them. 
 
 In 1807 the relative positions of the several tribes were, from 
 west to east and north-east, i, the Batlapin ; 2, the Barolong ; 
 3, the Bangwaketse, and 4, the great Bakuena group, or the 
 Bakone tribes as they were frequently called. 
 
 About 1811-12, in the later days of Molehabangwe, a some- 
 what startling incident took place, in the appearance so far in 
 the interior of a numerous body of plundering Kaffirs from the 
 border of the sea, who came against the Batlapin, intending to 
 steal their cattle. In 18 10 a similar, or probably the same 
 horde had threatened to attack Griquatown. From the date 
 of these attacks it is certain that the marauding Kaffirs be- 
 longed to neither the Amazulu nor Matabili, but were a portion 
 of the emigrant Abatembu or Amaxosa, about whom there are 
 a number of traditions along the valley of the 'Nu-'Gariep or 
 Upper Orange river, as well as among the Eastern Frontier 
 Kaffirs themselves, as will be more fuUy explained when special- 
 ly treating of those tribes. 
 
 This inroad is a strange illustration of that inherent craving 
 after cattle which possesses the native mind, when we find that 
 these very Kaffirs, to avoid the harrying of the more powerful 
 branches of their own tribes, fled from the lower or coast dis- 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 447 
 
 tricts into what was to them an unknown interior ; but no 
 sooner had they arrived there and made the discovery that there 
 were other tribes not only rich in cattle, but also less warlike than 
 themselves, than they at once made an attempt to commence 
 the same system of strife and spoliation from which they them- 
 selves had attempted to escape. They came in such insignificant 
 numbers that they could be isolated and cut off from supplies by 
 those whom they assailed, instead of being able to strike an imme- 
 diate and crushing blow like the overwhelming hordes of the 
 Amazulu and Matabih, which bore down everything before them 
 by sheer force of numbers, leaving nothing but the silence of 
 •desolation and death behind them. 
 
 Lithako, the great place of the Batlapin, was at this time 
 divided into two distinct districts. The Kaffirs first attacked 
 Molehabangwe's division of the town, when the inhabitants of 
 the opposite, or Mira division, seized the opportunity to flee with 
 their cattle. The attacking Kaffirs, observing their flight, took 
 possession of their cattle kraals and enclosures, under shelter 
 of which they resisted the assaults made upon them by Mole- 
 habangwe and the remaining inhabitants. The Kaffirs were 
 possessed of some muskets. After this the Batlapin placed 
 themselves between the Kaffirs and the water, and thus cut off 
 their supply. In this they succeeded for the greater part of a 
 day, when the Kaffirs, almost overcome by thirst, fought their 
 way through the opposing Batlapin, killing and wounding many 
 of them. 
 
 While the Kaffirs were obtaining a supply of water, some 
 Koranas who were with the Batlapin advised Molehabangwe to 
 retire with his cattle from the town to the open field, and there 
 stand on the defensive. This plan was rejected. The Kaffirs 
 did not, however, return to the attack that evening, but the 
 contest was renewed the next day. Molehabangwe with two 
 others had gone out to watch their motions, and this was ob- 
 served by the attacking party, who sent several men after them. 
 They fled, but were closely pursued almost the whole day, during 
 which time their pursuers on different occasions got so near to 
 them as to be able to throw several assagais at them, but without 
 effect. This continued until near sunset, when both sides being 
 •equally weary, the chase was given up. 
 
448 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The main body of the Kaffirs besieged the town the whole 
 day, and killed one of the captains, but they were not successful 
 in obtaining many cattle, though they killed some. The third 
 day the Kaffirs renewed the attack, when several captains were 
 killed, among whom were a father and two sons with many of 
 their people. In the evening the Batlapin, taking advantage 
 of the darkness, left the place with the cattle. The next day 
 the Kaffirs pursued, but instead of coming up with Molehabangwe, 
 fell in with the Mira division, which fled at the commencement 
 of the attack. In the battle which followed, Mahumu-Pelu, the 
 eldest son of the chief, was killed, and many of their cattle were 
 taken, with which their enemies, being satisfied, departed with- 
 out pursuing Molehabangwe. 
 
 These attacks from the southward rendered the Batlapin 
 so jealous of the intrusion of strangers from that direction, that 
 if any of the inhabitants saw travellers in the country, he was 
 bound to report the circumstance at once to the great chief at 
 Lithako, under pain of death. 
 
 In 1813 the south-western boundary of the Batlapin territory 
 was the ridge of mountains several hours' journey to the north 
 of the Great Kusie fountain. 
 
 The same insatiable lust for cattle was not only the ruling 
 passion of all these people, but also the impetus which urged 
 them to undertake enterprises with which one would scarcely 
 have credited them, had we not been assured of the fact upon 
 good authority. From time to time it gave birth to a migratory 
 spirit which impelled them to undertake long journeys, either 
 for the purpose of obtaining more extended pasturage, or for the 
 protection of their own, or the acquisition of cattle from other 
 tribes. The long distances to which some of their plundering 
 expeditions were pushed by the most daring of these people in 
 the hope of capturing the great treasure of their lives, is well 
 illustrated by the following account of one of them, given by 
 Makwetse, a captain of the Batlapin, to Mr. Campbell. The 
 narrator was engaged in the enterprise which he described, and 
 which also demonstrated at the same time that even up to a 
 recent period the various tribes found in Southern Africa were 
 living in detached groups, with considerable areas of open terri- 
 tory between them, inhabited only by the scattered aboriginal 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 449 
 
 hunters, who at one time had the whole of these wide-spread 
 lands to themselves. 
 
 For a long time the Batlapin had been in the habit of trading 
 with the Bakalahari, principally with a view of obtaining the 
 wild cat skins of which some of their most prized karosses were 
 made. From these people of the desert they learnt of a nation 
 called Mampua, living to the north or north-west of the Kala- 
 hari, who were said to be very rich in cattle. Whether these 
 belonged to the Hottentot or Bachoana race was not stated, 
 but judging from their position most probably to the Ovaherero 
 or Ovambo. The Bakalahari had received their information 
 from a remarkably small race of Bushmen who roamed over part 
 of the Kalahari, and who had made some successfxil excursions 
 £^ainst the Mampua. The arrows of these Bushmen were com- 
 posed of nine inches of reed and nine inches of bone, the whole 
 of the latter being covered with poison. 
 
 After hearing this, the Batlapin resolved to send a strong 
 commando into the country of the Mampua, with the hope of 
 seizing a large booty of cattle in their unexpected attack. They 
 started under the command of Makwetse. On their way they 
 did not meet any of these Bushmen, although on their return 
 they were attacked by them. The march upon the Mampua 
 people occupied two moons, travelling every day from sunrise 
 to sunset. They took pack oxen with them to carry food, but 
 obtained so httle to eat upon the road that they were ultimately 
 obliged to kill the oxen, and even aU these were consumed before 
 reaching the place of their destination. Many of the Bakalahari 
 accompanied them as guides on the road and to the pools of 
 water. They likewise assisted them in plundering the Mampua. 
 At one part of the road they were ten days without finding any 
 water, using watermelons in its stead. On one occasion they 
 came to a pool, in which elephants had been standing during the 
 night ; they all drank of the water, and were seized with violent 
 sickness. They found a large pool in a cave under a cliff, into 
 which the oxen went and drank. On the seventeenth day after 
 this they came to the Great Water (the Atlantic), of which they 
 were all afraid ; it had, they said, stars upon it (probably mean- 
 ing the sun's rays), and great waves that ran after them, and 
 then ran back again. They had never seen such a sight before. 
 
 GG 
 
450 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The country was level near the sea, but there were hills in the 
 distance. 
 
 Notwithstanding the secrecy of their expedition, the Mampua 
 had by some means been warned of their approach, and were 
 making their cattle swim to an island at a short distance from 
 the shore. Makwetse, being a young man, volunteered to push 
 forward with some others and intercept them ; and thus they 
 succeeded in capturing about 150 oxen and cows. The Mampua, 
 who at first expected that the invaders would attack their town, 
 when they saw them retreating with the cattle they had taken, 
 pursued them, but were repidsed with a loss of three men. The 
 next day they made a second attempt at recapture, but were 
 again beaten off. Observing the courage of the natives, the free- 
 booters, whose only object was the acquisition of cattle, deter- 
 mined without further delay to retrace their steps with what 
 little spoil they had been able to seize. 
 
 It was fortunate for them that they had made even this 
 capture, otherwise they must have perished from want of food 
 on their way home. Three moons were occupied on the journey, 
 as they were retarded by the cattle they had captured, yet not- 
 withstanding all their toil not more than thirty head survived 
 upon their arrival at Lithako. It is probable that the Mampua, 
 owing to the repeated attacks which had been made upon them 
 by Bushmen, Bakalahari, and others, had stationed sentinels 
 on the neighbouring hills to give timely warning of an enemy's 
 approach, and thus escaped the treachery the Batlapin had 
 meditated against them. 
 
 Notwithstanding the failure of this first attempt, having 
 once discovered the existence of this strange tribe possessing 
 cattle, several other expeditions were undertaken against them, 
 in one of which Mothibi, son of Molehabangwe, was absent ten 
 months. Mr. Campbell states that he learnt from the evidence 
 of another Motlapin named Mutire, that they repeated their 
 attacks upon these people on the west coast. Mutire af&rmed 
 that he had accompanied one expedition, and that they first 
 travelled north by Chue, the valley of Honey, and afterwards 
 westward, passing through a portion of the Kalahari, substi- 
 tuting wild watermelons for water. These they found strewn 
 in abundance over the desert. 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 451 
 
 After a journey of five moons they reached the nation called, 
 Mampua, who resided on a great water, across which they could 
 observe no land, and on which they observed the sun to set. 
 They saw people go on the water in bowls, who had pie^s 
 of timber which they put into the water, and pushed them- 
 selves forward. Mutire stated that the Mampua were a peace- 
 able and unsuspecting people ; that they killed a great many 
 of them, and took away their cattle. Those whom they did not 
 Idll fled, and left them to carry off their cattle without molesta- 
 tion, with which they returned in five moons to Lithako. This 
 ■was probably the same attack as that in which Mothibi was en- 
 gaged. After this Tsela-Kgotu, Mothibi's uncle, made several 
 successful expeditions against the same people. 
 
 The death of Molehabangwe, the first Batlapin chief who 
 raised them into notice, appears to have taken place during the 
 "period between the Kaffir attack and Mr. Campbell's visit in 
 1812-13. In the early part of 1817 the Batlapin were attackejd 
 by the warriors of Makaba, the' warlike chief of the Bangwaketse, 
 their ancient foes, on which occasion they lost a large portion 
 of their cattle. Irritated at the loss, but fearing to attempt 
 their recapture from so formidable an antagonist, Mothibi, who 
 by this time had succeeded his father Molehabangwe, deter- 
 mined to make reprisals upon the people of some other tribe 
 who he imagined would be less capable of resisting him. He 
 therefore resolved to make another onslaught upon the Bakuena, 
 who being nearly 200 miles to the north-east would be less sus- 
 picious of such an attempt from so distant a quarter. For this 
 purpose he mustered so large an expedition that the men com- 
 posing it imagined themselves sufficiently powerful to overcome 
 any force which might be opposed to them, and as a consequence 
 great was their joy and loud their boasting at the hour of their 
 departure, in anticipation of the easy but richly rewarded triumphs 
 they expected to gain. 
 
 Their object, as ever before, was to capture cattle. The 
 invading force was commanded by Mothibi in person. The 
 women, says Moffat, had just been waihng over the loss of many 
 cattle taken by the Bangwaketse, and now their husbands were 
 gone to inflict the same distress upon others ! The Batlapin 
 warriors, full of confidence, arrived at their destination," but 
 
452 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 instead of the success they had anticipated, their supposed in- 
 vincible commando was repulsed and scattered. Many were 
 slain, others dashed to pieces over precipices, and Mothibi him- 
 self, wounded in the foot, narrowly escaped with many of his 
 warriors. Again bitter were the lamentations of the women, 
 as each succeeding party announced to many a distracted mother 
 and child that they were widows and orphans. This calamitous 
 event produced such a depressing influence upon the Batlapin 
 that in June 1817 Mothibi, with the majority of the inhabitants 
 of Lithako, removed to the Koeromanie river. 
 
 Besides these greater events in their tribal history, the inter- 
 vening times were filled up with more petty raids of the maraud- 
 ing Bushmen, the men of the old hunter race, which sometimes 
 ended in a terrible massacre of every man, woman, and child of 
 the latter that fell into the hands of the Batlapin. The Bush- 
 men were once the sole possessors of the territory now occupied 
 by the Bachoana, equally with that taken possession of by 
 either the Koranas or Griquas, or those other tribes which it 
 will be necessary to notice in the sequel. With regard to the 
 Batlapin, it is quite certain that a considerable number of the 
 original inhabitants were still scattered over all portions of the 
 country which the former could not themselves personally 
 occupy. The Batlapin had neither been able to conquer, anni- 
 hilate, or expel the old race from its territories. These aborigines 
 clung to their ancient haunts with that astonishing tenacity 
 -against all odds and all dangers, which has ever been such a 
 remarkable feature with regard to them. The Bushmen of the 
 country had, according to Moffat, kept up a constant predatory 
 warfare with the Bachoana from time immemorial, upon whom 
 they wreaked their vengeance whenever an occasion offered. 
 
 Mr. Campbell asserts that some time previous to 1820 a large 
 party of Bushmen went to Old Lithako, and at midday captured 
 some of their cattle in sight of the town. The inhabitants, in 
 consequence of a late discomfiture they had received from the 
 Bushmen, were so intimidated that they declined to pursue 
 them. This timidity so emboldened the Bushmen that they 
 advanced to the side of the town, and demanded pots to boil the 
 flesh of the captured cattle ! On another and later occasion 
 the Batlapin acted with more spirit, and completely overcame 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 453 
 
 a party of those plunderers, after which time they were not again 
 molested ; but even up to 1820 a great cave near Koeromanie 
 was the general refuge of the robbing Bushmen. It was a cave 
 which contained gloomy mysteries, into the depths of which the 
 more timid Batlapin had not the courage to penetrate. 
 
 A characteristic and graphic description is given by Mr. 
 Campbell of the return of one of the Batlapin commandos after 
 pursuing some of the nimble-footed Bushmen. There had been 
 a great hue and cry, and about sunset the warriors who had 
 given chase were seen approaching on their return. There were 
 about eighty, the others had been left behind from lameness and 
 fatigue. They marched in rows about six deep, each carrying 
 before him a shield and spear in an upright position, and singing 
 in concert without taking any notice of those around. One or 
 two at a time were constantly running out of the ranks to a 
 distance of thirty or forty yards, imitating attacks upon Bush- 
 men or pretending to defend themselves against them. 
 
 On entering the town they proceeded directly to the chief's 
 house, where he^nd his captains were seated on the left side of 
 the gate. A considerable assemblage of women greeted them 
 on their arrival. The captains were seated in the form of a 
 crescent, the chief sitting in the middle and in front. The 
 commando on arriving within twenty yards halted, and took 
 their seats immediately opposite the chief, and after a short 
 pause a description of the pursuit was given by the leaders, 
 the women frequently shouting their applause during its recital. 
 It appeared that they followed the track of the greatest number 
 of oxen tiU they came to the Bushman kraal, where they found 
 nine of the animals lying dead. The Bushmen fled with five 
 of the oxen, one of which they also killed in the flight. To 
 entice the Bushmen to return, they left everything in the same 
 state in which they had found it, and retired to a distance out 
 of sight. The Bushmen did return, but having observed some 
 of the Batlapin, they instantly fled. On seeing this the Batlapin 
 feasted on the dead oxen, and then returned home. 
 
 After this occurrence Mothibi and his captains determined 
 to take signal revenge on the Bushmen for their late robberies, 
 by sending out a numerous party against them. Some time 
 before, when the Bushmen killed a brother of Mothibi, a similar 
 
454 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 party was sent out against them, who massacred all of that 
 miserable nation that came in their way, men, women, and chil- 
 dren, to the number of about 200. When the Batlapin attack 
 a Bushman kraal to revenge robberies of cattle, they kill without 
 distinction men, women, and children ; women, they say, to 
 prevent them breeding more thieves, and children to prevent 
 them from becoming hke their parents ! 
 
 On a previous occasion, when a considerable party of these 
 Batlapin were on a hunting expedition, they pursued a buck 
 which had been previously wounded by a party of Bushmen. 
 The pursuit continued until sunset, when they halted, but in 
 the morning they recovered the trail, and continuing the chase, 
 overtook and killed the animal. The carcase was cut up and 
 put on a pack ox, and sent by one of their number to Lithako. 
 The natives of this part, and amongst them the Batlapin, had a 
 recognized custom that any game killed belonged to the one who 
 had first wounded it. The knowledge of this fact will probably 
 throw some light upon what followed. The Bushmen had first 
 wounded this animal, which they lost through the intervention 
 of a stronger party of Batlapin. Thus considering themselves 
 wronged, they determined to recover by stratagem what they 
 had lost by force. On the road the messenger was joined by 
 some Bushmen, who walked with him and assisted to drive the 
 ox. However when they arrived at a convenient place, they 
 attacked and wounded the man with a poisoned arrow, and 
 then carried off the ox with the flesh on its back. 
 
 The Motlapin managed, notwithstanding his wound, to rejoin 
 the hunting party, and although he died soon afterwards, was 
 able to communicate the information of the robbery. The 
 hunters returned hastily to Lithako, and sent out Bushman 
 spies, i.e. tame Bushmen in their service, to discover the retreat 
 of the depredators. They soon returned with the desired infor- 
 mation, when a large party of Batlapin proceeded against them. 
 The aggressing Bushmen hving in two kraals, the Batlapin 
 divided themselves into two bodies, in order to attack both kraals 
 at the same time. One party reached one of the kraals before 
 daylight, while all the inhabitants were fast asleep, and a general 
 massacre of men, women, and children took place. Only one 
 Bushman escaped the carnage, who fled to the woods, pursued 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 455 
 
 by the enraged Batlapin. He was overtaken, and although he 
 defended himself boldly for a considerable time and wounded 
 several of his assailants, he was at length overpowered and num- 
 bered with the dead. Of the Bushmen of the other kraal, who 
 were attacked by the Mira division of the Batlapin, the men 
 escaped, but the women and children were all slaughtered. 
 
 About the time of Mr. Campbell's visit the Bushmen stole 
 twenty head of cattle from Mothibi's people, a commando im- 
 mediately pursued and overtook them on the plain, when they 
 kiUed ten men, five women, and five children. On returning 
 from the slaughter, all the circumstances attending it were 
 related at a pitso, or general meeting, after which men and 
 women dispersed over the town, imitating the screams of those 
 persons who had been killed, repeating their expressions of 
 terror, and representing their actions when begging for their 
 lives. The Lithako women displayed on this occasion a more 
 cruel disposition than even the men. They imitated, with much 
 apparent pleasure, the screams of the Bushmen when put to 
 death by the Bachoana. 
 
 Thompson informs us that the expeditions of the Batlapin 
 against the Bushmen were peculiarly vindictive, and conducted 
 with aU the insidiousness and murderous ferocity, without the 
 heroic intrepidity of American or New Zealand savages. This 
 was evidently the natural effect or reaction of the inherent 
 cowardice of these untutored savages, great in courage when they 
 found they had an enemy weaker than themselves, and whom 
 they had overpowered by stratagem or surprise, when nothing 
 but dabbUng in the blood of their helpless victims, women and 
 children, seemed to satisfy them. On such occasions their 
 ferocious cruelty knew no bounds, and they were guilty of as 
 horrible atrocities as ever stained the traditionary history of the 
 most barbarous and ruthless tribes of South Africa. 
 
 Campbell relates another instance when, on the ist of April 
 1820, an alarm was given that the Bushmen had carried off both 
 oxen and cows belonging to the mission society. Immediately all 
 was bustle and confusion, the men arming themselves and hasten- 
 ing out of town in little parties, which continued for more than 
 an hour, till nearly every man had gone in pursuit of the Bush- 
 men. Some parties marched in regular order with their spears 
 
456 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 suspended and their shields hanging over their backs. The 
 hatred which many of the Batlapin felt against the Bushmen 
 was so great that they were glad of such an occurrence, because 
 it afforded them an opportunity of taking revenge on that miser- 
 able portion of the human species. 
 
 In July of the same year another alarm was given, in the 
 evening, that the Bushmen had carried off a lot of cattle from 
 an outpost under Polikane, an old captain living in the lower 
 district of Lithako ; and it was further reported that the herds- 
 men also had been forced away by the Bushmen, with the design, 
 it was feared, of murdering them, to prevent them giving the 
 alarm. A general gloom was spread over the place by the news. 
 Not a whisper was heard after sunset, no one was seen moving 
 about, all was perfectly still, nor was their concern to be won- 
 dered at on such occasions, as their chief dependence for sup- 
 port was their cattle, the droughts so constantly blasting their 
 hopes of obtaining a supply from their fields. 
 
 Mothibi and the Batlapin started in pursuit, accompanied 
 on this occasion by a Christian Griqua, who Mr. Campbell trusted 
 would prevent the murder of the innocent, for, says he, if the 
 Batlapin were to come to a kraal of Bushmen, however guiltless 
 of the offence, while enraged against that people, they would 
 murder man, woman, and child with as much indifference as boys 
 would kill mice. The poor Bushwomen must be wretched in 
 the extreme, he adds, not knowing but that every time their hus- 
 bands leave home in search of food, they may bring after them 
 a host of barbarians thirsting for their blood and crpng for 
 vengeance. 
 
 Those who went on horseback in pursuit of the Bushmen 
 returned at midnight. After leaving Lithako they galloped 
 forward about twenty miles, when they came in sight of four 
 Bushmen driving the same number of oxen as fast as they could 
 make them go. At first the Bushmen thought the Batlapin 
 who followed them were on foot, therefore they thrust their 
 spears into the two weakest oxen, and continued to drive the 
 others towards Reyner Mountain. The instant however they 
 discovered that their pursuers were on horseback and armed 
 with guns, they wounded the remaining oxen, and drove them 
 a little way back, after which they fled and concealed them- 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 457 
 
 selves amongst bushes and holes. The Batlapin did not pursue 
 them, aware how much risk they ran from their poisoned arrows 
 shot from among bushes. They contented themselves therefore 
 with driving back the wounded cattle. The leaders of the party 
 were doubtless disappointed at finding none of the cattle dead 
 of their wounds. In that case they would have prepared to 
 feast, whereas they were now obhged to go to bed fasting, for 
 on such expeditions they carry no provisions, but depend upon 
 the cattle which are generally slaughtered by the Bushmen 
 before they can be overtaken ; and thus it is when they come 
 up to any cattle left dead by the Bushmen, instead of pursuing 
 the robbers with greater ardour, they sit down and feast. 
 
 Mothibi in his hunting and other expeditions was accom- 
 panied by many attendants carrying spears and poles dressed 
 with black ostrich feathers, which were stuck in the ground 
 around places where they halted, to frighten away lions, which, 
 from Bushman experience, it was discovered were not fond of 
 their appearance. 
 
 The loss of cattle to such cattle-loving races as the Bachoana, 
 Basutu, and Kaffirs must have been gaUing and irritating in the 
 extreme. When captured by people hke themselves, there was 
 the chance of recapture, with perhaps a few additional beeves 
 to compensate for the temporary loss ; but when seized by the 
 Bushmen, in most instances it became a total loss, as when the 
 latter found themselves hotly pursued, those they could not 
 escape with were generally stabbed or hamstrung, so that the 
 avengers who followed them could not avail themselves of the 
 recapture, nor make reprisals upon the hunter-race, whose only 
 cattle were the wild herds of the eland, the quagga, and the gnu. 
 The pursuers therefore, whenever an opportunity was afforded 
 them^ revenged themselves upon the persons of the wild hunters, 
 by slaying them without pity when they fell into their hands. 
 But is it possible for us to say that the Bushmen had neither 
 injustice nor wrong to complain of ? They were not the in- 
 vaders, it was not they who attempted to appropriate the country 
 of others ; and after such recitals as the foregoing of the treat- 
 ment which they constantly received at the hands of the Kora- 
 nas, the Griquas, and as we now find of the Bachoana, can the 
 deadly and vindictive hatred which seemed to animate their 
 
458 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 untutored minds, and which was frequently displayed in their 
 actions and in their attempts at retaliation, be wondered at ? 
 They found that every hand was raised against them, and that 
 none showed them mercy or pity. 
 
 Numerous intermarriages had taken place between Bush- 
 men and Batlapin and Koranas and Batlapin, and this not only 
 between the commoner people, but also between some of their 
 leading chiefs ; thus Mahutoe, the great-wife of Mothibi, was 
 the daughter of a Korana captain living near the Vaal, stiU she 
 was at the same time descended from Morakanela, an ancestor 
 of Mothibi, thus proving a prior marriage between some ancestor 
 of her father and a daughter of the royal house of Phuduhu- 
 choana. 
 
 It was said that Phethloi (the Peclu of Philip and other 
 writers), the eldest son and heir of Mothibi and Mahutoe, who 
 died young, perished through witchcraft ; as the Batlapin, in 
 common with all other native tribes in South Africa, had a firm 
 belief that all deaths except those occasioned by violence and 
 old age were caused by enchantments or sorcery. He left an 
 only son, named Phuitsile (the Dove has come), who was after- 
 wards killed fighting against the Dutch, leaving four sons and 
 three daughters. 
 
 The great-place of Mothibi, which was visited in 1823 by 
 Thompson, is thus described : the huts of which it was com- 
 posed were all of a circular form, and of a very peculiar and con- 
 venient fashion, considering the climate and circumstances of 
 the people. The roof was raised upon a circle of wooden pillars, 
 including an area of from twenty to thirty feet in diameter ; 
 about two yards within these pillars is raised a wall of clay, or 
 of wattle and plaster, which is not generally carried quite up to 
 the roof, but a space is left above for the free admission of air. 
 In the centre, or back of the hut, is constructed a small apart- 
 ment where they keep their most valuable effects. Between 
 the wall and the pillars the people generally recline during the 
 sultry hours. Each of these houses is enclosed within a close 
 wattled fence, about seven or eight feet high, which is carried 
 round it at a distance of six, eight, or ten yards, thus forming a 
 private yard, within which are placed the owner's com jars and 
 other bulky property. Each of these yards has a small gate, 
 
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SECOND PERIOD OF THE BACHOANA MIGRATION 459 
 
 and all the houses are built in exactly the same style, and nearly 
 of the same dimensions, except that belonging to the chief, 
 which is almost double the size of any of the rest. His house and 
 those of his principal captains were erected near a large camel- 
 thorn tree, which was left there as a sign of rank. The streets 
 and lanes were kept perfectly clean, neither bushes, rubbish, 
 bones, or any other nuisance was allowed to be thrown upon 
 them. The place allotted for public assemblies was in the centre 
 of the town, enclosed with a wattled fence. It was about 150 
 yards in diameter. One side was set apart for the warriors, the 
 other for the old men, women, and children. 
 
 The arms of the Batlapin at this time were bows and arrows, 
 assagais, battle-axes, and shields. We have already described 
 the paint that was used for war and for festive occasions. The 
 commonalty were debarred the use of particular skins ; that of 
 the jackal was reserved for the use of the chief men of the tribe. 
 Mr. Campbell describes one of these subordinate chiefs, named 
 Malawu, who had a short time before joined Mothibi with 500 
 men, as being seated on a quagga skin, which was striped like 
 that of a zebra ; his beard was black and about an inch long on 
 his upper lip and on the lower part of his chin ; he had also the 
 skin of a long serpent wrapped round his head, and the head of 
 the animal hung over his brow. The writer has been informed 
 by the Basutu chief Mapele that all the men of the Bachoana 
 and Basutu tribes prided themselves exceedingly upon aiiy 
 display of beard, considering it an index of strength and virility. 
 We shall omit for the present any consideration of their various 
 ceremonies, their rites of initiation and other customs, and 
 proceed once more in our attempt to unravel the thread of their 
 history. 
 
 Owing to the marauding Griquas and nomad Koranas who 
 infested the country to the south, a belt of neutral ground had 
 been tacitly agreed upon between Griqualand and the Bachoana 
 territory, in which, however, as we have seen, a considerable 
 number of Bushmen still hngered ; but formidable as their 
 attacks had proved, there were about this time other dangers 
 of a still more terrible character looming above the horizon in an 
 opposite direction. 
 
Chapter XXIII 
 
 THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 
 
 The year 1820 was an eventful one in the history of the Bachoana 
 and Basutu tribes, although some eight or ten years elapsed 
 before they were entirely crushed beneath the terrors to which 
 it gave birth. It was in that year that Moselekatze and his 
 horde of Abaka-Zulu, as they styled themselves, broke away 
 from the sanguinary yoke of Tshaka to commence for them- 
 selves a career which was to be marked, like that of the master 
 whom they had deserted, with atrocious cruelties and remorseless 
 bloodshedding. 
 
 Between that year and 1823 Makaba, who had already ren- 
 dered himself formidable by his widespread successes, raised 
 the fame of his Bangwaketse warriors to a higher pitch than they 
 had ever before attained, until at last he exercised a power which 
 threatened to overshadow aU the less warlike and weaker tribes 
 around him. At intervals, however, vague and exaggerated 
 reports began to reach the Batlapin, even as early as 1821, of 
 another still greater, but indefinable evil, that was moving among 
 the nations who lived far towards the rising sun. Some of these 
 rumours were of such a character that even the resident mis- 
 sionaries amongst them treated them as the reveries of a mad- 
 man. 
 
 And even when in the beginning of the year 1822 these vague 
 rumours began to take a definite shape, when it was affirmed 
 that a mighty woman had made her appearance, whose name 
 was Mantatisi, that she was at the head of an invincible army, 
 surrounded by hosts of warriors numerous as the locusts, rushing 
 onward among the interior nations carrying devastation and 
 ruin wherever she went ; that she nourished the army with her 
 milk, and sent out hornets before it, in one word was laying the 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 461 
 
 world desolate, even then Mr. Moffat states that the missionaries 
 considered that these numerous rumours had arisen from the 
 destructive wars carried on by the tyrant Tshaka, and therefore 
 too far removed to affect their operations ; while the tribes them- 
 selves were so much engrossed with the threatening and ever- 
 increasing power of the Bangwaketse growing up in their very 
 midst and so much nearer their own doors, that they were pre- 
 vented from paying much heed to the mutterings of omens which 
 appeared distant and chimerical. The star of Makaba ap- 
 peared too high in the ascendant for anything else to interfere 
 with it, and the Batlapin and the neighbouring tribes were 
 living in constant dread of an attack of so powerful an enemy, 
 of whom they could never speak without stigmatizing him with 
 the most opprobrious epithets. 
 
 Thus blinded by the fear of more immediate danger, the 
 immense hordes of the victorious and ruthless Mantatees were 
 steadily advancing upon them, gathering strength by absorbing 
 other tribes in their ranks as they approached, until their moving 
 hosts took days in passing any given spot. Their foremost 
 divisions had already swarmed over the Bangwaketse hills and 
 fallen by hundreds in the fatal toils laid for them by the warrior 
 chief ; they had stormed the Bahurutsi towns, reduced their 
 great-place to ashes, and so completely despoiled that tribe 
 of their great herds of cattle that the remnant were reduced to 
 seek roots and wild game for their sustenance. They had now, 
 after completing this last work of destruction, turned their 
 steps through the Barolong territory towards Lithako, upon 
 which place they were surely and rapidly moving, and yet the 
 Batlapin were unaware of their danger. 
 
 So Uttle was known or thought of the true position of affairs 
 that Mr. Moffat started from Kuruman on a distant journey to 
 the Bangwaketse along the very Hne of their advance. On 
 the third day he reached Old Lithako. Here the reports of the 
 Mantatees had somewhat revived, and the natives strongly 
 advised him to proceed no farther than Nokoneng, some twenty 
 miles distant. Rumours had reached Nokoneng that the Ma- 
 ntatees had already attacked the Barolong at Kunuana, about 
 100 miles off, and that their towns were in the hands of the 
 marauders ; but as spies who had been sent out returned without 
 
462 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 hearing anything of the reported invaders, he again set forward 
 and travelled four days farther, through a dry and trackless part 
 of the country, when he arrived at Mosite, a fine valley with 
 some pools of water and plenty of game. 
 
 Here however there was no longer room for doubt. Strange 
 men were seen watching from a distant height, who from their 
 unusual conduct in not approaching the waggons it was con- 
 cluded must be strangers from a great distance, or some of the 
 Mantatees. At length two passing Barolong informed the 
 travellers that the Mantatees were already in possession of the 
 town which lay in their rear behind some heights which they 
 coiild distinctly see, while one of their informants had narrowly 
 escaped with his hfe in the conflict with the invaders ; added to 
 this some prisoners who had escaped affirmed that the enemy 
 were then about to start for Lithako ! 
 
 The time for prompt action had arrived, and an immediate 
 return became imperative. On the way back to their station, 
 thousands who were yet slumbering in fancied security were 
 startled by the communication of the fearful news. The intelli- 
 gence when almost too late spread with rapidity, and all was 
 commotion and confusion. Fugitives from the latest scattered 
 tribes were already arriving, increasing the terror by their recitals. 
 The Mantatees were already upon them, their hordes were in 
 reality both numerous and powerful, they had destroyed many 
 of the Bakone towns and slaughtered immense numbers of 
 people, they had laid Kurrichane in ruins and scattered the 
 Barolong, and in addition were said to be cannibals ! 
 
 Tidings of so alarming a character threw a gloom over the entire 
 population ; all their previous perils were comparatively insignifi- 
 cant to this. A meeting was held, and three alternatives were 
 proposed : the first was to make the best defence they could 
 against their formidable foe single-handed, an apparently hope- 
 less undertaking ; the second, to abandon their position and flee 
 nearer to the Cape Colony for protection ; the third, to appeal to 
 the well-armed Griquas for assistance. The last and wisest plan 
 was adopted, and Mr. Moffat at once undertook the mission to 
 Griquatown. We have already seen that by a fortunate coinci- 
 dence the Griqua chiefs were assembled in Griquatown, the Koks 
 having accompanied Mr. Thompson at the time of the arrival of 
 the appeal from the Batlapin. 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 463 
 
 With commendable activity, forgetting for the moment their 
 own personal grievances, they were at once in the saddle ; but 
 with aU their promptitude eleven days would have to elapse before 
 the much needed succour could arrive at Koeromanie. Eleven 
 days appeared an awful space in such a time of wUd excitement 
 and apprehension, when every hour appeared an age, and every 
 moment might be the herald of momentous inteUigence, the 
 precursor of calamities and suffering not easily described. At 
 this crisis, Mr. Moffat, accompanied by Mr. Thompson, returned 
 to Koeromanie with the news of the promised succour, hoping 
 thus to encourage the Batlapin until the Griqua aid could arrive. 
 There all was agitation and dismay. Warriors donned their war 
 dresses, and chiefs adorned themselves with leopard skins and 
 plumes of feathers, shields and assagais were in requisition, quivers 
 containing poisoned arrows were slung from their shoulders, and 
 they paraded with their battle-axes in their hands. Orders were 
 sent off to their different towns and villages and to their neigh- 
 bours, the Batlaro ; a great pitso, or parhament, was held, at 
 which members of the following tribes were present : Batlapin, 
 Barolong, Batlaro, Bamairi, and Bakotu. 
 
 The warriors arrived at the great place of assembly and took 
 "up the positions allotted to them, seating themselves as they 
 came upon the ground in close rows, holding their shields in front 
 •of them, and their assagais, seven or eight of which were stuck 
 behind each shield, bristhng up like a wood of spears. On the 
 opposite side the old men, women, and children took their station. 
 War-songs were chanted, and mock-fights engaged in with all the 
 fantastic gestures their wild imaginations could invent. The 
 most privileged were those who had killed an enemy in battle. 
 
 When Mothibi stood up and commanded silence, he was an- 
 swered by a deep groan from the mass of warriors in token of 
 attention. Drawing an assagai from behind his shield, he pointed 
 to the north-east, frequently thrusting his weapon in that direc- 
 tion, as if plunging it into an enemy, denouncing a curse at the 
 same time against the invaders, thus declaring war against them. 
 A whisthng sound was the answer of approval from the whole of 
 the warriors. He then pointed towards the south and south-west, 
 ■with the same action as before, and denounced a curse against 
 the ox-eaters (Bushmen), which was again answered in a similar 
 
464 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 manner. Returning the weapon to its place, he commenced to 
 address them. 
 
 Various were the orations made that day by the several chiefs, 
 and fortunately fragments of their wild oratory have been pre- 
 served by Messrs. Moffat and Thompson, who were present on 
 this occasion. Be silent, ye Batlapin ! Be silent, ye Barolong ! 
 Even the Makooas (white people) will be silent on this day, were 
 the introductory exclamations of Mothibi. Ye sons of Mole- 
 habangwe ! the Mantatees are a strong and conquering people. 
 They have destroyed many nations. They are now on their way 
 to destroy us. The cause is a great one, it involves our very 
 existence. I now wait to hear what is the general opinion. Let 
 every one speak his mind freely. 
 
 He then made the same movements with his assagai as at the 
 commencement, after which he waved the point towards the 
 heavens, when all cried out Pula ! (Rain !) equal to the expres- 
 sion Blessing ! He then sat down amidst repeated shouts and 
 other tokens of applause. War-dances, accompanied with shouts, 
 introduced and concluded every speech. 
 
 Moshume said : To-day we are called upon to oppose an enemy 
 who is the enemy of every one. If we fiee, they will overtake us ; 
 if we fight, they will overwhelm us. They are as strong as a Hon, 
 they kill, and devour, and spare none. I know you, ye Batlapin, 
 at home and in the face of women ye are men, but in the face of 
 an enemy ye are women, ever ready to flee when ye should stand 
 firm. But consider and prepare your hearts to-day, be united 
 in one, and hardened for the hour of trial. 
 
 Ranyouwe exhorted them to stand fast like men, not to be 
 mere braggarts in the presence of women to make believe that 
 they were mighty men. Keep your boasting, said he, until you 
 have performed deeds worthy to be known. 
 
 Be silent ! cried the young warrior Isite, we are not Barimo,' 
 we are but men ! The Mantatees are mighty conquerors ; if we 
 wait until they fall upon us, and are then forced to yield, we lose 
 all. Let us attack the invaders before they advance farther, if 
 we are forced to retreat there wiU then be time for the women 
 and the feeble who remain behind to flee. We may fight and 
 retire, fight and retire again, still fight, and at last conquer. But 
 
 ^ The departed shades of their great chiefs, their tutelar deities. 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 465 
 
 this we cannot do if we wait for the enemies' approach and let 
 them attack us in our dwellings. 
 
 When Taisho, the Wise, stood up and demanded silence, an old 
 man ran forward, stretching forth his arms towards the chief and 
 exclaiming in a loud voice : Behold the man who shall speak 
 wisdom ! Be silent ! Be instructed ! A man, a wise man has 
 stood up to speak ! Taisho harangued them as the " sons of 
 Molehabangwe." He reproached them with cowardice, with 
 desertion in the time of war. Ye cowards ! ye vagabonds ! he 
 exclaimed, deny the charge if you can. Shall I count up how 
 often you have done so ? Were I to repeat the instances you 
 would decamp hke a chastened dog, or with shame place your 
 heads between your knees. Reflect on what is before you, let 
 the subject sink deep into your hearts, that you turn not your 
 backs in the day of battle. You have heard of the battles that 
 the Mantatees have fought, of the nations they have dispersed. 
 You have heard that they now repose in quiet, and you look alone 
 for deliverance to the Griquas with their guns and their horses. 
 But I say again, prepare your hearts, stand up in your own de- 
 fence, be strong, be resolute, else the invaders will overwhelm us 
 and we shall perish from the earth ! Then turning to Mothibi, 
 he continued, you are too indifferent in the concerns of your 
 people, you are rolled up in apathy, this is the day to show that 
 you are in reahty a great chief and a man ! 
 
 Dleloqua, a chief advanced in years, said : Ye sons of Moleha- 
 bangwe ! have you heard enough to convince you that it is your 
 duty to go forth to battle against the Mantatees, a people whose 
 only aim is to plunder and destroy ? Ye sons of Molehabangwe ! 
 ye have acted wisely this day. Ye have done well, first to deliber- 
 ate, and then proceed to action. Moffat, our friend, revealed 
 to us our peril, even as the daybreak after a dark night discloses 
 to a man the danger that approached him when darkness shut 
 his eyes. The peril is great, we must not act like Bachoana, but 
 hke white men. My fathers ! my brothers ! my sons ! let us 
 fortify our hearts, that disgrace may not haunt us. If we be not 
 in readiness to defend our towns, our families, and our herds, our 
 destruction is certain. Wherefore no one must attempt to excuse 
 himself from battle. All must be obedient. All must be as one. 
 
 H H 
 
466 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 This is a great pitso, therefore let your hearts be hard and great, 
 oh ! ye sons of Molehabangwe ! 
 
 It is best that we proceed against the enemy, said Mothibi in 
 his reply, that they come no nearer ; let not our towns be the seat 
 of war, let not our houses be the scenes of bloodshed and destruc- 
 tion. No ! let the blood of our enemies be shed at a distance 
 from our wives and children. Yet some of you talk ignorantly, 
 your words are the words of children or of men confounded. I 
 am left almost alone ; my two brothers have abandoned me, they 
 have taken wives of another nation, and aUow their wives to 
 direct them, their wives are their chiefs ! Then turning to his 
 younger brothers, he imprecated a curse upon them if they should 
 follow the example of their elder brethren. Addressing the 
 people, he said : You walk over my head while I sleep ; but you 
 now see the wise white men respect me. Had they not been 
 our friends, we must have fled before the enemy. Turning to 
 Dleloqua, he continued : I hear you my father, I understand you 
 my father, your words are true and good for the ear. May evil 
 overtake the disobedient ! May they be broken in pieces ! Be 
 sUent ye women ! said he, addressing them, ye who plague your 
 husbands, who steal their goods, and give them to others ; be 
 silent and hinder not your husbands and your children by your 
 evil words. Be silent ye kidney-eaters (turning to the old men), 
 ye who are fit for nothing but to prowl about whenever an ox is 
 killed. If our cattle are carried off where will you get kidneys ? ' 
 Then addressing the warriors, there are many of you, he said, 
 who do not deserve to eat out of a bowl, but only out of a broken 
 pot, think on what has been said, and obey without murmuring. I 
 say again, ye warriors, prepare for battle ! Let your shields be 
 strong, your quivers full of arrows, and your battle-axes as sharp 
 as hunger ! Turning once more to the women, he said : Prevent 
 not the warrior from going out to battle by your cunning insinua- 
 tions. No ! rouse the warrior to glory, and he will return with 
 honourable scars, fresh marks of valour will cover his thighs, and 
 we shall then renew the war song and the dance, and relate the 
 story of our conquest ! 
 
 ^ The Bachoana imagine that none who eat of the kidney of an ox will 
 have any offspring ; on this account no one except the aged will taste 
 them. Hence the contemptuous term of kidney-eater, synonymous with 
 dotard. 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 467 
 
 At the conclusion of this speech the air was rent with acclama- 
 tions, the whole assembly occasionally joining in the dance, the 
 women frequently taking the weapons out of the hands of the 
 men and brandishing them in the most violent manner ; and 
 people of all ages continued using the most extravagant and 
 frantic gestures for nearly two hours. Notwithstanding this 
 sudden outburst of popular enthusiasm, however, great uneasi- 
 ness prevailed, and everything was prepared for instant flight if 
 it should be necessary. 
 
 That night people arrived from Lithako with the intelligence 
 that the Mantatees were at a town belonging to the Barolong, not 
 far from that place, and that Mahumapelo, the chief of Nokuning, 
 a town eighteen miles north-east of Lithako, was preparing for 
 flight. They learnt also that these terrible marauders had seized 
 one of the Tamaha chiefs, and making him a prisoner, had forced 
 him to become their guide towards Lithako. And one of the 
 fugitives who had escaped from their hands declared that their 
 intention was first to plunder the towns of Lithako and Koero- 
 manie, and then proceed towards Griquatown. The man declared 
 that there were yellow people among the Mantatees, armed with 
 strange weapons and wearing cotton garments, that they were an 
 innumerable multitude, countless as the spikes of grass that wave 
 on the plains of the wilderness. 
 
 In this state of suspense Mr. George Thompson determined to 
 ride on horseback to Lithako, to obtain if possible more definite 
 information as to the movements of these dreaded enemies. 
 Mr. Moffat volunteered to accompany him, and they accordingly 
 started on the i6th of June, attended by a Mochoana servant. 
 They did not, however, proceed farther than the Koeromanie 
 fountain when they were forced to turn back, owing to damage 
 done to the waggon which accompanied them. The inhabitants 
 of Koeromanie were actively preparing for war, making great 
 quantities of poisoned arrows and other arms, and keeping up 
 the war dance by moonlight the whole night long, to a sort of 
 monotonous music. 
 
 Two days thus passed in great suspense. News then arrived 
 that the chief of Nokuning had abandoned his town, and that the 
 Mantatees were within a short distance of it. In the evening, 
 whilst sitting conversing upon the state of affairs, some one thun- 
 
468 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 dered at the door, and on its being opened, Sampin, one of 
 Mothibi's captains, rushed in the very picture of terror and dis- 
 may, calling out the Mantatees ! the Mantatees ! 
 
 At first it was thought they were entering the town, but this 
 proved not to be the case ; certain inteUigence had, however, 
 arrived that they had entered Nokuning, and that this fierce and 
 formidable enemy was now within eighty miles of the mission 
 station, which at the rate at which they travelled was not three 
 days' march. The unwarlike character of the Bachoana and their 
 unfitness to withstand such formidable assailants was strikingly 
 manifested in the total absence of anything like system or decision 
 in the plans of defence in the several communities, who were 
 now being destroyed piecemeal in their separate hordes. 
 
 The following morning the cattle were kept near the town ; 
 the people began to bury their most valuable effects and their 
 com in large earthen jars, and the missionaries were likewise pre- 
 paring their waggons to flee at a moment's notice. At this critical 
 juncture Mr. Thompson determined to set out by himself to dis- 
 cover, if possible, the true position and movements of the steadily 
 approaching enemy, and for this purpose he started once more 
 on the 19th of June, attended only by a Bachoana guide. 
 
 The great-place of the Batlapin had been, as we have already 
 seen, near the old ruins of Lithako, until the death of Moleha- 
 bangwe. The town was then moved some five miles farther to 
 the north-east. After a time Mothibi removed again with a 
 portion of the tribe nearer to Koeromanie, leaving the remainder 
 under the charge of a subordinate chief named Levenkel. On 
 the 20th the scouting party arrived near Lithako. Extensive 
 fields of mUlet were found on every side, but there was an unusual 
 stillness about both the fields and town as they approached. The 
 town was found entirely deserted by its inhabitants, not a human 
 being was tobe seen, although a few hours before it had contained 
 from six to eight thousand people. They had evidently fled in 
 great precipitation, for in a number of the huts the cooking pots 
 were found standing with food in them half dressed. It was 
 evident that the approach of the enemy had taken them by sur- 
 prise. The only sign of life was a large white vulture perched 
 like the genius of desolation upon a taU camel-thorn that shaded 
 the hut of some chieftain. 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 469 
 
 Proceeding a few miles beyond, their horses becoming faint and 
 weary, Mr. Thompson and Arend, a half-caste who had joined 
 him on the road, were discussing whether they should descend 
 into the valley to allow their horses to drink, when Arend sud- 
 denly called out " the Mantatees ! the Mantatees ! we are sur- 
 rounded ! " And there sure enough, on looking towards the 
 spot to which he pointed, the Mantatees were to be seen covering 
 a very extensive tract of ground, marching on in an immense 
 black mass in the valley below, pushing on towards the very 
 river to which but a moment before the scouting party had in- 
 tended to take their horses to drink. This was the first time 
 that vast invading horde was ever seen by a white man. 
 
 With considerable presence of mind Arend immediately said 
 " don't move, or they will see us ! " Accordingly they remained 
 for some time motionless as the trees around them. It was soon 
 seen that they were not perceived, as the invaders continued 
 their course towards the river, trampling into blackness the grassy 
 meadows over which they passed. The scouts were somewhat 
 relieved at being undiscovered, although expecting every moment 
 to find their retreat intercepted by some other division coming 
 in an opposite direction. Not satisfied however with what they 
 had seen, they determined if possible to get a front view by trjdng 
 to gain some rising ground in the direction of Old Lithako. They 
 succeeded in doing this, by dashing at a gallop through the river 
 just as the van of the enemy was rushing into the pools a few 
 hundred yards higher up, and putting spurs to their horses ^ they 
 gained a position overlooking the site of the old town. 
 
 They had not been there five minutes when they saw the sav- 
 ages rushing hke hungry wolves into the few huts which were left. 
 At the same moment some of the Mantatees discovered the scouts 
 on the hill above, and a large body of them at once advanced 
 towards the horsemen. The rapid advance of the savages gave 
 the lookout party no time for leisure, and they were obliged 
 again to put spurs to their horses and gallop to another eminence 
 at a little distance. Here they again turned to look at the enemy, 
 but seeing nothing of them, they made towards the plain over 
 which they had previously passed. This movement was a most 
 fortunate one for them, for they had scarcely proceeded five 
 hundred yards when, on looking back, they observed the height 
 
470 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 they had just left occupied by a crowd of the enemy, who had 
 evidently approached unperceived under cover of a ravine ; and 
 had not Mr. Thompson and his two companions started off the 
 instant they did, they would certainly have been surrounded 
 before they could have noticed their advance. 
 
 After this fortunate escape, Mr. Thompson made the best of 
 his way back to Koeromanie, where he arrived about midnight 
 after a long moonlight ride. The Griquas had not yet arrived, 
 and the missionaries, seeing no other hope, commenced making 
 preparations for immediate flight. At daybreak the whole town 
 was astir. Mothibi, the chief, was absent, and a general evacua- 
 tion of the town was determined upon. By eight o'clock hundreds 
 of pack oxen were continually moving off to the westward, loaded 
 with the most valuable effects of the inhabitants, consisting of 
 utensUs of various kinds, wooden and earthen vessels, red paint- 
 stone, powder of blink-klip, com, karosses, etc., etc. Meanwhile 
 the lowing of cattle, the wailing of women and children, the feeble 
 and tottering gait of the old and infirm, hurriedly moved from 
 their mats of repose to seek safety in flight, and the sullen de- 
 spondency of the warriors, formed altogether a scene of distress 
 extremely touching and pitiable. 
 
 About nine the report of a musket was suddenly heard from the 
 entrance of the town, and this instantly followed by a second. 
 A shout of exultation arose from the Bachoana. Two Griqua 
 horsemen, the avant-couriers of the rest, had arrived to announce 
 the advance of their countrjonen, whom they had left forty miles 
 behind, tarrying to refresh their horses. The intention of the main 
 body was not to continue their march until the next day. One of 
 the horsemen was however dispatched with urgent entreaties that 
 they would push on at once to Koeromanie, before the town was 
 entirely deserted. At noon Mothibi returned, but when night 
 came on and darkness began to surround the place, and no Griquas 
 had yet made their appearance, dire apprehensions once more 
 began to seize the inhabitants. The warriors in the town were 
 indeed aU awake and watchful, but it was known that if the enemy 
 came before the Griquas, they were ready to fly without resistance 
 and join the women in the mountains. 
 
 The night was therefore passed in a state of feverish excitement, 
 till dawn of day, when the missionaries, despairing of the Griquas, 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 471 
 
 ordered the oxen to be put to the waggons in order to retreat 
 with their families without further delay. The Bachoana, seeing 
 this, abandoned all hope of succour, and having no confidence in 
 themselves, prepared also for instant flight. At this moment a 
 cloud of dust was observed to the southward. It rapidly ap- 
 proached, when to the unspeakable joy of all, a troop of horsemen, 
 the Griquas, emerged from it, and entered the town at full gallop. 
 
 Though neither disciplined nor accoutred like regular troops, 
 and dressed in a garb both motley and ragged, yet with their 
 glittering muskets and bold bearing they had a very martial 
 appearance. The air was rent with acclamations, never before 
 had such horses, such muskets, such military array, been seen 
 in the land of the Batlapin. They came as defenders in the hour 
 of need, and they were hailed by the paralyzed natives as cham- 
 pions and heroes. 
 
 The Griquas were under the command of the chiefs Adam and 
 Cornelius Kok, Barend Barends, and Andries Waterboer. Though 
 not exceeding eighty in number, they appeared a very formidable 
 force contrasted with the ill-armed and unwarlike Bachoana. 
 All was now animation and activity. The two missionaries were 
 busy repairing muskets, several of those of the allies being out of 
 order ; many of the Griquas were busy casting bullets, and the 
 Batlapin warriors, with renovated confidence, were burnishing 
 their assagais and whetting their battle-axes. 
 
 A pitso was held, during which a woman of heroic mien, con- 
 trary to the custom of the country, rushed into the midst and 
 addressed the meeting with much energy : " Ye Griquas ! should 
 any of my countrymen turn their backs in the day of battle, shoot 
 them, destroy them without mercy, such cowards deserve not to 
 live ! 
 
 After this a general feasting commenced throughout the town, 
 at which aU classes, both of the Bachoana and Griquas, gave 
 themselves up to indulgence without regard to the imminent 
 danger which threatened them. Intelligence was brought that 
 the Mantatees were still at Lithako, regaling themselves on the 
 provisions which the inhabitants had abandoned in their hurried 
 flight. Some fugitive Bushmen also met the Mantatees. They 
 had been hunting, and had just slain a quagga, when they were 
 set upon by a party of the marauders and deprived of their prey. 
 
472 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 One of them had received a severe wound in the thigh from some 
 large cutting weapon, differing from any of the arms of the 
 Bachoana tribes. 
 
 Reheved from immediate anxiety by the receipt of this news, 
 the warriors of both nations devoted themselves without control 
 to feasting and merriment. More cattle were slaughtered, and 
 the roasting and riot went on around the fires without intermission, 
 as if they expected to eat no more for a month to come. 
 
 The Griqua chiefs decided to halt for two or three days before 
 making an onward movement, for the double purpose of refresh- 
 ing their horses and awaiting the arrival of a reinforcement of 
 their countrymen. This reinforcement was now on its way, and 
 consisted of twenty horsemen and about fifty men with waggons 
 and pack oxen, thus forming altogether the greatest warlike 
 expedition the Griquas had ever been engaged in since they were 
 a community. Upon Mr. Melvill's arrival it was settled that 
 Waterboer should act as chief-captain on the expedition against 
 the Mantatees. Mothibi and his chiefs were invited to join the 
 commando with their warriors, but with an intimation that in 
 the event of a battle being inevitable, the Bachoana must strictly 
 refrain from the slaughter of women and children (as was their 
 barbarous practice), and that all the enemy who laid down their 
 arms should receive quarter as prisoners of war. 
 
 On Tuesday the 24th of June they commenced their onward 
 march. At the Makuareen river Mothibi joined the commando 
 with five hundred warriors, and as many more were ordered to 
 join from the towns to the westward under his control. A party 
 of ten Griquas, commanded by Waterboer and accompanied by 
 Mr. Moffat, was sent forward to reconnoitre the enemy. They 
 started at daybreak, and about ten o'clock came in sight of the 
 Mantatees, who were encamped on a decHvity a short distance 
 south of the town of Lithako, while a second and more numerous 
 division occupied the town itself. 
 
 This great host, when first seen by Moffat, Waterboer, and the 
 reconnoitring party, seemed at the distance an immense black 
 patch on the opposite declivity, from which many small columns 
 of smoke were rising, which made the onlookers imagine when 
 they first saw it that it was not a dense mass of human beings, 
 but a great area where the grass had been set on fire during the 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 473. 
 
 night ; but what was their astonishment when on closer inspec- 
 tion they found that this immense black-covered surface formed 
 the camp of but one portion of the enemy ? As the reconnoitring 
 party drew nearer, their approach was discovered, when consider- 
 able confusion was seen in the camp, while the war axes and 
 brass ornaments could be distinctly seen glittering in the sun. 
 
 Even here famine, their greatest enemy, had already com- 
 menced dogging the steps of this vast multitude : dead bodies 
 reduced to skeletons were found lying about, some had evidently 
 been in search of water and there expired. The scouts approached 
 within a couple of musket-shots from the enemy. While stand- 
 ing in this position, they noticed that all the cattle were enclosed 
 in the centre of the vast host. No one came near them, except 
 a few warriors who in a threatening attitude dared them to ap- 
 proach, but the spears they hurled fell short of the mark. They 
 attempted to parley, and approached within a hundred yards, 
 when the savages uttering a hideous yell, several hundred armed 
 men rushed forward in a furious manner, throwing their weapons 
 with such velocity that the scouting party had scarcely time to 
 turn their affrighted steeds and gallop clear of them. Even as 
 it was, one of the Griquas narrowly escaped being knocked from 
 his horse by one of their war clubs. 
 
 After this little episode the advance guard of the Griquas 
 retired behind a hill about a mile from the savages, where they off- 
 saddled and remained all night. The Mantatees, as seen and de- 
 scribed by Moffat, were a tall, robust people, in features resembling 
 the Bachoana ; their dress consisted of prepared oxhides hanging 
 double over their shoiilders. The men during the engagement 
 which followed were nearly naked, having on their heads a round 
 cockade of black ostrich feathers. Their ornaments were large 
 copper rings, sometimes eight in number, worn round their necks, 
 with numerous arm, leg, and ear rings of the same metal. Their 
 weapons were war axes of various shapes, assagais, and clubs ; 
 into many of their knobsticks were inserted pieces of iron resem- 
 bling a sickle, but more curved, sometimes to a circle, and sharp 
 on the outside. Their language was only a dialect of Sechoana, 
 and they were more rude and barbarous than the tribes around 
 Lithako. Such then were the enemies these Griquas had to 
 encounter. 
 
474 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 At break of day, after passing an almost sleepless night on the 
 plain, the Griqua commando was in motion, and proceeding for- 
 ward joined the party in advance a Uttle after sunrise. It was 
 about eight o'clock when the Griquas galloped up towards the 
 enemy. It was hoped that the imposing appearance of about 
 one hundred horsemen would so intimidate the invaders as to 
 bring them to a parley. This however failed, for although they 
 were encamped on an open plain, they continued sitting, without 
 appearing in the least alarmed at the approach of the Griqua 
 cavalry. A few only were seen packing their oxen, and a large 
 herd of cattle was enclosed in their centre, surrounded by men, 
 women, and children. The whole of this division was estimated 
 at not less than fifteen thousand. 
 
 The most advanced of the Griquas drew up in front of them, 
 at a distance of about one hundred and fifty yards ; when sud- 
 denly, before half the Griquas had come up, they raised with 
 hoarse stentorian voices, calculated to daunt, their frightful 
 savage yell or war whoop, and threw out two wings, as if with 
 the intention of surrounding the advanced party ; hundreds of 
 their warriors then rushed forward, furiously discharging their 
 clubs and javelins. So very sudden and impetuous was this 
 assault that the Griqua chiefs and their men had scarcely time to 
 turn their horses' heads and gallop out of reach of their missiles. 
 Their appearance was truly formidable. Their warriors were 
 very tall, athletic men, quite black,' with no other clothing than 
 a sort of apron round their loins. Besides the plumes of black 
 ostrich feathers upon their heads, their assagais, battle-axes, and 
 clubs, they had large oval shields, which when rushing forward 
 they held close to the ground on the left side. 
 
 The Griquas having only fifteen rounds of ammunition each, 
 and finding what a fierce and audacious enemy they had to deal 
 with, reserved their fire in order to shoot deliberately. As soon 
 therefore as they were out of reach of the enemy, the Griquas 
 faced about, Waterboer and some of the others dismounting. 
 Waterboer levelled the first of their warriors, and immediately 
 afterwards some of the others following his example fired upon 
 
 ^ This arose from the fact that they were smeared all over with grease 
 and soot, or charcoal, instead of red ochre. We shall discover as we 
 proceed that different tribes had special war colours with which they 
 painted themselves. 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 475 
 
 the foremost of the advancing enemy and brought them to the 
 ground. Somewhat daunted by this, the wings retreated upon 
 the main body, crouching behind their shields whenever a shot 
 was fired. Moffat states that it was confidently expected that 
 they would be cowed when they saw their warriors fall by an 
 invisible weapon, and it was hoped that they would be humbled 
 and alarmed, and thus further bloodshed be prevented ; but 
 though they beheld with astonishment the dead and the stricken 
 warriors writhing in the dust, the majority looked with lion-like 
 fierceness at the horsemen, and yelled vengeance, wrenching the 
 weapons from the hands of their dying companions to supply 
 those they had discharged at their antagonists. 
 
 In the meanwhile the Batlapin warriors came running down 
 from the heights to join the combat, but little advantage was 
 gained from their aid, for only a small number had courage to 
 venture near enough to reach the enemy with their arrows, and 
 all of them fled with the utmost precipitation whenever a score 
 or two of the more warlike Mantatees rushed forth against them. 
 
 Again the Griquas approached nearer, when the enemy a second 
 time suddenly poured forth their armed bands upon them, more 
 numerous and fierce than the first. The Griquas dismounted 
 to take better aim, for shots fired from horseback produced very 
 little effect, and they had no ammunition to spare. This mode 
 of fighting however was not without danger, for the onset of the 
 enemy was so fierce and sudden, and they ran with so much swift- 
 ness, endeavouring each time to surround the small party, that 
 very brief space was allowed to jump again into the saddles and 
 gallop out of reach. The firing, though without order, was very 
 destructive, as each took a steady aim, and thus many of their 
 chief men, although they shewed undaunted spirit, fell victims 
 to their own temerity. 
 
 In this manner, alternately advancing and retreating, and 
 pausing occasionally to give them an opportunity of coming to 
 terms, the conflict continued for about two hours and a half. 
 During the whole of this time the enemy evinced a very bold 
 and resolute spirit, continually rushing out upon the horsemen, 
 treading over the bodies of their fallen countrymen, with a furious 
 and desperate courage. But when they found that all their 
 efforts to surround or overtake the Griquas were in vain, and 
 
476 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 that their bravest warriors were faUing thick on the field, mown 
 down by invisible weapons against which their shields formed 
 no defence, their audacity began to abate, [though they still 
 shewed no intention of retreating. The Griquas had endeavoured 
 to draw their warriors as far as possible into the plain, and then 
 by galloping between them and the main body, to cut them ofE, 
 and so decide the conflict ; but they speedily became aware of 
 this design, and kept closer to the circle of women and children 
 which surrounded the cattle, appearing obstinately determined 
 to stand by them. 
 
 The Griquas then approached more closely, and a number dis- 
 mounting occupied a rising ground, from which they could dis- 
 tinguish and select the warriors now driven in upon the multitude. 
 Every shot was deadly, and the greatest confusion and dismay 
 began to manifest themselves among the Mantatees. At length 
 increasing the confusion all the cattle burst out through the 
 crowd which encircled them, and were taken possession of by the 
 Griquas. The whole multitude then began to move off slowly 
 in a westerly direction, quickening their pace as they retreated. 
 The horsemen attempted to intercept them, when they immedi- 
 ately descended towards the ravine, as if determined not to return 
 by the way they came. This they crossed, but were again inter- 
 cepted. After they had fled about half a mile in the direction of 
 Lithako, where the other division of their forces lay encamped, 
 the Griquas turned their flank with a view of driving them to the 
 eastward and preventing them making a junction. Thus driven 
 in an opposite direction, they ascended a rising ground, when 
 suddenly wheeling about they rushed down upon their pursuers 
 with as great fury as at the beginning. The Griquas being close 
 upon them, it was with the utmost difficulty that many escaped 
 falling into their hands. 
 
 Great confusion, says Moffat, now prevailed, the ground being 
 very stony, which rendered it difficult to manage the horses. At 
 this moment an awful scene was presented to the view. The 
 undulating country around was covered with warriors all in 
 motion, so that it was difficult, as a few of the Batlapin had rallied 
 again and were once more bestirring themselves, to say who were 
 enemies and who were friends. Clouds of dust were rising from 
 the immense masses, who appeared flying with terror, or pursuing 
 with fear. To the alarming confusion was added the bellowing 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 477 
 
 of oxen, the vociferations of the yet unvanquished warriors, 
 mingled with the groans of the dying, the piercing wail of women, 
 and the cries from infant voices. 
 
 After this charge, the Mantatees prosecuted their course as at 
 first, and in spite of the destructive fire of their pursuers, who 
 stUl endeavoured to turn them, effected a junction with their 
 countrymen. Just as they entered the town, being reinforced 
 by several thousands of fresh warriors, they once more sallied out 
 to battle ; and it was not untU they found their utmost efforts 
 to close with their assailants fruitless, and their two principal 
 chiefs and bravest leaders had fallen, that they were with great 
 slaughter driven back. The whole united horde began now 
 to move slowly out of the town, setting it on fire as they departed. 
 The flames and smoke bursting from the thatched houses, and 
 the clouds of dust raised by such a multitude and rolling over the 
 swarthy host which was closely followed by the Griqua horsemen, 
 gave a wild and striking effect to the scene, not easily described. 
 
 As soon as the Mantatees got out from among the houses, they 
 again made an attempt to surround their pursuers, while encum- 
 bered by the huts and half -blinded by the smoke arid dust. A 
 band of warriors crept round among the bushes unperceived, and 
 were coming in behind when they were discovered. A party of 
 the Griquas was sent to encounter them, who drove them back to 
 the main body. They continued to- retreat to the north-east with 
 more order than was expected. The armed men remained in the 
 rear and on each wing, and occasionally turned upon the Griquas, 
 who followed them about eight miles beyond Lithako. The 
 pursuit was then given up about half-past three o'clock, and as 
 soon as the Griquas had left them, they all sat down on the plain. 
 
 When the two divisions of the Mantatees joined, says Mr. Mel- 
 vni, they appeared extremely numerous.^ They extended in a 
 
 * The apparent apathy of the second and more powerful division of 
 the Mantatee horde during the early part of the battle appears surprising. 
 Moffat says that during the fight it was observed that some women went 
 backwards and forwards to the town, only half a mile distant, with the 
 utmost indifference ; and that while the commando was struggUng between 
 hope and despair of being able to rout the enemy, information was brought 
 that half of their forces, under Chuane, was reposing in the town, within 
 sound of the guns, perfectly regardless of the fate of the other division, 
 under Karaganye. These must have been names given by the Batlapin 
 to these chiefs. It is supposed that they possessed entire confidence in 
 the yet invincible army of the latter, being the more warlike of the two. 
 
478 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 dense crowded mass, about five hundred yards broad and a hun- 
 dred yards deep. If the number be computed by the space 
 occupied, allowing only a square yard to each individual, they 
 must have amounted to fifty thousand persons. 
 
 In the meanwhile the Batlapin, who were hanging upon the 
 neighbouring heights watching the issue of the conflict, as soon 
 as they perceived that the Mantatees had taken fairly to flight, 
 came down upon the field of battle like ferocious wolves, to 
 plunder the dead and dying and to glut their vengeance by mur- 
 dering the wounded and the helpless women and children, dis- 
 patching them with their assagais and war axes. The Batlapin 
 were seen in all directions at this murderous work, and it was 
 only by, striking them and threatening to shoot them that they 
 were compelled to desist. The women were seen in little groups 
 surrounded by these barbarians, who were tearing away beads 
 and brass rings from their necks and arms. A woman was hold- 
 ing out her arms to one of these ruffians, in order that the brace- 
 lets might be taken off, but not being able to effect his purpose 
 quickly, the savage cut off both her arms with a battle-axe, and 
 then dispatched her. 
 
 The bold and unconquerable spirit of the Mantatee warriors, 
 continues the same eye-witness, formed a striking contrast to 
 the pusillanimity of the Batlapin. Many who had been wounded 
 by the first fire of the Griquas were left by the retreat of their 
 countrymen, scattered over the field. These had been fallen 
 upon by the Batlapin, and slaughtered without mercy ; some 
 were found still defending themselves, with a desperate courage 
 worthy of a better fate. Mr. Melvill states that he saw one man 
 with ten assagais and as many arrows sticking in his body, who 
 kept about forty of his enemies at a distance ; another, severely 
 wounded, fought desperately with one knee on the ground, keep- 
 ing at bay a band of assailants, and plucking a spear out of his 
 body to throw at them. They seemed to have no idea of yielding 
 or asking for quarter, probably because in their own wars they 
 were not accustomed to give or receive mercy. 
 
 It is not in my power, adds Mr. Melvill, to convey any adequate 
 idea of my feelings as I passed over the field after the battle had 
 ended. Dead bodies scattered about, women wounded and left 
 to languish in agony, and little children crying for their mothers, 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 479 
 
 these were objects enough to melt any heart ; but alas ! man in 
 a savage state is altogether selfish and unfeeling, inhuman almost 
 as the beasts of prey. The dead warriors, though in battle they 
 had displayed amazing agility and swiftness, looked lean and 
 gaunt. They, as well as the women and infirm, had evidently 
 suffered much from hunger. Their natural colour was a shade 
 darker than that of the Bachoana, whom in features they also 
 nearly resembled. 
 
 Mr. Moffat, who was present at the battle of Lithako, thus 
 describes the part he took in it. Seeing the savage ferocity of 
 the Bachoana in killing the inoffensive women and children for 
 the sake of a few paltry rings, or of being able to boast that they 
 had killed some of the Mantatees, he turned his attention to these 
 objects of pity, who were flying in consternation in aU directions. 
 By galloping in amongst them, many of the Bachoana were de- 
 terred from their barbarous purpose. It was distressing to see 
 mothers and infants rolling in blood, and the living babe in the 
 arms of the dead mother. All ages and both sexes lay prostrate 
 on the ground. Shortly after they began to retreat, the women, 
 seeing mercy was shewn to them, instead of flying generally sat 
 down and baring their bosoms exclaimed " I am a woman ! I 
 am a woman ! " It seemed impossible for the men to yield. 
 There were several instances of wounded men being surrounded 
 by fifty Batlapin, but it was not until life was almost extinct 
 that a single one would allow himself to be conquered. 
 
 This authority saw more than one instance of a man fighting 
 boldly with ten or twelve spears and arrows fixed in his body. 
 The cries of infants who had fallen from the breasts of their 
 mothers, who had fled or were slain, were distinctly heard. 
 Several times he narrowly escaped himself from the spears and 
 war axes of the wounded, while busy in rescuing the women and 
 children. The men, struggling with death, would raise them- 
 selves from the ground, and discharge their weapons at any one 
 of their conquerors within their reach ; their hostile and revengeful 
 spirit only ceased when life was extinct. Instead of laying down 
 their arms and suing for quarter, some actually fought on their 
 knees, their legs being broken. In this deadly conflict not one 
 on the side of the Griquas was killed, and only one slightly 
 wounded. One Mochoana lost his life while too eagerly seeking 
 
48o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 for plunder. The slain of the enemy numbered between four and 
 five hundred, while a large portion of the cattle which accom- 
 panied them feU into the hands of the victors. 
 
 As an instance of the innate ferocity of even the so-called 
 mildest of these tribes, Mothibi, the paramount chief, when re- 
 monstrated with on the indiscriminate massacre of women and 
 children after the repulse of the Mantatees, and informed that 
 they must be given over to the conquerors, started up in a rage, 
 and with a large stone knocked down one woman, and one of his 
 attendants immediately stabbed to the heart a male prisoner 
 standing by him. 
 
 With such an example set to his subjects, how can we wonder 
 that although Moffat declares that he shrank from detailing aU 
 the feats of savage barbarity and lion-like ferocity which he wit- 
 nessed among the Mantatees, he is compelled to add that no less 
 revengeful and furious was the spirit manifested by the Batlapin 
 and other tribes, who though the most arrant cowards compared 
 with the invaders, shewed that they were, if less inured to war, 
 as cruel as those who for years had been imbruing their hands in 
 the blood of thousands. The wounded enemy they baited with 
 clubs, assagais, and stones, accompanied with yellings and coun- 
 tenances indicative of fiendish joy. The hapless women found 
 no quarter, especially if they possessed anything like ornaments 
 to tempt the cupidity of their plunderers. A few copper rings 
 round the neck, from which it was difficult to take them, was the 
 signal for the already uplifted battle-axe to sever the head from 
 the trunk, or the arm from the body, when the plunderer would 
 grasp with a smile his bloody trophies. Others, in order to be 
 able to return home with the triumph of victors, would pursue 
 the screaming boy or girl, and not satisfied with severing a limb 
 from the human frame, would exhibit their contempt for the 
 victim of their cruel revenge, by seizing the head and hurling it 
 from them, or kicking it to a distance. 
 
 Many of the Mantatees were suffering dreadfully from want ; 
 even in the heat of the battle the poorer class seized pieces of meat 
 and devoured them raw. At the close of the contest Mr. Moffat 
 and Mr. Melvill collected many women and children, but it was 
 most difficult to get them forward to a place of safety. They 
 willingly followed until they came to a piece of meat which had 
 been thrown away in the flight, when nearly all would halt and 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 481 
 
 tear and devour it. Some prisoners were so extremely weak 
 that they were obliged to be left behind. From the prisoners 
 it was learnt that the Mantatees had intended to commence their 
 march towards Koeromanie the very day they were encountered, 
 and had slaughtered cattle to make themselves strong. They 
 had driven out the inhabitants of Nokuning, ransacked and burnt 
 that town, and were about to finish with Lithako in the same 
 manner, when the thunder and lightning of the Griquas, as they 
 termed the musketry, drove them back. 
 
 Mr. MelviU in his report gives the following description of 
 their dress and weapons. Their dress consisted in general of 
 brayed skins, hanging loose over their shoulders. Some of the 
 chiefs had karosses of a superior description, and not a few wore 
 long loose shawls of cotton cloth. Some of this, which was 
 examined by Mr. Thompson, was stated by him to be of Surat 
 manufacture, and must therefore have been procured from some 
 of the Portuguese settlements on the east coast, or from the Moors 
 of Inhambane. Most of the women were almost destitute of 
 clothing, having for the greater part only a small piece of skin 
 suspended round the loins. The men, having thrown off their 
 mantles during the engagement, were entirely naked, with the 
 exception of the piece of skin round their loins. Their ornaments 
 were the black ostrich feathers and copper rings before mentioned, 
 with large copper plates hanging from their ears. Besides the 
 weapons in common use, many of them had a weapon of a very 
 peculiar construction, being an iron blade of a circular shape, 
 with a cutting sabre edge, fastened to a stick with a heavy knobbed 
 head, which was used both as a missile and in close combat. 
 They had also large shields of buUocks' hide, which, like those 
 of the Kaffirs, covered almost the whole body. 
 
 Previous to the inroads of these Mantatees, the tribes between 
 Lithako and the Bakuena were first the division of the Batlapin 
 at Nokuning, whose chief was Mahumapela ; three days beyond 
 this was the great-place of the Barolong, under the chief Mashow 
 or Matlou. From this to the territory of the Bahurutsi, five days, 
 and one day beyond them a very large tribe under a chief called 
 Makapan. This was the Batlou, an offshoot of the Barolong, 
 who migrated in a northerly direction. A day beyond them were 
 the Bakuena, extending thence to the eastward to a few days* 
 
 I I 
 
482 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 journey from Delagoa Bay. It is of this group of which we shall 
 have to treat after completing our investigation of the Batlapin 
 and the Barolong. Most of these tribes had been exposed to 
 the attacks of the Mantatees, and after their defeat at Lithako 
 the retreating enemy once more began to spread the terror of 
 their name among the Barolong. They attacked and plundered 
 three different towns, and even threatened to turn once more on 
 Koeromanie to revenge their loss, supposing that by that time 
 the horses and guns had departed, while they knew that the Ba- 
 tlapin, whom they considered as the dust of their feet, would be 
 utterly unable to resist them. 
 
 As soon as the inhabitants of Koeromanie heard this, con- 
 fusion and dismay once more reigned amongst the Batlapin, 
 and everything was prepared for instant flight. Night but added 
 to their terrors, as they feared that the break of day might be 
 heralded by the yells of their terrible enemies ; while the cry of 
 " the Mantatees ! " went through the hearts of thousands like an 
 electric shock. Those who witnessed it affirm that it is impossible 
 to describe the intensity of feeling exhibited among the crowds 
 of excited and panic-stricken people, who were scattering them- 
 selves of their own accord to elude the grasp of these ferocious 
 invaders. Ultimately and unexpectedly, however, these dreaded 
 foes turned their attacks once more against the Barolong clans, 
 and Koeromanie was left, after all the alarms, unmolested. 
 
 As these formidable hordes marched along, the entire country 
 surrounding them and in their trail swarmed with stragglers and 
 small detached parties. Most of these were found to be in a state 
 of abject wretchedness and utter starvation. Some were found 
 literally feasting on the dead bodies of their companions. This 
 scarcity of provisions had been severely felt before their repulse 
 at Lithako, where the scouting party, as already noticed, saw the 
 remains of several who had died from exhaustion ; and yet herds 
 of cattle were found in the possession of their warriors. This 
 apparent paradox, that members of a conquering army which 
 captured aU before it should be perishing from hunger is explained 
 by the fact that while the leading chiefs and the chosen bands of 
 warriors, who immediately surrounded their persons as a life 
 guard, were able to feast on the captured oxen, their auxiliaries, 
 or those who would be looked upon as but of second rank, merely 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 483 
 
 obtained an occasional banquet on the eve of an expected battle, 
 to renew their strength and fit them for the contest ; while around 
 these were swarms of camp followers, vassals, and slaves, derived 
 in a great measure from the conquered tribes, who were almost 
 entirely dependent for their commissariat upon whatever the 
 veld would supply through which they were passing. Under any 
 circumstances the condition of these hangers-on must have been 
 pitiable, while after the least reverse occasioning increased 
 rapidity of movement, the horrors of famine, intensified by the 
 accumulation of their numbers, stared them in the face ; and 
 thus while the masses of warriors moved in compact bodies, these 
 unfortunates swarmed along the line of march in their endeavours 
 to obtain the means of subsistence. 
 
 But it was not only in the Batlapin and the Barolong territory, 
 with all their conquests and the many thousands of cattle they must 
 have captured, that numbers of their hordes were dying of himger. 
 Their march for hundreds of miles might have been tracked by 
 human bones. When they were attacked at Lithako, not having 
 seen horsemen before, they imagined that horse and rider consti- 
 tuted one animal ; but this, it was afterwards learnt, did not intimi- 
 date them ; for even after that their determination was fixed upon 
 attacking the Colony, having heard there were immense flocks 
 of sheep there. Had they succeeded in reaching the Orange river 
 or the border of the Colony, where they would most probably 
 have been defeated, the destruction of human life would have 
 been even more dreadful, as they must have perished from want 
 when retreating through the exasperated tribes they had van- 
 quished in quest of a place of rest, as their own country by that 
 time would have been occupied by the then-rising Abaka-Zulu 
 chief Moselekatze. 
 
 After the repulse of the Mantatees and the breaking up of the 
 combined hordes which had threatened to attack Koeromanie, a 
 state of confusion and unrest spread rapidly through the country. 
 Wars and rumours of wars were heard of everjrwhere. The great 
 Matabili storm-cloud had risen, and thus the shadow of a still 
 more terrible enemy than the Mantatees was already darkening 
 the borders of the beautiful and fertile country of the Bakuena ; 
 the powerful tribe of the Bangwaketse had been repulsed, and 
 their old warrior chief Makaba slain, the broken bands of the Man- 
 
484 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 tatees were harrying the country to the south-east, and pressing 
 on the rear of the retreating Basutu. 
 
 Such commotions, writes Moffat, were unknown within the 
 memory of the oldest native. Tradition could give no parallel. 
 They existed as far northward as our knowledge of the tribes 
 extended. Many tribes once powerful and prosperous were 
 almost extinct, and it now became more and more evident that 
 had not the Mantatees been defeated before old Lithako, the 
 Bachoana territory, Griqualand, and the Orange river valley 
 would have been swept of their inhabitants. The savage con- 
 querors would have been formidable enemies to the Colony, and 
 would in all probability have fallen in thousands before the sweep- 
 ing bomb or rocket, while the scattered remains of the aborigines 
 must have either perished in the deserts or fallen under the iron 
 yoke of their neighbours. The infection of war and plunder was 
 such that scarcely a tribe or town in the whole country was 
 exempt, while to secure the much-coveted plunder, the basest as 
 well as the most miserable acts of treachery were frequently 
 resorted to. The Batlapin, who of aU the native tribes had 
 suffered the least, owing to the proximity of the mission, instead 
 of being thankful, authorized one of their number, the chief's 
 brother Molala (the Poor One) to go with a body of warriors and 
 attack the outposts of their old foes, the once formidable Bangwa- 
 ketse. 
 
 They proceeded as far as the Barolong territory, where they 
 met the chief Gontse, who received and fed them, being related 
 to the reigning family of the Batlapin. Gontse dissuaded them 
 from the daring attempt, which would in all probability terminate 
 in their destruction. Molala, convinced of this, resolved on return- 
 ing, but before doing so treacherously watched an opportunity, 
 after they had been treated with so much hospitahty, of seizing 
 the Barolong cattle whilst they were grazing away from the town, 
 and having two or three guns compelled the owners to flee. Even 
 after this capture, the same authority assures us that the Batlapin 
 continued extremely unsettled. Indeed the whole country ap- 
 peared Hke an ocean in a storm, its mhabitants like the; waves, 
 alternately rolling forward and receding, carrying with them 
 devastation and misery. Numerous successful commandos 
 from the south wore out the spirits of the people, and com- 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 485 
 
 pelled them to lead a vagrant life, ready to start on the first 
 alarm. 
 
 From 1823 to about the end of 1828 the Koranas once more 
 commenced their northern depredations, and frequently during 
 that period harassed both the Batlapin and the Barolong, com- 
 mitting many atrocities on several occasions, not only burning 
 down the villages or kraals, but also butchering indiscriminately 
 the women and children. One of their last marauding expeditions 
 into the Batlapin country took place in 1828, and ended disas- 
 trously for them. It appears, says Moffat, that the party reached 
 the Malopo, and had taken a drove of Barolong cattle, when they 
 wandered from their course and came in contact with the subjects 
 of a powerful chief of the Batlapin. One of these, a man of in- 
 fluence, was shot. The news was instantly carried to head- 
 quarters, and a plan was laid by which the marauders fell into 
 an ambuscade, whence only nine narrowly escaped with their 
 hves, leaving all they had in their possession behind 
 them. 
 
 This was among the last efforts in a northerly direction of 
 the hordes of these ruthless desperadoes, who had been for the 
 five years mentioned scattering throughout the Bachoana tribes 
 devastation, famine, and death ; and had made repeated but 
 unsuccessful attacks on the people of Moselekatze. They had 
 fiUed up their cup of iniquity, and there had been no power to 
 arrest or overthrow them. The Bushmen, pestilence, prodigality, 
 and beasts of prey at last deprived them of their thousands of 
 cattle ; disease and famine thinned their camps, till at length, 
 in places which had echoed with the shouts of savage triumph 
 over slaughtered tribes and the noise of rude revelry and debauch, 
 nothing was heard but the howl of the hyena as an appropriate 
 funeral dirge over the remains of a people, the victims of insub- 
 ordination, ferocity, and lust. 
 
 By 1829 the overwhelming power of the Matabili had already 
 destroyed many powerful tribes, and saturated the Bakone or 
 Bakuena hiUs and plains with blood, following up the destruction 
 commenced by the Mantatees. With regard to the Batlapin, 
 during these occurrences Mahura, a younger son of Molehabangwe 
 and brother of Mothibi, had stationed himself at Old Lithako, 
 and the nearest outposts of the dreaded Matabili were still far 
 
486 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 removed to the eastward. After a time, however, upon their 
 nearer approach, and their occupying the country to the 
 banks of the Malopo, this chief removed to Taung, where he 
 was joined by other Batlapin and Banairi. 
 
 The incessant alarms and losses to which the Batlapin were 
 exposed led to the ultimate breaking up of their tribe. No 
 urther help was to be obtained from the Griquatown mission 
 people, they therefore fled first [to the intervening Bushman 
 territory, and thence to the Vaal, whence some of them never 
 returned ; while fragments of tribes scattered throughout the 
 coimtry gathered by degrees roimd the mission station at Koero- 
 manie. It was during this period of turmoil that Mothibi aban- 
 doned his town near Koeromanie, with the intention of following 
 the Griqua chief Adam Kok to Philippolis, incited doubtless to 
 this step by the recollection of the protection afforded by the 
 Kok family to his father's tribe at the time of their great distress ; 
 but this movement was unpopular with many of the Batlapin, 
 and a great number remained with his brother Mahura, who thus 
 obtained the sobriquet Mapudianye, meaning " the Gatherer." 
 This became his nom de guerre ; and while Mothibi was migrating 
 still farther to the southward, Mahura occupied Lithakong, repuls- 
 ing many foreign invaders and rapidly increasing his power and 
 influence. 
 
 Mothibi only went as far as the junction of the Great Riet 
 river and the Vaal, where he located himself ; the adherents of 
 Mahura, however, considered that he had deserted his post by 
 leaving the country when in distress, and thus a considerable 
 number of them renounced their allegiance and on the death of 
 Mothibi, Molala, his next brother, was instituted chief-paramount 
 by them ; but he died young, having been killed and devoured 
 by lions whilst hunting near the Vaal. The sceptre did not, how- 
 ever, revert to Mothibi's son, Gasibone (It does not see), but 
 passed on to Mankuruane, the son of Molala, when Mahura be- 
 came his guardian and regent, and another uncle, Saku, his com- 
 mander in chief or great fighting captain. 
 
 Henceforth the tribe became divided into two distinct branches, 
 one under Mankuruane, the other under Gasibone. Rivalries 
 and jealousies sprang up between them, while each maintained 
 that his was the legal right to supreme authority over the tribe. 
 
THE CAREER OF THE MANTATEE HORDE 487 
 
 This separation seems to have arisen partly from the ambition 
 of Mahura, and his hostility to " the house " of his nephew. He 
 was described by Captain Harris as a portly personage, of exceed- 
 ingly forbidding manners, and unprepossessing exterior. Per- 
 haps also a circumstance mentioned by another writer may throw 
 some light upon the matter. Mahura was said to have been a 
 churchgoer and a friend to the missionaries, while Gasibone was 
 wild and unruly. A third or minor branch of the same tribe was 
 formed under Jantje, who fled with a portion of the Batlapin 
 towards the junction of the Kolong and the Vaal, and settled at 
 Likhatlong. 
 
 We will now proceed to the next tribe presented for our con- 
 sideration. 
 
Chapter XXIV 
 
 THE BAROLONG 
 
 If we are to be guided by the traditions of this tribe, as well as 
 the siboko adopted by their ancestors, their ancient name must 
 have been Ba-bena-tsipe, the Sons of the Dancers of Iron, a title 
 which seems to indicate the skiU of their predecessors in the work- 
 ing of metals. The name Ba-rotou was adopted after one of their 
 early chiefs, who had the sobriquet of Rotou, but the recollection 
 of the name of the particular individual who had this addition to 
 his ordinary designation appears now to have been lost, and all 
 the attempts of the writer to make the discovery have failed. 
 
 The name of the great ancestor of their chiefs, Noto, the 
 Hammer for Iron, seems to demonstrate the antiquity of their 
 previous appellation, and as they state that he Uved very far to the 
 north, the fact of the eighteen generations which have intervened 
 between his days and our own would prove, if we calculate (owing 
 to the frequent lengthened minorities which occur among these 
 tribes in the line of succession) each generation at a probable 
 length of thirty-five years, that he must have lived some time in 
 the thirteenth century, and certainly, if we take the shorter cal- 
 culation of thirty years, not later than the early portion of the 
 fourteenth, and therefore when, according to their own tribal 
 traditions, as well as those of the other races we have already in- 
 vestigated, they must have lived not only very far to the north, 
 but also, in all probability, before their ancestors had arrived as 
 far south as the intra-lacustrine region then occupied by the fore- 
 fathers of the present Hottentots of South Africa. 
 
 The Barolong resemble the other portion of the Bachoana 
 race in character, customs, and modes of thought, but there is 
 such a variation in their language that the dialect which they 
 speak has been called Serolong, in contradistinction to the Se- 
 choana spoken by the latter, a fact which would seem to indicate 
 
THE BAROLONG 489 
 
 that the separation of these two groups must have taken place at 
 an early period of their migration to the south. 
 
 These people appear to have been great barterers. Natives, 
 says Broadbent, came from distant parts to traffic with the Baro- 
 long. Some brought iron, of which they made hoes, spears, axes, 
 and knives. Others brought brass rings, copper beads, and wire. 
 They also traded in the hides and skins of all kinds of animals 
 found in the country, and some brought a dark mineral powder, 
 with which, mixed with fresh butter, they anointed their heads. 
 The Barolong were also noted for their manufacture of fur ka- 
 rosses, which were much valued. The most prized were those 
 made of the skins of the panther, leopard, wild cat, and jackal. 
 The commoner ones were made of the skins of antelopes. 
 
 The Barolong and the Batlapin were the greatest hunters of 
 the jackal, an animal which abounded throughout the plains of 
 Seghoya and the entire country towards the Malopo. When 
 engaged upon these hunting expeditions, M. Arbousset informs 
 us that they went for days into the more desert parts of the 
 country, or rather into those portions inhabited by only the wild 
 game and the Bushmen, with their packs of little meagre dogs, 
 singing their hunting songs, of which the following was their 
 favourite upon such occasions : — 
 
 Puku57ne ! HoUo ! Jackal ! 
 
 Unketele, unketele ; Pay me a visit, pay me a 
 
 visit ; 
 
 Ki gu etetse, ki gu etetse, I have paid you a visit, I 
 
 have paid you a visit, 
 
 Ka linao. On my feet. 
 
 Thus, armed with light assagais, they animated themselves 
 and their dogs, pursmng the flying jackal at fuU speed, which 
 they declare to be " the son of a father whose skin was worth a 
 heifer of two seedtimes " (two years old). 
 
 The weapons of the Barolong were of the same description 
 as those of the Batlapin, with the exception of the shield, which 
 was square instead of the pecuHar shapes used by the latter. 
 They seem however to have possessed the same natural timidity 
 as the rest of the Bachoana, and as a race were not a whit 
 more warlike than the cowardly Batlapin themselves, who, as we 
 have seen, were only brave when they found their antagonists 
 
490 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 weaker than themselves, or when they had defenceless women 
 and children to deal with. 
 
 In reviewing the list of their early chiefs, little is known of 
 any of them. Molotoe, as his name seems to imply, is said to 
 have been skilful in inventions and resources, a statement which 
 probably refers to the manufacture of iron. It would seem how- 
 ever certain that the tribe was always more numerous and power- 
 ful than any of the other Bachoana which had preceded them, 
 as we find at the very earhest point of contact, when their tra- 
 ditions become more definite with regard to their history, that 
 the Batlapinwere living in such a state of subjection under them 
 that the most galUng and humiUating tribute was demanded of 
 them, and that when they resisted, the latter were broken and 
 scattered, and had to live an unsettled, fugitive life, very similar 
 to that which the Batlapin themselves imposed upon the Balala 
 at a subsequent period. 
 
 Tao (the Lion) appears to have been the Barolong chief who 
 pushed the conquests of his tribe farthest to the southward, when 
 he temporarily established his headquarters at a place which he 
 called Taung (the Place of the Lion), and which has ever since 
 borne his name. It was at this place that the fugitive Batlapin 
 chief Mashoe came unexpectedly in contact with his old foe, 
 whom he outwitted and foiled by his clever stratagems, when a 
 number of Tao's over-confident warriors fell into the fatal trap 
 which had been laid for them. It was whilst he was staying here 
 that he first brought down the vengeance of the emigrant Koranas 
 upon the Bachoana tribes, by his treacherous assassination of 
 their great chief Kunopsoop and a number of his people ; when 
 a struggle commenced between the two races, which ended in his 
 being driven back again into the interior, a distance of some hun- 
 dred and fifty miles. 
 
 His atrocities, however, although he was looked upon by the 
 Barolong as one of their great chiefs, were not confined to his 
 enemies and the strange tribes with which he came in contact, 
 but even to his own subjects who had offended him he ever 
 proved himself a pitiless and bloodthirsty tyrant. An immense 
 precipice, which crested a hiU near his great-place, became the 
 terror of all those who excited his displeasure, the Tarpeian rock 
 over which his victims were hurled, and these not in isolated 
 
THE BAROLONG 491 
 
 cases, but frequently, in considerable numbers. His victims, 
 without distinction of either sex or age, were driven shrieking in 
 a crowd over the dizzy edge, while a heap of bleaching bones 
 accumulated at its foot, to mark the implacability of his wrath. 
 At his death, on account of the increase of the tribe and the 
 ambition of the younger sons, a division took place, and the tribe 
 thenceforth became separated into four distinct branches, viz. : 
 
 1. Those under Ration, who were styled Baratlou, or the 
 
 Men of Ratlou ; and from whom, on a further sub- 
 division, the Batlou, or Men of the Elephant, had their 
 origin; 
 
 2. Those under Tsili, known as the Baratsili ; 
 
 3. Those under Seleka, afterwards called Baseleka ; 
 
 4. Those under Rapulana, taking the cognomen of Barapu- 
 
 lana, and finally Bapulana, the Men of the Showers, 
 altering like the Batlou the ancient siboko of their tribe, taking 
 as the object of their reverence, in honour of their chief, what- 
 ever might be indicated by the name he bore ; thus giving us an 
 illustration of the manner in which a number of these typical 
 emblems were originally selected. Further changes of this kind 
 took place at a subsequent separation, but the majority of the 
 divisions of the main tribe still rejoiced in the name of Barolong, 
 and continued to " dance " and revere the ancient s5anbol of 
 veneration of their ancestors. 
 
 This first recorded dismemberment is said to have been 
 effected in a peaceful manner, and without any quarrel or civil 
 war. In fact we shall find that the chiefs of some of these sepa- 
 rate clans occupied different quarters of the same great agricul- 
 tural towns, evidently for the sake of mutual defence in case of 
 a hostile attack. On the present occasion, Ratlou, or as he has 
 frequently been called, Tlou, or the Elephant, par excellence, 
 remained with his portion of his father's tribe near the great- 
 place, the others migrating principally in a southerly direc- 
 tion. 
 
 Tlou, upon his accession to the chieftainship, followed in his 
 father's footsteps until he raised himself to the highest pinnacle 
 of barbaric fame that any Barolong ruler had ever attained, and 
 acquired dominion over a greater extent of country than any of 
 his predecessors, extending as it did from the Bahurutsi moun- 
 
492 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 tains to the Hambana hills, a distance of two hundred miles, 
 while all the intervening tribes became tributary to him. 
 
 At his death, however, similar to all such ascendancy among 
 savage nations founded on the energy of a single warrior-chief, 
 the power built up in a Ufetime was shattered, and his tribe was 
 divided among his sons. Wars and contentions for supremacy 
 ensued between the rival chieftains, when most of the subject 
 tribes, taking advantage of these domestic dissensions, threw off 
 the Barolong yoke. Following this suicidal policy, from time to 
 time this once formidable branch of the Barolong tribe divided 
 and subdivided, until it dwindled into a number of petty scattered 
 clans, without cohesion, and ready to fall a prey to every invader 
 that chose to enter and ravage their country. 
 
 Seitshiro (the Hiding Place) succeeded his father in the nomi- 
 nal paramount chieftainship. Little is preserved in the tribal 
 traditions with regard to his rule, except the incidents which 
 marked its close, although he lived to an old age. At his death 
 he left, among others, a young wife named Sareni, who had no 
 children and who became a veritable Helen to her tribe. A 
 desperate dispute arose between three of his sons as to who should 
 obtain possession of her, the adherents of the rivals siding with 
 their respective chiefs. Sets-sero wished to take her as his wife, 
 but the others and those who supported them would not permit 
 it. At length Matlaku (the Roof) seized her, when a civil war, 
 called "the Woman's War," at once broke out among them. 
 The whole inhabitants of the town and the people of the tribe 
 were divided, a great battle was fought in the town itself, much 
 blood was shed in every path between the rivals, the place was 
 sacked, the great-town was " broken to pieces," and most of it 
 burnt to the ground. Matlaku, however, proving the stronger, 
 retained the precious prize, and carried her off with the remnant 
 of his people, seeking shelter for a time in the Batlapin country. 
 Some of the defeated claimants migrated towards the north, 
 while others followed Sihunelo and joined him. Sareni herself, 
 after her second husband's death, fled to the southward, upon 
 her tribe being scattered by the Matabili, and lived near the site 
 of the present Bloemfontein, where she survived to an advanced 
 age, calling, according to custom, the son she had from her last 
 union by the name of her former husband. The meaning of her 
 
THE BAROLONG 493 
 
 name Sareni was " the one Wife " ; she was the daughter of a 
 chief named Umkonta, or the Backbone. It was this fatal strife 
 and the destruction of their own great-place in the desperate 
 struggle of the rivals to obtain possession of this sable beauty, 
 which gave rise to the native proverb with regard to this tribe, 
 that " the Barolong are the calves of a great beast that devours 
 the house it lives in." 
 
 To enable us to unravel from this point the thread of subse- 
 quent Barolong history, it will be better, owing to the number of 
 offshoots into which they were subdivided, that we should pursue 
 our inquiry under the following different heads : 
 
 1. The Baratlou and two of its subdivisions, 
 
 (a) the Batlou proper, 
 
 (&) the clan of the Barolong styling themselves Bataung ; 
 
 2. The Barolong of the Baseleka branch ; and 
 
 3. The Barapulana. 
 
 I. The Baratlou. 
 
 In resuming our investigation of the chiefs of this branch, we 
 discover that upon the death of Seitshiro, and the conclusion of 
 the civil war which ended in the destruction of the great-place of 
 the Barolong and the dispersion of several branches of their tribe, 
 Kehelwa or, as he was also called, Mokoto, or the Rump or Path- 
 finder,^ succeeded as paramount chief, although his supremacy 
 was merely nominal and confined to his acknowledged preced- 
 ency in all rites and ceremonies, to his admitted claim to the 
 chief joint (the breast) when an animal was slain, and to priority 
 at the feast of firstfruits. No particular incidents of the rule of 
 this chief have been preserved, except that his great wife was a 
 daughter of Moroko (the Rainmaker), chief of the Baseleka, and 
 sister of Sihunelo ; and that he died leaving his successor Gontse 
 a minor, when Matlaku, his brother and the ravisher of Sareni, 
 became the regent and guardian of his son during his minority. 
 
 Gontse not having undergone the rite of circumcision at the 
 time of his father's death, could not, for this reason, assume the 
 
 ^ This diversity of names arises from the same individual frequently- 
 having different names in different portions of his career ; and thus the 
 apparent confusion, one speaking of him by the one appellation, 
 another by another. The meaning of Mokoto is literally that as the rump 
 of an animal invariably follows the head, so the true pathfinder never 
 falters in following the trail of whatever he may be in pursuit of. 
 
494 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 government, and therefore his uncle ruled in his behalf until that 
 act of initiation into manhood could be performed. His younger 
 uncle, Mongale, despised the youthful chieftain on account of his 
 small stature and mild temper, and concluded therefrom that his 
 mental powers must be defective. Urged on by these ideas, he 
 was induced to aspire to the chieftainship himself. As a pre- 
 liminary step, taking advantage of a rhinoceros having been 
 killed in a hunt, he privately appropriated the breast of the 
 animal for himself, which was tantamount to proclaiming himself 
 the chief. Gontse pretended not to observe it at the time, but 
 shortly afterwards he seized, with the advice of some of his 
 captains, a number of calves, the property of Mongale, which he 
 carried off and lodged in his own cattle kraal, and placing himself 
 at the gate, dared Mongale to take them away. Mongale soon 
 found to his chagrin that it would be prudent for him to overlook the 
 capture of the calves, as he discovered that the adherents of the 
 legal chief were more numerous and powerful than he had anti- 
 cipated, and that his design to seize the chieftainship would be 
 certainly frustrated should he attempt to carry it out. After 
 this no further dispute arose with regard to Gontse's authority, 
 although the great object of the people of this tribe appeared to 
 be, when not engaged in hostile and predatory excursions against 
 their neighbours, to fill up their time in fomenting quarrels and 
 making civil war amongst themselves. 
 
 The site which Gontse chose for his chief place stood on an 
 eminence which was destitute of tree or bush, but which, true to 
 their Bachoana instincts, the Barolong covered with cornfields. 
 Meribuwe, another town belonging to them, although not so 
 elevated, was similarly situated, evidently with the intention of 
 preventing surprise through the unseen approach of an enemy. 
 Even as it was, Gontse had been twice attacked by the old Bangwa- 
 ketsi chief Makaba, who had become the terror of the surrounding 
 tribes ; but then the young Barolong chief attacked others when- 
 ever he could do so with any prospect of success. Indeed, writes 
 Campbell, who visited them in 1820, all the nations in this land 
 of strife and blood watched each other, and seized the first oppor- 
 tunity that might occur to attack and carry off cattle. 
 
 In 1823 the Mantatees broke suddenly into the Barolong 
 territory, and one town after the other fell into the hands of the 
 marauders, a number were sacked and burnt, many of the in- 
 
THE BAROLONG 495 
 
 habitants were slain, and a considerable portion of their cattle 
 was captured ; terror and confusion were spread throughout the 
 country, and bands of fugitives were met with in every direction. 
 
 In 1824 a formidable division of the great marauding horde of 
 invaders doubled on the line of retreat, and once more spread 
 devastation among the Barolong. By this time, when they were 
 visited by Mr. Moffat, some of them had learnt wisdom, and 
 several of the weakened clans had banded together for mutual 
 protection. Yet notwithstanding their increased strength, their 
 dreaded enemies ravaged the country wherever they went. Thus 
 from Pitsane, a Barolong town one hundred and twenty miles 
 north-east of Lithako, Gontse, the paramount chief, Taoane, the 
 chief of the Baratsili, and Inche, a Barapulana chief, retreated, 
 after the Barolong had been driven out of Kunana or Mosheu by 
 the first onslaught of the Mantatees, though in the previous year 
 they had been joined by clans of the Bahurutsi and Bangwaketse, 
 the Mter hving in a suburb called Moromoto. 
 
 Moffat describes it as a town which covered a large space, and 
 contained upwards of twenty thousand inhabitants, all of whom 
 had congregated there after the attack of the Mantatees. Al- 
 though Gontse had the greatest number of people under him, 
 Taoane, being considered the most warlike, was the more power- 
 ful. At the time of Mr. Moffat's arrival all the inhabitants were 
 in a state of confusion and excitement from a threatened attack 
 of the Mantatees who had remained in the country. A terrible 
 battle had taken place between them and Sihunelo, the chief of 
 the Baseleka branch of the Barolong, in which a great slaughter 
 among the people of the latter had taken place, when the de- 
 feated chief with the remnant of his clan fled towards Pitsane. 
 
 On his arrival the alarm was great, as it was said that the pur- 
 suing enemy were following on his heels. The chiefs decided that 
 they would not fall back on Koeromanie, as there was an old feud 
 between themselves and the Batlapin, and Sihunelo declared that 
 having lost aU, he saw no alternative but to fight or die. The 
 next day Mr. Moffat and a small party of Barend Barends' 
 Griquas who were with him came suddenly upon the advancing 
 body of the invaders. The Griquas did what they could to turn 
 and drive back the enemy, and were successful as long as they 
 remained on the ground ; but after their departure, the enraged 
 enemy turned again and carried the town by storm, driving the 
 
496 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 inhabitants before them, and kilUng a great number/ The 
 Bapulana and the Batlou fled to the northward, Sihunelo turned 
 once more to the south, while the head family with the remnant 
 of their clan settled down at Lotlokani (little reeds), a river or 
 spruit running into the Malopo beyond Meritsani River, not far 
 from Mosega. 
 
 In 1826 these Barolong had extended to near the Malopo. 
 The place where they lived was called Choaing, north-north-east 
 of Motlotlobo, its name was derived from Lechoai (Salt). The 
 Barolong of Choaing were under a chief named Bogachu. The 
 country between them and the Batlapin was inhabited by the 
 Balala, and about twenty miles distant were a great number of 
 Barolong and Batlaro, to which the latter had fled to escape the 
 attacks made upon them and the Batlapin by Jacob Cloete, a 
 Griqua, and his bandit followers. It was not a proper town, but 
 a temporary place of abode. At this time Gontse, the para- 
 mount chief, was still living and residing at a place called Kougke, 
 where several thousand Barolong had re-assembled under him- 
 self and Molala and Mochuara, the Bapulana and Baratsili chiefs. 
 
 Moffat says that although he found the Batlapin not only 
 ignorant and depraved, but exceedingly brutal, he still felt con- 
 vinced that the Barolong he here saw far exceeded them in these 
 respects ; but we must remember that when he visited them they 
 had been (at least many of them) living the life of fugitives, and 
 had been thoroughly demoraUzed by the state of uncertainty and 
 dread in which their lives for several years had been spent. It is, 
 however, certain that before this period, when the Batlapin them- 
 selves were Uving the same kind of fugitive Ufe, the Barolong far 
 excelled them not only as smiths, in the superiority of their 
 metal work, and as carvers and workers in wood, being noted for 
 the elaborate workmanship of their spoons, bowls, drinking cups, 
 and large vessels, which abounded among them, but in the ex- 
 tent of their agricultural pursuits ; while in their mercantile 
 proclivities they were unsurpassed, and might aptly have been 
 termed the native traders of the Interior. 
 
 "■ Evidence of Silolecoe, a woman nearly eighty years of age, of the 
 Bakubune tribe. She had married a Morolong, and wsis the mother of 
 the catechist Gabriel, of the Bloemfontein church mission, and was 
 present at the scenes she described. 
 
THE BAROLONG 497 
 
 Like the Batlapin and all other kindred tribes, they paid a 
 dowry in cattle for their wives, a custom which seems to have 
 originated in the idea of making a provision for the widow and 
 children in case of the husband's death, but which has generally 
 been described by Europeans as a purchase. Campbell states 
 that they had a curious custom of calculating by nights instead 
 of days, thus in speaking of a distance they would say that it was 
 so many nights to such a place, instead of calculating so many 
 days' journey. 
 
 Driven about as the Barolong clans had been, they were not 
 allowed to rest long in their new habitations before they were 
 once more attacked by one of those marauding parties from the 
 south with which the whole country was filled, composed prin- 
 cipally of Koranas, Griquas, and similar desperadoes, from whom 
 the greater portion fled to the Kalahari for shelter, where on 
 account of the scarcity of water they lost many of their cattle. 
 After the storm had passed, the refugees once more returned to the 
 neighbourhood of Mosega, where they remained until about 1830, 
 when the western advance of the terrible MatabiH drove the last 
 vestige of their clans from that place, where Moselekatze built 
 one of his great mihtary kraals. 
 
 The wreck of the fugitives wandered to the southward, and 
 after many privations and vicissitudes for a considerable time 
 they joined their cotmtrymen who had located themselves at 
 Thaba Nchu in 1834 ; but on their arrival there the Baseleka 
 branch ceased to acknowledge them as possessing the paramount 
 sovereignty, and repudiated allegiance to them. After the de- 
 struction of the Matabili power and the flight of Moselekatze with 
 his myrmidons towards the Zambesi, the fallen chiefs of this 
 branch once more gathered their faithful retainers together, and 
 leaving Thaba Nchu, they retraced their steps towards the 
 interior, and settled in the country where they are now known 
 as the Northern Barolong. 
 
 The Batlou (the Men of the Elephant). 
 
 These people formed the principal offshoot of this branch of 
 
 the Barolong family, and by a reference to the pedigree of their 
 
 chiefs we shall find that they stood next in priority to the chiefs 
 
 paramount of the main branch. The Baratlou, as we have already 
 
 K K 
 
498 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 seen, had many contentions among themselves, each struggling 
 for supremacy. On one of these occasions they divided them- 
 selves under three separate leaders ; one of these fled to the 
 Batlapin, another kept distinct and independent under the guid- 
 ance of Makraka, the founder of the petty clan of the Barolong- 
 Bataung, and a third remained in what they termed the Batlou 
 country, from among whom the offshoot of the Batlou was 
 formed. 
 
 Those who joined the Batlapin prevailed on Molehabangwe, 
 the father of Mothibi, to make an attack upon the other portions 
 of the tribe. To this he consented, when in the engagements 
 which followed many of the Barolong were slain in the mutual 
 slaughter. Molehabangwe, however, evincing more consideration 
 than they did themselves, gave strict orders to his people that if 
 any of the captains of the Batlou feU into their hands, their lives 
 were to be spared ; and thus the life of Tchopi was saved, al- 
 though he defended himself until two arrows pierced his body. 
 Several other similar battles were fought between the rival clans 
 and their alhes. The Batlou went afterwards on an expedition 
 against Silutane, chief of a tribe living on the banks of the Likwa 
 or Upper Vaal, in which the chief Silutane and many of the 
 cattle belonging to his tribe were captured. In another expedi- 
 tion they accompanied some of the Bakuena (men of the Croco- 
 dile) against the Bapiri (men of the Hyena), in which they slew 
 many of the latter, and drove away their cattle. 
 
 The Muramusana, a clan of the Bakuena, subsequently made 
 an incursion into the Batlou country, and in their turn seized and 
 carried away some of their cattle. A short time afterwards a 
 large party of the Batlou, being out upon a great hunt, came 
 suddenly upon another hunting expedition of the same Mura- 
 musana, when the Batlou immediately attacked them, captured 
 their pack oxen, and slew many of their people. 
 
 They afterwards united in a foray upon the Bakobi to obtain 
 cattle ; but when they attacked the cattle posts they met with 
 such a warm reception that they failed in the object of their ex- 
 pedition. They then attacked the great-place of the tribe, but 
 were again beaten off with loss. In a second attack which they 
 made upon the same place, they were joined by Setebe, a neigh- 
 bouring chief, but in this attempt the inhabitants of the town 
 
THE BAROLONG 499 
 
 sallied out and set upon the Batlou with such resolution that they 
 met with a more severe repulse than before, one of the chiefs who 
 accompanied them, Matlaku, the uncle and former guardian of 
 the paramount chief Gontse, being among the slain. Thus fell 
 Matlaku, the abductor of Sareni, the fatal originator of " the 
 Woman's War." 
 
 After the Barolong territory had been ruthlessly devastated 
 by its fierce Mantatee invaders, the Batlou gave up what ap- 
 peared to them a hopeless struggle, and they retreated in a com- 
 pact body towards the north. Here, as the terrible Matabili 
 spread themselves farther and farther into the doomed country 
 of the Bakuena, they gradually grew in strength from the number 
 of fugitives who from time to time joined their ranks, until they 
 became a powerful tribe. To avoid the onslaught of a pitiless 
 foe, they again fell back in 1836 in a north-easterly direction, 
 until they occupied the country to the north of the Bapiri, along 
 the banks of the present Nylstroom to the great mountain pass 
 afterwards called by the name of their chief Makapan's Poort. 
 Their leader fixed upon this locality as his headquarters or great- 
 place, at a spot called Mamakoa, in the neighbourhood of which 
 are two great caverns, which afterwards became famous in the 
 annals of their tribe for the terrible siege they endured when be- 
 leaguered in them by the Boers. Their kraals or towns were situ- 
 ated along the foot of the high mountains, the present Waterberg, 
 which were less wooded than those in the Bapiri territory, or 
 Mogaritse. 
 
 At this time Mokopa, Mokopane, or Makapan as he was vari- 
 ously called, had succeeded to the chieftainship of the tribe. 
 He became so renowned as a warrior, but at the same time so 
 noted for his merciless character and the vindictiveness with 
 which he carried on his daring exploits, that he obtained the sur- 
 name of Sechuamara, or " the Bloody." His great stronghold, 
 as we have already noticed, was situated in Makapan's Poort. 
 About 1836 he attacked some of the more northern stations of 
 the Bapiri, when he besieged and carried by storm NguanaleUe, 
 the town of Seamogo, the younger brother of the Bapiri chief 
 Sekuati, kiUed every inhabitant of the place, and carried off the 
 whole of their herds of cattle. 
 
 On the northern frontier of the country claimed by Makapan 
 
500 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 was a small village of Bakuena called Matlatla, under a chief 
 named Sebula, who migrated from the south during the con- 
 fusion of the great native wars. Near this place a large salt vlei, 
 or pan, Lechoaing (the place of salt), was situated, which had 
 given its name to the native village. In April or May 1836 this 
 locality was visited by an emigrant Boer, with his family and 
 servants. He loaded his waggon with salt, and then wished to 
 return ; but his oxen, which had been bitten by the tsetse, became 
 too feeble to drag the load, and left it there, perishing one after 
 the other. This appears to be the first instance on record of the 
 oxen of a European being destroyed by this terrible fly. 
 
 Finding himself unable to move, the farmer, after losing his 
 means of transport, furnished himself with another span by the 
 aid of the muskets he had with him, from a kraal of the Bara- 
 pulana, another branch of the Barolong, who had followed on 
 the trail of the Batlou. Some of the inhabitants of the kraal 
 were killed. They had never before come in contact with fire- 
 arms ; and the people, seeing their comrades falling in the dust 
 and killed at such a distance, fled panic-stricken, leaving their 
 oxen and some cows in the power of the formidable white man, 
 who drove them all away, and arrived safely with his capture 
 amongst the Bapiri. From this tribe the wanderer went towards 
 Delagoa Bay, where it was said that he, his family, and slaves 
 all perished from the unhealthiness of the climate. This is one 
 of the remarkable instances of the astonishing recklessness and 
 daring which some of the old colonial voortrekkers displayed in 
 their determination to find new homes for themselves in the un- 
 known Interior. He trekked on, he knew not whither ! the first 
 of his race to pass through those mysterious wilds, whose river 
 banks, wooded and reed covered, were the haunts of the python 
 and the crocodile, travelling with his family through a perfect 
 terra incognita swarming with ferocious beasts of prey, and pass- 
 ing scattered habitations of savage men, yet moving onward, 
 although single-handed, like a conqueror, arrogantly lev5dng 
 blackmail from the trembUng inhabitants, and retaining his prey 
 after he had once seized it, in spite of all their efforts to prevent 
 him. Such acts, however much they may be censured, shewed 
 a determination of purpose, which may have been equalled, but 
 never surpassed. 
 
THE BAROLONG 501 
 
 That portion of the history of the Batlou which relates to the 
 desperate siege which they stood in the great caverns of Maka- 
 pan's Poort, the almost utter annihilation of their tribe by the 
 Boers of the Transvaal, and the causes which led to it, we shall 
 defer until we come to consider the migrations of the Emigrant 
 Boers themselves, and their effect upon the native races with 
 which they came in contact. 
 
 The Clan of the Barolong styling themselves Bataung {the Men 
 
 of the Lion). 
 
 Makraka, a chief of the Barolong, was the founder of the petty 
 clan Bataung, a title which was in all probability selected in 
 honour of his great ancestor Tao, the Lion. It appears that a 
 quarrel arose between him and two of his relatives as to whom 
 the supreme authority should belong, and as they could not agree 
 upon the point they separated and declared themselves indepen- 
 dent of each other. In 1810 Matlou and Lesuma were still Mving 
 in one town, which was at that time larger than Lithako, con- 
 taining from ten to twelve thousand inhabitants ; but Makraka 
 entered the Batlapin territory, and became for a time a kind of 
 tributary to Molehabangwe, with whom he lived upon good 
 terms until a breach sprang up between them caused by the 
 criminal intercourse which Molehabangwe carried on with the 
 wife of Makraka's son ; and the one thinking the witchcraft of 
 the other to be stronger than his own in consequence of more 
 people dying in his district than in that of the other, a separation 
 took place, and a feud sprang up between the two chiefs. 
 
 Makraka then removed with his people to a place called 
 Setabe, on a river seven days' journey from Lithako. Here he 
 was living in 1818. It was shortly after this that the irate chief 
 of the Bataung attacked and cut off an entire party of the Ba- 
 tlapin who had gone on a hunting and bartering expedition to the 
 Bakalahari, with the intention of procuring wild-cat skins. This 
 outrage aroused such an intense hatred and feeling of revenge in 
 the breasts of the Batlapin against these Bataung that it led to 
 a series of desperate struggles between them. As soon as the 
 occurrence became known to Molehabangwe, Makraka found him- 
 self suddenly attacked, and many of the cattle belonging to his 
 tribe captured. This so encouraged the Batlapin that they made 
 
502 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 a second and more formidable attack upon him, when notwith- 
 standing the determined resistance of the Bataung, they were 
 again defeated with severe loss. Their great-place was taken by 
 the victorious Batlapin, and burnt down, and many of its inhabit- 
 ants were slain. After this severe defeat and the destruction 
 of their great town, the remnant of them fled to the Bakuena 
 beyond the Bangwaketse. At this time however a portion of 
 Makraka's clan revolted, and joined Molehabangwe, while the 
 remainder to the number of about two thousand accompanied 
 the chief in his flight. 
 
 The Batlapin, learning the place of their retreat, and burning 
 for stiU further revenge, sent a third expedition against them. 
 Makaba, the chief of the Bangwaketse, tried to dissuade the pur- 
 suing force from carrying out their undertaking, but failed in the 
 attempt. They proceeded on their march, and Makraka found 
 himself once more face to face with his old foes. But the tide of 
 fortune now turned, and he was able, with the assistance of the 
 tribe among whom his people had taken refuge, to inflict such a 
 severe rebuff upon his inveterate enemies that they were obliged 
 to make a hasty retreat. Makaba also, indignant that they had 
 spurned the advice he gave, placed a strong force of his warriors 
 in ambush to intercept the retreating Batlapin. Into this snare 
 they fell ; and thus taken by surprise, and disorganized as they 
 were, so many of them were slain that their expedition ended in 
 a grievous disaster. 
 
 About the same time Makraka formed an alliance with his 
 formidable neighbour Makaba. This was not however of long 
 continuance when a difference arose between them, and Makaba 
 threatened to attack Makraka after seedtime. The dread of 
 this warrior was so great that many of the Barolong fled from 
 their chief, and took refuge among their former foes at Lithako. 
 Little more is known of the history of this clan, except that 
 about the end of 1812 a chief belonging to Makraka came on a 
 visit to Molehabangwe. During his sojourn there, he persuaded 
 Molehabangwe to cut down a tree which stood in the square, and, 
 they say, buried a stone near the tree. On returning home he 
 sent a present of Kaffir corn to Molehabangwe, who died soon 
 after the receipt of it ; on which the people interpreted the cutting 
 down of the tree as signifying their chief's death and the burying 
 
THE BAROLONG 503 
 
 of the stone as his burial, and asserted that poison was in the com. 
 This matter renewed the old misunderstanding between the 
 tribes, and the feud appears ever after to have been kept up, 
 although they did not consider themselves in a state of actual war. 
 
 Salakutu sometimes went out with a party professedly to 
 hunt, was absent for a long time, and returned with many cattle 
 he had stolen. When Mothibi saw this he would appear to be 
 enraged, but a present of part of the plunder soon pacified him, 
 and should the party injured complain, he took it upon himself 
 to satisfy them. Their wars, says Campbell, generally proceeded 
 from two causes, disputes about their wives, or abusing each 
 other's people ; the party injured then invaded his neighbour's 
 territory, carrpng destruction wherever he went. 
 
 After this the clan of Makraka disappeared entirely from the 
 scene, which led Dr. Livingstone into the error of imagining that 
 the great tribe of the Bataung, whose career we shall examine in 
 the sequel, had become extinct. Of this clan of the Barolong 
 nothing more is heard, it was therefore most probably annihi- 
 lated, like so many others of the minor clans during the terrible 
 native wars which desolated the entire country a few years after- 
 wards. 
 
 The Barolong of the Baseleka branch. 
 
 No traditions appear to have been preserved either regarding 
 Seleka, the Bhndworm or Grass-snake, the founder of the 
 Baseleka, or of Koi-koi, his successor. They appear however to 
 have resided, after their separation from the main branch, at a 
 place called variously by different native authorities Tabeu, 
 Thaba, Yataba, and Thaba Matjeeu. The last was probably the 
 original name given to it, meaning the Mountain of Rocks or of 
 Precipices. It was at this spot that Moroke, the Rainmaker, 
 the father of Sihunelo, had his great-place ; it is stated to have 
 been a considerable distance north of the Vaal. According to the 
 evidence of Silolecoe, there was living near them a nation called 
 Baga Motlatla, or the Batlatla, the men of the Corn-baskets, a 
 clan of the great group of the Northern Bakuena. 
 
 The Barolong and Batlatla did not live in peace, and at length 
 Moroke determined to end the feud if possible by taking his 
 enemies by surprise and destroying them at a single blow. For 
 
504 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 this purpose, said Silolecoe, one day Moroke took a large number 
 of his men to murder the Batlatla while they were stiU in bed. 
 One of the Batlatla men, however, was out on a journey, and he 
 saw the Barolong army coming towards his country. When he 
 feaw the Barolong approaching, he at once turned back to teU his 
 chief that he saw a war coming. Upon hearing this, the Batlatla 
 chief did not go out to meet the foe, but he commanded his men 
 to take their arms, their assagais, their clubs, their battle-axes, 
 and their shields, and to watch the whole night. He sent all the 
 women and children away from the town, to hide themselves and 
 sleep within the forests close by. In the evening the Barolong 
 approached the great town of the Batlatla, without knowing that 
 already the chief had heard of their coming. 
 
 Very early in the morning Moroke, the chief of the Barolong, 
 commanded his men to fall upon the town hke a great storm, 
 while, as he thought, the Batlatla were still asleep, and thus an 
 attack was made. But it was in vain ; for although Gaboronoe, 
 the Batlatla chief, would not let his men go to meet the men of 
 Moroke outside the town, they were waiting hke lions within it. 
 And then, as the Barolong came on to surprise the sleepers, the 
 Batlatla came out hke a swarm of bees upon them, and killed 
 large numbers of them. Their chief Moroke lost his hfe, and 
 many of his great men and his captains. 
 
 He left two sons of his great house, Mokgosi and Sihunelo, 
 and so Mokgosi, the War cry or Alarm, was made chief in his 
 father's stead. Some years after Moroke's death the two chiefs 
 called their men together for a great jackal-hunt, and they did 
 not know that a great hunt of the Batlatla was also intended, and 
 thus the two parties met at a place called Kokane. When they 
 saw the Batlatla, the two sons of Moroke remembered their 
 father's death, and resolved to avenge it, so a dreadful battle 
 took place at Kokane, and Gaboronoe, the Batlatla chief, was 
 killed with many of his men ; and the Batlatla, after seeing their 
 chief lying dead on the field, killed Mokgosi, the elder son of 
 Moroke, also ; but in the end Sihunelo, the younger son of 
 Moroke, and the father of the present Moroka, being a brave 
 young man, fought until he had defeated the Batlatla, and then 
 he returned to Thabeng, that is Thaba Matjeeu, which was near 
 a fountain called Dibane. 
 
THE BAROLONG 505 
 
 Sihunelo became a powerful chief. His great wife, after she 
 had borne him a son, Moroka, was made over to his brother 
 Sabbedere or Tshabahre, in order, it was said, that the heir might 
 have no rivals, and thus she remained the brother's wife. Among 
 the many commandos in which Sihunelo was engaged against the 
 surrounding tribes was one which he planned against the Ba- 
 kuena. The Bakuena chief was Siluchoage, the head of the Batlatla 
 branch of that people, and there was a large mountain called 
 Shalili, named after a Morolong, between the ^Barolong and the 
 Bakuena ; and Shalili was three days' journey on the north side 
 of the Vaal, south of the river Tigane or Tigare. 
 
 Sihunelo invited the Batlapin to assist him in the attack, 
 and they came to his aid in great numbers. His army is said to 
 have been composed of eight thousand men, and on this occasion 
 he was assisted by Coenrad Buys, a fugitive Boer, and a run- 
 away slave, besides three others who possessed firearms ; and it 
 was upon the assistance which he thought these weapons would 
 afford him that he greatly relied, and considered from that fact 
 that his army would be invincible. 
 
 As he advanced, a small party of Bakuena that was out on a 
 petty foray was surrounded, and about fifteen men were killed. 
 The great-place or chief town of the Bakuena was built upon a 
 hUl of difficult access, thus forming a place of considerable strength. 
 It had deep precipices facing the Barolong quarter, but was level 
 on the other side. The Barolong forces attacked it at two 
 different points, in large bodies. When one party of warriors 
 attempted to ascend the cliffs, they were repulsed by the Bakuena 
 rolling down great stones upon them from the summit, so that 
 they were glad to retire without being able to capture any cattle, 
 which was the great object of the expedition. The second party, 
 however, advancing by a different route gained a footing upon 
 the summit ; but when the Bakuena found that they had done so, 
 they charged them with such resolute vigour that the enemy were 
 quickly thrown into confusion, and put to the rout. The Barolong, 
 knowing the gap or poort, escaped through it ; but the Batlapin, 
 not knowing the country, were entrapped, and were driven head- 
 long over the precipices, where they all perished. Thus the five 
 muskets were found to be ineffectual in making an impression upon 
 so strong a position, and one that was so resolutely defended. 
 
5o6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Shortly after this attack, these Bakuena left the mountain, 
 and migrated across the river Khing. Here they built their 
 great town near a large mountain called Muchoane. Whilst here, 
 a chief of the Batlokua, or the men of Ma-Intatisi, sent messen- 
 gers to them, telling them they were to build walls round their 
 kraals. This mission was to throw them off their guard, and 
 the Bakuena, beheving them, fell into the trap. They com- 
 menced building large circular walls while the messengers, having 
 gained their entire confidence, stUl remained with them. The 
 work, after great labour, was completed, and the Bakuena be- 
 lieved that now they could rest in security, when one of the 
 Batlokua messengers secretly informed his chief that the Bakuena 
 were now bhnd, and slept. 
 
 Then a commando was prepared, and with rapid marches 
 came upon the Bakuena town in the dusk of the evening ; they 
 concealed themselves behind the walls the Bakuena had them- 
 selves built, and a little after midnight they arose and fell upon 
 the sleeping Bakuena, when many were killed, but others escaped 
 in the confusion and darkness of the night. The fugitives dis- 
 persed in different directions, and some retreated towards the 
 Barolong and took refuge under them. 
 
 It was shortly after this that the Batlokua, or the Mantatees 
 as they were more generally called at that period, began to push 
 their marauding expeditions into the country of the Northern 
 Bakuena. Silolecoe stated that after this the MakaU (Mantatees) 
 collected great commandos to clear the country of the Bakuena, 
 the Barolong, and aU the other tribes. We have alrea,dy de- 
 scribed the rumours which spread as the Mantatee hordes went 
 on accumulating in strength, and extending their devastations 
 as they spread themselves farther and farther into the country ; 
 and the attacks made by the invaders upon other portions of the 
 Barolong tribe. 
 
 Mr. Broadbent, who commenced a mission among the Barolong 
 in the year 1822, gives a considerable amount of rehable informa- 
 tion with regard to the Mantatees both before and after their 
 advance upon Koeromanie. At the time of their first irruption 
 into the Barolong territory he was traveUing across the country, in 
 search of Sihunelo, unconscious of the danger he was running. On 
 one occasion he came in actual contact with a party of them, but 
 
THE BAROLONG 507 
 
 fortunately as they had never seen white men or waggons before, 
 they fled from him with precipitation, imagining that they saw 
 walking houses filled with white demons and sorcerers ! Miser- 
 able, solitary stragglers were sometimes met with ; one, a tall old 
 man, who appeared more like a moving skeleton than a living 
 being. On a raw piece of meat being given to him, he greedily 
 devoured it hke a dog, although there was a fire where he might 
 have cooked it. At another time a fine young man, with a deep 
 wound in the neck, was found lying on the ground quite naked. 
 The care he had taken of his weapons excited the traveller's 
 surprise, and would have been worthy of a warrior even in classic 
 times. He had placed his assagais and battle-axe on the dry 
 ground, then his shield upon them, and his kaross so as to cover 
 the whole, and protected this with his naked body which was wet 
 with falling rain. His weapons were his means both of defence 
 and to obtain subsistence. 
 
 Other signs were not wanting that the missionary was ad- 
 vancing into a country occupied by the enemy. A short time 
 previously he had passed a Korana kraal, under an old captain 
 called 'Chu-de'-ep, who made his appearance enveloped in a 
 jackal-skin kaross from his neck to his feet, carrying a tail of 
 the same animal to brush off the perspiration and flies from 
 his august countenance. Proceeding onward, Mr. Broadbent 
 arrived at another station, under 'Kudeboe'kei, a captain of the 
 same race. Scarcely, however, had he arrived when an alarm 
 was given that the Barolong were approaching, flying from the 
 Mantatees. In an instant aU was hurry and a Babel of confusion. 
 The huts disappeared as if by magic, the mats of which they were 
 composed were rolled up, and the sticks which supported them 
 were tied in bundles. These, together with the scanty supply of 
 culinary utensils that they used, were soon secured on pack oxen, 
 and in an astonishingly short time they were hurrying away on 
 their march towards the distant horizon. As they disappeared 
 in one direction, clouds of dust arose in another, while the lowing 
 of hundreds of cattle and the bleating of flocks of sheep and goats 
 soon became audible. On these came, driven by a mixed mul- 
 titude of men, women, and children, accompanied by a host of 
 armed warriors, amid great noise and confusion, each party 
 attending its special charge, while the entire multitude were 
 
5o8 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 under the command of Sabbedere, the brother of Sihunelo, the 
 great chief of the Baseleka. 
 
 Sabbedere was a tall muscular man, armed with shield, 
 battle-axe, and quiver of assagais, attended by a bodyguard 
 similarly accoutred. A vast horde of the Mantatees had at- 
 tacked them, and after a severe battle, in which they stormed 
 the Barolong town, many Barolong were slain, and the remainder 
 had to fly. In doing so they had purposely separated their forces 
 into two bands. Sihunelo and his son Moroko had fallen back 
 with those with them by one route, and Sabbedere by another ; 
 and when Mr. Broadbent met them they were attempting to 
 form a junction. The Korana villages were abandoned by their 
 terrified inhabitants wherever the Barolong approached, as it 
 was supposed that the Mantatees were in close pursuit. 
 
 The great-place of the chief, which had been so recently 
 stormed and sacked by the invaders, was passed by Mr. Broad- 
 bent in his search for Sihunelo. It was beautifully situated near 
 a river. There was abundant evidence of the haste with which 
 the inhabitants had fled, as in some parts the houses were partly 
 broken and partly burnt, here and there were strewn wooden 
 utensils, and sometimes skeletons of persons who had been slain 
 in the assault and of children who had been left by their friends 
 and had been killed by the enemy or died of starvation were seen. 
 A living child, frightfully emaciated, with a large wound in her 
 left side, was found crouching near a door of a hut. The wound 
 had been made by ravens attacking her. She was a girl of about 
 seven years of age. A bare skeleton lay near her, the bones of 
 her sister, who had died of starvation. She had survived for 
 eighteen days, when she was found contending with three hungry 
 dogs and some crows picking bones ! This was the town where 
 Sabbedere and his people were attacked.^ 
 
 The hosts of the Mantatees were then to the north of them. 
 They were estimated at from forty to fifty thousand souls. It 
 was from this point that they turned upon Lithako, where, as we 
 have already seen, they were repulsed. According to Mr. Broad- 
 bent as well as the other authorities previously quoted, the 
 
 1 This country was a portion of that which the early emigrant Koranas 
 had forcibly seized from the Bushmen, and whence they had carried on 
 their depredations against the Bachoana tribes. 
 
THE BAROLONG 
 
 509 
 
 Mantatees had not seen horses before, and they thought the horse 
 and rider were one animal ; neither had they been previously 
 opposed by firearms. They evinced, says this writer, desperate 
 boldness in the unequal contest, and made one or two attempts 
 to surround these strange animals which " spit fire " at them ; 
 and it was not until about five hundred were shot that they com- 
 menced their retreat from their assailants, whom they could not 
 reach with their weapons, for the Griquas galloped away to reload 
 their guns, and then returned to fire. 
 
 The retreating enemy from Koeromanie fell back through a 
 line of country upon the trail of these Barolong, as Sihunelo in 
 his flight first made a temporary halt near the river Koralla, 
 thence he moved to the Nalassi mountains for a short time, when 
 he selected a beautiful spot called Maquassie. This was the very 
 place upon which the Mantatee hordes were then advancing. 
 Scarcely had Sihunelo settled in his new habitation in 1823, when 
 a fresh alarm was raised that the Mantatees were coming. This 
 was before daylight, and all was at once confusion and noise ; 
 instant measures were taken for abandoning the town. In the 
 twilight, amid the shouting of people, the lowing of cattle, and 
 barking of dogs, parties of armed men commenced driving off 
 herds of cattle, followed by women and children laden with such 
 things as they could carry. The chief Sihunelo with some of 
 his men remained to the last, and wished to persuade the mis- 
 sionary Broadbent to accompany them, as he could not remain 
 to defend them and, he said, " it would be madness to hazard a 
 battle, they are too strong for us." 
 
 This, at length, proved to be no false alarm ; the dreadful 
 Mantatees were reaUy in the vicinity of the newly raised town of 
 the Barolong, but, strange to say, probably believing the place 
 was abandoned, they passed at a short distance, and never came 
 into it. This seemed the more surprising, as while the vast horde 
 marched on in divisions formed of dense masses of people, the 
 surrounding country was filled, as we have mentioned, with small 
 parties of strolling Mantatees, who, while foraging for themselves, 
 formed a cloud of scouts around them. To these the Bushmen 
 might be added, and the very lions seemed accumulating along 
 the line of march. The great host was three days in passing 
 the neighbourhood of Maquassie in different divisions ; they 
 
510 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 moved towards the east, and yet during those three days not one 
 of the numerous stragglers appeared on the high ground near the 
 station. This fact aroused the superstition of the Barolong, 
 who reported long afterwards that because the missionaries would 
 not flee from the whole army of the Mantatees, these dared not 
 come to the station while the missionary was there. 
 
 The Barolong on this occasion avoided coUision with the main 
 body, but cut off the poor stragglers by scores. The greater 
 number of these unfortunate wretches appeared in a most miser- 
 able phght for want of food. They were reduced to eat their 
 dogs, cowdung, and, in fact, what could no longer be a matter of 
 doubt, they were found devouring their own dead ! The horrid 
 extremities to which some of these retreating fugitives were re- 
 duced is related by Mr. Hodgson, when he describes how horror- 
 struck he was upon discovering two women and a man concealed 
 in a bush in the act of cooking a human leg ; near them was 
 found the skeleton of a full-grown man and part of the body of 
 another, of which a leg and an arm had been cut off, the head 
 opened, the bowels drawn out, and the internal parts of the body 
 exposed to view. One of the women was roasting part of the leg 
 upon the coals, and the other was engaged with the man in eating 
 with savage greediness the portion which had just been cooked, 
 the man breaking the bones with a stone, and sucking them with 
 apparent delight. 
 
 At this time, Mr. Hodgson writes, the invading tribes were 
 truly formidable both as to their number and courage ; with the 
 exception of the Griquas' guns there was nothing which could 
 effectually oppose their progress, in whichever way they turned 
 they carried aU before them ; but what human adversaries could 
 not effect, gaunt famine accomplished. The subsequent dissen- 
 sions of their leaders enforced the final dismemberment of the 
 vast host, which at one time had threatened the safety of a large 
 portion of South Africa. It was at this juncture that one for- 
 midable section of them, which was said to have been composed 
 of five confederate tribes, doubled again and reentered the 
 territory occupied by the Barolong clans, with the apparent 
 determination of rooting out the last vestige of these easily con- 
 quered people. It was in dread of this renewed attack that 
 Mothibi, the Batlapin chief, and his people fled to the southward ; 
 
THE BAROLONG 511 
 
 and the missionaries Moffat and Hamilton retired to Griquatown 
 with their families for greater security from the advancing 
 enemy. 
 
 These invaders were led by the Bataung chiefs belonging to 
 the Leghoya group, whose history it will be necessary to investi- 
 gate more fuUy as we proceed. Early in 1824 some eight or ten 
 men of this tribe paid Maquassie a visit, but instead of frater- 
 nizing with the inhabitants, remained at a short distance from 
 the town, where, although several of the Barolong had some inter- 
 course with them, the greater portion of the latter treated them 
 with suspicion ; and it was not long before the real cause of this 
 ominous visit became fully demonstrated. 
 
 In May 1824 Sihunelo found himself suddenly attacked in 
 his great-place at Maquassie. This onslaught was made by the 
 combined forces of the invaders, who had surprised the inhabit- 
 ants by forced marches, and attacked them just before day- 
 break. Sihunelo was completely taken by surprise, and was 
 unprepared to resist them effectually, although he and his people 
 fought bravely and secured most of their cattle. They were 
 beaten out of the place and obhged to flee, while the enemy re- 
 tained possession of the town, which they sacked and burnt, the 
 mission station being served in the same manner. Not satisfied 
 with this, the victorious enemy under their great leaders Makari 
 and Mophete pursued the flying Barolong down the Vaal, until 
 some ten or twelve miles west of Moos. 
 
 In this extremity Sihunelo dispatched messengers to Griqua- 
 town, imploring assistance, while the Barolong and the Koranas 
 were scattering in all directions before their vindictive pursuers. 
 Waterboer, after being reinforced by the chief of Campbell and 
 others, at length started for their relief, when the Griquas vrere 
 joined by the Koranas, who hoped that a united attack would be 
 made upon the enemy. The Griquas however wasted their time 
 in hunting ; and then, not troubling themselves to ascertain 
 the actual facts, began without any ground of suspicion to mali- 
 ciously accuse Sihunelo and his people of having destroyed the 
 mission property and in order to hide their treachery charging 
 the mischief upon reported invaders. The Griqua Waterboer 
 and the other captains, getting Sihunelo into their power, obliged 
 him to pay a fine of six hundred head of cattle. Mr. Broadbent 
 
512 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 was, however, afterwards able to shew clearly the innocence of 
 Sihunelo in the matter laid to his charge by the Griquas, who 
 were compelled by the colonial government to restore their ill- 
 gotten booty. 
 
 The population of Griqualand and of the surrounding region 
 was at this time in a state of excitement, unrest, and apprehen- 
 sion, not so much from the proximity of the marauding Mantatees, 
 Bataung, and other tribes, as from the so-called Bergenaars, 
 whom the Griquas dreaded much more, as they had firearms 
 equally with themselves. It was evident therefore that Water- 
 boer reserved his strength and ammunition, collected professedly 
 to resist the spoilers of Sihunelo, in order to make an assault upon 
 the Griquas who disclaimed his authority, and had taken refuge 
 in the Berg. 
 
 With regard to this portion of the Barolong history, Silolecoe 
 stated that at this time some Griquas made a foray upon the 
 Barolong and carried off a lot of cattle, when to avoid a repeti- 
 tion of such conduct Sihunelo retreated to the Barapulana, who 
 were staying at Pitsane. This clearly proves what the Barolong 
 themselves thought of the affair of Waterboer. 
 
 We have already recounted the incidents which followed this 
 retreat of Sihunelo in rapid succession, under the head of Barend 
 Barends and that of the Barolong of Pitsane. Suffice it here to 
 say, that when in the neighbourhood of this last town he sent out 
 his men to Setlagole for the ostensible purpose of having a lion- 
 hunt, but in reality to reconnoitre the country and to discover 
 if possible the whereabouts of the enemy who had given chase 
 to him under Mophete and Makari, as soon as they discovered his 
 ffight. Whilst employed upon this expedition, they unex- 
 pectedly came upon the Bataung, the same body from whom 
 Mr. Moffat had so narrowly escaped on his return from the Ba- 
 ngwaketse, when his waggons were attacked and he was saved by a 
 small Griqua escort under Barend Barends, who had fortunately 
 joined him but a short time before. 
 
 Meeting their old foes face to face, a savage and furious battle 
 ensued, although many of the Barolong fled at its very onset. 
 A considerable number however rallied round their chiefs. The 
 slaughter which followed was great, especially among the leading 
 men. Several of Sihunelo's near relatives were slain, among 
 
THE BAROLONG 513 
 
 whom was Sabbedere, his favourite brother, besides a number 
 of minor chiefs or captains. Several leaders among the enemy 
 were also struck down, but the great loss on the Barolong side 
 was doubtless that of their great fighting captain. Sabbedere 
 died hke a warrior. He grappled with the most determined foes 
 of his tribe until overwhelmed by numbers, but even then he did 
 not submit until after laying six of them dead at his feet, when 
 he feU pierced with many assagais, and was immediately, in 
 revenge, literally chopped to pieces. The victors affirm that 
 Molitsane, the rising Motaung, gave the falling warrior his coup 
 de grace, whom, it is said, he mistook for Sihunelo him- 
 self. 
 
 This loss was fatal to the Barolong, and their chief, in the 
 bitterness of his grief exclaimed that of all his friends, he alone 
 was left ! For some time he and the remnant of his tribe lived 
 the life of fugitives, and the victorious Bataung carried devas- 
 tation and death in every direction, the country in the interior 
 being fuU of their marauding bands. 
 
 Some time after this, in August 1826, Sihunelo made a second 
 attempt to establish his great-place at Maquassie, in company 
 with Messrs. Hodgson and Archbell. In September he joined a 
 party of Bergenaars with a number of his people, who had gone 
 up the Vaal with the intention of attacking the chief who had 
 first driven him from Maquassie, captured his cattle, and killed 
 his brother. The opportunity for reprisals seemed too good to 
 be neglected. Sihunelo, however, was evidently more bent on 
 revenging the death of Sabbedere, who was, as we have stated, 
 his favourite brother, than even of recapturing his cattle ; but 
 in neither aim was he successful, for in this attempt he was again 
 defeated, and had a narrow escape with his life. Had it not been 
 for the exertions of the Bergenaars, he and all his people must 
 have been surrounded by the enemy. 
 
 After this last reverse, not being in a situation to meet his 
 enemies again in battle, he determined once more to abandon 
 Maquassie, and early in the morning of the 29th of September 1826 
 all were in motion. The people moved off under their respective 
 chiefs, quitting for ever their newly-raised habitations. After 
 this they wandered about for months, without any fixed place of 
 rest, occasionally disturbed by reports of the enemy being about 
 
 LL 
 
514 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 to attack them, and occasionally falling in with parties of the 
 Bataung, or the men of the Lion. 
 
 At length they settled at the 'Ker-by-'kaam, or the Motlana- 
 pietse, or Umtlalanpietse, as it was respectively called by the 
 Barolong and Batlapin, the Groote Platberg of the Bastaards. 
 Here Sihunelo died, when Moroka, the present chief, succeeded 
 to the chieftainship. Here the new chief remained with his 
 people until the year 1834, when they were driven from the Vaal 
 by prolonged droughts and fear of Moselekatze. They then 
 migrated in a south-easterly direction, until they arrived at the 
 hiUs about Thaba Nchu, the Mountain of Gloom. The advo- 
 cates of Basutu sovereignty state that Moshesh allowed them to 
 do so. If that be so, then we find that at this early period the 
 refugee " Chief of the Mountain " had already commenced laying 
 claim to the finest portions of the country between the Orange 
 and the Vaal ! From this point the history of this branch of the 
 Barolong becomes so intermingled with that of other races of 
 whom we have to treat, that it is better for us to defer any further 
 consideration of it until then. We will therefore now proceed 
 to the last clan of this group which it will be necessary for us to 
 notice. 
 
 The Barapulana. 
 
 This branch of the Barolong group after a time dropped or 
 elided the prefix Ra of their founder's name, as might be pointed 
 out in other instances, and thus contracted the appellation of 
 their clan to Bapulana, the men of the Showers. Little is known 
 of them except what has been already given in connection with 
 the other branches, up to the storming and sack of Pitsane by the 
 confederates under Makari. 
 
 It appears highly probable that as the name of this formidable 
 invading chief disappears immediately after the furious encounter 
 in which Sabbedere was slain, and that of Molitsane at once rises 
 to the surface as chief of the Bataung, that he also was killed 
 there among the Bataung captains who fell on that fatal day, 
 which on account of the number of great men who were slaugh- 
 tered on that occasion, was ever after spoken of as " the Battle 
 of the Chiefs." However this may be, it is certain that at thd 
 close of the conflict Molitsane had assumed the command of the 
 Bataung. 
 
THE BAROLONG 515 
 
 Upon the scattering of the Barolong clans, and Sihunelo's 
 flight once more to the south, a portion of the Bapulana escaped 
 to the north, where they joined their countrymen the Batlou ; 
 but the greater portion of them rallied round their chief Matlabe 
 (flattened clay),^ or as he was sometimes called, Molala (the poor 
 one), on account of the misfortunes which so frequently attended 
 him. This chief, to save himself and his people from utter de- 
 struction, entered into a kind of alliance with the enemy who 
 had so persistently endeavoured to destroy his tribe. In this we 
 have an exemplification of the manner in which these great in- 
 vading hordes were recruited, and how their numbers so rapidly 
 increased, by absorbing into their ranks the weaker tribes which 
 found it impossible to oppose them. Another potent reason 
 doubtless accelerated this process at the present juncture, and 
 that was the growing fame of the MatabiH, who were already 
 spreading terror through the Northern Bakuena. Thus we find 
 that Matlabe entered into a compact withMolitsane, and that these 
 two chiefs, aided by Ra-'kabi, chief of the Bakotu or Red men 
 (i.e. Koranas), Jan Bloem the Younger, and some of the Masateu 
 (the mixed multitude), or Griquas, determined to make an attack 
 upon the new, but formidable enemy. 
 
 In their first attack, they succeeded in surprising some of the 
 Matabili at dayHght, when the Matabili were repulsed at their 
 own kraals, and a large number of cattle were captured, with 
 which they attempted to retreat as rapidly as possible. The 
 Matabili, after recovering from their first surprise, pursued them, 
 surrounded them in the night, and stormed their encampment, 
 slaying a large number of them, when the remainder of the party 
 fled in a panic and took refuge for a time south of the Vaal. The 
 Matabili, however, not satisfied to think that any had escaped, 
 after securing the cattle pursued them again, pushing on after 
 them towards the valley of the Orange river ; but the confeder- 
 ates, in order to avoid them, separated. The Barolong doubled 
 and fled in an opposite direction, while the MatabUi in pursuit 
 came suddenly upon a strong party, among whom were a number 
 of emigrant Dutch farmers, when the pursuers were themselves 
 driven back with considerable slaughter. 
 
 1 That is a piece of softened clay which, when thrown against a wall, 
 or upon the ground, flattens out. 
 
5i6 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 After a time a quarrel arose between Matlabe and his ally 
 Molitsane, when the latter advanced suddenly towards the Vaal, 
 and attacked Matlabe's great-place, capturing it and most of 
 Matlabe's cattle, killing many of his people, and driving the 
 remainder, together with Matlabe himself, across the Vaal. The 
 defeated Barolong chief applied to his old enemy Moselekatze for 
 assistance. This was at once given to him. They attacked the 
 late victorious Bataung under MoUtsane, who was staying near 
 the Vaal, kiUed many of his warriors, and captured the few guns 
 he had and a great many cattle. 
 
 Almost immediately after this victory, Matlabe became 
 apprehensive, from the haughty demeanour of the Matabili, that 
 they would become perfect masters of the situation, when he 
 once more veered suddenly round to his late antagonist and old 
 aUy, and entered into a fresh compact with him to drive out their 
 common enemy. According to this agreement, the Matabili 
 were attacked by surprise, but again the confederates sustained 
 a severe defeat, from the superior prowess of the Abaka-Zulu. 
 A terrible slaughter followed, the great towns of the Bataung 
 were in their turn surprised and carried by storm one after the 
 other in rapid succession, and the inhabitants without distinc- 
 tion were mercilessly butchered. The remnant of the clans fled 
 across the country, taking refuge in the first instance among the 
 fastnesses of the Makwatling or Koranaberg, and then continued 
 their flight towards Thaba Nchu. 
 
 Shortly after this, Molitsane, his tribe having been scattered 
 by his reverses or dying of famine, found himself so weakened in 
 power that he was obliged to wander about in a state of destitu- 
 tion. Upon this Matlabe determined to seize his old rival and 
 put him to death. This, however, Moroka, the chief of the 
 Baseleka, would not aUow. A quarrel then arose between the 
 two kinsmen, Moroka and Matlabe, when the latter, being an 
 imperious man, parted in anger, and taking the remnant of his 
 clan with him, once more retraced his steps, and crossed the Vaal, 
 where he and his branch of the Barolong have since remained. 
 
 Thus have we completed our sketch of the Barolong history. 
 Of the Bakubuon, the Batsasin, and the Bakuru, nothing is now 
 known except that they once existed. A few years ago a few of 
 the Batsasin still survived at Taung. With regard to the Bush- 
 
THE BAROLONG 517 
 
 men, the Barolong tribe appears to have had little to do with 
 their extermination ; the pioneer Bachoana appear to have per- 
 formed that portion of the work, so that it will not be necessary 
 for us to dilate upon this point, but to pass at once to the next 
 subject for our consideration. 
 
Chapter XXV 
 
 THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 
 
 The group which we have now to consider was one of the most 
 important of those which migrated from the north. Its multi- 
 tudinous ramifications were at one time more widely spread than 
 those of any other. They were found scattered over a larger 
 area, extending from the Maluti in the south to Lake Ngami in 
 the north, and from the flanks of the Drakensberg towards the 
 seaboard on the east to the confines of the Kalahari on the west, 
 while the present Transvaal territory formed the principal focus 
 around which they concentrated. Taking them in their entirety, 
 they had made further advances towards civilization than any 
 other branch of the Bantu race. The main tribes trace back, 
 through an unbroken line of chiefs, to the great founder or com- 
 mon ancestor of the group, some twenty generations, represent- 
 ing therefore a probable length of time of six or seven hundred 
 years. 
 
 It is evident that the siboko of the ancient stem was the 
 Kuena, or Crocodile, even before the lifetime of the chief Kuena, 
 the special founder of the Bakuena proper. He therefore prob- 
 ably derived his name from the ancient siboko of his race. The 
 great antiquity of this tribal emblem is proved by the fact that 
 originally all the great branches from the old stem retained the 
 same siboko, although some were earlier offshoots than that of 
 Kuena himself. Thus the Bahurutsi branch is called Bahurutsi 
 a Malope, the Bamangwato, Bamangwato a Malope, and the 
 Bangwaketse, Bangwaketse a Malope, the people or men of a son 
 of Malope, while the Bakuena are called Bakuena a Masilo, the 
 people of Kuena the son of Masilo. This plainly shows that, 
 although a branch tribe may have selected a new object of vener- 
 ation, in which they were frequently guided by the name of their 
 
 £18 
 
A COPPER CASTING (ixact size) BY THE MAGALIESBERG BAKUENA, 
 
 Apparently made in three castings (i, 2, 3), 
 
 Found near some old Copper workings in the Transvaal. 
 
 It appears to have been a Madtila, or Phallic Charm. 
 
a 1. 
 
 a. 2 
 
 A SIMILAR COPPER CASTING BY THE SAME TRIBES. 
 Evidently used for the same purpose as the former. 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 519 
 
 founder, or it may be that the founder himself took the name of 
 the new siboko in order to shew that he was the man of, or repre- 
 sentative of, the emblem adopted by his clan, whichever way it 
 may have been, the origin of this superstition was beyond that, 
 though the commencement is lost in the dim obscurity of past 
 ages. 
 
 The term Bakone or Bakoni, which has been applied to them, 
 has been considered by some as a term of reproach, and of Kaffir 
 origin, being an appellation bestowed upon them by the latter 
 people, who looked with contempt upon the less warlike char- 
 acter of the interior tribes than that of themselves. M. Arbousset 
 states that he has heard that the denomination of Bakoni was 
 applied without distinction by the Kaffirs to all the coloured 
 people they had known, that of Basutu to the Bachoana in gen- 
 eral, and the name Baroa to the Bushman race. Moffat appears 
 more correctly to confine the title to the group of the Bakuena ; 
 while we shall find as we proceed that the term Basutu was ap- 
 plied exclusively to those clans which represent the Southern 
 Bakuena. The Bushmen on the other hand called the Bachoana 
 and Basutu collectively by the name 'Ku, while they designated 
 the Coast Kaffirs 'Tolo, and themselves 'Khuai and 'Khuai- 
 'Khuai. 
 
 Fortunately the connection between the various branches of 
 this group has been preserved,^ which enables us to follow out 
 our inquiry with considerable precision. We will therefore do 
 so under the following heads, viz. : — 
 
 1. The Bahurutsi, the people of Mohurutsi, 
 
 2. The Batlaru, the men of the Python, 
 
 3. The Bamangwato, the people of Ngwato, 
 
 4. The Batauana, the men of the young Lions, 
 
 5. The Bangwaketse, the people of Ngwaketse, 
 
 6. The Bakuena, the men of the Crocodile. 
 
 Under the last we shaU, on this occasion, merely speak of the 
 northern tribes of these people, and reserve whatever remarks we 
 have to make upon the remainder of the clans until we treat of 
 the great migration of these tribes to the south of the Vaal. 
 
 1 The merit of this is largely due to the energy of the Rev. Roger Price, 
 who upon being written to by the author for information, at once applied 
 himself to the collection of this valuable addition to the tribal history of 
 South Africa. 
 
520 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The Bahurutsi, or the People of Mohurutsi. 
 
 Malope, the great ancestor of this tribe, was the eldest son of 
 Masilo I, but, according to native tradition, having wrenched a 
 portion of the town or tribe from his father during the Hfetime 
 of the latter, his second son Kuena was looked upon as the true 
 lineal representative of the house of Masilo I. At the death of 
 Malope, his people were again subdivided under his three sons 
 Mohurutsi, Ngwato, and Ngwaketse, who laid the foundations 
 of three powerful tribes of the great Bakuena nation ; although, 
 in the first instance, Ngwato and Ngwaketse left their brother 
 Mohurutsi with their portions of their father's town, and joined 
 Kuena, where they remained with his tribe until a subsequent 
 period, when their followers, having retained their individuaUty 
 throughout, left it, and became independent tribes distinguished 
 by the names of their respective chiefs as the Bamangwato and 
 Bangwaketse. 
 
 It was evidently from this lengthened intimacy with the 
 Bakuena that these two branches retained the old national siboko 
 of the crocodile, the Bamangwato taking the antelope called the 
 puti or phuti (the duiker) as an additional object of their venera- 
 tion, while as we have already seen, the Bahurutsi having sepa- 
 rated under different circumstances became the Bachwene, or 
 the men of the Baboon, at an early period of their separation. 
 Notwithstanding this alteration, all the tribes derived from the 
 ancient stock of the Kuena hold the crocodile in particular fear, 
 even to the present day looking upon any contact with it as the 
 sure prognostication of evil ; thus showing that they still retain 
 some of the early habits of their race. 
 
 Although the national symbol ceased to be the special em- 
 blem of their tribe, it is quite certain that the Bahurutsi rulers 
 were still acknowledged as the paramount chiefs of aU the others, 
 with the exception of the representative Bakuena. This ancient 
 rank of the Bahurutsi is even now recognized amongst them. 
 This is unmistakably the case at any of their rites and ceremonies : 
 thus it is the prerogative of the Bahurutsi to be the first to eat 
 the first fruits of the new year, and it would be a serious breach 
 of international etiquette for any of the kindred tribes to partake 
 of the first fruits of the season before they had received intima- 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 521 
 
 tion from the Bahurutsi that they have already gone through 
 that ceremony. Even should a travelHng Mohurutsi be on a 
 visit to any other tribe when any of their rites and ceremonial 
 mysteries are being performed, he would take precedence of aU 
 the others, notwithstanding the presence of the ruling chiefs of 
 any of the other branches, even were he merely one of the com- 
 monalty among his own people, a sure acknowledgment, accord- 
 ing to native law and custom, of priority both of rank and of 
 tribal existence. 
 
 Little has been preserved of their intervening tribal history 
 from their separation to the last few years which preceded the 
 Mantatee invasion, except that they had numerous wars with 
 almost every tribe. They look, according to the authority of 
 Marete, upon Masilo as the great warrior chief of their race, who 
 spread his conquests far and wide in every direction. They 
 have the same traditions as aU the other tribes of having migrated 
 from the north, and it would appear that these conquests of 
 Masilo were achieved during this process of migration. 
 
 For a considerable period previous to 1812 their great town 
 appears to have been Kurrechane, about two hundred miles 
 north-east of Lithako. It was situated in the Mosega basin, 
 which contained the sources of the Marikwa, and was bounded on 
 the north and north-east by the Kurrechane range of mountains. 
 The beauty and fertiUty of this tract of country formed a theme 
 of admiration for several of the early travellers. Kurrechane, 
 Uke aU the chief towns of these agricultural tribes, was of con- 
 siderable dimensions. Dr. Casalis describes the country around 
 the town as being very beautiful. To the north, he says, rose the 
 mountains of Kurrechane and Lehorutse, to the east was the 
 valley of the Magame, covered with fields of millet, and to the 
 south, hills carpeted with verdure beautified the landscape by 
 the variety of their forms. 
 
 Mr. Campbell, who visited them in 1812-13, states that 
 Sibiware was then chief of the tribe, and that their manners and 
 customs were similar to those of the Bangwaketse. Their great 
 place was larger than Lithako, and their cattle kraal was so large 
 that animals frequently grazed in it. The climate of their coun- 
 try was cold, on account of its elevated position, while the grass 
 was peculiarly short and sweet. The country abounded also in 
 
522 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 wood, particularly one sort, of which they made large wooden 
 bowls which they called Magwana, and which grows tall and 
 thick. It was from the Bahurutsi that the Batlapin obtained the 
 copper for rings which they manufactured, and iron for making 
 assagais. The ore was said to resemble the earth, which they 
 dug out of a mountain, after which it was smelted, and made into 
 various articles. The iron was also dug out in stones, and under- 
 went the same operation. The Bahurutsi were two days' journey 
 from the Bangwaketse, and five days from the Batlapin. 
 
 Some of the principal houses were of considerable size. One, 
 described by Mr. Campbell, was circular, like all the others, 
 having not only the walls plastered within and without, but like- 
 wise the inside of the roof. The wall was painted yellow, and 
 ornamented with figures of shields, elephants, camelopards, etc. 
 It was also adorned with a neat cornice on a border painted of 
 a red colour. In some houses there were figures, pillars, etc., 
 moulded in hard clay, and painted with different colours, that 
 would not have disgraced European workmen. They shewed 
 themselves an ingenious people. Various vessels were in their 
 possession, painted of different colours and glazed for holding 
 water, milk, food, and a kind of beer made of corn. They had 
 also pots of clay of all sizes and very strong. Every part of their 
 houses and yards was kept very clean. They were also ac- 
 quainted with the method of smelting metals. 
 
 Alarms from sudden forays made upon them were as much a 
 normal condition among these Bahurutsi as among the other 
 tribes. Mr. Campbell has given us a description of the excite- 
 ment which one of these alarms occasioned. The hue and cry 
 was raised, and a scene of confusion quickly followed. A num- 
 ber of shrill whistles sounded in every direction, men bawling, 
 and the enclosed cattle bellowing with all their might, while the 
 warriors armed with their assagais, shields, and battle-axes, 
 started in pursuit. On their return they came marching in 
 regular order, carrying their arms in stately array, their faces 
 bedaubed with pipe clay, every face marked differently ; their 
 legs were painted with the same clay up to the knees, resembling 
 stockings. On halting, they went through all kinds of manoeu- 
 vres used in attacking an enemy, with their assagais, etc. Some- 
 times they would leap to a great height, as if to escape an arrow 
 
Carved Wooden Vessels, Bachoana. 
 
 I. Large Wooden Dish, with zigzag border. 
 
 vs. Do. Drinking Cup, capable of holding about one gallon. 
 
 3. Do. Kaabas» for milk or water. 
 
 /. 
 
 I, 2. Bamangwato Wooden Vessels, carved out of solid block, for water, milk, or beer. 
 3, 4. Do. do. Spoons, showing ornamentation on under side. 
 
 5. Makalaka Wooden Dish, showing zigzag border. 
 
 Copied from Dr. E. Holub's Collection of Native Implements-, &c., by G. W. Stow. 
 
 1. 
 
 mmf^^^ 
 
 J',if^; 
 
 
 -t^sz^^ ^ 
 
 Wooden Vessels, belonging to the Bakuena, cut out of solid wood. 
 . A great Drinkihg Beer Cup, capable of holding two gallons. z. Wooden Drinking Cup. 
 
 Hn with Cover. 
 
 A Circular Dish, about zh ft. in diameter. 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 523 
 
 or an assagai. Their movements in advancing or retreating 
 were in a zigzag direction, as if to prevent the enemy from taking 
 aim at them. When the exercise was over, they retired outside 
 the gate, and sat down. 
 
 On another occasion, some of these Bahurutsi warriors painted 
 their bodies with a pipe clay of a French-grey colour.^ Most of 
 them were armed with four assagais, also battle-axes and shields 
 made of the hide of an ox. They exhibited their war manoeuvres 
 in a terrific manner ; now advancing, then retreating, and sud- 
 denly returning to the attack, sometimes imitating the stabbing 
 of an enemy. The height of their leaps into the air was sur- 
 prising. At a great meeting, notwithstanding the great diversity 
 of dresses, they aU resembled each other in having their bodies 
 painted with white pipe clay from head to foot, and in wearing 
 a white turban made from the skin of the wild hog, the bristles 
 of which were as white as the whitest horsehair. Many wore 
 panther or leopard skins, and several were ornamented with eight 
 or ten coverings resembling fur tippets hanging from their shoul- 
 ders ; and others wore them depending from the middle of their 
 bodies. One warrior alone was painted red from head to foot. 
 
 These tribal colours would almost seem to intimate that such 
 distinctive adornment was used to enable the warriors of any 
 tribe to distinguish those of their own clan from those of their 
 enemy, in the day of battle, as in the confusion of the combat, 
 with men speaking the same language and using the same dress 
 and weapons, an error, especially in one of their night attacks 
 when they could not very readily by any other means distinguish 
 friends from foes, might easily arise. 
 
 There seems very little doubt that before the desolating 
 invasions of the formidable Mantatees, and still more terrible 
 Matabili, the country around the Bahurutsi was very thickly 
 populated. Mr. Campbell noted some of these tribes at the time 
 of his visit. He states that to the north of them the Bama- 
 Tigwato and Bakuena were hving, to the north-east the Makalaka, 
 to the eastward the Bahatja, the Bapalangi, and the Mashona, 
 to the south-east the Barolong, the Basetja, Maribana, Babu- 
 
 1 These tribes used different colours for their war paint, the Tamaha 
 and Batlapin red, some of the Mantatees black, and the Bahurutsi different 
 shades of white. 
 
524 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 klola, Bamuhopa, and Bapuhene, to the south-south-east the 
 Bapoo (the men of the Bull), Bamatou, Baliciana, Bahoba, 
 Bapiri, Baklokla (probably the Batlokua), Mulihi, Muhubilu, 
 Mumanyana, Bahoupi, and Bamaliti. Many of these were 
 doubtless minor offshoots or clans of the great tribes of this group, 
 which were afterwards swept from the face of the earth by the 
 invading hordes that, within the ten years which followed, devas- 
 tated the entire country occupied by the Bakuena group ; after 
 which many of these smaller tribes were never more heard of, and 
 were as clean gone as if they had never existed. 
 
 At the time, although some portions of the country were 
 thickly populated, it was not evenly peopled throughout ; but 
 there were numerous centres round which the tribes were densely 
 congregated, with great zones of open country around and inter- 
 vening between them, the resorts of countless herds of game, and 
 where the aboriginal Bushman still followed the chase, like his 
 forefathers before him, in spite of the intruders who had occupied 
 all the most arable portions of the land, where the invading hordes 
 had for some generations established their great agricultural 
 settlements. 
 
 As will be seen, on a reference to the table of chiefs, the 
 Bahurutsi divided into three great branches, the eldest or great 
 branch was the house of Mangope, whose representative now 
 resides at Kolobeng, and whose chief has always been acknow- 
 ledged as paramount over the others ; the second or inferior 
 branch was looked upon as the house of Moilo, whose members 
 are now far more numerous than those of the elder ; the third 
 offshoot was that of the Batlaru, or the men of the Python. Many 
 minor clans, now lost sight of, have been thrown off from these, 
 whose history it would be unnecessary for us, even if we were able, 
 to pursue. 
 
 The paucity of traditions which appear to have survived with 
 regard to their chiefs would seem to indicate that no one of the 
 original stock rendered himself, for many generations, so con- 
 spicuous, or sufficiently famous, as to have left his impress upon 
 the tribal history. What little is to be learnt about them has 
 always been from fragmentary allusions to them in connection 
 with other tribes. It is thus that we gather that the Bakuena 
 sometimes made forays upon them, with the hope of relieving 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 525 
 
 them of some of their sleek herds ; and that their powerful rela- 
 tives, the Bangwaketse, attacked them under their warlike chief 
 Makiba, when Wakanye, one of their captains, was slain. Their 
 vast wealth in cattle was no doubt the great inducement which 
 instigated these onslaughts upon them. 
 
 Crocodiles were so numerous in the rivers of the country that 
 in the days of the Bahurutsi occupation they have been known 
 to attack and overpower both cows and oxen which incautiously 
 approached the water to drink. 
 
 In our memoir of the Batlapin, we saw that the daughter of 
 the great house, or that of the chief wife or queen, asserted her 
 prerogative of appointing a successor to the chieftainship when 
 no male heirs had been bom to the house which she represented, 
 at the time of her father's death. The history of the Bahurutsi 
 chiefs furnishes us with another instance of the old-time customs 
 which still survived among these South African tribes. The 
 great queen of Sibiwure, at the time of his death had no children 
 by her husband, but still, although he had left sons by his other 
 or inferior wives, the right of succession was in her house. It 
 was therefore ordained, in accordance with ancient custom, 
 that his brother Lekweleng should consort with her that he might 
 raise up seed for his brother, Sibiwure being looked upon as the 
 reputed father of any offspring which might arise from such a 
 union. In consequence of this arrangement, a son was bom to 
 the great house, whose rights and privileges were exactly the 
 same as if he had been the actual son of the chief himself, Le- 
 kweleng, his actual father, remaining until his coming of age his 
 guardian, and acting as regent until that time arrived. 
 
 This Lekweleng, according to Campbell, appears to have been, 
 for his time, a considerable traveller. He had traversed the 
 country for eight days' journey to the eastward of the territory 
 of his own tribe ; and it is interesting to learn that it was prob- 
 ably through this channel that the Bahumtsi first heard of a 
 people still farther to the eastward than their daring chief pene- 
 trated, called MatabUi, living near the " Great Water." These 
 were probably the original Amazulu, who were then beginning 
 to drive the coast tribes before them ; and thus some of the fugi- 
 tives crossing the Drakensberg commenced to spread the terrible 
 fame of " the men who disappeared," as they were called by the 
 
526 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Bakuena tribes when they saw them advancing under cover of 
 their great shields. Through the same channel they learnt of the 
 existence of another nation to the north-east, called Molokwam, 
 that used only bows and arrows in war. He stated on his return 
 that all the intervening tribes which he passed had houses, dress, 
 and fields similar to the Bahurutsi. 
 
 In 1823 Lekweleng or Ithlasing was still at the head of the 
 tribe at Kurrechan^, when the Mantatees first fell upon the 
 Bakuena tribes, destroying many of their towns and slaughtering 
 immense numbers of the people, after which, while advancing 
 towards the west, the invaders met their first check at the hands 
 of the redoubtable Makaba and his Bangwaketse warriors. Thus 
 baulked of their expected prey, these swarming hordes, burning 
 with a vindictive desire to wipe out the rebuff they had just 
 received, invaded the Bahurutsi territory, darkening the hills 
 with their savage and relentless legions. Kurrechane was taken 
 by storm, and not only laid in ruins, but almost completely razed. 
 An indiscriminate butchery of the inhabitants who were not for- 
 tunate enough to make their escape accompanied the onslaught, 
 the invaders stripping them of the greater portion of their great 
 herds of cattle, and carr5ang havoc and desolation wherever they 
 went. Then turning upon the Barolong, as we have already 
 seen, they stormed their towns and scattered the inhabitants. 
 The alarm spread to the Batlapin, and the terrible report of their 
 cannibal propensities increased the consternation and dismay of 
 the tribes threatened with invasion. 
 
 Ithlasing's death must have occurred about this time, as no 
 further mention appears to be made of him. After the storm 
 had passed, some Bahurutsi fugitives again settled themselves 
 near the site of old Kurrechane. In 1829 these fragments of their 
 tribe were living at Mosega, under Mokatla. They had lost all 
 their flocks by the Mantatees, and were living congregated in a 
 glen, their wide spreading corn lands, which had once covered the 
 sides of the sloping hiUs and filled the valleys, were lying almost 
 totally neglected ; and they were subsisting on game, roots, 
 berries, and what little food they could raise from their diminished 
 cornfields. At this time another terror was growing upon them, 
 and they were living in fear lest Moselekatze should one day 
 make them captives. The most advanced outposts to the east- 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 527 
 
 ward of these dreaded Matabili were in this year at a distance 
 from the Bahurutsi of about one hundred miles, or about four or 
 five days' journey by waggon from Mosega, the intervening 
 country being beautiful and fertile, so that no barrier now inter- 
 posed between them. 
 
 Shortly after the terrible catastrophe which befel the great 
 Griqua raid under Barend Barends into the Matabili country in 
 1831, Moselekatze rapidly extended his conquests to the west- 
 ward. The French missionaries, Messrs. Pellissier and Lemue, 
 had by this time visited Mokatla, and established a mission at 
 Mosega. As the MatabiU chief advanced, he sent to summon 
 the white men to his headquarters, but fearing the wily despot, 
 they fled to Lithako. Almost immediately afterwards the in- 
 censed Moselekatze attacked Mokatla and his people, and put 
 the Bahurutsi to flight ; most of them, however, fled at his 
 approach. Whatever remained of the once populous town of 
 Kurrechane, the former great-place and pride of their tribe, was 
 rooted out, and the remnant of the inhabitants scattered in 
 various directions. 
 
 Mokatla, the chief, fled from his country with his people, a 
 portion of whom took refuge in a small forest not far from the 
 banks of the Kolong. Others sought refuge in the confines of 
 the inhospitable Kalahari ; while the great Abaku-Zulu con- 
 queror established his headquarters on the Tolane river, near 
 Marikwa, and fixed one of his great military stations in the fertile 
 basin of Mosega, asserting his sway at the same time as far as 
 the Malopo. 
 
 Harris, who visited Moselekatze at this spot, says that the 
 scattered inhabitants of this part of the country consisted prin- 
 cipally of the Barolong, Bangwaketse, Batlapin, and Bahurutsi. 
 These poor wretches, he writes, Hved in small communities, and 
 being destitute of cattle, depended entirely for subsistence on 
 locusts or such game as chance might direct to their pitfalls. 
 Near Sitlagole river many extensive villages totally deserted 
 were passed, rude earthen vessels, fragments of ostrich eggshells, 
 and portions of the skins of wild animals, however, proved that 
 they had been recently inhabited. During the whole of two 
 days, he adds, not a human being was seen. 
 
 At the time of Mr. Moffat's visit the remains of the ancient 
 
528 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 great-place of the Bahurutsi, which had taken its name from the 
 range of mountains Kurrechane or Chuenyane, could not be found, 
 while the number of hons which had congregated in this desolated 
 region was fearful. Such had become the condition of the coun- 
 try that the lions of this part, having gorged on human flesh, did 
 not spend their time in looking at the human eye, but sought the 
 easiest and most expeditious way of making a meal of a man, 
 
 After the defeat of the previously invincible Matabili by the 
 emigrant farmers and the flight of Moselekatze to the north, the 
 remnants of the Bahurutsi, Bakatla, and other tribes returned to 
 their old land ; but the terrible experiences of former years did 
 not bring peace to the country. They were no sooner rid of their 
 great common enemy, than the former system of never-ending 
 raids and petty wars and struggles for the possession of cattle 
 once more commenced among them, and continued without inter- 
 mission until the Boers, pressing in from the south, forcibly sub- 
 jected all those who came within their reach, and occupied the 
 country. 
 
 For the purpose we have in view it will not be necessary to 
 pursue the career of the Bahurutsi further ; we will therefore 
 pass on to the consideration of the next branch which presents 
 itself. 
 
 The Batlaru, the Men of the Python. 
 
 In the appellation and siboko of this tribe, we have an instance 
 of either the symbol being adopted in honour of the name of their 
 chief at the time of their separation from the parent stem, or else 
 the chief himself assuming on the occasion the proud title of the 
 Man of the Python far excellence, a designation upon which it is 
 certain the chiefs of the Bakuena and Bataung particularly prided 
 themselves, namely, of being called " the Man " of the Crocodile 
 or of the Lion respectively. 
 
 The Batlaru were also sometimes known by the name of 
 Bamothlo-a-re, the men of the Wild Olive, from the fact of their 
 great ancestor Motlaru, who first separated with his people from 
 the main branch, erecting his hut and those of his followers under 
 wide-spreading olive trees. This double object of veneration 
 would seem to suggest the probability of some incident having 
 occurred at this halting-place which aroused their superstition, 
 
I. Large Wooden Ladle (Bakuena), capable of holding upwards of a pint. 
 2,3. Do. do. do. 2^ feet long. 
 
 Copied from tlu originals by G. W. Stow. 
 
 Large Wooden Ladles, 2* feet long (Bakuena), cut out of solid wood. 
 Copied from originals by G. W. Stow. 
 
 
 Baohoana and Basutu Spoons, seen by early missionaries. 
 I. Casalis' Basutos, p. 140. -i, 3- Moffat's Labours, p. 133. 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 529 
 
 in which the visit of some enormous python to the shady grove 
 which afEorded them shelter was connected, and from which cir- 
 cumstance it acquired the name of Matlarung, the (actual) place 
 of the Python, as well as that of the chief, the Motlaru, or the man 
 of the Python. 
 
 In 1820 Mr. J. Campbell visited this tribe, when he obtained 
 the following corroborative evidence with regard to them. The 
 Batlaru originally constituted part of the Bahurutsi nation ; but 
 wishing to separate, they pretended to start some two hundred 
 and twenty years ago upon a jackal hunt. This excuse would 
 naturally appear a feasible one, on account of the great value 
 which was placed upon the skins of these animals for making the 
 most admired karosses. From this hunting expedition, however, 
 they never returned. They migrated with their herds, their 
 wives, and little ones in a southerly direction, towards the Koero- 
 manie, where after thus asserting their independence, they 
 settled, taking up their first residence near a shady grove of trees 
 (wild olives), which ever after obtained the name of Matlarung. 
 
 From that time to 1820 they were ruled by an unbroken line 
 of chiefs in eight descents. At the time of Mr. Campbell's visit, 
 Lahesi, then an old man, was the chief of the tribe. The Batla- 
 pin claimed the tract of country in which their forefathers had 
 settled, and they had ever since acknowledged them as superiors, 
 by giving presents as a kind of tribute, and agreeing that they 
 would not engage in any wars or expeditions without the consent 
 of the Batlapin chief. In other respects, however, they were 
 perfectly independent. The great place of their chief was at 
 Patane ; Kuice and Turiche were two other towns belonging to 
 them. The Batlaru painted their bodies red, in a similar manner 
 to the Batlapin, and powdered their hair with a blue sparkling 
 powder. They sowed Kaffir com, melons, and beans. During 
 the hunting months, from May to September, the chief resided at 
 Kuic4 six days' journey from Lithako ; this place was situated 
 in what was formerly the bed of the Malopo. 
 
 Lahesi stated that when he was a boy the Koeromanie river 
 ran along the desert, but since that time it had ceased to do so. 
 Formerly, he said, no buffaloes came near them, but of late they 
 had come. Neither had they lions or hyenas in 1820, but some 
 panthers. None of the Bushmen, he added, now robbed them, 
 
 M M 
 
530 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 fonnerly they did, but he kiUed many, and they had never trou- 
 bled his tribe since/ He declared that the Batlaru were the only 
 people who had a clean country : no robbing Bushmen, lions, or 
 hyenas, but many serpents, some of which were very large. 
 
 About the time the confederate tribes attacked the Barolong 
 under Gontse, Tauana, Sihunelo, and other leaders, and the fatal 
 " battle of the chiefs " was fought, a formidable horde of banditti 
 under the leadership of Jacob Cloete and Klaas Dreyer, from the 
 Langeberg, made a desperate onslaught upon the Batlaru. These 
 marauders were a heterogeneous mass of Griquas, Bastaards 
 from the Cape Colony, Namaquas, Koranas, Bushmen, and others 
 collected in the Langeberg of Griqualand West, on the border of 
 the Kalahari. Being armed with guns, they soon made them- 
 selves formidable, and committed many outrages throughout 
 the neighbouring country ; while their attack on the Batlaru 
 proved only the precursor of a succession of disasters to that 
 people. 
 
 Mothibi, the chief of the Batlapin, in speaking of this second 
 set of Bergenaars, said that when an enemy came from the in- 
 terior, they had neither guns nor horses, and there was some 
 chance of escape ; but when the Griquas and Koranas came, who 
 could obtain these means of destruction from the white people, 
 the heart of the Batlapin could think of nothing but the calamities 
 which awaited them. The Batlapin professed to assist the Ba- 
 tlaru against these lawless banditti, but, notwithstanding Mothibi 
 bewailed so pathetically the evils such marauders committed, 
 instead of rendering the necessary aid, he seized the cattle of the 
 weaker tribe. 
 
 This act of treachery excited the indignation of the Batlaru ; 
 they made reprisals, and as in all such cases, bloodshed followed 
 rapine. A meeting was convened at Koeromanie, to which the 
 Batlaru chiefs were invited, but as Mothibi had neither the wis- 
 dom, honesty, nor decision to order his people to resign their ill- 
 gotten spoil, the Batlaru returned mortified, and held him up to 
 derision in their dance and song. Irritated at this behaviour, 
 the Batlapin chief resolved to muster his warriors once more. 
 The next day the commando set off thirsting for plunder. The 
 
 1 Evidence, nevertheless, that the aboriginal inhabitants clung to their 
 old country until a recent period. 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 531 
 
 result of this was the devastation of the towns and villages of the 
 Batlaru, who fled at their approach. 
 
 In the midst of this the Batlapin discovered that they them- 
 selves were attacked by the same marauding Griquas. Their 
 women and children were seen flying in all directions, while the 
 immense columns of smoke shewed that many of the towns and 
 villages were on fire. At the same time the very people who 
 might have been their most serviceable allies at such a juncture 
 were fugitives in the wilderness, owing to the acts of treachery 
 and spoliation which they themselves had committed. 
 
 The date of Lahesi's death is not known, but Tlogu was the 
 great chief of this tribe when Mr. Moffat wrote of them. His 
 great place was at the same Patane, some twenty miles west of 
 Koeromanie. Such being the slight sketch we have been able to 
 make of this branch of the great group we are treating of, we will 
 now make a passing allusion to the next which presents itself. 
 
 The Bamangwato, the people of Ngwato, and The Batauana, 
 the men of the Young Lions. 
 
 Very little is known either of the people of Ngwato, the son of 
 Malope, as the men of this tribe frequently designate themselves 
 {Bamangwato a Malope), or of their history, except the facts 
 which have been previously mentioned. We have seen, when 
 treating of the siboko of the Bachoana, Bakuena, and Basutu 
 tribes, that the Crocodile is as much an object of superstitious 
 dread to a Momangwato as to a Mokuena himself. We have 
 already pointed out that this arose probably from their longer 
 connection with the main branch of the Bakuena, and the more 
 friendly conditions under which their ultimate separation took 
 place, than that of the Bahurutsi, when their common ancestor 
 Malope appears to have parted in anger from his father, and was 
 partly disinherited by Masilo I in consequence. 
 
 The Bamangwato have long been looked upon as one of the 
 most industrious tribes of the interior. Their skill in the working 
 of metals is unsurpassed by any of the native tribes, the Mashona 
 being the only people who can attempt to compete with them. 
 The elaboration and finish, especially when we take into con- 
 sideration the primitive methods and crude implements they 
 
532 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 employ in their manufacture, of their assagais, their elephant- 
 spears, harpoons, double-barbed arrows, and formidable battle- 
 axes, and the ornamentation which they sometimes attempt upon 
 their ironwork, are surprising. It was this wonderful skill in 
 metals which saved their tribe from annihilation when their terri- 
 tory was invaded by the hitherto pitiless Matabili. Their skilled 
 workmen were spared upon condition that Moselekatze should 
 receive as an annual tribute a certain number of assagai blades, 
 axes, etc. Some few of them fled to the north-eastern side of the 
 Kalahari, but the great majority remained near the mountains 
 they had formerly occupied, to the north of the old Bakuena 
 country, the vassal smiths of the great " conqueror of nations," 
 as the ruler of the Matabili was frequently styled. 
 
 The traditions of this tribe have never been collected, so that 
 nothing of their history is at present known, except that during 
 the lifetime of the old chief Kgama I a quarrel took place between 
 his two sons Kgari and Tauana, when a division of the tribe took 
 place, and Tauana became the founder of the branch clan Batau- 
 ana, the men of the Young Lions, whose descendants have been 
 found by modem travellers in the region of Lake Ngami. 
 
 The Bangwaketse, the People of Ngwaketse. 
 
 The siboko of the Bangwaketse was the same as that of the 
 ancient stem from which they had sprung, and after their separa- 
 tion they continued to dance and revere the Crocodile until they 
 became one of the most powerful and noted of all the numerous 
 offshoots of the family to which they belonged. They also boasted 
 in the title of Bangwaketse a Malope in a similar manner to the 
 Bahurutsi and Bamangwato, and were therefore more nearly 
 allied to the paramount chiefs of the Bahurutsi than even the 
 great Bakuena themselves. 
 
 As agriculturists, the Bakuena alone equalled them in the 
 extent of their operations, and the enormous com jars which they 
 built up of earthenware, capable of containing upwards of two 
 hundred gallons, were the astonishment of early travellers who 
 visited them. Campbell states that they cultivated more 
 ground, and had a greater abundance of millet, beans, pulse, and 
 watermelons than any of their neighbours, and more than this, 
 they did not paint themselves so much as the Batlapin, and were 
 
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 ■50 1 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 533 
 
 cleanly in their houses, in cooking and eating, and, what would 
 seem rather surprising with people possessing abundance of cattle, 
 neither they nor the Barolong practised riding of any kind, not 
 even on a pack ox.'^ 
 
 Great centres of population like that of the Bangwaketse 
 depended more upon their extensive agricultural operations than 
 their pastoral pursuits, although some of the more powerful tribes 
 possessed immense herds of cattle. From this cause therefore 
 there was less inducement to wander about in search of pasturage, 
 and they wovild, as a natural consequence, form more permanent 
 settlements, selecting the most fertile localities for their great- 
 places, or chief towns, or rather collections of towns. These more 
 fruitful and favoured tracts of country formed the nuclei around 
 which the people of the respective tribes congregated, which from 
 the amount of their population and the extent of cultivation 
 which surrounded them filled the early missionaries and travellers 
 who visited them, before the great native wars, with amazement. 
 Under such conditions, it was but natural that they were found 
 to have made greater advances in the construction and comfort 
 of their dwellings, and had arrived at a greater degree of per- 
 fection in various manufactures. Their pottery, their weapons, 
 their agricultural implements, and their wooden utensils far ex- 
 celled those produced by other tribes living under less favourable 
 circumstances. 
 
 These Bangwaketse, together with the Bakuena themselves, 
 the Bamangwato, and some other branches of the group, may 
 therefore be looked upon as having made greater strides towards 
 civilization than any of the others then pressing to the southern 
 portion of the African continent ; while, as a necessity, from the 
 very conditions of life by which they were surrounded, the period 
 occupied in their migration would, under ordinary circumstances, 
 be of far longer duration than that of those whose chief means of 
 support were their flocks and herds. 
 
 Neverthieless a continuous struggle was ever going on between 
 the various tribes, and even branches of tribes, for the possession 
 
 1 This shews a marked distinction between them and the nomadic 
 pastoral Hottentot race, who seem to have practised riding from a remote 
 period ; probably their erratic propensities, in contradistinction to the 
 agricultural proclivities of the former, may account for this. 
 
534 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 of cattle ; and when from time to time a more ambitious and war- 
 like chief than ordinary arose, his fame and that of his tribe 
 quickly spread among the others, while some of the weaker tribes 
 in his immediate neighbourhood became tributary to him, and 
 thus increased his strength. The warlike renown of any par- 
 ticular tribe seems almost in every case to have been derived 
 more from the personal daring and energy of the particular chief 
 ruling them at the time than from any other cause, a fame which 
 generally collapsed at once at the time of his death, when not 
 unf requently, owing to the dissensions of the rival claimants for 
 power, the tribe itself was torn into several brancties, the only 
 remains of their loyalty to the elder branch being shewn in some 
 slight acknowledgment of precedence and brief authority to the 
 paramount head of the original stock, which allowed him the right 
 of priority in all tribal rites and ceremonies when any members 
 of that particular portion of the tribe were present. 
 
 Their wars were more cattle forays on an extensive scale than 
 determined invasions for the purpose of securing territorial 
 aggrandizement. Such expeditions were not unf requently under- 
 taken against tribes living at a distance, sometimes of two hun- 
 dred miles or more, with the view of taking their intended foes by 
 surprise, and being able to pounce down upon their cattle with 
 little risk to themselves. The possibility of carrying out such 
 incursions, and traversing the intervening country without dis- 
 covery, or interfering, or coming in contact with the tribes which 
 must have been passed on the way, shews that there must have 
 been even at that time considerable tracts unoccupied by these 
 stronger races, which were still merely roamed over by countless 
 herds of game and the scattered hunter tribes who were the true 
 and original possessors of the soil, but who were never taken into 
 consideration when speaking of the inhabitants of the country. 
 Doubtless all the rich and well-watered portions, specially adapted 
 for their primitive mode of agriculture, had long been appro- 
 priated by the intruding tribes, and were in many parts densely 
 populated by them. 
 
 Such appears to have been the condition of these various 
 tribal groups at the time when Makaba II commenced his am- 
 bitious career ; but even he (judging from the fragmentary 
 portions of his history which have been preserved) seems to have 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 535 
 
 been more desirous of increasing the bovine riches of his tribe by 
 making large and continuous captures of his enemies' or rivals' 
 cattle, than of subduing them by actual conquest, in order to 
 bring them under his dominion. Much less had he a desire of 
 annihilating them, as was frequently the case in the terrible wars 
 which broke out about the time of his death. This warlike chief 
 adopted the custom of sending an expedition against one or other 
 of the surrounding nations every moon, while the moonlight 
 lasted, the expeditionary force always returning when the nights 
 grew dark. 
 
 The warriors of this tribe had a custom of making scars on 
 their left sides, as marks of distinction, which recorded the num- 
 ber of enemies they had slain in battle, and which reflected honour 
 upon them among their feUow countrymen. Thus the principal 
 messenger sent to the Batlapin during Mr. Campbell's visit by the 
 chief Makaba had five cuts or scars across his left side, a proof 
 that he had killed five men. This mode of recording the number 
 of enemies slain by any warrior, by making a corresponding 
 number of long scars on his body, was also practised by some of 
 the other tribes as well as the Bangwaketse ; one of the Batlou 
 was observed with ten of these distinctive scores upon his back, 
 which were marks for ten men he had killed in his lifetime. 
 
 In 1820 the Bangwaketse appear to have been one of the most 
 restless and formidable tribes in the Interior. They were gener- 
 ally successful both in capturing cattle and in inflicting loss of 
 life upon their opponents in their frequent expeditions. Their 
 power was shewn when a combination of ten other nations or 
 large tribes was formed with the intention of attacking and crush- 
 ing Makaba, but they could not make any impression upon him. 
 His country was of a character well adapted for defence, being 
 intersected with precipitous hills, with deep gorges and ravines, 
 and still more mountainous towards the north and east. The 
 vigour of his warriors was also remarkable when compared to 
 some of the Bachoana tribes. They did not paint their bodies 
 like the latter, but were accustomed to frequent ablutions, habits 
 which probably conduced to their superior physical development. 
 
 Little is known of the history of this tribe [from the time of 
 Ngwaketse, its founder, to the death of Moleta, the father of 
 Makaba. It is said that this chief was poisoned by his son 
 
536 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Makaba, for the sake of obtaining one of his wives, to whom the 
 son was attached. Of the intervening ancestors of Makaba 
 nothing is known, except the sequence of their names, as shewn in 
 the hst of the Bangwaketse chiefs. 
 
 Makiba the Second, or as he was sometimes called, Mori- 
 Moleta (the son of Moleta), had his great-place at a spot called 
 Kuakue, about two hundred miles to the north-east of Lithako 
 It was sometimes called Moleta, probably after his father during 
 his lifetime. It appears that he caused his father's death about 
 1790 ; after which it is said that this native despot had nearly 
 all his younger children put to death, lest they should murder 
 him as he had murdered his father. T'shouse or Choase, ' his 
 eldest son, was, however, allowed to survive. Tchoi, his great- 
 wife, fled from him to her father, who instead of returning her, 
 gave her to a powerful chief named Brumila, as his wife. 
 
 Makaba's entire life was filled up in making attacks and re- 
 prisals upon his neighbours. The Bakuena seemed special objects 
 of his restless maliciousness. In his father's lifetime he led an 
 expedition against them, when he succeeded in capturing many 
 of their cattle. In a second raid against the same tribe he was 
 equally successful, and even made one of their chiefs, named 
 Sichangwa, a prisoner, whom he afterwards liberated. In a 
 third attack, however, he slew Sichangwa, which so enraged the 
 Bakuena that they raUied, made a furious attack upon Makaba, 
 killed many of his people, and captured many of his cattle. 
 Notwithstanding this repulse, he attacked and killed Wikanye, 
 a great captain of the Bahurutsi ; he drove away his own uncle 
 Kanye and murdered his children, and carried on continuous 
 forays, harrying the neighbouring tribes on every side, until the 
 Bakuena on the one hand and the Batlapin on the other entered 
 into an offensive and defensive alliance against him. Their 
 attack was to be simultaneous. Makaba, however, not only de- 
 fended himself, but beat them off with great slaughter. Hence 
 arose the uniform enmity of the Batlapin chief against Makaba, 
 while the former and his tribe lived in constant dread of an attack 
 from so powerful an enemy. 
 
 1 This son is called Tsusane by Moffat. The custom of the same indi- 
 vidual altering his name at different stages of his life leads to this apparent 
 confusion in the names of individuals. 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 537 
 
 Makaba, like all South African despots, possessed such abso- 
 lute power over his people that all his orders, however hazardous, 
 were instantly obeyed. Thus when Jan Bloem the Elder, at the 
 head of the plundering horde that elected him their chief, made 
 his desperate attack upon the territories of the Bangwaketse, 
 Makaba became so exasperated that he ordered a chosen emissary 
 to go and assassinate Bloem. The man went, but mistaking his 
 victim, struck down another person instead of Bloem. He then 
 fled, and attempted to make his escape ; but being hotly pursued 
 was overtaken and put to death. 
 
 In the latter part of Molehabangwe's reign, the chief of the 
 Bangwaketse invited the Batlapin and some of the neighbouring 
 Koranas to join him in an expedition against a nation beyond his 
 territories. They complied with his request, and marched to- 
 gether to attack the enemy. On the field of battle, before the 
 engagement commenced, the Bangwaketse left the Batlapin and 
 the Koranas to fight it out by themselves, when about eighty of 
 them were killed. This act of treachery the Batlapin considered 
 as a snare which had been laid to entrap them, and thus ensure 
 their destruction. 
 
 Makaba by such means at length established his fame as the 
 most formidable and restless chief among these native tribes. It 
 was doubtless this continued state of war and uncertainty on the 
 part of this powerful and objectionable neighbour which induced 
 several branches of the Bakuena and other tribes to migrate more 
 to the south about this time, as we find that some of them had 
 already established themselves in the eastern portions of the 
 present Free State before they were overtaken by the devastating 
 wars carried on by the Amangwane under Matuana, the Ma- 
 ntatees under their Amazonian chieftainess, and the Matabili under 
 Moselekatze. 
 
 At this time a considerable number of nations occupied the 
 country to the north-east and east of the territory of this tribe, 
 which afforded an extensive field for the marauding expeditions 
 of this irrepressible chief. Among them were the Bapula (the 
 men of the Rain),^Bapuana, Bapiri (a branch of), Batpu, Mulihe, 
 Matshakwa, Bapurgi, Ba-poo (the men of the Bull), Mahehe, 
 Boperis, Bachacha, Omanribe, Selulana, Bokoti, Sebotya, Ba- 
 kohe. 
 
538 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 All these tribes extended in the directions specified, until, as 
 the natives stated, the borders of the Batshou reached a great 
 river so broad that you could scarcely see the other side. Its 
 course was towards the rising sun and they affirmed that it ran 
 into a great water that would frighten one to look at. They 
 reported that all the nations beyond the Bahurutsi were similar 
 in their manners, customs, and method of building houses, and 
 so thickly was the country populated that their large towns were 
 hardly ever more than a day's journey from each other, so that 
 there was no occasion to sleep in the fields. 
 
 Mr. Campbell obtained the following hst of tribes living to 
 the east-south-east of the Bangwaketse in 1813 :— Maklootua, 
 Moonshuyane, Bakuena, Boramateesa, Leghoya, Bochakapeele, 
 Mooboobe, Makoane, Bamootslaatsa, Barapootsaane, Bakote, 
 and Mapantue. On the south side of the Vaal river the Mole- 
 sanyane, and beyond them in a north-easterly direction, towards 
 Delagoa Bay, the Maquapa and Matslakoo. 
 
 It is very probable that in the above list of tribes the name of 
 the chief who ruled them at the time is given as the tribal desig- 
 nation, thus increasing the difficulty in any attempt to identify 
 them. At any rate they serve to show the comparatively dense 
 native population which had congregated in portions of the 
 country now called the Transvaal, although the greater number 
 have disappeared from the face of the earth, and that in a shorter 
 space of time than fifty years. 
 
 The hostile coUisions of the Bachoana and Bakuena tribes of 
 the period we are now treating of appear to have been as a rule 
 of short continuance, and differed greatly from the terrible ex- 
 terminating wars which followed, that took their rise from the 
 wide-spreading struggles which originated among the Kaffir 
 tribes of the coast group, who, like a devastating tide wave, 
 ultimately rolled inward among the more effeminate and less 
 warlike Bachoana and Basutu. The warriors of the latter made 
 their onslaughts, hke an irregular, undisciplined multitude, every 
 one considering himself at liberty to act almost as he pleased. 
 If one side was bold and furious at the onset, some of their oppo- 
 nents were quickly panic-stricken and gave way. Their example 
 was readily followed by those who were near them, and the flight 
 soon became general. The pursuit of the defeated army con- 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 539 
 
 tinued as long as the main body of the conquerors were able to 
 run ; all during the flight was devastation and slaughter, as it 
 was not their custom to take prisoners. In their attempts to 
 escape, many threw away their caps, karosses, sandals, shields, 
 and even assagais to increase their speed. The pursuit being 
 over, the vanquished generally occupied themselves with rest, or 
 in venting their chagrin in mutual reproaches for cowardice. 
 
 Moffat states that Makaba dreaded the displeasure of none of 
 the surrounding tribes. War was almost perpetual between him 
 and the Bakuena. From this it is evident that a great many of 
 the tribes mentioned in the previous lists were clans, or minor 
 offshoots of the great Bakuena group, under which name they are 
 comprehended when speaking of them collectively. Beyond the 
 Bakuena, Moffat adds, the Bamangwato were found, distin- 
 guished for industry and riches, and beyond the Bamangwato, the 
 Bamagata-tsela, who seemed to form the limit of these tribes in 
 that direction. 
 
 The chief town, Kuakue, covered a vast extent, and appeared 
 larger than any other South African native town ; while a num- 
 ber of smaller ones were spread throughout the surrounding 
 valleys. With regard to their houses and various domestic uten- 
 sils, the Bangwaketse were far in advance of the Batlapin, not 
 only in their construction, but in their cleanhness. They were 
 also great com growers. Some of their com jars were from eight 
 to twelve feet in diameter, and nearly the same in height. 
 
 Owing to the fatal jealousy which Makaba displayed towards 
 his children, his chief wife fled with her two sons, one of whom was 
 Tsusane or Tshouse, the eldest, who was ultimately slain by the 
 warriors of his father for treason. This incident is thus related 
 by Moffat. Tsusane, the eldest son of Makaba, was an ambitious 
 youth, and planned the murder of his father that he might seize 
 the chieftainship. At first he attempted to win over the men of 
 the tribe ; this failing, he secretly got a deep hole dug in the path 
 his father was wont to frequent, in which he got sharp stakes 
 fastened, and the whole covered as if to entrap game, hoping that 
 on the coming morn his father might be the unfortunate victim. 
 The plot was discovered, and Tsusane fled. He then attempted 
 to influence the Barolong and Batlapin to assist him in an attempt 
 to dethrone his father. Again he was unsuccessful. 
 
540 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Makaba, who appears to have been greatly attached to his 
 rebelUous son, gave strict injunctions to his warriors that in any 
 conflicts between them and his son's adherents, they were to spare 
 his son's Ufe. In one of his attacks upon a cattle outpost he was 
 defeated. Although a man of great swiftness, one still swifter 
 overtook him, who shouted, " throw down your weapons, and 
 your life is safe ! " He turned and threw his assagai at his pur- 
 suer, but missed his mark. He was again overtaken, when the 
 same kind message was sounded in his ears, with the addition, 
 " your father loves you, and will not kill you." Again he hurled 
 another assagai at his pursuer, and fled. The third time the voice 
 of mercy reached him, and while drawing his battle-axe from his 
 shield, his pursuer transfixed him with a javelin. The infatuated 
 father so mourned the loss of this unworthy son that he nearly 
 took vengeance upon the man who thus in sheer self-defence 
 deprived him of his intractable firstborn. 
 
 The year 1823 was an eventful one in the history of the 
 Bangwaketse. The formidable hordes which were marshalled 
 under the fierce inspiration of the fiery Amazon Ma Ntatesi, after 
 spreading havoc among a considerable portion of the Bakuena 
 tribes, lured with the hope of seizing rich spoils from the Ba- 
 ngwaketse, turned with their full forces into the territories of 
 Makaba. Here they succeeded in surprising and storming some 
 of his outstations, and dispersing some of the outlying portions 
 of his tribe. The invaders thought victory was certain, and their 
 dense legions swarmed over the hills towards his great-place ; 
 but the old warrior chief proved himself equal to the danger which 
 threatened him. 
 
 Gathering every available warrior, he guarded every pass, 
 entrapping his enemies by the same tactics which had proved so 
 effectual in resisting the elder Bloem at the head of his Korana 
 clans. He laid clever ambuscades in every direction, into which 
 they fell when they endeavoured to penetrate to his great town. 
 Hundreds were thus slain, so that in the end they were not only 
 defeated, but driven back with considerable slaughter. He was 
 thus able to boast of having accomphshed that which no other 
 tribe, however powerful, had yet succeeded in doing, forcing the 
 redoubtable Mantatee warriors to recoil before the impetuosity of 
 his own. After this achievement he styled himself " the Man of 
 
THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 541 
 
 Conquest ! " When speaking of this conflict, he said, " There 
 lie the bleached bones of the enemy, who came upon our hills like 
 the locusts, but who melted before us by the shaking of the 
 spear ! " 
 
 After this great triumph, the Bangwaketse were at the pin- 
 nacle of their greatness, but their fall and overthrow followed 
 quickly. The terrific Matabili war cloud was already ominously 
 looming above the horizon, and throwing its advancing shadow 
 over the Bakuena country. The Mantatee hordes, shattered as 
 they finally had been before Lithako, were still spread over many 
 parts of the land, filling it with dread, while a number of the dis- 
 possessed tribes strengthened their ranks, and by coalescing with 
 the scattered divisions rendered them powerful enough to inflict 
 upon others the same cruel wrongs which they themselves had 
 suffered. It was such a combined force, composed principally 
 of Bafukeng, Bapatsa, and Baperi warriors, under the leadership 
 of Sebitoane, who on the dismemberment of the Mantatee hordes 
 had separated himself from the main body of the invaders, which 
 now attacked the Bangwaketse, an attack which resulted in the 
 death of the powerful and hitherto invincible Makaba. 
 
 It seems strange at first sight that the chief who had shown 
 such bravery and fortitude in repelling the entire force of the 
 Mantatee hordes should at last be conquered by a single division 
 of that formidable confederacy ; this was caused, however, not 
 so much from any degeneracy in his people as by the treachery of 
 his son, Sebogo or Gasiitsiwe, his surviving heir, who, according 
 to Dr. Casalis, committed the most atrocious parricide to obtain 
 the object of his ambition, the chieftainship of his tribe. 
 
 Of his infamous conduct this writer gives the following 
 account. His father, feeling himself too old to fight, placed his 
 son Sebogo at the head of the younger warriors, and sent him to 
 repulse the invaders, who were advancing towards his capital. 
 Sebogo set off, but hardly was he out of sight when he ordered 
 his men to halt, and addressed the following speech to them : 
 " I am weary of obeying old men, it is time we ourselves should 
 be men. When the enemy appears do not hurl your assagais, 
 flee away and hide yourselves in the woods. The Baperi, think- 
 ing we are vanquished, will go and massacre the old men in the 
 town ! " The wretch was obeyed. The enemy passed, without 
 
542 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 opposition, and stormed the town. The veteran chief was slain 
 amidst heaps of his equally veteran warriors, some incapable from 
 their extreme age of bearing arms ; and thus the men whose 
 valour had raised the Bangwaketse fame to the height it had 
 attained cruelly fell beneath the battle-axes of the confederate 
 invaders. 
 
 When Sebogo and his men considered they had allowed suffi- 
 cient time for the accomplishment of this portion of the tragedy, 
 they suddenly reappeared, and rushing upon the overconfident 
 enemy, who were indulging in all the license of their easily pur- 
 chased victory, drove them from the town with considerable 
 slaughter, and retook from them the booty they had seized. 
 Thus Sebogo or Gasiitsiwe succeeded his father as chief of the 
 Bangwaketse. This event took place some time about 1824, but 
 his rule was neither a long nor a prosperous one. 
 
 Notwithstanding the consecutive attacks of the Mantatees 
 and of the horde under the Bapatsa chief Sebitoane, the Ba- 
 ngwaketse were still rich in cattle, and the MatabUi, after deluging 
 the Bakuena country with blood and marking their track with 
 the smoke of burning towns, at length in their turn attacked 
 Sebogo and the once-powerful tribe of the Bangwaketse. The 
 short-stabbing assagai of the Matabili proved to the Bangwaketse 
 warriors a more terrible weapon than the javelin and battle-axe 
 of their former opponents. They displayed some of the old 
 martial bravery of their tribe, but it availed nothing, and only 
 increased the carnage by their irresistible enemies. They 
 fought, but they were half annihilated ; men, women, and chil- 
 dren were mercilessly butchered, their prosperous towns were 
 wrapt in flames, and the fugitives who escaped dispersed in 
 various directions. 
 
 Some fled and took shelter in the wUds of the Kalahari, where 
 a great number of them and their cattle perished of thirst. The 
 Bakuena and the Bamangwato, writes Dr. Livingstone, as well 
 as the Bangwaketse, all fled thither ; and the Matabili marauders, 
 who came from a well-watered coast, perished by hundreds in 
 their attempts to follow them. One of the Bangwaketse chiefs, 
 more wily than the rest, sent false guides to lead them on a track 
 where, for hundreds of miles, not a drop of water could be found, 
 andthey were parched to death in consequence. Many of the 
 
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THE BAKUENA OR BAKONE TRIBES 543 
 
 Bakuena themselves sank under the privation, and their old men 
 who could have told stories relative to the history of the tribes 
 died in these flights. 
 
 After a life of trouble and dangers, the treacherous Sebogo 
 himself died far from the land of his fathers, on the roadside, 
 where three of his old companions-in-arms dug a grave for him 
 with their assagai points. 
 
 It wiU not be necessary to follow the career of this tribe fur- 
 ther. The great influence which they exerted upon the sur- 
 rounding tribes, increasing the tendency in the weaker branches 
 to migrate towards the south, was all centred in the life of a single 
 chief, Makaba II, or as he proudly styled himself, " the Man of 
 Conquest," and the power which he had built up during his life- 
 time seemed to fall helplessly to pieces as soon as he was removed 
 from the scene. 
 
Chapter XXVI 
 
 THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 
 
 {the Men of the Crocodile). 
 
 The ancient Bakuena appear to have been more prolific in 
 offshoots than any other tribe in South Africa, and Mogale, the 
 great ancestor of their chiefs, outrivals in this respect the cele- 
 brated Zwidi, the Umkulunkulu of the Frontier Kaffirs. Besides 
 the important branches we have already mentioned, and the 
 main branch of which we are about to treat, we have the tribes 
 which migrated still farther to the south, including the Bafukeng 
 and their kindred clans, together with those who still call them- 
 selves Bakuena and who became divided into the houses of 
 Bamonaheng and Bamokotedi and their sub-divisions, all of 
 which are of undoubted Bakuena origin, whose descent can be 
 traced to the great head of the family. There are others also 
 who affirm that they are offshoots of the original Bakuena stock, 
 although the names of the chiefs who form the connecting links 
 have not been preserved, at least have not yet been obtained 
 from any native authority. Four of the principal of these are 
 the tribe of Makgatla, in Magaliesberg, Transvaal ; the Bapha- 
 lane tribe, in the direction of Zoutpansberg ; the Bagamatlhaku, 
 also living in the Transvaal ; and the Bagmolochwana, living 
 under the Barolong chief Moroka at Thaba Nchu. Of these 
 tribes, however, it will not be necessary to speak, as they never 
 took a leading part in the history of the country, although their 
 existence serves to show how widely the ramifications of the great 
 Bakuena group are spread. 
 
 In treating of the Bahurutsi and others, we have given an 
 outline of what is known of the most ancient chiefs, who became 
 the founders of the various important branches already de- 
 scribed. It appears certain that thfese remote ancestors must 
 have migrated from the tropical or subtropical regions of the 
 continent. Many of their traditions are most distinct upon this 
 point ; and they state emphatically that their forefathers came 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 545 
 
 from " the far, far north," that the sun's shadow has altered 
 from the days of their remote forefathers, that before that time 
 their fathers said they came from the rising sun, and that this is 
 the reason why in burying their dead they place the face of the 
 deceased person in that direction, that they may see whence their 
 remote, or rather their earliest, progenitors came. 
 
 It seems that the Bachoana branch of this family led the van 
 in this great migratory movement, and from all that can be 
 gathered from native sources the sequence of it was in the order 
 we have already pointed out, viz : — ist, the pioneer tribes we 
 have described ; 2nd, the Batlapin and Barolong, leading the 
 van of the main body, and then 3rd, the great Bakuena group 
 now under consideration. 
 
 These last say that the old Bakuena nation came from the 
 north, and passed through the country in a south-easterly direc- 
 tion until they came to a river which they called the Likwa or 
 Lekwa (the Upper Vaal) ; that near this some of their clans 
 separated from the main body, which again turned with their 
 faces towards the north, until they reached the central and west- 
 em portions of the present Transvaal, where all the great branches 
 of their nation settled. 
 
 Owing to the fact that Malope, the eldest son of Masilo I, was 
 disinherited by his father, the chiefs of the Bakuena consider 
 themselves the representatives of the great head of the family, 
 and that they are superior in rank to those of the Bamangwato 
 and Bangwaketse, as they assert that when the original tribe 
 broke up into branches, the hereditary chieftainship was retained 
 in that of the Bakuena. Thus there is a kind of dual represen- 
 tation among the chiefs of this family, for while precedence is 
 conceded to the Bahurutsi in all ceremonial rites, such as circum- 
 cision, the eating of the first fruits, etc., in right of their descent 
 from the eldest son, the privileges of paramount chief are awarded 
 to the descendant of Kuena, as the great representative of the 
 object of their special veneration. He is the veritable Mo-kuena, 
 the Man of the Crocodile, and therefore stands first in rank as 
 the head of the nation ; and it is for this reason that even to the 
 present day all the branches mentioned in this memoir occasion- 
 ally send presents to the chief of the Northern Bakuena, as the 
 direct successor of the traditional paramount chief of the once 
 
 N N 
 
546 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 united nation. As an illustration that this claim is practically 
 acknowledged, should the chief of the northern branch be hunting 
 together with those of any of the others mentioned, he would 
 take, by right, all such portions of the game as are looked upon 
 as specially reserved for the great chief, even although the game 
 had been killed by one of the other chiefs. 
 
 This tribe and the minor clans more immediately connected 
 with it seem to have occupied the rich and fertile country north 
 of the Magaliesbergen, or as they were called by some of the early 
 missionaries the Cashan moimtains, as far as the Limpopo and 
 the vaUeys drained by its vairious tributaries. It was in this 
 territory that their great tribal centres were established, around 
 which a teeming population congregated. One of their great 
 towns was at Lokwani, on the Motsi-Motlabi, a branch of the 
 Nogotwani, a tributary of the Limpopo.* 
 
 Campbell informs us that these Bakuena tribes, Makquana 
 as he terms them, lived in 1813 to the north-east of Lithako, and 
 that their great town was three times the size of that of the Ba- 
 tlapin chief, which would give it a probable population of some 
 thirty thousand inhabitants. The modem Thaba Nchu will give 
 us an idea of the arrangement of one of these places and the 
 manner in which the detached suburbs, each under the rule of a 
 petty chief, were scattered round the main centre, where the resi- 
 dence of the paramount chief was situated, as weU as the likhotla 
 or place of public meeting, while vast com lands, frequently some 
 hundreds of acres in extent, spread round the whole of them. All 
 these taken in their entirety formed the great tribal town, and 
 such we must picture to ourselves if we would desire to obtain a 
 correct idea of these centres of native population called " the 
 great-places " of the various Bakuena or Bachoana tribes. 
 
 There can be no doubt but that in the earher days, before they 
 were disturbed by foreign invaders, the Bakuena were far more 
 civilized than not only the ruder and more warlike Coast-Kaffirs, 
 but also the tribes which led the van of the great southem migra- 
 tion, of which they themselves formed a part. We have already 
 pointed out the superiority of the great conical-topped huts of 
 
 1 Evidence of Poo (the Bull), a Northern Mokuena, born at the place 
 he mentions about the commencement of the present century. Notes 
 of C. S. Orpen. 
 

 Bakuena Wall Decoration (Esteriorj, near Jammerberg, Orange Free State, 
 
 Bakuena Wall Decoration (Exterior), From an old mined Bakuena Kraal, 
 Wal Drift, Klip River, Transvaal Territory. 
 
 ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦^ 
 
 V f^ ^¥ 
 
 wyw!^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Bakuena Wall Decoration (Interior), Rhebok Fontein. 
 
 Bakuena Wall Decoration (Interior), Rhebok Fontein. 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 547 
 
 the Bahurutsi and Bangwaketse, with their enclosed courtyards 
 and their vast com jars. The Bakuena even excelled them in 
 the ornamentation of their dwellings, their various patterns for 
 wall paintings both for inside and outside decoration, their 
 symmetrical horseshoe-shaped doors, their attempts at moulded 
 pilasters, their greater taste for agricultural pursuits, and their 
 more numerous manufactures, especially their superior pottery, 
 their various wooden vessels and elaborately carved spoons, their 
 copper castings and unsurpassed smith's work, together with 
 their more advanced musical instruments, such as the drum and 
 marimbo. The Kafhrs proper had no musical instnmients of 
 their own ; instead of drpms, they beat upon their shields, and 
 the 'Gora which was sometimes used by them was adopted from 
 the Bushmen. 
 
 As an evidence that the Bakuena at one time extended to- 
 wards the east coast, it was stated that beyond them was a tribe 
 which they called Magalatzina, from whom they and other tribes 
 obtained articles of clothing and beads of European manufacture, 
 that they were of a brown complexion and had long hair, and that 
 they used buffaloes to draw carriages. From this description, 
 the people alluded to would appear to have belonged to one of 
 the Portuguese settlements, and the articles named were such as 
 the Portuguese might have introduced from India. 
 
 The Bakuena not only surpassed the surrounding tribes in the 
 extent of land which they brought under cultivation, but in the 
 immense size of the herds of cattle in their possession. It was 
 this which aroused the cupidity of their neighbours, and made 
 them such frequent objects of attack. We have already noticed 
 the repeated onslaughts made upon them by the Bangwaketse 
 and other tribes, when they, in their turn, retaliated by making 
 reprisals, until they became comparatively a warlike people. 
 Mr. Campbell thought it was not unlikely that in time they might 
 become a scourge to others. That time, however, never arrived, 
 and the advent of formidable hordes of foreign invaders in a short 
 period destroyed for ever the long-continued prosperity of this 
 interesting group of tribes. Hordes of whose existence they had 
 been previously ignorant burst suddenly upon them, completely 
 annihilating many of their numerous clans, and driving the re- 
 mainder a mingled crowd of wretched panic-stricken fugitives 
 headlong from the country. 
 
548 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Unfortunately, previous to this stage of their history their 
 country was unvisited by missionaries and travellers ; it was 
 then considered the far interior, and few had the hardihood to 
 penetrate beyond such frontier tribes as the Batlapin, while the 
 adventurous spirits who did so, such as Dr. Cowan and Captain 
 Donovan, were never more heard of, having sunk under the com- 
 bined effects, which their own inexperience aggravated, of hard- 
 ships and fever ; and thus it is that a few scattered traditions are 
 the only available materials we can obtain to assist us in our 
 investigation. 
 
 From the days of Kuena to those of Mocwasele I, nothing is 
 known of the lives of the intervening chiefs, except that they once 
 existed. During the chieftainship of this Mocwasele the Bakuena 
 were rich in cattle, and Dr. Livingstone mentions as one of the 
 evidences of the subsequent desiccation of the country, that beds 
 of streams were pointed out where thousands and thousands of 
 cattle formerly drank, in which in his time the water never 
 flowed. This chief appears to have been a great traveller, and 
 is stated to have been the first who ever told the Bakuena of the 
 existence of white men (Ma-koa). Of the two following chiefs, 
 Seithlamo and Legwale, nothing has been recorded ; but during 
 the lifetime of Mocwasele II it is said that the two first white men 
 passed through his country, when they turned to travel down 
 the river Limpopo where they and all their party perished. 
 These were in all probability Donovan and Cowan, who undertook 
 their fatal journey in 1808. It was during the rule of this para- 
 mount chief that Makaba made his repeated attacks upon the 
 Bakuena clans, killing, as we have seen, one of their chiefs ; and 
 that the Barolong Sihunelo, with his combined force of some 
 eight thousand men, attempted to storm the position of one of 
 the southern clans, and met with the severe repulse we have 
 already described. 
 
 It was shortly after this event that the Batlokua, led on by 
 their redoubtable chieftainess, began to make their incursions 
 into the country of the Bakuena, which shortly afterwards cul- 
 minated in the formidable Mantatee invasion, when, aroused by 
 the example of the warrior queen, a number of the more desperate 
 fugitive tribes banded together, carrying with them their wives 
 and children, and commenced a career of havoc and destruction 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 549 
 
 unparalleled in the previous history of the more peaceful tribes 
 of the Bakuena group. It was against the tribes we are now 
 speaking of that the first burst of their fury was directed. The 
 terror of their name spread far and wide, and as we have seen, 
 by the time the rumours reached the Batlapin, their great leader 
 and her forces were invested with mythical horrors in the ex- 
 cited imaginations of the alarmed inhabitants. For two years 
 they carried on their ravages among the clans of the Bakuena, 
 capturing their cattle, destroying their towns, and slaying the 
 inhabitants, while the power of the invaders continued ever to 
 increase from the constant accession of other fugitive tribes to 
 their ranks. 
 
 But in 1823 a stiU more terrible enemy made his appearance 
 on the eastern border of the Bakone country, and as the Ma- 
 ntatee hordes evacuated the territory on one side in their advance 
 upon the Bangwaketse, where the old warrior Makaba awaited 
 them, the Matabih legions, under the pitiless Moselekatze, 
 entered it on the other, carrying death and destruction with them 
 wherever they went. Broadbent states that in December 1823 
 some of the first fugitive Bakuena sought refuge among the 
 Barolong, having escaped by flight after they had been attacked 
 by a powerful tribe called the Matabili. Most of their people 
 had been destroyed, their cattle taken, and their land left deso- 
 late. Having thus commenced, the ruthless Matabili continued 
 the work of destruction and exteraiination, until the entire 
 country of the Bakuena, once so flourishing and beautiful, was 
 reduced to an almost uninhabited waste. 
 
 Mr. Moffat, who travelled through it shortly after its ruin was 
 completed, has fortunately given a description of what it then 
 presented. Much of the intervening country, two days' waggon- 
 journey from Mosega, was mountainous and wooded to the 
 summits. Evergreens adorned the valleys, in which numerous 
 streams of excellent water flowed by many a winding course to- 
 wards the Indian ocean.^ Clumps of trees studded the plains. 
 It was a country once covered with a dense population. On the 
 sides of the hills and the flanks of the Kashan mountains (Maga- 
 liesberg) were towns in ruins, where thousands once made the 
 country ahve, amidst fruitful vales which were then covered with 
 1 This country is now a portion of the Transvaal territory. 
 
550 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 luxuriant grass and inhabited by game. The extirpating in- 
 vasions of the Mantatees and Matabili had left to beasts of prey 
 the undisputed right of these lovely woodland glens. The lion, 
 which had revelled in human flesh, as if conscious there was none 
 to oppose, roamed at large, a terror to the traveller. The im- 
 poverished thousands of the tribes of the country, who had 
 escaped with their lives the fury of the Matabili, after being 
 scattered by them had neither herd nor kraal, but subsisted on 
 locusts, roots, and the chase. 
 
 Great numbers of the fugitives were killed and devoured by 
 the lions, that had learnt to prefer human flesh to any other. 
 Women and children going for water were frequently hunted and 
 pursued by the hyenas, and were never more heard of. As some 
 kind of defence, many built their houses or huts on poles seven or 
 eight feet from the ground, the ascent and descent being by a 
 knotty branch of a tree in front of the house. In the centre of 
 the circle there was always a heap of bones of game, that the un- 
 fortunate inhabitants had killed for food. During the day the 
 families descended to the shade beneath to dress their food, but 
 they reascended again as the evening approached, to escape 
 from the ferocious beasts, which otherwise were sure to attack 
 them, and which prowled continually about them in search of 
 stragglers during the dark hours of the night. At one spot 
 Moffat found some seventeen families of fugitive Bakuena who 
 had constructed their huts in the branches of a great tree, the 
 topmost hut being thirty feet from the ground. The people of 
 these arboreal dwellings ascended by a series of notches in the 
 trunk. Platforms were formed of straight sticks among the 
 branches, upon which the huts were constructed and covered 
 with grass. 
 
 From the first Matabili outpost to the great-place of the chief 
 Moselekatze, the course travelled was east-south-east, through 
 a more level country beautifully studded with ranges of little 
 hills, many isolated of a conical form, along the bases of which 
 lay the ruins of innumerable towns, some of which were of amaz- 
 ing extent. This was a portion of the once thickly populated 
 Bakuena country. The ruins of many of these towns showed 
 signs of immense labour and perseverance ; stone fences averag- 
 ing from four to seven feet high were still standing. Everything 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 55i 
 
 was circular, from the inner walls which surrounded each dwelling 
 or family residence to those which encircled a town. In tra- 
 versing these ruins, Mr. Moffat found the remains of some houses 
 which had escaped the flames of the marauders. These were 
 large, and displayed a far superior style to anything witnessed 
 among the other native tribes of Southern Africa. The circular 
 walls were generally composed of hard clay, with a small mixture 
 of cowdung, so well plastered and polished, a refined portion of 
 the former being mixed with a kind of ore, that the interior of the 
 house had the appearance of being varnished. The walls and 
 doorways were also neatly ornamented with a kind of architraves 
 and cornices. The pillars supporting the roof were in the form of 
 pilasters, projecting from the walls. The houses, like all others 
 in the Interior, were round, with conical roofs extending beyond 
 the walls, so as to form a considerable shade, or what might be 
 called a verandah. The raising of the stone fences must have 
 been a work of immense labour, for the materials had all to be 
 brought on men's shoulders. 
 
 These now ruined habitations but a short time before teemed 
 with life and revelry. Nothing now remained but dilapidated 
 walls, heaps of stones, and rubbish, mingled with human skulls, 
 which told their own ghastly tale. Occasionally a large stone 
 fold might be seen occupied by the cattle of the Matabili, who had 
 caused the land thus to mourn. 
 
 It is certain that many of these Bakuena, either willingly or 
 by compulsion, had joined the victorious hordes of the Ma- 
 ntatees. Mr. Moffat's informant affirmed that he and others 
 were forced to accompany them as captives, and that after their 
 repulse at Lithako he and many hundreds more of the same 
 people were on their return to their ovna country made prisoners 
 by Moselekatze. The same man described these Bakuena na- 
 tions as once being as numerous as the locusts, rich in cattle, and 
 traffickers to a great extent with the distant tribes of the north. 
 This man with his fellow surviving Bakuena had witnessed the 
 desolation of many of the tovms around, the sweeping away of 
 the cattle and valuables, the butchering of the inhabitants, and 
 their wide-spread homes being enveloped in smoke and flames. 
 Expeditionary impis of Tshaka had made frightful havoc, but all 
 these were nothing compared with the final overthrow of the 
 
552 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Bakuena tribes by the arms of Moselekatze. The former inhabi- 
 tants of these luxuriant hills had, from a long continuance of 
 peace and plenty, become effeminate, while the Matabili under 
 the barbarous reign of the imperious Tshaka, from whose iron 
 grasp many of them had made their escape, like an overwhelming 
 torrent rushed onward from the north, marking their course with 
 blood and carnage. 
 
 Moffat, who travelled amongst them shortly after this terrible 
 period, gives the following account of the treatment which these 
 tribes received at the hands of the conquering Matabili. The 
 Matabili, he writes, were not satisfied with simply capturing 
 cattle, nothing less than the entire subjugation or destruction of 
 the vanquished could quench their insatiable thirst for power. 
 Thus whenever they captured a town, the terrified inhabitants 
 were driven in a mass to the outskirts, when the parents and all 
 the married women were slaughtered on the spot. Such as had 
 dared to be brave in the defence of their town with their wives 
 and their children were reserved for a still more terrible death : 
 dry grass saturated with fat was tied round their naked bodies, 
 and then set on fire. The youths and girls were loaded as beasts 
 of burden with the spoils of the town, to be marched to the home 
 of the victors. If the town were in an isolated position, the help- 
 less infants were left to perish either with hunger or to be de- 
 voured by beasts of prey. On such an event the lions scented 
 the slain, and left their lair. The hyenas and jackals emerged 
 from their lurking places in broad day, and revelled in the carnage, 
 while clouds of vultures were to be seen descending on the living 
 and the dead, and holding a carnival on human flesh. Should a 
 suspicion arise in the savage breast that there was a chance that 
 the helpless infants might possibly fall into the hands of some of 
 their friends, they prevented this by collecting them into a fold, 
 and after raising over them a pile of brushwood applied the flam- 
 ing torch to it, when the fold, the town, and aU it contained, so 
 lately a scene of mirth, became a heap of ashes. 
 
 The following poetical description of one of these scenes of 
 slaughter was given to the missionary Moffat by a native eye- 
 witness, and will well serve to illustrate the mode of attack and 
 onslaught of both the Matabili and Zulu hordes, as well as the 
 terror which accompanied it. Mr. Moffat writes that he ascended 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 553 
 
 a hill, at the base of which he had halted the preceding evening, 
 to spend the day. Happening to turn round to the right as he 
 sat down on the summit, he saw before him a large extent of 
 level ground covered with ruins, when he inquired of a native 
 who had followed him, what had become of the inhabitants ? 
 
 The man had just sat down, but rose, evidently with some 
 feeling, and stretching forth his arm in the direction of the ruins, 
 said : " I, even I, beheld it ! " and then paused as if in deep 
 thought. 
 
 "There lived the great captain of multitudes, 
 He reigned among them like a king, 
 He was the chief, the chief of the blue-coloured cattle. 
 They were numerous as the dense mist on the mountain's brow ; 
 His flocks covered the plain ; 
 
 He thought the number of his warriors would awe his enemies, 
 His people boasted in their javelins, 
 And laughed at the cowardice of such 
 As had fled from their towns. 
 
 I shall slay them, and hang up their shields on my hill. 
 Our race is a race of warriors, 
 Who ever subdued our fathers ? 
 They were mighty in combat. 
 We will possess the spoil of ancient times- 
 Have not our dogs eaten the shields of their nobles ? 
 The vultures shaU devour the slain of our enemies. 
 Thus they sang, and thus they danced, 
 Till they beheld on yonder heights the approaching foe. 
 The noise of their song was hushed in night, 
 And their hearts were filled with dismay. 
 They saw the clouds ascend from the plains : 
 It was the smoke of burning towns. 
 
 The confusion of the whirlwind 
 Was in the heart of the great chief of the blue-coloured cattle. 
 The shout was raised, 
 
 " They are friends ! " 
 But they shouted again, 
 " They are foes ! " 
 Till their near approach proclaimed them Matabili. 
 
 The men seized their arms. 
 And rushed out as if to chase the antelope. 
 
 The onset was as the voice of lightning. 
 And their javelins as the shaking of the forest in the autumn-storm. 
 The Matabili lions raised the shout of death, 
 
 And flew upon their victims. 
 
 It was the shout of Victory ! 
 Their hissing and hollow groans told their progress among the dead. 
 
 A few moments laid hundreds on the ground. 
 
554 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 The clash of shields was the signal of triumph ! 
 Our people filed with their cattle to the top of yonder mount. 
 The Matabili entered the town with the roar of the lion ; 
 
 They pillaged and fired the houses, 
 Speared the mothers, and cast their infants in the flames. 
 
 The sun went down ; 
 The victors emerged from the smoking plain. 
 
 And pursued their course. 
 Surrounding the base of yonder hUl. 
 
 They slaughtered cattle. 
 They danced and sang till the dawn of day. 
 They ascended and killed until their hands were weary of the spear." 
 
 Then stooping down to the ground, he took up a little dust in 
 his hand ; blowing it off, and holding out his naked palm, he 
 added : " That is all that remains of the great chief of the blue- 
 coloured cattle ! " 
 
 Mr. Moffat affirms that it is impossible to describe his feehngs 
 whilst listening to this descriptive effusion of native eloquence. 
 From other natives he discovered that this " was no fabled song, 
 but merely a compendious sketch of the catastrophe." 
 
 The writer has himself seen widespreading ruins, such as those 
 above described, scattered over large areas of coimtry, in his 
 various wanderings through portions of South Africa, to which 
 a similar history of blood is attached, and over which the devas- 
 tating hordes of the Amazulu, the Amangwane, and Matabili 
 have successively swept. 
 
 Captain Harris gives the following account of the miserable 
 condition in which he found these people at the time of his visit 
 in 1836. He states that travelling northward by marches of ten 
 and fifteen miles a day, he passed over rugged tracts strewn with 
 numerous stone walls, once thronged by thousands, but then 
 presenting no vestige of inhabitants. They frequently travelled 
 for days without seeing a solitary human being, occasionally only 
 falling in with the small and starving remnant of some pastoral 
 tribe of Bachoana, that had been plundered by Moselekatze's 
 warriors. These famished wretches, some of whom had been 
 herding the king's cattle during the absence of Kahpi's commando, 
 hovered around Captain Harris's party, disputing with vultures 
 and hyenas the carcases left by the hunters. Near the jimction 
 of the Marico and Limpopo, lat. 24° 10', he again met with a few 
 inhabitants, " the wreck of the Bakone or Bakuena, once the 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 555 
 
 most powerful and prosperous of the Bachuana nations." They 
 were attacked by Moselekatze, when Kama, one of their great 
 chiefs, was slain ; they fled to this part of the country, and were 
 reduced to an extremity of misery and want little short of actual 
 starvation. 
 
 The Bakone or Bakuaia had retired in Harris's time to the 
 north or rather west of the Limpopo, where a great range of 
 mountains called Mural by the natives divided the tracts occu- 
 pied by the Bakuena and the Babariri. 
 
 The loss of life during the continuance of these Matabili wars 
 was almost as incredible as during those of the Amazulu. It is 
 computed that at least a million of human beings of all ages 
 were sacrificed. Mr. William McLuckie, the first European who 
 attempted to penetrate into the old Bakuena country after 
 Moselekatze had established himself there, and therefore at a 
 time previous to Mr. Moffat's visit, has assured the writer that 
 during that trip for six weeks he never met a single living human 
 being ; nothing was to be seen but the charred remains of numer- 
 ous towns or kraals, strewn with skulls and other human bones, 
 while for long distances thickly-spread lines of bleaching bones 
 'were frequently met with, marking the spots where the wretched 
 fugitives had been overtaken by their savage and pitiless pur- 
 suers, to whom mercy was unknown. 
 
 Many of the Bakuena fled for refuge to the Kalahari, where 
 numbers perished for want of water. Other remnants of clans 
 were scattered in different directions, and some who retired to 
 the most inaccessible mountains for shelter were reduced to such 
 extremities that they were compelled to resort to cannibalism to 
 sustain their wretched lives. 
 
 Previous to these terrible wars many Bushman clans were 
 still to be found sprinkled throughout the Bakuena territory, 
 living by the chase, the plains in every direction being covered 
 with innumerable herds of game, hippopotami abounding in the 
 rivers, while vast troops of elephants roamed through the forest 
 glades. It was probably this superabundance of game, and the 
 innumerable springs and streamlets which afforded a plentiful 
 supply of water over so large a portion of the country, that 
 rendered the relations between the intruding race and the abori- 
 gines of a more amicable character than was found to be the case 
 
556 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 in parts where there was a greater scarcity of water, and where 
 as a natural consequence the intruding tribes and the Bushmen 
 were frequently forced into hostile collision in their struggle to 
 obtain it, thus laying the foundation for outrages by the stronger, 
 and consequent retaliations by the weaker race, whose territorial 
 rights were in most instances arrogantly ignored whenever the 
 intruders were strong enough to set the aboriginal owners at 
 defiance. But with the Bakuena the case appears to have been 
 different, and no traditions of any serious conflicts between them 
 have been preserved. 
 
 Nor have we any intimation that any number of them were 
 killed by either the Mantatee or Matabili invaders. But this 
 immunity did not exempt the greater portion of them from de- 
 struction : they rapidly disappeared, and it was subsequently 
 discovered that whole clans of them were seized and devoured 
 by the cannibals of the mountains. 
 
 During the progress of these events Mocwasele II, the para- 
 mount chief of the Bakuena, and father of Sechele, having offended 
 his subjects by appropriating the wives of his petty chiefs when- 
 ever he had an opportunity during their absence, was at length 
 murdered by them ; and although they spared the lives of his 
 children, they set up a usurper as chief in his stead. Sechele, 
 the rightful heir, was but a boy at the time of this occurrence. 
 
 Sebitoane, the emigrant Bapatsa chief, was still migrating 
 with his people from place to place, and as he was himself a de- 
 scendant of their common ancestor Kuena, the friends of the 
 young dispossessed chief invited him to assist them in reinstating 
 Sechele. Livingstone gives the following account of this coup 
 d'etat. Sebitoane undertook the task, and surrounded the town 
 of the Bakuena by night. Just as it began to dawn, his herald 
 proclaimed in a loud voice that he had come to revenge the death 
 of Mocwasele. His warriors, who encircled the place, beat loudly 
 on their shields, and the panic was tremendous. There was a 
 rush like that from a theatre on fire, and the warriors of Sebitoane 
 used their assagais on the fugitives with a dexterity which they 
 alone could employ. Sebitoane had given orders that the sons of 
 Mocwasele should be spared. One of the men, meeting Sechele, 
 put him in ward by giving him such a blow on the head with his 
 club as to render him insensible. The usurper, however, was 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 557 
 
 killed, and the young Sechele was restored to the chieftainship. 
 He subsequently married three of the daughters of his under- 
 chiefs, who on account of their blood relationship had stood by 
 him in his adversity. 
 
 After the repulse of the Matabili by the Emigrant Farmers in 
 1837, and Moselekatze had effected his retreat towards the Zam- 
 besi, some of the fragmentary tribes attempted to collect their 
 scattered and diminished clans together, but several years elapsed 
 before they regained sufficient spirit to make war once more upon 
 one another, as in former times. This however took place about 
 1840, when one of the periodical wars for the possession of cattle 
 burst forth. The old feud between the Barolong and the Bakuena 
 was revived, which ended in the former driving the latter from 
 Lepelole ; and ultimately the relations between the different 
 tribes were completely changed. 
 
 After the loss of their immense herds of cattle, and the flight 
 of many of the Bakuena, some of their tribe became expert 
 hunters, and evidently adopted the telle-telle mode of hunting 
 from the Kalahari Bushmen and Bakalakari. To this they gave 
 the name of " hopo," which Livingstone tells us was a trap con- 
 structed by them for the capture of the game of the country, 
 among which were great numbers of buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, 
 tsessebes, hartebeests, gnus, pallas, and rhinoceroses. The hopo, 
 he says, consisted of two hedges in the shape of the letter V. 
 They were made very high and thick near the angle, where they 
 did not however touch, and at the extremity was a pit six or eight 
 feet deep and twelve or fifteen in breadth and length. Trunks 
 of trees were laid along the margin of the pit, and formed an over- 
 lapping border, so as to render it almost inipossible for any 
 animal to leap out. The whole was decked with soft green 
 rushes. As the hedges were frequently a rtile lojig and about as 
 much apart at the opening, a tribe that made a circle round the 
 country and gradually closed up was almost sure to sweep before 
 it a large body of game. It was driven up with shouts to the 
 narrowest part of the hopo, where men were secreted who threw 
 their javelins into the affrighted herds. The animals rushed 
 towards the narrow opening, and fell into the pit. It was a 
 frightful scene. The men, wild with excitement, speared the 
 lovely animals with mad delight, and others were borne down 
 with the weight of their dead and dying companions. 
 
558 THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 Such then is the fragmentary history which we have been abl 
 to collect with regard to the great Bakuena nation up to the tinn 
 of its dispersion by the irruption of the conquering Matabili 
 No people were so mercilessly handled by them as these, one clai 
 after the other was exterminated until their once powerful anc 
 numerous tribes were reduced to a few miserable remnants, whicl 
 from being the possessors of enormous herds of cattle and th( 
 greatest cultivators of the land, were compelled to resort to veld 
 kost and cannibalism to support a wretched existence, thrown bad 
 again into the more savage mode of life from which their fore 
 fathers had slowly emerged until they had made greater advance: 
 towards civilization and had become more prosperous anc 
 numerous than any other South African race. From this ad- 
 vanced position they were hurled headlong by the rush of Ama- 
 zulu barbarism into depths of degradation from which they havt 
 not yet perfectly extricated themselves. 
 
 It will not be necessary to pursue this subject further. The 
 Boers shortly afterwards appropriated and occupied the beautiful 
 country in which they and their fathers had lived for several 
 generations. They had however set an example to the superior 
 race which finally supplanted them, in their treatment of the 
 aboriginal hunters who were found in possession of the coimtry 
 when their forefathers intruded into it : they neither extermin- 
 ated nor enslaved them, but, as we have seen, until evil days fell 
 upon both together, the land was considered broad enough and 
 productive enough to allow the two races to live on friendly terms 
 with each other, each pursuing its own particular course of life, 
 and apparently neither the one nor the other injured by the 
 amicable arrangement. 
 

 V. 
 
 ■5 ■= .= m 
 
 
 : ;? ^ T3- S-2 
 
 IS S £ < 
 
 11 
 
 > ■- tie : 
 
 u k- ^ 
 
 
 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 
 
 559 
 
 GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF BAKUENA CHIEFS, SHOWING THE 
 
 RELATIONSHIP TO EACH OTHER OF VARIOUS 
 
 TRIBES OF THE PRESENT DAY. 
 
 MOGALE 
 I 
 
 Mhete 
 
 I 
 
 Masilo I 
 
 Malope 
 
 KUENA 
 
 MOHURUTSI 
 I 
 
 Melora 
 
 I 
 
 LOGOPO 
 
 I 
 
 MOROAGALI 
 
 I 
 
 MOSHUANE 
 
 Ngwato 
 
 Ngwaketse 
 
 Kelebi 
 
 I 
 
 Maphachoane 
 
 Motlaru 
 
 I 
 
 MOLISANE 
 
 Mangope 
 Poo 
 
 KOBUDI 
 
 I 
 
 MOELWA 
 SiBIWURE 
 
 MOKATLA 
 
 MOTLALIBE, chief of the Bahurutsi living at Kolobeng in 1879 
 
56o THE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 KUENA, second son of Masilo I 
 
 I 
 
 Phokotsi 
 
 Kgabo I 
 
 I 
 
 Tebele 
 
 I 
 
 Kgabo II 
 
 Masilo II, alias Masito 
 
 MocHODi, alias Mokotedi Mothibang, alias Napo Tamai i 
 
 Legoyana Matei 2 
 
 Mocwasele I 
 
 I 
 
 Seithlamo 
 
 I 
 
 Legwale 
 
 Mocwasele II 
 
 Sechele, chief of the Bakuena living at MolopoloU in 1879 
 
 Ngwato, second son of Malope 
 
 I 
 
 Mathibe 
 
 Kgama I Tauana, founder of the Batauana tribe 
 
 I 
 
 Kagaki 
 
 Macheng Sekhome drove away Macheng 
 
 Kgama II chief of the Bamargwato at 
 Shoshong in 1879 
 
 Ngwaketse, third son of Malope 
 
 I 
 
 Leema 
 
 I 
 
 Makaba I 
 
 I 
 
 Mongala 
 
 I 
 
 Moleta 
 
 I 
 
 Makaba II 
 
 I 
 
 Gasiitsiwe 
 
 Bathoen, chief of the Bangwaketse at Kanye in 1879 
 
 1 Tamai was the founder of the Bamokotedi tribe, the remnant of which is at present 
 incorporated in the Basuto tribe founded by Moshesh. 
 
 ' Matei was the founder of the Bafukeng tribe, the remnant of which was also 
 incorporated in the Basuto tribe founded by Moshesh. 
 
THE BAKUENA OF THE NORTH 561 
 
 MoTLARU, second son of Moshuane 
 I 
 
 LUTSHARIMAU 
 
 I 
 
 MORUKONAILE 
 
 I 
 
 MONTIA 
 
 I 
 
 Rakise 
 
 I 
 
 TSHUPI 
 
 I 
 
 MOKOTWA 
 
 Lahesi, chief of the Batlaru in 1820 
 
 MoLiSANE, second son of Maphachoane 
 I 
 
 PULA 
 I 
 
 Mense 
 
 I 
 
 MOILOE 
 
 I 
 
 MOKGOE 
 I 
 
 Mefi 
 
 I 
 
 Shoofele 
 
 I 
 
 Sethiba 
 
 SiBETHE, chief of the Bamoiloe in 1879, at which time a 
 branch of the tribe was living at Thaba Nchu under 
 Marete, third son of Shoofele 
 
 MOTHIBANG, alias Napo, second son of Masilo II 
 
 Cholwani 
 
 MoNAHENG, founder of the Bamonaheng tribe, the most im- 
 portant of those whose remnants were gathered together 
 by MosHESH to form the present Basuto tribe 
 
 Tauana, second son of Mathibe 
 I 
 
 MOREMI I 
 I 
 
 Lechulathibi 
 
 MoREMi II, chief of the Batauana tribe living on the shore 
 of Lake Ngami in 1879 
 
 O O 
 
10 
 
 15 
 
 References 
 
 Ancient BiLshmcav Territory beloTUfvrw ijo 
 
 or tra*-ersed. hy the' Paxntgr Tribes i 
 
 Lvn£s an/L direction of Hiar mixjraJjijons^ 
 -AttderttHushmaih Territory helorijging to 
 
 or occupied' hy the' Sculptor Tribes i 
 
 Lvnes aruL du-ectLorv of thar migrations . 
 
 imes- of Hottenbyb mu/raJion' i .. " " - 
 
 Mos b northern/ point kjiot*'n/ reojcheft 
 
 hy the Fainta- Irihes , J^ 
 
 Most Soiith^rrv poirvh reajJiedy hy the' 
 
 Sculptor Jrihes . ' B 
 
 Posrdionj of Pairvtaijgs westj of 
 
 TanyoJiydoju C 
 
 RincipaL Zme- of Mia^eiij Hreeds : 
 
 livishmeirj withiSojchoaneu , Hobsuin 
 
 or Ka£fxr. ■_ , 
 
 Th jP' Bantu ^j^gty . 
 
 Country ocaupie/L hy tVesterrv 7V-i6es __ 
 Liii£s of minratioTV nf J'xxchoanO' 
 
 Tribes , Jiailapinj &e/. kej- 
 
 Coiavtry throijufhi which' BaJajjerLOj anxL 
 Basuiuj Tribes jnigrale't 
 
 ^^ Lines of mixp-alion'. 
 
 Trcmk, of the/Tribes WT.lh <hp, Anui -prefi^t' 
 Lmes of nvLgraiion' 
 
 Anwizuhi^ 
 
 MaUxbUi. 
 
 Europearv Intruders 
 Porhigti£sey 
 Dutchj 
 English^ 
 TfuBnidariy &ro 
 
 ^ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 : V- 
 
 \ \ 
 
 \ 
 
 15 
 
 T 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 G*' Ftsh\Bajy 
 
1 . 1 . ] i , Zombfsi Iii*-e*' 
 Z.2.2. MabxbiU, Courdry 
 oQ ^^ 3.33. Country of ihe^ Northem Bahu£fUi/ 
 i.i A> .Lower- Lvrnpopo 
 a. as. Zoutfxxnsberq 
 ti.fy.Watefierg 
 
 7 .MaJiapcais Poort 
 8 . S . OUphcmis ftiMer 
 
 9 . Souj-aes of the/ Limpopo 
 10.10 .MagalLesherg 
 ILU.IJ .VcLcd liur-Er 
 JZ.KoLong lii*-er 
 13 .Koerojnojijjpj or Kurtanaju 
 M: .GnaujxtO'»'rv 
 XZi.ModdfT- Ri^v-r 
 
 Vo.l&.Nu (iixriep or- 
 
 Upper Orange/ lUMer 
 
 1 7 . Qiledjjrv Tlwer 
 J8, i 8 .Drakensbcrg 
 
 1 9 . Sources of the/ Tixyehij 
 
 2 - TJmii-oLosu Rx*-er- 
 
 21 . Usuixij &■ Pongolxv Rivers 
 22 .Mont oxiopj Sources 
 2 3 . Rheruisterberg 
 24 . SneeuAyberq 
 Zo ZakiRi*-er 
 26 .Kareebergem 
 !7. -AJ.LcLnge/ Kloof 
 
 28 . Sttriday Rm^r 
 
 29, Zuu^rvtsld. 
 
 
 
 /% 
 
 ^4. 
 
 T \. •*• ; r..W"/A^iy •^ii-.. ffe^ ) ^- 
 
 13 
 
 25 
 
 35 
 
/ 
 
 ' Mozambiaue/ 
 
 ^ 
 
 I 
 
 I Mojuunbcu B. 
 BerAaiukcu B . 
 
 'V; 
 
 Vv^ 
 
 MT' 
 
 / 
 
 15 
 
 20 
 
 SKETCH MAP 
 
 I OF 
 
 25 
 
 riiMllEM. AMI© ©©HJTIHIIEM 
 
 Showing the Main Lines of Migration 
 Followed by the 
 
 Various Races xxfrw inlLabitiii^ ilxe 
 SoxitlieTTi Poi:^oiL of* tlie CoirtiiieiLt. 
 
 ' BY 
 
 Geo. W. Stow, F.G.S.,F.R.G.S. 
 
 1880. 
 
 LONDON = Swan Sonnenschein & Cp Limp 
 
 30 
 
 4,0 
 
 50 
 
INDEX 
 
 t'Aakaap, or Rietfontein : 
 
 missionaries at, 326 
 Abakazclu : 
 
 country devastated by, 388 
 
 in 1820 break away from Tshaka, 460 
 
 prowess of, in battle, 516 
 
 (See Matabili) 
 Abatembu, Kaffir tribe : 
 
 intermarry with Bushmen, and form half-caste clan of Tambukis, 169, 
 170, 353. and 430 
 
 advance from the eastward, 234 and 311 
 
 war of, with the Colonial Government, in 1846, 202 
 
 weapons of, 235 
 
 are plundered by the Koranas, 311 
 
 language of, 406 
 Abatwa : 
 
 name given to Bushmen by the Bantu, i and 32 
 
 {See Bushmen) 
 Aborigines of South Africa : 
 
 misconceptions concerning, 2, 5 and 235 
 
 report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on, 317 
 and 325 
 
 rights of, are disregarded, 348, 349, 383 and 403 
 
 cruel treatment of, 381 
 
 (See Bushmen) 
 Acrobats : 
 
 dance of, 118 
 Adamson, Reverend Doctor, philologist : 
 
 researches of, 8 
 Adultery : 
 
 among Bushmen and Koranas, 96 
 Aerk, first Missionary at Bethulie : 1 84 
 
 Africaander, Jager, afterwards Christian, head of the Jager 
 tribe of Hottentots : 
 
 marauding expeditions of, and terror inspired by, 158, 238, 254, 255, 
 271, 272, 326, 331, 333, 334, 335. 341, 343 and 359 
 
 serves Piet Pienaar, and removes with him beyond Ohphant River, 
 328 
 
 shoots Pienaar, and retreats to Namaqualand, 330 
 
 drives missionaries from Warm Bath, and attacks their settlement, 
 332 and 360 
 
 is converted by missionaries, and accompanies Mr. Mofiat to Cape- 
 town, 335 
 
 663 
 
564 INDEX 
 
 Africaander, Klaas : 
 
 is brother of Jager, 328 
 cruelty of, 334 
 Africaander, Titus : 
 
 is brother of Jager, 328 
 
 assists in the murder of Pienaar, 330 
 
 agility and daring of, 334 
 Africaanders : 
 
 are the ruling family of the Jager clan, 321 and 327 
 
 serve Piet Pienaax, and remove with him beyond OUphant River, 
 328 
 
 refuse to serve him longer, in consequence of harsh treatment, 329 
 
 conflicts of, with Bastaards under Barends, 340 and 344 
 Agriculture : 
 
 origin of, among primitive races, 58 
 
 love of, shown by the Bachoana and Basutu tribes, 259, 278 and 417 
 
 by the Bantu race generally, 265 
 
 by the Ovambo, 266 
 
 is practised by the Batlapin, 436 
 
 by the Bangwaketse, 532 
 
 by the Bakuena, 547 
 Akembi, chief of the Namaquas : 250 
 Albert Nyanza : 
 
 fishing methods of natives on the banks of, 93 
 Albertse, Mr., missionary to the Griquas : 
 
 accompanies Adam Kok, 322 
 Albrecht, Mr., missionary at Warm Bath : 
 
 piano of, is taken by Africaander, 333 
 Aliwal North : 
 
 stone implements found at, 65 
 Amageba, tribe of the Bachoana group : 417 
 Amalanga, tribe of the Bachoana group : 417 
 Amamfengo, southern Bantu : 404 
 Amampondo, coast Bantu tribe : 
 
 advance of, from the eastward, 234 
 
 weapons of, 235 
 
 language of, 406 
 
 further mention of, 251 and 407 
 Amangwane, coast Bantu tribe : 
 
 devastation caused by, 554 
 Amaxosa, Kaffir tribe : 
 
 region inhabited by, 4 and 170 
 
 advance of, upon Bushman territory, 193, 200 and 234 
 
 war of, with the Colonial Government, in 1846, 202 
 
 weapons of, 235 
 
 further mention of, 251, 265, and 407 
 Amazulu, southern Bantu tribe : 
 
 region inhabited by, 4 
 
 advance of, from the eastward, 234 and 525 
 
 weapons of, 235 
 
 meaning of name of, 417 
 
 devastation caused by, 554 
 
 further mention of, 251, 405 and 407 
 
 (See MatabiU) 
 -Ancestor-worship : 
 
 origin and development of, 83 and 121 
 
INDEX 565 
 
 Anderson, A. A., missionary to the Griquas : 
 
 degraded race discovered by, 20 
 
 statement made by, concerning the condition of Griquas, 317 
 
 is found at t'Aakaap, 326 
 
 in 1804 settles at Griquatown, 340, 364 and 368 
 
 discovers springs at Klaarwater, 344 
 
 takes possession of them for the London Missionary Society, 345 
 Angola : 
 
 Bantu tribes of, 405 
 Animals : 
 
 myths concerning, 129, 130, and 136 
 
 extinct, statements concerning, 131 and 132 
 Antelopes : 
 
 are numerous in the Kalahari, 422 
 Ants : 
 
 chrysalides of, are used as food by Bushmen, 20, 44, 55, 59 and 160 
 Arbousset, Monsieur, missionary : 
 
 writings of, and information obtained from, 6, 31, 47, 96, 100, no, 
 
 119, 120, 126, 132, 135, 183, 274, 298, 313, 416, 489 and 519 
 Archbell, Reverend Mr., Wesleyan missionary • 
 
 accompanies Moroko to Thaba Nchu, 300 
 
 is invited by Barends to Daniel's Kuil, 386 
 
 is stationed at Boetsap, 387 
 
 at Maquassie, 513 
 Arend, a half-caste : 
 
 accompanies Mr. Thompson, and discovers Mantatees, 469 
 Arms and ammunition : 
 
 iUicit traffic in, between Boers and Bastaards, 337 
 
 {See Firearms) 
 Arrows : 
 
 manufacture of, by Bushmen, 63, 69, 70 and 140 
 
 by Mashuna, 74 
 
 use of, in friendly warfare, 99 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, against Boers, 154 
 
 against Kaffirs, 207 
 Assagais : 
 
 used by Bushmen, 71 
 
 by Kaffir tribes, 206 and 235 1 
 
 by the Ovaherero, 261 
 Atlantic, the : 
 
 is reached by Batlapin, 449 
 Attaqua, Hottentot tribe -. 
 
 habitat of, 244 
 Australians : 
 
 affinity of, with Bushmen, in language and mythology, 17 to 20 
 AuTENiQUA, Hottentot tribe : 
 
 meaning of name of, 239 
 AwL : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, 73 
 
 Baardman. (See Ow'ku'ru'keu) 
 Baardman, the Younger: 
 
 is sold by his father to a Boer, 186 
 
 story of, 186 
 
566 INDEX 
 
 Baboons : 
 
 myth concerning, 117 
 
 dance resembling, 117 ^ | 
 
 likeness of Bushmen to, 147 
 
 veneration of, as siboko, 409, 413 and 520 ^ 
 
 Bachoana, southern Bantu tribes : 
 
 region inhabited by, 4 
 
 Bushman sculptures attributed to, 27 
 
 shelter given to, by Bushmen, 37 
 
 cannibalism of, 51 
 
 weapons used by, 74, 235 and 267 
 
 methods employed by, for capturing game, 92 ' 
 
 hasty interments of, 126 
 
 cruelty of, to subject Bushmen, 143 
 
 love of, for agriculture, 234, 417 and 422 I 
 
 advance from the north, and drive the Hottentots westward and I 
 
 southward, 234, 267, 280 and 433 
 
 are driven forwards by the coast Kaf&rs, 234 1 
 
 conflicts of, with the Koranas, 238 and 278 
 
 refugees of, join the Griquas, 319 
 
 plunder of, by banditti, 337 1 
 
 subdivisions of, various tribes of, 407 and 408 
 
 meaning of name, 408 
 
 skill of, in domestic arts and manufactures, 419 
 
 lose their warlike spirit, and fall a prey to their enemies, 419, 444 
 468 and 538 
 
 successive migrations of, 420 and 432 
 
 relative positions of tribes of, in 1807, 446 
 
 pride themselves upon having beards, 459 
 Bachoana Bushmen, a mixed race : 
 
 particulars concerning, 421, 429 to 431, and 432 
 Bachwene. (See Bahurutsi) ' 
 
 Backhouse, Mr. : 
 
 visits of, to Bushmen, 173 and 201 
 
 information obtained by, 269 and 403 
 Bafukeng : 
 
 venerate the dew, 409 ' 
 
 Bagamatlhaku, a Bakuena tribe : 
 
 habitat of, 544 
 Bagmolochwana, a Bakuena tribe : 
 
 habitat of, 544 
 Bahaole, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 venerate the rhinoceros, 409 
 Bahurutsi, a Bakuena Tribe : 
 
 venerate the baboon and crocodile, 413 and 520 ' 
 
 paintings of, 435 
 
 supposed occupation by, of Old Lithako, 441 1 
 
 are despoiled by the Mantatees, 461 1 
 
 origin and customs of, 520 1 
 
 copper and iron obtained from, 522 , 
 
 dwellings and utensils of, 522 1 
 
 wealth of, in cattle, 525 
 
 are attacked by kindred tribes, 525 [ 
 
 are finally subjected by the Boers, 528 ; 
 
 ceremonial precedence given to, 520 and 545 , 
 
INDEX 567 
 
 Baines, Thomas, traveller : 
 
 information given by, 56, 91, 137, 143, 144, 145, 255, 262, 264 and 41 1 
 Bakalahari, pioneer Bachoana tribe : 
 
 description of, 421 
 
 methods of hunting adopted by, 423 
 
 subjection of, 423 and 425 
 
 friendship of, with Bushmen, 424 
 
 trade of, with Batlapin, 449 
 
 give information concerning the Mampua, 449 
 Bakeli, a Bantu tribe : 404 
 Baker, Sir Samuel : 
 
 information given by, 93 
 Bakhabo, a branch of the Bapiri : 
 
 revere the monkey, 414 
 Bakhatla, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 venerate the baboon, 409 and 414 
 Bakobi : 
 
 attacks made upon, by the Batlou, 498 
 Bakone : 
 
 meaning of name, 519 
 
 {See Bakuena) 
 Bakotu : 
 
 attend the pitso at Kuruman concerning the advance of the Man- 
 tatees, 463 
 Bakubuon : 
 
 venerate the hippopotamus, 409 
 Bakuena, Bantu tribe : 
 
 attacks of the Koranas upon, 287 
 
 venerate the crocodile, 408, 409, 410 and 518 
 
 victories of, over the Batlapin and Barolong, 451, 452 and 505 
 
 country inhabited by, 481, 483, 518, 546 and 549 
 
 are invaded and defeated by the Mantatees, 506 and 548 
 
 various branches of, 519 and 544 
 
 wars of, with Makaba, 536 and 548 
 
 migration of, from the north, and settlement of in the Free State 
 and Transvaal, 537 and 545 
 
 paramount chieftainship of, 545 
 
 progress of, in civilization, 546 
 
 skill of, in various arts, 547 
 
 trade of, with the Portuguese, 547 
 
 vast herds of cattle possessed by, 547, 548 and 558 
 
 are attacked and destroyed by the Ma;tabili, 549 
 
 huts built by, in trees, 550 
 
 superior dwellings of, 551 
 
 wretched condition of remnant of, 554 
 
 friendly relations of, with Bushmen, 555 and 558 
 
 later degradation of, 558 
 
 country of, is occupied by the Boers, 558 
 
 genealogical table of chiefs of, 559 
 Bakuru, Bantu tribe : 
 
 are sons of the cornshellers, 409 
 Balala, pioneer Bachoana tribe : 
 
 subject condition of, 11, 12 and 425 
 
 habitat and description of, 421 and 425 
 
 services exacted from, 425 to 427 
 
 dwell between the Batlapin and Barolong, 496 
 
568 INDEX 
 
 Baletsatsi, Bantu tribe : 
 siboko of, is the sun, 409 
 observances of, 414 
 Ball : 
 
 games with, among Bushmen, 113 and 114 
 Bamairi : 
 
 attend the pitso at Kuruman, 463 
 Bamangwato, a Bakuena tribe : 
 weapons used by, 74 
 skill of, in ironwork, 142 and 531 
 venerate the duiker and crocodile, 413 and 520 
 descent of, from Ngwato, the son of Malope, 520 and 531 
 are spared by the Matabili to furnish workers in iron, 532 
 division of, 532 
 Bamboesberg : 
 
 Bushmen of, 171 
 Bamorara, a Bakuena tribe : 
 
 venerate the wild oUve, 409 and 416 
 Bamothlo-a-re. (See Batlaru) 
 Bangwaketse, a Bakuena tribe : 
 
 wars of, with Koranas, 287, 290, 291 and 299 
 capture cattle from Batlapin, 451 
 power and dread of, 460, 461 and 535 
 repulse of, by Mantatees, 483 and 541 
 origin of, 520 
 
 venerate the crocodile, 520 and 532 
 skUl of, as agriculturists, 532 
 progress made by, towards civUization, 533 
 are attacked and dispersed by the Matabili, 542 
 take refuge in the Kalahari, 542 
 Banoga, a Bachoana tribe : 
 venerate the serpent, 409 
 Bantu, the : 
 
 group of tongues spoken by, 404 
 extent of, and various tribes belonging to, 404 
 migrations of, 433 
 
 drive the Hottentots before them, 433 
 Banuka, a branch of the Bapiri : 
 
 venerate the porcupine as siboko, 409 and 413 
 Banyati, a Bachoana tribe : 
 venerate the buffalo, 409 
 Baobab tree : 
 
 use made of, by Bushmen, 56 
 BaphalanS, a Bakuena tribe : 
 
 habitat of, 544 
 Bapiri, a Bachoana tribe : 
 venerate the hyena, 409 
 attacks made upon, by Makapan, 499 
 Bapula, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 venerate the rain, 409 
 Bapulana, a Bachoana tribe : 
 venerate the showers, 409, 491 
 origin of, 491 
 
 further particulars concerning, 514 
 Baputi, a Bachoana tribe : 
 attack Bushmen, 190 
 
INDEX 569 
 
 Baptui, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 venerate the little bluebuck, 409 
 
 burial customs of, 415 
 Barapulana. (See Bapulana) 
 Baratlou, a Barolong clan : 
 
 origin of, 491 
 
 divisions of, and decay of, through internal dissensions, 492 and 498 
 Baratsili, a Barolong clan : 
 
 origin of, 491 
 Barends, Barend, Bastaard chief : 
 
 use of firearms by, 271 
 
 attracts the mixed portion of the Griqua nation, 317 
 
 dwells at Boetsap, 321 
 
 attempts of, to capture Africaander, 335, 339 and 344 
 
 friendship of, with missionaries, 340 and 344 
 
 authority of, is confirmed at Griquatown, 363 
 
 resides at Hardcastle, and afterwards at Daniel's Kuil. 365 and 386 
 
 becomes an ordained native teacher, 386 
 
 invites Mr. ArchbeU to his settlement, 386 
 
 victories gained by, over the Mantatees, 387, 388 and 471 
 
 defends Mr. Moffat from the Bataung, 388 and 512 
 
 in 1 83 1 undertakes a hostile expedition against Moselekatze, 389 and 
 527 
 
 returns with shattered forces and retreats to Namaqualand, 39 
 
 settles at Groenkloof, and dies on a visit to Boetsap, 392 
 Barends, Nicholas, brother of Barend : 
 
 description of, 339 
 
 encounters of, with Africaander, 340 
 
 residence of, 365 
 Baroa : 
 
 is a name given by Kaffirs to Bushmen, 31 and 519 
 Barolong, a branch of the Bachoana : 
 
 wars of, with the Koranas, 286 and 287 
 
 abandon their great place at Maquassie, 300 and 513 
 
 settle at the Great Platberg, and afterwards at Thaba Nchu, 300, 
 497 and 514 
 
 sufferings of, from the ravages of the Mantatees, ^76, 461, 462, 482, 
 494, 511, 512 and 526 
 
 take iron for their siboko, 409 
 
 consider themselves superior to the Batlapin, 437 
 
 wars of, with the Batlapin, 438 to 440, 484 and 505 
 
 attend the pitso at Kuruman, 463 
 
 ancient name of, and antiquity of, 488 
 
 come originally from the north, 488 
 
 are great traders, 489 and 496 
 
 habits and customs of, 489 
 
 timidity of, 489 
 
 tribe of, is divided into four branches, 491 
 
 alleged ignorance and brutaUty of, 496 
 
 skill of, in metal-work, in carving, and in agricultural pursuits, 496 
 
 flight of, before the Mantatees and Matabili, 495, 497 and 507 
 Barrow, Mr. (afterwards Sir John) : 
 
 visit of, to Bushmen, in 1796, and information given by, 35, 153, 
 
 163, 171, 239 and 251 
 Baseleka, a Barolong clan : 
 
 origin of, and residence of at Thaba Nchu, 491, 503 and 514 
 
570 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bastaards : i j <: 
 
 are a mixed race of European and Hottentot parentage, 317 and 365 
 colonial surnames of, 320 
 marauding habits of, 336 and 445 
 
 trafi&c carried on with, by Boers, for ammunition, 337 
 gather around Barend Barends, 339 and 366 
 friendly relations of, with the border colonists, 339 
 attack of, upon Africaander, 344 
 change their name to Griquas, 362 
 submit to Waterboer, 374 
 cruel treatment of Bushmen by, 380 
 migration of, eastward, from the Matabili, 391 
 Basutu, a modern Bantu tribe : 
 region inhabited by, 4 
 
 attacks of, on Bushmen, 26, 226 and 229 
 cannibalism of, 51 
 weapons used by, 74 and 235 
 game played by, 100 
 
 appropriate musical ideas from Bushmen, 108 and 109 
 war-songs of, 135 
 
 war of, with the Free State, 226 to 228 
 love of, for agriculture, 234 and 417 
 drive the Hottentots before them, and are themselves driven by 
 
 coast Kaf&rs, 234 
 advance of, from the north, 280 
 are despoiled by the Koranas, 280 and 310 
 increasing strength of, 312 
 vengeance taken by, upon Jalusa, 313 
 refugees from, join the Griquas, 319 
 attacks upon, by hordes of banditti, 337 and 381 
 are a branch of the Bachoana group, 405 
 traditions of, concerning their ancient home, 432 
 connection of, with eastern races, 433 
 paintings by, 435 
 
 pride themselves upon having beards, 459 
 retreat before the Mantatees, 484 
 clans included in, 519 
 are less warlike than coast Kafi&rs, 538 
 Basutuland : 
 
 stone implements and ancient mounds in, 65 
 tribes of, weapons used by, 235 
 Batauana, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 venerate the young lions, 409 
 Bataung, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 attacks of Koranas upon, 287 
 join the Mantatees, 376 and 388 
 venerate the lion as their siboko, 409 and 416 
 are a branch of the Leghoya, 410 and 511 
 wars of, with the Barolong, 511 and 512 
 are attacked and slaughtered by the Matabili, 516 
 Bataung, a Barolong clan : 
 
 wars of, with the Batlapin, 444 and 502 
 origin of, 498 and 501 
 destruction of, 503 
 Batlapin, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 make use of poisoned weapons, 74 
 
INDEX 571 
 
 Batlapin, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 constant waxfare of, with Bushmen, 178, 181, 194 and 452 to 456 
 
 intermarriage of, with Bushmen and Koranas, 287 and 296 
 
 wars of, with Koranas, 287, 442, 443 and 485 
 
 supply Koranas with assagais and karosses, 299 
 
 refugees from, join the Griquas, 319 
 
 are found on the Kuruman by Cornelius Kok, 325 
 
 obtain drink from melons, 359 
 
 terror of, at advance of Mantatees, 372, 463 and 482 
 
 advice and protection given to, by missionaries, 372 and 484 
 
 are driven from Kuruman, and become subject to Waterboer, 375 
 
 and 376 
 place of, among the Bantu peoples, 405 
 venerate the fish as their siboko, 408 and 409 
 traditions of, concerning the country, 418 
 origin of name of, 434 
 
 are visited by government commissioners, scientists, and mission- 
 aries, 434, 435 and 440 
 weapons of, 435 and 459 
 artistic work by, 435 
 description of, 436 
 
 skill of, in metal-work and agriculture, 436 
 pedigree of chiefs of, 437 
 
 subjection of, to Barolong, and revolt of, 441 and 490 
 wars of, with Bataung, 444, 501 and 502 
 assist Batlou against Leghoya, 445 
 exterminate marauding Bastaards, 446 
 territory of, in 1813, 448 
 trade of, with Bakalahari, 449 
 marauding expeditions of, against the Mampua and Barolong, 449 
 
 and 484 
 wars of, with the Bangwaketse, 451 and 536 
 in 1 8 17 settle on the Kuruman, 452 
 
 cowardice of, and cruelty of, in plunder, 452, 455, 478, 479.- 480 and 489 
 
 dweUings of, 458 
 
 pitso held by, 463 
 
 conflict of, with Mantatees, 475 
 
 breaking-up of tribe of, and division of, into two branches, 486 
 
 are routed by the Bakuena, 505 
 
 treachery of, towards the Batlaru, 530 
 
 axe attacked by Griquas, 531 
 
 are deserted by the Bangwaketse, 537 
 Batlaru, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 refugees of, join the Griquas, 319 
 
 venerate the python and the wil4 olive, 409 and 528 
 
 attend the pitso at Kuruman, 463 
 
 are a branch of the Bahurutsi, 524 and 529 
 
 habits and customs of, 529 
 
 subjection of, to the Batlapin, 529 
 
 are attacked by a horde of banditti, 530 
 Batlatla, A Bakuena clan: 
 
 wars of, with the Barolong, 503 and 504 
 Batlokua, a Bachoana tribe : 
 
 venerate the wild cat, 409 
 
 invade the Bakuena country, 548 
 
 (See Mantatees) 
 
572 INDEX 
 
 Batlou, a Barolong clan : 
 
 attacks upon, by the Koranas, 287 
 venerate the elephant, 409 and 491 
 quarrel of, with the Leghoya, 444 
 northward migrations of, 481 and 499 
 origin of, 491 and 497 
 
 warlike expeditions of, 498 „ . j 
 
 siege of, by Boers, in the caverns of Makapan s Poort, 499 and 
 SOI 
 Batshwa, Batlapin captain : 
 
 death of, 442 
 " Battle of the Chiefs " • 
 at Pitsane, 514 and 530 
 Battue : 
 
 among Bushmen, description of, 149 
 Baukxoba, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Bayeyi, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Beads : 
 
 are made by Bushmen from ostrich eggshell. 23, 52 and 139 
 use of, for ornament, among the Koranas, 274 
 Beards : 
 
 scanty among Bushmen, 15 and 184 
 are prized by the Bachoana and Basutu, 459 
 Beersheba, on the Caledon : 
 
 French mission at, 312 
 Bees : 
 
 methods of finding nests of, used by Bushmen, 86 
 dance resembling, 117 
 Belts : 
 
 worn by Bushwomen, manufacture of, 139 
 Benga, Bantu tribe : 404 
 Berg-Damaras : 
 
 characteristics of, and habits and customs of, 256 to 261 
 speak the Hottentot language, 257 and 265 
 number and habitat of, 257 
 want of energy and cohesion of, 258 
 hatred by, of the Ovaherero, 260 
 are skilful mountaineers, 260 
 origin of, 265 
 Bergenaars, a horde of banditti : 
 
 marauding expeditions of, 300, 301, 308, 375 and 381 
 possess firearms, 512 
 aid given by, to Sihunelo, 513 
 Bern, Bushman chief : 
 
 authority of, 354 
 Bethulie : 
 
 mission at, 134 and 184 
 Blaauw Bank : 
 
 mystic designs on rocks at, 29 and 398 
 Bleek, Dr., philologist : 
 
 studies of, in the Bushman language and mythology, arid informa- 
 tion obtained from, 8, 17, 131, 133 and 404 
 lamented death of, 8 and 404 
 Bloem, Jan, a German from Cape Colony : 
 allies himself with Koranas, 289 
 plundering expeditions of, 289 
 
INDEX 573 
 
 Bloem, Jan, a German from Cape Colony : 
 
 is elected captain of the Springboks, 290, 392 and 442 
 
 leads Koranas against the Bangwaketse, 290 
 
 attacks the Batlapin, 291 and 434 
 
 attempted assassination of, by Makaba, 537 
 
 death of, in 1799, 290 and 291 
 Bloem, Jan, the Younger : 
 
 succeeds his father as captain of the Springboks, 290 and 300 
 
 attacks Waterboer at Griquatown, 372 
 
 asserts his independence, 392 
 
 joins the Barolong against the Matabili, 515 
 Bloemfontein : 
 
 origin of name of, 290 
 Bluebuck : 
 
 veneration of, as siboko, 409 
 Boar, wild : 
 
 ferocity of, 89 
 Bode, THE : 
 
 voyage of, in 1677, 249 
 
 BOERS : 
 
 incursions of, into Bushman territory, and warfare carried on by, 
 25, 153, 155, 164 to 168, 172, 176, 196, 216, 217 to 226, and 397 
 
 kidnap and enslave Bushman children, 48, 192, 205 and 217 
 
 retain Bushmen on farms as shepherds, 54 and 173 
 
 dread of Bushmen shown by, 153 
 
 cruelty of, towards natives, 156, 165, 209, 210 and 328 
 
 move eastward to the Sunday river, 212 
 
 were at first welcomed by natives as skilful hunters, 217 
 
 first mention of, by a native, 305 
 
 iUicit trai&c carried on by, with Bastaards, 337 
 
 dispossess the Hottentots in Namaqualand, 362 
 
 besiege the Batlou in caverns, 499 and 501 
 
 treklang expeditions of, 500 
 
 drive back the Matabili in, 1837, and occupy the Bakuena terri- 
 tory, 515, 528, 557 and 558 
 
 BOETSAP : 
 
 Barend Barends resides at, 321, 385 and 392 
 is a Wesleyan mission station, 388 
 BoGACHU, Barolong chief : 496 
 
 BOK-POORT : 
 
 destruction of Bushmen of, 224 
 
 BOLOKO : 
 
 destruction of Bushmen of, 225 
 Bonteberg : 
 
 Bushmen retreat to, 159 
 Borcherds, Mr. ; 
 
 travels of, and information obtained from, 128, 159, 294, 334, 342, 
 
 344 and 434 
 Bosjesmans : 
 
 name given by colonists to Bushmen, 31 
 Boteta, Or Elandsberg : 
 
 is a Korana stronghold, 312 
 Botha, Mr., Dutch farmer : 
 
 helps in mission to Bushmen, 157 
 Bowker, Octavius : \ -- 
 
 hunting expeditions of, with Bushmen, 60 
 
574 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bows AND Arrows : 
 
 of Bushmen, description of, 68 
 
 used by Bachoana and Basutu tribes, 74 
 
 by Damara Bushmen, 140 
 BoYCE, Reverend W. B. : 
 
 information given by, 405 
 Brak River : 354 
 Bread : 
 
 method of making, by Bushmen, 55 
 Briquas, name given to the Batlapin : 434 
 Broadbent, Mr., Wesleyan missionary to the Barolong : 
 
 in 1822 settles at Maquassie, 388 
 
 gives information concerning the Mantatees, 506 to 512 
 
 demonstrates the innocence of Sihunelo, 5x2 
 
 information given by, concerning Bakuena, 549 
 Brown, Alfred : 
 
 writings of, 65 and 70 
 
 BUCHU, AN aromatic PLANT USED BY BUSHWOMEN : 45 
 
 Buffalo : 
 
 is venerated as siboko by a particular tribe, 409 
 bundelzwart, son of owib : 253 
 Burchell, Mr., scientist : 
 
 travels of, 435 
 Burials : 
 
 customs of, among Bushmen, 126 
 
 among Baputi, 415 
 Bushman -cards : 
 
 is a game played by various tribes, 100 to 102 
 Bushman -RICE. (See Ants) 
 Bushman school : 
 
 mission established at, in 1839, 201 
 
 BUSHMANLAND : 
 
 is the old name for the Zuurveld, 204 
 
 BUSHMANSBERG, BuSHMAN TRIBE AT : 
 
 destruction of, 193 
 
 BuSHMEN : 
 
 antiquity of, 3 to 16 
 — are the true aborigines of South Africa, 3 to 16, 22 to 30, 266, 397, 
 
 424 and 433 
 extended occupation by, 3 to 6 
 artistic talents of, and 
 paintings and sculptures by, 5, 13, 16, 21, 25, 50, 135, 172, 228, 230 
 
 232 and 345 
 ^ origin of, north of the equator, and southward migrations of, 6 to 
 
 13, and 232 
 physical characteristics of, 6, 7, 15, 138, 144 and 169 
 language of, 8, 9, 12 and 17 
 
 take refuge from invading stronger races, 10, 11, 179, 398 and 422 
 superstitions concerning, 11 and 81 
 are divided into two branches — sculptors or kopje-dwellers, and 
 
 painters or cave-dwellers, 12 to 14, 42 and 135 
 comparison of other races with, 14 to 21 
 numerical system of, 18 
 myths of, 19, 20, 129, 130 and 136 
 various names of, 31 and 519 
 character and virtues of, and 
 
INDEX 575 
 
 Bushmen : 
 
 faithfulness of, as herdsmen, 31, 34, 41, 80, 150, i6i, 173, 323, 347, 
 
 354 and 393 
 tribal emblems of, 32 
 
 government of, and tribal divisions of, 33 
 devotion of, to their chiefs, 34 
 atrocities committed by, in revenge for wrongs, 34 to 36, 50, 51, 180 
 
 216, 252 and 253 
 war made upon, and gradual extermination of, by invading stronger 
 
 races, 35 to 40, 144, 155 to 160, 162, 163, 164 to 168, 172, 185, 188, 
 
 189, 193, 194, 196, 214, 217 to 220, 223 to 225, 229, 233, 282 to 
 
 285, 302 to 307, 309, 328, 380, 393, 399, 403, 452 and 454 
 shelter given by, to Bachoana fugitives, 37, 191, 287, 288 and 292 
 gaiety and diversions of, 38, 45, 97 to 102, and iii 
 love of freedom and intrepidity of, 39, 149, 154, 157, 189, 215, 223, 
 
 224, 226, 230, 396, 399 and 401 
 habits of, 41 to 53 
 
 different language and habitations of two branches of, 42 and 135 
 description of town of, 43 
 food of, 44, 54 to 61, 139, 148 and 152 
 methods of adornment used by, 46, 52, 113, 138 and 143 
 terror exhibited by, of white men, 47, 54 and 103 
 children of, are kidnapped and enslaved by Boers, 48, 163, 192, 
 
 205 and 217 
 smoking habits of, 52 
 intoxicating liquor brewed by, 53 
 cookery of, 60 and 142 
 methods of obtaining fire employed by, 60 
 weapons of, 62 to 77,' 142, 207 and 449 
 as marksmen, 71 
 
 manufacture and use of poisons by, 74 to 79 
 secrets maintained by, 76 to 78, and 136 
 keen sight of, 81 and 214 
 
 disguises used by, for hunting and fighting, 82, 88 and 304 
 methods of hunting and fishing employed by, 82 to 94, 132 and 149 
 agility of, in chmbing, 87, 164 and 167 
 marriage customs of, 95 to 97 
 
 love of music, and musical instruments of, 102, 107 to iii, and 135 
 various dances of, iii to 121 ' / 1/ 
 
 religious ideas of, and belief of in a future state, 113, 129, 132, 136 
 
 and 145 
 superstitions of, concerning sickness, 120 and 125 
 knowledge of medicine possessed by, 125 
 burial customs of, 126 
 self -mutilation of, 129 and 152 
 poem of, 135 
 
 of Damaraland, description of, 137 
 panic created among, by a rocket, 141 
 vassalage of, to Bachoana, 143 
 of the Kalahari, description of, 147 
 of the west, 152 
 
 are swept off by an epidemic, 152 
 
 hatred of, towards their countrymen residing with Boers, 1:53 
 mission work among, 157, 172, i73> i75. 201 and 379 
 of the Karoo, description of, 160 
 of the 'Cam'deboo and Sneeuwberg, 164 
 
576 INDEX 
 
 Bushmen : " • 
 
 of the Eastern Plains, particulars concerning, i68 
 of the Bamboesberg, 171 
 
 of the Tooverberg and the Northern Plains, 172 ;- 
 
 of Reyner Mountain, 178 
 of the Malalarene, 181 
 of the 'Gij 'Gariep, or Vaal, 182 
 advance of, towards a pastoral state, 183 
 of the 'Nu 'Gariep, particulars concerning, 183 
 of the Geiiadeberg, 187 
 of the 'Kouwe or Jammerberg, 188 
 of the Koranaberg, 189 
 of Di-tse-thlong, 191 
 of the Koesberg, 192 
 of the Upper Modder River, 194 
 of the Washbank, 195 and 220 
 of the eastern province of the Cape Colony, 198 
 make common cause with the Basutu, 226-228 
 attachment of, to ancestral caves and strongholds, 228, 230, 265 and 
 
 452 
 dependence of, on Hottentots, 237 
 
 different modes of treatment of, by Koranas, 269, 275, 301 and 308 
 friendship of, with Leghoya, 309 
 remnants of, join the Griquas, 319 
 question of treatment of, by Griquas, 326 
 hatred of, towards Griquas, 326 and 350 
 occupy the Griqua country, and are driven from territory and springs, 
 
 344, 347, 361, 369 and 384 
 are compelled to steal cattle for subsistence, 347, 359, 452, 455, 456 
 
 and 457 
 small compensation made to, for territorial rights, 349 and 394 
 met with by Mr. Campbell in 18 13, 352 
 jealousy of, 358 
 
 ally themselves with Africaander, 359 and 360 
 besiege a party of Boers, 397 
 friendship of, with the Bakalahari, 424 
 wiUingness of, to fraternize with invaders, 430 and 432 
 give information concerning the Mampua, 449 
 follow in the rear of Mantatees, 509 , 
 
 names given by, to Bantu tribes, 519 
 dwell in peace in the Bakuena territory, 555 
 are devoured by cannibals, 556 
 
 BUSHWOMEN : 
 
 adornments of, 45 and 46 
 industry and skill of, in manufacture, 46 
 dances of, 115 and 118 
 belts worn by, 139 
 Buys, Coenrad, a fugitive Boer : 
 
 assists Sihunelo against the Bakuena, 505 
 
 Caddisworm, the : 
 
 veneration of, and prayers offered to, 133 
 Cagn. {See 'Kaang) 
 
INDEX 577 
 
 'Cam'deboo, the : 
 
 Bushmen of, 164 
 Cameron, Captain, traveller : 1 1 and 405 
 Campbell, Reverend J. : 
 
 travels and writings of, and information given by, 44, 49, 71, 90, 
 109, 178, 179. 181, 209, 253, 307, 308, 314, 335, 346, 347, 348, 
 3S2, 356, 357. 358, 362, 364, 379, 407, 417, 427, 429, 430, 435, 
 436, 441, 448, 452, 453, 455, 459, 494, 497, 521, 522, 523, 525, 
 529, S32, 535. 538, 546 and 547 
 Campbell, Griqua village : 
 
 alleged discovery of springs at, by Griquas, 348 
 four languages spoken at, 357 
 visit of Mr. Campbell to, in 1813, 357 
 is founded by the Koks, 378 
 
 is taken possession of, for the London Missionary Society, 383 
 Campbell Rand, or 'Kaap : 
 
 possession and occupation of, by Bushmen, 348, 356 and 393 
 alleged purchase of, from a Bushman, 348 and 349 
 Canal : 
 
 is cut by a Griqua aided by Bushmen, 179 
 Cannibalism : 
 
 is not practised by Bushmen or Hottentots, 51 and 336 
 of Kaffirs, 51 
 
 of Mantatees, 462, 510 and 526 
 Bakuena tribes fall back upon, 558 
 Cape district : 
 
 settlement of, by Koranas, 268 
 Captain Harry, chief of the Goringhaikona : 247 
 'Caricoup, Bushman captain at Modderfontein : 294 
 Casalis, Dr. : 
 
 information given by, 310, 411, 521 and 541 
 Cat, wild : 
 
 is revered as siboko by the Batlokua, 409 
 Cattle : 
 
 of Boers, are cared for by Bushmen in dry seasons, 161 and 173 
 are stolen by Bushmen for food, 179, 181, 187, 347, 369, 370, 452, 
 
 453. 455 and 456 
 destruction of, by Bushmen, 214 
 are prized by Hottentot tribes, 241, 243, 244, 245, 250, 251, 253 
 
 and 254 
 are prized and looted by Koranas, 272, 277, 287, 299, 310, 392, 429, 
 
 442 and 443 
 are the chief wealth of the Ovaherero, 262 
 conflicts for, between Koranas and Bushmen, 283 to 285 
 raids upon, by European freebooters, 289 
 captures of, by Africaander, 331 and 334 
 by Bastaards, 344, 389 and 445 
 by Griquas, 371, 476 and 512 
 paid as a fine by Sihunelo, 377 and 511 
 stolen by Bergenaars, 381 
 possessed by the Tamahas, 428 
 craving for, by Kaffirs, 446 
 seizures of, by Batlapin, 448 to 451 
 by the Bangwaketse, 451, 525 and 534 
 by Mantatees, 461, 473 and 474 
 are paid as dowry for wives, 497 
 
 P P 
 
578 INDEX 
 
 Cattle : 
 
 forays made upon, by all the Bachoana, 494 
 by the Batlou, 498 
 
 vast herds of, possessed by the Bakuena, 547, 548 and 558 
 Cauqua, Hottentot tribe : 244 
 Caves : 
 
 Bushman paintings in, $, 13, 25, 32, 98, loi, 122, 131, 171, 184, 
 
 188, 192, 19s, 201, 203, 228 and 232 
 were residences of the head chiefs, 33 
 examination of, and remains found in, S'i 
 used as a refuge by Bushmen, 179 and 453 
 siege of, against Basutus and Bushmen, 227 
 attachment of Bushmen to, 228 and 230 
 Chainouqua, Hottentot tribe : 241 and 243 
 Chamaqua, Hottentot tribe : 244 
 Chapman, Henry, F.R.G.S., traveller: 
 
 information given by, 56, 57, 76 to 78, 91, 137, 141, 143, 144, 148, 149, 
 150 and 264 
 Chariguriqua. (See Grigriqua) 
 Charingunqua, a Hottentot tribe : 242 
 Charms : 
 
 against sickness, 125 
 Chase, J. C, of Rouxville : 
 
 Bushman chief in the service of, 187 
 Children : 
 
 of Bushmen, are kidnapped and enslaved by Boers, 48, 192, 205 
 
 and 217 
 treatment of, by Bushmen, 50 and 51 
 Chinese : 
 
 resemblance of Bushmen to, 128 and 168 
 Cho-aing : 
 
 Barolong settlement at, 496 
 'Choro, chief of the Korachoqua ; 
 
 carries ofi the wife of Gonnema, 241 and 244 
 further mention of, 247 
 CnuANft, Mantatee chief : 
 
 remains at Lithako during battle with the Griquas, 477 
 'Chu-de'-ep, Korana captain : 
 
 description of, 507 
 Circumcision : 
 
 practice of, among Bachoana and Kaffirs, 273 
 by Batlapin, 438 
 Climate : 
 
 former, in South Africa, 418 
 Cloete, Jacob, Griqua captain : , , 
 
 leads a horde of banditti against Batlapin and Batlaru, 496 and 530 
 Clothing : . . 
 
 of Hottentots, 240 
 of the Berg Damaras, 259 
 of the Ovaherero, 263 and 266 
 of Koranas, 274 
 of Griquas, 318 
 of Mantatees, 473 and 481 
 CocHOQUA, Hottentot tribe : ' 
 
 meaning of name, 239 
 reside near Table Bay, 241 
 
INDEX 579 
 
 CocHOQUA, Hottentot tribe : 
 
 in 1672 sell the Cape peninsula to the Dutch, 242 
 
 probable numbers of, 246 
 
 disputes of, with the Namaquas, 250 
 CoETZEE, Cornelius : 
 
 murder of, by Hottentots, 343 
 Collins, Colonel : 
 
 report of, in 1809, 174 
 
 recommends the collection and instruction of Bushmen, 174 
 Colours : 
 
 used by Bushman artists, 230 
 
 distinctive, of various tribes, 523 
 Commandos : 
 
 against Bushmen, merciless warfare of, 162, 172, 177, 188, 189, 192, 
 196, 218, 219, 220, 223, 224, 225, 369 and 400 
 
 painting of, 200 
 
 are undertaken by the Africaanders against natives, 328 
 
 by Waterboer against the Mantatees, 376 
 
 by Batlapin against Bushmen, return of, 453 and 455 
 Commerce : 
 
 between the Dutch and Hottentots, 250 
 
 between the Ovambo and Portuguese, 264 
 
 of Koranas with the Bachoana and Leghoya, 309 
 
 iUicit, between Boers and Bastaards, 337 
 
 between the Batlapin and Bakalahari, 449 
 
 of various tribes with the Barolong, 489 
 Congo , the : 
 
 Bantu tribes of, 405 
 Cookery : 
 
 of Bushmen, 60 and 142 
 Corn : 
 
 cultivation of, by the Batlapin, 417 
 
 by the Bangwaketse, 539 
 Cowan, Dr. : 
 
 travels of, 435 and 548 
 
 death of, in 1808, 548 
 Cripps, St. Vincent : 
 
 discoveries of, in Basutuland, 65 
 Crocodile : 
 
 is venerated as siboko by all the Bakuena tribes, 408, 409, 518, 520, 
 531 and 532 
 
 superstitions concerning, 410 and 411 
 
 antiquity of, as a tribal emblem, 518 
 
 oxen are attacked by, 525 
 Cross, the : 
 
 as a Bushman symbol, 120 
 ■Cruythof : 
 
 expedition of, 245 
 
 D 
 
 Dacha ; wild hemp : 
 
 use of, for smoking, 53 and 173 
 cultivation of, by Hottentots, 238 and 243 
 by Berg-Damaras, 259 
 
58o INDEX 
 
 Damara : 
 
 name of, comprises several Bantu tribes, 261 
 Damaraland : 
 
 Bushmen of, 137 
 Dancing : 
 
 among Bushmen, 38, 45, 97, 102, 105, 107, 11 1 and 113 to 120 
 religious ideas connected with, 113, 121, 411 and 414 
 among the Koranas, 274 and 276 
 Daniel's Kuil : 
 
 settlement of Barend Barends at, 386 
 is a mission station, 387 
 Danser, David, Bushman captain : 
 
 alleged sale by, of territorial rights, 394 and 399 
 land allotted to, 395 
 Danster, a freebooter : 
 
 treacherous scheme of, for destroying Bushmen, 185 
 Danster, Bushman chief : 
 
 death of, 225 
 Danster, a petty Kaffir chief : 334 
 Daumas, Mr., missionary : 392 
 De 'Coie, or Danser : 
 
 war of, with the GoUaths, 399 
 death of, 400 
 (See Danser) 
 Delagoa Bay : 
 
 Bantu tribes at, 405 
 Diamonds : 
 
 discovery of, in the Vaal river valley, 316 
 Disguises : 
 
 assumed by Bushmen, for hunting and fighting, 82, 84, 88, 121 and 304 
 as a diversion, 97, 117 and 118 
 paintings of, 98 
 Di-tse-thlong or Platberg : 
 
 Bushmen of, 191 
 Dleloqua, Batlapin chief : 
 
 speech of, against the Mantatees, 465 
 Donovan, Captain : 
 
 travels of, 435 and 548 
 death of, in 1808, 548 
 Dreyer, Commandant : 
 
 attack of, upon Bushmen, 189 
 Dreyer, Klaas : 
 
 leads a horde of banditti against the Batlaru, 530 
 Drum : 
 
 manufacture of, and use of, by Bushmen, 110 
 Du Chaillu : 
 
 allusions of, to Bushmen, 11 
 Dugmore, Reverend H. H. : 
 information given by, 406 
 Duiker, antelope : 
 
 is revered as siboko by the Bamangwato, 413 and 520 
 by the Baputi, 415 
 Dulcimer, the 
 
 idea of among Bushmen, 107 
 DuNDAs, General, lieutenant-governor : 
 
 orders a commando against Hottentot murderers, 343 
 
INDEX 58r 
 
 Dutch, the : 
 
 settlement of, 235, 237, 268 and 269 
 
 purchase the Cape peninsula from the Cochoqua in 1672, 242 
 
 trade of, with Hottentots, 250 / • ^ 
 
 waxs of, with Hottentots and Batlapin, 269 and 458 
 
 evidence of contact with, in Korana names, 296 
 
 Gnquas are partly descended from, 316 
 
 drive the Jagers towards the interior, ^27 
 Du Toil's Pan : ^ ' 
 
 Bushman beads found at, 23 
 Dwarfs : 
 
 tales concerning 1 1 
 
 Earthmen, name given to Bushmen : 5 
 Edwards, Mr., missionary : 
 
 settles with the Batlapin, 435 
 Egyptians : 
 
 dance of, resembles that of Bushwomen, 118 
 EiKOMo, son of 'Kora : 
 
 is driven northward by Europeans, 269 
 
 place of, in genealogy, 298 
 Elands 
 
 Bushman painting of, 26 
 
 stone chipping of, 30 
 
 last survivors of, 228 
 Elandsberg. (See Boteta) 
 Elephants : 
 
 hunting of, 71, 89, 145, 155 and 359 
 
 former abundance of, 80 
 
 veneration of, as siboko, by the Batlou, 409 
 
 in the Bakuena country, 555 
 Engelbrecht, Hermanus, Dutch farmer : 
 
 murder of, by Africaander, 331 and 343 
 English, the : 
 
 obtain possession of the colony, 235 and 328 
 Epidemic : 
 
 among Bushmen, 152 
 Erasmus, Nicolaas, commandant •- 
 
 attacks and destroys Bushmen, with commando, 220 
 Evans, Mr., missionary: 
 
 arrives among the Batlapin, 435 
 
 Falls : 
 
 of the Gariep, 271 
 Faure, Reverend A., minister of the Dutch Reformed church 
 
 at Graaff Reinet : 
 
 testimony of, to fidelity of Bushmen, 173 
 
 urges the establishment of a mission station at PhUippolis for dis- 
 possessed Bushmen, 310 and 379 
 Fernando Po : 
 
 inhabitants of, belong to the Bantu race, 404 
 
582 INDEX 
 
 Feudal system : 
 
 prevails among the Bachoana tribes, 425 
 FicK, Commandant ■- 
 
 attack upon Bushmen led by, 189 
 FiNGOS : 
 
 language of, 406 
 Fire : ^ , 
 
 method of obtaining, used by Bushmen, 60, 140 and 142 
 
 myth concerning, 130 
 Firearms : 
 
 introduction of, among natives, 271 and 279 
 
 are possessed by the Griquas and Bastaards, 319, 392 and 530 
 Fischer, Floris : 
 
 efforts of, on behalf of Bushmen, 157 
 Fish : 
 
 use of, as food, by Bushmen, 152 
 Fishing : 
 
 methods of, employed by Bushmen, 72, and 92 to 94 
 Flute : 
 
 use of, among Bushmen and Koranas, 109 and 115 
 Food : 
 
 of Bushmen, 20, 44, 54 to 61 and 160 
 
 of Hottentots, 240 
 
 of Namaquas, 253 
 
 of the Berg-Damara, 25Q 
 Fourie, Stephanus, a Boer : 
 
 purchases territory from a Bushman, 394 
 Freeman, Mr. ; 
 
 information given by, 423 
 Frogs : 
 
 use of, as food, by Bushmen, 59 
 
 death of, through venomous spider, 79 
 
 Bushman dance resembhng, 117 
 Fruits : 
 
 used as food by Bushmen, 56 and 57 
 
 GAAP. (See Katse) 
 Gaboronoe, Batlatla chief : 
 
 wars of, with the Barolong, 504 
 
 is killed in battle at Kokane, 504 
 Gabriel, a native catechist : 
 
 parentage of, 496 
 Game : 
 
 former abundance of, 3, 36, 80, 147, 153, 155, 173, 252, 282, 322, 
 324, 356, 524, 534 and 555 
 
 Bushman methods of catching, 82 to 94, 149 and 354 
 
 is driven away by guns, 160 and 347 
 
 kUling of, and law of ownership of, 454 
 
 GASIBONfe, SON OF MOTHIBI : 
 
 rules one branch of the Batlapin, 486 
 'Gatee t'Kamma, native name of Griquatown : 
 Koranas at, 278 and 286 
 mission station is formed at, 286 
 {See Griquatown) 
 
INDEX 583 
 
 'GCU-WA, BROTHER OF MaDA'KANE : 
 
 paintings by, 200 
 Genadeberg, the : 
 
 Bushmen of, strength of, and final extermination of, 187 and 2 19 to 223 
 Ghonaquas : 
 
 are a mixed race, 204 
 Giddy, Reverend Richard : 
 
 information given by, 406 and 434 
 Gij 'Gariep, or Vaal River : 
 
 changes in level and channel of, 23 and 25 
 
 Bushmen of, 182 
 
 further mention of, 4, 13, 27, 28, 30, 47, 72, 93, 129, 135, 180, 270, 
 278, 308, 310, 319, 324, 336, 340, 352, 357, 358, 393, 396, 400, 
 432, 442, and 445 
 
 {See Vaal) 
 'Gij 'Gumaap, or Modder River : 393 and 396 
 Giraffe : 
 
 Bushman chipping of, at Pniel, 43 
 
 drawings of, 171 
 
 wide area formerly occupied by, 171 
 GoDLONTON, Honourable Robert, M.L.C. : 
 
 testimony of, to cruel treatment of Bushmen, 380 
 
 'GOEBOE, SON OF SoUSA : 
 
 wife of, is carried off by Oedasoa, 241 and 243 
 
 'GoGGUM' TooVENAAR, A KORANA INTERPRETER : 
 
 evidence given by, 271 
 'Go'gosoa, chief of the Goringhaiqua : 242 and 247 
 'Go-'koo-lume, site of the first great battle between Bushmen 
 
 and koranas : 284 
 Goliath Ysterbek, Korana captain : 
 
 defeats Jan Taaibosch, 298 and 301 
 
 land allotted to, 395 
 
 is suspected of sorcery, 399 
 
 war of, with 'De'coie, 399 
 
 GOLIATHS, KoRANA CLAN : 
 
 war of, with Bushmen, 399 
 
 GONNEMA, CAPTAIN OF THE COCHOQUA : 
 
 wife of, is captured by 'Choro, 241 and 244 
 becomes head chief, 242 
 
 GONTSE, SON OF MoKOTO, CHIEF OF THE BaRATLOU : 
 
 kindness of, to Batlapin, is repaid with treachery, 484 
 
 succeeds his father, 493 
 
 is twice attacked by Makaba, 494 
 
 retreats before the Mantatees from Pitsane to Kougke, 495 and 496 
 GoRACHOQUA. (See Korachoqua) 
 Gordon, Colonel : 
 
 narrow escape of, 90 
 
 visits the Bushmen of the west, and names the Orange river, 151 
 Goringhaicona, a Hottentot clan : 
 
 fierce predatory habits of, 245 
 
 number of, 247 
 Goringhaiqua, a Hottentot tribe : 
 
 account of, 241 and 242 
 
 number of, 247 
 Grass seeds : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, as food, 58 
 
584 INDEX 
 
 Great Fish River : 
 
 stone heaps found near, 128 
 Bushmen congregate along, 205 
 Great Riet River (see 'Gumaap) 
 Great Winterberg : 
 
 Bushman tribe of, 213 
 Greyling, Commandant : 
 
 expedition of, 224 
 Grigriqua, a Hottentot tribe : 
 habitat of, 243 
 number of, 247 
 migration of, for pasture, 247 
 are the ancestors of the Griquas, 316 
 Griqualand : 
 
 Bushman occupation of, 13, 42 and 361 
 sculptures found in, 27 
 limits of, in 1813, 362 
 
 disposal of, to the Free State authorities, 383 
 Griquas : 
 
 use of firearms by, 81, 90, 319 and 530 
 
 hatred and cruel treatment of Bushmen by, 159, 178, 326, 347, 363, 
 
 380 and 403 
 are a mixed race, descended from Hottentot tribes and Dutch 
 
 colonists, 244, 248, 296, 316, 319 and 365 
 eastward migrations of, 254 and 341 
 section of, called Bastaards, change their name at Klaarwater, 317 
 
 and 362 
 low moral condition of, 318 
 colonial names of, 320 
 
 are encouraged to migrate from the colony, 320 
 various divisions of, 321, 374 and 384 
 districts occupied by, and claims made by, to lands, 326, 346, 356, 
 
 357, 362 and 392 
 alleged discoveries by, of springs, 348 
 settlement of, at Campbell and Griquatown, 348 
 chafe under missionary restraint, 351 
 
 are largely independent of the settlement at Griquatown, 361 
 conservatism of, 370 
 predatory habits of, 371, 402 and 512 
 
 power of, and extent of territory ruled by, under missionary in- 
 fluence, 377 
 decadence of, 401 
 assist the Batlapin and Barolong against the Mantatees, 462, 463, 
 
 470, 471, 474, 476 and 495 
 Griquatown ■- 
 
 former names of, 278 
 
 establishment of missionary settlement at, in 1804, 286, 340, 346, 
 
 350, 362, 366 et seq. 
 Bushman paintings at, 345 
 
 laws enacted at, for the protection of life and property, 363 
 magistrates are chosen at, 364 
 population at, 364 
 desertion and ruin of, 403 
 
 missionaries retire to, from the Mantatees, 511 
 Groenkloof ■- 
 
 settlement of Barend Barends at, 392 
 
INDEX 585 
 
 Gum-Gariep, or Vet River : 
 
 Korana settlement on, 308 
 GuMAAP, OR Great Riet River : 
 
 Bushman sculptures found, at, 27, 28 and 182 
 
 rocky islands of, form the last stronghold of Bushmen, 396-399 
 
 further mention of, 42, 302 and 357 
 
 H 
 
 Hamilton, Mr., missionary : 
 
 arrives among the Batlapin, 435 
 
 retires to Griquatown, 511 
 Hancumqua, a Hottentot tribe : 243 and 247 
 Hankey, missionary institution : 
 
 vast heaps of stones near, 127 
 Hanno 'Kano, Korana captain : 293 
 Hans Dreyer, a Hottentot : 
 
 murder of, by Africaander, 331 
 Hans Human, a Bastaard Hottentot : 358 
 Hanto, Korana captain : 
 
 gives information to M. Arbousset, 298 
 
 is killed by a lion, 298 
 'Hanube, Korana chief : 291 
 
 Hardcastle, outpost of Griquatown : 362 and 365 
 Hare, the : 
 
 rejection of, as food, 260 
 'Harina, Links chief : 308 and 314 
 Harp, the : 
 
 use of, among Bushmen, 107 and 108 
 Harris, Captain : 
 
 travels of, and information given by, 7, 85, 89, 213, 391, 487. 52/ 
 and 554 
 Hart River : 
 
 native names of, 181 
 Hendriks, Hendrik : 
 
 attacks Waterboer, 372 
 
 II T^PTTyTR ATT * 
 
 establishment of mission at, for Bushmen, 175, 310 and 379 
 Hessequa, a mixed or Bushman tribe : 244 
 Hippopotami : 
 
 former abundance of, 81, 200, 341, 356, 418 and 555 
 
 hunting of, 89 and 91 
 
 cave of, 184 
 
 extermination of, by Kaffirs, 200 
 
 last survivors of, 228 
 
 veneration of, as siboko, 409 
 Hodgson, Mr., Wesleyan missionary : 
 
 settlement of, at Maquassie, 388 and 513 
 
 information given by, 510 
 Honey: , „ ,. 
 
 is made into an intoxicating beverage by Bushmen, 53 
 
 by Koranas, 276 ' 
 
 methods of obtaining, 56, 86 and 87 
 
 is supplied to travellers by Bushmen, 294 
 
586 INDEX 
 
 Honey : 
 
 abundance of, 356 
 
 is claimed by Bushmen, 356 
 Honey-bird : 
 
 guidance of, to bees' nests, 86 
 'Hon'kA, Bushman chief: 
 
 exploits of, 180 
 hopo, a method of entrapping game: 557 
 Horns : 
 
 of oxen, ornamental treatment of, 251 
 Horses : 
 
 are stolen by Bushmen, 219 
 
 are furnished to Griquas, 319 
 Hottentots : 
 
 region inhabited by, 4 
 
 were not the original possessors, 5 and 210 
 
 comprehend the language of Koranas and Namaquas, 11 
 
 nomadic pastoral habits of, 22, 32, 36, 152 and 210 
 
 ornaments of, 46 
 
 learn the use of poisoned weapons from Bushmen, 74 
 
 reach Damaraland, 137 
 
 reverence of, for the python, 202 
 
 are not found in the Zuurveld, 204 
 
 misconceptions concerning, as to numbers and time of settlement, 
 2JI, 236 and 246 
 
 are the first to follow the Bushmen, 234, 235 and 266 
 
 are driven southward and westward by stronger tribes, 234, 265 and 
 
 433 
 
 weapons used by, 235 
 
 attitude of Bushmen towards, 237 ' 
 
 are discovered by the Portuguese, 237 
 
 various tribes of, 238 et seq. 
 
 name is given by Dutch traders, 239 
 
 habits and customs of, 239 to 241 
 
 mUd and indolent character of, 245 and 248 
 
 probable numbers of, 246 
 
 constant migrations of, 247 and 248 
 
 wars of, with the Dutch, 269 
 
 fear of compulsory military service by, 328 
 
 insurrections of, and murders committed by, 342, 343 and 402 
 
 riding on oxen is practised by, 533 
 Hottentots, Chinese : 
 
 name given to Bushmen, 168 and 169 
 Howell, James: 381 
 
 Hughes, J., missionary at Kuruman : 375 
 Hunting : 
 
 methods of, employed by Bushmen, 82, 84, 85, 89 to 92, 132 and 
 149 
 
 by Bakalahari, 423 
 
 by Tamahas, 429 
 
 by Bakuena, 557 
 Hyena : 
 
 is revered as siboko by the Bapiri, 409 
 
 ferocity of, 550 
 
INDEX 587 
 
 Iguana : 
 
 is used as food by Bushmen, 148 
 Ilapaim, Korana captain at Modderfontein : 294 
 Imphi : 
 
 cultivation of, by the Basutu and in China, 433 
 Imvani, the : 
 
 Bushman paintings found near, 26 
 Inche, Barapulana chief : 
 
 retreats to Pitsane from the Mantatees, 495 
 Inkapetze, Tamaha chief : 
 
 is attacked by Koranas, 429 
 Inkwane, Batlapin captain : 287 
 Intshe, son of Inkwane : 
 
 is sheltered by Bushmen, 28; 
 Iron : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, for heading arrows, 140 and 208 
 
 skill in working shown by the Ovambo, 264 and 266 
 
 by the Bamangwato, 532 
 
 use of, is unknown to the Koranas, 270 and 276 
 
 is the siboko of the Barolong, 409 and 488 
 Isite, a young Batlapin warrior : 
 
 speech of, against the Mantatees, 464 
 Ithlasing. (See Lekweleng) 
 Ixias : 
 
 bulbs of, are used as food, 54 and 55 
 
 J 
 
 Jackal, the : 
 
 hunting of, 489, 504 and 529 
 Jager, Abram, a Griqua : 
 
 massacre of Bushmen by, 381 
 Jagers, or Hunters, a Griqua or Hottentot clan : 321 and 327 
 Jagers, Leonard, a counsellor of the Katse clan : 
 
 attack on kraal of, by Koranas, 279 
 
 account given by, of wars between Koranas and Bushmen, 302 to 307 
 
 narrow escape of, from a Bushman, 305 
 Jalusa, a Xosa freebooter : 
 
 destruction of, by Moshesh, 313 
 Jammerberg, the : 192. (See Kouwe) 
 Jantje, minor Batlapin chief : 
 
 settlement of, 487 
 Janz, Mr., missionary at Griquatown : 
 
 authority of, 364 
 
 takes possession of Campbell springs for the London Missionary 
 Society, 383 
 Joubert, Dutch farmer : 
 
 Bushmen living with, 186 
 Joubert, commandant of Waterboer : 
 
 cruelty of, to Bushmen, 403 
 
588 INDEX 
 
 K 
 
 Kaabas Mountains : 
 
 Boers are slain in pass of, by Bushmen, 153 
 'Kaang, Bushman chief or deity : 
 
 myths and beliefs concerning, 113, 117. 118, 119. 12O' 121, 124, 133, 
 134 and 136 
 
 is represented by the mantis and caddisworm, 131 and 133 
 'KabAsisi, Bushman chief : 
 
 shelter given by, to Basutu, 191 
 Kabeljauw River : 
 
 Christian settlement at, in 1775, 211 
 Kaffirs of the coast belt, a branch of the Bantu family of 
 nations : 
 
 westward migrations of, 9 and 212 
 
 language of, is modified by contact with Bushmen, 406 
 
 musical character of, 9 and 406 
 
 divergence of, from Bushmen, 17 
 
 ornaments used by, 46 
 
 cannibalism of, 51 
 
 early religious ideas of, 84 
 
 appropriate musical ideas from Bushmen, 106, 108 and 109 
 
 hasty interments of, 126 
 
 war-songs of, 135 
 
 superstitious reverence of, for the python, 148 and 202 
 
 intrusion of, into Bushman territory, and warfare of, 187, 193 and 
 200 
 
 act as guides, 199 
 
 hostility of, to exploring party, 199 
 
 weapons used by, 206 and 235 
 
 various tribes of, 235 
 
 place of, among the Bantu, 405 
 
 marauding expeditions of, against the Batlapin and Griquatown, 
 446-448 
 
 exterminating wars carried on by, against the Bachoana and Basutu, 
 
 538 
 Kaggen. {See 'Kaang) 
 Kalahari Desert : 
 
 description and inhabitants of, 4, 20, 57, 144, 146, 408, 422, 424 
 
 and 430 
 is the refuge of the Bakuena tribes from the Matabili, 527, 542 and 
 
 555 
 
 further mention of, 143, 358, 407, 411, 429, 443 and 445 
 Kallenberg, Mr., missionary at Pniel : 
 
 preserves the traditions of the Hottentot race, 267 
 'Kama, a Bushman word signifying pools : 145 
 Kama-piri, on the Kuruman river : 
 
 Batlapin settlement at, 325 
 Kanna-bosch, a narcotic root : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, 53 
 Kannamaparrisip, Namaqua clan: 255 
 Karaganye, Mantatee chief : 477 
 Karapan, Korana captain : 
 
 marauding expedition by, 311 
 Karoo, dry • 
 
 is a name given to different regions, 142 and 145 
 
INDEX 58^ 
 
 Kats, Andries, a Katse captain : 286 
 Katse, a Korana clan : 
 
 northwaxd migration of, 277 
 
 fraternize and intermarry with Bushmen, 285 and 301 
 
 origin of name of, 295 
 DE Katse, Hendrik, a Korana : 
 
 information given by, 275 and 283 to 286 
 'Kaup, Koraqua chief : 298 
 Keebe, chief of the Tamahas : 428 
 'Kees, Hottentot chief: 211 
 Kehelwa. (See Mokoto) 
 'Ker-by-'kaam : 
 
 battle at, between Koranas and Bushmen, 399 
 t'Keys, a Korana clan : 
 
 friendship of, with Bushmen, 302 
 Kgama, chief of the Bamangwato : 532 
 Kgari, son of Kgama : 532 
 'Khama'kose, Korana captain : 
 
 death of, 287 
 
 is father of Goliath Ysterbek, 298 
 Khamiesberg : 
 
 rule of ComeUus Kok at, 323, 345 and 350 
 
 visit of Mr. Campbell to, 352 
 KiiiBA, Bushman chief : 183 
 'Khoebaka, a title of supremacy among the Hottentots : 
 
 is borne by Sousa, 243 
 'Khoeque, a title of supremacy among the Hottentots : 
 
 is claimed by the Korachoqua, 242 
 'Khuai, native name for Bushmen: 31 
 'Kibi, digging-stick used by Bushmen : 
 
 manufacture of, 67 
 
 use of, as a weapon, 67 and 71 
 
 as an instrument of punishment, 121 
 
 for digging graves, 126 
 Kicherer, Mr., missionary : 
 
 attempts of, to estabUsh a mission for Bushmen, 157 
 
 description given by, 159 
 
 location of, among the Griquas, 326 
 Kidneys : 
 
 superstition concerning, 466 
 Kimberley : 
 
 mines of, 182 
 Klaarwater, former name of Griquatown : 
 
 Bushman occupancy of, is disregarded, 178, 278, 344, 348 and 402- 
 
 discovery of springs at, and mission settlement at, 178, 287, 322, 344,. 
 348 and 375 
 
 name of Griquas is adopted at, 362 
 Knecht, a fugitive Fingo : 
 
 massacre of, with his family, 193 
 Knecht's Kloof : 
 
 origin of name of, 193 
 Knoffel Valley : 
 
 rights of Bushmen are disregarded at, 383, 384 and 402 
 KocK, Jan, a Boer squatter : 205 
 KocKMAN, Jan : 
 
 attacks Waterboer, 372 
 
590 
 
 INDEX 
 
 KOEGELMAN, BuSHMAN CHIEF : 
 
 wound received by, 198 
 KoEROMANiE. {See Kuruman) 
 
 'KOESBERG, THE : 
 
 large mortar found at, 58 
 Bushmen of, 192 
 'KoHLA, Bushman chief : 
 
 warfare of, against Kaffirs, 206 
 character and exploits of, 206 to 209 
 is visited by Sparrman, 206 and 208 
 
 KOI-KOI, CHIEF OF THE BaSELEKA : 
 
 is successor of Seleka, 503 
 Kok: 
 
 origin of name of, 321 
 Kok, Abraham, son of Cornelius Kok : 
 
 compensation given by, to Bushman captain at Campbell, 349 
 
 joins his father there, 366 
 Kok, Abraham, eldest son of Adam Kok : 
 
 assumes the chieftainship, but is ousted by his brother, 383 
 Kok, Adam, Griqua chief, founder of the family • 
 
 visits the Batlapin, 292 and 434 
 
 sketch of career of, 322 
 
 transfers the chieftainship to his son Cornelius, 323 
 KoK, Adam, son of Cornelius, Griqua chief : 
 
 is called captain of Philippolis, 321 
 
 is nominated by his father chief of the whole of the Griquas, 
 
 327 
 is recommended by the missionaries at Griquatown, and his authority 
 
 is acknowledged, 350, 363 and 366 
 declension of, 351 and 366 
 
 accompanies Mr. Campbell on an exploring expedition, 356 
 is induced to abdicate, 367 
 followers of, are considered as rebels, 375 
 joins Waterboer in assisting the Batlapin against Mantatees, 373, 
 
 378 and 471 
 lives three years at Campbell and afterwards settles at Philippolis, 
 
 378, 379 and 380 
 becomes chief of Philippolis and of the Bergenaars, 381 
 authority of, is acknowledged at Griquatown and Capetown, 382 
 death of, in 1837, 382 
 KoK, Adam, the younger : 
 
 is elected chief on his father's death, 383 
 migrates to Nomansland, 383 
 receives the rights of his uncle, Cornelius, 385 
 KoK, Cornelius, son of Adam the founder : 
 hunting achievements of, 153 and 324 
 attracts the Griquas, 317 and 319 
 succeeds his father as chieftain, 323 
 wise measures of, 323 
 contact of, with the Batlapin, 325 
 retires to the Khamiesberg, 345 and 350 
 kindness of, towards Bushmen, 346 
 compensation given by, to Bushman captain, 349 
 returns to Griquatown and desires to assume chieftainship, 351 and 
 
 366 
 death of, 327 
 
INDEX 591 
 
 KoK, Cornelius, the younger : 
 
 is called captain of Campbell, 321 
 
 is appointed chief of the Kok family, 327 
 
 mixed clan belonging to, 359 
 
 authority of, is contested by Waterboer, 359 and 385 
 
 repudiates the authority of the Griquatown settlement, 365 
 
 joins his father at Campbell, 366 
 
 agrees to march against the Mantatees, and assists Waterboer, xtx, 
 376 and 471 
 
 aids the Batlapin against the Koranas, 442 
 Kok, Jan : 
 
 location of, 326 
 
 KOKANE : 
 
 battle is fought at, between the Barolong and the Batlatla, 504 
 
 KOKS, A FAMILY CLAN OF GrIQUAS : 
 
 eastward migrations of, 254, 334 and 341 
 
 use of firearms by, 271 
 
 hostihties of, with Africaander, 344 
 
 visit Klaarwater, 348 
 
 attract the unmixed native population, 366 
 
 settle at Campbell, 366 and 383 
 
 purchase land from Bushman captain, 384 
 
 assist the Batlapin against the Mantatees, 462 
 KoLBE, Mr., German missionary : 
 
 establishes a mission station for Bushmen, 173 
 
 foUows Aerk, 184 
 Kolben : 
 
 information given by, 316 
 'KoLONG, OR Lower Hart River : 
 
 Bushmen and other tribes on, 213 and 286 
 'Kon'gap, Koraqua chief ^ 298 
 
 KOONAP : 
 
 Bushman tribe of, 213 
 
 KOPIE, KORANA CAPTAIN : 298 
 
 'KORA, GREAT CHIEF OF THE KORAQUA : 
 
 is the progenitor of the Koranas, 268 
 death of, 269 
 descendants of, 298 
 
 KoRA, A KORANA CAPTAIN : 
 
 attacks Waterboer, 372 
 
 KORACHOQUA, A HOTTENTOT TRIBE, RICH IN CATTLE : 
 
 discovery of, by the Dutch, in 1657, 241 
 
 probable number of, 247 
 
 migration of, for pasture, 247 
 KoRANABERG. {See Makwatling) 
 Koranas : 
 
 early migration of, 11, 267 and 433 
 
 are driven southward by Bantu tribes, 11, 267^ and 433 
 
 kidnap Bushman children to sell to colonists, 48 
 
 marital relations of, 96 
 
 use of flute among, 109 
 
 hatred of, towards Bushmen, and cruel treatment by, 159, 178, 181, 
 276, 282 to 285, 302 to 307, 309 and 380 
 
 descent of, from the Koraquas and kindred tribes, 211, 242, 244, 248 
 and 268 
 
 retreat northward and eastward before Europeans, and cross the 
 
592 INDEX 
 
 KORANAS : 
 
 Orange river, 238, 269, 275, 277, 280, 282, 300, 307, 308 and 391 
 
 again encounter the Bachoana, 238 and 278 
 
 are the purest of the Hottentot tribes, 266 
 
 of the Cape district, particulars concerning, 268 to 270 
 
 of the valley of the Orange river, 270 
 
 habits and customs of, 274 
 
 indolence and vanity of, 273 and 299 
 
 cruelty of, to the aged, 274 
 
 of the Middle Veld, particulars concerning, 274 to 280 
 
 various clans of, 277 and 295 
 
 love of plunder by, and marauding expeditions of, for cattle, 279, 
 287, 290 to 292, 299, 310, 311, 392, 429, 442 and 485 
 
 treacherous attack on, by Barolong, 286 
 
 drive them northward and occupy their territory, 287 
 
 height of power and gradual decadence of, 293 and 312 
 
 of the Middle Veld, land occupied by, in 1801, 294 
 
 intermarriage of, with Batlapin, 296 
 
 remnants of, fraternize with Bushmen, 314 
 
 m3rth concerning origin of, 314 
 
 ally themselves with Griquas, 319, 364, 385 and 511 
 
 are plundered by Africaander, and perish of famine, 334 to 336 
 
 settle at Campbell and Klaarwater, 345 and 357 
 
 are met at the Great river by Mr. Campbell, 358 
 
 attack of, on Waterboer at Griquatown, 372 
 
 flight of, from the Mantatees, 507 and 508 
 ' KoRAQUAS, Hottentot tribe : 
 
 Koranas are descended from, 211 
 'KoREL, Bushman chief of the Genadeberg : 
 
 is attacked by Dutch commando, 220 
 
 receives Mr. Du Plessis in cave, 221 
 
 refuses to submit, 222 
 
 is shot dead, 223 
 'Ko-rin-'na, an old Bushman : 
 
 delight of, at seeing cave-paintings, 103 
 
 songs and dances of, 104 and 105 
 'KoROKLOU, Bushman chief : 
 
 is captured by Boers and taken prisoner to Bloemfontein, 192 
 'KoROKO, Bushman chief of the Kouwe : 188 
 Kougke : 
 
 Barolong re-assemble at, 496 
 'Kou-'ke, an old Bushwoman : 
 
 delight of, at seeing cave-paintings, 103 
 
 singing and dancing of, 104 and 105 
 
 information given by, 131 and 223 
 
 refuses to enter white men's country, 188 
 'Kousopp, paramount Bushman chief : 
 
 territory of, and claim of, to land, 300, 394 and 399 
 
 protests against the sale of land by De 'Coie, 395, 396 and 399 
 
 wax of reprisals carried on by, against the Boers, 400 
 
 is surrounded and slain, 401 
 KouwE or Jammerberg : 
 
 Bushmen of, 188 
 Kramer, Mr., missionary to the Griquas : 
 
 wanderings of, 317 
 
 locations of, 326 and 340 
 
INDEX 593 
 
 Kramer, Mr., missionary to the Griquas: 
 
 discovers springs at Klaaxwater, 344 
 
 takes possession of them for the London Missionary Society, 345 
 Krankuil, Piet, Bushman captain : 
 
 testimony of, to the cruelty of Bastaards, 380 
 'Krieger, Korana chief : 
 
 attack made by, upon Bushmen, 310 
 Kruger, Jacob and Karl, fugitive Boers : 
 
 flee from the Cape Colony on account of crime, and assist Jan Bloem 
 in raiding expeditions, 290 
 Kruger, Jacob, fieldcornet : 
 
 reports Hottentot insurrection, 343 
 Kuakue, chief town of the Bangwaketse : 5 39 
 
 'KUARA, name given BY BuSHMEN TO HoTTENTOTS : 3 1 
 
 'Kudeboe'kei, Korana captain : 507 
 'Kui;, name given to a Bushman: 31 
 
 KUENA, SON OF MASILO I : 
 
 founds the Bakuena tribe, 518 and 520 
 'Kuenon'keip, Koraqua chief : 298 
 kunana, or mosheu : 
 
 Barolong are driven out of, by the Mantatees, 495 
 'Kun'ap-soop, Taaibosch, paramount chief of the Koranas : 
 
 warfare of, against Bushmen, 285 
 
 halts at Klaarwater, 348 
 
 murder of, by Tao, 286, 298 and 490 
 Kunuana : 
 
 Mantatee victory at, over the Barolong, 461 
 'Kuri'ke, Korana chief : 
 
 death of, 291 
 
 KURRECHANfi, CHIEF TOWN OF THE BaHURUTSI : 
 
 in 1823 is stormed by the Mantatees, 462 and 526 
 
 beautiful situation of, 521 
 
 is finally destroyed by Moselekatze, 527 
 
 KuRUMAN, MISSION STATION AT : 
 
 Mantatees advance upon, 372 and 461 
 
 Griquas march to the assistance of, 373, 470 and 471 
 
 Batlapin withdraw from, 375 
 
 pitso is held at, concerning defence against the Mantatees, 463 
 
 preparations at, for defence or evacuation, 467 and 470 
 
 panic at, 482 
 Kuruman River : 
 
 alleged subsidence of, 292 and 529 
 
 settlement of Batlapin on, 325, 443 and 452 
 
 of Batlaru, 529 
 KwAAi Stuurman, Bushman chief : 
 
 daring of, 192 
 'Kwaha, alias Toby, a petty Bushman chief : 
 
 information given by, 31, 42. i34. 135 and 184 
 
 LAcoa, son of Molitsane : 227 
 Ladders : 
 
 made by Bushmen on the face of precipices and trees, 56 and 87 
 
 QQ 
 
594 INDEX 
 
 Lahesi, chief of the Batlaru : 
 protects the Bakalahari, 423 
 information given by, 529 
 Land : 
 
 hunger for, by Griquas, 392 to 395 
 Landstaal, the language of frontier Boers : 
 
 native elements in, 9 
 Langeberg, the : 
 
 Bushmen of, 284 and 302 
 
 is the south-eastern boundary of the Kalahari, 358 and 362 
 Langekloof, Bushman tribe of: 213 
 Langman, Floris : 
 
 murder of, by Hottentots, 343 
 Language : 
 
 of Bushmen and Hottentots, researches into, 8 
 
 of colonists and coast Kaffirs, modification of, 9 
 
 of Hottentots, Koranas, and Namaquas, similarity of, 11 
 
 connection of religion and mythology with, 17 
 
 of the two divisions of Bushmen differs widely, 42 and 135 
 
 of Namaquas and Berg-Damaras is the same, 257 and 265 
 
 of Koranas spoken by Bushmen, 308 
 
 of the Bantu race, 404 
 
 of South Africa, two divisions of, 405 
 
 development of, 412 
 
 of the Balala, 426 
 
 of the Tamahas, 428 
 
 of the Bachoana group, diverse dialects of, 434 
 
 of the Mantatees, 473 
 
 of the Barolong, 488 
 Leevekue, Bakalahari chief ■ 423 
 Leghoya, a pioneer Bachoana tribe : 
 
 friendly relations of, with Bushmen, 182, 309 and 312 
 
 southward migration of, 265, 421 and 432 
 
 are attacked and plundered by Koranas, 287 and 310 
 
 reverence the lion, 416 
 
 ancient towns of, 430 
 
 are the first to cross the Vaal, 442 
 
 defeat of by Batlou and Batlapin, 445 
 Lekoe, son of Mashow : 
 
 is disinherited, 440 
 Lekoumetsa, Bushman chief: 183 
 Lekweleng, or Ithlasing, brother of Sibiwure : 
 
 action of, regarding the succession, 525 
 
 travels of, 525 
 
 death of, 526 
 Lemue, Mr., French missionary : 
 
 information given by, 423 
 
 estabUshes a mission at Mosega, 527 
 LEMufi, Miss L. E., daughter of the above : 
 
 information obtained from, 31, 45, 55, 59, 67, 96, 109 and 225 
 Leshulatibi, Bachoana chief of Lake Ngami : 
 
 Bushmen are in vassalage to, 143 
 
 cruelty of, 144 
 Le Vaillant : 
 
 travels of, 107 and 167 
 
 information given by, 108, 1 10 and 168 
 
INDEX 595 
 
 Levenkel, Batlapin sub-chief : 468 
 
 LiCHTENSTEIN, Dr., SCIENTIFIC EXPLORER : 
 
 visits the Batlapin, 435 
 
 LiKHATLONG : 
 
 settlement of Jantje at, 487 
 Links (Linksch), Bushman captain of the Bamboesberg : 171 and 198 
 Links Stam, a Korana clan : 
 
 are the first offshoot, 277 
 
 have a chief of the same name, 294 
 
 advance of, eastward, 308 
 
 myth of, concerning the origin of their race, 314 
 Lions : 
 
 numbers and ferocity of, 43, 353 and 528 
 
 hunting of, by Bushmen, 84, 89 and 282 
 
 veneration of, as siboko, 409 
 
 superstitions concerning, 409 and 416 
 
 method of capturing, by the Bakalahari, 423 
 
 devour Molala, 486 
 
 roam in the deserted Bakuena territory, 550 
 
 LiTHAKO : 
 
 is the great-place of the Batlapin, 178 and 468 
 
 attack of Koranas upon, 290 
 
 visits of Mr. Campbell to, 352, 354, 417 and 435 
 
 advance of Mantatees upon, 372, 461, 462 and 467 
 
 battle is fought at, and victory gained over the Mantatees, 374, 376, 
 378, 387, 481, 482, 484, 508 and 551 
 
 metal-work is carried on at, 436 
 
 size and prosperity of, under Molehabangwe, 440 
 
 meaning of name, 441 
 
 visit of Bastaard marauders to, 445 
 
 attack on, by Kafi&rs, 447 
 
 missionaries take refuge in, from Moselekatze, 527 
 Livingstone, Dr. David, missionary explorer : 
 
 information given by, 144, 14S, 146, 37i. 405. 4ii. 422, 429. S42, 548. 
 556 and 557 
 
 further mention of, 11 and 503 
 Lloyd, Miss Lucy C. : 
 
 information given by, 102 
 
 Locusts : o ^ a 
 
 use of, as food by natives, and preparation of, 44, 55, 5°. 160, 25», 
 
 259. 353 and 550 
 
 LOKUALO, NAME GIVEN TO BUSHMAN CARVINGS : 27 
 
 Lokwani, a Bakuena town : 546 
 London Missionary Society : 
 
 aims and efforts of, for the Griquas, 321 
 
 springs at Klaarwater are held for, 345 
 
 power and authority of, at Griquatown, 368 and 387 
 
 territory claimed by, 369 and 375 
 
 LUALABA, THE : 
 
 Bantu tribes on, 405 
 Lydite : ^ J ^ 
 
 use of, for making stone weapons, 24, 58, 63 and fc>7 
 
596 INDEX 
 
 M 
 
 Maarman, Bushman captain : 282 and 284 
 McLucKiE, William, traveller : 
 
 information given by, 555 
 Mada'kane, Bushman chief : 
 
 retreats to an inaccessible glen, and refuses to give information, 199 
 Madolo, Bushman petty chief : 2C«d 
 Madraka, Barolong chief : 
 
 wars of, with Batlapin, 443 and 444 
 Madula, tutelar deities of the Bachoana : 419 
 Madura, Bushman chief : 
 
 is visited by Dr. Vanderkemp, 201 
 
 takes part with the government against Kafi&rs, 202 
 
 heavy tax imposed upon, 203 
 Magalatzina, name given to the Portuguese by the Bakuena : 547 
 Mahumapela, Batlapin chief at Nokuning : 
 
 flees from Mantatees, 467 and 481 
 Mahumu-Pelu, son of Molehabangwe : 
 
 is killed by Kaffirs, 448 
 Mahura, Batlapin chief : 
 
 is son of Molehabangwe, 325 
 
 migrates from Kuruman to Taung, 376 and 486 
 
 settles at Old Lithako, 485 
 
 gathers many adherents, and becomes regent for the paramount chief, 
 486 
 
 is a friend of the missionaries, 487 
 Mahutoe, great-wife of Mothibi : 
 
 mixed ancestry of, 458 
 Ma-Intatesi : 
 
 people of, venerate the wild cat, 408 
 
 {See Batlokua) 
 Maize : 
 
 introduction of, to the Bachoana, 418 
 MakAba II, chief of the Bangwaketse : 
 
 is attacked by Jan Bloem, but repulses him, and orders his assassina- 
 tion, 290, 291 and 537 
 
 constant warfare of, against the Batlapin and Bakuena, 444, 451, 502, 
 S36. 539 and 548 
 ^ power and dread of, 460 and 461 
 
 attacks the Baratlou and Bahurutsi, 494 and 525 
 
 is attacked by the Mantatees, but repels them, 526 and 540 
 
 poisons his father, 535 
 
 destroys his younger children, 536 
 
 treachery of, towards Batlapin and Koranas, 537 
 
 mourns the loss of his eldest son, 540 
 
 is slain by horde under Sebitoane, 483 and 542 
 Ma'kabute, Koraqua chief : 298 
 Makapan, Batlou chief : 
 
 rules a large tribe, 481 
 
 gives name to Makapan's Poort, 499 
 
 savage deeds of, 499 
 Makari, Bataung captain : 
 
 attacks and pursues Barolong at Maquassie, 511 and 512 
 
 probable death of, 514 
 
INDEX 597 
 
 Makgatla, a Bakuena tribe : 
 
 habitat of, 544 
 Makooas, name given to white people by Bachoana : 464 and 548 
 'Ma-'ko-on, Bushman chief : 
 
 meeting of, with Mr. Campbell's party, 355 
 Makraka, Barolong chief : 
 
 founds the clan of the Barolong-Bataung, 498 and 501 
 
 conflicts of, with Batlapin, 501 
 
 forms an alliance with Makaba, 502 
 
 is believed to compass the death of Molehabangwe, 502 
 Makua, Bantu tribe of Mozambique : 405 
 Ma'ku-une, Bushman chief : 
 
 exploits of, 181 and 182 
 Makwatling, or Koranaberg : 
 
 Bushmen of, 189 
 Makwetse, Batlapin captain : 
 
 narrative of, 448 
 
 leads a commando against the Mampua, 449 
 Malalarene, or Upper Hart River : 
 
 Bushmen of, 181 and 355 
 
 Barolong at, 286 
 
 Koranas found kraal on, 307 and 348 
 
 visit of Mr. Campbell to, 352 
 Malapitze : 
 
 is a Korana centre, 293, 297 and 442 
 Malawu, Batlapin sub-chief : 
 
 description of, 459 
 Malekutu. {See Banuka) 
 Malope : 
 
 is the ancestor of several Bakuena tribes, 559 
 
 sons of, 520 and 559 
 
 parts from his father and is disinherited, 531 and 545 
 Malopo River : 5 
 Maluti Mountains : 
 
 Bushmen take refuge in, 40, 129, 131, 190 and 228 
 Mamai, Batlapin chief : 437 
 
 MaMAKOA ; 
 
 Batlou settlement at, 499 
 Mampua, a Bantu tribe : 
 
 marauding attacks upon, by Batlapin and other tribes, 449 and 450 
 Manaka, daughter of Mashow : 
 
 appoints his successor, 440 
 Mangope, chief branch of the Bahurutsi : 524 
 Mankuruane, son of Molala : 
 
 rules as paramount chief of the Batlapin, 486 
 Mantatees, a Bantu horde : 
 
 advance of, upon Koranas, 299 and 309 
 
 atrocities of, 337 
 
 conquests by, and advance of, upon Lithako and Kuruman, 372, 
 429, 461, 462, 467, 469 and 506 
 
 description of, 373, 473, and 481 
 
 victory gained over, at Lithako, by the combined forces of Griquas 
 and Batlapin, 374, 387, 477 and 481 
 
 ravage the country of the Barolong,' 376, 482, 494 to 496, 508 and 526 
 
 terror inspired by, 463, 507, 508, 541 and 549 
 
 bravery of, 475, 478 and 479 
 
598 INDEX 
 
 Mantatees, a Bantu horde : 
 
 famine among, 482 and 510 
 
 marauding incursions of, 506 and 523 
 
 advance towards Maquassie^^but pass it by, 509 
 
 internal dissensions of, 510 
 
 attack the Bangwaketse, but are repulsed, 540 and 549 
 
 fall upon the Bakuena, and destroy Kurrechane, 506, 526 and 548 
 Mantatesi, chieftainess of the Batlokua : 
 
 rumours concerning, 460 
 
 marshals the Mantatee hordes, 540 and 548 
 Mantis, the : 
 
 is venerated as the representative of deity, 131 and 133 
 Mapaya, Bushman captain : 
 
 successful defence made by, 226 
 Mapeli, Bakuena chief- 415 and 459 
 Maquassie, Wesleyan mission station : 
 
 is destroyed by the Mantatees, 376 
 
 later settlement of Sihunelo at, 388, 509, and 513 
 
 is passed unheeded by the Mantatees, 509 
 
 attack upon, by the Bataung, 511 
 Mariqua River : 5 
 Maritz, Gerrit, fieldcornet : 
 
 reports outrage by Hottentots, 343, 
 Marriages : 
 
 celebration of, among Bushmen, 96 
 
 take place between Koranas and Batlapin, 296 and 458 
 
 between Koranas and Bushmen, 301 and 308 
 
 between Bushmen and Batlapin, 458 
 Masarwa, a mixed race : 
 
 speak the Bushman language, 265 
 Mashoe, Batlapin chief : 
 
 descent of, 437 
 
 outwits Tao and kills many of his people, 438 to 440, and 490 
 Mashuna : 
 
 weapons used by, 74 
 
 skill of, in metal- work, 142 and 531 
 Masilo : 
 
 is the ancestor of the Bakuena tribes, 518, 520 and 559 
 
 conquests of, 521 
 Massyn, Mr. : 
 
 attack of, on the Basutu, 227 
 Ma-'syao, Bantu tribe of Mozambique : 405 
 Matabili, a Bantu tribe : 
 
 overrun lands of Bushmen, 148 and 424 
 
 weapons of, 235 
 
 possess great herds of cattle, 299 
 
 dreaded advance of, 299 
 
 ravages of, 299, 300, 301, 418, 429, 483, 485, 492 and 523 
 
 disastrous expedition undertaken against, by Barend Barends, :!89 to 
 391 
 
 wars of, with the Barolong, 497 
 
 drive them out of Mosega and take possession of the country, 497, ' ' 
 
 515 and 516 ^ ^^' 
 
 attack and slaughter the Bangwaketse, 542 ' ' 
 
 devastate the Bakuena territory, 549, 551, cr^ and t;?? 
 
 cruelty of, 552 jj-* jjo j I 
 
INDEX 
 
 599 
 
 Matabili, a Bantu tribe: 
 
 exterminate some and degrade other Bakuena tribes, 558 
 m 1837 are defeated by the Boers and driven northward, 497, 515, 
 528 and SS7 > 'fy/' 3 j. 
 
 Matches : 
 
 astonishment of Bushmen at, 141 
 
 MaTHIBE, BaMANGWATO CHIEF: 413 
 
 Mathlo'-ganyane : 
 
 Bachoana Bushmen found at, 430 
 Matlabe, Bapulana chief : 
 
 settles at Kougke, 496 
 
 allies himself with Molitsane against the Matabili, 5 1 5 
 
 quarrels of, and defeat of, by the Matabili, 516 
 
 attempts to kill MoHtsane, 516 
 Matlakeng : 
 
 caves of, are stormed and inhabitants destroyed, 225 
 Matlaku, son of Seitshiro : 
 
 seizes his father's wife, 492 
 
 becomes regent for his nephew Gontse, 493 
 
 is killed in battle, 499 
 Matlatla, a Bakuena village : 
 
 salt is found near, 500 
 Matlou, or Mashow, Barolong chief • 
 
 great-place of, 481 
 Mats, Kaffir : 
 
 use of, by Boers, as shields, 197 
 Measles : 
 
 ravages of, among the Koranas, 293 and 297 
 Medicinal plants : 
 
 knowledge of, among Bushmen, 125 
 VAN Meerhof : 
 
 visit of, to the Namaquas, in 1661, 250 
 Melons : 
 
 supply water to natives, 359, 449 and 450 
 Melvill, Mr., missionary and government agent among the Griquas : 
 
 testimony of, to character of Bushmen, 161 
 
 residence of, at Griquatown, 337 
 
 conciUates Bushmen by presents, 370 
 
 complaint against, of Griqua chiefs, 373 
 
 reaches Kuruman, 472 
 
 information given by, respecting Mantatees, 478 and 481 
 Migration : 
 
 of the Hottentot and Bantu tribes, successive waves of, from the 
 north, 266, 420, 432, 433 and 545 
 
 eastward, of the Koranas, Griquas and Barolong, 307, 341, 391 and 
 
 433 
 
 of the Griquas, from the Cape Colony, 320 
 
 on account of cattle, 448 
 
 slow, of agricultural tribes, 533 
 
 of Bakuena into the Free State, 537 
 Millet : 
 
 cultivation of, 433 and 436 
 Mimosa : 
 
 collection of gum from, for food, 431 
 Missionaries : 
 
 mistakes and failures of, 321 and 401 
 
6oo INDEX 
 
 Mission : '' 
 
 to Bushmen, establishment of, 157, 172, 173 and 175 
 
 causes of failure of, 158 
 
 dispersion of, 176 
 
 (See London and Wesley an) 
 
 MpBATI : 
 
 is a Korana centre, 293 and 307 
 
 MOCHUARA, BaRATSILI CHIEF : 
 
 settles at Kougke, 496 
 
 MOCWASELE II, BaKUENA CHIEF : 
 
 meeting of, with white men, 548 
 
 murder of, 556 
 
 place of, in genealogical table, 560 
 
 MODDERFONTEIN : 
 
 Koranas and Bushmen live in friendship at, 294 
 Moduana, Batlapin chief : 437 
 Moffat, Rev. Robert, missionary : 
 
 writings of, and information given by, 5, 6, 10, 11, 27, 44, 50, 54, 144, 
 157, IS9, 214, 339, 418, 425, 435, 451, 452, 475, 476, 477, 479, 484. 
 495. 496, 519. 527. 531. 539> 549 and 552 
 
 visits Capetown, 335 
 
 aid given and obtained by, against the Mantatee invasion, and 
 
 journeys of, 373, 461 to 463, 467 and 472 
 
 narrow escape of, 388 and 512 
 
 visits Moselekatze, 388 
 
 retires to Griquatown, 5 1 1 
 
 MOGALE : 
 
 is the ancestor of the Bakuena chiefs, 544 
 MoGOKARE, Bushman tribe : 
 
 destruction of, 193 
 Mohurutsi, son of Malope : 
 
 is the ancestor of the Bahurutsi, 520 
 MoiLO, a branch of the Bahurutsi : 524 
 
 MOKATLA, chief OF THE BaHURUTSI : 
 
 in 1829 settles at Mosega, 526 
 
 is attacked by Moselekatze, and flees before him, 527 
 MoKGOSi, Batlapin chief • 
 
 deposes his elder brother, 437 
 
 is defeated by the Barolong, 438 
 MoKGosi, Barolong chief : 
 
 succeeds his father Moroke, 504 
 
 is killed at Kokane by the Batlatla, 504 
 Mo'koma, dance of blood : 
 
 performance of, 119 
 
 painting of, 121 
 Mokopa. {See Makapan) 
 
 Mokoto, paramount chief of the Baratlou : 493 
 Molala, brother of Mothibi : 
 
 treachery of, 484 
 
 is made paramount chief, 486 
 
 is killed by lions, 486 
 Molala, Bapulana chief. (See Matlabe) 
 Molehabangwe, Batlapin chief • 
 
 attack upon, by Jan Bloem, 291 
 
 aid given to, by CorneUus Kok, 325 
 
 employs Tamahas to capture cattle, 428 
 
INDEX 6oi 
 
 MOLEHABANGWE, BatLAPIN CHIEF: 
 
 succeeds his father Mashoe, and estabUshfes himself at Lithako, 440 
 
 defence of, against marauding Kaffirs, 447 
 
 attacks other Baratlou clans, 498 
 
 feud of, with Makraka, 501 ^ 
 
 death of, 451 and 502 
 
 MOLETA, FATHER OF MaKABA : 
 
 is poisoned by his son, 535 
 
 MOLITSANE, CHIEF OF THE BaTAUNG : 
 
 is father of Lacoa, 227 ' 
 
 poverty of, in later hfe, 314 and 516 
 
 ravages the Barolong territory, 376 
 
 belongs to the Leghoya, 410 and 51 1 
 
 slays Sabbedere, 513 and 514 
 
 aUies himself with Matlabe against the MatabUi, 515 and 516 
 
 quarrel and warfare of, with Matlabe, 516 
 
 MOLOKWAM 
 
 weapons used by, 526 
 MoLOTOE, Barolong chief : 490 
 
 MONGALE, UNCLE OF GONTSE : 
 
 endeavours to usurp the chief taiaship, 494 
 Mongolians : 
 
 affinity of, with Bushmen and Hottentots, 15 and 16 
 Montgomery, J. : 
 
 iaformation obtained from, 311 
 Moon, the : 
 
 feasts connected with, 112 
 
 superstitions concerning, 414 
 Mophet:6, Bataung captain : 
 
 attack of, on Barolong, 511 
 Morakanela, Batlapin chief : 
 
 deposes his elder brother, 437 
 
 is ancestor of Mothibi, 458 
 
 MOROKA, chief of THE BaSELEKA : 
 
 is the son of Sihunelo, and stations himself at Thaba Nchu, 300, 388, 
 
 514 and 544 
 
 prevents Matlabe from kiUing Mohtsane, 516 
 
 MOROKE, chief of THE BaSELEKA ; 
 
 is the father of Sihunelo, 493 and 503 
 
 attack of, upon the Batlatla, and death of, 504 
 
 MOROMOTO, SUBURB INHABITED BY BaNGWAKETSE : 495 
 
 MoRosi, Baputi chief : 
 
 Bushmen slain by, 190 and 229 
 Mortars : 
 
 made by Bushmen, 58 
 Mosega : 
 
 Barolong clans take refuge at, 496 and 497 
 
 is taken by the Matabili, and military kraal buUt at, 497 and 527 
 
 settlement of Bahurutsi at, in 1829, 526 
 
 French mission is established at, 527 
 Moselekatze, Matabili chief : 
 
 in 1820 rebels against Tshaka, 460 
 
 attacks Bushmen, 191 , j 
 
 cattle seized from, by Koranas, and revenge taken by, 299 and 311 
 
 wars of, 300 
 
 is visited by Mr. Moffat, 388 
 
6o2 INDEX 
 
 MOSELEKATZE, MaTABILI CHIEF: -d J o 
 
 expedition against, is undertaken by Barend Barends, 3K9 
 exultation of, over slain foes, 391 ^ ^ 
 
 power and dominion of, and terror inspired by, 4»3. S26 and 527 
 builds a military kraal in Mosega, 497 and 527 
 assists Matlabe against Molitsane, 516 
 attacks Mokatla and destroys Kurrechane, 527 
 spares the Bamangwato, and imposes a tribute of ironwork, 532 
 overthrows and destroys the Bakuena, 549 ^o 552 
 in 1837 is defeated by the Boers, and flees towards the Zambesi, 497, 
 528 and 557 
 
 MOSHESH, BaSUTU CHIEF : j , • 
 
 estabUshes himself among the mountains of Basutuland, and claims 
 land and authority, 211, 300, 301, 308, 311, 312. 3I3. 4io and 
 
 welcomes Griquas under Barends, 392 
 
 MOSHUME : 
 
 speech of, against the Mantatees, 464 
 MosiTE : 
 
 arrival of Mr. Moffat at, 462 
 
 MOTHIBI, BaTLAPIN CHIEF : 
 
 is the son of Molehabangwe, 325 and 443 
 
 appeals to missionaries for aid against the Mantatees, 372 
 
 retreats from Kuruman, southward to the Vaal, 375, 486 and 510 
 
 protects the Bakalahari, 423 
 
 holds Bachoana Bushmen in subjection, 430 
 
 marauding expeditions undertaken by, 450 and 451 
 
 is defeated and wounded, 452 
 
 in 1817 removes to the Kuruman river, 452 
 
 heads retaliatory expeditions against Bushmen, 453 and 456 
 
 description of great place of, in 1823, 458 
 
 presides at Batlapin assembly, 463 
 
 speeches of, against the Mantatees, 463, 464 and 466 
 
 returns to Kuruman and is reinforced by Griquas, 470 and 472 
 
 ferocity of, 480 
 
 receives stolen cattle from Salakutu, 503 
 
 treachery of, towards Batlaru, 530 
 
 death of, 486 
 
 MOTLARU : 
 
 founds the Batlaru tribe, 528 
 MoTOLE, Batlapin chief : 437 
 Mozambique : 
 
 Bantu tribes of, 405 
 Mpete, Batlapin chief : 
 
 deposition of, 437 
 Mpongwe 
 
 Bantu tribes of, 405 
 MuLLER, Max : 
 
 on comparative mythology, and language, 17 and 18 
 Munametse, Batlapin captain : 
 
 is the son of Batshwa and Pikwane, 442 
 
 serves under Molehabangwe, 443 
 
 disastrous expedition of, 443 
 
 assists the Batlou against the Leghoya, and is wounded, 445 
 MuNTCH, son of Intshe : 
 
 is pursued by Koranas, and takes refuge with Bushmen, 292 
 
INDEX 603 
 
 MURAMUSANA, A BaKUENA CLAN : 
 
 warfare of, with the Batlou, 498 
 Music : 
 
 love of, among Bushmen, 102 et seq. 
 Musical instruments : 
 
 origin of, among primitive races, 105 
 
 used by Bushmen, and copied by Kaffirs and Basutu, 107 to iii 
 
 used by the Namaquas, 253 
 
 by the Ovaherero, 262 
 
 by the Bakuena, 547 
 MuTiRE, A Motlapin : 
 
 accompanies expedition against the Mampua, 450 
 Mutsheng, a Batlapin clan : 
 
 lose aU their cattle by Korana robberies, 292 
 Myburgh, Mr., Boer marksman : 
 
 attack by, on Bushmen, 222 
 
 shoots their chief, 223 
 Myths : 
 
 as a source of history, 2 
 
 of the origin of man, 3 
 
 of Bushmen and Australians are allied, 17 to 20 
 
 of Bushmen, concerning baboons, 117 
 
 concerning the Mo'koma, 120 
 
 concerning the future life, 129 
 
 concerning the lower animals, 1 29, 1 30 and 1 36 
 
 preservation of, 122 
 
 connection of, with paintings, 1 22 
 
 of Koranas, concerning their origin, 314 
 
 N 
 
 'Naman-gan, Bushman chief : 282 
 Namaqualand : 
 
 sojourn of Adam Kok and Griquas in, 322 
 
 Bushmen living in, 323 
 
 flight of Africaander to, 330 
 
 turbulence of Hottentots in, 342 
 Namaquas ; a Hottentot tribe : 
 
 language of, 11 
 
 variance of, with the Cochoqua, 241 and 249 
 
 habitat and description of, 249 to 256 
 
 weapons used by, 249 
 
 herds of, and attention paid by, to cattle, 251 
 
 dread felt by, of Bushmen, 252 
 
 settlement of, at Pella, 253 
 
 government of, 254 
 
 in the south, become serfs of Boers, 254 
 
 cruelty of, to weaker tribes, 255 
 
 northward retreat of, before the white races, 256 
 
 wars of, with Africaander, 331 and 334 
 
 'Nambe, Bushman chief : 282 and 284 
 
 Names : ■, ■ , ^ a -^„ 
 
 of tribes and individuals, witness borne by, to history, 296 and 320 
 
 of tribes and clans, origin of, 409 and 410 
 
6o4 INDEX 
 
 'Na 'Na 'Kow, Bushman chief of the Tooverberg : 
 
 territory of, 173 
 
 pathetic narrative by, 176 
 
 escapes to mountains, and is shot by commando, 177 
 Natal tribes : 
 
 weapons of, 235 
 'Navi-i-I'kaa, Bushman tribe : 
 
 Uve at the mouth of the Orange river, 353 
 Negroes : 
 
 divergence of, from Bushmen, 6, 16, 17 and 19 
 
 original habitat of, 7 
 Nel, Field-Commandant : 
 
 evidence of, 162 
 Neutral ground : 
 
 is left between Griqualand and the Bachoana territory, 459 
 Ngami Region : 
 
 Bushmen of, 141 
 N'go, Bushman name for the caddisworm and mantis, 133 
 Nguanalelle, Bapiri town : 
 
 is attacked and destroyed by Makapan, 499 
 Ngwaketse, son of Malope : 
 
 is the founder of the Bangwaketse tribe, 520 and 535 
 Ngwato, son of Malope : 
 
 is the ancestor of the Bamangwato chiefs, 520 and 531 
 Nokuning, town of : 
 
 visit of Mr. Moffat to, 461 
 
 is entered by the Mantatees, sacked and burnt, 468 and 481 
 Nomansland : 
 
 Adam Kok migrates to, 383 
 NoTO, ancestor of the Barolong chiefs : 488 
 'Nu 'Gariep, or Upper Orange River : 
 
 Bushmen of, 183 
 
 further mention of, 4, 13, 72, 93, 132, 217, 219, 224, 270, 277, 280, 
 305, 310, 352, 354, 357, 368, 379, 403 and 446 
 
 O 
 
 Oaths : 
 
 taken by natives, 410 and 413 
 Obseses, Namaqua tribe : 255 
 October Balie, Bushman at Campbell : 
 
 payments made to, for lands, 348 and 349 
 Oedasoa, chief of the Cochoqua : 
 
 carries off the wife of 'Goeboe, 241 and 243 
 
 information given by, 245 
 
 number of people of, 246 
 
 migration of, for pasture, 247 
 Okavangari, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Oliphant's River : 
 
 is the boundary of the Boer territory, 323 
 
 is crossed by Piet Pienaar and the Africaanders, 328 
 
 Olive, the : 
 is venera 
 seer's Kl( 
 destruction of Bushmen in, 225 
 
 is venerated by the Batlaru, 528 
 Oliver's Kloof : 
 
INDEX 605 
 
 Omaqua, Hottentot tribe : 244 
 Ongeluk Fontein : 
 
 origin of name of, 354 
 Orange River : 
 
 is named by Colonel Gordon, in 1779, 151 
 
 crossing of, by the Namaquas, 254 
 
 by the Koranas, 277, 280 and 307 
 
 names given to, by natives, 270 
 
 further mention of, 253 
 Orlams : 
 
 are met by Mr. Campbell, 359 
 Ornaments : 
 
 of Bushmen, 46, 52, 113, 138 and 143 
 
 of Kaffirs, 46 
 
 of Ovaherero, 263 
 
 of Mantatees, 473 and 481 
 Orpen, Charles Sirr : 
 
 notes of, and information obtained by, 31, 45, 55, 59, 67, 96, 109, 
 134, 183, 184, 225, 408 and 546 
 
 examination of cave by, 63 
 Orpen, F. H. S., surveyor-general of Griqualand West : 
 
 tours of, and information given by, 66 
 Orpen, Joseph M. : 
 
 information obtained by, 117, 119, 120, 122, 131 and 134 
 Osingkuina, daughter of 'Go'gosoa ; 243 
 Ostrich : 
 
 hunting of, 85 
 Ostrich eggshells : 
 
 use of, in making beads, 23 and 139 
 
 as water-bottles, 49, 147 and 424 
 Ostrich feathers : 
 
 employment of, in hunting, 84 
 
 are used to scare away lions, 457 
 
 are worn by Mantatees, 473, 474, and 481 
 OuDE Timmerman, Bushman captain ^ 
 
 description of, 281 
 
 genealogy of, 282 
 
 country occupied by, 357 
 Ovaherero, or Damaras, Bantu tribe : 
 
 cruel treatment of, by Namaquas, 255 
 
 hostility and contempt of, towards the Berg-Damaras, 260 and 261 
 
 meaning of name of, 261 
 
 habits and customs of, 261 to 264 
 
 heartless character of, 263 
 
 further mention of, 404 and 405 
 OvAKUAMBi, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Ovakuandyera, Bantu tribe : 405 
 
 OVAMBANDERU, BANTU TRIBE : 
 
 connection of, with the Ovaherero, 261 
 
 OVAMBANTIERU, BaNTU TRIBE : 4O4 and 405 
 
 OvAMBo, Bantu tribe : 
 
 skill and industry of, in metal-work, 263 
 
 ornaments and weapons obtained from, 263, 264 and 266 
 
 further mention of, 404 and 405 
 OvATYiMBA, Bantu tribe : 
 
 origin of, 262 
 
6o6 INDEX 
 
 OwiB, Namaqua captain : 253 
 OwiES, Gerrit : 
 
 is killed by a Bushman, 342 
 'Ow'ku'ru'keu, Bushman chief : 
 
 is taU and bearded, 184 
 
 peaceable disposition of, 185 
 
 sells his son to Boer hunter, 186 
 Owl, Bushman chief : 
 
 is met by Mr. Campbell, 358 
 
 attacks Koranas, 369 
 
 is surrounded and forced to yield, 370 
 
 Paintings : 
 
 by Bushmen, found in caves, s. i3. 25, 26, 32, 74, 98, loi, 103, 131 
 171, 184, 188, 192, 195, 201 and 203 
 
 of men in hunting disguises, 98 and 122 
 
 of the Mo'koma, 121 
 
 connection of, with myths, 122 
 
 fideUty of, to nature, 195 and 232 
 Palgrave, William Coates, special commissioner to the tribes on 
 the west coast : 
 
 information given by, 69, 130 and 141 
 PatanA : 
 
 great-place of Batlaru at, 529 and 531 
 Paterson, Lieutenant : 
 
 visits of, to Bushmen, and information given by, 151, 152, 170, 204, 
 209 and 211 
 Patriots : 
 
 is the name assumed by Griquas opposed to Waterboer, 372 and 375 
 Peclu. {See Phethloi) 
 Pella, on the Orange river : 
 
 Namaqua settlement at, 253 
 
 is the headquarters of the Griquas, and the starting-point of their 
 eastward migrations, 254 and 445 
 
 settlement of Adam Kok at, 322 
 
 arrival of Mr. Campbell's party at, 360 
 Pellissier, Mr., French missionary : 
 
 estabUshes a mission at Mosega, 527 
 Phethloi, son of Mothibi : 
 
 death of, is attributed to witchcraft, 458 
 Philip, Reverend Dr., missionary : 
 
 statement made to, by Bushman captain, 176 
 
 information given by, 345, 350 and 351 
 
 finds Adam Kok and consents to his settlement at Philippolis, 379 
 and 380 
 
 further mention of, 384, 387 and 393 
 Philippolis : 
 
 establishment of, as a mission for dispossessed Bushmen, by Mr. 
 Sass, in 1814, 310 and 379 
 
 settlement of Adam Kok at, 379, 380 and 486 
 Phuduhuchoana, or the Steenbok : 
 
 is the great ruler and ancestor of the Batlapin tribe, 437 and 458 
 Phuitsile, son of Phethloi : 
 
 is killed in battle with the Dutch, 458 
 
INDEX 607 
 
 Pickering, Dr. : 
 
 writings of, 15 
 PiENAAR, Jan : 
 
 evidence of, 372, 38a and 393 
 
 PlENAAR, Mr. : 
 
 visit of, to Bushmen of the west, 151 
 
 PlENAAR, PlET, DuTCH FARMER : 
 
 obtains cattle by plunder, 289 
 
 cruelty and avarice of, 289, 328 and 329 
 
 is murdered by the Africaanders, 289 and 330 
 
 PiKWANE, WIFE OF MaSHOE : 
 
 is the mother of Molehabangwe, 440 
 
 marries Batshwa and becomes the mother of Munametse, 442 
 death of, 443 
 Pipes : 
 
 used by Bushmen, description of, 52 
 
 PlTS.^NE, A BaROLONG TOWN : 
 
 chiefs and clans assemble at, 495 
 
 is stormed and sacked by the Mantatees, 496 and 514 
 Platberg, the. {See Di-tse-thlong) 
 Du Plessis, Jacobus, interpreter to commando : 
 
 account given by, of destruction of Bushmen, 219 
 
 interview of, with Bushman chief, 221 
 VAN Plettenberg, Baron, governor at the Cape : 
 
 visit of, to the Bushman country, 90 
 
 permits eastward migration of Boers, 212 
 Pniel, on the Vaal : 
 
 mission station at, 42, 182, 267, and 358 
 
 Bushman town near, 42 and 43 
 Poison : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, for arrows, 69, 70, 71, 7^, 74 to 79, 360 and 449 
 
 ignorance of, on the part of early Hottentots and Kaf&rs, 74 
 
 use of, by the Batlapin, 74 arid 435 
 
 various kinds of, 75 
 
 antidotes to, 76 to 78 
 
 method of preparation of, 79 
 
 use of, in hunting game, 84, 90 and 92 
 
 is acquired by Koranas from Bushmen, 270 and 278 
 
 fatal effects of, 303 
 Poison-stone : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, 66 and 79 
 PoLiKANE, Batlapin captain : 456 
 Polygamy : 
 
 among Bushmen, 95 
 
 among the Berg-Damarais, 260 
 Poo, a northern Mokuena : 
 
 evidence of, 546 
 Poplar Grove : 
 
 stone weapons found at, 24 
 Porcupine, the : 
 
 veneration of, as siboko, 409 and 413 
 
 sup'erstitions concerning, 414 
 Poshuli's Hoek : 
 
 cave in, is used as a retreat by Bushmen, 220 
 Portuguese : 
 
 visits of, to South Africa, 237 
 
6o8 INDEX 
 
 Portuguese : 
 
 trade of, with the Ovambo, 264 
 
 with the Bakuena, 547 
 Prayer : 
 
 of Bushmen to the caddisworm, 133 
 Pretorius, a. Louw : 
 
 leads a commando against Bushmen, 219 and 222 
 Pretorius, Hans, Boer hunter : 
 
 purchases the son of Bushman chief, 186 
 Price, Reverend Roger : 
 
 information given by, 413 and 519 - 
 
 Python, the : 
 
 is venerated as the siboko of the Batlaru, 409 and 528 
 
 {See Snakes) 
 
 Q 
 
 QUAGGA, THE : ' 
 
 hunting of, by Bushmen, 52, 71, 84 and 303 
 
 by KoranEis, 304 ■ • 
 
 QUATHLAMBA MOUNTAINS : : 
 
 are the last refuge of Bushmen, 40 
 Quiver : 
 
 used by Bushmen, description of, 70 i : 
 
 R : 
 
 Ra-'kabi, Korana chief : j J 
 
 joins the Barolong against the Matabili, 515 i I 
 
 Ranyouwe : 
 
 speech of, against the Mantatees, 464 ; 
 
 Raphotho, a Mosuto : J , 
 
 kills Danster, 225 
 Rapulana, son of Tao, Barolong chief : 
 
 founds the clan of the Bapulana, 491 , ^ 
 
 Ratlou, son of Tag, Barolong chief : 
 
 founds the clans of the Baratlou and Batlou, 491 , , 
 
 power and territory of, 491 
 VAN Reenen, Coetzee, farmer : 
 
 overseer of, commits outrages on Bushmen and provokes retaliation, 
 
 162 . , 
 
 VAN Reenen, Jacobus and Sebastian : 
 
 visit of, to Bushmen of the west, 151 , 
 
 Reyner Mountain : ' ' 
 
 Bushmen of, 178 
 Rhinoceros, the : 
 
 hunting of, 89 
 
 is venerated as siboko, 409 ' • 
 
 VAN RiEBEEK, Mr. : 
 
 description of Hottentots by, 239, 242, 245, 247, 248, and 268 ' ' 
 
 in 1659 distributes land among Dutch colonists, 269 
 RiETFONTEiN. {See t'Aakaap) ' 
 
 RoLLAND, Mr., missionary AT Beersheba : 313 
 RooDE Pan : 
 
 stone weapons found at, 24 ' ' 
 
INDEX 609 
 
 ROODE POORT : 
 
 attacks of commando upon, 223 
 RouxviLLE : 
 
 death of Baardman at, 187 
 RuBiDGE, Dr. R., F.G.S. : 
 
 collections made by, 78 
 
 account given by, of destruction of Bushmen, 21S 
 RuYTER, Benedictus Platje, Bushman chief : 
 
 visits Rev. Mr. Campbell at Bethelsdorp, 209 
 
 {See 'Kohla) 
 
 SaBBADERE, BROTHER OF SiHUNELO : 
 
 receives his brother's great wife, 505 
 
 commands party fleeing from the Mantatees, 508 
 
 is slain in battle by the Bataung, 513 
 St. Mark's, mission station : 
 
 establishment of, by Archdeacon White, 204 
 Saku, Batlapin captain : 486 
 Salakutu, a Batlapin : 
 
 paintings by the wife of, 435 
 
 cattle-raiding by, 503 
 Salt : 
 
 is found in the Kalahari, 146 
 
 abundance of, near Matlatla, 500 
 Sampin, Batlapin captain : 
 
 brings news of Mantatees, 468 
 Sana, name given to Bushmen by Koranas : 275 
 Sareni, wife left by Seitshiro : 
 
 contest for the possession of, 492 
 Sarles, Korana captain: 311 
 Sass, Mr., Missionary to Koranas and Bushmen : 
 
 information given by, 273 and 310 
 
 is met at Silver Fontein by Mr. Campbell, 360 
 Sayce, Professor : 
 
 on the Bantu language, 404 
 
 SCHEEL KOBUS, LAST BUSHMAN CHIEF OF THE VAAL : 
 
 territory of, 300 
 death of, 314 and 401 
 (See 'Kousopp) 
 
 SCHEEPERS, GeRT, FARMER : 
 
 was the first Boer settler in the Zuurveld, 205, 211 and 212 
 
 SCHERPENAARD, FrANS : 
 
 murder of, by Hottentots, 343 
 ScHUNKE, H. Charles : 
 
 information given by, 404 
 
 SCHWEINFURTH : 
 
 writings of, 11 
 Scorpions, Korana clan : 
 
 push northward to Malapitze, 442 
 Sculptures : j ,, 
 
 of Bushmen, on rocks and shells, 5, 13. 27, 5° and 232 
 
 mystic character of, 29 and 398 
 
 SeAMOGO, BROTHER OF SeKUATI : 
 
 town of, is taken and destroyed by Makapan, 499 
 
6io INDEX 
 
 SEATLfi, BATLAPIN CHIEF : 
 
 deposition of, 437 
 Sebitoane, Bapatsa chief : 
 
 attacks the Bangwaketse, 541 
 
 slays Makaba and his veterans, 542 
 
 restores Sechele to the chieftainship of the Bakuena, 556 
 Sebogo, son ofMakAba: 
 
 commands army against the Mantatees, and compasses his father's 
 death, 541 
 
 succeeds to the chieftainship, but is routed by the Matabih, 542 
 
 death of, 543 
 Sebula, Bakuena chief : 500 
 Sechaba, name given to a clan : 410 
 Sechele, son of Moc'wasele II : 
 
 is chief of the northern Bakuena, 410 
 
 is restored to the chieftainship by Sebitoane, 556 
 Sechuamara. {See Makapan) 
 Sechuana, language spoken by Bachuana tribes : 
 
 dialects of, 405 and 407 
 
 characteristics of, 406 
 Seitshiro, son of Ratlou : 
 
 succeeds his father as chieftain, 492 
 
 death of, 492 
 Sekeletu, son of Sebitoane : 
 
 attacks Leshulatibi, 144 
 Sekuati, Bapiri chief : 499 
 Seleka, son of Tao, Barolong chief : 
 
 founds the Baseleka clan, 491 and 503 
 
 S4-LIHA, A BUSHWOMAN : 
 
 capture of, as a child, by Boers, 219 
 Serolong, language spoken by the Barolong : 406, 407 and 48S 
 
 SESUTO, language SPOKEN BY THE BaSUTU : 
 
 musical character of, 406 and 407 
 Setebe, Barolong chief : 
 
 assists the Batlou, 498 
 Sets-sero, son of Seitshiro : 492 
 Setswantu, tutelar deities of the Bachoana : 419 
 Shaw, Reverend W., superintendent-general of Wesleyan mis- 
 sions IN South Africa . 387 
 Shields : 
 
 used by Boers in attacking Bushmen, 196 and 222 
 
 used by Kaffirs, 207, 234 and 235 
 
 by Koranas, 276 and 284 
 
 by Mantatees, 474 and 481 
 
 by Bahurutsi, 523 
 
 by Matabili, 526 
 Shuttlecock : 
 
 use of, in game, by Bushmen, 102 
 
 SiBIWARE, CHIEF OF THE BaHURUTSI : 
 
 is visited by Mr. Campbell, 521 
 leaves no children, 525 
 succession of, 525 
 SiBOKO, tribal emblem : 
 examples of, 408 
 gives name to the tribe, 409 
 oath taken upon, 410 and 413 
 
INDEX 6ii 
 
 SiBOKO, TRIBAL EMBLEM: 
 
 superstitions concerning, 411 to 417 
 antiquity and origin of, 413 and 518 
 burial customs connected with, 415 
 
 SiCHANGWA, CHIEF OF THE BaKUENA : 
 
 is killed by Makaba, 536 
 Sickness : 
 
 Bushman superstitions concerning, 120 and 125 
 
 SiHUNELO, BaSELEKA CHIEF : 
 
 appeals to Waterboer for j aid [against the Mantatees, 376 and 
 
 is charged with theft and compelled to pay a fine, 376 and 511 
 
 resides at Maquassie, 388 and 509 
 
 is joined by Baratlou, 492 
 
 is defeated by the Mantatees and retreats to Pitsane, 495 and 512 
 
 is the son of Moroke, 504 
 
 defeats the Batlatla, but is routed by the Bakuena, 504 and 505 
 
 is the father of the present Moroka, 504, 505 and 514 
 
 grief of, at death of Sabbadere, 513 
 
 attempts to avenge him, 513 
 
 wanderings of, on leaving Maquassie, 513 
 
 death of, 514 
 
 SiLOLECOE, A WOMAN OF THE BakUBUNE TRIBE : 
 
 marries a Morolong, 496 
 
 evidence given by, 496, 503, 506 and 512 
 SiLUCHOAGE, Batlatla chief : 
 
 attack upon, by Sihunelo, 505 
 Silutane, Barolong chief : 
 
 is captured by the Batlou, 498 
 Silver Fontein : 
 
 ComeUus Kok resides at, 359 and 360 
 Sinkoniella, chief of the Batlokua : 
 
 is son of Ma-Intatesi, 408 and 410 
 
 SiTLORI, A MoTLAPIN : 
 
 poverty of, through Korana foray, 292 
 Skins : 
 
 preparation and use of, by Bushmen, 73 
 Slaparm, Korana captain : 
 
 acts as guide to Mr. Borcherds' party, 294 
 Slaves : 
 
 emancipated, join the Griquas, 319 
 Snakes : 
 
 venomous, suggest poisoned weapons, 75 
 
 are used as food by Bushmen, 148 
 
 Kaffir superstitions concerning, 148 and 202 
 
 drawings of, 202 
 
 [See Python) 
 Sneeuwberg, the : 
 
 Bushman paintings in caves of, 5 and 13 
 
 Bushmen of, 164 
 
 massacre of Bushmen of, 218 
 Somerset, Lord Charles, governor of the Cape Colony : 
 
 orders the suppression of missions to Bushmen, 175 
 
 visit of Africaander to, 335 
 
 SOMERVILLE, Mr., GOVERNMENT COMMISSIONER : 
 
 in 1 80 1 visits the Batlapin, 291, 434 and 440 
 
6i2 INDEX 
 
 SoNQUA, OR Bushmen : 
 
 conquest of, by the Namaquas, 245 
 plundering carried on by, 248 
 
 SOUSA, CHIEF OF THE ChAINOUQUA : 
 
 supremacy claimed by, 241, 243 and 244 
 Southern Africa : 
 
 primitive inhabitants of, 2, 10 and 12 
 
 physical contour of, 3 
 
 zones of, and present inhabitants of, 4 
 Sparrman, Dr. : 
 
 travels and writings of, .and information gained by, 86, 89, 100, no, 
 128, 164 to 167, 168, 170, 171, 205, 206, 208 and 211 
 Spider, venomous : 78 
 Springbok : 
 
 fine painting of, 203 
 Springboks, a Korana clan : 
 
 elect Jan Bloem as their captain, 290, 300 and 442 
 
 reason for name, 295 
 Stanley, Henry M. : 
 
 travels and writings of, 7, 11, 32, 262 and 433 
 
 VAN DER SteL, GOVERNOR : 
 
 visit of, to the Namaquas, in 1685, 250 
 
 cruelty of, 250 
 Stephanus, European associate of Africaander : 344 
 Stockenstrom, Andries, landdrost : 
 
 encourages kindly treatment of Bushmen, 161 
 Stone implements : 
 
 of Bushmen, discovery of remains of, 5, 23 to 25 and 62 
 
 various kinds of, 66 
 Stones, heaps of : 
 
 placed over graves, 126 and 128 
 
 constant additions made to, 127, 128 and 136 
 
 of other significance, 127 
 
 reverence shown to, 261 
 Sun, the : 
 
 is the siboko of the Baletsatsi, 409 
 
 rites concerning, 414 
 Sunday River : 
 
 is reached by Boers, 212 
 Swanepoel, David, Dutch farmer : 
 
 evidence of, 49 
 
 information obtained by, 184 
 SwENi. (See Zweei) 
 
 Taaibosch the Elder, paramount chief of the Koranas ; 
 
 pursues the Barolong, 286 
 
 is father of Jan Taaibosch, 298 
 Taaibosch, Gert : 
 
 is son of Jan Taaibosch, 298 
 
 migration of, esistward, 313 
 Taaibosch, Jacob : 
 
 is son of Jan Taaibosch, 298 
 Taaibosch, Jan, paramount chief of the Koranas : 
 
 is defeated by GoUath Ysterbek, 298 and 301 
 
INDEX 613 
 
 Taaibosch, Jan, paramount chief of the Koranas: 
 
 migration of, towards the Koranaberg, 298, 300, 301 and 313 
 
 is killed by a lion, 298 
 Taaibosch, 'Kun'ap-soop. (See 'Kun'ap-soop) 
 Taaibosch, Massau Rijt, Korana chief at Mamusa : 
 
 is living in 1872, 298 
 Taaibosch, Rijt, son of 'Kun'ap-soop : 
 
 is left behind in charge of the stationary part of clan, and becomes 
 chief of Mamusa, 298 and 301 
 Taaibosches : 
 
 are the main stem of the Great Koranas, 277 
 
 origin of name of, 294 
 
 are directly descended from Kora, 297 
 
 push northward to Malapitze, 442 
 Table Mountain : 
 
 occupation of, by Bushmen, 237 
 Taisho, the Wise : 
 
 urges the Batlapin to battle against the Mantatees, 465 
 Takiso, Tamaha chief : 429 
 Tamahas, or Red People : 
 
 are an admixture of Balala and Bushmen 
 
 particulars concerning, 427 to 429 
 Tambourine : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, 1 10 
 'Tambu'kis, originally a Bushman tribe : 
 
 name given by, 32 
 
 self -mutilation of, 129 
 
 intermarriage of, with the Abatembu, 169 and 170 
 
 amiable disposition of, 170 
 
 {See Abatembu) 1 
 Tao, the Lion, Barolong chief : 
 
 treacherously murders 'Kun'ap-soop, 286 and 490 
 
 great place of, at Taung, 438 and 490 
 
 wars of, with the Batlapin and Koranas, 438 to 440, and 490 
 
 is driven back to the interior, 440 and 490 
 
 cruel tyranny of, 490 
 
 death of, 491 
 Taoane, chief of the Baratsili : 
 
 retreats to Pitsane from the Mantatees, 495 
 Tauana, son of Kgama : 
 
 is founder of the Batuana clan, 532 
 Tarka, the : 
 
 colonists are driven from, by Bushmen, 172 
 
 tribe of, 213 
 Taung : 
 
 is occupied by Koranas under Jan Taaibosch, 299 and 300 
 
 evacuation of, 301 
 
 Batlapin settlement at, 376 
 
 is the great-place of the Barolong under Tao, 438 and 490 
 
 abandonment of, 440 
 Tchopi, Batlou captain : 
 
 is captured by Molehabangwe, but his life is spared, 398 
 'Te'to, Bushman captain : 
 
 is the father of Oude Timmerman, 282 
 Thaba Matjeeu : 
 
 is the residence of the Baseleka, 503 and 504 
 
6i4 INDEX 
 
 Thaba Nchu, or Black Mountain : 
 
 Wesleyan mission station at, 300 and 388 
 
 settlement of the Baseleka at, in 1834, 497 and 514 
 
 Moroka resides at, 514 and 544 
 
 arrangement of, 546 
 Thaba Patsoa : 
 
 destruction of Bushmen of, 225 
 Thompson, George : 
 
 journeys of, and information given by, 108, 128, 153, 160, 162, 252, 
 254, 255, 271, 336, 369. 4SS> 458, 462, 463. 467. 468 and 481 
 
 visit of, to Griquatown, 373 and 378 
 
 enlists the aid of the Griquas against the Mantatees, 373 
 
 encounter of, with Mantatees, 469 
 Thunderstorms : 
 
 feeling of Bushmen towards, 112 
 'Tky, Korana captain : 293 
 'Tlaka-lo-tlou. (See Daniel's Kuil) 
 Tlogu, chief of the Batlaru : 531 
 Tlotlolane, hill of : 
 
 mission settlement at, 313 
 Tlou, or the Elephant, Barolong chief: 441. (See Ratlou) 
 
 TOOVENAARS, WIZARDS OR SoRCERERS, A KORANA CLAN : 
 
 Katse are descended from, 277 
 
 is said to be the ancient name of the Great Koranas, 294 
 
 TOOVERBERG, THE : 
 
 Bushmen of, 172 
 
 establishment of mission at, 172, 175 and 379 
 Tortoise-shell : 
 
 use of, by Bushmen, for cups and dishes, 68 
 
 as a sounding-board, 107 
 
 as the frame of a drum, no 
 Transvaal, the : 
 
 dense native population of, 407 and 538 
 
 settlement of, by the Bakuena nation, 545 
 Truter, Mr., government commissioner : 
 
 visit of, to the Batlapin in 1801, 291, 434 and 440 
 Tsela-Kgotu, uncle of Mothibi : 
 
 expeditions of, against the Mampua, 451 
 Tsetse, the : 
 
 bite of, destroys oxen, 500 
 Tshabahre. (See Sabbedere) 
 
 TSHAKA : 
 
 t3n:anny of, 460 
 
 Abakazulu revolt from, 460 and 552 
 TsHOPO : 
 
 Korana clan resides at, 291 and 294 
 
 T'SHOUSfi, ELDEST SON OF MAKABA : 
 
 is spared, 536 
 
 plots against his father, and is slain for treason, 539 
 TsiLi, SON OF Tao : 
 
 founds the clan of the Baratsili, 491 
 TsoMo River : 
 
 mention of, 169 and 170 
 TsusANife. (See T'shouse) 
 'Tua-'kne, cave-dwellers : 
 
 name given to Bushmen by Koranas, 275 
 
INDEX 615 
 
 Turanian languages : 
 
 are genderless, 18 
 Turner, Mr., junior : 
 
 infonaation obtained by, 129 
 'Twa-'goup, Bushman chief : 
 
 is the father of 'Kousopp, 396 
 
 territory of, 396 
 
 is killed by a lion, 396 
 
 U 
 
 UlNTJES : 
 
 use of, as food, and preparation of, 258 and 259 
 Uithaalder, Bushman captain : 
 
 intrepid conduct of, 223 
 Umkonta, Barolong chief : 
 
 is the father of Sareni, 493 
 Umkulunkulu : 
 
 is the title of the principal deity of the coast Kafi&rs, 544 
 Upper Modder River : 
 
 Bushmen of, 194 
 
 V 
 Vaal, the : 
 
 Koranas and Bushmen on the banks of, 238 and 300 
 
 is called by natives 'Gij-'Gariep, 270 
 
 discovery of diamonds in the valley of, 316 
 
 further mention of, 356, 357, 389, 407, 421, 429, 433, 442, 445, 458, 
 486, 503, 505, 511, 513, 514, 516 and 519 
 Vanano, Bantu tribe of Benguela : 405 
 Vandeleur, General : 
 
 march of, against Hottentot rebels, 343 
 Vanderkemp, Dr., missionary : 
 
 visit paid by, to Bushman chief, 201 
 
 painting of, 201 
 Vansittart mountains : 
 
 name given to, 362 
 Vegetables : 
 
 cultivated by the Bachoana, 418 
 Veld kost, primitive food : 
 
 is the sustenance of the early Bushmen, 54 
 
 of the Berg-Damaras, 258 
 
 Bakuena tribes fall back upon, 558 
 Venter, Jan, Dutch farmer : 
 
 flocks of, are seized by 'Kousopp, 400 
 Vine, the : 
 
 is venerated as siboko, 409 and 416 
 Vlegermuis, Namaqua captain : 253 
 voortouw, korana captain : 3 1 2 
 Vos, A., Mr. AND Mrs. : 
 
 take charge of mission to Bushmen, 157 
 
 W 
 Wacamba, Bantu tribe : 404 
 Wade, Lieutenant-Colonel : 
 letter to, 345 and 350 
 
6i6 INDEX 
 
 Wajiji, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Wakanye, chief of the Bahurutsi : 
 
 is slain in battle, 525 and 536 
 Wakuafi, Bantu tribe : 404 
 Wakumba, Bantu tribe : 405 
 VAN der Walt, Gert, fieldcornet : 
 
 experience of, with Bushmen, 161 
 
 unfavourable attitude of, towards missions, 175 
 
 profits by their suppression, 177 , 
 
 Wanika, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Wa'nyamuezi, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Wapocomo, Bantu tribe : 404 
 Warden, Major : 
 
 account given by, of purchase of land from Bushmen, 394 
 Warm Bath, in Namaqualand : 
 
 missionary settlement at, 331 and 360 
 Warriors : 
 
 honourable scars of, 535 
 Warua, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Wasambara, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Washbank, the : 
 
 Bushmen of, 195 and 220 
 Wasuahili, Bantu tribe : 405 
 Water : 
 
 methods of carrying, among Bushmen, 49, 147, 152 and 424 
 
 is obtained from a distance, 81 
 
 poisoning of, 92 
 
 names given to springs of, 141 and 143 
 
 concealment of, from game, 147 
 
 scanty supply of, in the Kalahari, 148, 422, 424 and 443 
 
 is obtained from melons, 359, 449 and 450 
 Waterboer, Andries, Griqua chief : 
 
 claims land of Bushmen, 211 and 283 
 
 power and authority of, 319, 321, 376 and 377 
 
 is a native catechist, 350 
 
 in 1811 joins the settlement at Griquatown, 350 and 367 
 
 denies the authority of Cornelius Kok the younger, 359 
 
 is elected chief of the Griquas in place of Adam Kok, 367 
 
 subjection of, to the missionaries at Griquatown, 368 and 387 
 
 conflicts of, with Bushmen, 369 
 
 forces Owl to surrender, 370 
 
 efforts of, to suppress the plunder of cattle, 371 
 
 conquers rebel Griquas, 372 
 
 is appointed general of the combined forces against the Mantatees, 
 and defeats them, 374, 471 and 472 to 477 
 
 advises the Batlapin to remove from Kuruman, 375 
 
 raises a commando to aid Sihunelo against the Mantatees, 376 
 
 charges him with plunder, and compels him to pay a fine, 376 and 511 
 
 statement by, concerning the occupation of Campbell, 383 
 Weapons : 
 
 of primitive races, 14 and 54 
 
 of Bushmen, 62 to 73, 140, 142, 283, 302 and 449 
 
 of Kaffir tribes, 74 and 235 
 
 used by Kaf&rs and Bushmen, difference in, 206 
 
 af Hottentots, 235 
 
 of Namaquas, 249 and 252 
 
INDEX 617 
 
 Weapons : 
 
 of Berg-Damaras, 257 
 
 of Ovaherero, 261 
 
 of Bachoana, 267 
 
 of Koranas, 276 
 
 of Mantatees, 373, 473, 481 and 507 
 
 of the Bakalahari, 423 
 
 of the Batlapin, 435 and 459 
 
 of the Barolong, 489 and 508 
 
 of the Batlatla, 504 
 
 of the Bahurutsi, 522 and 523 
 
 of the Molokwam, 526 
 
 of the Bamangwato, 532 
 Wells : 
 
 sinking of, by the Ovambo, 264 
 Werner, Frederick, butcher : 
 
 murder of, by Hottentots, 343 
 Wesleyan Missionary Society : 
 
 work of, in South Africa, 386 and 388 
 Wessels, Jan : 
 
 information given by, 44, 72 and 396 
 
 has Baardman the younger in his service, 186 
 
 VAN DER WeSTHUYZEN, FiELDCORNET •- 
 
 assistance given by, against Hottentots, 342 
 White, Archdeacon : 
 
 estabUshes mission station of St. Mark's, 204 
 Widows : 
 
 among Bushmen, consideration shown towards, 97 
 Wilkinson, Sir J. Gardner : 
 
 writings of, on the Egyptians, 118 
 Windvogel, Knecht, Bushman chief : 
 
 destruction of, with whole tribe, by Danster, 185 
 
 territory of, 198 
 Witchcraft : 
 
 subsidence of rivers is ascribed to, 292 
 
 beUefs concerning, 458 
 Witsenberg : 
 
 Hottentot tribe on, 327 
 
 WiTTE-VOET, PlET, KORANA CAPTAIN : 
 
 marauding expeditions of, 311 
 Women : 
 
 abduction of, by Sonqua, 248 
 
 of Namaquas, description of and labours of, 251 and 253 
 
 of ancient Egj^t, 252 
 
 among Koranas, privileges of, 272 
 Wright, Reverend P. : 
 
 letter written to, by Waterboer, 368, 383 and 387 
 
 VAN WyK, J. A., FIELDCORNET OF THE HaNTAM : 
 
 reports outrage by Africaander, 343 
 territory of, 394 
 
 YsTERBEK. (See Goliath) 
 
 s s 
 
6i8 INDEX 
 
 z 
 
 Zak River : 
 
 mention of, 157, 160 and 162 
 Zambesi : 
 
 Bantu tribes on, 405 
 Zanquebar : 
 
 Bantu tribes of, 405 
 Zebra, the : 
 
 superstitions concerning, 411 
 Zulus : 
 
 smoking by, 53 
 
 language of, 406 
 
 (S«e Amazulu) 
 Zuurveld, the : 
 
 Bushmen of, 204 
 
 various inhabitants of, 204 
 
 was formerly called Bushmanland, 204 
 
 is the battle-ground of the black and white race ,210 
 Zwartkops River : 
 
 Lieutenant Paterson visits the, 204 
 
 is reached by Kaffirs, 212 
 'Zweei, last captain of the Maluti Bushmen ^ 
 
 intrepid defence and death of, 229 
 
 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. 
 

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