The early Cape Hottentots

[p. I]

General introduction.

In the year that van Riebeeck landed at Table Bay to establish a refreshment station for ships on their way to and from the East Indies, there was published in Amsterdam a small tract devoted entirely to a description of the country about the Cape of Good Hope. The Klare ende Korte Besgryvinge van het Land aan Cabo de Bona Esperanca was a compilation, based mainly on published accounts and partly on details supplied orally by men who had made the India voyage. Its principal value lies in the fact that it summarizes all the information available about the Cape at the moment when it was first settled by Europeans. That its description is highly imperfect is only to be expected, for nothing at all was then known about the country beyond certain parts of the sea coast from St. Helena to Mossel Bay. And yet the anonymous author was able to include in it a fairly lengthy account of the native inhabitants, who were already known as the Hottentoos or Hottentots, a name under which they have become celebrated in ethnography, history and general literature.

It was more than a century and a half since Vasco da Gama had brushed up against them at St. Helena Bay, and not quite that since Francisco d'Almeida with several of his companions met an untimely death at their hands in Table Bay. In the years that follwed many a ship or fleet put in at one or other of the harbours along the coast. First the Portuguese, then the Dutch and English and French, found it convenient to call here for fresh water and meat. The latter they obtained in barter from the natives, with whom their dealings were on the whole more amicable than might have been expected from the experiences of their predecessors. All travellers are narrators, and to these early voyagers the appearance and habits of the strange peoples they encountered were excellent material for publication or recital on reaching home. To them therefore we owe our first written records of the Hottentots. But a traveller's tale must also be marvellous and entertaining, and so the naked truth was often garbed in quaint, fictitious fancies. These voyagers in any case never stayed long enough to acquire more than a very superficial knowledge of the people, with whom they could not even communicate through the medium of a common language. The personal appearance, clothing, weapons, huts and subsistence of the Hottentots could be

[p. II]

observed almost immediately, and were recorded with a fair degree of trustworthiness; their language with its bewildering accompaniment of click consonants inevitably formed the subject of astonished and speculative comment; but of their social organization, manners and customs, religious beliefs and practices hardly anything could be learned, and such details as were recorded were the products of the imagination rather than of sober observation. The information so carefully pieced together in the Klare Besgryvinge was actually most fragmentary, and conveys no idea at all of the true culture of the Hottentots in all its ramifications.

Van Riebeeck for the first few years after his arrival was too fully occupied with his allotted task to pay much attention to research or exploration, although a reading of Linschoten, it may be, had inspired him with the hope that in the interior lay the gold and precious stones of Monomotapa and the mythical city of Vigiti Magna. His cattle dealings with the local Hottentots soon taught him a good deal about their political divisions and general character, while sundry incidents illustrating aspects of Hottentot custom also duly found their way into his official journal. Then bickerings between the local groups interrupted the all-important cattle trade, and so began a series of bartering journeys into the interior, contributing greatly to the knowledge already acquired and bringing back accounts of more remote tribes. Representatives of these in due course visited the settlement, to be eagerly questioned about their land and their neighbours. Much of what they told was subsequently found to be true, but they also described certain immensely wealthy and highly-cultured tribes living beyond them. The expeditions sent to locate these wonderful Chobonas and Hankumquas failed to do so, but returned with much interesting information about the Namaqua in the north. When van Riebeeck left the Cape in 1662 he embodied in a memorandum for his successor all that was then known to him of the Hottentot tribes either directly or through hearsay. The list shows that much had already been learned concerning their political divisions and distribution.

In and about the Cape Peninsula were the Gorachouqua and Goringhaiqua, with their offshoot the Goringhaikona; further north along the west coast from the neighbourhood of Table Bay to Saldanha Bay roamed the Kochoqua, who at the time when the Dutch settlement was founded were the strongest of the local groups; beyond them and extending to the Olifants River were the Little and Great Chariguriqua, while still further north lived the Namaqua. To the east, beyond the Hottentots Holland mountains, were the Chainouqua, under their powerful chief Soeswa.

[p. III]

Still further east, but known only casually or by name, were the Hessequa, Hankumqua, Chamaqua, Omaqua, Atiqua, Houtunqua, Chauqua and Chobona, all said to be very rich in cattle and some in precious stones as well.

Later expeditions verified the existence of some tribes known to van Riebeeck only through hearsay, failed to find others, and added some new ones unknown to him. By the end of the seventeenth century, following on the eastward journeys of Cruse (1668), Visser (1676) and Schryver (1689), it was known with certainty that beyond the Chainouqua lay the Hessequa, in the present district of Swellendam; the Gouriqua, in the vicinity of Mossel Bay and the Gouritz River; the Attaqua, extending north of them to near the present village of George; the Houteniqua, further east as far as the Kromme River; and the Inqua to the north, in the present district of Aberdeen.

By the time this knowledge had been gained, much had also been learned about the general culture of the Hottentots. Men like Wreede had in the early years of the settlement applied themselves to a study of the Hottentot language and incidentally of Hottentot customs; exploring parties like that of van Meerhoff to the Namaqua in 1661 had brought back many valuable notes on the life of this tribe; and as the settlement grew older, its European residents came to be more and more familiar with the Hottentots, able to communicate with them directly in Dutch or even through the medium of their own language, and gradually learning odds and ends about their manners and customs. Transitory visitors to the Cape, of whom there were many, felt it desirable to include in their descriptions of the country some account of its native inhabitants, and so recorded all they could ascertain about the Hottentots. Most of the works dealing with the Cape in the latter half of the seventeenth century contain at least a page or two about the Hottentots, based either on generally superficial personal observation or on the statements of local residents; while some of them, like Schreyer's Neue Ost-Indianische Reisz-Beschreibung, are devoted almost entirely to a description of this people, the product of direct and seemingly careful investigation.

The three accounts reproduced below are among the most celebrated of these early descriptions of the Hottentots. They are more comprehensive than most of their kind, and for that reason may fairly be regarded as representing adequately what was known about the Hottentots at this time. The study of primitive peoples had not yet developed into a special science, with an elaborate technique of field investigation; and we need hardly expect to find in these early forerunners the exhaustive treatment and wealth of detail we demand in the modern ethnographical monograph.

[p. IV]

The writers were not trained anthropologists. They were for the most part travellers, geographers, missionaries or leisured men of culture whose interest in the new countries they visited or described extended also to the native inhabitants, and accordingly they noted down what they were able to learn concerning the latter. Inspired by curiosity rather than by scientific motives, narratives of the kind they wrote are still being produced at the present time by travellers and others who come into contact with savage peoples; and the intrusion for the reader's delectation of strange and improbable details into a framework of sober fact is not characteristic of the seventeenth century alone, nor have fantastic speculations about ethnic origins ceased to fascinate the amateur dabbler in ethnography.

Judged in this light, and considering also the numerous handicaps under which these ethnographical pioneers must have laboured, the descriptions they compiled can be viewed with respect, if not necessarily with enthusiastic approbation. A survey of their contents shows that actually they contain a good deal of the information we still wish to have about primitive peoples in general. Dapper, Ten Rhyne and Grevenbroek, the three authors here represented, between them give us a fairly useful account of Hottentot tribal divisions, bodily appearance, clothing and ornaments, weapons and utensils, mode of life, dwellings, food and drink, birth, marriage, death and burial customs, religious beliefs and practices, treatment of disease, government, legal procedure, warfare, language and character. The more readily observable features of physique and material culture are on the whole treated far more fully than the less tangible aspects of social life and religion, which is but natural, for the latter are more difficult to understand, and must be studied with patience and sympathy, as well as over a reasonably long period of time. Many of the statements made by our authors subsequent investigation has shown to be correct; some observations and reflexions, however, can be ascribed only to ignorance or to imagination.

But on the basis of accounts such as these, supplemented by the contemporary official records and other descriptions, and where necessary by the comparative data of later study, it is possible now to reconstruct the main outlines of Hottentot culture as it existed before its fatal subjection to European influence. The following brief sketch is intended not so much to summarize the work of Dapper and the others as to provide the balance essential for the rightful appreciation of what they record. Features they describe in some detail have accordingly been completely ignored

[p. V]

here or passed over lightly, while aspects of culture to which they paid little or no attention have consciously been brought into greater prominence.^*

Many of the early writers believed that the Hottentots were descended from or considerably influenced by the Jews or other Semitic peoples. This theory, a hardy perennial still often used to account for the origin of savage customs with a superficial resemblance to those recorded in the Old Testament, has no solid foundation in fact. The Hottentots, it is now generally held by anthropologists, were of the same original stock as the Bushmen (who were seldom clearly distinguished from them by the early writers). They were however subsequently affected by the incorporation of alien blood, emanating from early invading peoples of Hamitic stock, from whom they also acquired certain distinctive linguistic and cultural characters. They all called themselves Khoikhoin, ‘men of men, people of pure race’, a name by which they distinguished themselves from others. The term Hottentots, by which they are now universally known, was imposed upon them by the Europeans about the middle of the seventeenth century. Dapper, and following him many later writers, maintain that it is derived from a Dutch word for ‘stammerer’ or ‘stutterer’, and was applied to them on account of the peculiar clicks which gave their speech its distinctive character. But there is good reason to believe that its origin really lay in their own use in many of their dance songs of some such word as Hautitou (→Hottentoo), which was adopted by the early voyagers as a convenient appellation and so found its way into European languages.

The early Dutch settlers found the Hottentots thinly scattered in small loosely-organized groups all along the western and southern coasts of the country. Later expeditions inland revealed their presence beyond the Orange River to the north, and as far as the Kei River in the east, although nowhere had they penetrated far inland. Both in culture and in physical features they all presented a good deal of homogeneity. Their languages, however, were later found to fall into four separate dialectical groupings. It is accordingly usual to classify the people themselves on this basis into four main divisions, known respectively as the Cape Hottentots, the Eastern Hottentots, the Korana and the Naman.

* The description which follows is based almost entirely upon the lengthy discussion of Hottentot culture in my book The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots (esp. pp. 223-418), where all the relevant literature has been utilized in compiling a comprehensive account of what is at present known about the Hottentots.

[p. VI]

The Cape Hottentots were found by the first Europeans in the south-western parts of the Cape, and described in most of the early accounts; although even in van Riebeeck's time the Naman (Namaqua) had also been visited. The physical appearance, clothing and adornment of both divisions are described at sufficient length in the various accounts published below, and need not here be specially discussed; any minor corrections or comments that seem called for will be found in the appropriate footnotes. Their mode of life is also dealt with in fair detail by Dapper and Grevenbroek; but a brief summary, corrected in the light of later researches, will perhaps contribute to a better understanding of what follows.

None of the Hottentots ever cultivated the soil. They were essentially a nomadic pastoral people, wandering about from place to place with their herds of long-horned cattle and flocks of fat-tailed sheep. Their principal food was the milk of their cattle, drunk as a rule after being allowed to thicken. The milking was done by the women, while the general herding and pasturing of the cattle was in the hands of the men. To supplement the milk diet wild fruits, berries and tubers of various kinds were gathered by the women from trees and bushes or dug up out of the ground, and eaten either raw or prepared in several different ways by baking and roasting. Meat, a luxury, was obtained chiefly by hunting, also the work of the men. In addition to game all sorts of small animals and even insects were eaten in case of necessity. The domestic animals were never slaughtered, save on festive or ceremonial occasions, but all dying of disease and other natural causes were eaten with relish. The unappetizing description Dapper gives of some Hottentot foodstuffs may seem hard to believe, but there is ample evidence to show that when hard pressed by hunger the Hottentots would eat almost anything that could be swallowed.

Their nomadic mode of life necessarily prevented them from banding together permanently in very considerable numbers. The ever-present need of grass and water for their herds and flocks compelled them to live and move in small, compact, and often widely-separated communities. As soon as any group became so large that permanent cohesion and common movement proved impossible or even inconvenient, some of the people would move away to a distance in order to acquire a new grazing ground of sufficient extent for their use. In this way the number of different communities was always tending to multiply.

Politically they were grouped into tribes, each with its own distinctive name. The tribes were not as a rule very large, the number of people in each ranging from several

[p. VII]

hundreds to a couple of thousand. Every tribe appears to have had its own territory, into which strangers might not intrude for hunting or grazing without first obtaining leave. Value was laid especially on permanent waterholes, round which the people migrated, claiming as their territory all the land where they were accustomed to graze their herds or to live. This land was exploited on equal terms by all the members of the tribe. It could under no circumstances become the property of an individual, nor was it held to belong to the chief; and it was generally regarded as inalienable. In the early Cape Records several instances are noted of land having been ‘sold’ to the colonists by Hottentot chiefs; but it is more than probable that such ‘sales’ were looked upon by the Hottentots themselves not as alienation but as the granting of usufruct, and the ‘purchase price’ as analogous to tribute paid for this use.

Many of the tribes, at the time when they first came into contact with the Dutch, consisted of several distinct divisions, more or less loosely connected together, though all tending to become independent in the course of time. Of the local groups found by the Dutch in the immediate vicinity of Table Bay, all, whether Goringhaiqua, Goringhaikona or Gorachouqua, were originally members of one tribe, of which Gogosoa was regarded as the principal chief. This whole tribe, again, seems to have been at one time dependent on the Kochoqua, from whom it subsequently broke away, as did also the Chariguriqua. The Kochoqua themselves were found divided into two branches, the senior under Oedasoa, who considered himself paramount, and the other under Gonnema.

This fissiparous tendency was due not only to the Hottentot mode of life, but also to the nature of their social organization. Each tribe was made up of clans, or groups of families claiming descent from some common ancestor in the male line whose name they bore. Marriage within the clan was strictly forbidden, so that a man had to seek his wife in some other clan. Membership of a clan guaranteed a person a strong measure of protection, and he could always count on the support of his fellow-clansmen, especially in case of the blood feud. The vendetta system was in force among the Hottentots, and the chief of the tribe was unable to prevent the members of two clans from carrying out blood vengeance on one another. The chieftainship was a prerogative of the senior clan in virtue of descent, and the hereditary head of this clan was the recognized chief of the tribe. If a man of fine character and marked ability he was accorded a good deal of respect, but the heads of the other clans acted as his council, and he could not do much without their co-operation. Together

[p. VIII]

with them he regulated the movements of the tribe in peace and war, and administered justice in accordance with traditional usage, just as the head of each clan, assisted by its old men, was responsible for maintaining law and order within his own group. The heads of the clans appear to have often been jealous of one another; there were constant internal rivalries and disputes, which sometimes flared up into open warfare. The bonds of cohesion were frail, and even a slight shock was sometimes sufficient to produce a permanent breach. Time and again a powerful clan would go off on its own, asserting its independence of the others; and clan loyalty was always stronger than tribal loyalty, a fact sufficiently often noted by the Dutch in their early dealings with the Hottentots.

Within the clan the outstanding social unit was the family, consisting of a man with his wife or wives and dependent children. All the Hottentot tribes permitted polygyny, although as a rule only the more powerful and wealthy men had more than one wife. In any case, the number of wives seldom exceeded two or three. The first wife married was the chief wife, and took precedence over the others. Families closely related tended to camp together, their huts being arranged in a definite order according to seniority in line of descent. As a rule the members of a tribe were scattered over its territory in small groups or ‘kraals’ of this kind, each group consisting of a single clan or part of a clan. The older people, however, would generally stay on at the headquarters of the tribal chief, situated as a rule along a river bank or in the neighbourhood of springs and deep pools, and always in parts where grass grew most abundantly. In this encampment the relative position of the different clans was strictly regulated by custom.

The camp took the form of a vast circle, enclosed with a great fence of thorn. Within the fence and round the circumference were the huts of the people, each hut facing inwards to the centre. Members of the same clan had their huts close together, and the tribal rank of a clan was readily seen in its distance from and position in regard to the huts of the chief and his clansmen. The great open space in the centre served as a fold for the stock at night. Special enclosures were made for the calves and the lambs, but the cattle and sheep just lay in the open before their owner's hut till driven out to graze in the morning.

The huts themselves were well adapted to the nomadic life of the people: light in weight, simple in material and structure, and providing an airy shelter from the wind and the sun, they could easily be taken down, packed up, transported on the backs of oxen to the site of the next

[p. IX]

encampment, and there rebuilt. Their shape and mode of erection are adequately described in the accounts printed below. It need only be added that the modern ‘matjeshuis’ or mat hut so often seen in the country districts of the Cape Province is the direct descendant of the old Hottentot hut, which it faithfully copies in appearance and often even in material.

Each wife had her own hut, in which she lived with her unmarried children. She was regarded as the mistress of the hut and all its domestic utensils, and so far from being dominated by her husband appears to have had a good deal of independence. Marriage arrangements were conducted by the parents of the two parties concerned. Generally the boy's people, after he had found a suitable bride for himself, would approach her parents on his behalf. The latter, however agreeably disposed they might be, were expected by custom to make a prolonged show of reluctance, ending, after much persuasion by the boy's people, in acquiescence. During the period of betrothal, generally a few months, the boy and girl might not communicate together save through an intermediary. The wedding was celebrated by a special ceremony at the home of the wife's people, accompanied by a feast and general rejoicing. The bridegroom provided a sheep or cow to be slaughtered for the bride, and eaten only by her and the other women who were already married. This special meal marked her acceptance into the ranks of married women. Henceforth the young couple formed a separate household in the community, lived in their own hut, and in general played the part of full adult members of the tribe.

A pregnant woman had to observe various food and other restrictions lest the child in her womb be affected disastrously. Delivery took place in her hut, from which all men were excluded. An old woman well versed in the art of midwifery was called in to supervise. The afterbirth and blood flowing from the woman were buried in a hole made in the floor of the hut, for it was believed that any unauthorized person getting hold of these substances could use them to bewitch the mother and her child. The woman remained secluded in her hut for several days, during which she had to abstain completely from her normal daily activities and also observe various ritual restrictions. On emerging she went through a special ceremony of purification, followed by a sacramental feast welcoming her into the ranks of women who had borne children. Twin births were considered unlucky, and one of the children, especially if a girl, was exposed or even buried alive, a fate which generally also overtook a baby whose mother died in giving birth to it. The Hottentots justified this infanticide

[p. X]

on the ground that it would be extremely difficult to maintain and rear such children.

Suckling was normally prolonged until the child was two or three years old. From the moment it could stand on its feet, however, it gradually learned to fend for itself. The little boys early began to herd the sheep and the calves, and to exercize themselves by hunting with small bows and arrows birds, lizards, mice and similar small fry which they ate. As they grew older they were put to herding the cattle, and also began to accompany the men on adult hunting expeditions. The first time a boy killed a big game animal was made the occasion of a ceremony at which he was formally initiated into the ranks of adult hunters. The little girls remained with their mother, learning to assist her in the daily household tasks, such as procuring firewood, preparing the food and the ointments for the body, fetching water, making reed mats and keeping the hut in repair. In family life respect for age was inculcated, and deference was always expected towards elders. Among brothers the eldest always had the honoured place and the first voice in any debate, and in family affairs his opinion carried authority. On the death of the father, he inherited the great bulk of the property and became the new head of the family. There was, however, a strong taboo between brothers and sisters, and when once grown up they had to avoid one another completely. A man had to respect his sister highly, and in her presence conduct himself with much decorum. Breach of this regulation was severely condemned and even punished.

The attainment of puberty was marked by the performance of special rites, conferring upon the initiates the status of mature adults and permission to marry. In the case of a boy, the ceremony involved a period of seclusion in a small enclosure, during which a learned old man instructed him carefully in all the laws and usages peculiarly observable by men. Some early writers, like Grevenbroek and Kolb, state also that boys each had to undergo semi-castration before being allowed to marry, but it is doubtful how far this operation can be regarded as part of the initiation rite, or even whether it existed at all. His formal instruction over, the boy had the right henceforth to associate habitually with the men, and to eat and smoke in their company. Boys who had not undergone the rites ate only with the women, and were regarded as milksops. Men who violated any of the special restrictions to which they were subject were also excluded from the company of the others, until ceremonially purified.

The ceremony for a girl, held when she first menstruated, has been recorded most fully for the Naman, but a few

[p. XI]

stray observations in early writings suggest that something similar existed among the Cape Hottentots. Among the Naman it was an elaborate affair, involving a lengthy period of seclusion, during which the girl was in a state of taboo and had to observe many restrictions, including above all the complete avoidance of cold water. It was brought to an end by a long series of purificatory rites, some of them designed to promote fertility in man, beast and nature, followed by her formal reintroduction to all the daily tasks from which she had been cut off during her seclusion.

It is worth noting at this stage the part which water, because of its outstanding importance to the material well-being of the Hottentots, came to play in their ceremonial life as well. Among the Naman there was a great annual rainmaking ceremony, when pregnant sheep and cows were sacrificed to promote the fruitfulness of nature; while in many of the ceremonies connected with the life history of the individual water played an essential part, being endowed in some instances with a special protective power, while in others it was considered extremely dangerous and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Thus objects or persons which might harm members of the society were rendered innocuous by immersion in cold water or by being sprinkled with cold water; while on the other hand sick people, mothers with new-born babies, menstruating women, bereaved people and many others were in a precarious condition and must on no account touch water lest they die. When, after many ceremonies of purification, these people were once more introduced to the daily life of the tribe, they were specially reintroduced to water, being splashed all over with it before they could resume their normal occupations.

Dead people were as a rule disposed of by burial, although the Hottentots also had the custom of abandoning old and helpless people to die ultimately of starvation or be devoured by wild beasts. Where burial took place, the relatives and friends of the dead person spent the night together outside the hut in which the body was laid, and carried on a ceremonial wailing. The corpse, doubled up like an embryo and wrapped in skins sewn together, was usually buried the following afternoon. A grave was dug with a niche in one side, in which the corpse was placed in a sitting position facing east. The niche was closed with bushes and a slab of stone, and a mound raised over the grave, everybody present adding to it a stone or twig. The hut of the dead person was then abandoned, and the camp moved to another site. The near relatives underwent a special ceremony of purification; while the widow in

[p. XII]

particular was subjected to a period of seclusion, at the end of which, after being purified, she was admitted by a sacramental meal into the ranks of the widowed.

The Hottentots had no definite conception of an afterworld or land of the dead, nor was there any established theory of reincarnation. They believed that the soul of a dead person went with him into the grave, from which it was able to emerge at will in human or animal guise. These ghosts were thought to be mischievous or harmful, and in particular to cause most of the sickness or death. Consequently they were much dreaded, and the graves of the dead avoided. To counteract the danger threatened by the ghosts, various protective measures were employed, such as sprinkling the grave with water immediately after the funeral, or daubing oneself with wet clay when visiting a site where the group had formerly camped, and which might therefore be haunted by ghosts. The Naman spoke of these ghosts most commonly as /hei /nun, ‘fawn feet’, but sometimes also as sobo khoin, ‘people of the shadow,’ or //gaunagu.

This word //gaunagu is the masculine plural form of //Gaunab, the name of a prominent figure in Hottentot religion and myth. The early writers found it most difficult to obtain any clear impression of Hottentot religious belief, sometimes confusing the names and attributes of the supernatural beings or even asserting quite seriously that the Hottentots had no religion at all. We know now that actually they had a well-developed system of beliefs and practices centring in mythical beings derived partly from animistic conceptions and partly from the personification of natural forces. //Gaunab was one of these supernatural personages. He was closely associated with the ghosts of the dead, and regarded primarily as a source of evil, responsible especially for much sickness and death. The whirlwind, eclipses of the sun or moon, shooting stars and similar natural phenomena were all omens of great misfortune linked up with him. How far he was actually worshipped is difficult to decide, but it seems clear enough that on occasion sacrificial offerings were made to appease him. The magicians were also said to derive much of their power from him.

In Hottentot mythology //Gaunab figured as a malevolent chief always in conflict with Tsui-//Goab, the great tribal hero. Tsui-//Goab in his mythological character is said to have been a great chief, a notable warrior of immense physical strength, and a powerful magician; he was also regarded as the creator, the guardian of health, the source of prosperity and abundance, and above all as the controller of the rain and its associated phenomena. The great

[p. XIII]

annual rainmaking ceremony, the most important ritual occasion in the life of the people, was directed to him; and since, as the giver of the rain, he was also the source of good pastures and the edible roots and berries, prayers were often addressed to him for food.

Another conspicuous figure was Heitsi Eibib, a sort of mythical ancestor hero. He was the central personage of a great mythical cycle, in which he and members of his family had many wonderful adventures and escapades. All the actions ascribed to him were those of a man, but of one endowed with supernatural powers: he died and rose again many times, he was a rich and powerful chief, a seer and thaumaturgist, and a great hunter, but he was also full of tricks and his character was not altogether blameless. His ‘graves’, great heaps of stone piled up high, were found all over the country, and no Hottentot would pass one without adding to it a stone or branch or some similar object, sometimes also muttering a prayer for good luck and success in hunting. But he never commanded the same respect and reverence in the eyes of the Hottentots as did Tsui-//Goab.

Many of the early writers further state that at new moon and at full moon the people spent the night in dancing, singing and merrymaking; and some of them add that on such occasions the moon was actually invoked, although others deny this completely. The direct evidence in favour of Hottentot moon worship is indeed most sketchy, but if one may judge from the fact that the allied Bushmen unquestionably prayed to the moon there seems no good reason to doubt that this may also have been true of the Hottentots. The moon figured too in their mythology, in connexion with the well-known story of the origin of death: it promised immortality to men, and when its message was distorted irrevocably by the hare, it was also the avenger, punishing the fateful deceiver. It was for this reason too that Hottentot men had to avoid eating the flesh of the hare.

Like most primitive peoples, the Hottentots had among them specialists in the art of magic. The magicians were the diviners of the community, and appear also to have presided over some of the ceremonies; but their principal function was to cure people who had been ‘bewitched’. Some of them no doubt had a good working knowledge of herbal medicines and their application, but there was also a good deal of pure magic and even sleight of hand in their treatments. Various methods of divination were in use, and great faith was also placed in omens, of which there were many kinds. Dreams, the flight and cry of birds, the direction of the winds, celestial phenomena, all these had special significance. The sight of the Mantis was an omen

[p. XIV]

of extreme good fortune, but the nickname ‘Hotnotsgod’ (Hottentot's God) which it still bears in South Africa does not appear to have had any factual justification. Amulets were commonly worn. Herdsmen, warriors, hunters and others tied round their necks small pieces of wood, fangs, beads and similar objects obtained from the magicians, and believed to ward off all dangers, maintain health or deliver the possessor from evil.

A few of the usages and beliefs mentioned above still survive among the Naman of South West Africa and the last remnants of the old Korana in the Orange Free State and South-Western Transvaal. But the vast majority of them have died out completely, just as the Hottentots themselves have for the most part lost their purity of race and even their language. The early effects of contact with Europeans are already noticeable in the accounts of our authors. The war of 1659 described by Dapper was the first step in a process by which ultimately the Hottentots completely lost all their pasture lands and became politically subject to the Dutch. The reckless trading mentioned by Dapper and Ten Rhyne gradually deprived them of their cattle and sheep, their principal means of subsistence, and the copper, beads, tobacco and alcohol they received in return from the Dutch could not save them from starvation. It was only by entering into the service of the whites, a practice already much followed in Grevenbroek's time, that many of them were able to secure a livelihood. Prolonged and intimate contact with the ever-expanding European culture ultimately resulted in the total disintegration of the Cape Hottentot tribes. Even their names are completely forgotten in popular speech, save where associated with places where they formerly lived. Imported diseases such as smallpox led to a rapid decline in their numbers. But even more effective in destroying their original status was the considerable amount of miscegenation that from the first years of the settlement took place between them and the white settlers and imported East Indian slaves. It is questionable if at the present time a single pure-blooded individual of the Cape Hottentot division can still be met with, and naturally all semblance of their original culture and tribal groupings has long since vanished.

In Little Namaqualand descendants of the old Naman are still found in fairly considerable numbers. Here, too, their tribal cohesion and culture have been completely destroyed by contact with the Europeans, and they have also absorbed a good deal of white blood. A few of the older people still know their own language, but the great majority now speak only Afrikaans, the regular medium of intercourse even

[p. XV]

amongst themselves. The Naman in South West Africa have preserved their language to a much greater extent, but their old culture, where it has not been wholly obliterated, has at least been considerably affected by the intrusion of European elements. All of them are now ostensibly Christians. Their tribal organization has been hopelessly broken down, and their mode of life has also altered. Most of them now live as servants in the employ of Europeans, and others have taken to agriculture in a small and on the whole insignificant way. Even the few who still lead a purely pastoral life as a rule have very small herds, while most of their handicrafts have suffered and some have completely disappeared. The manufactured goods of the trader are now to be seen in every Hottentot hut. Only the latter still survives relatively unmodified, save where occasionally a covering of old sacks has replaced the far more attractive reed mats.

We cannot be sufficiently thankful to the old writers for recording their impressions and observations of Hottentot culture while it still flourished in all its traditional manifestations. We may lament their many omissions, criticize their statements of so-called fact, ridicule their opinions or smile at their eager credulity; but with all their deficiencies they have left us a mass of accurate information which can no longer be obtained, and whose value both to the anthropologist and to the student of South African history is accordingly all the greater. Pioneers of South African ethnography and chroniclers of a most interesting phase in the development of our country, they must always command our respect and our gratitude.

I. Schapera.