of Bushman
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Bushmen
Encyclopedia Britannica
BUSHMEN, or Bosjesmans, so named by the British and Dutch colonists of the Cape, but calling themselves Saab or Saan, are an aboriginal race of South Africa, allied in some respects to the Hottentots, but differing from them in several essential points, and along with these having nothing whatever in common with the Kaffre 0r the Negro. The area in which they are found in nomadic families may be described as extending from the inner ranges of the mountains of Cape Colony, through the central Kalahari desert to near Lake Ngami, and thence north-westward to the districts about the Ovambo River north of Damara Land, in about 18° S. lat., or only over the most barren portions of the South African deserts, into which they have been pressed by the encroachments of the Kaffre, Hottentots, and Europeans, a few also remaining in the most inaccessible clefts of tho Drakenberg range about the sources of tho Vaal. They rank with the savages of Australia as the lowest existing type of mankind, human nature being nowhere seen in a more destitute or degraded condition. The Bushmen with whom tho colonists of the south have come most in contact are of very small stature, of a dirty yellow colour, and generally repulsive countenance. In type they somewhat resemble the Mongolians; the cheek-bcres are large and prominent, the eyes deeply set and crafty in expression, the nose small and depressed; tho hair appears in small woolly tufts with spaces between. Among 150 of their number measured by the traveller Barrow, tho tallest man was 4 feet 9 inches, the tallest woman 4 feet 4 inches. A hollowed back and protruding slcmach, with thick hinder parts and small limbs, are frequent characteristics of their figure, but many of them are well-proportioned, all being active and capable of enduring ...great privations and fatigue. Northward the Bι.shmen appear to improve both in general condition and in stature. Those met with towards Lake Ngami by Dr Livingstone are described by him as differing from those of the thirsty plains of the Kalahari, being of darker colour and of good proportions; some of those seen by the traveller Baines in this region are also noticed as being taller, some 5 feet 6 inches in height. Their clothing consists of a mantle of skins, termed a kaross; but they are fond of ornament, and decorate the arms and legs with beads and iron or copper rings, and the women sometimes stain their faces with red colour. For dwellings in the plains they have low huts formed of reed mats, or may simply occupy a hole in the earth; in the mountain districts they make a shelter among the rocks by hanging mats on the windward side. They do not possess cattle, and have no animals of any sort excepting a few half-wild dogs, nor have they the smallest rudiments of agriculture. Living by hunting, they are thoroughly acquainted with the habits Und movements of every kind of wild animals following the antelope herds in their -migrations. Theiι weapon is a small bow, strung with twisted sinew, used with arrows, which are neatly made of a reed with a barbed head of bo» o, sometimes tipped with a triangular piece of iron, and always coated with a gummy poisonous compound, which is variously made in different localities. The chief sources of the poison are the milky juice of the Amaryllis toxicaria, which is abundant in South Africa, or of the Euphorbia arborescens, generally mixed with the venom of snakes or of a large black spider of the genus Mygale ; or the entrails of a very deadly caterpillar, called N’gwa or ’ Kaa, are used alone. From their use of these poisons the Bushmen are held in great dread by the neighbouring races. A rude implement, called the gragf stock or digging-stick by the boers,-—consisting of a sharpened spike of hardwood over which a stone, ground to a circular form and perforated, is passed and secured by a wedge,— is used by the Buβhmen in uprooting the succulent tuberous roots of the several species of creeping plants of the desert. These perforated stones have a special interest in indicating the former extension of the race of the Bushmen, since tbey are found far beyond the area now occupied by their families.
There does not appear to be the least approach to any tribal unity in the wandering groups of the Bushmen; they have no chiefs, bodily strength alone forming a distinction among them. Their language, which exists in several dialects, is not intelligible to the Hottentots, but has in common with it the nasal, snapping, hissing, or grunting’sounds, only used more numerously. The Hottentot language is more agglutinative, the Bushman’s more monosyllabic; the former recognizes a gender in names, the latter does not; the Hottentots form the plural by a suffix, the Bushmen by repetition of the name; the former count up to twenty, the latter can only number two, all above that being “many.” The Bushmen possess a remarkable faculty which is not known in any other South African natives, that of graphic illustration; the rocks of the mountains of Cape Colony and of the Drakenberg have everywhere examples of Bushman drawings of men, women, children, and animals characteristically sketched. Rings, crosses, and other signs drawn in blue pigment on some of the rocks, and believed to be some centuries old, have given rise to the speculation that these may be remains of a hieroglyphic writing; and the discovery of drawings of men and women, with antelope heads, in the recesses of the Drakenberg in 1873 (Orpen in Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874), also very ancient, recalls the mythological figures of Egypt. The Bushmen are not deficient in a certain intelligence, and are valued as servants by the boers, being much more energetic than the Hottentots; of all the South African races they have the greatest aptitude for music and the dance. A regularly planned and wholesale destruction of this race on the borders of the colony in the earlier years, reduced their numbers to a great extent; and though this cruel hunting of the Bushmen has ceased, their children are still captured by the boers as servants. In retaliation, the Bushmen have loug been the scourge of the farms on the outer borders of the colonies, making raids on the cattle and driving them off in large numbers. On the western side of the deserts they are generally at enmity with the Koranna Hottentots, but on the eastern border of the Kalahari they have to some extent become tributary to the Bechwana Kaffres. Formerly occupying a much larger area, it appears probable that the Bushmen are the earliest remaining aborigines of South Africa, and that they existed there before the Kaffres, and perhaps also anterior to the Hottentots. The discoveries of the dwarf race of the Akka by Dr Schweinfurth beyond the Upper Nile basin, of the little Bushman-like Obongo on the western equatorial coastland by Du Chaillu, and of the Okota, an undersized people leading a miserable existence in bark huts on a branch of the Ogowé River, by De Compiègne in 1874, point to a former more general distribution of this primitive race.
Barrow’s South Africa, 1801-3; Burchell’s 7 , rare⅛ 1822; Livingstone’s Missionary Travels, 1857; Baines’s Explorations, 1864; Alerensky’s Siid-Afrika, 1875.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 4, p. 575
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