Ethnography; a pratical and preliminary description of the races of man

Table Of Contents

BLACK RACE

AFRICAN BLACKS

CHAPTER

Chapter I. The Bushmen

ENVIRONMENT. The Bushmen live almost entirely along the edges of, and in the Kalahari desert of South Africa. This region is one of the most barren in the world, and it would appear that no human group would ever have come to inhabit this waste, except under compulsion. The flora and fauna are most meagre and the water supply is to all appearances, practically nil. Hence the struggle for existence is very arduous and the numbers are small (in the Kalahari about 5,000, of whom 3,000 to 3,500 are still of unmixed blood), and widely scattered.

PHYSICAL FEATURES. The Bushmen in their physique show the result of long privation and of a bitter struggle with a hard environment. They are the shortest race of man, averaging about four feet six inches. The build is thin with the limbs lean, almost emaciated. Even the children lack the roundness of outline common in most other races although they do possess the very pendulous belly. There is almost no fat on the body : the skin is leathery, reddish-yellow in color, and dry in quality, seeming to fit the emaciated body too loosely, and becoming wrinkled at an early age so that it falls into strong folds about the belly and at the joints. The headcharacters are: relative smallness; dolichocephaly ; moderate prognathism; nose depressed at the root and turned up at the tip ; squareness of the full face (prominent cheek-bones and broad under- jaw)-, so that it has been compared in shape to a rectangle ; eyes wide-apart, and squinted (this quality and the furrowed brow going with life in the dazzling light of the desert) ; lips moderately everted. The individual hairs of the head are rolled into tight peppercorn knots ; there is very little hair on the face or body, but what is there is of a weak stubbly nature. In the old, the hair becomes grey, but baldness is seldom seen. The lumbar vertebrae is so mobile that the people can curl up like a dog into a small space. The hands and feet are very small. The characteristic negro-odor is absent. They have greater physical endurance (e.g. in running), than strength, and can go for a long time enduring hunger and thirst recovering soon from the effects. Their senses are very acute.

CHARACTER AND HISTORY. The Bushman has truly been characterized as the unfortunate child of the moment; for he is living entirely from hand to mouth with no thought for the morrow. He has been driven back from the fertile plains by the encroachments of the whites and the stronger native tribes. In the early clays of the white habitation of South Africa, regular plans were laid and partially carried out for the wholesale destruction of the Bushmen, but this cruel hunting has now ceased. The natural result of these attacks, was to embitter the native peoples against the whites. This showed itself in raids made on the out-lying farms where the cattle were driven off in large numbers. It is little wonder, then, that the hand of the Bushmen is turned against every man, for they feel that every man 's hand is against them.

"They have one ennobling quality, possessed no doubt equally by the beasts : a love of freedom, in which the Bushmen are superior to all other Africans. Unlike the Hottentot, the Bushmen never bowed to the yoke of slavery. In captivity the wild impulse of the genuine son of nature towards freedom never deserts him. Hence a destructive warfare born of savage hatred against all, whether white or black, who wish to limit this impulse ; and above all against the herds which cut short the borders of his hunting-grounds." 1

LANGUAGE. The Bushman language is, in general, agglutinative ; its striking peculiarity is the use of certain clicking sounds, taking the place of consonants and made by suddenly drawing the tongue away from certain parts of the roof, gums, or teeth ; of these clicks there are as many as eight varieties, very difficult of imitation by a foreigner.

SELF-MAINTENANCE. The Bushmen are entirely a hunting people without any thought of cattle raising or agriculture. So hard are the conditions under which these people are living, that there has been developed extreme dexterity and cleverness in self-maintenance within range of local possibilities. The most vital thing in the Bushman's life is the water-supph r ; this is appropriated, often by making a depression in the apparently dry bed of a stream and sucking up the moisture through reeds ; the women do this, and then store what they have been able to get in ostrich-egg shells, which are buried in the sand to cool the water and for the sake of concealment. There is also a certain bitter melon that grows under ground and is located by the hollow sound of the surface when tapped ; its juice is often the only liquid, at hand to quench thirst. They eat almost every kind of living creature which they can collect such as insects, lice, worms, lizards, locusts, grasshoppers, frogs, and snakes both poisonous and innoxious. The heads of the former snakes are cut off and then the bodies are roasted and eaten with the other small creatures, The locusts are dried over a fire, ground to a powder and then stored in skin sacks in a dry place to be kept till wanted. When the people are hungry they will make the powdered locusts into a porridge or mix them with honey and make them into a

1 Ratzel, " The History of Mankind," Vol. II, p. 268.

sort of cake. The crysalides of white ants are placed with a little fat on a flat stone over the fire and when they turn brown they are taken off and eaten. The greatest delicacy of all, apart from honey, is the foot of the elephant which is cooked b}^ burying in a hole in the ground after the ashes have been removed.

But the bulk of the food supply is acquired by the use of offensive weapons; either directly or through raids upon cattle-raising neighbors. The chief of these weapons is the bow and arrow, the former a rude, five-foot stave strung with sinews, and the latter between two and three feet long, singlefeathered, heavy toward the point, and so constructed so as to leave its poisoned head in the wound. In hunting or war, the small size, keen sight, and noiseless approach of the Bushman make him formidable beyond his slight strength; and the lack of physical power has likewise been balanced off by the use of poison (chiefly derived from snakes or corrupted flesh). The ostrich is approached in disguise — the head and shoulders covered with the skin and the stuffed head and neck of a former victim, and the legs colored white — and with the motions of feeding, etc., proper to the quarry, and is readily shot at close quarters with small poisoned arrows. Other weapons are the spear, only occasionally found, and the knobbed club for throwing or striking. Pitfalls are sometimes used and are dug with a stick weighted with a perforated stone — a tool employed, of course, in other digging operations. Snares are very cleverly made.

The man usually does the hunting after the larger game. Frequently he eats what he wishes while out and leaves the rest where it has fallen rather than bring it home to his wife. This means that the women often go hungry and are obliged to content themselves with the small forms of animal life which they can capture either around the camp or on other members of the family.

DWELLINGS. ' ' The Bushman seeks his dwelling in caves and clefts of the rock, in sheltered spots beneath over-hanging stones, or lies down in dry water courses, or in the deserted pit of an ant-bear. It is quite a sign of progress when he bends down the boughs of a shrub, and weaves them with other boughs and moss into a shelter from the wind, heaping up a lair of dried leaves and moss under it." 1 Only in the rarest cases does he advance to hut-building, when he finds that there is an abundance of game in the neighborhood and he decides to settle down for a prolonged stay. The huts are made by putting three sticks into the ground and covering them with tAvo mats.

When the Bushmen were asked why they did not make stronger and better huts, replied that such huts attached them

1 Ratzel, " History of Mankind,''' Vol. II, p. 271.

too much to one spot. An additional reason was the fear that their enemies might burn them all alive in these huts before they could get out; and that there was no way of putting the houses aside during the day to prevent their being seen.

Household gear is (almost lacking, for a Bushman has no use for the things which he cannot carry with him. Even domestic animals — whenever he has stolen a herd of them as he does frequently — appear to him a burden of which he wishes soon to be rid. Sharp nosed sheep dogs, which are used in hunting, are found once in a while in his possession. Pottery is seldom used, probably because of the ostrich eggs which are an excellent substitute.

Fire is obtained by rubbing hard and soft wood together; most of the animal food is thrown into the fire for a short time, and at least (or at most) warmed.

When the people sleep they curl themselves up into as small a space as possible. In the floors of their huts around the fire are many little holes in which the members of the family sleep. In cold or rainy weather they do not get up for several days.

MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY. Naturally the Bushmen live in small groups, for the environment will not support larger ones, even if they are always on the move. On the average it takes from 40 to 200 square miles to support one person. The parties are, for the most part, family groups, but family organization is little known. Acceptance of presents constitutes acceptance of their "proposing" suitor, and the marriage is ratified by carousing and by return presents, to the adherents of the groom. Parental and fraternal incest are forbidden. Because of poverty the prevailing form of marriage is monogamous ; but it is a matter of situation rather than of principle, and adultery is not severely treated.

"As the natural consequence of the general mode of life among these people, the position of woman is low. On their journeys they carry their children, besides the greater part of their property; at the halting-place they have to see to fire, food, water — -the last often difficult enough to procure, to the utensils ; in short to everything not immediately connected with the chase. If food runs short, they are. the first to be stinted, and get ill-treated as well. A weak, old, or sick woman is often left behind Avithout more ado. A bowl of water, a root or two, a bit of meat, are placed beside her; and the wild beasts soon accomplish her destiny. In the treatment of children by their mothers, the animal that is in man equally emerges. They are suckled for a long time, but also in the very first days of life fed upon chewed roots, meat, and other hard articles of diet. They even learn to chew tobacco at an early age. The child grows up without cleaning, watching, tending, without anything to cover its little head, often quite exposed to all weathers ; the boy is early initiated by his father into the mysteries of shooting, 1 racking game, seeking honey. The only production that gives the impression of costliness and elegance is the sunshade of ostrich feathers which tender Bushmen mothers plait for their children." 1

"The Bushmen will kill their children without remorse on various occasions, if they are found to be misshapen, when the food is scarce, when the father forsakes the mother, if they are obliged to tlee from farmers or others, in which case the children will be strangled, smothered, cast into the desert or buried alive. These latter things are done in order that they may not fall into the hands of the enemy. There are instances of parents throwing their children to a hungry lion who stood roaring before the family cave, refusing to depart until some peace offering was made. If when a mother dies she has any very voung children they are buried alive with her." 2

SELF-GRATIFICATION. Compared to the severity of the climate the Bushman's clothing seems very incomplete. He wears a triangular skin loincloth and a sort of cloak (kaross), which becomes a wrap for the night; the woman's kaross is someAvhat more ample, affording shelter to children in arms. Sandals of hide or bast are sometimes worn. However, what he lacks in clothing he makes up in a coating of dirt all over the body. In fact the ashes and grease which cover the whole body are like a rind.

"Finery is scanty and inexpensive. A few rings of brass or iron, a string of dark beads, some little sticks strung in a row like beads, bits of iron or brass according to taste, decorate neck or hair. Trophies of the chase form a more natural adornment ; feathers or hares' tails in the hair; teeth, hoofs, horns, shells, on the neck and arms. They carry their tobacco in short goats' horns, or in the pretty shell of a land-tortoise; while boxes of ointment or mysterious amulets are hung around the neck and waist. A jackal's tail on a stick fulfills the functions of fan and pocket handkerchief." 3

ART. The Bushmen are very clever in drawing figures of men and animals in cra^'on and colors. "The few remains of such drawings, which have been preserved on sheltered walls of caves, give the idea of higher artistic skill than the innumerable rock-scratchings of the American Indians. These designs are partly painted on rocks with the four colors, white, black, red, and yellow ochre, partly engraved in soft sandstone, partly chiselled in hard stone. Besides human figures, they accurately represent a number of the characteristic animals — ostrich, antelope, quagga, baboon, also cattle. The occurrence of horses in these Bushman drawings shows what an

impression that animal, first introduced by Europeans, made on them.

' ' The Bushman is like the Hottentot in his turn and capacity for music. "Wherever he can snap up an old fiddle from a European, or make a rudimentary one for himself out of a gourd and two' strings, he extracts a tolerable tone from the instrument, and reproduces any pretty airs that he may have heard at the mission or in his dances. There is a metallic ring in his voice. Besides the gourd-fiddle we find also the gora, and a drum, which often consists of a pot with a little water in it and a skin stretched over its mouth. The function of this music in the Bushman's life is to accompany the dance. The modulation of the voices are said to be intimately interwoven with the movements of the body. The Bushman dance is a gradual and methodical outbreak of licentiousness reaching the point of convulsion." 1

RELIGION. The religious ideas of these people are characteristically primitive, and there is probably no conception of a higher being. They are best shown, perhaps, in their belief concerning the dead. The body is taken out through a hole in the wall of the hut, which is then demolished; the family deserting the place immediately. "The dead man's head is anointed, then he is smoke-dried and laid in the grave in an outstretched position. No rule seems to prevail either as to the quarter towards which the head points nor as to the way in which the arms and legs are laid ; but an old Bushman told Campbell that the sun would rise later if dead people were not buried with their faces that way. Then they place stones like a roof over the corpse so as to prevent the earth from falling in upon it, and pile others in an oval form on top. Objects of value according to the Bushmen notions are often put into the grave ; thus near Colesberg, Fritsch found a tin ladle, a cup, and sheep and shears, the last on the breast. The wild Bushman put his weapons with the dead man. ' ' 2

"All Bushmen without exception carry amulets to keep off evil spirits, and bring good fortune in their enterprises. One tribe will not eat goat, though the goat is the commonest domestic animal in their district; others reverence antelopes, others again the caterpillar called N'gwa. They try to charm their luck in hunting by means of 'bull-roarers.' The custom of cutting off joints of the finger alike as a medicinal process, a sign of mourning, and an expiation, looks like sacrifice. You seldom meet a Bushman whose left-hand fingers have not lost some joints. Traces of a belief in a future life are chiefly to be seen in the monuments erected to great people when dead. Stones are thrown upon chief's graves so long as the memory of them lasts." 3

There are no gods or greal spirits; but there is a copious store of legends having to do with the heavenly bodies, and above all with animals. These show not infrequently the results of long and keen observation and of high-class imagination. The animal-heroes are, characteristically, first the lion, then the jackal and hyaena; nearer the Cape the locust is a figure of great prominence. The stories are largely of hunting adventure, and are interspersed with long conversations and soliloquies of the beasts; in their endless recountings the Bushmen develop a considerable dramatic quality both in gesture and tone. It is probable that the animals are, in a vague way, the objects of worship ; certain tribes lay a taboo upon certain animals, though they may be the commonest of the district.

REGULATIVE SYSTEM. Definite clan or tribal organization does not appear ; nor i ; s there any societal organization of any coherence or lasting quality. Assemblages of families sometimes appoint their most respected member "Kaptein, " and he holds a position of some influence as a sort of "selectman," but this is as far as political integration goes. Classes in the population, law other than family precedents, punishment other than retaliatory violence, in short, social forms other than the most primitive and rudimentary, are consistently absent. Relations with neighbors are those of unmitigated hostility ; it has been said that the only employment of the Bushmen is in the line of offensive operations in the chase and in war. The latter term must be taken in a restricted sense ; the Bushman is a professional cattle-thief, and periodically raids the herds of his neighbors, chiefly the Hottentots. This leads to such stern reprisal that the Bushman is usually shot at sight like a noxious animal. He is against the world and the world against him. The numbers of the Bushmen are rapidly diminishing ; the women are sometimes carried off and there has been some race mixture with Hottentots and Bantu; but the genuine wild type of the desert and mountains is preserved only in the isolation of a forbidding and nearly impenetrable environment.

Chapter II. Hottentots

ENVIRONMENT AND HISTORY. The Hottentots, who were formerly very wide spread in South Africa, and who now represent only the debris of a great stock, occupy the western part of Cape Colony and the adjoining German territory. They have been squeezed almost to death between the encroachments of the Europeans advancing from the coast, and the Kaffirs from the interior. The result is that the land which they inhabit is either of the prairie type or the desert. The inhabitants of pure 'breed are to be found chiefly in Great Namaqualand. Apparently they were encroached upon and driven from a more northerly station into southwest Africa, where they were found by the Dutch in the 17th century. Of full blood Hottentots, called Namas, there are probably less than 20,000. It has been reckoned that the Hottentot-Dutch and Hottentot-Bantu half-breeds, who are scattered all over southwest Africa, number about 180,000. Most of these speak Dutch. The half-breeds with white blood are called Bastaards, and are very proud of this admixture. The Bastaards are said to be the most active and enduring wanderers of the desert, the best shots, cleverest hunters, greatest scamps, most arrant drunkards and most dangerous criminals.

The name, Hottentot, was given by the early Dutch settlers at the Cape. This word is a Dutch onomatopoetic kind to express stammering and was applied because -of the staccato pronounciation and clicks of the native language. The people call themselves "Men of Men" (Khoi-Khoin).

The Hottentots and the Bushmen appear to be very distantly related, although they are dissimilar in language, character, manner of living, and physical nature. "According to a Hottentot myth, the first fathers of both lived together — the one a hunter, the other, though blind, yet able to distinguish animals of the chase from domestic animals. He outwitted the hunter, and forced him to go to the mountains, while he himself built his kraal. On the whole, this myth is probably right. At the time of the first discovery the Bushmen were already a degenerate tribe of hunters crowded in between settled nations carrying on stock-raising, with whom for centuries they had lived in open enmity. They seem to have been the original inhabitants of South Africa, and were driven into the less fertile mountains by the Hottentots. Both came from the north, but the Hottentots, migrating with their herds, had by a secure sustenance, greater power, and were enabled gradually to expel the Bushmen from the better hunting-grounds.

Thus the expelled race sank into want and misery, and in its efforts to maintain itself, became involved in quarrels with all its neighbors.

"The opinion which was formerly held, that the Bushmen were only degenerate Hottentots forced by poverty to become robbers, must be set aside as erroneous; though it is true that some scattered Hottentots or Kaffirs have united with the Bushmen and have been compelled to lead a similar life." 1

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. The Hottentots are distantly allied to the Bushmen in physique, showing about the same color and quality of skin, although they are taller by about eight inches. They are thought by some to form an intermediate type between the Bushmen and the Bantu. The cranial capacity is small, being about 1365 c.c, the skull is dolichocephalic, and the face is prognathous. The zygomatic arches are very high ; and this characteristic, combined with narrowness of the skull and a pointed shape of the chin, give to the face the shape of two triangles placed base to base, which contrasts with the rectangular shape of the Bushmen face. The eyes are deep sunk and wide apart, the nose is very broad and flat, with the nostrils opening forward, the mouth is large and thick-lipped. The ears are large and lobeless ; the hair is short, woolly, and black, and grows gray with age but seldom falls. There is little or no beard. The characteristic of steatopygy is common, as with the Bushmen.

The temperament of the Hottentot is leaden, being thus in contrast to the Kaffir's high courage and blind passion, and to the Bushmen's savage audacity and mecurial disposition.

SELF-MAINTENANCE. "Cattle-breeding is the pivot of Hottentot life. At the time of the first contact with Europeans the tendency to pastoral life was, owing to the growth of the herds, and the competition with the Bushmen who lived by the game, strong among many tribes, but was afterwards lessened by quarrels, cattle-lifting, and impoverishment. The first settlers could only support themselves by the aid of the natives' herds ; while, for the natives, the herds were their only wealth, by means of which they could obtain luxuries and finery. The man who had nothing, sought service with the richer among his people, with the sole object of owning cattle. Cattle was the money and the gold of these races in pre-European times. The tending of the cattle passes to all the inhabitants in turn. For quite young lambs and calves there is a shelter hut of their own. Milking and the sale of milk take place just as with the Negroes, except that the former is the duty of the

1 G. K. C. Gerland, " Iconographic Encyclopaedia of the Arts and Sciences," Vol. I, pp. 292-293.

women. Both men and women may drink cows' milk, but sheep's milk is allowed to women only."

"Their diet consisted of the produce of their hunting and their cattle, also of vegetables. The women used to procure such roots and tubers as the monkeys and pigs were seen to grub for most eagerly. But like all Africans, meat was what they always sought most passionately; according to Lichtenstein, no South African savage can bear entire deprivation of meat. At a pinch they singe skins and leather, which they will then chew until it is soft. They boil or broil meat, and roast roots in the embers ; but everything is devoured half -raw. The national dish is meat boiled in blood. ' n Yet they eat only those cattle which die a natural death, except on very special occasions.

"The weapons of the Hottentot, at the time of his first intercourse with Europeans, were like those of the Kaffir. The bow took secondary place ; like the Bushman bow, it was made of a single stave of strong wood. The arrows had barbed iron heads, hammered thin, on a reed shaft 20 inches long. Their snake poison was no doubt similarily compounded with that of the Bushmen. The quiver was a piece of wood scooped out or hollowed by fire, or was made from the hide of ox, eland, rhinoceros, or elephant. Their chief weapon, the javelin or assegai — as it is called even by seventeenth-century travellers, before we have any reports of the Kaffirs — had a plain blade half a foot in length, set on a shaft longer than the height of a man, and sharpened at the butt. According to some, it was poisoned. The last article in their equipment was the stick for striking* or throwing." 2

HOUSES. "The Hottentots' huts might equally well be called tents ; they can be struck and repitched in a few hours. The frame consists of supple staves, stuck into the ground in an oval, then bent together, and fastened to each other at the top. The enclosed space is, in length, about twice a man's height, and in breadth less than a third. The aperture is only half the height of a man, and a full grown man cannot stand up inside. Close mats are laid over the frame, and hides over them; the whole being weighted with stones as a safeguard against blasts of wind. The mats, the most artistic thing on the premises, are manufactured by the Namaquas as follows. The inner bark of the mimosa is softened in hot water, and by the united chewingpower of the family, and quickly spun into a thread by rolling on the naked thighs. Then rushes or grass-stalks are perforated at intervals of 2 inches, and the thread drawn through by means of a bone needle, a thorn, or an iron bodkin 2 feet in length. Not only are these mats airy in dry warm weather, but they swell with damp, and become so close that they keep off the heaviest rainfall. A single pack-ox easily carries the semicircular poles of the hut-frame, the mats, and the two or three utensils — calabashes, milking pail, pots — with the mistress of the house and her offspring into the bargain. In the middle, opposite the door, the interior of the hut displays a hole for the fire — careful housewives always make a hearth of clay — and round it as many sleeping-holes as there are inmates. The household goods are kept on a frame near the door ; which can be closed with skins. Its position is easily changed from one side to another, according to the direction of the wind, by shifting the mats, but it is originally towards the east. The construction of these residences is attended to almost entirely by the women. When the modern Hottentot has taken to the rectangular mud-hovel, he often keeps his beehive-shaped hut for sleeping. They build their villages in a circle, house by house, leaving a large wide space in the middle, into which they drive their sheep at night." 1

METALS. "They only know the use of copper for ornament and finery ; and they must have learnt of themselves to smelt it in small quantities. Their mode of smelting iron is that used throughout Africa. Their bellows consists of a goatskin with wind-hole and earthenware nozzle. Their smith's work, too, is done in the simple way, with stone hammer on a stone anvil. Indeed their production of iron even in the seventeenth century was so limited that the Dutch from the first imported iron for arm and foot-rings." 2

MARRIAGE. "Marriage takes place so early that the arrangement of it is the parents' affair. As with all South Africans it is based on undisguised purchase. It is preceded by an application on the part of a relative of the suitor to the father of the girl, and to herself. If the answer be favourable, his people come the next day to the bride's kraal with the oxen ordained for the wedding feast, and there slaughters them and arranges the meal." 3 The number of wives taken is limited only by the ability to feed them. Consanguine marriage is tabooed as far as first cousins. The first-born son is the sole heir.