Structure, Meaning and Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San. Roger Hewitt
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and feared by the |Xam and represented one of the most dominant aspects of |Xam belief in the supernatural.9
Two distinct beliefs about the after-life were collected. One informant described how the spirit of a dead person travelled along an underground path leading from the grave to a vast hole where it then lived. The spirits of all San went to this place, so did the spirits of animals and the spirits of Afrikaners (B. VI, 699 rev.; see also Stow, op. cit., 129). Another belief concerning the dead was that the cavity in any new moon which had the appearance of horns was the ‘catching place’ for people who had recently died. As the moon grew full by this means, the corpses inside were revived by the ‘moon-water’. When no more room was left, the people were tipped out onto the earth and lived again until they died again when the whole process was repeated. These two apparently conflicting accounts are all that is known of beliefs about the after-life, although it was also believed that a spirit might haunt the area of the grave briefly following death because the dead person was reluctant to leave his friends and still thought about them (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 399; von Wielligh, op. cit., Vol 3, 43f).
The extermination of the |Xam
The gradual extermination of the San by European settlers and others is well documented.10 By the early 20th century only a small remnant remained alive. Commando raids, first by the military and, soon after, by civilian farmers, were made upon the San, initially as reprisals for cattle stealing and with increasing frequency. This activity soon assumed the character of a sport, farmers going out to shoot San in large numbers ‘for the fun of the thing’ (Anthing 1563:11).
The area from which Bleek and Lloyd’s informants came became subjected to an intensification of such events after about 1850. In a lengthy official report of 1863, horrific details of the atrocities committed against the San of the northwestern Cape, L. Anthing (ibid., 4f) states that
The evidence I had obtained respecting the past and existing state of things was, that the colonists had intruded into that part of the country which borders on the Hartebeest and Orange [Gariep] rivers some years before, and that they had from time to time killed numbers of Bushmen resident there; that in some cases the latter had stolen cattle from the intruders, but that the killing of the Bushmen was not confined to the avenging or punishing of such thefts, but that, with or without provocation, Bushmen were killed, – sometimes by hunting parties, at other times by commandos going out for the express purpose. That in consequence of the colonists having guns and horses, and their being expert hunters (the pursuit of game being their daily occupation), the wild game of the country had become scarce, and almost inaccessible to the Bushmen, whose weapon is the bow and arrow, having a comparatively short range. That ostrich eggs, honey, grass-seed, and roots had all become exceedingly scarce, the ostriches being destroyed by hunters, the seed and roots in consequence of the intrusion of the colonists’ flocks. From these various causes, the Bushman’s subsistence failed him, and, in many cases they died from hunger. Those who went into the service of the newcomers did not find their condition thereby improved. Harsh treatment, an insufficient allowance of food, and continued injuries inflicted on their kinsmen are alleged as having driven them back into the bush, from whence hunger again led them to invade the flocks and herds of the intruders, regardless of the consequences, and resigning themselves, as they say to the thought of being shot in preference to death from starvation.
Such is the immediate historical background to the texts collected by Bleek and Lloyd, although as Dorothea Bleek (1923: vi) points out:
Their narrators were all Colonial Bushmen, who lived on the rolling plains south of the Orange [Gariep] river in the Prieska, Kenhardt and northern Calvinia districts. They had themselves seen their country invaded by white men for permanent settlement, but not so the parents from whom they heard the stories.
The dreadful conditions under which the |Xam lived at the time of collection impinges only infrequently on the collected texts, and in only one narrative are the settlers even mentioned (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 254ff). Within a few years, however, the |Xam were to vanish completely.
Notes
1Accounts of the distribution of San languages may be found in D.F. Bleek (1927, 1929b, 1956) and Westphal (1971).
2This convenient Afrikaans word meaning ‘field food’ will be used throughout.
3The following account is based on Bleek (1927: 57ff).
4‘Kaross’ is the common Afrikaans word for the skin cloak worn by San men and women.
5A sympathetic bond was believed to exist between a hunter and his quarry. Because of this, his activities, including his eating, were ordered by the need to prevent undesirable attributes, such as speed, from being transmitted to the game. See D.F. Bleek (1931–36, Part III: 233ff; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 271ff).
6A commonly used powder made from the leaves of aromatic shrubs.
7This relationship is also discussed in Chapter 7.
8There is no evidence that the same attributes could be possessed by women.
9See Appendix B for a more detailed account of !Giten and their role in |Xam society.
10Details of these events are given throughout Stow, op. cit., and, more recently in Ellenberger (1953), and in Laurens van der Post (1958).
2
Introduction to the narratives: their context, performance and scope
Like many other San groups, the |Xam had a highly verbal culture. Indeed, speech was almost a continual social activity. In Dorothea Bleek’s words:
Men hunted for a few hours or a few days then had nothing to do as long as the game lasted. A woman’s daily task of gathering roots and wood and fetching water was soon finished except in times of scarcity. Half or more than half of each day was spent lounging about watching bird and beast, and talking – always talking. Every event of a hunt was told and re-told. Every phase of a meeting with other people, the action of each person and animal being described and acted, the voice and gesture admirably imitated (Bleek & Stow, op. cit., xxiiif).
It is easy to see how such a culture should be rich in narrative, how narrative would be part of daily living to an extent unknown in literate societies where leisure time is limited.
It is difficult for us to realise how large a part talking, and hence storytelling, makes in primitive man’s life. Where a man’s only labour is hunting which occupies only a few hours of a day, and probably not every day, there is an amount of leisure unparalleled among civilised people … There are many hours at midday under a bush and in the evening round a fire, when all sit and talk and listen. Stories mingled with songs accompanied by mimicry are the chief daily recreations (D.F. Bleek 1929a: 311).1
Such is the verbal context of the one hundred or so narratives collected by Bleek and Lloyd and indeed they show the impress of that context very clearly – particularly in their heavy use of dialogue, exploring narrative events now from one character’s perspective, now from another. Even in the difficult conditions under which they were recorded, these narratives are alive with speech.
The |Xam employed only one term for narrative, kum, (plural kukummi). There is no record of their making distinctions between kinds of narrative such as myth, legend or fable. All narratives were kukummi whether they related the activities of supernatural beings, humans or animals. The word also appears in the titles of narratives, for example: ||khã:ka kum – ‘the lion’s story’, or !gã ka kum – ‘the frog’s story’. The same word, however, was also occasionally used simply to mean conversation and news, although there is no doubt from the texts that narratives were formally structured and constituted a distinct mode of expression. Verbal formulae are often encountered as is the stylised treatment of certain familiar episodes in some of the narratives, and the use of