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       Ethnographic background

      The |Xam once occupied much of the Calvinia, Prieska and Kenhardt districts of the Republic of South Africa. Their language, with only slight regional differences, was spoken in many parts of the country west of Port Elizabeth and south of the Gariep River. It is likely, but not certain, that all of the speakers of this language called themselves the |Xam.¹

      All of these |Xam-speakers are now extinct; many thousands were killed off by white farmers and others, between the early 18th and late 19th centuries. By the first decade of the 20th century numbers were so depleted and their culture so eroded that extinction became inevitable. In the northwestern Cape this process had begun much later than elsewhere because the inhospitable climate and poor farming conditions discouraged white settlement. The northwestern Cape, therefore, formed a pocket in which the San survived longer than they did further to the east and south. However, after the mid-19th century, penetration by the farmers into even this arid country caused severe reductions in the numbers of game animals as farmers hunted with firearms. At the same time the farmers’ cattle broke up the soil crust which supported the plant-life upon which the |Xam relied for much of their food. The livelihood of the |Xam was threatened and many were forced to seek employment on the farms.

      By the 1870s the process of cultural disintegration was well under way. There is, unfortunately, no information of the extent to which traditional life in this area was maintained under the pressure of European penetration. The texts collected by Bleek and Lloyd often make reference to the beliefs and customs of the informants’ parents, as though these were no longer current. On the other hand, some accounts of rituals, beliefs and social customs are also described as part of contemporary life. This may indicate that while the life of the |Xam in the Cape was being rapidly destroyed, much still remained intact at the time of collection.

      By being both a record of current practices and beliefs, and also containing ethnographic data relating to the period before European settlement in the northwestern Cape, the Bleek and Lloyd texts are the primary source of ethnographic information relating to the |Xam. A number of official papers, and the writings of various missionaries and travellers also provide additional information on these and other |Xam-speaking San; most of this was written in the late 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. As the Bleek and Lloyd collection was made in the 1870s, the time-span covered by this body of data is approximately 100 years.

      The area which was inhabited by |Xam-speakers consists, in the main, of semi-desert with a mean annual rainfall of below 5 inches in the northwest, to 15 inches in the east. The period of heaviest rainfall is between January and April when the monthly mean ranges between 0.5 to 3 inches from west to east. In the northwest the dominant vegetation is largely short bushes, grasses and occasional thorn trees poking from the pebbles, rock fragments and sand, which cover a thin layer of sandy loam. Dry river-beds, which flow for a few days during some rainy months, course this region in places but the main water sources are the 11 ‘pans’ – shallow natural basins – which contain water for varying periods (Wellington 1955, Vol 1, 240ff, 278ff, 323, 374ff, 474ff).

      Here the |Xam lived as hunter-gatherers, having little contact with other races except, in some areas, with the Khoe-khoen and, ultimately, the European farmers (Wilson & Thompson 1969, Vol 1, 63ff). They lived in small groups each of which shared the resources of a defined area within which they led a semi-nomadic existence, erecting simple hemispherical huts of branches covered with grass or reed mats, standing about three or four feet high (Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 275).

       Social units

      Estimates by early travellers of the size of |Xam bands, were entirely based on isolated sightings and did not take into account temporary fission, where a section or sections of the group might move to another part of the resource territory, or seasonal migrations, during which two or more groups might join together for a period of time either to share resources or for the purpose of defence. However, Dorothea Bleek, who visited the |Xam in 1910–11, reported that

      Three or four huts stand together, in one is the father, in others his married children. At most eight or ten huts of connections were dotted about within a radius of a few miles from the water, but this is an institution of later days (D.F. Bleek 1923: viii).

      Many earlier writers also reported similar numbers of people living together. The most detailed of such reports come, unhappily, from the official accounts of those sent on expeditions to exterminate the San in certain areas. Thus the ‘Report of the Field-Commandant Nicholas van der Merwe, of the Expedition performed against the Bushman Hottentots’ which ‘took the field on the 16th of August 1774’ (Moodie 1960: 35ff) described the many San ‘kraals’ which the expedition surrounded, as containing between eight and 30 people, men, women and children, whom they slaughtered. Other expedition reports give similar numbers (ibid., 33, 38, 45). The reports of travellers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries tend to confirm these numbers (ibid., 231; Campbell 1822: 17; Sparrman 1785, Vol 1, 202).

      Larger groups were also sometimes reported. Often such groups were seen living near to farms or were defensive aggregations (Moodie 1960: 5f, 25, 34; Lichtenstein 1930, Vol 2, 62; Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 307). That different groups did occasionally share resources is suggested by J. Barrow the traveller, who writes:

      During the day vast numbers of the savages had appeared upon the plain digging up roots: that they came from different quarters and in so many groups that (local