Structure, Meaning and Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San. Roger Hewitt
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an informal way, by the community, and the name given at birth would fall from use. There is no record of name-giving being done in any formalised fashion (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 101, 305, 367; also notebooks, L. VIII, (4) 6370 rev.).
Babies were not weaned until they were about three years old. They were carried in their mother’s karosses4 on food-gathering treks long after they could toddle, which they did at an early age. Children were soon expected to help with the gathering of veldkos, and large numbers of children would accompany the women to the food sources, and would work with the women. They were explicitly encouraged to be self-supporting and learn to gather, catch and cook food as an insurance for themselves against the sudden loss of both or either parent. Small boys were given miniature bows and arrows to practise with and would also be expected to help on a game drive by attending to many small but necessary tasks such as raising clouds of sand or planting the sticks used to guide the game. Again, they might be sent to discover the location of an antelope recently shot by a poisoned arrow and lying within a known area, or would watch out for game while the hunters slept during the day. Older boys would accompany their fathers when out hunting.
All children would help gather ants’ chrysalids and fulfil certain constant duties like fetching water or collecting firewood. All were expected to learn cooking techniques, the girls helping their mothers on occasions and, well before puberty, should be able to catch various small creatures, such as tortoise and lizard, and cook them without assistance from adults. In these ways children were educated into a close knowledge of the world about them and taught to acquire the skills needed in adult life (Lichtenstein 1930, Vol 2, 290; Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 273, 287; W.H.I. Bleek 1875: 14, 19; Bleek & Stow 1930: text facing plate 34; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 313, 337, 359).
The aged
Once a man became too old to hunt successfully a number of less demanding duties fell to him. He might be expected to do jobs such as gathering wood or guarding the fire at night when lions were known to be in the vicinity. Old women would probably continue to collect veldkos well after the age at which men ceased to hunt, but collecting veldkos was a task specifically for women and children, and the old men would not engage in this work (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 185; D.F. Bleek 1931–36, Part II: 62, Part IV: 340, Part V: 306).
The old people were respected for their knowledge and wisdom and would support the hunters by suggesting and giving the appropriate food to be eaten prior to a hunt.5 The old women were particularly responsible for helping with the children and were regarded as especially trustworthy consultants when children were ill.
While being valued members of the group, old people were, nevertheless, minimally productive in economic terms and could be a threat to the existence of the whole group when water supplies were low. At such times the old people might be left by the group and would usually die of hunger and thirst or be devoured by wild animals unless the rest of the group reached a water source in time to send someone to hurry back with supplies. An aged grandparent, or sometimes both grandparents, would be left in this fashion. Their children would do as much as they could towards the protection of their parents before leaving. They would close the sides of the hut and the door-opening with sticks from the other abandoned huts, thus giving a certain protection from beasts of prey, but they would leave the top of the hut open so that the occupants could feel the warmth of the sun. They would also leave a fire burning and extra firewood to frighten away dangerous animals, and a small supply of food and water if they could spare it (Lloyd, op. cit., 22; Sparrman 1785, Vol 1, 358; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 229).
Hunting
Hunting was done exclusively by the men, although women would occasionally assist during game drives. There were several methods of catching game. Usually animals were stalked with a bow and arrow, the hunters waiting not far from the waterholes or setting out to intercept predictable movements of game following rain. Springbok, for example, were always hunted after rain. Hunters worked either singly or in small groups but sometimes a large game drive would occur involving many of the men and some women and children. In springbok hunting a number of sticks would be planted in the ground at a distance from one another and ostrich feathers tied onto the top of each stick to make it more noticeable. These feathers would be made and owned by one of the men. A number of people would stand at strategic points and, while others drove the game toward the sticks, would make a great deal of noise and throw up sand to force the bucks along the line of sticks beyond which hunters would wait, arrows at the ready, and shoot the bucks as they passed by Bleek & Lloyd (1911: 285ff).
Springbok, duiker, gemsbok, rhebok, eland, quagga, zebra and ostrich were all hunted with bow and arrow but during the dry season when the game may have migrated, and at other times when there was little game about, smaller animals were also hunted. Anteater, porcupine, hare and dassie were all hunted, anteaters and porcupines being dug out of their holes with the use of a long barbed stick, while dassies and hares were often run to ground or killed with a thrown club. Most groups possessed a number of hunting dogs which were trained to total silence. Dogs were the property of individual hunters rather than of the group (ibid., 251ff, 311; Lloyd, op. cit., 16; W.H.I. Bleek 1875: 17; Moodie 1960: 231; Campbell, op. cit., Vol 2, 18; L. II, (26) 2320–2504).
Several kinds of traps were also used in hunting. These included very deep covered pitfalls, often seven or eight feet in depth, containing sharpened stakes on which the animals would impale themselves. Sometimes water-holes were covered over with bushes and reeds, and shallow pits dug nearby which soon filled with water. These pits were poisoned with Euphorbia branches; when the animals came to drink they would die, usually after a very short time. Both of these kinds of pits were dug by the men using horn-tipped digging-sticks, and, in the case of pitfalls, must have involved an immense amount of labour (Stow, op. cit., 81, 90ff; Campbell 1815: 215; 1822: 42; Barrow, op. cit., Vol 1, 284f).
Fishing was practised wherever possible. Groups living close to the Gariep River used funnel-shaped traps of closely woven reeds, about 3 feet long and 18 inches to 2 feet wide, which narrowed towards the mouth. These were stretched across a shallow part of the river while several men drove the fish towards the baskets where they would be caught and thrown ashore. On other occasions larger fish were harpooned, the harpoon being of wood pointed with bone and fixed to a long sinew line (Barrow, op. cit., Vol 1, 290, 300; Stow, op. cit., 93).
All large game was cut up where it was killed. The unwanted contents of the stomach were buried on the spot and the meat carried home in sinew nets. Arrows were scored with a personal mark so that each hunter could gather his own arrows after the hunt. The hunter whose arrow was responsible for the kill would have possession of the skin, if he so desired, although this does not seem to have been the case with springbok hunting (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 275ff, 361ff; D.F. Bleek 1931–36, Part II, 55).
The arrow poisons used by the |Xam were a mixture of animal and vegetable poisons, or sometimes a ‘black rock’ (Campbell 1822, Vol 1, 31; Barrow, op. cit., Vol 1, 230) poison, probably a form of arsenic. The most frequently used ingredients were amaryllis juice (Haemanthus toxicarius) and snake poison, which were mixed together in a fragment of ostrich shell. This mixture was then boiled until it took on a thick jelly-like consistency. When required for use, part of it was heated in a tortoise shell and placed in a special ‘poison stone’, a small flat stone deeply grooved in the middle. The tip was pressed down into the groove and slowly turned. The poison did not take instantaneous effect, but usually the smaller the animal, the more rapid the action. With large game animals, the hunter would have to return to his camp and wait overnight for the poison to take effect. He would then go out on the following morning and track the animal (Stow, op. cit., 78; Moodie, op. cit., 401; Schapera 1925a).
Gathering
Gathering was the responsibility of women of all ages. They gathered roots, bulbs, berries, edible leaves, in fact any wild vegetable food that was in season. The range of veldkos collected seems, from innumerable references in the Bleek and Lloyd texts, to have been very great indeed. Some lists of plants used by the |Xam were collected, but in the absence of reliable botanical information or