Structure, Meaning and Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San. Roger Hewitt
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Social life
As was noted above, the |Xam had a great amount of leisure time at their disposal. The men only hunted for a few hours of the day, and only a few days in any week, and the women’s work of gathering food and wood or collecting water took little time out of each day. Even on days when the men did hunt they would return to their encampment before noon and sleep for a few hours or sit in the shade making arrows or simply talking or smoking together. Often members of the group would visit relatives in other groups and sit exchanging news and anecdotes. The whole group were in more or less continual contact with each other, secrets were practically impossible and most grievances would be endlessly discussed by the members.
The |Xam were particularly fond of music and dancing. Their musical instruments were simply constructed, mainly being variations on the musical bow. One of the most popular of these was the ‘goura’ which consisted of an ordinary bow in which one end of the string, instead of being attached directly to the stave, was fastened onto a small piece of quill which was tied on to the end of the stave. This quill was held to the lips and made to vibrate by strong expirations and inspirations of breath. Drums, made by stretching the skin of a springbok thigh tight across a clay pot, were played by women at dances. Dancing rattles of springbok ears filled with small stones or dried berries were worn by the men which added to the percussion (Bleek & Stow, op. cit., xxiiif; Lichtenstein, op. cit., 292; Balfour 1902; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 325, 351ff).
Dancing was an extremely popular activity amongst the |Xam. Most dances only involved the men, who moved rhythmically in a circle, while the women clapped their hands. One or two women might also play the drums. One dance, known as the |Ku, which consisted of the men nodding their heads as they moved in a circle while the women clapped, seems to have been some kind of expression of criticism of one member of the band, but details are sparse on this matter. Another dance known as the ǂGebbi-gu was said to have been taught them by the baboons and had also been known by the Lion and the Ostrich, characters in a story, who fought and in consequence became animals. In the story the Lion is jealous of the voice of the Ostrich who gains the admiration of the women by his singing while doing this dance. The Lion, furious with jealousy, kills the Ostrich. The dance seems to have been performed by |Xam women who were led in song by one of their number. The songs were simply imitations of various animals, springbok ewes, partridges, ostriches, etc., the lead singer calling out a line of song which was then repeated by the others. The men stood around and called out in response.
Dances took place after a big kill by the hunters but some dances were reserved for special occasions, e.g., following the first thunder after the dry season, and the !giten, ‘shamans’ (sing. !gi: xa) had an initiation dance of their own called the ||Keng performed by both men and women. In this dance the initiator held a stick of office known as the ‘dancing stick’ and performed a sequence of movements which was followed by the initiates. All participants wore caps made from the heads of young gemsbok and special bangles known as the ‘||Keng’s rings’. Often dances, whether purely social or ritualistic, would last the entire night and well into the following morning (D.F. Bleek 1923: ix; 1931–36, Part I, 177f; Part VII, 11ff; and Stow, op. cit., pls. 13–14; Lloyd, op. cit., 18; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 91ff, 129, 353; Barrow, op. cit., Vol 1, 283f; Sparrman, op. cit., Vol 1, 356).
Belief and ritual
There is no evidence in the writings of the early travellers and missionaries, or in the many thousands of pages of |Xam texts collected by Bleek and Lloyd, of a belief in a deity resembling those deities, such as |Gaua, ǂGao n!a, Hishe, Thora, Huwe, etc., of the central and northern San. Two important supernatural beings, |Kaggen and !Khwa, were believed in by the |Xam. |Kaggen was credited with the creation of certain things in the natural world (see Chapter 7) although his main activities lay in the protection of the antelopes. The beliefs about him can only properly be situated within the complex of beliefs concerning hunting and the relationship between hunters and game animals.7 |Kaggen was the central character of a large number of narratives and these narratives together with the beliefs concerning him are discussed at length in Chapters 6–10.
!Khwa, whose name means ‘water’ or ‘rain’ – the |Xam used the same word for both – was principally related to girls’ puberty rituals. He was a threatening force and was believed to cause death by lightning or transformation into non-human forms to girls who did not observe the correct ritual practices during and immediately following menstruation, and to other members of the group as a consequence of this. The beliefs concerning !Khwa and menstruation rituals are discussed in Chapters 4, 7, and 10. !Khwa was never requested to cause rain but was requested by certain men to stop thundering and lightening during particularly heavy storms (D.F. Bleek 1931–36, Part V, 304; 1929a: 307).
The powers of |Kaggen and !Khwa were discrete and concerned only with specific areas of activity. This is typical of all |Xam beliefs in the supernatural. What the texts collected by Bleek and Lloyd display is a complex of beliefs in which different things are credited with various powers which might be tapped or avoided depending on their nature. The new moon and Canopus were addressed at certain times in the belief that they could influence favourably both the gathering of ants’ chrysalids and the abundance of game (D.F. Bleek 1929a: 305ff). The spirits of dead !giten were prayed to for rain on some occasions (D.F. Bleek 1931–36, Part V, 383; Part VII, 37ff). On the other hand a large number of beliefs concerned the sympathetic bond which was thought to obtain between hunters and game animals, and many ritualistic strategies were employed to maintain, exploit, or avoid undesirable consequences of that relationship (ibid., Part VIII, 146ff; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 67ff, 271ff, 353ff).
The concept known amongst the Zu|wasi as n!ow was also held by the |Xam, although many details collected by Lorna Marshall (1957a) on this subject are absent from the |Xam accounts, and no |Xam word was recorded which referred to it. The belief as held by the |Xam may be summarised as follows. Each male8 had a wind associated with him, cold and harsh or warm and pleasant, easterly, westerly, etc. This wind was said to blow when a hunter had killed an animal. ‘The wind is one with the man’, one informant expressed it (D.F. Bleek 1931–36, Part IV, 338). Certain game animals and certain stars also had winds associated with them and these were believed to interact with a hunter who had killed an animal. The nature of this interaction is unclear but in some way the man’s wind was affected by the animals wind, and the star’s by his. Different kinds of rain, mild or hard, were also believed to be linked to individuals in the same manner. A man’s wind and rain was a permanent attribute. When a person died his wind blew, removing his footprints from the ground. What kind of wind and rain a man had might influence his deployment in the hunt or whether or not he could address !Khwa. There is no textual evidence to suggest that the |Xam regarded this force as supernatural or magical. Indeed it appears to have been thought of more as a physical attribute than a spiritual one (ibid., 328f, 336; Part V, 303f; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 397).
The most commonly invoked supernatural power was known as !gi, the power possessed by !giten who were responsible for curing illness, making rain and, in some cases, influencing the movements of specific animals. The !giten who were curers could be either men or women, as could game !giten but rain-makers seem to have been exclusively men. These three offices frequently overlapped. !Giten often went into a state of trance during curing and, hidden under a kaross made a heavy snoring noise close to the patient’s body. By this means the illness was taken into the !gi:xa’s nose and was then expelled by repeated sneezing.
Malignant !giten were believed to be able to cause illness and death to those who displeased them in some way, and to take the form of various animals. !Gi was transmitted to !giten at the special initiation dance during which an initiator would snore each of the initiates in turn. This power was capable of diminishing over a period of many years and it was possible for a !gi:xa