Structure, Meaning and Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San

Roger Hewitt

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781776141265
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Structure, Meaning and Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San analyses texts drawn from the Bleek and Lloyd Archive – arguably one of the most important collections for the understanding of South African cultural heritage and in particular the traditions of the /Xam, South Africa's 'first people'. Initially appearing in a now rare 1986 edition and here re-issued for the first time, the doctoral thesis on which the book is based became the catalyst for much scholarly research. The book offers an analysis of the entire corpus of /Xam narratives found in the Bleek and Lloyd collection, focusing particularly on the cycle of narratives concerning the trickster /Kaggen (Mantis). These are examined on three levels from the 'deep structures' with resonances in other areas of /Xam culture and supernatural belief, through the recurring patterns of narrative composition apparent across the cycle and finally touching on the observable differences in the performances by the various /Xam collaborators.Hewitt's text remains the only comprehensive and detailed study of /Xam narrative, and it has become itself the object of study by researchers and PhD candidates in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada and elsewhere. This new edition at last makes Hewitt's important work more widely available. It will be a welcome addition to the recently burgeoning literature on the place of the /Xam hunter-gatherers in the complex history of South African culture and society.

1

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 farmers) concluded there must be several hordes in the neighbourhood (Barrow 1801, Vol l, 271).

And again:

Several little children came down upon the plain … presently afterwards the women and young girls, to the number of thirty or forty (ibid., 273).

Dorothea Bleek (1923: ix) also claimed that ‘several family groups’ sometimes joined together for a game drive.

When writing about dwellings, however, the majority of the early travellers describe only a few huts at each encampment. M.H.C. Lichtenstein (op. cit., 61ff) reports that:

A horde commonly consists of the different members of one family only and no one has power or distinction over the rest.

and that

Very little intercourse subsists between the separate hordes: they seldom unite, unless in some extraordinary undertaking, for which the combined strength of a great many is required.

The picture which emerges, therefore, is that of a number of extended family groups of various sizes, probably related by blood or marriage and joining together at certain times mainly for economic reasons. The concept of ‘the band’, however, lacks both spatial and social definition in the absence of adequate data. It might have been the case that a band consisted of a number of extended families related to a core of siblings, sharing a defined territory which contained a number of water sources. These people would be related to members of neighbouring bands with whom they visited, exchanged gifts, and married. The picture, however, must remain vague.

According to Dorothea Bleek (1923: vii),

The Colonial Bushman’s property was the water. Each spring or pool in that dry country had its particular owner and was handed down from father to son with the regularity of an entitled estate. Many families owned more than one water, had summer and winter residences, to which they resorted as the growth of the field supplies or the movements of the game necessitated. However, the owners never lived near the spring, for that would prevent the game from using it. The huts were a good way off, perhaps an hour’s walk and hidden by bushes. Their position was frequently changed.

Miss Bleek’s observation that water resources were ‘handed down from father to son’ may have been based on a statement by ||Kabbo, one of her father’s informants, that his own territory – his !xoe – containing several waterholes, had belonged to his father’s father, and, upon his death, had gone to his father, then to ||Kabbo’s elder brother, and, on his elder brother’s death, to ||Kabbo (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 305ff). However, this is the only instance of such information being given. It is possible that inheritance may have been patrilineal in some cases and matrilineal in others. Such was certainly true of the !Kung-speakers of the Dobe area studied by Richard Lee (1972, Vol 1, 129).

The territory itself was defined by water sources and other natural landmarks. |Hang ǂkass’o reported that ||Kabbo’s !xoe had a name, ||Gubo, and that it contained a number of named sites including water sources (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 307). The precise nature of the relationship between the inheritor of a resource area and the rest of the group is unclear. Beside possibly being responsible for regulating the use of water-holes, and having unquestionable rights to food resources, there is no evidence that any special privileges attached themselves to the inheritor and, judging by reports of usage and descriptions of everyday life in the oral literature, the question of ownership did not arise or influence the collective use of water, game and veldkos² by the group. From the earliest to the last reports, all writers claimed that, except in times of warfare, the San had no leaders of any kind (Schapera & Farrington 1933: 75; Lichtenstein 1930: 61f; Moodie 1960: 34; Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 274).

Membership of the group was either by consanguinity or through marriage. The father and mother lived in one hut together with their young children until the children could feed themselves and ‘talked with understanding’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 307), when they made their own huts next to their parents. In the other huts would live the married children with their offspring. Membership was not based on descent traced exclusively through either the male or the female line and both married sons and married daughters belonged to the same band. There is no evidence that bride service existed.

Kinship and marriage

Such kinship terms as were collected³ are incomplete and based mainly on vocabulary sources rather than on any actual observations of kinship as a system of obligations and affiliations within the group. However, beside purely descriptive terms of relationship, some terms were collected which were applied to whole groups of different relatives and these might have indicated special social relationships. Siblings and both cross and parallel cousins had the same terms of address applied to them, ||kã: (male), ||kãxai (female). (Cousin marriages, however, were not forbidden, and did occur.) Similarly, the parents of a son or daughter-in-law, and the parents of a brother and sister-in-law were addressed by the same term, ||k’en (male), ||k’aiti (female). The terms for ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’, !kõing and !kõite, were used in addressing any elderly relative or person distinctly senior to the speaker. The term xoakengu, ‘mothers’, was applied to older women of the group and was ‘often used where we should say “the elder women” or “mother and her friends”’ (ibid., 57). These women were especially responsible for the education of young girls in matters concerning puberty rites.

Beside these terms, there were others which indicate a special relationship between certain individuals. A woman called her father’s parents her ‘real’ (kwokwang) grandparents, and her mother’s parents her ‘lent’ (|xwõbe) ones. A man reversed this. His mother’s parents were his ‘real’ grandparents. Another special relationship seems to be indicated between a woman’s siblings and her sons, for a man addressed his mother’s sister as ʘpwaxai, ‘daughter’, and his mother’s brother as ʘpwõng, ‘son’, while they called him oä, ‘father’. Dorothea Bleek admits that she is unable to give an explanation for these terms but, in the latter case, suggests that ‘a particularly affectionate relationship is indicated’ (ibid., 59). A joking relationship appears to have existed between alternating generations of cosanguines but there are no extant details concerning this relationship.

The |Xam were strictly monogamous, although some early writers have suggested that occasionally a man might have two wives, one elderly and one much younger. This impression might have resulted from observers mistaking the wife’s younger sister, who customarily helped in the married home, for a second wife (D.F. Bleek 1923: ix; Stow 1905: 95; Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 241ff). (After the death of his wife, a man was free to marry whoever he chose but there is no evidence to show if this was also true for women.) Marriage could be between any man and woman except between brothers and sisters, and tended to be between members of different groups, although marriage within groups also occurred. The marriage was marked by no ceremony and there were no special requirements, save the consent of both parties. Residence was a matter of convenience and could be with the parents of either party. Miss Bleek (1923: ix) writes:

Sometimes the young couple build their hut near the bridegroom’s father, sometimes near the bride’s. They seem to keep the family groups fairly even.

The couple lived together in one hut with their young children and usually close to the huts of the rest of the family. Certain avoidances were practiced between the wife’s parents and their son-in-law. A man would not usually talk to his mother-in-law but would address his comments to his father-in-law. However, sometimes the same man would address his mother-in-law and not his father-in-law. In this case his wife or his children would address his father-in-law on his behalf. There is no further information to indicate when these avoidances or the breaching of them occurred (Bleek 1924: 58).

Children

Nothing is recorded about child-bearing amongst the |Xam but it is known that naming was done by the child’s parents. According to George Stow (op. cit., 103), the child would be named either from the place where it was born, a cave, river, etc. or from some other thing which might distinguish it, such as a physical peculiarity of the child or one of its parents. In the Bleek and Lloyd material the name given to a child at birth was called its ‘little name’. In later life, however, this name would be supplemented by another given, apparently in 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...