As the name was found in use among those who had no intercourse with Europeans, before we can receive the above explanation we must believe that the unknown traveler knew the language sufficiently well to ask a question, but not to understand the answer. We may add, that the way in which they still continue to use the word seems to require no fanciful interpretation. When addressed with any degree of scorn, they reply, "We are Bachuana, or equals—we are not inferior to any of our nation," in exactly the same sense as Irishmen or Scotchmen, in the same circumstances, would reply, "We are Britons," or "We are Englishmen." Most other tribes are known by the terms applied to them by strangers only, as the Caffres, Hottentots, and Bushmen. The Bechuanas alone use the term to themselves as a generic one for the whole nation. They have managed, also, to give a comprehensive name to the whites, viz., Makoa, though they can not explain the derivation of it any more than of their own. It seems to mean "handsome", from the manner in which they use it to indicate beauty; but there is a word so very like it meaning "infirm", or "weak", that Burchell's conjecture is probably the right one. "The different Hottentot tribes were known by names terminating in 'kua', which means 'man', and the Bechuanas simply added the prefix Ma, denoting a nation." They themselves were first known as Briquas, or "goat-men". The language of the Bechuanas is termed Sichuana; that of the whites (or Makoa) is called Sekoa.
The Makololo, or Basuto, have carried their powers of generalization still farther, and arranged the other parts of the same great family of South Africans into three divisions: 1st. The Matebele, or Makonkobi—the Caffre family living on the eastern side of the country; 2d. The Bakoni, or Basuto; and, 3d. The Bakalahari, or Bechuanas, living in the central parts, which includes all those tribes living in or adjacent to the great Kalahari Desert.
1st. The Caffres are divided by themselves into various subdivisions, as Amakosa, Amapanda, and other well-known titles. They consider the name Caffre as an insulting epithet.
The Zulus of Natal belong to the same family, and they are as famed for their honesty as their brethren who live adjacent to our colonial frontier are renowned for cattle-lifting. The Recorder of Natal declared of them that history does not present another instance in which so much security for life and property has been enjoyed, as has been experienced, during the whole period of English occupation, by ten thousand colonists, in the midst of one hundred thousand Zulus.
The Matebele of Mosilikatse, living a short distance south of the Zambesi, and other tribes living a little south of Tete and Senna, are members of this same family. They are not known beyond the Zambesi River. This was the limit of the Bechuana progress north too, until Sebituane pushed his conquests farther.
2d. The Bakoni and Basuto division contains, in the south, all those tribes which acknowledge Moshesh as their paramount chief. Among them we find the Batau, the Baputi, Makolokue, etc., and some mountaineers on the range Maluti, who are believed, by those who have carefully sifted the evidence, to have been at one time guilty of cannibalism. This has been doubted, but their songs admit the fact to this day, and they ascribe their having left off the odious practice of entrapping human prey to Moshesh having given them cattle. They are called Marimo and Mayabathu, men-eaters, by the rest of the Basuto, who have various subdivisions, as Makatla, Bamakakana, Matlapatlapa, etc.
The Bakoni farther north than the Basuto are the Batlou, Baperi, Bapo, and another tribe of Bakuena, Bamosetla, Bamapela or Balaka, Babiriri, Bapiri, Bahukeng, Batlokua, Baakhahela, etc., etc.; the whole of which tribes are favored with abundance of rain, and, being much attached to agriculture, raise very large quantities of grain. It is on their industry that the more distant Boers revel in slothful abundance, and follow their slave-hunting and cattle-stealing propensities quite beyond the range of English influence and law. The Basuto under Moshesh are equally fond of cultivating the soil. The chief labor of hoeing, driving away birds, reaping, and winnowing, falls to the willing arms of the hard-working women; but as the men, as well as their wives, as already stated, always work, many have followed the advice of the missionaries, and now use plows and oxen instead of the hoe.
3d. The Bakalahari, or western branch of the Bechuana family, consists of Barolong, Bahurutse, Bakuena, Bangwaketse, Bakaa, Bamangwato, Bakurutse, Batauana, Bamatlaro, and Batlapi. Among the last the success of missionaries has been greatest. They were an insignificant and filthy people when first discovered; but, being nearest to the colony, they have had opportunities of trading; and the long-continued peace they have enjoyed, through the influence of religious teaching, has enabled them to amass great numbers of cattle. The young, however, who do not realize their former degradation, often consider their present superiority over the less-favored tribes in the interior to be entirely owing to their own greater wisdom and more intellectual development.