African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

In 1879 I became very well acquainted with Tinkarn, one of Khama's headmen, who has a very thorough knowledge of, and great influence over, the Bushmen living throughout the country over which that chief exercises jurisdiction. I first met Tinkarn in the neighbourhood of the Mababi river, and subsequently travelled with him from there to Shoshong, and later on again met him on the Limpopo. The Masarwa in the Mababi undoubtedly spoke the same language as those living only a couple of days' journey farther north, with whom I heard my boy John talking in 1874, and these latter, according to John, spoke the same language as the Bushmen living in the Limpopo valley near the mouth of the Shashi. Farther west, I have listened to Tinkarn conversing not only with the Masarwa of the Mababi, but also with Bushmen living on the Botletlie river, and in many places in the desert between there and Shoshong, and also with some of these people living on the Limpopo. Tinkarn told me that he had learned the language of the Bushmen when he was a child, and I always thought that he spoke to all of them in the same language, not in a number of dialects. At any rate, he was perfectly fluent with all of them.

Although, however, there would seem to be strong presumptive evidence that all the various families or tribes of Bushmen living scattered over the more arid regions of South-Western Africa to the north of the Orange river speak a language, or dialects of a language, which is essentially the same as that spoken by the Koranas, yet, speaking generally, all the Bushmen I have seen differ considerably in physical appearance not only from pure-blooded Koranas—very few of whom are left to-day—but also from the descriptions I have read of the dwarf race of Bushmen that used to inhabit the Cape Colony. It is these latter whose language was studied by Dr. Bleek, and pronounced to be fundamentally different to that of the Hottentot tribes inhabiting the country near Cape Town. That, prior to the incursion of the tall, dark-coloured Bantu tribes from the north, the whole of Africa south of the Zambesi was inhabited by a race akin to the Bushmen of the Cape Colony is, I think, proved by the similarity of the rock-paintings in Mashunaland and Manicaland—which I think that I was the first to discover—to those existing in caves in many parts of the Orange and Cape Colonies.

I have never seen any pigmy Bushmen. Those I met with on the Orange river and in the country to the west of Griqualand in 1872, as well as a small number I saw near the Vaal river above its junction with the Orange in the same year, may not have been as tall as the average of the Masarwa farther north, but I feel sure that all the men were well over five feet in height.

Speaking generally, I should say that the Bushmen that I have seen—and they were many—whilst they were considerably lighter in colour and shorter and more slightly built than Kafirs, were at the same time darker skinned than most Koranas, and neither so thickset nor so short of stature as the average of those people.

The average height of the Masarwa men I have met with in the country extending from the western border of Matabeleland to Lake N'gami would certainly, I think, be over 5 feet 4 inches, and I have seen many of these people standing quite 5 feet 8 or 9 inches, and a few even 6 feet.

I have, however, occasionally seen men amongst them of a distinctly Korana type, short and stout built in figure, very light in colour, with small black glittering eyes, high cheek-bones, and hair growing in small tufts. There were two young men of this type amongst the Masarwa Bushmen living near the Mababi river in 1884. They reminded me very forcibly of the life-sized figure of a Cape Colony Bushman in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, though they were, I think, nearly if not quite five feet in height. From time to time, no doubt, members of various Bantu tribes have fled to the desert for refuge from their enemies and amalgamated with the Bushmen, and this may account for the greater stature observable amongst certain clans of Masarwas, when compared with full-blooded Koranas, or with the Bushmen of the Cape Colony, and the very general absence of the peppercorn growth of the hair in the former which is general in the latter; but if further investigation should definitely establish the fact that there is a very close similarity between the very peculiar languages spoken by the Koranas on the Orange river and all the scattered Masarwa clans that wander over the arid country stretching from the Limpopo to the Chobi river, there must be a very close racial connection between the two peoples. On the whole, I am inclined to believe that the greater part of the Bushmen I have met with were of pure race, with very little, if any, admixture of Bantu blood in their veins.

I never remember to have noticed any marked tendency to that wonderful development of the buttocks (steatopygia) in Masarwa women which is so characteristic a feature in pure-bred Korana women after they have reached middle age. Bushmen and Bushwomen, however, lead terribly hard lives, and do not often get the chance to become really fat, in the districts in which I have met with them. Should they do so, the men noticeably—far more so than the women—put on more flesh on the buttocks than do well-fed Europeans; but this is the case with the men of all the Bantu races as well. All the members of the royal family of Matabeleland, both male and female, who had passed middle age showed a most extraordinary development of the thighs and buttocks.

In addition to the yellow-skinned Bushmen, however, who are without doubt the oldest aboriginal race in South Africa, there are—or were—also to be found living in the eastern part of the Kalahari a few scattered communities of a race known to the Bechwanas as Bakalahari—they of the desert.

Speaking of these people, Dr. Livingstone wrote long ago, in that most admirable book Missionary Travels: "The Bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest of the Bechwana tribes, and they are said to have possessed enormous herds of the large horned cattle mentioned by Bruce, until they were despoiled of them and driven into the desert by a fresh migration of their own nation. Living ever since on the same plains with the Bushmen, subjected to the same influences of climate, enduring the same thirst and subsisting on similar food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account for difference in races. The Bakalahari retain in undying vigour the Bechwana love for agriculture and domestic animals. They hoe their gardens annually, though often all they can hope for is a supply of melons and pumpkins. And they carefully rear small herds of goats, though I have seen them lift water for them out of small wells with a bit of ostrich egg-shell or by spoonfuls."