African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

I used to think that the Bakalahari were a mixed race formed by the amalgamation of broken Bechwana tribes with the desert Bushmen. But I believe there is no warrant for this. Though all those I have seen spoke the language of the Bushmen as well as Sechwana, there can be no doubt that Dr. Livingstone was quite right in saying that, although the Bakalahari have lived a life of terrible hardship and privation for centuries in the desert, they still remain in character true Bechwanas, with all the love of that race for agriculture and stock-breeding.

Under the kind and just rule of Khama many Bakalahari have given up their nomadic life and once more become a settled agricultural tribe. They were supplied with seed-corn and given cattle, sheep, and goats to look after, and in 1879 I found large communities of these once miserable outcasts living near the wells of Klabala, cultivating large areas of ground, and growing so much Kafir corn and maize that, except in seasons of severe drought, they would never again have been likely to suffer from the famine against which their immediate ancestors had constantly struggled. These people, too, were tending considerable herds of cattle, sheep, and goats belonging to Khama, a portion of the increase of which was given to them every year.

I do not think there is any instance on record of a tribe or family of the aboriginal yellow Bushmen having given up their wild free life in the desert and taken to agricultural or pastoral pursuits.

In habits and mode of life true Bushmen seem to be the same wherever they are met with, and the Masarwa—the Bushmen of the interior of South Africa—certainly resemble very closely in these respects the descriptions I have read of their now almost extinct kinsmen of the Cape Colony. They build no huts, but merely erect temporary small shelters of boughs with a little dry grass thrown on the top. They neither sow nor reap any kind of grain, nor do they possess any kind of domestic animals, except small jackal-like dogs, which cannot bark. They obtain fire very rapidly with two pieces of wood. One of these is held flat on the ground by the feet of a man sitting down, whilst the other, the end of which has been placed in a small notch cut for its reception, is whirled rapidly round between the open hands, until the fine wood dust produced by the friction begins to smoulder, when it is placed amongst some dry grass and blown into flame.

The dress for men, women, and girls amongst the Masarwa is the same as that which used to be worn by the Bechwana and Makalaka tribes before these latter had come in contact with Europeans. They obtain iron-headed spears and earthenware cooking pots from the neighbouring Kafir tribes in exchange for the skins of wild animals, their only native weapon being the bow and arrow. Their bows are very small and weak-looking, and their arrows are unfeathered, being made of light reeds into the ends of which bone heads are inserted. These bone arrow-heads are always thickly smeared with poison, which seems to be made from the body of a grub or caterpillar mixed with gum. At least, in the bark quivers of the Bushmen whose belongings I have examined, I have usually found, besides their arrows and fire-sticks, a small bark cylinder closed at one end, in which were the bodies of grubs or caterpillars preserved in gum, which I was told contained the poison they smeared on their arrows.

The Masarwa living immediately to the west of Matabeleland have long since discarded their bows and poisoned arrows in favour of firearms, but twenty or thirty years ago these curiously toy-like but very effective weapons were in general use amongst the Bushmen living in the deserts to the south and west of the Botletlie river.

Except that they do not eat grass, Bushmen are almost as omnivorous as bears. Besides the flesh of every kind of animal from an elephant to a mouse (which is acceptable to them in any and every stage of decomposition), they eat certain kinds of snakes, fish, lizards, frogs, tortoises, grubs, locusts, flying ants, wild honey, young bees, ostrich eggs, nestling birds of all sorts, and various kinds of berries, bulbs, and roots. Bushwomen may often be met with miles away from their encampments, wandering alone over the desert wastes they inhabit, searching for edible roots and bulbs, which they dig up with pointed sticks. The children, too, begin to forage for themselves at a very early age, and I have seen little mites, apparently not more than two or three years old, crawling on their hands and knees on the tracks of tortoises. It was explained to me that these reptiles make light scratches on the ground with their claws as they walk along, and these almost imperceptible marks the infant Bushmen are taught to follow. No wonder they grow up to be good game trackers!

In many parts of the countries the Bushmen inhabit not only does game periodically become scarce or almost non-existent, but all other sources of food supply are liable at times to fail them as well.

At such times these wild people sometimes endure the most terrible privations, and no doubt numbers of them succumb yearly to slow starvation.

I have often met with families of Bushmen all the members of which were in such a terrible state of emaciation that it seemed a marvel that they were still alive. In such cases the flesh appeared to have almost completely wasted away from their legs and arms, leaving nothing but the bones encased in dry yellow-brown skin, whilst their faces looked like skulls covered with parchment, though the small black eyes still glittered from the depths of their sockets.