These Pygmies live in low oval huts, with doors two or three feet high. The houses are arranged in a circle about an open cleared space, in which the chief’s house stands. About one hundred yards from the village, along every path that leads to it, is a little guard house, only big enough for two Pygmies. These are guard houses and toll stations, and all strangers who pass must pay toll. The Pygmies are usually on good terms with their big neighbors, and both are useful to the other. The little people sell their ivory, skins, honey, and poison to their neighbors, or trade them for vegetable food. The Pygmies, keen and watchful, are good pickets for the others, and often warn them of danger from approaching enemies.
XXVI.
BUSHMEN AND HOTTENTOTS.
Far to the south in Africa, in and about the Desert of Kalahari, live the Bushmen. They are somewhat like the Pygmies. They are little—full-grown men being from four feet to four feet six inches in stature. They are of a yellow-brown color; their hair is black and kinky, but appears to grow in little tufts with bare spaces between; the jaws project and the lips are thick; they wrinkle early. They are quick and lively in movements, and are bold hunters.
Little bands of them wander from place to place, without any fixed home. They build no houses. Usually they live in holes among the rocks; at most, they build rude, temporary shelters. They live chiefly on game, which they kill with the bow and arrow, or sometimes with the spear. They sometimes trail an animal a long distance, and when they overtake and kill it, stop at the spot to eat it. They are wonderful at following the trail of either animals or men, and see signs of their having passed which a white man would never notice. They get a hard living; they gather seeds and roots, fruits and gums; they hunt the honey of wild bees; they catch lizards and snakes. They are so fond of the white grubs, or pupæ of ants—which we usually, but wrongly, call ants’ eggs—that the Boers, living near the little people, call them “Bushmen’s rice.” They also eat the huge eggs of the ostrich, and make water vessels out of the empty shells.
Their bows are small and their arrows are hardly more than a foot in length; the points of bone, stone, or iron are poisoned, and are so attached to the shaft that they separate and remain in the wound. The spear and darts which they use are also small and have poisoned tips. In the quivers with their arrows they carry a little sharpening stone for grinding the points and a brush for applying the poison. For digging roots the Bushmen use a pointed stick, which is weighted with a stone ring. These few simple weapons and tools are all that these poor people possess, except a few wooden dishes and a smoking pipe, which is said to be owned by a whole family or band.
Livingstone says that their arrow poison comes from a sort of caterpillar or grub, which they crush and dip the arrow tip into. They always clean their nails carefully after handling the poison, as it causes damage if it comes into contact with any scratch or cut. The pain caused by the poison is so great as almost to make the man who has been wounded crazy. When a lion has been struck with one of these poisoned arrows he roars terribly and bites and tears the ground and trees. To cure a person who has been bitten they use an ointment made of the crushed caterpillar mixed with grease. They believe that the caterpillar is hungry for grease; when it does not find fat in a person it kills him; when they supply it the fat it wants, it does no harm. It is said that this caterpillar is sacred and that they pray to it, asking it to give them plenty of game when they are hunting.
GORA-PLAYER: BUSHMAN (RATZEL).
These little people are fond of music and drawing. Their finest musical instrument is a gora. This is a hunter’s bow, with a ring on the bow string. By sliding this ring they change the note which it gives when twanged. The twang of a bowstring is not a very loud sound; to increase it a gourd is hung to the lower end of the bow. All over the country of the Bushmen cliffs and the walls of caves are covered with their pictures, which represent animals, birds, and men; hunting scenes and battles are also represented. These pictures are sometimes just pecked out in the rock; sometimes they are painted; sometimes they are first pecked out and then filled with color. The colors most used in these pictures are red, yellow, and black.
The negroid Kaffirs and the Hottentots who live near the poor Bushmen hate them and harm them. Meeting them on the road, they sometimes kill them without pity. In 1804 a Kaffir who went to Cape Town on business found a Bushman boy eleven years old working as a servant in the government building. He killed the little fellow with a spear. This, of course, was long ago, but it shows how the Kaffirs despise the Bushmen.