By Veldt and Kopje

by W. C. Scully

All authorities agree that Madikanè was of great stature, that he was light in colour, and that his hair and beard were long. It was his habit to carry his snuff-spoon stuck in the hair of his chest. One of the writers has examined a number of his male descendants, and found about one in every four with traces of hair on the chest. It is, it may be stated, very unusual to find any hair on the body of a Bantu.

Madikanè placed himself at the head of his own shattered tribe, together with the fugitives from some forty-four broken clans, and led them southward. He was killed on December 19th, 1824, in a combined attack made by the Tembus and Gcalekas, and on the next day there was a total eclipse of the sun.

The Baca women and children were all either killed or captured. Many of them wore ivory armlets, which had been put on when they were children, and which, consequently, could not be drawn off. For the sake of the ivory, the savage victors cut the hands off the unfortunate creatures and turned them abroad to die. Some few managed to make their way back, for over a hundred miles, to the valley of the Umzimvubu River—one of the former sojourning places of the tribe—and lived for many years. The last of these died only about eight years ago.

The eclipse on the following day was taken as a tremendous portent. All the fighting men were called up to the great places of the Tembu and Gcaleka chiefs, respectively, for the purpose of being doctored. The Bacas, in their flight, came upon an immense number of Tembu women and children who were proceeding, with cattle, with the intention of occupying an uninhabited piece of country under the Drakensberg Range. These the Bacas captured and took away, so as to rehabilitate themselves for their losses, domestic and other.

The following is the tribal war-song of the Baca tribe. It is a tune held in great veneration, and is never used except upon important occasions. Sung in slow, stately unison by a number of men on the war-path, it has an indescribably impressive effect:—

This song is apparently of great antiquity. Its words have quite lost their meaning. They are simply:—

“Eye ya how, eye ya yow yow yow.”

Tradition relates that when Madikanè was a boy he disappeared mysteriously. The witch-doctors told his father Kalimetsh not to be uneasy, as the boy would come back. After an absence of eight months he returned, saying that he had been in the forest learning the magical use of roots. He called to his uncle and two of his brothers, and they accompanied him to the place of his secret sojourn, driving with them a black ox. When they arrived at the specified spot the ox was slaughtered. Portions of the meat were then spread about for the use of the “imishologu,” or ancestral spirits, and then the tribal song was sung. After this the young man asked the others what they would like to be “doctored” for. The uncle suffered from a dread of being poisoned, and asked to be so doctored that poison should have no effect on him. The others asked to be so doctored as to become great fighting chiefs.

At the annual “incubi,” or “feast of the first-fruits,” which is held by the Bacas—when the chief rushes out of his hut after being doctored, and flings an assegai towards the rising sun—the tribal song is sung in full chorus by the assembled lieges.