Bushmen

Bushmen (Dutch, Bosjesmans), a term applied by the Europeans to the dwarfish aborigines of South-West Africa, who call themselves Khwai, i.e. "Men," and who are called Saan-qua (Soan-qua, San-qua) by their Hottentot neighbours and kinsmen. They appear to represent the primitive population of the whole of South Africa as far north as the Zambesi, whence they have been gradually driven to their present domain (the arid steppes of Great Bushman Land, south of the Orange river and the Kalahari Desert, north of that river) by the Bantu peoples advancing southwards from the interior of the continent. In some of their physical characters as well as in their speech, they resemble the Hottentots, of whom some regard them as a degraded branch, while others consider the Hottentots a mixed race, resulting from alliances between the Bantus and the Bushmen. Either view would satisfy many of the actual conditions, though it is probable that they have suffered degradation in their present environment, where they find little to live upon except game, snakes, lizards, termites, locusts, roots, bulbs, and berries. At times they pass four or five days in search of food, and then gorge themselves on the prey, five persons devouring a whole quagga or zebra in a couple of hours. Their weapons are the bow and poisoned arrow; their costume the undressed skills of wild beasts when procurable; their dwellings either the cave or a kind of "nest," formed by bending round the foliage of the bosje ("bush"), whence their Dutch name. They are grouped in small bands without any chiefs, and with scarcely any family ties, unions being of the most transitory nature. Yet debased as they are almost to the lowest level of culture compatible with existence, the Bushmen possess a sense of art far higher than that of the surrounding peoples, as shown by the paintings of animals true to life found in their caves. They have also a rich, oral folk-lore literature, consisting of legends, fables, and animal stories, in which the animals are made to talk each with its proper click, not otherwise heard in ordinary Bushman speech. These clicks, inarticulate sounds unpronounceable by Europeans, are peculiar to the Bushman and Hottentot languages, the former possessing six, the latter four; of these three have been borrowed by the Zulu Kaffirs, who have been for many generations in close contact with both of these primitive races.