Vol 1, 240ff, 278ff, 323, 374ff, 474ff).
Here the |Xam lived as hunter-gatherers, having little contact with other races except, in some areas, with the Khoe-khoen and, ultimately, the European farmers (Wilson & Thompson 1969, Vol 1, 63ff). They lived in small groups each of which shared the resources of a defined area within which they led a semi-nomadic existence, erecting simple hemispherical huts of branches covered with grass or reed mats, standing about three or four feet high (Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 275).
Social units
Estimates by early travellers of the size of |Xam bands, were entirely based on isolated sightings and did not take into account temporary fission, where a section or sections of the group might move to another part of the resource territory, or seasonal migrations, during which two or more groups might join together for a period of time either to share resources or for the purpose of defence. However, Dorothea Bleek, who visited the |Xam in 1910–11, reported that
Three or four huts stand together, in one is the father, in others his married children. At most eight or ten huts of connections were dotted about within a radius of a few miles from the water, but this is an institution of later days (D.F. Bleek 1923: viii).
Many earlier writers also reported similar numbers of people living together. The most detailed of such reports come, unhappily, from the official accounts of those sent on expeditions to exterminate the San in certain areas. Thus the ‘Report of the Field-Commandant Nicholas van der Merwe, of the Expedition performed against the Bushman Hottentots’ which ‘took the field on the 16th of August 1774’ (Moodie 1960: 35ff) described the many San ‘kraals’ which the expedition surrounded, as containing between eight and 30 people, men, women and children, whom they slaughtered. Other expedition reports give similar numbers (ibid., 33, 38, 45). The reports of travellers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries tend to confirm these numbers (ibid., 231; Campbell 1822: 17; Sparrman 1785, Vol 1, 202).
Larger groups were also sometimes reported. Often such groups were seen living near to farms or were defensive aggregations (Moodie 1960: 5f, 25, 34; Lichtenstein 1930, Vol 2, 62; Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 307). That different groups did occasionally share resources is suggested by J. Barrow the traveller, who writes:
During the day vast numbers of the savages had appeared upon the plain digging up roots: that they came from different quarters and in so many groups that (local farmers) concluded there must be several hordes in the neighbourhood (Barrow 1801, Vol l, 271).
And again:
Several little children came down upon the plain … presently afterwards the women and young girls, to the number of thirty or forty (ibid., 273).
Dorothea Bleek (1923: ix) also claimed that ‘several family groups’ sometimes joined together for a game drive.
When writing about dwellings, however, the majority of the early travellers describe only a few huts at each encampment. M.H.C. Lichtenstein (op. cit., 61ff) reports that:
A horde commonly consists of the different members of one family only and no one has power or distinction over the rest.
and that
Very little intercourse subsists between the separate hordes: they seldom unite, unless in some extraordinary undertaking, for which the combined strength of a great many is required.
The picture which emerges, therefore, is that of a number of extended family groups of various sizes, probably related by blood or marriage and joining together at certain times mainly for economic reasons. The concept of ‘the band’, however, lacks both spatial and social definition in the absence of adequate data. It might have been the case that a band consisted of a number of extended families related to a core of siblings, sharing a defined territory which contained a number of water sources. These people would be related to members of neighbouring bands with whom they visited, exchanged gifts, and married. The picture, however, must remain vague.
According to Dorothea Bleek (1923: vii),
The Colonial Bushman’s property was the water. Each spring or pool in that dry country had its particular owner and was handed down from father to son with the regularity of an entitled estate. Many families owned more than one water, had summer and winter residences, to which they resorted as the growth of the field supplies or the movements of the game necessitated. However, the owners never lived near the spring, for that would prevent the game from using it. The huts were a good way off, perhaps an hour’s walk and hidden by bushes. Their position was frequently changed.
Miss Bleek’s observation that water resources were ‘handed down from father to son’ may have been based on a statement by ||Kabbo, one of her father’s informants, that his own territory – his !xoe – containing several waterholes, had belonged to his father’s father, and, upon his death, had gone to his father, then to ||Kabbo’s elder brother, and, on his elder brother’s death, to ||Kabbo (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 305ff). However, this is the only instance of such information being given. It is possible that inheritance may have been patrilineal in some cases and matrilineal in others. Such was certainly true of the !Kung-speakers of the Dobe area studied by Richard Lee (1972, Vol 1, 129).
The territory itself was defined by water sources and other natural landmarks. |Hang ǂkass’o reported that ||Kabbo’s !xoe had a name, ||Gubo, and that it contained a number of named sites including water sources (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 307). The precise nature of the relationship between the inheritor of a resource area and the rest of the group is unclear. Beside possibly being responsible for regulating the use of water-holes, and having unquestionable rights to food resources, there is no evidence that any special privileges attached themselves to the inheritor and, judging by reports of usage and descriptions of everyday life in the oral literature, the question of ownership did not arise or influence the collective use of water, game and veldkos2 by the group. From the earliest to the last reports, all writers claimed that, except in times of warfare, the San had no leaders of any kind (Schapera & Farrington 1933: 75; Lichtenstein 1930: 61f; Moodie 1960: 34; Barrow 1801, Vol 1, 274).
Membership of the group was either by consanguinity or through marriage. The father and mother lived in one hut together with their young children until the children could feed themselves and ‘talked with understanding’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 307), when they made their own huts next to their parents. In the other huts would live the married children with their offspring. Membership was not based on descent traced exclusively through either the male or the female line and both married sons and married daughters belonged to the same band. There is no evidence that bride service existed.
Kinship and marriage
Such kinship terms as were collected3 are incomplete and based mainly on vocabulary sources rather than on any actual observations of kinship as a system of obligations and affiliations within the group. However, beside purely descriptive terms of relationship, some terms were collected which were applied to whole groups of different relatives and these might have indicated special social relationships. Siblings and both cross and parallel cousins had the same terms of address applied to them, ||kã: (male), ||kãxai (female). (Cousin marriages, however, were not forbidden, and did occur.) Similarly, the parents of a son or daughter-in-law, and the parents of a brother and sister-in-law were addressed by the same term, ||k’en (male), ||k’aiti (female). The terms for ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’, !kõing and !kõite, were used in addressing any elderly relative or person distinctly senior to the speaker. The term xoakengu, ‘mothers’, was applied to older women of the group and was ‘often used where we should say “the elder women” or “mother and her friends”’ (ibid., 57). These women were especially responsible
