object of greatest demand. In exchange Bushmen give game or skins, but they adore smoking, and as they grow no tobacco, must obtain that from others. Everyone smokes, even the children (Bleek & Duggin-Cronin, op. cit., 5).
Food-sharing
The division and sharing of food was a complex matter governed by a number of rules, obligations and avoidances. It appears that veldkos was gathered for each nuclear family independently but all meat was shared by the whole group. Springbok seem to have been the game most commonly eaten by the |Xam of the northern Cape and something is known of its division.
Assuming that three hunters tracked and killed a springbok, the division into parts was made by the two whose arrows did not secure the kill. The viscera were divided between the three families, and the killer received the upper bones of the forelegs and the neck. Of the other two hunters, one received the back, the tail and the skin, and the other the stomach and the blood. It is not recorded who had the remaining parts, but the shoulder-blades were not given to the hunter who made the kill. This division was made prior to the cooking, the meat being then given by the men to the women of each of their households to prepare and cook. When the meat was ready to be eaten, a second distribution was made, the men cutting for their male children, the women cutting for the girls. The children were especially given the leg bones which were broken open for the marrow (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 275ff).
Lorna Marshall (1961: 236ff) has recorded how, in the !Kung-speaking bands of the Nyae Nyae region of the Kalahari, a third wave of sharing takes place throughout the group, this being governed by a network of obligations of various kinds. One such obligation exists where the user of an arrow which has been received as a gift gives meat which has been shot with that arrow to the person who made the gift. The arrow-giver might then share that meat with another from whom they had initially received the same arrow and so on. The |Xam also practiced the exchange of arrows (D.F. Bleek 1931–36, Part VIII, 149; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 281ff) and it is, therefore, likely that some similar system of obligation also operated amongst them. Lorna Marshall also observed that the hunter who secured the kill often ended up with less meat than those further down the line of distribution. The missionary Robert Moffat (op. cit., 59) noticed that in the division of food-gifts from Dutch farmers to the |Xam, ‘Generally it is observed the one who first received the boon retained least for himself’. Lorna Marshall believed that amongst the !Kung-speakers, this custom might be designed to avoid tensions and jealousies that could arise if the hunter was consistently given preference.
However complex the initial system of meat distribution, another principle influenced the sharing at a different level and this consisted in a variety of avoidances and preferences based on certain beliefs and superstitions. Certain kinds of food were not eaten by adults at all, only by children. The flesh of the lynx was not eaten by women and it was regarded as unlucky for women with young children to eat hartebeest (an animal thought to resemble the mantis, which, in turn, was associated with the supernatural being |Kaggen). Children were not given the tips of springbok tongues, and certain portions of the ostrich were also forbidden them. Some children were not given jackals’ hearts for fear of promoting cowardice, but given leopards’ hearts, where possible, to encourage bravery. Baboon were not eaten at all by the San inhabiting the north-western plains because of their resemblance to humans. The variety and range of these preferences and avoidances was very great and possibly varied from one area to another and from one time to another (D.F. Bleek 1931–36, Part I, 175f; W.H.I. Bleek, op. cit., 16f; Lloyd, op. cit., 23; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 373).
Social life
As was noted above, the |Xam had a great amount of leisure time at their disposal. The men only hunted for a few hours of the day, and only a few days in any week, and the women’s work of gathering food and wood or collecting water took little time out of each day. Even on days when the men did hunt they would return to their encampment before noon and sleep for a few hours or sit in the shade making arrows or simply talking or smoking together. Often members of the group would visit relatives in other groups and sit exchanging news and anecdotes. The whole group were in more or less continual contact with each other, secrets were practically impossible and most grievances would be endlessly discussed by the members.
The |Xam were particularly fond of music and dancing. Their musical instruments were simply constructed, mainly being variations on the musical bow. One of the most popular of these was the ‘goura’ which consisted of an ordinary bow in which one end of the string, instead of being attached directly to the stave, was fastened onto a small piece of quill which was tied on to the end of the stave. This quill was held to the lips and made to vibrate by strong expirations and inspirations of breath. Drums, made by stretching the skin of a springbok thigh tight across a clay pot, were played by women at dances. Dancing rattles of springbok ears filled with small stones or dried berries were worn by the men which added to the percussion (Bleek & Stow, op. cit., xxiiif; Lichtenstein, op. cit., 292; Balfour 1902; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 325, 351ff).
Dancing was an extremely popular activity amongst the |Xam. Most dances only involved the men, who moved rhythmically in a circle, while the women clapped their hands. One or two women might also play the drums. One dance, known as the |Ku, which consisted of the men nodding their heads as they moved in a circle while the women clapped, seems to have been some kind of expression of criticism of one member of the band, but details are sparse on this matter. Another dance known as the ǂGebbi-gu was said to have been taught them by the baboons and had also been known by the Lion and the Ostrich, characters in a story, who fought and in consequence became animals. In the story the Lion is jealous of the voice of the Ostrich who gains the admiration of the women by his singing while doing this dance. The Lion, furious with jealousy, kills the Ostrich. The dance seems to have been performed by |Xam women who were led in song by one of their number. The songs were simply imitations of various animals, springbok ewes, partridges, ostriches, etc., the lead singer calling out a line of song which was then repeated by the others. The men stood around and called out in response.
Dances took place after a big kill by the hunters but some dances were reserved for special occasions, e.g., following the first thunder after the dry season, and the !giten, ‘shamans’ (sing. !gi: xa) had an initiation dance of their own called the ||Keng performed by both men and women. In this dance the initiator held a stick of office known as the ‘dancing stick’ and performed a sequence of movements which was followed by the initiates. All participants wore caps made from the heads of young gemsbok and special bangles known as the ‘||Keng’s rings’. Often dances, whether purely social or ritualistic, would last the entire night and well into the following morning (D.F. Bleek 1923: ix; 1931–36, Part I, 177f; Part VII, 11ff; and Stow, op. cit., pls. 13–14; Lloyd, op. cit., 18; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 91ff, 129, 353; Barrow, op. cit., Vol 1, 283f; Sparrman, op. cit., Vol 1, 356).
Belief and ritual
There is no evidence in the writings of the early travellers and missionaries, or in the many thousands of pages of |Xam texts collected by Bleek and Lloyd, of a belief in a deity resembling those deities, such as |Gaua, ǂGao n!a, Hishe, Thora, Huwe, etc., of the central and northern San. Two important supernatural beings, |Kaggen and !Khwa, were believed in by the |Xam. |Kaggen was credited with the creation of certain things in the natural world (see Chapter 7) although his main activities lay in the protection of the antelopes. The beliefs about him can only properly be situated within the complex of beliefs concerning hunting and the relationship between hunters and game animals.7 |Kaggen was the central character of a large number of narratives and these narratives together with the beliefs concerning him are discussed at length in Chapters 6–10.
!Khwa, whose name means ‘water’ or ‘rain’
