Hottentots

“ Though all the Hottentots have broad flat noses, yet they would not be so did not their mothers, considering a prominent nose as a deformity, flatten them immediately after their birth. Their lips are also thick, their teeth white, their eye-brows bushy, their heads large, their bodies meagre, and their limbs are slender. They seldom live longer than 40 years; and this short duration of life is doubtless caused by their being continually covered with filth, and [299] living chiefly upon meat that is corrupted. ”

“ Their women are, to European eyes, very repulsive objects—lean and gaunt, except over the hips where all the flesh seems to be piled. The Hottentots smear themselves with fat and soot, and are so used to it that when washed one seems to be without clothes. ”

“ There remains nothing now but to say a word or two concerning the Hottentots so frequently spoken of by travelers, by whoom they are generaly represented as the outcast of the Human species, a race whose intellectual faculties are so little superior to those of Beasts that some have been inclind to suppose them more nearly related to Baboons than Men. ”

“ As this work treats only of the normal habits and customs of the various parts of the world, and has nothing to do with the modifications of civilization, the account of the Hottentot will be necessarily brief.
In shape the Hottentots alter strangely according to their age. When children, they are not at all agreeable objects—at least, to an unaccustomed eye, being thin in the limbs, with an oddly projecting stomach, and a corresponding fall in the back. ”

“ And not only is the capture of the Hottentots considered by them merely as a party of pleasure, but in cold blood they destroy the bands which nature has knit between their husbands, and their wives and children, &c. ”

“ Finally, the Hottentots, a people not much removed from savagery, have a mythology full of savage and even disgusting elements. And this is just what we expect from Hottentots. The puzzle is when we find myths as low as the story of the incest of Heitsi Eibib among the Greeks. ”

“ I got the effect all right, for turning, I saw Gert, who had my short Martini carbine and was watching the Hottentots, almost doubled up with laughter, and the Hottentots running towards the rocks as fast as their legs would carry them. And in the rocks they stayed, and when the hour came for us to trek, there was neither Hottentot nor pack-cow. Gert went and parleyed with the women in the pondhoeks, but they could do nothing except demand coffee and tabaki, and the gentlemen up in the rocks evidently thought they had the whip hand, as we could go no farther without the cow. ”

“ The Hottentots by kindness and punctual wages are induced to come and work for them, and the good fathers are ever ready to instruct them in agriculture and the mechanical arts. In 1824, nearly two thousand Hottentots lived in small huts, under the protecting influence of the missionaries, each one cultivating a little patch of ground to raise vegetables for his family. Some of them employed their leisure moments in making mats and brooms, while others obtained a comfortable subsistence by the sale of poultry, eggs, and cattle. ”

“ Travellers among Bushmen, Hottentots, Fuegians, Esquimaux, Papuans and other peoples—peoples who have been pushed aside into unfavorable areas by the invasion of more warlike and better-equipped races, and who have suffered physically in consequence—confirm this. Kropotkin, speaking of the Hottentots, quotes the German author P. Kolben who travelled among them in 1275 or so. “He knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, but could not praise their tribal morality highly enough. ”

“ So the Hottentots are still angry with the hare for bringing death into the world, and they will not let initiated men partake of its flesh.67 There are traces of a similar story among the Bushmen.68 In another Hottentot version two messengers appear, an insect and a hare; the insect is charged by the Moon with a message of immortality or rather of resurrection to men, but the hare persuades the insect to let him bear the tidings, which he perverts into a message of annihilation.69 Thus in this particular version the type of the Two Messengers coincides with the Moon type. ”

“ Among the Hottentots, when their aged men and women can “no longer be of any manner of service in anything,” they are conveyed by an ox, accompanied by most of the inhabitants of the kraal, to a solitary hut at a considerable distance and, with a small stock of provisions, laid in the middle of the hut, which is then securely closed. The company returns, deserting him forever. They think it the most humane thing they can do to thus hasten the conclusion of life when it has become a burden. ”

“ The development in method of food-getting displayed by the Hottentots was really but the completion of the old battle for dominion with the animal host. It consisted in subjecting some of the docile herbivora more fully to human mastership. The hunter has to do with hostile beasts, victims but not servants of man. The herder has reduced some of these animals to servitude, and no longer has to overcome them through the arduous labors of the chase. ”

“ Some of the bushmen and half-civilised Hottentots, when they have killed an animal of suitable size, such as a buffalo, quagga, or any of the larger antelopes, will cut the skin all round above and below the hough, and, having stripped it off, will draw it upon their own foot, so that the heel comes where the hough of the animal used to be; the toe is then closed with a few stitches, a slit for a small tie or lacing is made on the instep, and, by walking in it before it dries or hardens, it is trodden into the shape of the foot. ”

“ There is, indeed, some crude and simple agriculture pursued by a few of the Negritos of Luzon, but evidently as an imitation of the Malay agriculture or as a result of direct teaching, certainly not as an original conception. The conflict of the Pygmies with nature has been confined to the animal world, and reached its highest level in the herding industries of the Hottentots. ”

“ It possesses a strong odor, which to the nostrils of a Hottentot is extremely agreeable, but which has exactly the opposite effect upon the more sensitive organs of an European. When a number of Hottentots are assembled in one of their rude huts, the odor of the buchu, with which the karosses as well as the hair of the natives are plentifully imbued, is so exceedingly powerful, that no one except a native can breathe in such an atmosphere. ”

“ This deforming of animals is a savage custom, for Hottentots twist the horns of their cattle and sheep, while a number of horns are produced in Africa by splitting the budding horns of the young animals. Though not obviously causing any deformity, there is one fashion which, though condemned by most people, is still followed by otherwise cultured and humane people. ”

“ Notwithstanding his affliction of deafness he begged his drunken father to take him from the poor-house and let him struggle for an education. Said he, “I know how to stop hunger. Hottentots live a long time on nothing but gum. Sometimes when hungry they tie a band around their bodies. ”

“ Kolben, discoursing with these Hottentots, took occasion to ask them concerning the utmost limit they carried the belief of the sanctity and avenging spirit of this insect, when they declared to him, that if the German had killed it, all their cattle would certainly have been destroyed by wild beasts, and they themselves, every man, woman, and child of them, brought to a miserable end. ”

“ But, when he can only procure meat, he eats with a continued and sustained voracity that is almost incredible. For quality be cares but little, and so that he can obtain unlimited supplies of meat, he does not trouble himself whether it be tough or tender. Whenever one of a horde of Hottentots succeeds in killing a large animal, such as an elephant or hippopotamus, and it happens to be at a distance from the kraal, the inhabitants prefer to strike their tent-like houses and to remove them to the animal rather than trouble themselves by making repeated journeys to and fro. ”

“ The Waguana followed in helter-skelter fashion, carrying all sorts of articles, next came the Hottentots, dragging the mules with the ammunition, whilst lastly marched the sheikh and the Belooch escort, the goats and women, the sick and stragglers bringing up the rear.
One of the Hottentot privates soon died, and five others were sent back sick. About thirty Seedees deserted, as did nearly all the porters, while the sheikh also soon fell sick. ”

“ Among the Hottentots, the dirtiest people in the world, no such disease exists. Among the peasants of Poland, who likewise live in a very dirty manner, their mode of life is said to produce not a fever, but a disease of the hair, called the plica Polonica. ”

“ What Kicherer says of the Boschemen being properly prepared, is worthy of more consideration. Thunberg [2] tells us that "the Hottentots and Boschemen are said to fortify themselves against poisoned darts, and the bite of venomous animals, by suffering themselves to be gradually bitten by serpents, scorpions, and other venomous creatures, till they become accustomed to it; but these trials sometimes cost them their lives. The urine of an Hottentot thus prepared is esteemed an excellent antidote, or counterpoison, and is therefore drank by such as have been bitten by serpents." ”

“ Scarcity or uncertainty of food limits growth. Wherever the life conditions in this respect become changed, in that place the influence of environment soon makes itself felt in the average stature of the inhabitants. Thus the Hottentots, physically of the same race as the Bushmen, but inhabiting a more fertile region, and, moreover, possessed of a regular food supply in their flocks and herds, are appreciably taller from these causes alone. All the aborigines of America seem to be subject to this same influence of the fertility of their environment. ”

“ No disgust is evinced by the Bosjesman Hottentots at the most nauseous food, and having shot an animal with a poisoned arrow, their only precaution, previous to tearing it in pieces and devouring it raw, is to cut out the envenomed part. ”

“ This increase in size is a common result of a change in habits which insures a fuller supply of food with less strain upon the muscular organization in obtaining it; a fact of which the lower animal world is full of illustrations. The life of the forest and desert hunters is one of incessant activity, and their food supply is precarious. The Hottentots, on the contrary, take life easily and are inclined to indolence, their herds supplying them with food in abundance with little exertion. ”

“ To this disease the horse is especially exposed, and it is almost always fatal. One attack, however, seems to secure immunity from a second. Cattle, too, are subject to it, but only at intervals of a few, sometimes many years; but it never makes a clean sweep of the whole cattle of a village, as it would do of a troop of fifty horses. This barrier, then, seems to explain the absence of the horse among the Hottentots, though it is not opposed to the southern migration of cattle, sheep, and goats. ”

“ To women much respect was shown; the most sacred oath a Hottentot could take was to swear by his sister or mother; yet the females ate apart from the men and did all the work of the kraal with the exception of the tending of cattle and of the curing of the hides; the men, however, assisted in the erection of the framework of the huts. ”

“ I dug down, and at the bottom of the hole found its egg, which it was evidently guarding. On another occasion I found two at the bottom of a large closed trap-door nest. The lid of a nest, when occupied by the getje, does not close so perfectly as when occupied by the spider, due perhaps to the narrowing of the opening. Though generally held to be poisonous, these charming little lizards are really quite harmless. Hottentots have a great dread of the getje, believing that if it bites them, they will live just long enough to reach home, at most till sundown. ”

“ The only drawback is their wildness and immense size of their horns, which they sometimes use with fatal effect.
The day before we reached the Orange River we fell in with a kraal of Hottentots, whom, to our great surprise, we found living in a locality altogether destitute of water! The milk of their cows and goats supplied its place. Their cattle, moreover, never obtained water, but found a substitute in a kind of ice-plant (mesembryanthemum) , of an exceedingly succulent nature, which abounds in these regions. But our own oxen, not accustomed to such diet, would rarely or never touch it. ”

“ The Greenlanders would carry the dead out by the window, not by the door, while an old woman, waving a firebrand behind, cried ‘Piklerrukpok!’ i.e., ‘There is nothing more to be had here!’ the Hottentots removed the dead from the hut by an opening broken out on purpose, to prevent him from finding the way back; the Siamese, with the same intention, break an opening through the house wall to carry the coffin through, and then hurry it at full speed thrice round the house ”

“ The Hottentots are a thin-skinned race, and flogging is to them a very terrible punishment. Gert had never fully recovered from his experience of the lash. Had his physical vigour been greater he might have been able to kill game from time to time, especially when the trek-bucks crossed the Desert. As things were, his hunting never yielded him more than a few snakes and lizards and an occasional jackal. On very rare occasions he managed to get a shot at a klipspringer antelope ”