Ethnographic Bureau for South Africa. i6i 



in the hands of magistrates, traders, farmers, missionaries, and others 

 who have not the inclination nor the literary skill to put it on record 

 in writing, and who lack the ethnological knowledge necessary for 

 sorting and arranging their material. Much of this information is 

 in the hands of old Colonists, gleaned from natives who have died 

 long since. It will be lost to posterity on the death of these Colonists. 

 In the early days, when an intimate knowledge of native customs, 

 and etiquette was more necessary to the white man that it is to-day, 

 many of these pioneers obtained information that could with difficulty 

 be elicited now. It is a matter of urgency that treasure houses of 

 ethnic data such as these should be unlocked by the trained ethnologist 

 before it is too late. 



And year by year the old generation of natives is ilying off. 

 The old men who hold the key to many an ethnic problem, men 

 whose very traditions may in great part die with them, are being 

 replaced rapidly by the modern, half-civilised, half-educated product 

 who, while interesting us sociologically as a chapter in the evolution 

 of a new type, is of verv little use as a source of native traditions 

 and folklore or as an authority on native customs \Miole pages of 

 the book of African ethnology are being lost every year, and will 

 have to be imperfectly reconstructed from the context. 



There is only one kind of organisation, in the opinion of the 

 present writer, that could hope to cope with the volume of work that 

 lies before the ethnologist in South Africa. That is a South African 

 Bureau of Ethnology, which should be a federal if not an Imperial 

 institution. The writer holds that the ethnology of South Africa 

 must be worked as a whole, if an unnecessary multiplication of 

 experts is to be avoided. In such a field as the study of the native 

 races of South Africa, where the greatest amount of work must be 

 done for a given endowment in the least time possible, a federal or 

 South African Bureau must have great advantages over a Colonial 

 or provincial one. Moreover, the native question is such a prominent 

 one in South African politics that a bureau financially dependent 

 on a purely local Parliament would run a certain amount of risk 

 of subordination to political ends — \vhich would be fatal to honest 

 work. For the above reasons the writer thinks the bureau should 

 be a South African or inter-Colonial affair. 



Before indicating the broad lines on which such a Bureau would 

 work, it will not be out of place to make some reference to what 

 has been done in other countries. 



In India there is an ethnological department. There is an officer 

 for the whole of India, and there are .oflficers for the several 

 Provinces. All these appointments are honorary, but they are worked 

 by Government, and have paid staffs of ethnologists.* In 

 Australia! all matters relating to the aborigines ■ are left to 



* For this information I am indebted to Mr. George A. Grierson, CLE., 

 of the Linguistic Survey of India. 



t Information kindly supplied by Mr. Charles Hedley, of the Australian 

 Museum, Sydney. 



