BUSHMEN AND THEIR RELICS NEAR MODDERPOORT. 



(Plates 7 and 8.) 



By Rev. Father Norton, S.S.M. 



The centenarian Mokoena that I have described in another 

 paper* said that when she was a child (pointing to a child of about 

 eight) the Bushmen were everywhere. This must have been 

 about the year 1814, when the famous old medicine man, her 

 cousin Mohlomi, died. She did not mention them, however, 

 in her list of the neighbouring tribes, either because they are small 

 or because they lived in small groups apart in the caves. The 

 devourers of Moshesh's cattle in the paper referred to were called 

 the Makhomokhomo but there is a version which makes them 

 Griqua. The title means " great at cattle," for so they evidently 

 were, whatever race they really belonged to. The centenarian says 

 that after the Lifaqane or invasions of the Zulu tribes (1822) the 

 Bushmen (they had come from Matatiele, but approached Modder- 

 poort from the north, i.e., from Mequatleng) taught the broken 

 and scattered Basuto tribes to trap game in pits. There is in 

 ■our caves a very vivid picture of the unsuspecting bok approach- 

 ing the large oblong trap, covered with brush wood, and human 

 beings near. In this way they gained consideration for a time, 

 or regained, for there is a story that the Bushmen taught the 

 Basuto the way to circumcise and took precedence in the Lodge. 



The Bushmen, then, who painted our Modderpoort caves had 

 their home at Mequatleng, whence come some of my exhibits, 

 kindly lent by Miss Woldmann. They came to the Modderpoort 

 valley, the country of their allies, the Bataung of Ramokhele, 

 which abounded in game, including the lion, the totem of that 

 tribe. The king of beasts had a splendid hunting ground in the 

 reeds between Hoogfontein, which travellers by Modderpoort 

 pass, and Welgevonden, some four miles off. There were elands 

 and all manner of game, and in the Poort itself (the " Pass of 

 Lions," as it is called in Sesuto) thick bush, a splendid lair. 

 But the Bushmen disputed the sport with the lions, and being 

 too small a folk to carry off the huge spoil of their little poisoned 

 arrows, they sat down in the caves till they had consumed it, 

 painting the chase on the walls and scraping the skins with the 

 tiny scrapers which one may still pick up any day. I made a 

 casual collection of the flints of the cave floors and sent them 

 to Cape Town the other day. To my surprise I was told they were 

 true flint implements, and my inexperience in this department 

 was encouraged. They were cleared out of Mequatleng by the 

 farmers, presumably after the conquest in 1868, for they were 

 as " great " at horses as at cattle, and relished them even more. 

 Nevertheless I met a tiny man about four feet high tramping 

 along the road the other day by Mequatleng. The unfortunate 

 remnants of the race were cleared out of the Maluti also some- 

 where about the same time. Alas for the only relic of Stone- 



See pp. 114-117, ante. 



