MODDERPOORT ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. II5 



held the land from Modderpooit (which in Suto is called " The 

 Pass of the Lions." })robablv after the Bataung or lion clan,' 

 another branch of which still lives at Vrolykheid) to Liheleng, 

 or the place of throwing down, where the Basuto in '51 drove the 

 Thaba Nchu Baralong over the edge of the Viervoet. and nearly 

 took the guns of Major Warden, whose allies they were, and who 

 retired to Bloemfontein the next day. The Bataung are en- 

 dogamous. as all the tribes. I am told by one of them, w^re formerly. 

 Hence the very characteristic physiognomy of the clan. 



My old friend. Makelele. then, around whose life I am grouping 

 m}/ material, and who ga.v(? me a large amount of my information 

 about these early days, was taken prisoner by the Mankuane, 

 who with other Zulu tribes had scattered her people, the Bakoena 

 of Monaheng, northwards from Mequatleng their home, between 

 the Viervoet and Korannaberg. The pressure of famine was 

 so great among her own people, owing to the constant raiding, 

 which made it not worth while sowing where no one knew who 

 would reap, that even the children had to be fed on game as soon 

 as they were weaned, and they were glad to learn from the despised 

 Bushmen in the neighbourhood of Mequatleng how to snare the 

 plentiful game by digging pits with a light covering of branches. 

 The game included gnus, blesbok, springbok, deer, eland, wolves, 

 lions. Even Makelele's daughter Uboeakae had seen these ; her 

 mother also wild oxen and rhinos. One day she and some other girls 

 had hidden in the rocks for fear of passing Zulus. A man i)assed 

 and asked v/hy they were hiding, and told them to come out. 

 When they had done so, one of them was hornched by a rhino 

 and the rest ran away. She also remembers the hippo in the rivers, 

 and how they pepa their children on their backs, as she says, like 

 women or monkeys. The voice of the cow was so unknown that 

 when the little children heard it they cried that it was a wolf. 

 This state of continual war with unsettlement of peoples was 

 strange to the races of these parts. Before then there was, of course, 

 constant fighting, but it is said to have resembled Irish village 

 fighting, just a day's shindy to keep their hands in, ending up 

 with drinks all round. 



Another effect of the famine was that both the captors of 

 Makelele and her own people began to indulge in human flesh. 

 It is well known that Moshesh's grandfather was left behind in a 

 flight and carried off by cannibals while the fugitives were still 

 in sight. This explains Moshesh's bon mot, when he was urged 

 to deal rigorously with the man eaters, that it would be wrong 

 to do harm to the grave of one's ancestors. His policy was to 

 recognise the dire distress in which cannibalism originated and 

 wean men from it by grants of grain rather than exterminate 

 them. Makelele's father was eaten by cannibals of the Crocodile 

 clan, and strangely enough by the very family into which her 

 grandson Nteke afterwards n:iarried. 



She wa . not long in bondage to the Mankoane, but managed 

 to escape after six months. She still bears a mark of her ad- 

 ventures in the long lobes of her ears where her great Zulu earrings 

 were fixed. The opportunity to escape was given by the arrival 



