July, 1905.] 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



173 



gradually occupied by the stronger races, the Hotten- 

 tots could no longer support their herds, their only 

 means of existence, and many were reduced to slavery 

 on the farms of the invaders, where their cleverness in 

 handling cattle made them valuable as drivers of bullock 

 waggons. Their light attachment to the soil, due 

 to their inherent love of wandering, made their displace- 

 ment the less difficult, and the national vice of dacha- 

 smoking to excess, together with the vice of spirit 

 drinking, acquired from the settler, accelerated their 

 degradation. 



Koranna. — The Koranna occupied the Middle 

 Orange in the 17th century, but they were always a rest- 

 less people, whom nothing would bind to the soil. One 

 section of them went up the Vaal and formed an inde- 

 pendent kingdom round the town of Mamusa on the 

 Harts river, where they still keep up many of the 

 national customs and speak a corrupt form of the Hot- 

 tentot language; but owing to their long intercourse 

 with the Kafir tribes, they have developed the physical 

 characters of the latter, and cannot be regarded as 

 pure Hottentots. 



Griqiia. — The Griqua are Boer-Hottentot half- 

 breeds, whose original home was to the north of the 

 river Olifant. They were forced to retreat before the 

 colonists and founded a republic at Rietfontein. Dis- 

 cords soon led to disruption. One section, under Adam 

 Kok, founded Philippolis and later on Kokstadt in 

 Griqualand East, and another section, under Andries 

 Waterboer, founded Griqua Town in Griqualand West. 



Bantu. — In Natal we find ourselves in the midst of a 

 tvpical Bantu people, the Zulu-Xosa, or Zulu-Ivafirs, 

 from whose language the group-name Bantu (people) 

 has been chosen as a general term to include all the 

 African races of Bantu speech. This artificial grouping 

 conceals a heterogeneous mass, containing at least six 

 distinct elements, true Negro, Negrillo, Bushman, Hot- 

 tentot, Hamite, and Semite, which are blended together 

 in different proportions, producing a wide diversity in 

 physical type. 



The chief characteristics of the main Bantu groups 

 are a fairly tall stature, a skin colour of varying shades 

 of red-brown, a high and narrow head, a broad nose, 

 and thick but not everted lips. 



It seems probable that the Bantu type is mainly due 

 to a blending of the true Negro, of the type found 

 to-day in greatest purity in West Africa and the Sudan, 

 with a Hamitic stock, and that the centre of the dis- 

 persion was somewhere in the neighbourhood of British 

 East Africa. From their dual ancestry the Bantu in- 

 herited the aptitude for agriculture, and for cattle-rear- 

 ing, and, provided thus with an ample suppiv of food, 

 living in a magnificently fertile area, possessing also a 

 political organisation, which developed into tribal group- 

 mg, they flourished, and increased and multiplied to 

 such an extent that now their teeming millions swarm 

 over almost the whole of South Africa. 



In their earlier wanderings they must have mixed to 

 a considerable extent with the aboriginal inhabitants, 

 and we find distinctly Hottentot features among the 

 Bechuana, who^ are regarded on this and other grounds 

 as being among the earliest immigrants. The later waves 

 preserved a purer type, such as the Zulu-Xosa, who are 

 comparatively recent arrivals in their present territory, 

 though a long period of contact with the aborigines is 

 shown by the adoption of three clicks into the language. 



Xosa. — At one time the Xosa spread far to the south, 



and the first conflict with the whites took place in the 

 Swellendam district in the middle of the i8th century. 

 Later on the boundary was fixed at the Gresit Fish 

 river, but the rapidly increasing people had spread by 

 1800 as far as Mossel Bay. Then force was brought to 

 bear on them, and troops were called out, but the general 

 retreat did not take place until 1835. External restric- 

 tions produced internal shiftings and d' turbances and 

 general disorganisation, leading to a loss of indepen- 

 dence for all the clans. 



Zulus. — The history of the Zulus, the northern branch 

 of the Zulu-Xosa, is well known since the time 

 when they sprang into notoriety under the famous 

 Chaka, the terror of whose name was carried for hun- 

 dreds of miles in every direction by tribes which he had 

 put to flight. Streams of disorganised people fled 

 before him, and some of these, encountering weaker 

 tribes in their flight, attacked them and took possessiori 

 of their lands : thus the disorganisation spread. Tlie 

 Fecane, or Fingu, Xezibe, Baca, and Amahlubi fled to 

 the south, and the Fecane, after being slaves to the con- 

 querors, were freed in 1835, and formed the Fingu 

 location near Port Elizabeth. 



Matahele. — The Matabele, " the men who dis- 

 appear," so called from their immense bucklers, having 

 fled across the Drakensberg, gathered together under 

 L'msilikatsi and poured in a vast army across Bechuana- 

 land, conquering the sedentary tribes, and augmenting 

 their numbers by captives and fugitives. They were 

 defeated and almost annihilated by the Boers, but this 

 catastrophe was only a brief check in their victorious 

 career, which culminated in the defeat of the Mashona 

 and the occupation of Mashon aland, Rhodesia. 



Mashona and J[Iakalaka. — The Mashona and Maka- 

 laka were probably among the earlier waves of Bantu 

 migration. Tradition ascribes to the Makalaka a power- 

 ful kingdom, which lasted for 300 years, between 

 the Limpopo and the Zambezi, and the Mashona lived 

 to the north of them as far as the Umfuli river. They 

 were powerless before the warlike Matabele, and were 

 either reduced to subjection or sought refuge in flight. 



Barotse and Makololo. — Another powerful kingdom 

 was that of the Barotse, on the middle Zambezi. This 

 was overthrown by the Makololo, under Sebituane, in 

 1835, but on the death of Sekeletu, the successor of 

 Sebituane, the Barotse revolted, drove out the Makololo, 

 and re-established their empire on a surer footing. 



Thus the history of the Bantu peoples is one of con- 

 tinuous movement, of perpetual shiftings, of states 

 formed by the grouping of many tribes under one force- 

 ful leader, and the disruption of these states, either by 

 natural disintegration when the central power weakens, 

 or before the attack of some greater or stronger force. 

 The grouping is political rather than racial, and hence 

 it tends to produce a blending rather than a differentia- 

 tion of type. 



The ethnology of a country is always influenced by 

 the environment, and this is notably the case in South 

 Africa. Here is an immense stretch of country, contain- 

 ing few barriers to limit expansion in any direction or 

 to provide security against attack. Hence the racial 

 history has shown streams of people perpetually moving 

 in all directions, producing an infinite fusion of types, 

 a uniformity in diversity, which makes South African 

 ethnology a subject of unusual complexity, needing a 

 great deal of patient unravelling before the affinities of 

 even the main races can be clearly discovered. 



