So Bushmen survive in the most rigorous places; they survive in the dense, mosquito-ridden papyrus swamps of the Okovango River, steaming like a jungle and dangerous with snakes and fever, where the River Bushmen live, the only Bushmen with plenty of water; they also survive on the vast, rolling steppes of central Bechuanaland, the territory of the Gikwe Bushmen, who for the nine dry months of the year have no water at all and do without it.

Besides the fact that Bushmen alone can live in the land they occupy, there is another reason for their remoteness and shyness. They are in many instances exploited by the Bantu farmers, and by a few of the European farmers, usually those who need free or almost free labor. Many Bantu farms and households have Bushman servants, or serfs, rather, as they usually come from the land on or near the farm, and when working they are paid nothing but are given food, tobacco, and sometimes cast-off clothing as wages. Some European farms in Bechuanaland and some in South-West Africa have Bushman laborers too, though most European farmers do not depend on Bushman labor. Those European farmers who do employ Bushmen usually pay wages, about ten shillings a month, plus a ration of food to each Bushman who is working, though not necessarily to his family, consisting of about a pound of cornmeal and a quart of milk a day, meat occasionally, and weekly a ration of tobacco. Perhaps the employer will add a set of clothing- that is, a pair of cast-off pants and a shirt-and perhaps a blanket every year, but occasionally they pay their labor in cast-off clothing and omit the ten shillings altogether.

European clothing is esteemed among Bushmen, for it is symbolic to them of a people mightier than themselves, and also because, made of cloth instead of leather, it is more clinging, therefore warmer and more comfortable, and dries faster when wet. It is sought after and desired, it is got through employment; yet, even so, Bushmen hesitate to seek employment because they believe that they will be badly treated (as they sometimes are) and they often find the customary wage and food ration to be inadequate for anyone who must support a family. Supposedly, the wives of Bushmen laborers are free to look on the farmer's land for roots and berries, as they would if they were living in the veld; but, as it happens, after a few years the supply of wild food around a farm becomes exhausted.

The Bantu farmers, being as a rule much poorer than the European farmers, are less generous to their Bushman serfs. They also give a food ration of cornmeal and milk but almost never meat, for any meat that may come into the Bantu kraal is eaten by the Bantus unless it is the carcass of a hyena or a leopard which the Bantu masters have killed for the pelt. The Bantus say: "Our Bushman servants are like our children; they herd our cattle for us and we feed them. A child does not ask for wages when he helps with the family work."

Besides this, the Bantus badly cheat the Bushmen who come in from the veld to trade cured antelope hides for metal and tobacco, sometimes asking several hides, worth several pounds apiece, for enough tobacco to fill the palm of the Bushman's hand, or for a piece of wire long enough to make an arrowhead. All in all, it does not benefit the Bushmen to live anywhere near Bantu or European settlements, and that is why the Bushmen of the veld run and hide when they see Europeans coming, believing that they may be taken by force (as they sometimes are), and why they avoid going to a Bantu settlement except to trade for tobacco when they feel they must smoke, or when they are dying of thirst and must come in to beg for water.

"Dikai made a bow from a branch, an arrow from a reed, and gave
them to her younger son." - © Copyright Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.

ONCE I TALKED WITH A YOUNG BUSHMAN who had visited one of our camps in Bechuanaland many times, who spoke Afrikaans, and whom I shall call Tami. I could speak a little Afrikaans, so he and I could talk together. He was in his early thirties and had been working for some time for European farmers. When I met him he was married, and as his wife had just had a baby, he felt that his ten-shilling- a-month wage was inadequate and he planned to move to another part of the country where he hoped to be paid more. As it is rather unusual for a Bushman to uproot himself from his own country, no matter how long he has been on a farm and away from his own people, I asked him where he had come from and how he had learned Afrikaans.

"Oh," he said, "I learned Afrikaans in the places I have been. I have worked for white men since I was a young boy and I have always been fast to learn their languages. In the same way I have learned the languages of the black people."

"Where did you live before you worked for white people?" I asked.

"We lived not far from Nurigaas, at the edge of the police zone. I am a young person still, but I remember that Nurigaas was all wild then. We always lived there."

"With your parents?"

"Yes, until the police boys (1) took the old man my father."

I asked him what had happened, and he said: "We lived at the edge of the police zone, you know. We lived with other Bushmen there, and my sister, she was there. My mother's father was still alive then, but he was too old, he couldn't even carry water, and my mother had to do every thing for him. She was his daughter, so she was glad to do it, but my sister and I thought he was just an old man who sat and coughed and spit. He didn't like the Europeans or the black people either, and my father didn't either, and that is why we lived on the other side of the police zone. On one side were the police boys with camels-that was in the old days with the camel patrol (2) -- and on the other side the lions and the Bushmen asked for your pass.

"One day my father went hunting and he was gone two days. Then my sister said: 'He must have shot a giraffe.' A giraffe is royal game, you know, and you can go to jail if you kill one, only my father didn't know it then.

"Yes, and that day two police boys came on camels and a white man on a camel. The police boys had a rifle and the white policeman had a rifle and a little gun in his hand. They had a Nurigaas Bushman walking with them, but he didn't come near us because he was ashamed. One police boy spoke the language of the Bushmen, and he said: 'Where is the old man who lives here?' and my mother pointed to my grandfather and she said: 'This is the one,' but the police boy said: 'Not that one, I want your husband. Where is he?' 'I don't know,' said my mother, but the police boy said: 'How can an old woman like you lie to me?' and my mother just covered up her face and said nothing. Then the police boy and the Nurigaas Bushman found my father's spoor off in the veld, and they all followed him with the police boy and the Nurigaas Bushman walking and the white man and the other police boy on the camels. Next morning they came back with my father, they had his hands tied behind and a rope around his neck and he was running behind the camel. His face was all thick, you know, and he had to hold his head back because the rope was choking, My mother, she ran after the police boys and called them to stop. She said: 'I will speak with the old man before he dies.' But the police boys had no time and they went off with the camels' heads going up and down and the old man running, running, running, behind.

"And my mother fell down in the dust and cried, and my sister did too, but I didn't, I watched my father instead because I didn't know when I would ever see him again. I told them so and I was right, because later a Bushman who came up from the south told us that they rode the camels through a river and my father was drowned. It was the rope around his neck that choked him, though. That is what happened, and I remember it all, but it happened a long time ago.

"After that, my mother wouldn't stay in the veld without a man and she took us near the waterhole of Nurigaas because the veld was no place for us when my father was dead. But I would like to find that Nurigaas Bushman who followed my father's tracks.

"Then one day a European farmer came in his ox wagon and he said to my mother: 'Who will give me a boy for this pound of tobacco?' And my mother was afraid, so she took the tobacco and said to me: 'He wants you to go with him.' I cried, but the white man took me and put me in his ox wagon and gave my mother another cup of tobacco, but she told him she didn't want it and wanted me to come back. But the white man drove away and my mother ran along beside, crying. She said: 'Wait! Where will I get another boy when he is killed like my husband?' But the farmer didn't hear her. I got sick riding in the wagon and my bowels opened and I was ashamed because the farmer's Bushmen were riding in the wagon too, and they said: 'Why are you crying? Don't be afraid.' But I was afraid because my grandfather told me that white people used to hunt Bushmen and wanted to kill us for our land. The farmer took me to his farm and I pulled weeds and watched his cattle. He gave me milk and cornmeal, but I didn't like it. I told him milk was for babies and I wanted him to take me back to my country, but he laughed at me.

"He called me Goliath because I was so small. Goliath, come here. Goliath, watch my calves. And later he gave me a shirt to cover my body and then I went to work for another master, who gave me a goat, and then I worked for my last master, who paid me shillings. But I am leaving here too because in South-West Africa they pay better. I am a father now, you know."

The day Tami left, I walked over the veld toward a road to say good-by to him, and when I got halfway there I found that he had come halfway to say good-by to me. He was holding his goat by the horns, and behind him his wife, wearing a horrid rag of a European dress, was standing with the baby inside the front of the dress. I gave Tami a knife and his wife a scarf of mine, although I had nothing to give to the baby, and they said good-by to me and turned, Tami dragging the goat around, pretending to be very jaunty, and they set out walking toward the road that leads to South-West Africa.

Times have changed since Tami's father died. In those days, to be sure, there was a great deal more friction between Bushmen and non-Bushmen than there is now because the Bushmen who lived near the farms of European or Bantu farmers quite often killed cattle. It is sometimes said that they did so because they were unable to distinguish between cattle and wild game, or that the cattle drove away the wild game so that the Bushmen would have had no meat if they had not killed the cattle, but I very much doubt that either of these things was true. Most probably, the Bushmen found that hunting cattle was extremely easy, and also, very probably, they wanted to revenge themselves upon the owners of the cattle, whom they believed to be encroaching upon the land they considered their own. Today, largely because the ownership of the land has been determined, many fewer cattle are killed by Bushmen.

"Ukwane eats a tsama melon, the source of food and
all water for Bushmen during the drought."
© Copyright Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.

OF COURSE, IT IS QUITE AGAINST THE LAW for any farmer to keep Bushmen against their will and without recompense, but in the most remote outposts, on many farms, the laws cannot always be enforced. In the Bechuanaland Protectorate today, and also, I believe, in South-West Africa, the governments are trying to set wage scales and provide education for Bushmen, something very difficult for the governments to do as the Bushmen represent only a small fragment of the population, pay no taxes whatever, of course, and are in great demand as laborers; but the only Bushmen who so far can benefit from this are those who already live on the more central farms. Most Bushmen live in the veld, many in almost unreachable parts of the desert, and these people are still being taken by farmers and made to work almost as slaves.

Usually Bushmen do not run away from their masters unless a very good chance presents itself, such as the master's departure for a time, in which case he may return to find that all his Bushmen have run. But to escape is not always easy; the Bantus usually ride after the escaping Bushmen and drag them back, sometimes beating them severely as well. We once learned of a Bushman who, trying to escape, was captured by his Bantu master and beaten to death, his potential labor being sacrificed to set an example for others.

A European farmer can sometimes get police help in recapturing his escaped Bushmen if the farmer has paid the Bushmen some wages in advance and is owed the Bushmen's labor. European farmers are also not always lenient with Bushmen who try to escape. But to escape from any master is by no means impossible; Bushmen are not locked up at night or guarded during the day. Even the chain gangs of Bushmen that you may see in European settlements (Bushmen living near the farms are put in jail occasionally for killing giraffes or stealing cattle) are always straggling down a road with a defenseless guard trailing far behind, and we often wondered why Bushmen were so docile, so easy to exploit, allowing themselves to be badly treated and taken away from their homes. Some people, like Tami, have no choice because they have forgotten the fine skills required to live in the veld and would die there. Some young Bushmen find the promise of European clothing and customs too alluring to resist and are willing to give up their own ways and customs for a shirt or a ragged dress. Perhaps others welcome the promise of food every day, even though they find that on the farms they are poorer than ever, having little enough food, and when their leather clothes fall into rags they cannot hunt to get new ones. Perhaps, too, they are surprised to find their Bantu or European masters not always as dangerous as they feared.

But these things are not true of everyone. Many servants long for their homes; many veld Bushmen hide from Europeans for fear they will be taken away, for they know that a European does not have to force them to come with him, only to persuade them, and since they are afraid of him they hear themselves agreeing to go, and, shortly after, find themselves working on his farm, angry with themselves and filled with remorse.

We learned two reasons for the submissiveness of Bushmen. One reason is that it is not in their nature to fight, not in their experience to deal with people other than themselves. They would much rather run, hide, and wait until a menace has passed than to defend themselves forcefully, quite unlike the Bantus, who are staunch and brave and in the past have waged great wars. But Bushmen deplore and misunderstand bravery. The heroes of their legends are always little jackals who trick, lie, and narrowly escape, rather than larger, bolder animals such as lions (who in the Kalahari are something of a master race). In the Bushmen's stories, lions are always being scalded, singed, duped, cuckolded, or killed.

Bushmen cannot afford to fight with each other and almost never do because their only real weapon is their arrow poison, for which there is no antidote. But even were they to disregard this danger, Bushmen would try not to fight because they have no mechanism in their culture for dealing with disagreements other than to remove the causes of the disagreements. Their hold on life is too tenuous to permit quarreling among themselves. A Bushman will go to any lengths to avoid making other Bushmen jealous of him, and for this reason the few possessions that Bushmen have are constantly circling among the members of their groups. No one cares to keep a particularly good knife too long, even though he may want it desperately, because he will become the object of envy; as he sits by himself polishing a fine edge on the blade he will hear the soft voices of the other men in his band saying: "Look at him there, admiring his knife while we have nothing." Soon somebody will ask him for his knife, for everybody would like to have it, and he will give it away. Their culture insists that they share with each other, and it has never happened that a Bushman failed to share objects, food, or water with the other members of his band, for without very rigid cooperation Bushmen could not survive the famines and droughts that the Kalahari offers them.

The other reason for their submissiveness is that Bushmen, whose possessions are only sticks and bones, beads made of eggshell and fragments of leather, are overwhelmed by the possessions of Bantus and Europeans-horses and cattle, dogs, melon lands, medicines, rifles, boots, and trucks-as well as their enormous size, heavy necks and arms, great beards, and roaring voices. Europeans are beyond the powers of Bushmen's imagination, more awesome in stature, in possessions, in might, than even the Bushmen's god, who can be cajoled, who hunts with a bow and arrow. Bushmen consider the Europeans and the Bantus to be superior beings. Bantus and Europeans consider the Bushmen to be inferior beings, and, without resisting, a Bushman always bows to a European or a Bantu person's will.

Once an old man, a veld Bushman, told us the story of the reim and the grass fiber. A reim is a leather rope which the Bantus make by skinning a cow with a long, spiraling cut that goes around and around the body so that the hide comes off all in one piece a few inches wide and many yards long, which is then stretched and cured, making a piece of leather useful for harnessing oxen or building a hut.

"In the earliest days," the old man said, "the Bushmen and the non-Bushmen were all one nation, and the great god come to earth and gave them a rope. Half the rope was made of reim and half was made of grass fiber. The great god told all the people to pull on the rope, and the non-Bushmen came away with the reim, but the Bushmen got only the grass fiber. After that, the non-Bushmen had cattle and reims and all those things, but the Bushmen had only the things that are in the veld. If this ever happened again," the old man said, "I would tell the Bushmen to make sure they got the reim half."