Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

D >> David Livingstone >> Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa


R. D. That's just the way people speak when they talk on a subject of
which they have no knowledge. When we first opened our eyes, we found
our forefathers making rain, and we follow in their footsteps. You, who
send to Kuruman for corn, and irrigate your garden, may do without rain;
WE can not manage in that way. If we had no rain, the cattle would have
no pasture, the cows give no milk, our children become lean and die, our
wives run away to other tribes who do make rain and have corn, and the
whole tribe become dispersed and lost; our fire would go out.

M. D. I quite agree with you as to the value of the rain; but you can
not charm the clouds by medicines. You wait till you see the clouds
come, then you use your medicines, and take the credit which belongs to
God only.

R. D. I use my medicines, and you employ yours; we are both doctors, and
doctors are not deceivers. You give a patient medicine. Sometimes God is
pleased to heal him by means of your medicine; sometimes not--he dies.
When he is cured, you take the credit of what God does. I do the same.
Sometimes God grants us rain, sometimes not. When he does, we take the
credit of the charm. When a patient dies, you don't give up trust in
your medicine, neither do I when rain fails. If you wish me to leave off
my medicines, why continue your own?

M. D. I give medicine to living creatures within my reach, and can see
the effects, though no cure follows; you pretend to charm the clouds,
which are so far above us that your medicines never reach them. The
clouds usually lie in one direction, and your smoke goes in another. God
alone can command the clouds. Only try and wait patiently; God will give
us rain without your medicines.

R. D. Mahala-ma-kapa-a-a!! Well, I always thought white men were wise
till this morning. Who ever thought of making trial of starvation? Is
death pleasant, then?

M. D. Could you make it rain on one spot and not on another?

R. D. I wouldn't think of trying. I like to see the whole country green,
and all the people glad; the women clapping their hands, and giving me
their ornaments for thankfulness, and lullilooing for joy.

M. D. I think you deceive both them and yourself.

R. D. Well, then, there is a pair of us (meaning both are rogues).

The above is only a specimen of their way of reasoning, in which, when
the language is well understood, they are perceived to be remarkably
acute. These arguments are generally known, and I never succeeded in
convincing a single individual of their fallacy, though I tried to do
so in every way I could think of. Their faith in medicines as charms is
unbounded. The general effect of argument is to produce the impression
that you are not anxious for rain at all; and it is very undesirable
to allow the idea to spread that you do not take a generous interest
in their welfare. An angry opponent of rain-making in a tribe would be
looked upon as were some Greek merchants in England during the Russian
war.

The conduct of the people during this long-continued drought was
remarkably good. The women parted with most of their ornaments to
purchase corn from more fortunate tribes. The children scoured the
country in search of the numerous bulbs and roots which can sustain
life, and the men engaged in hunting. Very great numbers of the large
game, buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessebes, kamas or hartebeests,
kokongs or gnus, pallahs, rhinoceroses, etc., congregated at some
fountains near Kolobeng, and the trap called "hopo" was constructed,
in the lands adjacent, for their destruction. The hopo consists of two
hedges in the form of the letter V, which are very high and thick near
the angle. Instead of the hedges being joined there, they are made to
form a lane of about fifty yards in length, at the extremity of which
a pit is formed, six or eight feet deep, and about twelve or fifteen in
breadth and length. Trunks of trees are laid across the margins of the
pit, and more especially over that nearest the lane where the animals
are expected to leap in, and over that farthest from the lane where it
is supposed they will attempt to escape after they are in. The trees
form an overlapping border, and render escape almost impossible. The
whole is carefully decked with short green rushes, making the pit like
a concealed pitfall. As the hedges are frequently about a mile long, and
about as much apart at their extremities, a tribe making a circle three
or four miles round the country adjacent to the opening, and gradually
closing up, are almost sure to inclose a large body of game. Driving it
up with shouts to the narrow part of the hopo, men secreted there throw
their javelins into the affrighted herds, and on the animals rush to the
opening presented at the converging hedges, and into the pit, till that
is full of a living mass. Some escape by running over the others, as
a Smithfield market-dog does over the sheep's backs. It is a frightful
scene. The men, wild with excitement, spear the lovely animals with mad
delight; others of the poor creatures, borne down by the weight of their
dead and dying companions, every now and then make the whole mass heave
in their smothering agonies.

The Bakwains often killed between sixty and seventy head of large game
at the different hopos in a single week; and as every one, both rich and
poor, partook of the prey, the meat counteracted the bad effects of an
exclusively vegetable diet. When the poor, who had no salt, were forced
to live entirely on roots, they were often troubled with indigestion.
Such cases we had frequent opportunities of seeing at other times, for,
the district being destitute of salt, the rich alone could afford to
buy it. The native doctors, aware of the cause of the malady, usually
prescribed some of that ingredient with their medicines. The doctors
themselves had none, so the poor resorted to us for aid. We took the
hint, and henceforth cured the disease by giving a teaspoonful of salt,
minus the other remedies. Either milk or meat had the same effect,
though not so rapidly as salt. Long afterward, when I was myself
deprived of salt for four months, at two distinct periods, I felt no
desire for that condiment, but I was plagued by very great longing for
the above articles of food. This continued as long as I was confined
to an exclusively vegetable diet, and when I procured a meal of flesh,
though boiled in perfectly fresh rain-water, it tasted as pleasantly
saltish as if slightly impregnated with the condiment. Milk or meat,
obtained in however small quantities, removed entirely the excessive
longing and dreaming about roasted ribs of fat oxen, and bowls of cool
thick milk gurgling forth from the big-bellied calabashes; and I could
then understand the thankfulness to Mrs. L. often expressed by poor
Bakwain women, in the interesting condition, for a very little of
either.

In addition to other adverse influences, the general uncertainty, though
not absolute want of food, and the necessity of frequent absence for the
purpose of either hunting game or collecting roots and fruits, proved
a serious barrier to the progress of the people in knowledge. Our own
education in England is carried on at the comfortable breakfast and
dinner table, and by the cosy fire, as well as in the church and school.
Few English people with stomachs painfully empty would be decorous at
church any more than they are when these organs are overcharged. Ragged
schools would have been a failure had not the teachers wisely provided
food for the body as well as food for the mind; and not only must we
show a friendly interest in the bodily comfort of the objects of our
sympathy as a Christian duty, but we can no more hope for healthy
feelings among the poor, either at home or abroad, without feeding them
into them, than we can hope to see an ordinary working-bee reared into a
queen-mother by the ordinary food of the hive.

Sending the Gospel to the heathen must, if this view be correct, include
much more than is implied in the usual picture of a missionary, namely,
a man going about with a Bible under his arm. The promotion of commerce
ought to be specially attended to, as this, more speedily than any thing
else, demolishes that sense of isolation which heathenism engenders,
and makes the tribes feel themselves mutually dependent on, and mutually
beneficial to each other. With a view to this, the missionaries at
Kuruman got permission from the government for a trader to reside at
the station, and a considerable trade has been the result; the trader
himself has become rich enough to retire with a competence. Those laws
which still prevent free commercial intercourse among the civilized
nations seem to be nothing else but the remains of our own heathenism.
My observations on this subject make me extremely desirous to promote
the preparation of the raw materials of European manufactures in Africa,
for by that means we may not only put a stop to the slave-trade, but
introduce the negro family into the body corporate of nations, no one
member of which can suffer without the others suffering with it. Success
in this, in both Eastern and Western Africa, would lead, in the course
of time, to a much larger diffusion of the blessings of civilization
than efforts exclusively spiritual and educational confined to any one
small tribe. These, however, it would of course be extremely desirable
to carry on at the same time at large central and healthy stations, for
neither civilization nor Christianity can be promoted alone. In fact,
they are inseparable.




Chapter 2.

The Boers--Their Treatment of the Natives--Seizure of native Children
for Slaves--English Traders--Alarm of the Boers--Native Espionage--The
Tale of the Cannon--The Boers threaten Sechele--In violation of Treaty,
they stop English Traders and expel Missionaries--They attack
the Bakwains--Their Mode of Fighting--The Natives killed and
the School-children carried into Slavery--Destruction of English
Property--African Housebuilding and Housekeeping--Mode of Spending
the Day--Scarcity of Food--Locusts--Edible Frogs--Scavenger
Beetle--Continued Hostility of the Boers--The Journey
north--Preparations--Fellow-travelers--The Kalahari Desert--
Vegetation--Watermelons--The Inhabitants--The Bushmen--Their nomad Mode
of Life--Appearance--The Bakalahari--Their Love for Agriculture and
for domestic Animals--Timid Character--Mode of obtaining Water--Female
Water-suckers--The Desert--Water hidden.



Another adverse influence with which the mission had to contend was
the vicinity of the Boers of the Cashan Mountains, otherwise named
"Magaliesberg". These are not to be counfounded with the Cape colonists,
who sometimes pass by the name. The word Boer simply means "farmer", and
is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally
the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober,
industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who
have fled from English law on various pretexts, and have been joined
by English deserters and every other variety of bad character in their
distant localities, are unfortunately of a very different stamp. The
great objection many of the Boers had, and still have, to English law,
is that it makes no distinction between black men and white. They
felt aggrieved by their supposed losses in the emancipation of their
Hottentot slaves, and determined to erect themselves into a republic, in
which they might pursue, without molestation, the "proper treatment of
the blacks". It is almost needless to add that the "proper treatment"
has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, namely,
compulsory unpaid labor.

One section of this body, under the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter,
penetrated the interior as far as the Cashan Mountains, whence a Zulu
or Caffre chief, named Mosilikatze, had been expelled by the well-known
Caffre Dingaan; and a glad welcome was given them by the Bechuana
tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. They
came with the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the Bechuanas
soon found, as they expressed it, "that Mosilikatze was cruel to his
enemies, and kind to those he conquered; but that the Boers destroyed
their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." The tribes who still
retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labor
of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, building,
making dams and canals, and at the same time to support themselves.
I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers coming to a village, and,
according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to
weed their gardens, and have seen these women proceed to the scene of
unrequited toil, carrying their own food on their heads, their children
on their backs, and instruments of labor on their shoulders. Nor have
the Boers any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid
labor; on the contrary, every one of them, from Mr. Potgeiter and Mr.
Gert Krieger, the commandants, downward, lauded his own humanity and
justice in making such an equitable regulation. "We make the people work
for us, in consideration of allowing them to live in our country."

I can appeal to the Commandant Krieger if the foregoing is not a fair
and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. I am
sensible of no mental bias toward or against these Boers; and during the
several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes, I never avoided
the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick,
without money and without price. It is due to them to state that I was
invariably treated with respect; but it is most unfortunate that
they should have been left by their own Church for so many years to
deteriorate and become as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid
prejudice against color leads them to detest.

This new species of slavery which they have adopted serves to supply the
lack of field-labor only. The demand for domestic servants must be met
by forays on tribes which have good supplies of cattle. The Portuguese
can quote instances in which blacks become so degraded by the love of
strong drink as actually to sell themselves; but never in any one case,
within the memory of man, has a Bechuana chief sold any of his people,
or a Bechuana man his child. Hence the necessity for a foray to seize
children. And those individual Boers who would not engage in it for the
sake of slaves can seldom resist the two-fold plea of a well-told
story of an intended uprising of the devoted tribe, and the prospect of
handsome pay in the division of the captured cattle besides.

It is difficult for a person in a civilized country to conceive that
any body of men possessing the common attributes of humanity (and these
Boers are by no means destitute of the better feelings of our nature)
should with one accord set out, after loading their own wives and
children with caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood men
and women, of a different color, it is true, but possessed of domestic
feelings and affections equal to their own. I saw and conversed with
children in the houses of Boers who had, by their own and their masters'
account, been captured, and in several instances I traced the parents
of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among
the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their
parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give
credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I
received no other testimony but theirs I should probably have continued
skeptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found
the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in
the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was
compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for
the cruel anomaly. They are all traditionally religious, tracing their
descent from some of the best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever
saw. Hence they claim to themselves the title of "Christians", and all
the colored race are "black property" or "creatures". They being the
chosen people of God, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance,
and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the
Jews of old. Living in the midst of a native population much larger than
themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they
feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the Americans in
the Southern States. The first question put by them to strangers is
respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or
envious natives against any tribe, the case assumes all the appearance
and proportions of a regular insurrection. Severe measures then appear
to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and,
however bloody the massacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue:
it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. Indeed, the late Mr.
Hendrick Potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great
peacemaker of the country.

But how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to
the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them? The people among whom they
live are Bechuanas, not Caffres, though no one would ever learn that
distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single
instance in which the Bechuanas, even those of them who possess
fire-arms, have attacked either the Boers or the English. If there is
such an instance, I am certain it is not generally known, either beyond
or in the Cape Colony. They have defended themselves when attacked, as
in the case of Sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with
Europeans. We have a very different tale to tell of the Caffres, and the
difference has always been so evident to these border Boers that, ever
since those "magnificent savages"* obtained possession of fire-arms, not
one Boer has ever attempted to settle in Caffreland, or even face them
as an enemy in the field. The Boers have generally manifested a marked
antipathy to any thing but "long-shot" warfare, and, sidling away in
their emigrations toward the more effeminate Bechuanas, have left their
quarrels with the Caffres to be settled by the English, and their wars
to be paid for by English gold.

* The "United Service Journal" so styles them.

The Bakwains at Kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes enslaved
before their eyes--the Bakatla, the Batlokua, the Bahukeng, the
Bamosetla, and two other tribes of Bakwains were all groaning under
the oppression of unrequited labor. This would not have been felt as so
great an evil but that the young men of those tribes, anxious to obtain
cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance among
their own people, were in the habit of sallying forth, like our Irish
and Highland reapers, to procure work in the Cape Colony. After laboring
there three or four years, in building stone dikes and dams for the
Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they
could return with as many cows. On presenting one to their chief, they
ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterward. These volunteers
were highly esteemed among the Dutch, under the name of Mantatees. They
were paid at the rate of one shilling a day and a large loaf of bread
between six of them. Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about
twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognized me with the loud
laughter of joy when I was passing them at their work in the Roggefelt
and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town. I conversed with them and
with elders of the Dutch Church, for whom they were working, and found
that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties. I do not
believe that there is one Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country,
who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labor passing
to the colony, to deprive these laborers of their hardly-earned cattle,
for the very cogent reason that, "if they want to work, let them work
for us their masters," though boasting that in their case it would not
be paid for. I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I
was not born in a land of slaves. No one can understand the effect of
the unutterable meanness of the slave-system on the minds of those
who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the
degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered,
would be equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them
as "paying one's way" is to the rest of mankind.

Wherever a missionary lives, traders are sure to come; they are mutually
dependent, and each aids in the work of the other; but experience shows
that the two employments can not very well be combined in the same
person. Such a combination would not be morally wrong, for nothing would
be more fair, and apostolical too, than that the man who devotes
his time to the spiritual welfare of a people should derive temporal
advantage from upright commerce, which traders, who aim exclusively at
their own enrichment, modestly imagine ought to be left to them. But,
though it is right for missionaries to trade, the present system of
missions renders it inexpedient to spend time in so doing. No missionary
with whom I ever came in contact, traded; and while the traders, whom
we introduced and rendered secure in the country, waxed rich, the
missionaries have invariably remained poor, and have died so. The
Jesuits, in Africa at least, were wiser in their generation than we;
theirs were large, influential communities, proceeding on the system of
turning the abilities of every brother into that channel in which he
was most likely to excel; one, fond of natural history, was allowed to
follow his bent; another, fond of literature, found leisure to pursue
his studies; and he who was great in barter was sent in search of ivory
and gold-dust; so that while in the course of performing the religious
acts of his mission to distant tribes, he found the means of aiding
effectually the brethren whom he had left in the central settlement.* We
Protestants, with the comfortable conviction of superiority, have sent
out missionaries with a bare subsistence only, and are unsparing in our
laudations of some for not being worldly-minded whom our niggardliness
made to live as did the prodigal son. I do not speak of myself, nor need
I to do so, but for that very reason I feel at liberty to interpose a
word in behalf of others. I have before my mind at this moment facts and
instances which warrant my putting the case in this way: The command to
"go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" must be
obeyed by Christians either personally or by substitute. Now it is quite
possible to find men whose love for the heathen and devotion to the work
will make them ready to go forth on the terms "bare subsistence", but
what can be thought of the justice, to say nothing of the generosity,
of Christians and churches who not only work their substitutes at the
lowest terms, but regard what they give as charity! The matter is the
more grave in respect to the Protestant missionary, who may have a wife
and family. The fact is, there are many cases in which it is right,
virtuous, and praiseworthy for a man to sacrifice every thing for a
great object, but in which it would be very wrong for others, interested
in the object as much as he, to suffer or accept the sacrifice, if they
can prevent it.

* The Dutch clergy, too, are not wanting in worldly wisdom. A
fountain is bought, and the lands which it can irrigate
parceled out and let to villagers. As they increase in
numbers, the rents rise and the church becomes rich. With 200
Pounds per annum in addition from government, the salary
amounts to 400 or 500 Pounds a year. The clergymen then preach
abstinence from politics as a Christian duty. It is quite
clear that, with 400 Pounds a year, but little else except
pure spirituality is required.

English traders sold those articles which the Boers most dread, namely,
arms and ammunition; and when the number of guns amounted to five, so
much alarm was excited among our neighbors that an expedition of several
hundred Boers was seriously planned to deprive the Bakwains of their
guns. Knowing that the latter would rather have fled to the Kalahari
Desert than deliver up their weapons and become slaves, I proceeded to
the commandant, Mr. Gert Krieger, and, representing the evils of any
such expedition, prevailed upon him to defer it; but that point being
granted, the Boer wished to gain another, which was that I should act as
a spy over the Bakwains.

I explained the impossibility of my complying with his wish, even though
my principles as an Englishman had not stood in the way, by referring to
an instance in which Sechele had gone with his whole force to punish
an under-chief without my knowledge. This man, whose name was Kake,
rebelled, and was led on in his rebellion by his father-in-law, who
had been regicide in the case of Sechele's father. Several of those who
remained faithful to that chief were maltreated by Kake while passing
to the Desert in search of skins. We had just come to live with the
Bakwains when this happened, and Sechele consulted me. I advised mild
measures, but the messengers he sent to Kake were taunted with the
words, "He only pretends to wish to follow the advice of the teacher:
Sechele is a coward; let him come and fight if he dare." The next
time the offense was repeated, Sechele told me he was going to hunt
elephants; and as I knew the system of espionage which prevails among
all the tribes, I never made inquiries that would convey the opinion
that I distrusted them. I gave credit to his statement. He asked
the loan of a black-metal pot to cook with, as theirs of pottery are
brittle. I gave it and a handful of salt, and desired him to send back
two tit-bits, the proboscis and fore-foot of the elephant. He set off,
and I heard nothing more until we saw the Bakwains carrying home their
wounded, and heard some of the women uttering the loud wail of sorrow
for the dead, and others pealing forth the clear scream of victory. It
was then clear that Sechele had attacked and driven away the rebel.