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Hunter-Gatherers, Traders and Slaves

The 'Mfecane ' Impact on Bushmen, their Ritual and their Art

THOMAS A. DOWSON

Julian Cobbing's critique of the notion of the 'mfecane' has, despite some criticism, provided a framework for the integration of what have been many different sectional histories of South Africa.¹ But, because early accounts of South Africa's past have not yet been totally unloaded of prejudice and of the colonists' legitimising ideologies, other myths and cultural stereotypes continue to act as alibis for present-day cultural divisionist policies. One such myth is the part played by various Bushman groups² in the colonial history of southern Africa. If we are to abandon the 'mfecane' myth because of its role in legitimising the apartheid state, the new historical constructions of the period conventionally designated the 'mfecane' should take cognisance of all peoples present on the landscape at the time.

Here I challenge the once explicit, now implicit, view that 'of the unlucky Bushman there is little for history to say'.³ Perhaps one of the reasons for this view having become implicit is that although some historians have already confronted the issue,⁴ they have not been able to develop an approach that reincorporates the Bushmen fully into southern African history. As a result many historians have ignored archaeological discourse and have tended to rely on cultural stereotypes. Nigel Penn, however, presents us with a notable exception in this regard for the western Cape.⁵ In this essay I advance a methodology that will allow us to restore the Bushman peoples to their rightful place not only in the events commonly known up until now as the 'mfecane' but also in the history of southern Africa.

The Bushmen in History

The Bushmen have been politically marginalised since the arrival of European colonists. The white settlers brought with them a specific set of European morals and standards, and it was against these that the Bushmen were seen and judged. Early writers forcefully convey these essentially conservative and racist attitudes. Missionaries in particular were scathing of the Bushmen: Robert Moffat and H. Tindall, for instance, were among many who emphasised what they considered to be a lacuna in Bushman life:

Hard is the Bushman's lot, friendless, forsaken, an outcast from the world, greatly preferring the company of beasts of prey to that of civilized man. His gorah soothes some solitary hours, although its sounds are often responded to by the lion's roar or the hyeana's howl. He knows no God, knows nothing of eternity, yet dreads death; and has no shrine at which he leaves his cares or sorrows. We can scarcely conceive of human beings descending lower in the scale of ignorance and vice; while yet there can be no question that they are children of one common parent with ourselves. If, during a period of four thousand years, they have sunk thus low, what would have the world become if left without Divine revelation to grope in the mazes of heathen darkness?⁶

He has no religion, no laws, no government, no recognised authority, no patrimony, no fixed abode . . . a soul debased, it is true, and completely bound down and clogged by his animal nature.⁷

These views still permeate much of southern Africa's history as it is being written by many historians, as opposed to archaeologists.⁸ (Although I join others in questioning the validity of this distinction between archaeology and history, it clearly exists in the southern African context.) For decades the Bushmen have been portrayed as simple nomads, wandering aimlessly across a landscape they did not own or manipulate. Living as if in a garden of Eden, 'hunter-gatherers had time and energy for subtle and complex aesthetic expression in rock art and in music'.⁹ But when some writers consider the leisure time the Bushmen, but not the herding or farming groups, are supposed to have had, the difference is explicable: 'The herding way of life, moreover, required more work than hunting and gathering, so that pastoralists had less time and energy to devote to aesthetic pursuits.'¹⁰

Early colonial reaction to the delicate and complex rock art of southern Africa was also one of great surprise, given the low intellectual status then ascribed to the Bushmen. Sir John Barrow, for example, wrote: 'The force and spirit of drawings, given to them by bold touches judiciously applied, and by the effect of light and shadow, could not be expected from savages.'¹¹ Although they allowed aesthetic merit, the early writers denied any intellectual accomplishment. Despite research over the last two decades demonstrating that Bushman art was not the product of idle hours, these early racist attitudes linger in histories produced today. Thus conceived, the Bushmen's stature as human beings capable of creative thought and the control of their own destiny was and still is being obscured.

Attitudes like Moffat's and Tindall's that held the Bushmen in low regard informed early explorers' and missionaries' perceptions of the Bushman peoples' political role in southern Africa, a perception that persists today in both public and academic discourse. Because of their 'animal nature' it was inconceivable that the Bushmen could have had any impact on the colonial history of southern Africa. This perception has given rise to what have become the two most widely held stereotypic images of the Bushmen in history and literature today: the Bushmen as stock raiders and the Bushmen as a vanishing race.

Bushman Raiders

The early written records of events in southern Africa abound with references to Bushmen as raiders – some writers mention little else. For example, Thomas Arbousset makes repeated reference to this, describing how even the Sotho would not use some of the good pastures for their cattle because they were 'exposed to the depredations' of the Bushmen. In one incident during Arbousset's expedition with King Moshoeshoe, for example, their horses disappeared during the night; they immediately assumed it was the Bushmen:

The previous winter, these vagrants had stolen all of Masopo' s horses, and they had eaten them in the bush in the heart of the Maloti. We reckoned that the same thing must be happening to us. But we were wrong. Our horses had simply gone round a mountain, and we found them grazing quietly at the bottom of a valley.¹²

This kind of incident must have happened more than once. It was supposedly because of these raids that the Boers mounted extensive commandos against the Bushmen, but the hatred ran deeper than this.¹³ While I would not argue that Bushmen were not involved in raids throughout the subcontinent, I do argue against the importance this activity is given in both popular and academic discourse. These raids have to be placed within a wider, more enquiring social context.¹⁴

This outlawed existence, so the reconstruction goes, could not go on for much longer; there could only be one end to it. The 'Bushman as raider' stereotype leads directly to the next.

The Vanishing Bushmen

As a result of contact with Bantu-speaking farmers and white colonists, the Bushmen, supposedly the weakest of the various cultural groups, were said to have disappeared into the more mountainous and less hospitable parts of the country. A view still widely held and promoted in popular local histories is that some Bushman groups were forced to move into the drier areas of the Kalahari, where they still exist today:

The struggle between the [whites and the Bushmen] went on for years, but there could only be one end to it. The Bushmen retreated into the mountains at first, but eventually moved into the desert areas of the Kalahari, Botswana and South West Africa, where they adapted themselves to conditions in which very few other people could have survived – a remarkable achievement in view of their limited equipment.¹⁵

Liberal histories, on the other hand, mention some form of economic relationship between Bushmen and the pastoralists or farmers in the different regions.^l6 But these are scant and very generalised. Maps drawn to accompany such texts tend to present various Bantu-speaking groups as having displaced Bushman groups.¹⁷ Leonard Thompson's map shows 'Khoisan' groups occupying more arid, less hospitable regions to the west of the subcontinent. Again, I do not want to argue that the Bushmen did not occupy these less favourable regions. What I am concerned with is the apparent ease with which Bushman populations are moved about on a map.

Maps like these, besides being demographically incorrect, construct a very simplified picture of the demography of the subcontinent; this in turn influences perceptions of the social dynamics of cultural interaction in the region. No idea of the complexity of the economic and social relations between hunter-gatherers and farmers is given. The impression is created that the Bushmen gave in to these stronger, less 'primitive' farmers and herders or were entirely assimilated, even though we know that some Bushman people developed strong ties with farming and herding communities. Although a different picture is beginning to emerge,¹⁸ partly as a result of writers incorporating archaeological research, the principle of the so-called 'weaker' necessarily giving way to the 'stronger' is still firmly entrenched in the academic mind.

This view of the Bushmen vanishing into the mountains where they lived out their last days, carrying out raids from time to time, is produced by the same ideology that led to the notion that Natal was devastated during the 1810s and 1820s and that its population was either exterminated or driven out by the Zulu.¹⁹ This idea of a 'devastated Natal' was then appropriated to justify British colonisation of the area and domination over African populations. The whites are thus presented as having put an end to Zulu ravages and having brought peace and stability to the area.

Where groups of Bushmen did remain, in the Drakensberg mountains of Natal and the eastern Cape, they are portrayed as a social nuisance, thus justifying the commandos sent out against them. 'The Bushmen became such a pest that it was necessary to hunt them down.'²⁰ The reinforcement of the idea of Bushmen as bandits in modern popular literature continues to excuse the early settlers for exterminating vast numbers of them.²¹

The persistence of these two stereotypes results in part from continuing to look at the Bushmen through the prejudices of early writers. Despite recent extensive research on historical and modern Bushmen challenging them, these stereotypes are not easily dislodged from histories of southern Africa. When one reads writers who, though still influenced by European values, were more sympathetic towards the Bushmen, a different image of the Bushmen and their political role in southern Africa begins to emerge.²²

Of course, an even more dramatically different image would have emerged if a history had been written by a Bushman and from a Bushman's perspective. In the absence of such a history, we do nevertheless have a record of another kind that can be used together with other historical sources to recover, at least in part, this Bushman perspective.²³ This record consists of archaeological remains.

The Archaeological Record

Although the written archaeological record is not seen from a Bushman perspective, some of it certainly contributes towards a more balanced view. The better-known part of the archaeological record comprises excavated remains such as lithic, ceramic, botanical, skeletal and faunal evidence, and it is with these that archaeologists have been primarily concerned. The other component of the archaeological record is rock art. I discuss each component in turn.

Excavated Remains

During the last decade in particular a number of studies have demonstrated that contact between Bushmen and Bantu-speaking farmers was much more complex than previously thought.²⁴ In the Thukela Basin, for example, excavations have provided empirical evidence for interaction between Stone Age and Iron Age groups.²⁵ Pieces of talc schist and soapstone, often used to make bowls and other vessels, have been found at hunter-gatherer sites in deposits post-dating 2000 BP; this material has not been recovered from deposits prior to this date, that is, before contact with the Iron Age farmers.²⁶ These sites are in the upper reaches of the Thukela River and some distance from the sources of these rock types. Similar stone was recovered from sites occupied by farming communities, one of which also produced an assemblage of Stone Age or hunter-gatherer tools that archaeologist Tim Maggs believes are contemporary with the farming occupation of the site.²⁷

Maggs and Aaron Mazel argue that the patterning of material culture in the Natal area shows that interaction between Bushmen and farmers, which must have started as soon as the farmers came into contact with Bushmen, was initially extensive and amicable. Mazel has demonstrated that these relationships, certainly at the outset, were on a relatively equal footing, unlike the kind of clientship the Bushmen entered into with the farmers as reported in the nineteenth-century records.²⁸ The possibility that clientship became more substantial as a result of decimation of the Bushman people by European colonists should be investigated; I touch on it again below. Further, there is every indication that new complex social relations accompanied and formed the basis of the new economic relations.²⁹

Bushman reactions to Bantu-speaking farmers and European colonists can no longer be seen in terms of weaker people meekly submitting to more sophisticated people with more advanced modes of subsistence. Maggs and Gavin Whitelaw believe that further studies in this field need to deal with understanding the more complex 'intermeshing processes' between the various economies.³⁰ The key to these processes is, I argue, to be found in social and cognitive enquiries.³¹ Turning to cognitive issues is a recent and important trend in archaeology.³² In contrast, by relying heavily on early historical documents and emphasising economic concerns at the expense of cognitive issues, Kalahari revisionists have been able to argue that the Bushmen were merely an oppressed class within the overall farming society rather than a cultural group with its own values, religion and sense of identity.³³

An examination of Bushman ritual and religion, however, shows that relations between the Bushmen and the farmers or pastoralists clearly did develop in some respects. Nevertheless, despite changes that took place within their society, the Bushman people did not lose their identity as a separate group. A social enquiry into the nature of change both between Bushmen and other groups and within Bushman society itself leads to the second part of the twofold 'Bushman record': rock art.

Rock Art

For decades Eurocentric attitudes towards Bushman art prevailed. It was not until researchers began to use authentic Bushman beliefs³⁴ that a much deeper appreciation of the art began to emerge. The current trend began by recognising that much of the art in southern Africa reflected shamans' experiences during the trance ritual and beliefs about it.³⁵

This research led to the investigation of the role of the shaman and rock art in Bushman society, before and after contact with farmers.³⁶ David Lewis-Williams, examining what was then thought to be 'traditional Bushman art', proposed that it provided a permanent backdrop to the daily social relations that shamans maintained during their trance rituals. Colin Campbell, on the other hand, examined 'contact art', art that had elements such as cattle, shields, horses and wagons, and so clearly resulted from Bushman interaction with other cultural groups. Campbell argues that these new images were incorporated into the art to provide an appropriate backdrop to a new set of social relations that were, like the 'traditional' relations, still maintained by shamans. Both Lewis-Williams's and Campbell's analyses were, however, carried out with a misconception of what is and what is not 'contact art'; the division cannot be made on subject matter alone. Hence a new examination is required.

To begin with, I argue that the rock art is not just a reflection or depiction of beliefs and experiences associated with the trance ritual. The art is a material item that was always, both before and during the so-called contact period, actively implicated in the reproduction and transformation of social relations, specifically those relations involving shamans. Because of the detailed and abundant trance imagery in the paintings, it is highly likely that shamans were the principal if not only producers of the art. Most panels, if not all, have some depictions that can be unequivocally associated with trance belief and experience. The historical documents and Bushman art are thus strikingly similar. Both create, transform and reinforce dominant ideologies: the historical documents continue to negotiate white settler ideologies, whereas Bushman rock art negotiated shaman ideologies.

To be able to discern exactly how the art played this role we need to understand, first, how the depictions were produced. The cognitive structure of the art was socially produced in that meanings attached to specific combinations of formal attributes come out of day-to-day social practice. The art was thus intimately implicated in developing social relations and the reproduction and transformation of social forms. Generally, and very briefly, I demonstrate how these processes came together and how the art negotiated Bushman ideology, particularly shaman ideology.

The proximity of Bantu-speaking farmers generated a new set of social relations in which the Bushmen in general and the shamans in particular were implicated. Farmers recognised the Bushmen as the original inhabitants and custodians of the land, and it was natural for the farmers to turn to them. This relationship, posited essentially on land ownership, came to centre on rain-making. The farmers, more than the Bushmen themselves, were dependent on rain; even minor droughts and, perhaps more important, delayed rains, affected their crops and herds far more than they did the Bushmen's antelope and plant foods. The mediator thus turned out to be the shaman. Part of the shamans' symbolic work was rain-making.³⁷ Even though the farmers had occupied the land, they were unable to farm successfully without rain. The farmers requested Bushman rain-makers to perform rituals and gave them cattle in return. It was the shaman who had (ideological) control over the farmers' economy.

Because the shamans were paid for their rain-making services with cattle, presumably among other things, they acquired a new status as procurers of meat, and no doubt achieved power through a newly developed right to distribute the meat. With the depletion of antelope herds by white hunters and the extermination of the Bushmen by white commandos, Bushman shamans were forced to become more dependent on the farmers: the shamans had to tighten their grip on the farmers. This resulted in Bushman shaman families going to live with black farmers.³⁸ It could be that these Bushmen were acknowledging the farmers' control of the land, but, at the same time, trying to retain some power and status.

Within Bushman society, diminishing traditional resources and, at the same time, new sources of wealth resulting from new social and economic relations with the farmers engendered competition between shamans. People looked to them as their go-betweens with the farmers and, increasingly, as the most reliable procurers of food. Shamans thus began to compete with one another and with important non-shaman members of the group for positions of influence. These power struggles, as well as the stresses of cultural contact between farmers and hunter-gatherers, were manifested in the art. The art, produced by shamans, became active and instrumental in forging new social relations that developed out of these power struggles.

People negotiate personal and social identities by means of stylistic statements.³⁹ Social identities become important during situations of intergroup competition and the need for co-operation to attain social, political or economic goals. Competition among individuals and an increase in options for individual enterprise result in strong personal identities. Contact between Bushmen and Bantu-speaking farmers created situations where both social and personal identities were implicated in social relations, and both of these are negotiated in the art. I give two examples of how this happened.

First, the south-eastern mountains, the Drakensberg and the Malutis, contain the most variation in artistic 'styles', but at the same time, it is also in this region that diversity of animal depictions is not as marked as elsewhere. Eland and rhebuck are by far the most frequently painted animals. The limiting of animal diversity in the paintings of this region was one result of a new interest in projecting a social identity and a social unity during changing social conditions, that is, competition between hunter-gatherers and farmers. The Bushmen of the area spoke of themselves as being 'of the eland'.⁴⁰

Figure 1. Rock painting of a trance dance from the Ladybrand District, Free State. These human figures lack facial features, and are all treated in much the same way.

Another feature of the art in this south-eastern part of South Africa is that artists began painting human figures with details never, or very seldom, used before or in other regions. These details include facial features, a change from the stick-like figures to more fully rounded figures and more numerous body adornments. This trend towards greater detail in the paintings can be explained by style becoming personalised as individual identities were developing as a result of increasing competition between individual shamans and other influential members of the group. In one small area of the Drakensberg, paintings of human activities show the rise of personal identities in an unprecedented manner. In all other areas, paintings of individual human figures are very similarly executed (Figures 1 and 2). In this one small area, paintings of human activity scenes show a marked differentiation between one large human figure and the others (Figure 3). This prominent figure is unequivocally a shaman, always much bigger, painted in a different colour, and often executed with more elaborate body adornments. Formal attributes were thus manipulated by shaman-artists to make social and political statements.⁴¹

Figure 2. Rock painting of a trance dance from the Mooi River District, KwaZulu-Natal. Like the human figures in Figure 1 the human figures here lack facial features and are painted in much the same way.

Figure 3. Rock painting of a trance dance with an apparent emphasis on rain-making – the large spotted animal is a rain animal. In this dance one man, a transformed shaman with antelope hooves instead of human feet, is painted in such a way as to stand out from the other figures (see Lewis Williams and Dowson, Images of Power, 68–70). He is a different colour, his 'infibulation' is more elaborate than others, and his head is more detailed. The shaman-artist thus manipulated these formal characteristics to make a statement about this shaman's position of power and influence in the band. Note, too, that the human figures have distinct facial features, unlike those in Figure 1 and Figure 2. As Bushman groups were becoming more stratified and power was becoming concentrated in individuals, human figures in the art were also becoming more personalised, and some figures – shamans – stand out from the rest.

These, then, were a few ways in which Bushmen used their art to negotiate changes brought about by contact with black farmers. It was, moreover, in comparable yet distinctive ways that the events towards the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, commonly referred to as the 'mfecane', were negotiated in their art.

Bushmen in the 'Mfecane' Period

Cobbing's plausible construction of events at the end of the eighteenth and the start of the nineteenth century has many implications. It not only allows for a reintegration of black and white history, but, if we adopt the approach I have briefly outlined above, we can reintegrate Bushman history into southern African history. It is highly improbable that Bushman groups in the south-eastern mountains were not affected by the upheavals in other areas: the Cape, where Dutch and British settlers were seizing land and labour from neighbouring African groups; Delagoa Bay, where, at much the same time an export trade in ivory, cattle, and slaves was burgeoning; and the middle Orange River and lower Vaal River areas, where in the 1810s Griqua and other bands of armed horsemen were beginning to raid across the highveld.

Jürg Richner's evidence shows that the Bushmen were as affected by European slaving as other groups and that this is significant in considering events at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth century.⁴² That the Bushmen were taken as slaves is not, however, a sufficient account of the Bushman people's role in the history of this period: we need to explore the social implications of slavery for the Bushmen. Not only were the Bushmen, mainly women and children, being used as slaves, but the men were being exterminated; Bushmen were also reported to be selling their children.⁴³ Survival of the Bushman social band with its own set of beliefs and values – albeit affected by contact – was thus placed under great threat.

Besides slaving, an important source of conflict was the export of ivory and cattle from Delagoa Bay. The role of the Bushmen in the ivory trade has been overlooked in recent discussions because the 'mfecane' is seen as an event brought about by and affecting only black South Africans. Moreover, the stereotypes outlined above have reduced the importance of the Bushmen in trade relations.

One of the reasons for early traders tending to concentrate their efforts on the farmers could have been that the Bushmen lacked central political institutions. Settled farming communities were probably in a better position to organise the ivory trade. This does not mean, however, that Bushman groups were always passive observers of these events. For instance, in 1829 Andrew Bain was trading cattle for ivory directly with Bushmen in what became the Transkei, and he reports that he was not the first.⁴⁴ And later, in 1846, Jacobus Uys traded ammunition for 50 elephant tusks.⁴⁵ It is also likely that Bushman hunters were implicated in the trade networks with Nhlangwini groups acting as middlemen.⁴⁶ By the middle of the nineteenth century Bushmen were actively involved in the ivory trade, and this may, albeit indirectly, have started in the eighteenth century, or even earlier, when the Portuguese were collecting ivory from the south–east.⁴⁷

The skill of the hunters in lifting livestock (Figure 4) also enabled them to forge

Figure 4. Rock painting showing Bushmen herding cattle. Cattle not only became a source of food but keeping cattle for trade purposes had very important political implications.

Figure 5. Rock painting of an elephant hunt with the hunters on horseback (near Taung). This is executed in the so-called finger tradition which is believed to be late. Elephants were last seen in the area in the 1850s, and horses were introduced in the area towards the end of the 18th century (T.A. Dowson, G. Blundell and S. Hall 'Finger Paintings in the Harts River Valley, Northern Cape Province, South Africa', Southern African Field Archaeology, 1 (1992) 27–32).

Figure 6. Rock painting of an elephant hunt, copied by G.W. Stow in the 1870s in the Wepener District, Free State (after G.W. Stow and D.F. Bleek, Rock Paintings in South Africa, London, 1930, plate 59).

political alliances with neighbouring farming communities. Silayi, a Thembu man who went to live with the Bushmen in the 1850s, told W.E. Stanford about the raids he participated in; he makes it plain that they were not simply raiding for food. Although Silayi's account is of a time towards the end of the period under discussion, his cannot have been the only such experience; other black people must have done similar things and earlier. Silayi does not say what happened to all the livestock taken, but on one occasion two horses were given to their Bushman chief.⁴⁸ Black chiefs like Mandela, Mchithwa and Moorosi offered the Bushmen protection in return for livestock and ivory.⁴⁹ Providing ivory and livestock, then, gave the Bushmen enormous political advantages during a time when their survival was being threatened more and more.

Impact of the 'Mfecane' on the Art

In this brief account of a fairly complex matter I refer to only two themes in the art, themes used by shaman-artists to establish and reinforce their power at this particular time: depictions of elephants, and conflict scenes.

In the south-eastern mountains paintings of elephants and scenes of elephant hunts are not infrequent. Given the shamans' control over other spheres of life, such as hunting,⁵⁰ it is likely that they would also have tried to appropriate the ivory trade to bolster their own status. This is not to say that all elephant hunters were necessarily shamans. As hunters engaged shamans for success in antelope and ostrich hunting, they probably also appealed to them to ensure success in the acquisition of ivory. Depictions of elephant were thus making statements about the power and the position of the shaman: they were statements about and evidence for the shaman's control over resources. They made paintings of elephant hunts (Figures 5 and 6) and elephants (Figure 7) to reinforce their control over Bushman involvement in the ivory trade. Depictions of elephants, included in panels with clear trance associations, seem to have become symbols of the shamans' political power. The paintings were thus actively involved in the reproduction and entrenchment of the shamans' power.

This leads me to depictions of conflict. Although reportedly numerous, in fact conflict scenes are not found in large numbers. Early rock art scholars concentrated on themes such as these because they seemed to match their stereotype of the Bushmen as hostile raiders. The biggest concentration of paintings of conflict scenes occurs in the lower Caledon River Valley. As Cobbing has shown, this is an important region for discussing the struggles of the 'mfecane' period.⁵¹ Despite the

Figure 7. Rock painting of an elephant from the Giant's Castle area in the Natal Drakensberg. This depiction is part of a large and complex panel which is replete with trance imagery. This depiction is thus unequivocally linked to shaman ideology.

Figure 8. Portion of a large panel of paintings depicting Bushmen/farmer conflict, Wepener District, Free State (after Stow and Bleek, Rock Paintings, plates 61, 62).

Figure 9. Portion of a large panel depicting farmer/farmer conflict, Rouxville District, Free State (after Stow and Bleek, Rock Paintings, plate 37).

problem of exact dates for each of the paintings, the concentration of fight scenes in this area can hardly be fortuitous.

The Caledon Valley paintings depict Bushman/Bushman, Bushman/farmer (Figure 8) as well as some farmer/farmer conflicts (Figure 9). An examination of these scenes in terms of Bushman beliefs shows they are not simple records of actual events. Many have elements that unequivocally relate to trance experience and thus place the paintings in the realm of shaman ideology.⁵²

Traditionally, Bushman shamans in trance fought off marauding spirits and malevolent but nameless shamans. With the development of relations with the Bantu-speaking farmers and the colonists, this shamanistic activity was extended to include these new sources of conflict.⁵³ The shamans now used their powers to engage the intruders on their land. This is not, of course, a fully adequate explanation of the pictures. We need to enquire about the social relations issuing in the fights and also about the place of the shaman-artists themselves in these relations.

In the upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Bushman groups and individual shamans were drawn into conflicts between Bantu-speaking chieftainships. It may be that even as shamans had long made rain for specific leaders of farming communities, so those leaders called upon the Bushman shamans in times of strife with other farming groups. For instance, Moorosi, chief of the Phuti, was supposed to have been related to Bushmen.⁵⁴ He acted as a protector to some Bushman groups, but D.F. Ellenberger reports that during the 'mfecane' Moorosi's people were subservient to the Bushmen.⁵⁵ So too, I argue, were shamans' supernatural powers harnessed by participants in the 'mfecane' struggles. Shaman-artists then used their art to negotiate this new opportunity for developing their own political power. As they had painted elephant hunts so they came to paint conflict between Bantu-speaking groups and thereby enhanced their status. The power struggles of the 'mfecane' period were thus multidimensional.

Conclusion

Ironically, Moffat was right when he said, 'Hard is the Bushman's lot', a sentiment that has been picked up again and again. But Moffat could not have been aware of how his and other early commentators' attitudes were to underwrite the Bushmen's historical and political marginalisation; history said little for William Macmillan's 'unlucky Bushman' in 1927 and does not add much more today. In 1972 Shula Marks observed, 'History tends to be the history of the successful, and the Khoikhoi herders and San hunter-gatherers . . . have all but disappeared from twentieth-century South Africa, at least in their earlier guise. Most historians writing of South Africa dismiss them in passing.'⁵⁶ Nothing has changed much. The role of Bushmen has merely changed from passing reference to a very generalised introductory chapter.⁵⁷ Historical constructions at a more general level have also ignored the Bushmen. For the eastern Cape, Gerrit Harinck accords greater significance to Khoi–Xhosa interaction; the Bushmen were simply 'eradicated and dispersed'.⁵⁸ Using both excavated material remains and rock art, Simon Hall has shown that 'this is a gross over-simplification'.⁵⁹ By taking seriously both parts of the twofold archaeological record, excavated material remains and rock art, we shall be able to start producing a history of southern Africa that includes all the people who were involved, in no matter what capacity. More specifically, and for the purposes of this volume, Bushman art, until recently a neglected part of the archaeological record, can play a major role in developing a new understanding of the 'mfecane' period, thus drawing the hunter-gatherers back into history. The 'invisible' Bushmen were active participants who should not be ignored. There is much that the Bushmen in their roles as hunter-gatherers, traders and slaves in a time of colonial oppression can contribute to the history of southern Africa through their art.

1.J.B. Wright, 'Political Mythology and the Making of Natal's Mfecane', Canadian Journal of African Studies, 23, 2 (1989), 273.

2.Many writers prefer 'San' to 'Bushman' because of the latter's pejorative associations for some, but by no means all, people in southern Africa. Unfortunately, 'San', a Nama word, also has negative connotations: it could be translated 'vagabond', and its use by historians, archaeologists and anthropologists ascribes to the Nama antagonistic attitudes towards Bushmen. Because there are so many Bushman languages, there is no generic word to cover all groups. Along with writers such as Lorna Marshall and Megan Biesele, I retain 'Bushman' but reject all possible pejorative associations.

3.W.M. Macmillan, The Cape Colour Question, London, 1927, 26.

4.S. Marks, 'Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', Journal of African History, 13 ( 1972), 55–80.

5.N. Penn, 'The Frontier in the Western Cape, 1700–1740', in J. Parkington and M. Hall, eds, Papers on the Prehistory of the Western Cape, Oxford, 1987; N. Penn, 'Labour, Land and Livestock in the Western Cape During the Eighteenth Century', in W. G. James and M. Simons, eds, The Angry Divide, Cape Town, 1989.

6.R. Moffat, Missionary Labour and Scenes in Southern Africa, London, 1842, 15.

7.H. Tindall, Two Lectures on Great Namaqualand and its Inhabitants, delivered before the Mechanics' Institute, Cape Town, 1856, 26.

8.Marks, 'Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch'; J. Richner, 'Eastern Frontier Slaving and its Extension into the Transorangia and Natal', paper presented at the Colloquium on the Mfecane Aftermath, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1991.

9.L.M. Thompson, A History of South Africa, New Haven, 1990, 9.

10.Thompson, A History of South Africa, 14.

11.J. Barrow, An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798 . . ., London, 1801–04. vol. 1 , 2 3 9 .

12.D. Ambrose and A. Brutsch, eds, Missionary Excursion: Thomas Arbousset, Morija, 1991, 104.

13.For details see 'Ergates', 'Bushmen's Stock Raids in Natal', Natal Agricultural Journal, 8 (1905); British Parliamentary Papers, (hereafter BPP), 'Reports and Papers on the Affairs of Cape Colony, the Condition of Native Tribes and the Sixth Kaffir War 1826–36'; and J.B. Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg 1840–1870, Pietermaritzburg, 1971.

14.Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg.

15.E.B. Hawkins, The Story of Harrismith: 1849–1920, Ladysmith, 1982, 10.

16.See papers in L. M. Thompson, ed., African Societies in Southern Africa, London, 1969, notably D.W. Phillipson, 'Early Iron-using Peoples of Southern Africa', 24–49; G. Harinck, 'Interaction between Xhosa and Khoi: Emphasis on the Period 1620–1750', 145–69; and S. Marks, 'The Traditions of the Natal "Nguni": A Second Look at the Work of A.T. Bryant', 126–44. See also M. Wilson and L.M. Thompson, eds, A History of South Africa to 1870, Cape Town, 1982 and Thompson, A History of South Africa.

17.See, for example, Thompson, A History of South Africa, Fig. 1.

18.See, for example, T. R. H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History, London, 1991, 4th ed.

19.Wright, 'Political Mythology'.

20.A. A. Anderson, Twenty-five Years in a Waggon, London, 1888, 5–6.

21.In some interesting and illuminating papers, A.E. Voss, 'Thomas Pringle and the Image of the "Bushmen"', English in Africa, 9, 1 (1982); A.E. Voss, 'The Image of the Bushman in South African English Writing of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries', English in Africa, 19, 1 (1987); A.E. Voss, 'Die Bushie is Dood: Long Live the Bushie. Black South African Writers on the San', African Studies, 49 (1990); and D. Haarhoff, The Wild South-West: Frontier Myths and Metaphors in Literature in Namibia, 1760–1988, Johannesburg, 1991, have shown how these images of the Bushmen have been used in South African English writing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as by black South African writers. Interestingly, this ideology finds a parallel in the United States with the notion of the 'vanishing American Indian', which also permeates all aspects of white culture, including art and literature; see B.W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Altitudes and U.S. Indian Policy, Middletown, 1982.

22.W.H.I. Bleek, 'Remarks on Orpen's "Mythology of the Maluti Bushman" ', Cape Monthly Magazine, New Series, 9, 49 (1874), 10–13; W.H. I. Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folklore and Other Texts, Cape Town, 1875; T.L. Hodgson, The Journals of the Reverend T.L. Hodgson, Missionary to the Seleke-Rolong and the Griquas 1821–1831, ed. by R. L. Cope, Johannesburg, 1977; J. M. Orpen, 'A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen', Cape Monthly Magazine, New Series, 9, 49 (1874), 1–10; G. W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa, London, 1905.

23.As in Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg; Penn, 'The Frontier in the Western Cape'; and Penn, 'Labour, Land and Livestock in the Western Cape'.

24.See for example J. Parkington, 'Changing Views of the Late Stone Age of South Africa', in F. Wendorf and A.E. Close, eds, Advances in World Archaeology, 3, New York, 1984; J.R. Denbow, 'A New Look at the Later Prehistory of the Kalahari', Journal of African History, 27 (1986); A. B. Smith, 'Competition, Conflict and Clientship: Khoi and San Relationships in the Western Cape', South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, 5 (1986); J. Kinahan, Pastoral Nomads of the Central Namib Desert: The People History Forgot, Windhoek, 1991; A.D. Mazel, 'People Making History: The Last Ten Thousand Years of Hunter-Gatherer Communities in the Thukela Basin', Natal Museum Journal of Humanities, 1 (1989); S.L. Hall, 'Hunter-gatherer-fishers of the Fish River Basin: A Contribution to the Holocene Prehistory of the Eastern Cape', Ph.D. thesis, University of Stellenbosch, 1990.

25.See Mazel 'People Making History' for the most recent syntheses and discussion.

26.Mazel 'People Making History', 141.

27.T.M.O'C. Maggs, 'Msuluzi Confluence: A Seventh-century Early Iron Age Site on the Tugela River', Annals of the Natal Museum, 24 (1980).

28.Mazel, 'People Making History', 142.

29.Mazel, 'People Making History', 132–52.

30.T.M.O'C. Maggs and G. Whitelaw, 'A Review of Recent Archaeological Research on Food-producing Communities in Southern Africa', Journal of African History, 32 (1991), 11.

31.J.D. Lewis-Williams, 'The Economic and Social Content of Southern San Rock Art', Current Anthropology, 23 (1982); J.D. Lewis-Williams, 'Ideological Continuities in Prehistoric Southern Africa: The Evidence of Rock Art', in C. Schrire, ed., Past and Present in Hunter-gatherer Studies, Orlando, 1984; Mazel, 'People Making History'; Hall, 'Hunter-gatherer-fishers'.

32.For a southern African perspective see J.D. Lewis-Williams, 'Social Theory in Southern African Archaeology', paper presented at the South African Association of Archaeologists Conference, Grahamstown, 1985; J.D. Lewis-Williams, 'Southern Africa's Place in the Archaeology of Human Understanding', South African Journal of Science, 85 (1989); T.N. Huffman, 'Cognitive Studies of the Iron Age in Southern Africa', World Archaeology, 18 (1986).

33.C. Schrire, 'An Enquiry into the Evolutionary Status and Apparent Identity of San Hunter-gatherers', Human Ecology, 8 (1980); C. Schrire, Past and Present in Hunter-gatherer Studies; E. N. Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies, Chicago, 1989; E.N. Wilmson and J.R. Denbow, 'Paradigmatic History of San-speaking Peoples and Current Attempts at Revision', Current Anthropology, 31 (1990).

34.In the 1870s the linguist Wilhelm Bleek and his co-worker Lucy Lloyd took down, by dictation, some 12 000 pages of Bushman texts comprising transcriptions in phonetic script and literal English translations; see J. D. Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings, London, 1981, 25–37. Their informants came from the north-western Cape Province and, later, from the northern Kalahari Desert; see J. Deacon, '"My Place is the Bitterpits"; The Home Territory of Bleek and Lloyd's /Xam San Informants', African Studies, 45 (1986). More recent research has been carried out on the religious beliefs of the Kalahari Bushman groups. Although the relevance of this material was once held in question, a cautious use of this material is now generally accepted; see J.D. Lewis-Williams and M. Biesele, 'Eland Hunting Rituals among Northern and Southern San Groups: Striking Similarities', Africa, 48 (1978); and J.D. Lewis-Williams, 'Ethnographic Evidence Relating to "Trancing" and "Shamans" among Northern Bushmen', South African Archaeological Bulletin, 47 (1992).

35.For more on the essentially shamanistic nature of Bushman rock art throughout southern Africa see, for example, Lewis-Williams 'The Economic and Social Context'; J.D. Lewis-Williams, 'Introductory Essay: Science and Rock Art, South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, 4 (1983); Lewis-Williams, 'Ideological Continuities in Prehistoric Southern Africa'; J.D. Lewis-Williams, 'Paintings of Power: Ethnography and Rock Art in Southern Africa', in M. Biesele, R. Gordon and R. Lee, eds, Past and Future of !Kung Ethnography, Hamburg, 1986; J.D. Lewis-Williams, Discovering Southern African Rock Art, Cape Town, 1990; Lewis-Williams, 'Ethnographic Evidence Relating to "Trancing" and "Shamans'"; T.N. Huffman 'The Trance Hypothesis and the Rock Art of Zimbabwe', South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, 4 (1983); T. M.O'C. Maggs and J. Sealy, 'Elephants in Boxes', South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, 4 (1983); R. Yates, J. Golson and M. Hall, 'Trance Performance: The Rock Art of Boointjieskloof and Sevilla', South African Archaeological Bulletin, 40 (1985); R. Yates, J. Parkington and T. Manhire, Pictures From the Past: A History of the Interpretation of Rock Paintings and Engravings of Southern Africa, Pietermaritzburg, 1990; S. L. Hall, 'Pastoral Adaptations and Forager Reactions in the Eastern Cape', South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, 5 (1986); Hall, 'Hunter-gatherer-fishers'; A.H. Manhire et al, 'Cattle, Sheep and Horses: A Review of Domestic Animals in the Rock Art of Southern Africa', South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, 5 (1986); P.S. Garlake, The Painted Caves: An Introduction to the Prehistoric Rock Art of Zimbabwe, Harare, 1987; P. S. Garlake, 'Themes in Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe', World Archaeology, 19 (1987); P.S. Garlake 'Symbols of Potency in the Paintings of Zimbabwe', South African Archaeological Bulletin, 45 (1990); J. Deacon, 'The Power of a Place in Understanding Southern San Rock Engravings', World Archaeology, 20 (1988); T.A. Dowson, 'Revelations of Religious Reality: The Individual in San Art', World Archaeology, 20 (1988); T.A. Dowson, Rock Engravings of Southern Africa, Johannesburg, 1992; Kinahan, 'Pastoral Nomads', J.D. Lewis-Williams and T. A. Dowson, Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art, Johannesburg, 1989; Mazel, 'People Making History'; J. Parkington, 'Interpreting Paintings without a Commentary', Antiquity, 63 (1989).

36.Lewis-Williams, 'The Economic and Social Context'; C. Campbell, 'Contact Period Rock Art of the South-eastern Mountains', M.A. dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1987.

37.Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing, 103–16; Lewis-Williams, 'The Economic and Social Context'; Campbell, 'Contact Period Rock Art', 38–55.

38.J. B. Peires, The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of their Independence, Johannesburg, 1 9 8 1 , 2 4 .

39.P. Wiessner, 'Reconsidering the Behavioural Basis for Style: A Case Study Among the Kalahari San', Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 3 (1984); P. Wiessner, 'Is there a Unity to Style?', in M. Conkey and C. Hastorf, eds, The Uses of Style in Archaeology, Cambridge, 1990.

40.P. Vinnicombe, People of the Eland: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a Reflection of their Life and Thought, Pietermaritzburg, 1976; J.D. Lewis-Williams, ' "People of the Eland": An Archaeo-linguistic Crux', in T. Ingold, D. Riches and J. Woodburn, eds, Hunters and Gatherers: Property, Power and Ideology, Oxford, 1988.

41.For a more fully developed discussion, see T. A. Dowson, 'Pictorial Pasts: Bushman Rock Art and Changing Perceptions of Southern Africa's History', Ph.D. thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in preparation.

42.Richner, 'Eastern Frontier Slaving'.

43.For numerous reports on Bushmen, their raids and raids against them, selling of their children, and slaving, see A. Smith, Andrew Smith's Journal of his Expedition into the Interior of South Africa, 1834–1836, intro. and notes by W.F. Lye, Cape Town, 1975, 44, 284; Richner, 'Eastern Frontier Slaving'; and BPP, 'Reports and Papers on the Affairs of Cape Colony', for numerous reports on Bushmen, their raids and raids against them, selling of their children, and slaving.

44.A.G. Bain, Extracts from the Journals of Mr Andrew Geddes Bain: Trader, Explorer, Soldier, Road Engineer and Geologist, ed. by M. Lister, Cape Town, 1949.

45.Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg, 62.

46.Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg, 34.

47.Vinnicombe, People of the Eland, 12, 14; see also Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg, 33–4.

48.W.E. Stanford, 'Statement of Silayi, with Reference to his Life Among the Bushmen', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 1 (1910), 436.

49.Wright, Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg, 189.

50.D.F. Bleek, 'Beliefs and Customs of the /Xam Bushmen', Part 7, entitled 'Sorcerers', Bantu Studies, 9 (1935).

51.J. Cobbing, 'The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo', Journal of African History, 29(1988), 487–519.

52.C. Campbell, 'Images of War: A Problem in San Rock Art Research', World Archaeology, 18(1986); Campbell, 'Contact Period Rock Art'.

53.Campbell, 'Contact Period Rock Art'.

54.Stow, The Native Races of South Africa, 229.

55.D.F. Ellenberger, History of the Basuto: Ancient and Modern, London, 1912.

56.Marks, 'Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch', 55–80.

57.For example R. Hallett, Africa to 1875, Ann Arbor, 1970, 238, and Thompson, A History of South Africa, ch. 1.

58.Harinck, 'Interaction between Xhosa and Khoi', 146.

59.Hall, 'Hunter-gatherer-fishers', 243.