Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
Other missionaries make old Wounded Knee a good sort of being on the
whole, who fights Gaunab, a bad being. Dr. Moffat heard that 'Tsui Kuap'
was 'a notable warrior,' who once received a wound in the knee. Sir
James Alexander {204} found that the Namaquas believed their 'great
father' lay below the cairns on which they flung boughs. This great
father was Heitsi Eibib, and, like other medicine-men, 'he could take
many forms.' Like Tsui Goab, he died several times and rose again. Hahn
gives (p. 61) a long account of the Wounded Knee from an old chief, and a
story of the battle between Tsui Goab, who 'lives in a beautiful heaven,'
and Gaunab, who 'lives in a dark heaven.' As this chief had dwelt among
missionaries very long, we may perhaps discount his remarks on 'heaven'
as borrowed. Hahn thinks they refer to the red sky in which Tsui Goab
lived, and to the black sky which was the home of Gaunab. The two
characters in this crude religious dualism thus inhabit light and
darkness respectively.
* * * * *
As far as we have gone, Tsui Goab, like Heitsi Eibib among the Namas, is
a dead sorcerer, whose graves are worshipped, while, with a common
inconsistency, he is also thought of as dwelling in the sky. Even
Christians often speak of the dead with similar inconsistency. Tsui
Goab's worship is intelligible enough among a people so credulous that
they took Hahn himself for a conjurer (p. 81), and so given to ancestor-
worship that Hahn has seen them worship their own fathers' graves, and
expect help from men recently dead (pp. 112, 113). But, while the Khoi
Khoi think that Tsui Goab was once a real man, we need not share their
Euhemerism. More probably, like Unkulunkulu among the Zulus, Tsui Goab
is an ideal, imaginary ancestral sorcerer and god. No one man requires
many graves, and Tsui Goab has more than Osiris possessed in Egypt. {205}
If the Egyptians in some immeasurably distant past were once on the level
of Namas and Hottentots, they would worship Osiris at as many barrows as
Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab are adored. In later times the numerous
graves of one being would require explanation, and explanations would be
furnished by the myth that the body of Osiris was torn to pieces and each
fragment buried in a separate tomb.
Again, lame gods occur in Greek, Australian, and Brazilian creeds, and
the very coincidence of Tsui Goab's lameness makes us sceptical about his
claims to be a real dead man. On the other hand, when Hahn tells us that
epical myths are now sung in the dances in honour of warriors lately
slain (p. 103), and that similar dances and songs were performed in the
past to honour Tsui Goab, this looks more as if Tsui Goab had been an
actual person. Against this we must set (p. 105) the belief that Tsui
Goab made the first man and woman, and was the Prometheus of the
Hottentots.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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