Missionary Travels and Researches in South AfricaLivingstone, David
Religion
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
Livingstone, David
Missions -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
The Matebele of Mosilikatse, living a short distance south of the
Zambesi, and other tribes living a little south of Tete and Senna,
are members of this same family. They are not known beyond the Zambesi
River. This was the limit of the Bechuana progress north too, until
Sebituane pushed his conquests farther.
2d. The Bakoni and Basuto division contains, in the south, all those
tribes which acknowledge Moshesh as their paramount chief. Among them
we find the Batau, the Baputi, Makolokue, etc., and some mountaineers on
the range Maluti, who are believed, by those who have carefully sifted
the evidence, to have been at one time guilty of cannibalism. This
has been doubted, but their songs admit the fact to this day, and they
ascribe their having left off the odious practice of entrapping human
prey to Moshesh having given them cattle. They are called Marimo and
Mayabathu, men-eaters, by the rest of the Basuto, who have various
subdivisions, as Makatla, Bamakakana, Matlapatlapa, etc.
The Bakoni farther north than the Basuto are the Batlou, Baperi, Bapo,
and another tribe of Bakuena, Bamosetla, Bamapela or Balaka, Babiriri,
Bapiri, Bahukeng, Batlokua, Baakhahela, etc., etc.; the whole of which
tribes are favored with abundance of rain, and, being much attached
to agriculture, raise very large quantities of grain. It is on their
industry that the more distant Boers revel in slothful abundance, and
follow their slave-hunting and cattle-stealing propensities quite beyond
the range of English influence and law. The Basuto under Moshesh are
equally fond of cultivating the soil. The chief labor of hoeing, driving
away birds, reaping, and winnowing, falls to the willing arms of the
hard-working women; but as the men, as well as their wives, as already
stated, always work, many have followed the advice of the missionaries,
and now use plows and oxen instead of the hoe.
3d. The Bakalahari, or western branch of the Bechuana family, consists
of Barolong, Bahurutse, Bakuena, Bangwaketse, Bakaa, Bamangwato,
Bakurutse, Batauana, Bamatlaro, and Batlapi. Among the last the success
of missionaries has been greatest. They were an insignificant and filthy
people when first discovered; but, being nearest to the colony, they
have had opportunities of trading; and the long-continued peace they
have enjoyed, through the influence of religious teaching, has enabled
them to amass great numbers of cattle. The young, however, who do
not realize their former degradation, often consider their present
superiority over the less-favored tribes in the interior to be entirely
owing to their own greater wisdom and more intellectual development.
Chapter 11.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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