The NegroDu Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
History
The Negro
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
Africa -- History; Black race
[30] Quoted in Bent: _Ruined Cities of Mashonaland_, pp. 203 ff.
[31] Cf. "Ethiopia Oriental," by J. Dos Santos, in Theal's _Records of
South Africa_, Vol. VII.
[32] Barbosa, quoted in Keane, II, 482.
[33] It was called Sofala, from an Arabic word, and may be associated with
the Ophir of Solomon. So, too, the river Sabi, a little off Sofala, may be
associated with the name of the Queen of Sheba, whose lineage was supposed
to be perpetuated in the powerful Monomotapa as well as the Abyssinians.
VII THE WAR OF RACES AT LAND'S END
Primitive man in Africa is found in the interior jungles and down at
Land's End in South Africa. The Pygmy people in the jungles represent
to-day a small survival from the past, but a survival of curious interest,
pushed aside by the torrent of conquest. Also pushed on by these waves of
Bantu conquest, moved the ancient Abatwa or Bushmen. They are small in
stature, yellow in color, with crisp-curled hair. The traditions of the
Bushmen say that they came southward from the regions of the Great Lakes,
and indeed the king and queen of Punt, as depicted by the Egyptians, were
Bushmen or Hottentots.
Their tribes may be divided, in accordance with their noticeable artistic
talents, into the painters and the sculptors. The sculptors entered South
Africa by moving southward through the more central portions of the
country, crossing the Zambesi, and coming down to the Cape. The painters,
on the other hand, came through Damaraland on the west coast; when they
came to the great mountain regions, they turned eastward and can be traced
as far as the mountains opposite Delagoa Bay. The mass of them settled
down in the lower part of the Cape and in the Kalahari desert. The
painters were true cave dwellers, but the sculptors lived in large
communities on the stony hills, which they marked with their carvings.
These Bushmen believed in an ancient race of people who preceded them in
South Africa. They attributed magic power to these unknown folk, and said
that some of them had been translated as stars to the sky. Before their
groups were dispersed the Bushmen had regular government. Tribes with
their chiefs occupied well-defined tracts of country and were subdivided
into branch tribes under subsidiary chiefs. The great cave represented the
dignity and glory of the entire tribe.
The Bushmen suffered most cruelly in the succeeding migrations and
conquests of South Africa. They fought desperately in self-defense; they
saw their women and children carried into bondage and they themselves
hunted like wild beasts. Both savage and civilized men appropriated their
land. Still they were brave people. "In this struggle for existence their
bitterest enemies, of whatever shade of color they might be, were forced
to make an unqualified acknowledgement of the courage and daring they so
invariably exhibited."[34]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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