Prada-Samper, José M. de. “The plant lore of the /Xam San: //Kabbo and ≠Kasiŋ's identification of ‘Bushman medicines’”. Culturas Populares. Revista Electrónica 4 (enero-junio 2007). http://www.culturaspopulares.org/textos4/articulos/deprada.htm ISSN: 1886-5623

The plant lore of the /Xam San: //Kabbo and ≠Kasiŋ's identification of "Bushman medicines"

José M. de Prada-Samper

Independent Scholar

Abstract

This paper presents for the first time two texts that deal with the ethnobotany of the /Xam, a now extinct San (Bushman) group. The discussion of the texts is focused on the concept of So-/õä, a term which, as it is proved in the paper, was generic and meant "medicine" The plant known until now as So-/õä was really called //kurrak@n//kurrak@n, and was used mainly in scarification rituals.

Keywords: Bleek, Lloyd, Bushmen, San, /Xam, Ethnobotany, Medicinal Plants, Halucinogenics, So-/õä, //kurrak@n//kurrak@, Hunting Rituals, Scarifications.

Resumen

En este artículo se publican por primera vez dos textos de la Colección Bleek-Lloyd relacionados con los conocimientos etnobotánicos de los /xam, un grupo bosquimano (san) ya extinguido. El análisis de los textos se centra sobre todo en el concepto que los /xam tenía de So-/õä término que, como se demuestra en el artículo, era genérico y significaba «medicina». La planta hasta ahora conocida como So-/õä se llamaba en realidad //kurrak@n//kurrak@n y se usaba sobre todo en rituales de escarificación.

Palabras clave: Bleek, Lloyd, bosquimanos /xam, etnobotánica, plantas medicinales, alucinógenos, So-/õä, //kurrak@n//kurrak@n, ritos de caza, escarificaciones.

T

his paper presents an edited transcription of two unpublished items from the Bleek and Lloyd Collection, the archive of /Xam San oral literature and ethnography gathered by W. H. I. Bleek and Lucy C. Lloyd between 1870 and the early 1880s.[1] the collection is kept in the Manuscripts and Archives Department of the University of Cape Town Libraries.[2] The two items in question appear in entry 109 of Wilhelm Bleek's A Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore and Other Texts (1875: 18-19). The entry of the report reads as follows:

Different Bushman Medicines; where found; and their uses. – Only the names of these medicines are given in Bushman, and the remarks respecting them in English, after ≠Kasiŋ (L IV.-1. 3425-3440) – These specimens were found in the hut of a Bushman sorcerer, and were kindly furnished for identification by Mr. J. Gibb. –//Kabbo's names for the same specimens, with remarks (in English only), are in a separate paper of 7 folio pages, to which ≠Kasiŋ's notes have been also briefly added, in red ink.

The "separate paper" mentioned at the end of the entry was written, in all likelihood, in the first days of September, 1873. It bears number BC151, E4.3.1 in the list of items in the Bleek-Lloyd Collection (Eberhard and Twentyman Jones 1992)[3] and is an inventory of the specimens (about 20 in number) provided by Mr. Gibb bearing the title "Bushman medicines". The inventory is divided in 7 sections numbered with roman numerals. The first of these, headed Ssho: /õä (in D. F. Bleek's spelling, So-/õä), has 12 subentries numbered in Arabic numerals. In this paper I will refer to this manuscript as BM. Most of the specimens listed in it, as will be seen in the texts, are vegetal, although there are a few of an animal nature.

As stated in entry 109 of Bleek's report, the inventory was written with the help of //Kabbo, a "Flat Bushman" from the area south of Kenhardt. This area is now partially enclosed by the farm Arbeidsvreug, in the South African province of the Northern Cape. //Kabbo had been helping Bleek and Lloyd since mid February, 1871. He left Mowbray, the Cape Town suburb within which the Bleek's home was situated, on October 15, 1873 (Bleek 1875: 5; Prada-Samper 2001: xxxvi-xxxvii). ≠Kasiŋ, whose remarks on the items of this inventory were added in November of that year, was a "Grass Bushman" from the Katkop area, several hundred kilometers to the west of //Kabbo's territory. He was the son of a Koranna chief and a Grass /Xam woman. He stayed in Mowbray from 1 November, 1873 until 18 March, 1874, and later with his wife and children from 13 June 1874 until 13 January, 1875 (Bleek 1875: 5; Prada-Samper 2001: xxxix).

≠Kasiŋ's detailed explanations on the items in BM, not to be mistaken with the remarks added to the inventory itself, are in notebook L.IV.1 (catalogued in the Collection as item BC151, A2.1.44). They were dictated to Lucy Lloyd on the 3 and the 4 of November 1873, and follow the numeration of the items established in BM. The same folder where the inventory is kept includes a 7 page typescript (listed as BC151, E4.3.2), which bears the title "Information on the materials used by Bushmen as poisons and medicines etc., taken down by L. C. Lloyd in 1873 from the dictation of ≠Kasiŋ, a Bushman-Hottentot from the Katkop mountains in Calvinia, C. P.". This typescript was probably meant for publication and includes, among other things, information on /Xam poisons taken mainly from ≠Kasiŋ's testimony (pages 1-2) and a summary of //Kabbo's notebook testimony on So-/õä. (pages 6-7). Pages 3 and 4 of the typescript are a fair copy, faithful to the manuscript and with some additional explanations by Dorothea Frances Bleek, of ≠Kasiŋ's notebook remarks to BM. I have taken this text into account when editing these.

I have not been able to find more information about the J. Gibb who provided the specimens. Data found after a quick search in the on-line National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System of the National Archives of South Africa (NAAIRS) strongly suggests that he is the same J. Gibb mentioned in several documents in the Cape Archive. One of them (CO 4125), dated 1864, is a memorial in which he requests to be appointed Acting District Surgeon at Clanwilliam. It would be very interesting to know where, and in which manner, he obtained the specimens. As to their whereabouts, in page 2 of the above mentioned typescript D. F. Bleek states the following: "I presume the specimens were returned. I do not know where they are".

//Kabbo's long series of stories and other information regarding one of the specimens in BM was dictated between 10-27 September 1873, and is also considered here. It was published more than 70 years ago by Bleek's daughter Dorothea and is one of her contributions to the journal Bantu Studies, now African Studies (D. F Bleek 1936: 144-160). This edition was reprinted, with notes and additional material, by Jeremy Hollmann in his outstanding edition of Dorothea's "Customs and Beliefs of the /Xam Bushmen" series (Hollmann 2005: 300-322). It occupies a whole notebook (L.II.36, listed in Eberhard and Twentyman Jones 1991 as item BC151, A2.1.42). I will henceforth refer to this testimony as KT.

*

Given the paucity of information the Bleek-Lloyd Collection offers about tthe /Xam-ka !ei knowledge of medicinal plants, the data contained in the material transcribed here is of great relevance. It has, apparently, so far escaped the attention of scholars interested in these matters. Among other things, the material throws light on So-/õä, a "vegetable medicine, used also as a charm" (Bleek 1875: 18). The plant's exact nature has been the object of some discussion, especially since it is believed to be a psychoactive substance, possibly connected with trance (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1989: 134-135; Hollmann 2005: 306-307). Although Jeremy Hollmann (2005: 277-278) has tentatively identified So-/õä as Gallium tomentosum, a plant of the Rubiaceae family, the fact is that, notwithstanding the detailed information given by //Kabbo in KT, it has not yet been possible to positively identify the species which he is describing.[4] The fact that So-/õä, as I hope will be proved in the rest of this paper, is not really the name of a single plant, but a generic term meaning "medicine", may be one of the reasons that have hindered the identification of the species.

The trouble with So-/õä begins with the original research of Bleek and Lloyd, as both were convinced that the term was used to designate a single species. For example, in a series of loose pages that I think are her grammatical and lexical aids for the study and translation of /Xam texts (BC151, E4.5.4), and which are drawn mostly from material dictated by //Kabbo, Lloyd explains the following:

sso: /o:ä (or //kárruken-//karruken or /u sshoä)

Names for a plant (or bush?) which is used in medicine by Bushmen, & also for purposes of enchantment.

At the start of his testimony on the subject, when giving the different names of the plant (D. F. Bleek 1936: 144; Hollmann 2005: 300; L.II.36: 3242'), //Kabbo said that "the !Kurri-ka !ke or Hart River's people call [the specimen] So-/õä". The !Kurri-ka !ke (which literally means "people of the riverbed[5]") are presumably a subdivision of the /Xam, and maybe Bleek and Lloyd based their conviction that So-/õä is the name of specific plant in this piece of information. The fact is that, when editing KT for publication, D. F. Bleek accepted this and later scholars simply followed her lead.

As stated before, however, entry no I in BM is headed Ssho: /õä (=So-/õä). It contains no less than 12 subentries of items, all of them vegetal, considered to be under that designation. Their uses range from, among others, being useful to find honey (item 3, also useful for "making people shoot well") to being a remedy against headache (item 7a). Item 4 is said to be "used by men as a medicine for the women", and could have been an aphrodisiac. Items 10b and 11 were used "when going to shoot each other". Item 10a was said by ≠Kasiŋ to be used "when a girl first leaves the house" meaning probably at the time of the first menstruation rituals.

Some of the substances were burnt and inhaled by the patient (items 3, 5b, the latter said to be "used by the witches"), others were powdered and rubbed in the body, sometimes mixed with fat (items 4 [= 8], 9). In other cases (item 3a), the plant could be boiled in water, which was then drunk by the patient. If the patient was "only a little ill" small pieces of the dry root were bitten off and ingested. The use of about half of the items (nos. 2, 5, 6, 7, 12) was unknown to //Kabbo, but in most cases ≠Kasiŋ could provide additional or missing information.

It is clear that most of //Kabbo's testimony in KT concentrates on single species of medicinal plant, always referred to as So-/õä. A reference in brackets to "no. 1" in a note in page 3242' of the original notebook (reference which was omitted both by D. F. Bleek and Hollmann) leaves no doubt that most (though possibly not all) of the material in KT deals with the first item listed in the inventory of the contents of the bag found by Mr. Gibb. KT does not include any other references to BM, but there are strong reasons to believe that "How the women fear the new So-/õä when it has just been brought home" and "The consequences of women's smelling fresh So-/õä scent", two distinctly separated set of remarks on pp. 3279-3283 and 3284-3286 of the manuscript (D. F. Bleek 1936: 150-151, 152-153; Hollmann 2005: 308-310; 311-313; D. F. Bleek omitted the titles), while dealing mainly with item 1 also mention another type of So-/õä, very likely item 4 (= 8) of the inventory, ≠i:tana.

This happens when //Kabbo explains that women must be careful of the scent of So-/õä (meaning here item 1) scent, because it can "hurt their hearts" (Bleek 1936: 152). When a woman's husband has put the So-/õä's scent into her body, //Kabbo says, /ki /ka:g@n-di-ka So-/õä, or, as D. F. Bleek rendered it, "she is one who has womanhood's So-/õä scent". This appears to be a variant of the sentence !e'ta /ka:gen ka ssho'/oa, "women's [ssho: /oa]", used by //Kabbo in BM to describe ≠i:tana. As a matter of fact, in a gloss on p. 3282' of the manuscript, //Kabbo explained that he meant here //ke ke:ya !ke ta /kagen e: /kwaiya, ho ta ssho: /oa, "Like/as women which (are) many, their [So-/õä]", which probably would be best rendered as "women's So-/õä", as Lloyd had originally translated it.

*

What is then the exact meaning of So-/õä if it does not designate a specific plant? The word appears to be a combination of So: (or s?o) , "to sit, be at, remain at" (D. F. Bleek 1956: 171, 173) and /oa, "to rub, wipe, sweep, anoint" (D. F. Bleek 1956: 355). As L. F. Maingard suggested about 70 years ago, the word is probably a cognate of the Khoi term so/õab, which means "medicine". Maingard included it in a series of words "where it is difficult to say whether the Bushman borrowed from [Khoi] or whether the reverse was the process" (1935: 486). I do not know the precise sense of the Khoi word, but in /Xam it is clear that So-/õä appears to refer to any vegetable substance which was considered to have medicinal or magical properties, in some cases to cure ailments, in others "to make the path good", to make people shoot well, or to help them find honey.

Unfortunately, ≠Kasiŋ did not add any new information about specimen no. 1 in BM. This appears to have been some kind of root whose specific /Xam name, as given by //Kabbo in his glosses and additions to KT, was //karruk@n//karruk@n, (D. F. Bleek 1936: 144; Hollmann 2005: 300; L.II.36: 3242'), a word which I have not been able to find in the Bushman Dictionary. The Koranna name, also given by //Kabbo, /u-Sõä, probably means "root medicine" (see D. F. Bleek 1956: 357, where /u is said to mean "root").

I leave to others the identification of //karruk@n//karruk@n, and hope that the materials here published will be of some help in that endeavour. However, I would like to add some brief remarks about the ritual use of the plant as described by //Kabbo in KT.

In his comments to one of //Kabbo's stories about the plant, in which a man faints when struck by another man who has rubbed his hands with the substance before fighting, Hollmann (2005: 306-307) says that "the death-like state of the man resembles the state of altered consciousness that Ju/'hoansi healers reach during the healing dance […] It is possible that the So-/õä plant was believed to have a similar effect on people". Hollmann could be right, but the fact is that, with the exception of some intriguing references to "trembling" (D. F. Bleek 1936: 156; Hollmann 2005: 317), there is nothing in //Kabbo's testimony or in ≠Kasiŋ's remarks about Gibb's specimens, that can be really interpreted to say that //karruk@n//karruk@n (or any of the other species mentioned), was a psychoactive substance, although there is no doubt that it was considered to be very powerful, and to be collected and handled with extreme caution. It is interesting to add here, however, that the French missionary Thomas Arbousset (1968 [1846]: 251), saw in the Malutis, many hundred of kilometers east of /Xam territory, an old woman who, while other people were smoking tobacco or dagga, "took from her neck a bit of some narcotic root, lit it at the fire, and bringing it near her nose, snuffed in the smoke". Interestingly, the plant described by //Kabbo could also be snuffed in this way (D. F. Bleek 1936: 156; Hollmann 2005: 316). So could item 5b in BM (the specific name of which was not given by the informant), about which ≠Kasiŋ said that it was "used by the witches".

In his testimony, //Kabbo gives especial importance to the use of //karruk@n//karruk@n in scarification rituals:

They cut their flesh; they burn (a piece of the) wood; it burns to charcoal; they hold it blowing it out where it flames; they dip it smoking into fat; they grind it (between stones). They rub it into the cuts, the wounds of the cuts; they blacken them with the So-/õä coals which are black. Then the cuts' scars are black, because the coals are black in them; they become dry, then the cuts dry closing up; the coal lies black inside the skin. (D. F. Bleek 1936: 144-145; Hollmann 2005: 300-301)

These proceedings, at least in some aspects, are very similar to the scarification practices described by Lorna Marshall in her account of the first kill rituals of the Ju/'hoansi of Namibia. In her book Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites Marshall states the following:

The principal element in the [first kill] rite is the scarification of the boy. The purpose of this is to put into the boy's body, through little cuts in his skin, substances that, in !Kung belief, will make him a successful hunter. The scarifications remain visible on the skin for a lifetime; they show that the man has been "cut with meat". (Marshall 1999: 154)

The scarifications described by //Kabbo were made in the hands, the arms, and the head, and do not correspond exactly to those made on the young Ju/'hoan initiate. But the basic principle is the same: to introduce into the body of the person "substances that […] will make him a successful hunter" (Marhsall 1999: 154), or, as //Kabbo explained, "that the arrow may fly well at the springbok" (D. F. Bleek 1936: 145; Hollmann 2005: 301).

It is not clear if //Kabbo is describing first kill rituals, but there is no doubt that he is referring to some sort of initiation connected with hunting. The "So-/õä man" mentioned by //Kabbo is an essential figure in these initiatory rites. He was scarified, but not "between the thumb and first finger (the place where the arrow lies)", as the /Xam did, but in the wrists, as the /Nu:-ka !ke (D. F. Bleek: 145; Hollmann 2005: 302). Only this "So-/õä man" could safely dig out the plant safely. No doubt he was a specialist in the collection and use of medicinal plants.

//Kabbo mentions the use of //karruk@n//karruk@n by other Khoisan groups who lived near the Orange river in BM and KT. These are the already mentioned /Nu:-ka !ke, who lived on the northern bank (D. F. Bleek 1936: 145, 157; Hollmann 2005: 302, 317), the /Ki:-/eŋ, who talked "both Bushman and Koranna" and lived close of the southern bank (D. F. Bleek 1936: 157; Hollmann 2005: 317), and the Koranna themselves (D. F. Bleek 145; Hollmann 2005: 301). The key to identify the plant in question could be found in our knowledge, if any, of the ethnobotany of these groups and their descendants.