The eminent anatomist Fritsch, in his valuable work on the natives of
South Africa (386-407), describes the Bushmen as being even in
physical development far below the normal standard. Their limbs are
"horribly thin" in both sexes; both women and men are "frightfully
ugly," and so much alike that, although they go about almost naked, it
is difficult to tell them apart. He thinks they are probably the
aboriginal inhabitants of Africa, scattered from the Cape to the
Zambesi, and perhaps beyond. They are filthy in their habits, and
"washing the body is a proceeding unknown to them." When the French
anatomist Cuvier examined a Bushman woman, he was reminded of an ape
by her head, her ears, her movements, and her way of pouting the lips.
The language of the Bushmen has often been likened to the chattering
of monkeys. According to Bleek, who has collected their tales, their
language is of the lowest known type. Lichtenstein (II., 42) found the
Bushman women like the men, "ugly in the extreme," adding that "they
understand each other more by their gestures than by their speaking."
"No one has a name peculiar to himself." Others have described them as
having protuberant stomachs, prominent posteriors, hollowed-out backs,
and "few ideas but those of vengeance and eating." They have only two
numerals, everything beyond two being "much," and except in those
directions where the struggle for life has sharpened their wits, their
intellectual faculties in general are on a level with their
mathematics. Their childish ignorance is illustrated by a question
which some of them seriously asked Chapman (I., 83) one day--whether
his big wagons were not the mothers of the little ones with slender
tires.
How well their minds are otherwise adapted for such an
intellectualized, refined, and esthetic feeling as love, may also be
inferred from the following observations. Lichtenstein points out that
while necessity has given them acute sight and hearing,
"they might almost be supposed to have neither taste, smell,
nor feeling; no disgust is ever evinced by them at even the
most nauseous kind of food, nor do they appear to have any
feeling of even the most striking changes in the temperature
of the atmosphere."
"No meat," says Chapman (I., 57), "in whatever state of decomposition,
is ever discarded by Bushmen." They dispute carrion with wolves and
vultures. Rabbits they eat skins and all, and their menu is varied by
all sorts of loathsome reptiles and insects.
No other savages, says Lichtenstein, betray "so high a degree of
brutal ferocity" as the Bushmen. They "kill their own children without
remorse." The missionary Moffat says (57) that "when a mother dies
whose infant is not able to shift for itself, it is, without any
ceremony, buried alive with the corpse of its mother." Kicherer,
another missionary, says
"there are instances of parents throwing their tender
offspring to the hungry lion, who stands roaring before
their cavern, refusing to depart till some peace-offering be
made to him."
He adds that after a quarrel between husband and wife the one beaten
is apt to take revenge by killing their child; and that, on various
occasions, parents smother their children, cast them away in the
desert, or bury them alive without remorse. Murder is an amusement,
and is considered a praiseworthy act. Livingstone (_M.T._, 159) tells
of a Bushman who thought his god would consider him a "clever fellow"
because he had murdered a man, two women, and two children. When
fathers and mothers become too old to be of any use, or to take care
of themselves, they are abandoned in the desert to be devoured alive
by wild beasts. "I have often reasoned with the natives on this cruel
practice," says the missionary Moffat (99); "in reply to which, they
would only laugh." "It appears an awful exhibition of human
depravity," he adds, "when children compel their parents to perish for
want, or to be devoured by beasts of prey in a desert, _from no other
motive but sheer laziness._" Kicherer says there are a few cases of
"natural affection" sufficient to raise these creatures to "a level
with the brute creation," Moffat, too, refers to exceptional cases of
kindness, but the only instance he gives (112) describes their terror
on finding he had drunk some water poisoned by them, and their
gladness when he escaped--which terror and gladness were, however,
very probably inspired not by sympathy but by the idea of punishment
at causing the death of a white man. Chapman himself, the chosen
champion of the Bushmen, relates (I., 67) how, having heard of Bushmen
rescuing and carrying home some Makalolos whom they had found dying of
thirst in the desert, he believed it at first; but he adds:
"Had I at that time possessed a sufficient knowledge of
native character, I should not have been so credulous
as to have listened to this report, for the idea of
Bushmen carrying human beings whom they had found half
dead out of a desert implies an act of charity quite
inconsistent with their natural disposition and
habits."
Barrow declares (269) that if Bushmen come across a Hottentot guarding
his master's cattle,
"not contented with putting him to immediate death,
they torture him by every means of cruelty that their
invention can frame, as drawing out his bowels, tearing
off his nails, scalping, and other acts equally
savage."
They sometimes bury a victim up to the neck in the ground and thus
leave him to be pecked to death by crows.
"LOVE IN ALL THEIR MARRIAGES"
And yet--I say it once more--we are asked to believe there is "love in
all the marriages" of these fiendish creatures--beings who, as
Kicherer says, live in holes or caves, where they "lie close together
like pigs in a sty" and of whom Moffat declares that with the
exception of Pliny's Troglodites "no tribe or people are surely more
brutish, ignorant, and miserable." Our amazement at Chapman's
assertion increases when we examine his argument more closely. Here it
is (I., 258-59):
"Although they have a plurality of wives, which they
also obtain by purchase, there is still love in all
their marriages, and courtship among them is a very
formal and, in some respects, a rather punctilious
affair. When a young Bushman falls in love, he sends
his sister to ask permission to pay his addresses; with
becoming modesty the girl holds off in a playful, yet
not scornful or repulsive manner if she likes him. The
young man next sends his sister with a spear, or some
other trifling article, which she leaves at the door of
the girl's home. If this be not returned within the
three or four days allowed for consideration, the
Bushman takes it for granted that he is accepted, and
gathering a number of his friends, he makes a grand
hunt, generally killing an elephant or some other large
animal and bringing the whole of the flesh to his
intended father-in-law. The family now riot in an
abundant supply.... After this the couple are
proclaimed husband and wife, and the man goes to live
with his father-in-law for a couple of winters, killing
game, and always laying the produce of the chase at his
feet as a mark of respect, duty, and gratitude."
It would take considerable ingenuity to condense into an equal number
of lines a greater amount of ignorance and naïveté than this passage
includes. And yet a number of anthropologists have accepted this
passage serenely as expert evidence that there is love in all the
marriages of the lowest of African races. Peschel was misled by it;
Westermarck triumphantly puts it at the head of his cases intended to
prove that "even very rude savages may have conjugal affection;" Moll
meekly accepts it as a fact (_Lib. Sex._, Bd. I., Pt. 2, 403); and it
seems to have made an impression on Katzel, and even on Fritsch. If
these writers had taken the trouble to examine Chapman's
qualifications for serving as a witness in anthropological questions,
they would have saved themselves the humiliation of being thus duped.
His very assertion that there is love in _all_ Bushman marriages ought
to have shown them what an untrustworthy witness he is; for a more
reckless and absurd statement surely was never penned by any
globe-trotter. There is not now, and there never has been, a people
among whom love could be found in all marriages, or half the
marriages. In another place (I., 43) Chapman gives still more striking
evidence of his unfitness to serve as a witness. Speaking of the
family of a Bamanwato chief, he says:
"I was not aware of this practice of early marriages
until the wife of an old man I had engaged here to
accompany us, a child of about eight years of age, was
pointed out to me, and in my ignorance I laughed
outright, until my interpreter explained the
matrimonial usages of their people."
Chapman's own editor was tempted by this exhibition of ignorance to
write the following footnote: "The author seems not to have been aware
that such early marriages are common among the Hindoos." He might have
added "and among most of the lower races."
The ignorance which made Chapman "laugh outright" when he was
confronted by one of the most elementary facts of anthropology, is
responsible for his reckless assertions in the paragraph above quoted.
It is an ignorant assumption on his part that it is the feelings of
"respect, duty, and gratitude" that make a Bushman provide his bride's
father with game for a couple of winters. Such feelings are unknown to
the Bushman's soul. Working for the bride's father is simply his way
(if he has no property to give) of paying for his wife--an
illustration of the widespread custom of service. If polygamy and the
custom of purchasing wives do not, as Chapman intimates, prevent love
from entering into all Bushman marriages, then these aborigines must
be constructed on an entirely different plan from other human beings,
among whom we know that polygamy crushes monopoly of affection, while
a marriage by purchase is a purse-affair, not a heart-affair--the girl
going nearly always to the highest bidder.
But Chapman's most serious error--the one on which he founded his
theory that there is love in all Bushman marriages--lies in his
assumption that the ceremony of sham capture indicates modesty and
love, whereas, as we saw in the chapter on Coyness, it is a mere
survival of capture, the most ruffianly way of securing a bride, in
which her choice or feelings are absolutely disregarded, and which
tells us nothing except that a man covets a woman and that she feigns
resistance because custom, as taught by her parents, compels her to do
so. Inasmuch as she _must_ resist whether she likes the man or not,
how could such sham "coyness" be a symptom of love? Moreover, it
appears that even this sham coyness is exceptional, since, as Burchell
informs us (II., 59), it is only when a girl grows up to womanhood
without having been betrothed--"which, however, seldom happens"--that
the female receives the man's attentions with such an "affectation of
great alarm and disinclination on her part."
Burchell also informs us that a Bushman will take a second wife when
the first one has become old, "not in years but in constitution;" and
Barrow discovered the same thing (I., 276): "It appeared that it was
customary for the elderly men to have two wives, one old and past
child-bearing, the other young." Chapman, too, relates that a Bushman
will often cast off his early wife and take a younger one, and as that
does not prevent him from finding affection in their conjugal unions,
we are enabled from this to infer that "love" means to him not
enduring sympathy or altruistic capacity and eagerness for
self-sacrifice, but a selfish, transient fondness continuing only as
long as a woman is young and can gratify a man's sexual appetite. That
kind of love doubtless does exist in all Bushman marriages.
Chapman further declares (II., 75) that these people lead
"comparatively" chaste lives. I had supposed that, as an egg is either
good or bad, so a man or woman is either chaste or unchaste. Other
writers, who had no desire to whitewash savages, tell us not only
"comparatively" but positively what Bushman morals are. A Bushman told
Theophilus Halm (_Globus_, XVIII., 122) that quarrels for the
possession of women often lead to murder; "nevertheless, the
lascivious fellow assured me it was a fine thing to appropriate the
wives of others." Wake (I., 205) says they lend their wives to
strangers, and Lichtenstein tells us (II., 48) that "the wife is not
indissolubly united to the husband; but when he gives her permission,
she may go whither she will and associate with any other man." And
again (42):
"Infidelity to the marriage compact is not considered a
crime, it is scarcely regarded by the offended
person.... They seem to have no idea of the distinction
of girl, maiden, and wife; they are all expressed by
one word alone. I leave every reader to draw from this
single circumstance his own inference with regard to
the nature of love and every kind of moral feeling
among them."[137]
That this is not too severe a criticism is obvious from the fact that
Lichtenstein, in judging savages, was rather apt to err on the side of
leniency. The equally generous and amiable missionary Moffat (174-75)
censures him, for instance, for his favorable view of the Bechuanas,
saying that he was not with them long enough to know their real
character. Had he dwelt among them, accompanied them on journeys, and
known them as he (Moffat) did, "he would not have attempted to revive
the fabled delights and bliss of ignorance reported to exist in the
abodes of heathenism."
It is in comparison with these Bechuanas that Chapman calls the
Bushmen moral, obviously confounding morality with licentiousness.
Without having any moral principles at all, it is quite likely that
the Bushmen are less licentious than their neighbors for the simple
reason that they are less well-fed; for as old Burton remarks, for the
most part those are "aptest to love that are young and lusty, live at
ease, stall-fed, free from cares, like cattle in a rank
pasture"--whereas the Bushmen are nearly always thin, half-starved
denizens of the African deserts, enervated by constant fears, and so
unmanly that "a single musket shot," says Lichtenstein, "will put a
hundred to flight, and whoever rushes upon them with only a good stick
in his hand has no reason to fear any resistance from ever so large a
number."
Such men are not apt to be heroes among women in any sense. Indeed,
Galton says (_T.S.A._, 178), "I am sure that Bushmen are, generally
speaking, henpecked. They always consult their wives. The Damaras do
not." Chapman himself, with unconscious humor, gives us (I., 391) a
sample of the "love" which he found in "all Bushman marriages;" his
remarks confirming at the same time the truth I dwelt on in the
chapter on Individual Preference, that among savages the sexes are
less individualized than with us, the men being more effeminate, the
women viragoes:
"The passive and _effeminate_ disposition of the men,
of which we have had frequent reason to complain in the
course of this narrative, was illustrated in the revel
which accompanied the parting feast, when the men
allowed themselves to be beaten by the women, who, I am
told, are in the constant habit of belaboring their
devoted husbands, in order to keep them in proper
subjection. On this occasion the men got broken heads
at the hands of their gentle partners; one had his
nose, another his ear, nearly bitten off."
Notwithstanding this affectionate "constant habit" of breaking their
husbands' heads, the Bushman women have not succeeded in teaching them
even the rudiments of gallantry. "The woman is a beast of burden,"
says Hahn; "at the same time she is subjected to ill-treatment which
not seldom leads to death." When camp is moved, the gallant husband
carries his spear and quiver, the wife "does the rest," carrying the
baby, the mat, the earthen cooking-pot, the ostrich shells, and a
bundle of skins. If it happens, as it often does, that there is not
enough to eat, the wife has to go hungry. In revenge she usually
prepares her own food only, leaving him to do his own cooking. If a
wife falls ill on the way to a new camping-place, she is left behind
to perish. (Ratzel, I., 7.)
In conclusion, and as a climax to my argument, I will quote the
testimony of three missionaries who did not simply make a flying visit
or two to the country of the Bushmen, as Chapman did, but lived among
them. The Rev. R. Moffat (49) cites the missionary Kicherer, "whose
circumstances while living among them afforded abundant opportunities
of becoming intimately acquainted with their real condition," and who
wrote that the Bushmen "are total strangers to domestic happiness. The
men have several wives, but conjugal affection is little known." This
opinion is thus endorsed by Moffat, and a third missionary, the Rev.
F. Fleming, wrote (167) that among Bushmen "conjugal affection seems
totally unknown," and pre-matrimonial love is of course out of
question in a region where girls are married as infants. The wife
always has to work harder than the husband. If she becomes weak or ill
she is unceremoniously left behind to starve. (Ratzel, I., 72.)