birds and khoesan - pre- publication article

8/7/2019 Birds and KhoeSan - pre- publication article

1/21

Birds and KhoeSan: linking spirit and healing withday-to-day life

Abstract The paper assesses what birds mean to the KhoeSan in recent and past contexts by linking

ethnographic, anthropological and archaeological material with my research on theshifting role of animals in KhoeSan life. Despite the low visibility of birds in KhoeSan research they areamongst themost meaningful of animals. Drawing on ideas of exceptional hunter-gatherer sensitivityto theirsensual environment, I trace how attuned knowledge of birds has fed into KhoeSancreation myths,healing practices, and day-to-day life. Echoing how birds feature in many cultures, amongsttheKhoeSan they hold the quality of messengers between divine and earthly realms. I link thisway of knowing birds to their characteristics and further indicate how particular bird

characteristics feed intodistinctive KhoeSan ways of knowing the world. The paper highlights particularly salienceof theostrich.

IntroductionFor different reasons, at different times and places, particularanimals feature more prominently than others in the conscious andimaginative world of KhoeSan. There are, however, certain animalsthat seem to have held and continue to hold a greater imaginativesignificance than others. Rock art studies and the significanthistorical ethnography of the Cape /Xam has particularlyemphasised the spiritual importance of eland, snakes and lions.Although birds are a feature of both rock art and the /Xam archive,they are not particularly prominent. Contrastingly, when one delvesinto broader research on folklore, religion and healing, it becomesreadily apparent that birds, and especially the ostrich, lie at theheart of KhoeSan ontology and epistemology. Interaction with birdsis deeply wedded to how KhoeSan conceive and articulate ideas of the world and consequently manifest ideas in practice.

Despite the profound social changes that have characterised

KhoeSan life since the 1950s, for most of these recent hunter-gatherers and pastoralists living in more or less remote parts of southern Africa, day-to-day life remains life in the open and entailsa significant degree of regular interaction with animals, be theyinsects, birds, farm animals, small mammals or larger herbivoresand carnivores. From her work on mythology, folklore and healingdances, Biesele has identified a crucial historical role for animals incontexts of imaginative substrate, or the distinctive Bushmanhunter-gatherer thinking, born from participation in theirenvironment, that underpins the creation, transmission andtransformation of Bushman traditional knowledge (Biesele1993:13). Other academics have similarly pointed to the profoundrole of the environment on the thinking and practices of Bushmen

1


2/21

and other African peoples (Carruthers 2003:258; Omofolabo 1996:182). With the awareness that the KhoeSan still live essentiallydeeply rural lives, in recent research I have examined the ways inwhich the profound role of animals in KhoeSan life may have shiftedover time and persisted in recent contexts. In this paper I focus onmy findings concerning birds. I explore how and why birds aremeaningful for KhoeSan by exploring the significance of every-dayinteraction with birds and how this relates in turn to theprominencing of particular species in KhoeSan cosmology andmedicine. My approach is not to address knowledge of birds within discretecultural KhoeSan clusters, but to try and convey what I see as pan-KhoeSan ways of thinking about birds and being with birds thatlocates them within persistent and distinctive ways of thinking anddoing. To this end, despite the dangers of presenting an accountthat looks ethnographically undigested and old fashioned, I use abroad range of examples from across past and recent KhoeSan.Given the limitations of a paper, I believe this approach provides thebest possibility for capturing the essence of KhoeSan birdrelationships. The pan-KhoeSan continuity I envisage relates not torigid knowledge and practices but to a range of ideas and strategiesthat come, go, return and transform but remain nevertheless visibleenough to justify description in a homogenous manner (Low 2008a:46). They are webs of ideas and practices that are, to use a musicalreference, tight but loose. My understanding draws on Bieseles

ideas of the imaginative substrate and arguments spearheaded byLewis-Williams concerning long term continuity in spiritual ideas andritual. 1 Discussing religion and folklore in this pan-KhoeSan manneris further validated by the continuities identified by Schmidt andGuenther in their respective works on KhoeSan folklore and religion.

Although my account emphasises that foraging and hunter-gatherer life lies behind KhoeSan knowledge of birds I am notproposing a simple opposition between the KhoeSan and Westernpeople or those from other civilizations or agricultural, urban orliterate backgrounds. What I wish to suggest is that the KhoeSanprovide one example of how the environment informs possibleways of being in the world. My work suggests that KhoeSan birdrelationships are more typical of people living close to nature andoutside or on the periphery of education and I see this as asocially and environmentally contingent distinction of degree, ratherthan absolute difference. Much that ripples through the KhoeSanresembles similar ideas and practices found across the world in pastand current times. As their continued lifestyle is more affiliated withhistorical than current living conditions for much of the world, there1 Lewis-Williams has revised his earlier suggestions of a panSan cognitive set but nevertheless sees

continued justification in recognising historical and regional patterns in San ideas and practices. SeeLewis-Williams Quanto?: The Issue of many meanings in southern African San Rock ArtResearch, South African Archaeological Bulletin 53: 86-97. 1998

2


3/21

are ways in which the KhoeSan can inform our understanding of potential common human historical ways of thinking and acting.

My starting point is rooted in a notion that indigenous peoples arealert to certain sorts of sensual clues from their environment. Theseare the clues that have underscored KhoeSan living strategies. Forsome time anthropologists, particularly including Radin (see Berman2000:11); Ingold (2000) and Brody (1983) have advanced ideas of hunter-gatherer s related to this theme whilst the ecologicalpsychologist Gibson provides perhaps the pithiest exposition.Gibson calls this disposition an education of attention (Gibson1979:254), which Ingold summarises as development by hunter-gatherer peoples of a sophisticated perceptual awareness of theproperties of ...[their] surroundings and of the possibilities theyafford for action (Ingold 1996: 40). 2

Birds are meaningful because they often provide KhoeSan, as theydo all people, with a significantly rich dynamic sensory experience.This brings them into an especially interactive relationship withKhoeSan, in contrast to, for example, the behaviour of earthwormsor plants. Birds alight, sometimes from nowhere or come from thefurthest visible point; they circle singularly or in groups over killsites and rotting animals; they swoop, dive and cluster in vibrantcohesive flocks. Sometimes they sing to the world, talk amongstthemselves or even talk to people. Birds join in around camp and inthe bush.

Focussing on birds uncovers many key distinctive features of KhoeSan life and thought. What, however, makes the study of birdsall the more rewarding is the exceptional range and depth of evidence available including rock art, some of which may be up to26,000 years old, colonial ethnography, and particularly theextensive later nineteenth century Bleek and Lloyd folklore archiveand the considerable anthropological research carried out since the1950s. To this range I add my own research findings based uponfieldwork amongst the Damara, Nama, Topnaar, Hai//om, Naro,Khomani, !Kung 3 and Ju/hoansi in 2001 and between 2006-2008.Although this study does not have room for more than passingreference to rock art, based on arguments for continuity, many of the ideas discussed have direct implications for rock art analysis.

These diverse sources provide rich insight into how birds feature inKhoeSan life, epistemology, ontology and cosmology. In commonwith many indigenous peoples, amongst the KhoeSan, birds workas a bridge between spiritual and physical realms. Birds play a keyrole in creation stories and are frequently thought of as prophetic2 Tim Ingold The optimal forager and economic man pp 25 - 44Philippe Descola - editor, Gisli

Palsson - editor. Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. Routledge, (1996: 40)3 I use the name !Kung to represent the self designation of particular Bushmen I encountered in thenorth western Otjozondjupa region of Namiba

3


4/21

messengers. In the healing domain birds, parts of birds, theirshadows and their eggs are the causes and curing agents of sickness. Birds amongst the KhoeSan fit the role the parasychologistHansen identified for birds across many diverse world cultures.Birds are messengers living between divine, spiritual and earthlydomains; they have a betwixt and between quality (Hansen, 2001:79). 4 At the same time the KhoeSan maintain a familiarly lookingcasual day-to-day, unconscious and pragmatic relationship withbirds. The difficulty inherent in representing KhoeSan birdknowledge lies in being alert to the subtlety, difference andsimilarities bound up in different ways of being human.

To date birds have not received the attention of other animalsamongst KhoeSan although brief mention is not uncommon. In olderliterature, well summarised by Schapera (1930), birds appear underrubrics of superstitions, belief and divination. In more recentanthropological literature birds feature in contexts of ecological andsubsistence knowledge and studies of folklore and rock art. Themost salient point to arise from recent research isacknowledgement that KhoeSan bird knowledge is extensive andclearly ranges beyond that required simply to hunt, although, asSiblerbauer observes, knowledge still tends to be based on practicalvalue and can consequently appear inconsistent or patchy(Silberbauer 1981: 64). This emphasis is similar to that Barnardfound concerning plant use amongst the Naro (Barnard 1986: 58).

Heinz notably obtained 65 names for 77 birds seen during hisfieldwork amongst the !Ko, south of Ghanzi in Botswana. Heinz wasparticularly impressed by !Ko knowledge of bird habits and !Koability to reproduce bird song (Heinz 1978, pp. 151-153). Guentherwas similarly impressed with bird knowledge amongst Naro.Coexae, one of the artists he encountered, provided names for 82of the depicted birds in his bird field guide. Coexae could similarlyimitate their song and relate a number of observations of theirhabits. Like Silberbauer, Guenther observes that naming is oftenonomatopoeic, including dw :sa (ant-eating chat, the short nasalcall is rendered dw by G/wi (Silberbauer 1981:70) ), or , xaxasse, the Blacksmith Plover. Often naming also simply involves abirds gross physical characteristics. For instance the Damara !huibmight casually be known as kai /anis , meaning big bird, or birdsappearing around rain time as /nanu anib , meaning rain bird.

In their study of !Kung animal knowledge Blurton Jones and Konnerindicated how the !Kung, amongst whom they thought knowledge of birds extensive, could read the environment. !Kung could describe ,for example, the mobbing behaviour or birds and the leadingbehaviour of the Honey-guide (1976: 338). Silberbauer, however

provides a less proto-scientific and a more emic G/wi perspective4 Hansen, p. 79

4


5/21

equally appropriate for other KhoeSan. Silberbauer emphasises howG/wi knowledge fits unevenly into Western interpretative paradigms.He observes, for example, that the bateleur eagle is thought toknow when a hunter will be successful and hovers above him. Theeagle might, over-simply, thereby be described as a good omen toG/wi hunters. The underlying issue is, however, not that randomevents are given superstitious meaning, but, that animals arethought, anthropomorphically, to have been given certaincharacteristics or knowledge, some of which may be better thanthat of humans (Silberbauer 1981: 64). Similarly to Gibsonseducation of attention, Silberbauer identifies that knowing what isnormal and abnormal behaviour makes up one part of the [G/wi]environmental information spectrum, which is under constant, if automatic, observation. Silberbauer emphasises that the practicalvalue of bird knowledge to the G/wi lies in their value as indicatorsof situations that are of importance. (Silberbauer 1981: 72). Thekey to getting to grips with KhoeSan bird relations lies in recognisingnot only what is important but why. Elsewhere I have examined howapparently familiar ideas of massage, perfume and inoculation,amongst others, have been repeatedly overlooked or misunderstoodby researchers because they appear so familiar (Low 2008a). Herbalremedies, fof example, are thought by some KhoeSan, to work bysmelling out sickness in the body; an idea far removed fromfamiliar phytological theory.

When thinking about birds it as important to resist boxing webs of ideas into definable categories of knowledge, such as myth,superstition, ethology and medicine. At the same time, however,trying to sidestep such boxed inquiry presents very real challengeswhen one tries to dissemble and discuss bird knowledge. In thefollowing account, for practical reasons, I fall prey to my owncautions and follow familiar ways of talking about birds, startingwith creation myths and moving on to their role in illness, cure andprophesy. I do this, however, with the proviso that we conceptuallytake the ball of mixed threads, pull it apart, talk about the differenttypes of threads but then try to roll it all back together at the end.

Encountering BirdsNot surprisingly, when KhoeSan look at birds they do not seebiological organisms in any sort of scientific manner. So what dothey see? To answer this we have to retreat a little to anthropologyof the senses. Partly following Foucaults ideas of the gaze, Classen(1993) and Howes (2004), amongst others, have detailed ahistorical prioritising of the senses in which Europeans and Sciencehave come to conceptually frame the world predominantly throughsight and socially contingent reading of things, as opposed to a

more holistic sensual encounter. A starting point in education of attention immediately alerts us to the importance of the wider ways

5


6/21

of listening and knowing that Science downplays. To considerKhoeSan encounters with birds we must factor in a probable greatersensory participation in the encounter than might typically beconceived amongst heavily urbanised peoples, alongside variationsof common knowledge, personal knowledge, mythology and folktales. Any interaction with birds, be it listening, use of their parts ordetermining their role as sickness causer, maps into this widerphysical and social context. Culturally, what particularly underscoresKhoeSan experience, as it does experience in numerous other non-scientific cultures, is the knowledge that a bird might be a personor a special messenger communicating across their sharedenvironment. Conversely, there are times when a bird is just a bird,when its presence is granted no particular significance and it ispragmatically accepted as part of the furniture of life. Theattribution of meaning lies embedded in the context drivenreceptivity of individuals.

At its root KhoeSan cultural understanding of birds is wedded totheir creation myths and ideas of birds having the potential to movebetween mythical old time and new time, wherein old time equatesto an old but still present spirit world. Building on Guenther (1999)and Biesele (1993), Keeney (Keeney 2007:240-255) emphasises theprofound importance of ideas of transformation within Ju/hoancosmology. To understand the role of birds we have to appreciatethis wider story of transformation across old and new time, spaceand form. Keeney observes that change was the original force in the

Bushman world. At the time of First Creation the original ancestorsgave birth to creatures that kept changing into different animals. InFirst Creation it was the nature of all things to change over and overagain. Then came Second Creation, a time of fixity when people andanimals became separated from each other and the animals werenamed. Despite this cleavage, however, the two realms remainlinked through the work of healers and the trickster, a recurrentagent in KhoeSan folklore and belief. Moreover, the notion of animals and people interchanging remains a possibility in the mindsof KhoeSan as an expression of the continued role of the FirstCreation in the present.

Creation MythsBirds lie at the centre of KhoeSan creation stories in roles thatindicate their special status on the borders of the spirit world.During her 1970s Ju/hoansi research, Biesele recorded stories thatlinked the kori bustard (Ardeotis kori) 5 with the primal formaldifferentiation of one animal from another. Biesele relates that thekori bustard is considered to be Kaoxas servant and a kind of captain of the other animals. Kaoxa is the divinity who calls any5 I have identified birds with familiar and scientific names where possible. I only have KhoeSan names

for a number of birds but I do not believe this detracts from the validity of the account; indeed usingonly KhoeSan names reinforces the message of different forms of knowledge that should not always beunthinkingly channelled into Western paradigms.

6


7/21

dance and was the one who made the fire of creation. TheJu/hoansi believe that animal characteristics were branded intothem using the fire of creation and the flames of the fire werefanned by the strong wings of the kori bustard. The branding daymarked the end of the magical time of human and animal overlap(Biesele 1993: 23, 98). 6

Amongst Hai//om, I heard a story about the ostrich that jugglessimilar themes of fire, large birds and branding although it does soas an explanation for ostrich characteristics. This twist ably reflectsthe way related themes of knowledge flow across different KhoeSangroups and how the knowledge plays out in local contingentcontexts.

The ostrich had a fire on which he cooked his food whilst the othersate food raw. One day he went to visit the people and they sawblack spots on his legs. The people asked where did you get those? [burn marks] . The people said we have to organize a dancetogether. When they danced the ostrich hid the fire under his armsand didnt stretch his wings. The people asked him why dont youstretch?. So he did and he forgot about the fire and a person stoleit. The ostrich chased him and kicked the rock. That is why he only has three toes .7

It is notable in this brief story that the ostrich seems ontologicallyelevated from other animals, he eats his food cooked not raw. This

perhaps echoes the previous account in which the kori bustard holdspower as Kaoxas servant. There is even a hint that the ostrich hasfire before people. Amongst the Naro Guenther identified similarbeliefs linking ostriches to the acquisition of fire. These typicallyfeatured a woman or an Ostrich Woman as custodian of the FirstFire. The fire holders kept the embers alight under their apron orwings. Typically fire is associated with women and ostrich womenalthough Guenther notes, as in the story above, that the role alsooccasionally falls to a male ostrich (Guenther 1999: 160). 8 In astudy of rock art the Eastwoods elaborate that they tooencountered a Naro belief in an Ostrich Woman, /Os. /Os is amagically potent bird who lives in the branches of the red-heartacacia . She is particularly dangerous to children and visible onlyto shamans. As the Eastwoods note a potent status of the ostrichwas similarly found in /Xam belief. A /Xam Bushmen named theostrich, Magic Bird, and observed: With the exception of the Moonand the Male Ostrich, all other things mortal are said to die outright,and not come to life again (Eastwood 2006: 108). 9

6 Biesele, Women like Meat, pp. 23, 987

Elizabeth Naibeb8 Guenther, Tricksters and Trancers, 1999, p.1609 Capturing the Spoor, p. 108

7


8/21


9/21

neck were thought too flexible. 12 A KKG speaking !Kung woman usedbeads tied round the neck for neck pain and beads around the waistto help diarrhoea. 13 Some KhoeSan combined the prescription of wearing an egg shell necklace with drinking burnt and groundostrich egg shell. Usually this is part of a treatment undertaken for aset of baby and young child sickness signs and symptoms, oftenreferred to simply as childrens sicknesses or /garon //ob amongstKKG speakers. Childrens sickness usually refers to a combination of fever, diarrhoea and stomach pain or equally signs that equate toacute dehydration or meningitis, typically including cessation of movement of the skin over the anterior fontanel and rigidity of thebabys body, possibly accompanied by spastic paralysis.

Why the KhoeSan use particular parts of the ostrich as they do is adifficult question. As anthropologists commonly encounter amongstother African people, questions of why are barely ever answered byKhoeSan beyond, because the old people told us. Ultimately, thequestion why must be acknowledged as revealingly inappropriate.When one, however, places ostrich use in wider contexts of KhoeSanknowledge and medicine, there is much to suggest the physicalform and attributes of the ostrich underlie its use. Both ostrich legsand the neck are highly distinctive amongst southern Africananimals. The long bald legs have a particularly familiar, if aberrant,human quality. Like the neck, what is also overtly apparent of legs istheir strength. The qualities of the strong legs or neck aretransferred to KhoeSan people by wearing or eating parts of the

ostrich. These confer body strength in general, but neck strengthand leg strength in particular. Amongst the Damara the tendon of the ostrich leg is used to treat knee or leg pain, gurub 14 . Thetendon is tied variously around the knee and ankle or down betweenthe two, alongside the tibia. This paralleling of ostrich leg tendon, toa leg tendon problem, strongly supports an idea of transference of qualities that is similarly played out in ostrich being used for theloose necks of children, although in the latter case ostrich neck isnot used as might be expected. Using a part not from the neckindicates how one part of an animal is conceptualized as holding thepotency of the entire animal. The knowledge expressed by one NaroBushman that if you eat the kori bustard you will never sit downfurther demonstrates how one part of an animal can hold andconvey the behavioural and physical characteristics of the wholeanimal, in this case the long legged ambulatory habits of the koribustard. 15

12 H222213 !K9914 Possibly related to khurub meaning blood vessel or !Khuru, knee cap (Haacke and Eiseb 2002:

572). The illness refers to a !nu or lump in the medial hamstring tendon associated with a bent, stiff and painful leg.

15 Nh2202

9


10/21

As ideas of making KhoeSan children strong are drawn from theanimal world, so do other environmental relationships inform use of ostriches. Across the KhoeSan run ideas of people withoutsomething powerful being introduced to it [ ??] through minor ormajor rituals of controlled exposure. This applies to puberty rites oreven how to introduce oneself to a new physical environment orweather phenomenon. 16 Amongst the Nama I encountered a notionthat further locates ostriches in the formative cosmological processof becoming part of the physical world, or second order creation inJu/hoan terms. When a baby is born some Nama say he doesntknow anything and for a small number of days, they place a littleburnt and ground ostrich egg shell on the tongue of the newborn asa medicine, called !huitsa . This medicine is just to teach the child.It is the first thing that comes to his mouth. 17 The wider context of the word !huitsa relates to !hui , variously meaning bursting open,exploding, opening of a spring and bursting into blossom (Haacke2002: 337), 18 all of which juggle this idea of coming forth intocreation.

From the late nineteenth century the philologist Theophilus Hahnprovides a yet further clue as to the possible potency of the ostrichand it is one that may well juggle [ repeat] formative KhoeSan ideasaround ostrich importance. Hahn identified !Urisis as the name of the sun, meaning the white one. Hahn determined the root of thisword lay in ! which, similarly amongst the !Ai Bushmen, originallymeant white and egg. Hahn proposed it is not unlikely that the

sun, which is round and white, was equated by at least Khoikhoi, if not Bushmen, to the egg par excellence , the ostrich egg (Hahn1881: 141).

The transformative and potent properties of the rising and fallingmoon are a central pole in KhoeSan mythology and folklore as is,less prominently, the sun; the revered and feared bringer of daylight from the East, the wife of the Khoekhoe trickster figureHeitsi-eibib (Hahn 1881:141) and the Ju/hoan n/um filled deaththing (Marshall 1969: 352). Wagner-Robertz (MS 50) noted howDamara healers entering trance ran to the direction of thesunrise. 19 Guenther recorded a belief amongst the Naro that relatedthe sun to a rhinocerous sauntering from east to west, who waskilled and reborn in the cycle of day and night. These themes of rebirth and extreme potency may well feed into Keeneysobservation amongst the Ju/hoansi that the most special dream ahealer could have is of an ostrich egg shell cracking open, meaningthe rope of light that goes to the Big God is now open for you. In arelated sense some Ju/hoansi similarly believed that really strong16 See eg. Marshall, Nyae Nyae !Kung (1999) on rain 124-12617 Nh3318

Haacke 2002: 33719 Manuscript 50 Zauberdoktoren, I am very grateful to Dr Wagner for his kind permission to usethe notes of his deceased wife.

10


11/21

healers do not just see coloured threads tracing round the sky whenthey are dancing, but they see these ropes as the ostrich eggshellbeads. Each bead is a step up the rope to the ancestors and the BigGod (Keeney 2003: 42, 60). 20 Giving children ostrich egg shellmedicine seems to reflect a compounded associations of the ostrichwith strength but also with coming into creation and having strengthin the cycle of life and death. In an extension of this belief, thesame idea is used for the ultimate divine gift to the strongesthealers, an opening up to the essence of creation. There is a sensein which the cracking of the egg shell is a rebirth into the divinity of persistent First Order creation.

Since the mythical branding, animals and people have beendifferent. However, the continual influence of First Order creationmeans that in certain situations humans and animals merge again.Conceptually there seems a hierarchy of merging. There is thegreat merging wherein Bushmen healers become part of the BigGod and there is a less powerful shamanic merging with animalsthat works with the same sympathies but is more a part of everydayspirituality and medicine. Merging is graphically represented in thepart-human part-animal therianthropes of Bushman rock art. Otherforms of merging include KhoeSan healers shape-shifting.

Ideas of transformation of people into animals have been recordedamongst the KhoeSan since some of the earliest colonial records. 21 Accounts of the nineteenth century Cape /Xam reveal that sorcerers

shifted into all sorts of animals including lions, birds and jackals22

and animals could similarly shift into human form. In currentcontexts, Bushman healers are particularly known for their ability tochange into lions. In lion form they can frighten and possibly killpeople or animals or defend their camp. They can also travel far tocheck out distant happenings. The ability to transform is intrinsic tothe First Order trickster figures of KhoeSan belief who sometimesappear as animals and can be recognised by their exceptionalanimal behaviour, such as not dying when shot.

The KhoeSan idea of transformation between people and animals isa Second Order creation phenomenon that demonstrates thecontinued power of the trickster. At the same time, people andanimals being the same is a First Order phenomenon and hencetransformation serves as a direct link to the past. In this manneranimal forms allow dead people to have a role in the present. In1972 The anthropologist Wagner-Robertz recorded a typicalexample of this in the case of a 77 years old half Bushman half Damara man, Frederik !Gaeb, who was told by his father shortlybefore he died if you see a big bird in the morning ( with a dekke?)20 Keeney, Ropes to God, p. 4221

Grevenbroek, 1695, recorded claims that some people were wizards capable of transforming(Schapera 1933: 213)

22 Bleek notebooks BC 151 A2 1 063, from CD accompanying Skotnes (ed) 2007

11


12/21

then you must know that I am coming for you. Frederik explainedthat he had seen his dead father numerous times in the form of botha snake and a bird. 23

Closely related to ideas of human / animal transformation is anotherhistorical and current KhoeSan idea that animals can enter peopleand cause sickness. The /Xam, for instance, spoke of animalsincluding owls and butterflies causing sickness. 24 The miniatureanimals inside people are typically removed in a healing dance bysucking, snoring or pulling, which is performed by a healerrubbing their hands or head, or inhaling with their nose or mouth, ona patient. The miniature animal enters the healer and is thenexpelled usually by coughing or snorting it out. In 2001 JustinaHaraes, a 71 years old Damara lady in Khorixas, described to mehow, at one point of her life, she was persistently sick, she couldnot feel anything and did not sleep. At night she was just sitting.One day a man came to help her. He told her she had a bird and asnake inside her. Although he could not suck the snake out, hesucked out the bird. It was a real bird. The man showed it to her andthen threw it in the fire. From that day on she was better.

Birds and windOne way of thinking about transformation of people into animals oranimals into miniature animals within people, is to think of howphenomena may share characteristics or essence and how thesemight be envisaged to move from one organisms or phenomenon to

another. Once in the recipient these characteristics of the host maybe referred to, depending on context as either the host animal or byother terms relating to its essence. Amongst the KhoeSan ideas of wind serve as a key way of talking about how essence or potencymoves between organisms and other natural phenomena (Low2008b). Wind equates to the breath of creation which, once inside aliving thing, further equates to that animals, persons and possiblyplants identity and distinctive ability to work in the world. Someanimals and people are thought of as having strong wind or potencyand if this is too strong the potency becomes dangerous. Oftenwords for smell or even shadow are also used as a way of talkingabout the dangerous or healing wind running from one organism orphenomenon to affect another. The KhoeSan talk of the whirlwind ashousing spirits of the dead that make a person sick. That is one formof harmful wind. Another is the dangerous smell of menstruatingwomen. A further idea involves a child wearing a necklacecontaining parts of a strong or potent animal, typically a kudu oreland. The necklace imbues the child with the wind of that animaland the child becomes dangerously strong. A well known cause of sickness amongst babies is the shadow or wind of a bird passingover the head of a baby. The potent wind penetrates the baby and

23 Wagner Robertz file 52 //Gamagu, Die Ahnen24 Hewitt, p. 292

12


13/21

causes depression of the anterior fontanel. Some say the babyslimbs claw up like the talons of a bird. The Hai//om call the bird a//gori (a kite?). The name is very probably related to //gorob ,meaning the talon of a bird of prey (Haacke 2002:257). The bird istherefore named by what it represents. Some Ju/hoan give theirchildren ostrich beads to wear strung round the waist to protectthem from the sickness causing shadow of the //gauwa ha bird. 25

The way wind relates to life, death and birds is both rich andcomplex. As academics it is tempting to try and explain what appearjumbled ideas by untangling them into metaphor, symbolism,allegory, metonymy, synecdoche or some other analyticalabstraction. Although such analysis can be highly insightful, itseems, however, to hold the danger of perpetuating aninterpretative colonialism within which KhoeSan phenomena are nottaken on their own terms and granted their own equal reality. Whatconcerns me is that something highly informative about howKhoeSan work and think is being lost in such abstractions. The keylies in the distinction that in Western terms if one does somethingwith or to something that is not the source phenomenon but issymbolically, metaphorically or otherwise related, in conventionalterms one is not doing something with the source phenomenon.Whereas in a KhoeSan context the depth and profundity of therelationship between say a bird, and a child with the wind of thebird, is such that real implications and effects manifest in the childor host by working with either of the inter-related entities. The

smell, breath, wind or shadow of one phenomenon can be workedwith by KhoeSan . Bad winds can be removed, good winds thatmake a person strong can be put in. This is an idea intrinsic towearing strong animal parts.

In the context of birds the notion of potent wind is more involutedand complex still. Amongst KhoeSan the experiential knowledge of birds wind-beating wings entangles with broader potency windideas. Awareness of wind generated by wings seems to havecontributed to concepts of birds actually being the wind, an ideafurther indicated by the awareness that birds come and go throughthe air. This quality of birds being the wind is conceptually possibleamongst KhoeSan in the context of their belief that onephenomenon can hold the characteristics of something else and is inthat sense an owner of, or worker with, that phenomenon.

Lloyd recorded a /Xam story that describes wind, who was formerlya man, becoming a bird who lived in a hole in the mountains andventured out for food. 26 A similarly intimate linking between thephysical blowing wind and birds is echoed in something apsychologist, Porteus, described in 1937. Porteus related that

25 J218626 Claim to the Country, digital archive of Bleek and Lloyd Book BC 151 A2 1 083

13


14/21

Bushmen thought of the wind rushing across the veldt as a hugebird that is the forerunner of death. It cannot be seen but the beatof its wings can be felt as it passes by (Porteus 1937: 119) Withoutknowing exactly where Porteus ascertained this information it ishard to accurately assess it. Although I have no other evidence,such an account of winds origin does, however, seems quite inkeeping with KhoeSan ways of thinking. His account is particularlyinteresting because it suggests a significant possible ideational linkbetween birds, wind and sickness that holds commonalities withrecently held ideas. In current contexts wind blowing in from foreignparts is sometimes thought the cause of illness as, in a relatedsense, is the wind coming in from foreign or unknown people (Low2008a: 263).

In terms of better understanding KhoeSan ways of being and thenotion that analytical abstractions such as metaphor might distanceus from some of the meaning and reality of KhoeSan bird relations,it is important to recognise that these sorts of complex beliefsinform action or use. In an historical /Xam context, for example,//Goo-ka-!kui, or Smokes Man (owner of or worker with smoke)saw a !kuerre!kuerre bird at the Haartfontein Mountains and threw astone at it, based on his understanding that it was the wind. Thewind bird thereupon went into a hole in the mountain and the windblew so frighteningly hard that the Bushman went home (Bank2006: 149; Bleek 1911: 107; Lloyd 1889: 48). 27 Throwing a stone atthe bird is working with one side of the equation and it has an effect

on the whole; the wind blew.

What works with, or owns, something else is knowledgedetermined by experience of the environment. How KhoeSan areinfluenced by birds or use them, lies at the heart of KhoeSan birdrelationships. As indicated, however, this use is not easilyunderstood in Western categories of scientific knowledge, magic ormedicine. KhoeSan agency intersects with the world at a pointwhere one thing is sensually and experientially identified in concertwith another within a significant context, or rather a context givensignificance within KhoeSan paradigms of environmental receptivity(Low Potency , forthcoming ). Schapera cites Hahns late nineteenthcentury observation that certain unspecified Khoi Khoi caught akind of caprimulgus ( ga //goeb) bird, burnt it to ashes andscattered it about to produce clouds and rain (Schapera 1930:391). 28 This behaviour is understandable when one thinks of Nightjars in a context of working with or being of the rain. Nightjarsare usually nocturnal feeders on insects. Their activity levels couldwell be associated with rain in terms of rain-wind bringing insects,insects gathering in numbers after rain or the darkening of a storm

27 Andrew Bank, p. 149; Bleek A Brief Account 1875, p. 48; Specimens of Bushman Folklore p. 10728 Schapera, The Khoisan Peoples , p. 391

14


15/21

encouraging the Nightjars to emerge. Hollman has similarly linkedthe comments of /Xam Bushmen concerning swallows being rainsthings to their increased activity around storm times. Hollmanparticularly elaborates that the physical attributes and behaviour of swifts, whom he thinks were often not distinguished by Bushmenfrom swallows, presented a package of characteristics thatassociated them in the minds of Bushmen with shamen, healingdances and altered states of consciousness. Hollman suggests thisresonance, coupled with the explicit identification of swift-people asrain-sorcerers by a /Xam Bushman, /HanKasso, accounts for therepresentation of swift-people as potent motifs in Bushman rock-art(Hollman 2005: 25). 29

It is useful to think in terms of ethological knowledge but asHollman reminds us, it is important to keep this rooted in thedeeper KhoeSan context articulated around listening to theenvironment and reading and working with the links they perceive.A baby adopting the posture of a bird if a birds shadow or bird windpasses over its head is one example of how observation, orlistening to the environment and making connections betweenphenomena, informs KhoeSan practice. A similar example is evidentif Hai//om children eat pangolin ;, the child will die and its body takethe form of the pangolin, meaning its arms will curl forwards. 30 Some Hai//om believe a child that makes a coughing sound like thenoise of the //gores (//gori, gori ) bird, becomes sick by having thebird, or the birds wind, oab , in them. When a bird causes sickness

in this manner there is a sense in which the idea is the inversion of being an owner of a bird, a worker with a bird, a bird sorcerer orbirds person. Instead of having some sort of protection from birdsor control over birds the bird has the control over the baby. This isvery similar to a phenomenon Khler describes amongst the Kxoe.The Kxoe believe certain animals including lion, duiker andbushdoves can cause sickness. They are said to //o a person,which literally means coming down (Khler 1971: 318). 31 Thephrase seems particularly appropriate to bird relationships. Not onlycan birds passing overhead cause sickness but, at least amongst theHai//om, so too can simply passing under the nest of the !nanasbird.

The notion of birds causing sickness is very widespread amongst theKhoeSan and probably has a considerably wider run amongst theirAfrican neighbours. A Khomani Bushman, Habijol, knew that onemust never kill what he variously called the roibosraksman, koringor corn bird in the knowledge that when the air goes out of the birdit takes your air out with it, and then you will die. Some Hai//om29 Jeremy C. Hollman, Swift-People: Therianthropes and Bird Symbolism in Hunter-Gatherer

Rock-Paintings, Western and eastern Cape Provinces, South Africa, South African Archaeological

Society Goodwin Series 9: 21-33, 2005: 2530 H221931 Khler, Krankheit, p. 318.

15


16/21

referred to the shadow of the red tailed //go-s as the cause of sickness whilst Ju/hoan referred variously to the Subbah or Tsababird, possibly an eagle, or to the shadow of the //gam . Theconsiderable variety of ideas that exists about which birds maycause sickness further indicates the flexible way in which knowledgeis held and operated amongst KhoeSan. In line with the idea of ananimal entering a person some Ju/hoansi said, variously, that thebird literally shouts over the baby and puts its body into it and thebaby will consequently grow feathers. Conversely !Kung and Narospoke of the bird, named /gou in !Kung, as taking the childs heart.This idiom is one heard more commonly in healing dance contextswhen some healers speak of having to rescue the heart of the sickperson from the spirit realm.

As these examples suggest there is a sense in which birds in healingand illness contexts work by coming into people and taking thingsout of people. Amongst at least the Damara the taking out idea runsbeyond taking the heart. One cause of madness is ascribed to birdsmaking a nest from the hair of the afflicted person (Wagner-RobertzMS:65). 32 The idea links to knowledge of certain birds pilferingbehaviour and awareness that to work with a part of a person is towork on the person, a notion sometimes played out in witchcraftscenarios when hair or nail clippings or footprint dust might bemaliciously worked with. The coming in and going out idiom isfurther meshed across the KhoeSan to broader associations inwhich birds act as agents and informants in matters of life and

death. According to Wagner-Robertz, amongst the Damara thefearful idea of dying far from home is bound up in knowledge of vultures and the role they might play in arriving to pick clean yourlonely corpse. Vultures are, in a sense, messengers of death andthere are Damara healing songs that begin by expressing the fear of death and vultures, but then end by praising the bird as a greatexpeditious messenger (Wagner-Robertz 2000: 64,76). 33 The linkbetween vultures, messenger status and death is, not surprisingly, acommon one. Hai//om, for instance, thought of lappet-facedvultures hovering over a potential dead animal as messengers of afood source.

Amongst the Damara the messenger bird plays an important role inboth diagnosis and cure. In Sesfontein, a sick person seeking a curewill creep in the night to the hut of a rain man healer and secretlypin a small amount of money wrapped in a cloth to the side of therain mans hut. By morning the rain man will know that the personcame, what the cause of their sickness was and how to treat it. Theoffering is called an anib which rain men describe as a kind of ancestor or spirit. The word anib directly translates as a male bird

32 Wagner Robertz 6533 Ibid., p. 76.

16


17/21

and it seems highly likely that the idea is linked to the coming of awind messenger or spirit bird (Low 2008a: 191-2).

Silberbauer noted that amongst the G/wi birds generally werecredited with thought processes and values comparable to man andsome birds were thought to have particularly special knowledgewhich they could share with people (Silberbauer 1981: 71-2). 34 ManyKhoeSan think along similar lines of animals speaking to oneanother and particularly of some birds that can be understood bypeople and impart important knowledge. Habijol would talk tocertain birds and on his request they would allegedly come and sitby him. Similarly to the vulture telling people about meat and thehovering bateleur eagle of the impending success of the hunt, otherbirds relate messages about impending visits and life and deathevents.

Birds are not alone in communicating warnings to people. A Hai//omman commented that if he is walking in the bush and he hears ajackal he will turn back because this is a message of death and alsoa warning. 35 It is birds, however, that are the consummate bringersof news and testament to this some elderly KhoeSan describe themas the old telephone. Chickens for instance tell of approachingvisitors, as does the //gauseb (Hai//om). Reminding us that this isboth recognisable and distinctive knowledge this apparently obviousbehaviour may occur many hours before someone arrives. Hearingthe /honess bird (KKG, owl) at night is a further sign of visitors

although the owl is more commonly attributed with prophetic newsof a death. The /khai ah is a particularly important bird to someJu/hoansi. It makes a pitiful noise if it is telling you something bad,like a relative has died. It makes a good sound if something good isgoing to happen and it warns you if something is near. 36 Amongst atleast Hai//om there seems to be a special link between birdbehaviour and pregnancy. A young Hai//om girl explained that if you are staying with strange parents, and you're pregnant and youdon't know how to tell them, the bird will come, and it makes anoise like a baby, eeeah. 37 If a brown bird (unspecified) comes to ahouse it means someone pregnant is inside. 38 An elderly Hai//omlady further told me that if the oo //nh bird follows you, you willnot get pregnant. 39

KhoeSan listening to birds sits within their wider disposition of listening to an environment; an environment in which they are aparticularly sensually aware human participants. KhoeSan, like

34 Silberbauer 1981, p. 71-235 Hai//om 221436 J217837 Hai//om 10 Belinda38

H224039 Hai//om 2221, probably related to oo, to eat, eat greedily and //nsen (bite off, trapped limb tofree itself (Haacke et al 2002: 102)

17


18/21

other southern Africans, listen keenly to their body. A twitch of theback may mean someone you once carried is coming and a feelingunder the thighs that you will ride in a car. Their awarenessamounts to a sensual reading of themselves as an agent within avery living and connected environment. Amongst Khomani it isknown that agama lizards can lift their heads and call the rain. Therain will follow from the direction in which they look. If a pangolinmakes a whistling sound some Ju/hoansi know it is going to rain. 40 If the n!ro bird ( threestreaked tchagra ) is playing and whistling toomuch some Naro know that clouds will come and the rain will soonfollow. 41 Amongst the Hai//om it is known that if the Korab birdcomes from the north east to the west the rain will be good thatyear 42 and if little birds make a noise together there is a snakeunder the tree. 43 If there is a grey Lourie in the veld, the bird thatmakes the koi noise, it means there is an animal in the area, maybea porcupine or warthog who is running away. One man explainedthat when you see a lot of pied crows together and they make acraw craw sound it means there is a lion under a tree. After thelion has eaten he sleeps and his mouth opens. The pied crows cleanhis teeth. 44 The listening to birds that tells of prophetic events is, tothe KhoeSan the same listening that gives them what we mightthink of as pragmatic knowledge of animals.

Conclusion

I began this paper by highlighting that many KhoeSan continue tolive close to nature and I raised the idea that, if nature informs howKhoeSan think, then nature probably continues to play a detectablerole in KhoeSan life. Turning our eye to birds gives clearconfirmation to this hypothesis. We have seen how birds are talkedabout, thought about in stories, communicated with, talked to andused.

For reasons of expediency this snapshot of bird relations, drawnfrom considerable time and space, has not dwelt on birds as food ortheir bones as tools, or eggs as water containers. Instead I havefocused on what appear more esoteric elements of KhoeSan birdrelationships. If I were to have included such details it is important,however, to acknowledge that these arenas equally articulate andcontribute to the shifting meanings of birds, medicines andencounters and one should be cautious in applying too familiar orsimple a meaning to everyday objects and actions. I have tried tohighlight that what seems special about birds is the way theirnature maps into what appear basic esoteric ingredients of 40 J218541 Nh219242

Adolph Tsam43 Hai//om Jaqueline44 H2220

18


19/21

KhoeSan ontology and epistemology but, when one thinks in termsof everyday relationships not simply with but in nature, there isnothing inherently esoteric about the way this works, it is simplyone way of making sense of the world and working with theenvironment.

Although I have not had room to adequately explore birds in rock artin many way rock art depictions and their juxtapositions andconnections capture how we must think about birds in a set of relations. In particular, where we see birds linked by lines of potencywe should think in terms of potency as a form of workable essencebinding the world together and informed by attuned and orientedsensuous and cultural dispositions. Bird depictions hold general birdessence - flight, airiness, arrival, departure, messages - alongsidespecific bird essence based on their form and behaviour the legsof the ostrich, the walking of the kori bustard or the swallow,catching insects in the shadow of rain. KhoeSan bird relationshipsmake sense when we think in terms of a listening dispositioncoupled with particular relationships with knowledge andunderstandings of the interconnectedness life.

ReferencesBank, Andrew. 2006. Bushmen in a Victorian World: The remarkable

story of the Bleek-Lloyd Collection of Bushman folklore . CapeTown, Double Story Books.

Barnard, A. 1986. Some aspects of Nharo ethnobotany, in E.Vossen and K. Keuthmann (eds) Contemporary studies onKhoisan , Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung, 5.1. Hamburg,Helmut Buske Verlag.

Berman, Morris. 2000. Wandering God; a study of nomadicspirituality . Albany, State University of New York Press.

Biesele, Megan. 1993. Women Like Meat: the folklore and foragingideology of the Kalahari Ju/hoan. Bloomington andIndianapolis, Indiana University Press. 1993)

Bleek, W.H. 1911. Specimens of Bushman Folklore Collected by thelate WHI Bleek and L.C.Lloyd . London, George Allen andCompany.

Blurton Jones, Nicholas and Melvin J. Konner. 1976. !Kungknowledge of Animal Behaviour (or: the proper study of mankind is animals), in Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: studies of the !Kung San and their neighbours . Cambridge. Mass. andLondon, Harvard University press.

Brody, Hugh. 1983. Maps and Dreams: a journey into the lives andlands of the Beaver Indians of northwest Canada .Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Carruthers, Jane. 2003. Past and Future Landscape Ideology: TheKalahari Gemsbok National Park, in W. Beinart and J.

McGregor (eds) Social History and African Environments .Oxford, James Curry.

19


20/21

Classen, Constance. 1993. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses inHistory and Across Cultures . London and New York, Routledge.

Eastwood, Edward and Cathelijine Eastwood. 2006. Capturing theSpoor: an exploration of southern African rock art . Claremont,South Africa, David Philip.

Gibson, James J. 1986. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception .New Jersey, Cornell University.

Guenther, Mathias. 1999. Tricksters & Trancers: Bushman religionand society . Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana UniversityPress.

Haacke, Wilfred HG and Eliphas Eiseb. 2002. A KhoekhoegowabDictionary with an English-Khoekhoegowab Index . Windhoek,Gamsberg Macmillan.

Hahn, Theophilus. 1881. Tsuni-//Goam: the supreme being of theKhoi-Khoi. London, Trbner & Co.

Hansen, George P. 2001. The Trickster and the Paranormal . USA,Xlibris Corporation.

Heinz, Hans, J. 1978. The Bushmans Store of Scientific Knowledge,in Phillip V. Tobias (ed) The Bushmen: San hunters andherders of southern Africa . Cape Town, Human & Rousseau.

Hewitt, R.L. 1986. Structure, Meaning and Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San , Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung 2:1.Hamburg, Helmut Buske Verlag.

Hollman, Jeremy C. 2005. Swift-People: Therianthropes and BirdSymbolism in Hunter-Gatherer Rock-Painitngs, Western andeastern Cape Provinces, South Africa, South African

Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 9: 21-33Howes, D. (ed).2004. Empire of the Senses: The Sensual CulturalReader . Oxford, Berg.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: essays inlivelihood, dwelling and skill . London and New York,Routledge.

Ingold, Tim. 1964. The optimal forager and economic man, inPhilippe Descola and Gisli Palsson (eds), Nature and Society:anthropological perspectives . London, Routledge.

Keeney, Bradford. 2007. Shaking Medicine: the healing power of ecstatic movement . Rochester, Vermont, Destiny Books.

Keeney, Bradford. 2003. Ropes to God: Experiencing the BushmanSpiritual Universe . Philadelphia, Ringing Rocks Press.

Khler, Oswin. 1971. Die Krankheit im Denken der Kxoe-Buschmanner, in Veronika Six et al (eds), AfrikanischeSprachen und Kulturen - ein Querschnitt , Deutsches Institutfr Afrika-Forschung. Hamburg,1971).

Low, C.H. 2008a. Khoisan Medicine in History and Practice , ResearchIn Khoisan Studies, 20. Kln, Rdiger Kppe Verlag.

Low, CH. 2008b. Khoisan Wind: hunting and healing, in ElisabethHsu and Chris Low (eds) Wind, Life, Health: Anthropological

and Historical Perspectives . Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.

20


21/21

Lloyd, Lucy. 1889. A Short Account of Further Bushman MaterialCollected by L.C. Lloyd . London, David Nutt.

Marshall, Lorna. 1969. The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen,Africa xxxlx: 347-381.

Omofolabo, Soyinka Ajayi, In Contest: the Dynamics of AfricanReligious Dances, in Kariama Weish Asante (ed) AfricanDance: and Artistic, Historical and Philosophical Enquiry(Africa World Press Inc., New Jersey, 1996), pp. 183-202.

Porteus, S.D. 1937. Primitive Intelligence and Environment . NewYork, The Macmillan Company.

Schapera, I. 1930. The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmenand Hottentots . London, George Routledge and Sons Ltd.

Silberbauer, George. 1981. Hunter & Habitat in the Central KalahariDesert . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Wagner-Robertz, Dagmar., Ein Heilungsritual der DamaSdwestafrika / Namibia , edited by M Bollig and W.J.G.Mhlig, History, Cultural Traditions and Innovations inSouthern Africa , 12 (Kln, Rdiger Kppe Verlag, 2000).

Possible additions:Might go crazy eating ostrich eggshell potent Naro 2141Cognitive space concerning habitual thought and practice toward

animals among the Central San (|Gui and //Gana idealist

Christopher Prendergast [ talking about one sense is a fallacy! Sitewith no body?]

9The real question is not whether the touch of a woodpecker's beakdoes in fact cure tuth ache. It is rather whether there is apoint of view from which a woodpecker's beak and a man'stooth can be seen as "going together" idealist levi strauss

10 Since action in the world partly depends on concepts, and sinceconcepts are learnt through expereience in the world, in whichone is brought up and lives, it is feasible that long-termcontinuities in cultural traditions exist, continually beingrenegotiated and transformed, but nevertheless generatedfrom within. Hodder idealist

Hewitt concludes that the feather, as a moon, lights the darknessand mediates Life and Death (Hewitt 2001: 174, 182). link use of feathers in eyes / eggs sparkling

Eggs sparkling / like the sun /The egg is like the sun, it has that shine on it you can see it forthey eat the shiny stones the ostrich only dies in the dry time

birds and khoesan - pre- publication article

Documents