Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/130

106 shell mounds being formed by both people at the same time. But in point of fact those destitute Hottentots who lived as beachrangers, as the first European colonists termed them, in all probability had more Bushman than pure Khoikhoi blood in their veins, though they would have resented being termed Sana, just as a mulatto prides himself upon his descent from a white man, and resents being termed a negro. In a pastoral clan the children of captive Bushman girls would be regarded as illegitimate, and would not inherit cattle from their fathers. The daughters of the next generation by Khoikhoi fathers might, and most likely did, occupy a better position, but the sons would remain paupers and dependents of some wealthy man. When fresh captives were made, their blood would become mixed with that of the half-breeds, and thus there would be men and women of only one-fourth Khoikhoi descent, and yet Khoikhoi in language, ideas, and habits.

This process having gone on for many generations, there must have been a mixture of blood in various proportions in the individual members of a clan. A raid would be made on a neighbouring tribe, and a herd of cattle would be secured, of which some of the mixed-breeds would obtain a share, when they would at once assume the position of honourable men and acquire all the rights of the purest Khoikhoi. But in the vanquished tribe there would be a similar class of mixed-breeds, and now that meat and milk had become so scarce that there was not sufficient food to keep all alive, the poorest of them would be compelled to separate from the others, and to seek subsistence along the shore until such time as chance placed an opportunity in their way of obtaining horned cattle or sheep by plunder. Their condition was more abject than that of pure Bushmen, who greatly excelled them as hunters, but as far as wild plants went, there was as great a quantity and as large a variety along the ocean shore as anywhere inland.