Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/135

Rh Tsui-ǁgoab was also believed to have been the ancestor of the whole Hottentot race, and likewise to be the moon, for these people, with childlike simplicity, could not comprehend that such various suppositions were incapable of being reconciled with each other. In the corrupted form of Utixo, the first Protestant missionaries to the Bantu used the word Tsui-ǁgoab to signify God, and it is so employed to the present day.

Many cairns of considerable size, formed of small stones capable of being carried by one individual, have been found in various parts of South Africa, but only a few of these were raised by Hottentots at places where they supposed Heitsi-eibib to have been buried. The Bushmen erected cairns over some of their dead, and it is not unlikely that the Hottentots merely enlarged such of these as they found where they settled. Some of the Bantu also erected cairns over the bodies of their chiefs, but these are more massive and are well known, so that they cannot be confused with the graves of Heitsi-eibib. The adding a stone to such a heap, at first regarded merely as a mark of respect to the dead who lay there, might easily in course of time come to be considered as an act of worship.

The system of religion of the Hottentots could not be explained by themselves, what they understood being little more than that the customs connected with it had come down to them from their ancestors. They had not the faintest expectation of their own resurrection, or conception of a heaven or a hell. Sacred days or seasons were unknown to them, and if the graves of Heitsi-eibib be excepted, no places were set apart for worship of any kind.

A more improvident, unstable, thoughtless people never existed. Those among them who had cattle were without care or grief, and usually spent the greater part of the day in sleeping. They delighted, however, in dancing by moonlight to music, which they produced from reeds similar to those used by the Bushmen, but superior in tone and effect. Visitors of rank were also welcomed and entertained with dancing and music—if the noise produced from the reeds, sometimes accompanied by the beating of a drum made by stretching the