Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/144

120 each other was when Europeans first became acquainted with them; at present where the race is still comparatively pure they are believed to be about equal. Males were never destroyed in large numbers by war, as among the Bantu, so most likely after the formation of the race there was always an approximate equality between the sexes, the captive Bushman girls, who could not have been very numerous at any one time, excepted. There was no loss of human life on charges of dealing in witchcraft, or the Hottentots would have speedily died out, for they were not so prolific as white people, and very much less so than the Bushmen were or the Bantu are now.

Taking these facts into consideration, the probabilities are very great that at the time of the origin of the race the females were few in number compared with the males who entered their country and induced or forced them to become consorts. Savages as those females were, they were yet able under these circumstances to occupy a position of influence in the household, which their descendants of the same sex never lost.

Dr. Theophilus Hahn says of them: All the Khoikhoi tribes use the expression Taras for woman. Taras is the woman, as ruler of the house, the mistress. The root da or ta means to conquer, to rule, to master, and the suffix ra expresses a custom or an intrinsic peculiarity. Taras is also a woman of rank, a lady. In every Khoikhoi's house the woman, or taras, is the supreme ruler; the husband has nothing at all to say. While in public the men take the prominent part, at home they have not so much power even as to take a mouthful of sour milk out of the tub, without the wife's permission. In the house the wife always occupies the right side of the husband and of the house.

If a chief died, it often happened that his energetic wife became the gau-tas (contracted from gau-taras), the ruling woman—i.e. the queen of the tribe—in place of the son who was not of age. All the daughters are called after the father and all the sons after the mother. The eldest