Title

Dorothea Bleek - Book BC151_A3_017

Collection

Dorothea Bleek notebooks

Summary

Naron notebook (volume V) Detailed description of dances, ghosts and spirits, burial of the dead, sorcery and magic arrows, addressing the rain, and related practices. Much personal and local history, names and details about the past and what the old people used to teach. References to recordings. Descriptions of hunting and cooking, arrow-making, cutting and healing, trading, smoking and eating, male and female practises, songs & different types of dances. Mention of creatures/beings/spirits and gives their names and beliefs related to them (||gauwa, |gone, !xuba, Hisesha).

Comments

1) Inside front cover 'V Naron'; 2) p.340: 2.1.21. ≠nu kai and Saul. Cooking using a pot, building a house, the burning of his food and his land; 3) p.343: 3.2.21. ≠nu kai and Saul. On smoking and growing tobacco, dagga, not grown by Naron but smoked by all in the past, trading with others; 4) p. 346v: 5.2.21. ≠nu kai and Saul on Ediphone IV, largely untranslated language; 5) p. 348v: |kukurib, 'What |kukurib said on the Ediphone', mostly concerning hunting different buck and making articles out of the skins; 6) p.350v-351v: 6.2.21. ||kukurib and ≠nu kai, about skins and trading beads, spears and skins between the Naron and the Auen, buying dagga, tobacco, melons and pumpkins from Klipkaffirs; 7) p.352: On making a trap; 8) p.352v: Passange 79. 7.2.21. Building house out of sticks; 9) p.353v: 8.2.21. Saul. On hunting gemsbok and using the skin; 10) p.354: ||kukurib, some history of the region, the Damara, the Bushman, the Hottentots, digging ants, some 'nice' foods eaten; 11) p.355v |kwikai. Record II, how Huiribs (?) wife on record II sang the song of the grass dance - almost the same as the reed dance, men dance and women join in, the Big snake song, song of women fetching grass; 12) p.356v: Record IV end; 13) p.357: 9.2.21. Saul. About arrows made and traded, how old men address the rain when a storm is coming - 'tell it not to hurt them not to be too wild'; 14) p.357v: How Klipkaffirs bury their dead, Bushmen tie 'them up arms under knees sometimes and bury them sittting'; 15) p.358v: Record I, Saul. On his life with the 'Baas', he is given a shirt and told to leave the bushes; 16) p.360: 10.2.21. ||axas. End of roll II 38 - 50, speaks of goods and bartering, bows and arrows, not all translated; 17) p.362v: 11.2.21. ≠nu kai. Digging out ants and eating after the rain, sieving and making a porridge out of them; 18) 363v: 'Those far off those arrows are their goods - far country's people work them the |gwi kwe work them all work them... it goes in, it comes out, it goes away it is not sore. A small place is not there (there is no wound)', 'sorcerers work them sorcerers shoot them',' people also who dont know it are killed', other works that sorcerers do, their arrows have medicine on them not poison, about Naron and Auen sorcerers; 19) p.366: 12.2.21. Personal histroy of the narrator; 20) p. 368v: 13.2.21. ≠nu kei and ||koase kei, long description of an anteater and its habits, killing an anteater and roasting it; 21) p.370v: 14.2.21. ≠nu kei. About cutting and marking; 22) p.372v: Catching a tortoise and putting powdered buchu in its shell, drilling ostrich eggshells into beads, making dancing rattles, dancing; 23) p. 375: ≠nu kei. Some personal history of ||axas who is Kaiyau's [?] wife, names and details of other Bushmen who live in the different houses that DB ('the missus') visits in the village; 24) p.376v: 15.2.21. |ur ||ai. Making arrows, some personal history, tasks that she used to perform, food that she eats; 25) p.380v: 17.2.21. ||axas. Personal history and terms for relations; 26) p.383: 18.2.21. ≠nu kei. On rain-time and the seasons, eating, scorpions; 27) p.384-386: numbered houses [?] and the names of their inhabitants and their personal history; 28) p.386v-390v: 19.2.21. ≠nu kei. More numbers and names and personal history; 29) p.392: 20.2.21. ≠nu kei. Personal history and details about other people and daily life, about the baboon - 'magic thing it is' and how can only be seen by grownups, a baboon tears a dog to pieces and is feared; 30) p.396: 21.2.21. ||axas. Tells a story of two girls, an elephant, and a song, games including the baboon game; 31) p.398: Koashe kei. On burying a man, setting a trap for springbok, being taught to shoot as a boy, he shot a duiker at eight and a list of other buck shot afterwards, on cutting boys, daily life, medicine, doctors and sorcerers; 32) p.402: 22.2.21. ||koase and ≠nu kei. On being cut as a boy, about |gone who lives in the mouth and who works magic, he hunts, the old people saw him, about ghosts or ||gauxa, 'the sky takes them [the dead] away', when the narrator saw a ghost, DB asks the narrator 'are you afraid of a spirit? Yes rain's dust it is'; 33) p. 405-407v: 23.2.21. |kwi |kais and ||axas (jun.) About burial and ghosts, the 'dead people put on ghost bodies', '|kwa[?] with his thong he pulls them up', '!xuba is up there', about praying to !xu ba, about singing and dancing the |gi i, the eland dance, about the 'unwell' girl and her treatment and seclusion, about |gore: 'a man does not know him and speaks not of him', 'Bushman people do not know !xuba'; 34) p.408: 24.2.21. O |una [?]. About dancing as young men, a men's dance, what they wore, what they saw, 'he was like a man' but Hisesha, a woman; 35) p.409-410: ||axas & O |una [?]. About Hisesha, or a men's dance that women do not go to, women do not see Hisesha, men say she is a ghost, men die & the spirit fetches them [see black creature described earlier in book], on making a grave when the man dies in the bush, 'the spirit in the veld walks much at night, a Bushman does not see him, only sorcerers (!gixa)'.

Contributors

Anni u, Saul, |kukurib, ≠nukei, |kwikai, ||axas and ||axas (jun.), ||koase kei/Koashe kei/||koas/||koashe, |ur ||ai, O |una

Date

1921-02-01T00:00:00.000

Categories

Custom and daily life, History (personal)

Story Pages

340-410

Page Images