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Marriage among !Kung Bushmen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Lorna Marshall
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Extract

Because within the area we indicate by shading on the map the !Kung Bushmen intermarry among themselves, by custom and preference, members of the Harvard Peabody Smithsonian Kalahari Expeditions needed a convenient way of referring to that area as a unit and arbitrarily called it the region of Nyae Nyae.

Nyae Nyae is a corruption of the !Kung name //Nua!ei. The name Nyae Nyae refers strictly to a group of pans in South West Africa (S.W.A.) centred approximately at Gautscha Pan at about 19° 48′ 30″ S, 20° 34′ 36″ E. We extend the application of the name to an area around the pans of about 10,000 square miles, lying for the most part in S.W.A. but reaching some miles over the border of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (B.P.). There are no strictly conceived boundaries around the area. We can only vaguely define it by saying that it does not include Karakuwise to the west or Chadum to the north. It does not, we think, reach eastward much farther than Kai Kai, or southward much beyond Blaubush Pan (40 or 50 miles south of Gam).

Résumé

LE MARIAGE CHEZ LES BOSCHIMANS !KUNG

Environ 1.000 Boschimans !Kung vivent dans la région de Nyae Nyae. De préférence et par coutume, ils se marient entre eux, mais ils n'ont aucune règle rigoureuse d'endogamie.

Dans la societé !Kung il est interdit, sous peine d'inceste, de se marier ou d'avoir des rapports sexuels avec un membre de sa famille restreinte ou avec toute autre personne à laquelle s'étend le tabou d'inceste selon la conviction que certains liens ressemblent à ceux de la famille restreinte. L'interdit d'inceste s'étend tout d'abord aux membres du lignage et aux beaux-parents, beaux-fils et belles-filles et aux demi-frères et sœurs. En ce qui concerne les collatéraux, le tabou s'éténd aux vrais frères et sceurs des parents, aux cousins germains, et aux cousins, au second et au troisième degré; aux neveux et nièces. Pour ce qui est des affins, il comprend les parents de l'époux d'‘ego’; les époux de FaBr, FaSi, MoBr et MoSi; les SiHuFa, BrWiMo; les SoWiFa, SoWiMo, DaHuFa, DaHuMo; les SoWi et DaHu; les HuBrSo et WiSiDa; les WiBrWi et HuSiHu. Parmi les parents de nom, il s'étend aux personnes qui ont les mêmes noms que ceux des parents ou des enfants d'‘ego’; aux parents, aux enfants et aux vrais frères et sœurs de tout individu ayant le même nom qu' ‘ego’; aux personnes qui ont le même nom qu'un des parents de l'époux d' ‘ego’ ou l'époux d'un des enfants d' ‘ego’. Les !Kung se conferment avec la plus grande rigueur à ces interdits de mariage. On préfère les mariages avec des personnes qui ne sont pas consanguines et avec lesquelles ‘ego’ est en parenté à plaisanterie, y compris certains parents de nom, SiHu et WiSi et, si la mort ou le divorce rende un mariage possible, avec HuBr et BrWi

Les parents arrangent les mariages pour leurs enfants lorsque les garçons sont adolescents et les filles plus jeunes. Il donnent la préférence à des familles fortes et nombreuses qui ne sont ni paresseuses ni avares dans le partage de la nourriture et les cadeaux.

Dans un certain sens, la bande possède les sources de nourriture et l'eau, et l'affin qui se marie dans la bande acquiert les mêmes droits qu'une personne née dans celle-ci. Il est rare qu'un individu possède des biens mobiliers, de sorte que les questions de proprieté n'entrent guère en ligne de compte dans le mariage. Il n'est payé aucune dot ni prix d'épouse. Le jeune époux donne plusieurs années de service comme chasseur pour payer son épouse. Une fois ce service accompli, les époux décident soit de rester avec la famille de l'épouse soit de s'en aller vivre dans celle de l'époux. Les veuves, veufs et divorcés ont le droit de se remarier. Les rapports sexuels en dehors du mariage sont interdits par la règle sociale, et plusieurs facteurs exercent un effet préventif contre l'impudicité prénuptiale ou l'adultère. Malgré que cette société pratique la polygynie, les épouses sont fortement désirées et recherchées. Mais elles ne dominent pas la société en dépit de leur importance pour la cueillette, et leur rôle d'épouse et de mère. Les hommes sont clairement les chefs et les protecteurs et leur rôle de chasseur alimentant leur famille en viande est reconnu et profondément apprécié.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1959 , pp. 335 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1959

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References

page 335 note 1 The sketch-map here provided is based on the National Geographic Map of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, March 1950, and the Times Atlas of World, Vol. IV. The orientation of Gautscha is taken from the S.W.A. Surveyor-General's map dated at Windhoek 7:n:JJGoogle Scholar.

page 336 note 1 Murdock, G. P., Social Structure, Macmillan Co., 1949, pp. 223, 226–8Google Scholar.

page 336 note 2 For the terms and for special features of the system see Marshall, Lorna: ‘The Kin Terminology System of the !Kung Bushmen’, Africa, vol. xxvii, No. 1, Jan. 1957Google Scholar.

page 337 note 1 Passarge, S. puts the phrase on his map in Die Buschmänner der Kalahari (Berlin, 1907, Dietrich Reimer, p. 19)Google Scholar, spelling it Ssu2gnassi. He places it on the line of 200 S., slightly to the east of 200 E., near what we call the centre of the Nyae Nyae region, in the area designated on his and other maps as the Kaukau Veld. He places the phrase as if it were the name of a Bushman group, like Heikom, Naron, or some other, He places the name 2Kung somewhat to the north-west. That is the name we spell Kung, which Bleek, D. ( A Bushman Dictionary, American Oriental Society, 1956, p. 447)Google Scholar records as !Kũ, !Ku or !Kun (person, Bushman).

Passarge places the name 2Kung once more at about 230 S. as the name of another Bushman group. In sound the name is the same or very, very like the name of the more northerly group. Miss Bleek refers to this group as being popularly called ‘Koon’. L. F. Maingard distinguishes between the two by spelling the name of the southerly group !K5. The !K5 are to be found in B.P., in and south of Okwa. Whereas the !Kung language has four clicks (symbolized now as dental /, alveolar ǂ, alveolar palatal !, lateral //), the !K3 language is very different and has a fifth click, that of the southern Bushman language groups, the labial o. The phrase ju /õassi has nothing to do with the !K5.

Maingard, in ‘Three Bushman Languages’ (African Studies, 16/1, 1957, p. 37)CrossRefGoogle Scholar uses the phrase as the name of a dialect of !Kung—‘… dƷuǀζõā:si (Northern Group, a dialect of !khû, partly in South West Africa and partly in the Bechuanaland Protectorate)’. Bleek, (op. cit., p. 354) does not record the phrase in !Kung (her northern Group II)Google Scholar, but gives it in Auen (NI) and says it means ‘Bushman’. She spells it Ʒu ǀnwasi.

We think that the phrase ju ǀõassi, which we started spelling in this way because we did not know any better and continue because it is simpler, can be a plied to groups of varying size and definition, on a variety of bases, when the in-group quality in comparison with the out-group is to be expressed in some way. When we asked what they call themselves, our /Kung informants often replied ‘ju ǀõassi’ as though the phrase might be coextensive with Bushman as distinguished from non-Bushman (Europeans, ǀhu, whom the !Kung also call ‘red people’, i.e. ju gau; or Bantu, whom the !Kung call ju dzo, ‘black people’ or !goma (or !komaʔ), ‘animals without hooves’). They also use ju ǀõassi when one might expect them to say ‘!Kung’ as distinguished from other Bushman language groups, or when they distinguish themselves from other !Kung outside their region. They said that the Makaukau (Auen) Bushmen to the south wete ju dole and they know that the ushmen at Karakuwise, Nuregas, and Chadum eak !Kung but said they were ju dole nevertheless. I had the impression that it was the out-group quality in the phrase (strange and therefore potentially harmful) which was being expressed when they applied it as above and claimed that the Makaukau were a murderous people who have a medicine so deadly that you die if you but glance at it, and that those Nuregas !Kung put poison into the pipes they give you to smoke. One's friend or relative can also heju dole if one is displeased with him. Isaak Utuhile (a Chwana chief under Queen Moremi, in Kubi, B.P.) said that in the phrase ju dole if one is displeased with him.

Isaak Utuhile (a Chwana chief under Queen Moremi, in Kubi, B.P.) said that in the phrase ju ǀõassi the Bushmen were saying of themselves, in effect, ‘We are not animals, we are human beings’, a connotation we did not discover in the thinking of the !Kung themselves. Ledimo, our chief interpreter, also a Chwana, said the phrase had the connotation of ‘perfect persons’ and that ‘clean’ and ‘empty’ were aspects of the word ǀõassi, he thought. Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall paraphrased it in the title of her book, The Harmless People (Knopf, New York; Martin Seeker & Warburg, London, 1959)Google Scholar.

page 338 note 1 Murdock, , op. cit., pp. 62–63Google Scholar.

page 343 note 1 Marshall, op. cit., pp. 13–15, 22–23.

page 348 note 1 Veldkos (field food) is an Afrikaans word used to refer to any kind of wild plant material which people gather to eat. Edible fruits, seeds, roots, tubers, leaves, all are included.

page 354 note 1 This taboo reveals the association which, I believe, the !Kung make between the hunting power of men and the male sexual principle. Both must be protected, and sexual activity must be controlled and constrained lest the life-giving and food-producing force of men be weakened or drained away. During the period of a hunt a man must not have sexual intercourse—that is, while the man is looking for game and, after lie has shot his little poisoned arrow into the animal, while he is tracking it for miles and waiting and watching for days till it dies of the poison. A hunt usually demands many days and nights of effort and privation.

Too frequent indulgence in sexual intercourse with one's wife, even when no hunt is in progress, is believed to diminish a man's hunting power. Some men believed that once in five nights was best; others thought once in three nights was all right. Men who have the joking relationship constantly play upon the theme of excess, taunting each other: ‘You do not know hunting, you know women’, ‘You cannot leave your wife long enough to hunt.’

The !Kung are less strict about another taboo. A woman is supposed not to touch a man's hunting gear at any time, because this would lessen his power to hunt. But I have often seen women touch assegais and quivers. Indeed it has sometimes been urgently necessary to do so when the children got hold of them, as, for instance, when the three-year-old ǂGao, agile as a flea, took after us with his father's assegai, infuriated with us for some sudden notion of his own. There is a medicine called gorw gowna, made from a plant, which may be rubbed on the weapons to purify them if they are touched by women, but I never saw this done and doubted if anyone bothered with it. The effect of a woman's touching the hunting gear is much stronger if she is menstruating. I assume they are more careful then.

page 357 note 1 Story, Robert, Some Plants Used by the Bushmen in Obtaining Food and Water, Department of Agriculture, Division of Botany, Union of South Africa, Botanical Survey, Memoir No. 30, 1958, p. 25. Dr. Story was a member of the 1955 and 1957expeditions We gratefully acknowledge whatever botanical identifications we mention as hisGoogle Scholar.

page 359 note 1 Murdock, op. cit., p. 263.

page 359 note 2 Ibid., p. 264.

page 363 note 1 John Marshall has described !Kung hunting in his film, The Hunters, Peabody Museum Film Study Center, Harvard University, and in ‘Man as Hunter’, Natural History, the magazine of the American Museum of-Natural History, New York, vol. Ixvii, No. 6, June, and No. 7, August, 1958Google Scholar.