Reports by Portuguese survivors of shipwrecks along the south-east coast during the 16th and 17th centuries show that the Nguni people herded cattle, hunted game, cultivated sorghum, ‘lived in beehive shaped huts in scattered homesteads and were ruled over by chiefs whom they called inkosi’. One of the main reasons for Xhosa expansion was the hiving off of the sons of the reigning chiefs to found new chiefdoms of their own, so relieving the political pressure at the centre of the kingdom. Movement was also precipitated by the need to find new hunting grounds and fresh pastures. It has been suggested that the heavily wooded nature of the area contributed towards the relatively slow rate of progress because the forest had to be burnt to provide grazing prior to occupation. Xhosa expansion met with little resistance until it reached the Kei River. The land east of the Kei was originally occupied by roving bands of ‘hunter-gatherers’ generally known as San or Bushmen. As the Xhosa penetrated further the San were driven from their hunting grounds to seek refuge in the mountain strongholds of the Drakensberg. But some established a symbiotic relationship with the Xhosa and continued to occupy the same territory. Intermarriage took place on a limited scale. Xhosa tradition records that Sikhomo was the first chief to marry a San woman, but that she ran away to her home on the Orange River after the birth of a son. This was probably in the 17th century. West of the Kei lived scattered groups of semi-nomadic ‘hunter-herders’ known as Khoi (Khoikhoi) or Hottentots. Available linguistic and archaeological evidence indicates that they had occupied this area for many centuries. There was some active resistance among the Khoi to the Xhosa advance; but on the whole friendly relations were established between them and they lived side by side for many years. Although quite a number of Xhosa refugees were absorbed into Khoi chiefdoms, the general trend was for the Khoi gradually to become incorporated into Xhosa society in a patron-client relationship. While the link was initially established through trade; extensive intermarriage, led by the respective royal lineages, opened the way for cultural diffusion. Peires notes that, ‘it is certain that a Khoi who entered Xhosa society did so on terms of distinct inferiority, but since this inferiority was expressed in economic terms and not in social or racial ones, it passed within the course of a generation’. Mixed Khoi and Xhosa communities are recorded by European travellers in Ciskei and Transkei from the 18th century on. ~ Janet Hodgson, BACKGROUND TO XHOSA HISTORY AND SOCIETY: THEIR INTERACTION WITH KHOISAN, The God of the Xhosa.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 11:45:08 +0000
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