Page:Folklore1919.djvu/155

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Folklore of the Bushmen.
143

Chaka’s wars, and Morosi allied himself to them by marriage. They have been gradually exterminated by wars with all other tribes (even with Bushmen tribes) and Europeans, and their remnant was long living secluded in the Maluti, hunting game and occasionally making raids. Qing’s stories are as follows:

Cagn was the first being; he gave orders and caused all things to appear, and to be made, the sun, the moon, stars, wind, mountains, and animals. His wife’s name was Coti. He had two sons, and the eldest was chief, and his name was Cogaz; the name of the second was Gcwi. There were three great chiefs, Cagn, Cogaz, and Qwanciqutshaa (of all three legends are here given), who had great power, but it was Cagn who gave orders through the other two. Cagn’s wife Coti, took her husband’s knife and used it to sharpen a digging stick (“Cibi” on which a perforated stone is put), and she dug roots to eat. When Cagn found she had spoiled his knife, he scolded her and said evil should come to her. Upon this she conceived and brought forth a little eland’s calf in the fields, and she told her husband, and said she did not know what sort of a child it was, and he ran to see it, and came back and told Coti to grind canna, so that he might inquire what it was. She did so, and he went and sprinkled these charms on the animal, and asked it “Are you this animal? Are you that animal?” but it remained silent till he asked it, “Are you an eland (Tsha)?” when it said “Aaaa.” Then he took it and folded it in his arms, and went and got a gourd, in which he put it, and took it to a secluded kloof enclosed by hills, and precipices, and left it to grow there. He was at that time making all animals and things, and making them fit for the use of men, and making snares and weapons. He made then the partridge and the striped mouse, and he made the wind in order that game should smell up the wind,—so they run up the wind still. Cagn took three sticks and sharpened them, and he threw one at the eland and it ran away, and he called it back, and he missed with each of them, and each time called it back, and then he went to his nephew to get arrow-poison, and he was away three days. While he was away his sons Cogaz and Gcwi went out with young men to hunt, and they came upon the eland their father had hidden, and they did not