Reception at Linyanti - The court Herald - Sekeletu obtains
the Chieftainship from his Sister - Mpepe's Plot - Slave-trading Mambari
- Their sudden Flight - Sekeletu narrowly escapes Assassination -
Execution of Mpepe - The Courts of Law - Mode of trying Offenses -
Sekeletu's Reason for not learning to read the Bible -
The Disposition made of the Wives of a deceased Chief -
Makololo Women - They work but little - Employ Serfs -
Their Drink, Dress, and Ornaments - Public Religious Services in the Kotla
- Unfavorable Associations of the place - Native Doctors -
Proposals to teach the Makololo to read - Sekeletu's Present -
Reason for accepting it - Trading in Ivory - Accidental Fire -
Presents for Sekeletu - Two Breeds of native Cattle -
Ornamenting the Cattle - The Women and the Looking-glass -
Mode of preparing the Skins of Oxen for Mantles and for Shields -
Throwing the Spear.
The whole population of Linyanti, numbering between six and seven
thousand souls, turned out en masse to see the wagons in motion.
They had never witnessed the phenomenon before, we having
on the former occasion departed by night. Sekeletu, now in power,
received us in what is considered royal style, setting before us
a great number of pots of boyaloa, the beer of the country.
These were brought by women, and each bearer takes a good draught of the beer
when she sets it down, by way of "tasting", to show that there is no poison.
The court herald, an old man who occupied the post also in Sebituane's time,
stood up, and after some antics, such as leaping, and shouting
at the top of his voice, roared out some adulatory sentences,
as, "Don't I see the white man? Don't I see the comrade of Sebituane?
Don't I see the father of Sekeletu?" - "We want sleep." -
"Give your son sleep, my lord," etc., etc. The perquisites of this man
are the heads of all the cattle slaughtered by the chief, and he even takes
a share of the tribute before it is distributed and taken out of the kotla.
He is expected to utter all the proclamations, call assemblies,
keep the kotla clean, and the fire burning every evening,
and when a person is executed in public he drags away the body.
I found Sekeletu a young man of eighteen years of age, of that
dark yellow or coffee-and-milk color, of which the Makololo are so proud,
because it distinguishes them considerably from the black tribes
on the rivers. He is about five feet seven in height,
and neither so good looking nor of so much ability as his father was,
but is equally friendly to the English. Sebituane installed
his daughter Mamochisane into the chieftainship long before his death,
but, with all his acuteness, the idea of her having a husband
who should not be her lord did not seem to enter his mind. He wished
to make her his successor, probably in imitation of some of the negro tribes
with whom he had come into contact; but, being of the Bechuana race,
he could not look upon the husband except as the woman's lord;
so he told her all the men were hers - she might take any one,
but ought to keep none.
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