I Sent A Message At The Same Time To Lechulatebe Advising Him
To Give Up The Course He Had Adopted, And Especially The Song;
Because, Though Sebituane Was Dead, The Arms With Which He Had Fought
Were Still Alive And Strong.
Sekeletu, in order to follow up his father's instructions and promote peace,
sent ten cows to Lechulatebe to be
Exchanged for sheep;
these animals thrive well in a bushy country like that around the lake,
but will scarcely live in the flat prairies between the net-work of waters
north of the Chobe. The men who took the cows carried a number of hoes
to purchase goats besides. Lechulatebe took the cows and sent back
an equal number of sheep. Now, according to the relative value
of sheep and cows in these parts, he ought to have sent sixty or seventy.
One of the men who had hoes was trying to purchase in a village
without formal leave from Lechulatebe; this chief punished him
by making him sit some hours on the broiling hot sand (at least 130 Deg.).
This farther offense put a stop to amicable relations
between the two tribes altogether. It was a case in which a very small tribe,
commanded by a weak and foolish chief, had got possession of fire-arms,
and felt conscious of ability to cope with a numerous and warlike race.
Such cases are the only ones in which the possession of fire-arms does evil.
The universal effect of the diffusion of the more potent
instruments of warfare in Africa is the same as among ourselves.
Fire-arms render wars less frequent and less bloody. It is indeed
exceedingly rare to hear of two tribes having guns going to war
with each other; and, as nearly all the feuds, in the south at least,
have been about cattle, the risk which must be incurred from long shots
generally proves a preventive to the foray.
The Makololo were prevailed upon to keep the peace during my residence
with them, but it was easy to perceive that public opinion was against
sparing a tribe of Bechuanas for whom the Makololo entertained
the most sovereign contempt. The young men would remark,
"Lechulatebe is herding our cows for us; let us only go,
we shall `lift' the price of them in sheep," etc.
As the Makololo are the most northerly of the Bechuanas, we may glance back
at this family of Africans before entering on the branch of the negro family
which the Makololo distinguish by the term Makalaka. The name Bechuana
seems derived from the word Chuana - alike, or equal -
with the personal pronoun Ba (they) prefixed, and therefore means
fellows or equals. Some have supposed the name to have arisen
from a mistake of some traveler, who, on asking individuals of this nation
concerning the tribes living beyond them, received the answer,
Bachuana, "they (are) alike"; meaning, "They are the same as we are";
and that this nameless traveler, who never wrote a word about them,
managed to ingraft his mistake as a generic term on a nation extending
from the Orange River to 18 Deg.
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