I Attached Myself To The Tribe Called Bakuena Or Bakwains, The Chief Of Which,
Named Sechele, Was Then Living With His People At A Place Called Shokuane.
I Was From The First Struck By His Intelligence, And By The Marked Manner
In Which We Both Felt Drawn To Each Other.
As this remarkable man
has not only embraced Christianity, but expounds its doctrines to his people,
I will here give a brief sketch of his career.
His great-grandfather Mochoasele was a great traveler,
and the first that ever told the Bakwains of the existence of white men.
In his father's lifetime two white travelers, whom I suppose to have been
Dr. Cowan and Captain Donovan, passed through the country (in 1808),
and, descending the River Limpopo, were, with their party,
all cut off by fever. The rain-makers there, fearing lest their wagons
might drive away the rain, ordered them to be thrown into the river.
This is the true account of the end of that expedition,
as related to me by the son of the chief at whose village they perished.
He remembered, when a boy, eating part of one of the horses,
and said it tasted like zebra's flesh. Thus they were not killed
by the Bangwaketse, as reported, for they passed the Bakwains all well.
The Bakwains were then rich in cattle; and as one of the many evidences
of the desiccation of the country, streams are pointed out
where thousands and thousands of cattle formerly drank,
but in which water now never flows, and where a single herd
could not find fluid for its support.
When Sechele was still a boy, his father, also called Mochoasele,
was murdered by his own people for taking to himself
the wives of his rich under-chiefs. The children being spared,
their friends invited Sebituane, the chief of the Makololo,
who was then in those parts, to reinstate them in the chieftainship.
Sebituane surrounded the town of the Bakwains by night;
and just as it began to dawn, his herald proclaimed in a loud voice
that he had come to revenge the death of Mochoasele. This was followed
by Sebituane's people beating loudly on their shields all round the town.
The panic was tremendous, and the rush like that from a theatre on fire,
while the Makololo used their javelins on the terrified Bakwains
with a dexterity which they alone can employ. Sebituane had given orders
to his men to spare the sons of the chief; and one of them, meeting Sechele,
put him in ward by giving him such a blow on the head with a club
as to render him insensible. The usurper was put to death;
and Sechele, reinstated in his chieftainship, felt much attached to Sebituane.
The circumstances here noticed ultimately led me, as will be seen by-and-by,
into the new, well-watered country to which this same Sebituane
had preceded me by many years.
Sechele married the daughters of three of his under-chiefs, who had,
on account of their blood relationship, stood by him in his adversity.
This is one of the modes adopted for cementing the allegiance of a tribe.
The government is patriarchal, each man being, by virtue of paternity,
chief of his own children.
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