He Was The Greatest Warrior Ever Heard Of Beyond The Colony;
For, Unlike Mosilikatse, Dingaan, And Others, He Always
Led His Men Into Battle Himself.
When he saw the enemy,
he felt the edge of his battle-axe, and said, "Aha!
It is sharp,
and whoever turns his back on the enemy will feel its edge."
So fleet of foot was he, that all his people knew there was no escape
for the coward, as any such would be cut down without mercy.
In some instances of skulking he allowed the individual to return home;
then calling him, he would say, "Ah! you prefer dying at home
to dying in the field, do you? You shall have your desire."
This was the signal for his immediate execution.
He came from the country near the sources of the Likwa and Namagari rivers
in the south, so we met him eight hundred or nine hundred miles
from his birth-place. He was not the son of a chief, though related closely
to the reigning family of the Basutu; and when, in an attack by Sikonyele,
the tribe was driven out of one part, Sebituane was one in that
immense horde of savages driven back by the Griquas from Kuruman in 1824.*
He then fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and cattle.
At Melita the Bangwaketse collected the Bakwains, Bakatla, and Bahurutse,
to "eat them up". Placing his men in front, and the women
behind the cattle, he routed the whole of his enemies at one blow.
Having thus conquered Makabe, the chief of the Bangwaketse,
he took immediate possession of his town and all his goods.
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* See an account of this affair in Moffat's "Missionary Enterprise in Africa".
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Sebituane subsequently settled at the place called Litubaruba,
where Sechele now dwells, and his people suffered severely
in one of those unrecorded attacks by white men, in which murder is committed
and materials laid up in the conscience for a future judgment.
A great variety of fortune followed him in the northern part
of the Bechuana country; twice he lost all his cattle
by the attacks of the Matabele, but always kept his people together,
and retook more than he lost. He then crossed the Desert
by nearly the same path that we did. He had captured a guide,
and, as it was necessary to travel by night in order to reach water,
the guide took advantage of this and gave him the slip.
After marching till morning, and going as they thought right,
they found themselves on the trail of the day before.
Many of his cattle burst away from him in the phrensy of thirst,
and rushed back to Serotli, then a large piece of water,
and to Mashue and Lopepe, the habitations of their original owners.
He stocked himself again among the Batletli, on Lake Kumadau,
whose herds were of the large-horned species of cattle.*
Conquering all around the lake, he heard of white men
living at the west coast; and, haunted by what seems to have been
the dream of his whole life, a desire to have intercourse with the white man,
he passed away to the southwest, into the parts opened up lately
by Messrs. Galton and Andersson. There, suffering intensely from thirst,
he and his party came to a small well. He decided that the men,
not the cattle, should drink it, the former being of most value,
as they could fight for more should these be lost. In the morning
they found the cattle had escaped to the Damaras.
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* We found the Batauana in possession of this breed when we discovered
Lake Ngami. One of these horns, brought to England by Major Vardon,
will hold no less than twenty-one imperial pints of water; and a pair,
brought by Mr. Oswell, and now in the possession of Colonel Steele,
measures from tip to tip eight and a half feet.
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Returning to the north poorer than he started, he ascended the Teoughe
to the hill Sorila, and crossed over a swampy country to the eastward.
Pursuing his course onward to the low-lying basin of the Leeambye,
he saw that it presented no attraction to a pastoral tribe like his,
so he moved down that river among the Bashubia and Batoka,
who were then living in all their glory. His narrative resembled closely
the "Commentaries of Caesar", and the history of the British in India.
He was always forced to attack the different tribes, and to this day
his men justify every step he took as perfectly just and right.
The Batoka lived on large islands in the Leeambye or Zambesi,
and, feeling perfectly secure in their fastnesses, often allured
fugitive or wandering tribes on to uninhabited islets
on pretense of ferrying them across, and there left them to perish
for the sake of their goods. Sekomi, the chief of the Bamangwato,
was, when a child, in danger of meeting this fate; but a man still living
had compassion on him, and enabled his mother to escape with him by night.
The river is so large that the sharpest eye can not tell the difference
between an island and the bend of the opposite bank; but Sebituane,
with his usual foresight, requested the island chief who ferried him across
to take his seat in the canoe with him, and detained him by his side
till all his people and cattle were safely landed. The whole Batoka country
was then densely peopled, and they had a curious taste
for ornamenting their villages with the skulls of strangers.
When Sebituane appeared near the great falls, an immense army collected
to make trophies of the Makololo skulls; but, instead of succeeding in this,
they gave him a good excuse for conquering them, and capturing so many cattle
that his people were quite incapable of taking any note
of the sheep and goats. He overran all the high lands toward the Kafue,
and settled in what is called a pastoral country, of gently undulating plains,
covered with short grass and but little forest.
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