Three Great African Chiefs (Khame, Sebele and Bathoeng) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Names. Remarks. 13. Maching . . Also son of K hard. Reigned five years, and was then driven out. 14. KMme" III. . . Son of Sekhome." He is the present chief now visiting England. Ngwato is said to have received his name in this way. Ngwato means a poor piece of beef, which was given to the mother of Ngwato, by her husband, because she was childless. Afterwards, when she bore a son, she called him Ngwato, or Contempt, on account of her husband's coldness and neglect. In the reign of Khare" a half-caste trader visited the tribe, with his wife and children. He was called Khoe. The Bamangwato regarded him as a white man, for he was the whitest they had ever seen. He died there. Mphoeng told me that white men were called M.SL-Khoa, after this Khoe. However that may be, certain it is that all white people are called Makhoa by Bechwana. Boers are called Maburu. It has already been stated that the totem or sacred animal of the Bamangwato is the Phuti (pronounced pootee) or duikerantelope of the Dutch. This antelope is of a brown or dun colour, generally seen quite alone, and is about two feet high. Formerly, the Bamangwato venerated the Kwena or crocodile, like their elder brothers the Bak- wena of Molepolole. Then how came they to discard the Kwena and to accept a new totem, the duiker antelope ? The Bamangwato explain it in two ways: ? (l.) A certain Chief of the tribe once took a wife out of the tribe of the Basilika 1 Bech- wana. This woman, like the rest of her tribe, venerated the Phuti, and refused to eat its flesh, as the Bamangwato then did. She would not accept the crocodile as her totem, but clung to her ancestral Phuti antelope. Her husband, like a sensible man, gave in, and soon imitated her in refusing to eat duiker venison, and never again killed a duik...