Birds and KhoeSan: linking spirit and healing with

day-to-day life

Abstract
The paper assesses what birds mean to the KhoeSan in recent and past contexts by linking

ethnographic, anthropological and archaeological material with my research on the

shifting role of
animals in KhoeSan life. Despite the low visibility of birds in KhoeSan research they are
amongst the
most ‘meaningful’ of animals. Drawing on ideas of exceptional hunter-gatherer sensitivity
to their
sensual environment, I trace how attuned knowledge of birds has fed into KhoeSan
creation myths,
healing practices, and day-to-day life. Echoing how birds feature in many cultures, amongst
the
KhoeSan they hold the quality of messengers between divine and earthly realms. I link this
way of
knowing birds to their characteristics and further indicate how particular bird
characteristics feed into
distinctive KhoeSan ways of knowing the world. The paper highlights particularly salience
of the
ostrich.

Introduction
For different reasons, at different times and places, particular
animals feature more prominently than others in the conscious and
imaginative world of KhoeSan. There are, however, certain animals
that seem to have held and continue to hold a greater imaginative
significance than others. Rock art studies and the significant
historical ethnography of the Cape /Xam has particularly
emphasised the spiritual importance of eland, snakes and lions.
Although birds are a feature of both rock art and the /Xam archive,
they are not particularly prominent. Contrastingly, when one delves
into broader research on folklore, religion and healing, it becomes
readily apparent that birds, and especially the ostrich, lie at the
heart of KhoeSan ontology and epistemology. Interaction with birds
is deeply wedded to how KhoeSan conceive and articulate ideas of
the world and consequently manifest ideas in practice.

Despite the profound social changes that have characterised

KhoeSan life since the 1950s, for most of these recent hunter-
gatherers and pastoralists living in more or less remote parts of
southern Africa, day-to-day life remains ‘life in the open’ and entails
a significant degree of regular interaction with animals, be they
insects, birds, farm animals, small mammals or larger herbivores
and carnivores. From her work on mythology, folklore and healing
dances, Biesele has identified a crucial historical role for animals in
contexts of ‘imaginative substrate’, or the distinctive Bushman
hunter-gatherer thinking, born from participation in their
environment, that underpins the creation, transmission and
transformation of Bushman ‘traditional’ knowledge (Biesele
1993:13). Other academics have similarly pointed to the profound
role of the environment on the thinking and practices of Bushmen

1
and other African peoples (Carruthers 2003:258; Omofolabo 1996:
182). With the awareness that the KhoeSan still live essentially
deeply rural lives, in recent research I have examined the ways in
which the profound role of animals in KhoeSan life may have shifted
over time and persisted in recent contexts. In this paper I focus on
my findings concerning birds. I explore how and why birds are
meaningful for KhoeSan by exploring the significance of every-day
interaction with birds and how this relates in turn to the
prominencing of particular species in KhoeSan cosmology and
medicine.

My approach is not to address knowledge of birds within discrete

cultural KhoeSan clusters, but to try and convey what I see as pan-
KhoeSan ways of thinking about birds and being with birds that
locates them within persistent and distinctive ways of thinking and
doing. To this end, despite the dangers of presenting an account
that looks ethnographically undigested and old fashioned, I use a
broad range of examples from across past and recent KhoeSan.
Given the limitations of a paper, I believe this approach provides the
best possibility for capturing the essence of KhoeSan bird
relationships. The pan-KhoeSan continuity I envisage relates not to
rigid knowledge and practices but to a range of ideas and strategies
that come, go, return and transform but remain nevertheless visible
enough to justify description in a homogenous manner (Low 2008a:
46). They are webs of ideas and practices that are, to use a musical
reference, ‘tight but loose’. My understanding draws on Biesele’s
ideas of the imaginative substrate and arguments spearheaded by
Lewis-Williams concerning long term continuity in spiritual ideas and
ritual.1 Discussing religion and folklore in this pan-KhoeSan manner
is further validated by the continuities identified by Schmidt and
Guenther in their respective works on KhoeSan folklore and religion.

Although my account emphasises that foraging and hunter-

gatherer life lies behind KhoeSan knowledge of birds I am not
proposing a simple opposition between the KhoeSan and Western
people or those from other ‘civilizations’ or agricultural, urban or
literate backgrounds. What I wish to suggest is that the KhoeSan
provide one example of how the environment informs possible
ways of being in the world. My work suggests that KhoeSan bird
relationships are more typical of people living ‘close to nature’ and
outside or on the periphery of ‘education’ and I see this as a
socially and environmentally contingent distinction of degree, rather
than absolute difference. Much that ripples through the KhoeSan
resembles similar ideas and practices found across the world in past
and current times. As their continued lifestyle is more affiliated with
historical than current living conditions for much of the world, there
1
Lewis-Williams has revised his earlier suggestions of a panSan cognitive set but nevertheless sees
continued justification in recognising historical and regional patterns in San ideas and practices. See
Lewis-Williams Quanto?: The Issue of many meanings’ in southern African San Rock Art
Research’,South African Archaeological Bulletin 53: 86-97. 1998

2
are ways in which the KhoeSan can inform our understanding of
potential common human historical ways of thinking and acting.

My starting point is rooted in a notion that indigenous peoples are

alert to certain sorts of sensual clues from their environment. These
are the clues that have underscored KhoeSan living strategies. For
some time anthropologists, particularly including Radin (see Berman
2000:11); Ingold (2000) and Brody (1983) have advanced ideas of
hunter-gatherers related to this theme whilst the ecological
psychologist Gibson provides perhaps the pithiest exposition.
Gibson calls this disposition an ‘education of attention’ (Gibson
1979:254), which Ingold summarises as development by hunter-
gatherer peoples of a ‘sophisticated perceptual awareness of the
properties of ...[their] surroundings and of the possibilities they
afford for action’ (Ingold 1996: 40).2

Birds are meaningful because they often provide KhoeSan, as they

do all people, with a significantly rich dynamic sensory experience.
This brings them into an especially interactive relationship with
KhoeSan, in contrast to, for example, the behaviour of earthworms
or plants. Birds alight, sometimes from nowhere or come from the
furthest visible point; they circle singularly or in groups over kill
sites and rotting animals; they swoop, dive and cluster in vibrant
cohesive flocks. Sometimes they sing to the world, talk amongst
themselves or even talk to people. Birds join in around camp and in
the bush.

Focussing on birds uncovers many key distinctive features of

KhoeSan life and thought. What, however, makes the study of birds
all the more rewarding is the exceptional range and depth of
evidence available including rock art, some of which may be up to
26,000 years old, colonial ethnography, and particularly the
extensive later nineteenth century Bleek and Lloyd folklore archive
and the considerable anthropological research carried out since the
1950s. To this range I add my own research findings based upon
fieldwork amongst the Damara, Nama, Topnaar, Hai//om, Naro,
≠Khomani, !Kung3 and Ju/’hoansi in 2001 and between 2006-2008.
Although this study does not have room for more than passing
reference to rock art, based on arguments for continuity, many of
the ideas discussed have direct implications for rock art analysis.

These diverse sources provide rich insight into how birds feature in
KhoeSan life, epistemology, ontology and cosmology. In common
with many ‘indigenous peoples’, amongst the KhoeSan, birds work
as a bridge between spiritual and physical realms. Birds play a key
role in creation stories and are frequently thought of as prophetic
2
Tim Ingold The optimal forager and economic man pp 25 - 44Philippe Descola - editor, Gisli
Palsson - editor. Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. Routledge, (1996: 40)
3
I use the name !Kung to represent the self designation of particular Bushmen I encountered in the
north western Otjozondjupa region of Namiba

3
messengers. In the healing domain birds, parts of birds, their
shadows and their eggs are the causes and curing agents of
sickness. Birds amongst the KhoeSan fit the role the parasychologist
Hansen identified for bird’s across many diverse world cultures.
Birds are messengers living between divine, spiritual and earthly
domains; they have a betwixt and between quality (Hansen, 2001:
79).4 At the same time the KhoeSan maintain a familiarly looking
casual day-to-day, unconscious and pragmatic relationship with
birds. The difficulty inherent in representing KhoeSan bird
knowledge lies in being alert to the subtlety, difference and
similarities bound up in different ways of being human.

To date birds have not received the attention of other animals

amongst KhoeSan although brief mention is not uncommon. In older
literature, well summarised by Schapera (1930), birds appear under
rubrics of superstitions, belief and divination. In more recent
anthropological literature birds feature in contexts of ecological and
subsistence knowledge and studies of folklore and rock art. The
most salient point to arise from recent research is
acknowledgement that KhoeSan bird knowledge is extensive and
clearly ranges beyond that required ‘simply’ to hunt, although, as
Siblerbauer observes, knowledge still tends to be based on practical
value and can consequently appear inconsistent or patchy
(Silberbauer 1981: 64). This emphasis is similar to that Barnard
found concerning plant use amongst the Naro (Barnard 1986: 58).

Heinz notably obtained 65 names for 77 birds seen during his

fieldwork amongst the !Ko, south of Ghanzi in Botswana. Heinz was
particularly impressed by !Ko knowledge of bird habits and !Ko
ability to reproduce bird song (Heinz 1978, pp. 151-153). Guenther
was similarly impressed with bird knowledge amongst Naro.
Coe’xae, one of the artists he encountered, provided names for 82
of the depicted birds in his bird field guide. Coe’xae could similarly
imitate their song and relate a number of observations of their
habits. Like Silberbauer, Guenther observes that naming is often
onomatopoeic, including dwẽ:sa (ant-eating chat, the short nasal
call is rendered dwẽ by G/wi (Silberbauer 1981:70) ), or , x’aũ
x’aũsse, the Blacksmith Plover. Often naming also simply involves a
bird’s gross physical characteristics. For instance the Damara !huib
might casually be known as kai /anis, meaning ‘big bird’, or birds
appearing around rain time as /nanu anib, meaning ‘rain bird’.

In their study of !Kung animal knowledge Blurton Jones and Konner

indicated how the !Kung, amongst whom they thought knowledge of
birds extensive, could read the environment. !Kung could describe ,
for example, the mobbing behaviour or birds and the leading
behaviour of the Honey-guide (1976: 338). Silberbauer, however
provides a less proto-scientific and a more emic G/wi perspective
4
Hansen, p. 79

4
equally appropriate for other KhoeSan. Silberbauer emphasises how
G/wi knowledge fits unevenly into Western interpretative paradigms.
He observes, for example, that the bateleur eagle is thought to
know when a hunter will be successful and hovers above him. The
eagle might, over-simply, thereby be described as a good omen to
G/wi hunters. The underlying issue is, however, not that random
events are given superstitious meaning, but, that animals are
thought, anthropomorphically, to have been given certain
characteristics or knowledge, some of which may be better than
that of humans (Silberbauer 1981: 64). Similarly to Gibson’s
‘education of attention’, Silberbauer identifies that knowing what is
normal and abnormal behaviour makes up ‘one part of the [G/wi]
environmental information spectrum, which is under constant, if
automatic, observation’. Silberbauer emphasises that the practical
value of bird knowledge to the G/wi lies in their value as indicators
of ‘situations that are of importance’. (Silberbauer 1981: 72). The
key to getting to grips with KhoeSan bird relations lies in recognising
not only what is important but why. Elsewhere I have examined how
apparently familiar ideas of massage, perfume and inoculation,
amongst others, have been repeatedly overlooked or misunderstood
by researchers because they appear so familiar (Low 2008a). Herbal
remedies, fof example, are thought by some KhoeSan, to work by
‘smelling out’ sickness in the body; an idea far removed from
familiar phytological theory.

When thinking about birds it as important to resist boxing webs of

ideas into definable categories of knowledge, such as myth,
superstition, ethology and medicine. At the same time, however,
trying to sidestep such boxed inquiry presents very real challenges
when one tries to dissemble and discuss bird knowledge. In the
following account, for practical reasons, I fall prey to my own
cautions and follow familiar ways of talking about birds, starting
with creation myths and moving on to their role in illness, cure and
prophesy. I do this, however, with the proviso that we conceptually
take the ball of mixed threads, pull it apart, talk about the different
types of threads but then try to roll it all back together at the end.

Encountering Birds
Not surprisingly, when KhoeSan look at birds they do not see
biological organisms in any sort of scientific manner. So what do
they see? To answer this we have to retreat a little to anthropology
of the senses. Partly following Foucault’s ideas of the gaze, Classen
(1993) and Howes (2004), amongst others, have detailed a
historical prioritising of the senses in which Europeans and Science
have come to conceptually frame the world predominantly through
sight and socially contingent ‘reading’ of things, as opposed to a
more holistic sensual encounter. A starting point in ‘education of
attention’ immediately alerts us to the importance of the wider ways

5
of listening and knowing that Science downplays. To consider
KhoeSan encounters with birds we must factor in a probable greater
sensory participation in the encounter than might typically be
conceived amongst heavily urbanised peoples, alongside variations
of ‘common knowledge’, personal knowledge, mythology and folk
tales. Any interaction with birds, be it listening, use of their parts or
determining their role as sickness causer, maps into this wider
physical and social context. Culturally, what particularly underscores
KhoeSan experience, as it does experience in numerous other ‘non-
scientific’ cultures, is the knowledge that a bird might be a person
or a special messenger communicating across their shared
environment. Conversely, there are times when a bird is just a bird,
when its presence is granted no particular significance and it is
pragmatically accepted as part of the furniture of life. The
attribution of meaning lies embedded in the context driven
receptivity of individuals.

At its root KhoeSan cultural understanding of birds is wedded to

their creation myths and ideas of birds having the potential to move
between mythical old time and new time, wherein old time equates
to an old but still present spirit world. Building on Guenther (1999)
and Biesele (1993), Keeney (Keeney 2007:240-255) emphasises the
profound importance of ideas of transformation within Ju/’hoan
cosmology. To understand the role of birds we have to appreciate
this wider story of transformation across old and new time, space
and form. Keeney observes that change was the original force in the
Bushman world. At the time of First Creation the original ancestors
gave birth to creatures that kept changing into different animals. In
First Creation it was the nature of all things to change over and over
again. Then came Second Creation, a time of fixity when people and
animals became separated from each other and the animals were
named. Despite this cleavage, however, the two realms remain
linked through the work of healers and the trickster, a recurrent
agent in KhoeSan folklore and belief. Moreover, the notion of
animals and people interchanging remains a possibility in the minds
of KhoeSan as an expression of the continued role of the First
Creation in the present.

Creation Myths
Birds lie at the centre of KhoeSan creation stories in roles that
indicate their special status on the borders of the spirit world.
During her 1970s Ju/’hoansi research, Biesele recorded stories that
linked the kori bustard (Ardeotis kori)5 with the primal formal
differentiation of one animal from another. Biesele relates that the
kori bustard is considered to be Kaoxa’s servant and ‘a kind of
captain of the other animals’. Kaoxa is the divinity who ‘calls any
5
I have identified birds with familiar and scientific names where possible. I only have KhoeSan names
for a number of birds but I do not believe this detracts from the validity of the account; indeed using
only KhoeSan names reinforces the message of different forms of knowledge that should not always be
unthinkingly channelled into Western paradigms.

6
dance and was the one who made the fire of creation’. The
Ju/’hoansi believe that animal characteristics were branded into
them using the fire of creation and the flames of the fire were
fanned by the strong wings of the kori bustard. The branding day
marked the end of the magical time of human and animal overlap
(Biesele 1993: 23, 98).6

Amongst Hai//om, I heard a story about the ostrich that juggles

similar themes of fire, large birds and branding although it does so
as an explanation for ostrich characteristics. This twist ably reflects
the way related themes of knowledge flow across different KhoeSan
groups and how the knowledge plays out in local contingent
contexts.

The ostrich had a fire on which he cooked his food whilst the others
ate food raw. One day he went to visit the people and they saw
black spots on his legs. The people asked “where did you get
those?” [burn marks]. The people said ‘we have to organize a dance
together’. When they danced the ostrich hid the fire under his arms
and didn’t stretch his wings. The people asked him “ why don’t you
stretch?”. So he did and he forgot about the fire and a person stole
it. The ostrich chased him and kicked the rock. That is why he only
has three toes.7

It is notable in this brief story that the ostrich seems ontologically

elevated from other animals, he eats his food cooked not raw. This
perhaps echoes the previous account in which the kori bustard holds
power as Kaoxa’s servant. There is even a hint that the ostrich has
fire before people. Amongst the Naro Guenther identified similar
beliefs linking ostriches to the acquisition of fire. These typically
featured a woman or an Ostrich Woman as custodian of the First
Fire. The fire holders kept the embers alight under their apron or
wings. Typically fire is associated with women and ostrich women
although Guenther notes, as in the story above, that the role also
occasionally falls to a male ostrich (Guenther 1999: 160).8 In a
study of rock art the Eastwood’s elaborate that they too
encountered a Naro belief in an Ostrich Woman, /Osê. /Osê is a
magically potent bird who lives in the ‘branches of the “red-heart
acacia” ’. She is particularly dangerous to children and visible only
to shamans. As the Eastwood’s note a potent status of the ostrich
was similarly found in /Xam belief. A /Xam Bushmen named the
ostrich, ‘Magic Bird’, and observed: ‘With the exception of the Moon
and the Male Ostrich, all other things mortal are said to die outright,
and not come to life again’ (Eastwood 2006: 108).9

6
Biesele, Women like Meat, pp. 23, 98
7
Elizabeth ≠Naibeb
8
Guenther, Tricksters and Trancers, 1999, p.160
9
Capturing the Spoor, p. 108

7
These various beliefs indicate one aspect of the special status
accorded the ostrich by KhoeSan. The danger of the bird to children
speaks of a shamanic potency rooted in the ostriches place in
creation stories and its immortal associations. Living beyond the
normal animal cycle of birth and death places the ostrich as an
animal ideationally tied to First Order creation. Immortality links the
ostrich to the trickster’s characteristic of perpetuating despite, or
because of, an ability to transform, as similarly evident in the cycles
of the moon and sun. These potent characteristics provide one clue
as to why the ostrich features in KhoeSan medicine. In a very real
sense, ‘magic’ and ‘medicine’, is, to the KhoeSan, working with the
knowledge and potential of First Order creation. Through the act of
transformation disease can be explained, illness cured and the
potential connective threads of life can be tapped by shaman to
influence the day-to-day. This potent mythological shamanic
dimension is an expression of what ostriches mean to Bushmen and
it is the ostriches special characteristics and possibilities that inform
not only stories about ostriches but how, through potent
transubstantiation, parts are used to treat people.

The use of ostrich parts in medicine is tied to both the ontological

and mythological status and potency inherent in ostriches. This idea
is in turn dependent upon the equally important KhoeSan belief in
the possibility of transference of formal qualities between animals
and people. Through wearing of animals parts, eating them, rubbing
them on, sniffing them, rubbing them into cuts or having them
‘shamanically inserted’, people become owners of particular animal
strengths or abilities. This complex of ideas holds the key to
understanding use of ostrich eggs in powder or bead form and use
of ostrich leg tendons as necklaces or ties on other parts of the
body. The apparently straightforward distinction between using
beads and ties for decoration or jewellery is complex and needs
problematizing within contexts of medicine and potency.

Amongst all the KhoeSan I have encountered, ostrich egg shell was
used in healing contexts either as beads or as a burnt and ground
powder to be rubbed on the body or swallowed. All groups ascribed
healing benefit to ostrich egg shell beads worn on the body. Often
egg shell bead necklaces are given to children. Some Ju/’hoan
described that babies wore them around the neck or waist to ‘make
them strong’.10 As I have discussed elsewhere, such apparently
simple statements should not be accepted simply. Ideas of strength
have a face value but equally a rich inner ideational context (Low
2008a: 70). A Naro woman suggested people wore egg shell
necklaces if they had neck problems. Alternatively they also wore
threads of ostrich leg tendon around the neck.11 A Hai//om woman
indicated a baby would wear an egg shell bead necklace if their

10
J2712; Nh2207
11
Nh2200

8
neck were thought too flexible.12 A KKG speaking !Kung woman used
beads tied round the neck for neck pain and beads around the waist
to help diarrhoea.13 Some KhoeSan combined the prescription of
wearing an egg shell necklace with drinking burnt and ground
ostrich egg shell. Usually this is part of a treatment undertaken for a
set of baby and young child sickness signs and symptoms, often
referred to simply as ‘children’s sicknesses’ or /gôaron //ob amongst
KKG speakers. Children’s sickness usually refers to a combination of
fever, diarrhoea and stomach pain or equally signs that equate to
acute dehydration or meningitis, typically including cessation of
movement of the skin over the anterior fontanel and rigidity of the
baby’s body, possibly accompanied by spastic paralysis.

Why the KhoeSan use particular parts of the ostrich as they do is a

difficult question. As anthropologists commonly encounter amongst
other African people, questions of why are barely ever answered by
KhoeSan beyond, ‘because the old people told us’. Ultimately, the
question ‘why’ must be acknowledged as revealingly inappropriate.
When one, however, places ostrich use in wider contexts of KhoeSan
knowledge and medicine, there is much to suggest the physical
form and attributes of the ostrich underlie its use. Both ostrich legs
and the neck are highly distinctive amongst southern African
animals. The long bald legs have a particularly familiar, if aberrant,
human quality. Like the neck, what is also overtly apparent of legs is
their strength. The qualities of the strong legs or neck are
transferred to KhoeSan people by wearing or eating parts of the
ostrich. These confer body strength in general, but neck strength
and leg strength in particular. Amongst the Damara the tendon of
the ostrich leg is used to treat knee or leg pain, ≠gurub14 . The
tendon is tied variously around the knee and ankle or down between
the two, alongside the tibia. This paralleling of ostrich leg tendon, to
a leg tendon problem, strongly supports an idea of transference of
qualities that is similarly played out in ostrich being used for the
loose necks of children, although in the latter case ostrich neck is
not used as might be expected. Using a part not from the neck
indicates how one part of an animal is conceptualized as holding the
potency of the entire animal. The knowledge expressed by one Naro
Bushman that if you eat the kori bustard you will never sit down
further demonstrates how one part of an animal can hold and
convey the behavioural and physical characteristics of the whole
animal, in this case the long legged ambulatory habits of the kori
bustard.15

12
H2222
13
!K99
14
Possibly related to ≠khurub meaning blood vessel or !Khuru, knee cap (Haacke and Eiseb 2002:
572). The illness refers to a !nu or lump in the medial hamstring tendon associated with a bent, stiff
and painful leg.
15
Nh2202

9
As ideas of making KhoeSan children ‘strong’ are drawn from the
animal world, so do other environmental relationships inform use of
ostriches. Across the KhoeSan run ideas of people without
something powerful being introduced to it[ ??] through minor or
major rituals of controlled exposure. This applies to puberty rites or
even how to introduce oneself to a new physical environment or
weather phenomenon.16 Amongst the Nama I encountered a notion
that further locates ostriches in the formative cosmological process
of becoming part of the physical world, or second order creation in
Ju/’hoan terms. When a baby is born some Nama say ‘he doesn’t
know anything’ and for a small number of days, they place a little
burnt and ground ostrich egg shell on the tongue of the newborn as
a ‘medicine’, called !huitsa. This medicine is ‘just to teach the child.
It is the first thing that comes to his mouth’.17 The wider context of
the word !huitsa relates to !hui, variously meaning bursting open,
exploding, opening of a spring and bursting into blossom (Haacke
2002: 337),18 all of which juggle this idea of coming forth into
creation.

From the late nineteenth century the philologist Theophilus Hahn

provides a yet further clue as to the possible potency of the ostrich
and it is one that may well juggle [ repeat] formative KhoeSan ideas
around ostrich importance. Hahn identified !Urisis as the name of
the sun, meaning ‘the white one’. Hahn determined the root of this
word lay in !ū which, similarly amongst the !Ai Bushmen, originally
meant ‘white’ and ‘egg’. Hahn proposed ‘it is not unlikely’ that the
sun, which is round and white, was equated by at least Khoikhoi, if
not Bushmen, to the ‘ egg par excellence ’, the ostrich egg (Hahn
1881: 141).

The transformative and potent properties of the rising and falling

moon are a central pole in KhoeSan mythology and folklore as is,
less prominently, the sun; the revered and feared bringer of
daylight from the East, the wife of the Khoekhoe trickster figure
Heitsi-eibib (Hahn 1881:141) and the Ju/’hoan n/um filled ‘death
thing’ (Marshall 1969: 352). Wagner-Robertz (MS 50) noted how
Damara healers entering ‘trance’ ran to the direction of the
sunrise.19 Guenther recorded a belief amongst the Naro that related
the sun to a rhinocerous sauntering from east to west, who was
killed and reborn in the cycle of day and night. These themes of
rebirth and extreme potency may well feed into Keeney’s
observation amongst the Ju/’hoansi that the most special dream a
healer could have is of an ostrich egg shell cracking open, meaning
the ‘rope of light that goes to the Big God is now open for you’. In a
related sense some Ju/’hoansi similarly believed that really strong
16
See eg. Marshall, Nyae Nyae !Kung (1999) on rain 124-126
17
Nh33
18
Haacke 2002: 337
19
Manuscript 50 ‘Zauberdoktoren’, I am very grateful to Dr Wagner for his kind permission to use
the notes of his deceased wife.

10
healers do not just see coloured threads tracing round the sky when
they are dancing, but they see these ropes as the ostrich eggshell
beads. Each bead is a step up the rope to the ancestors and the Big
God (Keeney 2003: 42, 60).20Giving children ostrich egg shell
medicine seems to reflect a compounded associations of the ostrich
with strength but also with coming into creation and having strength
in the cycle of life and death. In an extension of this belief, the
same idea is used for the ultimate divine gift to the strongest
healers, an opening up to the essence of creation. There is a sense
in which the cracking of the egg shell is a rebirth into the divinity of
persistent First Order creation.

Since the mythical branding, animals and people have been

different. However, the continual influence of First Order creation
means that in certain situations humans and animals merge again.
Conceptually there seems a hierarchy of merging. There is the
great merging wherein Bushmen healers become part of the Big
God and there is a less powerful shamanic merging with animals
that works with the same sympathies but is more a part of everyday
‘spirituality’ and medicine. Merging is graphically represented in the
part-human part-animal therianthropes of Bushman rock art. Other
forms of merging include KhoeSan healers shape-shifting.

Ideas of transformation of people into animals have been recorded

amongst the KhoeSan since some of the earliest colonial records.21
Accounts of the nineteenth century Cape /Xam reveal that sorcerers
shifted into all sorts of animals including lions, birds and jackals 22
and animals could similarly shift into human form. In current
contexts, Bushman healers are particularly known for their ability to
change into lions. In lion form they can frighten and possibly kill
people or animals or defend their camp. They can also travel far to
check out distant happenings. The ability to transform is intrinsic to
the First Order trickster figures of KhoeSan belief who sometimes
appear as animals and can be recognised by their exceptional
animal behaviour, such as not dying when shot.

The KhoeSan idea of transformation between people and animals is

a Second Order creation phenomenon that demonstrates the
continued power of the trickster. At the same time, people and
animals being the same is a First Order phenomenon and hence
transformation serves as a direct link to the past. In this manner
animal forms allow dead people to have a role in the present. In
1972 The anthropologist Wagner-Robertz recorded a typical
example of this in the case of a 77 years old half Bushman half
Damara man, Frederik !Gaeb, who was told by his father shortly
before he died ‘if you see a big bird in the morning ( with a dekke?)
20
Keeney, Ropes to God, p. 42
21
Grevenbroek, 1695, recorded claims that some people were ‘wizards’ capable of transforming
(Schapera 1933: 213)
22
Bleek notebooks BC 151 A2 1 063, from CD accompanying Skotnes (ed) 2007

11
then you must know that I am coming for you’. Frederik explained
that he had seen his dead father numerous times in the form of both
a snake and a bird. 23

Closely related to ideas of human / animal transformation is another

historical and current KhoeSan idea that animals can enter people
and cause sickness. The /Xam, for instance, spoke of animals
including owls and butterflies causing sickness.24 The miniature
animals inside people are typically removed in a healing dance by
‘sucking’, ‘snoring’ or ‘pulling’, which is performed by a healer
rubbing their hands or head, or inhaling with their nose or mouth, on
a patient. The miniature animal enters the healer and is then
expelled usually by coughing or snorting it out. In 2001 Justina
Haraes, a 71 years old Damara lady in Khorixas, described to me
how, at one point of her life, she was persistently sick, she ‘could
not feel anything and did not sleep. At night she was just sitting’.
One day a man came to help her. He told her she had a bird and a
snake inside her. Although he could not suck the snake out, he
sucked out the bird. It was a real bird. The man showed it to her and
then threw it in the fire. From that day on she was better.

Birds and wind

One way of thinking about transformation of people into animals or
animals into miniature animals within people, is to think of how
phenomena may share characteristics or essence and how these
might be envisaged to move from one organisms or phenomenon to
another. Once in the recipient these characteristics of the host may
be referred to, depending on context as either the host animal or by
other terms relating to its essence. Amongst the KhoeSan ideas of
wind serve as a key way of talking about how essence or potency
moves between organisms and other natural phenomena (Low
2008b). Wind equates to the breath of creation which, once inside a
living thing, further equates to that animal’s, person’s and possibly
plant’s identity and distinctive ability to work in the world. Some
animals and people are thought of as having strong wind or potency
and if this is too strong the potency becomes dangerous. Often
words for smell or even shadow are also used as a way of talking
about the dangerous or healing wind running from one organism or
phenomenon to affect another. The KhoeSan talk of the whirlwind as
housing spirits of the dead that make a person sick. That is one form
of harmful wind. Another is the dangerous smell of menstruating
women. A further idea involves a child wearing a necklace
containing parts of a strong or potent animal, typically a kudu or
eland. The necklace imbues the child with the wind of that animal
and the child becomes dangerously strong. A well known cause of
sickness amongst babies is the shadow or wind of a bird passing
over the head of a baby. The potent wind penetrates the baby and

23
Wagner Robertz file 52 //Gamagu, Die Ahnen
24
Hewitt, p. 292

12
causes depression of the anterior fontanel. Some say the baby’s
limbs claw up like the talons of a bird. The Hai//om call the bird a
//gori (a kite?). The name is very probably related to //gorob,
meaning the talon of a bird of prey (Haacke 2002:257). The bird is
therefore named by what it represents. Some Ju/’hoan give their
children ostrich beads to wear strung round the waist to protect
them from the sickness causing shadow of the //gauwa ha bird.25

The way wind relates to life, death and birds is both rich and
complex. As academics it is tempting to try and explain what appear
jumbled ideas by untangling them into metaphor, symbolism,
allegory, metonymy, synecdoche or some other analytical
abstraction. Although such analysis can be highly insightful, it
seems, however, to hold the danger of perpetuating an
interpretative colonialism within which KhoeSan phenomena are not
taken on their own terms and granted their own equal reality. What
concerns me is that something highly informative about how
KhoeSan work and think is being lost in such abstractions. The key
lies in the distinction that in Western terms if one does something
with or to something that is not the source phenomenon but is
symbolically, metaphorically or otherwise related, in conventional
terms one is not doing something with the source phenomenon.
Whereas in a KhoeSan context the depth and profundity of the
relationship between say a bird, and a child with the wind of the
bird, is such that real implications and effects manifest in the child
or host by ‘working with’ either of the inter-related entities. The
smell, breath, wind or shadow of one phenomenon can be worked
with by KhoeSan . Bad winds can be removed, good winds that
make a person strong can be put in. This is an idea intrinsic to
wearing ‘strong’ animal parts.

In the context of birds the notion of potent wind is more involuted

and complex still. Amongst KhoeSan the experiential knowledge of
birds’ wind-beating wings entangles with broader potency wind
ideas. Awareness of wind generated by wings seems to have
contributed to concepts of birds actually being the wind, an idea
further indicated by the awareness that birds come and go through
the air. This quality of birds being the wind is conceptually possible
amongst KhoeSan in the context of their belief that one
phenomenon can hold the characteristics of something else and is in
that sense an owner of, or worker with, that phenomenon.

Lloyd recorded a /Xam story that describes wind, who was formerly
a man, becoming a bird who lived in a hole in the mountains and
ventured out for food.26 A similarly intimate linking between the
physical blowing wind and birds is echoed in something a
psychologist, Porteus, described in 1937. Porteus related that

25
J2186
26
Claim to the Country, digital archive of Bleek and Lloyd Book BC 151 A2 1 083

13
Bushmen thought of the wind rushing across the veldt as ‘a huge
bird that is the forerunner of death. It cannot be seen but the beat
of its wings can be felt as it passes by’ (Porteus 1937: 119) Without
knowing exactly where Porteus ascertained this information it is
hard to accurately assess it. Although I have no other evidence,
such an account of wind’s origin does, however, seems quite in
keeping with KhoeSan ways of thinking. His account is particularly
interesting because it suggests a significant possible ideational link
between birds, wind and sickness that holds commonalities with
recently held ideas. In current contexts wind blowing in from foreign
parts is sometimes thought the cause of illness as, in a related
sense, is the wind coming in from foreign or ‘unknown’ people (Low
2008a: 263).

In terms of better understanding KhoeSan ways of being and the

notion that analytical abstractions such as metaphor might distance
us from some of the meaning and reality of KhoeSan bird relations,
it is important to recognise that these sorts of complex beliefs
inform action or use. In an historical /Xam context, for example,
//Goo-ka-!kui, or “Smoke’s Man” (‘owner of’ or ‘worker with’ smoke)
saw a !kuerre!kuerre bird at the Haartfontein Mountains and threw a
stone at it, based on his understanding that it was the wind. The
wind bird thereupon went into a hole in the mountain and the wind
blew so frighteningly hard that the Bushman went home (Bank
2006: 149; Bleek 1911: 107; Lloyd 1889: 48).27 Throwing a stone at
the bird is working with one side of the equation and it has an effect
on the whole; the wind blew.

What works with, or owns, something else is knowledge

determined by experience of the environment. How KhoeSan are
influenced by birds or use them, lies at the heart of KhoeSan bird
relationships. As indicated, however, this use is not easily
understood in Western categories of scientific knowledge, magic or
medicine. KhoeSan agency intersects with the world at a point
where one thing is sensually and experientially identified in concert
with another within a significant context, or rather a context given
significance within KhoeSan paradigms of environmental receptivity
(Low Potency, forthcoming ). Schapera cites Hahn’s late nineteenth
century observation that certain unspecified Khoi Khoi caught a
‘kind of caprimulgus ( ≠ga //goeb)’ bird, burnt it to ashes and
scattered it about to produce clouds and rain (Schapera 1930:
391).28 This behaviour is understandable when one thinks of
Nightjars in a context of working with or being ‘of the rain’. Nightjars
are usually nocturnal feeders on insects. Their activity levels could
well be associated with rain in terms of rain-wind bringing insects,
insects gathering in numbers after rain or the darkening of a storm

27
Andrew Bank, p. 149; Bleek A Brief Account 1875, p. 48; Specimens of Bushman Folklore p. 107
28
Schapera, The Khoisan Peoples’, p. 391

14
encouraging the Nightjars to emerge. Hollman has similarly linked
the comments of /Xam Bushmen concerning swallows being ‘rain’s
things’ to their increased activity around storm times. Hollman
particularly elaborates that the physical attributes and behaviour of
swifts, whom he thinks were often not distinguished by Bushmen
from swallows, presented a ‘package’ of characteristics that
associated them in the minds of Bushmen with shamen, healing
dances and altered states of consciousness. Hollman suggests this
resonance, coupled with the explicit identification of swift-people as
‘rain-sorcerers’ by a /Xam Bushman, /Han≠Kasso, accounts for the
representation of swift-people as potent motifs in Bushman rock-art
(Hollman 2005: 25). 29

It is useful to think in terms of ethological knowledge but as

Hollman reminds us, it is important to keep this rooted in the
deeper KhoeSan context articulated around listening to the
environment and reading and working with the links they perceive.
A baby adopting the posture of a bird if a bird’s shadow or bird wind
passes over its head is one example of how observation, or
‘listening to the environment’ and making connections between
phenomena, informs KhoeSan practice. A similar example is evident
if Hai//om children eat pangolin;, the child will die and its body take
the form of the pangolin, meaning its arms will curl forwards. 30
Some Hai//om believe a child that makes a coughing sound like the
noise of the //gores (//gori, gori) bird, becomes sick by having the
bird, or the bird’s wind, ≠oab, in them. When a bird causes sickness
in this manner there is a sense in which the idea is the inversion of
being an ‘owner’ of a bird, a ‘worker with’ a bird, a ‘bird sorcerer’ or
‘bird’s person’. Instead of having some sort of protection from birds
or control over birds the bird has the control over the baby. This is
very similar to a phenomenon Köhler describes amongst the Kxoe.
The Kxoe believe certain animals including lion, duiker and
bushdoves can cause sickness. They are said to //’oέ a person,
which literally means ‘coming down’ (Köhler 1971: 318).31 The
phrase seems particularly appropriate to bird relationships. Not only
can birds passing overhead cause sickness but, at least amongst the
Hai//om, so too can simply passing under the nest of the !nanas
bird.

The notion of birds causing sickness is very widespread amongst the

KhoeSan and probably has a considerably wider run amongst their
African neighbours. A ≠Khomani Bushman, Habijol, knew that one
must never kill what he variously called the roibosraksman, koring
or corn bird in the knowledge that ‘when the air goes out of the bird
it takes your air out with it, and then you will die’. Some Hai//om
29
Jeremy C. Hollman, “ ‘Swift-People’: Therianthropes and Bird Symbolism in Hunter-Gatherer
Rock-Paintings, Western and eastern Cape Provinces, South Africa”, South African Archaeological
Society Goodwin Series 9: 21-33, 2005: 25
30
H2219
31
Köhler, ‘Krankheit’, p. 318.

15
referred to the shadow of the red tailed //go-ās as the cause of
sickness whilst Ju/’hoan referred variously to the Subbah or Tsaba
bird, possibly an eagle, or to the shadow of the //gam. The
considerable variety of ideas that exists about which birds may
cause sickness further indicates the flexible way in which knowledge
is held and operated amongst KhoeSan. In line with the idea of an
animal entering a person some Ju/hoansi said, variously, that the
bird literally shouts over the baby and puts its body into it and the
baby will consequently grow feathers. Conversely !Kung and Naro
spoke of the bird, named /gou in !Kung, as taking the child’s heart.
This idiom is one heard more commonly in healing dance contexts
when some healers speak of having to rescue the heart of the sick
person from the spirit realm.

As these examples suggest there is a sense in which birds in healing

and illness contexts work by coming into people and taking things
out of people. Amongst at least the Damara the taking out idea runs
beyond taking the heart. One cause of madness is ascribed to birds
making a nest from the hair of the afflicted person (Wagner-Robertz
MS:65).32 The idea links to knowledge of certain bird’s pilfering
behaviour and awareness that to ‘work with’ a part of a person is to
work on the person, a notion sometimes played out in witchcraft
scenarios when hair or nail clippings or footprint dust might be
maliciously worked with. The ‘coming in and going out’ idiom is
further meshed across the KhoeSan to broader associations in
which birds act as agents and informants in matters of life and
death. According to Wagner-Robertz, amongst the Damara the
fearful idea of dying far from home is bound up in knowledge of
vultures and the role they might play in arriving to pick clean your
lonely corpse. Vultures are, in a sense, messengers of death and
there are Damara healing songs that begin by expressing the fear of
death and vultures, but then end by praising the bird as a great
expeditious messenger (Wagner-Robertz 2000: 64,76).33 The link
between vultures, messenger status and death is, not surprisingly, a
common one. Hai//om, for instance, thought of lappet-faced
vultures hovering over a potential dead animal as messengers of a
food source.

Amongst the Damara the messenger bird plays an important role in

both diagnosis and cure. In Sesfontein, a sick person seeking a cure
will creep in the night to the hut of a rain man healer and secretly
pin a small amount of money wrapped in a cloth to the side of the
rain man’s hut. By morning the rain man will know that the person
came, what the cause of their sickness was and how to treat it. The
offering is called an anib which rain men describe as ‘a kind of
ancestor or spirit’. The word ‘anib’ directly translates as a male bird

32
Wagner Robertz 65
33
Ibid., p. 76.

16
and it seems highly likely that the idea is linked to the coming of a
wind messenger or spirit bird (Low 2008a: 191-2).

Silberbauer noted that amongst the G/wi birds generally were

credited with thought processes and values comparable to man and
some birds were thought to have particularly special knowledge
which they could share with people (Silberbauer 1981: 71-2).34 Many
KhoeSan think along similar lines of animals speaking to one
another and particularly of some birds that can be understood by
people and impart important knowledge. Habijol would talk to
certain birds and on his request they would allegedly come and sit
by him. Similarly to the vulture telling people about meat and the
hovering bateleur eagle of the impending success of the hunt, other
birds relate messages about impending visits and life and death
events.

Birds are not alone in communicating warnings to people. A Hai//om

man commented that if he is walking in the bush and he hears a
jackal he will turn back because this is a message of death and also
a warning.35 It is birds, however, that are the consummate bringers
of news and testament to this some elderly KhoeSan describe them
as ‘the old telephone’. Chickens for instance tell of approaching
visitors, as does the //gauseb (Hai//om). Reminding us that this is
both recognisable and distinctive knowledge this apparently obvious
behaviour may occur many hours before someone arrives. Hearing
the /honess bird (KKG, owl) at night is a further sign of visitors
although the owl is more commonly attributed with prophetic news
of a death. The /khai ah is a particularly important bird to some
Ju/’hoansi. It makes a pitiful noise if it is telling you something bad,
like a relative has died. It makes a good sound if something good is
going to happen and it warns you if something is near. 36Amongst at
least Hai//om there seems to be a special link between bird
behaviour and pregnancy. A young Hai//om girl explained that if
you are staying with strange parents, and you're pregnant and you
don't know how to tell them, the bird will come, and it makes a
noise like a baby, eeeah. 37 If a brown bird (unspecified) comes to a
house it means someone pregnant is inside. 38 An elderly Hai//om
lady further told me that if the oo //nāh bird follows you, you will
not get pregnant.39

KhoeSan listening to birds sits within their wider disposition of

listening to an environment; an environment in which they are a
particularly sensually aware human participants. KhoeSan, like
34
Silberbauer 1981, p. 71-2
35
Hai//om 2214
36
J2178
37
Hai//om 10 Belinda
38
H2240
39
Hai//om 2221, probably related to ‘oo’, to eat, eat greedily and ‘ ō//nāsen ’ (bite off, trapped limb to
free itself (Haacke et al 2002: 102)

17
other southern Africans, listen keenly to their body. A twitch of the
back may mean someone you once carried is coming and a feeling
under the thighs that you will ride in a car. Their awareness
amounts to a sensual reading of themselves as an agent within a
very living and connected environment. Amongst ≠Khomani it is
known that agama lizards can lift their heads and call the rain. The
rain will follow from the direction in which they look. If a pangolin
makes a whistling sound some Ju/’hoansi know it is going to rain.40 If
the n!òro bird ( threestreaked tchagra ) is ‘playing and whistling too
much’ some Naro know that clouds will come and the rain will soon
follow.41 Amongst the Hai//om it is known that if the Korab bird
comes from the north east to the west the rain will be good that
year42 and if little birds make a noise together there is a snake
under the tree.43 If there is a grey Lourie in the veld, ‘the bird that
makes the koi noise’, it means there is an animal in the area, maybe
a porcupine or warthog who is running away. One man explained
that when you see a lot of pied crows together and they make a
‘craw craw’ sound it means there is a lion under a tree. After the
lion has eaten he sleeps and his mouth opens. The pied crows clean
his teeth.44 The listening to birds that tells of ‘prophetic’ events is, to
the KhoeSan the same listening that gives them what we might
think of as pragmatic knowledge of animals.

Conclusion

I began this paper by highlighting that many KhoeSan continue to

live ‘close to nature’ and I raised the idea that, if nature informs how
KhoeSan think, then nature probably continues to play a detectable
role in KhoeSan life. Turning our eye to birds gives clear
confirmation to this hypothesis. We have seen how birds are talked
about, thought about in stories, communicated with, talked to and
used.

For reasons of expediency this snapshot of bird relations, drawn

from considerable time and space, has not dwelt on birds as food or
their bones as tools, or eggs as water containers. Instead I have
focused on what appear more esoteric elements of KhoeSan bird
relationships. If I were to have included such details it is important,
however, to acknowledge that these arenas equally articulate and
contribute to the shifting meanings of birds, medicines and
encounters and one should be cautious in applying too familiar or
simple a meaning to everyday objects and actions. I have tried to
highlight that what seems special about birds is the way their
‘nature’ maps into what appear basic esoteric ingredients of
40
J2185
41
Nh2192
42
Adolph Tsam
43
Hai//om Jaqueline
44
H2220

18
KhoeSan ontology and epistemology but, when one thinks in terms
of everyday relationships not simply with but in nature, there is
nothing inherently esoteric about the way this works, it is simply
one way of making sense of the world and working with the
environment.

Although I have not had room to adequately explore birds in rock art
in many way rock art depictions and their juxtapositions and
connections capture how we must think about birds in a set of
relations. In particular, where we see birds linked by lines of potency
we should think in terms of potency as a form of workable essence
binding the world together and informed by attuned and oriented
sensuous and cultural dispositions. Bird depictions hold general bird
essence - flight, airiness, arrival, departure, messages - alongside
specific bird essence based on their form and behaviour – the legs
of the ostrich, the walking of the kori bustard or the swallow,
catching insects in the shadow of rain. KhoeSan bird relationships
make sense when we think in terms of a listening disposition
coupled with particular relationships with knowledge and
understandings of the interconnectedness life.

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Possible additions:
Might go crazy eating ostrich eggshell – potent Naro 2141
Cognitive space concerning habitual thought and practice toward
animals among the Central San (|Gui and //Gana idealist

Christopher Prendergast [ talking about one sense is a fallacy! Site

with no body?]
9The real question is not whether the touch of a woodpecker's beak
does in fact cure tuth ache. It is rather whether there is a
point of view from which a woodpecker's beak and a man's
tooth can be seen as "going together" idealist levi strauss
10 Since action in the world partly depends on concepts, and since
concepts are learnt through expereience in the world, in which
one is brought up and lives, it is feasible that long-term
continuities in cultural traditions exist, continually being
renegotiated and transformed, but nevertheless generated
from within. Hodder idealist

Hewitt concludes that the feather, as a moon, ‘lights the darkness

and mediates Life and Death’ (Hewitt 2001: 174, 182). – link use of
feathers in eyes / eggs sparkling

Eggs sparkling / like the sun /

The egg is like the sun, it has that shine on it – you can see it for
they eat the shiny stones – the ostrich only dies in the dry time

21