s known of the family life of the Bushmen. Marriage is a matter
merely of offer and acceptance ratified by a feast. Among some tribes the
youth must prove himself an expert hunter. Nothing is known of the laws of
inheritance. The avoidance of parents-in-law, so marked among Kaffirs, is
found among Bushmen. Murder, adultery, rape and robbery are offences
against their code of morals. As among other African tribes the social
position of the women is low. They are beasts of burden, carrying the
children and the family property on the journeys, and doing all the work at
the halting-place. It is their duty also to keep the encampment supplied
with water, no matter how far it has to be carried. The Bushman mother is
devoted to her children, who, though suckled for a long time, yet are fed
within the first few days after birth upon chewed roots and meat, and
taught to chew tobacco at a very early age. The child's head is often
protected from the sun by a plaited shade of ostrich feathers. There is
practically no tribal organization. Individual families at times join
together and appoint a chief, but the arrangement is never more than
temporary. The Bushmen have no concrete idea of a God, but believe in evil
spirits and supernatural interference with man's life. All Bushmen carry
amulets, and there are indications of totemism in their refusal to eat
certain foods. Thus one group will not eat goat's flesh, though the animal
is the commonest in their district. Others reverence antelopes or even the
caterpillar N'gwa. The Bushman cuts off the joints of the fingers as a sign
of mourning and sometimes, it seems, as an act of repentance. Traces of a
belief in continued existence after death are seen in the cairns of stone
thrown on the graves of chiefs. Evil spirits are supposed to hide beneath
these sepulchral mounds, and the Bushman thinks that if he does not throw
his stone on the mounds the spirits will twist his neck. The whole family
deserts the place where any one has died, after raising a pile of stones.
The corpse's head is anointed, then it is smoke-dried and laid in the grave
at full length, stones or earth being piled on it. There is a Bushman
belief that the sun will rise later if the dead are not buried with their
faces to the east. Weapons and other Bushman treasures are buried with the
dead, and the hut materials are burnt in the grave.

The Bushmen have many animal myths, and a rich store of beast legends. The
most pro