Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1908-05-20
AFRICAN BUsHMEN DOOMED.
DR.. Rudolf Pooh to Make q study
OF a Disappearing Race.

DR.. Rudolf Pooh to Make q study
OF a Disappearing Race.
A letter received In Washington from
Dr. Rudolf Pooh, the well known an
thrOpologist, says:
l am about to start, under the aus
pieces of the Imperial Academy Of
Sciences of Vienna, to make a study
of the Bushmen. The race is rapidly
dying out, and the sole purpose of my
expedition is to add to our knowledge
of this people before they become ex-
tinct.
The fact has been recognized for
some years that this African race is
destined to extinction. This is all the
more remarkable because everywhere
else the African races are more than
holding their own.
Pestilence war, and the evils that
the whites introduce are powerless to
obliterate them. Africa is growing
in native population.
But the Bushmen are now reduced
to a handful, and every year they
are dwindling Circumstances are too
hard for them, and it is not believed
they could be saved, even by change
In their conditions.
The Bushmen inhabit the great
desert of South Africa. There is no
running water, and yet among the
sand wastes there are depressions
where the natives find water by dig
nj ~, v,1o
the surface that vegetation fiourishes
and many animals find nurture in the
desert.
The Bushmen are only a few inches
taller than the pygmies Of Central
Africa. They live in rock caves or
in huts of sticks and grass. They sell
dom wear more than leather apron to
protect their legs from thorns
They subsist on the scant vegeta-
ton, on roots, and on the animals they
kill Clubs, bows and arrows, and a
few spears are their only weapons.
They are primitive, but they do not
buy their wives; they have been faith
full to those whites who have befriend-
ed them, and they paint and draw in
an astonishing manner. Much has
been written of the thousands of ami
NAL paintings with which they adOrn
the rocks and the walls of their caves.
Why do they not abandon the desert
to which they are confined? They
could not If they would. They are
hemmed around by pastoral and agri-
0S1 tod hx- CTR
tribes, who kill them like vermin If
they venture across the line.
If they were free to leave the desert
it is doubtful If they would do so, for
they are a hunting people, and such
tribes have never voluntarily become
a pastoral or an agricultural commu-
nifty. Whenever cattle have been given
to the Bushmen they have killed
them, for they will not herd them.
The whites have been even more
destructive of the Bushmen than their
native enemies Late in the eighteenth
century the Dutch used to shoot these
little people as they would game. It
is recorded that in the ten years end
ing In 1895 the Dutch killed 2,4SO Bush
men.
They have always shrunk from con-
tact with civilization, and to-day, when
they see white protectorates planted
all around them, they are retreating
farther into the desert. The whites
are invading the more fertile valleys,
are stalking out ranches and building
little settlements, are killing off the
game that is the hereditary food Of
the desert nomads, blowing the places
where the Bushmen go for berries and
edible roots, and narrowing the area
in which they can live.
They seem wholly unable to live IN
der new conditions, and the old con-
ditions are passing away. All who
know them best say that theiE absO-
lutte determination is q question Of
only few Washington Post.