Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1908-04-07
AFRICAN BUsHMEN DOOMED.
Dr.. Rudolf Pooh to Make a Study Of a
Disappearing Race.

Disappearing Race.
A letter received in New York from
DR.. Rudolf Pooh, the we'll known an
thropologlst, says:
am about to start under the auspi-
ces Of the Imperial Academy Of Scien-
ces of Vienna for the Kalahari desert
in South Africa to make study Of the
bushmen. The race is rapidly dying
out and the sole purpose of my expedi-
tion is to add to our knowledge Of this
people before they become extinct.
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
steadily in native population.
But the bushmen are now reduced
to handful and every year they are
dwindling. Circumstances are too
hard for them and 1t Is not believed
they could be saved even by change
in their conditions.
The bushmen inhabit the great des-
ert of South Africa. There is no rum
ming water, and yet among the sand
wastes there are depresslons where the
natives find water by digging, and in
places it comes so near the surface
that vegetation fiourishes and many
animals find nurture in the desert.
The bushmen are only few inches
taller than the pygmies of central Af-
rica. They live in rock caves or in
huts of sticks and grass. They seldom
wear more than a leather apron to
protect their legs from thorns.
They subsist on the scant vegetation,
on roots and on the animals they kill.
Clubs, bows and arrows and few
spears are their only weapons. They
are primitive, but they do not buy
their wives: they have been faithful to
those whites who have befriended
them, and they paint and draw in an
astonishing manner. Much has been
written Of the thousands Of animal
paintings with which they adorn the
rocks and the walls of their caves.
Why do they not abandon the des-
ert to which they are confined? They
could not If they would. They are
hemmed around by pastoral and agri-
cultural regions. all occupied by strong
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 q hunting people, and such
tribes have never voluntarily become
pastoral or an agricultural commun-
ity. Whenever cattle have been given
to the bushmen they have killed them,
for they will not herd them.
The whites have been even more de-
structive of the bushmen than their
native enemies. Late in the eigh-
teenth century the Dutch used to
shoot these little people as they would
game. It is recorded that in the ten
years ending in 1875 the Dutch killed
2,480 bushmen.
They have always shrunk from con-
tact with civilization, and today, when
they see white protectorates planted
all around them, they are retreating
further 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, ploughing the
places where the bushmen go for ber-
res and edible roots and narrowing
the area in which they can live.
They seem wholly unable to live un-
der new conditions, and the old condi-
tions are passing away. All who know
them best say that their absolute ex-
termination is question Of only few
years.--New York Sun.