4 - The !Xõ and Eastern ≠ Hoã

Summary

Introduction

The !Xõ, defined broadly, are a widely scattered people. As noted in Chapter 2, they call themselves by an extraordinary variety of names. !Xõ is the most widely used term, though ≠ Hoã is common in the east and Tshasi in the south. Dorothea Bleek (1929a; 1956) knew the westernmost !Xõ as the /nu// en or SVI (Southern Bushman linguistic group, language number six). This group lived along the Upper Nosob River (also spelled Nosop or Nossop) in what is now Namibia. Her masarwa or SV are also closely related, while the /nusan or SVIa language, studied by J.G. Kroenlein in 1861, is now known to be quite distinct (Traill 1974: 10–11).

The Eastern ≠ Hoã (hereafter, ≠ Hoã) are only very distantly related, but live in close proximity to the !Xõ on their southeastern boundary. As they were only ‘discovered’ (i.e., discovered not to be !Xõ) in the early 1970s, very little is known about them anthropologically. In the Kweneng district, some ≠ Hoã live in association with members of the Khoespeaking groups studied by Vierich (1977; 1982a; 1982b) and Motzafi (1986). These groups will be discussed in Chapter 7. In this chapter, my remarks on the ≠ Hoã will be confined to a brief look at the relationship terminology system recorded by the American linguist, Jeffrey Gruber (1973). This is virtually the only ethnographic material which exists on the ≠ Hoã per se.