The covenant - James A. Michener [176]
'How do they say, about the lodge?' she asked as she came easily down the path to Sotopo's kraal.
'They say well. He's strong, Xuma.'
'I know.'
It was permissible, in Xhosa custom, for boys who were not yet men to play at night with girls past puberty, always mindful that there must not be any babies, and Sotopo was aware that Xuma had begun to go into the veld with his brother, even spending nights with him, so he was not surprised that she should now be inquiring after him, and he was pleased. Because he loved his brother, and cherished the long exploring trip they had taken together, he looked forward to the day when Mandiso would be chief of the clan and he the assistant.
His family lived in a collection of huts, seven of them, scattered about the kraal in which the cattle were kept. They were dome-shaped, formed by rows of saplings implanted in a circular pattern, bent inward and bound together, then thickly thatched. The huts were handsome of themselves, and when seen against the rolling hills, formed pleasing patterns.
Xuma, honored to become part of this family, volunteered to help collect thatch for replenishing the huts, and often she went down to the river with her shell knife to cut rushes. Sotopo went with her, to help carry the large, but light, bundles homeward, and on one trip Xuma confided that her father had fallen into trouble with the witch doctor and had been forced to pay him excessive gifts.
'That's troublesome,' Sotopo said, not revealing that he, too, had had a minor confrontation with the powerful diviner.
'I don't know what Father did that was wrong,' Xuma said. 'He isn't a man who angers anyone easily, but the witch doctor was most angry.'
It was like that among the Xhosa. As a nation, the tribes were a gentle people, eschewing vast armies for war against their neighbors, but there were clashes with the Hottentots. Some of the conquered little people allied themselves with the Xhosa, intermarrying and occasionally even attaining power within the hierarchy. This interaction with the Hottentots continued through many centuries, and one of the lasting legacies was a unique language: from the Hottentots, the Xhosa borrowed the click sounds, and these distinguished their speech from that of the other southern black tribes.
Although they did not war on the grand scale, no Xhosa warrior ever hesitated to snatch up his assegais if his cattle had to be defended, or if he saw a good chance to capture his neighbor's. Cattle raiding was the national pastime; success conferred distinction, for cattle were in many ways more important than babies. Everything depended upon them: a man's reputation derived from the number of cattle he held; the kind of bride a young man could aspire to was determined by how many cattle he could bring as lobola to the girl's parents; and the good name of a kraal like Sotopo's sprang almost entirely from the number of cows and oxen and bulls it possessed. The cattle did not have to be good beasts, nor produce copious milk, nor excellent eating meat; there was no merit in having a prepotent bull which threw fine animals. Only numbers counted, which meant that year by year the quality of the great herds deteriorated, with five thousand beasts needed to perform the functions that nine hundred really good animals could have fulfilled.
So although the Xnosa lived without fear of warfare, they lived in dreadful fear of what might happen to their scrawny cattle, and it was the diviner who established and policed the intricate rules for the preservation of the herd. For example, during her entire lifetime no Xhosa woman could ever approach or lay her hand upon the rocks which enclosed the kraal, and if any dared to enter the sacred area, she would be punished. A boy set to tending his family's cattle as they roamed the hills had better come home with every calf, or his punishment would be savage. There was a time to perform every function connected with