Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Neil Parsons, a former professor of history at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, is the author of King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain through African Eyes, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Neil Parsons, a former professor of history at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, is the author of King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain through African Eyes, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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CLICKO

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Contents

Foreword by Alexander McCall Smith..................................ixIntroduction........................................................xi1 Growing Up in the Snow Mountains..................................12 Recruited at Kimberley............................................163 Enter Paddy Hepston...............................................234 Disappearance to Australasia or the Far East?.....................305 The Dancing Bushman in London.....................................346 Dancing in Cambridge and Paris....................................457 Hiding from Humanitarians.........................................568 Margate Rendezvous................................................649 From Dublin to Havana.............................................7710 Coney Island and Havana Again....................................8411 Joining Barnum and Bailey's Circus...............................9112 Kidnap in Connecticut............................................10613 'I am an American Gentleman'.....................................12114 Sam Gumpertz Takes Over..........................................13415 High Life with Frank and Evelyn..................................15016 'I Inherited a Bushman'..........................................16617 California Interlude.............................................17618 The Great Terminal Dance.........................................188Conclusion A Mantis Carol...........................................197Appendix............................................................207Notes...............................................................210Bibliography........................................................224Acknowledgements....................................................243Index...............................................................246

Chapter One

Franz Taibosh was in Fact Korana, not Bushman (San), by paternal ancestry. The clicking language spoken by him has been identified as Korana by, for instance, the word koo-rang. It was applied by Franz to a pretty young woman in Paris in 1913, and means a girl ('diminutive-feminine singular').

Franz's Korana ancestral identity is confirmed by the notes on the back of a 1931 museum photograph of him: 'He ... is said to be a direct descendant of a tribal king.' This establishes that Franz Taibosh (Taaibosch) was a descendant of Matsatedi Taaibosch, who succeeded his brother as leader of the Korana group of Khoekhoe around the Orange and Vaal rivers in the middle of the eighteenth century. (Taaibosch or taibos is Dutch-Afrikaans for a 'tough bush' found near rivers.) Matsatedi Taaibosch and his brother were themselves the direct descendants of the Korana clan's founder, a man named !Kora or Gora who had resided in the area of later Cape Town in the early part of the seventeenth century.

Prominent members of the Taaibosch family, like a son and a grandson giving evidence to colonial commissions in 1837 and 1869, prided themselves that 'they could with tolerable correctness trace the line of [their] ancestors to that remote period when they held possession of the country about Cape Town'. !Kora or Gora, recorded in English written documents as 'Corey', was kidnapped from Table Bay in 1613 by an English sea captain named Gabriel Towerson, who took him to England to train as a comprador or trading agent for the English East India Company. Living in the London house of Sir Thomas Smythe, governor of both the East India Company and of one of the Virginia companies, 'Corey' pined for home.

On his return to the Cape in June 1614, Corey 'threw away all his Clothes, his Linnen, with all his Covering, and got his sheeps skins upon his back [again]'. A year later, English sailors in Table Bay found him settled with his followers in a village of a hundred houses on the Liesbeek River, trading in livestock with visiting ships. But Corey now knew the true value of European goods, and drove increasingly hard bargains. In the words of a Welsh visitor of 1627, on the people of Table Bay: 'They hate the dutchmen since they hanged one of the blackes called Cary who was in England & upon refusall of fresh victuals they put him to death.'

By 1658, settlers of the Dutch East India Company-'unjust and often cruel to them, thus provoking reprisals'-had taken over the pastures of the Liesbeek valley from the original Korana (recorded in documents as Gorachoqua). The Korana retreated to the hills across the plains-after they had been expelled by the Dutch.

The Korana trekked hundreds of kilometres north with their sheep and cattle in two major groupings. The Links (or Left-hand) Korana migrated north-west up the Atlantic coast as far as the Orange River. The Great (or Right-hand) Korana under Corey's grandson Eiyakomo migrated northeast to the Camdeboo plains, south of the Sneeubergen (Snow Mountains). Camdeboo was a local Khoekhoe (Inqua) word for a 'green pool in a river' with fat hippos ready for the taking. Eiyakomo was subsequently killed hunting elephants, and was succeeded as chief of the Great Korana by his son !Kunansoop. Dutch hunters followed the Great Korana, and !Kunansoop abandoned the Camdeboo to them sometime before 1760. He led his people again northwards to rejoin the Links Korana on the Orange River.

On the Orange River !Kunansoop faced the aggressive competition of King Tau (the Lion) of the Rolong clan of the Tswana, who murdered !Kunansoop after tricking him into unarmed negotiations. The Korana chose Eiyakomo's younger son Matsatedi Taaibosch to be their chief, and used their poisoned arrows against the spears and battle-axes of the Rolong. Tau was killed, and lost his capital, known as Taung, to Matsatedi Taaibosch.

The Korana under Matsatedi Taaibosch dominated the Orange River valley for the last half of the eighteenth century. The nation was organized in numerous clans: Bag People, Black Chins, Cats, Mud People, Narrow-Cheeks, Reds, Seacows, Scorpions, Side People, Sorcerers, Springboks. There was extensive intermarriage with local San women, and with Tswana men and women. Trade with the Boers of the Cape in ivory, cattle and furs brought in firearms and gunpowder, horses, wagons, clothing and coffee-and also attracted 'rogues, rebels and runaways'. Oorlam people of mixed Khoekhoe and Dutch ancestry began to raid San Bushmen and Korana for cattle and child slaves to supply to the farms of their Boer relatives in the south. There was also a renegade Prussian sailor, Jan Blm (Bloem), who fled from the Cape and married into the Springbok clan of the Korana. He died in 1798, but his sons continued to lead Springbok-Korana bandits who raided as far south as the spring named Bloemfontein after them.

* * *

By 1785 there were so many Boers in the Camdeboo that a Dutch landdrost (magistrate) was posted at a spot thereafter known as Graaff-Reinet. However, the local San Bushmen of the Sneeubergen, the Sun'ei (known to the Dutch as 'Chinese' Bushmen on account of their narrow eyes), fiercely resisted Boer encroachment during the 1770s-1790s. Boer men and their Khoekhoe servants were organized into mounted troops known as commandos, which radically depleted Sun'ei numbers by genocidal raiding. Adult men were systematically killed as vermin, while...