Different histories of Buchu: Euro-American appropriation of San and Khoekhoe knowledge of Buchu plants

Environment and History

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 333-361

  Low, Christopher H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Buchu; Colonial ethnography; Khoisan; Smell

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; MEDICINAL PLANT; TRADITIONAL MEDICINE;

AFRICA; EURASIA; EUROPE; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 34548416726     PISSN: 09673407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3197/096734007X228309     Document Type: Article

References (134)

1. 'Khoisan' is a European constructed compound of old Nama khoi (modern khoe), meaning people in most Khoe languages and San (or San, Saan) the word Khoekhoe ('Khoekhoen' meaning people of people) use for Bushmen; see A. Barnard, Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 7. I use 'Khoisan' as opposed to 'Khoesan' as it remains more readily recognised. Aware of the pejorative namre of the word 'Hottentot', I use 'Hottentot' for historical accuracy, as a simple replacement with Khoekhoe would misrepresent the complexity of the material. In my experience only the most politicised Bushmen insist on being called 'San'. The vast majority I have encountered prefer to be known as 'Bushmen'. This may or may not represent repossession of the word. I use San and Bushmen interchangeably.
2. Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 2004).
3. The paper builds on accounts of buchu in my DPhil historical analysis of Khoisan medicine: Chris Low, 'Khoisan Healing: Understandings, Ideas and Practices' (DPhil diss., University of Oxford, 2004).
4. C.A. Smith, 'Common Names of South African Plants', in Botanical Survey Memoir, 35, ed. E. Percy Phillips, (Pretoria: Dept. Agricultural Technical Services, 1966), 134.
5. See Elphick for further discussion of this point: Richard Elphick, Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985), 4.
6. There are arguments that the difference between Khoekhoe and Bushmen has historically been economic (see John Wright, ' Sonqua, Bosjesmans, Bushmen, aba Thwa: Comments and Queries on Pre-Modem Identifications', South African Historical Journal 35 (Nov. 1996): 16-29. However, evidence seems to suggest that there is validity in envisaging a distinctive Bushmen culture founded in a hunter-gatherer culture that persists in certain dimensions despite significant social change. The Bushmen I am looking for historically are people connected to hunter-gatherer culture as described by the Marshall family, Richard Lee, Megan Biesele, Mathias Guenther, amongst others.
7. Chris Low, 'Khoisan Healing'.
8. Mary Gunn and L.E. Codd, Botanical Exploration of South Africa (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1981), 5, 12, 14, 27.
9. Smith, 'Common Names', 138.
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11. Schapera, The Early Cape: 115 and Smith, Common Names: 136.
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18. Ibid., 141
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20. Ibid., 305
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26. Ben-Erik van Wyk, Bosch Van Oudtshoorn and Nigel Gericke, Medicinal Plants of South Africa (Pretoria: Briza Publications, 1997), 34.
27. Khoisan envisage that illness can be caused by moving organs. Often these are said to 'stand up'; see Chris Low 'Khoisan Healing'.
28. http://www.evitamins.com/product.asp?pid=475 ( accessed March 15, 2007 )
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30. Ibid.
31. J. Donn, Hortus Cantabrigiensis or a Catalogue of Plants Indigenous and Exotic, 5th edn. (Cambridge, 1809), 50.
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62. See e.g. Y. Shimoyama, 'Chemistry of Buchu leaves', American Journal of Pharmacy 60, (12 Dec. 1888), http://www.swsbm.com/AJP/ AJP_1888_12.pdf
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74. Ibid.
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78. Cited by G.S. Nienaber, Hottentots (Pretoria, J.L. Van Schaik Beperk, 1963): 222.
79. William Ten Rhyne, 'A Short Account of the Cape of Good Hope and of the Hottentots who inhabit that Region', Schapera, ed., Early Cape Hottentots, 115.
80. Schapera, ed., The Early Cape, 245.
81. The Present State: 96, 113, 133, 141, 305, 309.
82. Cited by Nienaber, Hottentots, 222.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid; Thunberg, Flora Capenis, 143.
85. Cited by Nienaber, Hottentots, 222.
86. Sparrman, A Voyage to the Cape, 145, 184.
87. Le Vaillant Travels into the Interior Parts of Africa by the Cape of Good Hope in the Years 1780, 81, 82, 83, 84 and 85 (1791), 68.
88. Cited by Nienaber, Hottentots: 222.
89. Burchell, Travels, 275, 331.
90. Records of the Cape Colony, Jan-Feb 1826, Vol XXV, printed 1905: 224.
91. Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni - //Goam: The Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, (London: Trübner & Co., 1881), 23.
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93. P.W. Laidler, 'The Magic Medicine of the Hottentots', South African Journal of Science, XXV (Dec. 1928): 441.
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114. A.W. Hoernlé, 'Certain Rites of Transition and the Conception of !Nau among the Hottentots', in Harvard Studies (1918): 71; Hoernlé included a "'" above her a which is not available typographically.
115. L. Fourie, The Native Tribes of South West Africa (Cape Town: Cape Times, 1928), 104.
116. f denotes a glottal stop
117. Dorothea F. Bleek, Comparative Vocabularies of Bushman Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), 224. CII.(DB) refers to the provenance of her information: central Kalahari / Botswana and Dorothea Bleek.
118. Thomas Baines, Explorations in South West Africa being an Account of a Journey in the Years 1861 and 1862 from Walvisch Bay, on the Western Coast, to lake Ngami and the Victoria Falls (London: 1864), 220.
119. W. Haake and E. Eiseb, Khoekhoegowab-English, English Khoekhoegowab Glossary/Mîdi Saogub (Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan, 1999), 35.
120. S. Sullivan, 'Perfume and Pastoralism: Gender, Ethnographic Myths and Community-Based Conservation in a Former Namibian Homeland', in D. Hodgson Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: Gender, Culture and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist (Athens: Ohio Press, 2000), 152.
121. [hyphen over both 'a' 's ]
122. Sullivan, 'Perfume': 152.
123. Haacke and Eiseb, Khoekhoegowab, 33.
124. Oswin Köhler, 'Observations on the Central Khoisan Language Group', Journal of African Languages, 2 (1963): 227-234;
125. W.H.G. Haacke, 'Preliminary Observations on a Dialect of the Sesfontein Damara', in Contemporary Studies on Khoisan 1, Q.K.E 5.1, ed. R. Vossen and K. Keuthmann (Hamburg, H. Buske, 1986), 375-396;
126. W.H.G. Haacke, E. Eiseb, and L. Namaseb, 'Internal and External Relations of Khoe-Khoe Dialects: a Preliminary Survey', in Namibian Languages: Reports and Papers, ed. W.H.G. Haacke and E.E. Elderkin (Windhoek,1997), 125-210;
127. A. Traill, 'Click Replacement in Khoe', in Contemporary Studies on Khoisan 2, Q.K.F. 5.2, ed. R. Vossen and K. Keuthmann (Hamburg: H. Buske, 1986), 301-320.
128. Richard B. Lee, 'Trance Cure of the !Kung Bushmen', Natural History (Nov. 1967): 31, 33.
129. Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-//Goam, 141.
130. Sullivan, 'Perfume', 152.
131. Ibid., 153.
132. Cited by Sullivan, 'Perfume', 153.
133. Ibid.
134. Chris Low, 'Khoisan wind: hunting and healing', in 'Wind, life, health: anthropological and historical perspectives', JRAI Special Issue (2007): 71-90.