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According to the philological method, he will 'study the names of the persons, until we arrive at the naked root and original meanings of the words. Starting then with Tsui Goab, whom all evidence declares to be a dead lame conjurer and warrior, Dr.
Tsui Goab is thought by the Hottentots themselves to be a dead man, and it is admitted that among the Hottentots dead men are adored. As early as 1655, a witness quoted by Hahn saw women worshipping at one of the cairns of Heitsi Eibib, another supposed ancestral being. Kolb, the old Dutch traveller, found that the Hottentots, like the Bushmen, revered the mantis insect.
His etymology is not strengthened by the fact that Tsui Goab has once been said to live in the red sky. A red house is not necessarily tenanted by a red man. Still less is the theory supported by the hymn which says Tsui Goab paints himself with red ochre. Most idols, from those of the Samoyeds to the Greek images of Dionysus, are and have been daubed with red.
Tsui Goab is composed of two roots, tsu and goa. Goa means 'to go on, 'to come on. In Khoi Khoi goa-b means 'the coming on one, the dawn, and goa-b also means 'the knee. Dr. 'but we have to adopt the other metaphorical meaning, the approaching day, i.e. the dawn. Where is the necessity?
As far as we have gone, Tsui Goab, like Heitsi Eibib among the Namas, is a dead sorcerer, whose graves are worshipped, while, with a common inconsistency, he is also thought of as dwelling in the sky. Even Christians often speak of the dead with similar inconsistency. But, while the Khoi Khoi think that Tsui Goab was once a real man, we need not share their Euhemerism.
But he reflects that a wound is red, tsu means wounded: therefore tsu means red, therefore Tsui Goab is the Red Dawn. This kind of reasoning is obviously fallacious. Dr. Hahn's point could only be made by bringing forward examples in which tsu is employed to mean red in Khoi Khoi. Of this use of the word tsu he does not give one single instance, though on this point his argument depends.
Whether he was merely an ideal ancestor and warrior, or whether an actual man has been invested with what divine qualities Tsui Goab enjoys, it is impossible to say; but, if he ever lived, he has long been adorned with ideal qualities and virtues which he never possessed.
Molo, however, of whom this story tells, was a sword hero. At that time there lived a young man named Tsui, whose father was a high official and the friend of the prince. And the father once sent his son to visit his princely friend, who was ill. The son was young, handsome and gifted. He went to carry out his father's instructions.
Our own opinion is that, even if Tsui Goab originally meant Red Dawn, the being, as now conceived of by his adorers, is bedizened in the trappings of the dead medicine-man, and is worshipped just as ghosts of the dead are worshipped.
To put the case in a nutshell, the Hottentots have commonly been described as a race which worshipped a dead chief, or conjurer Tsui Goab his name is, meaning Wounded Knee, a not unlikely name for a savage. Dr.
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