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Updated: June 9, 2025
The nucleus of the whole were Basuto, who came with Sebituane from a comparatively cold and hilly region in the south. When he conquered various tribes of the Bechuanas, as Bakwains, Bangwaketze, Bamangwato, Batauana, etc., he incorporated the young of these tribes into his own.
The Bakwains often killed between sixty and seventy head of large game at the different hopos in a single week; and as every one, both rich and poor, partook of the prey, the meat counteracted the bad effects of an exclusively vegetable diet. When the poor, who had no salt, were forced to live entirely on roots, they were often troubled with indigestion.
The Boers, four hundred in number, were sent by the late Mr. Pretorius to attack the Bakwains in 1852.
This system was immediately introduced, and thieves are now sentenced to raise an amount of corn proportioned to their offenses. Among the Bakwains, a woman who had stolen from the garden of another was obliged to part with her own entirely: it became the property of her whose field was injured by the crime.
Thus they were not killed by the Bangwaketse, as reported, for they passed the Bakwains all well. The Bakwains were then rich in cattle; and as one of the many evidences of the desiccation of the country, streams are pointed out where thousands and thousands of cattle formerly drank, but in which water now never flows, and where a single herd could not find fluid for its support.
Sechele, the Christian chief of the Bakwains, who was eager to assist him in reaching Sebituane, offered his services, and with him as a guide, accompanied by Mrs Livingstone and their three children, he set out, in April, 1850, taking a more easterly course than before.
The Bakwains bought tobacco from the eastern tribes, then purchased skins with it from the Bakalahari, tanned them, and sewed them into karosses, then went south to purchase heifer-calves with them, cows being the highest form of riches known, as I have often noticed from their asking "if Queen Victoria had many cows."
They began on Monday morning at twilight, and fired with all their might, and burned the town with fire, and scattered us. They killed sixty of my people, and captured women, and children, and men. They took all the cattle and all the goods of the Bakwains; and the house of Livingstone they plundered, taking away all his goods.
Boasting that the English had given up all the blacks into their power, and had agreed to aid them in their subjugation by preventing all supplies of ammunition from coming into the Bechuana country, they assaulted the Bakwains, and, besides killing a considerable number of adults, carried off two hundred of our school children into slavery.
We never rode them, nor yet the horse which had been given by the bishop, for fear of hurting them by any work. Although the Makololo were so confiding, the reader must not imagine that they would be so to every individual who might visit them. Much of my influence depended upon the good name given me by the Bakwains, and that I secured only through a long course of tolerably good conduct.
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