Exploring arrow poisons from Windvogel’s Country, Eastern Cape, South Africa: a discussion between Piet Windvogel and William Atherstone on 6 February 1846

ABSTRACT

Some 170 years ago Piet Windvogel told William Atherstone about two plant-based arrow poisons prepared and used by Khoe-San living west of the Great Kei River in the modern-day Eastern Cape interior of South Africa. Atherstone’s interest in botany and in indigenous knowledge of local plant species fed into colonial intellectual networks, as well as imperialist concerns with scientific and/or economic profit. Yet his diarised record of Windvogel’s accounts has prompted us to compile a list of potential arrow poisons for a region where such ethnohistorical information is comparatively sparse. We have narrowed these down to the most likely botanical species used in Windvogel’s poison recipes: Prunus africana or rooistinkhout for the manufacture of t’ghee poison and perhaps Euphorbia mauritanica or gifmelkbos for taah poison, although species such as Acokanthera oppositifolia or gifboom, Asclepias fruticosa or melkbos and Carissa macrocarpa or the grootnoem-noem also merit consideration.

RÉSUMÉ

Il y a environ 170 ans, Piet Windvogel rapporta à William Atherstone l’existence de deux poisons à base de plantes qui étaient préparés et utilisés sur les pointes de flèche par des Khoe-San habitant à l'ouest de la rivière Great Kei, dans l'intérieur de ce qui est actuellement le Cap oriental d’Afrique du Sud. L’intérêt porté par Atherstone à la botanique et aux connaissances autochtones des espèces végétales alimenta les réseaux intellectuels coloniaux, ainsi que les intérêts impérialistes scientifiques et/ou économiques. Son compte-rendu des récits de Windvogel nous a incité à compiler une liste de poisons de flèche potentiels pour cette région où de telles informations ethno-historiques sont relativement rares. Nous avons identifié les espèces botaniques les plus plausibles qui ont pu être utilisées dans les recettes rapportées par Windvogel: Prunus africana ou rooistinkhout pour la fabrication du poison t'ghee, et possiblement Euphorbia mauritanica ou gifmelkbos pour le poison taah, même si d’autres espèces comme Acokanthera oppositifolia ou gifboom, Asclepias fruticosa ou melkbos, et Carissa macrocarpa ou grootnoem-noem méritent également considération.

KEYWORDS:

• plant-based arrow poisons
• ethnobotany
• indigenous knowledge systems
• Prunus africana
• Euphorbia mauritanica

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to staff members at the Economic Botany Collection and Library, Art and Archives at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens for access to their collections and assistance with subsequent enquiries, as well as to Anders Högberg (Linnaeus University, Sweden) who drew our attention to the South African arrow collection at this institution and instigated contact. The Digital Content Unit at Cambridge University Library kindly facilitated our use of two pages from the Atherstone library catalogue. We also thank the editors and our reviewers for their encouraging comments and recommendations. As always, any oversights remain our own.

Notes

1 We use Khoe-San as collective term for historically known pastoralists (Khoe) and hunter-gatherers (San), using capitals for both to acknowledge their equality. At the time of historical recording, these groups were culturally and genetically intermingled and identities were fluid so that distinctions between groups as presented in the records may be ambiguous. Where authors identified groups, we sometimes keep the original terms to maintain historical context, i.e. to reflect how the author interpreted identity at the time. This includes our occasional use of the term Bushman. Both the terms San and Bushman have had negative connotations, which we reject in the context of our work.

2 We follow Sampson and Neville (2018) by often using the Afrikaans names for plant species because they mostly draw their meaning from much older Khoe-San languages and ancient knowledge systems. English common names are more recent, have not been created for all the indigenous species and are seldom used by the general population of southern Africa (see also Powrie 2004), even those of British descent, as is demonstrated in this instance by Atherstone using the term melkhout instead of the English common name ‘white milk wood’ to refer to Sideroxylon inerme.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isabelle Parsons

Isabelle Parsons is an Africanist archaeologist, an associate lecturer with The Open University and a research fellow with the University of South Africa’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. Her research output reflects an interest in ethno-historical sources and archaeological investigation, hunter-gatherer and herder identities and lifeways and transitions to food production.

Marlize Lombard

Marlize Lombard is a Stone Age Archaeologist currently serving as Research Chair at the Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg. Cross-disciplinary, experimental and theoretical approaches that aim to reconstruct the Stone Age occupational history of southern Africa, behavioural and cognitive evolutionary trends during the Middle Stone Age and indigenous knowledge systems associated with the Middle and Later Stone Ages of southern Africa represent her research foci.