The Harmless People

by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Book Overview

"A study of primitive people which, for beauty of . . . style and concept, would be hard to match." --The New York Times Book Review

In the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall Thomas became one of the first Westerners to live with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Botswana and South-West Africa. Her account of these nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose way of life had remained unchanged for thousands of years, is a ground-breaking work of anthropology,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067972446X
• ISBN13: 9780679724469
• Release Date: October 1989
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A firsthand, close-up view of a little-known and little-understood people

The Bushmen are well known - and intriguing - to phoneticians, because Bushman languages, along with Bushman-influenced languages such as Zulu and Xhosa, are the only ones in the world with linguistic clicks. As a teacher of phonetics, that was my own original motivation for reading this book. I also thought it would be useful background to have before visiting South Africa. Finally, I met a very friendly and kind Nama-speaking Bushman in Minnesota once, and that further piqued my curiosity about his home culture. This book is truly a rich, firsthand resource on what traditional Bushman life was like in the 1950s. The Bushmen may be praised for their cleverness at being able to live in a land with very little visible water; but in this book you will learn that in fact many Bushmen died of thirst and hunger, not to mention disease, when times were unusually hard. One half of the book is dedicated to each of two Bushman groups with whom the author and her family stayed for extended periods, the Gikwe, and the !Kung, of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" fame. It was fascinating to read about how they courted, married, divorced, gave birth, chose names, cared for children and the aged, went through puberty, gathered and hunted, interacted with animals, told stories, died, and dealt with the spirits of the dead. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Bushman music, e.g. singing accompanied by playing on the stringed guashi, the bow, and the te k'na (mbira/kalimba/thumb piano), and the ritual dancing that sometimes went with it. Thomas states that music is by far the strongest of the Bushman arts. Mentions of some of the effects of intruding white people on the Bushmen's lives may give you pause. The Bushmen treated their white visitors with great openness and kindness. You can praise the generosity of the white chroniclers when they give gifts of food, clothes, and other useful items, and feel relieved when a formerly powerful hunter with a gangrenous leg is taken to be fitted with a peg prosthesis. Yet Thomas also mentions that some Bushmen had been tracked down and taken into slavery by people who had followed the tracks left by Thomas's family's vehicle on a previous visit. And other Bushmen had their guards down when whites came to kidnap them to do forced labor - the Bushmen welcomed them, expecting them to be as friendly and harmless as Thomas's clan. Thomas goes to great pains to depict the people she observed as accurately and honestly as possible, consciously avoiding the "noble savage" trap. Bushmen shared everything - because it was expected and it would cause great jealousy, conflict and bad relations if they did not; they did not take anything they knew to belong to another; and they had a strong sense of family and cared for those unable to care for themselves. But they practiced infanticide if a baby was born while the previous one was still nursing, since there would probably not be enough milk for both to survive. They could also be v

Beautiful!!

I could hardly put the book down. The writings were simple and descriptive. I have always found Tribal life very interesting and of all the books I have read hearing the Author's firsthand account was amazing. Listening to the people's tales and day to day life is something I am going to miss now that I have finished the book.

Classic, well-written, and enjoyable study of the Bushmen

This is a detailed, fascinating, and even beautiful account of the author's field study of the Kung! Bushman. Along with the Australian aborigines, the Bushman of the Kalahari desert, who inhabit an arid tableland in southwest Africa, are considered one of the two most primitive cultures in existence. The Bushmen aren't native to the Kalahari but were forced there as a result of conflicts with the white man and other tribes after the 17th century. Thomas gives a detailed account of their way of life and how they are able to survive in one of the most desolate places on earth. The Bushmen are very short of stature, averaging only 4 feet, 10 inches tall, and their skin has a yellowish tinge that is different from the blacker skin of their surrounding neighbors. The Kalahari has no surface water, and the rare rainfall immediately dries up. One of the few ways they get moisture as well as food is the tsama melon, which grows underground. The tsama melons are so important that the rights to a particular locale are inherited, which is unusual among the Bushmen. To survive in this harsh environment, the Bushmen have become expert botanists and can identify over 300 different kinds of plants, and they hunt antelope with poisoned arrows. Marriage among the Bushmen can occur at a very early age, but for women it is considered inappropriate to become fully sexually active and to marry before the age of 12. After having been almost completely wiped out between the 17th and the 19th century through conflicts with other tribes and the white man, there are now about 50,000 Bushmen inhabiting the Kalahari.Years later, when I saw the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, I recalled my first encountering the Bushmen in Thomas's wonderful little book. Several years after that, I had the opportunity to hear Jamie Uys speak, the south African director of the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, and he also described what it was like to work with and live in the Kalahari with the Bushmen during the making of his movie. Both he and Thomas commented that there was something very likeable about the Kalahari Bushmen, who now live very peaceably in their little arid paradise with relatively little conflict and strife. Well, paradise isn't exactly the word for the inhospitable environment where they live, but nevertheless the Bushmen came across in both Thomas's and Uys's accounts as overall quite happy and content with their life. Ever since reading this book, I have thought it ironic to consider that the more advanced cultures in other parts of the world, including those of us in the modern western countries, who are considerably more advanced, probably live no more happy and less stressful lives than the primitive Bushmen. Of course, one must be careful about the "Noble Savage" fallacy, but in the case of the Bushmen it seems to be true. This book is an updated edition of the one I read many years ago in college. Overall a classic study that takes its place alongside other great anth

An early ethnographic account with wonderful information

A seminal work of Thomas' experience living with the Kalahari !Kung hunter-gatherers in the 1950s. This is an intimate, personal account of her experience plus a colorful look at quite possibly how all of our ancestors once lived, including how this culture has, since the '50s, basically been destroyed by civilization. A valuable lesson in 303 pages.

A wonderful reading experience

This is a simple account, yet honest and very entertaining. It describes a people almost totally uninfluenced by the advancements and vices of the outside world. The stories held my attention without fail. While classified as anthropology, it is not written in a scientific manner and is approachable for anyone looking to experience a wholly foreign culture. The last chapter, which describes the people after thirty years, is discouraging, but gives some insight into our own ways of life. This is probably the best non-fiction "story" I have ever read.