The Hadzapi or Watindega of Tanganyika territory

The Hadzapi or Watindega of Tanganyika territory

Publications and Reports

Dorothea F Bleek visited the Hadzapi of Tanganyika in 1930. Her journal entries run from May to July (Fitzpatrick, 2017: 32; UCT BC151 A3.28; Marlowe, 2002: 9). Dorothea considered that the Hadzapi of Tanzania and the Bushmen of southern Africa might share a common ancestry, perceiving similarities between languages, customs, and beliefs. Wilhelm Bleek's work also pondered the existence of a pan-Bushman ecosystem (with Khoe cultural transmission) (Megan Biesele in Alan Barnard, 2020). Dorothea demonstrated no irrefutable link between the Hadzapi and Bushman hunter-gatherers but controversially linked Hadza to Central Bushman languages for minor (Naron-like) ethnographic similarities and loanwords. However, modern linguists theorise (the Bantu-influenced) Hadza's divergence from the Sandawe Bushman language 15,000 years ago, refuting the 'East African Bushman myth' (Weintroub, 2016; Marlowe, 2002: 3; Morris, 2003: 85, 89). Dorothea observed small cultural and linguistic similarities of 'Bushman or Hottentot origin' but overstressed phenotypic differences (Huntingford, 2017; Bleek, 1931: 424, 427). No subsequent evidence supports Bleek's view of Hadza as an 'isolate click language' related to Naron (Weintroub, 2016). However, Dorothea's early research (alongside contemporaries like Ludwig Kohl-Larsen and FJ Bagshawe) on the Hadzapi is foundational and consulted by contemporary scholars like Frank W Marlowe and UCLA's Nicholas Blurton-Jones.

Ink on paper

1931-07

An ±A4 handwritten MS of an untitled section of DF Bleek's 'The Hadzapi or Watindega of Tanganyika territory' (1931).

Hadzapi (plural form), Watindega, Tanganyika, Africa (the periodical), garments (male and female Hadzapi), Mr JF Bagshawe (author of The Peoples Of The Happy Valley [East Africa]), paint, scars (scarification), Makanyange (a Hadzapi medicine man), initiation (medicine), Bantu, buchu (something similar to), diet, singing, lukudzuko (the only Hadzapi game seen by DF Bleek)

DF Bleek's 'The Hadzapi or Watindega of Tanganyika territory' was published in July 1931 in volume 4 (number 3) of Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, pp. 273-286. It is unclear which section of Dorothea's finished article this draft pertains to, as no open-access copy is available. The relevant pages are numbered 9, 10, 11, 14 (and 14 rev.). The versos of pp. 9-11 resemble wordlists. A full copy can be found at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/abs/hadzapi-or-watindega1-of-tanganyika-territory/F4A940404F4B40A2B4A5376CD13F9591