THEAFRICANS
would engage such a person to perform the correct sacrifices on behalf of
his communiry.F"
The Mixed Farmers' Relations with Hunters and Herders
With its superior technology and more diversified economy, the farming
way of life gradually became dominant in the eastern part of Southern
Africa wherever arable agriculture was possible. Wecannot reconstruct the
process in detail, but we can identify the basic dynamics of the interactions
that took place.i"
When the first mixed farmers entered a locality previously occupied by
aboriginal hunting bands, they would probably have been too few in
number to present a threat to the autonomy of the aborigines. In that
context, mutually beneficial symbiotic relations would have developed-
farmers obtaining the meat and skins of wild animals from hunters and
hunters- receiving grain and milk in return. We have evidence that friendly
symbiotic relations persisted in the southern highveld on either side of the
Caledon River as late as the eighteenth century, while that area was still
being settled quite thinly by pioneer farrners.??
In some cases friendly symbiosis on a basis of complementarity eventu-
ally gave way to structured, differential incorporation of the hunters into