THEAFRICANS
semi-permanent hamlets or villages; and whereas the herders' political
organizations were fragile associations of semiautonomous
clans, the
farmers created centralized chiefdoms.
Surface deposits of high-grade iron ores, such as magnetite, wereavail-
able in several parts of Southern Africa. People dug the material from the
surface or mined it in open stopes. The smelting process involved high
skills, because the ore had to be heated to a temperature of at least one
thousand degrees centigrade. That was done by forcing air from hand-
operated bellows through narrow slits in low shaft furnaces built of clay.
The usable metal was then separated from the slag and brought to its
desired shape by reheating and hammering.s"
Blacksmiths were the most specialized artisans in society and were ac-
corded high status. Eugene Casalis, a perceptive French missionary who
worked in unconquered Lesotho from 1833 to 1855, reported that a black-
smith was "the principal workman, the only one whose labours amount to
anything like art . . . . [A]11acknowledge the blacksmith to be an excep-
tional character. He is more than a workman, he is the ngaka ea tsepe,the
doctor of iron."35Casalis described and illustrated the Sotho blacksmith's