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entirely, and they were not sure how people so deep in the interior, so mindful of all the old customs, would receive them. The reason for this was demonstrated years later by an anthropologist named Polly Wiessner, who showed arrows made by one group of Bushmen to Bushmen of another group. They were not at all pleased by the sight, and said they’d be upset if they found such arrows on their land, as it would show that people of another group had been intruding. In those days, Bushmen were of necessity territorial, and the Bushmen from the farm were not sure of their welcome.
    Nor were we, especially when no one seemed to be there. Some unseasonal rain had fallen, so we wondered if the people were off in the veldt, finding water in hollow trees. We waited for several hours, and thought of moving on to look for people elsewhere. But then two men came walking toward us. We told them our names and they told us theirs, which were /Gao and ≠Toma. We explained our presence, saying that we came in peace and wanted only to meet them. They listened. We asked their permission to camp and drink the water. They gave us permission. Then they showed us their encampment—a group of small, dome-shaped shelters made of branches thatched with grass, back in the bush in a grove of trees about two hundred feet from the water hole. We pitched our camp nearby. As we did this, the people came out of the bush a few at a time and went to their encampment.
    That night, when we were at our fire and the Ju/wasi were at theirs, we heard them talking about us in soft voices. As we learned later, a young boy was telling the other people that our trucks sounded like lions roaring, but not ordinary lions. This had frightened him, he said. The moon rose out of the grass on the horizon and the people with us went to sleep. But beyond us, by their evening fires, the Ju/wasi kept on talking.
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    I try to imagine the courage of /Gao and ≠Toma at that first meeting. The Ju/wasi had no chiefs or headmen, but if we had been gorillas, these men would have been the silverbacks. About twenty-five people lived at Gautscha at the time, and all but these two men had hidden in the bush when they heard our vehicles. The two men must have been unsure, yet when they came to meet us, they left their weapons behind. Those people didn’t call themselves Ju/wasi for nothing, and it was considered bad manners, and inflammatory too, to meet newcomers while carrying weapons. Most of the people encamped there had never seen white people or vehicles, but they certainly had heard about us, and what they had heard was both accurate and frightening, so it must have taken courage to approach us unarmed.
    I was later to learn that Bushman men did not consider themselves to be courageous. Or, to put it differently, what seems courageous to us seemed normal to them. They did such things as hunt Cape buffalo weighing 1,500 pounds, using a small bow with a twenty-five-pound pull that shot a six-inch poisoned arrow. Cape buffalo are the world’s most dangerous game, and are not at all compromised by a Bushman arrow, or not right away, as the poison takes several days to work. Hunting Cape buffalo with little poisoned arrows is not safe, but Bushmen did it anyway. A westerner hunts Cape buffalo with at least a .458-caliber rifle (the bullet is about four inches long) and considers himself to be the utmost in machismo and valor.
    Bushman men didn’t consider themselves brave or macho even when they drove off prowling lions, which they did without weapons, just by talking to them respectfully and showing them burning branches. And when white strangers appeared in roaring trucks, which these people had never seen or heard before, their men came out to deal with us too, appearing to be calm even though they might reasonably have thought we were dangerous. It was very much the Old Way.
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    Gautscha
means “place of buffalo.” But buffalo didn’t live