Birders of Africa: History of a Network 9780300209617, 0300209614

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Birders of Africa

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The Agrarian Studies Series at Yale University Press seeks to publish outstanding and original interdisciplinary work on agriculture and rural society—for any period, in any location. Works of daring that question existing paradigms and fill abstract categories with the lived experience of rural people are especially encouraged. —James C. Scott, Series Editor James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food Alissa Hamilton, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know about Orange Juice James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Sara M. Gregg, Managing the Mountains: Land Use Planning, the New Deal, and the Creation of a Federal Landscape in Appalachia Michael R. Dove, The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo Edwin C. Hagenstein, Sara M. Gregg, and Brian Donahue, eds., American Georgics: Writings on Farming, Culture, and the Land Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight Andrew Sluyter, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500 –1900 Brian Gareau, From Precaution to Profit: Contemporary Challenges to Environmental Protection in the Montreal Protocol Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta, Dancing with the River: People and Life on the Chars of South Asia Alon Tal, All the Trees of the Forest: Israel’s Woodlands from the Bible to the Present Felix Wemheuer, Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union Jenny Leigh Smith, Works in Progress: Plans and Realities on Soviet Farms, 1930 –1963 Graeme Auld, Constructing Private Governance: The Rise and Evolution of Forest, Coffee, and Fisheries Certification Jess Gilbert, Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal Jessica Barnes and Michael R. Dove, eds., Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change Shafqat Hussain, Remoteness and Modernity: Transformation and Continuity in Northern Pakistan Edward Dallam Melillo, Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection Devra I. Jarvis, Toby Hodgkin, Anthony H. D. Brown, John Tuxill, Isabel Lopez, Melinda Smale, and Bhuwon Sthapit, Crop Genetic Diversity in the Field and on the Farm: Principles and Applications in Research Practices Nancy J. Jacobs, Birders of Africa: History of a Network For a complete list of titles in the Yale Agrarian Studies Series, visit yalebooks.com/agrarian.

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Birders of Africa History of a Network

Nancy J. Jacobs

new h aven & london

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Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2016 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the US Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (US office) or [email protected] (UK office). Set in Ehrhardt and The Sans type by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953456 isbn: 978-0-300-20961-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48 –1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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For Peter

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1

ix

p a r t i vernacular birding and ornithology in africa chapter chapter chapter chapter

1. 2. 3. 4.

African Vernacular Birding Traditions 29 Early Birding Contact, 1500 –1700 62 Ornithology Comes to Southern Africa, 1700 –1900 78 Authority in Vernacular Traditions and Ornithology 101

p a r t i i lives of birders chapter chapter chapter chapter

5. 6. 7. 8.

The Boundaries of Birding 115 The Honor of Collecting 148 The Respectability of Museum Work Birding Revolutions 211

180

Appendixes 241 Notes 249 Bibliography 285 Index 315 Color plates follow page 112

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Acknowledgments

T

his is a history of a network—and another wide network of people made it possible for me to complete it. My debts, accrued over many years to people all over the world, are considerable. I am touched to think how my own work is linked to the global network of birders, past and present, and am extremely grateful for the generosity of others, both old friends and kind souls I’ve never met in person. The following gave permission to quote from archives, interviews, and personal communications: Tamar Cassidy; the Ditsong Museum; C. W. Benson’s daughter Rosemary Benson; Michael P. S. Irwin; Emma BruceMiller; Ian Bruce-Miller; John Colebrook-Robjent’s executors Ian BruceMiller and Bruce Danckwerts; Matthews Mathabathe’s children Bogoshi and Popo Mathabathe; Jacob Mokoena; Robert Payne; Sam Ranthlakgwa; Francis Thackeray; Jack Vincent’s son John; Zondi Sithole Zitha; and Melvin Traylor’s children and stepchildren, Nancy Traylor Tessmer, Richard W. Sharp Jr., Lucy Sharp Malone, Daniel W. Sharp, and Melissa Sharp Leasia. I thank the photographers who kindly allowed me to reprint their work: Kevin McDonald, Hugh Chittendon, and Neil Rusch. Other owners of images are credited in the illustration captions. I am indebted to the people who supported me or my family as we traveled for research. Christine and John Greenwood hosted us in Oxford. Susan Cook was a wonderful neighbor in Pretoria. For setting us up in Zambia, I am deeply indebted to Jan-Bart Gewald and Marja Hinfelaar. In

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Choma I was well received and supported by Ian and Emma Bruce-Miller. Dorothy Wakeling was a wonderful host in Harare. Next I thank librarians and archivists. The most important site of my documentary research was the Niven Library at the FitzPatrick Institute at the University of Cape Town. Margaret Koopman has been a cheerful source of help for more than a decade. I also thank Morné du Plessis, who was director during my longest residence at the library, and the rest of the staff for creating a hospitable atmosphere. At every library or archive, I was received with generosity. For professionalism, patience, and friendliness, I remember: Alison Harding at the Ornithology Library of the Natural History Museum in Tring; Mary Le Croy at the Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, New York; Linda Birch and Sophie Wilcox at the Alexander Grey Library at Oxford University; Ann Charlton at the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge University; Clare Mateke, at the Livingstone Museum, Livingstone; and Matthew Norman at Knox College. I felt especially welcome during our time at the Transvaal Museum, now the Ditsong Museum, in Pretoria. Those who received us well included: Bob and Laura Brain, Tamar and Rod Cassidy, Sandra Dippenaar, Heidi Fourie, Jan Legwai, Suzan Mametse, Klaas Manamela, Elitta Msango, Tersia Perregil, M. Sam Ranthakgwa, Frances Thackeray, and especially Zondi and Napoleon Zitha. I am deeply beholden to the ornithologists and expert birders who excused my ignorance and shared their knowledge of birds as well as the birders. Of the first order of helpfulness was Robert Payne, who took on my questions with enthusiasm and interest. Claire Spottiswoode has been unfailingly cheerful and helpful in equal measure for years. I also thank Mike and Trish Bingham, Joost Brouwer, Adrian Craig, Richard Dean, Robert Dowsett, Phil Hyde, Michael Irwin, Vincent Katanekwa, Alex Masterson, Audrey Msimanga, Ilse Mwanza, Fleur Ng’weno, David Ngwenyama, Dieter Oschadleus, Darcy Ogada, Mercy Njeri, Shyamal Lakshminarayanan, C. J. Skead, Peter Steyn, and John Wilson. A set of people were supportive in singular ways: Yahya Collector, Aikaeli and Niwaeli Kimambo, Christa Kuljian, and Melissa Leasia. Two fellowships gave me time for research. I spent a fruitful year at the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. For this stimulating environment, I am indebted to Kay Mansfield, James Scott, and Eric Worby, as well as the other fellows: Peter Lindner, Dilip Menon, Susan O’Donovan, Hugh

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Raffles, and Leander Schneider. The Pembroke Center Research Seminar, “Visions of Nature,” offered a space for thinking and learning. I thank the leader, Leslie Bostrum, and the other fellows: Sandy Alexandre, Wendy Chun, Peter Heywood, Jason Lindquist, Lisa Uddin, and Elizabeth Weed. It was enormously enriching to have the Watson International Scholars of the Environment (WISE) who spent part of 2009 thinking about African environmental history, including birds, with a group of us from Brown. The “WISE guys” were Hilary Bakemwesiga, Joachim Ezeji, Mwangi Githuru, Kawsu Jammeh, Susan Keitumetse, Oluseun Olubode, Cyrille Ngouana, Gaudensia Owino, and Jane Yawe. Camilla Hawthorne, Laura Sadovnikoff, and Steve Hamburg made that wonderful interaction possible. Several people worked as my assistants through this process, transcribing, typing, translating, and securing permissions to reproduce. I was always well served by the following: Géraud Bablon, Fanomezantsoa Endor, Christopher Geadrities, Adwoa Hinson, Vusumuzi Khumalo, Glen Ncube, Steve Sharra, Mpiana Severin, Edward Tang, Hope Turner, and Sara Weschler. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my friends at NEWSA (NorthEast Workshop on Southern Africa), which has always been a creative community: Peter Alegi, Kathryn de Luna, Derick Fay, Elizabeth GreenMusselman, Rob Gordon, Wendi Haugh, David Hughes, Diana Jeater, Gary Kynoch, Julie Livingston, Jacob Tropp, Wendy Urban-Mead, Diana Wylie, and of course Glen Elder, who imparted his charm and generosity to our interactions. My fellow scholars, especially historians and anthropologists of Africa and the environment, have so often helped me think through questions to better thoughts. I thank Teresa Barnes, James Beattie, Jane Carruthers, Raf de Bont, Michael Dove, Saul Dubow, Ilana Gershon, David Gordon, Arjun Guneratne, Thomas Hakansson, Patrick Harries, Gabrielle Hecht, Siegfried Huigen, Aneesa Kassam, Kairn Klieman, Hugh Macmillan, Adam Manvell, Bao Maohong, Jan-Henrik Meyer, Friday Mfuze, Gregg Mittman, Jamie Monson, Mwelwa Musambachime, Marguerite Poland, Kapil Raj, Lou Ratté, Harriet Ritvo, Libby Robin, Robert Ross, William Storey, Sandra Swart, Lerato Trok, Doug Weiner, Kristoffer Whitney, and John Wright. Several chapters of this work have been presented in various seminars and workshops, at: the Livingstone Museum in Zambia; the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pretoria; the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on

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Animal Magnetism at Brown University; the Bell Gallery at Brown University; the Science, Technology and Society Program and the African History and Anthropology Workshop at the University of Michigan; the workshop on “Globalizing Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine” at New York University, Abu Dhabi; the South African and Contemporary History Seminar Programme at the University of the Western Cape; Conversations in History at the Boston University Department of History; the seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History at MIT; a workshop on “Indigenous Environments: African and North American Environmental Knowledge and Practices” at Bowdoin College; the Projections Journal Lecture Series at MIT; the EnviroThursday Lecture Series at Macalester College; the African Studies Center at the University of Cape Town; the workshop “History of Knowledge and Transnational History: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Perspectives” at the University of Basel; the Department of Anthropology at Cologne University; CART at Leiden University; and the Hill Center for World Studies. Brown University has provided much support. The dean of the Faculty Office arranged funds to pay for the color photographs; and the Office of the Vice President for Research awarded the Humanities Research Funds that supported my work over the years. I thank library staff: Frank Kellerman, Bruce Boucek, Ian Straughn, Ben Taylor, and as always, the entire staff of the circulation and interlibrary loan departments. The specialist librarians Holly Snyder and Dominique Coulombe have been wonderful allies. At the Haffenreffer Museum I thank Kevin Smith and Thierry Gentis. Giovi Roz Gastaldi has also supported so many of my endeavors over the years by providing programming and digital design staff. As the years of research and writing became a book, Jean Thomson Black at Yale University Press listened and endorsed the project. She gave clear professional guidance. Her assistant, Samantha Ostrowski, was diligent and attentive. The anonymous readers who supplied reports for this project were careful and discerning. Again, I turned to Priscilla Hall for manuscript preparation. She has been a sharp-eyed, supportive, and patient copy editor. Seeing the book through her eyes was essential. My colleagues in the history and science studies at Brown who read and commented on chapters are: Palmira Brummett, Harold Cook, Roquinaldo Ferreira, Mary Gluck, Sherine Hamdy, Jennifer Lambe, Tara Nummedal, Joan Richards, Lukas Rieppel, Kerry Smith, and Deborah Weinstein. They have become a stimulating intellectual community.

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Among historians, I am especially indebted to Allison Shutt, who has always listened, understood, and made me laugh, and Andrew Bank, who has been wise and encouraging. At the center of my network are my husband, Peter Heywood, and our children, Wesley and Ela. Through the years Wes and Ela have been very supportive. To a remarkable extent, they did all that little children could do to help me toward completing this book. This may have been because I promised them that when I finished they could have a dog, but maybe they would have done the same anyway. Peter has been generous with his time, his effort, the family funds, and his love. He worked side by side with me in archives, read drafts, came to know the characters as well as I did, and always shared his scientific knowledge. In the spirit of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, lines 949 –956, I dedicate this book to him and thank him for the good life we have lived.

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Birders of Africa

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Introduction

P

eople have a long history in Africa, and they share it with birds. One bird, the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator), works with people in an alliance to take advantage of bees (fig. 1). The birds and humans both want something from beehives, but getting it is easier if they work together. The honeyguide eats wax and larvae and has a beak suited to tearing into honeycomb but not to opening a tree to reach the hive inside. Humans enjoy honey, but looking for it can be tiresome and time consuming. So people and birds cooperate. The bird leads honey hunters to beehives. These men then smoke out the bees, take the honey, and leave some comb for the bird. The bird is not dependent on people for food, and people are not dependent on the bird for honey, but cooperating benefits both. The honeyguide is found only in sub-Saharan Africa, where it occurs everywhere except the driest deserts and wettest forests. It is the only bird in the world that does anything like this, and so it has earned the scientific name “indicator.” The name is appropriate in another way. It can lead us into the subject of people and birds in Africa.1 What do people know about this bird? How did they learn? People and honeyguides coevolved as collaborators over millennia. The earliest history has been lost. Until recent centuries, the human societies of sub-Saharan Africa were largely oral, so evidence of the past is to be found in oral tradition, archaeology, and linguistics, rather than in texts. Being small, mobile, wild, and part of the everyday landscape, the honeyguide has not imprinted itself deeply on records of early history. Fortunately, names provide one

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1. Male greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator). Courtesy of the photographer, Hugh Chittendon.

way to access cultural associations. Predictably, the greater honeyguide and others in the genus are often known by what they do; in the Xhosa language spoken in South Africa, it is “the bird of the honey,” intakobusi, or “the bird of the bees,” intaka yeenyosi. When applied to people, intakobusi has taken on meanings that reflect experience of the honeyguide’s persistence: someone who is able to plead sweetly, or a garrulous person. Human qualities are also evident in two Hausa (Nigeria) names for the honeyguide—sa wawa dada and caca’bau—which are both taken from terms suggesting human foolishness. These could be ironic names. The importance of the honeyguide is also evident in the customs around it. Far and wide, there are injunctions against killing the bird. One specimen collector in South Africa in the 1770s provoked a reaction when he did: “I had but two opportunities of shooting it, which I did to the great indignation of my Hottentots.”2 Africa held many wonders for the first Europeans to encounter it, and they had never seen anything like the honeyguide. The bird was first de-

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scribed to readers outside Africa in a 1609 publication by a Portuguese missionary who had seen it forty years earlier at the Swahili port of Sofala in Mozambique. A handful of other reports made their way to Europe. Anders Sparrman, the collector who had vexed his servants by shooting the bird, gave the first extended description. A Swedish student of Linnaeus, he was the first to describe the bird scientifically, classifying it in the cuckoo genus with the name Cuculus indicator. (The genus Cuculus has since been replaced by Indicator.) Like other cuckoos, this one is a brood parasite, laying its eggs in another’s nest. Sparrman began by noticing what many do, that the bird was not much to look at, and yet, however plain its appearance, it was amazing. “It knows that when a bees-nest is plundered,” he explained. “Some of it . . . is left by the plunderers as a reward for its services.”3 Sparrman made the interaction between honey hunters and birds seem nearly theatrical: The morning and evening are probably its principal meal times; at least it is then that it shews the greatest inclination to come forth, and with the grating cry of cherr, cherr, cherr, to excite, as it were, the attention of the ratel [or honey badger (Mellivora capensis)], as well as of the Hottentots [Khoekhoen] and colonists. Somebody then generally repairs to the place whence the sound proceeds, when the bird, all the while continually repeating its cry of cherr, cherr, flies on slowly and by degrees towards the quarter where the swarm of bees have taken up their abode. The persons thus invited accordingly follow, taking great care at the same time not to frighten their guide with any unusual noise, or by means of a large company, but rather, as I have seen done by one of the shrewdest of my Boshies-men [San] to answer it now and then with a soft and very gentle whistle, by way of letting the bird know that its call is attended to. As an actor, the bird was purposeful: I have observed, that when the bees-nest was at a good distance, the bird, for the most part, made long stages, or flights, waiting for its sporting companion between each flight, and calling to him again to come on; but flew to shorter distances, and repeated its cry more frequently, and with greater eagerness, in proportion as they approached nearer to the bees-nest. I likewise saw, with astonishment, what I had been previously assured of by others, viz. that when this bird has, in

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consequence of its great impatience, got too far a-head of its followers, especially when, by reason of the roughness or unevenness of the ground, they have not been able to keep pace with it, it has flown back to meet them, and with redoubled cries, denoting still greater impatience, has upbraided them for being so tardy. It had a definite goal: Finally, when it has come to the bees-nest, whether this be built in the cleft of a rock, in a hollow tree, or in some cavity in the earth, it hovers over the spot for the space of a few seconds, a circumstance which I myself have been eye-witness to twice; after which it sits in silence, and for the most part concealed in some neighbouring tree or bush, in expectation of what may happen, and with a view of coming in for its share of the booty.4 In this striking account of animal-human interaction, Sparrman conveyed to scientific audiences what people who lived with the honeyguide in Africa had long known and practiced. Over the next few centuries other writers explained again the fascinating collaboration of humans and birds.5 Sparrman asserted that the honeyguide also partnered with the ratel, or honey badger, but he did not claim to have witnessed this, so he had to have been told by the Khoekhoen or by European settlers in the Cape Colony. The ratel-honeyguide collaboration was not mentioned again until a 1912 description by James Stevenson-Hamilton, a famous South African game ranger. He, too, did not claim to have witnessed the interaction and did not say who told him about it. Another form of guiding attributed to the honeyguide is that it will lead people into danger rather than to a beehive. This assertion dates to a missionary writing in the Congo in 1682 and was repeated by none other than David Livingstone. He was told that if a person fails to repay the bird, it will lead its next collaborators to a lion, snake, or leopard, rather than a beehive. Could a bird be capable of such an act? Livingstone polled more than a hundred men about their experiences and found that only one had been led to anything but a beehive, in his case an elephant. Unfortunately, Livingstone did not also ask whether the men believed the birds to be capable of such behavior. Recent testimony has contradicted the assertion. A report from the Maa-speaking Dorobo of Tanzania denied that the honeyguide was ever vindictive: they testified that it would lead them to a lion’s kill but not to the lion itself.6

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The ornithologist Herbert Friedmann, who produced a comprehensive study of honeyguides in 1955, believed that their alleged symbiosis with animals like the ratel was crucial to the evolution of the honeyguide-human relation. Returning to the matter in the 1980s, a group of South African ornithologists led by W. Richard J. Dean differed. They observed that no one had ever witnessed an entire guiding interaction with any creature other than a human; observers who thought they saw a bird guiding a badger may have encountered a honeyguide and a ratel as they moved independently to a hive. Drawing also on experiments and observation of ratels, Dean and his coauthors concluded that the honeyguide-ratel partnership was a myth. They had no doubt, however, that the honeyguide intentionally sought out people and led them to beehives. No further observations of the purported honeyguide-ratel partnership have since come to light. Doubt about it is therefore widespread among ornithologists, but popular knowledge has a life of its own: the notion of the partnership has thrived in films, texts, and children’s stories and on the Internet.7 Friedmann, who was on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, synthesized everything known to date about the honeyguide in a three-hundredpage publication. It subjected species in the family Indicatoridae to the analyses of mid-twentieth-century science and laid down new knowledge about the honeyguide. He plotted the phylogenetic tree, theorized about evolutionary adaptations, and reported on investigations into the honeyguide’s parasitic relations with species that serve as brood hosts. He also presented detailed reviews of historical references to the honeyguide, included a summary of “native legends,” and offered the findings of his correspondence. Nearly all the first-person accounts he quoted were from Europeans in the colonies or members of settler communities, but he included information provided by Africans. Though Friedmann used race in his first sorting of whose evidence to accept, his assessment of reliability was not determined solely by whiteness.8 The first African-authored texts on the honeyguide, by Kenyan ornithologist Hussein Adan Isack, approached African knowledge and practice systematically. In the 1980s he and Swiss biologist Hans-Ulrich Reyer led a research team that followed Boran honey hunters and honeyguides in Kenya for three years, finding that people and birds shared an “elaborate interspecific communication system.” The guiding they observed was a lot like what Sparrman had witnessed. The difference was that these authors tested the assertions of informants and presented data as quantified

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measurements. They found that if a honey hunter gave a special call for the bird, it doubled his chance of finding a honeyguide. Once contact was made, the bird flew off; the distances between stops were longer at first and shortened as they neared the beehive. As it progressed, the bird landed on lower branches than before. The honey hunters read the bird’s behavior as signals about the direction and distance of the bee colony. They whistled, talked, and pounded on wood to keep up contact with the bird. The men reported and sonograms confirmed that the honeyguide’s call changed when it reached the beehive. Isack and Reyer also interpreted the evidence. They cautioned that people’s ability to make sense of the honeyguide’s behavior is not necessarily evidence that the bird acts with the intent to make itself understood. Yet they concluded that the calls and flight patterns on arrival at the hive were best explained as communication. They found that, all things being equal, a Boran man seeking honey on his own would search on average for 8.9 hours, but that was reduced to just 3.2 hours with the help of a honeyguide. As for the honeyguides, 96 percent of the hives they indicated were inaccessible to them without human help. Isack and Reyer’s Science article endorsed African bird knowledge: in every case where they could be tested, Boran honey hunters correctly described the bird’s behavior, earning them the authors’ praise as “excellent ‘ethologists.’”9 No other bird is like the honeyguide, so in one way it points only to itself; but, honeyguide lore is rich and we can read it for a larger history of the politics of human knowledge. The people who lived with honeyguides were most concerned with practical knowledge of how to work with the birds, and those who came for research were interested in producing new, generalizable observations. Stories of the honeyguide indicate the possibilities of thinking about the people who know birds. Everyone shared stories, but they did so differently, in face-to-face interactions, through memoirs, and in scientific publications. People found sense in what others told them, even those who were very different from themselves. On the other hand, sometimes people who had a lot in common disagreed. The honeyguide, however, managed to hold their attention. Why Birds? Birds constitute less than 1 percent of known species yet are good to think of historically because of what they are: “large, sexually reproducing, diploid, warm-blooded vertebrate animals, with separate sexes, color vision,

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parental care, internal fertilization, and relatively large brains. These traits make them more like us than the majority of other living things.” Their sociability, especially, attracts human attention. Their courtship seems ritualized and suggests companionship. They care for their young with dedication and enough variety to make it interesting. The hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) builds great big nests for one brood while sociable weaver colonies (Philetairus socius) build a huge, shared one. Village weavers (Ploceus cucullatus), on the other hand, build many nests all in the same tree, hanging from nearby branches. Some birds construct clusters of nests of mud on rock faces or on walls humans have built; others brood singly and nearly invisibly on the ground. The social lives of birds inspired the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss to note their unique pull on people: birds “form a community which is independent of our own but, precisely because of this independence, appears to us like another society, homologous to that in which we live.”10 The living birds of Africa are intriguing. They move fast and far, in three dimensions. As a class they are diverse, ranging from the huge ostrich (Struthio camelus) to tiny warblers. But they separate into easily recognized groups such as powerful eagles, versatile water birds, aerobatic bee-eaters, and familiar sparrows. The “little brown jobs” of many families are camouflaged and seem undistinguished (except to those who pay attention), but others, like the lilac-breasted roller (Coracias caudatus) or the purplecrested turaco (Tauraco porphyreolophus), are generously proportioned riots of color. They make all sorts of sounds. Some, like the chorister robin-chat (Cossypha dichroa), are masters of song. Doves of different species provide much of southern Africa with its defining background track, while the cry of a hadada ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) puts comedy in a quiet evening. The buff-spotted flufftail (Sarothrura elegans) stays still and invisible in thick bush but sends out a haunting call. For food, they might soar over the landscape or flit among flowers. Some species, such as wagtails, are familiar and comfortable in villages. Less happily, other birds subsist on people’s crops or their chickens. Conversely, some of them satisfy the human palate very nicely. The charisma of birds has had a literal afterlife: a prominent class of birders, ornithologists, has made a study of them as dead, preserved specimens. The physical characteristics evolved by living birds have made them appealing as objects of study. They are conspicuous yet fast enough to make interesting hunting. Because of their size, preparing them is a quick

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job. Their feathers hold color without treatment. They are small and light enough for porters to transport by the hundreds from the African interior to the coast. Entire collections can be stored compactly and shipped economically. History is not just for people any more. Environmental history brought nature as a whole into the dynamic. Now animals and objects, including dead animals, are recognized as players in the past. Animals appear in histories as pathogens, pests, companions, commodities, instruments, and subjects of knowledge. As historical subjects, birds have a lot in common with other animals, and much about them is generally instructive about human relations with nature. Yet because of their diversity, conspicuousness, and charisma, birds may be an ideal topic for a focused study over time, across regions, and in different societies. Of course, some of us are not taken by birds. Humans also are variable. But engaging with birds has made a difference for many people, in how they exist and who they are.11 Birders and Networks This is a history of the knowledge that people create around those diverse and fascinating animals. With the goal of a symmetrical analysis of all forms of bird knowledge, I refer to all people who know birds as “birders” in this book. “Birder” is an odd word. How does an animal become a verb and then a noun for people who engage in the activity? The definition comes from the Anglophone North Atlantic, where “birder” usually means “birdwatcher,” someone who views birds for recreation. In urban, middleclass societies, recreational birdwatching has become the most prominent of human relations with birds. Africa, too, has its birdwatchers, although this leisure pursuit is more popular on other continents. But birding can be defined as something more than birdwatching, as by this American commentator: “Rather than obsessing over the lack of minority birders . . . I suggest expanding birding to include anyone who finds their way to nature through birds.”12 If finding one’s “way to nature through birds” makes someone a birder, then people all over Africa have historically qualified as birders, noting when bird behavior predicts changes in the weather, devising ways to keep them from their crops, or hunting them for food or cures. Observing the presence and behavior of birds was and remains an everyday rural act. A small but visible group of birders are scientists, more specifically known as “ornithologists.” During the colonial period they were European, Euro-

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African, or Euro-American, but they did not work alone; they hired local birders to collect and preserve their specimens. Drawing on all these meanings of “birder,” I use it as the generic term for the heterogeneous group of people who have been connected to birds over the past few centuries.13 Sub-Saharan Africa recommends itself as a useful category of analysis in the history of birding because “Africa” is a powerful concept in political and cultural history. Africa became a single place quite apart from its birding traditions, through its contact with Europe, including scientists. Under conditions of empire, relations among birders of different feathers took on a particular character. Birding in Africa has been infused with the politics of that continent. The network in the book’s title is the chain of associations among actors: masters in indigenous ways of knowing, traveling naturalists from other continents, and African assistants who worked for naturalists in the field and museum. The field of actor-network theory from science and technology studies has developed vocabulary and models to make sense of relations among nonhumans, diverse humans, and facts, and this book draws on some concepts of this theory to explain how people relate to one another and how they circulate knowledge. To avoid the executive bias that sometimes privileges scientists and science over other participants and knowledge traditions, my use of the term “network” is broad. Because the birders are heterogeneous, the network is a field of diverse interactions. What is known about birds varies and circulates differently.14 I use the word “knowledge” as the generic term for what people know about birds, and I recognize three types of bird knowledge and birders within one network: vernacular, ornithological, and recreational. The three traditions are fundamental to this history of birders, but my goal is to lay them over essential matters in the recent history of Africa and thus to illustrate wider issues: interactions between vernacular knowledge and science, relations among colonial subjects and imperial authorities, the operation of race and honor among people, and the decolonization of colonial culture and scientific practice. But we begin with the ways that birders know birds. A Guide to Birders Three images illustrate the essential interactions of birders in Africa: talking and writing, collecting birds for specimens, and making specimens from the collected bodies.

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2. Gert describing the mahem to Emil Holub. Holub, Seven Years, 1:147.

The first image is of a gray crowned-crane (Balearica regulorum), three European adventurers seeing it for the first time, and an African man telling them about it (fig. 2). One of the Europeans, probably the man seated at the front left, is the Czech traveler Emil Holub, who went to southern Africa in the 1870s. Holub included this engraving and a few paragraphs about the encounter in a book about his travels, translated into English as Seven Years in South Africa. The story began when Holub heard a beautiful song and implored everyone to listen. The crowned-cranes were visible, “fluttering some 500 yards” away. The African man, Gert, was reluctant to leave his breakfast, but when he recognized the birds as mahem, he became animated. He then delivered what Holub characterized as “an unusually long speech for Gert.” The substance included the difference in plumage between these and other cranes, that their crowns were formed of hair rather than feathers, that Afrikaner farmers kept them as tame birds, and that “in Africa, everybody knows them.” The racialized labor relations of southern Africa were recorded: Gert called Holub “bas” (baas, Dutch for “master”).15

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The illustration encapsulates the essence of this encounter: a breakfast, distant birds, an African speaking, and European listeners. It also draws on inaccurate stereotypes of Africans: Gert is depicted in a loincloth, even though men on the nineteenth-century southern African frontier wore trousers. The artist shows Gert as wild-eyed and gesticulating, but the passage conveys a more subdued body language: Holub described Gert squatting on the ground and then pulling him down to his level. At one point, he paused to take a chaw of tobacco. The story is of Holub soliciting Gert’s attention and listening to what he had to say about these birds. Though he was interested in birds, Holub was not adept at identifying them in the field. All the same, his field experience was enough to qualify him later as a coauthor of ornithological works.16 The next image is of an unnamed African hunter, birds that have already been shot, and a European ornithologist (fig. 3). The birds are vaguely drawn and the hunter is not identified, but we know a lot about the ornithologist. Emin Pasha was born in Germany in 1840 as Isaak Eduard Schnitzer. Of an adventurous and inquisitive nature, he went to Africa to serve in the Ottoman province of Equatoria. He was among the first in a line

3. Emin Pasha and a Sudanese hunter. Jephson and Stanley, Emin Pasha and the Rebellion, 113.

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of administrators who served colonial bureaucracies while their minds were really on birds. Like many imperial administrators who followed him, Emin provided specimens to scientists in Europe. When the Mahdist uprising in 1885 cut off Equatoria from the rest of Sudan, a group of supporters organized an expedition to rescue him. They found him in 1888, when one of his rescuers wrote: his “one recreation was in his ornithological researches, for which he had a great passion. His collectors went out daily and brought him in many rare kinds of birds, and in his leisure time he might be seen measuring and classifying his specimens, with all the fresh interest of an ardent ornithologist.”17 In this scene, the men respect each other and expect to be respected. The German is seated in the shade, wearing spectacles and holding a pen, and on his table lies a pile of paper. He is the picture of scientific and bureaucratic rationality. Before him stands the hunter, confident and poised, in the sunlight, with a gun as his tool. They have spoken, and now he proffers Emin Pasha a harvest of birds, strung on a stick. The two men are separated by dress, technology, environment, and mode of communication. The boundary and link between them is a rack of dead birds that are leaving their natural habitat to populate the realm of a scientific collection. The final image is a photograph taken in 1972 (fig. 4), and the ornithologist, Robert Payne of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan, is behind the camera rather than in the frame. This image is of Jali Makawa, a Mozambican-Malawian-Zambian who was perhaps the most-celebrated scientific assistant of colonial Africa and is the subject of chapter 6. The photograph captures Makawa in the field, preparing a specimen of a dead bird from an envelope of skin and feathers. Spread before him on newspaper are the bird’s internal organs and his tools: cotton stuffing, thread, and scissors. The container holds a white material—maybe borax or white cornmeal—used as a drying agent. This would have been sprinkled on the bird, left to absorb moisture, and then brushed off. The bird is obscured, but it may be a pipit (of the genus Anthus) or a pied wheatear (Oenanthe pleschanka), two of the thirty-two species collected by Makawa that are now at the museum in Ann Arbor. It is a small bird, and the work is delicate. “Jali was tidy in his skinning,” Payne recalls. Makawa has turned the skin inside out, stripped away the carcass, and laid it before him on the newspaper. The skull and lower legs would stay with the skin. At the moment the photograph was taken, Makawa was preparing to stick the pointed dowel into the base of the skull. To complete the transformation from living bird

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4. Jali Makawa skinning a bird, March 1972. Courtesy of the photographer, Robert Payne.

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to specimen, Makawa would insert the dowel in place of the backbone, stuff the skin with cotton, and sew it up. In his shirt pocket are a pen, a notebook and a ruler. Everything in Makawa’s appearance hearkens to scientists, yet he was an assistant to ornithologists rather than qualifying as one himself.18 The interactions conveyed in these images are between practitioners of the vernacular tradition and ornithology. Part I of this book, “Vernacular Birding and Ornithology in Africa,” is given over to the broad history of their contact, with emphasis on the period before 1900, although it also draws on ethnographic evidence from the twentieth century. The oldest tradition is the vernacular. Gert in figure 2, the hunter in figure 3, and Jali Makawa in figure 4 represent the vernacular tradition of knowing birds. All over the world, foragers, herders, healers, and farmers have always interacted with the birds around them, observing them, chasing them from crops, hunting them for food, using them for decoration, noting their augury powers, and using their bodies for cures and rituals. The point of knowing birds is to create productive, healthy, and happy lives for the people who live with them in fields and forests. Usually, in a vernacular tradition, to specialize in birds made little sense, but birding has consisted of a wide range of activities shared across social groups. There are many possible terms for this tradition: folk, indigenous, local, or vernacular. I prefer “vernacular” to “local”—science is also specific to its context, not universal—and to “indigenous”—Europeans also have vernacular knowledge, and whether a society experienced settler colonialism is not the most important factor characterizing environmental knowledge. To characterize the essence of African knowledge as “indigenous” gives us little room to describe the knowledge of Europeans and Euro-Africans as something other than “settler” or “white.” (In fact, I use the former terms to describe people of European origin apart from their racial identity.) I distinguish between “vernacular birding” and “ethno-ornithology,” the first being the practices of people and the second being the study of those practices by others. A lot of vernacular knowledge would qualify as me¯tis, the skill- and experience-based knowledge described by political scientist James Scott, but not everything known about birds need be practical. It has fine points of classification and includes metaphysical details. It can be moralistic or funny, too.19 Vernacular birding is a capacious category, most accurately thought of in the plural. It is not specifically African, nor in Africa is it one thing. SubSaharan Africa is huge, and its people and birds are diverse. The traditions

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of Africa also have continuities with vernacular birding on other continents. Vernacular birding traditions all over the world share practicality and even ideas about particular species. For example, owls are widely understood in Africa as holding supernatural powers. This is also true on other continents. Fear of them may be overdetermined by their nocturnal habits and unusual humanlike faces. Similar understandings can be more than coincidence if they are specific and if a known relationship exists between the groups. For example, throughout southern and south central Africa it is held that a bird causes lightning. The idea is consistent enough to take as a theme of a regional birding culture.20 Historically, in parts of Europe and Asia, vernacular natural knowledge took additional forms: illustrated texts that transcribed oral traditions, described practical knowledge, or transmitted the wisdom of ancient authorities. Sketches of the natural world evidenced knowledge production among craftspeople. Esoteric writing included representations of nature. In some societies elites circulated texts in classical languages. The archives of these visual and textual traditions have supported innovative and chronologically precise studies. The existence of texts in an archaic or ritual language— Greek and Latin in Europe—admittedly pushes the boundaries of the category “vernacular,” but early texts are not works of science. Conveyance through writing did not abnegate how much these elite expressions of natural knowledge had in common with nonelite ways of knowing, in content and traditions of authorship. The medieval European project of knowing nature was originally a humanist one, to become authorities on established wisdom.21 Not being preserved on paper, the archive of vernacular birding in Africa cannot sustain the same textual and visual readings. It requires different methods and a different approach to time. Chapter 1, “African Vernacular Birding Traditions,” is written in the ethnographic present perfect with an orientation to what was significant at past times and remained so into the twentieth century. It aims to establish that birds were materially present in African societies, that they held robust meanings across regions, and that the status of the man who knew animals, including birds, well enough to hunt them was recognized.22 Chapter 2, “Early Birding Contact, 1500 –1700,” reviews how birders from northwest Europe saw African birds on their earliest travels to the Cape of Good Hope. Mariners and gardeners drew on European vernacular knowledge, but what they reported about African birds was taken up in

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elite European scholarly production, which had been vitalized during the Renaissance. The evolution of elite European expertise about nature took place gradually over centuries: from achieving authority on classical texts, to the expansion of knowledge in encyclopedias, to assembling cabinet and museum collections, to the systematic presentation of plants and animals in the new genre of natural history. The ornithological tradition, represented by Holub in figure 2, Emin Pasha in figure 3, and Payne the photographer of figure 4, grew out of this early modern European natural history. Knowing birds as species defined by morphological or molecular criteria and establishing one’s contributions to that knowledge among others at a distance are very unusual things, and I reserve “ornithology” and “science” for this form of knowledge. In defining science narrowly and specifically I mean to provincialize its history. Separating disciplinary science out from other knowledge on these grounds does not frame it as more rational or disinterested than other ways of knowing, unique in its emphasis on observation, or characteristic of European thought. I do not mean to reinsert the divide between indigenous and scientific knowledge that anthropologists have rightly dismantled. I intend, rather, to explore bird traditions as specific historical phenomena and to analyze interactions among individuals wielding their forms of skill and mastery.23 The third chapter, “Ornithology Comes to Southern Africa, 1700 – 1900,” describes biology, including ornithology— organized in the hierarchies of Carl von Linné, more commonly known as Linnaeus— entering this story. This history has been fully analyzed before now, and this book does not offer authoritative coverage of ornithology; it features here chiefly in its relation to African vernacular traditions. Ornithologists distinguished themselves from others through formal specialist knowledge that was not applied to the challenges of daily life. Their work privileged the visual, and for a long time the specimens of dead birds were more important objects of study than were living birds. This is not to say that ornithologists had no tacit or embodied knowledge. As field birders and skilled laborers making specimens, they also deployed me¯tis, but distinction came from their technical analysis.24 Linnaeus’s classificatory science moved across the globe in the nineteenth century with explorers and empires. By the late nineteenth century, ornithology had become a specialized scientific field with the brief to order all the birds of the world. It spread across Africa in the wake of

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European political and economic expansion. With the help of vernacular birders, ornithologists harvested the avifauna of Africa and with the help of laborers skilled at preparing specimens, they then launched facts about bird species into the network of science. How ornithologists from Europe engaged with African vernacular birders and research assistants under imperial rule is the central question of this book. By offering a broad overview of the relations between scientific authority and white racial prejudice around the turn of the twentieth century, chapter 4 on “Authority in Vernacular Traditions and Ornithology” serves as a conclusion to the first part of the book. Part II of this book, “Lives of Birders,” details the interactions of different traditions of birders in the twentieth century through an examination of individual lives from the perspective of diverse actors. In Chapter 5, “The Boundaries of Birding,” we see ornithologists reconciling their racial awareness and their dependence on African vernacular birders. The way that African members of the network of birders responded to the hierarchies of ornithology is the subject of the next two chapters. Chapter 6, “The Honor of Collecting,” presents the life of Jali Makawa, a celebrated collector whose grounding in the world of vernacular birding appears to have mitigated his experience of exclusion. In contrast, Saul Sithole, the subject of chapter 7, “The Respectability of Museum Work,” had no evident background in vernacular birding traditions. His experience as a black South African laborer in the field of ornithology was constantly one of segregation. In the early twentieth century a third tradition was emerging globally: recreational birdwatching. The recreational tradition plays a smaller role in this book than the other two traditions. It appears in chapter 6 and again in chapter 8, “Birding Revolutions.” It is an activity of finding, noting, and recording birds by species, often with an emphasis on quantifiable personal achievement. Its practitioners are members of the urban bourgeoisie who were estranged from their forebears’ vernacular knowledge yet sought out an experience of nature. Rather than hunt or write about the birds, they watch them. Some are extreme in their enthusiasm and then they might be called “twitchers,” a derogatory term for those who keep lists of birds seen as a measure of achievement rather than of appreciation or understanding. Recreational birding grew out of ornithology. Through much of the twentieth century there was a continuum between leading ornithologists and gentlemen who wrote for local natural history journals. As ornithology was professionalized and as multitudes of people have developed a more casual

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interest in birds, the two traditions have moved apart (although individuals still do bridge them). Recreational birdwatching in late twentieth-century Africa was distinguished from the rest of the world by being the pursuit of the Euro-African minority and expatriates. Compared with urbanites on other continents, the “native bourgeoisie” of Africa is underrepresented among recreational birders.25 The Asymmetries of Knowledge in Empires The actors in this book are defined not only according to their proclivities toward birds. They are also Africans and Europeans, colonial subjects and administrators, employers and employees. These social categories bear on the status of knowledge to the extent that, now that the introduction to the ideal types of birding traditions has been made, it is henceforth impossible to think of anyone in African history as “vernacular birder” or “ornithologist” without also qualifying them by race and national status. Knowledge was among the resources gathered through the political and economic expansion of Europe. Europeans drew on African, Asian, and Native American knowledge about plants and medicines, sometimes to create colonial hegemony and wealth. The context for the network of knowledge exchange is a global history full of friction and disempowerment, and so exclusion and inequalities permeate the later history of the network of birders. Exploring the historical development of the asymmetries of science in empire is a foundational motivation for my study.26 Influential and provocative work by Mary Louise Pratt contributed immensely to awareness about the politics of colonial knowledge. Pratt’s 1985 article in Critical Inquiry, “Scratches on the Face of the Country; Or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen,” and 1992 book, Imperial Eyes, situate naturalists traveling through late eighteenth-century southern Africa in the expansion of empire. Pratt usefully describes the European project of learning the world’s plants and animals as an aspect of a new “planetary consciousness.” She draws a contrast between the overtly imperial discourse of expansion and enslavement and natural history writing, although natural history writing merits the characterization of “anticonquest” only because of its false innocence about such processes. As a form of surveillance of land and resources, this new ordering of nature was an expression of imperial power. Pratt puts the period of conquest at the Cape Colony at the end of the eighteenth century, which was also the mo-

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ment when the ideas of Linnaeus became powerful in natural history. Thus associating Linnaean science and the establishment of empire, she maintains that naturalists reproduced European hegemony in their engagement with the Khoekhoen, the Africans living at the Cape, and in their depiction of Khoekhoe relations with nature. Naturalists produced “an asocial narrative in which the human presence, European or African, is absolutely marginal.” The production of an empty landscape had an imperial and economic motive: Africans’ subsistence habitats “were meaningful only in terms of a capitalist future and of their potential for producing a marketable surplus.” Thus scientists on the frontiers of empire silenced and rendered the knowledge of colonial subjects as Other.27 Drawing attention to the interests and biases of science in empires was essential, and Pratt shows that naturalists at the Cape moved through a racialized, hierarchical, and violent society. Yet the analysis has little engagement with what they wrote about nature. Glossing over these naturalists’ passages on natural history made their depictions of relations of Africans to plants, animals, and productive landscapes invisible. Detailed subsequent work by historians has effectively overturned many of Pratt’s assertions about naturalist writing and travelers in southern Africa. The first major critic, William Beinart, used the case of the man who described the honeyguide, Anders Sparrman, to demonstrate how Pratt misrepresented travelers as depicting the landscape as empty. Similarly, Elizabeth Green Musselman asserted that the Cape offered a space for “explicitly acknowledged interaction between European and African natural knowledge.” Finally, Siegfried Huigen demonstrated that natural historians were not agents of imperial interests but artfully enrolled nonscientists, including employees of the Dutch East India Company, to support their work. In each case, the close reading of natural history texts reveals a complex politics of knowledge. Steffan Müller-Wille’s assertion about imperialism and botanical research in another colonial situation—North America—summarizes the thrust of such work: “Science, with its dialectical ability both to upset and to objectify social relations, constitutes one of the motors of colonialism writ large, rather than merely serving as one of its instruments.”28 Theoretical critique has established that symmetries in the archive and knowledge systems condition all knowledge production, and the useful result has been increased reflexivity and awareness about these dynamics, but close work with the archive demonstrates that the politics of its production has not obstructed useful historical research on imperial subjects. Carolyn

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Hamilton’s history of the production of knowledge about Shaka Zulu in nineteenth-century southern Africa exemplifies the possibilities in the fact that “indigenous communities had a lot to say and spoke with many voices, and, more importantly, were heard. Their words were not reflective in pristine form in colonial discourse, and it may not now be possible to recover their voices, but the sediments and influences of their speech can be discerned.” Hamilton’s work establishes how much would be lost if archives created through colonial discourse were only known for their silences. The interpretive and methodological challenges in writing the history of interacting knowledge traditions within empires are great, yet histories are written that are coherent, consistent with each other, and real in their renderings of humanity.29 Understanding the history of knowledge production in colonies as interaction rather than exclusion does not mean taking it as an apolitical exchange among equals. It is still necessary to elucidate the forces structuring the interchange, especially the waxing global ideology of white racialism. But it is also possible to discern real relationships and real politics. I credit several historians with providing models for how to explain these complex and contradictory truths and change over time. Beinart and Musselman have both suggested that, in the Cape Colony, scientists’ engagement with vernacular knowledge narrowed after the mid-nineteenth century. This coincided with a general shift in the Cape away from the vision of cultural and political assimilation. Yet interchange did not end. Beinart’s detailed survey of the further development of conservationist thought in South Africa has people of all backgrounds participating in a conversation about environmental conditions.30 Patrick Harries has written about how complex the politics of dialogue were. In Mozambique, the missionary Henri-Alexandre Junod’s curiosity about plants and insects led him to engage with local knowledge about them. He left behind the biological racism of nineteenth-century Switzerland and came to see human difference as environmental but still significant. Thus Junod, who had noted and appreciated the knowledge of Africans, and who did not believe in innate racial difference, also supported segregation in South Africa. Science in this history was not a straightforward operation of silencing, and perceptions of racial difference influenced it in complicated ways. Diana Jeater also shows Europeans and Africans learning and unlearning how to speak with one another about law in the early twentieth century in the newly established colony of Southern Rhodesia. The circum-

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stances were often violent, but translation was necessary. This did not mean that colonizers and subjects communicated well. The early need to establish communication gave way to talking at cross-purposes. Jeater’s analysis models dialogue between Europeans and Africans in empire as negotiated, changing, and failing, in short as a historical subject that was documented in surviving archives.31 Helen Tilley’s argument about British science in the African Research Survey of the 1930s also maintains colonial conquest did not prevent scientists from following their own questions into the territory of African knowledge. Ecology led the way for other sciences, including medicine and anthropology, to become entangled with vernacular knowledge. The effect in the late twentieth century, Tilley goes so far as to argue, was “epistemic decolonization” rather than domination. This argument inverts the idea of science as colonial discourse, attributing the epistemic pluralism of the postcolonial period to the efforts of colonial scientists to engage local knowledge in their fieldwork. Diana Wylie’s consideration of nutrition science in apartheid South Africa puts more emphasis on the filters between knowledge systems and the change in their interactions over decades. She describes how the disposition of white nutritionists toward the food practices of the black majority hardened in the twentieth century, moving from paternalism that claimed to be benevolent to an outright racism that blamed victims of apartheid for their own dispossession.32 Histories of scientific research in colonial Africa are often histories of labor relations. Here, too, the dynamic is unbalanced but not unidirectional. Lyn Schumaker’s influential work on the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in colonial Zambia suggests that anthropological fieldwork with its heterogeneous networks operated under influences of research assistants. Sekibakiba Lekgoathi’s study of ethnography conducted on behalf of the apartheid government tracks the influence of “native informants.” All was not harmonious, but even in this context the connections were vigorous. Andrew Bank’s close attention to the anthropologist Monica Hunter Wilson’s early fieldwork presents a range of African intermediaries: the daughter of a leading Christian family, a medical doctor, and a clerk-fixer-bodyguard who took some two hundred pages of notes. Her fieldwork “demonstrates how thoroughly collaborative this process was at every stage, although in ways that differed accordingly to the identities of the research assistants and the specifics of each field site.” Assistants were subordinates even while they were experts, yet they found the work preferable to other available options.

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Their participation has been called the “bargain of collaboration.” Their strategies of valorization were of their own devising and individual affect modulated their relation with the work. All these models have made me curious about interchanges of knowledge between unequal participants and inspired me to explore the factors that structured them.33 Methods, Sources, and Scope The second half of this book is about the lives of individuals, and the difference in subjects has required methodological flexibility. When it comes to lives of the nonelite, the genre biography can be awkward. Typically, biography unfolds a story of agency in lives in the light of the individual’s own reflections about him- or herself. The self-actualization assumed in the genre may not be demonstrable for people who are less independently empowered. In archives on the nonelite, the inner self may have left no imprint. Perhaps when subjects are elusive and answers mysterious, it is helpful to step back from the genre of biography. Drawing on a limited set of American works, the historian Jill Lepore has suggested that treatments of “ordinary” lives tend toward microhistorical more than biographical; the “small” mysteries and everyday life are the stuff of microhistory. The microhistorical disposition toward tentative conclusions eases some of the challenges of reconstructing the lives of racialized, colonized, working-class subjects from archives left by the elite. I recognize the distance between my understanding and the actual lives of the Africans who served as assistants to ornithologists and try to be transparent about my role. When I recount interviews, I usually include my questions. The mysteries I take on may or may not be “small,” but they concern a limited sphere of a person’s life. Relations with families, the deity, and friends come up only as they enter the work sphere. In chapters 6 and 7, when the gaps in my understanding remain unsatisfying to me, I fill them, where possible, with accounts of analogous lives. This is probably the greatest innovation of my method.34 Although it is not a study of the discipline of ornithology, this study is rooted in research in ornithological publications and archives that record the knowledge and practices of vernacular birders as well as their own. Ornithologists took field notes, and sometimes these made mention of the network of birders, especially those by colonial administrators who were also ornithologists and who had long residence in one place. Ornithologists differed in how much they recorded about the people who collected or ob-

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served birds for them, but some of them revealed a good amount. Through research in archives, museums, and libraries in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Zambia, I have gathered my own notes on the lives and work of birders. Literate birders write about their devotion in memoirs that are full of passion and romance. Rural birders from oral societies do not work with the genres of memoir or romance, but sometimes we see their emotional satisfaction from living with birds. Unfortunately, no African vernacular birder has become an internationally recognized author, as has Iam Saem Majnep of New Guinea. To compensate for these lacunae, I have sometimes interviewed birders about their own work and memories of people featured in this book.35 As for scope, I have taken all of sub-Saharan Africa as the area, but I do not argue that bird knowledge on that continent has a particular character. “African vernacular birding” means vernacular birding in Africa and does not suggest relations with birds that are exclusively or uniformly African or characteristic of Africa. Both vernacular birding and ornithology vary within Africa, and so it is important to reference places. The map appearing here leads readers who might be unfamiliar with Africa to major places, countries, and ethnic groups mentioned in the text.36 Inevitably, but still regrettably, this study’s coverage of Africa is uneven. Being dependent on the ornithological archives for what they could tell me about all sorts of birds and birders, I found the deepest pools of evidence about all three traditions—the vernacular, ornithological, and recreational—in Anglophone eastern and southern Africa. The archive is richest in those territories, being both British and settler colonies. Britain has had an exceptionally rich natural history and ornithological tradition. A French ornithologist was forthright: “The French, Belgians and Portuguese paid less attention to birds than did the British.” Ornithology thrived in Germany, but Germany’s loss of its colonies after 1918 meant that its citizens lost the opportunity to become colonial bureaucrats and ornithologists of Africa. Vernacular birders spoke the languages of Africa and ornithologists used scientific vocabulary to demarcate species, but the heterogeneous network across the continent connected through English.37 The Honeyguide in Time In this excursion through birders, method, and historiography, we have lost sight of the honeyguide. It has one more lesson: that this network

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5. Africa (detail), showing selected countries, ethnic groups, and places mentioned in the text. Produced by Bruce Boucek, Brown University Library. Courtesy of Brown University Library.

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of birds and birders exists in time, within history. As human technology has changed, honeyguides have also adapted. They have learned to seek the attention of people on bicycles, in cars, and in motorboats. But it is hard for them to keep up with human economic and cultural development. Having become wage earners, people buy sugar from stores and get medicine from clinics, and so they are less interested in collecting wild honey. Nomads have become more sedentary. Boys who go to school spend less time in the bush and may not acquire the skill to follow a bird. Woodcutting has removed the trees that honeyguides settled in for display. Government control over forests also reduces access. This is not to say the birds have become rare but that their partnership with people is declining. In some places, honeyguides have given up trying to lead people to hives. The end of the guiding partnership would be a global loss, but the honeyguide does not lead us directly to a history of loss, not yet. The history it shows us, rather, is of a dense and dynamic network of birds and birders.38

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part i

Vernacular Birding and Ornithology in Africa

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chapter 1

African Vernacular Birding Traditions

F

ittingly, a famous African symbol of historical awareness is a bird, the sankofa of the Akan people of Ghana, which turns to touch its back with its beak, sometimes grasping an egg. Representing connection with the past, the sankofa has become a motif of memory and wisdom throughout the African diaspora. If the sankofa were to look toward past relations between people and birds, it would see that they have been important in countless ways. People have long viewed living birds as neighbors, competitors, food sources, medicines, and conduits to the spirit world. Knowing about them contributed to collective well-being. Knowing about birds mattered to some individuals because they were personally drawn to them but also because expertise was recognized and honored.1 Widespread continuities in bird knowledge and practice across subSaharan Africa indicate that vernacular bird knowledge is ancient and was robust as people settled new landscapes and interacted with others. We know that bird knowledge changed over time, but our understanding of precisely when and how is tentative. For example, at some point, perhaps early in the Common Era, people in west central Africa adopted a new term for “bird,” njila. We do not know why or when this happened. Other references to birds can carry specific markers of time and change, as when they reference world religions, such as the Hausa name bawan-Allah and the Fulfulde korgel-Allah (both “Allah’s little slave” for the red-billed firefinch, Lagonosticta senegala). A South African pupil’s explanation that the orange-throated longclaw (Macronyx capensis) acquired its orange-red neck

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by wiping Jesus’ blood could have originated no earlier than the early nineteenth century. Precise chronologies such as these are rare in this history, and I therefore suggest that rather than thinking in terms of the past or the ethnographic present, readers should understand this chapter in the present perfect; it is an account of what has been and may still be, of things that originated in a different time but remained consequential into the twentieth century. This chapter does not argue that there is a coherent and singular African vernacular tradition, but I do generalize, cautiously, around themes, including birds’ classification among living creatures, their connections to the spirit world, their political significance, their material relations with people, and their significance to individuals. It is in delicate but discernable patterns that I have found significance.2 Birds were everywhere, but they were small things seen every day and usually not memorialized in conspicuous ways. As in life, in the archival record they are fleeting and sometimes distant. Records of birding are regrettably sparse and uneven in quality. My principle has been to privilege the testimony of those who had the most experience of vernacular birding. Unfortunately, these farmers and hunters did not write a lot, so others— ornithologists, travelers, and schoolchildren who had been assigned to write essays— created much of the evidentiary base. Some of what they asserted may be incorrect. This writing by outsiders requires critical reading and later chapters address the politics of bird knowledge. Here, I have sifted through the archive for a provisional survey of the birds and the birders. Material culture provides another form of evidence. Art and artifacts, including objects at the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University, reveal a plentitude of bird images, some conspicuous, some nearly hidden that testify to their multifaceted meanings to people. My own bird knowledge is closer to that of biological science but when the tenets of vernacular birding contradict biology, I present them neutrally. My knowledge of African history is situated in academic social sciences. Until now, birds and birders have not been subjects in these fields, but they provide a productive frame for thinking about them.3 Knowing Birds: Conception and Perception How do people know birds? Writing about the American South, the anthropologist and ethno-ornithologist Shepard Krech counts two ways: “conception,” the naming and categorization of things according to a cognitive scheme, and “perception,” culturally specific understandings or as-

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sociations gained through sensory experience. This is, he writes, a “thorny and debated” distinction. For example, perception and conception are both engaged when we name a bird for its call. Still, these categories provide a way to open discussion of human cognition.4 Perceptions of birds run through stories and proverbs that distill the collective observation of anonymous generations, such as one collected by the Sotho-Tswana intellectual and politician Sol Plaatje: “Young birds will always open their mouths, even to those who came to kill them.” In addition to aphorisms and tales, folk rhymes offer interpretation of birds’ calls as speech. But the point of folktales and aphorisms is to provide instruction in human morality and good sense. While they reference known characteristics of animals, they do so opportunistically, to make points about human norms. Didactic rather than descriptive, these aphorisms testify that birds drew attention but do not offer a broad platform to analyze them as birds.5 Specific perceptions about birds are often commemorated in names that show which characteristics are thought to be most distinctive. Surveying the qualities that inspire names reveals patterns of perception. Sound was the major inspiration, followed by color, body, and habits. Among the names based on sound, too many to mention are onomatopoetic. Some are descriptive, such as kamolongwe, meaning “talkative person,” for the white-browed robin-chat (Cossypha heuglini) in the Tumbuka and Khonde languages of Malawi. In Cote d’Ivoire, a hornbill can be called the “train bird” because of the noise it makes in flight. One bird, known in English as the white-browed sparrow-weaver and to scientists as Plocepasser mahali, was known to Tswana-speakers as mogale, which means “brave person” or “hero,” possibly because of its pugnacious character and call.6 Listening to birds is linked to the perception of nature in general. Birds help people keep track of time and seasons. In Ghana the great blue turaco (Corythaeola cristata) is known as kokokyinaka, the clock bird, for its regular call. In South Africa, intibane (the red-capped lark, Calandrella cinerea) and then iqobo (the wailing cisticola, Cisticola lais) signal dawn and sunset. In southern Africa farmers hear the call of the cuckoos, inkanku, as a signal to start sowing. Birds communicate place as well as time. Hunters in Zambia knew to follow the voice of the yellow-billed oxpecker (Buphagus africanus) to find the antelope they sought. A bird can betray itself to people with its voice: the male black-headed bushshrike (now black-headed gonolek, Laniarius erythrogaster) was said to become so absorbed in the beauty of its singing that it closed its eyes and was easily caught by hand.7

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Sound is most important, but birds also entered human perception through other senses. Taste was an essential way of perceiving birds and noting their differences. Some birds were delicacies, especially fatty water birds or plump ones that stayed close to the ground. Others were unpalatable, but taste alone does not account for taboos. Vision, while less dominant than it would become among ornithologists, was a critical way of perceiving birds, through observation of movement and habitat in addition to the plumage and shape of bodies.8 Questions of conception, of ordering and classifying birds, take us into more challenging cognitive and ontological territory. It seems that vernacular traditions consistently recognize a category of “birds.” As in other vernacular traditions, bats or termites, being things that fly, might be included among them. It seems, however, that ostriches, which do not fly but have feathers, beaks, and wings, are commonly accepted as birds. Also included among birds are types such as the lightning bird that biologists do not put in the class Aves because they do not believe they exist.9 As such numerous, diverse, and active life-forms, further distinctions between birds are necessary. They must be named and grouped. Vernacular knowledge does not validate stable names tied to the species recognized by ornithologists. When possible here I associate bird types with English and scientific names, but such translation is a convenience, to allow outsiders to these traditions to imagine the birds and these identifications can only be provisional. One intractable problem is that vernacular names may not have been accurately recorded. In ornithology, names exist to clarify the concept of species. In vernacular birding, the focus on species as breeding communities is absent, and names have other purposes than to demarcate independent populations.10 Parsing thirteen Zulu terms for doves and pigeons, the linguist Adrian Koopman found that names sometimes contradicted the concept of species and were transferred to other kinds of birds because of a particular shared characteristic. This is not to say that observers could not tell the birds apart. For an obvious instance of using the same name for very different things, Zulu speakers also use bird (or other animal) names to describe cattle coloration. A black beast with white shoulders and head might be called inkwazi, after the African fish-eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer), but no one confuses the bull and the bird. Similarly, both the secretary-bird and a large hornbill have been known as burtu in Hausa. These birds do not look alike, but both are

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large and hunters have used their skins for camouflage as they approach gazelles. Perhaps this was reason enough to share a name. Birds recognized as types not only share names, but one type can have different names. A bird guide once told me: “If you have one bird and four different Zulus, you will find four different Zulu names.” The ethno-ornithologist Adam Manvell’s study of Hausa bird names collected between the early twentieth through the early twenty-first centuries counted as many as fourteen names for one ornithological species. Why so many? Since vernacular names are not standardized, there is regional variation. And names in use in the same region may distinguish creatures by age and gender, as do the English “cygnet” and “drake.”11 Some of the neologisms may have been invented to cater for name avoidance. Farmers in Lesotho have been heard speaking to birds with extreme politeness when scaring them from their fields, without using their names. Likewise, the Mbuti of the Democratic Republic of Congo are prohibited from saying the names of certain birds before a hunt. Name avoidance (a custom often known by the Zulu practice of ukuhlonipha) also may have resulted when an important person took on a bird name and subordinates lost the right to say it. Or it may have happened that the meaning of a name changed and a new one was needed to identify the animal. This appears to have happened in the Mijikenda language of Kenya, whose speakers were compelled to say things like “flying animals” or “animal with wings” when “birds” took on ominous meanings and could not be mentioned. One of these processes could explain the case mentioned above of the Njila languages developing a neologism for “bird” early in the Common Era.12 Classifying animals requires a category of human. The boundaries between people and birds could be crossed in rituals. Evocative evidence of this is found in rock paintings in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, now attributed to San foragers. They feature hybrid humanostrich forms. The depiction of the birds testifies to their importance as prey, but the details in the portrayal of the humans, including their ostrichlike anatomy, may also reflect the trance experience of San rituals. Becoming an animal in a trance could empower hunters over their prey, but the paintings may be telling of more than the efficacy of hunting. The paintings may show people also taking on the sexual potency of the male ostrich and nutritional potency of the eggs. This is just one example, but the generalizable lesson is true of vernacular traditions around the

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world: people and others in the animal world could take on each other’s character.13 Many sorts of associations between kinds of birds and kinds of people are common. In a famous case, Nuer (Sudan) twins are associated with all birds and may not eat them because both are of god. Among the Marakwet, the chesirotagat (superb starling, Lamprotornis superbus) was a bird of women, and the merewo (Hartlaub’s turaco, Tauraco hartlaubi) was a bird of initiates. The evidence is only suggestive, but kingfishers may have some wider association with women: one Zulu (South Africa) name is inhlunuyamanzi, which means “vagina of the water,” while the Mbuti of Congo hold that a kingfisher gives a particular call around menstruating women to warn that she may pollute the hunt. More pointedly, complaints about crows introduced from India to East Africa during British colonial rule—that they are rapacious and bring discord—were a snide way of referring to human immigrants from South Asia.14 An altitudinal taxonomy is prominent among classifications of living things. Strata of upper, middle, and lower are centered on people, who define the middle space. It has been said about Maasai conceptions: “Birds seem to be situated on a vertical cosmic plane, spatially and conceptually mediating ties between the human and the divine. . . . They occupy an interstitial role, separate from yet in certain respects part of human society, familiar beings yet evocative of divinity, diversely arrayed between earth and sky.” The Rangi of Tanzania have also divided animals into altitudinal groups: ndee (birds and bats), which are above; vanyama (mammals, not counting people and bats), which are terrestrial; and makoki (creeping and swimming things), which are below. The categories are expansive in that auspicious and inauspicious animals exist in each. Beyond that broad system, the category of birds is divided into three further strata, with soaring birds above, water birds below, and all others in the middle. Marakwet elders told J. K. Kassagam about a similar system (table 1).15 The spatially based ideas of birds go to the heart of what birds are and how they relate to people, because those who live in human spaces have a social status. In many instances, birds that live in villages are less likely to be hunted. In forsaking the wild, they have become like people. The most conspicuous example may be wagtails, members of the genus Motacilla. Birds in the wagtail family earn their name. When they land, they bob their long tails, rapidly, perhaps to balance themselves, to scare up insects, or to avoid

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african vernacular birding traditions Birds of the upper space Birds of Prey

Scavengers

eagles kites hawks falcons

crows ibises marabou storks vultures

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Birds of the middle space

Birds of the lower space

swallows weavers cuckoos rollers sunbirds owls

bulbuls waxbills starlings guinea fowls ostriches flycatchers

predators. The Cape wagtail (Motacilla capensis) is a charming bird, small and delicate, with slender lines and no fear of human spaces. Here is how they were depicted on a farm owned by white settlers in the nineteenthcentury Cape Colony, now part of South Africa: In the country, each farm-house and “pondok” (mud-dwelling of Hottentot labourer) has its well-known pairs of this engaging bird; and woe to the unlucky urchin who dares to meddle with them or their nests!! To say that “the angels won’t love them,” would be a blessing compared to the fate that would be prophesied for the wicked child. We have often seen the master of the house sitting in his chair in the cool of the evening, and, perhaps, while one bird perched upon the rail of his chair, another would jump at the flies on his soil-stained shoes, while two or three more stood pecking at those that plagued the old dog lying at his master’s feet. Perhaps one or two would have found their way into the voorhuis, or entrance-hall, where a rich harvest awaited them in the bodies of those flies slain by the attendant dark urchins.16 This bird is a favorite across eastern and southern Africa. It has been called the “African’s mascot.” In Burundi its presence is desired before houses are built, and killing one can render a man impotent or sterile. Some considered it a wizard’s bird or held that killing it could bring disaster. Reports have it that if a boy killed a wagtail by mistake, he had to bury it with proper prayers and beads in the grave, as befitting its special status. It is said in Sudan that if a wagtail is killed, compensation may be demanded, as for a brother. A Malawian poet, Jack Mapanje, has used wagtails as metaphors for human qualities, both positive and annoying. A contradictory

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understanding has been reported in western Kenya: there, a wagtail perching on a house can be an omen of death.17 A special status extends to other birds who live within human society. Killing a honeyguide can be akin to murder to the Boran, because the bird talks to people. The house bunting (Emberiza sahari) lives near people in the Sahara and is not harassed. Swallows building on the side of a Xhosa house are thought to bring luck. “It is a bird that behaves like a human being.” A less winning bird, the marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumenifer), has been allowed to live unmolested in Mandingo villages in Gambia, where it is auspicious for luck and peace. Should a young stork fall from the nest, people would raise it until it fledged. Like its European cousins, Abdim’s stork (Ciconia abdimii) chooses to roost on human structures, on the apexes of huts (fig. 6). People in the Sahel, where it breeds, welcome it as a harbinger of good. Images of storks were put on walls and roofs of Benin palaces.18

6. Abdim’s stork nesting on at hut in Niger. Bates, Birds of West Africa, 110.

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As they move into new spaces, people and birds have sought each other out. For decades, successive watchmen at the De Beers diamond mine at the mouth of the Orange (Gariep) River in Namibia, working a boring job in a desolate place, made friends with wild birds by putting out food. The birds came regularly, without fear, to call on the watchmen, but the flycatchers were wary of strangers. When it comes to people, it seems birds also have perception and conception.19 God, Spirits, and Birds Being of the sky and air, birds have been actors in spiritual realms. The field of African studies has long since made the point that thinking of traditions as static superstitions that helped people to cope with the unknown was to miss the point entirely. History has revealed quite the opposite: in Africa the role of the spirit world and its expression in nonhuman nature were well known and understood. Over decades of work historians and anthropologists have exerted themselves to translate these understandings for wider audiences. Although they have not focused on the specific role of birds, they have provided directions for understanding their power. Spirits have power and birds are connected with spirits and rituals. We learn of an Owambo ritual involving birds in northern Namibia, where spirits of big birds have supernatural force. They have been invoked in rain rituals, and during initiations they possessed boys and girls in the transition to adulthood. Men masked as birds performed the circumcision procedure. It could be dangerous to look at them, so whistles and horns communicated the birds’ presence. Through the action of the big birds, the boys were transformed into men with access to the spiritual world and its power. The big bird in Owambo was terrifying, but its intervention was necessary for a child to develop as a person. Often birds were present only through their feathers, as on a spectacular mask made by an artist of the Tsaayi people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The form— circular, carved with abstract symbols, and painted red, black, and white—was first observed in the early twentieth century. The piece featured in figure 7 is rimmed with feathers of the great blue turaco, adding extravagant color and fullness to an already impressive object. The use of feathers could associate an object with the power of a particular bird.20 Birds of the upper sky are most closely associated with god. To the Marakwet, the colorful chebilot (blue-breasted bee-eater, Merops variegatus)

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7. Congolese mask with blue tauraco feathers (#1999-67-31). Gift of Mr. Peter Klaus and Dr. Anita Klaus. Mithoefer Collection. Courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.

was a representative of Kuino Ban, the god of the rainbow, and Ilat, the god of thunder. Thus, it reminded people to consider their behavior. The kukai (fan-tailed raven, Corvus rhipidurus) was a representative of an ancestor and did the same. In Zimbabwe vultures circling high in the sky brought important information from god to hunters. All sorts of birds have been messengers from god or spirits. It is a tricky distinction, but these roles may be distinct from those of auspicious or inauspicious birds, because as messengers they bring a warning rather than cause an outcome. If a Marakwet heard a woodpecker sounding to the right, it was a good sign, but if the sound came from the left, it was a caution. Luhyia, also of Kenya, take the landing of a gray crowned-crane near the homestead as a prediction of the arrival of guests. During a hunt, the cry of the igolomi (Knysna turaco, Tauraco corythaix) can signal harm to the hunter or the death of the prey. A bird described as a “blue jay” or “roller” might warn of death in Zambia.21

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The presence of certain birds has augured change in seasons and perhaps even affected the weather. With a call that sounds like water pouring from a bottle, the white-browed coucal (Centropus superciliosus) has earned the name “rain bird” in South Africa (ubikwe in Xhosa and ufukwe in Zulu). The mahem (gray crowned-crane) also can bring rain. Swifts appear before rain, and the umnqunduluthi, a plover, predicts cold and snow. The uboboyi the African hoopoe (Upupa epops africana), marks spring. The hadada ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) signals a good harvest. To the Marakwet, other species—the red-chested cuckoo (Cuculus solitarius), wagtails and swallows—forecast rain.22 Many birds were taken as auspicious or malign. If an inauspicious bird (one of several possible kinds) crossed their path, travelers might turn back. If the southern fiscal (Lanius collaris), the kimakau, rushes him, a Marakwet man might interpret it as a curse. Nocturnal birds are often inauspicious. But owls have the worst reputation. In many places, if an owl lights on a roof, someone will die. Owls are so ominous that an illustration in the Ndebele translation of Pilgrim’s Progress put one with the snake (a more traditional Christian symbol of evil) in hell. Other birds evoke war. Mau Mau fighters in Kenya listened for the montane nightjar (Caprimulgus poliocephalus) for warnings of the enemy. The messages were not always so serious. The call of the kipkass, the white-bellied go-away-bird (Corythaixoides leucogaster), can sound rude to human ears, and a Marakwet woman might take it humorously as commentary on immodest dress.23 Some kinds of birds have consistent associations with spirits and power over a wider area. In widely spread parts of West Africa, the white helmetshrike (Prionops plumatus) is associated with Islam (fig. 8). In the Mandinka language of Gambia it is named Allala-nansingo or “Allah’s little boy,” and may not be harmed. Its names in the Hausa and Fulfulde languages of northern Nigeria are more descriptive. One of them, modibboru, was said by the American ornithologist George Latimer Bates to be taken from modibbo, the Fulfulde term for an Islamic scholar. Bates speculated that name was inspired by its appearance. Indeed, the white crest and throat could be taken for the headdress and scarf of a Muslim holy man. Another Hausa name is drawn from almajirai, the term for young mendicant scholars of Islamic knowledge. Manvell suggests that its behavior of foraging in groups inspired an association with students who move together through city streets in search of charity. In addition to these connections with Islam in West

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8. Prionops plumatus. W. Swainson, The Natural History of the Birds of Western Africa (Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, 1837), pl. 26.

Africa, in the Banda language of the Central African Republic the bird’s name evokes a secret society and a local divinity. That one bird has been associated in varied ways in different places with a deity is noteworthy.24 In southern and south central Africa, some variant of “bird of heaven” (Xhosa: intakezulu; Zulu: inyoni yezulu; Shona: shiri ye denga) is known as an agent of the high god. The bird, also known as impundulu in Xhosa and Zulu, is dangerous, destroying life and property during a storm. Unusually, the descriptions of this bird are highly visual, with emphasis on white, black, red, and green. It is sometimes described as burning. Testimony from Lesotho conveys a “strange, mighty, black and white bird, with burnt wing tips, and very strong crackers, to scratch at persons or animals, and to violently split the solid rock.” An essay by a Xhosa schoolboy assigned by a missionary to write on birds held: “When it is thundering, people say the lightning-bird is clappering with its red wings. . . . This bird preys on

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people, sucking their blood, so that they die.” Sometimes it leaves its urine, but sometimes the bird is a hen and destruction comes from its silvery eggs. At other times, impundulu has the genitals of a man and takes a human mistress. The woman who becomes its familiar is not harmed, but her husband might be stricken with a chest disease that resembles tuberculosis: pain between the shoulder blades and coughing of blood. Her daughters may also become possessed.25 Around the 1960s, an unknown artist painted the impundulu (with a lightning bolt) and the intaka ye zulu on storefronts in the Transkei, in what is now the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa (fig. 9). The photographer asked one (presumably white) storeowner about how the bird affected business. He claimed it had no negative effect, but no one recorded what the customers thought.26 The impundulu proper is a kind of bird, even if ornithologists do not recognize it. But a few other birds that ornithologists do recognize are also associated with lightning. The most conspicuous examples are large,

9. Impundulu, Tina Bridge, Eastern Cape, South Africa, 1963, “Ethnographic and Historical Photos.” Niven Library, 1963 – 64, BHW 2. Courtesy of the Niven Library at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.

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10. Hamerkop (Scopus umbretta). Courtesy of the photographer, Kevin McDonald.

ground-dwelling birds, perhaps associated with the place lightning strikes rather than originates. The hamerkop (Afrikaans for “hammerhead”) goes by the names of uqhimngqofe and uthekwane in Zulu and Xhosa. It is noted for its distinctive behavior. It will stand for hours on the side of a pool, peering downward at its reflection (fig. 10). Unlike the Greek figure Narcissus, however, uthekwane is critical of its appearance. In their essays on birds Xhosa schoolchildren reported it obsessing over the crest at the back of its head: “I am quite pretty on this side, except for this tuft which spoils me.” Another odd thing about the hamerkop is that it makes huge and rambling nests with soft material, including chicken feathers, cloth, newspapers, and human hair. The size of the nest purportedly was responsible for this bird’s reputation as “king of the birds” in Congo. Such nest building evokes suspicion. A Xhosa child’s essay said: “The hammerhead is a wizard, it takes human hair and uses it in building its nest.” The Gikuyu (Kenyan) name for the bird, Karogi nguno, suggests a witch, and the Kamba (Kenyan) will not hunt it. Coming too close to the bird could be dangerous, but destroying its nest or harming it is deadly. According to another schoolboy’s essay: “If you destroy its nest, you will see the sky overcast on the spot as the bird keeps on

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calling; and, if you run into the hut for refuge, it will sit on the roof and call till you are struck by lightning, and then it will go away.” Or it could send a snake or a flood. If it defecates on you, you could die, or its curse could make you a homeless wanderer. If you touch its eggs, you could go mad. “If you wish to be safe from lightning,” conventional wisdom in South Africa and Lesotho has it, you must greet the bird respectfully, “Grandmother Hamerkop, greetings unto you.” This was a powerful bird!27 Like the hamerkop, hornbills are birds of the lower stratum, but Zulu testimony has them as a favorite of god. Furthermore, a hornbill is the icon of religious societies in Zaire, Angola, and Zambia. It is probably the inspiration for the “bird of destiny” or “birds of prophecy” in Benin royal art. They have been associated with rain in places as widely spread as Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa, where they can augur drought and calamity or a good harvest and prosperity. The largest hornbill, the southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri), is widely feared as a lightning bird in southern and south central Africa.28 A connection between lightning and the ground hornbill (fig. 11) was recorded in Xhosa territory in 1823: “They so idolise a blackish Bird of the toucan species . . . that if by accident they should kill it, they immediately sacrifice an Ox or a Heifer by killing and burning it: the same sacrifice they make if a person is killed by lightning.” What to call it in colloquial English was a problem. This writer named the bird a “toucan.” English-speakers use the name of another American bird, “turkey,” a rare New World animal that migrated to other continents as part of the Columbian Exchange. Some Xhosa farmers agreed about the resemblance and declined to raise American turkeys for fear that they, like ground hornbills, could command lightning.29 Another bird of the sky is the bateleur (Terathopius ecaudatus), a shorttailed eagle. In both the Eastern Cape of South Africa and on the Zimbabwean plateau, people consider its cries from above to be cautions of danger, even from ancestors. In the KwaZulu-Natal Province, medicine made from this bird, the ingqungqulu, can protect from lightning and bring rain. Zulu informants have said it will bring heavy downpours. “Then the sky weeps, mourning this strong bird known for fearlessness.” The Xhosa children did not warn of lightning but described its flight as ominous. If its shadow crossed you, you would be afflicted. If its droppings fell on your head, the result was fatal. Among both the Xhosa and the Shona, and probably among others, it is described as “the bird who never drops a feather,” a reference

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11. Southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri). Courtesy of the photographer, Kevin McDonald.

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to its strength and pride. In connection with armies it could be auspicious; Xhosa children knew it as intaka yamadoda (bird of the warriors) and intaka yempi (bird of the army). Some held it is most likely to bring news of defeat: “The side over which it keeps flying is the one that will be defeated.” But its calls might be taken as a warning rather than a curse: “Should a person be on a journey, and the bateleur sees that danger will befall him or a wild beast will harm him, it makes a prolonged cry, and that person takes steps to save his life.” Guerrillas in Zimbabwe in the 1960s and 1970s watched eagles to learn when the enemy was near.30 Birds and Political Power The symbols of political power are legion, and birds are among them. When it came to feathers, birds themselves provided the symbols. In southern Africa it was said to be a chief ’s prerogative to wear the feathers of the crane, probably the blue crane (Anthropoides paradiseus), and of the African paradise-flycatcher (Terpsiphone viridis). The feather on the headdress in iconic images of Shaka, king of the Zulu, may be from one of these birds. Otherwise, people made bird images and invested them with political meaning.31 The most prominent use of birds in political symbols was at Great Zimbabwe. At least eight carved birds were found at Great Zimbabwe, the monumental site that served as the capital of a large state from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. All but one of the birds, on poles as tall as men, were found in a hilltop enclosure that was probably a space for rituals related to kingship. There is no record of what these sculptures were called or of how they were used. They are not literal representations of kinds of birds or even of birds—they have human as well as avian features, but they have been associated with the chapungu (bateleur) and the hungwe (African fish-eagle), birds that excel at soaring between land and sky. The chapungu was a messenger from God and a servant of the king. The hungwe is a Shona totem and the subject of praise poems. The birds may have represented royal ancestors who were petitioned at the enclosure.32 On the other side of the continent, the impressive gold-encrusted royal and ritual iconography of the Akan people of Ghana also features birds (fig. 12). A ceremonial sword in the collection of the Haffenreffer Museum, three feet (1 m) long, is topped with a bird eight inches (20 cm) high and covered with gold foil. The bird is nondescript; its type is less important

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12. Bird handle on Akan staff (#2004-15-86). Gift of Mr. Peter Klaus and Dr. Anita Klaus. Mithoefer Collection. Courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.

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than what it carried: a cannon on its back and powder kegs in its beak and at the base of its tail. Records for the object quote a saying about “the bird that always travels with cannons and powder,” associated with a wise chief who is always prepared for war. Another bird in the collections of the Haffenreffer Museum, this one topping a spectacular beaded crown from Nigeria, conveys the importance of birds in the iconography of the Yoruba people (fig. 13). Members of royal lineages wore crowns that frequently featured birds. Containing medicinal substances to enhance a ruler’s power, they embody as much as symbolize effective rule. The beaded birds are stylized, beyond the point of representing any species; like other animal icons, they stand as a metaphor for human matters. Birds may represent witchcraft to Yoruba people, but in this case they bring to mind the power of women, including royal ancestors who were extremely powerful in Yoruba states.33 The meanings of birds as symbols varied, but in pockets around the continent they were used to establish claims to political power. For some rulers, knowledge of them was worthwhile. The Medicinal Power of Birds People also deployed the power of birds in the human realm through pharmacology. Many parts of the bird have restorative and curative properties: bones, flesh, eggs, and feathers. This is an important area of birding that reflects knowledge of what birds do. Pharmaceutical knowledge grows from the same “habits of receptivity, acuity, perception and sensitively that enable survival.” As with other aspects of vernacular birding, the historical record offers us only fleeting glimpses, so it is difficult to produce a tight analysis of variations across time, space, and in different contexts. With scattered data, observations can only be broad.34 Writing of people who speak Khoesan languages in southern Africa, Chris Low argues that it is through healing that the potency of birds enters everyday life. “Potency,” a translation of the term n/um, is a common term in ethnographies, not just those about birds. Low defines it “not as a thing, but as the ability to make things happen.” Potency can be transferred from other living things: “By taking on the potency of a strong bird a person can become strong and achieve the same things as the bird; they own the bird or work with the bird.” While the nature of n/um is specific to this culture, the

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13. Beaded bird on Yoruba crown (#2000-3-1). Haffenreffer Special Fund purchase. Courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.

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idea that people can appropriate the character of other entities, including birds, is much wider.35 Bird-based pharmacology is often sympathetic, conceived to impart desired qualities of the bird to the human patient. The honeyguide may be administered to a person who needs to find something. The feathers of strong and swift birds are well suited to arrows. In Ethiopia the flesh of a bateleur rubbed on skin is said to impart courage. Because they return home, a medicine made with swallows has been used to impel South African cattle not to stray, and the wing of a swallow, mixed in milk, can give speed to dogs. In Kenya, eating the brain of a vulture can help a seer communicate with the dead, and the foot can bring good luck in gambling. In Zimbabwe and South Africa, the fish-eagle and doves are beneficial to would-be lovers. The extravagant tail feather produced by the male pin-tailed whydah during the breeding season serves as a love charm for men in Kenya. In Hausaland, the cormorant is thought to see only at night and has the same effect on those who eat it. A bird with a visible sex organ, the white-billed buffalo-weaver (Bubalornis albirostris), is a medicine for men. Owls are harbingers of death but also serve as medicine, sometimes to bewitch someone malignly, sometimes to counteract witchcraft, and sometimes for general health. In Bornu, a green parakeet could make a “juju” to protect the wearer from death.36 The association with lightning gives the southern ground-hornbill and bateleur special properties. These birds could be killed and submerged in water. Then “it will not stop raining until we take it out of the water.” Their feathers and eggs could be used to treat lightning strikes. According to one essay about the bateleur, “For these reasons this bird is held in high repute among the men; it is not killed by any Tom, Dick or Harry, but by witchdoctors only, and even witch-doctors must take precautions by rendering their family immune before killing it, for great damage might be done to their villages in the event of their killing it.” A Sotho man explained to British army medic Sir Andrew Smith in 1834 that if a hamerkop stepped in small holes filled with milk it would become enraged and break a drought with thunderstorms. The impundulu, the lightning bird that ornithologists do not believe in, also had medicinal uses. “Exceptionally smart doctors have killed such a bird. For doctors its feathers and skeleton are uncomparably excellent.”37 As long as medicines made from birds are needed for health, people will continue killing them. Bird parts of eighteen species were seen at a market in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, in the 1990s. A 1999 survey of twenty-four

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markets in Nigeria counted 2,251 birds for sale, whole or in parts of 199 species. (Birdlife International counts 954 birds on the Nigerian list.) Some specimens remained on the shelf, unpurchased, for a long time, but birds with recognized uses were in greater demand and might be traded over a distance. In the twenty-first century, populations of some eagles and especially vultures are vulnerable and may suffer from the trade. In one case in colonial Lesotho, vultures were protected for medicinal uses. Birds are protected if killing them could provoke harm to the hunter.38 Predator, Prey, and Partners Humans and birds have also influenced one another’s health, life, and death. People have eaten birds and birds have raided people’s crops. Understood ecologically, they connect by exchanging energy, hydration, and nutrition. The properties of animals and plants set a course of interaction. For example, ostrich eggs are durable and large and therefore make excellent water containers. The oldest known example of their use is from one hundred thousand years ago. Excavations at the Diepkloof rock shelter in the Western Cape Province uncovered broken ostrich eggshells. By repurposing ostrich eggs as water vessels, people enhanced their own survival.39 But most ecological exchanges between the species have had to do with food rather than water. Birds and people can have mutual interests about food, such as when birds eat the insects that devour cultivated crops, but usually the parties are more antagonistic. For farmers, birds can be terrible pests. Forty-four species of birds have been reported following plows in South Africa, eating seeds immediately when they are sown. The most notorious marauder is the red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea), which has been called a “feathered locust.” A photograph of a boy stationed on a platform at harvest time to scare quelea, taken in northern Nigeria at the turn of the twentieth century, documents the ancient and enduring experience (fig. 14). An anthropologist described the job in South Africa: “The small boys have to rise before dawn so that they are in the fields at the time when the birds begin to be active, and there they remain till evening, shouting until they are quite hoarse to scare the birds away and throwing stones at them.” Sound is a common defense: in South Africa women have used what they know about birds to defend their crops, imitating the grunts and gurgles of the predatory unomyayi (a rook, Corvus frugilegus) to scare smaller marauders from cornfields. The war has not only tactics but strategies. The

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14. Scaring birds from fields. Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, 2:33.

magpie mannikin (Lonchura fringilloides) came to Cameroon with rice cultivation, and the crowned-crane’s depredation from time to time has dissuaded farmers from attempting to grow millet. Farmers can sometimes be at peace with or at least be resigned to birds. They have noticed that some act as allies when they eat insects, and when marauders are trapped, they taste better for being grain-fed.40 The largest bird, the ostrich, provides those who kill it with a considerable amount of protein. It is all the more valuable for surviving in dry areas where other food can be hard to come by. Earlier, I mentioned rock paintings of ostriches associated with Khoesan foragers of southern Africa. A prevalent interpretation of these paintings of people with ostrichlike bodies is that they depict trance states achieved in rituals. Khoesan ritual was rich, but these foragers also had an ecological relation with animals. Ostriches were significant among their prey, and stories demonstrate that Khoesan foragers used them and knew them well. Another form of rock art

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15. Three engraved ostriches on a dolerite boulder ridge overlooking the Gariep River, southern Africa. Courtesy of the photographer, Neil Rusch.

may provide further testimony of their everyday importance. A set of three birds (fig. 15), the largest about six inches (15 cm) tall, was pecked out on a boulder near the Orange River. Judging from the patination, they were created at an unknown but probably not ancient date. Unlike the paintings discussed above, there is nothing human about these engravings. Where most engraved images face right, these are facing left; in fact, they are walking in that direction. Thinking of these engravings within their context helps us imagine possible meanings. Are they directing the viewer to a site of memory or toward a valuable hunting site? The intent of the maker has evaporated, but the naturalistic images of the birds that provided a lot of meat, skins, huge eggs for eating, with shells for carrying water suggest that this species once made this place worth noting.41 Across the continent in general, however, wild birds have not been a leading food source. In some places, people do not eat birds or are not supposed to eat them, including all Maasai and Nuer twins and adults in the Sudan. The people who ate the most birds were those who hunted them the

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most—small boys—who spent their days in pasture and forest with time to kill and animals to hunt. None other than Nelson Mandela recalled bird hunting among his boyhood activities. Boys hunted for something to do as much as to get food, and in the process they learned skills. There were many techniques and technologies for bird hunting, including bows and arrows (fig. 16). Arrows, sometimes using poison tips, could certainly kill a small bird. Traps might involve a stone resting on a stick or a cage that dropped on the bird. Boys had amazing skills with catapults (what Americans call “slingshots”), or they threw knobkerries, a clubbed stick used in southern Africa. Bird lime, a sticky concoction made from plants, could trap small birds. They might sing specific songs while hunting different species. The enthusiasm about hunting could coexist with restrictions. A prohibition on hunting brooding birds has been reported in Zulu territory.42 Sometimes hunters enlisted birds in their work. A man of the Lomwe (also known as Nguru or Makua) in Mozambique was photographed with a

16. Bulu hunter with cross-bow. Bates, Birds of West Africa, xv.

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17. Trapper with call bird, Namuli Mountain in Mozambique. Vincent, Web of Experience, facing 77. Courtesy of John Vincent.

francolin in a cage (fig. 17). The author, Jack Vincent, also described caged canaries in the same region: We continually noticed an interesting custom general with the inhabitants, that of keeping cage-birds. The pets were invariably common Yellow-fronted Canary (Serinus mozambicus), and although we could elicit no information as to the reason of the habit, almost every native met with carried his bird in a small home-made wooden cage. The birds were greatly valued, could not be purchased, and seemed to be well cared for; even road-workers carried their birds to work with them, and when passing a large gang on the new road construction it was not unusual to see a row of cages laying along the bank at the side.43 These canaries could also have been call birds, left near traps to catch bigger birds that made a better meal. On the other hand, they could have conceivably been companion animals. The African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) was kept as a cage bird in Hausaland. Of course, cage birds can

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also be eventually eaten, so the relationship can be one of both husbandry and pet keeping.44 Birds and people do have mutually beneficial partnerships. Several species of wagtails (genus Motacilla), the common inhabitant of people’s homesteads described above, are often found in cattle kraals throughout southern and eastern Africa. Motacilla capensis (fig. 18), the Cape wagtail; M. aguimp, the African pied wagtail; and M. flava, the western yellow wagtail, which breeds in Europe and Asia, all eat insects, including those that congregate around stock, and are considered “birds of the cattle.” The Zulu generic term for wagtails is umvemve, meaning “young, feeble calf.” But it is not just that they are associated with cattle or follow them: they are credited with the skill of herding. Names for wagtail species are “goatherd” or “little shepherd” in Bantu languages of Kenya and Tanzania, including Gikuyu, and in Marakwet, an unrelated Nilotic language of Kenya. Xhosa children averred that the umcelu loves herding cattle and sheep and that it, like the intengu (fork-tailed drongo, Dicrurus adsimilis), is considered a caretaker of

18. Wagtail (Motacilla capensis). Courtesy of the photographer, Hugh Chittendon.

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the cattle. Like many other birds, the intengu and umvemve are messengers, but to stock rather than people, whistling signals to them.45 Did the wagtail and drongo really herd cattle by whistling to them? If cattle herders left them in its care, could we then say that bird was functionally herding? Xhosa cattle owners seem to have recognized that birds were not always effective herders, judging by the aphorism “The cattle of the herdless man are herded by the drongo.” When a boy is away from his herd, it could be said— one imagines the tone as indulgence, mockery, or exasperation—“He is trusting to the assistance of intengu.”46 Yet is it impossible that birds might signal danger to stock? The occasional partnership between birds and other species need not be limited to people. The Mbuti associate many kinds of birds with different animals. There are birds of elephants and of okapis, of chimpanzees, and of antelope and buffalos. They consider the birds as sources of information about their animal partners. Animals do hear one another. Hunters complain about many bird species sounding off when they approach game; the “go-away” birds owe their English name to this understanding. Birds also listen for signals from other animals. An experiment in Cote d’Ivoire in 2001 and 2002 demonstrated that yellow-casqued hornbills (Ceratogymna elata) distinguish between Diana monkeys’ warning calls about eagles and about leopards. The birds paid little attention to alarms signaling leopards, which do not eat hornbills, but took action when monkeys gave the eagle alarm. Hearing a monkey’s eagle alert was as good as hearing the eagle in provoking a response from the birds.47 Perhaps a bird could warn stock of danger. It is not necessary to assume that they shared interests of the human stockowners or the cattle themselves to imagine why they would do so. Maybe by alarming cattle they prompted a reaction that would increase their harvest of insects. Whatever they got out of it, wagtails and drongos were actors in relations with people and cattle. People called what they did “herding.” The physical and cognitive character of birds matter, but readings of bird character and its action also matter. Birds also live in human minds. Birds and Imagination It is possible that birds were exceptional as projections of human imagination. Vernacular traditions are not romantic and have no reason to express nostalgia about nature, but they do convey that birds have evoked

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creativity and wonder. An anthropologist once tapped into specific imaginings about life as a bird. In 1954 and 1955 Hortense Powdermaker administered a questionnaire to teenagers in Zambia. The forty-four boys and fifty-eight girls were given several essay topics. The final question was: “If it pleases God to make you anyone or anything you please, who or what would you like to be? Give your reasons.” One-third of the boys and half of the girls thought it desirable to remain human. Twenty of the boys and fourteen of the girls chose to become birds. The sample is small, but the ways they explained themselves was rich.48 Boys described how particular kinds of birds had desirable characteristics. A bird was “a friend of anybody,” happy and without evil. Another boy had many reasons for saying, If it was God’s pleasure to make me anything instead of a boy, I would pray him to make me a bird: The reason for the choice of a bird is that, birds are coloured with many beautiful and bright colours, and besides that we are all attracted by the melodious songs and above all they are the happiest creatures on earth. I think, I cannot believe you when you say that I found a bird on a branch in great sorrow. Birds are hardly in great sorrow, unless when they are hurt. The other reason is that we all admire the quick movement of birds, and when we admire, why not be birds? They do not work hard save in the morning and they get everything without struggling hard. As for food they just pick up some grains which the farmers leave in their fields and they do not need to buy blankets for they have warm feathers which protect them from the cold. I think if the world was full of birds and no other creature, I hope the world would be at its greatest happiness, peace and also freedom.49 Many girls saw the advantage in becoming men, who were happy, free, and brave. Those girls who said they would become birds explained that life might be easier than as women. Birds withstood bad weather and fled enemies with ease. Girls also noted that birds both procured food and looked good with little effort. Even social life was better for birds; “no laughing at each other as human beings do.” Powdermaker observed that, more than the boys, they said that what made birds attractive was their flight. “Again, if I were a bird my journeys would all be very simple and short. There would be no need for me to ask or look for aeroplanes. Instead I can only be flying and when I am tired sit on the branch of a tree instead of looking for

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the aerodrome. If I am a bird, I can not be finding it difficult to fetch food, because I can fly anywhere it can be found.” Another girl wrote that if she was a bird “I should be the happiest and freest of creatures.” This girl’s sentiment is rarely stated in vernacular traditions; perhaps the longing for flight is too fundamental to require expression.50 The Honor of the Hunter What would motivate an individual to distinguish himself as an expert in vernacular birding? What could one gain by being an expert? Did anyone qualify as a specialist birder? A lot of what was known about birds came from boyhoods spent hunting them and other animals. Picture this image recorded by an anthropologist in KwaZulu-Natal around 1930: children playing a game to test who could name the most kinds of birds.51 A Xhosa boy, Leonard Pamla, of Saint Cuthbert’s School, might have done well in that competition. He had a lot to say about the unogqaza, a tiny warbler: Although so small, the tinky is a clever little bird and a very industrious one. When building her nest, she builds it in a spot with longish grass; she doesn’t just build in a big tuft, but in a place without such a tuft she weaves her nest beautifully. . . . The youngsters are no longer called “gorbs” but chickens by the boys. Oh! The tricks these little youngsters play! One flies hither and thither and drops among the long grass. You search and search endlessly for it, and yet you have repeatedly passed it by; for when the young Tinky drops to the ground it drops tail upwards and harmonises with the grass. Very clever!52 Pamla made boys’ birding seem like a lot of fun, but a story recorded by a German missionary from the Mbene people of what is now Tanzania in the early twentieth century, imagined its heroic potential. This story was chosen as the opening piece in Nelson Mandela’s collection of African children’s stories under the title “The Enchanting Song of the Magical Bird.” It tells of a gigantic, destructive bird that renders men unable to defend their village by mesmerizing them with its color and song. Finally, the children of the village kill the bird and save their families. International urban audiences may be shocked that Mandela’s collection begins with a story of killing a beautiful bird, but the tale reflects the understanding that birds can be dangerous to human life. Mandela, it is no surprise, valorizes

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those who save their people. Unusually, in this story small people do it by hunting small animals, but legendary adult heroes such as Sundiata and Ogun were also hunters. Heroic stories throughout Africa include those of men hunting for the public good, protecting crops and people, and providing meat. Through these actions, individuals gained recognition and respect.53 Specialist and prestigious occupations, including that of the hunter, were integral to social formation. Jan Vansina, in Paths in the Rainforest, postulates that hierarchical societies formed as leaders attracted knowledge holders and created a synergy of production within a group. Jane Guyer and S. M. Eno Belinga draw on Vansina’s work in a 1995 article to make a theoretical intervention into the widely held concept of “wealth in people.” Guyer and Belinga explain that wealth in equatorial Africa accrued not just through the number of retainers but through their quality, especially what they knew. Knowledge about how to sustain collective health and produce wealth was a resource for the collective. They argue that followers’ skills and knowledge have underpinned the position of a leader. In histories and ethnographies of south central Africa (roughly Malawi, southern Mozambique, eastern Zambia, and Zimbabwe), hunters come across as valuable and honored members of society.54 Many ethnographies and histories from across the region describe how guilds and secret societies brought hunters together. Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga conveys the depth and status of specialist expertise with the English term “Professoriate of the Hunt.” The best hunters had an acute knowledge of nature and spirits, of their weapons, and of the rituals required for success. Hunting large mammals had a high ritual status; among Shona elephants were respected for their size and cognition. In some areas, such as Bisa territory in central Zambia, hunters united in guilds that held knowledge of esoteric forces and ritual practices. Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner described “cults” of professional Ndumbu hunters in western Zambia. Hunting associations sometimes had relationships to chiefs. An anthropologist doing fieldwork in the mid-twentieth century collected accounts of guild members approaching a Bisa chief for his blessing and making offerings to dead chiefs before undertaking a hunt. The groups also had internal hierarchies. Their dependency might extend to unfreedom; in the Zambezi valley, military slaves known as chikunda hunted in service to their masters. Ivory for international trade was their product, but chiefs also commissioned groups to hunt other animals, notably man-eating lions.

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These guilds provide historic examples of wealth-in-knowledge being used in service to a leader and to build a collective.55 Hunting was a particularly masculine activity. Turner depicted the hunter as an independent, hard-drinking, fierce, virile outsider. In their ritual, hunters prayed: “We want a man who can sleep with ten women in one day, a great thief of a hunter.” The reference to “thief ” Turner explained as “adulation for what in ordinary life would be illegal acquisition.” Brian Morris has expanded on Turner, distinguishing between masculine ideals for kin (that of brothers) and affines (that of husbands). The matrilocal marriage in the region made husbands outsiders to villages, where brothers served as protectors and chiefs. The woodland, danger, and hunting were the preserve of outsider husbands, who gifted meat to their wives and their families, as well as to chiefs. The vocabularies for hunting and sex were related. In a fascinating study, Eugenia Herbert includes hunting with “rituals of transformation” that drew on powers of reproduction and threatened reproduction if mishandled. Procreation between humans and hunting sometimes sustained each other and sometimes threatened each other, but the understanding that their power is related was widespread. Because hunters fostered life through killing, their role was sometimes ambiguous and might appropriate male and female characteristics. Herbert understands hunting as a prototype, not a negation, of life-giving activity.56 Discussing the history of affect in southern Zambia, Kathryn de Luna draws our attention to the value knowledge held for individuals, who gained honor and a right to command respect, based on behavior and rank. Through historical linguistic research on ancestral languages to the Botatwe family spoken in contemporary Zambia, de Luna has identified a term for a talented hunter, *-pàdʊ́, which has associations with a person who gives, who is generous. Archaeological evidence from the eighth through the thirteenth centuries CE supplements these findings by suggesting that game was taken in mass hunts and extravagantly butchered, with good amounts going to waste. Thus, de Luna postulates that hunting parties offered individuals a chance to build reputations of generosity. Because the region was linked to wider networks of trading and raiding, Botatwe-speakers borrowed new terms for hunters and the older term *-pàdʊ́ took on the meaning of “friend,” “companion,” or “elder.” A person with a reputation gained wealth in human contact: through peers as friends and lovers, as a master as protector and promoter, and by having children and underlings.57

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We have come a long way from birds, but the culture of hunting is critical to the further history of the network. Birds may not have been the most important prey historically, and it would be too much to say that many people were identified as specialist birders. But it takes no great leap of imagination to see that when ornithologists created a demand for birds and colonial governments restricted the hunting of large game, bird hunting could acquire some of the prestige and potency of big game hunting, that men could use it to form relations with superiors, peers, and women. The legacy of hunting would prepare individual African men to engage with European ornithologists, sell their services to them, and act as specialist birders. Vernacular Birding, the Foundation of the Network Across the broad canvas of sub-Saharan Africa, we see variations and consistencies in birding traditions. The range within regions suggests dynamic development of people-bird relations. Broad consistencies between language groups and across regions suggest that the transmission of knowledge was fluid. The networks of birders and bird knowledge pulsed throughout societies. The record of birding is also therefore diffuse and individuals are not commemorated. Even if specialist birders did not constitute a category, people possessed a detailed knowledge of birds, an understanding of their power in human life, and reasons to know about them. Birds were predators consuming plant calories and prey providing protein, but not just those things. People also responded to them as creatures with voices; as beings with their own relations to god, spirits, and ancestors; as stuff for curses or cures; and as collaborators. We see that birds take action in important ways. And so, people paid attention. Birders from Europe would have good reason to seek insight and instruction from their counterparts in Africa.

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chapter 2

Early Birding Contact, 1500–1700

E

uropeans arrived at the Cape of Good Hope around 1500 seeking the water and food needed for the journey between Asia and Europe. They traded with and sometimes raided the stock owned by the Khoekhoen who lived there. In 1652, the Dutch East India Company founded a permanent outpost to better provide for its fleets. When the settlement expanded into a colony, relation with the Khoekhoen turned to conquest. By 1700, Dutch rule had put many Khoekhoen in the positions of dependent laborers and racialized “others.” The Dutch appreciated very little about the Khoekhoen, apart from their ability to work, and a particularly virulent and early expression of antiblack racism developed against them. The Dutch absorbed less from Khoekhoe botanical and medical expertise than they did in parts of Asia. However, even though prejudice and occupation structured the ways Europeans and Khoekhoen communicated, they did make some contact around birds, drawing on what they had in common as vernacular birders. The interchange was modest in scope but similar in character to better-known instances of European encounters with vernacular knowledge in Asia and the Americas. At the Cape, the network of birders was shallow, and it soon succumbed to its fragility. Through the exigencies of transmission, the connection between Khoekhoe and Dutch birders was interrupted, and memory of it was erased.

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Vernacular Bird Knowledge and Early Natural History in Europe We know that Europeans were at home with birds as pests, companions, moral models, food, icons, and inspiration. Falconry was a prestige form of hunting among the elite. At the same time, popular vernacular knowledge had a lot in common with that in Africa. Scarecrows became icons of the harvest season, while storks nesting in chimneys became an emblem of northern European home life. Europeans also hunted. Ducks, pigeons, and partridges were favorite game, caught with the help of dogs or falcons. In Europe, as in Africa, birds have been omens, sources of health, indicators of other worlds, and guides to wisdom. The call of a bittern or a raven could be a portent of doom. The twisting of a kingfisher corpse hung on a thread could predict the weather. A stone from a swallow’s nest could restore the sight of a blind person. Owls evoked the occult, and doves were emblematic for Christians. Early birds and cuckoos provided lessons in wisdom and foolishness. Not all winged creatures described by Europeans were species now admitted by ornithologists: bats, griffins, and phoenixes were among them. Our record of vernacular bird knowledge in Europe is rich because, in contrast to practices of the adepts of Africa, the learned tradition in Europe involved putting that knowledge into texts. This dated back to the classical age; Aristotle was the most distinguished of ancient bird experts.1 After 1500, writing on nature expanded, beginning a gradual and incremental transition that ultimately resulted in disciplinary science. Regarding birds, a landmark appeared at the end of the sixteenth century when Ulisse Aldrovandi published a compendium of everything known about them. The work was in Latin and its scope was unprecedented but, rather than seeing his effort as something new, Aldrovandi saw himself as completing the work of Aristotle. Further, his interests included those of vernacular birders: how birds tasted and their use in heraldry were recorded, as well as their habits and their bodies. Mythical creatures also featured. These all were necessary facets of humanist expertise. Aldrovandi’s attention to nature marked the movement toward the genre of natural history but still kept to the older, text-based, prescientific knowledge.2 Aldrovandi also included new information, some of it about African birds. Members of the family Viduidae had been noted in Medici aviaries in 1581 and appeared in his compendium. They made their way to Italy

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through another major development of the sixteenth century, the wave of European trade and empire-making on other continents. Information also came from travelers who wrote down what they observed about the flora and fauna of other places—people such as the Dutch trader Pieter de Marees, who published a 1602 guide to trading in West Africa and included descriptions of birds. De Marees contributed new material but repeated much of what was popularly known about European birds and their habits.3 This was a nascent form of the genre of natural history. The tremendous knowledge production contributed to the later scientific revolution, but this was still a period of transition. Historian Paula Findlen avoids premature declarations of the emergence of “science” in this period by describing the development of a “scientific culture.” Even as Aldrovandi was incorporating knowledge about African birds into an elite scholarly genre, the first intercontinental contact was between vernacular birders. But when they met as birders in Africa they also met in the context of European expansion and increasing racial awareness.4 The Dutch Trading Companies as Vernacular Knowledge Networks The purpose of Europeans’ travel was acquisition— of objects and of information. At Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) outposts in the Indian Ocean and the Dutch West India Company (WIC) outposts in the Americas in the early seventeenth century, Europeans explored nature and others’ knowledge of animals, plants, and medicine. The acquisition of the knowledges of Asia, the Americas, and Africa is epitomized in the careers of several individuals in diverse postings. The physician Jacobus Bontius drew on Javanese and Chinese sources to produce studies on medicine and natural history during his stay in the Indies from 1627 to 1631, the year of his death. As was common, Bontius looked in the vicinity of diseases for their cures. This led him to record healing techniques as well as medicinal plants of the Indies. He documented ways to induce abortions, ease childbirth, and heal wounds. “Most of Bontius’s information came from things heard rather than observed,” and his (posthumous) publications credited the men and women in Java who taught him.5 Other cases were similar. Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede had extended contact with South Asian plant knowledge. Beginning in the 1670s, he conducted research on the plants of the Malabar Coast through collabo-

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ration with gardeners of the Ezhava caste, particularly the physician Itty Achudan. His dependence on Indian expertise was so strong that the resulting work, the Hortus Indicus Malabaricus, was characterized by Richard Grove as a “profoundly indigenous text.” This may be an overstatement: van Rheede collaborated with Europeans as well as Indians, and they also influenced the work’s structure. Van Rheede’s work is well known, perhaps because Linnaeus immortalized Malayalam names in his binomials. Another naturalist, Maria Sibylla Merian, was distinguished for her gender, her lifelong interest in nature, her artistic skills, and her scientific achievements. Already an established artist, Merian traveled to the Dutch colony of Surinam in 1699 with the express interest of studying insects. In this tropical plantation colony she met enslaved Africans as well as Native Americans; these people became important teachers and assistants in her work as a naturalist. Her conveyance of their knowledge of plants is considered respectful and empathetic, as when she recounted how the experience of slavery promoted the use of abortifacients. She learned much about plants and insects from Native Americans and Africans, and freely credited it.6 As extensive as the connections were, Dutch trading networks did not introduce foreign knowledge into European scientific networks without filters. The first filter was publication. For example, Bontius’s medical work was published posthumously in 1642, eleven years after his death in 1631, and his natural history did not appear until 1658, decades after his death. Such a delay might have resulted from concerns in the VOC about sharing strategic information. A more intractable filter had to do with the problem that understandings were not always reconcilable. Harold Cook observed of Bontius that he “was boiling things down to their lowest common denominator, information units that could be circulated in just about any context. He (re)produced knowledge, accumulated it, and exchanged it, making information—if not theories— commensurable.” Selectivity is not the same as prejudice, but there was also prejudice. The German-born botanist Rumphius developed strong ties to the Ambonese, learned their customs and language, and conducted extensive research into the natural history. All the same, the historian Maria-Theresia Leuker, concludes that his anecdotes of Asian customs underscored the difference in his perspectives and theirs, implying his sense of European superiority.7 The Dutch sent what they acquired back to Holland, where expertise and refinement flourished. Cook has made a compelling case that in the seventeenth century this infusion of knowledge about the world’s nature changed

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the way the Dutch thought about plants, animals, and human health. As enthusiasts collected objects, not least those from overseas, they also acquired expertise. Being familiar with objects, Cook tells us, constituted a new form of knowledge that was differentiated from practical knowledge or practiced reason. Contact and exchange with Asia, motivated by the desire for objects and consumables, inspired the Dutch to learn about new environments and medical traditions, to collect samples and techniques, and to deliver what they found to associates in Europe, who consumed it with enthusiasm. The eighteenth-century flourishing of natural history grew out of this collection of the world’s knowledges.8 The VOC and its counterpart in the Atlantic, the West India Company, became knowledge networks providing an infrastructure for the exchange and transmission of information between practitioners of vernacular knowledge. This acquisition stimulated a period of transition in Europe, eventually leading to the development of disciplinary science. But science was the outcome, not the motivation, for knowledge acquisition. In taking up and circulating knowledge, VOC personnel became authors and created new facts for select audiences. Yet they were not involved in what Bruno Latour calls “the proof race” of science, the project to establish their claims against those of competitors. The formation of scientific networks was an effect of their work, but it happened long after first contact.9 Conquest of the Cape of Good Hope Although little about the Cape of Good Hope could be said to glitter, the permanent European settlement there was founded by the VOC during the Dutch Golden Age. The first contacts between Africans and Europeans in the region near Cape Town had occurred by 1500. When Khoekhoen and Europeans arriving at the southwest corner of Africa first met one another, their encounters were driven by the mariners’ need for provisions, which they acquired by trading or raiding Khoekhoe herds. Interest in birds, except as food, was incidental.10 After about a century and a half, in 1652, sporadic landings and exchange punctuated by violence gave way to permanent settlement by Europeans under the rule of the VOC. The Cape of Good Hope was only a minor part of the VOC empire, conceived as an outpost to support the Indian Ocean trade. With its mild and well-watered climate, it was an ideal gardening site, and its original purpose to the VOC was strictly to produce

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enough food to supply passing ships. Offering promise to European gardens and medical practice, the unique fynbos flora of the Cape of Good Hope drew the immediate attention of Dutch traders. The Dutch were enthusiastic about gardens, and since the Cape settlement was primarily a garden, much of the earliest natural knowledge they acquired at the Cape was about plants. The VOC also used the Cape as a stopover to acclimatize plants from Asia before importing them to Europe. But this was not a peaceful garden. Social and political interactions between the Dutch and the Khoekhoen were violent and turned out to be disastrous for the Khoekhoen. Things did not necessarily start out that way: when they established themselves at the Cape, the Dutch expected to assimilate a few Khoekhoen into their society, as evidenced by Commander Jan van Riebeeck’s adoption of Eva, a girl who converted to Christianity. Even so, the Dutch were aggressive against Khoekhoe polities. Seizing cattle and land, the settlement provoked the First Khoekhoe-Dutch War (1659 – 60), in which Eva served as a mediator and translator. As a diplomat, Eva was influential and she married a VOC employee, a doctor. Yet the Khoekhoen as a whole were considered a problem: van Riebeeck asked the company for permission to enslave them. The VOC refused, still hoping to keep its presence at the Cape light and relatively peaceful. After the war, it attempted to separate their settlement from Khoekhoe territory with a thorny hedge. The Khoekhoen living closest to the settlement were displaced and became impoverished of stock.11 The Second Khoekhoe-Dutch War (1673 –77) brought more groups under Dutch sway. For Eva, the experience as an interlocutor ended badly, in alcoholism and early death. For the Khoekhoen as a whole, the situation worsened. As a pastoral society with small populations and without political unity, they were vulnerable to political and economic collapse. The pattern repeated itself in Dutch relations with Khoekhoe groups as they progressed inland. Even as the Dutch sought allies among more distant Khoekhoe groups, they inexorably undermined their wealth in stock, their hold on the land, and their political structures. VOC influence grew further as Khoekhoe groups feuded with one another. Individuals attempting recovery—becoming laborers for the Dutch— only made themselves dependent, becoming near-slaves. The process happened rapidly, beginning before conquest had become an explicit goal among the Dutch. As the independent Khoekhoen collapsed, Dutch attitudes about them became thoroughly derogatory, contradicting van Riebeeck’s original wish

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for some assimilation. Their language, economy, daily lives, sexual practices, and bodies were all perceived as strange and repulsive, and the Khoekhoen came to epitomize “otherness” for Europeans. Particularly powerful was the perception of their “idleness.” The South African writer J. M. Coetzee terms this the Discourse of the Cape. While the Dutch developed a racist discourse about the Khoekhoen, they also seemingly overlooked their natural knowledge. This is especially striking compared with their interactions in other places. One wonders whether the exceptionally racist attitude can explain the lack of contact around plants and animals at the Cape. Did Europeans not have interest in what the Khoekhoen knew because they considered them to be inferior beings with inferior knowledge? Could the interest of the Dutch in other knowledges, so evident in South and East Asia, not survive in the society they found most savage? On closer inspection, despite the violence and prejudice that increasingly defined the Dutch-Khoekhoe encounter, we do see early moments of conversation. In those first decades at the Cape, both the Dutch and the Khoekhoen had vernacular ways of knowing, and they connected, lightly and briefly, around things in nature. An array of forces worked against more extensive interchange. Then the connection was dropped, and the story that it had ever existed was forgotten. The explanation for the disappearance of these fragile links lies in the workings of the networks.12 The First European Birding at the Cape Several factors distinguished natural knowledge at the Cape from what the Dutch encountered in Asia. Unlike in Asia, where the Dutch encountered rich horticultural traditions, the botany of the Cape remained undomesticated. The Khoekhoen were pastoralists who did not cultivate, although they did forage for plant food and had medicinal herb craft. Furthermore, unlike many Asians, Khoekhoe knowledge was strictly oral. This made it harder for the Dutch to learn from them. The Khoekhoen did tell the Dutch which local plants were edible, and the newcomers then added wild asparagus to their diet, for example. A leading Dutch expert on the Khoekhoen who arrived at the Cape in 1684 praised their plant knowledge. But they were not agriculturalists, and the laborers in the company gardens were taken from Madagascar, Asia, or other parts of Africa. The Dutch and Khoekhoen therefore had only narrow grounds for exchanging plant knowledge.13

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Birds at the Cape of Good Hope attracted nothing like the attention given to plants, but a few works describe what could be seen at the Cape in the seventeenth century. In 1652, the year of the foundation of the VOC settlement, Jacobus Hondius, published a book summarizing what had been learned about the Cape, including a list of about thirty-five flying creatures—including horseflies—with their Dutch generic names. This and subsequent publications referred to birds with Dutch names for partridges, quails, and larks. Hondius’s work list is a simple inventory, with only a few comments about hunting penguins, gathering their eggs, and the gustatory quality of both. He cannot be said to have “discovered” new species for European audiences, because his concept of type was broad and he did not differentiate Afrotropical birds from related Palearctic ones. Larks were larks, all over the world.14 Writing about nature typically involved both observation and reference to classical writers. Much of the report by the Danish traveler Frederig Andersen Bolling, who stopped at the Cape in 1670, summarized what experts had said about ostriches, including biblical references. He was particularly interested in the strangest birds to his eyes, ostriches and penguins, and provided illustrations of them. These are not scientific illustrations: one bird is recognizable as a generic penguin, but not as the species that lives on the south coast of Africa (fig. 19). Some of what Bolling said was incredible, but he also tested some assertions. Having heard that ostriches eat iron, he threw pieces of iron at them; they didn’t eat it. Staying less than a month, he learned only a little and did not talk to the inhabitants of the Cape.15 A qualified doctor in the service of the VOC, Willem ten Rhijne, did discuss birds with the Khoekhoen, and the record reveals how the manner of communication shaped what newcomers learned from the indigenes. Ten Rhijne’s story provided the first connection between the natural history of southern Africa and that of other places occupied by the VOC. Breaking a journey to Japan in 1673, he lingered at the Cape. The record of his stay, published in Latin in 1686, became influential for its description of the Khoekhoen. Ten Rhijne also reported on the birds he saw, named in Latin polynomial terms or in modern European languages. His work provides rare evidence of the history of contact because, in his account of Khoekhoe words (the first published), he mentions some bird names: “Thus all birds whatsoever are called courcour, with the addition of particular names, e.g. camma courcour, an aquatic bird, be it duck, or diver, or albatross, etc.; sickom courcour, a young bird, sickom being, as often with them, a corruption

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19. Penguins, as seen in 1670. Bolling, Oost-Indiske Reise-Bog, 27.

of a Dutch word; grotom (a similar corruption) courcour, a big bird, by which however, they generally mean the ostrich.”16 Thanks to the work of the anthropologist Isaac Schapera and the historical linguist Hans den Besten, it is possible to linger over these words. Dutch origins are evident in the word grotom, from the Dutch groot. Courcour was actually an onomatopoeic term for “chicken,” a species introduced by the Dutch. Sickom, a common word among Khoekhoen at the Cape, was used to denote “useless” or “bad”; the influence of the Dutch ziek, meaning “sick,” is probable. Camma comes from a Khoekhoe word for “water,” but its form is corrupted. Notably, there is no record of words based on ani, a Khoekhoe term for “bird.” Can this hash of etymology tell us anything about Khoekhoe bird knowledge? Schapera doubts its validity. But den Besten considers ten Rhijne’s vocabulary good evidence for the existence of a Khoekhoe Cape pidgin, a language they developed to make themselves understood

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to foreigners. His explanation suggests why Khoekhoe knowledge might be absent, even in the text that purports to convey it. If Khoekhoen were simplifying their communication for Dutch consumption as early as the 1670s, the depth and authenticity of any exchange would have been compromised. Conditions of communication in a colonial society structured relations among birders.17 The Lost Records of Nama-Dutch Birding By the 1670s, attitudes among Europeans toward the indigenous people at the Cape were already more derogatory than they had been two decades earlier when the settlement was founded. But Europeans were still developing the category of “Hottentots,” and the VOC aspired to good relations with a powerful kingdom inland beyond its sphere. By traveling north, they hoped to make contact with the Mutapa state of Zimbabwe, “Mwenemutapa,” the El Dorado of seventeenth-century Africa. Zimbabwe was a long way from the Cape, but the Dutch heard about a powerful, rich, and physically imposing people to the north of them, the Namaqua (now known as the Nama). They intrigued the Dutch, not least because they would know the way to Mutapa. Two early expeditions made contact with the Nama, the closest of whom lived more than a hundred miles from the Cape. Dutch expeditions met them in 1661, in 1663 – 64, and in 1682. From the first reports, the Dutch gathered that these people were similar to their Khoekhoe neighbors at the Cape but, because not yet conquered, they remained distinct from what was already being seen as a lower social order. The possibility that the Nama would be allies and conduits to wealth increased interest in them.18 A further expedition to Namaqualand, in 1685, produced illustrations and short descriptions of flora and fauna with a good amount reference to the Nama’s own natural knowledge. This is intriguing because the encounter has been largely forgotten as an example of the scientific interests of VOC employees. The records have a lot of characters with Germanic names and none with Khoesan ones, but it is critical evidence of Dutch consultation with the Khoekhoen about their natural knowledge. The story begins with Andreas Cleyer, a medical specialist with the VOC in Batavia (now Jakarta) in Indonesia. As head of the “medical shop,” Cleyer was yet another VOC official who collected and published on Asian medical knowledge. Being a medic, he was very interested in plants and in

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using the post at the Cape to acclimatize plants for dissemination to Holland, and in supplying medicines to Batavia. In 1682 he sponsored a company servant working in Batavia, the apothecary, gardener, and illustrator Hendrik Claudius, to move to the settlement at the Cape. There, Claudius began working directly for the VOC.19 The year 1685 was a turning point for Claudius, with the arrival of important travelers at the Cape and his own participation in an expedition. One traveler was perhaps the VOC’s most distinguished natural historian: Hendrik van Rheede, author of the Hortus Malabaricus. Van Rheede arrived in April as an inspector working on behalf of company directors. He was the highest-ranking person at the Cape. With his interest in botany, he soon met Claudius. A month later, the settlement welcomed a French Jesuit, Father Guy Tachard. Here is what he wrote about Claudius and his fortuitous connection with van Rheede: We made acquaintance with a young Physician of Breslau in Silesia, called Mr. Claudius whom the Dutch for his great Capacity entertain at the Cape. Seeing he hath already travelled into China and Japan, where it was his Custom to observe every thing and that he designs and paints Animals and plants perfectly well, the Hollanders have stop’d him there to assist them in making their new discoveries of Countries, and labour about the natural History of Africa. He hath compleated two great Volumes in Folio of several Plants, which are drawn to the life, and he hath made a Collection of all the kinds which he hath pasted to the Leaves of another Volume. Without doubt the Heer van Rheeden who had always the Books by him at home, and who shewed them to us, has a design to give the publick shortly an Hortus Africus after his Hortus Malabaricus.20 Van Rheede praised the Cape gardens extensively and during his stay also traveled beyond the settlement to assess the forests, flora, and fauna and their potential as resources. Although commercial possibilities were the chief interest of the VOC, van Rheede also sought better information about the interior and authorized the commander at the Cape, Simon van der Stel, to go on a longer expedition to Namaqualand. Van der Stel led a party in August 1685 to travel farther in the north than the Dutch had ever been, with a mandate to search out sources of copper. Claudius accompanied him. The expedition, lasting into 1686, was the first extended European explo-

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ration of the Cape hinterland and reached the Copper Mountains and the Nama people more than five hundred miles north of the Cape.21 On this expedition an unidentified artist whom we take to be Claudius painted some plants and animals of Namaqualand. In accordance with his patrons’ interests, he depicted many more plants than animals. Until now they have been unconnected to the history of birding. The pictures do not convey what is distinctive about species; how could they? Species had not yet been defined. No natural historian had ever positioned these birds on the tree of life. Without that retroactive scientific legitimization, we are without the foundation to say what Claudius was “really” drawing, if imperfectly. But the paintings and captions are worth looking at. As examples we take two birds, identified as thoucocos and gambri. Living at the Cape settlement, Claudius would have known local starlings. The red-winged starling (Onychognathus morio) is common in Cape Town today. But on this image of the gambri (fig. 20), the artist deliberately

20. Gambri. Attributed to H. Claudius. TCD MS 984 folio 92r. Courtesy of the Board of Trinity College, Dublin.

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21. Thoucocos. Attributed to H. Claudius. TCD MS 984 folio 76r. Courtesy of the Board of Trinity College, Dublin.

drew an orange eye, which has become an important marker of difference within the genus. The red-winged starlings of Cape Town have darker eyes and the orange eye is characteristic of the type that lives in Namaqualand, the pale-winged starling (O. nabouroup). Perhaps Claudius was finely observing what birds looked like, or perhaps someone pointed it out to him. Thoucocos is harder to identify (fig. 21). This drawing may have been inspired by a pied barbet (Tricholaema leucomelas). Its bill is different and the plumage varies, but it bears a resemblance to the species, apart from the lack of a red dot between the eyes. Perhaps the artist saw a juvenile, which has no red dot. But conformity to the definition of the species known by ornithology today is not the point. Claudius was getting to know birds previously unknown to Europeans, and he did so with the help of African birders.22 As an apothecary, Claudius knew his plants, so for them he often used Latin names such as “a kind of Euphorbium.” But other species must have been very strange to him because he called them only “plant,” “herb,”

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“root,” or “bulb.” For animals he used no Latin names but broad Dutch on the level of classes and orders: “bird,” “hare,” “fish,” “snake,” “lizard.” Sometimes he qualified these with Dutch generic terms such as “dove” and “starling.” Specific names are not always present: often the author wrote only “this plant” or “this bird.” What is remarkable for southern African natural history is that the Namaqualand captions include, by my count, fifty-five vernacular names in five languages. The expeditions to Namaqualand included Khoekhoe servants, and it is fair to assume that these colonial laborers served as interlocutors. In communicating Khoekhoe names, Claudius used phrases such as “This snake is called Thoumquete by the Namaquas.” This phraseology, reporting what a species was “called,” did not amount to inscribing a name for further use. But neither did he replace the vernacular names with a foreign one. His citation of the vernacular is consistent with the work of his superiors— Cleyer in Batavia and van Rheede in Malabar. This is not to say that Claudius’s engagement with non-European knowledge was as extensive as van Rheede’s collaboration with South Asian plant specialists and Cleyer’s consultation with Chinese medicine. But it is safe to say that Claudius went out of his way to consult the Nama because he and his superiors found some value in what they knew. (For a list of all Nama bird names in the record, see appendix 1.)23 Soon after this expedition, Claudius left the Cape. The reason was Father Tachard. In 1688 he published the book about his voyages including the enthusiastic description about Claudius excerpted above. That book also featured illustrations, a map, and other information attributed to him. Upon reading the book, van der Stel was “perturbed” at the artist’s loquaciousness and reported to the VOC that he had taken steps to prevent further communications with outsiders. He did not say what those steps were, but Claudius seems to have been transferred from the Cape. Records of the expedition were submitted to the VOC but appear to have soon been removed from company archives.24 “The publication of books on the medicine and natural history of East Asia was the outcome of countless human relationships,” Cook tells us, and breakdowns in these relationships can explain why some work was never published. The Cape was a small outpost with few redundancies, and the loss of connections was devastating to the further circulation of what was learned in Namaqualand. Van Rheede died in 1691, even before publication of the final volumes of the Hortus Malabaricus. His associate in Amsterdam, Jan Commelin, died in 1692 while attempting to finish it, and the southern

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African work was abandoned. Claudius’s further history is unknown, except that his widow was reported as living in Amsterdam in 1697. His Namaqualand birds had no further resonance in European natural history. These animals were delivered to taxonomists in Europe through the descriptions of later travelers, as if Claudius had never seen them, as if the Nama had never shown him.25 The journey itself became widely known through virtual happenstance: an abridged version of the journal was published much later, in 1726, within a multi-volume work on the East Indies by François Valentyn (or Valentijn), a clergyman who had acquired the manuscript from van der Stel’s son. Valentyn’s account offered little description of natural history and included no illustrations of plants or animals. Other folios of watercolors by Claudius of the flora and fauna of the Cape made their way to natural history repositories, but they preserved no Nama names. And so, the interactions in Namaqualand were unknowable for centuries, until a second copy of the expedition journal, with seventy-one pages of captioned illustrations, was discovered in 1922 at Trinity College, Dublin.26 As for Khoesan bird knowledge, the ornithologist François Levaillant would engage it later in the eighteenth century (see chapter 3). Nineteenthand twentieth-century ethnographers who produced studies of ethnozoology would gather some information on birds. But the ornithologists of that period did not engage what the Khoekhoen knew. Vernacular knowledge had real value to them because they had a better chance of finding the birds they were looking if they could ask about them. But by the nineteenth century Khoekhoen were largely assimilated into Cape colonial society as a laboring class speaking the local dialect of Dutch. As their languages were spoken less, their animal names lost currency. The moment for contact between European and Khoesan birders was passing.27 The restoration of the Namaqualand expedition to the history of birding provides an invitation to continue searching out the history of a heterogeneous network in Africa. The captions demonstrate there was a connection between vernacular birders of different continents. Claudius’s Nama hosts were there, available to consult about the plants, snakes, mammals, and birds he did not know. Their understanding of types would have influenced what he found to draw, perhaps whether he made an eye red or orange. Because these connections were dropped, we can only discuss them broadly. But we can appreciate that they were possible even as the Khoe-

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khoen spoke pidgin to the Dutch and the Dutch were erecting all manner of prejudice against the Khoekhoen. What we can know about the interchange turns attention to the further history of the network. The very fact that connections were lost—as opposed to never made—provides reason to continue searching for the forces that distanced birders from each other.

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chapter 3

Ornithology Comes to Southern Africa, 1700–1900

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hen Europeans and Africans met around birds, the way they knew nature mattered to the interaction. In the case of Claudius and Nama birders, all parties had come from vernacular traditions and the interactions were direct, if soon forgotten. When the new knowledge of birds, ornithology, came to Africa, Europeans’ relationship with African knowledge would change. In Europe, too, scientists were distinguished from lay experts, but in Africa, ornithologists also held an imperial and racial identity. The leading partisans of European empire would include ornithologists, soldiers and governors who conquered people and occupied territory. Their knowledge had its own imperial character: it would achieve global precedence over local vernacular expertise and it would develop the ability and claim the authority to place the birds of Africa in a worldwide order. Newcomers to the study of African birds would turn to European ornithologists, not vernacular birders, to learn the species. Ultimately, this systematic science was among the bundles of achievements that would nourish imperial culture and white racial identity. Compared with their relations in Europe, in Africa, the difference between ornithologists and vernacular birders was compounded by empire. As later chapters will address, imperial and racial status broke along the same line as scientific status. This became most clear in the twentieth century. Here, in this chapter, we explore the inscription of that line in earlier centuries, when empire in Africa was limited and scientific status was still in formation. In this phase, we can see the initial insertion of distance be-

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tween ornithologists who were European and vernacular birders who were African. We see that beyond the separations dictated by empire or race, this new way of knowing changed the way people interacted as birders. To demonstrate this, I continue the discussion of the Cape Colony, now in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to probe what was distinctive about the new tradition. Three aspects of ornithology — scientific naming, species description, and specimen collecting — stand out sharply from vernacular practices. One bird, the white-browed sparrow-weaver (Plocepasser mahali), a bird distinguished by its Tswana name, “mogale,” for its undaunted character, will lead us through the history of the widening fissure. The Emergence of Classificatory Ornithology in the Eighteenth Century In the seventeenth century, knowledge about nature both flourished and changed in Europe. An early, influential landmark publication was John Ray’s 1676 book, known by its shortened title: Ornithology. Ray and his coauthor Francis Willughby (who predeceased publication) developed a new definition of species based on breeding communities and discarded Aristotle’s classification system, which was based on habitat, opting for one more directly based on physical form. A class of waterfowl were, for example, separated from terrestrial birds, but distinguished according to their bills or feet. As fish-eaters with cloven feet, herons were further divided into nineteen kinds. He also followed a new method of observation that led him to break with the tradition of repeating and commenting on what had been said by classical experts. Instead, Ray decided to describe birds in numbered entries by detailing their bodies and songs precisely. Focused on the birds, he therefore “wholly omitted what we find in other authors concerning Homonymous and Synonymous words, or the divers names of Birds, Hieroglyphics, Emblems, Morals, Fables, Presages, or ought else appertaining to Divinity, Ethics, Grammar, or any sort of Humane Learning: And present him only with what properly relates to their Natural History.” (All the same, he gave hunting and falconry tips.) With his assertions about methods and content, Ray distinguished himself from both the humanistic tradition of mastering texts, as in Aldrovandi, and from the vernacular interest in how birds mattered to human society. Such a movement toward observation marks the transition from a “scientific culture” to scientific practice among those who

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read and wrote texts. The historian of ornithology Tim Birkhead considers that Ray’s declaration marked a landmark, the beginning of disciplinary science, when it came to birds.1 Ornithology was published in the decade before Claudius made images and took names of birds in Namaqualand. If Ray’s work was a harbinger of new ways of knowing birds, the old ones were still robust, even in Europe. That the transition to biological practices was incremental is evidenced in an influential book on the Cape by Peter Kolb, published originally in German in 1719 and in English in 1731. That Kolb also wrote about nature is often forgotten. Actually, the first part of Kolb’s work was a natural history of the Cape, but it did not represent recent developments in the genre. Kolb wrote his treatise as a letter and organized his discussion of nature around broad categories in popular use, plants and animals were separated out as terrestrial, birds, marine, snakes, and insects. On birds, he quoted Willughby and Ray, but he did not follow Ray’s classification or his method.2 He began the section on birds with a lament over having lost his notes and announced his intention to present the types alphabetically, not by classes as Ray did. As was customary in many vernacular systems, he included bats among the birds. Unlike Ray, he did not clearly differentiate between closely related types: all woodpeckers, for example, were lumped together. Rookmaaker characterizes Kolb’s descriptions as “so general and meaningless that one cannot reach any conclusions.” Kolb’s commentary on the titmouse reveals his disinclinations: “At the Cape are seen so many Sorts of Titmouses, that it would be a very tedious Work to describe them all.” Kolb did offer broad descriptions of what the birds did, what their songs were, and what they ate, but he did not care to enumerate physical differences between them. Neither did he follow Ray’s injunction to exclude human considerations. On the contrary, his greatest interests hinged on the ways “Hottentots” or “Cape-Europeans” related to birds.3 Visual evidence, in the form of a plate depicting seven birds, also demonstrates that Kolb’s method was not the observation of types recommended by Ray (fig. 22). Although they are drawn with differing levels of expertise, the images usefully convey the physical character of birds known in English as a sugarbird, a korhaan (bustard), a crowned-crane, a flamingo (either the greater or the lesser), a spoonbill, an ostrich, and a widowbird. Perhaps the quality varies because they were borrowed from different sources: a comparison with the plates in Willughby and Ornithology shows that Ray’s publication was the source for some, but not all, of the images. This sort of

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22. “Seven African Birds.” Kolb, Present State, pl. 7.

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borrowing was not unusual and was not bad practice; what matters about the images is not that they were unoriginal but what they reveal about Kolb’s source of knowledge. For example, the image numbered “1” looks more like the Cape sugarbird than any other, and it is eating from flowers. But, referring to that bird in the text, Kolb named it a “Bienen-fresser” (bee-eater) and described it as eating insects, which nectar-eating sugarbirds do not do. The two birds are not closely related, but the confusion might arise from their scimitar-shaped bills. The problem is compounded because Kolb further recounted this same “Bienen-fresser” guiding people to bees’ nests, which is the exclusive activity of a third bird, the honeyguide (fig. 1). This conflation of three birds that looked and acted differently would have come from misunderstanding what he learned from texts or testimony, not from his own observation. The story of the seventh illustration, of a type now known in English as the widowbird, is similar. It was closely copied from Ray, who described it as an “Indian sparrow.” In fact, the bird does not live in the part of South Africa that he visited, and Kolb could not have seen it. Moreover, his text makes no mention of the showy tails highlighted by the illustration. Kolb’s use of Ray suggests that the new ornithology made inroads only gradually.4 Kolb was a better ethnographer than a naturalist, and his reporting on the Khoekhoen and the Dutch has become fundamental historical evidence about the Cape Colony under the VOC. His work challenges degrading depictions of the Khoekhoen. By vigorously refuting earlier writings, Kolb’s became the authoritative ethnography of the Cape, influencing JeanJacques Rousseau, who quoted him in his celebration of the Khoekhoen as noble savages. Rousseau, in turn, was a great influence on the Surinam-born Frenchman François Levaillant, who is generally considered South Africa’s first ornithologist.5 François Levaillant wrote a lot about what he observed about both people and birds in the narratives of his travels as well as in Les oiseaux d’Afrique, published in six volumes between 1796 and 1813. With Kolb, Levaillant stands out among European writers for his empathetic descriptions of the Khoekhoen. Uniquely, in a culture of extreme prejudice, he emphasized his companionable and romantic relations with them. He named two bird species for Khoekhoe friends—names that are retained in scientific nomenclature as Apaloderma narina and Chrysococcyx klaas and in English as Narina trogon and Klaas’s cuckoo. He also named a bird for Rousseau.6

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Levaillant has been controversial. Because of his sympathies with the Khoekhoen, his reputation as an ethnographer has risen and fallen with the politics of white South Africa. For various reasons, his reputation in ornithology has also been mixed. By the mid-nineteenth century it was recognized that he was not always a reliable authority on birdlife: of the threehundred-odd birds in the series, as many as twenty do not correspond with any known species and some may have been fabricated by a taxidermist. Some species were residents of Europe or the Americas rather than Africa, and Levaillant was not always correct about the location. But even before then, he had become archaic in ornithology. This had to do with his position on classification, not with his reliability about species or his attitude toward the Khoekhoen. Unlike Ray, Levaillant did not order the birds into a hierarchy: Les oiseaux d’Afrique simply listed the birds by number. This technique staked his position in the controversies in natural history at the end of the eighteenth century.7 Levaillant was a follower of the French ornithologist George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, author of L’histoire naturelle (1749 – 89), who was resistant to elaborate classifications that grouped species with similar characteristics into hierarchical relationships, the affinities being closest within a genus and becoming progressively less obvious (and more debatable) at higher levels. Buffon was vehement that an “artificial” classification system—his term for a system based on a few select characteristics—was an inappropriate way to convey the richness and complexity of nature. He once used an African bird, the secretarybird, to make this point: “To what class can one relate a being in which are united characteristics so opposite? Here is another proof that nature, free in the midst of limits that we think prescribe it, is richer than our ideas and vaster than our systems.” Buffon made a reputation through lively writing and detailed description. Yet the artificial systems he eschewed were workable. For example, Linnaeus’s classification of plants around reproductive features only was an artificial system that was gaining widespread acceptance.8 As is well known, the standard system became the one by Linnaeus that required zoologists to conceive of birds as members of the kingdom Animalia, the phylum Chordata, and the class Aves, but Linnaeus was not an expert ornithologist. The sixth edition of the Systema Naturae (1748) divided all the birds of the world into only six orders and fifty-one genera. Systematizers with a greater knowledge of birds who tried to displace this arrangement included Michel Adanson, who also had a West African connection,

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having published a general natural history of Senegal in 1757. The most developed taxonomy for birds was by Mathurin-Jacques Brisson. His Ornithologie, which appeared in 1760, was extremely long—six volumes—with a greater emphasis on classification than on the character of the living bird. His work raised the number of orders to twenty-six, with 115 genera, and Linnaeus took on many of these in his twelfth edition (1766). These included African birds: the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae had featured only twenty-two Afrotropical birds, while the twelfth included fifty-two, with forty-eight taken from Brisson.9 Although Brisson was the better ornithologist, what recommended Linnaeus’s work was binomial nomenclature, the innovation that each species could be known by two unique names. Linnaeus’s system defined the task of ornithologists as taking all members of the class Aves and determining their positions in the lower hierarchy of orders, families, genera, and species. The momentum toward the system is evident in the 1788 foundation of the Linnaean Society of London. Even among his followers, Linnaeus’s system was sometimes disputed: British naturalists criticized his principles and flirted with other systems. His innovation of every species having a unique designator of genus and species, however, was secure.10 Ray had envisioned new observation of birds, rather than a catalog of what was important and known about them to people, which immediately differentiated natural history from vernacular knowledge. He also promoted attention to classification, which had great implications for the encounter between ornithologists and vernacular birders. The work of classification required certain devices and registers to order the birds. Hierarchical categories, descriptions of physical types, specimen collecting, and recognized names made the birds of the world legible without the narrative detail favored by non-Linnaean naturalists. Formulaic and purposely stripped of human associations, the facts of ornithology provide limited evidence about context. However, ornithological facts collected in Africa do preserve some information about the nature of the collaboration with vernacular birders. Parsing facts in the form of species names, descriptions, and specimens reveals some of what may seem lost: the dynamics of the earliest connection between European ornithology and African vernacular bird knowledge. Binomials An untapped form of evidence—binomial names—reveals something about the politics of connection. The history of scientific names is im-

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portant to ornithologists, who keep careful track of them to establish priority, evaluate authoritative descriptions, and legitimate species. The analysis within the field of history differs through a greater attention to context and the changing forces associated with new naming practices. How and when vernacular names were recorded and taken up by European birders in Africa provides evidence of interaction, one structured by the asymmetries of empire, the exigencies of scientific networks, and unpredictable contingencies, but interaction all the same.11 By the end of the eighteenth century, relations among birders in southern Africa differed significantly from what they had been a hundred years earlier: the Khoekhoen had become a subservient creolized laboring class who spoke Dutch. The challenge to the expanding Cape Colony came from agropastoral people speaking Bantu languages, including Sotho-Tswana, Zulu, and Xhosa. As Africans, they were subject to the prejudices of the Atlantic World, but in populous and robust societies blocking expansion by Cape, they were not relegated to the status of the conquered and assimilated Khoekhoen. The advent of British rule over the Cape Colony, after 1806, put this hierarchical frontier-facing society under a modern state and connected it to European science. The birds of southern Africa became a field of research.12 A record of southern African ornithology through the mid-nineteenth century is preserved in Birds of South Africa (1867) by Edgar Layard, the curator of the South African Museum from 1855 to 1872. Organized according to the classification system developed at the British Museum, it is the earliest synthesis of the field in Africa. The binomials offer some sense of a hybrid colonial culture. In entries for the 702 species listed by Layard, he used thirteen names that probably originated in Africa among speakers of West African, Malagasy, Khoesan, Germanic, and Bantu languages (see appendix 2). One of the species names, for the white-browed sparrow-weaver in the genus Plocepasser, was “mahali.” This was derived from “mogale,” the Tswana word meaning “brave hero” that served as a vernacular name for the bird.13 From one perspective, the existence of even thirteen names is unexpected. Linnaeus explicitly banned all names drawn from any languages other than Latin or Greek. He ruled that those nonclassical languages were “barbarous” and “should be considered as primitive ones because to the learned men, are their languages unknown.” The injunction against barbarous names has been described as a devaluation or a form of discipline against local knowledge. Londa Schiebinger further associates it with the

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imperial project of Europe, arguing that Linnaean systematics should be seen as “a politics of naming that accompanied and promoted European global expansion and colonization.” Thus she calls it “linguistic imperialism.” Schiebinger suggests that a possible alternative to linguistic imperialism existed in the system devised by Michel Adanson. For example, Adanson’s borrowing from the Senegalese vernacular is recalled in “gonolek,” which is now the common English and French name for some bushshrikes. Yet Schiebinger remains tentative and suggestive in saying what might have happened: “Had Adanson’s system been chosen for the starting point of botanical nomenclature, nomenclature today might be more inclusive of the world’s languages.”14 Perhaps other systems would have been more inclusive, but this one was not as exclusive as even Linnaeus claimed. He was sometimes willing to break his own injunction. Because of his great respect for van Rheede’s work, he bestowed fifty-seven scientific names, both specific and generic, that originated in the Malayalam and had been published in Hortus Malabaricus. In the entries on the plants he cited many others. In a study of his naming of Chinese plants, Alexandra Cook sees a similar flexibility with Linnaeus’s own strictures. Of 286 economically important genera, 11 percent of the names have non-European roots. Some parameters evidently allowed vernacular influences to enter scientific nomenclature. An examination of southern African names that defied the rules can tell about the politics that structured scientific, and by extension European, uptake of others’ knowledge.15 A good number of the derivations from the vernacular in Layard’s book originated with Levaillant, the Rousseauian. He extolled the value of vernacular names, claimed to honor them as far as was possible, and urged others to do so. “I try to retain, as far as possible, the names which the animals I am describing have been given in their land of origin, or at least, I will mention these names even if I substitute others that seem to me to be more suitable to our own language. . . . So I invite travellers to retain, as far as possible, the names given in foreign lands to the animals they bring back home.” Levaillant decried scholars who “place infinite value on seeming to be ignorant of these original names in their own language and are determined to know only those things described in Greek or Latin terms. One sees this arrogance pursued to the point where there is an assumption of the right to reprove those who, in order to make themselves better understood, have dared to use a name consecrated by centuries of tradition rather than to employ a designation recently introduced.”16

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In appendix 3, in which names derived by Levaillant from southern African vernaculars are listed, we see that this passage rather overstates his commitment. A lot of the names he learned from the Khoekhoen are actually Dutch—such as “môlenar”—which indicates they may have been using a pidgin with him as their predecessors had done at the Cape. Of the three hundred species in Les oiseaux d’Afrique, we find only thirteen names with acknowledged roots in southern African vernacular languages. Far more of Levaillant’s names were devised from descriptive terms in his native French. To eagles, a conspicuous family of large birds, he gave only French names, including the “bateleur,” which has been taken up as the English common name. Perhaps the poetry of naming an aerobatic eagle after a juggler was too great for Levaillant to resist. Yet consider that he even felt empowered to rename his paramour, because: “I found her name difficult to be pronounced, disagreeable to the ear, and very insignificant according to my ideas; I therefore gave her a new one, and called her Narina, which in the Hottentot language, signifies a flower. I begged her to retain this pretty name . . . in remembrance of my visit to her country, and as a testimony of my love.” In short, his practice was less respectful of “original” names than he had claimed.17 The power to name is seductive, but Levaillant’s use of Khoesan names may also have been strategic. By the time he published, Latin and Greek were markers of the artificial binomial system that he, as a follower of Buffon, deplored. If his call to preserve vernacular names was a rallying cry against systematists, his use of French served the same purpose. Unfortunately for Buffon and Levaillant, their system lost out to that of Linnaeus: they did not become obligatory in scientific networks. Buffon’s and Levaillant’s names took indirect routes into posterity, only if a later ornithologist working in the Linnaean system chose to endorse them. When this happened, the systematist who first proposed it in binomial form was commemorated as the species authority. The non-Linnaean Levaillant dismissed scientific naming as arrogance, but it was more than that: it also grew out of concerns about essences. This philosophical debate among learned men in Europe surfaced in a few discussions of the names for African birds. Commenting on the naming of the secretary-bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), Anders Sparrman asserted that it was possible to capture the essence of a species in a name: “The Hottentots give it a name most suitable to its nature, viz. as translated into Dutch slangen-vreeter, (or serpent-eater;) and, in fact it is for the purpose

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of confining within due bounds the race of serpents, which in Africa is very extensive, that nature has principally defined this bird.” Similarly, by giving the greater honeyguide the species name of indicator, Sparrman chose a name suitable to its nature.18 The eminent naturalist of the early nineteenth century, William Burchell similarly defended scientific naming as discernment of essence: “He who extends his view beyond the narrow field of nomenclature, beholds a boundless expanse, the exploring of which is worthy of the philosopher and of the best talents of a reasonable being.” His bird names often demonstrate the principle that names should encapsulate the essence of a species in a classical language: Trigonoceps occipitalis (commemorating the birds’ head), and Vanellus armatus (referring to the bird’s call, which sounded like the clinks of a blacksmith forging armor). His use of a Tswana vernacular name—kgori—in Otis kori for the bustard was exceptional, but it would be unwarranted to use his naming practices as evidence that Burchell, who was supremely curious and observant about people and nature, was uninterested in and ignorant of vernacular knowledge. Vernacular languages were not able to convey essences to a global community.19 Conceiving of naming as discernment signals Sparrman’s and Burchell’s concern with a name’s reception rather than its origins. Here lies the explanation for the southern African vernacular names in Layard’s scientific nomenclature. At first it seems paradoxical: Linnaeus banned vernacular names, yet one of his followers, Sir Andrew Smith, took them up because they would be advantageously received. Smith was a medic in the British army posted to South Africa in the 1820s and 1830s. He was more interested in birds than earlier naturalists at the Cape had been and brought many to the attention of ornithologists in Europe. His “discoveries” are collected and pictured in his opus, Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa (1838 – 49). Today he is the authority for nearly eighty species of Afrotropical birds, a good proportion with vernacular-derived names. His references to vernacular names may seem surprising. He was a fellow of the Linnaean Society and an officer in the British military. Was he humbly respecting centuries of tradition, as Levaillant claimed to be? Did his use of the vernacular constitute an alternative to linguistic imperialism, as Schiebinger suggested of Adanson? Actually, his names had nothing to do with any assessment of the quality of vernacular knowledge but revolved around his concern about transmission through scientific networks.20

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We can track his evolving interest in vernacular knowledge. In Cape Town, he became the first superintendent of the South African Museum and produced a questionnaire requesting zoological information from the colony’s inhabitants, “for the local knowledge they possess will enable them to furnish information that must lead to results that all the zeal and activity of a Traveller, or temporary Resident, could never effect.” Ranking high among what Smith hoped to learn were: “Its colonial name or names; The meaning of such name or names; Its local or provincial names; The meaning of such.” Knowing vernacular names allowed an ornithologist to ask about them, and Smith was attuned to this practical advantage. In this period he published Afrikaans and English names for about twenty species but gave none from Khoesan languages, which were becoming rare in the colony, or from Bantu languages, which were spoken beyond its boundaries. This changed after 1834 –36, when he led the Expedition for Exploring Central Africa to Tswana territory in what is now the North West Province of South Africa. His publications, journal, and diary give little of a sense of how he interacted with the region’s inhabitants around birds, but the record left in his scientific names establishes that he did.21 Drawing on unpublished work by the ornithologist Cuthbert John ( Jack) Skead, seventeen of Smith’s bird names with sure or probable origins in names used by speakers of Bantu Sotho-Tswana languages are listed in appendix 4. Nearly all of the vernacular influences came from the 1834 –36 expedition to Tswana territory. Smith used vernacular names for more than two dozen birds, mammals, and most famously for the genus of fish Tilapia, a term now used around the world. The striking fact of Smith’s using these names is that he rarely translated them or acknowledged their origins. In addition to the names that appear to have been in use, he sometimes named species with Tswana place-names, but he did not indicate which sorts of names were which. He recorded the Tswana meaning of a vernacular-derived term only once, for, litsitsirupa, an onomatopoeic depiction of a thrush scratching the ground. But he did have a general interest in vernacular knowledge. The questionnaire sent out by the South African Museum included a question about whether “any superstitious notions exist relative to” a species. Smith’s biographer, Percival Kirby, averred, “whenever he could he consulted everyone he met with who appeared to be interested in natural history.” A catalog for a museum exhibit gave some illustrative samples of African birdlore, and he corresponded with Charles Darwin about plant knowledge. These

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anecdotes tell us that Smith did absorb vernacular knowledge. They explain how he would have learned the Tswana names, but why he did he use them without attributing or explaining them?22 The reason is, I think, that Smith’s use of vernacular names had more to do with the politics of science in England than those of empire in southern Africa. He wrote in a period of controversy in English systematics. In the early nineteenth century, Europeans traveling to areas previously unknown to them encountered many new species. The great influx of species made the project of giving each a distinctive name according to its essence, as Sparrman and Burchell had hoped to do, impossible. As Gordon McOuat put it, “Simply, naturalists needed new names to handle the bulk.” Not only were essential names limiting, but they were often misleading. Conservatives in influential positions in science faced challenges from proponents of other systems and Linnaean reformers. The reformers argued that names were arbitrary; their value lay in their recognition, not their meaning. The movement was patriotic in its interest in British species and in colloquial names that were in English, and so it included a campaign against Latin and Greek in favor of the vernacular. In defending one way of naming species over another, the parties debated class and refinement as well as nation and authenticity. It was finally settled in 1842 through improved gatekeeping. Hugh Strickland devised a new nomenclatural system, the Strickland Code, that was accepted by the British Academy for the Advancement of Science. Asserting that recognition by scientists made names valid—not accuracy—it stipulated the law of priority: the original name given by the describing authority would have precedence, with an important exception: it was not to extend to authors older than Linnaeus or to non-binomials given by his contemporaries.23 Smith was a terrible writer, but he did speak for himself and through obscure prose signaled that he aligned with those reformers. He recommended avoiding terms that highlighted essential physical characteristics and explained why he chose vernacular names instead. The names given by the Natives to the objects above described, I have adopted as the trivial ones, whenever they would readily admit of such application, under an idea that they are not so calculated to confuse and mislead as those formed with a view to indicate certain assumed peculiarities in the individual objects. . . . Until some form of nomenclature be invented, which is not calculated to confuse and mislead by

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suggesting some such character or appearance in an object, it would perhaps be better to avoid, as much as possible, any reference to such in the name.24 How could Latin mislead? Framing the question in Latour’s terms illuminates the direction of Smith’s concern. Making its way from the colonies, information took the form of what Latour calls “immutable and combinable mobiles.” In theory, these facts should always stand for what the author had intended (hence “immutable”) and could be joined with other data from elsewhere in a comprehensive system (hence “combinable”). A center of calculation, again drawing on Latour, is an institution where data from around the world are combined and made legible within one system of understanding. The invention of classical scientific names was a form of calculation, of combining disparate information into one system. The foundation of the South African Museum notwithstanding, the centers of calculation for southern Africa were in Britain.25 Smith’s problem was that scientific data taken up by the center was not always immutable. As a lingua franca, the classical vocabulary of science helped Linnaean taxonomy make vast amounts of data legible; it allowed scientists to work with facts from the entire world. I believe that it was precisely because of this combinability of classical names that Smith used so many Tswana ones. Through their use, he could avoid problems of misinterpretation. If you did not want future scientists to make bad interpretations about why you chose to name a species after its color, you would prefer a less transparent term. Vernacular descriptions such as mahali were opaque: talatala did not convey “green” to cosmopolitan circles as well as rufescens conveyed “red.” Smith knew the original meaning of these names, but meanings were not important for his further purposes, which is why he used names for places and for birds indiscriminately. He had no reason to tell that “Tilapia” came from the Tswana “tlhapi” for “fish” or that “mahali” meant anything about the bird’s character. Standing for nothing but themselves, his names came closer to being immutable. Tswana names could not mislead because they were ciphers.26 The lesson of Smith’s naming is not that he was “inclusive” of African knowledge or less imperialistic. It is that we must consider nomenclature in the scientific as well as the imperialist context and be cautious from taking it as evidence of an inclusive or exclusionary disposition toward the vernacular knowledge of colonial subjects. Smith gave enough vernacular names

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to demonstrate that he had learned a lot of African knowledge through an engagement with vernacular experts. But learning and using are different things, and he inserted distance between the new ornithological names and their origins. Further distance between vernacular knowledge and ornithology grew as other scientific practices intervened. Descriptions Scientific names referred to species, which required definition. Birders largely agree on what constitutes a bird, although sometimes the category of “flying creatures” has included bats. People often agree on distinctions between species, but the formal hierarchies of taxonomies were unique to biological disciplines. Vernacular birders put low value on distinguishing an order from a family and a family from a genus, and had little to add to that pursuit. When species description became the most important of ornithological activities, vernacular influences receded.27 Ornithological writing might include narratives of expeditions. They would describe locations where the specimens were collected. Some observations of breeding, song, habitat, diet, or movement might be mentioned. But this was optional. Ornithological writing featured many notices of new species, conveyed through type descriptions. A historian of ornithology, Kristin Johnson, writes that “type descriptions assumed a characteristic format, short and succinct. New species appeared in Latin, with occasional comments or observations, but for the most part with a straightforward description of colour, size, etc. The descriptions varied in length, reaching some one or two pages for particularly interesting (and usually large) species such as a cassowary, but generally averaging six to eight lines.” The system was highly functional for zoology, but it created concepts of a species that would be nearly unrecognizable to a vernacular birder who knew the bird as a moving, eating, singing, flying creature.28 For a sense of how species were represented and the relation between descriptions of the physical specimen and anecdotes of the living bird, we take three descriptions of Plocepasser mahali. This is how the bird presented itself to the photographer Kevin McDonald (fig. 23). Here is the original notice of the bird’s existence given by Smith in 1836: “Upper part of head, and a longitudinal stripe on each side of neck, black-brown; eyebrows white; sides of head brown; sides of neck, interscapulars, and back, light brown; rump, upper and under tail coverts, chin, and

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23. White-browed sparrow-weaver (Plocepasser mahali). Courtesy of the photographer, Kevin McDonald.

throat, pure white; breast and belly dull white, faintly clouded with brown; wing coverts and scapulars dark brown, the former tipt with white so as to form two oblique lines of that colour on the wings; tail black-brown tipt with white. Length 6½ inches. Inhabits the country between the Orange River and the Tropic.”29 In this original publication, Smith conveyed only this sparse yet precise description of the bird’s coloration. There was no account of song, breeding, flight, sociability, diet, or habitat. He included more of those details in an 1849 publication for a more general audience, Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa. This book was produced for popular consumption and the attraction was its illustrations. The depiction of P. mahali is rather stiff, but it shows the form and color clearly. Figure 24 is apparently the only image of that bird published in the nineteenth century. In the accompanying text, Smith provides the species description in a small font, in Latin. But it was intended for a popular audience, and the English description gives evocative descriptions such as “broccoli-brown,” and “dusky white.” Another paragraph gives a sense of the living, bird: its location, its sociability, its diet, but not the call. Like other observers

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24. Plocepasser mahali. Smith, Illustrations, 2: pl. 65.

of P. mahali, Smith lingered on the large nest colonies. Other entries in this volume sometimes mention the testimony of “natives,” but the one on P. mahali does not, although Tswana birders provided the name.30 P. mahali was included in 1867 in Layard’s Birds of South Africa. Here it was placed in the subfamily Ploceinae (weavers) in the family Fringillidae (finches) of the order Passeres (now Passeriformes, perching birds). Layard’s description of P. mahali tracked Smith’s 1836 text closely: “upper part of head, and stripe on each side of neck, black-brown; eyebrows white; side of head, brown; side of neck and back, light-brown; rump, vent, chin, and throat, pure white; breast and belly, dull-white; wings with two white stripes across the shoulders. Length, 6″ 6′″; wing, 4″ tail, 2″ 9′″.” For ornithologists, the description of the body was the most important thing about the species.31 Layard’s entry on P. mahali expanded on Smith’s original scientific publication by including a few paragraphs on the living bird. But his experience of the bird was indirect. Unlike his predecessor Smith, he did not travel on expeditions. Instead, he encountered many species only through

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what had already been written and through his wide correspondence, which he quoted in the accounts on behavior and habitat. He was liberal in placing confidence in correspondents: they included a woman, Mary Elizabeth Bowker Barber of Grahamstown, and a “Coloured” man (a category which included descendants of the Khoekhoen), David Arnot of Colesberg. In some entries he referenced what others had recorded of vernacular knowledge of the birds, but rarely.32 What do we take away from this close reading of ornithological entries on one species and of the writers’ engagement with vernacular knowledge? As Johnson observed, the privileged and mandatory aspects of ornithological work were the binomials and the short descriptions of the specimen. Attention to color and form provided people who had access only to dead birds with a way to know them. Because the specimens remained the same, the description of P. mahali was largely static. Beyond the description of the specimen, accounts of the living bird that would be familiar to vernacular experts were optional. Some anecdotes about living birds circulated, but the physical descriptions were more stable and became more important to those who were compiling evidence about species of the world. Latour characterizes the strengthening in position of those at a distance who achieve authority, as a “cycle of accumulation.” Through this process, Linnaean systematics achieved an independence and an arrogation of expertise, diminishing their connection with the vernacular experts who had historically known plants or animals.33 Specimens Consolidating the taxonomic knowledge rested on another practice: the collection of specimens, their preservation, and their transfer to centers of calculation, especially in Europe. The earliest naturalists had collected for cabinets of curiosity. The numbers deposited in museums rose after 1820, although their value as formal records, rather than novelties, lagged. By the end of the century the convention held, as it still does, that the skin used for the original scientific description be permanently available for future study as the “type specimen.” The size of these collections, their centrality to the discipline of ornithology, and their organization by time, place, and taxonomic status has made them an intriguing archive for historians of ornithology. They have provided a material record of scientific work and have inspired creative and reflexive histories of environments,

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networks, and individual animals. The most important center of calculation and repository of specimens of the birds of Africa was the British Museum in London.34 The earliest techniques of preservation were rudimentary. Birds might be stuffed, bottled in alcohol, embalmed, or dried in the sun or an oven. Preserved skins were quickly made—a good preparator can be expected to turn out four to ten skins in an hour— easy to transport and store, and useful to the researcher. However, until the application of arsenic after 1830, they were vulnerable to insect infestation.35 The first collection of prepared specimens at the Cape of Good Hope dates from the work of the Forsters, Johann Reinhold and his son Johann Georg Adam, who came to the Cape with James Cook in 1772. But the earliest naturalists were not systematic about collecting and depositing specimens. Sparrman collected mammals, insects, and a few birds, but parts of the collection were damaged, burned, or sold off and cannot now be reconstructed. Levaillant’s specimens were not well documented to begin with and the history of their disposal is not thoroughly recorded. Burchell dried birds in the sun and tried the seeds of shrub Tarchonanthus as an insect repellant. Many of his specimens remained crated and uncataloged until after his death in 1863. Insects destroyed a good proportion of the skins. As for Smith, his expedition overcame transportation difficulties to return with 3,379 bird skins, but they belonged to the sponsors, and on his return to London in 1837 many were auctioned off to recoup investments. The small brown-and-white bird known as the brave one among the Tswana and as P. mahali to ornithologists is now represented in scientific taxonomic systems through his preserved skins. This species was described before practices had become standardized and its record has several anomalies. Because Smith did not designate specific skins as type specimens, there are several syntypes (meaning more than one specimen that serves as the type for the species), including one specimen in the British Natural History Museum at Tring, pictured here (fig. 25).36 The bird is recognizable from the illustrations and descriptions given above; it has the white brow, neck, breast, and belly, the dark face, and the lighter browns on the cheeks, shoulders, interplayed with white on the wings. But it is unmistakably dead. Without its soft tissue it is thin and flat. Without its skeleton it is limp. Its eyes are closed. All things being equal, the men who worked with specimens would probably have enjoyed knowing about the bird’s scolding call and bold habits. If they could have, they would

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25. Plocepasser mahali syntype (1845.7.6.132). Natural History Museum Bird Section, Tring. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

have noted its open, living eyes. But this was the form of the bird that could be transported and stored. It preserved the characteristics detailed by the formal descriptions. The inert envelope emptied of the living bird became sufficient for the purposes of ornithology. The specimen is made complete through its label. In contrast to the norm, none of the three labels on this specimen originated with the collector. Each of them bears Smith’s name and broad information about distribution, but they do not give the precise location of the specimen’s collection. It was taken in 1834 or 1835, but the only date given on each label is that of the publication of Smith’s first description of the species (fig. 26).37 The nature of labor relations and the record of contributions by hired assistants have not been archived with the specimen. Invariably, the ornithologist is named on the label as the collector, no matter if an assistant had

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26. Labels of Plocepasser mahali syntype (1845.7.6.132). Natural History Museum Bird Section, Tring. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

shot and prepared the bird. We find records of the participants in other sources; for example, that Smith worked with the assistance of his “batsman” John Mintern, whom he trained in taxidermy. For his part, Burchell was characteristically generous when he recorded contributions of his assistants by name: “[Speelman] added to my ornithological collection more than any of my other Hottentots. Juli, however, was in this respect, very little inferior to him, either in the number, or in the value and rarity, of the objects which his zeal and industry procured for me. I ranked myself only as the third.”38

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A rare few texts preserve vignettes about the moment of collection and convey something of what vernacular birders thought about the curious work of collecting the bodies of dead birds. Possibly some observers felt unease about collecting. Recall that the Khoekhoen were “indignant” about Sparrman’s shooting of the honeyguide. Probably the most common reaction to specimen collecting was bafflement. Levaillant reported: “This operation surprised them much; they looked at me with astonishment, and could not conceive why I had deprived birds of their lives in order to strip them, and immediately after to restore them to their former figure.” Smith recounted much the same reaction in Tswana territory: “Seeing these birds carefully carried to our tents, expressed surprise at our thinking them of value; and those who saw with what care they had been preserved, made known the proceeding to every new comer.” Some were interested in the meat. Describing a group of foragers, Smith wrote, “They all complained of hunger and stuck fast to our wagons; many of them took up their position alongside of the bird skinner.”39 As they moved beyond the Cape Colony in later years, ornithologists remained amused at reactions to collecting and recorded anecdotes about them. These records offering something rare: vernacular perspectives on the practices of ornithology. At the end of the nineteenth century in Cameroon, George Latimer Bates made this wry note of how his neighbors explained his work. “What I do with my specimens is a perennial topic of speculation. The prevailing theory, apparently confirmed in their minds by my denial whenever asked, is that I intend to bring them to life again across in the white-man’s land, & stock that country with the fauna of this. The fact that I never eat the meat of my specimens has some deep significance, tho’ they don’t just agree as to what it is. My desire to get male & female represented, of course confirms their theory.”40 Another anecdote by Thomas Ayers, a British naturalist working in the Transvaal, then an independent republic, is noteworthy for describing vernacular birding by Euro-African settlers in South Africa. He wrote about a specimen of chat: Passing a Dutch farmer’s one day, I saw this Chat hopping about upon a large stack of faggots some 200 yards from the house. Being a scarce bird, I shot it at once, when one of the farmer’s sons came running to me, exclaiming, in tones of anguish: “What have you done? You have shot the Mock-bird!” He went on to tell me that it was a great favourite of theirs; that it came into the house every day to be fed, and was

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particularly fond of admiring itself in the parlour looking-glass; and that the bird had been with them for years. I expressed my sorrow at having been so unfortunate as to cause them such grief for the loss of their favourite, and offered to preserve the skin and send it to them; but the young Dutchman said: “Of what use is the skin? The bird is dead: keep it.” The specimen sent is the skin of this curious bird.41 Eventually, the cash available for bird skins established the sense in specimen collecting. In the 1880s a Euro-African family in South Africa collected birds for the profit in selling skins to international collectors. It paid enough to finance the education of one generation. But the curio market evaporated by 1900, and Africa never became a supplier in the global feather trade. Although the numbers were small, ornithologists working in Africa still needed skins, and they trained hunters in the techniques of specimen preparation. A few specialist collectors put their birding skills to good use, for cash. Jali Makawa, the subject of chapter 6, is the best-known example.42 Birders of Different Feathers Ornithological understandings of the birds of Africa were moving away from vernacular knowledge and also from the living birds. The more ornithologists knew, the less they needed to consult others. As scientists inscribed facts about new worlds and transmitted them through their network, their knowledge became more robust, independent, and separate from that of others. Over time, ornithologists could become more self-sufficient in their peculiar way of birding. The new syntheses and orderings allowed distant science to claim authority over what was known locally. This happened within empires, but distance between science and vernacular knowledge systems widened, not only because of imperial dynamics, but also for reasons having to do with ways of knowing. As empire expanded, its effects would strengthen, but the dynamics between birding traditions remained in play.

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chapter 4

Authority in Vernacular Traditions and Ornithology

B

efore closing this broad overview of different birding traditions, we turn to matters of authority. The individual birders whom we will meet in part II of this book were expert and accomplished birders, but they had different ideas of authority. Furthermore, by 1900, when the second half of this study opens, authority among ornithologists had become explicitly racial. The interplay of these two characteristics of authority, about how it differed between the vernacular and ornithological traditions and about how race mattered to some birders, accounts for much of the politics of birding in twentieth-century Africa. Facts and Authorship I propose that the way facts circulate and the types of authority they create are the defining characteristics of birding traditions. Recreational birdwatching, ornithology, and vernacular traditions, collectively and in the plural, are distinguished from one another by types of facts and networks. Facts here are not really observable packets, such as “The bird is flying”; rather, they are more along the lines of explanations and interpretations, such as “That bird is mogale” or “That bird is Plocepasser mahali.” In analyzing the nature of facts, Latour’s Science in Action is again a useful guide. Latour turns our attention to the character of circulation. As he explains it, once facts leave their originator, observations face an uncertain future: “Either the others will not take up the statement or they will. If they

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don’t, the statement will be limited to a point in time and space. . . . But if they do take it up, they might transform it beyond recognition.” A fact that can be transformed beyond recognition is a soft fact. A fact designed with the intent of escaping this fate is a hard one. “Hard” and “soft” can mean lots of things in science and knowledge, and my meaning here is specific. In this argument, “hard” is not a matter of quantitative science and “soft” is not a matter of fuzzy. The sole difference between hard and soft is how facts move through the network of further circulation. Soft facts are the default mode of human communication. Most people launch their innovatory ideas to be taken up and transformed as they may. Proverbs, folk tales, and rumors all circulate as soft facts. Latour’s example is the wisdom in “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Such are soft facts. Most of what anyone knows and draws upon in life are soft facts, which are necessary for leading a competent life. Again, softness is not a matter of accuracy or rationality but of circulation. Unmoored from their originators, soft facts mutate as they travel and are continually re-created into something new. Latour explains that receivers of soft facts “may have no interest whatsoever in the claim, shunt it towards some unrelated topic, turn it into an artifact, transform it into something else, drop it altogether, attribute it to some other author, pass it along as it is, confirm it, and so on.” This adaptability allows soft facts to circulate widely.1 By contrast, Latour elaborates that science has made an innovation in the way people share information. He describes science as an enterprise in constructing facts, things that are “collectively stabilised from the midst of controversies.” Hard facts are needed for the distinctive “proof race” of science: unlike other people, scientists are in a contest to become authorities recognized at some remove from themselves. They make facts with the aspiration of solidifying the essence of the argument into an (ideally) immutable package and establishing themselves as authors. If a fact circulates in a regime of hardening, receivers are not to alter the fact/interpretation or separate it from its author. If a scientist’s interpretations are accepted and retain authority as they are relayed through the network, then he or she has won the proof race. If the idea becomes essential to further work, if all scientists who follow must engage it, then it and by extension its author have become “obligatory passage points.” When the system works as intended, an original author is accurately credited even at the far end of a long chain of many linkages and nodes. All who hope to know or contribute on the matter must negotiate with his or her work. This is a challenge. Procuring resources to support the research requires effort, as does positioning the

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fact so others will repeat it. Making hard facts is a social enterprise requiring allies. But the alternative is to remain isolated or unrecognized beyond one’s immediate listeners. Few people are interested in this proof race, but for scientists, it defines their work. For examples of hard facts traveling far and someone’s work becoming an obligatory point of passage, see any academic journal. Journals will also reveal facts that never traveled at all, that exist untransformed but also uncited and isolated.2 The expectation of consistency during transmission and enduring association with the author is unique to the facts of science and not a general characteristic of literacy. The ability to write does not reduce people’s circulation of useful information in the form of soft facts. Literate people constantly purvey soft facts in the form of aphorisms, jokes, urban legends, and household tips. Whether they are shared orally or in writing, these nuggets are not launched in a proof race on behalf of the original author. Vernacular knowledge is sometimes published, but then it becomes a primary source awaiting repurposing and deployment into the proof race by a social scientist. Hardening a fact actually requires more than a named author; it involves marshaling authorities and circulating data according to a strict regime of citation.3 The quality of knowledge has less to do with whether facts are soft or hard than how they are launched into circulation. A birder might share the observation that a breeding community of starlings has orange eyes only within his or her immediate circle. The information about morphological characteristics of species would be of interest to ornithologists, but until it becomes an entry in the proof race of science, that fact would remain soft. Biologists may repackage what they learn from vernacular experts about honeyguide calls, strengthen it through association with methods that are already accepted, and launch it into the scientific fray. Through considerable expense and a lot of work, the ornithologists created something revolutionary and remarkable, a single system that rendered all the birds of the world legible from one perspective. They developed the language, the connections, and the standards to engage in a conversation, often over long distances, about things previously unconnected. But, to say that facts are hard and travel well is not to endorse their quality as superior. Traveling does not make science universal. As Latour writes: It is crucial to understand that these are two opposite solutions to the same paradox; “harder” facts are not naturally better than “softer” ones; they are the only solution if one wants to make others believe something

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uncommon. Nothing should be unduly added to these differences, even though [they] seem to overlap with divides often used to oppose “daily reasoning,” “savage mind,” “popular beliefs” and “ancient and traditional sciences” to modern, civilised and scientific reasoning. In this argument, no assumption is made about minds or method. It is not assumed that the first solution provides closed, timeless, inaccurate, rigid and repetitive beliefs whereas the second offers exact, hard and new knowledge. It is asserted simply that the same paradox may be solved in two different ways, one that extends long networks, the other that does not.4 Latour further describes scientific networks as “narrow and fragile” and compares them to termite galleries linking nests and feeding sites, a long network of narrow passages rather than an all-encompassing cover. This perspective on the network both accounts for the particularities of science and provincializes it.5 I define birding traditions by their manner of circulating facts. I contend that the defining character of vernacular birding traditions, in Africa and around the world, is their soft facts. Even if it happened independently in many places and the practice was refined over generations, everything known by vernacular birders—the observations about what birds eat, how they sing, what their powers are—was discovered by individuals and taken up by others without debt to the discoverer. Individuals incrementally added to the understanding that whistling for the honeyguide would signal their readiness to search for a nest. Once established, others learned the benefits of whistling. Individuals engineered good lime concoctions for catching birds and others found their practices worth repeating and refining. Likewise, individuals formulated the association between uthekwane and lightning, which others found to be useful knowledge. But, in the repeating of these facts, the originators were lost and the recipients passing them on became responsible for the content. In essence, when a soft fact changes in circulation, recipients become coauthors; they may include additional kinds of birds as lightning birds, or vary the intervals of whistling for a honeyguide. The analysis of rumors in recent African historiography is pertinent. Luise White’s characterization of their truth, that “it has to be established by continually listening to and evaluating new evidence,” is reminiscent of soft facts.6 Vernacular birding certainly saw differences of opinion, for example, over a name, or whether not leaving a portion of the hive for the honeyguide

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would provoke its treachery, or which birds have connections with lightning. But these controversies could not have been resolved by returning to the original form of the observation. Vernacular experts might disagree bitterly over whether a wagtail is an effective cattle herder, but the tradition offered no way to settle the matter beyond the immediate community, and there was no provision for a person who establishes the truth of it to be commemorated in later years.7 My purpose is not to draw attention to yet another absence in Africa. Soft facts are not an African phenomenon; it would be exceptional for vernacular birders anywhere in the world to produce hard facts. Neither Claudius nor the Nama birders were commemorated in expedition records by name. Neither do practitioners of the third type of birding tradition, the recreational kind, produce hard facts. Like all good field observers, recreational birders wield a tacit knowledge of birds in their natural habitat. But when this knowledge can be shared, it circulates as soft facts, such as how to make the “pishing” noise that gets birds’ attention. Although they do not produce them, recreational birders are eager consumers of the hard facts of ornithological knowledge. They absorb the findings of ornithology as a form of leisure rather than a vocation or avocation.8 Racialized Authority in Ornithology The second characteristic of authority in the network of birders in Africa is its racialization in ornithology. This occurred gradually and certainly was under way before it becomes apparent in historical records. The process was gradual and difficult to reconstruct over time, but it appears to have intensified in the nineteenth century. The scramble for Africa must have impelled the transformation, although the history is too broad to recount in detail here. After 1900, racial segregation became the principle of the expanded empire over Africa. Racial identity had to do with science through theories about race and also because scientific achievement was among the forces driving ideas of superiority among Europeans. Michael Adas demonstrates that the Industrial Revolution in Europe fueled “a growing sense on the part of overseas observers that African and Asian peoples had little to offer Europe in techniques of production and extraction or in insights into the workings of the natural world.” All indications are that this attitude had grown by the turn of the twentieth century, but it is probably also more conspicuous because documentation became much more extensive.9

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After the imperial scramble made it possible for Europeans to collect and classify birds in previously unknown regions, the birds of Africa grew more prominent within ornithology. The “bird room” of the British Museum became a particularly important center for knowledge about Africa. The turn of the century saw further compendia of knowledge on the birds of Africa produced in Europe: Arthur Stark and W. L. Sclater’s four-volume Birds of South Africa in 1900 –1906, George Ernest Shelley’s five-volume Birds of Africa in 1896 –1912, and Anton Reichenow’s three-volume Vögel Afrikas in 1900 –1905. Through most of the twentieth century, ornithological conversations having to do with that continent were firmly anchored in centers of calculation in Europe. As an example, consider the ornithologist at the British Museum who never traveled to the mainland of West Africa, David Bannerman, yet produced the eight-volume Birds of Tropical West Africa, published between 1930 and 1951.10 I have found just two efforts to disseminate ornithological knowledge for the education and enrichment of Africans: a bird guide for Nigerians published in 1933 and a museum kept at the Overton Institution in Livingstonia (now Malawi) by the missionary W. A. Young. On the continent itself, the personnel was exclusively Euro-African in centers of calculation and amateur associations such as the South African Ornithologists’ Union (1904 –16) and the South African Ornithological Society, founded in 1929. This distinguishes the history of Africa from that of South Asia, where Indians formed and joined scientific natural history societies. There is no African analogue to Sálim Ali, whose boyhood involvement in the Bombay Natural History Society inspired a distinguished career in ornithology. In South Africa, a recreational birdwatching tradition grew as these organizations expanded, but it was thoroughly the pursuit of Euro-Africans.11 It is difficult to track the intensification of race in a science that is mostly concerned with the description of bird bodies. Certainly, Europeans in earlier periods had a racial identity, but it became more evident in the twentieth century. As a notification of racial boundaries in ornithology, consider the case of the young Austin Roberts. In 1907, before he became the best-known ornithologist of South Africa, he cited Zulu understandings of parasitism by the pin-tailed whydah (Vidua macroura) in the nest of the common waxbill (Estrilda astrild): It was not until after many an unsuccessful search for the nest of this bird that I one day stumbled upon a clue to its peculiar breeding-habits.

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When talking about birds to an old Natal colonist he happened to mention that the Zulus have a saying that a young “King-red-beak” [Vidua macroura] is reared out of every “rooibekje’s” [Estrilda astrild] nest, they as usual, imputing it to some supernatural agency. Here I had the key to the solution of what had for so long puzzled me, and I immediately acted on it. It is well known how often the superstitions of the observant natives have been found to be based upon fact, and this, I have no doubt, is another instance.12 Roberts’s use of African vernacular knowledge did not amount to a generalized endorsement of all Zulu birding knowledge. He combined consultation and observation, and moreover, his secondhand referencing of local knowledge was through a Euro-African settler. It was similar to what Smith, Burchell, and Levaillant had done—bracketing what they learned from Africans as suggestive, even without confirmation. Scientists had collaborated with others as long as there had been scientists. This would not change. What did change is that scientists developed an acute awareness of their collaborations with African vernacular traditions. Roberts was called out in a letter by A. G. Butler: “Mr Roberts first got this idea into his mind from hearing that, according to the Zulus, a young [Vidua macroura] is reared out of every nest of [Estrilda astrild]. . . . It needs more than a negro proverb, disparity of size in eggs, or the fact that [V. macroura], like hundreds of other finches, is an occasional egg-stealer, to convince one that it is parasitical in its habits after the fashion of a cowbird.”13 In a response, Roberts defended himself and his method: yes, vernacular knowledge may be based in fact, but he had always recognized that its precepts must be scientifically confirmed. Roberts objected to Butler’s framing of his method: “His remarks anent my paper having been founded on a Negro (? Bantu) proverb certainly seems to me to be uncalled for, seeing that I gave the available proof I had, and wrote with the object of getting others to take up and confirm or disprove my thesis. That this bird is parasitic I have now not the slightest doubt, and it only remains for future observers to confirm the subject.” Since then, the Zulu birders, the old Natal colonist, and Roberts have been vindicated: the pin-tailed whydah is a parasite.14 One explanation for the increase in the expression of whiteness at the end of the nineteenth century is that Europeans acted more typically in imperial roles, as supervisors of subject labor. James Chapin, the specialist of birds of the Congo who spent his career at the American Museum of

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Natural History (AMNH) in New York, explained how an ornithologist also managed labor. Speaking of his time in the Congo between 1909 and 1915, he recalled learning the lesson from Herbert Lang, who had longer experience in Africa. When the birds were shot, I had to see that they were skinned. Now, notice I say I had to see. I skinned a good many myself, because I rather like good bird skins, and although I trained a half-dozen men on this bird trip to make up birdskins, they didn’t always quite satisfy me. Often I had them take the skin off, and I made a point of always of sexing the specimens myself and looking at the bodies. . . . Lang was a little critical of me. He said, “The way to get on in Africa is not do to things yourself, but have men that you can teach to do them.” We always tried to get everything possible done by our native assistant, but never to relax for one minute in seeing that the job was well done.15 As hired labor, colonial subjects, and racialized men, these assistants are sometimes only weakly imprinted on the official state archival record. Yokana Kiwanuka of Kenya does not appear in published narrative accounts; yet his employer V. G. L. van Someren arranged to have the plain-backed sunbird named for him, now a subspecies: Anthreptes reichenowi yokanae. Sadly, we know little about his investment and participation in the network of birders.16 The career of an assistant to Jack Vincent and Admiral Hubert Lynes gives a sense of the boundaries at work. He is mentioned in several publications as “Ali,” and he may have been one of the workers in an undated photograph from Vincent’s memoir, but they are not named (fig. 27). We learn an enormous amount about the racialized nature of their collaboration from a passage by Vincent detailing his appreciation of Ali: In conclusion it is necessary to include a few words of appreciation to someone who will not read this, namely, to one of my native servants, “Ali,” for the services he has rendered me. He accompanied Admiral Lynes and myself in 1930 –31, and was with me throughout the Portuguese East African Expedition. It is not my custom to fraternize with natives, but Ali is an absolute “white man,” and one of the very best. Not only is he an all-round handy man with his hands, but also a fellow with brains. In spite of being entirely self-taught, he speaks six languages fluently and writes four tolerably well. He is just as much

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27. Assistants preparing skins for Jack Vincent. Vincent, Web of Experience, facing 53. Courtesy of John Vincent.

at home in the wilds on scanty diet and with little clothing as he is in towns, dressed and feeding as a European, yet he never forgets his position. His trustworthiness and courage make him the finest of companions, and if ever it should be my good fortune to be able to undertake another expedition it is my sincere hope that Ali may be with me.17 Vincent expressed affection and personal admiration. At the same time, he exhibited the intensified obsession with racial status in the twentieth century: note how he purported to breach the distance of race but in effect inscribed it. Vincent never recorded Ali’s story or, remarkably, his surname, which we learn from other sources was “Safi.” Safi was from Malawi, the source of a good number of labor migrants to South Africa. He worked at the zoo in Pretoria and in 1930 joined the Vernay-Lang Expedition, a Transvaal Museum — now Ditsong Museum —venture to Botswana with Herbert Lang as scientific leader. In 1931 he was recommended to Lynes and Vincent as an assistant. With them, he traveled to Zimbabwe, Zambia,

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Malawi, Angola, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Returning to South Africa, he settled in Cape Town, where he worked at the South African Museum for the ornithologist Leonard Gill. His life story entered the archival record in 1933, when he was nearly deported under a policy to control the number of immigrants from Malawi. Lang, Gill, and Lynes petitioned for his right to remain in South Africa, which was granted.18 In 1947 Safi spent a year in Bulawayo training preparators at the National Museum of Rhodesia at the request of Reay Smithers, who recorded Safi’s surname and something of his life outside the collaboration with Lynes and Vincent. Smithers gave Safi a different origins story, claiming he was from Moyale, on the border of Kenya and Ethiopia; perhaps Safi had learned to be discreet about his Malawian background. Reportedly, he retired to Woodstock, Cape Town, where he operated a herbalist business. Smithers summarized the absent presence of many assistants: “Today his influence, although forgotten, is still there wherever natural history specimens are processed. . . . Regrettably I have lost touch with him.” How did Ali Safi experience the ornithologist’s insinuation that he should “know his position”? How did he balance the rankling insult of the exclusion from science and the rewards of holding vernacular knowledge? His decision at the end of his life, to make a career as a dispenser of traditional medicines, speaks of where he found value.19 Social Worlds and the Experience of Boundaries The two matters of authority described in this chapter—the contrast between the two traditions and the racialized exclusion in ornithology—interacted to define the politics of collaboration in the twentieth century. To make this point, I turn to a landmark 1989 article by Susan Leigh Star and James Griesemer, on “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects.” Star and Griesemer call theirs an “ecological” approach—meaning an exploration of relationships rather than a study of nature. As they explain it, diverse actors, such as research scientists, philanthropists, or specimen collectors, inhabit different social worlds. Social worlds are meaning collectives that have common interests, employ a shared discourse, and follow the same processes. But social worlds do not only look inward. They come together to collaborate, even though their goals remain

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divergent. In the absence of consensus, collaborations are possible because of flexible “boundary objects.”20 Boundary objects are things, ideas, or relationships that have different meanings to different parties. They “are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites.” As points of attention and meaning on the borders shared by social groups, they need not be physical things. As sites of translation (which in science studies refers to translations of interests rather than of words or ideas), they are political. The flexibility of boundary objects means that collaborators can use them creatively. Star and Griesemer even characterize diverse collaborators as “entrepreneurs.” In similar model, Peter Galison draws from historical anthropology to theorize points of contact as “trading zones.” His study is of collaborations within laboratory physics in the United States, but the heterogeneity of participants is similar. Galison maintains that “despite the differences in classification, significance, and standards of demonstration, the two groups can collaborate. They can come to a consensus about the procedures of exchange, about the mechanisms to determine when goods are ‘equal’ to one another. They can even both understand that the continuation of exchange is a prerequisite to the survival of the larger culture of which they are a part.” Galison might have been describing African vernacular birders and European ornithologists in colonial Africa. Birds, which were so dissimilar to vernacular birders and ornithologists yet which enabled productive partnerships, are classic boundary objects. The collaborations around them can be understood as trading zones.21 The social worlds analysis helps us understand that collaborating African assistants and European employers approached one another from separate positions. Vernacular birders brought their conception of authority and experience of soft facts. This, I think, could have eased the experience of the racialized exclusion that becomes so evident in the twentieth century. The truth of it is that few vernacular birders of Africa have shown much interest in facts transmitted through the long and narrow networks of ornithology. For them, being the original author of particular facts was never the point. Describing fossil collectors in mid-nineteenth-century India, Savithri Preetha Nair describes this minimal involvement— entrepreneurship, even—well: “The native collectors had no knowledge of the scientific significance of fossils nor did they yearn for it, but the money and goodwill

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they would receive in exchange for fossil intelligence and specimens was enough for cooperation.” And what they received may have not only come as exchange from ornithologists. Performing their expertise may have tendered them recognition among peers.22 To say that vernacular practitioners were not invested in science is manifestly different from saying that the category of Africans has not been invested in science. The history of medicine provides examples. Doctors in British Africa developed an identity of themselves as professionals in a scientific practice. As whiteness in Africa gained momentum, these doctors suffered the stings of increasing racial exclusion. Among Africans in the network of birders, museum workers could have developed a similar investment in science and sensitivity to segregation. If they had no foundation in vernacular traditions, their experiences of racialized authority in science were would have been harsh, worse than for those who were rewarded in historic African social worlds. This is an important insight to be gained by an approach that layers traditions of knowledge over colonial racial status: in viewing African “assistants” to European researchers as situated in separate traditions, distinctions between them emerge.23 The case of Ali Safi shows the promise of questions on the micro scale, questions about experiences and affect, of constructions of self and estimations of others. Yet it is impossible to know much more about him. Neither do ornithological archives reveal much about the inner life of his employer Jack Vincent. Fortunately, I have been able to learn more about a set of birders, ornithologists and their assistants, who were both vernacular birders and more oriented toward professional science. Part II of this book, Lives of Birders, takes up those stories. Thinking about these birders, we see how members of vernacular and ornithological social worlds interacted by drawing boundaries, by wearing others’ exclusions lightly, or by chafing over them. Then, in the second half of the twentieth century, the exclusions of race came into question. Ornithology transformed. Recreational birders became the most numerous of the traditions and connected with vernacular knowledge. Now, in the twenty-first century, the network has been remade.

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Male greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator). Courtesy of the photographer, Hugh Chittendon.

Cape wagtail (Motacilla capensis). Courtesy of the photographer, Hugh Chittendon.

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(Above) Congolese mask with blue tauraco feathers (#1999 – 67-31). Gift of Mr. Peter Klaus and Dr. Anita Klaus. Mithoefer Collection. Courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University. (Left) Bird handle on Akan staff (#2004 –15-86). Gift of Mr. Peter Klaus and Dr. Anita Klaus. Mithoefer Collection. Courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.

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Beaded bird on Yoruba crown (#2000 –3-1). Haffenreffer Special Fund purchase. Courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.

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(Left) Southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri). Courtesy of the photographer, Kevin McDonald. (Below) Three engraved ostriches on a dolerite boulder ridge overlooking the Gariep River, southern Africa. Courtesy of the photographer, Neil Rusch.

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Gambri. Attributed to H. Claudius. TCD MS 984 folio 92r. Courtesy of the Board of Trinity College, Dublin.

Thoucocos. Attributed to H. Claudius. TCD MS 984 folio 76r. Courtesy of the Board of Trinity College, Dublin.

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(Left) White-browed sparrow-weaver (Plocepasser mahali). Courtesy of the photographer, Kevin McDonald. (Right) Plocepasser mahali. Smith, Illustrations, vol. 2: pl. 65.

Plocepasser mahali syntype (1845.7.6.132). Natural History Museum Bird Section, Tring. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

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Jali Makawa’s depiction of the buff-spotted flufftail (Sarothrura elegans). Filed in James Chapin, Index Card Collection, American Museum of Natural History, under “Sarothrura elegans.” Photograph by Matthew Sandley, Photo Studio, AMNH. Courtesy of Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

The buff-spotted flufftail (Sarothrura elegans). Courtesy of the photographer, Hugh Chittendon.

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Hamerkop (Scopus umbretta). Courtesy of the photographer, Kevin McDonald.

Fleur Ng’weno leading a Nairobi bird walk, 2006. Courtesy of the photographer, Daniel Kathurima.

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part ii

Lives of Birders

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chapter 5

The Boundaries of Birding

I

n Europe and its colonies of settlement overseas in the nineteenth century, birding held appeal for many. The adventure of hunting, the culture of collecting, the romantic urge to connect with nature, and an enthusiasm for productive leisure activities all motivated the middle and upper classes to pursue systematic knowledge about birds. Some people observed them, some collected specimens, some wrote about them, some painted them, and some bought and read others’ bird books. Combined with interest in unknown geographies and adventure, this was enough to inspire some people to seek out the birds of Africa. With the establishment of European empire over Africa, the number of ornithologists who held day jobs as colonial officials expanded, and their presence spread throughout the continent. With the expansion of colonial society, recreational birdwatching, a leisure activity of urban bourgeois classes, entered the constellation of birding practices in Africa. In the early decades of the twentieth century, birdwatching was beginning throughout the continent, especially in British colonies of eastern and southern Africa with settler populations who brought a strong tradition of amateur natural history from their home country. The culture of birding was imbued with colonial politics. Living with Africans, Europeans became “whites,” with all the benefits and anxieties that racial definition brought them. Working in Africa, with Africans, they needed to lay boundaries to demarcate and protect their status. Although all white birders laid boundaries, they put them in different places, and

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the relations behind and across the boundaries meant different things to them. The records of recreational birders and ornithologists in Africa show that race and empire were inescapable, but white birders were able to accommodate the problem of their prejudices against and dependence on the vernacular birders of Africa differently. The history of European birders in Africa shows that the politics of race were powerful but also that they were a realm for individual negotiations.1 European Birders Migrate to Africa Among the educated and middle classes of Europe and North America, knowing birds was originally one aspect of the study of natural history. The science of ornithology and the popular activity of recreational birding had grown together out of natural history and were still closely connected in the early twentieth century. As the specialized science of ornithology emerged, there were few professionals, and so the status of amateur was not secondary. Some people produced hard facts and thus qualify as scientists, but the species descriptions produced by ornithologists were not beyond the understandings of a wider readership that put value on knowing birds. Yet even without a community of nonvernacular, nonscientific birders, some who knew birds as the species defined by ornithologists also thought about them as something other than biological categories. They wrote with affection about their personal engagement with the creatures. This early expression of what would become the recreational tradition often revealed a lot of what writers thought about human society. In Africa, bird writing sometimes provided comment on empire and race.2 Europeans who moved to Africa for the sake of imperial rule were constantly reminded of their displacement, and some of them drew on the seasonal migrations of Palearctic birds to Africa to make sense of their own presence on the continent. In popular thought about bird migration, “Palearctic” became “European,” and bird migration became analogous to human sojourns. In 1920 the Swedish nature writer and photographer Bengt Berg followed white cranes from Lapland through Gibraltar to the Sudan. He constantly rejoiced to see species of snipe, sandpiper, and the nightingale from Lapland. The Palearctic pin-tailed ducks that fascinated the ancient Egyptians he called “envoys.” His tone, though joking, was revealing of his notion of a common citizenship with the birds who migrated to Africa. “The sandpiper was born in Kashmir and therefore understood

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no Swedish, if I had wanted to speak to him.” He differed from today’s birders, who travel to add new species to their life lists; Berg displayed only a secondary interest in African-breeding birds.3 A British birdwatcher made even more of the political connections between Europeans and European avian migrants in Africa. Cecily RugglesBrise published her bird notes from Dar-es-Salaam in the late 1920s. She refers to her father J. H. Gurney and cites his book, Bird Migration as Observed on the East Coast of England. Otherwise she says little about herself, except that she is a birdwatcher, motorist, and golfer. (Her notes indicate that she saw many species from her car or on the golf course.) She writes with particular feeling about seeing two species of plain, small birds that breed in Britain, the spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa striata) and the willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus): I like to think of the British migrants which spend the cold northern winter with us in East Africa as our bird Empire makers. Neither history nor research is ever likely to tell us what impelled the first bird pioneers to venture on so long and arduous a journey. But during the hot season at Dar es Salaam and elsewhere we are sometimes refreshed by the sight of their descendants who for thousands of years have forged a link between England and her African Empire, and for the sake of that link migration will always be fraught with significance for us.4 Ruggles-Brice was extreme in meshing the fact of bird migration with twentieth-century politics. That a homesick person would feel emotion when seeing familiar birds in other lands is unremarkable, but RugglesBrice used these birds to make sense of her presence as a European in Africa in the 1920s. Even when it came to birds, the discourses of empire, race, and the exceptionalism of Africa were inescapable. As David Hughes has argued, writing about nature without its inhabitants is a particular form of white writing about Africa, one that established the belonging of settlers. Some birders also followed this convention.5 Adventure was the iconographic male European activity in Africa, and for some Europeans, practices of natural history, including birding, provided an opportunity for it. Seeing the rare species, bagging the difficult shot, or even establishing a new ornithological fact could be experiences worth narrating. Naturalist observations and personal experiences with animals became a genre that the book-buying public apparently found worthwhile. The books offered immediate and vivid anecdotes about nature. Vernacular

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birders might appear to follow a honeyguide or share birdlore, but Africans provided evidence of their own otherness more than knowledge about birds. Birds and birders all provided narrative color for an adventure story.6 Some recreational birders did describe their interactions with vernacular birders, and white racial identity was conspicuous in some birding narratives. Hans Coudenhove, a German count, migrated to east central Africa in 1896 and died without ever having returned in 1925. He struck up a correspondence with the editor of the American magazine Atlantic Monthly, which featured a series of his articles, and compiled them for a posthumously published book, My African Neighbors: Man, Bird, and Beast in Nyasaland. Coudenhove’s writing had appeal in describing his experience with humor and candor. Although he sometimes depicts the people he knew as logical and estimable, racial thinking was no less developed with him than his peers. It would seem that all of Coudenhove’s interactions with Africans were dictated by his race: sharing a meal seems to have been unthinkable, so for five years he ate alone. In this isolating zone of whiteness, animals provided the companionship he could not allow himself among people. Explicitly invoking Saint Francis of Assisi, he recalled with tenderness how a trogon took greater interest in him than in “the native camp.” A kingfisher kept watch when he was ill with malaria, “waging war” on the insects that pestered him. He befriended ravens, kites, and mammals, too. Coudenhove was not an ornithologist. For him, birds were neighbors, not objects of study. Needing animals for their companionship because the people at hand were unacceptable, he did not engage vernacular birders for their knowledge.7 One British birder, Madeline Alston, describes the goings-on in the local bird society as a light comedy. She does much more than identify the species; she names its character. Species are friendly, shy, sinister, or carefree. In Alston’s treatment, individual birds have charming habits, but also act with intention. Her description of the favorite of African homesteads, the Cape wagtail (Motacilla capensis), represents her disposition well. “He is a friendly thing and some bird-loving neighbours have one that walks about freely among them, feeding from their hands as they sit on the veranda. They keep a reserve of food in match-boxes, in the shape of a little collection of ticks from their dogs, for their little friend. But he deserts them and their offerings during the breeding season, like a dutiful parent resisting the lures of personal gratification.”8 For Alston, knowing nature, being able “to place things in the universe, to classify, to find the order and the species and the period to which they be-

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long,” was a sign of a superior appreciation: “Otherwise we go through life blindly muddling along, accepting things without wonder, wrapped snugly in self-complacency and ignorance.” But knowing birds is not enough; she distinguishes sharply between an ornithologist and a bird lover, to the detriment of the cold scientists.9 Alston had opinions about the people she met and about their relations with birds. Rather than bird experts, the people whom Madeline Alston met on her trips represented potential service providers, poachers, or thieves. Like many Europeans, Alston judged Africans on the authenticity of their things; dressing like a European or inappropriate use of European accessories drew her ire. Alston drew connections between Africans’ material presentations and their environmental knowledge and practices. The “one-fourth civilized” rower who brought her near the flamingos on Lake Lucia was overly timid of hippos or lazy. Pokoni, a retired police officer who hosted her at his admirably neat homestead in Botswana, also impressed her with his good manners and his guiding ability. About him she reported: “To Pokoni we were sorry to say good-bye. ‘A born gentleman!’ said Bob. ‘How can anyone despise a race that produces such a type?’”10 Yet she nearly despised a mission-educated Lozi man who accompanied her on a Zambezi boating trip. A “cook-boy,” Noel represented the failure of African masculinity and natural knowledge through negative European influences. (The contrast with her rugged womanhood was stark.) Noel could do nothing right; he was afraid of water, bored in the boat, overdressed for the bush, and ignorant of birds: Was his apathy, I wondered, a temperamental characteristic, or the result of his missionary training? In teaching the natives to imitate our ways they are losing something that Africa can give them. The mission boy or girl learned to read at the expense of much nature-lore that the old natives possess, for the most important thing in education is the awakening of a living interest in the world at our doors, and the first approach to religion should be through the sense of reverence and wonder for God’s works. Sums! And the great river flowing by unnoticed, and such birds as Noel had never before seen.11 Volumes of colonial discourse about education, segregation, and preservation of nature are distilled in Alston’s musings about the men who hosted her graciously or earned her scorn. Despite her professed admiration for African “nature-lore,” before the invention of ecotourism and professional bird guides, recreational

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birdwatchers like Alston did not readily connect to vernacular knowledge. Moving from place to place and separated from the people by colonial conventions, the first avitourists might not encounter the best vernacular birders, who had little inkling that their knowledge could be marketed to anyone. Furthermore, recreational birdwatching rested on global categories of species identified by visual markers, and vernacular birders’ concepts of types of birds in local environments would not have always satisfied the birdwatchers’ need for guidance.12 Ornithologists with long residence in Africa who worked with vernacular birders to produce bird facts provide better examples of the politics of collaboration. Three ornithologists who worked most closely with vernacular expertise— George Latimer Bates, Reginald Ernest Moreau, and Leslie Brown— demonstrate the politics of birding. Theirs are stories of the possibilities and limitations of connection. They confirm what Tilley has shown, that scientists in colonial Africa were interested in vernacular knowledge, worked to gather it, and often credited what people there knew. One, Reginald Ernest Moreau, was arguably the most respected ornithologist in Africa in this period, of whom a colleague wrote: “Moreau, in Tanganyika, could never have done the wonderful work he has if he had not used a native collector.” Yet Moreau himself envied George Latimer Bates for “his skilful West African assistants, who knew the ways of the depths of the forest.” Finally, Leslie Brown, who made his career in Kenya, constructed a persona in popular and scientific literature through relations to his assistants. He wrote of his lead assistant, Njeru Kicho, “We supplemented each other very well. And, as I said earlier, we both enjoyed it—we still do.” More than other ornithologists, Bates, Moreau, and Brown acknowledged their dependence on vernacular birders’ contributions.13 Yet these men found different balance points to maintain equilibrium between their relations with African vernacular birders and with other scientists, other “whites,” as well their own identity and aspirations. By comparing these cases, we see variation in the workings of whiteness and racial constructions in colonial science. Asking under what conditions these ornithologists linked their assistants to international networks reveals that personal affect, ease and unease at home and in Africa, social and erotic longings, and self-constructions as scientists and white men all played out in the politics of collaboration. Focused on birds but shaped by affective and exclusionary forces among humans, these collaborations reveal something deep, even poignant, about colonial science and society, something

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that has remained below the surface in many studies of colonial science that privilege the applied sciences and economic interests. Those Good Ornithologists, the Bulu Boys George Latimer Bates built a community with the birders among the Bulu people in Cameroon. His fieldwork method was to deputize them, including women (unlike most ornithologists, Bates did learn from women), to collect and observe birds. In return they rewarded his confidence by providing rare specimens, artfully captured, and rich descriptions of bird life. The specimens he sold to museums, and the descriptions, married with his own observations, became the basis for his written work. His rhetorical strategy was inclusive; despite his position as author and arbiter of the correct fact, Bates did not claim the position of lone observer for himself. Rather, his opus Handbook of the Birds of West Africa conveyed a deep vernacular knowledge about birds, especially that of the Bulu people.14 To a great extent, vernacular expertise underwrote Bates’s establishment as an ornithologist. In his telling, his Bulu interlocutors were worthy of recognition on several levels. He detailed and praised their expertise at collecting, and in his Handbook of the Birds of West Africa he noted their protection of some species that served a useful function. Although Bates says little in this book about individual research assistants, he also says nothing about himself—not about his origins, how he came to Africa, how he became familiar with the Bulu, and how long he stayed in Cameroon. He was decidedly not writing in an imperialist heroic genre. Most remarkably, his language—for example, “Whenever seen, by myself or by natives”— suggests that he operated within a culture of collaboration.15 Consider his extraordinary comment on the problems classifying Andropadus gracilirostris (the slender-billed greenbul, now known as Stelgidillas gracilirostris): “I have had no hesitation about keeping the other four species in Andropadus, but about this one I was more doubtful; and the decision in favour of that course was almost unsettled again by the consideration that those good ornithologists, the Bulu boys, do not call this one Otok though they have no name for it. We, none of us, knew its voice.”16 And that’s the catch. In the space of two sentences Bates included his assistants in the category of ornithologists and himself with them in a community of expertise, while also juvenilizing as “boys” the men he so much respected. (“Boys,” it will become clear, was Bates’s generic term for black

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males.) Of course, it is no surprise that colonial language imbued Bates’s writing, but the fact that it did raises the question of how his experience of vernacular expertise was reconciled with stereotypes. On this issue, we can look beyond his published works to his notes and diaries and others’ memories of him, where it is possible to make a broader examination of his life, his relationships, his fieldwork practices, and his thinking. George Latimer Bates was born in 1863 in Knox County, Illinois, into a family of devout and educated Presbyterians. Galesburg was an antislavery Lincoln stronghold and home to Knox College, founded by Garrisonian abolitionists who espoused racial equality. Even so, over the decades following the war, the radical abolitionist influence waned. Coming to adulthood in Galesburg, Bates would have absorbed these complex and contradictory racial influences, including statements supporting radical equality alongside accommodation with the inexorable racism of white America.17 Although Bates wrote virtually nothing about himself, his sister, Mary, younger by four years, produced an account of his life in 1959. Several themes emerge in her discussion of his childhood. George was extremely shy around strangers, he loved to read (Africa was a favorite subject), and he loved natural history, taking up collecting as a child.18 He was second in the class of 1885 at Knox, a cohort of thirty-one students (two of whom were black). Socially withdrawn, someone astutely cast him as Wall in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of his few college activities. On graduating, he took a position as a teacher in Hawaii. Because of difficulty with the school head, he quit within the year and returned home, Mary reported, to “keenly disappointed” parents, who “look[ed] upon his failure as little less than a disgrace.” He moved around the Southeast for a few years, doing odd jobs and collecting specimens, until 1888, when, “acceding to the strong wish of his parents,” he entered the Chicago Theological Seminary. His master’s degree completed, he again tried teaching, in South Dakota. But he was a skeptic about religion and moved on in 1895 to west central Africa, to support himself as a dealer of natural specimens.19 Presbyterian connections brought Bates first to Gabon, then French Congo, and finally Cameroon, among the Bulu people. He learned their language well enough to write its first grammar, chiefly for the benefit of the American missionaries, who published it in 1904. But, Mary wrote, “He soon settled down to the real business of his life . . . the collecting of natural history specimens.” He collected all sorts of plants and animals, but birds became his passion. His diaries from these years provide our first introduc-

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tion to his own thinking. In Africa he took joy in simple meals, the rich life of forest, and the company of his Bulu neighbors, although he recorded no conjugal relations.20 Bates created a comfortable society and re-created himself in Africa, among birds and the people who knew them so well. Yet he was always aware of his position as an outsider. Did he, perhaps, see his own circumstance when he described the mixed bird parties of the forest? One of the most curious things about the small birds in the depths of the big forest is that they are nearly always seen in companies, which are generally composed of birds of several different species mixed together, often with a squirrel also. This is something very different from the flocks of starlings, weavers & others, which . . . are usually composed of one species. The companies of which I speak keep together only loosely & are scattered thru the tops of many adjoining trees. . . . To these loosely united companies of little birds of various kinds feeding together the Bulu & Fang give the name of éjak; and as a name is very much needed for a thing so peculiar, I shall use the word here. . . . [I think] that what induces these birds to seek their daily food in company is the oppressive loneliness of the great forest. The birds, and also the squirrel which often joins the éjak are social beings and love to hear the voices of their companions. . . . The notion that the birds, & in fact other animals must find the darkness & loneliness of the forest oppressive is at least very natural, as it is certainly so to men themselves.21 If the éjak is a metaphor for his loose flocking with Africans, birds were the basis for the fellowship. In his journals, he preferred Bulu names for birds, rarely using English and including scientific names largely in headings. When people brought him birds, eggs, nestlings, or nests, or reported unusual songs, he questioned them and considered their accounts. A critical, rigorous thinker, his method was to be skeptical and to reason through testimony, but he overwhelmingly found the observations and logic of vernacular birders to be sound. In his journal we see them teaching and Bates learning, for example, about the kurrichane thrush (Turdus libonyana): “I have known this bird a good while, but only lately learned what a fine singer he is, tho here again I rely on native testimony as to the identity of the singer”; and “A boy got me a nest Mar. 18 on a plantain near a village, which I have no doubt he was right in saying was that of a etyityo as he said the

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boys used to see the bird on the nest & try to catch it.” Typical statements such as “His story is confirmed by the fact” and “I do not doubt it” summarize his disposition to information brought to him. Moreover, he credited individuals and recognized that some were experts: “This is a name given by Asoko to a bird for which most natives do not seem to know a name.”22 In 1904 –5 he made a trip to England and the United States. Returning to the south of Cameroon after 1905, he became a planter as well as a collector, settling on the Ja River, two days’ walk east of Sangmélima. He called his farm “Bitje,” after the Bulu pronunciation for his name. Thereafter his journals trail off, and almost no letters survive. We know that George returned to America for the last time for his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1911. This would turn out to be his last trip to the United States. German authorities expelled him from Cameroon during World War I, and he fled to Spanish Guinea. Coming home to Bitje after the war, he found that his Bulu friends had tended his house. They also cared for him, organizing relay runners to summon a foreign doctor from fifty miles away when he was ill. Correspondence indicates that he gave up birds during this period but returned to their study after 1918.23 During the 1920s Bates traveled around Cameroon, to Lake Chad and to Nigeria to collect material for his compendium on West African birds. He visited London and the Natural History Museum in 1923. His plantation was not an economic success, and in 1928 he left Cameroon and the Bulu for good to travel overland from Lagos to Dakar, collecting birds on the way. On these trips, for the first time in years he kept a diary in addition to his bird notes, so we learn more about him and his relations with his assistants. Leaving Bitje behind, Bates complained constantly about the lack of good help. It is clear that he relied on his servants to provide a comfortable life as well as bird specimens. In Nigeria he wrote: “I have been feeling very low-spirited at being thus alone, without anybody of my own to care for me. What a good situation I was in before, with my Bulu Boys along. No one can find a boy here. These people do not take to the job of boy!” At one camp, he is joyful: “The black man in charge of this rest-house has brought me the greatest luxury I wish for these days—a boy—a real boy who seems to want to work.” He also suffered from not knowing local languages, as well as from his poor French. (Despite his talent for languages, and the fact that he had lived under French rule in Cameroon since the end of World War I, he never learned it well.)24

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Very often he was frustrated, and the frustration erupted in the French Sudan (Mali) when soldiers interrupted his peace at a campsite. “I began to try to talk angrily but French words would not come. I picked up a stick and struck out blindly & desperately, & hit a man . . . on the arm. He grasped & twisted my arm, & would have hurt if had not the others held him off. They went away, & I sat down to my supper, feeling ashamed. As I sat, some missiles, clods of earth, were thrown at me in the house . . . that just missed my head.” French officials drove up in a car soon afterward, and the resolution of the affair (which he did not record in any detail) detained him in Koulikoro (Mali) for several days. Reflecting on events, Bates made a painful and honest admission: “That things were unpleasant may be partly my fault, I whom am sensitive to unkindness lacking in independent selfesteem.”25 At the end of his 1928 expedition, Bates settled in Essex, England, where he could work in the “bird room,” the ornithological library and specimen collection of the Natural History Museum in London, the leading center for ornithological research. In his retirement he worked at the museum on his Handbook, published in 1930. For a work of scientific ornithology, the book is pleasurable reading, a knowledgeable and lively introduction to species and their distribution, with some observations about their habits. He returned to West Africa in 1930 to collect in Sierra Leone for the British Museum and in 1931 for another Nigeria-to-Dakar journey through the Sahara. On this last trip, alone and aching for familiar companionship, he wrote: “I have learned in Africa to understand and respond to a word in Tennyson’s Ulysses that used to seem strange, the last item in the wandering Greek King’s enumerations of his loved ones at home, ‘wife and child and slave.’” Bates had no wife or child, had left his parents and siblings on another continent, and slaves were a thing of the past—all he had was his Bulu “boys” who had helped him before. Preparing for this trip, he imagined them joining him: A correspondence with Mr. Reis in Cameroon has given me some hope of having one of my old Bulu boys again for this my last (and greatest?) journey. It is doubtful, for I no longer belong to those people as I did, and many things have changed. If I get word at Lagos by which I can be sure of at least one of those old Bulu boys to go with me, I will go on by the “Wahahe” to Duala to meet him, and we will come back to Lagos

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together by the same boat. If the boy that is willing to come should by chance prove to be the one who has repeatedly shown himself to be a thief, I will e’en take him nevertheless, and try to keep a sharp lookout after my property, considering even the bother of having to do this well repaid if he will serve me as once he did.26 He received only an expression of interest, not a commitment, from one Muondo Banga, and so he did not travel to Douala. Disappointed, Bates wrote the next day, “I am still haunted by regret for Muondo Banga, and filled with dreams of propitious circumstances such that I might take not only himself and his wife but the small boys, his wife’s two brothers, who used to work for me, on a long adventurous journey like this.” As he suspected, he and the Bulu no longer belonged to each other: “I have written to Mr. Reis expressing thanks, and asking him to give Muondo Banga ‘my love’ and regrets. And that’s the end of that.”27 In his previous trip to Hausa territory, he came closest to re-creating the collaboration he had had among the Bulu. Many people caught birds for him and he learned their names for them. If he was more comfortable among the Hausa, he ascribed it to the quality of the servants: “I have a sense of freedom—freedom from dependence on French-speaking natives (who are not like ordinary natives, but seemed to me more or less insolent and hateful to deal with). It is not that my own knowledge of any native language gives me this independence here; if my mind were not so stiff and old I could by this time have known a useful amount of Hausa.”28 Moving back into French territory, he complained constantly about a sequence of servants. Again, he was physically violent, this time striking one across the nose. One morning, Bates recorded what might have been a relief for him: “I heard a very brisk voice speaking in the familiar accents of Kruboy English ‘You want boy?’ I looked at the strong, thick-lipped and high-cheeked speaker, and said ‘Yes.’” Thus he engaged the hapless Hamani, with whom he was “continually angry and disgusted” for the ten weeks they spent together. Apart from the personal tensions they caused him, these servants were not intermediaries between him and the landscape and its birds. He made do with what help he could find, but as the trip wore on, he increasingly worked alone, just another itinerant collector, without the vernacular guidance that distinguished his youthful work. Now sixty-nine, he walked the desert near Timbuktu alone, collecting specimens: “Wish I could find where they hide their nests.”29

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Two nonornithological personal factors strike the reader of these late journals: his racial identity and his sexuality. These bear on his relations with African vernacular birders and thus on his research, and so require comment. His emotional investment in his male servants, his disengagement from heterosexual relations, and the observations of male beauty in scattered references in the travel diary raise the possibility that he felt samesex longings strong enough to have contributed to his estrangement from his family and Illinois Protestant society, but this cannot be confirmed from the available source material. It is clearer, however, that his ideal community was homosocial and that he created it with his servant bird experts, his affective disposition shaping his research strategies. Furthermore, the diaries of his Saharan travels show an interest in race that was not evident in his earlier journals. He was very attentive about Fulani, Tuareg, and Arabs, all of whom he considered white: “I wish I knew more about these African races that are not negroes in features or mind, but far different, stoical, proud, and aloof.” 30 His travels gave him a wider perspective and provoked a telling commentary on his attitudes about racial difference and colonial propriety: I had a cook . . . I don’t quite understand why I hated him so and felt so relieved at getting rid of him yesterday. Something in me, a prejudice of some kind, rises up in arms against the natives who know more or less French & cease to be real natives. Black men seem to be inevitably spoiled by contact with whites—unless it be in Northern Nigeria. There, of all places in the world that I know anything about, is where students of the problems of the government of negroes should look for ideas.31 He admitted he hadn’t always felt thus, and it is noteworthy that his Francophobic feelings intensified in French West Africa, where the policy of assimilation held the most possibility (although the numbers of assimilated Africans were still minuscule). Having just traveled through Hausaland, the archetypical example of British indirect rule, he recalled that system, which he believed more authentically African and preferable. His political commentary reveals something about his research collaborations. Africans who assimilated into French culture would leave behind vernacular birding expertise and would not tolerate the master-servant hierarchy. Other factors also underscore the social asymmetry in his research: his admiration for “unspoiled” Africans, his physical violence against them, his lack of

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inclination to teach, and his reliance on servants for instruction about birds. His admitted lack of confidence, acute shyness, and discomfort even among family are evidence of a discomfort with symmetrical social relations. Conceivably, the status of Africans as colonial subjects made it possible for him to be more comfortable with them. Bates became a British citizen when he retired to England. In his old age, he remained active. In his seventies he learned Arabic and traveled to Arabia for a book on its birds that he never completed. Despite his enthusiasm for their subject, he held to the edge of the society of fully fledged scientific ornithologists. He “could rarely be induced to speak at the monthly meetings of the British Ornithologists’ Club.” His colleagues interpreted his shyness as a natural attribute magnified by long residence in Africa. “None of his ornithological friends in this country knew him intimately, but what we did know we liked. He was always ready to help over any problem presented to him and would put himself to no end of trouble over the smallest detail to assist.” His sister, Mary, visited him once for four months and noted that George had little social life and did not attend church. Yet again, at the end of his life, he found companionship with a boy (here literally a subadult male) around the subject of birds. With Pat Freeman, a young neighbor, Bates conducted a study of the breeding habits of doves. Young Pat had given no evidence of interest in birds before he met Bates; he had no vernacular expertise. All the same, the ornithologist was generous to his junior collaborator, with Freeman as the first author of the publications that resulted from their work (fig. 28).32 “Invaluable for Making Long Series of Routine Observations” More than any other ornithologist working in Africa, Reginald Ernest Moreau achieved international prominence, becoming the editor of Ibis, the leading British ornithological journal, when he retired in England. Moreau established his reputation in the vanguard of a “revolution” in ornithology in the 1920s and 1930s, as it left behind descriptive accounts of systematics and distribution (such as Bates wrote) and incorporated subjects already present in other modern biological sciences, such as genetics, physiology, and ethology. He is remembered as “the first to make serious life-history studies of tropical birds.”33

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28. George Latimer Bates and Pat Freeman. Bates (George Latimer) Collection, Ornithology and Rothschild Library of the Natural History Museum. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

As mentioned, his pioneering work owed much to research assistants. Yet this was his comment on vernacular knowledge: Although the local natives live among some of the finest forest in East Africa, they are, on the whole, remarkably devoid of bush-craft, and the enquirer can learn little from them about the local birds. They lime a few fruit-eating species in the clearings, and occasionally trap Francolin

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or Guinea-fowl; but I have often envied Bates his skilful West African assistants, who knew the ways of the depths of the forest. During the last twelve months I have, however, had the assistance of an experienced native collector, and have learnt more in that time than in the two preceding years.34 This is a puzzle: if Moreau’s work was so respectable, and if it depended on research assistants, how could they be anything less than skillful or knowledgeable? Which discrepancy explains this difference between his experience with research assistants and that of Bates: the quality of the vernacular knowledge, or the willingness of the ornithologist to seek out and credit that knowledge? We cannot compare the expertise of their assistants, but we find ample evidence that the ornithologists’ dispositions, affective ties, and anxieties gave them contrasting experiences of vernacular expertise and different inclinations toward linking Africans into scientific networks. Moreau came to ornithology only in his twenties, as an accountant, a colonial official, and an eager participant in ornithological networks. Soon thereafter, he was happily partnered in a scientifically profitable relationship. These facts explain much of the difference between him and Bates and the ways they related to African vernacular birders as experts and companions. In an autobiographical sketch published after his death, he described himself as a rather undirected youth with only a casual interest in birdwatching. Born into a middle-class family in the Surrey suburbs of London, he had a good secondary education, but tragically, the door of a passing train struck his father as he stood on the platform. His father lived but suffered a nervous breakdown. Thereafter, tightened family circumstances prevented Moreau from going to university. His own rheumatoid arthritis kept him from the draft in the World War I, and he joined the civil service for a career with job security. It was not a happy time. He was living at home in a stressful family situation, with few friends and no great interest in his main task of bookkeeping.35 To relieve his rheumatoid arthritis, in 1920 he transferred to the army audit office in Cairo, where he found his avocation. There, at the age of twenty-three, he dedicated his weekends to searching out birds. His colleagues warned him about solitary travel in the desert, but Moreau persisted and became fluent in Arabic. Admitting to a “rather bloody-minded social nonconformity,” he avoided his fellow auditors and socialized instead with

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scientists. As an admirer commented: “It is surprising to find so good [an ornithologist] drifting casually into ornithology in his mid-twenties, and then not through seeing birds but through friendship with a much older man.” His new intellectual partners included the entomologist C. B. Williams, who “instilled the rudiments of the scientific approach,” and Winifred Muriel, a Cumbrian vicar’s daughter who was serving an English family as a nanny. Their common interest in birds proved stronger than the difference between his atheism and her Anglicanism, and they married. His weekends on donkey back in the desert produced respectable ornithological work, and in 1927 he published his first paper in Ibis.36 The Moreaus feared a transfer back to England, but another opportunity came when Williams transferred to the Amani agricultural research station in Tanganyika, and “it was thought that somebody who knew about government accounting methods would be useful and that somebody not wholly unattuned to the scientific approach would fit it.” Thus, Reg Moreau was also reposted. He, Winnie, and their two children moved in 1928 to the Usambara rainforest, where birds, scientific colleagues, and research assistants were plentiful. Amani was a small, focused community of British researchers where Reg enjoyed use of “the best library facilities between Cairo and the Zambezi.” He noted that his time at Amani “amounted to the beginnings of the education I never had.”37 Moreau’s journals and early publications from Tanganyika convey the joy of observing birds. He loved language and wrote charming anthropomorphic descriptions. He took time to record the family life of animals and delighted in displays of affection between monkeys and the sight of a hen leading her chicks through the grass, the progress of a nest of baby Bates’s (a species named for the lonely man in Cameroon). Anyone who has ever enjoyed watching a turaco, lourie, or go-away bird take flight (and many who have not had the opportunity) would appreciate his description of Fischer’s turaco (Tauraco fischeri): This Lourie is an exceedingly poor flyer. It rarely attempts a flight of even a hundred yards, and then appears to be making a desperate effort to maintain itself in the air, with neck outstretched and clumsily flapping wings. In the ordinary way the bird is hardly more aerial than a monkey. It seems quite incapable of raising itself in the air. It takes long hops from branch to branch, and occasionally glides a few yards from one tree to another. We have seen them work along a line of coniferous

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trees along a road by climbing each to the top and thence gliding to the lower branches of the next. . . . The whole movement is curiously unavian; the creature looks as if it were climbing a rope hand over hand.38 Reg’s use of the first person plural was not a rhetorical device. In his first publication on birds in the Usambaras, he made the extent of Winnie’s participation clear: “The frequent use of the pronoun ‘we’ . . . is a natural result of our close collaboration.” They shared the adventure of finding new birds, Winnie even making entries in his field notebook. Their closeness permeates his work, as when he described a bird call: “I was sitting in a wood at Turiani when, from the thicket in front of me, came a soft guarded whistle exactly like my wife’s when she wants to draw my attention to a bird. As I had left her two hundred miles away it was really startling.” Since the reader has no experience of her whistling, the passage tells us nothing of the bird, but it does tell us something of their collaboration.39 The family lore, as recalled by their son, David, in his own memoir, presents the Moreaus as a madcap twosome. Even if David’s childhood memories were exaggerated in their particulars, they make noteworthy statements that the couple were fun, fearless, loving to their children, and passionate about wildlife. Birds, snakes, eagles, and even a leopard entered the family spaces (fig. 29). Their daughter, Prinia, was named for a warbler, Prinia gracilis, although Winnie dissuaded Reg from naming the boy “Buphagus” for the oxpecker genus. Winnie cared for rescued nestlings by tucking them into a sock between her breasts. The Moreaus, as recalled by their son, would have been a rare pair in the small British community at Amani. Reg recited bawdy limericks to guests. Not to be outdone, Winnie appeared at a dinner for visiting dignitaries with chicks nestled in her bosom. The provincial governor was reduced to tears of laughter when he heard the chirping.40 Reg Moreau was as gregarious in Africa as he was everywhere else. An obituary writer praised his “unfailing ability to speak with any man as an equal, be it on birds or philosophy, anecdotes or morals.” This writer hadn’t known him in Africa, but we know that Reg spent a lot of time talking with natives of both Egypt and Tanganyika. As with Arabic, he became fluent in Swahili. He researched bird names, publishing two articles with highly detailed and careful discussions of nomenclature patterns and classification in several languages, although he did not record general birdlore.41

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29. Reg Moreau and a friend. A. L. Moreau Photographs, Alexander Library of Ornithology, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

Remarkably, he also published original ethnographic research on subjects having nothing to do with birds. He wrote about a method of suicide among aggrieved women who curse themselves by breaking kitchenware. The article makes clear that his work as an amateur ethnographer grew out of his extraordinary listening skills: “Since I came to live at Amani my attention has repeatedly been called to this method of committing suicide,” and “Different Sambaa and Bondei have given some accounts of the procedure that are in excellent agreement with one another.” In 1940 a published note on joking relationships made him curious about whether Tanganyikans had these customs of normalized insults and extreme practical jokes

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among members of certain groups. He made inquiries and found Amani residents “without exception to be ready to discuss the matter” and through interviews with thirty-two men from seventeen ethnic groups became the first to document utani practices in Tanganyika, eventually publishing in the leading social science journal Africa. Reg claimed no authority as an ethnographer, stating, “I make no attempt to discuss my data, for I am not qualified to do so,” and gave primacy to his informants’ explanations that joking relations arose among former enemies. His familiarity with local social relations and customs and his facility as an interviewer come through in the article as he detailed rights, obligations, and curative and ritual powers in joking relationships.42 These exchanges with cultural topics are important because they are rare on the subject of birds. A few years after arriving in Amani he gave a wry recount of an effort to learn from Africans: “My native informant stated readily that he had heard the bird’s call, but when pressed to imitate it he would only reiterate the remark that he could not remember it because it had been dark.” By 1932 he went on record with his impression, quoted near the beginning of this section, about the limitations of vernacular knowledge, that “the enquirer can learn little” about birds. In 1966 he expressed his appreciation for his collectors: “Before long they could be sent to isolated parts of Tanganyika to make highly discriminating collections; and the notes they made (in Swahili) enabled labels to be written that were far more critical and informative than most.” This appreciation is not evident in the original publications.43 The disparity between his ability to learn a lot from Africans about human topics but a limited amount on avian ones merits some discussion, particularly in the light of his appreciation of Bates’s work. Reginald Moreau’s explanation was that Amani people did not have much to teach him. It is, of course, possible that the Bulu who worked with Bates had an exceptionally well developed body of avian knowledge and that Amani residents did not. It is also possible that Tanganyikans had similarly detailed knowledge, but that people who moved to Amani for work were unfamiliar with the birds in the Usambaras, an area with much biodiversity and endemism. Furthermore, the lingua franca Swahili may not have had names for locally specific birds. There is also evidence, however, that Moreau was less inclined than Bates to seek out vernacular expertise about birds and to credit the ornithological contributions of expert African birders. That his strategy of learning about an unfamiliar avian world was not to enlist the aid of the people who lived there is evident in his earliest field notes. Although he had no good

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guide to the avian fauna (none had been written yet) and knew few scientific or specific English names, he did not use vernacular names as Bates did, instead using provisional and general terms such as a “lovely little bustard?” or “a pair of priceless little birds.”44 Most important, his depiction of his chief research assistant, Salimu Asmani, suggests Moreau was not predisposed to appreciate the extent of vernacular expertise. Asmani came to Moreau with the recommendation of Arthur Loveridge, a British curator and general collector best known for his association with the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. Loveridge, who produced many popular works on specimen hunting in Africa, had an extremely high opinion of Asmani’s dedication and skill, calling him “one of those rarities, a native naturalist” (fig. 30).45

30. Salimu Asmani (right). Loveridge, Many Happy Days, pl. 2.

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In 1966 Moreau also remembered him as “acute, responsible and pertinacious.” In his first mention in Moreau’s journals, Asmani’s contribution is clear: “[Asmani] says Trogon is responsible for the wonderful crescendo whistle ‘whee hoo’ ad lib so often heard; & pointed out that it was often answered by quite a different 4-note call.” As quoted above, in 1932 he reflected that he learned more in one year with his experienced collector than he had in two years without him.46 But Asmani’s expertise did not elevate him to Winifred’s level as a research partner. Even when Asmani’s talent and dedication were most outstanding, his expertise was inferior: on a robin of the Phyllastrephus genus, Moreau wrote in 1937: “Salimu Asmani, who got the unique type, was attracted to it by its strange song, and he spent a couple of hours chasing it through the undergrowth. We questioned him directly afterwards. He described the song as clear and loud, its tone reminding him of both P. f. tenuirostris and Cossypha heuglini. The notes, which he was able to repeat again and again without variation were five. . . . It is regrettable to have to record that up to the present no European has any field knowledge of this remarkably distinct Phyllastrephus.” Despite noticing the unfamiliar call, bagging the type, and mastering its song, Asmani’s report was deemed lacking because the observer was African.47 At any rate, collecting specimens and describing birdcalls did not put this accountant in contention for the title of “Africa’s greatest biologist.” Rather, he and his assistants made an impact by practicing a new type of ornithology. In the 1920s and 1930s the field of ornithology developed a more rigorous quantitative methodology to learn about living birds, especially through census taking and studies of ethology and ecology. This shift suited Moreau’s skills, and he began to produce quantified studies of behavior, especially during nesting and the raising of young. Winnie was involved in this research as well. Reg claimed that neither he nor his collectors were any good at finding nests, “but fortunately, my wife proved to be.” In his publications he credited specific observations to her, even coauthoring with her. But Winnie suffered poor health and had to care for the children, and even though Reg’s position at Amani was not particularly demanding, he could not do ornithology full time. Furthermore, the new quantified ornithology required a lot of data, accumulated over hours of observation. So, to conduct this research, he commanded the time of wage-earning assistants. As one obituary put it: they “could sit all day at nests and record whatever went on while he attended to his many duties.” Moreau described the work

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in similar terms: “These Africans were invaluable for making long series of routine observations, especially of incubation and feeding rhythms at nests.” Moreau found his assistants to be well suited for routine work under his supervision.48 The men, including Saidi Nyundo, Charles Abdallah, and Simon Mhunza, were employees of the Amani research station, which donated their time to the project. Because they kept their own field notebooks, in Swahili, their contributions are better documented than those of any other research assistants in African ornithological history. The notebooks followed a general pattern. Moreau, writing in ink, described the location of a nest. Usually this was at the Amani station, outside a house in the case of a swallow or swift. Then pages follow, one per shift, as his assistants recorded, in pencil, the weather and the time of specific events such as feeding, males and females relieving each other, defecation, and first flight of the young. A typical shift was five to seven hours. At the bottom of the page Moreau calculated, again in ink, statistics such as the average length of time between feedings, the frequency with which each chick was fed, and the age of the fledglings. If Bates’s research assistants provided him with expertise, creativity, and intimacy in return for patronage, Moreau’s sold their time and ability to make standardized, routine, methodical observations. Under R. E. Moreau, ornithology and Taylorism, the regimen of industrial time, came together in colonial Tanganyika. The laborers were Africans, but the work was similar to that done by research assistants anywhere and did not intersect with vernacular knowledge.49 Although it is difficult to discern much about the writers of these regimented notes, it is evident that some of them related to the birds. Some writers (they did not sign their entries) produced terse notes in the first person conveying what they saw, while others used full sentences to characterize behavior in affectionate and quite human terms. Often they provided additional details, and Moreau acknowledges that he found these voluntary observations helpful. Moreau incorporated their observations into his analyses, but for the most part the breeding studies were based on the quantifiable information about the frequency of particular behaviors, which were often represented graphically in tables. Assistants were essential to Moreau’s research, but the contributions he solicited came one datum point at a time as they took information in a quantified, chronographic form alien to vernacular thought. Moreau also described the project with quantitative data: in 1939 his assistants had recorded sixty thousand events in the life histories of swifts

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and swallows. For a 1942 paper, he reported they clocked eleven hundred hours of observation. This is the key to the paradox of Moreau’s dependence on and skepticism of the skills of his assistants. Compared with Bates, his research methods entailed a deskilling of the position of research assistant, or at least disconnecting it from vernacular expertise.50 Over time, the life strained the Moreaus. The children returned to England for school, Winnie was often ill, and they suffered shortages of food and other supplies, as well as from the climate. “I don’t like Africa,” Moreau wrote to a correspondent in 1945, later declaring it a “horrible place.” Trachoma endangered his vision in 1946, and the Moreaus returned to England for good. They settled near Oxford, in the village of Berrick Salome. How his time in Africa had changed his life! He had become a respected scientist, at the center of ornithological networks. He served as editor of Ibis from 1947 through 1960 and held a research position at the Edward Grey Institute for Ornithology at Oxford University. He became president of the British Ornithologists’ Union and was honored by them with a medal and by Oxford with an honorary MA. His “kindness, enthusiasm, and marvelous vocabulary” put him at the center of his circle at Oxford. Obituaries tend to be generous, but it is noteworthy that those for Moreau uniformly stress his sociability. Through his correspondence with ornithologists from all over the world, he “made a host of friends . . . where others would have been content with acquaintances.” He was especially solicitous toward students “and was always giving the kind of help he had himself received in his early days in Egypt and East Africa.”51 In Europe, Moreau documented two encounters with vernacular knowledge. He took up history, writing a book about his Oxfordshire village Berrick Salome, based largely on oral histories in an effort similar to his ethnographic work in Tanganyika. The departure from his work in Africa came when he endorsed vernacular expertise about birds. In 1952 the Moreaus made a pioneering study of migration in the western Mediterranean. In Spain, Reg once again engaged with locals. Once more, Winnie served as his coauthor (fig. 31). As in Africa, he collected vernacular bird names. At sixty, he delighted his fellow bus passengers in Spain by riding on the roof. And among the peasants of Spain, they found the rich body of vernacular knowledge that had escaped Reg in Tanganyika and until then had escaped ornithologists of the Palearctic region. 52 The research in Europe presents a foil to his work in Africa and illuminates his use of assistants there as unskilled data collectors. In their

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31. Reg and Winnie Moreau in retirement in England. A. L. Moreau Photographs. Alexander Library of Ornithology, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Courtesy of

acknowledgment of Spanish expertise, the Moreaus enthused with commendations more typical of Bates: “We are much impressed by the amount of information, especially about the immigrants, that is to be obtained from the cazadores of all sorts and we are particularly grateful to the lighthousekeepers who gave us the benefit of their experience.” What differentiated the Spanish lighthouse keepers from Salimu Asmani? The crux was: Who could testify without corroboration? Moreau had said that the field knowledge of a “European” was necessary to know the birds Asmani told him about. Apparently, he did not need an ornithologist to confirm the vernacular knowledge of the Spanish lighthouse keepers.53

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Simply Men Hunting Together Bates and Moreau were of the generation that retired before the end of colonialism and so were not confronted by decolonization, African nationalism, or the late twentieth-century impetus toward a more inclusive network of scientists. An ornithologist who bridged the colonial and postcolonial periods, Leslie Brown, illustrates mid-twentieth-century developments in the network of birding. As a popular writer, Brown revealed some of himself, suggesting how birding in Africa gave European and EuroAmerican men the opportunity to distinguish themselves as characters. His memoirs provide another case of the personal investment that ornithologists had in their own position in Africa, a position that would become vulnerable with decolonization. Brown wrote at least four memoirs, three of which give a good deal of attention to his assistant, the Kenyan Njeru Kicho. Their work demonstrates mostly clearly a “collaboration without consensus” about goals. The working relationship ended with a fallout between the two men in the 1960s, when Kicho took control of his role in the collaboration. Unfortunately, Kicho left no account of what happened. So, all that is left to us is an against-the-grain reading of Brown’s narrative. This, too, is a problematic exercise, because Brown acquired a reputation for extreme difficulty. Was he so extremely irascible with his assistants in the 1950s, or was he the hailfellow-well-met of his own accounts?54 Born in 1917 and Scottish by heritage, Brown lived in Kenya from 1947 until his death in 1980. Unlike Bates and Moreau, we have no sense from his first memoir about any mentors who encouraged his interest. (The lack of attention to other people is suggested by the title: Birds and I.) Brown presented his life’s development from a boy egg collector in colonial India to an observer and photographer in Scotland, where he attended public school and Saint Andrew’s University; to Trinidad, where he studied tropical agriculture at Imperial College; and finally to Nigeria, where he held his first post as an agricultural officer. When he moved to Kenya in 1947, he was posted to the Embu district (later known as Mbere), to the east of Mount Kenya. In 1948 in the forest there, at an undisclosed spot he called Eagle Hill, he began his study of the birds that distinguished his career, the Falconiformes, in particular members of the family Accipitridae, including eagles and hawks. In these early years, Brown concentrated on breeding and nesting behavior, and used “eagle watchers” to collect data. Although he had

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hired assistants in Nigeria, in Kenya they became central to this work, and he publicized their contributions. At first, finding the right eagle watchers was difficult. He had to establish with them “that no wool could be pulled over this Bwana’s eyes” and convey that it was worth their time to work for him. Njeru Kicho began to work with him in early 1949. In Brown’s first publication in the ornithological journal Ibis in 1952, he was forthright about his dependence on his assistants, writing: “My thanks are due to these men, especially Njeru Gicho [Kicho], for their many hours of patient observation, without which this paper could not have been prepared.”55 By 1952 Moreau and Bates had both established the value of African assistants in ornithological work. But Brown’s employment of them differed from Bates’s reaping of existing vernacular knowledge or Moreau’s demand for quantified observations: he used Kicho and others for a qualitative study of behavior of individual birds. They watched the birds and told him about it, and he wrote up the findings. This was an unprecedented reliance on Africans to create new ornithological knowledge. In the early 1950s Moreau was editor of Ibis, and one imagines that his probing was responsible for Brown’s extended justification of the reliability of observations by his observers. In the Ibis article Brown reasoned that because they were illiterate they could not take down statistics. But being illiterate, they had excellent memories, and being bush experts they were superior observers. He also explained how he compensated for their errors in time telling and claimed that he had tested their knowledge. He concluded by defending them and himself: I could cite instances of their accuracy, but for considerations of space I must content myself with the general statement that (a) they clearly had considerable general knowledge of eagles, (b) they were not likely to make stereotyped reports as to what might happen, but would report fairly accurately what they had actually seen. No observation made by them upon which I placed any reliance was found to be inaccurate; indeed, on several occasions they reported facts, which I did not believe but found to be true. This point is support for the acceptance of their observations even when these have not been checked by myself. I have made a note in the text on the comparatively few occasions where this was the case.56 Here Brown contradicts the skepticism represented in chapter 4 by Butler’s criticism of Roberts having credited a “negro proverb.” According

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to Brown, science could benefit a lot from these assistants’ work. He wrote in the 1955 memoir Eagles: “An educated man would have been able to record more accurate times—but I could never find an educated man with his knowledge of the bush—the two don’t go together anywhere. With his broad basic observations, and my more detailed ones from close quarters in hides, we supplemented each other very well. And, as I said earlier, we both enjoyed it—we still do.” The separate roles of vernacular birder and ornithologist were clear, yet Brown did not go so far to insist that Africans were capable of only vernacular knowledge, as Bates did when he complained that French-speaking Africans “cease to be real natives.”57 Brown elaborated on his work in Kenya in his further accounts The Mystery of the Flamingos (1959) and Encounters with Nature (1979). Kicho figures large in these books, which may constitute the most detailed firstperson account of a research collaboration in African science. It is a buddymovie presentation, of mismatched yet affectionate comrades not entirely free of tension but beating obstacles in their mutual pursuit. The pursuit (as Brown understood it!) was scientific research, and the books offer justification for the merit of Kicho’s contributions. He accepted Kicho’s observations without corroborating them: “I was not there and had to take Njeru’s word for it.” And he gave him credit, frequently including him as a partner: “Njeru and I have made a considerable discovery.” Their achievement was impressive. Over four years, they found twenty-six pairs from ten species of eagles and observed their breeding and nesting behavior.58 Kicho is introduced as being middle-aged, born about 1910 –12, and “the nearest thing to an African ornithologist I have ever seen.” Among the assistants, Kicho stood out as being particularly interested in birds and unafraid of large animals or tall trees, even the eagle parent who attacked him when he was seventy feet in the air. Brown gave Kicho the credit, rather than himself, for supervising the other assistants and even admitted that Kicho’s knowledge sometimes exceeded his own. “I could not have gained a tenth of the detailed knowledge I gained had I not been assisted by Njeru and his various assistants. . . . To him is very largely due whatever credit may have come my way for the detailed work.”59 What motivated Kicho to collaborate in this project? Brown had a theory. “He was paid what was for him a providential sum of money to go and sit at the base of a tree, doing nothing but watch an eagle all day, and as he was rather interested in them anyway it suited him down to the ground.” A recurrent theme that may have pained Brown later was Kicho’s

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honesty: “None of his helpers reached the same standard; they started off well enough, but they could not keep it up, and there would come a time when I found they were no longer correctly identifying the male and female, or started reporting that the eagle came at exactly the same time each day, thus clearly proving that they were not doing their job. The only thing to do was get rid of them and scrap the dubious observations. Njeru could soon find another young bushman who was quite ready to climb trees and do other things required of eagle watchers.” Sometimes Brown doubted Kicho’s assertions, but he was invariably proven correct. Brown lost his skepticism: “Thereafter I never rejected any of Njeru’s apparently impossible statements, and when I was able to check on them I always found them to be correct.”60 The Mau Mau challenged Brown in ways no ornithologist in Africa had ever before faced. The Mau Mau were an anticolonial rebel movement of Gikuyu who made attacks on white farmers in 1952, leading the Kenyan government to impose a state of emergency. But the violence was not primarily a race war between Mau Mau insurgents and white settlers. The conflict is better understood as a civil war involving the Mau Mau on one hand and the government, loyalist Gikuyu, and soldiers (askari) from other ethnic groups on the other. The Mau Mau were not the deadliest force in the conflict: the best-informed death counts are that 32 white civilians, 63 European combatants, 170 African soldiers, and more than 1,800 Kenyan civilians died at the hands of the Mau Mau. But the total number of suspected Mau Mau killed has been estimated at 20,000. Ninety percent of all dead were Gikuyu.61 The forests around Mount Kenya, including those around Embu, saw intense conflict and bird research there became impossible. In Brown’s telling, the Mau Mau were an inconvenience rather than a threat. He claimed not to have given the civil war much thought: From time to time I had to cross open stretches of flat mud, overlooked by dense cover on all sides, a sitting target for anyone who felt inclined to kill me. I confess I looked over my shoulder now and again and paid unusually keen attention to the movements of birds and other kindred signs which could indicate the presence of human beings. All went well, however, and I emerged at the other end unscathed; no doubt the police would have objected had they known about it, but they did not know.”62

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Social movements had no significance for his scientific efforts. In 1959 he claimed: “Not long ago I saw an article in an Indian paper by Professor J. B. S. Haldane in which he said that it was unlikely that anything much would be found out about East African flamingos until the people had been granted self-government, for only then would conditions be sufficiently settled. If he read this I hope he will permit me a sardonic smile!” Although Brown did not acknowledge the Mau Mau threat, his work in Embu tailed off as fighting intensified. He explained this as an effect of his home leave and transfers. Moving 250 miles away to Kisumu in Nyanza Province in 1953, he took up research on flamingos in the soda lakes of the Rift Valley. Kicho received permission to leave Central Province and join him in Kisumu when Brown testified that he rejected the Mau Mau “wholeheartedly.”63 Brown was convinced of Kicho’s loyalty, calling him his “faithful henchman.” From his perspective, it was a convivial relationship. “His way of thinking was not the same as mine, but I feel that we got nearer to one another than do most of our respective races.” Their camaraderie was based on their bravery and physical toughness. After Kicho joined him on a particularly difficult excursion into the lakebed, Brown recounted, “Njeru remarked, with characteristic humour, ‘If a cup was given for bird watching we ought to have won it to-day!’”64 For Brown, shared masculinity and interest in birds allowed him and his assistants to transcend race. “Ordinarily his way of life and mine were very different, but here we were sharing something which we both enjoyed, and as a result, we were simply men hunting together, and not African and European. People nowadays scoff at this sort of thing, but it is my opinion that it is only in this kind of way that any European ever gets an African off his guard and prepared to display something of what he is thinking. Bygone administrators were not such blimps and fools as their modern pink intellectual counterparts too often suppose.” One suspects that the accusations of “pink intellectuals” and the challenges by Mau Mau fighters were in part responsible for Brown’s inclusion of Njeru Kicho in what had been until then a relationship between himself and the birds. In contrast to his experience in Nigeria, in Kenya his position as a British official was challenged. His response was to reemphasize his manly and intrepid credentials earned with an African companion. The assertion of a mutual understanding between himself and Kicho, an uncorrupted African, served as a defense of colonialism.65

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According to Brown, Kicho’s aid was freely given in a shared project; their common efforts drew out the best in both of them, produced distinguished research, and, to a degree, transcended race. Yet the asymmetries inherent in science conducted in racialized empires infused their work more than Brown admitted. As we shall see in chapter 8, their collaboration was lacking the consensus Brown was so confident about. Knowledge, Intimacy, and Boundaries; or, Sexing-Up Ornithology In a field with mostly hidden assistants, the histories of Bates, Moreau, and Brown reveal that African vernacular birders contributed greatly to twentieth-century ornithology. This set of ornithologists was markedly liberal in their acknowledgment of vernacular expertise and of the individuals who helped them, but their writings show that the network of birders was structured by the politics of empire and race. This analysis of the placement of racial boundaries has its roots in critical colonial studies, where racial categories are not organic, identity is mutable, groups are not coherent, and alliance and intimacy unite those whom segregationists and nationalists believe are naturally divided. An influential example comes from the work of Ann Stoler, who has investigated the tensions of carnal knowledge in European colonies. Concentrating on matters of sex, sexuality, and family, her work develops a social and cultural history of the colonial effort to lay boundaries between Europeans and colonized populations around the turn of the twentieth century. The boundaries legitimated and produced European power. For the sake of preventing the fragmentation of the white colonial population, men, women, parents, and the state policed the parameters of European society and identity by regulating intimate activity with the colonized and determining the civil rights of families according to their degree of whiteness. In this analysis, emphasis is on the interchange between natives and colonists and the threat it posed to whites.66 What does sex have to do with science? Hugh Raffles has explained that, like carnal knowledge, scientific knowledge involves intimacy, is acquired through relationships, and satisfies longings. Furthermore, like carnal relationships, intimate scientific relationships in the colonies were unsettling to Europeans, threatening their intellectual authority. Controlling intimate practices is a dominant theme in field research in colonial Africa. These attractions, the qualified legitimacy of their progeny, and the limitations upon

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hybridity are manifest in these ornithologists’ scientific lives. Clearly, the colonial state and society were less threatened by wayward scientists congressing with vernacular experts than by whites having sexual intercourse with natives or by poor whites “going native,” but science was not immune to the general disapproval of overly familiar relationships with “natives.”67 This obsession with boundaries had not been present in the vernacular knowledge exchange under the VOC or in the work of the earliest ornithologists. Scientific networks had moved away from vernacular ways of knowing, European and African alike, but by the twentieth century Africans were categorically excluded, cordoned off by boundaries that defined their bodies, rights, and abilities as separate from those of Europeans. This explicit racialization of ornithological authority becomes visible after imperial conquest. These ornithologists maintained hierarchical relations with African vernacular birders and set their own boundaries. Because connections with self, family, scientists, and assistants were forged in relation to all the other linkages, the placement and nature of the boundaries varied among ornithologists. Bates considered Bulu bird knowledge to be nearly as reliable as his own, although any Bulu moves toward assimilation into European ways could destroy that resource. His American origins were only indirectly responsible for his greater openness to African knowledge. As an American, he had little possibility of ensconcing himself in a colonial administration, as many British ornithologists did, including Moreau and Brown, but Bates would not have chosen that life. He was happiest as an outsider among his own people and as an outsider among ornithologists, and for that reason he could lay his boundary deep in African territory, with authorship and servitude as the sentinels for the integrity of science. Hierarchical relations with vernacular bird experts suited his personal needs and did not challenge social propriety or his scientific self-construction. Because relations were so clearly hierarchical, he was able to depend very much on African expertise without committing himself to full partnership. Only the white junior partner Pat Freeman could be both collaborator and coauthor. Moreau had a different relationship with various forms of expertise. Although he interacted easily with Africans and listened to what they had to tell him, he did not endorse even Asmani’s observations as independently reliable. If interest or knowledge were the qualification for entry into ornithology, Asmani had a better chance of entering than Pat Freeman, Winnie Moreau, or maybe even Reg Moreau. He did sanction vernacular capacity to know birds through routine observation and standardized procedures,

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though; and by deskilling and controlling African contributions he made them scientifically acceptable. Winnie Moreau was central to these relations, not because she policed them, but because she and his colleagues at Amani satisfied his need for intellectual companionship in a bounded, racially exclusive cohort. Spanish farmers and lighthouse keepers stood as a midpoint between Africans who did not know much about birds, and Winnie, who could be a coauthor and recognized participant in the scientific network. They did not write, but they could report without corroboration. Leslie Brown gave the strongest endorsement of African vernacular knowledge and unlike Bates, who took on Pat Freeman, and Moreau, who had Winnie, he was consistent in coauthoring only with scientists who were established producers of hard facts. His method and collaborations can be read as suggesting that his writing observed the boundary between birding traditions before that of races. Yet he was very aware of the difference between himself and his assistants, and he resented attempts to challenge the social relations of colonial Africa. He used birding in Africa with Africans to convey a particular persona to popular audiences, that of a robust white man who overcame physical and political challenges. Brown drew attention to the way that his and Kicho’s companionability transcended difference, yet he remained the “Bwana” and Kicho was the “henchman.” It may not be useful to categorize knowledge produced in areas under European rule as “colonial” in character. But knowledge was produced in a colonial context. Every ornithologist in colonial Africa, and every assistant, operated in the overpowering condition of being white or black. The ornithologists discussed here pivoted differently toward European and white American society. They went to Africa, stayed there, and left for different reasons. Their own longings and character filtered the shadings of their whiteness. Despite these differences, Bates, Moreau, and Brown each viewed their assistants as African and received their contributions in that light. My argument, that authorship of hard facts distinguished science from vernacular knowledge, takes on another dimension in colonial Africa: ornithologists might take up and credit what vernacular birders told them, but the authorship of hard facts was exclusively white.68 The next three chapters explore how African birders responded to the boundaries laid by white birders. Among this group, too, we see variations. Jali Makawa worked his own patch beyond the border of ornithology and race. Saul Sithole, who was not a vernacular birder, smarted from the exclusion, and Njeru Kicho proved not to be anybody’s henchman.

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chapter 6

The Honor of Collecting

N

o one knew more about living, flying, singing, and nesting birds in south central Africa than Jali Makawa (c. 1914 –95). He first met birds as a boy in rural Mozambique and Malawi, and as a young man demonstrated an exceptional interest and knowledge of them. Makawa has already surfaced in this history of birders. Figure 3 showed him preparing a specimen, and chapter 1 paid particular attention to the hunting culture of south central Africa, his home. His extraordinary expertise began in the well-established vernacular birding and hunting traditions of that region, but he also developed ornithological skills. As C .W. (“Con”) Benson’s collector, he learned to prepare the skins for their afterlife as specimens. Working with Benson and other ornithologists, he became familiar with the species as defined by ornithologists. No one ever recorded him explaining what birds meant to him, but the picture below (fig. 32) depicts what was evident throughout his life: they held his attention.1 A Servant to Science Makawa’s half-century career as a birder was extraordinarily distinguished. Ornithologists just couldn’t stop praising him. Through the combination of his own superlative ability and the relative liberalism of his employers, he received extensive credit in the historical record. Michael Stuart Irwin of Zimbabwe raved: “We hear much today about wonderful birders, where they have been and what they have seen, but if I ever I am

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32. Jali Makawa considers a red-billed hornbill (Tockus erythrorhynchus). Benson, “Notes on the Birds,” Ibis 87 (1945): pl. 6A. Courtesy of John Wiley and Sons.

asked the question as to who knew his birds best in the field my immediate answer would be Jali Makawa. . . . His skills in the field could hardly be matched by anyone today and he was an acute observer and nest finder and once he had encountered a bird he would always remember it.” Robert Dowsett, a leading ornithologist of Zambia, concurred: “Mr Jali Makawa probably has a wider experience of birds in the field in Africa than anyone else alive.” Ornithologists claimed that he could whistle up birds by imitating their calls. Makawa’s expertise and skill led to the naming of several subspecies for him as well as a species that he was first to collect, the whitechested tinkerbird (Pogoniulus makawai).2 Makawa collaborated with scientists from Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge Universities, but his expertise was in the bush, not in the museum or library, and his position was that of a servant; others always commanded his activities. Despite his talent, the Zimbabwean ornithologist Richard Brooke doubted that Makawa had much relation to the work beyond the immediate benefits it provided. Brooke’s summary of Makawa’s professional life went like this: he was “perhaps the best African to take up this line of work. One

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could mimic a bird call and tell Jali to go and collect its maker and in a day or two he would have successfully accomplished this. Con believed that Jali had a real love of birds but the rest of us thought that he was just happy to move around without being tied to a clock, and to have the opportunity of becoming the Casanova of central Africa.” Brooke is elsewhere on record doubting that the naming of P. makawai meant much to him, saying, “Jali would have been far more appreciative if he had been given a crate of beer as his just reward.”3 What was in it for Makawa, as a servant savant? Despite all our evidence of what he knew and did, he recorded little about himself and almost nothing about birding. Because Makawa did not record his motivations and rewards of his work, we have to read his behavior to solve the mystery of how he worked between vernacular birding and ornithology. How did he experience the boundary between himself and ornithologists? The Articulation of Vernacular Birding and Ornithology Born in northern Mozambique around 1914, Makawa was from the people known as Lomwe, Nguru, or Makua. They live north of the Zambezi, slightly inland from the Indian Ocean coast and featured in chapter 1 through their trapping of francolins and for keeping canaries as cage birds. Makawa told an ornithologist about the practice: “Jali says he remembers as a small boy in PEA [Portuguese East Africa], in April, putting out traps for these quails. An hour later he would come back and find them all full. There were thousands of the birds.” The people were also known as hunters. In fact, in the late nineteenth century the ethnic name Makua became a generic term for elephant hunters. Gun ownership among men was said to be nearly universal, although they had only old-fashioned muskets.4 World War I provoked emigration from Mozambique, and the Makawa family came to Nyasaland around 1920. Makawa was a preternaturally talented observer and hunter from a well-developed birding and hunting tradition who made a fortuitous connection in 1932: he was given work as a cook’s assistant for the ornithologist Benson, who was starting on his first post in the colonial service. Young Jali had lasted three months with a particularly difficult employer, and the district commissioner considered him a good match for an inexperienced bachelor administrator. The name “Jali” may be a form of “Charlie”; if so, he may have taken it when he entered domestic service.5

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33. C. W. Benson in the field in 1942. R. J. Benson Archive. Courtesy of Rosemary Benson.

This was a fortuitous connection for both men. Benson was an enthusiastic ornithologist (fig. 33), and soon Makawa took interest in collecting. Irwin, who knew them both, recalled, “It was Jali who asked Con to give him a gun so he could go and shoot.” In the context of the hunting culture of south central Africa and Lomwe/Makua gun ownership, Makawa’s preference for being a collector rather than a domestic servant makes sense.6 Benson described his “houseboy’s” first success as a collector, at the end of 1934: “The evening before I was due to leave early the next day, I spotted a Slaty Flycatcher Melaenornis chocolatina, which I failed to collect. I decided that this was Jali’s opportunity. Within twenty-four hours of my return to Lilongwe, to my astonishment he rejoined me, bringing the specimen.” His vernacular birding tradition had prepared Makawa to distinguish that flycatcher from the others and had endowed him with the

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skill to hunt it. Duly impressed, the ornithologist granted Makawa more opportunity to collect, and this became his chief occupation.7 From his base in a vernacular birding tradition, Makawa also developed fluency with ornithology. An unexpected find in an American archive offers some idea of how he knew creatures in both traditions. In the 1940s Benson corresponded with the ornithologist James Chapin at the American Museum of Natural History in New York about the songo, a snake with a crest on its head that made a haunting call. Chapin sometimes did light writing on Africa and thought a story on the songo might interest American readers. But New York was a long way from the vernacular knowledge of Africa, so he turned to Benson for help with research on the creature that British settlers in Nyasaland called the “Crowing Crested Cobra.”8 Benson asked Makawa about it, and so he drew a picture, complete with signature (fig. 34). Benson, who had always praised Makawa’s collecting, was apologetic about the drawing: Here are my African Collector’s efforts (his name is Jali Makawa). I have frequently mentioned him in my papers. . . . Now I must say at

34. Jali Makawa’s depiction of the songo. Drawing filed in James Chapin, Index Card Collection, American Museum of Natural History, under “Sarothrura elegans.” Photograph by Matthew Sandley, Photo Studio, AMNH. Courtesy of Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH, New York.

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35. Jali Makawa’s depiction of the buff-spotted flufftail (Sarothrura elegans). Drawing filed in James Chapin, Index Card Collection, American Museum of Natural History, under “Sarothrura elegans.” Photograph by Matthew Sandley, Photo Studio, AMNH. Courtesy of Archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH, New York.

once that these are probably of no good to you at all. His first effort, marked 1) is hopeless. 2) is a little better. It shows a comb on top, and a bulge below the head. Two wicked eyes! There is an ill-defined cross on the side of the head. This has no significance. It occurs to me as just possible that you may like to have this no 2 drawing and make a copy from it. It is very crude, but I think most native drawings are. The forepart of the body is much thicker than the rest. Jali says that the creature is ready to attack (as a cobra) and the fore-part is therefore expanded.9 Being asked about the songo would have put Makawa in a difficult position. He knew that scientists and British settlers did not believe in it. They knew that snakes do not have vocal cords or combs. Makawa knew that Sarothrura elegans, the buff-spotted flufftail, is responsible for the haunting call. Makawa also drew that bird (fig. 35) and a chameleon (not pictured here). The sketch of the flufftail is amateur in execution. The line of the beak is unlike any bird’s. The body is just a shape, with no attention to the wings that lie against it. But the long toes, the stubby tail, the speckled back,

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36. The buff-spotted flufftail (Sarothrura elegans). Courtesy of the photographer, Hugh Chittendon.

and the solid-colored head show he knew the bird he was drawing (fig. 36). Chapin decided these two sketches demonstrated that Makawa was a good representative of vernacular understandings: “These drawings are useful for comparison with his earlier sketch of the C.C.C. They show that his rail is fairly accurate and the chameleon quite recognizable, so that his delineation of the serpent would be fairly true to the idea the natives have to it.”10 Perhaps, however, the sketches also indicate Makawa’s engagement with ornithological knowledge. He was asked to draw three different sorts of animals and responded with three different sorts of drawings. First was a locally known and named creature whom the English considered mythical, the songo. This sketch reaffirms the aural nature of vernacular knowing described in chapter 1; Makawa did not have a well-formed image of what the songo was supposed to look like. Criticizing the rendition, Benson missed the point that the creature was only heard, never seen. Second was a representative of a genus known in English as “chameleon.” It was better

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proportioned than the cobra but did not look like any particular species. Perhaps the lack of specificity lay in Benson’s request, or perhaps Makawa the bird hunter had not developed a strong visual image of chameleons. The third animal, the bird, was specifically known by scientific and English names and was drawn with confidence and detail. Unlike his perception of the songo or chameleon, Makawa knew the bird as a scientifically defined species and by sight, as the ornithologists knew it. Benson suggested that at least part of Makawa’s skill developed through working with an ornithologist: “He is an excellent example of the cheerful adaptability of the Nyasaland Native to European employment, and has come to acquire a first-rate knowledge of the appearance and voices of the birds that inhabit Nyasaland.” At some time Makawa learned to read and write. He also learned about birds from Benson. For example, he referred to the broad-tailed warbler as “Mbalami wa India” because Benson told him this bird also occurred in India.11 An ornithologist who worked with Makawa in the 1960s, Melvin Traylor, described how he communicated with Makawa about species: “There are very few birds here that Joli [sic] hasn’t collected at one time or another, and he has a remarkable ear and memory for calls. My only real problem is finding a common name for various birds; his names are a peculiar combination of Nyanja and Latin that he has picked up from Benson. However, using ‘Roberts Birds of South Africa,’ the Bible as Joli calls it, we can usually make ourselves understood.”12 Benson’s Effusive Acknowledgments Con Benson was extraordinarily liberal with acknowledgments. His articles often included a long list of individuals deserving thanks, including typists and collectors. He named a thirteen-year-old “general handyman and expert tree climber” in one publication. Noting his tendency to acknowledge everybody “remotely connected with the project,” Stuart Keith of the United States said, “In a profession where many workers vigorously defend territories, he stood out as being the most unterritorial ornithologist I’ve ever known.” For all his extraordinary ability, Makawa would not have been as evident in the historical record if he had done the same work for a less generous ornithologist.13 Benson’s personal correspondence was huge, and he was unfailingly polite, friendly, formal, and discreet. He wrote extremely detailed letters

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on minutiae of classification, usually introduced by one paragraph of greetings and personal news. The personal news was sometimes about Jali and more rarely about his own family. Benson left us a good deal of information about Makawa’s activities but little about Makawa’s character. Actually, Benson’s correspondence left behind even less of a sense of his own character. Obituaries disclose that he was born in 1909 and educated at Eton and Cambridge. He joined the colonial service largely to practice ornithology in Africa. Irwin of Zimbabwe noted that “though never easy going, Con was a wonderful person to work with, demanding and precise, but always full of encouragement, dauntingly efficient and tireless.” Professionally scrupulous but not warm, Benson recorded a lot about Jali’s skill and sometimes revealed him as a person with emotions and values.14 In 1940 Benson’s first article appeared in the leading ornithological journal Ibis. In that piece Benson acknowledged Makawa for the first time by name in print. Benson gives him pride of place, the last to be mentioned: “I cannot conclude this list of acknowledgements without paying a tribute to my native collector, Jali Makawa, a member of the Nguru tribe, without whose assistance in collecting and skinning I should have been able to accomplish but a fraction of what I have.”15 Talent as a collector and faithfulness as a servant was a continuing theme. Consider what Benson wrote to his colleague Chapin in New York: “My Dear Chapin, Jali Makawa has been doing particularly well, and you may be interested to hear of his doing. About three weeks ago he came back from Cholo with a male and a female of Turdus fischeri. He came in late one evening about 7.30 pm after having been away 10 days, though I had told him he could stay away for 3 weeks. It was a great moment for me. He first of all got a female . . . in the trap still warm, and heard an unfamiliar call in the vicinity, which he mimicked and hereby collected a male.” This letter is loaded with details about Makawa’s birding skill and its service to Benson’s ornithology. Benson believed Makawa when he said he whistled up the rare thrush. Makawa chose to relinquish over a week of freedom by returning early to his employer and Benson concluded: “It was a great moment for me.” A 1937 mention by an ornithologist in neighboring Northern Rhodesia tells us other ornithologists noticed how exceptional he was: “Benson’s boy is marvelous.”16 Makawa accompanied Benson to his postings around Nyasaland. He often worked independently of Benson, and Benson entered many reports from him without question or commentary in his field notebooks. One entry

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on the green-backed honeyguide (Prodotiscus zambesiae) conveys the depth of Benson’s confidence in Makawa’s work: “My collector reports that this species indulges in aerial sorties, in the course of which it makes a call which sounds like ‘Chre, chrr, chrre, chrre’ rather faint. Normally it is an entirely silent bird, ie when perched, in my own experience!” The entry was completed in a different ink: “This witnessed by myself Sept 44. Jali said it was making a harsh call in flight (see above), which I cannot now hear. I read out to Jali my rendering, with which he at once agreed.” Makawa served as Benson’s ears as well as his eyes.17 During World War II, between June 1941 and March 1942, Makawa traveled to southern Ethiopia when Benson was called up as a political officer for the British occupation. Makawa learned to speak some Swahili when he was “in the army with East Africans.” The joke about Benson’s collecting in Ethiopia was: that he “fired so many rounds from his shot-gun over such a wide area that the Italians refrained from attacking what they thought must be a very large force.” Perhaps, if Benson had told the joke, Makawa would have been doing the firing. Benson was often occupied with his desk job, but when he couldn’t go into the field, Makawa collected independently, “with admirable discrimination.” Benson’s Ethiopian campaign was an ornithological triumph, claiming a total of 2,400 specimens. Furthermore, they discovered a species unknown to science, the white-tailed swallow (Hirundo megaensis). Again, Benson gave ample information about Makawa’s role.18 After the occupation, the pair returned to Nyasaland, where they remained until 1952. In 1945 Makawa traveled without Benson to Serra Jeci (the Njesi Plateau) in northern Mozambique. Benson had been there in 1942, but it was not possible for him to return, so Makawa made the trip alone. With only two and a half weeks in the field, Jali again made great finds, notably in bagging a long-billed tailorbird (Artisornis moreaui, named for R. E. Moreau), which had not been known outside the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania.19 Other Traveling Men of South Central Africa Benson thought of Makawa as an exceptional servant and collector. Certainly, Makawa’s self-conception would have had more to it. He died without granting an interview, but in anthropologists’ writings on other men, we can see the appeal of a life like his. Travel created a capital reserve for masculine freedom and position.

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Jake Ndumba, as described by the anthropologist James Pritchett, was a polyglot playboy from northwest Zambia. “Mr. Jake,” as he was known, traveled to France and Burma during World War II, and he worked for years in South Africa. Mr. Jake didn’t hunt, but he acquired languages and accents and made sexual conquests. Back home in retirement, he regaled his friends with stories. Younger men shared food and drink while they absorbed his cosmopolitan tales. Pritchett, the ethnographer of Ndumba’s social cohort, wrote of this raconteur that “individuals are inseparable from the stories they weave. One essentially becomes one’s stories. Individuals wear their separate tales as markers of identity just as those in the West may drape themselves in their professional accomplishments.”20 In stories told by others, Jeremiah Maswera was reputed to be a selfish, womanizing drunkard. In 1992, when the anthropologist Anita JacobsonWidding met him, he was a lithe, hard-working septuagenarian. His daughter told her of his failings. He was a loner, spending most of his time with his cattle in the mountains of Manicaland, Zimbabwe. He sometimes sold a cow and spent the cash on alcohol and city women. At home, his wife and daughter nagged and complained. For her part, Jacobson-Widding was charmed. Meeting him at last, she was surprised to see that he was “an amiable, gentle person, who behaved with a suave and dignified graciousness. . . . There was an air of candidness and personal integrity about him—a dignity without pompousness, a dignity coupled with curiosity and warmth.” He showed her the cooking hut he was building, one with benches on the male side and mats on the female side, “if there are any female visitors.” He told her about his eighteen years in Johannesburg. The city thrilled him with its excitement, anonymity, and promise. The anthropologist queried if he hadn’t felt humiliated living under apartheid. “Humiliated? Oh no. It’s the other way round. You don’t feel pushed or pulled, or controlled by anyone. Johannesburg is the place where you feel free. Just as free as when you are up there!” he said, pointing to the hills.21 These men created distinguished lives through travel and work. Ndumba converted his life into stories that sustained him and his friends into their old age and amused Pritchett. Maswera also entertained his friends, but his sojourns into the city and bush gave him an appreciation for solitude. It was a gendered solitude that offended the women in his family, but Jacobson-Widding read it as an internal resource that powered his confidence. Indications are that Makawa, too, gained social capital through his travel and work for ornithologists. Makawa was a traveler, a storyteller, a man with dense networks created by his extraordinary career.

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A Servant with Status In 1946 Makawa earned £26, and Benson estimated that the costs of his travel and bonuses brought his compensation to £60 per year. This was three times the earnings of an unskilled worker in Nyasaland that year and in line with what a carpenter would have earned. One additional benefit of collecting is that all animals collected can be eaten. If a few shotgun shells claimed other game, they would not be missed. Irwin recalled Makawa coming back to camp with a duiker. It had been lying down in the grass, Makawa explained, and stood up right in front of his shot as he was aiming for a grass warbler. Even if the story wasn’t plausible, fresh meat was welcome in the camp.22 What was Makawa’s life outside of collecting? It is hard to say. Con did not write about much of anything besides ornithology. In 1944 he noted his own marriage to Florence Mary “Molly” Lanham, a botanist whom he met while researching at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria. We know that Makawa’s first wife died in Malawi in 1961 after he had moved to Zambia.23 Visitors wrote better character studies of Makawa than Benson did. The first was Arthur Loveridge, curator at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, who made a collecting expedition in 1948 through Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. Loveridge (whom we encountered in chapter 5 as Salimu Asmani’s first employer) was an experienced fieldworker, mostly with snakes in Tanganyika. Born in Britain, he moved to Massachusetts in 1924. He published several popular accounts of his work, and his Central African trip also produced a book, I Drank the Zambezi. This book makes a painful read; he was humorless, difficult, and more than a little insensitive, complaining a lot about his servants. Coming from the Scrooge-like Loveridge, Makawa appears as something other than the loyal and competent servant he was for Benson.24 From the beginning Makawa wasn’t interested in working for Loveridge: I had asked Benson to try to find me a couple of good skinners, failing that, two alert youngsters who were trainable. Benson said he had only got two old men for me, but suggested I might persuade his own bird collector, Jali Makawa, to accompany us. Jali, who spoke Swahili fluently, refused quite definitely, saying he wanted a month’s holiday as he had but recently returned from a trip to Nchenachena on the lower slopes of the vast Nyika Plateau. As we too must pass through Nchenachena it was finally agreed that Benson would try and arrange for Jali to meet us there at the conclusion of his vacation.25

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The year 1948 was one of famine, but you wouldn’t know it from Loveridge. The food shortage is mentioned, but he fixates on his labor “problems”—servants leave without permission for funerals, he can’t find enough male labor, and workers lack enthusiasm—without ever making the empathetic leap of wondering how these may have stemmed from the deprivation.26 As an expert collector, Makawa had a different status from the porters, cooks, and camp servants. Still, Loveridge complained that he, too, was unenthusiastic about the work. Makawa groused about the chill and refused to leave camp until noon, which is surprising in the light of the way Benson and others described his work ethic (see the section on his trip with Mel Traylor, below). Any one of several factors could explain Makawa’s uncharacteristic disinclination to work on the Nyika; the stress of the famine, the interruption of his vacation, the cold on the plateau (as he claimed), and Loveridge himself. On this trip Makawa also collected for Benson. Loveridge claimed he made the first record of a species of the montane blue swallow (Hirundo atrocaerulea) breeding in the territory.27 Then everything changed one day while they were under way. An unknown bird rose from the hillside ahead and caught his gaze. The sight of Makawa in pursuit of the bird impressed Loveridge more than the bird itself. As we approached the place a buzzard, either mountain or augur, rose from a hillside ahead of us and circled low. Jali raced uphill after it with an astonishing display of energy. Indeed he was the only Nyasaland Native I met who walked so fast I had difficulty in keeping up with him. My own boys, Thomas and Wyson, were probably the poorest gunbearers I ever had for they were rarely at my elbow when wanted and their dawdling resulted in my losing many opportunities. It may, I suppose, have been lack of stamina, but ignoring exhortations, they habitually dropped behind when we were returning to camp which they would reach as much as ten minutes after me. . . . When at last they reached us I remarked to Thomas: “I am thinking of making Jali a sergeant major and letting him take you out for a route march each morning until you learn how to walk!”28 Loveridge’s description of Makawa climbing the hill after the buzzard gives us a glimpse of him as an independent expert whose work was not mediated or oriented toward his employer. Makawa didn’t say what was

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propelling him up that hill, away from Loveridge and toward the bird. Loveridge surely misinterpreted the significance for the gunbearers. Makawa was not modeling good labor for a white man. The sight of an unknown bird infused the adept hunter with curiosity and energy, and he outmarched the scientist up the hill. Loveridge also conveys insight into Makawa as a social being, which is reminiscent of Mr. Jake, the traveling raconteur with a gift for accents. “He was a most likable fellow with an irrepressible cheerfulness that proved a great asset. Not only could he speak his own language (Nyanja), but his wife’s (Yao), his master’s (English), and for my benefit, Swahili. An incomparable mimic of both birds and men, he nightly entertained his companions with reminiscences and impersonations of the people encountered during his extensive travels. One night I overheard him imitating an Indian baboo to perfection, his voice periodically submerged by waves of laughter from his listeners.” The story recalls Pritchett’s point that “individuals wear their separate tales as markers of identity” in the manner of professional accomplishments.29 As an earner of a good wage, Makawa had status, but the social fluency Loveridge describes came from his nature as well as his professional standing. His gift for mimicry helped him whistle up birds and charm people. He not only had experiences to share but also the ability to narrate them in several languages. By all accounts he was inherently good company. We can practically see the appeal of his well-compensated savoir-faire. In a photo of Makawa with some women, he, strikingly slight, is crisply dressed and leans in toward one, comfortable with both her and the camera (fig. 37). But perhaps the reputation was not entirely of his own creation. Recall the discussion in chapter 1 of the status given to a hunter working in service to a leader in the region of northern Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia. This was the cultural milieu for Makawa’s work with Benson. In that light, his first 1934 trip, when he quickly returned with the slaty flycatcher, and the 1954 hunt, which he voluntarily cut short by more than a week, become something other than the dedication of a servant. They signaled his performance as an expert. This won him a good wage and more time in the bush, but also recognition. Over the course of his career, collecting birds earned him esteem not only from ornithologists, but perhaps more important, in vernacular terms, from those he met through his travels. The roles of reputable adept and servant did not inherently contradict each other. As a servant savant, he was cultivating a role that originated beyond the world

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37. Jali Makawa and women at Ncenachena. Loveridge, I Drank the Zambezi, pl. 10.

of ornithology. The ornithologists did not realize that he was slotting them into a historic African role, as patron to a hunter. Makawa’s polyglot life of emigration, travel, fresh meat, friends, and cash was possible because of birding. He worked as a servant, but building as he did on the cultural milieu of south-central Africa, he was also an entrepreneur. Between him and the ornithologists were the birds, positioned as classic boundary objects of heterogeneous collaboration. The vernacular birder and the ornithologists had distinct interests, but the project of transforming live birds into specimens was capacious enough to accommodate their different interests. Vocational Achievement After 1950 the collaborators gained recognition for their work. In 1951 the Central African Broadcasting Service aired a radio show with Benson introducing bird calls by Makawa. Even speaking Nyanja, Benson’s accent can only be described as plummy. Makawa just speaks to clarify and

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then demonstrates the calls for the listening audience, which had no recordings of local birds.30 The culmination of Benson’s work in Malawi was the 1953 publication of the Check List of the Birds of Nyasaland, the first book on birds in this territory. Again, Makawa was acknowledged. The book included a list of bird names in vernacular languages. After twenty years as a Nyasaland administrator who moonlighted as a scientist, Benson found a way to be paid for his avocation: he took a position with the Game and Fisheries Department in the Eastern Province of Northern Rhodesia. Makawa’s loyalty to Con Benson proved stronger than to Malawi, so he, too, moved to what is now Zambia. In this new environment, Benson noticed Makawa’s adjustment to a new community of peers: “I have had my collector Jali Makawa busy lately. He is anxious to exhibit his prowess to African members of my Dept.”31 In 1957 Benson transferred to the headquarters of Northern Rhodesia’s Game and Tsetse Control Department in Chilanga, a town south of Lusaka. Makawa appears on government payrolls after 1958, first as a vermin hunter, with a promotion in 1962 to game guard. In 1958 Benson made an expedition to the Comoro Islands, and Makawa accompanied him as a preparator and collector. Both attended the first Pan-African Ornithological Congress in 1957 in Livingstone. In one session, Benson praised Makawa’s bird imitations.32 John Colebrook-Robjent, a Zambian ornithologist whom I met in 2006, recalled reactions to Makawa at a later meeting: There was always, everywhere, tremendous respect by the ornithologists for him. And so he didn’t dance about and say, “‘I’m marvelous . . . I’m Jali Makawa.” He just simply stood there quietly and, “Yeah, yeah,” bowed to them and shook them by the hand, and they talked a few words, and so on. You could see a huge amount of respect on the one side . . . lots of African ornithologists, or ornithologists with associations with Africa. They all, “Oh, yes, Jali Makawa!” I mean, he was reckoned to be the number one African collector of the continent.33 An Ornithologist Observes Makawa In 1961 and 1962 Makawa made a deep impression on an ornithologist from Chicago. Melvin A. Traylor Jr. of the Field Museum of Natural History went collecting in Northern Rhodesia, and like several other

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ornithological visitors, he contracted Makawa’s assistance. Traylor was the son of a self-made and influential banker who had been touted as a presidential candidate in 1932. The family spent summers in the Wisconsin woods, where Mel developed a love of the outdoors. After studying at Harvard, he chose a life as an ornithologist at the Field Museum. He lost an eye in Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands but nonetheless continued to study birds in the wild. Traylor was frugal and pious, and he smarted when the British and white South Africans labeled him a “millionaire American.”34 Traylor kept a detailed diary of his trip through northwest Zambia and Botswana. His record of his time in Central Africa became one of learning about Jali and, through him, the birds. Traylor was undeniably the superior in this relationship, but the two cultivated a mutually dependent and respectful bond. Makawa earned a wage for this trip from Benson, not Traylor. In exchange for Makawa’s services, Traylor supplied Benson with specimens and paid Makawa bonuses. The economic relationships between them were of gift exchange rather than wage labor, and this probably influenced the dynamic.35 In his first appearance in the diary, Makawa is not even introduced, just mentioned as one of the party. Through most of the diary, his name is written “Joli,” probably because Traylor had never seen the spelling. But within a few weeks Makawa became the best supporting actor of the expedition. Traylor’s diary is filled with near-incredible hunting stories starring Makawa. Here, I choose only a few to illustrate his interest and appreciation. One can imagine Traylor dining out for years on wry stories of a superlative African companion. “He’s a spindly-legged, unimpressive looking man, but he is certainly a fine hunter and a tireless skinner.”36 Traylor’s narration about Jali becomes droll. In one entry he enumerates a list of birds shot in one day, “not including the tree rat. The latter was shot from the tree under which I was having dinner. It was well after sunset and I couldn’t imagine what bird Jali could see, but when he fired, plunk down came the rat.” Traylor’s stories reproduce Makawa’s own tales of nonchalant bravado. About Makawa’s encounter with a leopard, Traylor repeats: “He said that if he had had buck-shot he would have got him, but he didn’t want to tackle him with bird shot. He might have tried at that.”37 In Traylor’s telling, Makawa is nothing less than a phenomenon. He stays a step ahead of the ornithologist. Here he is looking for the bird associated with the songo, the crowing crested cobra: “As we were plowing through the marsh . . . I heard Joli making a somewhat mournful ‘Hooo’

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call. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later the thought of Sarothruras occurred to me and I showed Joli the picture in ‘Roberts.’ ‘Oh, that was what I was calling in the swamp.’ Therefore, we went back this afternoon and I watched Joli in action. . . . [He] picked a spot where he had a fair field of fire and started calling. He only got one shot, but came out all enthusiastic and said that there were many, many in there and that we should use the nets. To-morrow we shall do just that and concentrate on swamp birds.”38 “All enthusiastic” about one spot, Makawa is disdainful of another: “Joli doesn’t think much of this place, ‘nothing different.’” He is way ahead of Traylor and nearly preternatural in how much he knows: “We went on to a marshy spot and Joli said, ‘The snipe, yesterday he flew from there and landed here.’ He took another stop and out popped the snipe which I got this time.” When Traylor asks him to keep a look out for a rare species, “he reached into his bag like a magician and produced a young female.” He was vindicated in a disagreement with Traylor about a lark when Benson rules the specimen to be a new race. Traylor decided: “I shall delight in naming it after Joli, since he collected 8 while I barely got my sights on one” (Traylor never referred to his own handicap of shooting with one eye). This subspecies of the pink-billed lark is now known as Spizocorys conirostris makawai.39 Makawa suffered from both tuberculosis and malaria on this trip. He had been treated for tuberculosis the year before the expedition, and so, when he coughed up blood, Traylor was alarmed. He offered to find medical treatment, but Makawa refused. “He said that they had him in the hospital two months last time and that he would rather die than go back. Jali is not given to histrionics, so he means what he says. I pray I am doing the right thing, and I am making sure he takes the pills.” After being down a few days with malaria, “Jali was back on his feet to-day, and you could see him improve as each additional bird fell. I’ve never seen anyone who hates so much to be sick.”40 Makawa listened to the radio at night but did not share many political opinions with Traylor. He was “a mighty worker,” doing cooking and laundry. Makawa was mindful of others, watching out for the Chicagoan: “Since I got ‘misplaced’ one day at Tsodilo, Jali won’t let me off alone.” This was a bit of an inconvenience for Makawa, who “goes fast, mostly listening for odd calls but still missing nothing, while I have to go slow and stare at everything. Consequently, he goes slower than he would like and I contribute little.”41

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Makawa also helped out his fellow workers: “Jali did a characteristically kind deed to-night. In Sepopa Thomas is only 4 miles from home, and since he has only seen his wife three nights after being at the mines for a year, Jali suggested that he go on home while, he, Jali, got my dinner. The invitation was accepted with alacrity, and Thomas went off with a smile and the alarm clock set for 4:00 am. He had better be back to cook breakfast or Jali won’t extend this invitation again!” All this was done with good humor. The next day, “Thomas didn’t show up till six, and Jali has given him a continuous ribbing all day. I suspect much of it has been ribald.” With this salacious talk going on, it seems that Traylor the devout Protestant was embarrassed.42 The time with Traylor was personally eventful for Makawa, although the ornithologists conspired to keep news from him. Although it was not apparent in the stories of hunting, race and servitude also infused Makawa’s relations with Traylor. While they were in the field, Traylor received a note from Benson: “It seems that Joli’s nephew, for whom he is acting as parent and whom he is sending through school, has been described as mentally ill by his schoolmaster. Benson naturally fears that this will disturb Joli and advises me to say nothing until Joli hears about it from his wife, and then to tell him that he, Benson, is taking care of everything and will bring the boy home if necessary. There isn’t anything Joli could do at home, but I’ll be desolate if he decides to go anyway.” Traylor’s non sequitur about his own desolation may reveal his discomfort about deceiving an extraordinary servant. Benson telegraphed them in the field when the boy was sent back to Nyasaland, but Makawa was better networked than his employers realized: “I took the news to Joli; he had heard from his wife and was interested to know that the boy was home, but otherwise not concerned.” Both Makawa’s mother and his first wife died during the trip, but Traylor didn’t record his reaction.43 For Traylor, getting to know Jali may have been more important than the birds they collected: “Put Jali on the train in the evening. Seeing him go I really felt that the expedition was over, and it is now just a case of packing up and going home. All told he was with me for four months, and I can’t imagine any way in which he could have been improved. His last request was that if I came out again could he come along, and my answer was that I wouldn’t come without him.” Traylor kept a glow about his new friend. Stopping at the British Museum in London on his way home, he encountered Benson, who paid him “a very fine compliment second hand from Jali;

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the latter wrote that I was a ‘Bwana something, something’ in Chinyanja, which Benson says was untranslatable but high praise. This was very pleasing, since I had always felt that Jali and I formed a fine mutual admiration society.” And that about says it all. Makawa’s thoughts went untranslated, but the ornithologists who worked with him felt they understood.44 Makawa as Elder Expert Benson left the government service in 1962 and took a position at the Livingstone Museum. He retired and returned to England in 1965, settled in Cambridge, and worked regularly on the bird collection at the University Museum of Zoology. In that same year he was awarded the OBE; wags read it as “Ornithology Before Everything.” Makawa continued to work for the Game Department, at some time moving to Lochinvar National Park, although he still served as a collector on periodic ornithological expeditions. By this time we see him asserting an expert status even among the ornithologists who employed him. Anecdotes from these expeditions show him invested in his work and holding to his own opinions about locations and specimens. There was a discussion with Michael Irwin of the National Museum in Bulawayo that became part of his legend. Irwin recounted the moment to Glen Ncube, who interviewed him on my behalf in Harare in 2007: “Now, this was in 1964, we were at a place called Imusho in Barotseland. It’s on the border with Angola, and I had collected a river warbler [Locustella fluviatilis] and I showed this to Jali and I said, ‘Jali, you know this is a thrush nightingale [Luscinia luscinia].’ I then thought it was a thrush nightingale. I said, ‘Jali, you have collected this bird before.’ He said, ‘No boss, I have never seen that bird in my life before.’”45 This conversation exemplifies the complicated possibilities in a colonial working relationship: Makawa uses the racialized South African honorific “boss” even while holding his taxonomical ground. It seems Makawa then went out to get an actual thrush nightingale to settle the matter: “Now that same morning Jali collected a thrush nightingale.” Imagine the men putting two specimens side by side, one they agreed on and one they didn’t. Irwin continues his story: “I said, ‘Jali, they’re both the same,’ he said, ‘No, I’ve never collected that bird before.’” Makawa was vindicated when Irwin examined the bird in a museum. “It wasn’t until I got back to Bulawayo and I compared this with other specimens that I realized I’d collected a river warbler, which is quite rare.”46

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Makawa knew what he had seen, and he knew his “Bible,” the species descriptions published by ornithologists. From England, Benson also spread the news of the discovery, but Benson states that it was Makawa, not Irwin, who did the shooting: “That collector of mine Jali Makawa got it, and at once took it along to Michael in triumph as something new.” Irwin’s story shows that Makawa set real store in the fact that he knew the birds well. Traylor and Loveridge, too, say that he exerted himself to find the rare birds. By the time he was in his fifties, he was claiming authority as a Linnaean scientific expert and winning respect. A photograph of Makawa taken in 1971 shows him as a collector. His clothes are worn and he himself is in his mid-fifties, but his demeanor is one of ruggedness and confidence. His easy handling of the gun and steady gaze are striking (fig. 38).47 In 1971 Makawa corresponded with Robert Dowsett, the keeper of Natural History at the Livingstone Museum, about leaving the Game Department for a position with the museum. Dowsett made enquiries and learned that Makawa’s government pension was not yet secure. Apparently the terms for a pension were fulfilled by June 1972, when Makawa wrote Dowsett from Lochinvar, in English: Dear Sir, I here by trying to know the situation decided up to now because I can’t here [sic] anything from you since we arranged our transfer from Lochinvar to Livingstone. I have already stopped working and I am just waiting for transport from you, to come and collect me any time from now. Sir, I am so worried about this situation because I might think there is no work for me there, until I see you do something then I will hope to have a job there.48 Thus on retirement from government service with a pension, Makawa moved again, this time to work for an ornithologist other than Benson. He took a position as Dowsett’s assistant at the Livingstone Museum. Memories of Makawa at the museum, as he passed from Aaron Muchindu, bird preparator, to Vincent Katanekwa, ornithologist (and museum director when I spoke to him in 2011), are that he was an assiduous worker, rising early and loath to take breaks when in the field. In March 1972 Makawa collected with Dowsett and Robert Payne, the ornithologist from Michigan, in northern Zambia. A tape recording of Makawa’s interview with a group of men near Mphika reveals him moving between four languages—Nyanja,

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38. Jali Makawa in the Mafinga Mountains of Mozambique, 1971. Courtesy of the photographer, Robert Dowsett.

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Bemba, Mweru, and Yao—in just a few minutes. Speaking with authority, Makawa probed a group to learn of firefinches and indigobirds, the subject of Payne’s research, in the area: “Do you know the bird that lives and lays eggs in the ceiling? It has a red head.” “Yes it is called katindi.”49 Also in 1972, Makawa took leave from the museum to make the longest journey of his life, to Madagascar, with Colebrook-Robjent, the ornithologist and egg collector from Choma, Zambia, who was collaborating with the Yale ornithologist Charles Sibley. Benson needed Jali’s help for his own expedition to Madagascar, again in collaboration with Sibley, in November and December of the same year. Benson hoped Makawa would join the work. Sibley was funding much of the expedition as part of his genetic research on egg whites. By this time, Makawa was so famous that Sibley had heard about him from a mutual acquaintance. Benson averred: “[Makawa’s] presence . . . may well prove vital to the success of the expedition.” With support from Yale University, Makawa returned to Madagascar in November 1972, where he was reunited with Benson. Andy Williams of the Kenya National Museum accompanied them.50 This was a difficult trip for Benson. Dowsett reported that the museum administration expected a good return on their contribution and asked that Makawa return with two hundred skins. But Benson felt the strain of satisfying Sibley, who had reportedly contributed £600 to the expedition. Makawa’s first responsibility was to find nests and collect egg whites for Yale. Both men would have to work very hard, and when money was short Con spent around £400 of his own savings. (As a pensioner, he felt this sharply.) Added to that was the international controversy. Collecting of any sort had become controversial among bird conservationists, and egg collecting had become “the hobby that dare not speak its name.” The word in the international ornithologist and conservation circles was that Benson was overcollecting among rare and endangered species. Don Turner, a retired police officer and amateur ornithologist in Kenya, raised an alarm with Kai Curry-Lindahl of UNESCO and Roland Clement of the Audubon Society’s national office in New York. Makawa’s known prowess as a collector worked against Benson in this case; Turner mentioned him by name when making the allegations of extensive collecting. In the end the collection was audited, and Benson was absolved of all wrongdoing. But he was discouraged by the experience, and this was his last expedition.51

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Makawa as a Long-Distance Servant Further recognition came to Makawa. Dowsett published an article about him in the Zambia Museums Journal. By then he was aging, and by 1977 Dowsett arranged for another retirement for Makawa. Since he had moved so much and so far in service, he had no home to go back to. His position in life was entirely dependent on ornithologists and Dowsett’s solution was to find him yet another ornithological placement, this time on the Choma farm of the Bruce-Miller family, dedicated amateur birders. It was arranged that Makawa would construct his own house on the farm, using his own savings. Makawa moved to Muckleneuk, the Bruce-Millers’ farm in Choma, on May 3, 1977. He spent most of his last years there. There, too, he cultivated his role as a servant and an adept hunter.52 Benson and Makawa remained dedicated to each other after their separation. Benson’s correspondence from England expresses affection for Makawa. Dowsett often sent news of Makawa in his letters, and Benson reportedly displayed three photographs of Makawa in his office. In 1972, when Con and Molly made a return visit to Central Africa, Jali traveled to Bulawayo see him.53 A one-week trip to Malawi in 1976 was to be focused on correcting page proofs for a new edition of Birds of Malawi (which Benson coauthored with his wife): “There won’t be any time to talk to anybody but Jali. We can’t afford any visitors wasting our time, whoever they may be. This visit is absolutely purely a week of concentrated working on our proof correcting, and nothing else, whatever. . . . There will surely be plenty of time to talk to Jali, notwithstanding, in the evenings.” Con arranged for Jali to stay with a “liberal” English friend nearby, so they could see each other when he and Molly weren’t working.54 The pair also corresponded. The letters date from January 1973 to December 1977. One might expect such letters to provide the mother lode for a biography of the bird expert Jali Makawa, but in this medium Makawa took the role of a servant, not savant. The set contains twenty-two letters in Nyanja from Makawa to Benson, a copy of one letter in Nyanja from Benson to Makawa, and two letters in English to Molly Benson, in a different hand but signed by Jali. One letter is in English from Jali’s son Festo in Livingstone, asking Benson to find him a fourteen-year-old pen pal. In one sense, Makawa’s letters suggest sophistication. They are written in cursive. His return address identifies the sender as “J. F. W. Makawa,”

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perhaps an indication of his name before he became “Charlie,” and he signs his name with a flourish. But despite these touches, the writer’s rudimentary education is evident. Steve Sharra, a Malawian who holds a PhD in teacher education, translated the Nyanja letters into English for me. Sharra noted that the letters lack punctuation and use inconsistent spellings. Although cursive, the script is large and uneven. Makawa positioned their relationship in terms of colonial East African honorifics for whites, addressing Con as “Bwana” and Molly as “Dona” (which he spells “ndona” or “Donna”). The letters are short, with much space given over to elaborate and repetitive greetings, as required by Central African etiquette. For example: “Hello Hello hello ndona Hello hello if you are well with your family I am happy. I am really joyful writing you this letter.” He reports on three children by name—Makawa (or Joni or Jhoni), Festo, and Malinta—to say they are well. Their mother receives no mention.55 The letters convey greetings, requests, queries about his requests, queries about the logistics of delivering his requests, and thanks for the Bensons’ gifts of money at Christmas. Benson also sent extra remittances after the Madagascar trip. Makawa preferred certain items to having cash delivered through intermediaries he did not trust. Perhaps he also recognized that the cash could be more easily subdivided between those who made claims on his aid. Over these four years he asks for several watches, two wigs (one with long hair, the other plaited), and jerseys for the children. He clarifies that he is not asking for these things in addition to what the Bensons gave him, but only that he prefers the items to cash. A letter to Benson’s daughter Diana conveys Makawa’s enthusiastic greetings and a specific request for a blazer. C. W. Bensoni Greetings Madam Greetings Madam ndaina Greetings If you are well I am very happy thank you thank you I was very happy to receive your letter Upon reading I was filled with real joy I understood that when you finish your work writing books on birds you are going to visit Malawi The time you want to come to Malawi is the same time I want to go on holiday I want us to meet in Malawi I want to see you Or perhaps you will come with Donna. If on your trip you will come together with Donna I will be very happy to see Madam Please when coming bring me my blazer You will receive

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the money in Malawi where we will meet please Sir because it is good if it is an easy thing if it is a difficult thing reply to my letter and also if it is possible write a letter and tell me the price please so that I save the money please Sir so thank you I received your letter on 17/5/1976 I was filled with joy reading your letter Also the building of the house has not yet started If the building of the house starts I will inform you please Sir tell me which month you will start off from England I want to know so that I begin preparing for us to meet in Malawi Please greetings greetings madam greetings greetings Now I have finished your letter with joy Yours J Makawa Written along the side of the page is “The blazer should be blue.” Sometimes he even signs the letters “your servant, Jali Makawa,” and after the pleas for consideration the closing does not seem rhetorical. Apart from financial considerations, Makawa gives almost no mention to his work. Birds receive no mention in any of the letters.56 In 1976 and 1977, he let fall some brief nuggets about his retirement plans, informing Benson that Dowsett (“Dausenti”) was helping him with arrangements on the farm with the Bruce-Millers (a name which he spelled with several variations). Once settled there, he informed Benson, “I have decided not to live in Malawi I will die here at Bwana Burusimira’s.” The two saw each other for the last time at the Pan-African Ornithologist Congress in Lilongwe in 1980.57 A set of letters by an African research assistant to the European scientist is a rare source, but read apart from the historical context, they would be misleading. The sources written in Jali’s hand transmit only some of his status. Mostly, they remind a colonial employer of his obligation. The letters convey the idea that, as with earlier hunters of south central Africa, the support of a patron underlay a hunter’s status. In the twentieth century, however, the patron was an ornithologist rather than a chief. Desperately Seeking J. F. W. Makawa I traveled to Choma in 2006 to interview people who remembered Makawa, for he had died in 1995. Paddy Bruce-Miller had also died, but a few people still had memories they were willing to share. These were Paddy’s son, Ian, who was an adult when Makawa came to the farm; Ian’s daughter, Emma, who remembered Makawa from her girlhood; a group of nine

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workers on the Bruce-Millers’ farm; Major John Colebrook-Robjent, who traveled to Madagascar with him; and Colebrook-Robjent’s own assistant Lazero Hamusikili, who sometimes worked with Makawa around Choma. These people responded in various ways to my open-ended invitation to share narratives about Makawa. The Bruce-Millers and Colebrook-Robjent were in regular contact with British and South African ornithologists, and they had a sense of why an historian might be interested in Makawa. Ian and Emma Bruce-Miller had made the entire project possible; they hosted me, arranged interviews, and shared memories.58 The farmworkers arrived in a group for the interview and sat in a circle. Since I don’t speak Tonga (the dominant language in Choma), Ian translated my questions. They answered carefully but briefly. Being summoned by their employer to a structured interview with someone who had come from so far away, on such a specific quest, did not stimulate effusive narratives. It was impossible for me to stay long enough to let their stories emerge, but I did learn some small points. They recalled with chuckles that he once returned from a beer drink with a “wife,” but it didn’t last long. They denied that he was a heavy drinker. Neither did he go to church. His responsibility was to patrol the perimeter of the farm, hunting for wild pigs and baboons. They remember that he had savings and that his children visited from Lusaka. He was a kind, funny person who spoke Nyanja, Yao, and Tonga. They didn’t recall that he told them about birds, about his life as a research assistant, or how he had become the most famous collector in the history of African field science. It seemed to me that by hunting dangerous wild animals, he was demonstrating the masculine expertise that had won him a reputation with scientists and peers.59 Emma and her father, Ian, added other perspectives. Emma’s memories were of a kindly old man who was often around, but he never taught the Bruce-Miller children about birds—his English wasn’t good enough. He owned a sewing machine and used it to earn money on the side. Emma also kindly shared her childhood diary and that of her grandmother Margaret Bruce-Miller. Those passing mentions reveal Makawa making jokes, talking about birds, and shooting bushpigs that threatened the crops. Ian remembered him as a “merry soul” who had enough money to draw women’s attention. He was a hard worker who drank moderately. He had amazing powers of observation, “missing nothing.” As the adult son of the farmowning family, Ian interacted with Makawa as one of the controlling family. He recalled that in the afternoon, after a day of patrolling the farm, Makawa

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would come by the house and report the day’s bird sightings (with much gesticulation) to Paddy and Margaret Bruce-Miller. They might talk about the news, in Nyanja, for up to an hour; the exchanges were lively and evidently enjoyable. As on the trip with Traylor, Makawa sometimes helped out in the kitchen.60 In Choma, I also visited Major Colebrook-Robjent at his house. He maintained the air of a military officer, with his erect bearing and careful speech. He showed me the magnificent egg collection that dominated his modest home and told me about his own research into nest parasitism by honeyguides. He recognized the impediments to my questions: “It’s very difficult to bury yourself like a worm into somebody’s mind. Now how do you get into somebody’s mind?” He claimed that he could not help me with what I wanted to learn about Makawa.61 john colebrook-robjent ( jc-r): I think we’re going to disappoint you. nancy jacobs (nj): Sorry? jc-r: I am going to disappoint you. nj: How’s that? jc-r: Well, I’m not going to fill your notebooks full of wonderful stories. Colebrook-Robjent came to Zambia in 1966 as a captain in the British army seconded to the Zambian military. After two years he resigned his commission and took up farming, with much of his energies given over to egg collecting. Through the collecting, he met Charles Sibley of Yale, whom he considered his mentor. He traveled to Madagascar with Makawa and worked with him around Choma. For his part, “Jali,” he said, “probably loved the English too much”: jc-r: Well, he, he was full of praise all the time on how things were run by the English and how airplanes could be invented and this sort of thing. And he couldn’t understand how, when he was sitting next to me in the airplane, how such a thing is possible to fly. He said, “How is this possible to be done?” So he was a great admirer, very politically incorrect, of course. He considered Makawa trustworthy as a research assistant. “Now he was, he was, I would say, completely honest. I mean, I know that sounds fatuous, but it’s not very common. And he was one of those people, I would say, if he said something and he remembered it correctly, that was the truth of

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the matter.” Colebrook-Robjent also thought that circumstances in those days offered less of an incentive for corruption than those in twenty-firstcentury Zambia. He reflected cautiously as he explained to me, an American liberal: jc-r: But, you see, I cannot imagine anybody being able to do Jali’s work now. Not only because of the change of circumstances, and we’re now an independent African country, before it was Pax Britannica, and I can’t see that anybody, even taking that into consideration, I cannot see one man being given a shotgun, five hundred shells, money to live on, and told to go to Timbuktu, well not Timbuktu, but get on a bus or get on a coach, I don’t know how he would do it, walk if you like, to Mwinilunga, and come back in three months’ time to the Livingstone Museum with two suitcases full of birds. It cannot be done now. No one here, I can tell you, out of the ten million people who live here, would be able to do that. nj: Why not? What’s the issue? jc-r: They wouldn’t. I mean, it’s just my gut reaction tells me it’s not possible. Five hundred cartridges, how valuable is five hundred cartridges? Extremely valuable, five hundred shotgun cartridges. . . . And the shotgun itself. You’re given a shotgun which doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the museum or it belongs to somebody. I mean how much is a shotgun worth? I mean it won’t—it’s just not practical—it’s not a realistic thing that you could expect somebody like that to do, and he did it. These musings come across as nostalgic and condescending about contemporary Zambian society. The gun and cartridges had value in colonial Africa, too. But, perhaps in that statement he’s relaying that the path to reputation through adept hunting is no longer a tenable one and that an employer cannot rely on that aspiration to sustain an employee’s loyalty. After speaking with Colebrook-Robjent, I went outside to meet his collector, Lazero Hamusikili. He recalled that Jali had instructed him about the benefits of sleeping in the bush to catch the earliest birds. Hamusikili, however, could not convey Makawa’s motivations. As he aged, Makawa’s health suffered. In April 1988 he was accused of witchcraft by a neighbor on the farm. Hunters, who possess esoteric knowledge of the wild, often suffered such accusations, and this one blew over. Problems arose between his children and the Bruce-Millers. Ian called the

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police once because Jali’s son Makawa was acting “mad.” He took away Jali’s shotgun to keep it out of young Makawa’s hands. According to Ian, his children became jealous about their father’s wealth and took him from the farm. Emma remembers her grandparents being angry about his leaving. She suspects this was several years before 1995, the date of his death. Margaret Bruce-Miller recorded in her diary entry on April 9, 1990, that she was arranging for “a load of goods for Jali Makawa, who has left to live with his daughter in Lusaka.” No one from the farm reported being at his funeral; they said that they do not know where he is buried and that they are not in touch with the family.62 What Was J. Makawai ? Irwin was with Makawa when he brought in the white-chested tinkerbird later named Pogoniulus makawai. In recounting the incident, Irwin drew our attention to the quality of Makawa’s gaze: “I can always remember, too, his slight figure in the far distance . . . looking rather puzzled at the tinker bird which he (or nobody else) had ever seen before.” As it has turned out, no one has ever collected P. makawai since then either. In an article titled “What is Pogoniulus makawai?” two British ornithologists have theorized on the bird: it may be an existing but rare species (so rare that only Jali Makawa could collect it!), or a relict individual of a species that no longer exists, or perhaps an aberrant individual of another Pogoniulus species. In any case, Makawa collected an extraordinary rarity. Not to make too much of the analogy, but searching for the internal life of Makawa feels a bit like searching for the rarest of the birds named for him. In 1973, Makawa himself attempted to capture another specimen of P. makawai and failed. Unfortunately, if I was searching for J. makawai, I didn’t have the benefit of his assistance. He never recorded his motivations or satisfaction.63 Like the assistants who worked for Bates and Moreau, he worked in a racialized space. He found the birds and skinned them, but he was paid less than the ornithologists, was not allowed to write the “Bible,” served as laundry man and cook, and was not told when his nephew was sick. Whatever Makawa thought about the colonial conditions of his work, his comportment was amiable. Maybe he was extraordinarily grounded, able to shake his head, laugh, and move on because being a servant to ornithologists was the best option of all those available to him. Compared with what he might have been doing, his work was good: better pay than other work available

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to black men with little education, and freedom to travel and work without much supervision. If his work demanded continual forbearance, ornithologists might have seen the cracks. People who have little access to formal, collective, institutional power often respond with surreptitious destruction, small symbolic acts, or moralization. If Makawa ever employed an everyday “weapon of the weak” to counter their authority, no ornithologist ever noticed it. The central mystery of Makawa’s life is how he reconciled being the best with being a servant. It was possible because separate traditions of birding converged in Makawa’s killing of birds. He used employment with ornithologists to position himself as a specialized birder of a vernacular tradition (fig. 39).64 We must conclude that Makawa had a deep interest in birds, not just in beer and women, as Richard Brooke, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, believed. Makawa never went on record saying he cared about

39. Jali Makawa in miombo woodlands near Luitikila Stream, Mpika District, Zambia, 1972. Courtesy of the photographer, Robert Payne.

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birds, but the work gave him a lot of freedom and he used it to find them. Such excellence required interest. Certainly he enjoyed his work, as many men from capitalist or agrarian societies would have. But the enjoyment and interest paid off because the work gave him social capital. As a servant collector, Makawa sought and received the reputation and recognition due to an adept hunter in Central Africa. The hunter was honorable, not humiliated. He held his own among men, and he attracted women. The hunter stalked; he did not study. He killed; he did not write or teach. The facts he received and purveyed were soft facts. Makawa’s life was encased by colonialism and race, but working as a colonial servant was not inimical to creating himself as a reputable man on a historical African model.

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chapter 7

The Respectability of Museum Work

M

useum employees who prepared bird specimens encountered the birds only after they were already dead. In one sense, they might not be considered birders at all, merely laborers with inanimate objects that were once birds. Museum preparators were not expected to master ornithological knowledge, nor were they rewarded if they did. They might have little interest in the living forms of the animals they preserved. But birds need not be living to be the objects of intersection between people. In the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, ornithology indexed all it knew about birds through these dead, preserved bodies, and the work of preparators was central to the discipline. Decentering the network of birding beyond elite participants—the ornithologists and hunting experts—means including laborers doing routine work with bird bodies. Skinners and taxidermists were part of the network and in Africa these laborers were black colonial subjects. Africans who prepared birds that had already been killed by someone else differed from hunters such as Makawa because they did not draw on vernacular traditions in their work. Birding with cotton batting, arsenic, and thread had no precedent, and as laborers in scientific institutions, museum preparators did not perform roles defined by historical African social worlds. The social world of their work was urban and colonial. The bestestablished museums in Africa were in South Africa, where racial divisions were more formalized and uncompromising than elsewhere. Thus, compared with collectors in other parts of Africa, these workers had an un-

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cushioned experience of the racialization of science. Undoubtedly many responded by detachment. But it was also possible to excel. In this chapter I consider a man who did so, Saul Sithole (1908 –97), a South African museum preparator whose work was dictated by segregation yet whose performance was always impeccable. Sithole’s comportment and achievements register only lightly in the historical record. He had an uneventful life and is nearly absent in published accounts. He left few traces of himself, and the two interviews with him were recorded in paraphrased notes rather than transcribed. Also, they focused on his professional life and do not indicate an interior, expressive life. I learned about his performance and values only when I arrived for research at the Transvaal Museum (now the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History) in Pretoria. Sithole’s family was well established in Pretoria, and his daughter recalled his life in an interview with me. The records remaining of Saul Sithole’s life do not allow for a biography of individual achievement, and even if they had, he was barred by his race from a life of achievement in science. Yet Sithole set out to lead a life that could have suited a traditional biography. He exhibited a will not to be subordinate through unfailing propriety and professional decorum. As his legacy, he cultivated the enduring respect of his peers and his family. With his unfailing comportment of respectability, he defied professional and political segregation. Sithole’s Resume as a Technician Saul Sithole was born September 20, 1908, in Standerton, a town currently in Mpumalanga Province but then in the eastern part of the Transvaal Colony, absorbed into the British Empire only six years earlier. The family was Zulu-speaking (although Austin Roberts considered Sithole to be “Shangaan”). His father was a Methodist lay preacher and thus a member of the kholwa, African Christians. Ama-kholwa is a Zulu word meaning “believers,” and the term is associated mainly with converts in Zululand and Natal. The group gathered on mission stations in the mid-nineteenth century, where they became part of South Africa’s peasant class and sent their children to school. Some became property owners and prosperous. Enthusiasm for education became a marking characteristic for South African converts (sometimes they were actually called the “Schools”), and by the early twentieth century the kholwa were reading and writing Zulu

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publications. They considered themselves progressive; they organized ethnic and nationalist political organizations and wrote, read, and debated histories of black South Africans, in Zulu. Certainly, the Sithole family kept up with this literature. Since kholwa writers and readers engaged in fierce debates about tribe and religion, we can assume that the tradition instilled a pride of heritage and seriousness of religious conviction in the Sithole family. I have seen no indication that the kholwa ever wrote on science or nature, but neither is there any indication that Saul Sithole found his career through an early interest in science.1 When Saul was young, his father moved to a church in Lady Selborne, the freehold black township in Pretoria. Urban residential segregation was the law in South Africa at this time. Lady Selborne had been founded for the mixed-race Coloured group, but, as was common in large urban areas, all “non-whites,” including Coloureds, Asians, and people of wholly African ancestry, lived in the same townships. The second son of three, between Solomon and Amos, Saul completed standard six, roughly equivalent to American eighth grade. In Down Second Avenue, memoirs of a childhood in another black community in Pretoria in the 1930s, the author Es’kia Mphahlele recalled that his Methodist school was overflowing and strict. The curriculum was nothing like the literature the kholwa themselves were producing; the standard six examination entailed reciting Tennyson and Byron to white inspectors who attended the oral examinations. Passing the examination, as Saul did, was a noteworthy achievement for black South African children and would have qualified him as a teacher of the lower grades.2 Saul’s education was interrupted when his father died. He and Solomon went to work to enable young Amos to continue his studies. He worked periodically as a bus conductor until a friend of the family, Elephas Lebelo of Marabastad, helped Solomon and Saul find jobs at the Transvaal Museum. His daughter, Zondi Sithole Zitha, and her husband, Napoleon, granted me an interview in 2006 and told me about Sithole’s life outside and within the Transvaal Museum. She recalled that her father started work at the museum on November 11, 1928, exactly ten years after the Armistice. She believed his first job was as a cleaner. In the early 1990s Sithole himself told Tamar Cassidy of the museum’s Bird Department that during his first year he helped mount the elephant long displayed in the museum entrance.3 Sithole’s professional life became specialized around birds when he joined the Vernay-Lang Kalahari expedition of 1930, a cooperative effort

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between the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Transvaal Museum. Arthur Vernay was a New York antiques dealer who sponsored and participated in fifteen expeditions for the AMNH. Lang was Herbert Lang, a German-born taxidermist, naturalist, mammologist, and photographer (1879 –1957) who had worked at AMNH and is best known as leader of the 1909 –15 expedition to the Congo. On that trip he and his collaborator, the young American James Chapin (who has featured in previous chapters), collected mammals, birds, and people’s manufactures in eastern Congo. But the ethnographic collection, including Lang’s photographs of the Mangbetu people and their objects, may be the greatest legacy of the expedition. During his years in the Congo rainforest, he shot, developed, and preserved hundreds of sharp, elegant photographs, many taken with a large-format camera. His photographs of individuals are remarkable more as portraiture than as ethnographic representations. In 1925 he returned to Africa on a collecting expedition in Angola. When that expedition ended, Lang remained on the continent and took a position at the Transvaal Museum in 1927.4 The Transvaal Museum was founded in the independent Boer republic before the South African War (1899 –1902), but after the war it became an Anglophone institution. Scientific interest was part of the bundle of “South Africanism” that originated among the English population in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony. Colonial scientific institutions made claim to universal traditions. At the same time, science supported a confident and respectable self-image and could potentially help to unify English-speakers and Afrikaners as white South Africans. Study of indigenous flora and fauna stoked settlers’ identification with the landscape and provided them with respectable contributions to international science. After the Union of South Africa came into being in 1910, the expansion of scientific institutions in the Transvaal played a part in regional rivalry between whites in the north and south of the country. As for black South Africans, racial science was among the justifications for their different treatment. The context of science at the Transvaal Museum was thoroughly segregationist, but it was not Afrikaner nationalism.5 Zondi Zitha recalled that her father learned to skin birds from Herbert Lang. A report by Austin Roberts, the ornithologist on the team, confirmed this, noting that Sithole excelled at the work: “Lang is training the boys to make good skins. . . . Saul is far better than the other skinners and is doing very fine skins.” Sithole was the only black assistant mentioned in Roberts’s

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40. Vernay-Lang 1930 Kalahari Expedition: Skinning tent. Courtesy of Ditsong Museum Archives.

report on ornithological research, but he told Cassidy that five skinners prepared the specimens (including Ali Safi, mentioned in chapter 4). Lang described Sithole as a leader: “This native, by his ready willingness to render himself useful and by his good example, assisted in maintaining an excellent discipline and great industry among the skinners.” The expedition yield included thirty thousand bird skins for four museums: the Transvaal Museum, the Field Museum in Chicago, the AMNH in New York, and the British Museum in London. A photograph of the skinners shows six men sitting on the ground under a makeshift tent to shield them from the sun. The slight lone person on the far left appears to be Sithole (fig. 40).6 Saul Sithole was a city boy whose knowledge came through books, but not specifically science books. When Lang and Sithole met in Pretoria, the German American had greater experience of the bush than Sithole did. Rural craft never became Sithole’s expertise. Instead, he became an urban technician working in support of international cosmopolitan scientific research. The tools of his trade were fine steel, cotton wool, alcohol, and arsenic. We can reconstruct Sithole’s work through a booklet, The Preparation of

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Birds for Study, published in 1923 by James Chapin, Lang’s colleague at the AMNH. Intended to enable amateurs to collect scientifically useful specimens, the booklet lays out the procedure for preserving birds shot in the field as study skins. Chapin was an extremely conscientious correspondent and most likely sent a copy of his booklet to Lang. It is not unimaginable that Sithole consulted it as he learned. In any case, Chapin spent six years as Lang’s assistant, so the technique would be similar to that learned by Sithole.7 Chapin’s book gives clear instructions and sketches of specimens in varying stages of preparation. Consider the instructions and accompanying illustration for step 6: “With the left hand grasp firmly one of the thighs, to support the body of the bird. With the thumb of the right hand, aided occasionally by the scalpel, separate the skin of the rump from the body.” The illustration presents the preparator’s hands with simple lines, without the detail given to the bird’s rough skin, fine feathers, and striated internal muscles (fig. 41). The human hands of the preparator are not marked by race or even gender. This illustration underscores the fact that Sithole’s

41. The preparator’s hands. Chapin, Preparation of Birds, 11.

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work was not specific to any vernacular tradition. Like technical assistants all over the world, he honed his skills on the job. Sithole’s work with specimens was precise, his daughter, Zondi Zitha, recounted. When he did his work he did not want to be interfered, and would say Dr. Lang wouldn’t like this to be that and would like this to be that. And I think that was the beauty of the whole thing. And not only did he pick up from Dr. Lang. Absalom, also. Absalom also did taxidermy with my dad. But, uh, according to what my dad used to say, Absalom is just, you know, a person who wants to do . . . verrry . . . quickly, and then everything, it’s over. Then they would call him, “Saul, but this has not been done by you.” You see, and then he’s got to redo that, otherwise that thing is going to be destroyed. Because it wasn’t properly done. Sometimes he brought his work home, and Zondi learned to respect its boundaries, even those that most tempted children: “When he does his tools, his knives and needles and everything had little bags, putting them in there, and when there’s artificial eyes in them, we would like to try and look at them. ‘Now these are my specimens, please don’t interfere.’ He’d keep them in a separate little bag. Then you’d know, that bag, it’s a ‘don’t touch’ bag; it belongs to my dad.” It would be incorrect to think of the work as merely mechanical. It was not just precise; preparing bird skins well requires a feel for what the bird should look like. Tamar Cassidy, who worked with Sithole, explained it to me: It’s more than a skill. Every bird is different. You have to know the bird. There is a certain craft involved in knowing how to deal with that kind of bird or skeleton or wing or whatever it is. The whole point is to make it look presentable, and that is the hard part. It is easy to do the technical work, to make a skin is okay. Every bird is differently shaped. You have to know the muscles. Any portrait artist, or anybody who does a body, draws, you have to know the structure of the body. So when you put it together again, the skin bends a little bit. It has to fall into position. Feathers are arranged. Feathers and hair, whatever, they’re arranged in specific rows, which are different for each species.8 Sithole had this sense. Cassidy believes he gained it on expeditions, when he could observe living birds. Matthews Mathabathe, who joined the

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museum in 1958, recalled Sithole in an interview with me: “He had artistic hands on his work.”9 After the Vernay-Lang expedition, Sithole worked primarily in the Bird Department as an assistant to Austin Roberts. Austin Roberts’s name has become nearly synonymous with birding in South Africa. His Birds of South Africa, published in 1940, was not the first bird guide for the country, but it was the most successful and became the basis for a franchise in ornithological information. We’ve already encountered Austin Roberts in chapter 4, when he attracted fire for repeating a Zulu assertion about parasitism. He had said: “It is well known how often the superstitions of the observant natives have been found to be based upon fact.” Vernacular understandings of bird behavior could be useful to a collector, significant enough for Birds of South Africa to feature names of birds in South African languages. Roberts believed that vernacular avian knowledge was threatened and in a 1939 speech advocated collecting it.10 Since they have lost their adherence to tribal customs and influences, Natives are losing their knowledge of names of the species of birds, especially the “uninteresting” ones. Formerly they prided themselves on their knowledge of the flora and fauna, and had a wonderful vocabulary; but it is becoming increasingly difficult to collect data from them as the processes of European settlement increases. It is hoped, however, that with the illustrations in my book efforts will be made to collect as many names as possible from the older Natives who may have names for the species. . . . There is also room for the gathering of much in folklore of the numerous distinct tribes. My reason for including some of the Bantu names is to direct attention to the need for recording them more completely and to show how little we really know about them.11 If Roberts was interested in vernacular knowledge, he did not connect with it much. Over the course of his career, he made only infrequent references to what could be learned from “observant natives.” In the field, he seems to have struggled to find help. On a 1928 trip to Zululand he brought no support staff from the museum and was not able to convince men from the area to travel with him. After the Vernay-Lang expedition, Sithole became his chief companion and general assistant on collecting trips, accompanying him on collecting trips to Vryburg, Grahamstown, and Zululand, the last a six-week trip in 1932.12

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With verve, Zondi Zitha told a story of her father’s responsibilities on a trip to Zululand: No, he was involved in the living birds. They used to go out, and they used to go and put up traps, and when he packs up his bag at home, says now I’ve got to make room for the traps at the museum. Then I’d say to him, “What are you going to look for?” He said, “No, this time we’re getting to Zululand. They say there’s a hippo there that is finishing up the animals there, and sometimes it goes out of the river and it hides in the reeds there, so they’re going out to go and trap it.” And then I asked him, “How do you trap it? A hippo being so big.” He says, “Yes, what they do is, there’s a sort of a trench made and then they put on reeds and wire, and when it comes in, comes walking slowly, it’s not aware that there’s a trench there and it’ll go (sound effect) into the swamp and they would use those injections and then needed a lot of manpower to get it out there. So what they would do is to get the Zulus in the neighborhood, he would go out and plead and then speak Zulu to them, he would come in, and then they would help them to get hold of this animal. On these expeditions, Saul Sithole was not a vernacular expert, but he was doing critical work as an interlocutor between local labor and the cosmopolitan scientist. According to Roberts’s biographer C. K. “Bob” Brain’s notes of his interview with Sithole, he considered Roberts to be humble and hardworking, regularly doing a share of the skinning. True, when Roberts was cross he was “terrible,” but this was not often. He made jokes when he had time, but that was not often. In his own way, Roberts also connected with Sithole. People did not figure largely in any of his reports, but Sithole was an admired background character. In Roberts’s records we see Sithole cleaning the collections and improving the preservation of old, poorly made skins. On expeditions he prepared bird and mammal skins and did the odd jobs required of him. When supplies had to be ferried across the Cunene River, he “was sent to help, and fell into the water, but continued to work like a Trojan far into the night until all were across.”13 It wasn’t always serious: a schoolboy who had once helped Roberts in the field wrote him an amusing memory of Saul Sithole, although he forgot his name: “PS I suppose you remember how Paul the skinner (I think his name was) laughed at the [tiptol] I asked him to stuff, which was almost in ribbons from the shot I hit it with.”14

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Sithole’s life registered so deeply with Roberts that his report from February and March 1933 offers rare insight into the social world of the museum’s Bird Department. “Native Assistant Saul has continued his useful assistance in cleaning skulls and re-making up badly prepared skins for birds. I may record his marriage in March.” Sithole’s wife, Sophia Nomvula, was also from Lady Selborne and, like him, had studied through standard six. The couple lived in Lady Selborne, where their only child, Zondi, was born in 1931.15 Roberts’s 1934 visit to the United States to make a study of its museums interrupted Sithole’s career as an ornithological assistant. Transvaal Museum preparators had specializations, but they also worked outside them. Sithole was a “handyman who could work with every scientist,” his colleague Matthews Mathabathe told me. In the interregnum, he worked in paleontology at Sterkfontein limestone cave with Robert Broom. A medical doctor who took up physical anthropology, Broom was the theorist of the “Boskop man,” a separate species of primitive man that lived in southern Africa. This theory of separate evolution among humans was the most odious underpinning of white supremacy. How black workers experienced the findings of racial science remains uncertain. When asked about her father’s position on evolution, Zondi Zitha testified to the family’s enduring connection to Broom, but without mentioning race.16 He used to make us laugh and say, “You know, my doctor says, we originate from the woods.” I said to him, “No, why?” He says, “Yes, my doctor is the cleverest doctor. And I think he is right. Look at a baboon, it’s only lazy, doesn’t want to talk.” So he had that belief because it was the interweaving with his professor, that Dr. Broom used to tell him that, and he said to him, “So, I still want a man who can come and tell me that he has found the missing link.” And I said, now, when I heard of this professor at Wits [University of the Witwatersrand], he was now contradicting what Dr. Broom was saying. . . . Then I said to myself, I don’t know how far true this is because Dr. Broom used to say to my dad, “No other man has worked as hard as I’ve worked!” Sithole was present with Broom for the finding of the second-ever Australopithecus africanus skull (after the Taung child). A photograph from August 18, 1936, documents the personnel involved in the event. Broom’s notes on the back read: “Taken by W. Herbert Lang at Sterkfontein the day after the Sterkfontein skull was discovered. I am indicating with my left hand the

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spot where the skull lay. With me are Mr. Barlow and behind two museum boys. Saul and Jacobus. The other boy is one of the quarry boys.” Broom does not record who exactly first found the skull, but there would have been a collaboration, from the man doing the digging and informing his supervisor, to Broom pronouncing the significance. In this photograph, Broom is formally seated and professionally dressed, positioned as the owner of the find. He points to the spot, to which one of the other men probably led him. On the left in the rear is Saul Sithole, nattily dressed in shirt, tie, vest, and cap and smiling comfortably (fig. 42).17 As a preparator of fossils, Sithole learned new skills. At Sterkfontein he took on the work of cleaning the rock from the bones. Until 1934 Sithole had spent six years on mammals and birds, both preserving them and preparing them for displays. The work was precise, but the specimens were plentiful, and a beginner could practice on common types. By contrast, every one of the Australopithecus finds at Sterkfontein was priceless. It must have been a measure of the museum’s confidence in Sithole that he was given responsibility to prepare them. Francis Thackeray, the anthropologist who later directed the Transvaal Museum, learned to prepare fossils from Saul Sithole when he was a student in 1970. He described the procedures to me: Well, I was preparing fossils using very dilute acetic acid, essentially vinegar. And the current kitchen had been turned into a laboratory. It was basically very primitive—we needed kitchen bowls, we required running water, and that was an ongoing process. The fossil was encased in stone, in sand which had been calcified, and what I was required to do was to immerse blocks of breccia with the fossils into the bowls, and then within 24 hours the very dilute acetic acid—the vinegar—would dissolve away the calcium carbonate, would basically remove grains of sand, grain by grain. Within 24 hours you could actually remove quite a lot of the rock.18 On using vinegar, Thackeray affirmed: “Quite a gentle process, it wasn’t a strong acid. And then you had to wash the block in running water very thoroughly — that was washed for about two days. And then it would dry, just being left on a laboratory shelf or in the sunshine, and then you would examine the exposed bone, the newly exposed bone, and you would treat that with a protective glue —we called it Glyptal in those days. And then it would dry, and then the whole process would begin again.” As

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42. The 1936 discovery of Australopithecus specimen at Sterkfontein. Courtesy of Ditsong Museum Archives.

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with bird skins, the preparation of fossils was routine work that required attention and patience. It was essential but humble scientific work conducted with water, vinegar, glue, and sunlight, a responsibility for reliable assistants. In his zoological and paleontological work, Sithole also worked as a collector, as Zondi Zitha described: “When he was involved at Sterkfontein he actually got the opportunity of visiting Sterkfontein, to go and see the caves there. They did a lot of work also there, at Sterkfontein, looking for the parts and bones and little nitty-gritties which they used to set. And he [Broom] said, ‘There are bones missing. You must go and look for them!’” He also collected insects and trapped small mammals and birds on zoological expeditions, which he resumed with the 1937 Barlow–Transvaal Museum expedition to Namibia with Roberts and the herpetologist Vivian FitzSimons. According to Zitha, he became invested in the challenge: “He did, he used to go out, they used to do a lot of camping outside, and he used to come back and say to us, ‘We didn’t get what Austin Roberts wanted.’ And sometimes they used to go out with another expedition, somebody would go and collect beetles and butterflies, and he would say, ‘But we didn’t get what you wanted. . . . We’re going again.’ In two, three weeks again. He was always on the road.” As Cassidy said, Sithole liked to tell the story of the Herero chats (Namibornis herero) that he caught in the Erongo Mountains in Namibia in 1937. Roberts couldn’t bag the chat, but by scraping a matchbox with a match, Sithole was “mobbed” by them. In later years he was pleased to have trapped two of the rare birds, while the eminent Austin Roberts only ever caught one. Roberts acknowledged him in an article on the expedition, published in the Ostrich, the South African ornithological journal. A photograph in the museum archives shows Roberts, FitzSimons, and Sithole with the birds collected on this trip. The contrast between this picture and the one taken at Sterkfontein a year earlier is striking. Where Robert Broom had claimed mastery of the Australopithecus find, with the other men arranged around him almost incidentally, the photograph celebrating the ornithological finds gives equal positioning to all three men, the two scientists and the preparator. Their dress is comparable, apart from Sithole being in shirtsleeves and the others in jackets. Austin Roberts looks at the collection while FitzSimons and Sithole both hold the gaze of the lens. The men are cleaned up to city standards and are relaxed and pleased with the display (fig. 43).19

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43. Austin Roberts, Vivian FitzSimons, and Saul Sithole with birds collected in South West Africa, 1937. Courtesy of Ditsong Museum Archives.

Sithole recounted to Cassidy that the following year he traveled to Kruger National Park with Dutch scientists to collect blood samples from giraffes, rather than to prepare skins. He went to the western and southern Cape with Roberts for four months in 1939 – 40. Until this expedition, it had not been recorded that Sithole shared the driving. On this trip he was at the wheel during an accident that knocked him unconscious and slightly injured Roberts. The issue of driving created a rare sore spot in museum correspondence about Sithole. In a letter about arranging vehicles for a 1941 trip, Roberts wrote: “My senior rubbed Saul the wrong way and he turned sulky and I have had to talk him round to go with me. . . . I should have had a white man palmed onto me to drive it, because they won’t let Saul drive it after the last trip to the Cape Province.” Something about the incident offended Sithole. Certainly, the sense of a responsible self and automobile accidents are related in complicated ways. With race rubbed into this wound, for once Sithole’s resentment showed.20 After the Cape trip, Sithole traveled little. He prepared new specimens and exhibits and maintained the existing collections. He is remembered

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for improving the quality of the specimens prepared by others. In 1948 Austin Roberts suffered a heart attack while driving and died in his car. By this time Robert Broom had ceased work at the Sterkfontein caves. Saul made just two more expeditions for the museum, both in 1956. His trip to Angola with the entomologist Charles Koch was the farthest he traveled during his career. Probably with some pride, he recalled to Cassidy that he showed the scientist how to collect black-and-white striped beetles in the dunes of Namibia. His last expedition was to the Blouberg region of what is now Limpopo Province with the ornithologist O. P. M. Prozesky. By this time Sithole was no longer young, and his principal memory (and probably source of pride) was of marching fourteen miles uphill in a storm. On a visit to a rain queen the next day, she gave them a sheep to slaughter, which caused the rain to stop. One wonders what the Methodist technician meant to say when he told his coworker about the power of a rain queen. Pay, Pension, and Retirement By all accounts, Sithole liked museum work, and his superiors were happy with him. In a country where the largest employer was the mining industry and most of its workers faced deadly occupational hazards, museum work would have attractions. Compared with other available options, the Transvaal Museum was a relatively good place for a black man to work during apartheid. Sithole made a telling comment about museum expeditions in an interview with Brain, Roberts’s biographer. Brain paraphrased Sithole’s sentiment: “Saul enjoyed working with Roberts; Dompas done away with.” By “Dompas” Sithole meant the “damned pass,” the identification document required for black men to move through cities. The comments suggest that when he was in the field with scientists, he felt some relief from the constant racial surveillance of urban life. His problem, however, was that he was still a black man in a segregated society, and this made him poor. The pay differential between whites and blacks was enormous. In a 1935 proposal for a vertebrate animal survey, Austin Roberts budgeted £800 per year for the administrative officer, £500 per year for the senior field officers, and £45 per year for the “Native” assistants. This is comparable to what black unskilled railway and harbor workers were earning at the time. Museum correspondence in 1956 lists the highest pay level for a preparator at £180 per year. This was more than

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twice what an unskilled black railway worker or migrant gold miner could earn but was not half what an unskilled white railway worker could earn. From this a black man was required to pay 2 shillings per month in pass fees. Furthermore, museum workers had no pension.21 At the age of fifty Saul Sithole decided to improve his financial position by going into business for himself. He secured a strong reference— notwithstanding the misspelling of his name—from his old expedition companion Vivian FitzSimons, who had become director of the museum. To whom it may concern: Saul Sitole has been in the employ of the Transvaal Museum continuously from 11 November 1928 to the date of his resignation, 29 March 1959, when he left at his own wish to improve his position. Although he has throughout been employed as a preparator and has shown special ability in the skinning and preparation of birds and mammals, he can when necessary turn his hand to most things with success. He has taken part in most of our scientific field expeditions all over Southern Africa and has proved himself a most dependable and reliable worker. He is of a good standard of education, is of a quiet disposition, steady and possessed of a high sense of responsibility and integrity. It is therefore with the utmost confidence that I can recommend him for any position where the afore-mentioned attributes count.22 Sithole’s interlude as an entrepreneur, discussed below, lasted ten years. As Zitha tells it, Sithole’s concern about status within Lady Selborne may have influenced his attempt to establish himself in business. Actually what prompted my dad to leave the museum was . . . the influence that was in the vicinity, in Lady Selborne, was you must try and do things for yourself. And I don’t know, I don’t want to tell a lie now, what sparked him to say, “No, I’m leaving the museum, I’m going to start my own coal business.” Because now it was a commodity that was very scarce, and he had a van by then, big lorry. And he said, “No, I’ve been working so long at the museum,” and it is this thing of the museum not having a pension fund for them and not paying them very well. He said, “Let me try a business.” And then that’s how he left the museum. It wasn’t out of bitterness. I don’t know, perhaps there was, I’m not sure. But he broke off from the museum for quite some time, but not very long.

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Although Zitha spoke only generally, expectations within this social world seems to have motivated him to take the risk. “And he started saying, ‘I’m going to build myself up and sell coal, and perhaps I’ll be a better person in the community.’”23 Going into business in Lady Selborne was a risky decision. When founded in 1905, residents’ committees governed the township, but over the next decade it came under the administration of the neighboring whitecontrolled municipality. Lady Selborne residents paid for services, but, being black, they had no representation in local government. In the early 1920s and again in the 1940s residents mobilized for improved services and representation. But the election of the National Party on the platform of apartheid in 1948 turned policy toward segregation on a larger scale. Urban townships such Lady Selborne in Pretoria and Sophiatown in Johannesburg were deemed to be overcrowded slums. John Seakalala Mojapelo, author of a history of Pretoria, estimated the population of Lady Selborne in 1950 at 150,000 people. The freehold tenure in Lady Selborne and Sophiatown contradicted the apartheid position that black people could not be permanent residents of urban areas. Moreover, they were on valuable parcels of land near the city centers. The apartheid policy required urban black populations to live on leased plots in more remote locations. By 1958 when Sithole started his coal business, Lady Selborne’s removal already appeared imminent. Ominously, the Sophiatown neighborhood in Johannesburg had already lost its struggle to avoid removal. Sithole joined the committee of Lady Selborne property owners and contributed to the fund for lawyers’ fees. How he incorporated this threat into his calculations about possible financial and social gain is unclear. By 1961 the removal was sealed, and over the rest of the decade residents were forced to sell and relocate to other areas set aside for black habitation.24 The Sithole family moved to Mamelodi township. Whatever Sithole’s expectations for the removals were, his business was not able to survive the upheaval. Zitha recalled that his reputation at the museum served him when his business failed. “It started quite well but as time went on, when the Selborne removals started, the business was no longer flourishing as it was. So he felt, ‘Rather than to be sitting at home, why not pack my bags and go back to the museum?’ And as we were sitting there one day, I was already married at my own place, he said to me, ‘You know, I can’t go on like this. I’m going back to the museum.’ I said, ‘Ah! Will they take you back?’ He said, ‘Yes, I didn’t leave the museum with a bad record. I’m going back.’”

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The opportunity to return to paid employment came in 1968, when his old friend and fellow preparator Sampson Maseko died. By then, Brain, who knew Sithole from his paleontological work, had become director of the Transvaal Museum and invited him to return. Sithole’s fellow preparator Mathabathe recalled, “When Sam died, there was nobody who could replace him, so Dr. Brain . . . decided to call Sithole back, as he had heard the business of Sithole was not going very well. So he called him back.” Brain wrote to the secretary for cultural affairs for permission to rehire Sithole at a higher grade of pay. In 1970 he was earning R534 a year. (When the rand became the currency at the founding of the Republic of South Africa in 1961, it was exchanged for South African pounds at the rate of R2 per £1.) This was a low salary, even for a black man. If Makawa earned about what a skilled carpenter in Northern Rhodesia earned, Saul Sithole earned only two-thirds of what that trade paid in South Africa. Of course, the work conditions were better than the hard physical labor demanded of many black men, but official government statistics indicate that he earned less than unskilled laborers in private industry.25 And so, Saul Sithole returned to the museum. In the 1970s his official position was “Technical Assistant in the Technical Departments,” the division of the museum responsible for display and taxidermy. Again taking up the task as preparator, he worked on exhibits for the Austin Roberts Bird Hall, which opened in 1972. In the last decades at the museum, he was not the Trojan he had been as a young man. He largely worked in the “pickle shed” behind the main building, where he preserved new specimens. The pickle shed smelled awful, but Sithole spent his days there, and a regular flow of visitors braved the stench to talk to him. The museum kept him on, although he wasn’t as productive as he had been. “Oh, when he was turning seventy-five, he wanted to leave, and then Bob Brain, he’s the one who motivated him to stay. . . . He was not stuffing any longer, but just there for him to impart the knowledge and guide. That’s what Bob used to do, keep him there for guidance.” He did a lot of talking: “He liked to talk. He liked people, and visitors he used to like. And, strange, quite a number of visitors used to come in from outside and say, ‘Where’s Saul?’ But fortunately, he was at the museum and they could meet him personally and talk to him. And he’d come back home and he’d say, ‘You know? Visitors came in and wanted to see me.’ I said, ‘They said you were very important.’ He’d say, ‘Yes, I am. Very important!’”26 He told those who passed through about the work done at the museum and his own role in it. Younger colleagues listened when he admonished

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them to work hard and save their money. Director Brain, too, came to talk to Sithole in the pickle shed. As an old man, his position at the museum gave him meaningful activity and recognition. As ever, he got along with everyone. The family has a 1978 article clipped from an unidentified newspaper (probably the Pretoria News) that summarized his contributions to the museum and quoted him on the possibility of retirement: “I don’t want to be like some of my school mates who have retired. They are now old men.”27 In December 1990 he did retire, as Zondi Zitha described: “Then he said to me, ‘My, but now, I’m eighty now, and I’m getting old now.’ I said, ‘Okay. Feeling old, why don’t you retire?’ He says, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ Then he went and spoke to Brain. Bob said, ‘No, Saul, you’ll retire when I retire.’ It was quite . . . he had a good relationship with Bob.” The Pretoria News ran an article titled “More than a Museum Piece,” with a photograph, commemorating his sixty-two years of service. After he retired, sometimes he visited the museum; Zitha recalls taking him to see Thackeray. A photograph shows Sithole probably in 1991 with a bust of Broom and an image of an Australopithecus skull (fig. 44). Old by now, he was still well dressed and stood erect. However, the oversized model of Broom and the specimen

44. Saul Sithole at the Transvaal Museum with the bust of Robert Broom. Courtesy of Ditsong Museum Archives.

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dwarfed him. Sithole does not hold his own in this photograph; the staging puts him lower and to the side. Age, apartheid, and the hierarchical space of the museum dictated his position. Saul Sithole died on October 16, 1997. The museum allowed staff members to attend the funeral, but the family remembers that no white colleagues came. The Transvaal Museum gave Sithole an independent position in the history of the institution when it named its staff service award for him. In the new South Africa, the project of restoring black actors to the official history of the museum had begun.28 Sithole’s Respectability Recalled FitzSimons’s letter of reference described Sithole as “of a quiet disposition, steady and possessed of a high sense of responsibility and integrity.” All available indications are that Sithole lived as an emblem of twentieth-century respectability. What is respectability? John Iliffe includes respectability as a particular form of honor culture in his overview, Honour in African History. To Iliffe, honor is created by rank and behavior. Iliffe points out that twentieth-century black South African respectability had precedents in earlier honor cultures, but in the later Christian milieu of colonial South Africa it built a claim to status on a disciplined moral character. Respectability differed from other concepts of honor by valuing restraint and etiquette over status and achievement.29 Respectability was, according to Robert Ross, a powerful ideology in the nineteenth-century Cape. He suggests that it was a British-derived outward manifestation of a specific class ideology visible in material culture, religion, and individual comportment. It was achieved on an individual level, but it required the validation of others. The foundation for black respectability in South Africa was Christianity—in fact, another name for the ama-kholwa converts was “ama-respectables.” Sithole’s brand was Methodism, the religion of the English respectable working class. Throughout his life, he remained active in the denomination of his preacher father. He was a regular churchgoer and a member of the Methodist men’s league, the Amadodana. The power of Christianity in his life gives a sense that he lived not only to be respectable but also to be righteous.30 In Sophiatown, the large black freehold neighborhood in Johannesburg that was removed in the mid-1950s, respectability was a widely held value. David Goodhew stresses its importance among the working classes who resisted their removal. The campaign against apartheid in the 1950s was, with

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its sober disposition and particular attention to matters of education and home ownership, marked by this comportment. As a respectable black man, Sithole had company in Lady Selborne, where residents owned property, acquired through saving and ambition. It wasn’t necessary to be rich to be respectable, but it was hard if one was notably poorer than others.31 Sithole’s bundle of respectable virtues included industry, frugality, sobriety, and good grooming. Younger members of the museum staff recall that he lectured them on the importance of thrift and saving. He organized a savings association for his coworkers. His own savings he used to buy a tombstone for his parents, an act of filial loyalty that was much admired. Because he didn’t have a pension, he saved for his own eventual retirement. Clothing is a strong marking of respectability, and Sithole always dressed professionally and carried a briefcase. He did not challenge hierarchy. Away from the pickle shed and among museum managers, he did less talking and more listening. He was dubious about union organization among his colleagues. Education was important to him: he sent his daughter to a Methodist boarding school. By the time his granddaughters went to high school, the apartheid policy of Bantu Education had caused many elite schools to be closed, but with the help of Prozesky, the museum ornithologist, one of the girls was placed at the Hebron College of Education. Christian and capitalist values of industrial Europe were most influential in black South African respectability. Iliffe goes so far as to say, “Respectability was the chief means by which Europeans tried to domesticate African notions of honour, replacing their emphasis on rank and prowess with stress on virtue and duty.” Yet honor was not so easily tamed for colonial purposes; all the historians cited here stress that the European-inflected culture of respectability provided a basis for opposition to white domination. As nineteenth-century converts embraced Christian virtues, in his careful execution of his duties, was he making a claim on the respectability of science? Certainly, Sithole was aware of just how far his investment in the respectable urban, Christian life and a scientific occupation could take him.32 Sithole and Science under Segregation Sithole’s values prepared him to see the attractions of a life of science. But he could not be a scientist because, in addition to being a skilled preparator and a respectable member of his community, Saul Sithole was a black South African. This fact permeated his relationship with his job and

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science. Saul Sithole’s proximity to the world and values of white scientists made the barriers of race much more intrusive for him than they were for vernacular experts such as Makawa. Expeditions did offer the museum’s black workers a notable break in the experience of twentieth-century South Africa. Yet race structured the society of fieldworkers. It was among the factors that converged to put Sithole under a tarp with a knife and never under the sky with a gun. It was virtually unthinkable for a black South African to carry a gun on a government-sponsored expedition.33 It is axiomatic to segregation that it always affects those closest to the boundary. Black men who invested in urban, Christian, and professional values posed a problem for the protectors of exclusive white privilege. The boundary between assistant and cosmopolitan science was contentious and frictional when the assistant was a respectable modern individual precisely because the social worlds of aspiring black assistants and white scientists had consensus about the meaning of work. Yet shared understandings did not raise the status of the assistant. They might be interested and engaged in science, but the position of the Transvaal Museum was that no black person had any relation to science except through white supervisors. What was true in other sectors of work like mining was also true in the museum. Blacks did only menial labor, and the institution benefited from being able to pay them little. By the 1970s, the natural history-rich South Africanism of the early twentieth century had been eclipsed. Physical science and technology gained ascendancy in government-funded institutes, and the whip hand of Afrikaner nationalism eroded white unity. The Transvaal Museum remained largely an English-medium organization in the heart of Afrikanerdom. By and large English-speakers were not active supporters of the National Party and the policy of apartheid, but neither did they pose much active opposition. Brain himself recognized the inconsistency in the racialized segregation of museum work. In a 1977 letter to his colleagues in the Department of National Education, he criticized the low government pay scales for black employees. “The crux of the problem regarding non-white salary scales in Declared Institutions is that these are regarded as white institutions in which career opportunities may not be created for non-white employees. . . . I, as a director of a state-aided museum, believe myself to be guilty of a double standard in that, while accepting the designation of the Transvaal Museum as a white institution, I continue to employ non-whites for menial tasks, simply because they provide cheap labour.” Segregated pay scales were fundamental to apartheid, but Brain proposed

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that the educational institutions offer the same opportunities to “scholars, students, artists, scientists and visitors of all races.” This was a nonstarter for a government institution under apartheid. And the liberalism of English-speaking South Africa had its limits. Even after decrying the double standard in pay grades, the museum did not integrate its tea breaks, which greatly irked the assistants I talked to. Black employees moved above support positions only after 1994.34 How did Saul Sithole bear the yoke of segregation? Apart from the incident in the 1940s when he was insulted by the ban on his driving, I found no memories of frustrating encounters between Sithole and the scientists he worked for. He was an avid reader of the Pretoria News, the Rand Daily Mail, and the magazine Drum, but he was not an active member of the African National Congress, in part because participating might threaten his position at a government institution. His public persona revealed no chinks in his dignity and discretion, perhaps because public expression of his grievances and frustrations could have undermined his respectability. In the interview with me, Zondi Zitha had only warm words for his white supervisors. To what extent this was her discretion, Saul’s unwillingness to burden her with his negative experiences, or Roberts’s and Brain’s decent treatment of Sithole, is hard to say. Perhaps this unyielding performance of respectability was a form of defiance of the racial double standard. How better to flout segregation than to surpass whites in adherence to their purported values? By being unfailingly decent in an indecent situation, he rose above it. Segregation could curb his professional stature, but could not impugn his character.35 Zondi Zitha believes that, had he had the opportunity, her father would have enjoyed a deeper engagement with science. She believes that his interest in the work was part of what kept him in a low-paying job at the museum. “He loved his work. He loved his work, quite true.” She gave examples of his interest. He pointed out rock formations and birdcalls to his daughter. He created his own natural history cabinet with objects discarded by the museum, including some animal horns, birds stuffed for exhibition, a case of locusts, and a replica of “Mrs Ples,” the famous Australopithecus specimen found by Broom in 1947. He also displayed ethnographic objects collected on his travels. His love of travel and nature inspired her to become a Girl Guide leader, and she used his equipment on her camping trips.36 Perhaps the best evidence we have of his attachment to science comes from its intersection with vernacular and Christian cosmological under-

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standings. When acquaintances asked Sithole to supply animal parts for charms and medicines, he refused. His opinion on human evolution is not recorded, but he continued to identify with the research into human origins. When I spoke with them in 2006, both the Zithas retained an interest in Robert Broom’s legacy, and they were aware of the work of Philip Tobias, a paleontologist who also excavated at Sterkfontein. Napoleon Zitha passed away in 2008. In 2015 Zondi Zitha remained in their home in Mamelodi, which featured her father’s natural history cabinet in pride of place. When she hears reports about new finds, she wishes she could discuss them with her father. A Technician’s Claim on Scientific Knowledge: Analogies A man with Saul Sithole’s loyalty, precision, and ethics certainly could have been a museum manager, an educator, or a scientist. Precisely what he would have chosen to become, had he a choice, is beyond our knowing. Introducing other assistants into the analysis reduces the need for one individual such as Sithole to stand in for a class of people. Although Sithole did not speak to the record, some of his younger colleagues pictured with him in figure 45 spoke with me. These men could speak only for themselves, but their stories give insight into an assistant’s experience of exclusion from science. When we imagine how Saul Sithole connected to the science he was prevented from claiming, we can do so within parameters suggested by Mathabathe, and with two other younger colleagues of Saul Sithole who spoke with me, Jacob Mokoena and Sam Ranthlakgwa. Jacob Mokoena (born 1933) and M. S. “Sam” Ranthlakgwa (born 1938) worked in the zoology departments, preparing mammals and birds for study, when the aging Saul was doing more general taxidermy in the pickle shed. Mokoena retired in 2003, and Ranthlakgwa was still on staff when I interviewed them in 2006. Mokoena was an animated storyteller and willing to share the adventures and frustrations of life as a museum assistant. I talked to them together, which is to say, I threw out some questions, Mokoena told stories, and Ranthlakgwa sometimes worked in a few details. Mokoena’s spirited answers evoked some leading questions from me. Used to speaking Afrikaans in the workplace, they gamely switched to English for my benefit, sometimes feeling about for vocabulary.37 We began about their expeditions. In 1970 they both traveled to northern Botswana, where they came closer to the Zimbabwean war than they

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45. Black staff at the Transvaal Museum, 1980. Left to right: Jan Bogopa, Saul Sithole, Geelbooi Mathabathe, Johannes Kawa, and Matthews Mathabathe. Courtesy of Ditsong Museum Archives.

would have liked. They were warned away from Victoria Falls at gunpoint by white Rhodesian solders. Later they met some black guerrillas, who threatened to kill the whites who had fished in the Zambezi without permission. Mokoena explained how he had intervened for them: “No, you can’t kill those people, we came with them. And we went with them. They’re our colleagues.” Mokoena had been active in the Public Service Association, the union for museum employees. He told me of his efforts to integrate tea breaks for all museum staff and to create a pension fund for museum staff. Mokoena appreciated some of the white scientists and described how others were unfriendly. I was interested in their relations both with the scientists and with the subject of their work, but for Mokoena the personal politics of the collaboration outweighed other considerations. When I asked him, “What did you think of what the scientists were doing? Did it interest you, or not so much?” he gave me an answer about his supervisors: “What I would say is, they were very interested in my work—not me as a person.” When I

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pressed him about his connections with scientific knowledge he used in his work, he repeatedly demurred. On scientific names, Mokoena said: “Now, Latin names are, they are cumbersome, very cumbersome. Well, the man who is studying for his doctorate can worry about that, not a person like myself. You see, I did not even care to put them into my head.” On habitats, Mokoena also professed little knowledge: “Well, that was mostly for the scientific people, it was the scientists, in fact, to do that—habitat, and so on, where they live. But when I was still working there it was something very simple to me.”38 The one incident where Mokoena described drawing on his deeper awareness of science was to undercut an ugly joke from a scientist: You see, the theory of evolution, I still know when we, about the Apartheid era, you know. It’s very nice to be enlightened, you know, to know something, and then I was working with Mr. Prozesky, and we were, from out from the tree, you know, coming up, we see a poster there saying “Visit to the Zoo.” When Mr. Prozesky said to me, he said, “You see that poster? Go and see your brothers,” he means the monkey. I said, “You see, evolution doesn’t say that, it says everybody comes from the monkey.” I told him like that. When I pressed them to speak of themselves and their relation with scientific practices, they repeatedly returned to their exclusion. When I tried to catch Mokoena out on an inconsistency in his account, he clarified that he could not separate his relations with science from the racial exclusions he suffered in his scientific work. nj: Would you like to read the reports? Would that interest you? jacob mokoena ( jm): They did not give them to us. nj: Are you curious? Would you be curious? jm: And the problem, it was, when somebody says he’s studying for a doctorate, you wouldn’t like to go and compete with him or—but perhaps questioning [unintelligible] on the job. You see, the difficult part comes there. You’ve just got to do what your master says. And yours is not to answer but is to do. nj: Uh-huh. Now, earlier, when you told me about the freedom fighters, you said, “No, these are our colleagues.” You used the word “colleagues,” and now you use the word “master.” Those are two very different words, aren’t they?

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Mokoena laughs, Ranthlakgwa laughs with him. sam ranthlakgwa (sr): Yeah. jm: No! No. But, then you wouldn’t like those people to do certain horrible things to a person who is in your work every day, you are work with them, never mind who’s the work person, but you wouldn’t like somebody to come and kill you. Those people were going to kill them! nj: Oh, I understand that! No. Yeah, I know, but— jm: Ask Sam, it was very horrible! nj: Yeah. And you did the right thing, but I’m wondering about your use of the word “master” or “colleague.” Which is more appropriate about the working relationship? jm: That’s a very little bit—very difficult thing because, you see, when I mentioned colleague, it wasn’t in the right context for colleague. But since we are working, they were my master because they were giving me instructions. Somebody who instructs you isn’t your colleague—he is your master. Like now, if you’re giving me instructions, I’ve got to follow instructions, if I don’t follow them, it’s either I take the exit, or follow the instruction. It works like that. But when something comes bad, I must say they are my colleagues, tell those people, then they will listen. nj: All right. Now, did you wish you knew more about what the people with the doctorates were doing? Did that interest you? Would you have liked to have known that, or were you happy doing what you did and what you’re still doing, with the preparing and the skinning? Were you curious about the science? jm: You mean science. You know, we were not that curious. We were only interested in the work we were doing. It’s what we were doing— because we knew—we knew that getting promotion, well when you become curious, when you know this, you are going to be promoted to something. They were just right there, you say, these people? Assistant. They [unintelligible] being assistant. And from there they gave us another name—what is it? Preparators. sr: Preparators, yeah. “We were not that curious. We were only interested in the work we were doing,” Mokoena said, and it made perfect sense. There was no chance to be anything but an assistant.

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Which is not to say that all assistants were immune to the attractions of science. I had a very different sort of interview with Matthews Mathabathe (born 1934), a retired insect preparator. I knew something of Mathabathe’s history from the archives. He began at the museum in 1958. When I first encountered him, I was struck by his exquisite handwriting, demonstrated in a 1960 letter to Director FitzSimons asking for a wage increase. In his precision and work ethic, he reminded me of Saul Sithole. Sir, When I commenced duties at the Transvaal Museum, I was promised an increase of salary, which I thought would be quite reasonable money. You explained to me that I had first to master my work of preparing and labeling beetles. As I have always done my best to satisfy you, and even start work in the morning at 7 am in order to clean your offices, the work room and dark room, and since you have not complained about my service, I am given to understand that you must be satisfied. After some thought I now think it time to approach you in connection with an increase to my wage. . . . I need clothes, would like to save a few shilling, would like also to marry. But how can I? I ask you kindly to consider an increase, and will promise to continue showing an interest in your valuable work. Thanks, Your faithfull Servant Matthews Mathabathe39 He received his raise. Forty-three years later, Mathabathe was retired with a wealth of experience. He shared some of it with me. At first, he said, he appreciated museum work because it was not as hard as many of the jobs black men did in South Africa, but eventually preserving beetles was more than just a job for him: “At the beginning, I loved the work because it was not strenuous. And automatically, it got an artistic way of doing it, and well, I personally love of art. It depends on if you are artist, you can be a good preparator, and if you are not, it’s just work.” He especially liked working alone, without interruptions or the need to converse. It’s indicative that he habitually came to the office early and when he took on jobs in his retirement he worked on Saturdays. To learn to what extent he connected with the object of scientific study, I asked him, “What did you think of the beetles?” His answer took me

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aback. “The beetles, usually, I love it. Looking at it is like a common thing. Not really good. And when you started working with it, with the beetles, that beetles we have got to work because, look there is a beetle, which the bushman uses for arrow, there is a beetle that bores the holes, there is a beetle—Africans eat their eggs, there are beetles, they have got work. Very appreciable things.” He credited the museum entomologist Charlie Koch with encouraging him to love beetles. The pair worked together at the Gobabeb Research Station in Namibia. Like the other Transvaal Museum preparators, Mathabathe’s relation with science was channeled through a white scientist. But what he told me suggested a relationship different from those Mokoena and Ranthlakgwa experienced: “Yes, from the start until the finish. I was with Koch. I was still young, young, young, young, young. He took me I guess for his son. I was not his servant at that time. We’d eat together, we’d drink together, no I would say we were together everywhere, wherever he goes.” On Koch and Sebastian Endrödy-Younga, another entomologist at the Transvaal Museum, he asserted: “They were like brothers, brothers to me. They were almost identical. They were heavy smokers, both. And then— eh—they had no, they were not racist.” However, when speaking generally of “scientists,” Mathabathe had a harder assessment: “The scientists would not like us to go deep into their secrets.” As Mathabathe described it, an interested black research assistant and a secretive white scientist engaged in a competitive game over access to knowledge. When I asked him how he learned scientific taxonomy, he replied. matthews mathabathe (mm): I taught myself. Hmm. By working longer, you see, even if you try to hide certain things, at one time that person will eventually see what you have done. Or automatically why you do this and that and that. I worked there for about forty years before I got my retirement. At one place, and with entomologists. So it is simple sometimes to see. You could hide something for a long time but sometimes eventually I would find out that this is that, that, that, that. Some of these things are what I’ve taught myself. It is not that I’ve been told. It’s how we say it’s what I stole. nj: So after you stole it did you let them know you knew, or did you keep that as your secret? mm: Sometimes I would just show them that a little I could see what was going on.

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Mathabathe appreciated that the museum provided a better-than-average working environment for blacks, but the friction there fueled his competitive game, and that game gave him satisfaction. When he explained this, I was surprised. nj: So the museum was a good place for a black man to work? mm: It was. It was, you know sometimes you can enjoy hardship. nj: Enjoy hardship? How? mm: Okay, well you are now continuously under it, eventually it’s— enjoy it. nj: Explain that. mm: You can live under the heavy yoke, yoke, yoke of somebody and then you are going to know that person until you find way how to enjoy it. You know that when he’s there, I can do this. When he’s like that, I can dodge him like this. And you find that now you are become so much to, so much used to what he is, that he is no more very harsh to you. So that’s why I say hardship can be enjoyed sometimes. By strategically gaming his hardship, Mathabathe managed a degree of defiance against his position as a racially segregated scientific subordinate. As a union organizer, Mokoena resisted his poor working conditions, but he was accepting of his separation from scientific practices. In terms of his claim on science, Saul Sithole probably fell somewhere between these two men. Zondi indicated that he was more curious about science that Mokoena claimed to be, but his strong social orientation might have diminished the appeal that Mathabathe found in solitary intellectual pursuits. Achievement for Sithole lay in the esteem of others; the secret acquisition of scientific knowledge might have had less of a point for him. Mokoena, Ranthlakgwa, and Mathabathe, veteran black employees of the Transvaal Museum, allow us to envision a category of African scientific assistants who were not vernacular experts and were not admitted into the world of zoology or botany. These museum assistants inhabit a contradictory space within networks of science. The workers did not constitute a separate social world of birders. Operating in constrained roles in the traditions of science, their cohort was small, localized, and late to develop: their collective did not cohere in a way that is comparable to the social worlds of vernacular experts or ornithologists. Their social world was more broadly of urban workers, a community where science was not of much interest. Yet the life of Sithole and the testimony of Mathabathe suggest that some

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museum assistants might respond to the exclusions of science in pointed ways. The poverty and lack of status could be rendered more bearable through a performance of respectability. Removed from birds, Saul Sithole was nonetheless part of the network of birders; the story of his exclusions is critical to its history.

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chapter 8

Birding Revolutions

I

n the mid-twentieth century, the network of birding was reconfigured. In Africa, it had been typified by the articulation of vernacular birders and European descriptive ornithologists, but those knots loosened when biology took on new questions and when decolonization took away the day jobs that had put many European ornithologists in Africa. After independence, birding absorbed some of the characteristics of postcolonial politics, with white minority rule in southern Africa and the thrust toward economic development shaping relations among birders. A new way of birding—recreational birdwatching— circulated around the globe and became the most conspicuous and best-resourced tradition in Africa, too. Birders of all kinds joined the network and forged new connections between the various traditions. Expanding and mutating, the network of birders in postcolonial Africa was more energized than ever. But the greatest lesson may be one that had been unfolding over centuries: that humans have a deep interests in connecting with birds and, through them, with one another. Ornithology as Biology By the mid-twentieth century, the ornithology that Andrew Smith had used to classify and describe new species was giving way to studies of living birds. Ornithology was no longer descriptive natural history and became a subdiscipline of biological science. The British journal Ibis lagged in this development, perhaps in part because of its strong links with the

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network of ornithologists in Africa. In 1939 the great biologist and ornithologist Ernst Mayr opined that “it is common knowledge throughout the world that the IBIS is full of second-rate papers of colonial officers and faunistic lists of little general interest.” But one colonial officer did become impatient with the fact gathering of his predecessors: Reginald Moreau, who became editor of Ibis in 1947 and had been a pioneer in ethological research. Under his leadership, ecology, ethology, and evolution became more prominent topics in the journal.1 In this process, ornithology followed other fields in embracing “a truly pioneering marriage of genetics, population biology, paleontology, systematics, and evolution,” known as the modern synthesis. Its primary questions concerned the forces driving speciation within populations. This new science was no more particularly applicable to birds than to any other class of organisms, but their relatively straightforward speciation through their geographic isolation made them excellent model organisms for evolutionary biology. Thus, ornithologists became central to the new biology. Two Germans, Erwin Stresemann and Mayr (who took up a post at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1931), were pivotal. In fact, Mayr bequeathed biology with a concise and widely credited definition of species: “actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.”2 Specialized laboratory skills, up-to-date equipment, and training in quantitative methods were becoming become important to the science of birds. Moreau’s work with Beryl Patricia Hall illustrates this developing expansion of methods. A rare female ornithologist, Hall was self-taught and worked in a volunteer position in the Bird Room of the British Museum after 1947. Having served in wartime as an ambulance driver in South Africa and Egypt and having established her ornithological expertise among her male colleagues, she was deemed uniquely qualified for an expedition to South Africa and Namibia. Over the next decade she conducted further fieldwork in Botswana and Angola. With this grounding in the birds of Africa, she joined Moreau in the 1960s on work for their coauthored publication, An Atlas of Speciation of African Passerine Birds.3 Questions about the geography of speciation were high on the agenda of modern synthesis. A 1966 Ibis article by Hall and Moreau with I. C. J. Galbraith provides a good example of such work. The study of the genus Malaconotus (bushshrikes) combined detailed study of morphology and the geographical distribution of populations with consideration of vegetation

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change in the Pleistocene. The authors posited that the different coloration of Malaconotus species could be explained by the genetics governing the biochemistry of carotenoids and melanin. This multifaceted analysis overturned the traditional taxonomy of the genus. What did not change with the new ornithology was the importance of specimens. The search for variation between localities ensured that ornithologists kept collecting widely.4 The development of the field is further evident in the work of Robert Payne, who had worked with Makawa. Born in 1938 in Niles, Michigan, Payne learned birding with his father, a high-school biology teacher. He gained global birding experience at a young age. When the family went to Burma, now Myanmar, on a Fulbright scholarship, they collected birds for the Smithsonian. On graduation, Bob entered the US Naval Academy, which put him on the USS Northampton for a cruise to the Caribbean and the Atlantic. The navy also gave him new bird experiences. Midshipman Payne would stroll the deck, looking for birds. Off the coast of Brazil, a cook fishing off the deck caught an albatross, but these mariners let it go. Payne left the academy to complete his undergraduate education at the University of Michigan and then earned his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on breeding seasons and reproductive physiology. His interests turned to brood parasites, those species that lay their eggs in the nests of others to be raised by them.5 In 1965 Payne moved to South Africa, to the newly founded FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town. As a postdoctoral fellow, he extended his research on physiology and behavior to Afrotropical brood parasite species: cuckoos, honeyguides, and the family that has distinguished his career, the Viduidae, which includes indigobirds and whydahs. Payne’s Afrotropical work in this period is indicative of trends in the discipline. There was better funding than anyone had ever had before, and his ability to dedicate himself utterly to ornithology epitomized the professionalization of the field. He spent the two years of his fellowship largely in the field, observing birds; he traveled fifty-five thousand miles in all, through thirty-one countries, from South Africa to Kenya and then to West Africa. To my knowledge, the geographical scope of this work was unprecedented. Literally bringing the research home with him, he raised both hosts and parasites in captivity for further observation. In a mid-twentieth-century American home, these research subjects built their nests with postage stamps and rubber bands in a year-round Christmas tree set up just for them.6

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The questions and techniques were also those of a new era. Payne made a special study of things that were beyond the perception of lay birders. His original questions had to do with clutch size: Were those laid by the brood parasites, which did not bear the burden of raising the young, larger than among other species? Payne collected females after they mated. Then he sectioned the ovaries, counted the follicles, and ascertained the number of eggs they would have laid. In addition, he noticed the spots on the roof of the mouths of the parasite chicks and found that, besides the black spots seen in pickled specimens of all indigobird species, live birds had blue, red, yellow, pink, and purple spots that varied by species. (Payne later found that the mouth spots and colors of young indigobirds generally match those of the foster siblings.)7 He also addressed the topic of greatest concern to modern synthesis: speciation. Payne’s research expanded on that of Hall and Moreau by bringing ethology into the analysis of speciation. Audiospectrographs of host and Vidua calls indicated that the songs of host species imprinted themselves on Vidua chicks, which influenced the males’ singing and the females’ selection of mates. By imitating the calls made by the males of the hosts who had raised it, the male of the parasitic species attracted breeding partners who had been raised by the same species of foster parents. Because closely related indigos colonized more than one species of finch, mate selection among those who could very well interbreed differed by region. Thus, “indigo birds which in some areas do not interbreed and behave as distinct species may in other areas interbreed.” Payne’s conclusion departed from Mayr’s definition of species: “The relationships among the indigobirds are inadequately described simply in traditional terms of either biological or typological species.”8 Clearly, this was no longer Bates’s, Benson’s, or Makawa’s ornithology. It now required the skills, time, and money available only to professionals. Scientists at European and American research institutions were well positioned to meet these requirements. This was the “American century,” and Payne’s ability to dedicate himself so thoroughly to the birds of Africa grew out of the wealth and position of the United States after World War II. Payne’s monograph, The Parasitic Indigobirds (Vidua) of Africa, is written for specialists, which marks another characteristic of bird science in the later decades of the twentieth century. As ornithology became more technical, it grew further away from many who were interested in birds and sympathetic to research. One accomplished recreational birdwatcher

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in England admitted that few “ordinary” birders subscribed to Ibis. “Those who do privately admit they seldom read it and I openly confess I can’t understand it.” Scientific bird knowledge could no longer be corroborated by careful, thoughtful observers of birds. The facts of ornithology had long been separated from vernacular birders. Much of what ornithologists now wrote put them at a remove from recreational birdwatchers.9 Ornithologists Face African Independence The transformation of ornithology into a professional and academic science happened around the same time as decolonization, and this magnified its effects in Africa. Until the mid-twentieth century, the colonial administrator-cum-ornithologist had had the double blessing of access to birds in Africa and recognition by scientists in Europe. They were secure in their claim to be the leading authorities on birds. A possibly apocryphal anecdote illustrates the relation between ornithology and the colonial bureaucracy. David Bannerman heard from a district commissioner in West Africa that he always took Bannerman’s Birds of Tropical West Africa (1930 –51) with him on tours of his district. “‘Not all eight volumes?!’ exclaimed Bannerman; to which the gentleman casually replied: ‘It only means another porter.’” This was meant as a droll story, but it suggests a larger truth: the practice of ornithology rested on the affordances of position in colonial structures. The winds of political change blew on this form of birding as well as on statehood. Globally, a new sort of biology was swamping older descriptive ornithology, but in Africa it was already in retreat because of political change.10 The end of the Belgian, French, and British empires came rapidly. In the 1950s and 1960s, nearly all colonies in North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, and Central Africa (the greatest exception being the Portuguese territories) became independent countries, seventeen of them in 1960 alone. It would be inaccurate to say the network of birders or even ornithology decolonized; they were never strictly colonial phenomena, but by repopulating the civil service, the foundation of new nations removed the major class of ornithologists from their positions of authority, decolonization removed their access to African birds. For the Kenyan birding team Leslie Brown and Njeru Kicho featured in chapter 5, political independence in 1963 came just when the assistant was declaring his independence from the ornithologist. Of all the men whose

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lives we have examined, Kicho’s is the most elusive. We know him only through Brown, whose needs and force of personality were strong enough to drive other actors from the stage, at least in records left by him. We cannot say that the chronology of the end of empire and the chronology of Kicho becoming fed up with Brown had anything to do with each other; but, coming together as they did, they represented a turning point in the history of birding. Already in the 1950s, Brown became aware of some limits to Kicho’s investment in the collaboration. He had explained irregularities in his data as a result of the insecurities of the Mau Mau, but he also admitted one limitation to Kicho’s dedication: “There were certain things he would not do; for instance it was very difficult to induce him to watch a nest in the evening when he wanted to go home.” In the 1960s, Brown returned to the eagle research and published an article that atypically mentioned Kicho only in a list of acknowledgments. It had been an eventful decade. Brown had married and retired, and Kenya had become independent. His relationship with Kicho had also come to an end, but Brown’s publications gave no indication of that. Our best clue is in the draft of manuscript, that “with increasing age and addiction to drink my most experienced observer, Njeru Kicho, has become unreliable and I no longer use him.” If Kicho was unreliable and uncooperative, Brown had a problem. In his 1955 book Eagles, Brown had explained that when an eagle watcher proved unreliable, “the only thing to do was get rid of them and scrap the dubious observations.” But Kicho’s reliability had been the keystone of Brown’s research. If he had been untruthful in his reports, all of Brown’s eagle work could come into question.11 In his 1979 memoir Encounters with Nature, Brown finally offered his story about what happened with Njeru Kicho. Most striking is the introduction, where he describes his experiences conducting research in Ethiopia in 1977. Traveling in a small plane, his party became lost and landed in Somalia. Unfortunately, this was during an intense phase in the war between the two countries over the Ogaden Desert, and the Somali authorities detained the party for a month. Brown’s outrage at not being able to communicate with his worried family or his Ethiopian contacts could not be assuaged. He lamented that he was too old and infirm to have snapped his qat-chewing captor’s neck and escaped. “It would have been child’s play, and certainly no loss to humanity.” Always industrious, Brown used the time to write a book.12

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One did not need to be a Somali guard to rub Leslie Brown the wrong way. If his early memoirs reveal a strong interest in stories about himself, testimonies about him after his death reveal a thundering intolerance of “inferior” beings and those who crossed him. His obituaries describe a nearly impossible person, exceptionally impatient and antagonistic, but an extremely talented ornithologist. An obituary writer was candid about Brown’s effect on him: “He delivered me back to Nairobi, numbed by a four-hour tirade against the stupidities of publishers but awe-struck at the quantity of material he could turn out for them. . . . He was not a glad sufferer of fools, pompous landowners, constipated functionaries, imperceptive editors or slow publishers. He was toweringly hard-working and asked nothing of anyone that he was not prepared to do himself.”13 Was the Brown of 1979 the Brown of the 1950s and 1960s? How difficult had he been as Njeru Kicho’s employer? The 1979 description of Kicho was nostalgic and tender, for Brown, extremely so. He reaffirmed the credit given to Kicho as the best of the eagle watchers: “For many years, he was my right arm.” It rehearsed earlier arguments about the suitability of illiterate bushmen for this work, about Kicho’s expertise, and about their shared conviviality. But now, three decades after they had worked so closely, Brown at last laid out his version of what had gone wrong between them. The first problem was his own distance from the work. Referring to his personal and professional trajectory, he wrote: “All these activities reduced my spare time, and also my spare funds, so that I could no longer employ my eagle-watchers permanently, and had to leave them in Mbere, using them from time to time. I still visited the hill each year often enough to check on what the eagles were doing; and the longer I kept on going there, the more I began to realize that such long-term records could be increasingly valuable.”14 The problem came to a head in 1962: I told Njeru to keep a careful eye on [a breeding pair] in case she might re-lay—as she had once before. It seemed very unlikely that she would, but it was just possible. It was Njeru’s downfall. I kept in touch with Mbere as well as I could, and Njeru reported that nothing was happening at the nest until July when, as expected, it was being built up. Since I was so anxious to get new colour photographs I went there as soon as I could and was assured by Njeru that there were green branches on the nest and that the birds should soon lay. This all

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agreed with past experience. However, I thought that, since I was there, I would check. Njeru seemed unaccountably reluctant, and my suspicions rose as I climbed the hill, finding our usual tracks overgrown, with no sign that anyone, let alone Njeru, had been there recently. He said, scowling, that they had gone by another route. However, he was just playing his luck, which was out. When we reached the nest, there was a great big young bird within a few days of his first flight. If it had been younger I could still have rebuilt the hide and photographed the parents, but it was now too late. Brown, who had insisted in his 1952 Ibis publication on the reliability of data from his eagle watchers, was confronted with a different reality. “Njeru was thus branded unmistakably, as a liar; but he was simply furious with me for catching him out, and did not speak to me again for years. It was the end of an era for me, for thereafter I felt I could not trust anyone else, and that all future records would have to depend entirely on what I myself saw.”15 For Brown, this was a historic moment, the “end of an era,” he called it, without at all meaning decolonization. How might Kicho have explained what had changed? Since the relationship was one of employment, of money exchanged for time and effort, my hunch is that Kicho stopped supplying his time because the pay cut was unsatisfactory. For Kicho, who did not clock hours as an industrial wage worker would, a pay cut was insulting. How could a network of intimate relations and obligations become a parttime thing? Njeru Kicho is significant in the network of birders because, unlike Jali Makawa and Saul Sithole, he exited the network. He was not the first assistant to decide that working for Leslie Brown was not worth the pay, but, deciding at the moment when Kenya became independent, he became the last. From then on Brown worked alone. The two did not break off entirely. Their reconnection in 1969 was documented in a photograph (fig. 46). Brown died in 1980. I do not know the date of Kicho’s death.16 When European administrator-ornithologists lost the sinecure of empire, British amateur ornithologists lost presence in Africa. Two of those we have been following, Moreau and Benson, recognized the challenges in the end of empire and the discrediting of white exclusivity. Retired in Europe, they commented on political developments. In 1955 Moreau reflected critically on the “filthy muck we have made of our colonial administration up and down the world” and opined that Apartheid South Africa “stinks from the racial and sociological point of view.” But in 1959 he declared that “the

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46. Njeru Kicho (left) and Leslie Brown (center) in 1969. Photograph by Walter Spofford, in Amadan and Steyn, “Leslie Brown,” 67. Courtesy of the Archives of Falconry, Peregrine Fund, Boise, Idaho.

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whole African situation is abominable. On the one hand I believe that African countries that achieve complete independence in the present stage will at best be Liberias or Haitis and perhaps even the Haiti of 150 years ago.” Moreau had always been critical of white minority rule, but Benson, whose experience was in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, expressed sympathies. He admired Ian Smith of the Rhodesian Front. At the height of the war between Rhodesia and Zimbabwean revolutionary forces, in 1974, he wrote to an ornithologist: “Anyway, one can but wish Rhodesia (including yourself personally) all the very best. I don’t doubt that your army is highly efficient.”17 Ornithologists did not have to be imperial subjects to rue decolonization. The American Chapin agonized about independence in the Congo and vigorously defended the Belgians, including King Leopold, to all listeners. The exception among these conservatives was the US government employee Rudyerd Boulton, who retired in Southern Rhodesia in 1959 to promote scientific work in the Central African Federation, a short-lived attempt to amalgamate Nyasaland and Northern and Southern Rhodesia (the colonies that now are the independent countries Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). Boulton recognized the research model that would replace administrator-ornithologists: foreign university staff with research funding. He founded an organization, the Atlantica Foundation, to serve them and connect them with the citizenry in independent Africa. But the disintegration of the federation and unilateral declaration of independence by the white minority government estranged Rhodesia from international science after 1965. The liberal Boulton, who had sunk his personal fortune into his Rhodesian retirement, was sealed in. He saw his networks shrink to local, white, ornithological, and recreational birdwatching communities who warmly took him in. Adapted to this smaller but, to him, satisfying world, he died in liberated Zimbabwe in 1983. He left his land and library to the National Parks Department.18 The Global Recreational Revolution Recreational birdwatching is the third broad tradition of birding. Its late-twentieth-century florescence completed the birding revolution in Africa. As an outgrowth of ornithology, it has more in in common with that tradition than with vernacular birding. Until the professionalization of science, both recreational birding and ornithology had been leisure activities.

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Leisure is a phenomenon of the capitalist regulation of time and the modern cultivation of self. It can exist only in societies where time dedicated to work can be distinguished from time spent on other activities. Vernacular birding could bring pleasure, but in agrarian societies, when work is finished, people are not likely to think it desirable to structure further activities. Rather, the hard-won respites of rest or merriment hold appeal. By contrast, in industrial societies nonworking time may be organized to bring intellectual and emotional improvement. Recreational birdwatchers are not the only birders to love birds, but they make a choice to be around birds because it enhances their lives and themselves. Of all birders, they are the most expressive in communicating affect.19 Recreational birdwatching in Europe and the United States developed out of the nineteenth-century tradition of popular natural history. With some notable exceptions, natural historians were upper-class and middleclass well-educated men. The prevalence of men is shared between vernacular bird hunting, ornithology, and natural history. In the early twentieth century, however, women became more visible in these networks through the nature study movement. Nature study in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries extolled the value of observation and experience in the natural world. As an enhancement to child rearing, and morally uplifting in its ethic of conservation, it befitted conceptions of femininity. Of South African writers, Madeline Alston, the British woman who was so concerned with the dress and etiquette of her African guides (chapter 5), came closest to this disposition. The entry of women is a signal characteristic of early recreational birding.20 By the early twentieth century, the hobby of birdwatching was growing distinct from an interest in natural history. Birds had special appeal for hobbyists because they are numerous, diverse, diurnal, social, colorful, melodious, accessible, and can fly. Within a few decades, birds far eclipsed other natural history subject such as plants, rocks, or butterflies in popular interest. The boom was made possible by the appearance of mass-marketed books specifically about birds. The earliest bird books could be sentimental in their descriptions and vague about appearance or distribution, but the genre hit its stride in the United States with Roger Tory Peterson’s 1934 Field Guide to the Birds. Peterson’s guide emphasized visual clues to identify birds by species. Little lines on the illustrations pointed to distinctive features. The subtitle on one page read, “Most of these have unstreaked breasts.” Clear tips on identification contributed a lot to the revolution in

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birding. It could become a hobby for people of different degrees of experience and interest, and all could easily gauge their involvement by listing species seen, on a day, in a place, during the course of a year, or over a lifetime.21 After Peterson’s guide, recreational birdwatching gradually spread around the world. His influence is often taken as a landmark for the practice becoming accessible to beginners and for local avifauna becoming knowable to visitors. In English-speaking Europe, the hobby grew without the benefit of an accessible field guide until 1954, when Peterson himself produced one in collaboration with the British ornithologist Guy Mountfort. In the 1960s and 1970s his British publisher, Collins, subsequently issued Peterson-style field guides for many areas of the English-speaking world, including the regions of Africa. Australia’s ornithology and popular natural history were well developed, but the new sort of field guide appeared only in 1980. The first fully illustrated book dedicated to field identification in India was produced in 1983 by the venerable team of Sálim Ali and Dillon Ripley. Appealing southern African field guides on the model of Peterson’s became available in the 1980s with the appearance of books by Ian Sinclair and by Kenneth Newman.22 It is fitting that the purchased field guide is central to the tradition of recreational birdwatching, because a birder’s relationship with it is one of consumption—buying a book and absorbing the information. Their status as consumers is the best distinction between recreational birders and ornithologists. In previous chapters, I have defined the vernacular and ornithological traditions according to the type of facts they circulate. To continue that argument: the defining characteristic of recreational birders is that they consume hard facts and produce soft ones. Recreational birders seek authoritative knowledge from ornithologists on species’ distribution, on their characteristic markings, songs, and behavior. Field guides and handbooks are absolutely essential to the recreational birders who buy the books, study them, and use them to hone their own skills in the field. The facts were assembled within classificatory ornithology; they have triumphed in the “proof race” of science, but in field guides they are given in a mutated form—without the record of who discovered them. Peterson himself wrote in his introduction, “Field birding is a game—a most absorbing game.” As for its scientific value, he said, “it has little.” Recreational birdwatchers do not generally create facts or pay attention to the individuals who did. They do report their sightings to hotlines and bul-

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letin boards and share experiences with equipment, books, guides, and all the practical challenges of finding, identifying, and counting species, but these contributions are made of soft facts, launched into circulation without controls and without a sealed connection to their originators. As such, they can be accepted, altered, forgotten, or repurposed by others. The books by recreational birders are meant to convey not new knowledge about birds but histories of their own experiences and summaries of birding tips. The closest they come to hard facts is in their own genre, the life list. They log their own encounters with species, and these records are always associated with the original author who made them. Among recreational birders, one gains status through these long, verified lists. A few amateur birders do sometimes collaborate with professional ornithologists. As citizen-scientists they might contribute data to ornithologists’ research. The best may be equal to ornithologists in knowing and identifying species. When amateurs makes new observations, they move into the ornithological tradition.23 The tension within recreational birdwatching is between the process, connecting with living creatures, and what has become a goal, list making. A subset of recreational birders is more focused on goal than process, and they make a project of building long lists of birds personally seen. In British English, these are known as “twitchers.” Spotting and recording birds rather than pausing to watch them, this group is frequently derided as obsessive and unappreciative of nature. The most extreme twitchers can come off as narrow-minded. It could be argued, however, that they are actually driven by the character of birds, their great variety, charisma, and accessibility, by the thought of experiencing as many of these creatures as possible. Birds bring out different things in different people at different times.24 National Birds Birds are among the things that can define a nation. In Australia, the United States, Colombia, and India, ornithologists were among those who defined and defended the national heritage. In Africa, this first became apparent in the country with most ornithologists, amateur as well as professional, South Africa. The South African Ornithologists’ Union had been founded in 1904 but was amalgamated with other zoological societies into the South African Biological Society in 1916, which left ornithologists without their own organization. They reestablished their independence in 1929 by founding the South African Ornithological Society (SAOS). The

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society was a scientific group and in 1930 began publication of Ostrich, which remains the premier journal for research on southern African birds. Austin Roberts, Saul Sithole’s supervisor at the Transvaal Museum, was a leading force in the new organization. Roberts was born in 1883 and began writing ornithological field notes before 1900. He joined the staff of the museum in 1910 and had had a considerable career before he began writing a book for the general public in the mid-1930s. His Birds of South Africa would revolutionize birding in that country. The irony is that he had long worked for a revolution in birding other than the populist expansion he actually managed; his aspiration had been to replace established European authorities with South African scientists. In his specialized research on both mammals and birds, Roberts unsuccessfully sought a sort of decolonization of ornithology to dislodge European centers of calculation from positions of authority. In the 1910s Roberts challenged mammal taxonomies developed at the British Museum and drew a published rebuke for not consulting “older collections” or “older workers.” In ornithology, he aligned himself with American ornithologists who were devising more and smaller genera and using trinomials. Roberts’s fellow South African ornithologist Jack Vincent disagreed with these revisions and struggled with “how to stop the Roberts influence.” (Vincent published a revision of nomenclature only after Roberts’s death.) As for British ornithologists, Roberts was said to have become “paranoic at the failure of overseas workers, particularly those based at the old British Museum of Natural History, to pay any attention to his findings.”25 Roberts and other members of SAOS also did outreach to the public. Decided that the country ought to know its birds, they planned a comprehensive monograph on the birds of the nation. South African readers already had a few books on their birds. In the wake of Edgar Layard’s 1867 Birds of South Africa, at least four other books had been published in the country, although the first one with popular appeal and good tips for identification came out only in 1936. The story of Roberts’s book is that in 1932 John Voelker, an English chartered accountant and amateur birder newly arrived in the country, asked a leading biologist if he could recommend a bird book. “No, I can’t,” he was told, “but I can take you to the person who could write one.” Thus Voelker met Roberts and agreed to sponsor the production and publication of an affordable and accessible bird guide. The artist Norman Lighton was hired to create the illustrations.26

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Austin Roberts’s Birds of South Africa was finished in 1939. Jan Smuts, the former and soon-to-be reinstated prime minister, wrote the foreword. It was shipped to England for printing just after the outbreak of the war. The return shipment of two thousand copies reached South Africa in July 1940 and sold out in six weeks. An executive at the national bookstore chain, the Central News Agency, said, “In 23 years of publishing, I have never known a book, especially at its price, to sell out in such a short time.” Two thousand more copies were ordered for the second printing. Lighton’s paintings found a further audience when the United Tobacco Company reproduced 150 of them on cards inserted in cigarette packages. Provided to collect these cards was a bilingual album, Our South African Birds/Ons Suid-Afrikaanse Voëls, which was the first description of bird species in the country’s Afrikaans language. Three hundred thousand of these albums were printed, exponentially increasing the audience for the work. Through Roberts the recreational birdwatching revolution reached Africa.27 The popularity of Roberts’s book is made even more remarkable by its specialist presentation. Roberts was a scientist and did not make things easy for lay readers. The original title of Birds of South Africa was “A Handbook of South African Birds.” It was much smaller than the five-volume Handbook of British Birds that appeared between 1938 and 1941, but it is an example of this specialist, largely British genre that provided “comprehensive coverage of all aspects of bird identification, behaviour and distribution” rather than tips for identifying animals in the field.28 The Birds of South Africa was four hundred pages long, with sections for “Nomenclature and Classification,” “Distribution and Variation of Birds,” and “Physical Conditions of South Africa.” It had nothing like the identification or field tips in Peterson’s guide. The table of contents directed users to the appropriate family, but by scientific name only, with no English glosses such as “ostriches” for “Struthionidae.” Bird guides generally follow the same organization, but for someone who did not know this, the way to find species was in the indices at the back. Each page covered two to four species, listed under a number (1– 875) and the scientific name printed in bold. Also included were the English and Afrikaans names, previous scientific names, and known names in southern African languages. Probably less than half of the species carried vernacular names; but some had as many as seven. Next came dimensions, the overall length of the bird in inches and those of the wing, tail, tarsus, and culmen, to a range as small as 3 millimeters. The description covered distribution, breeding habits, egg size

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and color, and song. The birds were most identifiable from the fifty-six plates, generally showing fifteen to twenty birds on each. Although small, the images were finely depicted in a variety of natural poses but without drawing attention to field marks. The book had no distribution maps. In comparison to Peterson’s Field Guide, it would have been challenging for anyone who did not already know something about birds to use this book. Yet the reading public loved The Birds of South Africa. Reprints eventually ran to nearly twenty-five thousand copies. It is popularly held that in late twentieth-century South Africa only the Bible outsold Roberts, at least until Mandela wrote about his long walk to freedom.29 Roberts and his book became an institution. All subsequent editions list him as first author. Since the third edition, his name has also been included in the title, which became Roberts’ Birds of Southern Africa. The work now has appeared in seven editions, the most recent from 2005, also in electronic formats and in a by-subscription online version. Subsequent editions adhered to internationally recognized nomenclature and taxonomy. It is still not a field guide—the most recent edition has nearly 1,300 pages—but an authoritative reference for students of birds.30 Even in this popular publication, Roberts did not give up his old battles. In the introduction he griped about British scientists. He expressed concern over the authority of “systematists of the north” who “have viewed with some disfavour a few alterations I have found necessary in the classification of our birds.” He framed his case in terms of rights and justice: “It must be acknowledged that the work of those in the fields concerned is more entitled to acceptance than the dicta of those who have had only dead specimens to guide them. Yet it is a fact that again and again the conclusions formed on the study of material (preserved and accessible for confirmation if required) and work in the field in Africa have either been rejected or ignored by recent workers in the northern hemisphere; and it is high time that this attitude of mind were changed and a juster and more sensible line were adopted, otherwise changes in the nomenclature of African birds will continue and retard the progress of knowledge.”31 Systematics, of course, was the way of knowing African birds that was available to ornithologists in northern museums, such as David Bannerman, who wrote from afar, while knowledge of birds in the field was the South Africans’ advantage. Not being under the thumb of any other scientific authority, in Birds of South Africa Roberts used his own classifications. When Roberts died in 1948, Moreau, the intellectual and social center of British

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ornithology, commented with marked condescension on his scientific legacy and personal character: “Sad about poor old Austin Roberts; I used to find him crotchety but helpful. Sadder still that from all I can hear there is no one anywhere in South Africa to take his place. With his excellent field-work he could have been so much more important a figure in world ornithology if he had not been his own worst enemy with his half-baked taxonomy.”32 But not all birders cared about the quality of Roberts’s taxonomic system, and more than anyone else, he inspired a great awakening of recreational birders: five regional bird clubs were founded in the late 1940s. Recreational birders soon came to outweigh ornithologists in number and impact. Roberts could not convince European and American ornithologists that his classification system was superior, but he inspired South Africans to stake a collective national claim over bird expertise. The burgeoning of recreational birdwatching dislodged ornithology as the way to knew birds as species. More successful movements to decenter the field of ornithology itself, to move it toward Africa developed in the 1950s. One woman, Cecily Niven, was key to these developments. The daughter of the author, entrepreneur, and politician Percy FitzPatrick (of Jock of the Bushveld), Cecily and her husband, Jack, had been birders before “Roberts” was published, and in 1955 she became president of SAOS. The Nivens endowed the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology within the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cape Town in memory of Cecily’s father. Also on her instigation, SAOS organized the first meeting of the PanAfrican Ornithological Congress (PAOC) in 1957. The congress remained identified with white South African ornithologists for decades.33 Birds also ranked among national heritage in newly independent countries and are featured on the flags of Uganda and Zambia. A bird did not have to be the sort recognized by ornithologists to serve as a national symbol, and so a sculpture of a bird appears on Zimbabwe’s. As discussed in chapter 1, the sculptures at Great Zimbabwe were not meant to represent any type of birds (some have toes), but their use to convey power is noteworthy. They claimed the attention of all groups in the country that is now Zimbabwe, becoming symbols for both colonialism and nationalism. Europeans ransacked Great Zimbabwe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially after the territory was claimed as “Rhodesia.” Of the eight bird carvings, all but one and part of another were removed to Europe and South Africa, where one of the birds was acquired personally by Cecil John Rhodes and kept at Groote Schuur, the prime minister’s residence (in

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addition to being director of the British South Africa Company, which held a charter over Rhodesia, Rhodes was prime minister of the Cape Colony). Four and a half birds were housed at the South African Museum in Cape Town. The bird carvings became a favored symbol for Rhodesian rule, appearing on coins, insignia, and stamps. Archaeologists and white popular opinion claimed a Phoenician or Semitic origin. By the mid-twentieth century, improved archeological analysis had established the indigenous origins of the site, and the nationalists claimed it as African heritage.34 The recent history of these sculptures, as told by Edward Matenga, is fascinating. The government of newly liberated Zimbabwe considered the site its most precious cultural heritage. Consequently, after the political transition in 1980, the National Museum of Zimbabwe offered the South African Museum a large and rare collection of thirty thousand insect specimens of the Hymenoptera order in exchange for the sculptures. While the insects were of great research value, the carvings were unique political capital. Apartheid South Africa and liberated Zimbabwe had no diplomatic relations, yet a directive from Prime Minister P. W. Botha’s cabinet instructed the museum to make the swap. In January 1981, two Dakota aircraft of the Zimbabwean air force landed in Cape Town bearing the insects. They returned to Zimbabwe with four and a half sculptures, traveling on separate planes in case of disaster. (A final bird, at Rhodes’s house, now the official presidential residence in Cape Town, was not returned.) News of the repatriation leaked out only after it was complete. South African Museum personnel defended the importance of the insect collection and the quality of the replicas retained for public display, but white southern Africa remained so deeply invested in the birds that complaints resulted. During the heightened antagonisms caused by invasions of farms owned by Euro-African settlers in 2003, President Robert Mugabe celebrated the repatriation of another soapstone bird, from Germany, in a public ceremony attended by war veterans singing struggle songs. A live television broadcast featured Mugabe uniting the returned base with its top half, which had remained in Zimbabwe.35 Mobutu Sese Seko, the larger-than-life dictator of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, also deployed birds as a subject of natural heritage and demonstration of his patronage. In 1976 a five-hundred-page coffeetable book with glossy color photographs, Les oiseaux du Zaïre, included his name as sponsor of the publication in the subtitle. The message was that birds were among what made Zaire and its ruler great. But in general, charismatic megavertebrates have received more attention in postcolonial Africa

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than have birds. Their conservation has been a leading state project. Julius Nyerere, first president of independent Tanzania, led the way by dedicating nearly 15 percent of that country as protected areas for wildlife. The British had dedicated the first wildlife reserves, and at independence, Tanzanians affirmed that their landscape and wildlife were a heritage that would help nation building. But the connection to heritage was contradictory because vernacular hunting practices in parks were criminalized under postcolonial governments just as they had been under colonial ones. The received colonial heritage is valuable in being marketable to overseas consumers, who would come as tourists bearing international currency.36 Tourists plan their vacations around many attractions, and it is hard to say precisely how birds rate in their planning or in national revenues. But it was clear that at the century’s end, ecotourism had value. Gambia—a country that is essentially a shoreline, a river, and a thin strip of land—is excellent birding territory. On the West African coast just south of the Sahara and English-speaking, it is accessible to European tourists; an estimated one hundred thousand of them arrived each year in the 1980s. Many came for the beach, but in 1991 around twenty thousand of them made their way to the Abuko Nature Reserve, a good birding spot. International tourism to South Africa was underdeveloped until its 1994 transition to majority rule, but by 1999 it had increased by 38 percent. In 1998 South Africans and foreign birders spent somewhere between $14 and $30 million in order to see birds. That does not compare to the mining industry’s nearly billion-dollar contribution to the country’s GDP, but, requiring no human investment, birds more than carried their own economic weight; in a developing country, every small boost matters.37 Inclusive Ornithology More than anyone else, Bunty Rowan bridged the ornithological and recreational birdwatching worlds of South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. The daughter of the entomologist S. H. Skaife, Rowan gained an MSc in zoology from the University of Cape Town in 1941. A wedding gift of Roberts’s book inspired her and her husband, Bertus, to start birding. Both Rowans worked in fisheries, Bunty as a microbiologist at the Fishing Industry Research Institute. She was an active member of SAOS and the Cape Bird Club, and judging from the archival record, she was a prime mover of Cecily Niven’s idea to found the FitzPatrick Institute at the University of Cape Town. Rowan helped plan it, attended meetings, advised

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Niven, and spoke with the press. She applied for the job of director but confided to her referee: “I don’t think I am a very likely candidate, for a number of reasons—for instance, there is the matter of my sex! Then I have no overseas experience. In addition, the need to earn a living has obliged me to pursue my work mainly in the fields of microbiology and marine biology, and although I claim to have reached professional status or near it— ornithology has been no more than a part time occupation for me.”38 The job went to John Winterbottom. He, too, had never been a fulltime ornithologist. Recently retired from the Education Department in Northern Rhodesia, he also had never worked as a scientist, but he won the top job all the same. Rowan became scientific officer at the institute. She dined out on the quip that she had grown from fishwife to birdbrain, but she published original research, gave speeches to meetings that encouraged girls to take up science, and guided new birders into the hobby. Photographs of SAOS from the 1950s and 1960s show Rowan working with recreational birders who skew toward female (as in fig. 47).39

47. Mary “Bunty” Rowan teaching egg measurement to recreational birders. Photographic Archive, Niven Library. Courtesy of the Niven Library at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.

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Inclusion of women was smoother than maintaining the South African presence among ornithologists elsewhere on the continent. After 1957, the South Africa–based association of ornithologists, the PAOC, held its next four meetings there or in countries that had a less critical stance toward it—the Seychelles and Malawi. The organization then made moves to expand beyond South Africa and white ornithologists; a smattering of African names appears in the records for the meeting in Botswana in 1985 and Kenya in 1988. Because of Kenyan embargos on minority-ruled South Africa, only three ornithologists from that country attended the 1988 meeting, all traveling on other passports. Nature published a commentary by one of them, decrying the “poor science” of the papers presented in Nairobi and the paucity of leadership after South Africans were excluded. The Nature article represents a late effort to justify the boundaries drawn around ornithology in the colonial period. Asserting, “A congress that once offered a forum for all African ornithologists has been dealt a crippling blow by politics. African birds and those who study them are the losers,” it suggested that ornithology until then had been free of politics, that the filter of race had been merely one of qualification, and that only ornithologists knew birds well enough to consider their conservation. The lack of awareness of the racialized exclusions of the early twentieth century is striking.40 Jali Makawa attended the 1957 PAOC meeting, but all of the participants listed in the published proceedings were white. John ColebrookRobjent, whom we met in chapter 6, made a critical distinction when he characterized PAOC participants as “African ornithologists, or ornithologists with associations with Africa.” What was the overlap between those two categories? According to my survey of the contents of Ibis 1960 –79, research on the birds by that time known as “Afrotropical” remained vibrant. It is difficult to determine how authors circulated across continents, but it is fair to say that the largest clusters of authors were located in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at museums and universities. Their names suggest European ancestry. Some ornithologists were based at research institutions (rather than in government bureaucracies, as they had been during colonial rule). The first Ibis article I found on an African topic by a person with an identifiably non-European name was published in 1976. PAOC became truly pan-African after South Africa’s transition to majority rule in 1994. With the end of apartheid, PAOC welcomed South Africans back into the flock, whose composition had changed in their absence. The report of the ninth congress of 1996 stated that ninety-one participants had been “African.” By the end of the century, the barriers between South

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Africa and the rest of the continent had fallen, and boundaries of nationality and race in PAOC were breached.41 Ornithology is now professionalized, and another area of inclusion is of amateurs, not just the experts who have always existed among British naturalists, those with an avocation rather than a vocation, but also the general population. Some ornithological work in Africa has enlisted lay researchers. Since the turn of the twentieth century, ornithologists around the globe have welcomed their help in studying migration. They put rings with return addresses on birds’ legs in the hope that people finding them would report back, providing data on movement. Their hopes were fulfilled, and the understanding of migration rapidly improved. This research continues. The South African Bird Ringing Unit (SAFRING), initiated in 1948, ringed over 1.7 million birds by 1998. Of these, less than 1 percent were returned, but the data provided important insight into bird distribution, migration, and lifespan.42 SAFRING is now based at the University of Cape Town, which also hosts the Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2), a project that identifies itself as one of “citizen science,” meaning amateur-driven research. SABAP2 has demarcated areas in the countries South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Zambia into units measuring roughly five and a half miles (9 km) square, and volunteers following set protocols contribute reports of species seen in these “pentads.” SABAP2 is a considerable enterprise, surpassing six million records in 2014. For the other side of the continent, an online clearinghouse for sight records, the West African Bird DataBase (WABDaB), focuses on Niger and Chad. With the goal of promoting “knowledge, conservation and bird tourism,” it organizes records of bird sightings submitted by volunteers around location and species. These banks of species distribution data are far deeper than ornithologists could manage alone. SAFRING, SABAP2, and the WABDaB publish data on the web for free use. All these databases credit participating individuals by name, but the West African Bird DataBase connects citizen scientists with the realm of hard facts by requesting that authors who draw significantly on the work of one individual for a publication offer a coauthorship to the citizen scientist. These projects represent a noteworthy step toward decentering the ornithology of Africa from northern centers of calculation.43 Writing of the Indian context, Shyamal Lakshminarayanan has advocated an ornithology for the information age that should be of interest

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to scientists in Africa. His vision is of participatory, decentralized, openaccess research. As a first step, Shyamal recommends low-cost field guides in local languages. Thus prepared lay birders in all corners of the country would contribute primary data on their sightings, which would build up information on species and their distribution. Providing amateurs who may not have formal academic training with instruction in research techniques as well as access to ornithological data will improve the quality of information they gather. The Internet and other tools of information technology will also help toward accurate processing of the new details. The challenges for this system in most of Africa are greater than for India, but Shyamal’s vision for new connections between ornithologists and other birders recommends itself as a way to invigorate the science of birds in a postcolony.44 Science is not without its attractions to the general public. Ornithologists at the Livingstone Museum in Zambia in the 1970s and 1980s received letters from people who not only reported finds but expressed interest in the work. A finder of a ring in 1989 tried to find out why the bird was carrying it. The writer, who was not fluent in English and could not have been well educated, learned through his repeated inquiries that the Livingstone Museum had the ability and authority to answer his question: “One day as I like moving in the bush I find a bird with a Ring on its leg. I see something like this on its leg (2B 40/32). What does it mean or how long does it stay. It was not a dead bird. I have ask a lot of people but they didn’t tell me what it means. I need you help.” The educational ramifications of bird ringing were clear. An employee of the Zambian library service wrote a similar but more sophisticated letter in 1972, asking about the project of ringing, “I am very interested in this scheme and I would be grateful to let me know about your finding about it.” To the benefit of scientists, birds created new connections in the network of birders.45 It still will not be easy. Ornithology has shared some of the general challenges of postcolonial Africa. In biological sciences internationally, revolutions in genetics and computation created “an ever increasing level of accuracy and sophistication, a level far beyond what those architects of the Modern Synthesis could have dreamed possible in the 1940s.” In the late twentieth century finances became the most obvious drag on African ornithologists—and other scientists—who hoped to keep up with global currents. Robert Payne’s later work with collaborators serves as an example of advancing molecular research on speciation. In later decades of the twentieth century, understandings of speciation in the Vidua family were

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revised through studies of mitochondrial DNA. Statistical research allowed the researchers to construct haplotype and phylogenetic trees that revealed a complex history of evolutionary relationships. Such work exemplifies how the advanced laboratory facilities and computer power unavailable in Africa drove cutting-edge research.46 In response, some African scientists took up work abroad. Additionally, a good proportion has developed specialization in matters of conservation. Questions about conservation motivated ethno-ornithological work, some of which is cited in this book. But in the new millennium disciplinary ornithology in Africa has also made gains. The founding of the A. P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute in Jos, Nigeria, in 2001 was important for giving the continent another center of calculation for ornithology. Leventis, the founder, comes from a Cypriot business family with operations in West Africa and is a birdwatcher himself. European and American science remain dominant in the study of Afrotropical birds, but the center of gravity has been nudged southward toward African research institutions. In the new millennium, a generation of ornithologists and ecologists is established at universities and nonprofit organizations in Africa.47 Inclusive Birdwatching Vernacular birders are born into the tradition, and ornithology can attract only the scientific-minded. So, if birding is going to expand in Africa, it will have to be through the recreational tradition. The recreational network reached a biology teacher in Lesotho in 1947. He wrote to Austin Roberts, not because he knew his best-selling book, but because of the cigarette cards: “Sir, I have come across picture cards enclosed in cigarette cases marked ‘Our South African Birds.’ I am not however a smoker and do not know how to get the full set of these Bird Cards. I will welcome any advice on how to get these cards as they are helpful for the study of biology to my students. I am a teacher of Biology in the above school and am eagerly awaiting your kind advice.” Unfortunately, I did not find a record of Roberts’s response. It says a lot about the early history of recreational birding in Africa that it took a cigarette company to bring Roberts’s work to a black man who was interested in it.48 Actively seeking out avifauna remains a niche hobby throughout Africa. Since decolonization, descendants of colonial settlers and expatriates on temporary sojourns remain the great majority of recreational birdwatch-

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ers. The racial profile of birders in Africa tracks the international one. In the United States, a survey by the Fish and Wildlife Service indicated that 25 percent of white Americans claimed some degree of birdwatching interest, but only 6 percent of African Americans. Two books with distinctive titles convey the complexion of birding, globally. A 1998 collection of South African bird writing featured twenty-two personal narratives of birding by white writers interspersed with three paeans to birds by an Egyptian-born poet. Its title, Birders of a Feather, was beautifully appropriate. In contrast, a book by a black American birder seeking to make the hobby more diverse is titled Birding for Everyone: Encouraging People of Color to Become Birdwatchers. This book gave profiles of enthusiastic African American, Latino, and Asian American birders and emphasized the importance of mentors. It was intended to demonstrate that everyone should feel welcome in birding circles. This is the same message spread by birders who wish to expand their networks in Africa.49 With international support and connections, organizations dedicated to birding and bird protection do exist in contemporary Africa. Birders have grouped up in national bodies similar to Audubon in the United States. Much of the financial support for African bird initiatives comes from BirdLife International, the umbrella organization that dominates birding around the world. BirdLife counts twenty-four partners with activities in forty African countries, including South Africa, where the venerable SAOS became BirdLife South Africa after the transition to majority rule. In Africa as a whole, BirdLife claims a combined employed staff of five hundred, with eighty-seven thousand members. The African Bird Club, a UK-registered charity founded in 1994, also sponsors bird research and conservation projects in Africa. They have provided employment for in-country professionals and aided countries in environmental matters.50 Conservationists are well aware that if they want to protect birds they need to connect the network of birders to urban nonbirders. If birding feels alien it will not thrive, and bird protection will be more difficult. Through education and outreach, recreational birders have created connections with the nonbirders of cities. They have developed creative school curricula celebrating birds and teaching children their ways. The best materials specifically reference historical cultures. For example, a South African project from 2003 had students writing “Praise Poems to Birds.” Kenyan schoolchildren can read an illustrated book about the migration of Palearctic birds to their country.51

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Dylan Aspinwall was born in England in 1942 and made his career as a teacher in Zambia. Aspinwall did not just note species—he counted birds and made ornithologically useful records of their distribution. Chairman of the Zambian Ornithological Society (ZOS) from 1971 until his death in 1995, he led an active organization with a dedicated membership. Through his correspondence and in person, he became the central node in social and informational networks on Zambian birds. As a teacher committed both to birds and to Zambia, Aspinwall tried especially to cultivate young birders, bringing his students along on the monthly ZOS outings. After one of these trips a student of Libala School in Lusaka, Mwape Sichilongo, wrote a prize-winning essay about his experience of fifteen species of birds seen in a few hours at Lochinvar National Park. His conclusion was: “Thank God all these beautiful animals and birds are within such easy reach of Lusaka at Lochinvar, so we can go and visit the place and enjoy and learn about our heritage.” The students who went on field trips with Aspinwall are now adult citizens with children of their own. They will have memories of how a dedicated teacher shaped their appreciation for nation and nature, but his efforts did not produce a cohort of young Zambian birdwatchers.52 The connection of Africans with recreational birding has been more successful through market relations. By the late twentieth century, international avitourists made up a conspicuous portion of recreational birders, and their need to find a good number of species on a tight schedule has created professional opportunities in Africa. Local birders found work as tourist guides, sharing birdlore as well as their skill at spotting rarities. Many of those now working as guides learned about the birds as children in Africa always have, by growing up among them. But in order to earn money offering a service, a vernacular birder would need to know names of birds in English and would have to learn something about the ways of recreational birders. So courses for bird guides are offered in several countries. Tourism pays enough for city people who have not grown up knowing the birds to train to acquire the skills.53 An unscientific survey of my own birder friends who came to adulthood in the late twentieth century suggests that good networks are essential for the creation of birders. I have met few people who started solitary birding in childhood the way Bates did. Moreau’s metamorphosis into a birder as a young adult through relationships with more experienced seniors is more typical. Interest in birds has been created and sustained through relationships of education, work, friendship, and marriage. Some of my birder

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friends marvel at the serendipity of having met a good birder at a formative time. Their experiences indicate that the network has become more inclusive. My interpretation of their stories is that, though women are still a minority, they are not facing active discrimination. As for race, birding cannot be said to have completed the transformation to a postracial condition— but few networks in this world have achieved that. The most effective mentoring of birders in Africa has to be in Nairobi, where Nature Kenya (short for the East Africa Natural History Society) holds its Wednesday Morning Bird Walks, famously led by Fleur Ng’weno. Born of French parents and raised mainly in the United States, Ng’weno attended Connecticut College and the University of Michigan and worked for the National Audubon Society. On a visit to Nairobi in 1963 she met and married Kenyan journalist Hilary Ng’weno and has lived there ever since. Having studied botany and always watched birds, Ng’weno joined the East Africa Natural History Society. In 1971 she started leading the Wednesday bird walks, a weekly excursion to points in and around Nairobi. The participants at first were, like her, “expatriate housewives,” but then the group diversified. First came some scientists and ornithologists, then some young people who, as Ng’weno describes it, had not been admitted to university and were looking for something to do. Spending every Wednesday with her, they became the first indigenous African recreational birders in Kenya. The bird walks have been an outreach and training program for more than forty years (fig. 48). On any given Wednesday morning in 2014, perhaps fifty people, mostly young Kenyans, met at the National Museum in Nairobi and walk from the carpool to a selected site to look for birds. Since 1985 Mombasa, too, has had its bird walks, led by Marlene Reid. Kenya’s bird walks suggest that city people in Africa need birding as much as those as on any other continent, to “reconnect” with nature. The walks are intended to cultivate enjoyment, not to serve as professional training, but many of the bird guides in Kenya today came to birding through the Wednesday excursions.54 Over the years I have interviewed guides who told me about their routes into the work. They vary a lot in their experience and expertise. A Kenyan guide, David Ngala, was most impressive. He grew up in the countryside but did not know much about birds as a boy. It was through his work as a driver that he met birders from England and started learning through and with them. Eventually he served as research assistant to a visiting ornithologist from England for three years. How hard is it to learn about birds as

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48. Fleur Ng’weno leading a Nairobi bird walk, 2006. Courtesy of the photographer, Daniel Kathurima.

an adult? He told me it wasn’t hard if one was interested and sympathetic with the habitat. Ngala’s activities have expanded beyond birding to general conservation of the Arabuko-Sokoke forest near Malindi. He has served the forest by reporting on illegal logging and going to the press in 1992 when part of it was threatened with conversion to farmland. He leads communities groups that raise chickens and run a tree nursery, and searches out international support for local conservation efforts. He has also blogged on the website WildlifeDirect, which makes it possible for donors to fund his work. Ngala received international recognition from the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund in 2012 when he was named a “Conservation Hero.”55 Ngala and other bird guides I talked with shift among the communities of vernacular, recreational, and ornithological birders, and they move comfortably in international circles. Many were led to conservation work, sometimes coming into conflict with those less sympathetic to the cause. Frequently they struggled with money. They also confirmed what we have seen in the lives of many birders: connection and mentorship are what

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bring people into birding. A guide once told me this about birders from other countries: “I get to know them. I can see how much interest they have. We’re sharing it.” Perhaps the best-known African professional guide is Sizwe, the pseudonymous South African whose decision about whether to submit to an HIV-AIDS test is described in Johnny Steinberg’s widely read work of popular nonfiction, published in the United States under the title Sizwe’s Test. Even after Sizwe moved on to become a small businessman, the connections he made with white birders were robust and trusting. When the author Steinberg lost touch with Sizwe, his old friends the birders put them back in contact. When Sizwe was troubled, he confided his worries to a birder, a white South African woman. These were not just old contacts; they were friends.56 The Preservation of Interspecies Heritage: A Proposal Birdlife International estimates that of the 2,355 bird species found in Africa, about 245 are threatened with extinction. Twenty-nine species are crucially endangered. Hunting for food or the cage bird trade, introduced predators, climate change, and pollution take their toll on species, but extinction occurs through the repeated loss of small populations in small habitats. The conversion of forest to farmland, even on a local scale, can have dire impact on a rare species, and so preserving habitats is critical. The work to secure protected spaces within Important Bird Areas therefore leads the efforts of Birdlife International and its national affiliates. Excluding people from land as it is set aside for animals is problematic; local people, especially the global poor, cannot be expected to bear the burden of safeguarding our planetary heritage. International conservation organizations acknowledge that the pressing needs of people must inform all programs to prevent extinction. The survival of endangered species depends on it. Even so, a review of bird conservation in 2001 cautioned that “conservation’s failures to date outnumber its successes.”57 Knowledge of birds also merits conservation. The print culture of historical ornithology is robust as libraries in Europe and North America care for extensive holdings. Google Scholar and the Biodiversity Heritage Library have made many classic books available on the web. Twentiethcentury ornithologists frequently bewailed the loss of African vernacular bird knowledge. But bird knowledge is not applied, as medicine is, and knowledge about birds has not been subject to bioprospecting and patenting.

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Thus, there is less incentive to collect it. This is unfortunate, because vernacular birding is part of cultural heritage and on that score alone is worthy of conservation.58 Much is threatened in our new millennium, and a myriad of crises among people and in nature cry out for attention. It could be argued that the world does not need one more pet project. But reconsider one point about the species that led us through the introduction to this book, the honeyguide: that marvelous bird may be ceasing to lead people to honey. In some places, the effort to attract a person’s attention no longer pays off, and they have stopped trying. As a species, they do not give up easily; honeyguides have been known to follow motorized transport, calling to people to get out and work with them. How tragic if, as a species, we put them off! What if the international community bestirred itself to support the interspecies practice of honey hunting? What if, like the Important Bird Areas, an Important Birder Area was set aside where people could be supported as they preserved this culture?59 Imagine an East African forest as an International Heritage Site, where the work of honeyguides and honey hunters would be celebrated. Skilled adepts like the Boran men who showed off their skills for Isack and Reyers could train apprentices. Representatives from areas where honeyguiding has declined could come to learn about restoration. Undergraduate interns from around the world would clamor to be included! Recreational birdwatchers with a taste for adventure travel could follow along, paying ecotourist rates. Ethnographers, ornithologists, and animal behavior scientists could document and study the partnership. Perhaps even historians or honey badgers would join in. The forest heritage preserve would become a node for the intersection of all traditions of birders, with one another and the birds.

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Appendixes

Some common French and English names for African birds, such “bokmakierie,” “turaco,” “gonolek,” and “coua,” have roots in African vernacular bird names. Scientific names also bear witness to African origins. Borrowed names have value. They provide evidence, sometimes the only surviving evidence, of conversations about birds. I contend that they are indicators of a more extensive exchange and that Africans provided Europeans with introductions to the birds of the continent. The following appendixes present southern African vernacular bird names taken up by European birders as common and scientific names from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Some of these names never went further than their first recording and it is sometimes not possible to associate a name with a particular type of bird, but even an inaccurate name or one that never had scientific currency provides evidence of interaction. List making is an exercise in interpretation. In deciding which terms to include on these lists, I relied on the testimony of the original authors that the name recorded was one that Africans used for birds or on the work of other scholars who judged that the name had African origins. In compiling these lists, I worked closely with Rookmaaker’s Zoological Exploration. I also consulted histories of bird names, including Clinning’s Southern African Bird Names and Jobling’s Helm Dictionary. Current scientific names are taken from the online Integrated Taxonomic Information System, http:// www.itis.gov/. For an authoritative reference on currently valid scientific names, see Priority! by Edward Dickinson et al.

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appendixes Appendix 1: Vernacular Names in Claudius’s Bird Illustrations

The first column lists all Khoesan names for birds listed in captions to illustrations in the journal of the 1685 Namaqualand expedition. The illustrations were probably by Claudius, but we do not know who wrote the captions. If it indicated a specific Khoesan language, this is given in parentheses. The second column gives the English name for the bird that most resembles the illustration. These identifications are approximations. Claudius’s watercolors were not scientific illustrations and do not always correspond well with currently recognized bird types. Vernacular name

Best approximations of bird type

thoucocos (Nama) chatehehamabé (Nama) tschoyra (Nama) tgous (Nama) chaboy (Nama) quelip (no language specified) gambri (no language specified)

acacia pied barbet capped wheatear European bee-eater Namaqua sandgrouse Namaqua dove Namaqua dove or emerald-spotted wood-dove pale-winged starling or red-winged starling

Source: Waterhouse, Van der Stel’s Journal, 163 – 64.

Appendix 2: Names Derived from Southern African Vernaculars in Layard, Birds of South Africa (1867)

This table shows vernacular influences on scientific nomenclature in 1867, as presented in Layard’s book. The first column gives Layard’s species name. The second column gives vernacular influences. This column shows that most of the vernacular-derived terms came from Levaillant and Smith. The third column gives current species names. The table updates Layard’s usage by italicizing binomials and putting species in lower case. The non-African elements of the binomials are set off by parentheses.

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Layard’s species number and binomial

Previous derivation from vernacular

English name (binomial) in 2015

221. (Motacilla) aguimp

Levaillant. See appendix 3.

236. (Turdus) libonyana

Smith. See appendix 4.

313. (Prionops) talacoma

Smith. See appendix 4.

317. (Telophonus) bacbakiri 367. (Ploceus) taha

Levaillant. See appendix 3.

372. (Plocepasser) mahali

Smith. See appendix 4.

412. (Fringillaria) impetuani 415. (Fringillaria) tahapisi

Smith. See appendix 4.

429. (Megalophonus) sabota 432. (Megalophonus) lagepa 450. Turacus (persa) 451. Turacus (porphyreolophus)

Smith. See appendix 4.

African pied wagtail (Motacilla aguimp) Kurrichane thrush (Turdus libonyana) white helmetshrike (Prionops plumatus) bokmakierie (Telophorus zeylonus) yellow-crowned bishop (Euplectes afer) white-browed sparrowweaver (Plocepasser mahali) lark-like bunting (Emberiza impetuani) cinnamon-breasted bunting (Emberiza tahapisi) Sabota lark (Mirafra sabota) Karoo lark (Calendulauda albescens) Guinea or green turaco (Tauraco persa) and purple-crested turaco (Tauraco porphyreolophus)

481. Coua (cristata) 482. Coua (coerulea) 498. (Oxylophus) edolius

Smith. See appendix 4.

Smith. See appendix 4.

Smith. See appendix 4. “Tauraco” is assumed to be from a West African language, but it cannot be traced beyond Edwards’s use in 1743 (he spelled it “Touraco”). A name for the bird in Gambia is similar: “Kowkow.”a Buffon.b Said to be from the Malagasy. Kolb, then Levaillant. See appendix 3.

crested coua (Coua cristata) and blue coua (Coua caerulea) Pied cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus)

Source: Layard, Birds of South Africa. Notes: a George Edwards, Natural History of Birds, 1, pl. 7. Kowkow: Hopkinson, Birds of Gambia, 63. But demonstrating that vernacular names cannot always be pinned to one species: another source gives “kowkow” as the name for the western plantain-eater, known to ornithologists as Crinifer piscator: Cham, Camara, and Wilson, “Ornithological Discovery,” 605. b Buffon, Histoire naturelle, 6:365 – 66.

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appendixes Appendix 3: Names Derived from Southern African Vernaculars in Levaillant’s Oiseaux d’Afrique (1796 –1806)

This list is the work of Géraud Bablon, whom I thank for his able assistance and great enthusiasm. Bablon read Oiseaux d’Afrique and identified names with acknowledged vernacular roots, both from the Dutch and from Khoesan languages. While Levaillant gave many onomatopoetic names, Bablon omitted these unless the author indicated they were already in use. Levaillant also named two birds with honorifics given for his Khoekhoe friends, but these are excluded; they were not bird names in use among speakers of Khoesan languages.

Illustration number and name

Vernacular referencea

English name (binomial) in 2015

14. ourigourapb

“The name the Great Namaqua give this bird.” In addition, Levaillant noted the Khoekhoe name “hou-goop” and the Boer name “witte-kraai.” “Names which, in all three languages, mean white raven.” Its black coloring reminded colonists of the black jacket of the tax collector, so they used the Dutch name “fiskaal.” “Name under which it is known in the Cape. . . . Namaqua call it hoép and Hottentots name it orép.” “This name, preceded by a loud click of the tongue of the type made by the Hottentots, is that which these people give to this pretty bird.” “The savages name it couïgniôp, preceded by a click, of the tongue.” Evidently Khoesan. “That by which the Namaqua designate it.”

Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus)

61. fiscal

67. bacbakiri

89. nabirôp

90. couïgniop

91. nabouroup

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southern fiscal (Lanius collaris)

bokmakierie (Telophorus zeylonus)

Cape glossy-starling (Lamprotornis nitens)

unknown

pale-winged starling (Onychognathus nabouroup)

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appendixes 111. janfrédric

129. capocier 131. pinc-pinc 135. crombec

160. Môlenar

178. Aguimp 209. Coucou d’Édolio

Name from “white and black people of the Cape of Good Hope.” Dutch Christian name “Jan Frederik” is onomatopoetic. “Jan Frederik” is still the Afrikaans name. Contraction of Dutch “capocvogel” for “cotton bird.” “Name given to it by children of the Cape colonizers.” “Imitation of krome-bec which my Hottentots had given it.” Dutch for “curved beak.” “From the Hottentots and colonizers’ name.” Dutch for “miller.” “The name the Namaqua give this bird.” From Kolb, who said it was used by “Cape Europeans.” Onomatopoeic.c

245

Cape robin-chat (Cossypha caffra)

Karoo prinia (Prinia maculosa) cloud cisticola (Cisticola textrix) Cape crombec (Sylvietta rufescens) Cape batis (Batis capensis)

African pied wagtail (Motacilla aguimp) Pied cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus)

Source: Le Vaillant, Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d’Afrique. Notes: a This table omits names taken from vernacular languages spoken in West Africa, Madagascar, or South Asia. b This bears resemblance to gora:p, the name Piet Lynx, a Korana speaker, gave for Corvusscapularis, the pied crow. Maingard and Lloyd, “Korana Names,” 315. c Kolb, Beschreibung des Vorgebürges, 176, and Kolb, Present State, 2:150.

Appendix 4: Andrew Smith’s Names Derived from Southern African Vernaculars

This list draws heavily yet selectively on the work of C. J. Skead. My source for all but the first entry is his unpublished study, “Dr. Andrew Smith’s Use of Colloquial Native Names in his Scientific Nomenclature,” which I found in Special Collections in the Niven Library. I have supplemented his work with two publications by Desmond Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin” and Setswana: Animals and Plants. Skead’s method was to select out all names that appeared to originate in Southern Africa. He included names such as motitensis and gariepensis, which I have not given here because they were derived from place-names

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appendixes

rather than bird names; Gariep is the name for the Orange River, and Motito is the English rendition for the town the Tswana call Boithitong. Naming birds after towns and rivers says nothing about conversations among birders. As for the remaining names, it is still hard to establish their validity, because Smith only once revealed the vernacular meaning of a name. Skead corresponded with Cole and other white South African experts on SothoTswana linguistics, to determine meanings. Cole confirmed some terms as bird names and devised explanations for others. I summarize his reasoning in the second column. Consulting with contemporary Tswana-speakers would produce more associations with actual birds, but vernacular names change, and some names that were current in the early nineteenth century might be mysterious now. The non-African elements of the binomials are set off by parentheses.

Smith’s name

Vernacular reference

(Aquila) choka

“Chok of the Colonists,” according to Smith.a Unknown. It is not green or yellow, so there may be no connection to “tala” for green (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 188). Unknown (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 188). “Letsutsurôpu” and variants are widely used for thrushes. Smith gave the origin of name as imitating sound of scratching ground. Alternatively, it may be onomatopoeic for the clicking call (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 185). “Phênê” and variants are associated with many robin species (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186). “Sebota” and variants are widely used for larks (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186).

(Prionops) talacoma

(Merula) libonyana (Merula) litsitsirupa

(Erythropygia) paena

(Mirafra) sabota

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English name (binomial) in 2015 Tawny eagle (Aquila rapax) White helmetshrike (Prionops plumatus)

Kurrichane thrush (Turdus libonyana) Groundscraper thrush (Psophocichla litsitsirupa)

Kalahari scrub-robin (Cercotrichas paena)

Sabota lark (Calendulauda sabota)

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appendixes (Emberiza) tahapisi

(Emberiza) impetuani (Estrelda) lipiniana

(Euplectes) taha

(Ploceus) tahatali

(Plocepasser) mahali

(Cinnyris) talatala

(Polysticte) quopopa (Perdix) lechoho

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“Thagapitse” is associated with this and other bunting species It is probably a compound name from Tswana. “Thaga” is associated with many brightly colored seed-eating birds (bishops, canaries, finches, firefinches, queleas, waxbills weavers, whydahs, widows, etc.). The original meaning of “thaga” may have been “bird,” related to “intaka” in Xhosa. “Pietsi” is a zebra, in reference to the buntings’ striped heads (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186). Unknown (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 188). “Lipinnyana” is diminutive for “Leping,” which is confirmed as a name for ant-eating chat (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 188). On “Thaga,” see (Emberiza) tahapisi (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186). “Thagatalê” may be a compound of “thaga” for a weaver and “tala” for greenish (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186). “Mogale” is widely used for whitebrowed sparrow-weaver. In Setswana “mogale” means a brave or fierce person, probably referring to the bird’s scolding call (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 185). “Tala” means greenish. “Talatala” is used in the Hurutse dialect for sunbird (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186). “Kopaopa” is given for this bird in several dialects (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186). “Lesego” is used for francolin in several dialects (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 185).

247

cinnamon-breasted bunting (Emberiza tahapisi)

lark-like bunting (Emberiza impetuani) black-faced waxbill (Estrilda erythronotos)

yellow-crowned bishop (Euplectes afer) southern masked-weaver (Ploceus velatus)

white-browed sparrowweaver (Plocepasser mahali)

white-breasted sunbird (Cinnyris talatala)

Crested barbet (Trachyphonus vaillantii) Natal francolin (Francolinus natalensis)

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appendixes

Smith’s name

Vernacular reference

(Perdix) sephaena

Not confirmed for this bird, but related to “paena.” See Erythropygia paena (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 186). “Lephurrwana” and variants are widely used for button quail. Onomatopoeic for the sound of rapid, whirring flight (Cole, “Old Tswana and New Latin,” 185).

(Ortygis) lepurana

English name (binomial) in 2015 crested francolin (Francolinus sephaena)

small buttonquail (Turnix sylvaticus lepurana)

Sources: Smith, Miscellaneous Ornithological Papers: Choka, 114; Smith, Report of the Expedition: Talacoma, 45; Libonyana, 45; Litsitsirupa, 45; Paena, 46; Tahapisi, 48; Sabota, 47; Impetuani, 48; Lipiniana, 49; Taha, 50; Tahatali, 50; Mahali, 51; Talatala, 53; Quopopa, 54; Lechoho, 54 – 55; Sephaena, 55; Lepurana, 55 –56; Smith, Illustrations, 2: Litsitsirupa, pl. 37; Lagepa, pl. 87. Note: a No translation provided. Not on Skead’s original list, the term was in use among Dutch rather than Sotho-Tswana speakers and thus is also not one Cole has commented on.

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Notes

Introduction 1. Species identification in ethno-ornithological work is difficult and has not always been successful. Ng’weno, “Sound, Sight, Stories and Science.” Whenever possible I identify birds by scientific name and best-accepted English common name, as well as the original vernacular term, updated to current orthographic standards. For English and scientific names, I have consulted the Integrated Taxonomic Information System http://www.itis.gov/ and the August 2014 update of the Clements checklist, http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/. 2. Xhosa honeyguide: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 69 –70. Hausa honeyguide: Adam Manvell, pers. comm., Aug. 5, 2013. Shooting the honeyguide: Sparrman, “Account of a Journey into Africa,” 45. Levaillant (sometimes spelled Le Vaillant) also reports that his guides begged him not to shoot the honeyguide; yet he did. Also: Le Vaillant, Travels into the Interior, 1:372. 3. History of knowledge about the honeyguide: Friedmann, Honey-Guides, 25 –32. Another early mention: Tye and Jones, “Birds and Birdwatchers in West Africa,” 217. Sparrman’s original notice of the honeyguide was in his “Account of a Journey into Africa,” 46. His scientific work and his disposition toward vernacular knowledge: Beinart, “Men, Science, Travel, and Nature.” Plundered: Sparrman, Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, 2:187. 4. Passages taken from Sparrman, Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, 2: 187– 88. 5. Descriptions of the honeyguide: Percival, Game Ranger’s Note Book, 347; Bates, Birds of West Africa, 268 – 69. In recounting his experience with a honeyguide, C. J. Skead considered that it had “misled” him: Skead, “Hive Indication.” Another firsthand account: Chapin, “Profiteers of the Busy Bee.” A report that people in Gambia knew nothing of any “honey-showing bird”: Hopkinson, Birds

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of Gambia, 68. A documentary film made in Kenya in 1950 showed honey hunters at work, but it was staged. A white Kenyan had partnered with the bird for filming, and Africans were spliced into the final cut: Queeny, “Wandorobo and the Honey Guide.” Description of filming in expedition records: Queeny, “1950 Safari [Diary of a Safari in East Africa, Dec. 18, 1949 –Apr. 17, 1950],” 20 –24, in Queeny Folio Collection, Washington University Libraries; Ker, Around the Campfire, 69 –71. 6. The ratel and the honeyguide: Sparrman, Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, 2:181– 83; Stevenson-Hamilton, Animal Life, 1:124 –25. Purported observations of symbiosis with the ratel: Friedmann, Honey-Guides, 41–50. David Livingstone on the honeyguide and dangerous animals: Livingstone, Missionary Travels, 547. A colorful and embellished secondhand account of a vindictive honeyguide: FitzPatrick, Jock of the Bushveld, 346 –51. A report of a treacherous honeyguide from West Africa: Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 54. The Dorobo: Chapman, On Safari, 268. An English hunter’s report of the absence of this idea in East Africa and his own experience of being led to a wounded lion: Percival, Game Ranger’s Note Book, 348. A 2006 Zambian news story about a honeyguide leading a man to a lion presents it as no more than coincidence: Mupuchi, “Lion Attacks Man.” 7. The scientific debate: Friedmann, Honey-Guides, 41–50; Dean, “Greater Honeyguides and Ratels”; Dean, Siegfried, and MacDonald, “Fallacy, Fact, and Fate.” A theory about the evolution of a partnership with protohumans in the Pliocene: Wood et al., “Mutualism and Manipulation.” In popular culture: Uys, Animals Are Beautiful People; Yong, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Honey Badgers”; Brett, Honey, Honey—Lion! 8. Friedmann, Honey-Guides, e.g., 42 – 47. 9. “Excellent ‘ethologists’”: Isack and Reyer, “Honeyguides and Honey Gatherers,” 1346. Also: Isack, “Greater Honeyguide’s Dilemma”; Isack, “Role of Culture.” Honey-hunting among the Zulu: Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds,” 41– 43. An argument about cognition in the honeyguide: Griffin, Animal Minds, 175. 10. “Large, sexually reproducing”: Birkhead, Wimpenny, and Montgomerie, Ten Thousand Birds, 60. “Form a community”: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Savage Mind, 204, quoted in Galaty, “Maasai Ornithorium,” 229. 11. Animals and objects in history: Callon, “Some Elements”; Ritvo, Animal Estate; Latour, Pasteurization of France; Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid; Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto; Livingston and Paur, “Interspecies”; Mavhunga, “Vermin Beings.” 12. Ted Lee Eubanks, quoted in Robinson, Birding for Everyone, 108. 13. The meanings of “birder” as: (1) “birdwatcher” from the Oxford English Dictionary; (2) one who “identifies birds in a natural habitat” from WordNet, a resource from Princeton University; (3) “recreational birdwatcher” from Cocker, Birders. The evolving meaning of the word: Dunlap, In the Field, 9. 14. I have been most influenced by Latour, Science in Action. A short list of works that grapple with executive bias: Star, “Power, Technology”; Law, “Monsters,

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Machines and Sociotechnical Relations”; Callon, “Actor-Network Theory,” 194; Hitchings, “People, Plants, and Performance.” 15. Holub, Seven Years in South Africa, 1:147– 49. Mahem is a Bantu name that has been taken up by Afrikaans. An early appearance in print: Thompson, Travels and Adventures, 449. 16. Holub and von Pelzeln, Beiträge zur Ornithologie Südafrikas. 17. Jephson and Stanley, Emin Pasha and the Rebellion, 112. I first found this source in Mearns and Mearns, Bird Collectors, 179. The figure on the right is probably Jephson, the book’s author. 18. Robert Payne, pers. comm., Sept. 11, 2014, Mar. 1, 2015. 19. Indigenous knowledge: Osseo-Asare, Bitter Roots, esp. 16. A discussion of “indigenous,” “vernacular,” and “local” knowledge: Beinart and Brown, African Local Knowledge, 17–22. Relations between African knowledge and “science”: Tilley, “Global Histories, Vernacular Science.” My use of “vernacular” and “science” is similar to Helen Tilley’s, although I use “ethno-ornithology” for what she would call “vernacular science,” meaning the academic study of folk practices. Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory. Me¯tis: Scott, Seeing Like a State. 20. Fear of owls, globally: Cocker, “Magic, Myth and Misunderstanding”; Mynott, Birdscapes, 45. In Kenya: Muiruri and Maundu, “Birds, People, and Conservation,” 286; Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 20 –21. Lightning bird: chapter 1. Vernacular knowledge of white farmers in South Africa: Beinart, Rise of Conservation. 21. One example: Mueggler, Paper Road. 22. In contrast, many recent studies of ethno-ornithology tend to emphasize its utility, like that of other “indigenous knowledge systems” for conservation. 23. Indigenous knowledge: Agrawal, “Dismantling the Divide”; Horton, “African Traditional Thought,” 257–58. Hard and soft facts: Latour, Science in Action, 205 –14. 24. Classical knowledge of birds and John Ray: Birkhead, Wisdom of Birds, 17–51, 133 –36. Other histories of ornithology: Brook, “Short History of Ornithology”; Walters, Concise History of Ornithology; Bircham, History of Ornithology; Chansigaud, All about Birds; Birkhead, Wimpenny, and Montgomerie, Ten Thousand Birds. 25. A work meant to ameliorate the underrepresentation of American minorities in birding: Robinson, Birding for Everyone. 26. Europeans drawing on Asian, Native American, and African knowledge: Carney, Black Rice; Schiebinger and Swan, “Introduction”; Cook, Matters of Exchange. 27. Pratt, “Scratches on the Face”; Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 51, 61. Another South African study of silenced and appropriated knowledge: Lalu, “Medical Anthropology.” 28. Beinart, “Men, Science, Travel, and Nature.” “Explicitly acknowledged”: Musselman, “Plant Knowledge at the Cape,” 369; Musselman, “Worlds Displaced”; Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism. Also: Guelke and Guelke, “Imperial Eyes on

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South Africa.” “Science, with its dialectical ability”: Müller-Wille, “Walnuts at Hudson Bay,” 48. 29. “Indigenous communities”: Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 27. 30. Beinart, “Men, Science, Travel, and Nature,” 784; Musselman, “Plant Knowledge at the Cape,” 369. Allowing a limited number of Africans status in colonial society, assimilation was nonetheless the outcome of conquest and violence: Peires, Dead Will Arise. Beinart, Rise of Conservation. 31. Harries, Butterflies and Barbarians; Jeater, Law, Language, and Science. 32. Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory, esp. 322 –29. Wylie, Starving on a Full Stomach. 33. For comparison, assistants in Europe: Shapin, Social History of Truth. Emphasis on the subordination of assistants’ knowledge: Sanjek, “Anthropology’s Hidden Colonialism”; Shepherd, “When the Hand.” A review of histories of Africans as active agents in matters of science: Tilley, “Global Histories, Vernacular Science,” 14 –15. Emphasis on the influence and legacy of individual assistants/”native informants”: Camerini, “Wallace in the Field”; Harries, “Field Sciences”; Schumaker, Africanizing Anthropology; Raffles, “Uses of Butterflies”; Lekgoathi, “Colonial Experts, Local Interlocutors”; Jézéquel, “‘Collecting Customary Law’”; Bank, “‘Intimate Politics’ of Fieldwork,” 559; Bank and Bank, Inside African Anthropology; Osseo-Asare, Bitter Roots. Assistants to ornithologists: Mearns and Mearns, Bird Collectors, 57–59. Bargain of collaboration: Lawrance, Osborn, and Roberts, Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks. Strategies of valorization: Jézéquel, “‘Collecting Customary Law,’” 153. Strategies of selfhood: Miescher, Making Men in Ghana. 34. Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much.” A magisterial biography of an ordinary black South African man who left few records of self-reflection: Van Onselen, Seed Is Mine. A critique of this work: Minkley and Rassool, “Orality, Memory, and Social History.” A review of recent microhistories in Africa: Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange, 1–7. 35. Affect in ornithology and recreational birdwatching: Cocker, Birders; Franzen, “My Bird Problem”; Whitney, “Knot in Common.” A vernacular birder telling his story: Majnep and Bulmer, Birds of My Kalam Country. One South African black naturalist assistant who worked mostly with mammals published a memoir: Arends and Stopforth, Trapping Safaris. Seemingly produced as a text for “Coloured” schoolchildren, the book is infused with the values of apartheid-era South Africa. Witz, “Making of an Animal Biography.” 36. The problems of continents as units of analysis: Lewis and Wigen, Myth of Continents; Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. 37. Comparative levels of European ornithological interest: Morel, “Fifty Years of Ornithology,” 359. 38. Changing honeyguide behavior: Queeny, “Wandorobo and the Honey Guide,” 396; Friedmann, “Honey-Guide,” 559; Friedmann, Honey-Guides, 50 –54; Isack and Reyer, “Honeyguides and Honey Gatherers”; Dean, “Greater Honeyguides and Ratels”; Isack, “Role of Culture.”

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Chapter 1. African Vernacular Birding Traditions 1. The analysis in this chapter is of oral knowledge that has left a remnant in the written record. It describes vernacular knowledge as situated within regions and language communities, not within “tribes” or “ethnic groups.” However, the records themselves often identify the knowledge only “tribally” or generalize across a territory. Constantly describing language communities as “Hausa-speakers” and “Xhosa-speakers” would come off as pedantic. I ask the reader to bear in mind that my use of such terms as “Luyia,” “Xhosa,” and “Zulu” does not denote categories of ethnic identification or political organization. These terms are meant simply to indicate a place or a language family. 2. Njila: Jan Vansina bases his name for the Njila languages, a subunit of the Bantu family, on this name for birds. Vansina, How Societies Are Born, 6. Hausa and Nigerian reference to Islam: Bates, Birds of West Africa, 502. Xhosa references to Christianity and Europeans: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 22, 3, 82, 105 – 6. In Anglo and Spanish America, the Native American, European, and African bird traditions similarly exchanged names and lore: Bonta, “Transmutation of Human Knowledge”; Krech, “Indigenous Ethnoornithology.” 3. I thank Kevin P. Smith, deputy director of the Haffenreffer Museum, and Tierry Gentis, curator, for their generous introduction to that collection. Unfortunately, ethno-ornithological research on sub-Saharan Africa is not extensive. The regions that have inspired the most ethno-ornithological analysis are the Americas and New Guinea. Krech, Spirits of the Air; Krech, “Indigenous Ethnoornithology”; Vivanco, “Spectacular Quetzals”; Dove, “Process versus Product.” This chapter benefited from several unpublished manuscripts about historical bird records and bird lore in southern Africa compiled by the ornithologist C. J. Skead: “Historical Bird Incidence in Southern Africa” (2002), “Ethnographical Folklore Extracts Relating to Birds” (n.d.), and “Ethnographical Folklore Extracts Relating to Birds” (n.d.), all held in Special Collections, Niven Library. 4. Krech, “Indigenous Ethnoornithology.” Linguistic evidence is, of course, a well-established source for early African history. This may be a promising avenue into the history of animals in precolonial Africa, but not having the requisite skills, I have not sought to reconstruct relationships between bird names or in the birdrelated vocabulary. I have, however, investigated names for qualitative insights. Some sources for names: van Someren and van Someren, Studies of Birdlife; Bates, Birds of West Africa; Lloyd, “Korana Names”; Muir, “Afrikaans Bird-Names”; Moreau, “Bird-Names in Coastal North-Eastern Tanganyika”; Moreau, “BirdNomenclature in East Africa”; Plowes, “Ovambo Bird Names”; Hendrix, “Some Kivu Birds”; White, “Lunda and Lwenda Bird Names”; Chadwick, “Zulu Names for Birds”; Benson, Check List; Mlingwa, “Birds of Tanzania.” Much of the research on bird names and on ethno-ornithology in general dates from before World War II. Adam Manvell theorizes that naturalists found value in vernacular names in the earliest decades when they lacked reliable field guides to aid them with identi-

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fication: Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 11. Yet this was the period of wider interest in vernacular science: Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory. A caveat about translating names: Many lists of bird names in African languages do survive from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but these are mixed blessings; for example, inaccuracies in early editions of Roberts’s Birds of South Africa convinced the editors of the fifth edition, published in 1985, to scrap all vernacular names recorded in previous editions and commission new research. Maclean: Roberts’ Birds of Southern Africa. In this chapter I do identify birds by current scientific name with the understanding that particulars may be reductive or false. My reason is that, despite the inevitable imperfections, associating names with the lingua franca of ornithology will make it much easier for a heterogeneous audience to navigate the discussion. Therefore, I have provided current scientific names as an approximation of types of birds. 5. Proverbs: Plaatje, Sechuana Proverbs, 57. Zulu proverbs: Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds.” An overview of themes in folktales about birds: Werner, “Birds in Bantu Folk-Lore”; Gora, “Role of Bird Characters.” Zambian children’s poetry based on bird calls: Mtonga, “Bird Songs.” 6. Not all birds have names, because not all attract significant human attention: Bates, Birds of West Africa, v; Msimanga, “Role of Birds,” 22; van Someren and van Someren, Studies of Birdlife, 8. Train bird: Lowe, Trail That Is Always New, 175. Robin-chat: Wilson, “Vernacular Names of Malawi’s Birds.” Mogale: Cole, Glendinning, and Campbell, Setswana, 76. The name mogale is said to be used in many Tswana dialects in South Africa and Botswana. See also chapter 3. 7. Keeping time through bird calls: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 72, 96; Lowe, Trail That Is Always New, 181; Vincent, “Birds of Northern Portuguese East Africa,” part IX, 758; Krige, Social System of the Zulus, 190; Godfrey, BirdLore of the Eastern Cape, 56; Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds,” 45 – 47. Oxpecker: Stoehr and Sclater, “Notes on a Collection,” 84. Black-headed bushshrike or gonolek: Hopkinson, Birds of Gambia, 24 –25. Hopkinson gave the scientific name for this bird as Telephonus senegalus, now out of date. I read a copy of with no publication information, but this work appears to have originally appeared as a serial article in Bird Notes, 1912 and 1913. 8. In general, feathers are less conspicuous in African material cultures than in those of the Americas: Krech, Spirits of the Air; Norton, “Going to the Birds.” 9. Bats classed with birds: Kesby, “Rangi Classification,” 42 – 43; Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 51. The ostrich as “an animal posing as a bird”: Galaty, “Maasai Ornithorium,” 228. Flying termites included among birds: Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 6, 11. A famous case from New Guinea of a member of the class Aves not qualifying as a bird: Bulmer, “Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird?” 10. Concepts of species in vernacular taxonomies: Atran, Cognitive Foundation of Natural History. 11. Zulu bird names: Koopman, Zulu Names, 233 – 48. Cattle colors described with bird names: Poland and Hammond-Tooke, Abundant Herds, 42 –55. Hausa names: Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 83.

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12. Sotho praise names: Laydevant, “Coutume du Hlonepho,” 90. Mijikenda terms for “birds”: Walsh, “Birds of Omen.” Mbuti names: Ichikawa, “Birds as Indicators,” 110. Name avoidance among the Xhosa: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 81, 92. “Njila”: Vansina, How Societies Are Born, 6. 13. Hollmann, “‘Big Pictures.’” 14. Marakwet: Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 14 –18. Zulu kingfisher: Koopman, Zulu Names, 247. Mbuti kingfisher: Ichikawa, “Birds as Indicators,” 112. Nuer: Firth, “Twins, Birds and Vegetables.” Firth summarizes earlier analyses on twins and birds by E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Claude Lévi-Strauss. One significant method of adopting birds into human society, keeping them in cages as pets, seems to have been more prominent in Europe and the Americas than in Africa: Norton, “Going to the Birds.” Introduced crows: Greenough, “Crows and Pawns.” 15. Vertical cosmic plane among the Maasai: Galaty, “Maasai Ornithorium,” 229, 30. Rangi: Kesby, “Rangi Classification.” A similar understanding among the Asante: McCaskie, “People and Animals.” Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 4. Kassagam’s research was part of a larger project on the ethno-ornithology of Kenya, most of which has not been published. A tripartite system among the Asante: Kassam, Gikuchi, and Ndegwa, “Ethno-Ornithology.” A nonaltitudinal classification system of birds and other animals: Morris, Power of Animals, 144 – 45. 16. Layard and Sharpe, Birds of South Africa, 548 – 49. 17. The “African’s mascot”: Young, “Bird Lover in Nyasaland,” 32. Wagtail in Burundi: Rodegem, “Forme d’humour,” 538. In South Africa: Jackson, Manna in the Desert, 119; Soga, Ama-Xosa, 200 –201. In Democratic Republic of the Congo: Ichikawa, “Birds as Indicators,” 106. In Zambia: Marks, Large Mammals, 85. In Sudan: Beaton, “Bari,” 112. In East Africa generally: Muiruri and Maundu, “Birds, People, and Conservation,” 287; van Someren, Days with Birds, 234. Mapanje’s wagtail metaphor: Mthatiwa, “Bird Metaphors,” 22 –24. 18. Honeyguide among Boran: Isack, “Role of Culture.” House bunting: Tristram, Great Sahara, 393 –94. Swallows: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 73. Marabou stork: Hopkinson, Birds of Gambia, 105. Abdim’s stork: Bates, Birds of West Africa, 110; Adjakapa, “Breeding Biology of Abdim’s Stork,” 63. Benin storks: Blier, Royal Arts of Africa, 58, 61– 62. 19. De Beers watchmen: Courtenay-Latimer, “Africans as Protectionists.” 20. Spirits in African history: Ellis and ter Haar, Worlds of Power; Gordon, Invisible Agents; Gordon and Krech, “Indigenous Knowledge.” Birds in creation stories: Low, “Birds and KhoeSa¯n,” 301–2; Salokoski, How Kings Are Made. Tsaayi masks: Dupré, “129 Mask,” 215. Feathers on Kuba and Kongo masks: Blier, Royal Arts of Africa, 226. Animals in rituals and symbolism in Malawi: Morris, Animals and Ancestors. 21. Marakwet: Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 8, 26, 29, 38. Zimbabwe: Mavhunga, Transient Workspaces, 55 –56. Luhyia: Muiruri and Maundu, “Birds, People, and Conservation,” 287. Zambia: Kangende, Zambian Myths and Legends, 55 –56.

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22. Rainbirds: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 19, 47, 55 –56. Mahem was the bird introduced Holub by Gert, depicted in fig. 2 and described in the Introduction: Holub, Seven Years in South Africa, 1:147– 49. Cuckoo species as rain birds in Europe: Krech, “Indigenous Ethnoornithology,” 85. Cuckoo species as rain birds in Africa: Vincent, “Birds of Northern Portuguese East Africa,” part IX, 765; Muiruri and Maundu, “Birds, People, and Conservation,” 287– 88; Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 32. 23. A list of inauspicious birds in Zambia: Kangende, Zambian Myths and Legends, 54 – 66. Among the Tsonga of South Africa and Mozambique, it was a mampfana, a “kind of crane.” Junod, Life of a South African Tribe, 2:128. Southern fiscal among Marakwet: Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 22. The owl as evil in southern Africa: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 59 – 60; Chavunduka, “Good and Bad Animals in Shona Folklore,” 21; Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, 285; Low, “Birds and KhoeSa¯n,” 299; Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds,” 49. In Gambia: Hopkinson, Birds of Gambia, 86. Pilgrim’s Progress: Hofmeyr, Portable Bunyan, 137 and 58, fig. 15. Nightjar during Mau Mau: Muiruri and Maundu, “Birds, People, and Conservation,” 286 – 87. Marakwet: Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 33. 24. Prionops plumatus and Islam: Hopkinson, Birds of Gambia, 26; Lowe, Trail That Is Always New, 207; Bates, Birds of West Africa, 442; Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 66; Blancou, “Oiseaux de l’Oubangui-Chari,” 85. I thank Adam Manvell and John Hanson for their help in researching Prionops plumatus. 25. “Strange, mighty, black and white bird”: Sechefo, Customs and Superstitions in Basutoland, 28. Lightning bird: Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, 382 – 83; Junod, Life of a South African Tribe, 2:290 –92; Krige, Social System of the Zulus, 311–16; Wilson, Reaction to Conquest, 282, 302, 489 –92; Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 2; Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, 38 – 40; Kangende, Zambian Myths and Legends, 5; Kuper, Swazi, 60. The association with tuberculosis: Laubscher, Sex, Custom and Psychopathology, 13 –15. A new-age appropriation of embodiment of or possession by the lightning bird as a higher consciousness: Watson, Lightning Bird. Impundulu in recent history: Mbeki, South Africa: Peasants’ Revolt, 107; Redding, Sorcery and Sovereignty, esp. 137, 83; Crais, Politics of Evil, 129, 215. 26. Skead’s notes with “Impundulu, Tina Bridge, Eastern Cape South Africa,” BHW3 in Ethnographic and Historical Photos, 1963 – 64, held with C. J. Skead, “Ethnographical Extracts Relating to Birds,” Special Collections, Niven Library. 27. Quotations from Xhosa essays: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 11–12, 14 –15. Powers of the hamerkop: Engelbrecht, Korana, 178; Woodward and Woodward, Natal Birds, 199; Soga, Ama-Xosa, 198; Jacot Guillarmod, “Notes on Birds in Basutoland,” 38; Sechefo, Customs and Superstitions in Basutoland, 29; Msimanga, “Role of Birds,” 22; Muiruri and Maundu, “Birds, People, and Conservation,” 284; Walsh, “Birds of Omen;” Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds,” 49. King of birds in the Congo: “Radio W. J. Z. Interview with James Chapin, ‘Black Bird Students of Central Africa,’” Oct. 5, 1925, in James P. Chapin, Biographical

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Material, AMNH. Greeting the hamerkop: Hean and Mokhehle, “Basuto Wildlife Beliefs,” 81. The “bittern” reported to be of ritual use in West Africa in the sixteenth century was possibly a hamerkop: Tye and Jones, “Birds and Birdwatchers in West Africa,” 216. 28. Benin: Blier, Royal Arts of Africa, 57, 69. Hornbills as icons of religious societies: Roberts, Animals in African Art, 67–70. Hornbill and rain in Gambia, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe: Hopkinson, Birds of Gambia, 58; Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 31; Kangende, Zambian Myths and Legends, 61– 63; Young, “Bird Lover in Nyasaland,” 103; Msimanga, “Role of Birds,” 22. Among the Zulu: Woodward and Woodward, Natal Birds, 97; Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds,” 47– 49. Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, 57–58. Among the Xhosa: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 65 – 66; Soga, Ama-Xosa, 198 –99. 29. “They so idolise”: Philipps, Philipps, 1820 Settler, 200. South African reluctance to raise turkeys and peacocks: Wilson, Reaction to Conquest, 288n1. 30. Bateleur among Xhosa and Zulu: Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, 407– 8; Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 33 –36; Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, 58. Among Marakwet: Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 24 –25. Among Bemba: Moore, “‘Bwanga’ among the Bemba,” 229. Bateleur flight as an inspiration to dance moves in southern Democratic Republic of the Congo and northern Zambia: Roberts, Dance of Assassins, 88 – 89. In Zimbabwe: Lan, Guns and Rain, 157–58; Mavhunga, Transient Workspaces, 31. 31. Chiefs and feathers in southern Africa: Lichtenstein, Travels in Southern Africa, 2:287; Woodward and Woodward, Natal Birds, 14; Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 44; Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, 2:314; Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds,” 36. 32. Fish-eagle and bateleur in Zimbabwe, including at Great Zimbabwe: Franklin, “Vakaranga Superstitions,” 124; Huffman, “Soapstone Birds from Great Zimbabwe”; Matenga, Soapstone Birds of Great Zimbabwe; Jacobson-Widding, Chapungu, 28, 53, 142 – 45, 369, 469; 33. Animal metaphors: Roberts, Animals in African Art. Birds and witchcraft: Blier, Royal Arts of Africa, 11, 34. Yoruba crowns: Drewal and Mason, Beads, Body, and Soul, 201–7. 34. “Habits of receptivity”: Low, “Birds and KhoeSa¯n,” 300. 35. Low, “Birds and KhoeSa¯n,” 297. 36. Honeyguide: Brelsford, “Babemba Animal Medicines,” 11; Derwent and Mander, “Twitchers Bewitched,” 22. Arrow feathers: Mavhunga, Transient Workspaces, 54. Bateleur: Blanchard, Ethiopia, 84. Eagle: Woodward and Woodward, Natal Birds, 149. Swallows: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 73; Derwent and Mander, “Twitchers Bewitched,” 22. Vulture and whydah in Kenya: Muiruri and Maundu, “Birds, People, and Conservation,” 284, 86. White-billed buffaloweaver: Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 69 –70. Owls: Brown, African Birds of Prey, 268; Roberts, Animals in African Art, 70 –72. Medicine in Zimbabwe: Franklin, “Vakaranga Superstitions,” 124; Msimanga, “Role of Birds,” 23. Parakeet in Bornu: Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, 1:141.

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37. “For these reasons”: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 35. Hamerkop and drought: Smith, Diary, 1:163. Smart doctors: Sechefo, Customs and Superstitions in Basutoland, 28. Birds and weather: Sclater, “Some Account of the Ground Hornbill,” 52; Priest, Guide to the Birds of Southern Rhodesia, 80; Belcher, Birds of Nyasaland, 10; Krige, Social System of the Zulus, 315. 38. Birds in markets: Derwent and Mander, “Twitchers Bewitched”; Cocker, “African Birds in Medicinal Use,” 61– 62; Msimanga, “Role of Birds,” 23; Nikolaus, “Bird Exploitation for Medicine.” Nigerian species and their status: Lepage, “Avibase.” Lesotho: Jacot Guillarmod, “Notes on Birds in Basutoland,” 35. Two species said to be respected in the early twentieth-century Cameroon were the black-headed heron (Ardea melanocephala) and the hooded vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus): Bates, Birds of West Africa, 120, 67. 39. Texier et al., “Context, Form and Significance.” 40. Early reference to birds eating insects: Haagner, “White Stork,” 53. Following plows: Winterbottom, “Birds Following Ploughs.” Bird pests: Bates, Birds of West Africa, 83, 510; Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 43; Mundy and Jarvis, Africa’s Feathered Locust. Repelling birds: Krige, Social System of the Zulus, 195 –96. On the matter of bird flesh, group of European expatriates in Zambia did a taste testing and published some results: Cott and Benson, “Palatability of Birds.” 41. Ostriches in nineteenth-century San testimony: Bleek and Lloyd, Bushmen Folklore, xiv–xv, 53, 137– 45, 275 –79. Rock engravings: Parkington, Morris, and Rusch, Karoo Rock Engravings. 42. Birds as secondary to mammals in adults’ diets: Ichikawa, “Birds as Indicators,” 107; Morris, Animals and Ancestors, 32; Galaty, “Maasai Ornithorium,” 231; Firth, “Twins, Birds and Vegetables,” 5. Understanding who hunted is difficult because of the colonial tendency to describe grown men as “boys.” Some that are unequivocally about “small boys”: “Birds and Native Boys,” in FitzSimons, Natural History, 1:139 – 42; Mandela, Long Walk, 8; Ntiamoa-Baidu, “Terns in Ghana”; D’Souza, “Life during Wartime,” 103; Boys singing while hunting: Brandily, “Songs to Birds.” Prohibition on hunting brooding birds: Biyela, “Popular Predictor Birds,” 39. 43. Vincent, “Birds of Northern Portuguese East Africa,” part I, 621. 44. Gray parrots: Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 47. Terns as cage birds in Ghana: Ntiamoa-Baidu, “Terns in Ghana,” 42. Francolins were trapped in South Africa with cages or in holes baited with corn. Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 38 – 89. 45. It is worth noting that the Nilo-Saharan language family of the Marakwet and the Niger-Congo family of Bantu languages are unrelated. References to stock in names for Motacilla species: Moreau, “Bird-Nomenclature in East Africa,” 1003; Kassagam, What Is This Bird Saying?, 48; Koopman, Zulu Names, 240; Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 75, 100 –103. The French name for wagtail, bergeronnette, also translates as shepherd. 46. Xhosa on intengu: Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 75.

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47. Mbuti on birds and animals: Ichikawa, “Birds as Indicators,” 112. Honeyguide as problems for hunters: Stoehr and Sclater, “Notes on a Collection,” 85; Stevenson-Hamilton, Animal Life, 3:56; Brown, Life of the African Plains, 164; Percival, Game Ranger’s Note Book, 345. Yellow-casqued hornbills, leopards, and Diana monkeys: Rainey, Zuberbühler, and Slater, “Hornbills Can Distinguish.” 48. Girls and boys in standards 5 and 6 answered the questionnaire. The answers provide insights into the reputation of the British, perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of African society, ideas of proper etiquette, and the level of fascination with modernity and technology. The boys were from working-class and more educated households and wrote their essays in English. Of the girls, only one was the daughter of a miner, and they wrote their essays in Bemba. Powdermaker, “Social Change.” 49. Ibid., 803. 50. Ibid., 805. 51. Game: Krige, Social System of the Zulus, 78. 52. Godfrey, Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape, 94. 53. Mandela’s children’s stories: Gordon, Mandela, and Williams, Mandela’s Favourite Children’s Stories. Recognized hunters among the Hausa: Manvell, Hausa Bird Lexicon, 20, 22. 54. Formation of societies: Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests. Wealth in Knowledge: Guyer and Eno Belinga: “Wealth in People.” 55. “Professoriate of the Hunt”: Mavhunga, Transient Workspaces, 41– 69. Guilds in south central Africa, including relations with chiefs: Richards, Land, Labour and Diet, 348 –50; Turner, Forest of Symbols, 280 – 81; Alpers, “Ivory and Slaves,” 11; Marks, Large Mammals, 61–70; Morris, Power of Animals, 113 –19; Isaacman and Isaacman, Slavery and Beyond, 90, 100 –101, 241. I thank David Gordon for first suggesting this connection. 56. “We want a man”: Turner, Schism and Continuity, 27–28. Also Turner, Forest of Symbols, 280 –98. Outsider hunters: Morris, Power of Animals, 69 –74. Hunting as a ritual of transformation: Herbert, Iron, Gender, and Power, 164 – 87. Further between sexual activity and hunting: Isaacman and Isaacman, Slavery and Beyond, 90; Marks, Large Mammals, 62, 138 – 40; Mavhunga, Transient Workspaces, 61– 62, 67. 57. De Luna, “Hunting Reputations”; De Luna, “Affect and Society,” 143. Chapter 2. Early Birding Contact, 1500 –1700 1. Bird knowledge in ancient and medieval Europe: Armstrong, Folklore of Birds; Walters, Concise History of Ornithology, 20 –51; Bircham, History of Ornithology, 1–23; Collar et al., Birds and People; Chansigaud, All about Birds, 17–54. Falconry: Norton, “Going to the Birds.” Bittern: Barua and Jepson, “Bull of the Bog.” Raven, kingfisher, swallow: Birkhead, Wisdom of Birds, 17. 2. Aldrovandi and Aristotle: Findlen, Possessing Nature, 57– 61.

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notes to pages 64 –73

3. African species in Aldrovandi’s work: Payne, “Family Viduidae,” 215. Marees and other mariners on the West African coast: Tye and Jones, “Birds and Birdwatchers in West Africa,” 215 –16; Sclater, “Notes on the Early Sources.” Early modern European acquisition of American birds: Norton, “Going to the Birds.” 4. “Scientific culture”: Findlen, Possessing Nature, esp. 9. 5. Bontius: Cook, Matters of Exchange, 191–209. 6. Van Rheede: Grove, Green Imperialism, 73 –94; Cook, Matters of Exchange, 310 –17. Merian: Davis, Women on the Margins, 140 –202; Schiebinger, Plants and Empire; Hochstrasser, “Butterfly Effect.” Van Rheede is sometimes spelled “van Reede.” 7. “Boiling things down”: Cook, Matters of Exchange, 208. Rumphius: Leuker, “Knowledge Transfer”; Cook, Matters of Exchange, 329 –32. Publication of Rumphius’s work was delayed because of VOC concerns that rivals would benefit from it. 8. The infusion of global knowledge and the development of the genre of natural history: Cook, Matters of Exchange; Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous, 152 – 66; Huigen, de Jong, and Kolfin, Dutch Trading Companies. 9. Proof race and obligatory point of passage: Latour, Science in Action, 141, 72 –73. 10. Summaries of the earliest published descriptions of birds at the Cape: C. J. Skead, “Historical Bird Incidence,” 1– 6, in Special Collections, Niven Library; and especially Rookmaaker, Zoological Exploration, 12 –20. 11. The VOC at the Cape: Elphick, Kraal and Castle; Elphick and Giliomee, Shaping of South African Society. Eva: Wells, “Eva’s Men.” 12. Coetzee, White Writing. 13. Khoekhoe botanical knowledge: Grevenbroek, “Elegant and Accurate Account,” 245; Fleischer, “(Ex)Changing Knowledge,” 84. 14. The 1652 report: Hondius, Klare Besgryving, 256 in original Dutch and 23 –24 in English translation. 15. Rookmaaker, Zoological Exploration, 16; Raven-Hart, Cape Good Hope, 149 –50. The original illustration: Bolling, Oost-Indiske Reise-Bog, 27. 16. Ten Rhyne, “Short Account,” 155. Ten Rhijne is sometimes spelled “ten Rhyne.” 17. Den Besten’s assertion that this was pidgin was based on language structure rather than vocabulary: Den Besten, Roots of Afrikaans, 113 –14. Khoekhoe pidgin: Den Besten, “Badly Harvested Field,” 271. The influence of Khoekhoe speakers on the dialect that became Afrikaans: Elphick, Kraal and Castle, 207–13. 18. Huigen, “Travellers to Monomotapa.” Dutch knowledge about Khoekhoen and the Nama in 1661 and 1662: Huigen, Weg naar Monomotapa, 47–50. 19. Claudius: Heniger, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede, 69 –76. The best review of what is known about him: Smith, Claudius Water-Colours. 20. Tachard, Voyage to Siam, 62 – 63. 21. The expedition: Heniger, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede, 72 –76; Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism, 23 –25, 32 –33, 63 – 67. Although he was skeptical, van

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Rheede also stipulated that the expedition look for evidence of people with eyes on their feet. Huigen, Weg naar Monomotapa. 22. The vernacular knowledge of artisans in early modern Europe: Smith, Body of the Artisan. Species identifications of Published images of Thoucocos and Gambri: Waterhouse, Van der Stel’s Journal, pls. 747, 63; Rookmaaker, Zoological Exploration, 22. Like the gambri, the pale-winged starling has an orange eye. Like the thoucocos, the juvenile pied barbet, lacks the adult’s diagnostic red forehead spot. I thank Kevin MacDonald and Shyamal Lakshminarayanan for commenting on the birds. Richard Dean helpfully informed me about the orange eye and the red dot. 23. For English translations of the captions: Waterhouse, Van der Stel’s Journal, 161– 68. Members of the expedition: Huigen, “Travellers to Monomotapa.” The use of Latin names for plants suggests that Claudius, the trained apothecary, was the author of the captions. 24. Smith, Claudius Water-Colours. 25. “Countless human relationships”: Cook, Matters of Exchange, 376. Even the Hortus Africanus, Claudius’s collaboration with van Rheede that was so keenly anticipated by Tachard, was never completed. Gunn and Codd, Botanical Exploration of South Africa, 33; Heniger, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede, 74 –76. A manuscript by Commelin now in Berlin is said to include the botany of Namaqualand. Might it be the remnants of the lost Hortus? Wijnands, Wilson, and van Hove, Commelin’s Monograph. Another case of lost writings and illustrations are those of Robert Jacob Gordon: Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism, 95 –96. A South Asian case of work “exiled from world of certified knowledge”: Raj, Relocating Modern Science, 27–59. 26. Valentyn and the journal: Huigen, “‘Woest Land,’” 62 – 63. The Trinity College copy: Waterhouse, Van der Stel’s Journal, vii–xx. The journal went to Trinity College in 1802 when the descendants of the statesman-botanist Fagel sold it. How it had come to the Fagel family is not clear, but Fagel had sent a collector to the Cape with Claudius and did receive plants from the Cape as early as 1688: Cook, Matters of Exchange, 321–24. An unpublished manuscript at Oxford University may be the original journal. Sadly, in contrast to the Trinity College manuscript, it does not retain watercolors or captions: Cook, Matters of Exchange, 456n72. A folio associated with Claudius, Icones Plantarum et Animalium, is now held at Museum Africa (formerly the Africana Museum) in Johannesburg: Macnae and Davidson, “Volume.” Another, the Codex Witsenii, is at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town: Wilson, van Hove-Exalto, and van Rijssen. Other, smaller folios are held at institutions in Europe. Rookmaaker, Zoological Exploration, 21–26. 27. Khoesan ethnozoology: Maingard and Lloyd, “Korana Names.” Edgar Leopold Layard, author of the first book on southern African ornithology, knew and annotated the Codex Witsenii, which came to Cape Town by 1829. But he did not mention it in Birds of South Africa (1867). By then, the scientific authorities for those species had been established and Claudius was not among them. His work had historical and antiquarian, but not zoological or botanical, value. Layard and Claudius’s work: Barnard, “Description of the Codex Witsenii.”

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notes to pages 78 – 84 Chapter 3. Ornithology Comes to Southern Africa, 1700 –1900

1. “Wholly omitted”: Ray and Willughby, Ornithology of Francis Willughby, [v]. The Ornithology began with the work of Ray’s deceased collaborator Francis Willughby but was written by Ray. Ray as the foundational figure in ornithology: Birkhead, Wisdom of Birds, 17–51. The scientific revolution as an innovation from earlier scholarly studies of nature: Findlen, Possessing Nature, 393 – 497. 2. Kolb: Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism, 33 –58. In the original German the first volume was on natural history and birds were the twelfth section: Kolb, Beschreibung des Vorgebürges, 173 –190. These subjects were put in the second volume of the English translation, which is much condensed from the German. Kolb citing Ray: ibid., 178, and Present State, 2:137. 3. The titmouse, which Kolb called “Meise”: Kolb, Beschreibung des Vorgebürges, 183, and Present State, 2:153. Rookmaaker comment on Kolb: Rookmaaker, Zoological Exploration, 29. 4. The bird plate is numbered “Tab VII” in both English and German, but the illustrations were reworked for the English volume. The birds are the same and the poses are similar. Figure 22 here is a reproduction from English version because its quality was higher than I could obtain from the German original. Kolb borrowed plate number 5 from Ray and Willughby, Ornithology of Willughby, Tab LII. Kolb on Bienen-fresser (bee-eater, referred to as “gnat-snapper” in the English version): Kolb, Beschreibung des Vorgebürges, 183, and Present State, 2:154 –55. Ray’s “longtailed Indian sparrow”: Ray and Willughby, Ornithology of Willughby, Tab XLV. Kolb’s English translation identifies the seventh bird as a sparrow: Sperlinge/sparrows: Kolb, Beschreibung des Vorgebürges, 186, and Present State, 2:159. Assistance with identification of species in the illustration: Robert Payne, pers. comm., May 5, 2012. 5. Rousseau in South Africa: Coetzee, White Writing, 24 –25. 6. A partial reproduction of Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d’Afrique, with interpretive essays: Rookmaaker et al., François Levaillant. The work as a whole has never been translated. The history of Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d’Afrique and its legacy for ornithology: Rookmaaker, Zoological Exploration, 177–271; Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism, 119 – 45. 7. An apartheid-era treatment critical of his accuracy and character: Forbes, “Le Vaillant’s Travels in South Africa.” In contrast, Pratt largely approves of his “relativist, egalitarian spirit”: Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 88 –90. A recent attempt to restore his reputation as an ornithologist: Glenn, “Levaillant’s Bird Books.” 8. “To what class”: Buffon quoted in Walters, Concise History of Ornithology, 56. Buffon and Linnaeus: Farber, Discovering Birds, 15 –26. 9. The development of classificatory systems: Farber, Discovering Birds, 15 –26; Walters, Concise History of Ornithology, 52 – 60; Chansigaud, All about Birds, 69 – 85. All Afrotropical species in the tenth and twelfth editions of Systema Naturae: Sclater, “Notes on the Early Sources,” 191–92.

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10. Classification in nineteenth-century zoology: Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid. Classification in early ornithology: Johnson, “Type-Specimens of Birds,” 175 –79. 11. Authoritative information on scientific names: Dickinson et al., Priority! 12. Elphick and Giliomee, Shaping of South African Society. 13. The number of vernacular-derived scientific names has changed since Layard’s time. For example, he did not use the genus Tockus, from Buffon’s “Le Toc,” which is valid today. Buffon, Histoire naturelle, 7:141– 44. Mogale: Cole, Glendinning, and Campbell, Setswana, 76. 14. Linnaeus on “barbarous words”: Philosophia Botanica 1751, 160, 187, cited in Váczy, “Hortus Indicus Malabaricus,” 29. Devaluation and discipline: Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous, 166 –72. Gonolek: The name was taken up by Buffon, who noted that its meaning was “feeder on insects” in a Senegalese language. Buffon, Histoire naturelle, 1:379 – 80. Linnaeus did not take up “gonolek,” and it is not used in scientific nomenclature. Linguistic imperialism: Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, 224. 15. Linnaeus and van Rheede: Váczy, “Hortus Indicus Malabaricus,” 29 –33. The 11 percent calculation and Chinese influences in general: Cook, “Linnaeus and Chinese Plants,” 128. Linnaeus, collecting and further interest in local knowledge: Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous, 166 –72. 16. Levaillant, quoted in Rookmaaker et al., François Levaillant, 225. 17. Pidgin at the Cape: see chapter 2 for discussion of ten Rhijne’s wordlist. My list of vernacular-derived names in Levaillant is admittedly provisional. I do not count onomatopoetic names that he seems to have devised himself. This number excludes the names given by other naturalists; an additional dozen or so had roots in vernacular languages of Madagascar, Senegal, or South Asia. (Despite its title, the book included many non-African birds.) Narina: Le Vaillant, Travels into the Interior, 1:382. 18. “The Hottentots give it a name”: Sparrman, Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, 1:154. 19. “He who extends his view”: Davies and Hull, “Burchell’s South African Bird Collection,” 319. Kori: Burchell, Travels in the Interior, 1:393. Layard attributes a further term, “korokoba,” for the crimson-breasted gonolek (Laniarius atrococcineus), to Burchell, but I have not found where he used it. Layard, Birds of South Africa, 163. Burchell as “the perspicacious naturalist”: Comaroff and Comaroff, Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness, 190. Otis kori was not a name used by Layard and thus is not included in appendix 2. He called the bird Eupodotis Cristata. Burchell’s species name has since been restored, and it is now Ardeotis kori. 20. Smith’s major publications: Smith, Report of the Expedition; Smith, Illustrations: Aves, 2. His position in the history of science in South Africa: Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 36 –39. Membership in the Linnaean Society: Kirby, Andrew Smith, 61. 21. The questionnaire: Kirby, Andrew Smith, 55 –56. Afrikaans and English names appear in a series of articles, “A Description of the Birds Inhabiting the

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notes to pages 90 – 95

South of Africa,” published in the South African Quarterly Journal, 1829 –31, republished in Smith, Miscellaneous Ornithological Papers. His diary and journal: Smith, Diary; Smith, Journal. 22. Skead’s unpublished research on Smith’s use of vernacular names: C. J. Skead, “Dr Andrew Smith’s Use of Colloquial Native Names in his Scientific Nomenclature,” in Special Collections, Niven Library. See also appendix 4. Smith’s biographer on consultations of vernacular knowledge and his correspondence with Darwin: Kirby, Andrew Smith, 264 – 65. Superstitious notions: ibid., 56. The 1837 catalog: “A Catalogue of the South African Museum, now exhibiting in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly” (London: Smith, Elder, 1837), held in Sir Andrew Smith’s Early Zoological Papers, Beinecke Library. On this publication: Ripley, “Volume of Collected Papers.” 23. “Bulk” of new names: McOuat, “Species, Rules and Meaning,” 481. Controversies over classification, including the Strickland Code: Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid, 38 – 68; McOuat, “Cataloguing Power.” The code itself: Strickland, “Series of Propositions.” 24. Smith, Report of the Expedition, 57, my emphasis. 25. Latour, Science in Action, 215 –327. 26. A similar case: Müller-Wille, “Walnuts at Hudson Bay.” The likelihood of mobiles actually mutating against the will of the scientists: Stöckelová, “Immutable Mobiles Derailed.” 27. Birders and species: Dunlap, In the Field, 27–28. The publication of new journals, the Zoological Journal of the Linnaean society in 1824, the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in 1830, and Ibis, published by the British Ornithological Union after 1859, provided new outlets for species descriptions: Johnson, “Ibis.” 28. “Type specimens”: Johnson, “Type-Specimens of Birds,” 177–78. 29. Smith, Report of the Expedition, 51. 30. Smith, Illustrations, 2; P. mahali is pl. 65. For reference to natives, see the description for pls. 7 and 64. I thank Christopher Geadrities for his generosity in making this translation from Latin. 31. Layard, Birds of South Africa, 187. 32. Mary Barber’s scientific contributions: Beinart, “Men, Science, Travel, and Nature,” 792 –98. David Arnot’s speculation in the diamond fields: Shillington, Colonization of the Southern Tswana, 52 –53. Anthropological research with San informants: Bank, Bushmen in a Victorian World. No less a figure than Charles Darwin engaged an African intellectual in correspondence about human emotion, although this exchange did not lead Darwin to make broad antiracial statements or prevent him from absorbing racial notions provided by white South African correspondents, including Mary Barber. Shanafelt, “How Charles Darwin.” Layard’s references to African and “colonists’” vernacular knowledge: Layard, Birds of South Africa, 127, 30 –31, 50. 33. The relation between taxonomy and description in early ornithology: Farber, Discovering Birds, 138 –39. Cycles of accumulation: Latour, Science in Action,

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211–32. The methods of systematic description eclipsing vernacular European knowledge: Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous, 171–72. 34. Collections of bird specimen in museums in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Colombia: Mearns and Mearns, Bird Collectors, 42 –51; Johnson, “Type-Specimens of Birds”; Lewis, Feathery Tribe, 114 – 44; Quintero Toro, Birds of Empire. Toward the end of the nineteenth century Lewis, especially, stressed the development of rigor in labeling and collection. Histories of specimens: Patchett, Foster, and Lorimer, “Biogeographies of a Hollow-Eyed Harrier”; Greer, “Untangling the Avian Imperial Archive,” also other articles in that special issue of Antennae on “Alternative Ornithologies”; Kohout, “From the Aviary.” 35. Four to ten skins an hour: Lewis, Feathery Tribe, 133. Arsenic: Farber, “Development of Taxidermy.” 36. Early South African collectors: Rookmaaker, Zoological Exploration, 58 –59, 145 – 47, 257–71, 159 – 62, 75 –76. Burchell: Davies and Hull, “Burchell’s South African Bird Collection”; Mearns and Mearns, Bird Collectors, 64. Smith: Smith, Report of the Expedition, 63; Stenhouse, “Birds Collected.” 37. Working with records of the expedition, ornithologists have reconstructed the history of his collecting: Summers, History of the South African Museum, 17–18; Oschadleus, “Type-Localities of Smith’s Specimens.” 38. John Milton, Smith’s batman: Kirby, Andrew Smith, 65, 266. Burchell’s collectors: Burchell, Travels in the Interior, 2:491. When I tried to find traces of African labor in specimen labels I was disappointed. A mention in Charles Belcher’s 1930 Birds of Nyasaland that a pale-billed hornbill (Tockus pallidirostris) “is dated in native writing ‘May 1902’” inspired the staff at the Natural History Museum in Tring to call up the specimen for me, but we could not see that the handwriting looked any different from other labels of the period. Tockus pallidirostris: Belcher, Birds of Nyasaland, 137. I thank Mark Adams for his assistance in checking this label. 39. “This operation”: Le Vaillant, Travels into the Interior, 1:394. “Seeing these birds”: Smith, Illustrations, 2, pl. 114. “They all complained of hunger”: Smith, Diary, 2:167. 40. “What I do”: George Latimer Bates, West African Material, box A, Miscellaneous notebooks, item 2, 76, in Manuscript and Photograph Collection of George Latimer Bates, Ornithology and Rothschild Library. Another conversation about collecting: Fuertes and Osgood, Artist and Naturalist in Ethiopia, 53. 41. Layard and Sharpe, Birds of South Africa, 233. 42. Specimen preparation as a family business: Cowles, Zulu Journal. An ornithologist’s interactions with vernacular birders as collectors in Europe: de Bont, “Poetry and Precision.” How Africa escaped the depredations of becoming a supplier of this one global commodity is curious. Hopkinson thought the feathers of African birds were not sufficiently beautiful for the international trade. The ostrich is an exception that proves the rule. Hopkinson, Birds of Gambia, 99.

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notes to pages 101 – 6 Chapter 4. Authority in Vernacular Traditions and Ornithology

1. Transform it beyond recognition: Latour, Science in Action, 108. “May have no interest”: ibid., 207. 2. “Collectively stabilised”: ibid., 42. Hard facts as a social enterprise: esp. ibid., 31– 62, 150 –53. 3. The history of hard facts in European science is beyond the purview of this book, but historians of early modern Europe have collectively described scientific authorship arising through a gradual and multicausal process: Chartier, “Foucault’s Chiasmus”; Rabinovitch, “Chameleons”; Safier, Measuring the New World. 4. Latour, Science in Action, 209. 5. Ibid., 232. 6. White, Speaking with Vampires, 33. Another form of oral discourse which has sometimes been seen as offering firm evidence about the past is the traditions told by griots. Despite the fact that griots do memorize lines, Jan Jansen’s study of their performances concludes that they were intended as interventions into contemporary social relationships and therefore that using them as historical evidence is “problematic and maybe even futile.” Jansen, Griot’s Craft, 9. 7. The “proof race” has an intriguing overlap with Horton’s description of science as an open system with a developed awareness of alternatives and norms governing the choices among ideas. His discussion of literate and oral information resembles the distinction between hard and soft facts, although not all written facts qualify as scientific facts. His conclusion, where he steps back from associating all Europeans with science, is also helpful: that he uses religion rather than environmental knowledge as an exemplar of “traditional thought” makes his observations about Africa less pertinent to my discussion. Horton, “African Traditional Thought,” 221–58. 8. I thank Arjun Guneratne for the point about the tacit knowledge of recreational birders. 9. On the broad movement toward segregation policies in twentieth-century empires: Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. European assessment of African science and technology in the late eighteenth century and after the Industrial Revolution: Adas, Machines as the Measure, 108 –98, quotation from 44. 10. The major studies of African birds published in Europe: Layard and Sharpe, Birds of South Africa; Shelley, Birds of Africa; Reichenow, Vögel Afrikas. Bannerman and his experience in Africa: Bannerman, Birds of Tropical West Africa; Brooke, “Historical Sketch of Afrotropical Ornithology,” 10. The “bird room” of the Natural History Museum moved to the Rothschild Library and Museum in Tring in 1971. For comparison, consider the imperial character of US ornithology in South America: Quintero Toro, Birds of Empire. 11. Nigerian bird guide: Fairbairn, Some Common Birds. The museum in Malawi: Young (W. P.) Correspondence (Df 220/65), Bird Section, Natural History Museum. Histories of ornithology in Africa: Haagner, “Short Account of Ornithology”; Sclater, “Notes on the Early Sources”; Britton, “Ornithological Progress”;

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Morel, “Fifty Years of Ornithology”; Brooke, “Historical Sketch of Afrotropical Ornithology”; Siegfried, Brooke, and Armstrong, “Trends in the Literature”; Craig, “Stuffed Birds on Trees.” The South African Ornithologists’ Union: Ashton, “Southern African Ornithological Society”; Carruthers, “‘Beautiful and Useful Allies,’” 98 –101. Scientific participation in South Asia: Prakash, Another Reason; Ali, Fall of a Sparrow; Lewis, Inventing Global Ecology. 12. Roberts, “Remarks on Breeding-Habits,” 10. Roberts and Butler used the outdated species names V. principalis and E. astrilda. In East Africa, the colonial administrator and ornithologist Frederick Jackson had come to the same conclusion perhaps twelve years earlier, when his assistant Baraka told him of the parasitism of the pin-tailed widowbird in the waxbill’s nest. However, rather than reporting common local knowledge, Baraka came to this conclusion after “several weeks of patient watching.” Jackson did not publish this account until 1938: Jackson, Birds of Kenya, 1527. I thank Robert Payne for this reference. Baraka is commemorated in a subspecies name, Bradypterus mariae barakae. 13. Butler, “Is the Pintailed Whydah Parasitic?,” 121–22. 14. Roberts, “Egg-Collecting,” 35. By inserting “(? Bantu)” after “Negro” in the quotation from Butler, Roberts was asserting his superior knowledge about black people of South Africa. 15. Reminiscences of James P. Chapin: recorded on tape by E. T. Gilliard at the American Museum of Natural History, March–May 1960, 6 (reel 4a), in James P. Chapin, Biographical Material, AMNH. On Chapin’s influential booklet demonstrating how to prepare a bird skin for study: see chap. 7. 16. Yokana Kiwanuka: Sclater, “General Meeting”; van Someren, “Pioneers of Afrotropical Ornithology”; Mearns and Mearns, Bird Collectors, 59. 17. Vincent, “Birds of Northern Portuguese East Africa,” part I, 651. Other references to Ali, Lynes, and Vincent: Vincent, Web of Experience, 44; Lynes and Sclater, “Contribution to Ornithology,” 14. 18. Vernay-Lang Expedition: Austin Roberts Report for April 1940, in Monthly Reports, Mammals (Incl. Higher Vertebrates), Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. South African Museum: Summers, History of the South African Museum, 132, 229 –30. South African Museum records include Ali Safi’s name in employee lists, but I was unable to find any accounts of his work, character, or life. I learned of his Malawian origins and his legal trouble from Henry Mitchell, pers. comm., Apr. 3, 2015. I thank him for sharing his unpublished paper, which establishes Safi’s history, “Prudent struggle: Independent Malawian Migration to South Africa, c. 1937–1961.” 19. Smithers, “Recollections of Great Naturalists,” 9. 20. Social worlds: Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology”; Clarke and Star, “Social Worlds Framework.” 21. “Both plastic enough”: Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology,” 393. Boundary objects in historical studies: Kjaergaard, “Fossil Trade”; Rieppel, “Dinosaurs”; Star, “This Is Not a Boundary Object.” “Despite the differences”: Galison, Image and Logic, 803. 22. Indian fossil collectors: Nair, “‘Eyes and No Eyes,’” 367.

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notes to pages 112 –21

23. Doctors as professionals in the British Empire and segregationist South Africa: Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora; Iliffe, East African Doctors; Digby, “Early Black Doctors in South Africa.” Chapter 5. The Boundaries of Birding 1. The discussions of Bates and Moreau in this chapter are condensed from Jacobs, “Intimate Politics of Ornithology.”. 2. Cultures of ornithology and ornithological biography: Barrow, Passion for Birds; Rhodes, Audubon; Lewis, Feathery Tribe. 3. Berg, To Africa with the Migratory Birds, 94 –95, 107. Histories of understandings of bird migration: Wilson, “Directing the Flow”; Quintero Toro, Birds of Empire; Whitney, “Knot in Common”; Greer, “Geopolitics and the Avian Imperial Archive”; Jacobs, “Africa, Europe.” 4. Ruggles-Brise, Notes on Birds of Dar Es Salaam, 89. 5. Hughes, Whiteness in Zimbabwe. Also: Carruthers, Kruger National Park; Beinart and McGregor, Social History. In 1935 Fritz Baumgarten, an author of German children’s books, imbued this notion with charm and whimsy by portraying Palearctic chicks in a “forest school” marveling at the map of Africa, where they would soon be traveling. Baumgarten, Waldschule. 6. A few birding-as-adventure stories: Percival, Game Ranger’s Note Book; Lowe, Trail That Is Always New; Pitman, Game Warden Takes Stock; Lynn-Allen, Shot-Gun and Sunlight. 7. Coudenhove, My African Neighbors, 130 – 48. In contrast, Africans were described as inhumane to birds and animals: ibid., 36 –38. Coudenhove’s biography: Jacobs, African History through Sources, 189 –91. 8. Alston, Old Cape Homestead, 142. 9. “To place things in the universe”: ibid., 136. Ornithologist versus bird lover: ibid., 155, 97. 10. “One-fourth civilized” and Pokoni: Alston, Wanderings of a Bird-Lover, 114, 220. 11. Alston, Sunbirds and Jacarandas, 165. 12. The visuality of birdwatching: Law and Lynch, “Lists, Field Guides.” 13. Vernacular knowledge and science in British imperial Africa: Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory. Moreau’s “wonderful work”: N. B. Kinnear to Benson, Feb. 27, 1937, Constantine Walter Benson Correspondence, 1933 –1939 (Df 230/34/13), Bird Section, Natural History Museum. Bates’s skillful assistants: Sclater and Moreau, “Taxonomic and Field Notes, I,” 490. “We supplemented each other”: Brown, Eagles, 51. 14. See fig. 16, in chapter 1, above, of the Bulu archer. It is a remarkable illustration, showing Bates’s interest in ethnographic information and African expertise. 15. Bates, Birds of West Africa, 75. This book was an important source for my own research into vernacular birding.

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16. Ibid., 409, my emphasis. Compare this mode of inclusion with that of Alfred Russel Wallace in Camerini, “Wallace in the Field,” 61– 62. 17. Latimer and Bates family histories: Knox County, Illinois, Genealogy and History, “George Griswald Latimer Family.” Knox College: Muelder, Fighters for Freedom. Waning of radical abolitionist influence: Matthew Norman, pers. comm., Dec. 21, 2004. 18. Mary Bates Sargent, “George Griswold Latimer Bates,” 1–3, in Mary Bates Sargent Collection, Knox College Archives. 19. The class of 1885: Norman, pers. comm. All quotations in this paragraph: Sargent, “George Griswold Latimer Bates,” 4. 20. Bates, Handbook of Bulu. He acknowledges on the title page, “vocabulary taken largely from the ms. of Silas Johnson, M.D.” The book was reissued in an expanded, coauthored edition: George Latimer Bates and Silas F. Johnson, Handbook of Bulu. “Real business of his life”: Sargent, “George Griswold Latimer Bates,” 5. 21. “Oppressive loneliness”: West African Material, box A, Miscellaneous notebooks item 5, “New bird notes,” 268 –71, in Manuscript and Photograph Collection of George Latimer Bates, Ornithology and Rothschild Library (hereafter cited as Bates Collection). 22. “I rely on native testimony”: loose paper headed “18 March 1903,” in West African Material, box A, Miscellaneous notebooks item 4A. “I have no doubt he was right”: West African Material, box A, Miscellaneous notebooks item 5, 27. “His story is confirmed”: West African Material, box B, Numbered bird notebooks item 15, Notebook X, 126. Asoko: West African Material, box A, Miscellaneous notebooks item 3, 40. All held in Bates Collection. 23. 1904 –11: Sargent, “George Griswold Latimer Bates,” 6. Knox College awarded him an honorary doctorate: N. B. K. [N. B. Kinnear], “Obituary: Bates,” 345. Returned to ornithology after a pause: G. L. Bates to J. P Chapin, July 18, 1923, in Historic Correspondence, George L. Bates, AMNH. 24. “The job of boy”: 24. “The greatest luxury”: 41. Both in West African Material, box E, Travel diaries item 40, in Bates Collection. 25. “I began to try”: 84. “That things were unpleasant”: 78. Both ibid. He delayed writing the journal entry for a few days and began the account with this reflection. 26. The originals of his travel diaries: West Africa Travel Diaries, Bates Collection. A typed copy the 1931 trip diary sent by Bates to his sister, Mary, is also available in the Knox College Archives. The documents appear to be identical. I cite the typed version. “A correspondence with Mr. Reis”: G. L. Bates, “A Diary of a Trip through West Africa at the Border of the Desert of Sahara in 1931,” 2, Mary Bates Sargent Collection, Knox College Archives. 27. Bates, “1931 Diary,” 2 –3. 28. Names: West African Material, box D, Numbered bird notebooks item 30, Notebook XXV, 260, in Bates Collection. Freedom: Bates, “1931 Diary,” 50. 29. Violent behavior: ibid., 43. “Very brisk voice” and “continually angry and disgusted”: ibid., 45. “Wish I could find”: West African Material, box D, Numbered bird notebooks item 34, Notebook XXIX, 10 in Bates Collection.

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notes to pages 127– 35

30. “I wish I knew more”: Bates, “1931 Diary,” 12. 31. “I had a cook”: ibid., 9. 32. Bates died in 1940 before the Arabian project was completed. Richard Meinertzhagen acquired his manuscript and revised it for publication under his own name as Birds of Arabia. Meinertzhagen’s dependence on Bates’s work and failure to credit him in the publication provoked criticism from ornithologists: Cocker, Richard Meinertzhagen, 214 –15, 28 –29; Cowles, “Bates: Unpublished ‘Birds of Arabia’”; Seabrook, “Ruffled Feathers.” “Could rarely be induced to speak”: Bannerman, “Obituary: Bates,” 347. Social life in London: Sargent, “George Griswold Latimer Bates,” 3, 10. Coauthoring with neighbor boy: Freeman and Bates, “Notes on Breeding Habits.” 33. Ornithology in the 1920 and 1930s: Haffer, “‘Stresemannsche Revolution’”; Johnson, “Ibis.” “First to make serious life-history studies”: Lack, “Obituary: Moreau,” 559; Ricklefs, “Lack, Skutch, and Moreau.” 34. Sclater and Moreau, “Taxonomic and Field Notes, I,” 490. To “lime” a bird is to catch it with a sticky substance. Sclater was a systematist in London who collaborated in the classification of Moreau’s specimens. 35. Moreau’s memoir: Moreau, untitled autobiographical sketch, written in 1966 and published in Ibis in 1970. Also his son’s autobiography: David Moreau, More Wrestling. 36. Friendship with a much older man: Lack, “Obituary: Moreau,” 557. Rudiments: Reginald Moreau, untitled autobiographical sketch, 552. Although he did not include mention of it in his autobiographical sketch, his experiences in Egypt inspired Moreau to write fiction. A collection of short stories was published in 1930 under a pseudonym: E. R. Morrough [Reginald E. Moreau], Temple Servant. 37. Reginald Moreau, untitled autobiographical sketch, quotations in this paragraph from 553. 38. Sclater and Moreau, “Taxonomic and Field Notes, I,” 514. 39. “The pronoun ‘we’”: ibid., 492. “Whistle”: Sclater and Moreau, “Taxonomic and Field Notes, III,” 15. A publication coauthored with his wife: Reginald Moreau and Winifred Moreau, “Incubation and Fledging Periods.” 40. David Moreau, More Wrestling, 1–20. 41. Moreau, “Bird-Names in Coastal North-Eastern Tanganyika”; Moreau, “Bird-Nomenclature in East Africa. 42. “Any man as an equal”: Monk, “Obituary: Moreau,” 560. Bird lore: Reginald Moreau, “Bird-Names in Coastal North-Eastern Tanganyika”; R. E. Moreau, “Bird-Nomenclature in East Africa.” Ethnographic research: R. E. Moreau, “The Joking Relationship (Utani),” “Joking Relationships in Tanganyika.” “Ready to discuss the matter” and “discuss my data”: ibid., 386. 43. My native informant: Sclater and Moreau, “Taxonomic and Field Notes, V,” 425. “Can learn little”: Sclater and Moreau, “Taxonomic and Field Notes, I,” 490. “Before long”: R. E. Moreau, untitled autobiographical sketch, 554. 44. The Usambaras: Conte, Highland Sanctuary. The problem of lacking a field guide: Reginald Moreau, untitled autobiographical sketch, 554. “Lovely little

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bustard?”: Notebook beginning 18. 3. 29, entry for June 5, 1929, Reginald Ernest Moreau Collection, Alexander Library (hereafter cited as Moreau Collection). 45. Native naturalist: Loveridge, Many Happy Days, 113. More on Salimu: Loveridge, Tomorrow’s a Holiday, dedication in unpaginated front matter, 53 –55, 131–33, 56, 75, 212 –14. Loveridge’s character and life: Williams, “Arthur Loveridge.” Loveridge’s work with Jali Makawa: see chapter 6, below. 46. “Acute, responsible and pertinacious”: R. E. Moreau, untitled autobiographical sketch, 554. Moreau’s son’s memory of Salimu: David Moreau, More Wrestling, 16. “‘Whee hoo’ ad lib”: Notebook beginning 18. 3. 29, entry for Nov. 2, 1930, Moreau Collection. 47. Phyllastrephus: R. E. Moreau and Winifred Moreau, “Biological and Other Notes,” 323. 48. Africa’s greatest biologist: Lack, “Obituary: Moreau,” 560. “Fortunately, my wife”: R. E. Moreau, untitled autobiographical sketch, 554. “Could sit all day”: Brooke, “Obituary: Moreau,” 39. “Routine observations”: R. E. Moreau, “Parental Care,” 146. 49. List of assistants: R. E. Moreau, “Breeding of a Paradise Flycatcher,” 256. Others are infrequently named in the notebooks. 50. Assistants’ field notebooks: Moreau Collection. Because I do not read Swahili, I hired Anton Espira, a native speaker from Kenya who holds a DPhil in ecology, to read the notebooks for me. Moreau on helpfulness of his assistants’ voluntary observations: R. E. Moreau, “Breeding of a Paradise Flycatcher,” 256. The sixty thousand events: R. E. Moreau, “Numerical Data.” Eleven hundred hours: R. E. Moreau, “Breeding Biology.” 51. Moreau’s opinion of Africa: July 15, 1945, September 17, 1946, in Historic Correspondence, R. E. Moreau (1945 –1946), AMNH. “Kindness, enthusiasm”: Lack, “Obituary: Moreau,” 558. “Host of friends”: Monk, “Obituary: Moreau,” 560. “Giving the kind of help”: Thomson, “Obituary: Moreau,” 564. 52. History of his Oxfordshire village: R. E. Moreau, Departed Village. The roof of the bus: David Moreau, More Wrestling, 17. 53. Cazadores: items 103 – 4, “Notes on the birds on the Levante and the Pitysae in Autumn,” Moreau Collection. This was published in Spanish: R. E. Moreau and Winifred Moreau, “Notas Otoñales sobre Aves.” 54. His fiery character comes through in his archived correspondence: Leslie Brown Collection, Alexander Library. 55. Brown’s first memoir: Brown, Birds and I. He had already published fiction, a dramatic story with Scottish and avian characters. Brown, Outlaw of the Air. “Bwana’s eyes”: Brown, Encounters with Nature, 47. Njeru Kicho’s employment: Brown, Eagles, 36 –39. “Thanks due”: Brown, “Large Birds of Prey,” 579. In early publications, Brown spelled Njeru’s surname as “Gicho.” I follow his spelling from 1979. 56. Brown, “Large Birds of Prey,” 579. Also Brown, “Supplementary Notes,” 43 – 45. 57. Brown, Eagles, 51. A similar statement from South Africa about the superior observational skills of illiterate Africans: Attwell, “Short Notes,” 179.

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notes to pages 142 – 50

58. “Njeru’s word”: Brown, Eagles, 43. The book is peppered with similar statements: 193, 223, 237. “Njeru and I”: ibid., 112. Twenty-six breeding pairs: ibid., 39. 59. Nearest thing to an African ornithologist: ibid., 36. Details about Kicho: ibid., 49. 60. “He was paid” and “None of his helpers”: ibid., 50. “Thereafter I never rejected”: ibid., 227. 61. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 4; Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 5. 62. Brown, Mystery of the Flamingos, 72. 63. “Not long ago”: ibid., 55. Haldane was a British communist and noted geneticist who broke with Soviet scientists over the work of Lysenko. In 1957 he moved to India, where he headed the government Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Orissa. Haldane took Indian citizenship. “Wholeheartedly”: Brown, Encounters with Nature, 54. 64. Faithful henchman: Brown, Mystery of the Flamingos, 96, 25. “His way of thinking”: Brown, Eagles, 37. Brown’s own fitness: Brown, Mystery of the Flamingos, 54 –55. “If a cup was given”: ibid., 99. 65. “Ordinarily”: Brown, Eagles, 35 –36. Here Brown is describing his relationship with Kicho’s predecessor, who was an expert in game but not as deeply interested in birds. An unpublished short story by Brown, “Life of Alexander Magunki,” was about a masculine hybrid Scottish-Kenyan in a made-up world of explorers and scientists: Leslie Brown Collection, Alexander Library. 66. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power. 67. Intimate knowledge: Raffles, “Intimate Knowledge,” 326. 68. Camilo Quintero Toro argues for an analogous asymmetry in USColombian ornithological relationships. The distinction was national, not racial, but the American ornithologist Frank Chapman assumed that European and North American ornithology had a higher claim to status than South American ornithology: Quintero Toro, Birds of Empire, 72 – 85. Chapter 6. The Honor of Collecting 1. The photograph, taken in Ethiopia during World War II, is of a northern red-billed hornbill (Tockus erythrorhynchus). The bare-chested man in the background is unidentified. He appears to hold a chick from the nest. Benson, “Notes on the Birds,” pl. 6A between pp. 504 and 505. 2. “We hear much”: Irwin, “Obituary: Makawa,” 191. “Mr Jali Makawa”: Dowsett, “Jali Makawa,” 39. Benson and Traylor claiming Makawa could whistle up birds: North, “Voices of African Birds,” 389; Nelson, “Century of Birds,” 77. Pogoniulus makawai is the only species named for him; the others are subspecies (I counted four on avibase.bsc-eoc.org). 3. “[He was] perhaps the best”: Brooke, “Obituary: Benson,” 254 –55. Brooke was an accomplished although not academically trained ornithologist in Southern

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Rhodesia and South Africa. He ended his career as a staff member at the FitzPatrick Institute at the University of Cape Town. The statement about a crate of beer attributed to Richard Brooke is quoted in Irwin, “Obituary: Makawa,” 192. 4. Lomwe hunting culture: Morris, Power of Animals, 10, 65. 5. Makawa’s family history: Benson, “Further Notes,” 263; Index card “Jali Makawa,” James P. Chapin, Index Card Collection, AMNH. “Jali says he remembers”: Nyasaland Bird Notes, 1939 –1952, vol. 2, 5, in Correspondence File N, C. W. and F. M. Benson, Closed Correspondence, University Museum (hereafter cited as Benson Correspondence). The Lomwe, Nguru, and Makua migration to Nyasaland: Vail and White, “Tribalism in Malawi,” 167; Newitt, History of Mozambique, 414 –15. 6. “It was Jali who asked Con”: interview with Michael Stuart Irwin conducted by Glen Ncube, Apr. 16, 2007. Image of Benson in the field: R. J. Benson Archive. 7. “The evening before”: Benson, “Accomplished Collector,” 30. 8. Benson sent Chapin clippings on the “Crested Crowing Cobra” from the Nyasaland Times in 1946. They exchanged several letters on the subject. Chapin eventually produced a popular piece on the creature for the Sunday Mirror, an American newspaper supplement: Chapin, “Trapping the Crowing Cobra,” with illustration by Eernö Slovak. On the songo: Shircore, “Crowing Crested Cobra”; Loveridge, I Drank the Zambezi, 269 –72. In other parts of Africa, too, this call is thought to come from a snake or lizard. Cameroon: Bates, Birds of West Africa, 69 –71. Zanzibar and Pemba: Pakenham, “Field Notes on the Birds of Zanzibar and Pemba,” 176. Malawi: Wood, “Another Note,” 106. South Africa: Astley Maberly, “Notes on Sarothrura elegans,” 40. 9. C. W. Benson to J. C. Chapin, May 24, 1947, in C. W. Benson, Historic Correspondence, AMNH. The drawing is filed in Chapin’s species card file, under “Sarothrura elegans.” 10. Chapin calls the bird a “rail,” but the common English name is buff-spotted flufftail. Chapin to Benson, Sept. 1, 1947, in James P. Chapin, Index Card Collection, AMNH. 11. “He is an excellent example”: Benson, “Further Notes,” 263. Makawa’s literacy: Irwin, “Obituary: Benson,” 421. Mbalami wa India: Dowsett, Aspinwall, and Dowsett-Lemaire, Birds of Zambia, 53. 12. Traylor, “African Expedition Journal,” III:7, in Melvin A. Traylor, Jr., Archived papers, Field Museum. The “Bible” Makawa and Traylor used was the 1957 revised edition of Austin Roberts’s field guide. 13. Thanks to a thirteen-year-old: Benson, “Birds of the Comoro Islands,” 9. “Unterritorial ornithologist”: Keith, “In Memoriam: Benson,” 162. 14. “Never easy going”: Irwin, “Obituary: Benson,” 422. 15. Benson, “Further Notes,” 263. 16. “My Dear Chapin”: Benson to Chapin, Oct. 17, 1954, in James P. Chapin, Index Card Collection. “Turdus fischeri now has the scientific name of Zoothera

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notes to pages 157– 63

guttata. Benson’s boy”: J. M. Winterbottom to N. P. Kinnear, Oct. 9, 1937, in Winterbottom ( John Miall) Correspondence, 1929 –1949, DF230/65, Bird Section, Natural History Museum. 17. Benson, Nyasaland Bird Notes, 1939 –1952, vol. 3, 38, in Correspondence File N, Benson Correspondence. 18. Ethiopia: Benson, “Accomplished Collector,” 30. Makawa learning Swahili: interview with Bob Stjernstedt, Livingston, Zambia, May 5, 2006. Benson’s shooting in Ethiopia: Times obituary, reproduced in Benson, Type Specimens of Bird Skins, xi. “Admirable discrimination”: Benson, “Notes on the Birds,” 368. Hirundo megaensis: Benson, “Additional Notes.” 19. Artisornis moreaui: until 2001, Makawa’s find was the only evidence of the long-billed tailorbird in Mozambique. It was known to live in the forest edge in the Usambaras, but Makawa reported finding it in the canopy. Subsequently, Benson questioned the accuracy of that observation, but researchers later confirmed that Makawa was correct: Ryan and Spottiswoode, “Long-Billed Tailorbirds,” 142. 20. Pritchett, Friends for Life, 75 –79. “Individuals are inseparable”: ibid., 78. 21. “An amiable gentle person”: Jacobson-Widding, Chapungu, 364; “female visitors”: ibid., 362. “Humiliated?”: ibid., 365. 22. Wages in Nyasaland in 1946: Frankema and van Waijenburg, “Structural Impediments to African Growth?” online appendix. Year 1946 earnings: Benson to Assistant Keeper of Bird Room, Natural History Museum, Oct. 28, 1946, in Constantine Walter Benson Correspondence, 1940 –1949 (Df 230/34/14), Bird Section, Natural History Museum. Duiker standing up in front of speeding bullet: Irwin, “Obituary: Makawa,” 192. 23. Benson’s marriage: Benson, “Notes from Nyasaland,” 446. They were married in Pretoria in 1943. “Obituary C. W. Benson, OBE, MA (Cantab).” Makawa’s marital status in 1961: “African Expedition Journal,” III: 18, in Melvin A. Traylor, Jr., Archived papers, Field Museum. 24. An unusually forthright memorial by a co-worker at the Harvard Museum emphasized Loveridge’s difficult disposition and interpreted his valorization of a convivial relationship with Salimu Asmani as an artifact of colonial power relations: Williams, “Arthur Loveridge.” 25. “I had asked Benson”: Loveridge, I Drank the Zambezi, 75. 26. Famine in 1948: Megan Vaughan, Story of an African Famine. 27. Makawa’s performance on this trip: Loveridge, I Drank the Zambezi, 114 –15. 28. Chasing the buzzard: ibid., 116. 29. “A most likable fellow”: ibid., 115. Loveridge was wrong about Makawa’s native language. His natal community would have spoken the Lomwe/Makua language of Mozambique. “Individuals wear”: Pritchett, Friends for Life, 78. 30. I thank Marja Hinfelaar for bringing the radio broadcast to my attention: Marja Hinefelaar, pers. comm., Nov. 6, 2008. Apparently there were other installments that have not come to light.

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31. Benson’s book: Benson, Check List. Benson’s transfer to Northern Rhodesia: Departmental Annual Report, 1952, SEC 6/227, Zambia Archives. Anxious to exhibit his prowess: Benson to Chapin, Jan. 20, 1953, in Historic Correspondence, C. W. Benson, AMNH. 32. Transfer to Chilanga: Department of Game and Tsetse Control. Aves: General and Collective, 1955 –1961, SEC 6/603, Zambia Archives. Makawa’s employment in the Department of Game and Tsetse Control: African Staff Returns, 1960 –1961, SEC 6/600, Zambia Archives. Trip to Comoros: Benson, “Birds of the Comoro Islands,” 8. Benson praising Makawa at Pan-African Ornithological Congress: North, “Voices of African Birds,” 389. 33. Interview with John Colebrook-Robjent, Choma, Zambia, May 16, 2006. 34. Traylor’s life story: Nelson, “Century of Birds.” Millionaire American: Traylor “African Expedition Journal,” IV:30 –31, in Melvin A. Traylor, Jr., Archived papers, Field Museum. 35. The diary was eventually typed as a hundred-page manuscript in four parts. Payment: ibid., IV:2 –3. 36. Makawa introduced: ibid., I:2. “Spindly-legged”: ibid., I:11. 37. Tree rat: ibid., IV:28. Leopard: ibid., II:6. 38. Ibid., III:12. 39. “All enthusiastic”: ibid., II:3 – 4. “Out popped a snipe”: ibid., II:7. “He reached into his bag”: ibid., IV:34. Naming the lark after Makawa: ibid., IV:5. 40. “He said they had him in the hospital”: ibid., IV:25. “Jali was back on his feet”: ibid., IV:33. 41. “Radio”: ibid.: II:10. “Mighty worker”: ibid., II:8, IV:24. “Since I got ‘misplaced’”: ibid., IV:19. 42. “Characteristically kind” and “Thomas didn’t show up”: ibid., IV:27. 43. “It seems that Jali’s nephew”: ibid., II:9. “I took the news to Jali”: ibid., II:13. His first wife’s and mother’s deaths: ibid., III:18. 44. “Put Jali on the train”: ibid., IV:38. “A very fine compliment”: ibid., IV:44. 45. Interview with Michael Stuart Irwin conducted by Glen Ncube, Apr. 16, 2007. I thank Claire Spottiswoode for providing the scientific names. 46. Ibid. This story is also recounted in Irwin, “Obituary: Makawa,” 191. 47. “That collector of mine”: Benson to C. R. S. Pitman, Sept. 15, 1964, in C. R. S. Pitman Correspondence, Benson Correspondence. 48. Makawa’s pension: R. J. Dowsett to Makawa, May 22, 1971, and Makawa to Dowsett, June 11, 1972, in Ornithology Department (NH/3/1), Livingstone Museum. 49. Memories of Makawa at the Livingstone Museum: interview with Vincent Katanekwa, Clare Matake, and Friday Mufuzi, Livingstone, Zambia, Oct. 19, 2011. The recording of the 1972 interview: I thank Robert Payne for sharing the tape. I thank Rachel Jacobs for connecting me with Mr. Yahya Collector of Katate, Zambia, who painstakingly confirmed the languages spoken and provided a translation.

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50. Correspondence about the Madagascar trips: Dowsett, R. J. et al., Benson Correspondence. “May well prove vital”: Benson to C. Sibley, Oct. 10, 1972, in Ornithology Department (NH 4/1), Livingstone Museum. Sibley on Makawa and Madagascar: Sibley to Benson, Sept. 23, 1972, in Correspondence File M, Benson Correspondence. 51. Egg collecting: Barrow, Passion for Birds, 137– 40. Allegations of Makawa overcollecting: D. A. Turner to K. Curry-Lindahl, Dec. 27, 1972, in Correspondence File E, Benson Correspondence. Roland Clement retired to New Haven and was a lively nonagenarian participant in the Agrarian Studies Seminar at Yale University in the 2000s. In 2005, when I was a fellow in the seminar, I discussed his role in this affair with him, and he said he mostly served as a conduit for Turner’s concerns. 52. Retirement arrangements: Dowsett to Benson, Feb. 1. 1977, in Dowsett, R. J. et al., Correspondence Files D, Benson Correspondence. Journal article about Makawa: Dowsett, “Jali Makawa.” Moving to Bruce-Miller’s farm in May 1977: Diary, Bruce-Miller Family Papers. 53. Photographs of Makawa in Benson’s office: Benson to Dowsett, Mar. 20, 1973, in Dowsett, R. J. et al., Correspondence Files D, Benson Correspondence. 54. “There won’t be any time”: Benson to Dowsett, Aug. 19, 1976, in Dowsett, R. J. et al., Correspondence Files D, Benson Correspondence. This edition of the book was Benson and Benson, Birds of Malawi. 55. Makawa’s letters are in two folders: “Dowsett 19. 3. 1971 to 19. 7. 1975” and “Dowsett 5. 5. 1975 to 5. 12. 1977,” in Correspondence Files D, Dowsett, R. J. et al., Benson Correspondence. “Hello Hello Hello”: Makawa to Benson, Aug. 3, 1974. 56. Makawa to Benson, May 18, 1976. 57. “I have decided”: Makawa to Benson, July 30, 1977. Benson and Makawa’s last meeting: “Obituary C. W. Benson, OBE, MA (Cantab),” 15. 58. In addition to the Colebrook-Robjent interview cited above, these were the interviews, all Choma, Zambia: Muckleneuk Farm employees, May 15, 2006; Ian Bruce-Miller, May 15, 2006; Emma Bruce-Miller, May 21, 2006; and Lazero Hamusikili, May 16, 2006. I am grateful to Claire Spottiswoode for providing me with an introduction to the Bruce-Millers. A postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge University, Claire developed an appreciation for and interest in Makawa through her research on Central African ornithology. 59. General memories of Makawa: interview with Muckleneuk Farm employees, May 15, 2006. 60. Emma Bruce-Miller’s memories: Emma Bruce-Miller, pers. comm., May 21, 2006. Ian Bruce-Miller’s memories: interview with Ian Bruce-Miller, May 15, 2006. Record of Makawa in farm’s daily life: Diary, Bruce-Miller Family Papers. My thanks to Emma Bruce-Miller for copying relevant portions of the diary. 61. My interview with Colebrook-Robjent focused on my questions about Makawa. John Colebrook-Robjent died in 2008. More on his life: Dee, Running Sky, 137–56.

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62. Makawa in the Choma hospital in 1982 and 1990: [Untitled notice about hospitalization of Jali Makawa]. Witchcraft accusation and leaving the farm: Diary, Bruce-Miller Family Papers. I tried, but was not able, to learn about the last years of his life with his family. 63. “I can always remember”: Irwin, “Obituary: Makawa,” 191. The status of Pogoniulus: Collar and Fishpool, “What Is Pogoniulus Makawai?” Makawa’s 1973 attempt to find P. makawai was in collaboration with Robert Dowsett: Dowsett, Aspinall, and Dowsett-Lemaire, Birds of Zambia, 285. 64. Scott, Weapons of the Weak. A study of an African work culture: Atkins, Moon Is Dead! Chapter 7. The Respectability of Museum Work 1. Sithole’s ethnic background: A. Roberts to Chief Native Commissioner, South West Africa, 1937 in Reports: Fieldwork or Study Tours, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. Kholwa: Etherington, Preachers, Peasants and Politics; Marks, Ambiguities of Dependence; La Hausse, Restless Identities; Mokoena, Magema Fuze. 2. Lady Selborne: Mojapelo, Corner People. Township life in 1930s Pretoria: Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue, 69 –74. Unlike Sithole, Mphahlele continued beyond primary school and became a writer for Drum magazine. 3. Employment records of the Transvaal Museum: Native Leave Register, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. Much of this reconstruction of Sithole’s life is based on interviews. interviews with Saul Sithole by Bob Brain and Tamar Cassidy, paraphrased notes only: Sithole, Miscellaneous, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. His daughter’s memories: interview with Zondi Sithole Zitha and Napoleon Zitha, Mamelodi, South Africa, Feb. 17, 2006. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from Zondi Sithole are from this interview. 4. Vernay and the Vernay-Lang Kalahari Expedition: Brain, Austin Roberts, 87–100; Ornithological Results, Vernay-Lang Kalahari Expedition, 1930, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum; FitzSimons and Brain, “History of the Transvaal Museum.” The AMNH Congo Expedition: Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections; Schildkrout and Keim, Scramble for Art; Slack, “American Museum Congo Expedition.” 5. The Transvaal Museum: Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 168; FitzSimons and Brain, “History of the Transvaal Museum”; Brain, “Natural History.” 6. “Lang is training”: A. Roberts to Museum Director C. J. Swierstra, Mar. 30, 1930, in Vernay-Lang Kalahari Expedition, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. Safi, Lyne, and Vincent: Vincent, Web of Experience, 44. Safi, Lyne, and Vincent were not officially expedition members, but they joined it when it coincided with their own Kalahari trip. “This native” and “30,000” bird skins: Herbert Lang, “Report on the Vernay-Lang Kalahari Expedition 1929 –1930,” in Ornithological Results, VernayLang Kalahari Expedition, 1930, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. 7. Chapin, Preparation of Birds. By the late twentieth century, the use of arsenic as recommended by Chapin fell out of favor. In the interview with Tamar Cassidy,

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Pretoria, South Africa, Oct. 20, 2011, Sithole described heavy use of arsenic, sprinkled or dabbed on a specimen skin. 8. Interview with Cassidy. 9. Interview with Matthews Mathabathe, Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 17, 2006. 10. “It is well known”: Roberts, “Remarks on the Breeding-Habits,” 10. Vernacular names: Roberts, Birds of South Africa, xv. Roberts’s life: Brain, Austin Roberts. 11. Undated lecture (probably delivered July 7, 1939), in “Ornithology in South Africa,” Publications box 2, Austin Roberts Papers, Publications, Ornithology Department, Ditsong Museum. 12. Inadequate help on 1908 Borer Expedition in Mozambique: expedition diary in Brain, Austin Roberts, 25 –54. In Zululand 1928: Austin Roberts, “Report of Expedition to Ubombo District” (1928), in Monthly Reports, Mammals (Incl. Higher Vertebrates), Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. Records of many of Austin Roberts’s expeditions, including Zululand and the 1931 Barlow Expedition to Namibia, are filed in “Other Expeditions” in Austin Roberts Papers, Vernay-Lang Kalahari Expedition, Ornithology Department, Ditsong Museum. Sithole’s own account is from Cassidy’s interview of him. 13. “Report of the Charles Sidney Barlow and Transvaal Museum Expedition to South West Africa and Little Namaqualand, 3 May 1937 to September 1937,” 17, in “Other Expeditions,” Vernay-Lang Kalahari Expedition, Austin Roberts Papers, Ornithology Department, Ditsong Museum. 14. Sithole’s memories of Roberts: “Interview with Saul Sithole by Bob Brain,” Sithole, Miscellaneous, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. “PS I suppose you remember”: Theo Sutton to A. Roberts, 20 May 1934, in Correspondence Box 4, Austin Roberts Papers, Ornithology Department, Ditsong Museum. Theo writes a written vernacular term that I interpreted as “tiptol,” which is Afrikaans for a bulbul. I thank Claire Spottiswoode for the suggestion. 15. “Native assistant Saul”: February and March 1933, in Monthly Reports, Mammals (Incl. Higher Vertebrates), Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. 16. Roberts’s study of museums and scientific programs in the United States, by the Carnegie Corporation: Roberts, Museums; Dubow, Scientific Racism, 20 – 65. The research agenda at the Transvaal Museum was the same as the South African Museum’s in Cape Town, which notoriously promulgated racial typologies for consumption by the general public. The work of taxidermy in this project: Rose, Bushman, Whale and Dinosaur. Boskop man: Broom, “Evidence Afforded.” 17. “Taken by W. Herbert Lang”: Notes on reverse side of photograph of Broom, Barlow Sithole and Jacobus, Transvaal Museum. 18. Interview with Francis Thackeray, Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 21, 2006. 19. Sithole acknowledged: Roberts, “Some Results.” 20. Kruger National Park trip: September 1940 in Monthly Reports, Mammals (Incl. Higher Vertebrates), Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. “My senior

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rubbed Saul the wrong way”: A. R. to “Punch” (most likely Charles Sidney Barlow, the benefactor for this expedition), July 3, 1941, in Reports: Fieldwork or Study Tours, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. 21. The 1935 budget: Roberts, Museums, 66. The year 1956 pay scales: Union of South Africa, Bureau of Census and Statistics, Official Year Book, 1956 –57, 192, 196. Correspondence in Non European Staff Overtime, 1956 –77, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. The file contains many records of pass fees. Sithole’s passbook number was 1000962. “Harbor and railway wages”: Marlous van Waijenburg, pers. comm., Dec. 7, 2014. 22. FitzSimons’s reference for Sithole: ibid. 23. Interlude in the coal business: “When It Comes to Jumbos.” 24. Lady Selborne: Mojapelo, Corner People; Carruthers, “Urban Land Claims.” Sithole and the legal case: Zondi Sithole Zitha, pers. comm., June 13, 2014. 25. Sithole’s employment record at the museum is documented in Non European Staff Overtime, 1956 –77, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. Comparative wage data: Republic of South Africa, Department of Statistics, Suid-Afrikaanse Statistieke 1972, G-51–55. 26. The Austin Roberts Bird Hall: FitzSimons and Brain, “History of the Transvaal Museum,” 11. 27. Brain is largely responsible for Sithole’s existence as an identifiable character in international networks. He included photographs and mention of Sithole in three publications. Brain, Hunters or the Hunted?, 193; Brain, “Natural History,” 48; Brain, Austin Roberts, 2, 95, 101, 102. “When It Comes to Jumbos” (? Pretoria News), Nov. 24, 1978. 28. Sithole’s retirement: “More than a Museum Piece,” Pretoria News, Dec. 20, 1990. The photo of Sithole with Broom’s bust is undated, but it was probably taken when the Robert Broom postage stamp was issued in 1991. The bronze bust was unveiled by Jan Smuts in 1949: FitzSimons and Brain, “History of the Transvaal Museum,” 9. 29. Iliffe, Honour in African History, see esp. 246 – 61. 30. Respectability in nineteenth-century South Africa: Ross, Status and Respectability. Ama-respectables: Marks, “Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity,” 230. 31. Respectability in twentieth-century Johannesburg: Goodhew, Respectability and Resistance. Property ownership in Lady Selborne: Mojapelo, Corner People. 32. “Respectability was the chief means”: Iliffe, Honour in African History, 246. A discussion on gender, especially women’s respectability: Ross, Status and Respectability; Thomas, “Modern Girl.” Although it does not analyze “respectability” per se, Meischer’s study of the meaning of masculinity in the life histories of male “middle figures” in colonial Ghana is pertinent here. The chapter on the working lives of the eight members of the educated, intermediary class probes the relations between employment and the sense of self as a successful man. Drawing

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notes to pages 200 –215

on interviews, Meischer is able to analyze changes during the life cycle and selfrepresentation, modes of inquiry that are sadly not possible for the life of Saul Sithole: Miescher, Making Men in Ghana, 84 –114. 33. Two collectors who were black but not of the indigenous majority did hunt in South Africa. Records of the 1940 joint South African Museum–Transvaal Museum expedition to the southern Cape Province describe Ali Safi as “collecting” about half the birds acquired in Knysna: Monthly Reports, December 1941, Mammals (Incl. Higher Vertebrates), Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. Nicholas Arends, a mixed-race South African who worked for the mammologist Guy Shortridge, also carried a gun, to protect himself on expeditions and to kill animals caught in his traps: Arends and Stepforth, Trapping Safaris; Witz, “Making of an Animal Biography.” 34. South Africanism: Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge. The crux of the problem: C. K. Brain to “Colleague,” Oct. 20, 1977, in Tydelike Werkers tot 1989, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. 35. Sithole’s relationship to the African National Congress: Zondi Sithole Zitha, pers. comm., June 13, 2014. 36. The contents of Sithole’s natural history cabinet: ibid. 37. Interview with Jacob Mokoena and M. S. “Sam” Ranthlankgwa, Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 22, 2006. 38. The similarity is strong to the specimen collectors described in Nair, “‘Eyes and No Eyes,’” or Rieppel, “Dinosaurs.” 39. M. Mathabathe to V. FitzSimons, Oct. 13, 1960, in Non European Staff Overtime, 1956 –77, Central Archives, Ditsong Museum. Chapter 8. Birding Revolutions 1. E. Mayr to D. Lack, Dec. 8, 1939, quoted in Johnson, “Ibis,” 539. 2. Modern synthesis: Birkhead, Wimpenny, and Montgomerie, Ten Thousand Birds, 57– 60; “Truly pioneering”: ibid., 58; Mayr quoted: ibid., 59; Mayr’s career: ibid., 95 –108, 113 –15. 3. Hall’s life and work: Prys-Jones, “Obituary: Hall”; Hall and R. E. Moreau, Atlas of Speciation. 4. Hall, Moreau, and Galbraith, “Polymorphism and Parallelism.” The article credits Galbraith with the biochemical analysis and discussion of alleles in part 2 of the paper. 5. Payne’s biography: Robert B. Payne, pers. comm., Oct. 18, 2014. 6. Payne’s early research: Payne, Behavior, Mimetic Songs. Payne, pers. comm., Nov. 3, 4, 2014. An accessible summary of coevolution between hosts and parasites: Payne, “Brood Parasitism in Birds.” 7. Payne’s later research on mouth spots: Payne, Nesting Mouth Markings. 8. “Indigobirds that in some areas”: Payne, Parasitic Indigobirds, 282. “The relationships among the indigobirds”: ibid., 3. 9. “Those who do”: Cocker, Birders, 47.

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10. The anecdote is told but its source is not cited in Moss, Bird in the Bush, 136. An education officer in Zambia also took advantage of yearly rounds to do birding: Winterbottom, Far Away. 11. “There were certain things”: Brown, Eagles, 49. Brown married in 1958, and a son was born in 1960: Brown, Encounters with Nature, 56. Kicho mentioned but not explained: Brown, “Observations on Some Kenya Eagles.” “Age and addiction”: Leslie Brown, “Observations on Some Kenya Eagles, Especially the Crowned Eagle Stephanoaetus coronatus and Ayres Hawk Eagle Hieraetus dubius, and to the Relation Between Breeding Success, Changes in Mates, and Longevity in the Wild State,” 1, in Leslie Brown Collection, Alexander Library. This is a manuscript version of an article published in 1966, but the published version does not discuss his relationship with Kicho. “The only thing”: Brown, Eagles, 50. 12. “Child’s play”: Brown, Encounters with Nature, ix. His detention in Somalia: Amadan and Steyn, “Leslie Brown,” 66. 13. Boswall, “Obituary: Brown,” 549 –50. 14. “For many years”: Brown, Encounters with Nature, 48. “All these activities”: Ibid., 56. 15. Kicho and Brown in 1962: Brown, Encounters with Nature, 60 – 61. 16. Brown’s widow donated his papers, including correspondence and manuscripts but sadly not his personal diaries, to the Alexander Grey Library at Oxford University, where they were received as the Leslie Brown Collection. 17. “Filthy muck”: R. E. Moreau to J. P. Chapin, May 30, 1954, in R. E. Moreau #5 (1952 –1964), Historic Correspondence, AMNH. “Liberias or Haitis”: Moreau to Chapin, Sept. 15, 1955, ibid. “One can but wish Rhodesia”: C. W. Benson to M. P. S. Irwin, Aug. 9, 1974, in M. P. S. Irwin Correspondence, Benson Correspondence. 18. I intend on writing articles on Chapin and Boulton in the near future. Chapin: Friedmann, “In Memoriam: Chapin.” Boulton: Masterson, “Wilfred Rudyerd Boulton.” 19. Leisure in Africa: Martin, Leisure and Society. 20. Natural history: Jardine, Secord, and Spary, Cultures of Natural History. Working-class natural history: Secord, “Science in the Pub”; Raffles, “Uses of Butterflies.” Nature study movement: Gibbons and Strom, Neighbors to the Birds. 21. Peterson: Dunlap, In the Field, 91–116. 22. A history of birdwatching in Britain: Moss, Bird in the Bush. In Australia: Robin, Flight of the Emu, 165 –298. In India: Shyamal Lakshminarayanan, pers. comm., Oct. 9, 2014. East and West African field guides: Williams, Field Guide to the Birds of East and Central Africa; Morel, Field Guide to the Birds of West Africa. An opinion about the first books to qualify as field guides in South Africa: Brooke, “Short History of Ornithology,” 12. 23. Peterson on scientific value: Dunlap, In the Field, 100 –101. Amateurs and professionals in American ornithology: Battaglio, Rhetoric of Science; Barrow, Passion for Birds. In British ornithology: Mearns and Mearns, Bird Collectors; Moss,

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notes to pages 223 –29

Bird in the Bush, 190 –91; Johnson, “Ibis.” In India: Lakshminarayanan, pers. comm. 24. A noteworthy example of an expert recreational birder writing on an emotional connection with the birds, including those in Africa: Dee, Running Sky. British twitchers: Cocker, Birders; Moss, Bird in the Bush, 263 –95; Wallace, Beguiled by Birds, 134 – 42. A hard-eyed look at the most accomplished list-maker, the American Phoebe Snetsinger, who saw more than eight thousand species: Gentile, Life List. 25. Roberts’s dispute with British zoologists and Vincent’s statement: Brain, Austin Roberts, 143 –54. “Paranoic” is a quotation from a 1992 personal communication to Brain from Richard Brooke, 153. The relation between South African and British science: Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 210 –14. 26. Australian national ornithology: Robin, Flight of the Emu. Audubon in the United States: Dunlap, In the Field, 30 –31. Colombia: Quintero Toro, Birds of Empire, 87–129. India: Lewis, Inventing Global Ecology. Early South Africa bird books: Woodward and Woodward, Natal Birds; Stark and Sclater, Birds of South Africa; FitzSimons, Natural History; Haagner and Ivy, Sketches; Gill, First Guide to South African Birds. Bird books for South African children: Norman, Bird-Book for S. African Children; Beresford, African Feathers. History of SAOS, including Voelker and Roberts: Ashton, “Southern African Ornithological Society”; Brain, Austin Roberts, 120 –24. 27. History of publication and reception: Brain, Austin Roberts, 125 –30. The cigarette cards: Roberts, Our South African Birds/Ons Suid-Afrikaanse Voëls. 28. American field guides: Dunlap, In the Field. Handbook to British Birds: Moss, Bird in the Bush, 133 –37. “Original title”: Brain, Austin Roberts, 126. 29. A model reading of field guides: Dunlap, In the Field. Bible as only book to outsell Roberts: Brooke, “Short History of Ornithology,” 11. 30. Further printings and subsequent editions: Brain, Austin Roberts, 131–39. Online publication: http://www.robertsonline.co.za/. 31. Roberts, Birds of South Africa, xx–xxi. 32. “Sad about”: Moreau to Chapin, June 26, 1948, in Historic Correspondence, R. E. Moreau #4 (1947–1951), AMNH. Roberts’s relations with foreign ornithologists: Brain, Austin Roberts, 143 –54. 33. Bird clubs: Ashton, “Southern African Ornithological Society.” Prospectuses for the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology were issued in 1960, 1966, and 1973: Special Collections, Niven Library. 34. Cultural history of the birds: Huffman, “Soapstone Birds from Great Zimbabwe”; Matenga, Soapstone Birds of Great Zimbabwe. 35. Matenga, Soapstone Birds of Great Zimbabwe. Repatriation to Zimbabwe: Dewey, “Repatriation of a Great Zimbabwe Bird”; British Broadcasting Corporation, “Zimbabwe Bird ‘Flies’ Home.” 36. Birds of Zaire: Lippens, Oiseaux du Zaïre. Fifteen percent of Tanzania: Adams and McShane, Myth of Wild Africa, 201. 37. Gambia: Cham, Camara, and Wilson, “Ornithological Discovery.” International tourism in postapartheid South Africa: Allen and Brennan, Tourism in the

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New South Africa, 21. Between $14 and $30 million is gauged from the estimate of R80 –170 million, calculated at the average 1998 exchange rate of R5.5 to $1: Turpie and Ryan, “Nature and Value of Birding.” 38. M. K. Rowan to D. Serventy, July 10, 1959, in D. L. Serventy Correspondence, Special Collections, Niven Library. 39. Fishwife to birdbrain: Address to Cape Bird Club, June 3, 1977, in Mary Katherine (Bunty) Rowan Collection, Niven Library. A novel about sparrow society, in some ways an allegory for 1960s South Africa: Hickey, Two for a Farthing. 40. PAOC through the 1980s: Brooke, “How Far Have We Come.” The 1989 Nature article: Crowe, “Pan-African Ornithology Divided.” 41. The 1976 article: Okia, “Birds of the Understory.” The 1996 Congress: Craig and Gordon, “Proceedings of the Ninth Pan-African Ornithological Congress.” 42. South African Bird Ringing Unit, “Welcome.” 43. Websites on species distribution: Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2, “Welcome;” West African Bird DataBase, “Welcome to the WABDaB.” 44. A vision for information-age ornithology for a developing country: Lakshminarayanan, “Taking Indian Ornithology”; Lakshminarayanan, “Using Citizens.” A modest bird guide from Mauritania: Sek and Kan, Jubbannde e Inde Ndiwri Muritani. I thank Gabar Mustafa for trying to find a translator for this book. 45. “One day”: M. Kasempe to Livingstone Museum, July 28, 1989, in Ornithology Department, Livingstone Museum. “I am very interested”: M. Phiri to Livingstone Museum, Sept. 4, 1972, ibid. 46. “An ever-increasing level”: Birkhead, Wimpenny, and Montgomerie, Ten Thousand Birds, 64. Payne, “Brood Parasitism in Birds”; Sorenson, Sefc, and Payne, “Speciation by Host Switch”; Payne, Nesting Mouth Markings. 47. A. P. Leventis ornithological institute in Jos, Nigeria: http://www .aplori.org. 48. “Sir, I have come across”: H. J. Kibuka to A. Roberts, Apr. 23, 1947, in Correspondence, box 2, Austin Roberts Papers, Ornithology Department, Ditsong Museum. 49. Homogeneous South African bird writing: Tyson, Birders of a Feather. African Americans as birdwatchers: Robinson, Birding for Everyone. Lack of diversity among birders in the United Kingdom: Moss, Bird in the Bush, 327–28. 50. The major birding organizations: Birdlife Africa, “About Birdlife Africa”; Morel, “Roundtable Discussion.” Birdlife South Africa: BirdLife South Africa, “Birdlife South Africa’s History.” African Bird Club, “Working for Birds in Africa.” 51. “Praise Poems to Birds”: Gattrel, Praise Poems to Birds. Kenyan books: Ng’weno, Bird with a Silver Ring; Matseart, Being a Bird. 52. Aspinwall’s life: Dowsett, “Obituary: Aspinwall.” An example of Aspinwal’s science: Aspinwall and Beel, Field Guide to Zambian Birds. The prize-winning essay: Sichilongo, “Trip to Lochinvar.” Aspinwall’s legacy in the Zambian birding community: Ilse Mwanza, pers. comm., May 14, 2004.

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notes to pages 237– 46

54. The first guiding course I found mention of was in South Africa in 1987: Brett, “Bird Identification Course.” An early example in Gambia: “Training Developments in the Gambia.” 55. Interview with Fleur Ng’weno, Arusha, Tanzania, Oct. 16, 2012; Ng’weno and Reid, “Kenya Record”; Darcy Ogada, pers. comm., Dec. 18, 2012. Fleur’s enthusiasm and charm provided inspiration for a fictional character in a 2008 novel about Rose Mbikwa, who becomes the love interest of a hapless bird novice in Nairobi. Drayson, Guide to the Birds. 55. Interview with David Ngala, Arusha, Tanzania, Oct. 15, 2012; Ngala, “Wildlifedirect Blog: David Ngala”; Walt Disney Company, “DWCF Announces 2012 Conservation Heroes.” 56. Steinberg, Sizwe’s Test, 54 –55, 323 –24. In South Africa the book is called Three Letter Plague. I thank Gary Kynoch for this reference. 57. BirdLife, “State of Africa’s Birds.” Brooks and Thompson, “Current Bird Conservation Issues.” 58. Bioprospecting in ethno-botanical knowledge: Osseo-Asare, Bitter Roots. The National Museums of Kenya recognized and initiated a program in the 1980s to document ethno-ornithological knowledge: Kassam, Gichuki, and Ndegwa, “Ethno-Ornithology.” A technologically driven vision of open access ornithological data and collection of new data by citizen scientists: Lakshminarayanan, pers. comm. 59. The need for a reserve for honeyguides and honey hunters: Dean, Siegfried, and MacDonald, “Fallacy, Fact, and Fate,” 100.

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Bibliography

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Abdallah, Charles, 137 Abdim’s stork (Ciconia abdimii), 36 Abuko Nature Reserve, 229 Achudan, Itty, 65 actor-network theory, 9 Adanson, Michel, 83 – 84, 86 Adas, Michael, 105 adventure stories, 117–18 Africa, 18, 105; avitourism in, 236; birders’ racial profile in, 235; birding in, 8 –9; birds in, varieties of, 7; as concept, 9; eastern, 23; European birders migrating to, 116 – 21; independence movement in, 211, 215, 219 –20; map of, 24; naturalist writing in, 19; ornithologists spreading throughout, 115; portrayed as empty landscape, 19; southern, 23; spirit world in, 37; whiteness in, gaining momentum, 112 African Bird Club, 235 African fish-eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer), 32 African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus), 54 African hoopoe (Upupa epops africana), 39 African paradise-flycatcher (Terpsiphone viridis), 45 African pied wagtail (Motacilla aguimp), 55 African Research Survey, 21 Africans, ornithological knowledge disseminated to, 105 African vernacular birding: ancient knowledge and, 29; records from, sparseness of, 30

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Akan, iconography of, 45 – 47 Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 63 – 64, 79 Ali, Sálim, 106, 222 Alston, Madeline, 118 –20, 221 Amadodana, 199 Ambonese, 65 American Museum of Natural History, 183 animals, brought into history, 8 apartheid. See South Africa aphorisms, 31 Arends, Nicholas, 280n33 Aristotle, 63, 79 Arnot, David, 95 Asia, natural knowledge in, 68 Asmani, Salimu, 135 –36, 146 Aspinwall, Dylan, 236 Atlantica Foundation, 220 Atlantic Monthly, 118 Atlas of Speciation of African Passerine Birds, An (Hall and Moreau), 212 Australopithecus africanus, discovery of, 189 –90, 191 authority: birding traditions and, 101–2; ecological approach to, 110 –11; race and, 101, 105 –10, 146 authorship, 102 –3 avitourism, 236 Ayers, Thomas, 99 Bablon, Géraud, 244 Banga, Muondo, 126 Bank, Andrew, 21

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Bannerman, David, 105, 215, 226 Barber, Mary Elizabeth Bowker, 95 bateleur (Terathopius ecaudatus), 43, 49 Bates, George Latimer, 39, 99, 120, 121–22, 129, 140, 141, 146, 147, 236; on his Bulu boys, 122, 124, 125 –26; childhood of, 122; discomfort of, with symmetrical social relations, 127–28; education of, 122; first years in Africa, 122 –23; Francophobic feelings of, 127; frustration of, during travels, 124 –25, 126; among the Hausa, 126; homosocial community of, 127; journals/diary of, 123, 124, 127; Moreau’s envy of, 130; as planter and collector, 124; race as issue in later journals, 127; retiring in England, 125, 128; shyness of, 128 Bates, Mary, 122, 128 bats, 32, 63, 80, 92 Baumgarten, Fritz, 268n5 Beinart, William, 19, 20 Belinga, S. M. Eno, 59 Benin, 36 Benson, Constantine Walter (Con), 148, 150, 171; acknowledging others, 155 –56, 163; confidence in Makawa, 156 –57; correspondence with Makawa, 171–73; early years of, 156; final expedition of, 170; Makawa working for, 150 –55; personal correspondence of, 155 –56; radio appearance of, 162 – 63; retirement of, 167; travel to Ethiopia, 157; on white minority rule, 220 Benson, Molly, 171 Berg, Bengt, 116 –17 binomials, 65, 84 – 87, 95 Biodiversity Heritage Library, 239 biography, methods of, 22 biological practices, transition to, 80 biology: advances in, 211–12; evolutionary, 212 birders: defined, 8 –9, 250n13; mentoring of, 237; networks and, 236 –39 Birders of a Feather, 235 bird guides (human), 119, 237–38 bird guides (publications), 106, 187, 224 –25 bird-human hybrids, 33, 41, 45, 51 Birding for Everyone: Encouraging People of Color to Become Birdwatchers, 235 BirdLife International, 235, 239 Bird Migration as Observed on the East Coast of England (Gurney), 117 bird of heaven, 40 – 41 bird ringing, 233

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birds, African terms for, 29 –30; associated with different animals, 56; associated with god, 37–38; associated with kinds of people, 34; associated with seasons and weather, 39; as call birds used in hunting, 54; characteristics of, 6 –7; classification of, 32 –34, 83 (see also classification systems); as companion animals, 54 –55; communicating place, 31; conception of, 30 –31, 32 –37; dead, study of, 7, 16; distinguished by taste, 32; as food source, 52 –53; herding, 55 –56; hunting of, 53; inauspicious, 39; interactions of, with animals and plants, 50; knowledge of, and collective well-being, 29; listening for other animals’ signals, 56; living, study of, 7– 8; medicinal power of, 47–50; as messengers, 38; as metaphors for migrating Europeans, 116n17; migration of, 116 –17; naming of, 31, 33, 187, 241, 242 – 48, 253 –54n4; national, 223 –29; in partnership with humans, 55; parts of, selling for medicinal uses, 49 –50; perception of, 30 –32; as pests to farmers, 50 –51; preparing for study, 184 – 87; preservation of, 96; as projections of human imagination, 56 –58; scaring from the fields, 51; sculptures of (Rhodesia), 227–28; signaling danger, 56; sociability of, 7; social status of, 34 –37; society of, described in comedic terms, 118 –19; sounds as defense against, 50 –51; spiritual realm related to, 37– 45; symbolizing political power, 45 – 47; as timekeepers, 31; tourism and, 229; traditions about, 14 –15; vernacular naming of, 29 –30, 187, 242 – 48; working with humans, 1, 3 – 4, 55 –56 Birds and I (Brown), 140 Birds of Africa (Shelley), 105 Birds of Arabia (Meinertzhagen), 270n32 Birds of Malawi, 171 Birds of South Africa (Layard), 85, 86, 94 –95, 224, 242 – 43 Birds of South Africa (Roberts), 155, 187, 224 –27 Birds of South Africa (Stark and Sclater), 105 Birds of Tropical West Africa (Bannerman), 105, 215 birdwatching. See recreational birdwatching bird writing: colonial language in, 122; on empire and race, 116 –21; racial identity in, 118, 119 Birkhead, Tim, 80

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index Bisa, traditions of, 59 black-headed gonolek (Laniarius erythrogaster), 31 blue-breasted bee-eater (Merops variegatus), 37–38 blue crane (Anthropoides paradiseus), 45 Bogopa, Jan, 204 Bolling, Frederig Andersen, 69 Bombay Natural History Society, 106 Bontius, Jacobus, 64, 65 Boran, traditions of, 5 – 6, 36 Boskop man, 189 Botatwe languages, 60 Botha, P. W., 228 Boulton, Rudyerd, 220 boundaries, 145 – 46 Brain, C. K. (Bob), 188, 194, 197, 198, 201 Brisson, Mathurin-Jacques, 84 Britain: migrants from, compared with birds, 116 –17; ornithological tradition in, 23; politics of science in, 90 British Academy for the Advancement of Science, 90 British Museum, 96, 105, 224 brood parasites, 3, 213 –14 Brooke, Richard, 149 –50, 178 Broom, Robert, 189 –90, 191, 192, 194 Brown, Leslie, 120, 140, 146, 147, 219; acknowledging his assistants, 141– 42; collaboration with Kicho, 140 – 43, 215 –18; difficult reputation of, 140; early life of, 140; studying Accipitridae, 140; using eagle watchers, 140 – 43; working during Kenyan civil war, 143 – 44 Bruce-Miller, Emma, 173, 174, 177 Bruce-Miller, Ian, 173, 174 –75, 176 –77 Bruce-Miller, Margaret, 174, 175, 177 Bruce-Miller, Paddy, 173, 175 Bruce-Miller family, 171, 173 –74 Buffon. See Leclerc, George-Louis buff-spotted flufftail (Sarothrura elegans), 7, 153 –54 Bulu, 53, 121–23, 146 Burchell, William, 88, 90, 96, 98, 107 Burundi, 35 Butler, A. G., 107, 141 cage birds, 54 –55 call birds, 53 –55 canaries, caged, 54 Cape Colony. See Cape of Good Hope Cape of Good Hope, 15 –16, 18 –19, 20, 228; acclimatizing plants at, 67, 72; authori-

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tative ethnography of, 82; birds at, 69, 73 –74; British rule over, 85; Cape wagtails at, 35; challenged by agropastoral peoples, 85; conquest of, 66 – 68; European exploration beyond, 72 –73; Europeans’ arrival at, 62; first European birding at, 68 –71; gardens at, 66 – 67; gardens of, 72; natural knowledge at, 68; prepared specimens from, 96 Cape wagtail (Motacilla capensis), 35 –36, 55, 118 Cassidy, Tamar, 186, 192 Centers of Calculation, 91, 95 –96, 106, 224, 232, 234 Central African Broadcasting Service, 162 Central African Federation, 220 Central African Republic, 40 Chapin, James, 107– 8, 152, 154, 183, 184 – 85, 220 Chapman, Frank, 272n68 Check List of the Birds of Nyasaland (Benson), 163 chorister robin-chat (Cossypha dichroa), 7 Christians, 181– 82 citizen science, 232 classification systems, 90; Adanson, 86; altitudinal taxonomy in, 34; Aristotle, 79; artificial, 83; Brisson, 84; British Museum, 85; Buffon, 83; Layard, 88; Levaillant, 87– 88, 93; Linnaean, 83 – 87, 91; Ray, 80, 83, 84; Roberts, 226 –27 Claudius, Hendrik, 72 –76, 78, 80, 242, 261n26 Clement, Roland, 170 Cleyer, Andreas, 71–72, 75 Coetzee, J. M., 68 Cole, Desmond, 245, 246 Colebrook-Robjent, John, 163, 170, 174 –76, 231 collaboration, culture of, 121, 149 Collins (publishing house), 222 colonialism, 14 colonies: communications in, 71; knowledge production in, 18, 20 Commelin, Jan, 75 –76 common waxbill (Estrilda astrild), 106 –7 Congolese mask with blue tauraco feathers, 38 conservation, 20, 234, 235, 239 consumers, birdwatchers as, 222 Cook, Alexandra, 86 Cook, Harold, 65 – 66, 75 Cook, James, 96 Coudenhove, Hans, 118

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critical colonial studies, 145 crows, 34 cuckoos, 3 Curry-Lindahl, Kai, 170 cycles of accumulation, 95 Darwin, Charles, 89, 264n32 Dean, W. Richard J., 5 decolonization, 140, 211, 215, 218 –20 de Luna, Kathryn, 60 de Marees, Pieter, 64 des Besten, Hans, 70 dialogue, politics of, 20 –21 disciplinary science, 16, 63, 66, 80 Discourse of the Cape, 68 Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, 238 Dorobo, 4 Down Second Avenue (Mphahlele), 182 Dowsett, Robert, 149, 168 –71, 173 drongo, herding by, 56 Dutch: attitudes toward the Khoekhoen, 67– 68; controlling dissemination of foreign knowledge, 65; exchanging plant knowledge with the Khoekhoen, 68, 69; Golden Age of, 66; knowledge gathering by, 66. See also Dutch East India Company; Dutch West India Company Dutch East India Company, 62, 64, 66 – 67, 82; encounter with the Nama, 71–76; interested in Zimbabwe, 71; records of Namaqualand expedition removed, 75 Dutch trading companies, as vernacular knowledge networks, 64 – 66 Dutch West India Company, 64, 66 Eagles (Brown), 142, 216 East Africa Natural History Society, 237 ecology, 21, 50 ecotourism, 229 egg collecting, 170, 175 éjak, 123 Emin Pasha and the Rebellion ( Jephson and Stanley), 11, 12 empire: compounding difference between ornithologists and vernacular birders, 78; Linnaean science and, 18 –19; ornithology and, 17 Encounters with Nature (Brown), 142, 216 endangered species, 239 Endrödy-Younga, Sebastian, 208 ethno-ornithology, 14, 253 –54nn3, 4 ethology, 214

Jacobs_final.indb 318

Europe: hunting in, 63; vernacular bird knowledge in, 63 – 64 Europeans: attitudes toward the Khoekhoen, 68; first birding at Cape of Good Horn, 68 –71; knowledge of, achieving precedence over the vernacular, 78; racially defined, 115; relationship of, with African knowledge, 78; supervising subject labor, 107– 8; travels of, to acquire objects and information, 64 – 66 Eva (Khoekhoe woman), 67 evolution, 189, 205 evolutionary biology, 212 Expedition for Exploring Central Africa, 89 expertise, acquisition of, 66 extinction, 239 Ezhava caste, 65 facts: circulation of, 103 – 4; communication of, 102; hard vs. soft, 102 –5; nature of, 101–2 falconry, 63 fan-tailed raven (Corvus rhipidurus), 38 feathers: linked with powers, 37; symbolism of, 45; trade in, 100 field guides, 222 Field Guide to the Birds (Peterson), 221–22, 226 fieldwork, African intermediaries involved in, 20 –21 Findlen, Paula, 64 First Khoekhoe-Dutch War, 67 Fischer’s turaco (Tauraco fischeri), 131–32 FitzPatrick, Percy, 227 FitzPatrick (Percy) Institute of African Ornithology, 213, 227, 229 –30 FitzSimons, Vivian, 192, 193, 195 folk rhymes, 31 food, mutual interest in, of birds and humans, 50 Forster, Johann Georg Adam, 96 Forster, Johann Reinhold, 96 fossils, preparation of, 190 –92 Freeman, Pat, 128, 129, 146, 147 Friedmann, Herbert, 5 Galbraith, I. C. J., 212 –13 Galison, Peter, 111 Gambia, ecotourism in, 229 gambri, 73 –74 Germany, ornithological tradition in, 23 Gert (in Holub’s Seven Years), 10 –11

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index Gikuyu, 42, 55, 143 Gill, Leonard, 110 Goodhew, David, 199 Google Scholar, 239 gray crowned-crane (Balearica regulorum), 10 –11, 38, 39 great blue turaco (Corythaeola cristata), 31 greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator). See honeyguides Great Zimbabwe, carved birds at, 45 Griesemer, James, 110 –11 griots, 266n6 Groote Schuur, 227–28 Grove, Richard, 65 guilds, for hunters, 59 – 60 Gurney, J. H., 117 Guyer, Jane, 59 hadada ibis (Bostrychia hagedash), 7, 39 Haldane, J. B. S., 144, 272n63 Hall, Beryl Patricia, 212 –13, 214 hamerkop (Scopus umbretta), 7, 42 – 43, 49 Hamilton, Carolyn, 19 –20 Hamusikili, Lazero, 174, 176 Handbook for British Birds, 225 Handbook of the Birds of West Africa (Bates), 121, 125 hard facts, 102 –3, 105 Harries, Patrick, 20 Hartlaub’s turaco (Tauraco hartlaubi), 34 Hausa, 2, 33 Hausaland, 127 Herbert, Eugenia, 60 Herero chats (Namibornis herero), 192 history, animals brought into, 8 Holub, Emil, 10 –11 Hondius, Jacobus, 69 honey badgers, 4, 240 honeyguides, 1– 6, 36, 82, 88, 240, 249 –50n5; adapting to human technology, 25; interaction with animals, 4 –5; interaction with humans, 1, 3 – 6 honor culture, 199 Honour in African History (Iliffe), 199 hornbills, 31, 32 –33, 43 Hortus Malabaricus (van Rheede), 65, 75 –76, 86 house bunting (Emberiza sahari), 36 Hughes, David, 117 Huigen, Siegfried, 19 humans: birds in partnership with, 55; racial differences perceived among, 20; separate

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evolution among, 189; taking on animal character, 33 –34; types of, associated with bird types, 34 hunting, 53 –55; in Europe, 63; as masculine activity, 60; preparing African men for European ornithologists, 61; prestige from, 59 – 61; vocabulary for, related to sex, 60 Ibis ( journal), 141, 211–12, 214, 231 I Drank the Zambezi (Loveridge), 159 Iliffe, John, 199, 200 Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa (Smith), 88 – 89, 93 imagination, birds as projections of, 56 –58 Imperial Eyes (Pratt), 18 Important Bird Areas, 239 impundulu, 40 – 42, 49 Indicatoridae, 5 indigobirds, 214 Industrial Revolution, 105 intimate activity, regulation of, 145 – 46 Irwin, Michael Stuart, 148, 152, 159, 167, 177 Isack, Hussein Adan, 5 – 6 Islam, birds associated with, 39 – 40 Jackson, Frederick, 267n12 Jacobson-Widding, Anita, 158 Jeater, Diana, 20 –21 Johnson, Kristin, 92, 95 Junod, Henri-Alexandre, 20 Kamba, traditions of, 42 Kassagam, J. K., 34 Katanekwa, Vincent, 168 Kawa, Johannes, 204 Keith, Stuart, 155 Kenya, 36, 143 Khoekhoen, 19, 71, 76, 87– 88; assimilation of, into colonial society, 76; bird knowledge of, 76 –77; bird names of, 69 –70, 75; at Cape of Good Hope, 62; characteristics of, 68; Dutch interaction with, 62; Kolb’s writings on, 82; as laboring class, 85; Levaillant’s writings on, 82 – 83; plant knowledge of, 68, 69, 71; relations with the Dutch, 66 – 68 Khoesan speakers, and birds’ medicinal powers, 47 kholwa, 181– 82 Kicho, Njeru, 120, 140 – 45, 147, 215 –16, 217–18, 219 kingfishers, 34

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320

index

Kirby, Percival, 89 Kiwanuka, Yokana, 108 Klaas’s cuckoo (Chrysococcyx klaas), 82 knowledge: asymmetries of, 18 –22; conservation of, 239; exchange of, 18; from familiarity with objects, 66; history of, 20; politics of, 19; production of, 19 –20; types of, 9; value of, 60; wealth and, 59 knowledge networks, Dutch trading companies and, 64 – 66 Knysna turaco (Tauraco corythaix), 38 Koch, Charles, 194, 208 Kolb, Peter, 80 – 82 Koopman, Adrian, 32 Krech, Shepard, 30 –31 kurrichane thrush (Turdus libonyana), 123 KwaZulu-Natal Province, 43 labor relations, 21 Lady Selborne (Pretoria), 182, 195 –96, 200 Lakshminarayanan, Shyamal, 232 –33 Lang, Herbert, 108, 109, 110, 183 – 86, 189 Lanham, Florence Mary (Molly), 159 Latour, Bruno, 66, 91, 95, 101, 102, 103 – 4 Layard, Edgar, 85, 86, 88, 94 –95, 224, 242 – 43 Lebelo, Elephas, 182 Leclerc, George-Louis (Comte de Buffon), 83, 87 leisure, 220 –21 Lekgoathi, Sekibakiba, 21 Lepore, Jill, 22 Les oiseaux d’Afrique (Levaillant), 82, 87 Les oiseaux du Zaïre, 228 Lesotho, 40, 43 Leuker, Maria-Theresia, 65 Levaillant, François, 76, 82 – 83, 86 – 87, 96, 99, 107, 244 Leventis, A. P., 234 Leventis (A. P.) Ornithological Research Institute, 234 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 7 L’histoire naturelle (Buffon), 83 lightning, birds associated with, 15, 41– 45, 49 Lighton, Norman, 224, 225 lilac-breasted roller (Coracias caudatus), 7 linguistic imperialism, 86 Linnaean science, empire and Linnaean Society of London, 84 Linnaean taxonomy, 18 –19, 83 – 87, 91 Linnaeus, 16, 19, 65, 85, 88 Linné, Carl von. See Linnaeus Livingstone, David, 4

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Livingstone Museum (Zambia), 233 Lomwe, 53 –54, 150, 151 long-billed tailorbird (Artisornis moreaui), 157 Loveridge, Arthur, 135, 159 – 61, 168 Low, Chris, 47 Luhyia, traditions of, 38 Lynes, Hubert, 108 –10 Maasai, 34, 52 magpie mannikin (Lonchura fringilloides), 51 mahem, 10 Majnep, Iam Saem, 23 Makawa, Festo, 171 Makawa, Jali, 12 –14, 17, 100, 147, 149, 162, 169, 178, 213, 231; accused of witchcraft, 176; Benson acknowledging, 156, 163; Benson’s confidence in, 156 –57; character studies of, 159 – 61; childhood of, 150; children of, 171, 172; compensation for, 159; correspondence with Benson, 171–73; dense networks of, 158; distinguished career of, 148 – 49; drawings by, 152 –55; early interest in, 148; as entrepreneur, 162; expertise of, 152, 161– 62, 167–70; internal life of, 177; memories of, 173 –77; motivations for, 150; ornithologists’ respect for, 163 –70; praise for the English, 175; radio appearance of, 162 – 63; servant status of, 149 –50, 156, 159 – 62, 171, 173, 178 –79; social fluency of, 161; status of, 160, 161, 179; talented observer and hunter, 150 –51; tinkerbird named for, 177; travel to Ethiopia, 157; travel to Mozambique, 157; working with Benson, 150 –55; working with Bruce-Miller family, 171, 173 –75, 176 –77; working with Dowsett, 168 –70; working with Traylor, 163 – 67 Makua, 53 –54, 150, 151 Malaconotus (bushshrikes), 212 –13 Mandela, Nelson, 53, 58 –59, 226 Mandingo, 36 Manvell, Adam, 33, 39 Mapanje, Jack, 35 marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumenifer), 36 Marakwet, 34, 37–38, 39 masculinity, meaning of, 279 – 80n32 Maseko, Sampson, 197 Maswera, Jeremiah, 158 Matenga, Edward, 228 Mathabathe, Geelbooi, 204 Mathabathe, Matthews, 186 – 87, 189, 197, 203, 204, 207–10

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index Mau Mau, 143 Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa, 59 Mayr, Ernst, 212, 214 Mbene, 58 Mbuti, 34, 56 McDonald, Kevin, 93 McOuat, Gordon, 90 Medici, aviaries of, 63 medicinal power, 47 medicine, history of, 112 Meinertzhagen, Richard, 270m32 Merian, Maria Sibylla, 65 m¯etis, 14, 16 Mhunza, Simon, 137 microhistory, 22 migration, 232 Mintern, John, 98 Mr. Jake. See Ndumba, Jake modern synthesis, 212, 233 Mojapelo, John Seakalala, 196 Mokoena, Jacob, 203 – 6, 209 montane blue swallow (Hirundo atrocaerulea), 160 Moreau, David, 132 Moreau, Prinia, 132 Moreau, Reginald Ernest, 120, 128 –29, 141, 146 – 47, 212 –13, 214, 226 –27, 236; Asmani and, 135 –36; assistants to, 135 –37; on decolonization, 218 –19; as editor of Ibis, 141; as ethnographer, 133 –34; family life of, 130; learning strategy of, 134 –35; listening skills of, 133; moving to Usambara rainforest, 131; personality of, 132; quantitative approach to ornithology, 136 –38; respect for, 138; return to England, 137; sociability of, 138; socializing with scientists, 130 –31; studying migration in Spain, 138 –39; transferring to Cairo, 130 –31; on vernacular knowledge, 129 –30, 134 –35, 139; writings of, 131–34 Moreau, Winifred, 146 – 47 Morris, Brian, 60 Mountfort, Guy, 222 Mphahlele, Es’kia, 182 Muchindu, Aaron, 168 Mugabe, Robert, 228 Müller-Wille, Steffan, 19 Muriel, Winifred, 131–32, 136, 138, 139 museums: preparators at, 180, 181, 189, 206; racialization of science at, 181; social world of, 180 Musselman, Elizabeth Green, 19, 20

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Mutapa, 71 My African Neighbors: Man, Bird, and Beast in Nyasaland (Coudenhove), 118 Mystery of the Flamingos, The (Brown), 142 Nair, Savithri Preetha, 111–12 Nama, bird names for, 75, 76 Nama-Dutch birding, 71–76 Namaqua (Nama), 71 Namaqualand, 71–77 name avoidance, 33 Narina trogon (Apaloderma narina), 82 national birds, 223 –29 National Museum of Zimbabwe, 228 natural historians, perceptions of, 19 natural history: development of, 63, 64; popular, 221; spawning ornithology and recreational birding, 116 Natural History Museum (London), 125 nature: European expertise on, 16; ordering of, 18 Nature, 231 Nature Kenya, 237 nature study movement, 221 nature writing, 63 – 64, 69 Ncube, Glen, 167 Ndumba, Jake, 158, 161 Ndumbu, traditions of, 59 nests, destruction of, 42 – 43 networks, 9; scientific, 104 Newman, Kenneth, 222 Ngala, David, 237–38 Nguru, 53, 150 –51 Ng’weno, Fleur, 237, 238 Ng’weno, Hilary, 237 Niven, Cecily, 227, 229 –30 Niven, Jack, 227 Nomvula, Sophia, 189 Nuer, 34, 52 n/um, 47– 49 nutrition science, 21 Nyasaland, 150, 220 Nyerere, Julian, 229 Nyundo, Saidi, 137 objects, familiarity with, 66 Ogun, 59 Oiseaux d’Afrique (Levaillant), 244 oral knowledge, 253n1 orange-throated longclaw (Macronyx capensis), 29 –30 ornithological writing, type descriptions in, 92 Ornithologie (Brisson), 84

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ornithologists: as colonial officials, 115; collaborating with vernacular birders, 120, 121, 123 –24, 129 –30, 134 –35, 139 – 45; distinguished from bird lovers, 119; field notes of, 22 –23; imperial and racial identity of, 78; managing labor, 107– 8; personal investment of, 140; relating to African vernacular birders, 17; selfsufficiency of, 100 ornithology, 7, 8 –9, 101; arrival in Africa, 78; challenges for, in postcolonial Africa, 233; decolonization of, 224; decolonization’s effect on, 215, 218 –20; disciplinary, 234; distinct from recreational birdwatching, 215; distinct from vernacular practices, 78, 79; emergence of, as specialized field, 16 –17, 116; facts of, providing little context, 84; growing more technical, 214 –15; historical, 239; including amateurs, 232; inclusive, 229 –34; integrating modern biological sciences, 128 –29; modern synthesis of, 212, 233; professionalization of, 214; quantitative approach to, 136 –38; racialized authority in, 105 –10; research model for, 220; revolution in, 128; scientific naming’s importance to, 84 – 85; as subdiscipline of biological science, 211–12; systemic perspective of, 103; tradition of, 16; vernacular perspectives on, 99 –100 Ornithology (Ray), 79 – 80, 82 ostrich (Struthio camelus), 7, 69: eggs of, as water containers, 50; as protein source, 51; rock paintings of, 33, 51–52 Ostrich, 224 Our South African Birds/Ons Suid-Afrikaanse Voëls, 225 Overton Institution, 105 Owambo, traditions of, 37 owls, 15, 49 Palearctic birds, migration of, 116 –17 pale-winged starling (Onychognathus nabouroup), 74 Pamla, Leonard, 58 Pan-African Ornithological Congress (PAOC), 227, 231 Parasitic Indigobirds (Vidua) of Africa, The (Payne), 214 Pasha, Emin, 11–12 Paths in the Rainforest (Vansina), 59 Payne, Robert, 12 –14, 168, 213 –15, 233 penguins, 69, 70

Jacobs_final.indb 322

Peterson, Roger Tory, 221–22 pharmacology, bird-based, 47–50 pied barbet (Tricholaema leucomelas), 74 pink-billed lark (Spizocorys conirostris makawa), 165 pin-tailed whydah (Vidua macroura), 106 –7 Plaatje, Sol, 31 plovers, 39 political power, birds symbolizing, 45 – 47 potency, 47– 49 Powdermaker, Hortense, 57–58 Pratt, Mary Louise, 18 –19 Preparation of Birds for Study, The (Chapin), 184 – 85 Pretoria News, 198 Pritchett, James, 158, 161 procreation, hunting related to, 60 proof race, 102, 266n7 Prozesky, O. P. M., 194, 200, 205 publication, control of, 65 Public Service Association (South Africa), 204 purple-crested turaco (Tauraco porphyreolophus), 7 race: authority and, 101, 105 –10, 146; birding and, 116, 235; in bird writing, 116 –21; colonial science and, 120; ornithologists, racial identity of, 78; racialized authority in ornithology, 105 –10; racialized authority in science, 112, 145, 189 racism, against the Khoekhoen, 62, 67– 68 Raffles, Hugh, 145 rain, birds associated with, 43 Rangi, traditions of, 34 Ranthlakgwa, M. S. (Sam), 203, 205 – 6, 209 Ray, John, 79 – 80, 82, 84 recreational birdwatching, 17–18, 101, 105, 115, 211; after African independence, 211; appeal of, 115, 221; attraction to, 238 –39; colonial politics and, 115; as consumer activity, 222; disconnected from vernacular knowledge, 120; distinct from ornithology, 215; empire and, 116; goal vs. process of, 223; growing out of ornithology, 220 –21; inclusive, 234 –39; natural history and, 221; Peterson’s effect on, 221–22; politics of, 120; race and, 116; racial profile of, 235; school curriculum about, 235; scientific contribution of, 222 –23 red-billed firefinch (Lagonosticta senegala), 29 red-billed hornbill (Tockus erythrorhynchus), 149 red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea), 50

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index red-capped lark (Calandrella cinerea), 31 red-chested cuckoo (Cuculus solitarius), 39 red-winged starling (Onychognathus morio), 73 –74 Reichenow, Anton, 105 Reid, Marlene, 237 respectability, 199 –200, 202, 279n32 Reyer, Hans-Ulrich, 5 – 6 Rhodes, Cecil John, 227–28 Rhodesia, 220, 227–28 Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 21 Ripley, Dillon, 222 river warbler (Locustella fluviatilis), 167– 68 Roberts, Austin, 106, 141, 181, 183 – 84, 187– 89, 192 –94, 224 –27, 234 Roberts (Austin) Bird Hall, 197 Roberts’ Birds of South Africa. See Birds of South Africa (Roberts) rock paintings, 33, 51–52 rook, Corvus frugilegus, 50 Rookmaaker, L. C., 80 Ross, Robert, 199 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 82 Rowan, Bertus, 229 Rowan, Mary (Bunty), 229 –30 Ruggles-Brise, Cecily, 117 Rumphius, 65 SABAP2. See Southern African Bird Atlas Project Safi, Ali, 108 –10, 112, 184, 280n33 SAFRING. See South African Bird Ringing Unit Sahel, 36 sankofa, 29 SAOS. See South African Ornithological Society Schapera, Isaac, 70 Schiebinger, Londa, 85 – 86 Schumaker, Lyn, 21 science: assistant vs. cosmopolitan, 201; colonialism and, 19; decolonization and, 21; disciplinary, 16; innovating information sharing, 102; labor relations and, 21; politics of, 90; proof race of, 102 –3; public attraction to, 233; racialized authority in, 112, 145, 189 Science in Action (Latour), 101 scientific naming: arrogance of, 87– 88; ciphers in, 91; contexts for, 91–92; as discernment, 88; encapsulating species’ essence, 88; power of, 87; referring to species, 92

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scientific networks, 66, 104 scientists, status of, 78 Sclater, W. L., 105 Scott, James, 14 seasons, birds associated with, 39 Second Khoekhoe-Dutch War, 67 secretary-bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), 32 –33, 87– 88 secret societies, for hunters, 59 segregation, science and, 200 –202 Sese Seko, Mobutu, 228 –29 Seven Years in South Africa (Holub), 10 –11 sex, hunting related to, 60 Sharra, Steve, 172 Shelley, George Ernest, 105 Shona, 43 – 45, 59 Shortridge, Guy, 280n33 Sibley, Charles, 170, 175 Sichilongo, Mwape, 236 Sinclair, Ian, 222 Sithole, Amos, 182 Sithole, Saul, 17, 147, 191, 193, 198, 204, 209, 210; compensation of, 194 –95; death of, 199; early years of, 181– 82; entering business for himself, 195 –97; later years of, 197–99; loving his work, 202 –3; museum work of, 197; preparing fossils, 190; removed from Lady Selbourne, 196; resentment of, 193; respectability of, 181, 199 –200, 202; segregation and, 200 –202; tools of, 184, 186; as urban technician, 184 – 87; on Vernay-Lang Kalahari expedition, 182 – 84; work precision of, 186; working with Broom, 189; working as collector, 192; working with Koch, 194; working in paleontology, 189 –92; working with Prozesky, 194; working with Roberts, 187– 89, 192 –93; working at Transvaal Museum, 194 –95, 197–98 Sithole, Solomon, 182 Sithole family, 182, 196 Sizwe, 239 Sizwe’s Test (Steinberg), 239 Skaife, S. H., 229 Skead, Cuthbert John ( Jack), 89, 245 – 46 skinners, 180 skins, preservation of, 95, 96 slaty flycatcher (Melaenornis chocolatina), 151 slaves, military, used as hunters, 59 slender-billed greenbul (Andropadus gracilirostris; Stelgidillas gracilirostris), 121 Smith, Andrew, 49, 88 –91, 92 –94, 107, 211 Smith, Ian, 220

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index

Smithers, Reay, 110 Smuts, Jan, 225 social formation, 59 social worlds, 110 –12 soft facts, 102, 103, 104 songo, 152 –53, 154, 164 – 65 Sophiatown ( Johannesburg), 196, 199 –200 Sotho, traditions of, 49 South Africa, 43, 180, 218; apartheid in, 158, 196, 199 –200; birding tourism in, 229; culture of, science as part of, 183; educational standards in, 182; nutrition science in, 21; ornithology and, 223 –27; PAOC and, 231–32; resistance to, among other ornithologists, 231; science and segregation in, 200 –202, 205 –9; white rivalry in, 183. See also Cape of Good Hope South African Biological Society, 223 South African Bird Ringing Unit, 232 South African Museum (now Iziko Museum), 89, 228 South African Ornithological Society, 105, 223 –24, 227, 230, 235 South African Ornithologists’ Union, 105, 223 Southern African Bird Atlas Project, 232 southern fiscal (Lanius collaris), 39 southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri), 43, 44, 49 Sparrman, Anders, 2, 3, 5, 19, 87– 88, 90, 96, 99 specialist collectors, 100 speciation, 212, 214, 233 –34 species, classified by breeding communities, 79 specimens: cash available for, 100; collection of, bafflement at, 99; hunters trained in collection of, 100; repository for, 96; Smith’s display of, 96 –98 spirituality, birds related to, 37– 45 spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa striata), 117 Star, Susan Leigh, 110 –11 Stark, Arthur, 105 starlings, 73 –74 Steinberg, Johnny, 239 Sterkfontein, 189 –92 Stevenson-Hamilton, 4 Stoler, Ann, 145 Stresemann, Erwin, 212 Strickland, Hugh, 90 Strickland Code, 90 sub-Saharan Africa, oral tradition in, 1

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Sudan, 35, 52 sugarbird, 80, 82 Sundiata, 59 superb starling (Lamprotornis superbus), 34 superstitions, 37, 187 swallows, 36, 39 swifts, 39 syntypes, 96 Systema Naturae (Linnaeus), 83 – 84 systematics, 226 Tachard, Guy, 72, 75 Tanzania, wildlife policies in, 229 taxidermists, 180 taxonomies, formal hierarchies of, 92 taxonomy, altitudinal, 34, 35 Taylorism, 137 ten Rhijne, Willem, 69 Thackeray, Francis, 190 thoucocos, 74 Tilley, Helen, 21, 120 Tobias, Philip, 203 tourism, 236 trading zones, 111 Transkei, 41 translation, sites of, 111 translations, for bird names, 254n Transvaal Museum (now Ditsong Museum), 183, 189, 194 –95, 197–99, 201–9 trapper with call bird, 54 travel, benefits of, 157 Traylor, Melvin A., Jr., 155, 163 – 67, 168 trinomials, 224 Tsaayi, traditions of, 37 Turner, Don, 170 Turner, Victor, 59 – 60 twins, associated with birds, 34 twitchers, 17, 223 type descriptions, 92 type specimen, 95 Uganda, birds and national heritage of, 227 United Tobacco Company, 225 Valentyn (Valentijn), François, 76 van der Stel, Simon, 72, 75 van Rheede, Hendrik Adriaan, 64 – 65, 72, 75, 86 van Riebeeck, Jan, 67– 68 Vansina, Jan, 59 van Someren, V. G. L., 108 vernacular birders: dependence on, 120, 121, 123 –24; relationships with, 120

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index vernacular birding, 14 –15;, differences of opinion in, 104 –5; in Europe, 15 –16, 63 – 64; naming in, 32 –33; soft facts and, 104 vernacular knowledge, 253n1; collection of, 187; differentiating, natural history from, 84; in Europe and Asia, 15; publication of, 103 vernacular names: assumed by European birders, 85; entering scientific nomenclature, 86; Layard’s use of, 88; Smith’s use of, 89 –92 vernacular tradition, 14 –15, 92, 101 Vernay, Arthur, 183 Vernay-Lang Kalahari expedition (1930), 182 – 84 Vidua, speciation in, 233 –34 Viduidae, 63 village weavers (Ploceus cucullatus), 7 Vincent, Jack, 54, 108 –10, 224 VOC. See Dutch East India Company Voelker, John, 224 Vögel Afrikas (Reichenow), 106 vultures, 38, 50 WABDaB. See West African Bird DataBase wagtails (Motacilla), 34 –36, 39, 55, 56 wailing cisticola (Cisticola lais), 31 wealth, knowledge related to, 59 weather, birds associated with, 39 weaver colonies (Philetairus socius), 7 Wednesday Morning Bird Walks (Nairobi), 237, 238 West Africa, 39 West African Bird DataBase, 232 western yellow wagtail (Motacilla flava), 55 White, Luise, 104 white-billed buffalo-weaver (Bubalornis albirostris), 49 white-browed coucal (Centropus superciliosus), 39 white-browed robin-chat (Cossypha heuglini), 31 white-browed sparrow-weaver (Plocepasser mahali), 31, 79, 85, 92 –98

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white-chested tinkerbird (Pogoniulus makawai), 149, 150, 177 white helmetshrike (Prionops plumatus), 39 – 40 whiteness, in colonial science, 120 white racialism, 20 white-tailed swallow (Hirundo megaensis), 157 WIC. See Dutch West India Company widowbird, 82 WildlifeDirect, 238 Williams, Andy, 170 Williams, C. B., 131 willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), 117 Willughby, Francis, 79, 80 Wilson, Monica Hunter, 21 Winterbottom, John, 230 women: inclusion of, 229 –30; learning from, 121; and the nature study movement, 221 woodpeckers, 38 Wylie, Diana, 21 Xhosa, 2, 36, 40 – 44, 55 –56 yellow-billed oxpecker (Buphagus africanus), 31 yellow-casqued hornbills (Ceratogymna elata), 56 yellow-fronted canary (Serinus mozambicus), 54 Yoruba: crown with beaded bird, 48; iconography of, 47 Young, W. A., 105 Zaire, 228 –29 Zambia, 38, 227 Zambian Ornithological Society (ZOS), 236 Zimbabwe, 38, 43; birds and national heritage of, 227, 228; VOC’s interest in, 71 Zitha, Napoleon, 182, 203 Zitha, Zondi Sithole, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189, 192, 195 –96, 198, 202, 203, 209 ZOS. See Zambian Ornithological Society Zulu, 32 –33, 34, 40, 43, 53

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