Ju/’hoan Women’s Tracking Knowledge and Its Contribution to Their Husbands’ Hunting Success

1. What they did

Anthropologists had long described Ju/’hoan San women as gatherers who did not hunt. Megan Biesele, an anthropologist who speaks Ju/’hoan, and her husband Steve Barclay, a hunter and tracker from South Texas, set out to look more closely at what women contribute to hunting.

• Tracking with couples (1995). Near /Aotcha in Nyae Nyae, northeastern Namibia, they spent a day following the hunter N!ani and his wife Di//xao as they tracked together, and another day with /’Angn!ao and his wife N!aq’e. Barclay also spent a full day tracking alongside /’Angn!ao as a partner who carried no weapon.
• Interviews. They interviewed women, men and mixed groups about how often and in what ways spouses work together in hunting, and recorded details of snares and other hunting techniques, with help from Biesele’s longtime language teacher !Xuma.
• Literature review. They surveyed the anthropological literature on women and hunting, among the San and in other hunter-gatherer societies, and gathered comments from other researchers.

They saw themselves as a mixed-gender team well placed to notice what earlier researchers, few of whom were skilled trackers, may have missed. They asked whether husband and wife tracking is a recent change in Ju/’hoan life or has deep roots.

2. What they found

Tracking together

• N!ani and Di//xao tracked side by side about 30 feet apart: close enough to share information, far enough apart to cover a wide swath of ground.
• They often communicated without words, by hand signs, about which tracks were most promising. They changed tracks at least 20 times in four hours, choosing the freshest and most productive among many animals’ tracks.
• They stooped to feel faeces to judge how close an animal was, and weighed the size of each animal against how hard it would be to get close enough for a shot.
• When they came close to a family of warthogs, Di//xao fell back so N!ani could shoot with his bow and poisoned arrow. The authors found that the thinking part of the stalk had been a joint effort. The couple said they had tracked together for most of their married lives.
• Di//xao proved fully as competent a tracker as her husband.

How Ju/’hoan tracking works

• Hunters stalk a moving animal to within about 25 to 75 feet, because their light arrows have a short range. After the shot, they track the poisoned animal more slowly until it dies.
• The authors saw all three levels of tracking described by Louis Liebenberg: simple (following clear footprints), systematic (reading signs such as a bent grass leaf in a footprint, blood on leaves, or how wet or warm faeces are) and speculative (building a working hypothesis from knowledge of animal behaviour and terrain). An animal walking at ease drops faeces now and then; a frightened, running animal holds them until it stops.
• They stress that speculative tracking is done equally well by men and women.
• Hunting from blinds at pans is now rare; Ju/’hoan people regard it as ineffective.

What people told them

• “Many women,” including those of the previous generation, had long gone hunting with their husbands, some carrying nursing infants. These women are said to be excellent trackers.
• Men are “in charge” in that they carry the weapons. Women sometimes lead the tracking and stalking until the animal is close; when the hunter draws his arrows, he takes the lead, and everyone uses hand signs to stay silent.
• While gathering, women often find important tracks and baby animals. Babies are sometimes used to lure the mother to the hunters: kudu cows are preferred because they are hornless, and this is never done with gemsbok, because the females’ horns are as dangerous as the males’.
• Women knew snaring as well as men. A ten-year-old girl, //Ukxa, built a demonstration snare expertly while her father described it.
• Men and women alike felt that hunting in mixed groups was productive, and women’s judgment and strength were openly celebrated.

From the literature and other researchers

• Earlier San studies mostly described women’s roles in hunting as ritual, or as bringing news of animals and signs seen in the bush. Some said Ju/’hoan women never hunt.
• Alison Brooks and Aron Crowell had followed husbands and wives along the same track about ten minutes apart in the mid-1970s. Wives of excellent hunters identified and read the tracks of important food animals; wives of non-hunters commented on mouse and toad tracks and missed many important ones.
• Polly Wiessner found that one-third of the arrows (33 of 98) in five active hunters’ quivers at //Aru in 1997 belonged to their wives, which gave the wives the right to distribute the meat. She said only couples who hunt with bow and arrow cooperate; women do not help with gun hunting or with spear hunting on horseback.
• Women hunt or help hunt in many other societies, for example among the Agta of the Philippines, the Matses of the Peruvian Amazon, Mbuti net hunters and the Inupiat of Alaska.

3. What they concluded

• Ju/’hoan women make a substantial contribution to their husbands’ hunting success through active use of tracking knowledge, more than earlier anthropological accounts reported. Their roles are informational, communicational and cognitive as well as ritual.
• A married couple’s well-practised communication makes them an effective tracking team: two observers working in parallel multiply the information gathered.
• Following Liebenberg’s view, the authors lean towards spousal cooperation in hunting having substantial time-depth. But the “recent change” and “ancient” explanations are not necessarily opposed: cooperation may have deep roots, with each couple working out how much to cooperate according to circumstances.
• They call their evidence admittedly scanty and invite colleagues to share ideas and data. Whether circumstances today encourage or discourage cooperation, and why, needs further study.
• In an endnote, Edwin Wilmsen adds that Herero pastoralists, including women, are equally good at reading spoor, supporting Barclay’s point that all peoples who depend on animals need tracking skills.

4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking is both the subject and part of the method. The authors followed two Ju/’hoan couples as they tracked and stalked animals (including a family of warthogs) and Barclay tracked for a day with /’Angn!ao. They describe changing from track to track to find the freshest, reading faeces, bent grass and blood, trailing poisoned animals until they die, and the three levels of simple, systematic and speculative tracking. Barclay also describes reading tracks, trails, hog wallows and scrapes in South Texas to decide where to set hunting blinds.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Reported but not validated. The Ju/’hoan women are “said to be excellent trackers,” and the authors judged Di//xao fully as competent as her husband, but no test or certification of anyone’s skill is reported. Barclay learned tracking and hunting from his father and uncles in South Texas; his experience was not validated either.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• A mixed-gender, husband and wife research team, pairing a skilled tracker with a fluent Ju/’hoan speaker, which the authors credit for much of their success.
• Hunting narratives were taped and translated with a Ju/’hoan language teacher; the authors value stories as information held in memorable narrative form.
• Hands-on demonstrations of snares, which are highly specific to terrain. Video footage of recent Ju/’hoan hunting was also reviewed.