I think that the magistrates, native commissioners, police officers, missionaries, farmers, miners, and traders in South Africa who have had first-hand experience of dealing with raw Natives will agree with me that in sound reasoning ability, as applied to matters with which he is familiar, the Native is no whit below the white man.  It would be easy for me to give hundreds of instances that have come under my own observation of arguments stated and deductions made by Natives who were innocent of all European education that would show a capacity for mental analysis and clear ratiocination equal to that of the educated European, but I have to consider the reader’s patience and will therefore confine myself to a few illustrations taken at random from a number that were written down by me at the time of observation.  I may say here that my translation into English has been made with the most scrupulous regard to exactness so as to avoid the possibility of importing into the words used a fuller meaning than that which was actually present in the speaker’s own mind.

In the Northern part of Matabeleland, not far from the Zambesi river, lives a tribe called Bashankwe who follow a custom of marriage known locally as “ku garidzela” which is in effect a rendering of personal service, in the doing of such primitive husbandry as there obtains by the prospective son-in-law for the parent of the girl chosen instead of paying for her a consideration in money or cattle as is done by most of the Natives in South Africa.  It is a practice similar to the custom which may be supposed to have been general in Palestine when Jacob served for Rachel in the days of the Hebrew patriarchs.  Sometime ago I discussed the nature and present incidence of this custom with a chief named Sileya of those parts, a wholly untutored Native.  A point brought up for settlement was the validity, under the present regime, of the claim for compensation that under their law might be brought by a rejected “garidzela” lover for the value of the work done by him during his period of service when, at the end of such service, he found the girl unwilling to marry him.  I had explained to the chief that the white man’s government would always set its face against any custom whereby it might be possible for the parents to pledge their daughters in marriage, and had pointed out that this particular custom was for that reason not viewed with favour by the authorities.  To this Sileya replied:  “If you, the Government, will make it plain that the man who finds himself refused by the girl for whom he has been serving can claim compensation for the work he has done then the fathers will become more careful than they now are and they will refuse to accept the young man’s services save where the girl is old enough to consent for herself, for no man likes to give up what he has won and held, and in this manner our old custom will not go against the way of the Government.”  This reply, which I have Englished almost literally, is typical of the Native form of argumentation and it shows good all-round thinking ability; it is not a particular instance of special intelligence, but a fair example of average Native perspicacity.