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Overview
Dawn’s-Heart is identified in the chapter title with Jupiter and acts as husband and father in the narrated household. When he returns from hunting, the child is crying and his younger sister-in-law is caring for it. The female hyena sitting in his wife’s place remains silent. He has not understood that his wife has changed into a beast of prey and gone into reeds, while the impostor wears her ornaments. During a game or dance the sister’s angry reference to she-hyena wives reveals the deception.
He throws or thrusts his assegai at the impostor’s sitting place; she escapes through the fire and leaves the ornaments behind. He then reproaches the sister for not telling him sooner. Her explanation contrasts his wife, who sat facing him, with the stranger who kept her back towards him. In daylight he joins the party taking goats to the reeds. At the sister’s call his wife rushes out and catches a goat, and he, the sister and the others seize her. The collective treatment removes her animal hair while leaving the ear tufts she requests.
The closing narrative gives him a changed appearance when returning home thereafter. His large eyes resemble fires and frighten the other people and jackals; he walks with an arrow on his bow and his assegai’s end planted in the ground. A note links this anger to what the hyenas had done to his wife. Separately, the appended 1875 report describes a mysterious child identified with a nearby star: he swallows it and later spits it out grown, and a further Dawn’s-Heart-child follows. The report’s stellar-child material is supplementary evidence and is not presented as another episode fully narrated in the 1879 text.
Origins & earliest records
Bleek and Lloyd, Specimens of Bushman Folklore (1911), III.—30, pp. 84–98. The heading credits |han#kass’o, April and May 1879, who heard the tale from his mother |xabbi-an and her mother #kammi. The edition separately appends an extract from Bleek’s Second Report (1875), p. 11.
Records & interpretation
Complete pp. 84–98 and notes read. Printed 1879 narrative and appended 1875 report are distinguished, especially beast-of-prey/lynx versus lioness/woman/lynx sequences. Hyena escapes injured, not killed; child-star identification in the report is explicitly tied to the occasion of inquiry.
In the literature
“The people were afraid of him as he came”
III.—30, !Ko-g!nuing-tara, Wife of the Dawn’s-Heart Star, Jupiter; complete pp.84–97 and all notes; full appended1875 report extract pp.96–98; brief main narrative excerpt p.97 · Bleek–Lloyd original English translation; Lucy C. Lloyd, editor
Dawn’s-Heart returns from hunting to a crying child and a supposed wife who will not face him. His sister-in-law’s disclosure reveals the impostor. After missing the fleeing hyena he joins the retrieval of his altered wife. Thereafter he returns carrying weapons with eyes compared to fires, frightening people and jackals. Main child note identifies the wife as mother; the separately appended report supplies a distinct fuller star-daughter cycle.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Specimens of Bushman Folklore
III.—30, complete pp. 84–98: main 1879 wife/hyena narrative with notes, then separately reproduced 1875 report extract, original report p. 11.
- 02
Specimens of Bushman Folklore — III.—30, !Ko-g!nuing-tara, Wife of the Dawn’s-Heart Star, Jupiter; complete pp.84–97 and all notes; full appended1875 report extract pp.96–98
London: George Allen & Company,1911; original bilingual edition. Complete selected English narrative/all notes and full embedded report quotation read; original84/87/93/97/98 pixels inspected.
Family, evolution & connections
Dawn’s-Heart’s wife and younger sister — the 1879 account
III.—30, the 1879 narrative and its explanatory notes, pp.84–97.
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- Two sisters (sibling grouping, not a parent)
- Her unnamed nursing child (sex unspecified)
- Her younger sister, the child’s maternal aunt
Explicit sister, wife, sister-in-law and mother designations in the printed account. The root groups siblings; it is not an unnamed parent. The child’s sex and paternal descent remain unspecified here. The appended 1875 report has different family details and is excluded. The hyena’s mistaken marriage is not kinship with the real wife. The younger sister’s OCR name is uncertain.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
Specimens of Bushman Folklore
London: George Allen & Company,1911; original bilingual edition. Complete selected English narrative/all notes and full embedded report quotation read; original84/87/93/97/98 pixels inspected.
- Dawn’s-Heart returns from hunting to a crying child and a supposed wife who will not face him. His sister-in-law’s disclosure reveals the impostor. After missing the fleeing hyena he joins the retrieval of his altered wife. Thereafter he returns carrying weapons with eyes compared to fires, frightening people and jackals. Main child note identifies the wife as mother; the separately appended report supplies a distinct fuller star-daughter cycle.
- Complete embedded1875 report extract gives a different outline: a star daughter identified at the inquiry as Regulus is swallowed and later released grown, then produces another star child. Other animals seek recognition as mother before the true mother is accepted; rejected animals retaliate. Wife is called Lynx, turned lioness, recovered as a woman and then becomes meat-eating lynx. Brothers aid recovery in that outline, unlike the main1879 husband/sister/people scene. This extract’s reported identities and transformations are kept source-specific; no independent1875 edition or entire earlier narrative read.
III.—30; complete embedded quotation of Second Report1875p11, as printed1911pp.96–98
No entire volume, original performance/manuscript archive or independent |Xam translation read. Embedded1875 outline distinguished from main1879 narrative; practical treatment/dance protocols omitted.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary collected narrative and appended historical report extractOriginal 1911 edition: Wife of the Dawn’s-Heart Star, JupiterResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
