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Overview
The female hyena brings about !Ko-g!nuing-tara’s displacement by adding her own armpit perspiration to food gathered with other animals. When the wife eats and changes into a beast of prey, her clothing and ornaments fall away. The hyena puts on the ornaments and goes home in the absent wife’s place. The narrative does not say that she magically changes her body into an exact human copy; her disguise is described through the stolen things and her behaviour in the household.
The returning Dawn’s-Heart questions why his supposed wife is not tending the crying child, but she does not speak. The younger sister continues taking the child to its real mother in the reeds. The deception comes to light during a game or dance, when the sister angrily refers to the men’s wives as old she-hyenas. Dawn’s-Heart attacks the place where the impostor has been sitting with his assegai. She jumps away, steps into the fire and burns herself, leaving the ornaments behind. Her flight and injury, rather than her death, are the reported outcome.
The edition’s appended extract from Bleek’s 1875 report adds an earlier motive: Jackal and Hyena had been insulted when the child rejected their claims to be its mother, so they took revenge on its true mother. That excerpt calls the food poisoned and describes the wife’s forms differently from the printed 1879 telling. These supplementary details are attributed to the report, rather than supplying an unrecorded motive or identical transformation mechanism for every line of the later narrative.
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
“She sprang away, while they remained.”
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.93 · Bleek–Lloyd original English translation; Lucy C. Lloyd, editor
A female hyena adulterates the wife’s food and later wears her abandoned ornaments to impersonate her at home. The husband initially accepts her; his younger sister-in-law exposes the deception. He strikes with an assegai at her sitting place but misses her. She escapes, burns herself in the fire and leaves the ornaments behind. No hyena death is narrated.
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.
!Ko-g!nuing-tara, Dawn’s-Heart’s Wife
The hyena occupies the wife’s place and wears her ornaments. The p.93 explanatory note says Dawn’s-Heart married her because he believed she was his wife. This is mistaken identity, not a biological relationship between the two females.
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.
- A female hyena adulterates the wife’s food and later wears her abandoned ornaments to impersonate her at home. The husband initially accepts her; his younger sister-in-law exposes the deception. He strikes with an assegai at her sitting place but misses her. She escapes, burns herself in the fire and leaves the ornaments behind. No hyena death is narrated.
- 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.
