Saturday, April 10, 2021

Week 10 Project research notes: Mantis/Ikaggen

Well, I just have to say WOW about this. I had always known there was a mantis trickster among the San people (Bushman people)... but this project is my first time to work with these materials, and I am totally blown away. This mantis is definitely a trickster, but his stories take place in a world that is NOT our world (yet), and that gives it all such a different feeling.

I'm thinking I want to do Mantis and the Elephants, and then maybe Mantis and Korotwiten. Those are more self-contained as stories... but the other cycles are so powerful! Anyway, here are my notes and resources for when I get ready to add the Mantis page in Week 11.


Very glad I discovered this book by Jenny Seed: The Bushman's Dream: African Tales of the Creation, published in 1974. It takes the main line of Mantis stories and connects them in a continuous narrative. Each chapter focuses on a specific Mantis story, but there's also an arc from start to finish as the Mantis more and more clearly perceives what is happening: the First People, like Mantis and his family, and the other people like the Tick People, Frog, and so on, are becoming animals. Then we come, the Next People, and we share our world with these animals who were once people. She doesn't give the chapters titles, so I've provided titles here for future reference:
Chapter 1 (p. 4): Introduction: we meet Mantis and he goes off into the wilderness with his springbok.
Chapter 2 (p. 12): Elephant People steal the springbok; his one is amazing: I love how Mantis escapes through the trunk.
Chapter 3 (p. 20): Korotwiten Bird teaches Mantis how to hunt ants but Mantis gets greedy. (This is also a great story about trickster greed and recklessness.)
Chapter 4 (p. 30): Blue Crane protects the Tortoise from Foulmouth the Ogre. (She is Mantis's sister, and this story is not really about Mantis but about her heroism.)
Chapter 5 (p. 38): Manti smakes an eland from Kwammanga's shoe (Rainbow Man, who is his son-in-law). The people kill the eland for meat. Angry, Mantis tells the sun not to shine. Then Mantis regrets the darkness, and makes the moon.
Chapter 6 (p. 50): Mantis confronts Old Smooth Head, who has eyes in his toes.
Chapter 7 (p. 58): Mantis offends the Bee People and Rock Rabbit People with his bad behavior; Kwammanga is well behaved. There is a rockfall, and the hosts protect Kwammanga, but Mantis gets hurt. 
Chapter 8 (p. 68): The Baboon People kill Mantis's son. Mantis fights the Baboons and brings his son back to life. 
Chapter 9 (p. 80): Frog Man and Frog Woman quarrel. Frog Man goes away and becomes a frog. Looking for Frog Man, Blue Crane becomes a crane.
Chapter 10 (p. 88): Mantis tries to steal food from the Tick People. They beat Mantis, but he uses his magic to take their sheep and their houses; they become ticks. 
Chapter 11 (p. 100): Mantis gets sick from eating too much sheep and decides to invite the All-Devourer, the father of his foster-daughter Porcupine to come eat with them. Everyone warns him not to do this, and it is a disaster: All-Devourer eats everything. He even eats Mantis and Kwammanga.
Chapter 12 (p. 112): Young Mantis and Young Kwammanga (his other son, not the Mongoose) battle the All-Devourer; everything comes back out that All-Devourer had eaten. Then Mantis says it is time to go away, and he becomes a mantis. 

These stories are all so good; I don't know how I will choose what to include in the Storybook! Here are links to the materials in Mantis and his Friends, which is one of the books online:


These stories are a more reader-friendly presentation of materials in Specimens of Bushman Folklore (see also this table of contents).

I also found this amazing archive of their work: Bleek and Lloyd Archive, including scans of the artwork, like this: These are sorcery’s things. I think that one man, to the right of the spectator, having killed a hartebeest, becomes like it with his companions. The Mantis is going with them. The others had helped him. They become Mantises. The Mantis is not there.’ The Mantis was the protector of the bucks, particularly of the eland and the hartebeest; the latter was said to resemble him, as its horns turn back like his antennae. Bushmen say, ‘The Mantis is used to go with the hartebeest when he walks about.’


Plus, I splurged (really splurged) and ordered a very expensive new book from a German publisher which covers both the material in the books and in the archive; I've pasted in the table of contents below (it covers all the story cycles; these are just screenshots of the Mantis materials):




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