BERGDAMA

also called Damara, a nomadic Negroid people of mountainous central Namibia. They speak a click Khoikhoin (Hottentot) language, but racially they are more like the peoples of central and western Africa, though their origin is obscure. When first encountered by Europeans, in the 17th and 18th centuries, many of the Bergdama were serfs of the Khoikhoin and Herero. Knowing the arts of iron forging and pottery making, they provided iron implements and ornaments for their masters. They also served them as cattle herdsmen. Bergdama in the aboriginal state subsisted on wild plant foods, and some groups also kept goats. They were scattered in small bands of migratory families composed of several closely related kineach band, when temporarily settled, inhabiting a circle of grass-covered huts enclosed by a thornbush fence. A sacred fire burned in the centre of each village. The band chief, advised by his elder male kinsmen, controlled the group, and he was also its ritual leader and fire keeper. There was no larger-scale political or social organization. Bergdama religion included the concept of a supreme being responsible for rain and the annual renewal of plant life. There was also belief in life after death and that sickness and death were caused by the deity or by the souls of departed men who required food. Many Bergdama have adopted Christianity.