ABSTRACT
The Mantis Makes an Eland' is the title that Dorothea Bleek gave to a series of complex /Xam tales about the creation and death of the first eland antelope. 'The Mantis Makes an Eland' and the subsequent death of the first eland clearly invoked a set of concepts that were important, not just in the judgement of researchers but to the San themselves across southern Africa. The Mantis's nuclear family, the first conceptual group, comprises the Mantis himself; his wife, the Dassie; and the adopted Porcupine. The Mantis makes the first eland out of a shoe that belongs to either his son in-law, /Kwammang-a, or to himself, depending on the emphasis of any given performance of the myth. In San thought generally, the honey that the Mantis obtains by means of his shamanic powers in Qing's myths and that, in the /Xam narratives, he feeds to the eland and rubs on its flanks is rich in connotations.
