Kaggen

Kaggen is the best-known figure in the traditional religions of the San, the hunter-gatherers of southern Africa. San beliefs are poorly attested; the myths of Kaggen come mainly from the ǀXam.

Kaggen, often called the Mantis, is a creator and a trickster who can take the shape of a praying mantis, an eland bull or a snake. His favourite creature was the eland: when his sons killed it before it was ready to be hunted, he sprinkled its blood and fat to make the herds of wild eland.

The eland is also the commonest power animal in the trance dance, where shamans enter the spirit world. After the Dutch settled at the Cape in 1652, farmers pushed into San lands from the early eighteenth century, and commandos killed or enslaved thousands by the century's end.