Preserving the guile of African ‘San posse’

In the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Paul Newman and Robert Redford are pursued by a posse of lawmen, among whom is a Native American tracker, writes Richard Collins. 

The fugitives try every trick in the book to shake off their pursuers but the tracker isn’t fooled. Although the historical Butch and Sundance were chased by many a posse, the film depiction is fictitious. But are similar feats of detection possible in the real world?

The San people have lived in southern Africa for over 20,000 years. They dislike being called bushmen, a name derived from the Dutch for “bandit”. The ability of San hunters to track animals, and read the signs of their behaviour, is legendary. They can often determine an animal’s size sex and relationships, simply by examining its footprint. Trackers can even work out what an individual might be doing at a particular location.