In The Novel, King Solomon's Mines, An Old Witch...

[sandyRoe]

...warns her fellow tribesmen that an eclipse isn't white man's magic and the sun would soon reappear.

How old would she have had to be to remember the previous one?

[jno]

it depends, they happen about twice a year but in a wide variety of places. I see the next one in the USA won't be till 2044 - followed by one in 2045.

[sandyRoe]

So, she wouldn't necessarily have been a hundred or more.

[jno]

I suppose she would have to be rather older than the other tribespersons, otherwise they'd remember it for themselves.

[jno]

I remember in my youth reading a story, in a kids' magazine, in which some white folks are captured by a savage tribe and try to awe them by producing fire out of a small handheld object. But the primitives respond by chanting

"Him no magic

We not frightum

That thing just called

Cigarette lightum".

White man's  magic must have been on the wane already.