The Dutch and the Natives.
Hottentot Character
At the commencement of British rule in Cape Colony (1806) there were in the country 26,000 persons of European descent, chiefly Dutch; 17,000 Hottentots who wandered around the outskirts of settlement and made a precarious livelihood by raising or stealing cattle; and 29,000 slaves. The Bantu had only occasionally appeared upon the visible horizon to the east and this gathering cloud was not yet a serious subject to the people or their Governors. The yellow-skinned Bushmen had retired from sight and sound of the settlers and were in any case a small and diminishing quantity. The Hottentots were in abject fear of their masters, whether as slaves "tending another's flock upon the fields" which once had been their fathers', or as wandering and homeless vagrants constituting a continuous nuisance to the scattered communities. Apart from their subjection to the Dutch, however, they were a thoughtless, cheerful, good-natured people, ignorant of everything except a little hunting and, in physique and character, were about half-way between the Bantu and the Bushmen. Like the latter they became almost extinct under the recurring attacks of small-pox and the increasing pressure of a white population on the south and the swarming masses of Bantu on the north-east.
Native Tribes
Following the conquest other native elements came into view. Under the earlier Dutch régime Malays from the East Indies had been introduced for purposes of special work and negro slaves from the west coast had been obtained in large numbers. From the union of Hottentots and Malays came a mixed race called "Cape Boys," and from the union of Dutch and Hottentots came the Griquas who afterwards filled a considerable place in local history. From the seventeenth century until the abolition of slavery, in 1834, all the hard and humble work of the community was done by slaves. The Dutch farmer lost all knowledge of menial work and acquired a conviction of personal superiority which became ingrained in his character. Upon his lonely farm he was master of what he surveyed, and even the laws had little real influence or effect upon him. Constant danger from Hottentot inroads and afterwards from the far more serious and deadly Kaffir raids had bred an independence of character which isolation and ignorance deepened into extreme racial narrowness combined with contempt for men of darker colour or alien extraction.
Grievance of the Hottentots
The plowing of ground and fence-building by the Dutch was to the natives a declaration of war upon the rights of Africans—that is, according to the natives themselves, just as the building and mining by the British in the Transvaal is held to be hostile by the Boers who have inherited Hottentot principles with their Hottentot blood. In 1659 Van Riebeck, of Cape Town, wrote to the Governor-General at Batavia that the natives had been in mischief again, that one prisoner spoke "tolerable Dutch," and "being asked why they did us this injury, he declared ... because they saw that we were breaking up the best land and grass, where their cattle were accustomed to graze, trying to establish ourselves everywhere, with houses and farms, as if we were never more to remove, but designed to take, for our permanent occupation, more and more of this Cape Country, which had belonged to them from time immemorial."
Wars with the Natives
Wars with the natives were frequent. The first one with the Hottentots occurred in 1659, and arose out of the natives finding their cattle debarred from accustomed pasture lands. It consisted chiefly in a series of cattle raids and fruitless return expeditions, but was perhaps as annoying as a more real war would have been. The Hottentot tribes could never be found when sought for by the Colonists, and no doubt this mobility on the part of their earliest enemy gave the Dutch settlers lessons from which they profited during the succeeding two hundred years. The last important struggle with this native race was in 1673, and arose out of the destruction by Dutch hunters of antelopes, elephants and other game which were very precious to the Hottentot, and were within the territories of the principal remaining tribe—the Cochoqua. During four years a sort of guerilla war was carried on with Gonnema, the Chief of the clan, and considerable loss of cattle, some loss of life and a great loss of sleep caused to the border settlers before peace was concluded. Their expeditions could never get at Gonnema, although he became eventually tired of living a hunted life in the mountains, moving from hiding-place to hiding-place to escape his pursuers. Gradually, however, the Hottentots disappeared from view, so far as any measure of organized hostility was concerned, and, like the Bushmen, became either wandering pariahs of the veldt or bondsmen in the fields of their fathers.
The Kaffir Wars