These poor people were fed on the flesh of old ewes, or any animal that the boor expected to die of age; or, in default of that, a few quaggas or such game were killed for them. They were tied to a wagon-wheel and flogged dreadfully for slight offences; and when a master wanted to get rid of one, he was sometimes sent on an errand, followed on the road, and shot.[64] The cruelties, in fact, practised on the Hottentots by the Dutch boors were too shocking to be related. Maiming, murder, pursuing them like wild beasts, and shooting at them in the most wanton manner, were amongst them. Mr. Pringle stated that he had in his possession a journal of such deeds, kept by a resident at so late a period as from 1806 to 1811, which consisted of forty-four pages of such crimes and cruelties, which were too horrible to describe. Such as we found them when the Cape finally became our possession, such they remained till 1828, when Dr. Philip published his “Researches in South Africa,” which laying open this scene of barbarities, Mr. Fowell Buxton gave notice of a motion on the subject in Parliament. Sir George Murray, then Colonial Secretary, however, most honourably acceded to Mr. Buxton’s proposition before such motion was submitted, and an Order in Council was accordingly issued, directing that the Hottentots should be admitted to all the rights, and placed on the same footing as the rest of his Majesty’s free subjects in the colony. This transaction is highly honourable to the English government, and the result has been such as to shew the wisdom of such liberal measures. But before proceeding to notice the effect of this change upon the Hottentots, let us select as a specimen of the treatment they were subject to, even under our rule, the destruction of the last independent Hottentot kraal, as related by Pringle.
“Among the principal leaders of the Hottentot insurgents in their wars with the boors, were three brothers of the name of Stuurman. The manly bearing of Klaas, one of these brothers, is commemorated by Mr. Barrow, who was with the English General Vandeleur, near Algoa Bay, when this Hottentot chief came, with a large body of his countrymen, to claim the protection of the British.” “We had little doubt,” says Mr. Barrow, “that the greater number of the Hottentot men who were assembled at the bay, after receiving favourable accounts from their comrades of the treatment they experienced in the British service, would enter as volunteers into this corps; but what was to be done with the old people, the women and children? Klaas Stuurman found no difficulty in making provision for them. ‘Restore,’ said he, ‘the country of which our fathers have been despoiled by the Dutch, and we have nothing more to ask.’ I endeavoured to convince him,” continues Mr. Barrow, “how little advantage they were likely to obtain from the possession of a country, without any other property, or the means of deriving a subsistence from it. But he had the better of the argument. ‘We lived very contentedly,’ said he, ‘before these Dutch plunderers molested us; and why should we not do so again if left to ourselves? Has not the Groot Baas (the Great Master) given plenty of grassroots, and berries, and grasshoppers for our use? and, till the Dutch destroyed them, abundance of wild animals to hunt? and will they not turn and multiply when these destroyers are gone?’”
How uniform is the language of the uncivilized man wherever he has been driven from his ancient habits by the white invaders,—trust in the goodness of Providence, and regret for the plenty which he knew before they came. These words of Klaas Stuurman are almost the same as those of the American Indian Canassateego to the English at Lancaster in 1744.
But we are breaking our narrative. Klaas was killed in a buffalo hunt, and his brother David became the chief of the kraal. “The existence of this independent kraal gave great offence to the neighbouring boors. The most malignant calumnies were propagated against David Stuurman. The kraal was watched most jealously, and every possible occasion embraced of preferring complaints against the people, with a view of getting them rooted out, and reduced to the same state of servitude as the rest of their nation. For seven years no opportunity presented itself; but in 1810, when the colony was once more under the government of England, David Stuurman became outlawed in the following manner:—
“Two Hottentots belonging to this kraal, had engaged themselves for a certain period in the service of a neighbouring boor; who, when the term of their agreement expired, refused them permission to depart—a practice at that time very common, and much connived at by the local functionaries. The Hottentots, upon this, went off without permission, and returned to their village. The boor followed them thither, and demanded them back; but their chief, Stuurman, refused to surrender them. Stuurman was, in consequence, summoned by the landdrost Cuyler, to appear before him; but, apprehensive probably for his personal safety, he refused or delayed compliance. His arrest and the destruction of his kraal were determined upon. But as he was known to be a resolute man, and much beloved by his countrymen, it was considered hazardous to seize him by open force, and the following stratagem was resorted to:—
“A boor, named Cornelius Routenbach, a heemraad (one of the landdrost’s council), had by some means gained Stuurman’s confidence, and this man engaged to entrap him. On a certain day, accordingly, he sent an express to his friend Stuurman, stating that the Caffres had carried off a number of his cattle, and requested him to hasten with the most trusty of his followers to aid him in pursuit of the robbers. The Hottentot chief and his party instantly equipped themselves and set out. When they reached Routenbach’s residence, Stuurman was welcomed with every demonstration of cordiality, and, with four of his principal followers, was invited into the house. On a signal given, the door was shut, and at the same moment the landdrost (Major Cuyler), the field-commandant Stoltz, and a crowd of boors, rushed upon them from an inner apartment, and made them all prisoners. The rest of the Hottentot party, who had remained outside, perceiving that their captain and comrade had been betrayed, immediately dispersed themselves. The majority, returning to their kraal, were, together with their families, distributed by the landdrost into servitude to the neighbouring boors. Some fled into Caffreland; and a few were, at the earnest request of Dr. Vanderkemp, permitted to join the missionary institution at Bethelsdorp. The chief and his brother Boschman, with two other leaders of the kraal, were sent off prisoners to Cape Town, where, after undergoing their trial before the court of justice, upon an accusation of resistance to the civil authorities of the district, they were condemned to work in irons for life, and sent to Robben Island to be confined among other colonial convicts.
“Stuurman’s kraal was eventually broken up, the landdrost Cuyler asked and obtained, as a grant for himself—(Naboth’s vineyard again!)—the lands the Hottentots had occupied. Moreover this functionary kept in his own service, without any legal agreement, some of the children of the Stuurmans, until after the arrival of the Commissioners of Inquiry in 1823.
“Stuurman and two of his comrades, after remaining some years prisoners in Robben Island, contrived to escape, and effected their retreat through the whole extent of the colony into Caffreland, a distance of more than six hundred miles! Impatient, however, to return to his family, Stuurman, in the year 1816, sent out a messenger to the missionary, Mr. Read, from whom he had formerly experienced kindness, entreating him to endeavour to procure permission for him to return in peace. Mr. Read, as he himself informed me, made application on his behalf to the landdrost Cuyler,—but without avail. That magistrate recommended that he should remain where he was. Three years afterwards, the unhappy exile ventured to return into the colony without permission. But he was not long in being discovered and apprehended, and once more sent a prisoner to Cape Town, where he was kept in close confinement till the year 1823, when he was finally transported as a convict to New South Wales. What became of Boschman, the third brother, I never learned. Such was the fate of the last Hottentot chief who attempted to stand up for the rights of his country.”
Mr. Pringle adds, “that this statement, having been published by him in England in 1826, the benevolent General Bourke, then Lieutenant-Governor at the Cape, wrote to the Governor of New South Wales, and obtained some alleviation of the hardships of his lot for Stuurman; that, in 1829, the children of Stuurman, through the aid of Mr. Bannister, presented a memorial to Sir Lowry Cole, then governor at the Cape, for their father’s recall, but in vain; but that, in 1831, General Bourke, being himself Governor of New South Wales, obtained an order for his liberation; but, ere it arrived, ‘the last chief of the Hottentots’ had been released by death.”