Colonization and Christianity / A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the / Europeans in all their colonies

by William Howitt

Such was the treatment of the Hottentots under the Dutch and under the English; such were the barbarities and ruthless oppressions exercised on them till the passing of the 50th Ordinance by Acting-Governor Bourke in 1828, and its confirmation by the Order in Council in 1829, for their liberation. This act, so honourable to the British government, became equally honourable to the Hottentots, by their conduct on their freedom, and presents another most important proof that political justice is political wisdom. After the clamour of the interested had subsided, and after a vain attempt to reverse this ordinance, a grand experiment in legislation was made. A tract of country was granted to the Hottentots; they were placed on the frontiers with arms in their hands, to defend themselves, if necessary, from the Caffres; and they were told that they must now show whether they were capable of maintaining themselves as a people, in peace, civil order, and independence. Most nobly did they vindicate their national character from all the calumnies of indolence and imbecility that had been cast upon them,—most amply justify the confidence reposed in them! “The spot selected,” says Pringle, “for the experiment, was a tract of wild country, from which the Caffre chief, Makomo, had been expelled a short time before. It is a sort of irregular basin, surrounded on all sides by lofty and majestic mountains, from the numerous kloofs of which six or seven fine streams are poured down the subsidiary dells into the central valley. These rivulets, bearing the euphonic Caffre names of Camalu, Zebenzi, Umtóka, Mankazána, Umtúava, and Quonci, unite to form the Kat River, which finds its way through the mountain barrier by a stupendous poort, or pass, a little above Fort Beaufort. Within this mountain-basin, which from its great command of the means of irrigation is peculiarly well adapted for a dense population, it was resolved to fix the Hottentot settlement.”

It was in the middle of the winter when the settlement was located. Numbers flocked in from all quarters; some possessing a few cattle, but far the greater numbers possessing nothing but their hands to work with. They asked Captain Stockenstrom, their great friend, the lieutenant-governor of the frontier, and at whose suggestion this experiment was made, what they were to do, and how they were to subsist. He told them, “if they were not able to cultivate the ground with their fingers, they need not have come there.” Government, even under such rigorous circumstances, gave them no aid whatever except the gift of fire-arms, and some very small portion of seed-corn to the most destitute, to keep them from thieving. Yet, even thus tried, the Hottentots, who had been termed the fag-end of mankind, did not quail or despair. In the words of Mr. Fairbairn, the friend of Pringle, “The Hottentot, escaped from bonds, stood erect on his new territory; and the feeling of being restored to the level of humanity and the simple rights of nature, softened and enlarged his heart, and diffused vigour through every limb!” They dug up roots and wild bulbs for food, and persisted without a murmur, labouring surprisingly, with the most wretched implements, and those who had cattle assisting those who had nothing, to the utmost of their ability. All winter the Caffres, from whom this location had been unjustly wrested by the English, attacked them with a fury only exceeded by their hope of now regaining their territory from mere Hottentots, thus newly armed, and in so wretched a condition. But, though harassed night and day, and never, for a moment, safe in their sleep, they not only repelled the assailants, but continued to cultivate their grounds with prodigious energy. They had to form dams across the river, as stated by Mr. Read, before the Parliamentary committee, and water-courses, sometimes to the depth of ten, twelve, and fourteen feet, and that sometimes through solid rocks, and with very sorry pickaxes, iron crows, and spades; and few of them. These works, says Mr. Read, have excited the admiration of visitors, as well as the roads, which they had to cut to a considerable height on the sides of the mountains.

At first, from the doubts of colonists as to the propriety of entrusting fire-arms, and so much self-government to these newly liberated men, it was proposed that a certain portion of the Dutch and English should be mixed with them. The Hottentots, who felt this want of confidence keenly, begged and prayed that they might be trusted for two years; and Captain Stockenstrom said to them, “Then show to the world that you can work as well as others, and that without the whip.” Such indeed was their diligence, that the very next summer they had abundance of vegetables, and a plentiful harvest. In the second year they not only supported themselves, but disposed of 30,000 lbs. of barley for the troops, besides carrying other produce to market at Graham’s Town. Their enemies the Caffres made peace with them, and those of their own race flocked in so rapidly that they were soon 4,000 in number, seven hundred of whom were armed with muskets. The settlement was left without any magistrate, or officers, except the native field-cornets, and heads of parties appointed by Captain Stockenstrom, yet they continued perfectly orderly. Nay, they were not satisfied without possessing the means of both religious and other instruction. Within a few months after their establishment, they sent for Mr. Read, the missionary, and Mr. Thompson was also appointed Dutch minister amongst them. They established temperance societies, and schools. Mr. Read says, that during the four years and a half that he was there, they had established seven schools for the larger children, and one school of industry, besides five infant schools. And Captain Stockenstrom, writing to Mr. Pringle in 1833, says, “So eager are they for instruction, that when better teachers cannot be obtained, if they find any person that can merely spell, they get him to teach the rest the little he knows. They travel considerable distances to attend divine service regularly, and their spiritual guides speak with delight of the fruits of their labours. Nowhere have temperance societies been half so much encouraged as among this people, formerly so prone to intemperance; and they have of their own account petitioned the government that their grants of land may contain a prohibition against the establishment of canteens, or brandy-houses. They have repulsed the Caffres on every side on which they have been attacked, and are now upon the best terms with that people. They pay every tax like the rest of the inhabitants. They have cost the government nothing except a little ammunition for their defence, about fifty bushels of maize, and a similar quantity of oats for seed-corn, and the annual stipend for their minister. They have rendered the Kat river by far the safest part of the frontier; and the same plan followed up on a more extensive scale would soon enable government to withdraw the troops altogether.” In 1834, Captain Bradford found that they had subscribed 499l. to build a new church, and had also proposed to lay the foundation of another. In 1833 they paid in taxes 2,300 rix-dollars, and their settlement was in a most flourishing condition. Dr. Philip, before the Parliamentary Committee of 1837, stated that their schools were in admirable order; their infant schools quite equal to anything to be seen in England; and the Committee closed its evidence on this remarkable settlement with this striking opinion: “Had it, indeed, depended on the Hottentots, we believe the frontier would have been spared the outrages from which they as well as others have suffered.”

Of two things in this very interesting relation, we hardly know which is the most surprising—the avidity with which a people long held in the basest thraldom grasp at knowledge and civil life, or the blind selfishness of Englishmen, who, in the face of such splendid scenes as these, persist in oppression and violence. How easy does it seem to do good! How beautiful are the results of justice and liberality! How glorious and how profitable too, beyond all use of whips, and chains, and muskets, are treating our fellow men with gentleness and kindness—and yet after this came the Caffre commandoes and the Caffre war!

Of the same, or a kindred race with the Hottentots, are the Bosjesmen, or Bushmen, and the Griquas; their treatment, except that they could not be made slaves of, has been the same. The same injustice, the same lawlessness, the same hostile irritation, have been practised towards them by the Dutch and English as towards the Hottentots. The bushmen, in fact, were Hottentots, who, disdaining slavery and resenting the usurpations of the Europeans on their lands, took arms, endeavoured to repel their aggressors, and finding that impracticable, fled to the woods and the mountains; others, from time to time escaping from intolerable thraldom, joined them. These bushmen carried on a predatory warfare from their fastnesses with the oppressors of their race, and were in return hunted as wild beasts. Commandoes, a sort of military battu, were set on foot against them. Every one knows what a battu for game is. The inhabitants of a district assemble at the command of an officer, civil or military, to clear the country of wild beasts. They take in a vast circle, beating up the bushes and thickets, while they gradually contract the circle, till the whole multitude find themselves inclosing a small area filled with the whole bestial population of the neighbourhood, on which they make a simultaneous attack, and slaughter them in one promiscuous mass. A commando is a very similar thing, except that in it not only the bestial population of the country, but the human too, are slaughtered by the inhuman. These commandoes, though they have only acquired at the Cape a modern notoriety, have been used from the first day of discovery. They were common in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and under the same name, as may be seen in almost any of the Spanish and Portuguese historians of the West Indies and South America.

The manner in which these commandoes were conducted at the Cape was described, before the Parliamentary Committee of 1837,[65] to be a joint assemblage of burghers and military force for the purpose of enforcing restitution of cattle. Sir Lowry Cole authorized in 1833 any field-cornet, or deputy field-cornet, to whom a boor may complain, to send a party of soldiers on the track and recover the cattle. These persons are often of the most indifferent class of society. It is the interest of these men, as much as that of the boors, to make inroads into the country of the Griquas, Bushmen, or Caffres, and sweep off droves of cattle. These people can call on everybody to aid and assist, and away goes the troop. The moment the Caffres perceive these licensed marauders approaching their kraal, they collect their cattle as fast as they can, and drive them off towards the woods. The English pursue—they surround them if possible—they fall on them; the Caffres, or whoever they are, defend their property—their only subsistence, indeed; then ensues bloodshed and devastation. The cattle are driven off; the calves left behind to perish; the women and children, the whole tribe, are thrown into a state of absolute famine. Besides these “joint assemblages of burghers and military force,” there are parties entirely military sent on the same errand; and to such a pitch of vengeance have the parties arrived that whole districts have been laid in flames and reduced to utter deserts. Such has been our system—the system of us humane and virtuous English, till 1837! To these dreadful and wicked expeditions there was no end, and but little cessation, for the boors were continually going over the boundaries into the countries of Bushmen, Caffres, or Guiquas, just as they pleased. They went over with vast herds and eat them up. “In 1834 there were said to be,” says the Report, “about 1,500 boors on the other side of the Orange River, and for the most part in the Griqua country. Of these there were 700 boors for several months during that year in the district of Philipolis alone, with at least 700,000 sheep, cattle, and horses. Besides destroying the pastures of the people, in many instances their corn-fields were destroyed by them, and in some instances they took possession of their houses. It was contended that the evil could not be remedied; that the state of the country was such that the boors could not be stopped; and yet an enormous body of military was kept up on the frontiers at a ruinous expense to this country. The last Caffre war, brought on entirely by this system of aggression, by these commandoes, and the reprisals generated by them, cost this country 500,000l., and put a stop to trade and the sale of produce to the value of 300,000l. more!” Yet the success of a different policy was before the colony, in the case of the Kat River Hottentots, and that so splendid a one, that the Report says, had it been attended to and followed out, all these outrages might have been spared.

Such are commandoes.—So far as they related to the Bushmen, the following facts are sufficiently indicative. In 1774 an order was issued for the extirpation of the Bushmen, and three commandoes were sent to execute it. In 1795, the Earl of Macartney, by proclamation, authorized the landdrosts and magistrates to take the field against the Bushmen, in such expeditions; and Mr. Maynier gave in evidence, that in consequence, when he was landdrost of Graaf Reynet, parties of from 200 to 300 boors were sent out, who killed many hundreds of Bushmen, chiefly women and children, the men escaping; and the children too young to carry off for slaves had their brains knocked out against the rocks.[66] Col. Collins, in his tour to the north-eastern boundary in 1809, says one man told him that within a period of six years parties under his orders had killed or taken 3,200 of these unfortunate creatures; and another, that the actions in which he had been engaged had destroyed 2,700. That the total extinction of the Bushmen race was confidently hoped for, but sufficient force for the purpose could not be raised. But Dr. Philips’ evidence, presented in a memorial to government in 1834, may well conclude these horrible details of the deeds of our countrymen and colonists.

“A few years ago, we had 1,800 Boschmen belonging to two missionary institutions, among that people in the country between the Snewbergen and the Orange River, a country comprehending 42,000 square miles; and had we been able to treble the number of our missionary stations over that district, we might have had 5,000 of that people under instruction. In 1832 I spent seventeen days in that country, travelling over it in different directions. I then found the country occupied by the boors, and the Boschmen population had disappeared, with the exception of those that had been brought up from infancy in the service of the boors. In the whole of my journey, during the seventeen days I was in the country, I met with two men and one woman only of the free inhabitants, who had escaped the effects of the commando system, and they were travelling by night, and concealing themselves by day, to escape being shot like wild beasts. Their tale was a lamentable one: their children had been taken from them by the boors, and they were wandering about in this manner from place to place, in the hope of finding out where they were, and of getting a sight of them.”

I have glanced at the treatment of the Griquas in the last page but one. Those people were the offspring of colonists by Hottentot women, who finding themselves treated as an inferior race by their kinsmen of European blood, and prevented from acquiring property in land, or any fixed property, fled from contumely and oppression to the native tribes.