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

by William Howitt

One of the first of this race, whom this amiable and excellent man encountered in South Africa, was at Bethelsdorp, the missionary settlement, and under the following circumstances:—“A Caffre woman, accompanied by a little girl of eight or ten years of age, and having an infant strapped on her back above her mantle of tanned bullock’s hide. She was in the custody of a black constable, who stated that she was one of a number of female Caffres who had been made prisoners by order of the Commandant on the frontier for crossing the line of demarcation without permission, and that they were now to be given out in servitude among the white inhabitants of this district. While the constable was delivering his message, the Caffre woman looked at him and us with keen and intelligent glances, and though she very imperfectly understood his language, she appeared fully to comprehend its import. When he had finished she stepped forward, drew her figure up to its full height, extended her right arm, and commenced a speech in her native language, the Amakosa dialect. Though I did not understand a single word that she uttered, I have seldom been more struck with surprise and admiration. The language, to which she appeared to give full and forcible intonation, was highly musical and sonorous; her gestures were natural, graceful, and impressive, and her dark eyes and handsome bronze countenance were full of eloquent expression. Sometimes she pointed back to her own country, and then to her children. Sometimes she raised her tones aloud, and shook her clenched hand, as if she denounced our injustice, and threatened us with the vengeance of her tribe. Then, again, she would melt into tears, as if imploring clemency, and mourning for her helpless little ones. Some of the villagers who gathered round, being whole or half Caffres, interpreted her speech to the missionary, but he could do nothing to alter her destination, and could only return kind words to console her. For my part, I was not a little struck by the scene, and could not help beginning to suspect that my European countrymen, who thus made captives of harmless women and children, were, in reality, greater barbarians than the savage natives of Caffraria.” He had soon only too ample proofs of the correctness of his surmise. This fine race of people, who strikingly resemble the North American Indians in their character, their eloquence, their peculiar customs and traditions of Asiatic origin, have exactly resembled them in their fate. They have been driven out of their lands by the Europeans, and massacred by thousands when they have resented the invasion.

The Hottentots were exterminated, or reduced to thraldom, and the European colonists then came in contact with the Caffres, who were numerous and warlike, resisted aggression with greater effect, but still found themselves unable with their light assagais to contend with fire-arms, and were perpetually driven backwards with shocking carnage, and with circumstances of violent oppression which it is impossible to read of without the strongest indignation. Up to 1778 the Camtoos River had been considered the limit of the colony on that side; but at that period the Dutch governor, Van Plattenburgh, says Pringle, “in the course of an extensive tour into the interior, finding great numbers of colonists occupying tracts beyond the frontier, instead of recalling them within the legal limits, he extended the boundary (according to the ordinary practice of Cape governors before and since), adding, by a stroke of his pen, about 30,000 square miles to the colonial territory.” The Great Fish River now became the boundary; which Lord Macartney in 1798, claiming all that Van Plattenburgh had so summarily claimed, confirmed.

It is singular how uniform are the policy and the modes of seizing upon native possessions by Europeans. In America we have seen how continually, when the bulk of the people, or the legitimate chiefs, would not cede territory, the whites made a mock purchase from somebody who had no right whatever to sell, and on that title proceeded to drive out the real owners. In this case, Plattenburgh, to give a colour of justice to his claim, sent out Colonel Gordon in search of Caffres as far as the Keiskamma, who conducted a few to the governor, who consented that the Great Fish River should be the boundary. The real chief, Jalumba, it appears, however, had not been consulted; but the colonists the next year reminded him of the recent treaty with his tribe, and requested him to evacuate that territory. Jalumba refused—a commando was assembled—the intruders, in colonial phrase, but the real and actual owners, were expelled: Jalumba’s own son Dlodlo was killed, and 5,200 head of cattle driven off. This was certainly a wholesale beginning of plunder and bloodshed; but, says the same author, “this was not the worst—Jalumba and his clan were destroyed by a most infamous act of treachery and murder; the details of which may be found in Thompson and Kay.”

It was on such a title as this, that Lord Macartney claimed this tract of country for the English in 1797, the Cape having been conquered by us. It does not appear, however, that any very vigorous measures were employed for expelling the natives from this region till 1811, when it was resolved to drive them out of it, and a large military and burgher force under Col. Graham was sent out for that purpose. The expulsion was effected with the most savage rigour. This clearing took up about a year. In the course of it Landdrost Stokenstrom lost his life by the Caffres, and T’Congo, the father of the chiefs Pato, Kamo, and T’Congo, was butchered by a party of boors while he lay on his mat dying of a mortal disease. The Caffres begged to be allowed to wait to cut their crops of maize and millet, nearly ripe, arguing that the loss of them would subject them to a whole year of famine;—not a day was allowed them. They were driven out with sword and musket. Men and women, wherever found, were promiscuously shot, though they offered no resistance. “Women,” says Lieutenant Hart, whose journal of these transactions is quoted by Pringle, “were killed unintentionally, because the boors could not distinguish them from men among the bushes, and so, to make sure work, they shot all they could reach.” They were very anxious to seize Islambi, a chief who had actively opposed them, for they had been, like Plattenburgh, treating with one chief, Gaika, for cession of claims which he frankly told them belonged to several quite independent of him. On this subject, occurs this entry in Mr. Hart’s journal:—“Sunday, Jan. 12, 1812. At noon, Commandant Stollz went out with two companies to look for Slambi (Islambi), but saw nothing of him. They met only with a few Caffres, men and women, most of whom they shot. About sunset, five Caffres were seen at a distance, one of whom came to the camp with a message from Slambi’s son, requesting permission to wait till the harvest was over, and that then he (if his father would not), would go over the Great Fish River quietly. This messenger would not give any information respecting Slambi, but said he did not know where he was. However, after having been put in irons, and fastened to a wheel with a riem (leathern thong) about his neck, he said, that if the commando went with him, before daylight he would bring them upon 200 Caffres, all asleep.” Having thus treated a messenger from a free chief, and attempted to compel him to betray his master, away went this commando on the agreeable errand of surprising and murdering 200 innocent people in their sleep. But the messenger was made of much better stuff than the English. He led them about on a wild-goose chase for three days, when finding nothing they returned, and brought him back too.

Parties of troops were employed for several weeks in burning down the huts and hamlets of the natives, and destroying their fields of maize, by trampling them down with large herds of cattle, and at length the Caffres were forced over the Great Fish River, to the number of 30,000 souls, leaving behind them a large portion of their cattle, captured by the troops; many of their comrades and females, shot in the thickets, and not a few of the old and diseased, whom they were unable to carry along with them, to perish of hunger, or become a prey to the hyenas.

“The results of this war of 1811 were,” says the Parliamentary Report of 1837, “first, a succession of new wars, not less expensive, and more sanguinary than the former; second, the loss of thousands of good labourers to the colonists (and this testimony as to the actual service done by Caffre labourers, comprises the strong opinion of Major Dundas, when landdrost in 1827, as to their good dispositions, and that of Colonel Wade to the same effect); and thirdly, the checking of civilization and trade with the interior for a period of twelve years.”

The gain was some hundreds of thousands of acres of land, which might have been bought from the natives for comparatively a trifle.

In 1817, those negotiations which had been entered into with Gaika, as if he were the sole and paramount king of Caffreland, were renewed by the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. Other chiefs were present, particularly Islambi, but no notice was taken of them; it was resolved, that Gaika was the paramount chief, and that he should be selected as the champion of the frontiers against his countrymen. Accordingly, we hear, as was to be expected, that the very next year a formidable confederacy was entered into amongst the native chiefs against this Gaika. In the league against him, and for the protection of their country, were his own uncles, Islambi and Jaluhsa, Habanna, Makanna, young Kongo, chief of the Gunuquebi, and Hintza, the principal chief of the Amakosa, to whom in rank Gaika was only secondary. To support their adopted puppet, Col. Brereton was ordered to march into Caffreland. The inhabitants were attacked in their hamlets, plundered of their cattle, and slaughtered or driven into the woods; 23,000 cattle carried off, 9000 of which were given to Gaika to reimburse him for his losses.

Retaliation was the consequence. The Caffres soon poured into the colony in numerous bodies eager for revenge. The frontier districts were overrun; several military posts were seized; parties of British troops and patroles cut off; the boors were driven from the Zureveld, and Enon plundered and burnt.