THE AFRICANDERS’ FIRST TREK TO THE NORTH.
1806–1838.
When the British took forcible possession of the Cape colony a second
time, in 1806, they found a total population of 74,000. Of these 17,000
were native Hottentots, 30,000 were slaves of African, Asiatic and
mixed blood, and 27,000 were of European descent—mostly Dutch, with a
sprinkling of German and French. Nearly all spoke the dialect of
Holland Dutch, into which the speech of a people so mixed and so
isolated had degenerated.
In the beginning of the second English regime there was a fair promise
of peace and of the gradual fusion of the Africander and the English
elements in a homogeneous people. The Dutch, from whom the Africanders
were principally descended, and the English were cognate nations.
Though separated as to national life and history by fourteen centuries,
they possessed the same fundamental principles that give tone to
character—the two languages were so far alike that the one people found
it easy to learn the speech of the other; they both loved liberty, and
they both held the Protestant faith. On the surface of things there was
every reason to expect that the common features in blood, language,
political ideals and religion would lead to kindly intercourse,
intermarriages, and a thorough blending of the two races in one.
The first few years of experience seemed to strengthen this promise of
good into certainty. Two successive British governors were men of
righteousness and wisdom. The restrictions upon trade imposed by the
Dutch East India Company were removed. Schools were founded. Measures
were taken to improve the breed of horses and cattle. The trade in
slaves was forbidden, and missionaries were sent among the natives. The
administration of this period was careful to leave untouched as far as
possible the local institutions, the official use of the Dutch
language, and the Dutch-Roman law, which had become the common law of
all civilized South Africa, both Dutch and English.
Under these favoring influences the two peoples became friendly and
began to intermarry. In 1820 the British government promoted emigration
from England and Scotland to South Africa, to the extent of about five
thousand. From that time there was a steady increase of the population
from Great Britain, and to a much smaller extent from Germany, France
and other European nations. The newcomers from continental Europe soon
lost their nationality and learned to speak either English or the local
Dutch dialect.
The promise of peace, and of the complete fusion of all the elements in
one people loyal to the British crown, was not fulfilled. The causes of
the failure—then insidious, but now easy to detect and analyze—must be
considered at this point, for only in their light can we understand the
Africander people and form a just judgment of their subsequent course.
Doubtless the colonists were influenced, to a greater degree than they
realized, by the natural dislike of any civilized people to be
transferred to the rule of a foreign nation. They were not the kind of
people to make much of the fact that the Dutch and the English sprang
from a common origin more than fourteen hundred years before—if they
had any knowledge of it. To them the British were a different race, and
the British government was a kind of unloved step-father who had first
conquered dominion over them by the strong hand and then bought them
with money, as perpetual chattels, from their degenerate mother
country.
Another cause of the failure to amalgamate was in the now fixed
character of the South African Dutch. Few of them dwelt or cared to
dwell in village communities. Some were farmers, it is true, living in
touch with the towns; but most of them were stockmen roaming in a
pastoral life over large tracts of the country—almost without local
habitation. At long intervals they saw something of their always
distant next neighbor ranchmen, but they saw nothing of the life in the
few colonial towns. The intercourse between these pastoral Africanders
and the British was so infrequent, and so limited as to scope, that the
two races knew but little of one another. As a result, the process of
social amalgamation, going on at Cape Town and in some other places
where the population lived in communities, made little progress in the
country districts where the great majority of the Africanders dwelt.
A single incident, of no great proportions in itself, must be given a
separate mention among the causes of estrangement between the two
civilized races in South Africa. It was not so much the cause of a new
line of cleavage as it was the wedge driven to the head into one of the
existing lines. In 1815 a Boer was accused of seriously injuring a
native servant. When the authorities sent out a small force to arrest
the accused his neighbors rallied to his defense, and a brief
resistance was offered to the serving of the warrant. The uprising—a
mere neighborhood affair—was easily suppressed. Several prisoners were
taken, six of whom were condemned to death. Five of the condemned were
hanged, and their women—who had fought beside them—were compelled to
stand by and witness the execution. Some promise of reprieve had been
made by the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. The crowd of Africanders
stood about the gallows on the fatal day, hoping to the last moment
that their friends would be spared, but no reprieve came. The tragedy
was completed, and the story of it went into the Africander folklore,
becoming, and remaining to this day, a part of the nursery education of
every Africander child. They named the ridge on which the execution
took place, “Schlachter’s Nek,” which, being interpreted, is “Butcher’s
Ridge.” Canon Knox Little, in his late work on South Africa, is
authority for the statements that Lord Somerset actually reprieved the
condemned men, that the reprieve reached the Field-Cornet appointed to
carry out the execution in good time to save the victims, and that the
Field-Cornet executed the death warrant having the governor’s reprieve
in his pocket, being actuated to the murderous deed by private spite.
The Canon adds that the Field-Cornet was so sure that he, himself,
would be punished for his iniquity that he committed suicide. It is to
be devoutly hoped that the learned Canon is well informed both as to
the governor’s purpose of mercy and the Cornet’s motive for suicide.
Whatever the interior facts may have been, they were unknown to the
Africanders. The cruel act—justified by the doers as a piece of
necessary firmness—caused bitter and widespread resentment at the time,
and continues to foster anti-British feeling among all the Dutch of
South Africa.
Another cause that made for disruption was an unwarrantable and most
unwise interference of the British authorities with two cherished and
guaranteed rights of the colonists—the old system of local government,
and the use of the Dutch language in official documents and legal
proceedings. In the forms of government changes were made which greatly
reduced the share formerly enjoyed by the people in the control of
their local affairs. The substituting of English for Dutch in official
and legal documents was a still more serious grievance to a people of
whom not more than one-sixth understood English.
Still another cause of disaffection grew out of wars with the Kaffirs
on the eastern border. Between 1779 and 1834 four struggles to the
death occurred between the whites and the tribes living beyond Fish
river. By dint of hard fighting the Kaffirs were finally subdued and
driven forth into the Keiskama river region. But for some reason the
home government assumed that the colonists had ill-treated the natives
and provoked them to war. The dear bought victories of the whites were
rendered sterile by strict orders from the British Colonial Office that
the Kaffirs be allowed to return to their old haunts, where they once
more became a source of constant apprehension to the border farmers.
This action on the part of the home authorities was taken as an
evidence of either weakness or hostility to the Africander population,
and led them to think of the British Colonial Office as their enemy.
The final, probably the principal, cause, the one that fanned the
slumbering resentment of many things into active flame, arose out of
the slave question. To the great detriment of their manhood and
womanhood the early Dutch colonists resorted to slave labor. From 1658
onward slavery had been practiced throughout the colony, as, indeed, it
had prevailed in most of the world. Trouble began to grow out of it as
early as 1737. In that year the first European mission to the
Hottentots was undertaken by the Moravian church. Their work was much
obstructed by the colonists, who even compelled one pastor to return to
Europe because he had administered Christian baptism to some native
converts. In later years most of the missionaries came from England,
where the anti-slavery sentiment was fast becoming dominant, and from
1810 the English missionaries were cordially disliked by the colonists
because they openly espoused the cause of the slaves and reported every
case of cruelty to them that came to their knowledge. Possibly they
sometimes exaggerated, as it has been asserted of them, but this may be
excused in the only friends the oppressed blacks had. Besides this
conflict between the slave-owners and the missionaries, there was a
steady increase of disaffection from a cognate cause—the temper and
action of the government towards the servile classes. In 1828, to the
great disgust of the colonists, a civil ordinance placed all Hottentots
and other free colored people of South Africa on the same footing with
the whites as to private civil rights. This was followed by enactments
restricting the authority of masters over their slaves, the purpose
being to mitigate the sufferings of the enslaved. Then came the
abolition of slavery in all British dominions, in 1834. To provide
compensation to slave-owners parliament set apart the sum of
£20,000,000, to be distributed to the several colonies where slavery
had existed. The share of this amount appropriated to the Cape Colony
slave-holders was a little over £3,000,000—a sum considerably below the
equitable claim for the 39,000 slaves to be set free. Additional
irritation was felt when it was found that the certificates for
compensation were made payable in London only, so that most of the Cape
slave-holders were forced to sell them to speculators at a heavy
discount. Many farmers were impoverished by the change, and labor
became so scarce and dear that it was impossible to carry on
agriculture to profit.
Serious enough was the summing up of the causes that made for the
disruption of the Dutch and the English classes in Cape Colony.
Hitherto the Africanders had been able to indulge their love of
independence by living apart from the centers of organized government.
But now they had come under the conquering hand of an alien and
masterful people; they had been sold for money by their mother country;
they had been treated with undue sharpness and cruelty—as witness the
atrocity of Schlachter’s Nek; they had been spied upon and denounced by
the missionaries; they had been forced to transact all their official
and legal business in a foreign language which few of them understood;
the savage native blacks had been put on a level with them; their
victory over the Kaffirs at the cost of much blood had been rendered
fruitless by the interference of the home government; and now their
slave property, which they had acquired under law, had been taken away
without adequate compensation, and the further practice of slavery had
been interdicted.
Rebellion against the power of Great Britain was hopeless and not to be
thought of. But they could go out into the wilderness and begin life
anew where they could follow the independent pastoral pursuits they
preferred, enjoy the isolation and solitude they loved, preserve all
their ancient customs, and deal with whatever native people they might
find there in their own way, untrammeled by the English who had
undertaken to govern them on principles which they could neither
understand nor approve.
Then began the “Great Trek” of 1836—the Africander secession and
exodus, leaving their former country to the possession of the English,
and seeking towards the north for a country wherein they would be free
according to their own ideals of liberty.
To the north and east of the utmost limit of European settlement in
1836 was a region now divided into the Orange Free State, The Transvaal
or South African Republic, and the British colony of Natal. A few
hunters had penetrated a little way into it, and some enterprising
border farmers had occasionally driven their flocks and herds into the
southern fringe of it in search of better pasture. It had been
described by the few who had explored it as having districts that were
well watered and fertile—a country of arable and pasture lands. Within
it, and bordering close to it on the northwest, were the fierce Zulus;
and it abounded with big game and enormous beasts of prey. But the
Africanders knew what it was to battle for place and for life with wild
beasts and savage men. They had less dread of these than of the
experiences they foresaw for themselves under the new government set up
in Cape Colony. They made choice of the wilderness with all its
hardships and perils, and set forth.
One may not be able to laud all their motives for taking this course,
as we judge such matters now, after more than half a century during
which there has been a constant brightening of the light of moral
truth. It must be admitted that their action was taken, in part,
because of attachment to slavery. But condemnation of that part of
their complex motives should be modified by the thought that the best
peoples of the world were just then coming to see with John Wesley that
human slavery is “the sum of all villainies.” And it should be
remembered that nearly thirty years later than the Africander secession
and exodus partly in the interest of slavery, fully one-third of the
free population of the United States seceded from the Union wholly in
the interest of the same “peculiar institution,” claiming to hold their
lands as well as their slave property, and that it cost the nation a
million lives and a thousand million dollars to transmute into American
practice the lofty sentiment embodied in the American Declaration of
Independence that, being created equal, all men have sacred rights to
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
After discounting fairly the nobility of their motives in making the
“Great Trek,” it will be allowed by every unprejudiced mind that with
the less laudable were mingled the love of manly independence and a
reasonable resentment at injustices done them in several matters, and
that they were supported in the hazardous undertaking by a courage
equal to that of the Pilgrim Fathers in venturing into the New England
wilderness.
Not inaptly they compared themselves to Israel forsaking Egypt and
beginning the long wilderness journey to a land of promise, thinking it
not unlikely that the British governor, like Pharaoh, would pursue
after them and try to turn them back. But their Pharaoh, after
consulting his legal adviser, decided to let them go. It was serious,
indeed, to lose so many stalwart and useful citizens, but there was no
legal way of stopping them; and it would not do to use the strong hand,
for Great Britain had just abolished slavery.
Slowly and in small parties the exodus began, for there must not be
cattle enough in one train to exhaust the pasture along the route they
were to follow. Places of rendezvous were appointed beforehand, where,
at necessary intervals of time, all might come together for mutual
encouragement and counsel. The men carried arms for defense and for the
killing of game for food. Long experience in shooting, not for sport
but for life itself, had made them almost infallible marksmen—an
accomplishment that proved their only salvation in the fierce and long
continued struggle that was before them.
Between 1836 and 1838 nearly 10,000 Africanders set forth, traveling in
large covered wagons drawn by strings of oxen numbering in some cases
ten and even twelve yoke. It is interesting to know that among the few
survivors of that historic pilgrimage is Paul Kruger, who, as a boy of
ten years, helped to drive his father’s cattle across velt and mountain
range.
The story of the wanderings of these emigrant Africanders, and of their
conflicts with the warlike aborigines, is romantic to the highest
degree, recalling in some of its features the adventures of the
eleventh century crusaders and of the Spaniards in Mexico in the
sixteenth century.
The first division that trekked, consisting of ninety-eight persons
traveling in thirty wagons, suffered defeat and almost ruinous
disaster. They had penetrated into the far northeast beyond the Vaal
river—the territory of the present South African Republic—where many of
their number fell in battle with the natives. The remainder was rapidly
thinned out by deaths from fever and from privation caused by the
wholesale destruction of their cattle by the tsetse-fly. After
incredible sufferings a mere handful escaped eastward to Delagoa Bay.
Another and larger division was formed by the union of several smaller
parties at a rocky peak called Thaba ’Ntshu, situated near the eastern
border of what is now the Orange Free State, and visible from
Bloemfontein. This division soon became involved in hostilities with a
branch of the fierce Zulu race, known in later history as the Matabele.
The chief of this tribe, Moselekatse, was a general of much talent and
energy as well as a brave warrior. The Matabele, regarding the
Africanders as trespassers upon their territory, immediately provoked
war by attacking and massacring a small detached body of emigrants.
Doubtless the whites were intruders; but they knew that the Matabele
had lately slaughtered or driven out of that region the weaker Kaffir
tribes, and therefore had no conscientious scruples about meting to
them the same treatment they had measured to others. Indeed, the
Africanders seem to have regarded their relation to all the natives as
being similar to that of the Israelites under Joshua to the tribes of
Canaan—they were there to possess the land, and to reduce the heathen
inhabitants to submission and servitude by whatever means it might be
necessary to use. They now had an unprovoked and murderous attack to
avenge, which they proceeded to do with great promptitude and courage.
Hurling their whole strength against Moselekatse with the utmost fury,
they routed his greatly superior force with terrific slaughter, so that
he fled before them, far and fast, toward the northwest, not halting in
his flight until he had crossed the Limpopo River. There he, in turn,
made havoc of the natives dwelling between that stream and the Zambesi
River, and established in that region the Matabele kingdom in such
strength that it continued a scourge to all neighboring peoples until
its overthrow in 1893. By the defeat and expulsion of the Matabele the
Africanders obtained possession of the immense territories lying
between the Orange River on the south and the Limpopo on the north. The
small communities with which they were able to people the country at
first grew in numbers until they became in course of time, the
population of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.
Meantime, the largest and best organized of the three pioneering
expeditions, under the capable leadership of Pieter Retief—a man much
respected by all Africanders to this day—trekked eastward and then
southward into the warmer and more fruitful country lying between the
Quathlamba range of mountains and the Indian Ocean. Here they found a
region practically emptied of native inhabitants, save a not very
numerous tribe of Zulus. Native wars had nearly depopulated the country
in 1820. They also found a small English settlement at Fort Natal,
where the flourishing town of Durban is now situated. These few
Englishmen had obtained a cession of the narrow maritime strip they
occupied from King Tshaka, and were maintaining a little republic as a
temporary form of government until they could obtain the status of a
British colony. They had applied for that standing in 1835, with the
request that a legislature be granted them. The British government was
still considering their request, and was in doubt as to whether it
should occupy the fort and establish a colony there, when the
Africanders arrived. The settlement was so insignificant, and the
prospective action of the British authorities so uncertain that the
emigrants paid little attention to it.
Desiring to live on terms of peace with the Zulus the Africanders
applied to their king, Dingaan, for a cession of territory, rashly
visiting his kraal for that purpose. The king made the grant readily
enough, but the next day when they were about to depart after drinking
a farewell cup of native beer, he treacherously ordered his warriors to
slay his guests, alleging that they were wizards. Pieter Retief, with
all who had accompanied him on the embassy perished that day, and the
deed was followed up with an attack on a small body of emigrants camped
near by. The surprise was complete, and every soul was massacred
without mercy.
These atrocities roused the whole body of emigrants to execute
vengeance, and they did it so effectually that anniversaries of that
day, December 16th, 1838, are still observed by the people of the
Transvaal. A mere handful of the Africanders decimated and put to rout
King Dingaan’s great host. They owed their victory to expert
markmanship and horsemanship as well as to their lion-like bravery and
prowess. Riding swiftly into easy range they fired a volley with deadly
precision and then wheeled and as swiftly rode out of reach of the Zulu
assagais without suffering harm. Several repetitions of this maneuver
so reduced the fighting force and the courage of the Zulus that they
turned and fled precipitately. Two years later, 1840, the king’s
brother, Panda, then in rebellion against Dingaan, made common cause
with the Africanders, and together they drove the warlike king out of
Zululand. Panda was then made king in his brother’s stead, accepting
the relation of vassal to the government of the Natalia Republic
established by the Africanders. They began about this time to survey
and apportion the land, and founded a city about sixty-five miles
inland from Port Natal, known ever since as Pietermaritzburg.
This action, with some others of a like nature, brought about the
second contact of Boer and Briton, the subject to be treated in the
next chapter.