The Great Trek and its First Results.
[Sidenote: Abolition of Slavery]
The abolition of slavery is one of the landmarks in South
African history. The motive for the expenditure of a
hundred million of dollars in freeing slaves within the bounds of
the British Empire was noble beyond all criticism. The act itself
was wise and necessary. But the immense distance of the British
Government from the scene in South Africa and the unfortunate
ignorance of the Colonial Office, at times, concerning conditions
in those far-away regions, produced mistakes in the carrying out of
their policy of freedom which created a distinct injustice and made
memories which still rankle in the breasts of Dutchmen from the
Cape to the Zambesi. The Slave Emancipation
Act came into force in Cape Colony on
December 1st, 1833, and by the terms of its
administration $6,235,000 was apportioned to the Cape proprietors,
as against the $15,000,000 at which they had valued their
property. The difference was considerable and, as many of the
slaves were mortgaged it is apparent that some measure of trouble
must have followed even had the whole six million dollars been
promptly distributed amongst the farmers. As it was, the period
of seven years' apprenticeship originally granted in order to prepare
all parties for the inevitable change of condition was shortened
to five years, while the money itself was doled out from London
after individual proof of claim. The result, through a natural and
complete ignorance of procedure amongst the farmers, was the
wholesale disposal of claims against the Government for mere
trifles and the enrichment of hordes of agents at the expense of
the settlers.
[Sidenote: A Disastrous Measure]
To many this meant ruin. Their source of labour was gone;
they could not, or would not, themselves perform manual work;
their discontent with the British Government was intensified by a
bitter feeling that the missionaries were their sworn enemies and
were installed at the ear of the Governor and in the heart of the
Colonial Office; their belief in British power was at a minimum
owing to weakness in dealing with the Kaffirs; their homes had
been harried along the border during many Kaffir wars and sometimes
in days of peace; their pleas for a vagrancy law which should
restrain wandering Kaffirs or Hottentots while
within the Colony had been refused from fear
of harshness in its local administration; their
whole social system, religious sentiment and racial pride seemed
in a state of revolt against existing conditions. At this
unfortunate moment another Kaffir war broke out. There had
been warning signs of danger along the eastern frontier of the
Province, much alarm had been felt and expressed and appeals
were sent to Cape Town for protection. Dr. Philip, the political
missionary and self-constituted defender of all natives, declared these
fears unwarranted, and Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who had just come
out as Governor, failed to take any serious measures for defence.
The result was that on December 23rd, 1834, 10,000 Kaffirs swept
over the frontier, plundered the farms, murdered fifty Europeans
within a week and, before the Colony was cleared of them, had
wholly, or partially destroyed 806 farm-houses and captured, or
destroyed sixty wagons, 5700 horses, 111,000 horned-cattle and
161,000 sheep. This was the final blow to thousands of Dutch
settlers. Had they been naturally loyal to British institutions and
allegiance, their repeated misfortunes must have produced some
discontent, and, as it was, they were said to create an absolutely
impossible situation.
[Sidenote: The Trek Commences]
Disregarded by their own slaves, whom they
despised and often ill-treated; pillaged by the native tribes, whom
they hated with a bitter hatred and oppressed wherever possible;
governed by the English, whom they had learned to dislike intensely
and to in some measure despise; controlled by rules of administration
which they failed to understand and by laws of liberty which aimed
at their individual right of control over human chattels,
while striving to permeate by education the
dense mass of their inherited ignorance; they prepared
their caravan-covered wagons, gathered together their
household possessions and flocks and herds, and withdrew in
thousands from the Colony, and, as they hoped, from British rule.
[Sidenote: Qualities and Mode of Life]
Such is a brief pen-picture of the immediate and surface causes
of the Great Trek. It gives the most favorable view for the
emigrant farmer, and constitutes, in various forms, the basis for the
belief in foreign countries that the Boers were forced to migrate
from Cape Colony by British tyranny or maladministration; that
they deserved their independence if ever a people did; and that Great
Britain had no right to interfere further with them in the interior.
Such an opinion is far from correct. As we have seen in preceding
pages, the British Government had made sundry serious mistakes in
policy; but they had occurred under conditions of exceptional
difficulty and from motives of the highest and best. The Boers, in fact,
did not want firm government or free institutions; they desired
liberty to do as they liked with their own living
chattels and with the natives of the soil. They
deliberately cultivated modes of life and thought diametrically
opposed to everything the Englishman holds dear, and carefully
fanned the smouldering embers of dislike and distrust in their own
breasts until they became a flame of active hatred. The development
of conditions, therefore, which in Canada or Australia would have
produced protests and elicited eventual and satisfactory reforms only
served, in South Africa, to intensify individual bitterness, to increase
the racial misunderstandings and prejudices, and to hasten the great
migration into the interior.
There are some important details to consider in this connection.
Many of England's troubles in administering the eastern part of the
Colony were due to Boer arrogance and contempt of native rights and
property; while the wars which resulted in the destruction of Dutch
property, in turn, were natural though regrettable ebullitions of that
spirit of revenge which is not always confined to savages. Unwise
as Lord Glenelg's despatch to Sir Benjamin D'Urban was, its terms
clearly prove this fact. As to the Trek itself, there is a possibility
that it would have occurred in any case. The Boers were accustomed
to a wandering life in wagons, and, in time, their laagers must
inevitably have extended further and further into native territory. The
loss of their slaves would have naturally driven parties of the more
enterprising and youthful into the vast interior, and the spirit with
which they slaughtered natives as readily and as cheerfully as they
did wild beasts would have surely established Dutch communities to
the north and east without the provocations afforded by missionary
charges of cruelty, the Slaghter's Nek incident, the freeing of the
slaves, or native raids of retribution across the frontier. The pity
of it is that the feeling of hatred toward England and Englishmen
was so early in its origin and so deep-seated in its nature that some
of these occurrences, which superficial writers give as the undoubted
cause of the sentiment, were in reality more like the froth and foam
upon the top of a slow-gathering wave of sullen and stubborn
resentment against a superior racial civilization.
[Sidenote: Troubles with the Natives]
The Boers who migrated were chiefly those of the eastern part
of the Colony, far away from the seat of Government and almost
entirely isolated from communication with English settlers--largely
by their own desire. They were accustomed to
fighting the natives, and had the authorities
allowed them at pleasure to throw off their allegiance
and move into the interior in detached bodies, there would have
been no end to complications with the native tribes, while a
prolonged series of little wars in partial defence of men who were alien
in race and thought and policy would have resulted. At this period,
too, England still maintained throughout the world the principle
that he who is born a British subject is always one, and in South
Africa, up to 1836, it was really good policy to prevent isolated
Dutch settlements in the native regions. When the migration
became too large and too well organized to prevent, later developments
made it still necessary to press this claim of allegiance in
order to try and control, or check, the new régime of strife and
bloodshed which the Boer commandos had established and which
threatened both British interests and settlers in Natal. There was
much of the picturesque and something of the apparently heroic in
this famous migration. Out of Egypt and from the bondage of the
Englishmen--who would not let them retain their bondsmen--the
Boers went to the number of at least ten thousand, and traversed
the vast wilderness stretching through what is now Griqualand East
into the Natal of to-day; or else trekked into the regions north of
the Orange and Vaal Rivers. The interest and striking features
of the migration were undoubted, but the heroism was not at first
so clear. As events turned out there was much of danger and
death in these determined raids into native territory--conquered
and partially cleared of population by the wars of Moselkatze and
Tshaka--but at first the contempt of the Boers for all savages, their
absolute belief in themselves as a chosen people and in their
shotguns as invincible allies, made the movement an apparently simple
matter.
[Sidenote: Preparations and First Party of Trekkers]
In 1836 the Great Trek began. All through the frontier districts
sounded the hum of preparation, while the still primitive roads
became crowded with large wagons laden with
household goods, provisions, ammunition and the
families of the men who rode on either side or
guarded the droves of cattle and horses and the flocks of sheep and
goats which accompanied each caravan. The parties travelling
together were usually made up of related families, and were led by
one of themselves duly elected to the post and to the title of
Commandant. The first party to start was divided into two sections of
about fifty individuals each. One section met the not uncommon
fate of over-confident invaders in a land of savages, and its
members were destroyed with the exception of two children. The other
went away up to the north and east, and only a few finally reached
the Portuguese settlement at Delagoa Bay alive. Fever and the
Tsetse fly had been too much for the expedition.
[Sidenote: The Second Party]
The second party
was a large one under command of an able leader--Hendrik
Potgieter. Slowly and carefully he guided his people
up to an extensive strip of land lying between the
Vet and Vaal Rivers, and of this they took possession.
It was not long, however, before Moselkatze, the potent
Chief of the Matabele, heard of this invasion of his sphere, and some
isolated parties of the farmers were killed by his warriors. Then
came the news that a grand attack was to be made and the settlement
wiped out. Potgieter at once selected a suitable elevation,
made a strong defence with wagons and trees, and with forty men
awaited the attack. The result of fierce onslaughts upon such a
position by the naked bodies and brandishing spears of a Matabele
army was what might have been expected, and 155 corpses of the
enemy were finally left outside the laager.
[Illustration: BRITISH COURIER CARRYING THE NEWS OF THE BEGINNING
OF WAR TO THE ENGLISH SETTLERS]
[Illustration: INSPECTION BY THE COMMANDANT OF THE ASSEMBLED "COMMANDO"
IN THE MARKET PLACE OF A DORP.
BEGINNING OF THE WAR-BOERS LEAVING PRETORIA FOR THE FRONT.]
[Sidenote: The Third Contingent]
Relief came to the party from a third contingent of emigrants
under Gerrit Maritz, who soon after joined forces with them, and
then the Boers with their characteristic and inborn
contempt for the natives organized an expedition of
one hundred and seven farmers to attack the
nearest kraal of the Chief whose name was a household word of
terror amongst alien tribes and a force for unity and fighting power
amongst his own people. The commando surprised a large kraal
from which both Moselkatze and his Induna happened to be absent,
slew at least four hundred warriors, fired the village and returned to
camp with nearly seven thousand cattle as trophies of victory. The
emigrants then established themselves at a place on the Vet River,
which they called Wynburg, and here they were soon joined by other
families from Cape Colony, and, notably, by one band with Pieter Retief
at its head. The latter was elected Commandant-General, and a skeleton
of a constitution, after the Dutch plan, was framed. Instinct,
however, with the roving spirit of their people, many of the continually
arriving bands would not settle down even at this spot, and hankered
after the lowlands and sea-coast of Natal. Pieter Uys, one of the
leaders, had visited this region a couple of years before, and was
eloquent in praise of its beauty, fertility and delightful climate. The
fact that Natal had been partially colonized as early as 1825 by
Englishmen, under arrangements with Tshaka; that it was claimed as a
British possession, and that, in 1835, the settlers at Durban had
petitioned the Imperial Government to take them formally under its
protection; does not seem to have greatly concerned the Boers. The
only point in question was how Dingaan, who had succeeded Tshaka
as head of the Zulus, could be persuaded or coerced into a cession
of territory outside the immediate sphere of British settlement on the
coast.
[Sidenote: How they Obtained Land]
To this end Retief himself crossed the Drakensberg mountains,
paid a visit to Dingaan in what is now Zululand, and found him
apparently quite willing that the farmers should
settle in Natal. Meantime a second Dutch expedition
against the Matabele in the west had been organized,
and the result, as told by Dr. Theal, the Cape Town historian,[1]
is so typical of Boer methods and character in warfare that no
apology is needed for its reproduction here:
[1] _The Story of South Africa_. By George M. Theal,
LL.D. London, 1895.
[Sidenote: Ruthless Warfare]
"It consisted of one hundred and thirty-five farmers in two
divisions, under Hendrik Potgieter and Pieter Uys. Moselkatze
was found on the Marikwa, about fifty miles north of Mosega, and
he had with him at least twelve thousand warriors, all splendidly
trained and as brave as any troops who ever lived. But the advantage
of the farmers in their guns and horses was so great that the
hundred and thirty-five did not hesitate to attack a force which was
to theirs as ninety to one. For nine days the Matabele tried to
reach their opponents, but all their efforts were in
vain. The farmers were more than once nearly
surrounded; still their plans were so perfect that
they were never quite entrapped. They had little
else but dried meat to live upon, and they had no resting-place but
the bare ground with a saddle for a pillow. Only the hardiest of
men and horses could have carried on aggressive operations so long.
The loss of the Matabele was great, so great that at the end of the
nine days Moselkatze gave up the contest and sought only to
escape. With his people and his cattle he fled to the north, and in
the country beyond the Limpopo commenced to destroy the Mashona
tribes as he had destroyed the southern Betshuana. The farmers
were too wearied to follow him, and indeed they could not have
continued in the field much longer under any circumstances, so they
contented themselves by seizing six or seven thousand head of
cattle, with which they returned to Wynburg."
[Sidenote: Subjugation of Matabele]
There seems to have been no particular reason for the expedition
except the driving of the Matabele out of a region which the
Boers wanted and the making of their own position more secure. It
is probable that negotiation would have answered the purpose, as
Moselkatze was more amenable to reason than other native
potentates had proved to be, and was to some slight
extent under the influence of Dr. Moffat. But the
emigrant farmers wanted territory, and despised the
native owners too much to care about taking time and trouble for
its acquisition. Better a bold assault, a speedy and successful
slaughter of the enemy, than an ordinary and peaceful but prolonged
settlement. The immediate result of this raid was a proclamation
issued by Commandant Potgieter in which he declared territory now
including the greater part of the Transvaal, a half of the Orange
Free State, and the whole of northern Bechuanaland, to belong to the
emigrant farmers.
[Sidenote: Pieter Retief]
Not satisfied with this immense acquisition, or
annexation of territory, Retief, in the succeeding year (1838) led a large
party of Boers over the Drakensberg, and went on
himself with about seventy men to Dingaan's
capital--Umkungunhlovu, where he claimed the formal cession
of that part of Natal which had been previously promised him.
The Zulu Chief expressed his approval of the deed which had been
drawn up, affixed his mark to it, and then invited the visitors into his
own private part of the kraal. Unsuspiciously leaving their guns
behind them, the entire party seated themselves, and were then
seized, bound and slaughtered by surrounding guards. Immediately
afterwards ten thousand Zulus left the kraal, and after a march of
eleven days fell upon the nearest Boer encampment at a place since
called Weenen, and destroyed men, women, children and slaves.
The horrors of that massacre have never been forgotten or forgiven
by the Dutch. Had not one young man, sleeping at a distance from
the camp, awakened in time to save himself on a swift horse, every
Dutch emigrant in Natal must have suffered the same fate. As it
was, he succeeded in warning the other scattered parties in time for
them to form their simple laagers and to shoot down the attacking
Zulus until surrounded, literally, by heaps of dead savages.
[Sidenote: War with the Zulus]
Immediately upon hearing of the disaster Potgieter and Uys
collected every available fighting man and crossed the mountains to
the relief of their comrades. The Englishmen of
Port Natal, or Durban, also offered their assistance.
Finally, a force of 347 Boers rode straight for the
Zulu capital, intent only on vengeance. After five days' journey they
were, however, drawn into an ambush and lost ten men, including
Commandant Uys, and much ammunition and baggage. About the
same time seventeen Englishmen, leading fifteen hundred friendly
natives, of whom some four hundred were armed with muskets,
started out to help the Dutch. A little south of the Tugela River
they came upon a Zulu regiment, and were in turn drawn into an
ambush on April 17, 1838, which resulted in one of the bloodiest
battles ever fought in that region of almost continuous conflict. The
little force found itself between the wings of a Zulu army numbering
at least 7,000 men and with thousands more coming in during the
battle. Three times the Englishmen and their little force beat back
the enemy. One division, with four white men and four hundred
blacks, did fight its way down the steep bank of the Tugela and
across the river. The other division, after battling for hours with
the serried masses of savage warriors, was finally
overpowered and slaughtered.
[Sidenote: Natal Overrun by Native Soldiers]
Natal was now
overrun by Dingaan's soldiers, and the remaining
Boer families were gathered together in fortified camps, which the
Zulu armies could not carry by storm.
[Sidenote: Pretorius in Command]
In November, 1838, however, a change came over the scene.
Andries Pretorius, a Boer leader of great natural skill and characteristic
self-confidence, arrived in Natal, was elected to the command
of the scattered forces, and speedily succeeded in getting together a
compact and mobile little army of 464 men. With prayers and psalms
the men rode straight for the place where they expected to find
the enemy. Every precaution against surprise or
ambush was taken, and wherever they camped
they were surrounded with a circle of wagons
lashed together; while scouts were maintained continuously in all
directions. A vow was made that if victory came to the little troop
they would build a church and set apart a yearly thanksgiving day
in commemoration. On the 16th of December, Dingaan's army of
ten or twelve thousand men attacked their camp on the margin of a
stream which has ever since been called Blood River, and for two
hours the brave Zulu warriors faced the storm of bullets from that
deadly laager. It was useless, however. The guns and artillery of
the invaders killed over three thousand of the enemy before they
finally broke and fled. Pretorius followed them to the Zulu capital,
which Dingaan meantime set on fire, and then tried without success
to capture the Zulu Chief, who had fled with some thousands of men
to a part of the country where cavalry could not operate. Finally,
the commando returned to Natal with some 5,000 head of cattle
and the loss of six white men in the entire campaign. Dingaan also
returned and rebuilt his capital, while the Dutch founded
Pietermatitzburg, erected a church in memory of their victory, and
commenced the annual celebration of Dingaan's Day which is still
maintained.
[Sidenote: Durban Re-occupied by the British]
Meanwhile Durban had been re-occupied by a small British
force in accordance with a proclamation issued by Sir George
Napier, Governor of Cape Colony, and dated
November 14, 1838, which declared that it was intended
"to put an end to the unwarranted occupation of
the territories belonging to the natives by certain emigrants from
Cape Colony, being subjects of Her Majesty." No definite
interference was effected, however, and a year later the troops were
withdrawn in one of the multiform mutations of Colonial Office
policy; though Sir George Napier absolutely refused to recognize any
right of control over the country by the Boers, and declared in
January, 1841, that "Her Majesty could not acknowledge the independence
of her own subjects." Despite this Pretorius acted as if he
were the head of a free and all-powerful community, and with a
degree of autocratic contempt for other races and peoples which
was very characteristic. Dingaan, during the year succeeding the
battle on the banks of the Blood River, remained passive, and does
not appear to have had any aggressive intentions.
[Sidenote: Invasion of Zululand]
In September,
1839, however, the Boers made common cause with a local rebellion
raised by his brother Panda, joined the latter in
January, 1840, with four hundred men under
Pretorius, invaded Zululand and defeated Dingaan with
great slaughter. The latter fled to the Delagoa Bay region, and
was shortly afterwards murdered, being replaced by Panda as
"King of the Zulus" under the terms of a curious proclamation
signed by the Boer leader as "Commandant-General of the Right
Worshipful Volksraad of the South African Society," and in which
he claimed for the farmers the whole of Natal by right of conquest.
During this campaign against Dingaan--from which the Dutch
farmers received a booty of 40,000 head of cattle--an event occurred
for which there is no adequate excuse, and which illustrates the
unscrupulous nature of Boer warfare. Dingaan, at one stage of the
invasion, tried to come to terms with his enemy, and sent an officer
named Tambusa to negotiate for peace. Contrary to all the rules
of war, savage or civilized, Pretorius had the envoy arrested, tried
by court-martial for an alleged but unproven share in the
Umkungunhlovu massacre, and executed.
[Sidenote: Republic of Natalia Established]
What was called by the Boers the Republic of Natalia, stretching
from the Umzimvubu to the Tugela and including a claim to much
of modern Zululand, was thus established. The first act of its
Government, toward the close of 1840, was to attack a chief
named N'Capai, living two hundred miles from the
territory of the alleged Republic, and not far from the
border of Cape Colony. Without apparent rhyme or reason, the
men were slaughtered, their cattle captured, and seventeen young
children carried away into slavery. This at last aroused the Colonial
Government, and, in turn, the Home authorities. Sir George Napier
promptly sent some soldiers into the region to watch events and
prevent further aggression upon the natives, announced his intention
to resume the military occupation of Natal, and at the same time
appealed to the Colonial Office for further aid and instructions.
Ultimately it was decided to occupy Natal permanently. But before
this was done there had to be some fighting with the irrepressible
farmers. A small British force had been sent to defend Durban,
but before it reached that place was surprised and almost surrounded
by a number of Boers. After fighting for some time the British
retired, losing their guns and oxen and some nineteen men. Captain
Smith found a new position, strengthened it, and stood a siege at the
hands of Pretorius and his six hundred men, until he was relieved
on June 25, 1842, by troops from Cape Town, who came to his
rescue by sea.
[Sidenote: Further Developments]
The further developments of the situation were peaceful. Lord
Stanley, then Colonial Secretary, wrote a despatch on December 13,
1842, appointing Mr. Cloete as British Commissioner
at Durban, and laying down definite and
important rules in a new system of administration
for the country. Under these instructions the white people were to
be called together and given every opportunity for stating the nature
of the institutions they desired, although full legislative power was
not yet to be granted. "I think it probable," said Lord Stanley,
"looking to the nature of the population, that they will desire those
institutions to be founded on the Dutch rather than on the English
model, and however little some of those institutions may be suited
to a more advanced state of civilization, it is the desire of Her
Majesty's Government that, in this respect, the contentment of the
emigrants, rather than the abstract merits of the institutions, should guide
our decision." There were, of course, to be certain
limitations in this connection. No distinction or
disqualification founded on "color, origin, language
or creed," was to be recognized. No "aggression
upon natives beyond the Colony" was to be tolerated
or sanctioned. Slavery in any shape or form was to be
"absolutely unlawful." But the Boers were incorrigible. They
would not meet with the British Commissioner or fairly discuss his
terms. They would not accept the principle of racial and religious
equality under any condition of affairs. They would not accept any
restriction upon their right to take whatever territory they liked
from the natives outside of Natal and at any time they might feel
disposed. They would not endure the principle of negro freedom in
this new region any more than in the older Colony at the Cape.
Apart from these basic principles of government, practical details
also galled them. The establishment of a Land Court to limit and
define the possessions of settlers and to give legal rights of ownership
to the natives, was especially objectionable, and, by 1847, most
of the emigrant farmers had again trekked away to the Orange Free
State and the country beyond the Vaal.
[Sidenote: British Principles of Government]
There seems to have been no valid reason for this movement.
The British Government, outside of certain fundamental principles
of morality and administration, desired to give the farmers every
possible latitude. It had no wish for territorial expansion, and would
never have interfered at all if the aggressive policy of the Boers
meeting the wild instincts of the Bantu, or Zulus, half-way, had
not drenched the region with blood. But the
deterioration of the Boer character, or rather the
expression of that character in a sphere where it was
practically uncontrolled, had assumed a form in which the possession
of large tracts of land and the compulsory service of natives appeared
as absolute essentials of life, which they had the right to take by
force--in the same way as Moselkatze and Tshaka had done
previously and with apparently no higher motives than those which had
actuated savage chiefs at war with weaker tribes. Moreover, they
had failed signally in this first effort at self-government, and the
rivalry of leaders like Hendrick Potgieter, Gerrit Maritz and Andries
Pretorius had not only helped to prevent the establishment of any
form of administration amongst the people capable of levying taxes
and compelling obedience to the state, but had made constant raids
upon neighboring native tribes appear almost essential to the
holding together of the scattered communities in a common bond of
conflict and territorial acquisition.
[Sidenote: The Trek North of the Vaal River]
With the failure to acquire and hold Durban and to rule themselves
or the regions of Natal which they had taken from the Zulus
ended the first Boer effort to reach the sea and
to establish Dutch independent communities in touch
with the external world. The bulk of the farmers,
as already stated, trekked north of the Orange or the Vaal. Here
they found conditions, in 1845-47, which were scarcely less
perplexing and troubled than their own had been. Over an area of some
700 miles long and 300 wide was established a Dutch population of
about fifteen thousand persons which was constantly at war with the
natives, and, as a result of losses in this connection, did not increase
greatly in numbers despite the numerous accessions from Cape
Colony and Natal. Nominally, and by British theory, they were still
British subjects; practically, from the Orange to the Limpopo they
were independent communities whom the Colonial Office would have
preferred to forget altogether rather than to assert claims over or
make demands upon. But their relation of permanent and bitter
hostility towards the natives appears to have made absolute British
neutrality impossible. Accordingly, in 1843, an effort was made to
further isolate the Boers from Cape Colony, and "buffer states" of
native or half-breed tribes were established and recognized; much
in the same way as in the days of the Kosa tribes on the eastern
frontier of the Colony. Then, however, it was for the protection of
the Dutch farmers against the natives; now it was for the protection
of native and Colonial interests against the turbulent Boers.
[Sidenote: Moshesh the Basuto]
Moshesh the Basuto was at this time established in much
strength upon the borders of the present Orange Free State and in
territory now known as Basutoland. He was one of
the ablest men produced by the Bantu, or Kaffir,
race, and, unlike chiefs of the type of Moselkatze
the Matabele or Tshaka the Zulu, did not build his fortunes and his
power upon bloodshed and devastation. When the regions afterwards
covered by the Dutch republics and Natal were swept by a
sanguinary tide of conquest under the leadership of the two chiefs
mentioned, Moshesh followed in the wake of the wave of slaughter,
gathered together scattered remnants of tribes, conciliated, strengthened
and united them until, by almost imperceptible degrees, he had
established a strong state around the rock-ribbed heights of Thaba
Bosigo--the centre of his kraal and his kingdom. In 1843,
therefore, when the British authorities were looking around for some
means of restricting the sphere of Boer difficulties and aggressions
upon the natives, Moshesh seemed an ideal instrument. He was
intensely ambitious to extend and consolidate his power. He was
not a savage or barbarous potentate in the sense of Dingaan or his
predecessor; and to him the proffered alliance, a small annual
subsidy, an extension of recognized territorial rights and supremacy
over minor chiefs in contiguous regions, was extremely attractive and
easily acceptable. West of his territory lived a tribe of
Griquas--a half-breed people of mixed Dutch and Hottentot blood--numbering
about two thousand and ruled over by a man named Adam Kok.
They were largely influenced by missionaries, and were an inoffensive
and, as it turned out, perishing race.
[Sidenote: Establishment of a Border Native State]
With Kok a similar arrangement
of alliance was made, and he was recognized as ruler of all the
territory from the Basuto border westward to where
Andries Waterboer--another Griqua chief--held
sway over the region afterwards dominated by
Kimberley and including Modder River and the southern portion of the
present Free State. East of Moshesh and the Basuto territory a
similar alliance was made with the Pondo Chief, Faku, and thus the
girdle, or league of allied states between British territory and the
Boers was complete.
[Sidenote: Rebellion by the Boers]
But the plan did not work out as well as was expected. The
racial elements involved were too mutable, the conditions too loose,
the Governments too inadequate in strength and prestige, the Dutch
too aggressive and hostile in character, to admit of its permanent
success. A strong man, backed up continuously with plenty of
British troops, might have saved the situation and averted the wars
which followed; but continuity of policy for these fluctuating
frontiers seems to have never prevailed at either London or Cape Town.
The Treaty States did not prevent personal and commercial
intercourse between the Boers of the Cape and of the interior. They
did not avert further emigration or encourage the return of those
who had left the Colony. The Dutch population in Adam Kok's
territory did not like being ruled by a half-breed chief, and the
greater part of them repudiated the right of Great Britain to
support him in this government. Some of the minor native chiefs
refused to accept the sovereignty of Moshesh. The
first result was a small Boer rebellion against Kok
and the defeat of 250 men by some British troops
under Colonel Richardson. The second was an entire rearrangement
of existing matters by Sir Peregrine Maitland, who had
meantime become Governor at the Cape. Kok's sovereignty over the
whole region was still acknowledged, but he was limited in government
to the portion of it occupied by Griquas; while the whites
living in the other section were placed under the supervision or rule
of a British officer, who, in 1846, established himself at a small place
called Bloemfontein, where some three hundred Boers of a friendly
disposition took the oath of allegiance to the Queen. The rest
moved north to Wynburg and out of the region thus controlled by
Major Warden. With Moshesh much less could be done. He had
been far too shrewd to violate directly the terms of his arrangement
with Great Britain or to accept any proposals which would seriously
alleviate the differences between himself and the bordering tribes or
neighboring Boers. Thus the State, which had been strengthened
with a view to maintaining peace, now threatened to promote
conflict instead, and in this condition matters rested when Sir Harry
Smith came out to Cape Town in 1848 as Governor and High
Commissioner. Now the events which immediately followed came the
Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.