THE ENGLISH IN SOUTH AFRICA.
Having now quitted North America, let us sail southward. There we may
direct our course east or west, we may pass Cape Horn, or the Cape
of Good Hope, and enter the Pacific or the Indian Ocean, secure that
on whatever shore we may touch, whether on continent or island, we
shall find the Europeans oppressing the natives on their own soil, or
having exterminated them, occupying their place. We shall find our own
countrymen more than all others widely diffused and actively employed
in the work of expulsion, moral corruption, and destruction of the
aboriginal tribes. We talk of the atrocities of the Spaniards, of the
deeds of Cortez and Pizarro, as though they were things of an ancient
date, things gone by, things of the dark old days; and seem never for
a moment to suspect that these dark old days were not a whit more
shocking than our own, or that our countrymen, protestant Englishmen of
1838, can be compared for a moment to the Red-Cross Knights of Mexican
and Peruvian butcheries. If they cannot be compared, I blush to say
that it is because our infamy and crimes are even more wholesale and
inhuman than theirs. Do the good people of England, who “sit at home
at ease,” who build so many churches and chapels, and flock to them
in such numbers,—who spend about 170,000_l._ annually on Bibles,
and more than half a million annually in missions and other modes of
civilizing and christianizing the heathen, and therefore naturally
flatter themselves that they are rapidly bringing all the world to the
true faith; do they or can they know that at this very moment, wherever
their Bibles go, and wherever their missionaries are labouring, their
own government and their own countrymen are as industriously labouring
also, to scatter the most awful corruption of morals and principles
amongst the simple natives of all, to us, new countries? that they are
introducing diseases more pestilent than the plague, more loathsome
than the charnel-house itself, and more deadly than the simoom of the
tropical deserts, that levels all before it? Do they know, that even
where their missionaries, like the prophets of old, have gone before
the armies of God, putting the terrors of heathenism to flight, making
a safe path through the heart of the most dreadful deserts; dividing
the very waters, and levelling the old mountains of separation and of
difficulty—
By Faith supported and by Freedom led,
A fruitful field amid the desert making,
And dwell secure where kings and priests were quaking,
And taught the waste to yield them wine and bread.—_Pringle._
Do they know, that when these holy and victorious men have thus
conquered all the difficulties they calculated upon, and seen, by
God’s blessing, the savage reclaimed, the idolater convinced, the
wilderness turned into a garden, and arts, commerce, and refined
life rising around them, a more terrible enemy has appeared in the
shape of European, and chiefly English corruption? That out of
that England—whence they had carried such beneficent gifts, such
magnificent powers of good—have come pouring swarms of lawless
vagabonds worse than the Spaniards, and worse than the Buccaneers of
old, and have threatened all their works with destruction? Do they
know that in South Africa, where Smidt, Vanderkemp, Philip, Read,
Kay and others, have done such wonders, and raised the Hottentot,
once pronounced the lowest of the human species, and the Caffre, not
long since styled the most savage, into the most faithful Christians
and most respectable men; and in those beautiful islands that Ellis
and Williams have described in such paradisiacal colours, that
roving crews of white men are carrying everywhere the most horrible
demoralization, that every shape of European crime is by them exhibited
to the astonished people—murder, debauchery, the most lawless
violence in person and property; and that the liquid fire which, from
many a gin-shop in our own great towns, burns out the industry, the
providence, the moral sense, and the life of thousands of our own
people, is there poured abroad by these monsters with the same fatal
effect? Whoever does not know this, is ignorant of one of the most
fearful and gigantic evils which beset the course of human improvement,
and render abortive a vast amount of the funds so liberally supplied,
and the labours so nobly undergone, in the cause of Christianity.
Whoever does not know this, should moreover refer to the Parliamentary
Report of 1837, on the Aboriginal Tribes.
The limits which I have devoted to a brief history of the treatment
of these tribes by the European nations have been heavily pressed
upon by the immense mass of our crimes and cruelties, and I must now
necessarily make a hasty march across the scenes here alluded to; but
enough will be seen to arouse astonishment, and indicate the necessity
of counter-agencies of the most impulsive kind.
The Dutch have been applauded by various historians for the justice
and mildness which they manifested towards the natives of their Cape
colony. This may have been the case at their first entrance in 1652,
and until they had purchased a certain quantity of land for their new
settlement with a few bottles of brandy and some toys. It was their
commercial policy, in the language of the old school of traders, to
“first creep and then go.” It was in the same assumed mildness that
they insinuated themselves into the spice islands of India. Nothing,
however, is more certain than that in about a century they had
possessed themselves of all the Hottentot territories, and reduced the
Hottentots themselves to a state of the most abject servitude. The
Parliamentary Report just alluded to, describes the first governor, Van
Riebeck, in the very first year of the settlement, looking over the
mud-walls of his fortress on “the cattle of the natives, and wondering
at the ways of Providence that could bestow such very fine gifts on
heathens.” It also presents us with two very characteristic extracts
from his journal at this moment.
“December 13th, 1652.—To-day the Hottentots came with thousands of
cattle and sheep close to our fort, so that their cattle nearly mixed
with ours. We feel vexed to see so many fine head of cattle, and not
to be able to buy to any considerable extent. If it had been indeed
allowed, we had opportunity to-day to deprive them of 10,000 head,
which, however, if we obtain orders to that effect, can be done at
any time, and even more conveniently, because they will have greater
confidence in us. With 150 men, 10,000 or 11,000 head of black cattle
might be obtained without danger of losing one man; and many savages
might be taken without resistance, in order to be sent as slaves to
India, as they still always come to us unarmed.
“December 18.—To-day the Hottentots came again with thousands of
cattle close to the fort. If no further trade is to be expected with
them, what would it matter much to take at once 6,000 or 8,000 beasts
from them? There is opportunity enough for it, as they are not strong
in number, and very timid; and since not more than two or three men
often graze a thousand cattle close to our cannon, who might be easily
cut off, and as we perceive they place very great confidence in us,
we allure them still with show of friendship to make them the more
confident. It is vexatious to see so much cattle, so necessary for the
refreshment of the Honourable Company’s ships, of which it is not every
day that any can be obtained by friendly trade.”
It is sufficiently clear that no nice scruples of conscience withheld
Governor Van Riebeck from laying hand on 10 or 11,000 cattle, or
blowing a few of the keepers away with his cannons.
The system of oppression, adds the Report, thus began, never slackened
till the Hottentot nation were cut off, and the small remnant left
were reduced to abject bondage. From all the accounts we have seen
respecting the Hottentot population, it could not have been less than
200,000, but at present they are said to be only 32,000 in number.
In 1702 the Governor and Council stated their inability to restrain
the plunderings and outrages of the colonists upon the natives, on the
plea that such an act would implicate and ruin half the colony; and in
1798, Barrow, in his Travels in Southern Africa, thus describes their
condition:—“Some of their villages might have been expected to remain
in this remote and not very populous part of the colony. Not one,
however, was to be found. There is not, in fact, in the whole district
of Graaff Reynet, a single horde of independent Hottentots, and perhaps
not a score of individuals who are not actually in the service of the
Dutch. These weak people—the most helpless, and, in their present
condition, perhaps the most wretched of the human race,—duped out of
their possessions, their country, and their liberty, have entailed
upon their miserable offspring a state of existence to which that of
slavery might bear the comparison of happiness. It is a condition,
however, not likely to continue to a very remote posterity. Their
numbers, of late years, have been rapidly on the decline. It has
generally been observed, that where Europeans have colonized, the less
civilized nations have always dwindled away, and at length totally
disappeared.... There is scarcely an instance of cruelty said to
have been committed against the slaves in the West Indian islands,
that could not find a parallel from the Dutch farmers towards the
Hottentots in their service. Beating and cutting with thongs of the
sea-cow (hippopotamus), or rhinoceros, are only gentle punishments;
though those sort of whips, which they call _sjambocs_, are most horrid
instruments, being tough, pliant, and heavy almost as lead. Firing
small shot into the legs and thighs of a Hottentot is a punishment
not unknown to some of the monsters who inhabit the neighbourhood of
Camtoos. By a resolution of the old government, a boor was allowed to
claim as his property, till the age of twenty-five, all the children
of the Hottentots to whom he had given in their infancy a morsel of
meat. At the expiration of this period, the odds are two to one that
the slave is not emancipated; but should he be fortunate enough to
escape at this period, the best part of his life has been spent in a
profitless servitude, and he is turned adrift without any thing he can
call his own, except the sheep-skin on his back.”
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.”
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
499_l._ 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 500,000_l._, and
put a stop to trade and the sale of produce to the value of 300,000_l._
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.
Amongst the vast mass of colonial crime, that of the treatment of the
half-breed race by their European fathers constitutes no small portion.
Everywhere this unfortunate race has been treated alike; in every
quarter of the globe, and by every European people. In Spanish America
it was the civil disqualification and social degradation of this race
that brought on the revolution, and the loss of those vast regions to
the mother country. In our East Indies, what thousands upon thousands
of coloured children their white fathers have coolly abandoned; and
while they have themselves returned to England with enormous fortunes,
and to establish new families to enjoy them, have left there their
coloured offspring to a situation the most painful and degrading—a
position of perpetual contempt and political degradation. In our
West Indies how many thousands of their own children have been sold
by their white fathers, in the slave-market, or been made to swelter
under the lash on their own plantations. Here, in South Africa, this
class of descendents were driven from civilization to the woods and
the savages, and a miserable and savage race they became. It was not
till 1800 that any attempts were made to reclaim them, and then it was
no parental or kindred feeling on the part of the colonists that urged
it; it was attempted by the missionaries, who, as in every distant
scene of our crimes, have stepped in between us and the just vengeance
of heaven, between us and the political punishment of our own absurd
and wicked policy, between us and the miserable natives. Mr. Anderson,
their first missionary, found them “a herd of wandering and naked
savages, subsisting by plunder and the chase. Their bodies were daubed
with red paint, their heads loaded with grease and shining powder,
with no covering but the filthy caross over their shoulders. Without
knowledge, without morals, or any traces of civilization, they were
wholly abandoned to witchcraft, drunkenness, licentiousness, and all
the consequences which arise from the unchecked growth of such vices.
With his fellow-labourer, Mr. Kramer, Mr. Anderson wandered about with
them five years and a half, exposed to all the dangers and privations
inseparable from such a state of society, before they could induce them
to locate where they are now settled.”
With one exception, they had not one thread of European clothing
amongst them. They were in the habit of plundering one another, and
saw no manner of evil in this, or any of their actions. Violent deaths
were common. Their usual manner of living was truly disgusting, and
they were void of shame. They were at the most violent enmity with the
Bushmen, and treated them on all occasions where they could, with the
utmost barbarity. So might these people, wretched victims of European
vice and contempt of all laws, human or divine, have remained, had not
the missionaries, by incredible labours and patience, won their good
will. They have now reduced them to settled and agricultural life;
brought them to live in the most perfect harmony with the Bushmen; and
in 1819 such was their altered condition that a fair was established
at Beaufort for the mutual benefit of them and the colonists, at which
business was done to the amount of 27,000 rix dollars; and on the goods
sold to the Griquas, the colonists realized a profit of from 200 to 500
per cent.!
Let our profound statesmen, who go on from generation to generation
fighting and maintaining armies, and issuing commandoes, look at this,
and see how infinitely simple men, with but one principle of action
to guide them—Christianity—outdo them in their own profession. They
are your missionaries, after all the boast and pride of statesmanship,
who have ever yet hit upon the only true and sound policy even in a
worldly point of view;[67] who, when the profound statesmen have turned
men into miserable and exasperated savages, are obliged to go and
again turn them from savages to men,—who, when these wise statesmen
have spent their country’s money by millions and shed blood by oceans,
and find troubles and frontier wars, and frightful and fire-blackened
deserts only growing around—go, and by a smile and a shake of the
hand, restore peace, replace these deserts by gardens and green fields,
and hamlets of cheerful people; and instead of involving you in debt,
find you a market with 200 to 500 per cent. profit!
“It was apparent,” says Captain Stockenstrom, “to every man, that if it
had not been for the influence which the missionaries had gained over
the Griquas we should have had the whole nation down upon us.” What a
humiliation to the pride of political science, to the pride of so many
_soi-disant_ statesmen, that with so many ages of experience to refer
to, and with such stupendous powers as European statesmen have now in
their hands, a few simple preachers should still have to shew them the
real philosophy of government, and to rescue them from the blundering
and ruinous positions in which they have continually placed themselves
with uneducated nations! “If these Griquas had come down upon us,”
continues Captain Stockenstrom, “we had no force to arrest them; and I
have been informed, that since I left the colony, the government has
been able to enter into a sort of treaty with the chief Waterboer, of a
most beneficial nature to the Corannas and Griquas themselves, as well
as to the safety of the northern frontier.”
If noble statesmen wish to hear the true secret of good and prosperous
government, they have only to listen to this chief, “who boasts,”
to use the words of the Parliamentary Report, “no higher ancestry
than that of the Hottentot and the Bushman.”—“I feel that I am
bound to govern my people by Christian principles. The world knows
by experience, and I know in my small way, and I know also from my
Bible, that the government which is not founded on the principles of
the Bible must come to nothing. When governments lose sight of the
principles of the Bible, partiality, injustice, oppression and cruelty
prevail, and then suspicion, want of confidence, jealousy, hatred,
revolt, and destruction succeed. Therefore I hope it will ever be my
study, that the Bible should form the foundation of every principle
of my government; then I and my people will have a standard to which
we can appeal, which is clear, and comprehensive, and satisfactory,
and by which we shall all be tried, and have our condition determined
in the day of judgment. The relation in which I stand to my people as
their chief, as their leader, binds me, by all that is sacred and dear,
to seek their welfare and promote their happiness; and by what means
shall I be able to do this? This I shall best be able to do by alluding
to the principles of the Bible. Would governors and governments act
upon the simple principle by which we are bound to act as individuals,
that is, to do as we would be done by, all would be well. I hope, by
the principles of the gospel, the morals of my people will continue
to improve; and it shall be my endeavour, in humble dependence on the
Divine blessing, that those principles shall lose none of their force
by my example. Sound education I know will civilize them, make them
wise, useful, powerful, and secure amongst their neighbours; and the
better they are educated, the more clearly will they see that the
principles of the Bible are the best principles for the government of
individuals, of families, of tribes, and of nations.”
Not only governors but philosophers may listen to this African chief
with advantage. Some splendid reputations have been made in Europe by
merely taking up some one great principle of the Christian code and
vaunting it as a wonderful discovery. A thousand such principles are
scattered through the Bible, and the greatest philosophers of all, as
well as the profoundest statesmen, are they who are contented to look
for them there, and in simple sincerity to adopt them.