Boer History1658 at the Cape of Good Hope: Slaves, Hostages, and Wynberg Vines
The Harwarden Trek — Little Berg River and Tulbagh View
In February 1658 the council resolved on another inland trading party. Cattle stocks were too thin for fleets expected soon. The Arnhem and Slot van Honingen, two large Indiamen in deep distress, had lately consumed forty head of horned cattle and fifty sheep in a short stay. [3]
The expedition was larger than any yet sent from Fort Good Hope. Sergeant Jan van Harwarden led fifteen Europeans and two Khoikhoi, with six pack oxen. Surveyor Pieter Potter was to map the country and keep the journal. Orders covered tribes, ivory, feathers, musk, civet, gold, and precious stones, and a site for a trading post if trade justified one. [3]
They passed Paarl mountain on the right, crossed the Berg River, and went north to the great mountain wall of the coastal belt. Searching for a pass, they found a stream foaming down a huge cleft — the Little Berg River — but could not follow it; the sides rose in near-perpendicular precipices. No path opened beyond. Dysentery forced a retreat. Near the Little Berg they camped while Potter, three Netherlanders, and the two Khoikhoi climbed the range — near the later Roodezand Pass — and became the first Christians recorded to look down into the dell now called the Tulbagh basin. Along the Breede valley they saw a wide bare scene under the sun, with no sign of human life. The expedition failed as a road to the interior. [3]
On the way home they bartered a few cattle from Chariguriqua camps. One man died; another followed within days. The night before they reached the fort, as they ate their last bread ration, a lion sprang on one of them. Van Harwarden shot it through the forehead; the man lived but lost his right arm. [3]
Amersfoort and Hasselt — Bulk Slavery Arrives
Before 1658 the settlement held only some ten or twelve enslaved people from Batavia and Madagascar. Labour was now urgently wanted. The Company sent the yachts Hasselt and Maria to the west coast. They cruised off St Paul de Loanda for a Portuguese prize; when that failed, the Maria returned to the Cape and the Hasselt sailed for the Gulf of Guinea. [3]
On 28 March the Indiaman Amersfoort entered Table Bay with one hundred and seventy captives. On the passage from Holland she had taken a Portuguese ship bound from Angola to Brazil with more than five hundred people aboard. The prize was too old to bring in; officers removed two hundred and fifty of the most valued captives, including older boys and girls. Eighty died before Table Bay; one hundred and seventy landed in miserable condition. [3]
Weeks later the Hasselt brought two hundred and twenty-eight survivors of two hundred and seventy-one bought at Popo. Numbers at the Cape now exceeded need; one hundred and seventy-two were sent to Batavia. Of those left, eighty-nine were sold on credit to burghers at prices from about £4 3s. 4d. to £8 6s. 8d. each; the Company kept the rest. [3]
School, Seal Meat, and Coast Traders
One early rule was Christian instruction. On 17 April a school opened under the commander’s brother-in-law Pieter van der Stael, sick comforter since 1656. Captives received pronounceable names and short daily lessons. The prize for diligence was a glass of brandy and a little tobacco; the commander himself attended the first days and recorded that the prize spurred application. [3]
Food was mainly seabirds and seal flesh, which van Riebeeck said they liked; large quantities came from Saldanha Bay. Four burghers — Thomas Christoffel Muller, Jurien Janssen, Joachim Elberts, and Gerrit Harmanssen — took free papers as coast traders, bought a Company boat, and plied Saldanha, Dassen Island, and Table Bay with eggs, fish, oil, skins, salted birds, and dried seal meat, selling freely and delivering surplus to the Company at fixed rates. [3]
Desertions and the Hostage Crisis — June–July 1658
Captives were under owners’ power, though rules forbade gross ill-usage. People from Guinea and Angola, once recovered from the voyage, began to run north toward a homeland they knew lay somewhere in that direction. Burghers who had bought on credit feared ruin. They — and the commander — blamed nearby Khoikhoi for enticing desertion; Khoikhoi women were seen giving small gifts of food. [3]
Weeks earlier Hendrik Boom had lost seven cattle. Friends arrested old Gogosoa until the stock was found — within hours, after the whole Kaapman clan searched. When slaves deserted, leading burghers urged the same method. A council with senior merchant Willem Bastink of the Prins Willem, secunde Roelof de Man, and Van Harwarden resolved to seize Gogosoa’s heir Schacher (Osingkima), his brother Otegno (Pieter), and Osaoa, sitting unsuspecting in the fort courtyard. They were held until runaways were returned. [3]
On Sunday 23 June excitement ran high. Interpreter Doman, back from Batavia and asking to be called Anthony, advised seizing beachranger chief Jan Cou so both clans would search. Jan Cou was taken at once. In the council chamber Eva defended the beachrangers and accused the Kaapmans; Doman retorted with old charges including David Janssen’s murder. Harry then said Schacher advised seizing a Gorachouqua leader too; that clan fled before it could be done. Kaapmans and beachrangers recovered only two captives; three more returned of hunger. The rest of the hunt failed. [3]
Harry Seized and the Kaapman Treaty
By 3 July the council — with two ships’ officers joining — was convinced the Khoikhoi had not driven the desertions. Fear remained that the fleeing Gorachouquas would make trouble and that Schacher’s seizure would stop cattle trade. Prisoners offered cattle for freedom and blamed Harry. The council reviewed Harry’s past and resolved to seize him and his herd near the old redoubt. Within an hour Harry was jailed; Van Harwarden rode for Salt River. [3]
At Harry’s kraal assegais flew; one Khoikhoi was shot dead, another wounded, before one hundred and ten cattle and two hundred and sixty sheep were driven in. Panic followed: only ninety-seven European men were resident, twenty of them invalids. Twenty soldiers, powder, and hand grenades came ashore from the Prins Willem; two guns went on redoubt Korenhoop at Rondebosch; burghers without guns were ordered to draw them under fine. [3]
Pieter Otegno was released with a peace message. Gogosoa and fourteen leading men came in. A treaty followed: past offences forgotten; future offenders punished by their own people; Kaapmans to move east of the Salt and Liesbeek, leaving Cape-side pasture to the Dutch, with leave to shelter behind the Lion’s Head if attacked; no trespass on cultivated ground; utmost effort to recover fugitive slaves, paid as for an ox; no blocking other Khoikhoi from trade; fixed cattle sales per ship and for the garrison; a Kaapman with Doman to board each arrival for bread, rice, pork, and brandy. Schacher and Osaoa were freed; the Kaapmans gave ten cows and nine sheep; gifts returned. [3]
Beachranger peace was refused. On Doman’s advice Harry was sent to Robben Island with Jan Cou and Boubo (Simon), the latter two until Janssen’s murderers were given up — they were freed after about two months on friends’ pleas. Harry stayed; only Eva pleaded for him. He might have had wives and children with him; he preferred not. Male captives, except infants and the very old, were put in chains as the only way to keep them at work. Many burghers returned purchased slaves and asked the Company to take them back, preferring European hands if released for hire. [3]
Cochoqua Trade through Eva — October 1658
For some months after the Kaapman settlement, contact was thin. Gogosoa kept distance and largely avoided the cattle clauses. Gorachouquas stayed away. Beachrangers, few in number, made a kraal at the Lion’s Head foot and sometimes fetched firewood for brandy and tobacco. Inland parties sold too few oxen for Company need. [3]
In October the strong Cochoqua clan migrated within a few hours of the fort. Trade opened through Eva, whose sister was a wife of chief Oedasoa. She acted so far in European interest that a large cattle supply followed and the Cochoquas looked on the Dutch with favour, while feuding with the Kaapmans. Eva visited the clan alone and later with Van Harwarden’s traders; she told them Christian teaching learned in the commander’s house. Van Riebeeck was pleased when she said that even in greasy skins among her sister’s people she still said her prayers night and morning. [3]
Burgher Remonstrance — December 1658
In December the farmers remonstrated against new restrictions. Van Goens had allowed cattle purchase from natives; at van Riebeeck’s urging the Seventeen withdrew it. The local council forbade such traffic under fines of £5, £10, and prosecution for a third offence. Intercourse was so barred that a burgher could be punished for letting a Khoikhoi enter his house. Leave to board ships three days after arrival was withdrawn after freemen hid in a return fleet; special leave was now required. The commander answered that not a letter of the regulations would be altered. [3]
The same paper complained that wheat prices did not pay. Farmers wanted 16s. 8d. the muid. Van Riebeeck could not raise the rate set higher up — later Batavia ordered about 6s. 11d. the hundred pounds. [3]
Wynberg Vines, Maize, and Half-Bred Sheep
In 1658 vine culture spread beyond Table Valley. Early stocks had thrived; the commander set out twelve hundred cuttings on a farm beyond Rondebosch thereafter called Wynberg, which Commissioner Cuneus had allowed him instead of Green Point. Burghers were urged to follow; most planted only a few cuttings by their houses. The first maize came in the Hasselt from the Guinea coast. Farmers were required to plant it because captives knew the crop; they did so reluctantly, preferring Fatherland grain and fruit to vine and maize they claimed not to understand. [3]
At burgher-councillor election freemen nominated Hendrik Boom, Jan Reyniers, Herman Remajenne, and Jacob Cornelissen. The council chose Hendrik Boom and kept Stephen Botma another year so that two councillors should sit, one retiring yearly. Half-bred sheep thrived better than pure Cape stock; burghers might keep only imported rams. When the Company had enough, each farmer’s flock was made up to fifty Cape ewes and one European ram. About five hundred breeding ewes stood on Robben Island under two men who also kept the night fire for ships. [3]
The West Friesland and the Hunger for Labour
Among callers was the West Friesland, one hundred and forty-eight days out with three hundred and fifty-one men once healthy. At Saldanha she could not furl sails: seventy-two dead, more than half the living unable to walk from scurvy. Free traders and Cape supplies restored the crew. [3]
Free farms at Rondebosch already meant a constant demand for cheap labour. The Company had imagined peasant proprietors on grants of at most twenty morgen, working with their own hands or a couple of servants or slaves. Farmers already wanted to direct others. West Coast slavery had disappointed; they asked again for Europeans. Garrison men willing to hire out might take free papers — about twenty-five names, few staying long. Mechanics took free papers; ground went to Johannes Louw, Philip van Roon, and Jan Coenraad Visser. The council asked the Seventeen for poor industrious farming families; the reply was that such people were hard to move to an almost unknown land, though friends might be sent and women carefully carried. [3]