Boer History1661 at the Cape of Good Hope: Namaqua Contact, Cruythof, and Meerhof’s Peace
Danckert’s Return — 20 January 1661
On the 20th of January 1661 Jan Danckert’s exploring party came safely back to the fort. They had left in November 1660 with thirteen volunteers, the interpreter Doman, pack oxen, and muskets, aiming north along the mountain range that separates the western coast belt from the interior. At a river flowing to the Atlantic they had found hundreds of elephants and given the stream the name it still bears. Farther on they had seen smoke and been told by San that it rose from Namaqua fires. Fatigue forced the turn for home before that camp was reached. [3]
The report that Namaqua fires had been seen was enough. Within ten days another party was ready. Thirteen Europeans and two Khoikhoi went under Corporal Pieter Cruythof, with under-surgeon Pieter van Meerhof as journalist and second in command. The path was the one already tried: past a mountain the travellers named Riebeek’s Kasteel, then the least rugged line north toward the Elephant River and beyond. [3]
Cruythof and Meerhof to the Namaquas — January–March 1661
Not far beyond the Elephant River the party fell in with eighteen or twenty Namaqua hunters. After hesitation and repeated invitations through the interpreters, the hunters came up in a friendly manner. Trinkets were given; confidence on both sides was established within minutes. Some of the Namaquas stayed with the Europeans that night and next morning led them to a village nearby. [3]
The kraal belonged to the Namaquas under chief Akembie. Meerhof counted seventy-three huts in a circle, with a few others outside, and estimated about three hundred men and four hundred women and children — the proportion of women and children small because the place was only a temporary outpost. Stock stood at roughly four thousand head of horned cattle and three thousand sheep, moved from pasture to pasture as grazing required. [3]
The travellers were welcomed with open joy. A calf and a sheep were presented for food. The leaders were invited into the chief’s hut, seated on a kaross, and given milk. In the evening a grand dance was held in their honour: a ring of between one and two hundred men, each holding a hollow reed of different length or thickness; a leader in the centre with a long stick, singing and directing; the ring blowing the reeds and moving through evolutions while women danced outside the circle. The entertainment lasted about two hours. [3]
Akembie’s Kraal and Namaqua Life
Meerhof described the Namaquas as larger in person than other Khoikhoi groups known at the Cape, and better dressed. They wore karosses of leather or of leopard, wild cat, or coney skins. Hair was of the same kind as among the Cape clans, but copper ornaments fastened to some of the tufts stretched them so that they fell round the head. Ivory and copper rings were worn on the arms. They smelted copper and iron and made ornaments and weapons from both. Habitations were the familiar hemispherical wooden frames covered with mats, movable almost as readily as canvas tents. Milk, kept in large calabashes and hollowed wooden vessels, was the chief article of food. [3]
Warriors carried shields of double oxhide large enough to hide behind, and used the assagai, clubbed stick, and bow and arrow. At the time of Cruythof’s visit there was a feud with the Cochoquas. San had recently robbed the Namaquas of cattle, and the clan was looking for a chance of vengeance on that side as well. Presents of beads, copper plates, tobacco, and other articles were made; what pleased most was a red nightcap. The strangers were well entertained while they stayed. When they left, gifts for the fort included a young ox and a goat — the first goat seen at the Cape. The party reached the fort on the 11th of March, after only forty days away. [3]
Oedasoa, the Chariguriqua Feud, and Mediation
Khoikhoi clans were often at odds with one another when Europeans first came to know them. Some feuds were hereditary; others were smaller quarrels. The ill-feeling between Namaquas and Cochoquas at this time was not deep-seated. It had grown from a deed of spoliation: Oedasoa, the Cochoqua chief, had fallen on the Great Chariguriquas and taken their cattle. The Chariguriquas had fled to the Namaquas, who had taken up their cause, but so lukewarmly that Akembie told Cruythof he would make peace at once if Oedasoa sent messengers for that purpose. [3]
Van Riebeeck wanted the interior clans on good terms so that all might come unmolested to the fort with cattle for sale. As soon as he had Cruythof’s report and the expedition journal, he visited Oedasoa and addressed him as ally of the Honourable East India Company. The Netherlanders, he said, were friends of all peoples and wished everyone to live in peace and trade in friendship. He asked his good friend and ally to appoint delegates to treat with the Namaquas; a European party would go with them and help secure the country’s tranquillity. [3]
Oedasoa answered that he knew the commander wished all people to live in peace, but he was not so good himself. His followers were more numerous and more powerful than the Namaquas and the Great Chariguriquas combined, and he was disposed to make them feel his strength. He was persuaded, however, to change that view. After a short delay three Cochoqua delegates were appointed to arrange for peace. [3]
Meerhof’s Peace Mission — 21 March to 23 April 1661
Volunteers offered again. On the 21st of March a party of nine Europeans, the three Cochoqua delegates, and two interpreters left the fort for Namaqua country under Pieter van Meerhof. Large presents went for Akembie, his three grown sons, and the leading men of the clan. The country as far as the Elephant River was by now well known. When Meerhof reached that stream for the third time he was not sorry to find no Namaquas on its banks: their absence let him lead the party into regions no explorers had previously entered. [3]
Six days farther north he pushed through country more barren and desolate than he had ever seen or imagined. On the sixth day of that wearisome march the party came on an encampment of the Great Chariguriquas and found some of Akembie’s people left there on purpose to receive any Europeans who might arrive during the chief’s absence. The main body of the Namaquas had migrated farther north. The object of the expedition was still attained: peace was concluded between the belligerent clans by their representatives. Meerhof’s party returned to Fort Good Hope on the 23rd of April, bringing every prospect of a large increase in the Company’s cattle trade. [3]
Van Riebeeck remained eager for a formal alliance with the Namaquas. Personal intercourse had broken the old belief in their high civilisation; they were known to be ordinary Khoikhoi, not even as numerous or powerful as the Cochoquas. They were, however, rich in cattle, and through them the commander still hoped to reach the golden regions laid down on the charts. Faith in the maps of the day was unshaken. He still spoke of Vigiti Magna and of the great river that ran past it as if they were established geographical facts. Beyond that river lay the land of wealth, and friendship with the Namaquas seemed the way to it. [3]
Pieter van der Stael, Sick Comforter — 1661
While the interior was being opened to commerce, work among people already at the settlement was not wholly neglected. There were no missionaries in the later sense of the word, but one man at the Cape was doing the work of an evangelist: Pieter van der Stael, the sick comforter, and brother-in-law of commander van Riebeeck. In 1661 his term expired. A new engagement for three years was entered into; the original record of that agreement is still cited in the Cape archives tradition. The document stated that the sick comforter had been very zealous in teaching Khoikhoi and slaves the Dutch language and the principles of Christianity. [3]
That conduct had been brought to the notice of the directors in the Netherlands. They approved it and ordered his pay raised to forty-five gulden a month — then considered a very large salary for the office. The agreement recognised the teaching work as part of his future duty, though he was still to attend the sick in the hospital and conduct the Sunday services. The whole number of Khoikhoi within the settlement at this time did not exceed fifty souls, so the “Dominie,” as he was sometimes called, had few of that people to labour among. Their manner of living made any effort to improve their minds almost hopeless in the eyes of contemporary observers. [3]
Already some observers suspected that the only workable method with the Khoikhoi was the path taken with Eva (Krotoa). She had grown up in the commander’s household, acquired European habits and tastes, learned to read, and acted outwardly as a Christian, though she was not yet baptized. Two systems seemed on trial: van der Stael among the beachrangers’ hovels under the Lion’s Head, teaching language, faith, and the alphabet; and Eva, trained from childhood in industry and settled modes of living before purely religious instruction was pressed. Both approaches would have advocates long after 1661. [3]
Burgher Office, Game, and Farm Discipline
Inside the settlement only a few lesser events of the year need notice. Burgher councillor Leendert Cornelissen had suffered heavy losses by the desertion of slaves, the disturbance with the Khoikhoi, and mishaps in his timber business. Those troubles had driven him to carelessness and intemperance unbecoming his position. The court of justice, of which he was a member, met every alternate Saturday afternoon at two o’clock. On one occasion, when a case came on for hearing, he was found in a tavern unfit to appear. The council of policy deprived him of office and, from a double nomination by the freemen, appointed Hendrik Boom in his stead. [3]
The two burghers who held exclusive privilege to shoot and sell game had also become irregular, so that venison was procurable only at uncertain intervals. The commander therefore allowed all freemen to kill wild animals for their own families’ consumption, but not for sale, on the ground that the public welfare required that modification of the licensed hunters’ privileges. [3]
Farmers, instead of attending to their work when ships were in the bay, often came into the port, commonly with a waggon load of firewood for sale. To check that waste of time the council enacted that no firewood should be brought for sale except on Saturday afternoons or on Sunday mornings before nine o’clock, and an official was sent to Rondebosch to compel the farmers to plough their lands. Such regulations were not peculiar to the Cape; elsewhere in Europe labour and wages were likewise bound by local authority. [3]
Van Harn’s Death and the Coming Change of Command
Van Riebeeck had long been anxious for removal from South Africa. He thought highly of his own abilities and believed he deserved promotion. Further advancement at the Cape being impossible, he had more than once asked for an appointment in India, always adding that he would abide by his superiors’ decision. In 1660 the directors resolved on his removal and appointed Gerrit van Harn as successor, without saying more about van Riebeeck himself than that he was to proceed to Batavia and there receive instructions. [3]
Van Harn sailed from Texel in the Wapen van Holland, a first-class Indiaman whose skipper was David Coninck, formerly of the Dromedaris. Soon after leaving home, sickness broke out among the crew. Before many weeks at sea the ship was like a hospital. Twenty-five corpses had already been committed to the deep when, on the 17th of March 1661, van Harn himself died. [3]
When news of the commander-designate’s death reached Batavia, the council of India appointed in his stead Zacharias Wagenaar, then serving as a merchant in the Company’s service. With the first return ship van Riebeeck was told that he might shortly expect his successor. He received the announcement with satisfaction. Arrangements to leave South Africa had already been in train: his two sons had been sent to the Latin school at Rotterdam; his private farm at Wynberg was to be handed to the council for the Company, with a commissioner to appraise improvements — among them more than a thousand young citrus trees, banana plants, olives, walnuts, apples, pears, plums, other fruit trees, and thousands of vines. The formal change of command would fall in the following year; 1661 closed with the succession settled in principle and the Namaqua road opened in practice. [3]
Everaert’s November Departure toward the Namaquas
Late in the year a further party was fitted out to visit Akembie, invite him and his three sons to the fort, and carry the most friendly messages and acceptable presents. Outfits for such journeys show the style of living among Company servants: food ample though coarse; tea and coffee unused; arrack or brandy part of the ration; and a large quantity of spice — cloves, nutmegs, and especially cinnamon — which would strike anyone unacquainted with colonial tastes as strange. [3]
Thirteen volunteers went under Sergeant Pieter Everaert as leader, with Pieter van Meerhof second in command and Cornelis de Cretzer as journalist. They left the fort on the 14th of November 1661. North of the Elephant River they would meet scarcity of water, much of it too bitter to drink, and long stretches of sand without sign of human life — a dreary wilderness under a hard sun. Bushmen later told them the Namaquas were far to the north; the party tried to follow and did not succeed in reaching them. One volunteer was trampled to death by an elephant. No discovery of importance was made. The return to the fort fell on the 13th of February in the next calendar year; 1661’s last inland push thus closed the year’s record of Namaqua diplomacy without adding a new treaty or a new map of the interior. [3]