Boer History1662 at the Cape of Good Hope: Wagenaar’s Installation and Van Riebeeck’s Departure
Everaert’s Return and Settlement Discipline — Early 1662
On the 13th of February 1662 Sergeant Pieter Everaert brought his party back to the fort. Thirteen volunteers, with under-surgeon Pieter van Meerhof second in command and Cornelis de Cretzer as journalist, had left on the 14th of November 1661 to invite the Namaqua chief Akembie and his sons to Table Bay. North of the Elephant River water was scarce and often too bitter to drink. Days of sand without human sign ended only when San told them the Namaquas were far to the north. The party tried to follow and failed. One volunteer was trampled to death by an elephant. No discovery of lasting importance was made on the trek. [3]
Inside the settlement the year’s lesser troubles were already visible. Burgher councillor Leendert Cornelissen, a timber dealer, had suffered heavy losses through desertion of slaves, earlier disturbance with Khoikhoi groups, and mishaps in trade. Carelessness and intemperance followed. The court of justice, of which he was a member, met every alternate Saturday afternoon at two. On one sitting he was found in a tavern unfit to appear. The council of policy stripped him of office and, from a double nomination by the freemen, appointed Hendrik Boom in his place. [3]
The two burghers who held exclusive privilege to shoot and sell game had grown irregular, so venison reached the fort only at uncertain intervals. The commander opened permission for all freemen to kill wild animals for their own families, but not for sale, on the ground that the public welfare required a check on the licensed hunters. Farmers who should have been at the plough when ships lay in the bay were often at the port with a waggon-load of firewood. The council ordered that firewood for sale might be brought only on Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings before nine, and an official was sent to Rondebosch to keep men at the plough. Such rules were of a piece with labour regulation elsewhere in Europe at the same date; they show how tightly the refreshment station still managed free time and free trade. [3]
Cape Clans, the Cochoqua Feud, and the Wynberg Conference
Early in 1662 the old feud between the Cape clans and the Cochoquas under Oedasoa, quiet for a short spell, broke open again. The Cape clans drove their cattle as close as they could to the European settlement and sent messengers to implore protection. Commander Jan van Riebeeck, with a small guard, rode out to see the ground for himself. Just beyond Wynberg he found four kraals with one hundred and four large huts, holding fully two thousand Goringhaiquas and Gorachouquas. He dismounted and sat under a screen the people hastily made by planting poles and spreading a mat. [3]
The chiefs said they expected no mercy from Oedasoa. Unless they could fall back on the mountains they could not defend themselves, and as the Europeans now held those mountains they thought they were entitled to protection. Van Riebeeck answered that if they would undertake to deliver ten head of horned cattle and ten sheep for every vessel that entered the bay, he would take them under the guardianship of the Honourable Company. The chiefs asked leave to consult their people and begged him to wait. An old man went round to call the sages. Under the presidency of Choro they debated for fully four hours; a small committee of leading men then framed the answer. They could not dispose of so many cattle without destroying breeding stock, but they would sell all that could be spared without binding themselves to any fixed number. [3]
Van Riebeeck tried to persuade them that fixed deliveries would let them enrich themselves by barter inland. The argument failed. He left the camp after telling the chiefs that grass was growing scarce in that neighbourhood and that they must move away at once. Yet he had no intention of leaving the Goringhaiquas and Gorachouquas to Oedasoa’s mercy. Oedasoa was the Company’s friend and ally, but so powerful that it seemed unwise to let him destroy the Cape clans and become the immediate neighbour of the settlement. In that case he might soon grow troublesome and block intercourse with tribes farther inland. The commander chose to watch events and keep a balance of power. Next morning Gogosoa and Choro, with Harry and a troop of followers, brought fourteen oxen and eleven sheep for sale in hope of appeasing him. They were liberally entertained and told that the Europeans remained friendly, though no promise of armed protection would be given. [3]
Mozambique Soldiers and Lieutenant Tulleken — April 1662
The Company was then preparing a fleet to attack Portuguese Mozambique. Orders reached the Cape to detain two hundred and fifty soldiers from homeward-bound ships and hold them ready to embark when the expedition arrived. In April 1662 the soldiers were landed and placed under Lieutenant François Tulleken, who during his short residence took military precedence of Sergeant Everaert. The presence of so large a body of men strained local supplies and made the cattle trade with neighbouring clans more urgent than usual. [3]
Verbal reports carried home by skippers did not always match the despatches van Riebeeck prepared. The commander tended to overstate the advantages of the Cape station; skippers tended to underrate them. He spoke of fresh meat, vegetables, and a near certainty of fruit; they spoke of tough lean meat, ships straining at cables in heavy seas, and lodging-houses and brandy shops where charges were made without the fear of God. Runaways who secreted themselves on return fleets naturally supported the skippers once they reached the fatherland. [3]
The directors told the commander they were inclined to believe the complaints, noting that in one matter he had clearly misled them: he had often held out the prospect that the Cape would feed itself, yet rice still had to be imported. The charge was harsh — imported rice was a small item against the bulk of fleet provisions — but belief had settled in the Netherlands that Cape resources were thinner than his letters claimed. Strict orders followed: no more men were to be released from service to become town burghers. Farmers were needed first of all. The instruction fixed the tone of the last months of van Riebeeck’s command and of the opening months under his successor. [3]
Wagenaar Arrives — 2 April 1662
Van Riebeeck had long asked for removal and promotion in India. In 1660 the directors resolved on his departure and named Gerrit van Harn as successor, saying only that van Riebeeck was to proceed to Batavia for further orders. Van Harn died at sea on the 17th of March 1661 in the Wapen van Holland. The council of India then appointed Zacharias Wagenaar, a merchant in the Company’s service, and the first return ship carried word that a successor might shortly be expected. Van Riebeeck received the news with satisfaction. His two sons were already at the Latin school in Rotterdam. His private farm at Wynberg had been handed to the council for the Company, to be appraised by the next commissioner for improvements — among them more than a thousand young citrus trees, banana plants, olives, walnuts, apples, pears, plums, other fruit trees, and thousands of vines. [3]
On the 2nd of April 1662 Wagenaar reached the Cape as commodore of the two ships Angelier and Ojevaer, part of the return fleet of 1662 under Arnold de Vlaming, ordinary councillor of India. Three other ships of the same fleet, with Joan van der Laen as commodore, were already at the Table Bay rendezvous. Four ships were still behind: one was later known to have gone down in a gale; the other three were never heard of again. Wagenaar was warmly welcomed on landing, but the reins of government were not handed over at once. [3]
Installation — 6 May 1662 — and Van Riebeeck’s Departure
On the afternoon of the 6th of May 1662 the freemen assembled at the fort. The garrison stood under arms before a temporary platform. The induction was simple. Secretary Hendrik Lacus read the commission of the governor-general and council of India. The troops presented arms. Secunde Roelof de Man, Lieutenant François Tulleken, fiscal Abraham Gabbema, and the minor officers engaged to support the new commander’s authority. The freemen repeated a formula promising obedience to his lawful orders. The ceremony was then over. [3]
On the 7th of May van Riebeeck and his family embarked in the Mars. Early on the following morning the ship sailed for Batavia. He had governed the settlement ten years and one month. By order of the directors he left a lengthy memoir for his successor: the condition of the infant colony, remarks on planting by season, an account of all Khoikhoi clans then known, and a mass of hearsay geography, much of which later proved inaccurate. After Batavia he became head of the Company’s establishment at Malacca until 1665, then secretary of the Council of India for many years, without a vote in its debates. [3]
The Settlement at Handover
The station Wagenaar inherited was in fairly prosperous condition. Javanese horses had increased to over forty, old and young, so that eighteen mounted men could patrol the border. The protective hedge was growing well and promised within three or four years to be high and thick enough that nothing could be driven through it. From the Khoikhoi there seemed little immediate cause for fear on that line. Horned cattle, sheep, and pigs stood in good stock. Every farmer had at least twelve working oxen and six cows; every man whose wife had arrived from Europe had at least twelve cows. Inferior animals might still be exchanged for the best the Company bought from the natives, so freeholders held the choicest stock in the country. Each had his little freehold farm marked out; beyond the ploughlands the open country remained common pasturage. [3]
The directors had already reproved van Riebeeck for the severity of his regulations and ordered many trade restrictions removed. Farmers still could not legally buy cattle from the natives, nor sell a muid of wheat, an ox, or a sheep except to the Company, but they might dispose of anything else freely — even to the master of a foreign vessel — at the best price they could get. Town burghers lived largely off visitors. In the decade 1652–1661 an average of twenty-five Company ships put into Table Bay each year, with about two hundred men aboard, some five thousand visitors a year staying usually ten or twelve days. Seventeen English and six French ships had also anchored in the bay during van Riebeeck’s government, and their crews bought freely from freemen. Foreign ships were not encouraged as a policy, yet English and French seamen were treated no worse at the Cape than Dutch seamen then were in English or French colonial ports. [3]
The government would sell foreigners nothing from Company stores, but lodging houses and taverns were open, vegetables, pigs, and poultry could be bought from burghers, and at times the authorities closed their eyes to sales of cattle when the Company was fully supplied and a high figure was offered. Directors’ instructions were to give burghers a helping hand and not enforce harsh rules when unnecessary. The living was precarious and tended to form petty traders rather than the solid farming body the Company wanted. Van Riebeeck reported that many townsmen did so well they were never seen with shirt sleeves rolled up; a few years later another commander found some in extreme poverty. Both statements could be true of different men at different moments. [3]
Van Riebeeck left high hopes of the olive. Nowhere, he thought, was there a finer young olive than on the Wynberg farm that had been his; the previous year it had been overloaded with well-ripened fruit, and hundreds of young trees were ready for transplanting in July and August. He also urged the taming of young ostriches as presents for Asian potentates — their feathers were saleable, but no one yet thought of farming the bird for plumage alone — and the stocking of islands in Saldanha Bay with rabbits to feed distressed ships. Rabbits already swarmed on Robben Island, though a harmless snake had so multiplied that further increase there seemed doubtful. [3]
Known Clans and Van Riebeeck’s Memoir
The clans known in 1662, as set down for the new commander, were the Goringhaikonas, Goringhaiquas, and Gorachouquas near the fort; the Cochoquas in two divisions under Oedasoa and Gonnema, and the Little Chariguriquas, along the coast from the Cape neighbourhood to the Elephant River; the Namaquas and Great Chariguriquas north of that river; and the Chainouquas east of the Cochoquas. Together these better-known groups were supposed to number some forty-five to fifty thousand souls. Across the explored country lived scattered San by plunder and the chase; of their numbers the outgoing commander offered no estimate. [3]
The Hessequas, whose pastures lay next east of the Chainouquas, had already sent a messenger to learn what he could of the strangers from over the sea. Of them little more than the name was known. Van Riebeeck had heard of Hancumquas under a chief Choebaha, believed to head the whole Khoikhoi race, and of Chamaquas, Omaquas, Attaquas, Houteniquas, and Chauquas, without having seen members of those clans. Beyond a great river on which the maps still set Vigiti Magna he expected an entirely different people, the Chobonas of Monomotapa — clothed, housed in substantial dwellings, rich in gold and jewels. He had also been told of amazons, of cannibals with hair to the ground, and of a race that tamed lions for war; of their exact abodes he professed ignorance. The memoir mixed hard local knowledge with the cartography of hope. [3]
Within the last three years several farmers had taken free papers. Each man’s ground was surveyed, a neat chart framed, and a title deed issued when terms of occupation were met, yet the same government that recorded every ship in the bay neglected a full land-grant register. Of those who became burghers about this time, only three men remained and left descendants widely spread in South Africa: Willem van der Merwe, Hans Ras, and Pieter van der Westhuizen. [3]
Wagenaar’s Character and Khoikhoi Deputations
Commander Wagenaar’s habits formed a contrast with his predecessor’s. Van Riebeeck was small, restless, and quick to take offence — contemporaries called him “the little thornback.” Wagenaar was an elderly man of grave demeanour who did not let passion disturb him. He possessed no ability, mental or physical, in any high degree; he was dull, impassive, averse to exertion. Ambition of fame or rank, if he had ever felt it, had died before he reached South Africa. He brought considerable experience in business and had once headed the Company’s factories in Japan. Long residence in different parts of India had shattered his health; at times he was laid up for weeks, able only to sign official papers. There was little risk that such a man would push the settlement forward faster than Batavia and the Seventeen authorised. The only relatives who accompanied him were his wife and a widowed daughter-in-law. [3]
Shortly after he assumed office, deputations from the various Khoikhoi clans known to van Riebeeck waited on him to learn whether the relationship would continue as before. They were received with every mark of kindness, liberally entertained, and assured that the new commander desired unbroken friendship. A good supply of merchandise would always be kept so that when they brought cattle for sale their wants could be met. The first council over which Wagenaar presided renewed the regulations forbidding anyone from molesting or insulting a Khoikhoi person. The Cape clans were declared to have a perfect right to come and go where and when they chose, the only exception being that inside the settlement boundaries they must keep to the recognised thoroughfares. [3]
Wagenaar among the Cochoquas and the Hessequa Traders
When the rainy season was over, Wagenaar resolved to visit the Cochoquas in person. A fleet was expected for which a large cattle supply was needed, and the encampments of Oedasoa and Gonnema lay within a day’s ride of the fort. He took Eva as interpreter, with ten horsemen and twelve foot soldiers as a guard. He was absent eight days, and his notes show little enjoyment. From chiefs down to the poorest people there was an unceasing request for tobacco and brandy as long as he had any to give. The chiefs made presents of cattle and sheep and offered such food as they had, but looked for ample gifts in return. Milk came in utensils so filthy he would not touch it and feared he had given offence. His only clear satisfaction was that his people collected a good flock of sheep by barter. He stayed a couple of days at each kraal; the experience left so disagreeable an impression that he never again paid the Cochoquas a personal visit. [3]
Soon after his return a party of Hessequas arrived with a goodly herd of cattle for sale. They said the country where they fed their flocks lay far to the eastward, beyond a range of lofty mountains where no European had ever been — a district somewhere between the later villages of Caledon and Swellendam, the range later crossed by the high road through Sir Lowry’s Pass. They knew of no people in that direction except pastoral clans like their own. Wagenaar gained little geography from them and did not press hard once he saw they knew nothing corresponding to Vigiti Magna. Their visit nonetheless opened a line of trade from east of the Hottentots Holland mountains into the Cape market. [3]
Cruythof’s October Trek and the De Lairesse Fleet
Still hoping to find the long-sought town of the maps, thirteen volunteers left the fort on the 21st of October 1662 under Corporal Pieter Cruythof, with Pieter van Meerhof as assistant. They followed the old northern path to a Namaqua encampment deep beyond the Elephant River. That camp should have been their real starting point into unknown country, but the Namaquas would not let them pass. The clan was at war with its neighbours and offered the Europeans only the choice of fighting beside them or turning back. They turned back. The trek’s fuller incidents — including a night attack with darts, four men severely wounded, and Cruythof’s rejected order to kill Bushman women and children found later in an encampment — belong to the return that reached the fort on the 1st of February 1663. The year 1662 closed with the northern road still blocked by Namaqua war and European caution. [3]
Toward the close of 1662 another expedition of a different kind left the Cape. A fleet of six large ships and a tender under Admiral Hubert de Lairesse put into Table Bay, took on board the soldiers who had been waiting some months, and sailed to try to wrest Mozambique from the Portuguese. Storms and head winds off the south-east African coast, scurvy, and then endemic fever wrecked the design; more than a hundred men died in a few days at a bight above Delagoa Bay, and the admiral at last bore away for Batavia. Those disasters unfolded on the voyage and into the following season. At the Cape the visible fact of 1662 was the embarkation itself: the detained troops left, the bay emptied of that temporary garrison, and the settlement returned to the quieter tempo of Wagenaar’s first year in command. [3]