Boer History1672 at the Cape of Good Hope: Van Breugel, Land Purchases, Goske, and St Helena
Van Breugel Assumes Command — March 1672
After the death of Commander Pieter Hackius at the end of November 1671 the settlement had been carried on by a board of officers without a local chief. That interim closed when the Macassar arrived from Texel on the 23rd of March 1672 with the newly appointed secunde Albert van Breugel as passenger. The councillors went on board to welcome him and to escort him to the fort, but a strong south-easter springing up suddenly kept them from returning to land before the 25th. [3]
Van Breugel’s commission empowered him to act as commander whenever no one higher in rank in the service was present at the Cape. He therefore assumed the direction of affairs as soon as he landed. The board that had held the fort through the summer—Lieutenant Coenraad van Breitenbach, Johannes Coon, the junior merchant Daniel Froymanteau, and secretary Hendrik Crudop—thus gave way to a single senior civil officer short of a full commander’s permanent title, but with clear authority to sit at the head of the council. [3]
The same day that Van Breugel finally came ashore, a homeward-bound ship brought a commissioner of the Cape residency in the person of Arnout van Overbeke, member of the council of justice at Batavia and admiral of the return fleet of 1672. He was received with the ordinary state observed toward officers of his rank. The walls of the old fort would not admit of the cannon being used too freely, but the ships at anchor lent assistance with their great guns. Amid the roar of their discharges Van Overbeke landed on the jetty, where the officers of the settlement met him. The troops, with as many of the burgher militia as could be assembled, were drawn up and presented arms as he passed along the lines, and as he entered the fort his flag was hoisted and saluted. [3]
Van Overbeke and the Schacher Purchase — 19 April 1672
After investigating the affairs of the settlement, commissioner Van Overbeke thought it expedient, in order to prevent future disputes, to make a formal purchase of the country about the Cape from the Khoikhoi claimants. A negotiation was accordingly entered into with the chief formerly called by his countrymen Osingkima and now Mankagou, to whom the Dutch had given the name of Schacher. [3]
When Van Riebeeck arrived in South Africa, Schacher’s father, the fat captain Gogosoa, had been the principal chief of the three clans—Goringhaiquas, Gorachouquas, and Goringhaikonas—in occupation of the Cape peninsula and the adjacent country. Since that time some changes in the internal condition of these clans had taken place. The largest of them had been subdivided into several little bands. The permanent residents of the peninsula had increased in number owing to the facility of obtaining food afforded by the presence of the European settlers. The others had not yet recovered from the loss sustained during the pestilence of 1665. But to them all Schacher’s position was the same as that of his father had been, so that if any one had a right to barter away the country, that one was he. [3]
The Khoikhoi chief, when applied to, readily consented to the conditions proposed, for they took nothing from him which he had not already lost. The agreement, long preserved in the Registry of Deeds in Cape Town, contains eight clauses. In the first, the “Hottentot prince,” as he is called, agrees for himself and his heirs in perpetuity to sell to the Honourable East India Company the whole district of the Cape, including Table, Hout, and Saldanha bays, with all the lands, rivers, and forests therein and pertaining thereto, to be cultivated and possessed without remonstrance from anyone—with the understanding, however, that he with his people and cattle shall be free to come anywhere near the outermost farms in the district where neither the Company nor the freemen require the pasture, and shall not be driven away by force or without cause. [3]
In the second clause he agrees for himself and his people never to do harm of any kind to the Company or its subjects, and to allow them the rights of transit and trade not only in the ceded district but in his other possessions. In the third he promises to repel all other Europeans who may attempt to settle in the district. In the fourth he engages that he and his descendants for ever shall remain the good friends and neighbours of the Company, and be the enemies of all that seek to do the Company or its subjects harm. On the other side, the Company engages in the fifth clause to pay to Prince Schacher goods and merchandise such as he may select to the value of four thousand reals of eight (£800). The sixth guarantees to him and his people the peaceful possession of his remaining territory and gives them the right of passage through the Company’s ground wherever the exercise of this privilege may not cause damage or annoyance. [3]
The seventh clause secures to Schacher the right of refuge in the Company’s territory in case of his being defeated by his Khoikhoi enemies, and binds the Company to protect him. It also refers tribal disputes to the decision of the Company, and provides for a present to be made yearly to the protecting power. The last clause is Schacher’s acknowledgment that the foregoing having been translated to him he agrees to all, and that he has received the amount stipulated. The document is dated in the fortress of Good Hope on the 19th of April 1672. It is signed on behalf of the Company by Aernout van Overbeke, Albert van Breugel, Coenraad van Breitenbach, and J. Coon, and bears the marks of Prince Schacher and ’T Tachou, stated to be the person next in authority to the prince. Secretary Hendrik Crudop signs as a witness. [3]
The paper is drawn up in precise legal language and is clear in its statements, but it cannot be held to give the Company any claim to the Cape district not possessed before. The seller had no choice in the matter. If he had declined to agree to it, the result, so far as the Company’s retaining possession of the soil, would have been precisely the same. Saldanha Bay is included in the purchase, though the country thereabouts was known to be in the occupation of the Cochoquas. The price paid is stated to be £800; in a despatch to the directors the value of the goods actually transferred to Schacher is put down at £2 16s. 5d. It was not, and under the circumstances could not be, an honest open bargain made by two parties who thoroughly comprehended what they were doing and knew the value given and taken. [3]
Chainouqua Cession of Hottentots Holland — 3 May 1672
An agreement identical with that signed by Schacher was concluded on the 3rd of May between Albert van Breugel and Coenraad van Breitenbach on the part of the Company, and the two leading men of the Chainouquas on behalf of their minor chief Dhouw, wherein the district of Hottentots Holland adjoining the Cape, with all its lands, streams, and forests, together with False Bay, are ceded to the Company in return for merchandise amounting in value to £800. The goods actually transferred were worth no more than £6 16s. 4d. [3]
The twin deeds of April and May thus wrapped Table Valley, the peninsula bays, Saldanha Bay, False Bay, and the grass country of Hottentots Holland in the same legal form: a perpetual sale at a paper price of eight hundred pounds, a residual right of pasture at the outermost farms, promises of friendship and exclusion of other Europeans, and a cash-in-kind transfer whose real cost was a few pounds’ worth of copper, beads, and tobacco. The Company already held the soil by occupation and fortification; the 1672 papers added a documentary claim that later officers could cite when inland posts and farms were pushed beyond the Liesbeek. [3]
Plant Experiments and the First Cape Brandy
At this time experiments were being made in the cultivation of various useful plants from other parts of the world. Sugarcanes and cocoanut trees were brought from Ceylon, and cassava plants were introduced from the west coast of Africa, but these all failed. The olive was still regarded as a tree that would ultimately succeed. Some seasons the fruit fell before it was ripe; in other seasons it was small and of very inferior quality. But the trees looked so well that the gardeners always maintained that they had not yet procured the best kind for bearing, and that if they could only get proper stocks or grafts the plant would to a certainty answer here. [3]
In this year the first brandy was distilled at the Cape. It was made as an experiment to ascertain if the wine of this country could not be turned to some good account. The general opinion of the quality of the brandy was, however, even less favourable than of the wine of which it was made. The 1672 garden books thus record three tropical failures, a still-hopeful olive, and a first local spirit that pleased nobody—yet the distillation itself marked a new use for Cape grapes beyond table wine and vinegar for the ships. [3]
War Intelligence and Defensive Measures — 31 July 1672
On the 31st of July intelligence arrived that war had commenced between France and England on one side and the United Provinces on the other. Orders were therefore sent out to take every possible precaution against surprise. The council hereupon made the best arrangements which they could for the defence of the settlement. The establishment on Dassen Island was broken up, and the five hundred sheep which were kept there were removed to the mainland. At Saldanha Bay and Robben Island preparations were made for abandoning the posts upon the first appearance of an enemy, and destroying everything that could not be carried off. In case of need the women and children with the cattle were to be sent to Hottentots Holland. The work at the castle was meantime diligently carried on. [3]
The European war that framed these Cape orders was the most unequal struggle modern Europe had yet seen the Free Netherlands fight. The Kings of England and France, the Elector of Cologne, and the Bishop of Münster were allied for the suppression of Batavian liberty. Louis XIV in person with a splendidly equipped army invaded the Provinces from the south in May 1672, and within twenty-eight days no fewer than ninety-two cities and strongholds fell into his hands. William of Orange was raised to the stadtholdership; the dykes were cut; and a great fleet was got together in Zeeland and North Holland. At the Cape the same crisis meant fewer ships, harder recruiting, and a standing order to finish the stone castle while the old earthen fort still stood as a crumbling second line. [3]
Goske Installed as Governor — 2 October 1672
On the 2nd of October Governor Isbrand Goske arrived in the ship Zuid Polsbroek, after a passage of five months from Texel. The Zuid Polsbroek had lost eighteen men, and there were sixty down with scurvy when she dropped her anchors. The governor landed at once, and was received by the garrison under arms. As soon as his flag was distinguished on the ship the news had been signalled to Rondebosch and Wynberg, so that the burghers were fast assembling on the ground which now forms the parade. To them the governor was presented by the secunde Van Breugel, and was saluted with loud acclamations of welcome, mingled with discharges of firearms from the troops and the roar of cannon from the Zuid Polsbroek and the finished point of the new fortress. The governor’s commission was then read, and the ceremony of induction was over. [3]
With Goske’s installation the Cape residency was raised temporarily to the dignity of a government. He held the title of governor and councillor extraordinary of India, with a salary of £25 a month—double that of a commander—together with a liberal table allowance and a pleasure house or country seat with an ornamental garden at Rondebosch in addition to quarters in the fort. Van Breugel remained as secunde; the fiscal Pieter de Neyn, already named in the wartime appointments of the previous year, completed the higher civil staff that the directors had selected when war with France and England was still only a cloud on the horizon. [3]
Population, Old Fort, and Castle Works
At the time when the Cape settlement was raised temporarily to the dignity of being called a Government, the European population consisted of sixty-four burghers, thirty-nine of whom were married, sixty-five children, fifty-three Dutch men servants, and about three hundred and seventy servants of the Company and soldiers—in all not exceeding six hundred souls. Those few hundred Europeans occupied what the directors called the frontier fortress of India: a refreshment station whose stone castle was unfinished, whose earthen fort was crumbling, and whose inland cattle still depended on trade and raid alike. [3]
The first and most important object that Governor Goske had to attend to was to prepare the Cape for defence in the event of its being attacked, and for this purpose he had authority to land from passing ships as many men as could be spared and he might require. But the troubles in Europe caused a falling-off in the number of ships sent out, and further made it so difficult to obtain soldiers and seamen that for some years hardly a vessel sailed with her full complement of hands. Urgent as was the necessity for completing the castle, it was not possible at any time to employ more than two hundred and fifty to three hundred men upon it. [3]
The governor resolved as a temporary measure to repair the old fort, the earthen walls of which had by this time so crumbled away that he described it as being like a ruined molehill. It was hastily built up again, and then every man that could be spared was set to work upon the castle. The wartime programme of 1671—complete the stone fortress, increase the garrison, confide affairs to men of higher grade—thus became daily labour under a resident governor rather than a paper order from Amsterdam. [3]
Hottentots Holland Outpost — 18 October 1672
It was now nearly three years since the commissioner Van der Broeck had authorised the Cape government to form a farming establishment at Hottentots Holland, but, owing to the illness of Commander Hackius and the absence of any one of high authority after his death, nothing had yet been done in the matter beyond surveying the ground. Besides the original object in view there was now a special reason for forming an outpost in the country, as a place was needed to which the cattle could be sent, and upon which the garrison could fall back if compelled to abandon the Cape. On the 18th of October 1672 Sergeant Cruythof and twelve men left to put up the necessary buildings, and thus the first step was taken to extend the settlement toward the interior. [3]
The description of Hottentots Holland which was sent to the Netherlands for the information of the directors would seem at a later day to be too highly coloured if the face of the country had not since undergone a great change. Western valleys were then covered with long rich grass. Every summer a party of men used to be sent out with scythes to the Tigerberg, and thirty or forty waggon loads of hay were brought back to the Company’s stables as forage for the horses. The recesses in the mountain sides facing the sea contained patches of evergreen forest, in which were found great varieties of useful timber. [3]
The grass at Hottentots Holland and the forests in the immediate neighbourhood were mentioned as being superior to those of any other part of the country as yet visited. The soil was described as rich, and the south-east wind, that scourge of the husbandman in Table Valley, was far less violent there. It was a bountifully watered land; its streams were stocked with fish; and on its pastures at certain seasons browsed elands and hartebeests and other game. It was easy of access by sea. A cutter could run up to the head of False Bay, where without any difficulty produce could be shipped, and thus the journey through the heavy sand of the Cape Flats be avoided. The October outpost therefore combined a wartime cattle refuge with the first permanent farming foothold beyond the peninsula. [3]
Gonnema and the Hippopotamus Hunters — November 1672
Gonnema, known to the first settlers as the Black Captain, usually had his kraals in the neighbourhood of Riebeek’s Kasteel and Twenty-four Rivers, but occasionally he wandered to the shores of Saldanha Bay, or eastward to Hottentots Holland. All his neighbours were in dread of him, for whenever there was an opportunity he was in the habit of plundering them. It was from him that the whole of the Khoikhoi in the neighbourhood of the Cape were fifty years later called Gunjemans by the Dutch. The people of his own clan were even at this time called Gonnemas, and the word gradually became Gonnemans, Gonjemans, and Gunjemans. [3]
In November 1672 three burghers obtained permission from the governor to shoot hippopotami, and for this purpose they travelled along the banks of the Berg river down to Riebeek’s Kasteel. There Gonnema with forty or fifty of his followers came upon them and seized their waggon, oxen, provisions, and whatever else they had with them, barely permitting them to escape with their lives. It does not seem to have occurred to the governor that Gonnema might object to the destruction of game in his district, and so the act was attributed solely to his enmity to the Company. But there was then no force that could be spared to chastise the offender, and the injury was therefore left unpunished. The November seizure thus stood as an unpaid account when the calendar year closed under Goske’s new government. [3]
St Helena Expedition — 13 December 1672
With a view of crippling the English East India Company, orders were at this time received from Holland to fit out an expedition to attack and endeavour to destroy its victualling station at St Helena. For this purpose the ships Vryheid, Zuid Polsbroek, Cattenburgh, and Vliegende Swaan were made ready at the Cape, and 180 soldiers and 150 sailors above their ordinary crews were embarked in them. The expedition was placed under the direction of Jacob de Geus, skipper of the Vryheid, and subject to his general orders Lieutenant Coenraad van Breitenbach had command of the land forces. [3]
The little fleet sailed from Table Bay on the 13th of December 1672. Upon arriving at St Helena they found the garrison of the island too small to offer effectual resistance. The few men there thought it more prudent to spike their cannon and to make their escape in a ship lying ready for sea. Several who had not time to embark surrendered. Skipper De Geus took possession of the abandoned island and of an English slave ship from Madagascar bound to Barbados with 240 negroes on board, which had put in for refreshment. Lieutenant Johannes Coon was installed as commander, and when the fleet sailed he was left with a small garrison to occupy the new acquisition. A few weeks later intelligence reached the Cape that Lieutenant Coon had died, and Lieutenant Van Breitenbach was then appointed by Governor Goske and the council to succeed him. [3]
Thus 1672 ran from Van Breugel’s March landing and Van Overbeke’s state entry, through the April and May land deeds that priced the Cape and Hottentots Holland at eight hundred pounds on paper and a few pounds in goods, past the first local brandy and the July war orders that emptied Dassen Island of its sheep, to Goske’s October induction as governor, Cruythof’s October foothold at Hottentots Holland, Gonnema’s unpunished November seizure on the Berg, and a December fleet that seized English St Helena for a season. The settlement closed the year as a named government of fewer than six hundred Europeans, with a repaired earthen fort, a half-built stone castle, an inland farming post beyond the Flats, and its senior military officers already committed to an Atlantic side-theatre of the European war. [3]