Boer History1674 at the Cape of Good Hope: Castle Occupied, Cruse’s Commando, Eva, and the Orphan Chamber
Castle Occupied — Winter 1674
By the beginning of the winter of 1674 the stone castle in Table Valley was far enough advanced to be judged more capable of defence than the old earthen fort that had stood since the first years of the settlement. Governor Isbrand Goske therefore moved the garrison into the new works. The walls of the old fort were broken down, and the ground they had occupied was opened into the wider defensive plan that had been pressed since the European war made a permanent masonry fortress urgent at the Cape. [3]
The move did not mean that the castle was finished. Bastions, curtains, and interior buildings still needed labour, stone, and timber. It did mean that the settlement’s principal armed force no longer depended on decaying earthworks, and that the symbolic centre of Company authority shifted from the old fort into the unfinished pentagon that would dominate Table Bay for the rest of the Dutch period. Every free hand that could be spared from other duties continued to work on the walls or to haul building material to them, while the outpost at Hottentots Holland and the look-out on the Lion’s Head remained part of the same defensive system. [3]
Peace with England — 13 July 1674
On the 13th of July a despatch vessel, gaily decorated with flags, sailed into Table Bay bringing intelligence that peace had been concluded with England. The French naval power hardly gave the Company a thought at the Cape, so that there was no longer any necessity for extraordinary exertions to complete the castle. From this date the work was carried on regularly, but it was not considered of such urgent importance as to require a large staff of men to be kept at the Cape purposely for it. [3]
The European settlement of the war thus altered the Cape’s labour budget as well as its diplomacy. Wartime pressure had emptied islands of stock, driven castle construction, and limited immigration; the July news relaxed the most acute fear of an English attack on Table Bay. A special treaty between the two East India Companies, dated 18 March 1674, further bound each to promote the honour and profit of the other—language that, at the Cape, confirmed that the island fortress race of the early 1670s had lost its sharpest edge even while Gonnema’s war inland remained unfinished business. [3]
Disease among the Khoikhoi and a Pause in the War
The war with Gonnema had been suspended for some months owing to a strange and fatal disease which had broken out among the Khoikhoi, especially those under Captain Klaas (Dorha). What this disease was is not stated in the surviving narrative, but it is certain that it was not smallpox. Though its ravages were not very great, for a short time it kept the Khoikhoi from moving, as they considered it a bad omen. Governor Goske, recording the circumstance, added that before coming into contact with Europeans the Khoikhoi had not been subject to particular fatal maladies of the kind later observed after changes of food and habit; war and occasional famine had kept numbers down without producing the pestilences familiar in European experience. [3]
The pause mattered because the fighting of 1673—Moord Kuil, the Saldanha post murders, Cruse’s first punitive march, and the August executions before the fort—had left Gonnema at large in the mountains beyond Twenty-four Rivers and the Company’s Chainouqua and Peninsula allies still bound to Cape policy. Disease among Klaas’s people delayed any fresh combined expedition until the captains themselves judged movement possible again. When that judgment came, it came through Klaas’s own report to the governor rather than through a spontaneous Company raid. [3]
Klaas’s Report and the March Commando
On the 24th of March Klaas paid a visit to the governor and reported that the sickness had left his people. He had sent out spies who brought back information that a large party of Gonnema’s followers was encamped at the Little Berg River, where it issues from the gorge in the mountains later called the Tulbagh Kloof. It was immediately resolved to send an expedition against them. A combined force of soldiers, burghers, and Khoikhoi was made ready: fifty burghers under command of Wouter Mostert, four hundred Khoikhoi under the captains Klaas, Koopman, Schacher, and Kuiper, and fifty soldiers under Ensign Hieronymus Cruse, who was also commandant-general of the expedition. [3]
The party marched along the line later traversed by the railway, passing round Klapmuts, down the Paarl Valley, and following the base of the mountains to Vogel Vlei. There they rested for a few hours and planned their next march so as to surround Gonnema’s encampment before daylight. But, as on a former occasion, the people who were to be attacked managed to make their escape just in time to avoid the onslaught. They left all they possessed behind them. The commando seized without resistance eight hundred head of horned cattle and four thousand sheep. The Khoikhoi contingent stripped the huts of everything that could be of use to them and then set fire to whatever remained. [3]
Division of the Spoil
Upon arriving at the fort, the spoil was divided among the members of the commando. The burghers received three hundred cows and ninety young cattle. Each of the four Khoikhoi captains received a fair share of horned cattle and three hundred sheep in full possession, and a loan of three hundred sheep to be returned when required. The Honourable Company kept the remainder. The same thing happened when the Khoikhoi were driving away their share that usually occurs with native allies on such occasions: the best of those dealt out to the burghers and reserved for the Company were whistled away, and if the governor had not taken summary proceedings to recover them, the Europeans’ share of the spoil would have been very trifling indeed. [3]
The March expedition therefore repeated the pattern of 1673 without ending the war. Gonnema again escaped personal capture; his followers lost a large stock of cattle and sheep; Klaas and the Peninsula captains were rewarded as allies and creditors of loaned sheep; and Goske had to police the division after the return to Table Valley. Inland, the Cochoqua chief remained a threat to the Company’s partners at the Tigerberg and beyond Twenty-four Rivers, even while castle labour and Atlantic peace news reshaped the settlement’s priorities at the bay. [3]
Death of Eva — 29 July 1674
On the 29th of July of this year died Eva, the Khoikhoi woman who had been brought up in Commander Jan van Riebeeck’s household and who was afterwards married to the surgeon Pieter van Meerhof. In childhood she had been apt to learn, readily acquired the Dutch and Portuguese languages, adopted European customs, professed a belief in Christianity, and gave promise of a life of usefulness. After Van Meerhof’s death she remained some time upon Robben Island and then requested to be brought over to Table Valley. There her manner of living attracted the attention of the officers of government, and after repeated warnings she was brought to account. [3]
She had been guilty of drunkenness and other misconduct, had more than once gone to live at a Khoikhoi kraal and while there had fallen into practices the officers condemned, and had neglected her helpless children. For these offences she was sent back to the island, and her children were placed under the care of the deacons. There was no desire to be harsh with her, and upon a promise of reformation she was again permitted to reside in Table Valley. Then the same cycle repeated—removal to Robben Island alternating with short periods of scandalous conduct in Table Valley—during the remainder of her life. [3]
The conclusion which Governor Goske arrived at from a review of her career was that the hereditary disposition of the Khoikhoi was too unstable to admit of their adoption of European civilisation otherwise than very slowly and gradually—a judgment that belongs to the governor’s own record rather than to later ethnography. As Eva was the first baptized Khoikhoi at the Cape, he decided that she should have an honourable funeral, and the day following her death she was buried within the church in the castle. Three years later a burgher who had been a personal friend of Van Meerhof, when removing with his family to Mauritius, was allowed to take two of the children as apprentices under formal contracts approved by the council and the church authorities. [3]
The Deacons’ Poor Fund
The duty of supporting destitute orphan children devolved, as had already been seen, upon the deacons. There was a fund at their disposal for relieving the poor of the congregation, out of which all such charges were paid. This fund was raised partly by church collections, partly by certain fines and fees, and was often augmented by donations and bequests. The first person who bequeathed money for this purpose to the Cape congregation had been Commander Zacharias Wagenaar; since his death other contributions had been received in the same manner. [3]
In the year 1674 the capital of this fund amounted to rather more than a thousand pounds sterling, invested as loans on mortgage of landed property and bearing interest at the rate of six per cent per annum. The collections were more than sufficient to meet current expenses, so that the fund was constantly increasing. By 1679 it was equal to about £1,535, and by 1684 to about £1,821—figures recorded later, but already the 1674 capital shows a working poor-relief institution able to maintain Eva’s children and other dependents without drawing the full cost from the Company’s cash chest. [3]
The Orphan Chamber Established
For the protection of the rights of children of another class an Orphan Chamber was at this time established. The necessity for such an institution was apparent from the fact that recently several widows had remarried without previously securing to the children their legitimate portion of the property of the deceased parent. It was enacted that in future no marriage of a widower or widow, whether a servant of the Company or a burgher, could take place in the colony without a certificate first obtained from the Orphan Chamber that the rights of the children by the previous marriage were secured. [3]
The chamber was provided with power to invest money belonging to orphans and to collect interest therefor at the rate of six per cent per annum. It was constituted guardian of orphans in all cases where none were named by the will of the deceased parent, and was authorised to provide for the maintenance of minors under its care by a reasonable allowance from the property belonging to them. The Orphan Chamber thus created consisted of five individuals, two of whom were to be servants of the Company and three burghers. Of the last, one was to be secretary and was to receive payment for his services. The first president was Hendrik Crudop; the first secretary was Johannes Pretorius, formerly secunde at Mauritius and now a burgher at the Cape. [3]
Every year one servant of the Company and one burgher retired, and were succeeded by two new members chosen by the council of policy from a list of four names presented by the chamber itself. It was thus to some extent a self-perpetuating corporation. The large sums of money which the Orphan Chamber had charge of were commonly invested on mortgage of landed property, so that it served the purpose of a loan bank as well as a guardianship board. Together with the deacons’ poor fund, the chamber gave the Cape a dual institutional answer to dependency: charitable relief for the destitute, and formal property guardianship for minors with estates. [3]
Church Control, Meerland, and Baptism
Some regulations regarding church matters which were made in December 1674 show how complete was the control exercised by the council of policy. The church council submitted two names for the election of an elder in place of the one retiring, but objections were taken to both, and fresh nominations were called for. The church council was informed that one of the elders should be a servant of the Company and the other a burgher, and that the officer who held the position of political commissioner should not be nominated as an elder. [3]
Another question referred to the council of policy for decision had reference to baptism. Some Roman Catholics had settled in the colony, and though they were at liberty in their own houses to worship God in the manner approved by their consciences, they could not assemble together for public worship nor have the services of their church performed by any clergyman who might chance to call in a foreign ship. Under these circumstances, one of them requested permission of the consistory to have his children baptized in the Reformed church, and offered sponsors who were also Roman Catholics. [3]
The church council expressed its opinion that the children should be baptized if other sponsors were not forthcoming, but that the parents ought first to be admonished to endeavour to procure sponsors of the true reformed faith. Before taking action, however, they submitted this opinion to the council of policy for approval. The council referred them to the instructions concerning baptism which had been received from Batavia in the time of Commander Wagenaar, which accorded with the view they had taken, and informed them that the customs of India were to be observed in every respect. At this time the Rev. Rudolphus Meerland was clergyman of the Cape, having succeeded the Rev. Adrianus de Voocht on the 12th of February 1674, when the last named left for Batavia. [3]
Bax Appointed to Succeed Goske — November 1674
During the last three years the officers at the head of the several departments had been almost entirely replaced. The secunde Albert van Breugel had been charged by the governor with inattention to his duties, and though upon investigation the Batavian authorities acquitted him of carelessness, he was removed from the post. Hendrik Crudop, now advanced to the rank of merchant, was appointed secunde in his stead. The fiscal De Neyn had gone to Batavia in October 1674. The explorer Hieronymus Cruse had climbed the ladder of promotion in the army and was now a lieutenant. The council of policy consisted of the governor, the secunde Hendrik Crudop, the captain Dirk Smient, the lieutenant Hieronymus Cruse, the treasurer Anthonie de Vogel, and the chief salesman Marthinus van Banchem, the last named being also the secretary. [3]
Governor Goske had been sent to the Cape for a particular purpose—to hold it for the Netherlands at a time of great peril. That time was now past. Peace had been made with England, the only naval power capable of injuring the States, and the special Company treaty of March 1674 reinforced the new calm. There was no necessity to retain at the Cape any longer an officer of Goske’s rank and ability, more especially as he reminded the directors of their engagement to relieve him at an early date and requested permission to return to Europe. [3]
In November 1674 the Assembly of Seventeen appointed Commander Johan Bax, the second officer in rank at the island of Ceylon, to succeed Mr. Goske as governor of the Cape, but without the additional title of councillor extraordinary of India. At the same time they complimented the outgoing governor very highly upon his administration and issued directions that he was to supersede any officer of lower rank who might be returning to Europe as admiral of a fleet. Bax would not reach Simon’s Bay until January 1676, nor be installed until 14 March 1676; but the succession decision of November closed the calendar year under Goske with castle occupation, a March cattle seizure against Gonnema’s people, Eva’s funeral in the castle church, a funded orphan and poor-relief apparatus, tightened consistory control, and a named replacement already chosen in Amsterdam. [3]