Boer History1700 at the Cape of Good Hope: Valckenier’s Commission, Huising’s Meat Contract, Open Cattle Trade, Waveren Occupation, and Vergelegen
Valckenier, Huising’s Meat Contract, and the Open Cattle Trade — February 1700
Ever since 1658 trade between the burghers and the Khoikhoi had been strictly forbidden. The chief object was to prevent any act that might bring on a collision with the natives. In opposition to the law, however, parties of deserters and other persons of loose character carried on a cattle trade, and were often guilty of conduct that cannot be distinguished from robbery. Governor Simon van der Stel thought to check this by threatening more severe punishment, and on the 19th of October 1697 he issued a placaat in which the barter of cattle from Khoikhoi was prohibited under penalty of whipping, branding, banishment, and confiscation of property. The directors disapproved. They were disposed to allow the colonists to purchase cattle from the Khoikhoi and fatten them for sale to such persons as would contract to supply the garrison and fleets with beef and mutton. They therefore annulled the placaat, and on the 27th of July 1699 issued instructions that the cattle trade should be thrown open, on condition that the burghers should supply draught oxen to the government whenever required, at fourteen shillings each. [3]
The council of policy had then no option, but was under the necessity of obeying orders. Tenders were called for, and in February 1700 the burgher Henning Huising (also Huizing) entered into a contract to supply the garrison, hospital, and Company’s fleets with beef and mutton at twopence halfpenny a pound, he to have the use of the Company’s slaughter-houses and, as a cattle run, the whole of the district of Groen Kloof that was not occupied by Khoikhoi. The contract was signed provisionally for ten years, but the directors reduced it to five. With this transaction the Company designed to relinquish sending expeditions into the interior to purchase cattle, as had been the custom for nearly half a century; and henceforth it was only when draught oxen were needed that military bartering parties went inland. [3]
Huising’s rise in a sharper light. The German immigrant had piled up riches in a short span; Simon van der Stel had earlier recognised his shrewdness and gifts as an organiser, and under the son he acquired the meat-supply monopoly when the Company stopped routine cattle farming of its own. The February settlement of 1700 was therefore not only an open-trade placaat: it made one well-placed contractor the principal intermediary between inland stock and the roadstead’s demand for the term the directors would allow. [3]
By a placaat of the council of policy presided over by the commissioner Wouter Valckenier, on the 28th of February 1700, the trade was thrown open to the burghers, with such restrictions as were considered necessary to prevent its abuse. From this date cattle breeding became a favourite pursuit with yearly increasing numbers of colonists. There was as much to be made by it as by agriculture, and it was attended with less expense and less anxiety. The government gave permission to applicants to use land for grazing purposes at some defined locality, but if the pasture failed or did not prove as good as was anticipated, the occupiers did not hesitate to seek other and better places. [3]
The February settlement thus fixed in local form what the Seventeen had already decided from the Netherlands: open barter under regulation, a private contractor for fleet and hospital meat, and Company withdrawal from routine inland purchase. Huising’s Groen Kloof run and slaughter-house privilege made him, for the five-year term, the principal intermediary between grazing stock and the roadstead’s demand. The same commercial reordering, however, soon multiplied friction with San groups on the Obiqua range and beyond: when cattle were lifted from Gerrit Cloete at Riebeek’s Kasteel and from the Waveren post in 1701, and when more than two hundred head belonging to Huising himself were later taken at Groen Kloof, the open-trade regime of 1700 was already feeding the frontier stock that raiders found worth driving. [3]
Commercial intercourse between burgher and Khoikhoi would not remain open indefinitely. Some Khoikhoi later made such complaints of the rapacity and violence of burgher trading parties that the council of policy provisionally suspended the liberty of free barter, and, owing to the governor’s representations, in 1703 the Assembly of Seventeen withdrew the privilege. Commercial intercourse between the two races was again made illegal, and the European graziers were chiefly depended upon to provide as many cattle as were needed. Calendar 1700 nevertheless stands as the year in which Valckenier’s February placaat and Huising’s meat contract translated the directors’ July 1699 instruction into Cape practice—opening three years of free barter before the experiment was reversed. [3]
Vergelegen Granted to the Governor — February 1700
Between Wilhem Adriaan van der Stel and the colonists of South Africa there was not the slightest feeling of sympathy. In all the official documents of the period during which he was at the head of affairs, and the quantity is great, there is not a single expression like “our own Netherlanders” of his father. He requested the directors indeed to send out industrious Zealand farmers and no more French cadets, but the sentence displays as little affection for the one class as for the other. The governor was engaged in farming for his own benefit on a very large scale as things were estimated in those days. [3]
He could not take ground for himself, but in February 1700 a commissioner, Wouter Valckenier by name, holding authority from the governor-general and council of India, visited the Cape, and at his request granted him in freehold four hundred morgen of land at Hottentots-Holland. To this he afterwards added by granting a tract of the adjoining ground to a subordinate official, and then purchasing it from that individual at a nominal rate. The estate he named Vergelegen—“far-situated,” in gloss near the later Somerset West country. The very fact that Valckenier had granted him this magnificent tract already aroused bitter feeling among free burghers who watched Company servants farm for private profit on a scale no ordinary settler could match. [3] [4]
Upon it he built a commodious dwelling house, with a flour mill, a leather tannery, a workshop for making wooden water pipes, wine and grain stores, an overseer’s cottage, a slave lodge, and very extensive outbuildings. He was in the habit of frequently residing there for ten days or a fortnight at a time, when public business was partly suspended. This was concealed from the directors, for there is no mention of Vergelegen or of the governor’s absence from the castle in the official journal of occurrences or the correspondence of the period, copies of which were sent to Holland. On the estate were planted nearly half a million vines, or fully one fourth of the whole number in the colony in 1706. Groves, orchards, and cornlands were laid out to a corresponding extent. Beyond the mountains at various places the governor had six or eight hundred large cattle and eight or ten thousand sheep. [3] [4]
The lands were in a high state of cultivation, bearing some four hundred thousand vines, thousands of fruit trees, and everything else which could be raised. Beyond the mountains the governor had no less than fifteen different cattle stations. Although all this existed for his private profit, it was worked almost entirely at the expense of the Company, but without their knowledge: some sixty servants and a hundred slaves working continually on the estate, besides smiths, waggoners, and many others; the Company’s head gardener as superintendent; waggons, ploughs, and other implements made with the Company’s iron; and the necessary wood drawn from the Company’s forests. With officials in a position to trade and glut the limited market in this manner, the burghers with their small and unaided resources could do little more than protest to the authorities in Holland. [3] [4]
The secunde, Samuel Elsevier, obtained a grant of the farm Elsenburg, near Klapmuts. The Rev. Petrus Kalden, clergyman of the Cape, in like manner obtained the farm Zandvliet, between Stellenbosch and the head of False Bay. These officials engaged in farming on a much smaller scale than the governor; but, in the case of the clergyman especially, neglected their public duties to attend to their private properties. The governor’s brother, Frans van der Stel, was a farmer at Hottentots-Holland. His father was a farmer at Constantia. The market for produce was small, and all of these persons had an entry to it before the burghers could dispose of anything. Calendar 1700 did not yet bring open conflict over those facts, but it did place Vergelegen’s freehold title on the record under Valckenier’s commission—the landed base of the complaints that Adam Tas and the country burghers would later carry to Batavia and the Fatherland. [3] [4]
The grant cut so deep. Born in Haarlem on 24 August 1664, Wilhem Adriaan had grown up among aristocratic Six and Hinlopen connections in Amsterdam, served briefly at a Company desk as a youth at the Cape, married Maria de Hase, and returned as an alderman of the city before he faced the colonists on 23 January 1699. To himself the appointment could seem a crown prince’s succession to a retiring king. That pride, set against free burghers who farmed without Company iron, Company slaves, or Company gardeners, made Vergelegen more than a large farm: it became the symbol of a private monopoly built with public means. Calendar 1700 only fixed the freehold; the political storm still lay several years ahead. [3]
Simon van der Stel and the Steenbergen — 1 February 1700
After handing over the administration on the 11th of February 1699, Simon van der Stel had retired to his farm Constantia, where he had built a large and handsome residence. There during the next thirteen years strangers of note were always sure of a hearty reception, and the hospitality of the late governor was so great that his house was seldom or never without visitors. He devoted his remaining years chiefly to agriculture and cattle rearing. On the 11th of March 1699 he obtained from the commissioner Daniel Heins a grant in freehold of Zeekoe Vlei with the ground surrounding it an hour’s walk in diameter. [3]
On the 1st of February 1700 the same commissioner who granted Vergelegen to the son, Wouter Valckenier, granted the retired governor the use of the Steenbergen for the term of his life. Practically therefore he had the whole peninsula beyond his property as a cattle run. The wine which he made was the best in the colony. The burghers believed that he possessed some secret for manufacturing it, and strangers attributed its quality to the care which he took in pressing and fermenting, but it is now known that it owed its flavour to the soil. [3]
From the day he retired to Constantia, Simon’s name faded from the active administrative record, yet as a private citizen-farmer he remained extremely active for another twelve years, supplying the Company with fresh produce and wine and entertaining local and foreign guests lavishly. The February life-use of the Steenbergen completed the landed settlement of the father’s retirement while the son’s Vergelegen freehold was being fixed at Hottentots-Holland. The Steenbergen grant did not create a new village; it legalised grazing depth behind the peninsula farm already famous under his name. In the politics of 1700 the father’s retirement lands and the son’s Vergelegen stood on opposite sides of False Bay and the Hottentots-Holland mountains, both secured under Company commissioners within twelve months of the February 1699 handover—the father by Heins and Valckenier, the son by Valckenier alone. [3]
Occupation of the Land of Waveren — July–October 1700
The governor’s November 1699 tour had already named the Tulbagh basin the Land of Waveren, in honour of a family of position in Amsterdam, and the inland range the Witsenberg, after the justly esteemed burgomaster Nicholas Witsen of Amsterdam. The visitors had been charmed with the basin’s appearance. Very few Khoikhoi were found. In the recesses of the mountains were forests of magnificent trees; although the timber could not be removed to the Cape, it would be of great use to residents. Immigrants were arriving in every fleet from the Netherlands, so the governor had resolved to form a settlement in the valley, where cattle breeding could be carried on to advantage. Agriculture, except to supply the wants of residents, could not be pursued with profit, owing to the difficulty of transport. [3]
The basin itself sits on the second step by which the mainland rises from the ocean toward the interior plain. The Breede river has its source on the third terrace and, rushing down the gorge later called Michell’s pass, flows south-eastward through the long valley inland of the Obiqua. The basin is drained by the Little Berg and its rills, whose waters escape through a gorge in the Obiqua and flow north-westward. The watershed between Breede and Little Berg is only a gentle swell: at the foot of Michell’s pass a mill race can turn water from one ocean’s drainage toward the other. For graziers the point was simpler. Pasture and mountain timber lay beyond the settled Berg River farms, and a thin military line could claim the basin before rival European or San use hardened against them. [3]
Several burghers who had been living at Drakenstein were now permitted to graze their cattle at Riebeek’s Kasteel, and on the 31st of July 1700 some recent immigrants from Europe were sent to occupy the Land of Waveren. As it was the rainy season, the families of the immigrants remained at the Cape until rough cottages could be put up for their accommodation. At the same time a corporal and six soldiers were sent to form a military post in the valley for the protection of the colonists. This post was termed the Waveren outstation, and was maintained for many years. On the 16th of October several additional families were forwarded to the new district to obtain a living as graziers. [3]
The July and October movements of 1700 thus carried occupation over the Roodezand into the basin itself, matching the open-trade regime just fixed under Valckenier. The Waveren outstation of seven men was a thin line against San groups who used the Obiqua mountains as a base for descents on stock below. Troubles with those raiders would multiply in 1701, when a band drove off forty head of cattle from Gerrit Cloete’s farm at Riebeek’s Kasteel, a temporary military post was established at Vogel Vlei at the foot of the Obiqua mountains, Cloete was again robbed, eleven head were lifted from the Waveren post itself, and reinforcements of six mounted soldiers were later sent to each of the two posts with twelve men stationed at Riebeek’s Kasteel. In November 1701 forty head of cattle, mostly belonging to Etienne Terreblanche, would be seized by San in the Land of Waveren, and one of the soldiers who tried to recover them would be killed. [3]
Calendar 1700 nevertheless established the civilian and military footing of the new district: immigrant households held back at the Cape until cottages stood, then moved in; a named outstation of a corporal and six soldiers; and a second tranche of grazing families in October. The extent of the settlement in 1700 shows how the older French and Dutch farms along the Berg River—French Hoek (first known as Oliphant’s Hoek), Groot Drakenstein, Dal Josaphat, the Paarl country, and Wellington—still formed the settled core, while Waveren lay beyond the Obiqua as the newest cattle district rather than as a second grain colony. From about 1710 to 1715 many of the farmers from Waveren would gradually drift down the valley of the Breede River, so that the July–October occupation of 1700 marks the first fixed European foothold in a basin that later fed the eastward trek. [3] [4] [8]
Van Loon at Stellenbosch and De Groot at Drakenstein — April 1700
After the removal in 1691 of the Rev. Pierre Simond to Drakenstein, there had been no resident clergyman at Stellenbosch for nearly nine years. Once in three months the clergyman of the Cape visited the vacant church and administered the sacraments, and occasionally Simond attended for the same purpose. On the remaining Sundays the sick-comforter conducted the services. At length the Assembly of Seventeen appointed the Rev. Hercules van Loon, who had once been acting clergyman of the Cape, resident clergyman of Stellenbosch. He arrived from the Netherlands on the 11th of April 1700. [3]
At Drakenstein service was still conducted sometimes in the front room of a farmer’s house, sometimes in a large barn, there being as yet no church building. There was a French clergyman, assisted by a French sick-comforter. In April 1700 a sick-comforter and schoolmaster was first appointed for the Dutch portion of the congregation, that had previously been neglected. An able and zealous man named Jacobus de Groot, who was returning from India to Europe, was detained at the Cape for the purpose. It was felt that a sick-comforter and schoolmaster were necessary to minister to the Dutch section of the Drakenstein congregation, as many did not understand the French language; Jacobus de Groot of Haarlem, then on his way to Europe from Galle, received the first appointment from the government in April 1700; he was well versed in the French tongue, and had for three and a half years diligently discharged the duties of sick-comforter at Galle. The letter of the 3rd of April 1700 to the landdrost and heemraden of Drakenstein records the appointment. [3] [8]
The dual arrangement—French ministry for Huguenots, a newly assigned Dutch sick-comforter for the Dutch-speaking share of the same district—marked the year as one of pastoral consolidation rather than new church fabric at Drakenstein. Van Loon’s installation closed the long Stellenbosch vacancy that had lasted through most of the 1690s. De Groot’s detention closed the neglect of Dutch hearers in a congregation still organised around French preaching and French-language sick-comfort under Paul Roux. Neither appointment required a new stone church in 1700; both placed named officers on the country circuits while Table Valley prepared its own building project. [3] [8]
Simond himself was already looking toward Europe. He had prepared a new version in metre of the psalms of David, which he was desirous of submitting to a synod of the French churches, as great interest had been taken in the work by the Huguenots in Europe. He therefore tendered his resignation, to the regret of the Drakenstein people, and requested permission to return to the Netherlands. The Assembly of Seventeen consented on condition of his remaining until the arrival of the Rev. Hendrik Bek (Beck), whom they appointed to succeed him; Bek would reach the Cape only in April 1702. For calendar 1700 the decisive pastoral acts were therefore van Loon’s arrival at Stellenbosch and de Groot’s detention for the Dutch of Drakenstein, while Simond’s French congregation still held services without a permanent church building and without yet receiving its designated successor. [3] [8]
Language pressure already framed those appointments. The directors wished French in Huguenot families to give way to Dutch as speedily as possible; the proportion of French speakers was too small, beside Dutch and German descent, for French to remain long the public tongue of a mixed district. When Bek later conducted public worship in Dutch at the Seventeen’s direction, while Paul Roux continued French sick-comfort, the French adults who still could not follow a Dutch sermon would memorialise for fortnightly French preaching. That quarrel belongs mainly to 1702 and after. In 1700 the practical answer to mixed hearers was simpler and more local: keep the French ministry, and add de Groot so that Dutch farmers at Drakenstein were no longer left to a language they did not understand. [3] [8]
Cape Church Foundation Stone — 28 December 1700
In April 1678 the foundation of a church in Table Valley had been laid, but with that the work had ceased. For another quarter of a century services were conducted in a large hall within the castle. In course of time the poor funds accumulated to a considerable amount, and the consistory then consented to apply a sum equal to £2,200 of English money to the erection of the building. As the original plan was now considered too small, it was enlarged, and a new foundation stone was laid by the governor on the 28th of December 1700. [3]
By the close of 1703 the edifice would be finished except the tower. The first service in it would be held on the 6th of January 1704, the Rev. Petrus Kalden being the preacher. Of the building then constructed the tower and end walls would remain as part of later fabric, these forming part of the side walls of the present church—the Groote Kerk known later as the town church completed under Wilhem Adriaan’s governorship. Simon van der Stel would be buried there in 1712, under pavement and a monument later lost when the church was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. For calendar 1700 the decisive public act was the December foundation under the son’s hand, funded from accumulated poor money and scaled larger than the abandoned 1678 plan—moving worship, in prospect, out of the castle hall into a town church. [3]
The Cape foundation thus closed a year in which the country churches also gained officers without yet gaining fabric. Stellenbosch received van Loon in April; Drakenstein received de Groot for its Dutch hearers in the same month, while still worshipping in farm rooms and barns; Table Valley committed poor-fund capital to a larger stone plan than the one abandoned twenty-two years earlier. The castle hall would continue to serve through 1701–1703, but the December stone fixed the end of that long interim as Company policy rather than as a private hope of the consistory alone. [3]
Wool Shipment, Rice Import, and Drought — 1700
The directors were desirous of procuring sheep’s wool from South Africa, as some samples sent to Europe were pronounced of excellent quality. They were of opinion that if it could be produced at eight pence a pound, they would be able to make a good profit from it, and the colonists would have another reliable source of income. Instructions were sent to the government to have this industry taken in hand by the burghers. But it was not a pursuit that commended itself to South African farmers at that time. Although a good many European sheep had been imported in former years, there were very few of pure breed left, nearly all having been crossed with the large-tailed native animal. It was commonly believed that woolled sheep were more subject to scab than others, and the havoc created by that disease was often so great that the farmers were in constant dread of it. Then there was the expense of separate herds. Further the carcase of the woolled sheep was not so valuable as that of the other, so that the graziers who bred for slaughter could not be induced even to make experiments. [3]
In 1700 the government sent home two hundred and eighty-five pounds of wool shorn from sheep belonging to the Company. This was received with favour, but instead of increasing, the quantity fell off in succeeding years. In 1703 one small bale was all that could be obtained; it realised about fifteen pence English money a pound on the market in Amsterdam. In 1704 a very small quantity was procured, in 1705 none at all, and in 1706 one hundred and fourteen pounds. In the mean time the governor took the matter in hand as a private speculation. He collected all the wool-bearing sheep in the settlement at a farm of his own, wrote to Europe for rams and ewes of good breed and to Java for some Persian sheep, and was about to give the industry a fair trial when he was recalled. The 1700 shipment thus marked the high point of an official experiment that the burghers would not take up at scale while slaughter stock remained more profitable and less disease-anxious under local belief. [3]
The governor had previously endeavoured to introduce the culture of silk. He made experiments with the white mulberry, which was found to grow and thrive well, but the silkworms which he obtained from imported eggs all died. He then gave up the trial, being of opinion that the mulberry was in leaf at the wrong season of the year for worms from the south of Europe. A less important but more successful experiment made by this governor was placing partridges and pheasants on Robben Island to breed. Other constructive work that belongs to the same habit of official initiative: improvement of the Company garden, a small museum and rebuilt garden house, a botanical guide still consulted a century later, a new garden near Rondebosch called the Nieuwe Landen (Newlands), tree-planting, and the Waveren exploration already noted. Neither silk nor game birds altered the grain balance of the settlement, but both belong with the Company’s wool packet of 1700: projects pressed from above where burgher incentive lagged. [3]
From 1698 to 1705 the seasons were very unfavourable for farming, and no wheat could be exported. In 1700 it became necessary to import rice from Java, as there was not sufficient grain in the country for the consumption of the people and the supply of fresh bread to the crews of ships. In 1705 the long drought would break up, and the crops would be very good; but as the wheat was being reaped heavy rain would set in and greatly damage it. There would, however, be a surplus above the requirements of the country, and in 1706 exportation would be resumed and fourteen hundred muids sent to Batavia. Calendar 1700 therefore combined a hopeful wool packet home with rice on the reverse voyage—evidence that the settlement still could not feed itself and the fleets from local grain alone. [3]
Population was at this time increasing rapidly. The families of the burghers were generally large, they married at an early age, and no young women remained single. From Europe every year a few settlers were received. A custom had come into vogue of allowing soldiers and convalescent sailors to engage for short periods as servants to burghers, their wages and cost of maintenance being thus saved to the Company, while they were at hand in case of need. From a hundred to a hundred and fifty of the garrison and seamen were commonly out at service. A great many slaves were being introduced from Madagascar and Mozambique. Between the years 1691 and 1700 many surnames first found in the colonial records—among them Bakhuizen, de Haas, Odendaal, Bisseaux, Helm, de Boer, van Rensburg, Brink, Hoffman, le Riche, Coenradie, Cronjé, Delport, Maritz, Mouton, Mouy, Niel, Swanepoel, and de Vos—mark the demographic base on which that growth rested. French names still settling into Dutch spellings in the same generation: Crosnier toward Cronjé, Mesnard toward Minnaar, de la Porte toward Delport, Terreblanche toward Terblanche, Niel toward Nel. Against that increase stood the drought, the rice import, and the still thin Waveren line—expansion inland while the granary remained short. [3] [8]
The bad seasons tended to produce a spirit of restlessness among the farming population, which was increased by the conduct of the principal officers of the government. With the enlargement of the settlement under open cattle trade and the Waveren occupation, fresh troubles with San raiders were already forming on the Obiqua and Groen Kloof flanks. Places the same pressure in the origin of the trek habit: when officials could glut a limited market with Company means, burghers with small unaided resources looked away from Table Bay toward remoter pasture. Calendar 1700 itself is recorded less as a year of open frontier war than as the year in which Valckenier’s commission, Huising’s contract, Vergelegen’s freehold, the Steenbergen life-use, the Waveren cottages and outstation, van Loon and de Groot, the Cape church foundation, the Company’s wool packet, and the Java rice import together reordered how the colony bought meat, occupied inland pasture, staffed its country pulpits, and fed its people under drought. [3] [4]