Boer History1705 at the Cape of Good Hope: Namaqua Staffs, Starrenburg Landdrost, Postlooper to Natal, Drought Breaks, and the Tas Memorial
Starrenburg Landdrost of Stellenbosch — July 1705
In July 1705 Johannes Starrenburg succeeded Pieter Robberts as landdrost of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. Robberts had held the country magistracy since February 1703; before him Michiel Ditmar had served from July 1698. The landdrost sat as president of the local court with the heemraden, collected revenue through the district apparatus, and was the governor’s ordinary channel for orders inland of the Cape peninsula. [3]
Starrenburg’s appointment fell in the middle of Wilhem Adriaan van der Stel’s governorship, when free grazing had already pushed burghers to Riebeek’s Kasteel and the Land of Waveren, military posts still stood at Waveren, Groen Kloof, and related stations, and the free cattle barter opened in 1700 had been withdrawn again in 1703. The new landdrost would soon be the official who carried an armed party from house to house in the country districts seeking signatures for a certificate of the governor’s good administration—work that belongs to 1706, but whose office foundation was the July succession of 1705. [3]
For the inland congregations the year also continued the thinned ministry left by the death of the Rev. Hercules van Loon in June 1704. Stellenbosch still had no resident clergyman except the quarterly visits of the Rev. Hendrik Bek from Drakenstein; the Rev. Engelbertus Franciscus le Boucq, named for Drakenstein, would not arrive until March 1707. Civil authority at Stellenbosch thus rested more heavily on the landdrost and heemraden while the church vacancy dragged on through another full calendar year. [3]
Namaqua Captains Confirmed as Plato, Jason, and Vulcan — October 1705
In October 1705 three Namaqua captains came to the Castle for the purpose of requesting the governor to confirm their authority. They were kindly treated; their request was complied with; and they left carrying presents of beads and other trifles and copper-headed canes upon which the new names given to them— Plato, Jason, and Vulcan—were inscribed. Thenceforth they were termed allies of the Honourable Company. [3]
The October visit followed the friendship agreement made when several Namaqua captains had visited the Cape in September 1704. That earlier agreement had already placed the tribe, like others in contact with the Europeans, in the position of vassals as a matter of course. The staffs of 1705 turned political friendship into named personal commissions: each captain carried a copper-headed cane as the visible mark of Castle recognition, and the classical nicknames entered the Company record beside their local authority. [3]
The number of captains who applied for staffs was itself a sign that the tribes were more broken up than formerly. Sometimes a clan requested the appointment of a regent because its hereditary captain was a minor; sometimes a brother of a deceased captain was sought in his stead, the applicants always giving as a reason that the dead chief had left no children. Feuds between clans of the same tribe caused frequent disturbances, though those same clans usually acted together against the adjoining tribe. Plato, Jason, and Vulcan fitted this wider practice of Castle staffs and ally titles rather than standing apart from it. [3]
Northern diplomacy still sat beside a closed cattle trade. After Khoikhoi complaints of rapacity and violence by burgher trading parties, the council of policy had provisionally suspended free barter, and in 1703 the Assembly of Seventeen had withdrawn the privilege opened in 1700. Commercial intercourse between the two races was again illegal; European graziers were depended on for ordinary beef and mutton, with military bartering parties inland only when draught oxen were urgently needed. Confirming Namaqua captains did not reopen private purchase; it fixed political recognition while meat supply stayed bound to colonial herds and licensed contracts. [3]
Drought Breaks, Rain-Damaged Harvest, and No Wool — 1705
From 1698 to 1705 the seasons had been very unfavourable for farming, and no wheat could be exported. In 1700 rice had been imported from Java because there was not enough grain for the people and for fresh bread to ships’ crews. In 1705 the long drought broke up, and the crops were very good; but as the wheat was being reaped heavy rain set in and greatly damaged it. There was nevertheless a surplus above the requirements of the country, and in 1706 exportation would resume with fourteen hundred muids sent to Batavia. Calendar year 1705 was thus the hinge: the dry stretch ended, a surplus appeared despite harvest rain, and the first export shipment waited for the following year. [3]
The directors remained desirous of sheep’s wool from South Africa. Samples had been pronounced excellent; they held that wool at about eight pence a pound might profit the Company and give colonists another income. Burghers did not take to the industry. European sheep had been crossed with the large-tailed native animal; woolled stock were thought more subject to scab; separate herds meant expense; and the carcase was less valued by graziers who bred for slaughter. In 1700 the government had sent home two hundred and eighty-five pounds of Company wool; in 1703 one small bale realised about fifteen pence a pound at Amsterdam; in 1704 only a very small quantity was procured; in 1705 none at all; in 1706 one hundred and fourteen pounds. The governor later collected wool-bearing sheep on a farm of his own as a private speculation and wrote to Europe and Java for better stock, but that trial belonged to the close of his administration rather than to the empty wool ledger of 1705. [3]
Population nevertheless increased. Burgher families were generally large; they married early; few young women remained single. Every year a few settlers arrived from Europe. A custom allowed soldiers and convalescent sailors to engage for short periods as servants to burghers, their wages and maintenance being saved to the Company while they remained at hand in case of need—commonly from a hundred to a hundred and fifty of the garrison and seamen out at service. A great many slaves were being introduced from Madagascar and Mozambique. Labour and household growth thus continued through the last drought year and into the first surplus harvest. [3]
Parallel experiments of the same administration—white-mulberry planting and imported silkworms that died, and the more successful placing of partridges and pheasants on Robben Island to breed—showed a governor willing to trial secondary products while grain and cattle still dominated. The bad seasons had also tended to produce restlessness among the farming population, increased by the conduct of the principal officers of government. Between Wilhem Adriaan van der Stel and the colonists there was not the slightest feeling of sympathy recorded in the official papers of his years in office. [3]
Postlooper Expedition to Natal — November–December 1705
Owing chiefly to the scarcity of timber and fuel, in 1705 it was resolved to send an expedition to Natal and the adjoining coast to inspect the country and particularly the forests known to be there. The schooner Centaurus, built at Natal in 1686–7 mainly from timber growing on the shore of the lagoon, had been in use nearly fourteen years before needing repair and stood as proof that the wood was valuable. The galiot Postlooper was made ready. Her master, Theunis van der Schelling, had visited Natal when mate of the Noord in 1689 and 1690, and therefore knew the harbour. He was instructed to make a thorough exploration of the forests and to frame a chart of the coast. A sailor expert in drawing pictures was sent to take sketches of the scenery. [3]
The Postlooper sailed on the 20th of November 1705. She reached Natal on the 29th of December, and found the bar so silted up that she could only cross at high water. There were not so many cattle in the neighbourhood as there had been sixteen years before. Wood still remained in considerable quantities. The outward voyage and the December landing thus closed the calendar year on the Natal coast; the return to Table Bay would fall only on the 8th of March 1706, after the skipper was hurt when the tiller struck him in the chest as the galiot lurched on the bar, and after two of the crew had run away, attracted by the life of an Englishman found living there. [3]
In December 1689 a purchase of the lagoon and surrounding land had been made from the chief then living at Port Natal and recorded in a formal contract in two copies. The Dutch officers’ copy had been lost when the Noord was wrecked in January 1690; Van der Schelling was therefore instructed to procure the copy left with the chief so that a notarial transcript might be made. The chief who had sold the ground was dead, and his son now headed the tribe or clan. On inquiry the son stated that he knew nothing of the document and supposed it had been buried with his father’s other personal effects. It was evident that he did not recognise the sale as binding upon him or his people. [3]
At Natal an Englishman was found who gave his name as Vaughan Goodwin and stated that he was a native of London. He had two wives and several children. His story was that he had arrived in February 1699 in a vessel named the Fidele, and with two others had been left behind by Captain Stadis, who purposed to form a settlement and promised to return within three years. Stadis had not yet appeared. In 1700 the natives had killed the other white men. Goodwin’s household was what the Postlooper’s people encountered at the year’s end on a coast still valued for timber more than for any immediate Dutch occupation. [3]
Official Farms, Vergelegen Scale, and Burgher Charges to Batavia — 1705
The governor was engaged in farming for his own benefit on a very large scale as things were then estimated. He could not take ground for himself, but in February 1700 commissioner Wouter Valckenier, holding authority from the governor-general and council of India, had granted him in freehold four hundred morgen at Hottentots Holland. To this he afterwards added by granting adjoining ground to a subordinate official and purchasing it from that individual at a nominal rate. The estate he named Vergelegen. [3]
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: 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 sent to Holland. On the estate were planted nearly half a million vines, or fully one fourth of the whole number in the colony by 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]
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 farmed on a smaller scale than the governor, but, especially in the clergyman’s case, neglected public duties for private property. The governor’s brother, Frans van der Stel, was a farmer at Hottentots Holland. His father farmed 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. [3]
Some of the farmers determined to complain to the supreme authorities, and in 1705 privately forwarded to the governor-general and council of India a list of charges. At Batavia no action was taken. While the complainants awaited a reply, the materials of a larger memorial to the directors in the Fatherland were already being assembled in the country districts. The year thus opened two tracks of protest: a private list already on the Batavia route, and a fuller case still being written for Amsterdam. [3]
Adam Tas Memorial and Huising’s Lost Meat Contract — Late 1705
Adam Tas, a native of Amsterdam and a burgher of Stellenbosch, drew up a memorial to the directors. The document contained thirty-eight paragraphs, some of great length, in which the governor and the others were accused of acting as already sketched, and the governor was further charged with corruption, extortion, and oppression. It was affirmed that he employed the Company’s servants and slaves at his farm; that he used the Company’s materials for building; that his agents when sent to barter cattle from the Khoikhoi had taken them by violence; that he bought wine at very low rates from those who could find no market for it and disposed of it at very high rates to strangers; that instead of licensing by auction four dealers in wine, to each of whom the farmers could sell without restriction, he caused the privilege of dealing in that article by retail to be sold as a monopoly to a man who would buy his at a good price; and that he would make no grant of land without a bribe. Some other offences of an equally serious nature were complained of. [3]
The memorial was signed by sixty-three individuals, thirty-one of whom were Frenchmen. Their intention was to send it to the directors with the return fleet in the early months of 1706. Official records of the early years of Wilhem Adriaan van der Stel’s administration, to which the burghers had no access, later showed that some of the most serious charges against him were without foundation. One principal opponent—Jacob van der Heiden—was at a later date strongly suspected of dishonest practices himself. Another—Henning Huising—had strong ground for resentment at the end of 1705, when he lost the lucrative meat contract he had held for five years. [3]
At the instance of the governor, tenders were called for, and four butchers were licensed, the price of meat being fixed at a penny three farthings a pound to the Company and two pence to burghers. Huising resented this, and as the contract had made him the richest man in the community, he could make his resentment felt. After those circumstances are weighed, the charges that were unquestionably true still made a formidable indictment, and the majority of the governor’s opponents were among the most godfearing and respectable men in the country. Among them was J. W. Grevenbroek, recently an elder at Stellenbosch, who took an active part in the movement though his name was not attached to the memorial. [3]
On the 29th of November 1705 the Indian authorities, with a view to save expense, instructed the council of policy not to contribute longer toward the prizes of the Stellenbosch fair or to furnish wine and ale at the Company’s cost. There was thus no kermis or fair in 1706 and later—the first visible effect of a November 1705 economy order that country people would blame on the Cape government when the annual gathering failed. By the close of the calendar year the Batavia list of charges was already away, Tas’s thirty-eight paragraphs stood signed for the next return fleet, Huising’s five-year meat monopoly had ended in a four-butcher licence system, and Starrenburg held the landdrostship through which the governor would try, in the opening months of 1706, to answer the memorial with forced certificates and arrests. [3]
Close of 1705 at the Cape
By the end of 1705 Johannes Starrenburg had been landdrost of Stellenbosch since July, and three Namaqua captains had left the Castle in October as allies named Plato, Jason, and Vulcan, carrying copper-headed staffs and bead presents. The drought that had run since 1698 had broken; crops were very good though heavy rain damaged the wheat at harvest, leaving a surplus that would only ship in 1706, while the wool experiment produced nothing for Europe in the calendar year. On the 20th of November the Postlooper sailed under Theunis van der Schelling for Natal’s forests and bar; she was at Port Natal by the 29th of December, finding silted water, fewer cattle than in 1689, standing timber, a dead chief’s unacknowledged sale contract, and Vaughan Goodwin’s English household. Inland, Vergelegen and the farms of Elsevier, Kalden, and Frans van der Stel already crowded a small produce market; burghers had sent a private list of charges to Batavia without result; Adam Tas had drawn a thirty-eight-paragraph memorial signed by sixty-three, thirty-one of them French, for the next homeward fleet; Henning Huising had lost the five-year meat contract to a four-butcher licence; and Batavia’s November order had ended Company support for the Stellenbosch fair. Those were the calendar facts of a year that confirmed Namaqua captains, changed the country magistracy, reopened a grain surplus, probed Natal for timber, and assembled the written case that would break into open conflict when the return fleet of 1706 rode in Table Bay. [3]