Boer History1739 at the Cape of Good Hope: Swellengrebel Installed, Barbier’s Rising, San Commando, and Earthquake
Swellengrebel Installed Governor — 14 April 1739
Calendar 1739 opened with the Cape still under the acting head chosen by lot after Governor Adriaan van Kervel’s death on the 19th of September 1737. The independent fiscal, Daniel van den Henghel, had held the chair since the morning of the 20th, when the council split evenly between him and the secunde Hendrik Swellengrebel and the master of the warehouses proposed that the lot decide. Through the whole of 1738 that unusual arrangement had continued while the directors’ corrective despatches made the slow circuit from Europe. [3]
The Assembly of Seventeen did not approve of Van den Henghel’s appointment, because they considered the secunde the proper person to assume the chief authority upon the death of a governor. They therefore sent instructions that he should return to his office of independent fiscal, that Swellengrebel should take the place of governor, and that the secretary Ryk Tulbagh should become secunde. Those changes took effect on the 14th of April 1739. [3]
Swellengrebel was by birth a colonist, a son of Johannes Swellengrebel, who had been dispenser and member of the high court of justice at the beginning of the century. He had sat on the council of policy for thirteen years before the brief interval as secunde that preceded Van Kervel’s death. Tulbagh, already secretary and married to Swellengrebel’s sister, stepped into the second civil chair on the same April day. Van den Henghel remained in the colony as fiscal until the 18th of September 1741, when he was relieved by Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn. [3]
Elephant River Complaint and the Fiscal’s Inquiry — 1739
In 1739 a petty insurrection took shape from a frontier stock dispute. Some Khoikhoi captains complained that a party of Europeans living along the Elephant river had robbed them of cattle under pretence of barter. Those persons were summoned to appear before the landdrost’s court at Stellenbosch, and their stock was summarily impounded to prevent concealment. [3]
They declined to obey the summons, and raised an outcry that the landdrost’s assistant had acted in excess of the law in taking possession of their cattle before it was proved that they had been engaged in the forbidden traffic. The matter was referred to the fiscal, who investigated the case and found that the Khoikhoi had sufficient cause of complaint. Their property was therefore restored, and they were taken under the Company’s protection. At the same time the landdrost’s assistant was found to have acted with unnecessary violence, and he was replaced by a more prudent officer. [3]
A summons was then issued for the Europeans to appear before the court of justice and answer for their conduct in ignoring the constituted authority. As on the former occasion, they did not comply. The Elephant river dispute thus passed from a local stock seizure into open defiance of Stellenbosch process and of the high court at the Cape. [3]
Barbier at Drakenstein — 1 March 1739
A turbulent individual named Etienne Barbier, by birth a Frenchman, who had been in the Company’s military service and had risen to the rank of sergeant but had deserted about a year before, represented to these persons that he possessed great influence in Europe, and induced them to join him. His object was to attain such a position that he could make terms with the government. [3]
The malcontents were joined by some other disaffected Europeans, chiefly deserters and Company’s servants with passes to seek employment, and on Sunday the 1st of March 1739 the whole rabble, mounted and armed, appeared at Drakenstein. After reading a seditious document to the people, Barbier affixed it to the door of the church. [3]
Upon intelligence of this event reaching the castle, instructions were sent to the landdrost to have Barbier seized and brought before the high court of justice, and, if resistance was made, to shoot him. The March Sunday at the Drakenstein church door thus turned a stock quarrel and a second refusal of process into a public seditious demonstration within sight of one of the colony’s three parish pulpits. [3]
San Raid on Piketberg and the Bokkeveld — 1739
Just at this time a horde of San made a raid upon the scattered farmers of Piketberg and the Bokkeveld, murdered two Europeans and several slaves, set fire to some houses, and swept off large herds of cattle. In the preceding year the same marauders had driven off the stock of a farmer named August Lourens, but had been pursued, and the cattle had been recovered without any bloodshed. [3]
By direction of the council, the landdrost and board of militia of Stellenbosch had then requested a discreet farmer to endeavour to enter into a friendly agreement with the San, and presents were made in hope of inducing them to abstain from robbery. The farmers of the frontier, however, had no confidence in the success of such treatment, and they were now seized with a general panic, fearing that the government would again try to conciliate rather than punish. Most of them in consequence abandoned their farms and fell back towards the Cape. [3]
The double pressure of Barbier’s mounted band at Drakenstein and the burning of Piketberg and Bokkeveld homesteads thus fell on the same months of 1739. Frontier households judged that gift diplomacy after the Lourens recovery would not answer a raid that had already left Europeans and slaves dead and houses in ashes. [3]
Kruywagen’s Commando and Barbier’s Execution — 1739
The government, however, acted in a different manner. The old burgher councillor Jan Kruywagen was instructed to raise a commando and follow up the marauders, and all who had joined Barbier were offered pardon if they would take part in the expedition. Fifteen of them accepted the offer at once, and the remainder shortly afterwards. [3]
Barbier managed to keep in concealment for a few months, but was eventually apprehended. In November he was tried, condemned to death, and executed. After the barbarous manner of that time in Europe as well as in South Africa, his body was divided into portions, which were affixed to posts in different parts of the country. [3]
Some of the farmers who were called out by Kruywagen refused to act under him, and his commando was too weak to accomplish the purpose for which it was raised. In attempting to expel the San from a mountain, a number of men, including the commandant, were wounded, and one was killed. The first punitive column of 1739 thus absorbed most of Barbier’s former followers by pardon, destroyed the French deserter’s leadership in November, and still failed to clear the disturbed districts with the force first fielded. [3]
Stronger Force and San Peace Terms — August–October 1739
A stronger force was then raised, and took the field in two divisions, some soldiers having previously been sent to occupy temporary stations in the disturbed districts, where the families of the men on commando could be protected. In August one of the marauding bands was defeated and some cattle were recovered, only one burgher being killed. [3]
Reinforcements were then sent to the front, and in October more than sixty San were killed and upwards of thirty others were wounded. A party of Europeans, who were searching along the coast for a ship that was supposed to have been wrecked, shot from thirty to forty more. The San then agreed to terms of peace. [3]
On the European side during the latest operations three farmers had been wounded in action, and two— Jan Engelbrecht and Philip Meyer—had been surprised and murdered. The fighting season of 1739 thus closed with a negotiated peace after August and October engagements, temporary military posts covering the farms of men still on commando, and a heavy San death roll alongside the two named burgher murders in the later phase. [3]
Game Rewards Reduced — November 1739
From time to time regulations were issued for the preservation of harmless wild animals and for the destruction of beasts of prey. In November 1739 the reward for killing a lion was reduced from £4 3s. 4d. to £2 1s. 8d., for a leopard from £2 1s. 8d. to £1 5s. 0d., and for a hyena from 12s. 6d. to 8s. 4d. [3]
Half of these premiums were paid by the Company, the other half by the burgher council if the animal was destroyed in the Cape district, and by the court of landdrost and heemraden if it was destroyed in the district of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. The November cut therefore lowered the cash incentive for predator control at the same moment that frontier commandos were still winding down the San campaign and that Barbier’s body was displayed as a public warning. [3]
Later, in 1745, a regulation required the dead animal to be exhibited at the castle or at the landdrost’s office before the premium was paid, because skins alone had become suspect when some persons were thought to be bartering furs from Khoikhoi of the interior. That later rule shows how the November 1739 bounty schedule sat inside a longer administrative effort to police both predators and fraud in the premium system. [3]
Drought Export and Earthquake — 1739
During the thirteen years 1738–1750 there were several bad seasons and one exceptionally good one. The exports therefore fluctuated greatly. The year 1738 was one of drought, and consequently the harvest was so poor that in 1739 only 340 muids of wheat and 85 muids of rye could be sent abroad. [3]
That thin shipment was the export ledger’s reading of the previous year’s failed fields: magazines and ships could clear only a few hundred muids after the dry season, long before the rust-ruined crops that in 1740 stopped grain export altogether and forced careful regulation of bread at home. Calendar 1739 thus carried the first deep trough of the uneven export record of Swellengrebel’s early years. [3]
That the Cape is subject to occasional shocks of earthquake was experienced in the early morning of the 5th of September 1739, and again at daybreak on the 27th of August 1749. In the first instance there was a single shock; in the second there were two in quick succession. On both occasions there was a rolling noise, as of passing thunder. Beyond causing alarm, no damage was done. The September morning of 1739 therefore added a felt earth tremor to a year already marked by a new governor in April, a church-door rising in March, frontier war through the later months, and a starved grain export. [3]