Boer History1835 in South Africa: Smith’s Ride, Hintsa, Queen Adelaide, and Port Natal named D’Urban
Smith’s Ride, Martial Law, and D’Urban at Grahamstown — January 1835
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry George Wakelyn Smith was the officer in the colony next in rank to the governor when this year opened. He had been deputy quartermaster-general at the Cape since the 24th of March 1829. The man he answered to was Sir Benjamin D’Urban, governor since the 16th of January 1834. The reason Smith left Capetown at daylight on the 1st of January was not a new quarrel of this calendar, but the invasion of Sunday evening the 21st of December 1834. Maqoma and Tyali had put 12000 to 15000 men across the border from the Winterberg to the sea. 22 colonists and 10 traders were dead. Bathurst had emptied toward Grahamstown on the 29th. By the 31st the open country as far west as Uitenhage, save 3 posts, lay open. First news reached the castle on Sunday afternoon the 28th of December, by express from Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Somerset dated 5 a.m. on the 22nd. On New Year’s Eve there was still a party at Government House. On New Year’s morning the news of the invasion was in the streets of Capetown. That is why January opened with a ride, not with a council sitting: the eastern districts were already on fire, and the officer who could hold Albany had to be there before the governor could leave the peninsula. [3] [4]
Smith rode toward Grahamstown, nearly 600 miles by the road, in the hottest time of the year. Magistrates and fieldcornets had been warned to hold a horse and a guide at each stage. He started before daylight, finished in the afternoon, opened mail-bags, wrote orders, and slept a little before the next stage. He made about 100 miles a day; the day he reached Uitenhage he had done 140. Ten miles from Grahamstown Somerset had a clipping hack and an escort of 6 of the Cape mounted rifles waiting. On the afternoon of Tuesday the 6th of January he rode into the drostdy. On the 3rd a proclamation of D’Urban had placed Albany, Somerset, Uitenhage, George, Graaff-Reinet, and Beaufort under martial law, and had given Smith full authority over military and civil inhabitants in those districts until the governor himself arrived. The ride mattered because 600 miles of summer road, not a ship, was how the colony put a lieutenant-colonel into a town filling with women who had left their farms, and because martial law in 6 districts was the paper that made his orders bind burgher and soldier alike until D’Urban came. [3] [4]
The garrison of the Cape peninsula was a few engineers and artillerymen, the 98th under Lieutenant-Colonel John McCaskill, and the 72nd highlanders under Lieutenant-Colonel John Peddie, who had lost an arm at Salamanca. 458 effective highlanders and 13 artillerymen were sent to the frontier as quickly as possible. Two brigs, the Kerswill and the Mary Jane, were chartered and sailed for Algoa Bay on the 2nd of January. Admiral Sir Thomas Bladen Capel, on his way out to the East Indian command, placed the ship-of-war Wolf at the governor’s disposal. She sailed from Simon’s Bay on the 5th and reached Algoa Bay on the 11th. The Winchester, of the African command, was employed as a transport, and a coasting schooner was chartered for supplies. A few of the troops went overland in waggons. The ships mattered because the peninsula could not empty its barracks by the same road Smith rode, and because Capel’s Wolf was an admiral’s gift, not a regiment sent from England. [3]
Smith at once put Grahamstown in a state of defence and began to organise forces. Burghers from the districts beyond the ravaged territory were coming in. Altogether nearly 1300 Khoikhoi were levied: about 800 as auxiliaries to the line, 275 provisionally attached to the Cape mounted rifles. Mr. George Wood was empowered to clothe and equip them. In a store lay a quantity of thick baize imported for the Xhosa trade and found unsaleable; it was bought up and cut into uniforms. On that transaction, and a few others in which three or four colonists took large profits, later advocates of the Xhosa would rest a charge that the white people had made the war for military expenditure. On the 31st of December Tyali had required the reverend William Chalmers to write to Somerset proposing a cessation on condition that matters remain as they were. Mr. James Weir carried the letter to Captain Armstrong’s post. 50000 or 60000 head of horned cattle and as many sheep had been driven over the Keiskama. The proposal was rejected, and a like answer went to Maqoma. The first week therefore put on the Fish not another patrol for 40 horses but a 600-mile ride, 6 districts under martial law, two brigs and a Wolf on the water, 1300 in baize, and a town filling with refugees. [3] [7]
Lieutenant-Colonel John Bell was left to carry on the administration at Capetown with the executive council, under the title of the provisional government. D’Urban could not leave at once: legislative provisions for the new conditions of the labouring classes and apprentices were still in progress. On the 8th of January he embarked at Simon’s Bay in the ship-of-war Trinculo, and on the 14th reached Algoa Bay. At Port Elizabeth and at Uitenhage he inspected the arrangements for defence, then hastened to Grahamstown, where he arrived on the 20th of January. He had passed through a devastated country, with nothing but ruins to mark where homesteads had stood. To the secretary of state he wrote that he could not adequately point out the horrors by which a beautiful and fertile province had been almost converted into a desert. In Grahamstown there were nearly 2000 refugees, many of whom had saved no property whatever. One of his first measures was a board of relief of clergymen of different denominations and a few other leading men, with power to draw on the assistant commissary-general for provisions, clothing, and medicines. The board appealed to the colony and abroad, and in course of time 3737 pounds in money was raised. The governor headed the list with 150 pounds. Including the people at the Kat river, nearly 12000 individuals at one time or other during the war received assistance through this board. The arrival mattered because the governor was now among 2000 people who had lost their farms, and because a board that could draw rations was the difference between a drostdy of refugees and a famine in Albany. [3] [4]
Cox, the Fish Thickets, and the Amatolas — January–April 1835
On the 10th of January a cavalry corps of 76 British settlers, 90 burghers of Uitenhage, and 40 Cape mounted riflemen, under Major William Cox of the 75th, left Grahamstown and dashed across the Fish. The patrol surprised Eno’s kraal, killed several men including a son and two brothers of the chief, and lost one burgher severely wounded. The huts were destroyed; very few cattle were recovered. Cox went on to Fort Willshire, found it much damaged by fire, visited Tyali’s kraal in the Tyumie valley, burned the abandoned huts, and returned by the Kat river. The object was twofold: to draw the Xhosa out of the colony, and to prevent the people at the Kat river from joining them. Those people had not been molested, and the impression on both sides was that they would take part against the white people. In the garrison of Fort Willshire before its abandonment 25 of the Cape mounted rifles had arranged with Maqoma to betray the post; a body lay in ambush for hours, but no signal came. The mixed congregation of the reverend W. R. Thomson, under fieldcornet Christiaan Groepe, took up arms at once. That, and Cox’s demonstration, enabled Captain Armstrong to bring nearly the whole of the Kat river people into Fort Adelaide with their women and children. The reverend Mr. Read was not permitted to visit them during the war. The dash mattered because Eno’s kraal was the first blow across the Fish, and because Groepe’s choice kept the Kat river on the colonial side when both camps had expected it to go the other way. [3]
The three Gqunukhwebe captains Pato, Kama, and Kobe had not joined their countrymen, though many of their followers had taken part in the invasion and shared the spoil. They remembered their feud with the Ngqika house, and they hoped by siding with the Europeans to recover the territory between the Beka and the Fish which had been theirs before 1819. They offered protection at Wesleyville to any white men who could get there. Tshatshu, of the Tinde clan, professed neutrality, but the clan had grown too weak to protect anyone. The reverend John Brownlee lost his cattle; a trader in his house was threatened with death; under cover of night he, his family, and the trader reached Wesleyville. The reverend Mr. Dugmore of Mount Coke did the same, as did several traders’ families. Volunteers from Port Elizabeth, guided by Henry Fynn and Theophilus Shepstone, both of whom spoke the language, brought out nearly 100 white people. Kobe went with them to Grahamstown as hostage for his brothers. On the 20th of January Chalmers’s and Weir’s families were conducted from the Tyumie to Fort Adelaide. The Gqunukhwebe choice mattered because Wesleyville became a door out of Xhosa country, and because Pato’s feud with Ngqika, not a sudden conversion, was why three captains stood with the colony while Maqoma and Tyali did not. [3]
At Burnshill on the upper Keiskama — a Glasgow station founded in June 1830 — several families sat under the protection of Sutu, great widow of Ngqika, anxious for the boy Sandile. Mission families from the Pirie (founded May 1830) and from Knappshope made their way there. The trader at Knappshope was murdered; four others nearer the mountains escaped. On the 26th of January Cox with a strong escort brought out the four traders and the families of the missionaries Laing, McDiarmid, Ross, and Kayser, and at old Lovedale on the Ncera was joined by John Bennie and his family. In all, 35 individuals were rescued. Matwa and Tente, inferior sons of Ngqika attached to James Laing, went with him to Grahamstown and remained until peace. Maqoma, Tyali, and Umhala retired to the Amatola thickets; the warriors of Eno, Botumane, and Siyolo were still between the Sunday and Bushman’s rivers. Most of the colonial cattle had been driven into Gcaleka country beyond the Kei. Fort Willshire was reoccupied. At that post one day 4 soldiers of the 72nd and 2 of the levy were cut off and killed within sight of the garrison. Early in February Somerset cleared the Zuurberg and Olifants’ Hoek; Eno, Botumane, and Siyolo fell back to the Fish thickets and were joined there by the other hostile clans. The rescue mattered because Sutu’s protection, not a British column, kept Burnshill alive until Cox arrived, and because the cattle the colony wanted were no longer on the Fish: they were already east of the Kei in Hintsa’s country. [3]
A strong force of the 72nd and 75th, Cape mounted rifles, artillery, burghers of Uitenhage, George, and Graaff-Reinet, Albany sharpshooters, Port Elizabeth yeomanry, and the levy was formed into three divisions. On the 11th of February the centre under Smith crossed at Trompetter’s drift, the left under Lieutenant-Colonel Richard England at Committee’s drift, the right under Somerset at Xhosa drift a few miles from the sea. From daybreak on the 12th until the morning of the 15th the ravines were scoured. The Xhosa then abandoned the Fish thickets and fled across the Keiskama. They were believed to have lost 73 men, and they left about 4000 head of horned cattle and a number of horses, sheep, and goats. The colonial loss was heavy: 7 burghers — W. Western, John Goodwin, Richard Bland, Frederick van der Schyff, Pieter and Hillegard van Rooyen, and Caspar Loetz — 4 of the 72nd, 1 of the 75th, and 1 Cape mounted rifleman killed; 12 severely wounded. On the 19th of February Tyali’s warriors raided the Kat river settlement and attacked the military post; they were beaten back with heavy loss, Groepe again of great service. The Fish scouring mattered because the thickets that had covered the invasion were emptied toward the Keiskama, and because 7 named burghers paid for that emptying before any column had yet been numbered for a march beyond the river. [3] [7]
On the 6th of March a party surprised the post at Trompetter’s drift, where a raft was being built for commissariat. Captain Harries abandoned it. Four colonists — Thomas Titterton, Francis Clark, Thomas Bilston, and Robert Shaw — were killed trying to escape, and 4 of the levy fell. Burghers of George and Uitenhage under commandant Jacobus Ignatius Rademeyer recovered the position, but the commandant and 40 men were surrounded in a wooded ravine; 5 colonists — Adam Boshof, Jan Bernard, Jan Meyer, Andries van Zyl, and Hermanus Wessels — were killed and 8 wounded. Before the Fish fastnesses were cleared again, 4 more white men were killed and 5 wounded. On the 19th of March the plans for an invasion beyond the Keiskama were complete. The force ready was 25 artillerymen with 6 field guns, 371 of the 72nd, 358 Cape mounted riflemen, the mounted burghers of Swellendam, George, Graaff-Reinet, and Somerset ( 1537), the Beaufort volunteers ( 62), the corps of guides ( 40), and the levy ( 761): altogether 1997 cavalry and 1157 infantry, under D’Urban, with Smith second. Four columns stood under Peddie, Somerset, Cox, and commandant Stephanus van Wyk. England held the line of defence covering the Fish posts: 24 artillery and engineers, 461 of the 75th, and the rest of the levy and local burghers. The March numbers mattered because the colony was no longer defending Albany farm by farm: it was about to cross the Keiskama with nearly 2000 horse, and England was being left behind to hold the Fish so that the invasion would not open a new hole behind it. [3] [7]
On the 31st of March the advance guard crossed the Keiskama near Fort Willshire and entered the country of the Rarabe clans, who had taken shelter along the base of the Amatolas between the sources of the Tyumie and the easternmost tributary of the Buffalo. Three divisions and part of the fourth scoured the mountain base; the rest of Van Wyk’s horse went by the Kat river to the Bontebok flats, to stop cattle being driven out, to intercept any help Hintsa might send, and to cut communication with the emigrant Thembu under Mapasa, who professed friendship while petty raids ran into the Tarka. From the 2nd to the 10th of April operations along the Amatolas recovered about 15000 head of cattle and drove the Xhosa from every point where they tried to stand. One of the most active burgher officers was commandant Jacobus Linde of Swellendam, 75 years of age, who had served in four earlier wars. The European loss was one colonist named Lloyd and 3 soldiers killed; 5 soldiers, 4 burghers, and 2 of the levy wounded. By the 10th resistance in the open had ended; most of those of the levy who had joined the Xhosa, formidable because they carried guns, now surrendered. On the 11th the first division moved toward the Kei. The Amatola week mattered because 15000 cattle came out of the mountains, and because the next river east was no longer a Rarabe problem: it was Hintsa’s Kei. [3] [7]
Hintsa, the Fingos, and the Crossing of the Kei — April–May 1835
On the 15th of April D’Urban with the first division crossed the Kei. On the left bank two Gcalekas were seen, one a councillor of Buku, who asked if the white people knew what stream it was, and why they crossed it, as the country eastward belonged to Hintsa, who had taken no part in the war. 5 days were allowed for a definite answer. The assertion of neutrality was true of Hintsa as an individual, not as chief of the tribe. Many Gcalekas had assisted the Rarabe to lay waste Albany and Somerset. Tens of thousands of colonial cattle, and the greater number of the Rarabe herds, were in his territory. Trading stations in his country had been pillaged; two traders, Thomas Eccles and Robert Horton, had been detained 36 days and cruelly treated before they were permitted to retire to Clarkebury. The missionary families at Butterworth had been so threatened that they left. A general order nevertheless said the country was not to be treated as an enemy’s, and that no act of violence was to be committed against the people or their property if Hintsa complied. Following the line of the later high road, the army reached Butterworth on the 17th. The mission buildings were in ruins, destroyed as soon as the reverend John Ayliff had retired to Clarkebury. On the 20th Somerset’s second division rejoined, having scoured the Gonubie to the sea without resistance, destroyed some kraals, and secured a couple of thousand cattle. The crossing mattered because the Kei was the line Hintsa claimed as his own, and because five days of silence would decide whether the Gcaleka country was to be treated as neutral or as the place where Albany’s cattle now stood. [3]
Shortly after the governor reached Butterworth, Fingo captains appeared at the camp and solicited protection. Among them were six men — Umhlambiso, Jokweni, Mabandla, Matomela, Umsutu, and Jama — chiefs of remnants of the amaHlubi, amaZizi, amaBele, amaReledwane, abaseKunene, and amaKuze. They were not slaves transferable from owner to owner; they held tracts of land, sat under their own captains, and carried arms; but they could get no satisfaction against a Xhosa in a chief’s court, and they were liable to be robbed and assaulted almost at will. The application caused the governor to adopt a large plan: removal of the hostile Rarabe chiefs east of the Kei, settlement of the Fingos between the Fish and the Keiskama, and location of so-called friendly Rarabe — Sutu and Sandile, Nonibe and Siwani, Umkayi, Matwa and Tente, Tshatshu — between the Keiskama and the Kei, with a large tract for Pato, Kama, and Kobe east of the Keiskama. When Hintsa’s five days expired without an answer, the Fingos were taken under British protection. Captain Henry Douglas Warden with a troop of the Cape mounted rifles went to Clarkebury and returned with 65 Europeans — missionaries, artisans, and traders, with their families — among them the reverend Messrs. W. Satchell, T. Palmer, J. Ayliff, and W. J. Davis of Buntingville, Morley, Butterworth, and Clarkebury. 24 people of the levy and 524 Fingos who had attached themselves also came out. When Clarkebury was abandoned, the only missionary station occupied in any part of Xhosa country was Shiloh on the Klipplaats. On the 21st of April a British settler named Armstrong, serving as an ensign, was sent to the colony with despatches and an escort of 30; he loitered behind and was murdered by Gcalekas; a patrol found the body with 5 assagai wounds. The Fingo appeal mattered because it gave D’Urban a people to settle west of the Keiskama, and because Armstrong’s death on the 21st showed that five days of courtesy had not made the country east of the Kei safe. [3] [7]
On the 24th, nine days after the passage of the Kei, one of Hintsa’s councillors, believed to be a spy, was sent back with a declaration of war. On the 25th the first division moved to the Zolo, a tributary of the Tsomo, leaving the second near Butterworth. Smith with burghers and Cape mounted rifles scoured the country, and between the 24th and the 28th captured about 15000 head. Warden, joining the Thembu regent Vadana, on the 27th attacked one of Hintsa’s kraals on the Bashee and took 4000. Convinced of the force in his country, Hintsa on the 29th of April, under the governor’s pledge of personal safety, came to the camp with 50 followers. On the 30th terms were concluded. Hintsa undertook to deliver 25000 head of horned cattle and 500 horses immediately, and the same number of each at the expiration of a year; to cause Maqoma, Tyali, Eno, Botumane, Umhala, and Siyolo to cease hostilities and surrender their firearms; to punish with death the man who had murdered the trader William Purcell on the 13th of July 1834 for refusing to sell goods on a Sunday; and to pay 300 head of good cattle to each of the widows Purcell and Armstrong. He agreed to give two hostages, and offered himself as one. Buku came shortly afterwards as the other. Hostilities thereupon ceased, and on the 2nd of May the first division began to move toward the colony. The terms mattered because 25000 cattle were the price of a peace Hintsa could not deliver from herds that were not his to give, and because the pledge of personal safety was the only reason a paramount chief walked into a British camp. [3]
Before the division reached the Kei, Somerset, left near Butterworth, reported that by order of Hintsa and Buku the Xhosa had begun to attack parties of Fingos, had murdered several, and that a general massacre was imminent. The governor threatened Hintsa that if the Fingos were further molested he and the Xhosa with him would be hanged, the pledge of personal safety being forfeited. Hintsa issued an order to cease, which was obeyed. The attack was not wanton: as soon as the Fingos were assured of British protection they had begun to seize cattle to take with them. On the 6th of May Somerset moved from Butterworth with these people, and on the 14th reached the block between the Keiskama and the Fish and the roads running east through Trompetter’s and Committee’s drifts. Ayliff was stationed with this party. A smaller party was located on the Gaga. A census as they crossed the Keiskama showed, in round numbers, 2000 men, 5600 women, and 9200 children, with 22200 head of cattle. On the 4th of May Smith had issued a notice offering the Rarabe, if they would surrender their arms, to keep all cattle then in their possession except such as belonged to colonists, chiefs only to be detained. No one accepted. They did not regard themselves as subdued. The Fingo march mattered because 2000 men and 22200 cattle crossing the Keiskama were a new people being planted on colonial ground, and because Smith’s offer of the 4th showed that the Rarabe in the Amatolas still did not think the war was over. [3]
On the 10th of May — repeated in Grahamstown on the 16th of June — D’Urban issued a proclamation annexing the country from the border of 1819 eastward to the right bank of the Kei from its source in the Stormberg to the sea, and giving it the name Province of Queen Adelaide. After the proclamation the first division crossed the Kei, leaving only 500 men on the eastern side. Hintsa had not delivered the cattle of the 30th of April. From his point of view the reception of the Fingos, and the protection which enabled them to drive off Gcaleka herds, cancelled the arrangement; but instead of claiming a deduction he said his followers would not obey orders to bring in the oxen and cows the Rarabe had placed in their charge. Reluctant to be taken as a hostage across the Kei, he proposed that a patrol go with him to collect the cattle, while his son Kreli (Sarili) and Buku remained in camp. D’Urban consented. Smith with 500 men marched toward the Bashee. On the second day of the march, on a steep hill, all except Smith dismounted. Hintsa, leading a remarkably strong horse, gained the ridge, mounted, and dashed forward at full speed. Smith overtook him, called to him to stop, snapped a pistol twice, threw it away, and pulled him over by the kaross. Hintsa sprang up, hurled an assagai which fell short, and ran down the hill. George Southey called to him in Xhosa to stop, fired and wounded him slightly, then with a second shot inflicted a wound that must in time have proved mortal. In a thicket at the bottom Hintsa, almost within arm’s length, was in the act of quivering an assagai when Southey fired on the impulse of the moment. The chief fell with his skull blown away. Someone afterwards cut off the ears. In that mutilated state the corpse was carried to the nearest kraal and left there. He was buried by his own people at the foot of the Bongo hill. The death mattered because a paramount chief who had come in under a pledge of safety was now dead on a cattle patrol, and because the province named on the 10th would thereafter be argued in London as much by that thicket as by the line of the Kei. [3] [7]
The same evening Smith crossed the Bashee and on its right bank captured 3000 head, some recognised as colonial. Next morning very early he pushed on with picked men, leaving a guard with the cattle. During his absence Lieutenant White, merino breeder and surveyor, employed in making a chart, left the cattle-guard with 4 of the levy, went to the top of a hill for bearings, and was killed with one of his escort by Xhosa who crept up. His body was buried on the bank of the Bashee. On the 17th of May Smith recrossed the Kei. About 1000 Fingos joined him on the march and accompanied him into Queen Adelaide. When news of Hintsa’s death reached D’Urban he had an interview with Kreli, and on the 19th of May an agreement was concluded: peace; Kreli to recognise the Kei as the colonial boundary; to deliver the cattle his father had undertaken to surrender; to receive east of the Kei the clans of Maqoma, Tyali, Eno, Botumane, Umhala, and Siyolo and not permit them to recross without the governor’s permission; and not to molest the Thembu under Vadana. Kreli was then permitted to return. Buku remained a hostage and was detained 2 months in Grahamstown before he was set at liberty. Sutu arranged an interview for Cox with the Rarabe chiefs at the foot of Intaba-ka-Ndoda on the 13th of May; they declined even to discuss removal across the Kei, and sent raiding parties far into the colony. Seven Europeans — Jan Greyling, James Jenkins, Mrs. Jacob Trollip, John Bentley, James Jubber, Chipperfield, and Faber — were murdered in cold blood by raiding parties. Greyling, who had distinguished himself in the Amatolas, was returning home on leave; his father had been murdered with landdrost Stockenstrom in 1812; his mother had afterwards married commandant Pieter Retief. A little earlier Andries de Lange had been murdered on the Koonap; some weeks later Tobias Tharratt at Botha’s hill. The 19th of May mattered because Kreli, not Hintsa, now answered for the Gcaleka, and because the Rarabe at Intaba-ka-Ndoda had already refused the removal that Kreli had just promised to receive. [3]
Queen Adelaide, King William’s Town, and the Forts — May–June 1835
The governor caused forts of very simple construction to be built and occupied in the new province. Along the Buffalo there were three: Fort Beresford, named after one of his aides-de-camp, near the source; one at the site selected for a camp and for the residence of the military officer in command of the province, which on the 24th of May was named King William’s Town in honour of William IV; and one on the right bank about 8 miles farther down, named Fort Murray after the colonel of the 42nd highlanders. Between the Buffalo and the Kei there were three: Fort Wellington, named after the duke, on the Gonubie hill near the source of the Gonubie; Fort Warden, after Captain Warden, on the Impotshana five or six miles from the Kei; and Fort Waterloo, half-way between these and the sea. On the upper Keiskama was Fort Cox, named after Major Cox; on the line between Fort Willshire and King William’s Town, Fort White, named after the colonist killed on the Bashee. In the old ceded territory three new forts were built: Montgomery Williams, on the right bank of the Keiskama half-way between Fort Willshire and the sea; Fort Thomson, after the commanding officer of the royal engineers, near the junction of the Gaga and the Tyumie; and Fort Peddie, after the lieutenant-colonel of the 72nd, in the centre of the Fingo locations. Smith, writing to the civil commissioner of Albany on the 24th of May, said there never was a site more perfectly prepared by nature for a splendid provincial town. A general order that day established the township. “With God’s blessing, if what I have done be confirmed at home, at some future period, here will spring up a beautiful provincial town.” The naming mattered because a camp on the Buffalo was being treated as a town of the crown, and because Smith’s own sentence already hung on confirmation at home. [3] [4]
The planting season was well advanced, so on the 23rd of May the farmers were permitted to return to their homes to get in grain. Of the money lent by Lord Charles Somerset to the sufferers by the flood of July 1822, a portion had been repaid and was lying in the government bank. D’Urban appointed Mr. Hougham Hudson a commissioner to lend this fund again in small sums to the most distressed of the frontier farmers. It amounted to 6792 pounds. There was also 9019 pounds received for captured cattle sold by auction, distributed in proportion to losses. To this date the whole of the forces in the field had been supplied with provisions, but neither the burghers nor the levy had received any pay. When the farmers went home, the levy was retained, and the governor thought it just they should have some compensating pay. That arrangement — releasing burghers to get crops in, detaining the levy — was afterwards counted in England as an injustice toward coloured people, and became one of the most serious complaints against him. His opinions had undergone a great change since December. He no longer believed the border clans to possess the virtues of civilised Europeans, and he had discovered that the pictures sent from Bethelsdorp were distorted; he had not lost the desire to benefit coloured people, but he would deal with them as they were. Soldiers, colonial volunteers, and the levy were kept following the Xhosa from one stronghold to another, doing as much damage as possible to cornpits so as to reduce subsistence in Queen Adelaide — another charge later laid as inhumanity rather than a necessity of war. On the 11th of June the governor proceeded to Grahamstown to attend to civil administration, leaving Smith in command at King William’s Town. The May arrangement mattered because grain would not wait for a peace, and because the unpaid levy kept in the field would be read in London as a colour line, not as a harvest. [3] [7]
On the 25th of June Lieutenant Charles Bailie, a young colonist of great promise, son of John Bailie who had headed the first party of 1820, left King William’s Town with 28 of the levy to assist in scouring a kloof near Intaba-ka-Ndoda. The party was surrounded, and on the 27th was brought to a stand not far from the abandoned Pirie. When their ammunition was expended, the whole were killed. Some days afterwards the dead were found by a patrol and buried on the spot, which is still called Bailie’s grave. The comfortable home this colonist had created was burned to the ground. His young widow, who had fled for her life, was left so destitute that the only property she had in the world beyond her personal attire was a bible found in her dead husband’s belt and forwarded to her. On the 20th of July a boat from a little coasting schooner named the James put ashore at the mouth of the Tshalumna to procure wood and water. About 50 Xhosa approached, at first friendly, then seized firearms. Two sailors ran into the sea and swam off; the other two were stabbed to death with assagais. Bailie’s grave mattered because a settler’s son and 28 of the levy died inside the new province after it had been named, and because the James at the Tshalumna showed that the coast was still not a British shore. [3]
D’Urban’s plans for the province were to encourage Christian missionaries — not political agitators — among the clans, to prevent the clans fighting each other, to suppress the cruel practices connected with accusations of witchcraft, to guide the chiefs by stationing respectable European agents with them, to prohibit the sale of munitions of war and intoxicating liquors while promoting commerce in useful articles, and to foster industry and order among new subjects of the crown. Mr. Stretch was stationed at Fort Cox with the Ngqika clans. Mr. Southey at Fort Murray. Mr. Fleetwood Rawstorne with Umhala and Siyolo at Fort Waterloo. Mr. John Mitford Bowker with the Gqunukhwebe at Fort Peddie, and as superintendent of the Fingos. The agents were to act as controllers of the chiefs while appearing as friendly advisers, and to take preliminary examinations in cases of murder, rape, arson, and assault. Glasgow stations in the Ngqika country — Lovedale, Burnshill, and Pirie, named for Dr. Love, the reverend John Burns, and the reverend Alexander Pirie — were to be resumed; Frederick Kayser returned to Knappshope; Brownlee resumed with Tshatshu; William Shepstone reoccupied Wesleyville, William Boyce Mount Coke, and Ayliff continued with the Fingos. The agents mattered because Queen Adelaide was not meant to be an empty military strip: it was meant to be a province with named men sitting beside named chiefs, and with the Glasgow and Wesleyan stations open again. [3]
Boyce’s Message, the 27th Regiment, and the Marks of 17 September — August–September 1835
As soon as the seed grain was in the ground a notice issued that the burghers must prepare to take the field again. By this time the governor was convinced that even if he could drive the Rarabe across the Kei the means at his disposal were insufficient to keep them there, and he was inclined to make peace on terms that would admit of their remaining in Queen Adelaide under military supervision. That is why the next move was not another Amatola scouring but a message. Boyce suggested a plan by which communication could be opened without compromising the government. Early in August, Boyce, Shepstone, and Samuel Palmer went to Pato’s residence on the Beka. Though the Ngqika and Gqunukhwebe clans bore no love to each other, there were close matrimonial connections, and several women were willing to convey messages to relatives in the Amatola fastnesses. The missionaries sent assurances of sorrow, advised the chiefs to apply for merciful terms, and stated as private opinion that less onerous conditions than expulsion west of the Kei might be imposed if they asked for land under English protection. They were also told that the governor intended to collect a very strong burgher force again. On the 15th of August Maqoma and Tyali sent an envoy to a patrol to ask for a conference. Cox and Warden met them, attended by 600 or 800 men, fully 300 armed with muskets. A suspension of hostilities was agreed until the governor could be communicated with. Warden rode for Grahamstown. D’Urban directed that if the chiefs would agree to become British subjects and submit to restraint in a few small particulars, he would grant peace. Smith, Cox, and Warden held another conference; Maqoma and Tyali, attended this time by about 4000 well-armed men, elected to accept, and it was arranged they should meet the governor at Fort Willshire on the 11th of September. Boyce’s message mattered because a Wesleyan at Mount Coke, using Gqunukhwebe marriages, opened a door the army had not been able to kick in, and because 4000 armed men choosing to talk was not yet a surrender. [3]
All this time nothing was heard from England concerning relief. Under very favourable circumstances a reply from the imperial government to a letter from Capetown could be received in from four and a half to five months; usually longer. In this instance the English ministry believed military aid was not needed, and none was sent out. D’Urban had left instructions that if reinforcements reached Capetown or Simonstown they were to be sent forward with all possible haste. On the 18th of August the transport Rodney arrived in Simon’s Bay from Cork with the 27th regiment, 540 officers and men, but brought no other information than that their destination was the Cape Colony. As soon as refreshments could be taken on board she sailed for Algoa Bay, and on the 8th of September the 27th marched into Grahamstown. Ten days later D’Urban received a letter from Lord Fitzroy Somerset dated the 8th of April, informing him that the 27th was sent to relieve the 98th, not to strengthen the force under his command. The governor took the responsibility of keeping both regiments in the colony. The arrival of these soldiers and the assembling of the farmers again greatly strengthened his hand in the negotiations, though neither troops nor burghers were called upon to take an active part in the field. The Rodney mattered because 540 men from Cork looked like relief and were meant as a relief of the 98th, and because D’Urban kept both battalions anyway, which was how he sat down at Fort Willshire with a stronger hand than London had intended to give him. [3]
On the 8th of September the governor arrived at Fort Willshire, and on the 11th Maqoma, Tyali, Eno, and some others proceeded there to meet him. A difficulty arose: during the truce the Xhosa had continued their depredations in the colony just as in time of war. The governor gave the chiefs a few days to prove their earnestness by recalling their followers. When this was done, on the 17th of September Maqoma, Tyali, Eno, Kusha for Sutu and Sandile, and Fadana for Botumane attached their marks to a document in which they agreed to become British subjects and to live in submission to the general laws of the Cape Colony, though retaining their own laws and customs for the domestic government of their people; to surrender all the muskets in their possession; and each to pay a fat ox yearly in token of fealty. On the other part the governor agreed to protect them in person and property, and to assign for their use the land between the Tyumie and Kei from the ridge of the Amatolas to a line along the Keiskama from the junction of the Tyumie, the Debe, the Debe neck, the Pirie mission station, the Isidenge hill, and the Kabousie, with reservation of ground for roads, outspans, churches, schools, magistracies, and military posts. At the same time and place a precisely similar arrangement was concluded with Umhala, Siyolo, and a captain named Gasela, grandson of Rarabe by a minor wife, who had emerged from obscurity during the war: land between the Kei and Nahoon from the sea up to a line a mile south of the high road from King William’s Town to the principal ford of the Kei. On the same day, at the Beka, Pato, Kama, and Kobe, regarded as allies, affixed their marks to a document of like import, in which the land assigned was the territory between the Fish and Buffalo from the sea up to a line from Xhosa drift on the Fish to Ford’s drift on the Buffalo — restoration of their ancient possessions east of the Fish and a large tract west of the Buffalo. Land adjoining Burnshill went to Sutu and Sandile; adjoining the Tyumie station to Matwa and Tente; on the right bank of the Buffalo above the Gqunukhwebe line to Nonibe and Siwani, who during the war had lived on the Beka with Dugmore; and in the same neighbourhood to Umkayi. No Xhosa was to cross the western boundary of the locations without a pass from a government commissioner, or armed, under penalty of being shot. The only land in Queen Adelaide left ungranted after the clans were located was the narrow tract between the Buffalo and the Nahoon, reserved for white occupation. The governor also intended to allot to colonists all the ground in the territory ceded by Ngqika in 1819 that was not in possession of the Gqunukhwebe and the Fingos. The marks of the 17th mattered because Maqoma and Tyali were no longer enemies across a river: they were, on paper, British subjects inside Queen Adelaide, and because the Buffalo–Nahoon strip was the only ground in the new province still reserved for white farms. [3] [7]
About 60000 head of cattle had been retaken from the Xhosa, but four-fifths were either lost again, died from fatigue and poverty, or were slaughtered for the forces. A farmer often assisted to recapture his own cattle and afterwards saw them used by the army. Supplies of grain and waggons were requisitioned, and promises of payment could not be met for want of funds. When the accounts were adjusted, the cost of the war to the imperial government — the excess of military expenditure above that of the previous year — was 154000 pounds. Ordinary military expenditure was 96000 pounds. The loss of men by the Xhosa cannot be accurately stated. Commissioners employed to locate the clans reported about 4000 fallen; shortly after peace the Xhosa began to deny that the number was anything like as large. Without a roll-call there could be no certainty. Kraals were burned, but new huts were easy. Large quantities of maize and millet had been destroyed, and cattle — the chief wealth — had almost disappeared from Queen Adelaide. The Rarabe had taken nearly twice as many from the colonists as had been retaken from them, but the waste was enormous. When hostilities ended the Gcaleka declined to give up the cattle placed under their care, so the Rarabe found themselves in great poverty. Fortunately it was the planting season, and there was sufficient seed left. The only people who gained by the war were the Fingos: from being outcasts they had become possessed of land and cattle, and were now an organised community in a fair way toward prosperity. Those who were murdered or fell in action were not by any means all whose lives were lost. Care, anxiety, and distress brought many men and women to their graves, and the number would have been enormously increased if rations had not been furnished by the military commissariat to those who must otherwise have perished of want. The accounts mattered because 154000 pounds was what London would be asked to pay above an ordinary year, and because 4000 reported dead on one side and no roll-call on either was the arithmetic on which later arguments about the war would rest. [3]
Port Natal named D’Urban, Gardiner, and Trichardt at the Zoutpansberg — 1835
In January Captain Allen F. Gardiner, previously of the royal navy, visited Natal to prepare the way for missions among the Zulu. In his account of the journey he stated that there was then at the port but one house constructed after a European model, and that was built of reeds and mud. It was occupied by Mr. James Collis, the principal trader, who lost his life by an explosion of gunpowder a few months later. The huts of the residents were all carefully concealed in the thicket; the place presented a wild and deserted appearance. Previous to this year the houses at the bay had been mere wigwams hidden in the bush. On the 23rd of June at a public meeting they resolved to lay out a town and to name it D’Urban in honour of the governor of the Cape Colony. They selected a site a little farther up the shore of the inlet than where the later town would stand. The regulations included provision for a church and a hospital. Including Gardiner, his interpreter George Cyrus, and his waggon driver Richard King, the whole white population did not amount to 35 souls, most of them elephant hunters who merely lived there a month or two in the year. They held advanced views upon representative government. In a petition to D’Urban for transmission to England they stated that the country between the Tugela and Umzimkulu was unoccupied except by about 3000 blacks living under their protection and acknowledging their chieftainship, although there was no recognised authority among themselves. They had named the district Victoria, and requested that it might be made a colony of the British empire, with a governor and council appointed by the king to act in concert with a house of assembly chosen by themselves. The meeting of the 23rd of June mattered because a bay of fewer than 35 whites took the Cape governor’s name while he was still in the field on the Buffalo, and because a petition for a house of assembly at Natal was being written by men who had as yet no recognised authority among themselves. [3] [7]
On the 20th of January 1834 a meeting in the commercial exchange at Capetown had resolved to request the imperial government to acknowledge the settlement at Natal; a petition with 192 names had been forwarded a few months later. D’Urban, in his covering despatch, had observed that the scheme would prevent other powers settling there, but that a garrison of at least 100 soldiers would be needed. On the 10th of November Mr. Spring Rice had written declining on account of the expense. On the 4th of December of this year, when forwarding the petition from the residents at Natal, D’Urban recommended occupation as a British possession and suggested Gardiner as administrator. There was one ever-present cause of irritation between Dingane and the European settlers: fugitives from his tyranny continually placing themselves under the white chiefs at the port. The danger was so great that the white people agreed to observe a treaty entered into on the 6th of May by Gardiner on their behalf and the indunas Umthlela and Tambusa on the part of Dingane. Dingane consented to waive all claim to the persons and property of every individual then residing at Port Natal in consequence of having deserted from him, and to accord them his full pardon, without ceasing to regard them as his subjects, liable to be sent for whenever he thought proper. The British residents engaged never to receive or harbour any deserter from the Zulu country, and to use their best endeavours to secure and return every such individual. In accordance with this treaty Gardiner himself conveyed a party of 4 fugitives back to Dingane, by whose orders they were starved to death. Dingane then gave him authority over the Natal people, with liberty to establish a mission at the port and one on the northern bank of the Tugela under the induna Nongalaza. Gardiner returned to England as speedily as possible to procure men for those posts. The treaty of the 6th of May mattered because the bay lived only as long as Dingane chose, and because four starved fugitives were the price of a mission leave that Gardiner then took home to recruit. [3] [4]
In this year the first American missionaries, 6 in number, arrived in South Africa. Three of them went northward to Moselekatse’s country; the others — Dr. Adams and the reverend Messrs. Champion and Aldin Grout — proceeded to Natal, visited Dingane at Umkungunhlovu, and obtained leave to establish themselves in his country. North of the Orange the first waggons were still moving. Carel Trichardt and Van Rensburg, who had crossed the Orange early in 1834 and reached the Vaal in February of that year, had in December of this year got to the Zoutpansberg. They travelled as far north as the neighbourhood where Schoemansdal would afterwards be built, looking for an outlet to the Portuguese at Delagoa Bay so that a settlement in the Zoutpansberg could have access to the Indian Ocean. The mountain wall — summits 3500 and 4000 feet, stretching west toward the Blauwberg and east toward Albasini’s — blocked the way. December under the Soutpansberg mattered because the first trek was no longer a camp on the Vaal: it was a party looking for a pass to Delagoa, and because American missions were arriving at Dingane’s kraal in the same year that a town at the bay took D’Urban’s name. [3] [4] [7]
Glenelg, Compensation Lists, and the December Despatch — 1835
Of late there had been frequent ministerial changes in England. In July 1834 Viscount Melbourne had succeeded Earl Grey as premier, with Mr. J. Spring Rice in the colonial department. Five months later, in December of that year, Sir Robert Peel had become premier and the earl of Aberdeen had succeeded Rice. That ministry held office only 4 months. In April of this year it was overthrown; Viscount Melbourne returned to power, and Mr. Charles Grant — shortly afterwards raised to the peerage as Baron Glenelg — became secretary of state for the colonies. He was one of the leaders of the party then called philanthropic. During all the anxious months of this year and a part of the next, the governor received only two communications from England of moment: one from Aberdeen, and one from Glenelg dated the 30th of April, which was the last and only one received throughout the year. On the 15th of June Glenelg wrote that Mr. Fowell Buxton had given notice of a motion in the Commons for a bill suspending payment of the 20000000 pounds for one year, on reports of ill-treatment of apprentices in the West Indies, and warned the colonists that no distinct pledge would be given that the bill would be opposed. The threat was not carried into effect. The silence mattered because a governor in the field from January to December had 2 letters from home to work with, and because Glenelg, not Aberdeen, now held the colonial seals that would judge Queen Adelaide. [3] [4]
Slavery compensation could command little attention while burghers were called away to the Fish. The colonial commissioners wrote on the 18th of June — within a fortnight of the time when all uncontested claims should have been in — that in consequence of the few returns collected it was necessary to modify the London regulation with reference to the closing of the lists on the 30th of June. Toward the end of the year, when the cessation of war enabled colonists to realise the extent of their ruin, attention could again be turned to slavery matters. The assessment of claims continued. According to the colonial commissioners the number of returns was 6335; total number of slaves 35745; estimated value 3041290 pounds and 6 pence. The London list would later show 38427 slaves and an estimated value of 2824224 pounds 7 shillings and 9 pence: an increase of 2682 in number and yet a decrease of 217065 pounds 18 shillings and 3 pence in estimated value. A largely signed petition, with which D’Urban sympathised, went to London. Apprenticeship, which had begun on the 1st of December 1834, still had years to run. The June lists mattered because the war had made the 30th of June closing date impossible, and because London would later raise the head-count and cut the valuation in the same stroke. [3] [4]
A committee of the House of Commons was taking evidence upon the condition of the aborigines of British settlements, with Buxton in the chair. Before it appeared Dr. Philip, and with him Tshatshu — a professed Christian of Bethelsdorp — and Andries Stoffels, a Kat river resident of mixed Xhosa and Khoikhoi blood. Stoffels later contracted consumption and died at Capetown on his way back. Another witness, whose evidence shocked as much as it surprised the colonists, was Captain Andries Stockenstrom, lately commissioner-general. He was called forward 11 times. Before the committee he gave an account of the death of Zeko in 1830 in which the colonial force was represented as a band of robbers and murderers — a statement that created intense indignation in South Africa. There was a party in Capetown, few in number but with powerful support from abroad, whose leaders were Philip and Mr. John Fairbairn of the Commercial Advertiser. They desired states ruled by Bantu chiefs under missionary guidance, from which Europeans not of their views should be excluded. Public meetings in the principal villages condemned Philip’s attitude. The Wesleyan and Scotch missionaries, the men who had been living among the Xhosa, with one solitary exception then resident in Europe, supported the government and the colonists, and found themselves abused in English newspapers for doing so. The committee mattered because Stockenstrom’s 11 appearances, not a despatch from Grahamstown, were what Buxton’s chair was hearing, and because Philip and Fairbairn were already arguing Queen Adelaide in Capetown before Glenelg had written his December paper. [3] [4]
On the 14th of October D’Urban still further extended the limits of the crown by a proclamation which fixed the north-eastern boundary from the Stormberg source of the Kei to the head waters of the Kraai on the northern side of the mountain range, then along the Kraai to its junction with the Orange near where Aliwal North would later stand, then along the Orange westwards as far as the Stormberg spruit. The annexation brought the north-eastern British frontier up to the Orange and added a tract already used as pasture by graziers. The three proclamations of the year on this border were those of the 10th of May, the 16th of June, and the 14th of October. On the 23rd of October Smith proceeded to the Moravian station Shiloh on the Klipplaats and interviewed Mapasa. The chief offered no objection to the arrangements. He engaged to obey government officers, to assist in preventing his people from plundering the colonists, and to live in peace. His wants were few: to be left to govern his people as he chose and to be protected by the Europeans against his enemies. In the Gcaleka country shortly after the war, disease broke out among the horned cattle and many thousands died. Kreli sent in rather more than 3000 head. On the bank of the Buffalo as far as the Nahoon the governor thought of placing a compact body of white settlers, protected by a line of forts from the sea to King William’s Town, dividing the Rarabe country into two sections. No steps were taken until the secretary of state’s approval should be obtained. It was regarded as certain that the mouth of the Buffalo could be used by shipping, though as yet no proper examination had been made; the first landing of goods at that mouth belongs to the months after the forts were up. The October line mattered because the Kraai and the Orange were now written as a British north-east, and because Mapasa at Shiloh asked only to be left to govern and to be protected — a smaller bargain than the marks of the 17th of September. [3] [4] [7]
In December, after an absence of nearly a twelvemonth, D’Urban turned back toward Capetown. Never since the days of father Tulbagh had a South African ruler been as popular. His ability, straightforwardness, and warm sympathy with the distressed caused him to be esteemed and beloved. Respectful addresses poured in from all parts of the colony, and at every stage on the return journey the people did their utmost to testify affection and loyalty. The Moravian, Wesleyan, and Scotch missionaries were equally forward in commending his conduct. There was, however, a party in Capetown that entirely disapproved. Glenelg, writing from Downing Street under date of the 26th of December, composed a bulky despatch of which the pith was that in the conduct pursued toward the Xhosa nation by the colonists and the public authorities through a long series of years, the original justice was on the side of the conquered, not of the victorious party. He found fault with the language in which the governor had described the Xhosa, particularly the expression “irreclaimable savages,” which he had read with pain. He instructed the governor to withdraw colonial authority from Queen Adelaide. The document itself would not lie on the castle table until another calendar; but it was written in this year, and its tenor was already known to Philip’s party even before the paper reached the country. The 26th of December mattered because a secretary of state who had sent almost no letters during the war now condemned the province named on the 10th of May and the marks made on the 17th of September, and because D’Urban was riding home to addresses of loyalty while Downing Street was already writing that the original justice had been on the other side. [3] [4] [7]