Boer History1836 in South Africa: Glenelg, Stockenstrom, Queen Adelaide Abandoned, and Vegkop
Smith at King William’s Town, the Census, and Delancey beyond the Kei — January–February 1836
Colonel Henry George Wakelyn Smith was still at King William’s Town when this year opened, with military control over the province named Queen Adelaide. The man he answered to was Sir Benjamin D’Urban, governor since the 16th of January 1834. D’Urban had been back in Capetown since the 30th of December 1835, after nearly a year on the frontier. Queen Adelaide existed because of the invasion of Sunday evening the 21st of December 1834, when Maqoma and Tyali put thousands across the border from the Winterberg to the sea. On the 10th of May 1835 D’Urban annexed the country between the Keiskama and the Kei in the king’s name. On the 17th of September 1835 Maqoma and Tyali made their marks to terms that left them in that country as British subjects. Smith was left there to make that settlement work: respectable European agents with the chiefs, munitions and liquor kept out, useful trade encouraged, accusations of witchcraft stopped, and the clans kept from fighting one another. There was again peace on the Fish. That is why January opened with a commandant in a new town, not with another column: the war of the year before was over on paper, and the work now was to hold a province named for a queen. [3] [4]
Mr. Hougham Hudson was appointed agent-general at Grahamstown, with Mr. Theophilus Shepstone as clerk. Captain Charles Lennox Stretch was placed with the Ngqika, Imidange, and Amambala at Fort Cox. Mr. Richard Southey was at Fort Murray with Tshatshu, Umkayi, and Siwani. Mr. Fleetwood Rawstorne was at Fort Waterloo with Umhala and Siyolo. Mr. John Mitford Bowker was at Fort Peddie with the Gqunukhwebe and the Fingos. The agents were to take preliminary examinations in murder, rape, arson, assault, and theft, and to send sufficient cases to the military commandant for court martial until a simple code could be sanctioned. Petty criminal cases and all civil cases were left to the chiefs. A small body of Xhosa police was enrolled to assist them. The posts mattered because Smith could not sit in every valley: the agents were how British authority was supposed to reach Maqoma’s people without another commando. [3]
A census was taken. The Xhosa west of the Kei numbered 72700 souls: 7500 Gqunukhwebe, nearly 1000 Tinde, 9200 under descendants of Ndlambe. With the Fingos, the total between the Fish and the Kei south of the Amatola range was 90500. The count mattered because the province was not an empty strip between two rivers: it was a settled Xhosa country with Fingo locations inside it, and any order to give it up would move tens of thousands of people, not a line on a map. [3]
As soon as order was restored the missionaries returned. The Tyumie, Burnshill, and Pirie were reoccupied by the reverend William Chalmers, James Laing, and John Ross, with James Weir and Alexander McDiarmid as assistants. Mr. John Bennie re-established Lovedale on a new site near the junction of the Gaga and the Tyumie, because the buildings at the Ncera had been destroyed in the war. The reverend Frederick Kayser returned to Knappshope. The reverend John Brownlee resumed with Tshatshu. The reverend William Shepstone reoccupied Wesleyville, the reverend William Boyce Mount Coke, and the reverend John Ayliff continued at Fort Peddie. The stations mattered because the war had emptied them; putting the same men back in the same valleys was how D’Urban meant the new province to look like government rather than occupation. [3]
On Thursday the 7th of January Smith held what he called his Great Day at King William’s Town. Maqoma, Tyali, and Umhala had already been invested as magistrates; he now wanted a larger gathering, with the new laws read out and sub-magistrates and fieldcornets named, so that British rule in the province would be seen as begun, not merely proclaimed. He spent hours of most days with the chiefs, pressing money instead of barter, clothes, and methods of trade. The ceremony mattered because Smith was trying to turn last September’s marks into a working court system before London had even answered the annexation. [4]
Beyond the Kei the clans were quarrelling. On the 23rd of January Captain P. Delancey of the 75th left Fort Warden with an escort of 110 men. He visited in succession Kreli, Vadana, and Faku, and obtained their promises to keep peace with each other and with the colony. Three of Ncapayi’s councillors met him and made a similar promise in their chief’s name. The reverend Samuel Palmer went with the party; William Fynn and Aaron Aldum interpreted. On the 17th of February Delancey reported himself at headquarters in King William’s Town without accident. Immediately afterwards Butterworth, Morley, Clarkebury, and Buntingville were reoccupied by the Wesleyans. The embassy mattered because Hintsa was dead and Kreli was young: without a visit in force, the country east of the Kei could slide back into the raids that had opened the war. [3] [4]
In February the trader David Hume returned to Grahamstown from a journey along the Limpopo to where it passes through the eastern mountains, with an account of the tsetse and descriptions of the country as far as the lake received from numerous natives. During the early months Captain Sutton and Lieutenant Moultrie of the 75th, and Captain Cornwallis Harris on furlough from India, hunted along the Limpopo, each first propitiating Moselekatse with presents. In the same February the fieldcornet of the New Hantam, in Graaff-Reinet, reported that a large concourse with 70 waggons had crossed the Orange. He thought most meant to return, though four Liebenberg families and Carel Cilliers had said they would go on toward the Portuguese territories. The reports mattered because the interior was already being walked by hunters and by farmers before Glenelg’s paper reached the castle: the north was not waiting for a despatch. [3] [4]
Glenelg’s Despatch, the Commons Committee, and the Treaty with Moselekatse — March 1836
In Capetown a small party entirely disapproved of the governor’s settlement. Its leaders were the reverend Dr. John Philip and Mr. John Fairbairn of the Commercial Advertiser. They wanted states ruled by Bantu chiefs under missionary guidance, from which Europeans not of their views should be excluded. Philip had gone to England with Jan Tshatshu and Andries Stoffels. A committee of the Commons under Mr. Fowell Buxton was taking evidence. The first session had run through August 1835; after a break of five months the second ran from the 1st of February until the 1st of August of this year. Tshatshu’s father’s clan numbered less than 1000 of both sexes and all ages; he was represented as a powerful chief who could bring 2000 warriors into the field. Philip then toured England with the two men. Stoffels contracted consumption and died at Capetown on his way home. The committee mattered in this year because London was still hearing the war from witnesses chosen in Capetown and Bethelsdorp, not from the agents now sitting at Fort Cox and Fort Peddie. [3] [4]
Another witness, whose evidence shocked as much as it surprised the colonists, was Captain Andries Stockenstrom, lately commissioner-general, then a pensioner living in Europe. He was called forward 11 times. Before the committee, on the 19th of August 1835, he had given an account of the death of Zeko in 1830 in which the colonial force was represented as a band of robbers and murderers. Complete rebutting testimony was delivered to the committee by Colonel Wade on the 25th of March, but it was then too late to be of use except for the record. Stockenstrom had declared that he believed there were civilised nations in which the proportion of thieves was greater than among the Xhosa, and that arrangements could be made with the chiefs by which robbery could be suppressed. No evidence could have been more welcome to Buxton or to the secretary of state who now held South Africa in his keeping. The sittings mattered because the man London was about to send as lieutenant-governor was the same witness the eastern districts already distrusted. [3] [4]
There had been frequent ministerial changes in England. In April 1835 Viscount Melbourne returned to power, and Charles Grant — shortly afterwards Earl Glenelg — became secretary of state for the colonies. Glenelg professed to study the question, but his sympathies were all on one side. He complained that the governor had not furnished a clear and comprehensive explanation of the causes which provoked the irruption, and he had read with pain the expression “irreclaimable savages.” The conclusions were in a bulky despatch dated the 26th of December 1835: in the conduct pursued toward the Xhosa nation by the colonists and the public authorities through a long series of years, they had an ample justification of the war into which they rushed; urged to revenge and desperation by systematic injustice, they had a perfect right to hazard the experiment of extorting by force that redress which they could not expect otherwise to obtain; the claim of sovereignty over the new province bounded by the Keiskama and the Kei must be renounced, because it rested upon a conquest resulting from a war in which the original justice was on the side of the conquered, not of the victorious party. A lieutenant-governor would be appointed for the eastern districts. Treaties were to be made with the chiefs, who alone were to be looked to for restitution in cases of theft. No Europeans except Christian teachers were to be allowed to settle east of the Fish. Toward the end of March the uncertainty was removed by the arrival of the paper itself. Of all the official documents that had ever reached South Africa, none was so effective in turning the eastern districts. The announcement was the signal for general commotion. The Dutch population commenced in earnest to swarm out of the colony; the British, learning that they had given ample justification for the December crossing, could only look to the future with the direst forebodings. The London Times of the 5th of January had already reported that rumours of what was to happen had created considerable sensation in the City among merchants trading with the Cape. The despatch mattered because it did not merely scold a governor: it told the men who had fought in 1835 that the original justice of the war was on the other side, and that the province Smith was still holding must be given up. [3] [4] [7]
On the 3rd of March a treaty was signed in Capetown by D’Urban on the one part and by Nombate, on behalf of Moselekatse, on the other. The Matabele chief engaged to be a faithful friend and ally of the colony, to maintain peace, to protect white people visiting his country, to encourage missionaries, and generally to act as a promoter of civilisation. The governor made similar engagements and undertook to supply suitable presents periodically. Nombate returned to Mosega laden with gifts, without a thought that his chief had incurred any responsibility by putting his hand upon a pen while a mark was made. Glenelg’s party regarded such documents as having the same value as those entered into between civilised powers, and thus at the time when the emigrant farmers came into collision with the Matabele that tribe was spoken of as being in alliance with the colony. The mark mattered because it was made in Capetown in the same month the Glenelg paper arrived: London would later hear of Vegkop as an attack on an ally, not as a raid on waggons north of the Vaal. [3] [7]
On the 29th of March Glenelg replied to the Natal petition that had gone home on the 4th of December 1835, refusing to accede, on the ground that His Majesty’s government was deeply persuaded of the inexpediency of engaging in any scheme of colonisation or of acquiring any further territorial possessions in Southern Africa. The despatch was written after the northward movement had commenced. D’Urban, writing on the 8th of June and again on the 9th, begged the secretary of state to endeavour to obtain compensation from the revenue of the mother country for faithful subjects who had been visited with calamities rarely paralleled, as unexpected and unavoidable as they were undeserved, which neither prudence nor foresight could have averted. The loss he cited was 456 houses and 58 waggons burnt or destroyed, and a total estimated at 300401 pounds 10 shillings — an enormous sum in a poor community. He accompanied the paper with a long defence of Smith from the time of his arrival in Grahamstown until the 17th of April. He also recorded what he called the apparently utter abandonment of both himself and the colony by the British government, which had sent him neither instructions nor Treasury communications. On the 3rd of June he wrote to Smith that he could not but regard the Boers with strong feelings of sympathy: they had had hard measure. Pieter Retief, in a letter of the 11th of April, listed among those grievances the alarm created by a proposed enrolment. The June papers mattered because they were D’Urban’s answer to Glenelg, and because they put a number on the war’s damage at the same moment London was refusing Natal and preparing to give up Queen Adelaide. [3] [4] [7]
Farms in the eastern province were being sold at great sacrifice, and in many cases merely abandoned. Mr. Commissary Palmer of Grahamstown wrote on the 8th of March that for some time the Boers had been refusing to accept anything but coin for sums due to them, and had been willing to take a sovereign in lieu of 23 shillings in paper or Treasury notes. From February to September the return of depredations showed 514 cattle and 129 horses stolen, of which 234 cattle and 31 horses were recovered. The figures mattered because Glenelg’s order that chiefs alone were to be looked to for restitution was arriving in a countryside where stock was already walking, and where men who would not take paper were preparing to walk themselves. [4]
Stockenstrom at Table Bay, Martial Law Abolished, and the Council’s Resolutions — July–September 1836
On Sunday the 3rd of July the East Indiaman Lord William Bentinck sailed into Table Bay with the new lieutenant-governor. Small-pox had broken out on the passage. The passengers were landed and quarantined in the old Chavonnes battery until the 23rd. By fumigated documents Stockenstrom was able to communicate with the governor. The papers entrusted to him contained nothing more explicit than the despatches already received. On the 25th of July he took the oaths of office as lieutenant-governor of the eastern districts, which under his commission comprised Uitenhage, Albany, Graaff-Reinet, and Somerset. He had been directed to make Grahamstown his headquarters, and he was to receive a salary of 1000 pounds a year with a free residence. Stockenstrom was the same captain who had been commissioner-general on that frontier, who had given the Zeko evidence in London, and who was personally unacceptable to a large proportion of the inhabitants of the districts he was now to govern. That is why the oaths of the 25th were not a routine: London had sent the eastern districts a lieutenant-governor the settlers already believed had testified against them. [3] [4] [7]
D’Urban received him with every mark of honour: guns from the castle, every ceremony. He thought it the more necessary, as Glenelg was doubtless aware, because of that personal unacceptability. On the 18th of August — the day after the lieutenant-governor left Capetown for the east — D’Urban issued a proclamation abolishing martial law in Queen Adelaide. Justice there had been administered by Smith under martial law, and Stockenstrom, a titular captain who had served only a short time as an ensign in the Cape corps, would not be regarded as their military superior by officers in the army. Stockenstrom professed to regard the proclamation as the subversion of the existing system by the governor himself. The proclamation mattered because it stripped Smith of the legal basis on which he had governed the chiefs, just as the man sent to replace that system was riding east. [3] [4]
On the 5th of August D’Urban sent Smith a memorandum. Successive despatches of the 26th of December, the 5th and 17th of February, and the 28th of March had announced and reiterated the determination to renounce the sovereignty between the Keiskama and the Kei. When the last of those papers was written, the governor’s correspondence up to January had been before Glenelg; when Stockenstrom had his last interview with the secretary on the 19th of April, correspondence up to February had been before him, and no change had been intimated. D’Urban was compelled to conclude that there was no longer the slightest ground for hoping that the determination might be changed. It was full time to prepare the public mind for relinquishment by the end of the year, that date having been fixed as affording sufficient interval to recede with safety from the limits of the 10th of May. Smith was instructed to continue the course he was pursuing so that all might see the system working well until its overthrow. The memorandum mattered because it was the governor telling his commandant, in writing, that Queen Adelaide was finished, and that the remaining months were only to show that it had worked. [3] [4]
On the 24th of August the members of the legislative council present, official and unofficial — Pieter Gerhard Brink, John Bell, Jan Godlieb Brink, Anthony Oliphant, Henry Cloete, John Bardwell Ebden, Charles Stuart Pillans, and Hamilton Ross — unanimously passed resolutions of unqualified approval of the measures adopted in repelling the invasion, and of the arrangements of the 6th and 17th of September 1835 as best calculated to ensure the tranquillity of the eastern frontier. The council could not overrule Glenelg. The vote mattered because the colony’s own legislature put on record that it still stood with D’Urban’s settlement in the same month martial law was taken off the province. [3]
On the 3rd of September the lieutenant-governor reached Grahamstown. An address signed by 412 British settlers, expressing loyalty to the crown and calling in question the evidence he had given before the Commons, was ready. He refused to receive it. On the 6th a mass meeting was held in the commercial hall, at which men from all parts of the district were present, when four resolutions were passed unanimously, challenging proof of his assertions that atrocities had been perpetrated upon the Xhosa by the colonists. So inauspiciously commenced his term. Numerous largely-signed petitions were sent to England praying that an impartial commission of inquiry might be sent out; Glenelg refused. So closely did the secretary ally himself with the accusers that at this very time he introduced into the imperial parliament the act commonly known as the Cape of Good Hope punishment bill, the preamble of which read that the inhabitants of the territories adjacent to the colony, to the southward of the 25th degree of south latitude, being in an uncivilised state, offences against their persons and property were frequently committed by His Majesty’s subjects within such territories with impunity. The bill received the royal assent in August. The Dutch farmers were abandoning the land of their birth. The English settlers were still attempting to prove to their countrymen that when they crossed the sea they had not left their honour behind. They solicited the governor to publish the official records arranged by Lieutenant Donald Moodie; a guarantee was offered that the expense would be made good if the secretary of state declined to sanction it. This could not be done, but Moodie was directed to continue. In August, when Stockenstrom reached Uitenhage, the inhabitants presented an address asking his opinion as to whether any law could prevent the emigration; he answered that he was not aware of any law which prevented any of His Majesty’s subjects from leaving his dominions and settling in another country, and that such a law, if it did exist, would be tyrannical and oppressive. The Grahamstown week mattered because the lieutenant-governor’s first act in the drostdy was to refuse 412 names, and because the punishment bill treated the country beyond the colonial line as a place where British subjects committed offences with impunity — the same country the waggons were already entering. [3] [4] [7]
Smith’s Farewell, the Forts Withdrawn, and the Treaties of December — September–December 1836
On the 13th of September the lieutenant-governor attended a meeting of the chiefs and their principal men at King William’s Town. They had been called together to be officially introduced to him and to hear Smith’s farewell remarks. There was a large gathering, and all expressed regret at parting with the officer who had governed them kindly and justly for nearly a year. The expression was a mere matter of form: Maqoma complained that the power of the chiefs was being taken away, and the sympathy of every black man present was with him. Asked to make their wishes known, Maqoma asked for the country he had once occupied west of the Tyumie, and Tyali requested that punishment for dealing in witchcraft should be restored. A day or two later the chiefs urged that the military posts in the province should be withdrawn. Stockenstrom then resolved to abandon forts Warden, Wellington, Beresford, and Murray at once, and Waterloo after a short delay. The orders were promptly carried out. Some of the Khoikhoi levies that had assisted to garrison these posts were disbanded; the others, with the European soldiers and the Cape mounted rifles, were sent to strengthen the forts along the Fish and Kat, which in October were made the principal line of defence. Whether the province was retained or abandoned, the lieutenant-governor stated it as his opinion that in case of a disturbance such a line would be better than scattered posts among the Xhosa. He next proceeded to Shiloh and ascertained the wishes of the emigrant Thembu chief Mapasa: to be left to govern his people as he chose and to be protected by the Europeans against his enemies. The farewell mattered because Smith’s year as “father” of the province ended in a meeting where Maqoma asked for the Kat valleys back and for witchcraft punishments restored — the two things the 1835 settlement had been meant to stop. [3] [4]
On the 1st of December there was another large meeting at King William’s Town, convened for the purpose of arranging the withdrawal of the British flag. The greatest apparent difficulty was the position of those who professed either to have been neutral or to have taken part with the Europeans: Sutu with her son Sandile, Nonibe with her son Siwani, and Umkayi, Pato, Kama, Kobe, Tshatshu, Matwa, and Tente. Stockenstrom advised them to become reconciled with their rivals, and by informing Maqoma and Tyali that he could not withdraw the troops until there was general concord, he brought those chiefs to profess friendship. During three successive days they discussed their differences, and then they appeared and informed him that they were on the best of terms. On the 5th of December he issued a proclamation renouncing British dominion over the territory, releasing the people from their allegiance, and repealing D’Urban’s proclamations of the 10th of May, the 16th of June, and the 14th of October 1835. A little later, by direction of the secretary of state, the land ceded by Kreli beyond the Kei was restored, and he was released from the obligations contracted by his father and himself. The 5th of December mattered because it took down what the 10th of May had put up: a British province between the Keiskama and the Kei, and the allegiance of the chiefs who had made their marks on the 17th of September. [3] [4] [7]
On the same 5th of December treaties were concluded between the lieutenant-governor on behalf of the king and, on the other part, (1) Maqoma, Tyali, Botumane, Eno, and Sutu for herself and Sandile; (2) Umhala, Umkayi, Gasela, Siyolo, and Nonibe for herself and Siwani; and (3) Pato, Kama, and Kobe. The boundary was declared to be that agreed upon by Lord Charles Somerset and Ngqika in 1819: the Keiskama from the sea to its junction with the Tyumie, thence the Tyumie to a ridge connected with the Katberg, and thence that ridge and the Katberg to the Winterberg, so as to include within the colony all the branches of the Kat and within Xhosa country all the branches of the Tyumie. The ground in dispute during Wade’s administration was thus transferred. It was partly occupied by Fingos; in the treaty with the Ngqika chiefs it was stipulated that these Fingos were not to be molested till their crops were reaped, and until that time a garrison should be kept in Fort Thomson for their protection. They were then to be removed. With this exception, no rights whatever were reserved beyond the boundary as now defined, and the chiefs and people there were made absolutely independent of Great Britain. Between the Fish and Kat on one side and the Keiskama and Tyumie on the other, the land from the Fingo location around Fort Peddie as far up as Fort Beaufort was still unoccupied. D’Urban had intended to place a European population upon it; Stockenstrom was of opinion that it should be filled as densely as possible with Khoikhoi. Glenelg decided differently. He issued orders that this land was to be given to the Xhosa, and accordingly in the treaties it was surrendered. It was still to be called British territory, but it was stipulated that they could not be deprived of it unless they violated the treaties or made war, that they were to have the free and full exercise of their own laws administered by their own chiefs, that they could exclude white people from it, and that the king’s dominion should in no way be exercised except the right of stationing troops and building forts with lines of communication. No patrolling was to be allowed. The chiefs were placed on a perfect political equality with the heads of the colonial government. Colonists were to have no more right to cross eastward without the consent of the chiefs than Xhosa to cross westward without the consent of the colonial government. The European agents were to be no longer magistrates, but ministers or consuls. The treaties mattered because they did not merely pull the flag back to the Fish: they made Maqoma the equal of a lieutenant-governor, gave the old ceded territory to the Xhosa, and turned Smith’s agents into consuls without a court. [3] [4]
Five days later the lieutenant-governor entered into a treaty with Umhlambiso and Jokweni, the two most important Fingo captains, similar to those with Maqoma and the others; they became independent chiefs. Fort Peddie was maintained. The weaker Fingo captains, as well as Tshatshu, Matwa, and Tente, were regarded as of too little importance to enter into treaties. Shepstone acted as interpreter; Hudson, who had ceased to be resident magistrate of Albany and had become secretary to the lieutenant-governor, signed as a witness. On the 29th of December Mr. William Macdowell Fynn was appointed agent with Kreli, and Mr. Henry Francis Fynn agent with Mapasa. Stretch and Bowker were directed to act as consular agents with the Ngqika and the Fingos, and Stretch was required to move from Fort Cox to Blockdrift on the Tyumie. The condition of the eastern districts from the day Glenelg’s intentions became known was deplorable. The farmers complained that strong armed parties of blacks were wandering over the country, squatting on any property they pleased, plundering with impunity, because the aggrieved were afraid of prosecution if they resorted to violence. D’Urban attributed the condition to the new and reckless policy which had sufficed to dispel the salutary fear of British power, to shake the respect of friends, to banish the flower of the frontier farmers, and to leave those who yet remained in a state of the most fearful insecurity. December closed with a flag down, three proclamations of 1835 repealed, and chiefs sitting as equals of a lieutenant-governor. [3] [4]
Municipal Ordinance, Port Elizabeth, and the Court on Hintsa — 1836
To facilitate reference to courts, one of the lieutenant-governor’s earliest acts was to increase the number of magistrates. All laws were made by the legislative council, in which he had no seat; but every ordinance affecting the eastern districts had to be sent to him for comment, and he could submit drafts. As the territory under him included Graaff-Reinet and Uitenhage but not Beaufort and George, it was necessary to raise these latter again from the rank of sub-districts, which was done by an ordinance issued on the 10th of August, when their resident magistrates were appointed civil commissioners also. By an order in council dated the 13th of April Port Elizabeth became a free warehousing port. Every year saw an increase in the volume of trade passing through it; it had altogether outgrown the stage when its requirements could be met by a special justice of the peace. The port mattered because Algoa Bay was no longer a landing under a drostdy far inland: it was a warehousing harbour in its own right in the same year the eastern districts received a lieutenant-governor. [3] [4]
On the 4th of July 1834 Spring Rice had given directions for an ordinance to permit elective municipal councils in the towns and villages. Owing to D’Urban’s absence from Capetown, the instruction had waited. In September the ordinance was passed by the legislative council and at once put into operation. Upon a requisition signed by 25 persons living within a mile of any central point, occupying houses worth a yearly rental of not less than 10 pounds, and paying yearly taxes exceeding 6 shillings, the resident magistrate or justice of the peace was to call a public meeting of householders, who should determine whether the place should be created a municipality. Repair and lighting of streets, supply of water, drainage, police, care of the commonage, and supervision of slaughterhouses were confided to elected commissioners holding office for 3 years. Capetown was excepted. Beaufort West would be the first to take advantage, but that sitting belongs to the next calendar; what this year put on the statute was the ordinance itself. On the 25th of July an ordinance was issued which did little more than recognise church matters as they existed upon subscriptions. The municipal law mattered because towns that had lived under a landdrost or a special justice could now elect commissioners for streets, water, and police — a civil change in the same year the eastern frontier was being unmade. [3] [3]
On the 29th of August a court consisting of Lieutenant-Colonel Hare as president, Majors Tripp and MacPherson, and Captains Answick and Fawkes, gentlemen impartial and disconnected with the colony, sat at Fort Willshire for the purpose of investigating the circumstances which immediately preceded and followed the death of Hintsa. In his instructions Glenelg had stated that a gentleman bearing the name of Campbell, practising medicine at Grahamstown, would be able to give or indicate some evidence. The court was hailed with great satisfaction in the east, because it was of the nature of that which was wanted on a larger scale: an investigation on the spot by impartial commissioners into all the charges brought against the colonists. Witnesses were conveyed from Grahamstown in waggons at government expense. Of those who had been down at the river when Hintsa met his death, Lieutenant Balfour, Smith’s aide-de-camp, was the most important besides George Southey. Glenelg later expressed his sense of the diligence, temper, and impartiality with which the inquiry had been conducted. The mutilation of the body was too clearly proved, but the fact had not been brought home to any person; neither George nor William Southey was implicated in that unmanly transaction. On the 5th of August the report of the aborigines committee was printed by the Commons. The court mattered because Hintsa’s death on the Bashee in 1835 was the charge London most wanted heard on the spot, and because the finding left the mutilation proved and the Southeys clear. [4]
On the 6th of July an article in very violent language appeared in the Commercial Advertiser: Fairbairn alluded to Moodie as an unprincipled placehunter, accused of attempting the life and honour of the lieutenant-governor in his absence by collecting evidence while drawing the emoluments of protector of slaves long after that office had expired. Mr. John Centlivres Chase was referred to in terms somewhat less opprobrious. Chase thereupon brought an action for libel; the sitting of that case belongs to another calendar. While Stockenstrom was on the road from Capetown, Captain Campbell sent him a copy of Hendrik Klopper’s affidavit that when the commando under Captain Fraser entered Xhosa country in December 1818 Stockenstrom himself had shot a Xhosa boy. He ignored it completely. A tale was soon in everybody’s mouth of the lieutenant-governor having once in cool blood shot an unarmed boy out of pure revenge for the death of his father. The article and the affidavit mattered because the lieutenant-governor’s credit in the east was being fought in a newspaper and in a sworn paper at the same moment he was riding to Grahamstown. [3]
The commissariat chartered the brig Knysna, built of stinkwood by Mr. George Rex on the bank of the Knysna a short distance below the ford. On the 19th of November she arrived off the mouth of the Buffalo with a cargo of grain. Her master, Captain John Findlay, did not think it prudent to attempt to cross the bar, so the grain was sent in with boats. The owner’s son, Mr. John Rex, brought merchandise which he disposed of to traders, taking hides in exchange. The whole cargo was landed and the hides taken on board without mishap. On the 17th of July the Doncaster was wrecked near Cape Agulhas. In February the American missionaries founded their first Natal station about 8 miles from Port Natal, on the river Umlazi; in November they commenced another, named Ginani, on the Umsunduzi, about 10 miles north of the Tugela. Captain Gardiner, who had named the port D’Urban the year before, now tried to act as missionary and as a magistrate under the Cape of Good Hope punishment bill. The Buffalo landing mattered because D’Urban had thought the mouth could serve shipping when he planned white settlers on the bank; the boats of November were the first test, in the same months the forts behind that mouth were being given up. [3]
Trichardt at the Zoutpansberg, the Liebenbergs, and Vegkop — May–October 1836
The abandonment of the Cape Colony by many thousands of substantial burghers, intent upon seeking a new home in the wilderness where they could be free from what they regarded as intolerable misrule, is an event unique among European dependencies of the time. No single event brought it on. Causes of disaffection had been accumulating ever since 1811. On the 30th of November 1834 there were in the Cape and Stellenbosch districts 21667 slaves, 56 per cent of the whole number owned in the colony; from those districts there was no emigration worth noticing. In Worcester, Swellendam, and George there were 11021, 28 per cent; the emigrants from those districts were a little less than 2 per cent of the whole. In Beaufort, Graaff-Reinet, Somerset, Albany, and Uitenhage — the part exposed to the marauding hordes — there were 6333, 16 per cent; the people who left those districts were rather over 98 per cent of those who left the whole colony. The attorney-general, Oliphant, was consulted by D’Urban and gave his opinion that it seemed next to an impossibility to prevent persons passing out of the colony by laws in force or by any which could be framed. On the 19th of August D’Urban wrote to the lieutenant-governor that he could see no means of stopping the emigration except by persuasion and attention to the wants of the farmers. The slave figures mattered because they cut against the easy story that emancipation alone drove the waggons: the districts that owned most of the slaves stayed; the districts that had taken the war of 1834–1835 left. [3] [4] [7]
The first to leave had been a little band from Albany under Louis Trichardt (Triechard, Triegardt), a man of violent temper, for whose apprehension Smith had offered 500 head of cattle at the close of the war. Jan van Rensburg’s party of equal size had joined before they crossed the border. Together they had 30 waggons. Travelling slowly northward, in May they reached the Zoutpansberg, where they halted. After a short delay Rensburg’s party moved on again and soon afterwards encountered a Bantu tribe; according to rumour they were all murdered, though many years later it was ascertained that two of the children had been spared. Trichardt waited in vain for Andries Hendrik Potgieter. About the end of June, Potgieter with a few companions did arrive, having left the main body at the Zand river and followed Trichardt. They were shown what they termed a gold mine opposite Trichardt’s camp, and rings of that metal made by native workmen; they saw manufactured iron, game in vast numbers, and the wide-spreading baobab. From the camp they turned back. After seven days they came to a kraal of the Magwamba — whom they called Knobnoses from a peculiar puncturing of the face — and there met two half-breed sons of Coenraad du Buis, Doris and Carel Buys. At that kraal they saw Indian and European calicoes, cloth, shawls, even straw hats, obtained in exchange for ivory, and blacks from Lourenço Marques who could speak Portuguese, trading, with vessels waiting in Delagoa Bay. In June, having received no tidings from Rensburg, Trichardt’s people travelled eastwards through the Spelonken. The Zoutpansberg halt mattered because it proved that Albany men were already living beyond the Limpopo watershed while Stockenstrom was still in quarantine in the Chavonnes battery. [3] [4] [7]
The second party consisted of farmers from the Tarka under Potgieter, a substantial burgher of kindly disposition and moderate views, with a body from the neighbourhood of Colesberg acknowledging him as chief commandant: Carel Cilliers with wife and six children, Jan du Toit, Jan Botha, three families Kruger, eight families Liebenberg, four Brookhuizen, four Brits, and three Van Rensburg. About half joined Potgieter and went on in advance. He directed his course northward past Thaba Ntshu until he came to the Vet. On its banks, close to the site of later Winburg, he found a remnant of the Bataung under Makwana, poor, powerless, and afraid to draw Moselekatse’s notice. Makwana ceded to the emigrants all the land between the Vet and the Vaal except a tract reserved for his own people, upon condition of being protected from the Matabele and provided with a small herd of cattle. The emigrants in fancied security scattered themselves over the vacant country; some even crossed the Vaal and went down its northern bank to the junction of a stream they named the Mooi. On the 24th of May Potgieter, his brother Hermanus, Cilliers, J. G. S. Bronkhorst, and others left the Sand river to inspect as far as Delagoa Bay. On the 2nd of September they arrived at the spot where they had left the last encampment and found that a dreadful massacre had just taken place. The cession mattered because a Bataung remnant sold the emigrants a country Moselekatse still treated as his hunting ground: that is why the waggons were standing open when the Matabele came. [3] [7]
Fieldcornet Stephanus P. Erasmus, who lived near the Kraai, had got up a party to hunt elephants: himself, his three sons, Pieter Bekker and his son, Jan Claasen, and Carel Kruger, with coloured servants, five waggons, 80 oxen, and about 50 horses. They set out some time in August, trekked across what would be the Free State, and crossed the Vaal. One morning they left the waggons in charge of the servants and in three small parties rode away. In the evening Erasmus and one son found the waggons surrounded by 500 or 600 Matabele soldiers sent out by Moselekatse to scour the country. The other two sons and Carel Kruger had been surprised and murdered. The Bekkers escaped; Claasen was never heard of again. Erasmus rode for the nearest emigrant party, five hours on horseback. He obtained 11 men, encountered a division of the Matabele army, and turned back to give notice. The families farthest in advance had hardly time to draw their waggons in a circle when the Matabele were upon them. From ten in the morning until four in the afternoon the assailants vainly endeavoured to force a way into the lager, and did not relinquish until fully a third of their number were stretched on the ground. Of 35 men within, only Adolf Bronkhorst was killed; a youth named Christiaan Harmse and five coloured servants, who were with cattle at a distance, were murdered. Another party of Matabele had gone farther up the river and had unexpectedly fallen upon the encampment of the Liebenbergs. They murdered old Barend Liebenberg, his sons Stephanus, Barend, and Hendrik, his son-in-law Jan du Toit, his daughter, Du Toit’s wife, Hendrik’s wife, a schoolmaster named Macdonald, 4 children, and 12 coloured servants; and they carried away 3 children to present to their chief. The two divisions then united and returned to Mosega with large herds of the emigrants’ cattle. Six days after the assault Erasmus rode to where his waggons had stood and found only the bodies of five servants. His waggons were seen at Mosega by Harris a few days later; two captive girls had been taken to one of Moselekatse’s residences farther north. On the 9th of September Erasmus sent a letter to Colonel Somerset reporting the affair. To Sutton, Moselekatse tried to make it appear that the massacre was committed in mistake, his men having been sent against the Koranas under Jan Bloem; but the soldiers were not so stupid as to confound white people with Koranas. In May a party of Boers in a temporary camp beyond the Orange was attacked one night in their sleep by a large band of Bushmen: 7 men, 2 women, and 3 children were killed. The Vaal massacres mattered because they showed what Moselekatse’s alliance of the 3rd of March was worth to anyone who crossed the river without his leave. [3] [4] [7]
As soon as the Matabele were out of sight the farmers hastened across the Vaal and formed a lager at the place since known as Vegkop, between the Rhenoster and Wilge. 50 waggons were drawn up in a circle, firmly lashed together, every opening except a narrow entrance closed with thorn trees. The month of October was well advanced — the 16th to the 19th — when one morning a few frightened Bataung rushed in and announced that a great Matabele army was approaching. After a short religious service conducted by Cilliers, the farmers rode out with Potgieter at their head and encountered a division of Moselekatse’s forces, about 5000 strong, under Kalipi. Riding close up, they poured a volley into the mass and then retired to reload, repeating the manoeuvre until the lager was reached. The Matabele thought they had the farmers in a trap, sat down at some distance, then suddenly rose with a loud hiss — their ordinary signal of destruction — and rushed upon the lager. There were only 40 men, all told, inside; luckily they had spare guns, and the women knew how to load them. 1113 assagais were afterwards picked up in the camp. By that means they killed two of the defenders, Nicholas Potgieter and Pieter Botha, and wounded 12 others. Still the fire was so hot that Kalipi judged it expedient to withdraw. In less than half an hour after the first rush the Matabele turned to retreat. They collected the whole of the cattle, however, and drove them off, leaving not a hoof except the horses the farmers had been riding, which were within the camp. Potgieter followed until sunset and managed to shoot a good many, but could not recover the cattle. They counted 155 corpses close to the waggons. Altogether the Matabele had now killed 20 whites and 26 persons of colour, and had swept off 100 horses, 4600 head of horned cattle, and more than 50000 sheep and goats. Seven months earlier three American missionaries — Dr. Wilson and the reverend Messrs. Lindley and Venable — had taken up their residence at Mosega with Moselekatse’s permission. As soon as he ascertained that their preaching was against his actions he forbade his people to listen, and left Mosega for Kapayin. Vegkop mattered because 40 men held the circle, but without cattle they could not stay: the victory left them dependent on whoever would lend oxen, which is why the next camp was not on the Vet but at Thaba Ntshu. [3] [4] [4] [7]
Maritz at Thaba Ntshu, Jalusa, and the Volksraad of 2 December — 1836
Just at this time the first families of the third party of emigrants arrived in the neighbourhood of Thaba Ntshu. They came from Graaff-Reinet under Gerrit Maritz, formerly proprietor of a large waggon-making establishment, a man of considerable wealth. They had not less than 100 waggons; their flocks and herds were very numerous, and they were obliged to travel slowly and to spread over a great extent of country. Almost the first information of the earlier emigrants after they crossed the Orange was brought by Hermanus Potgieter to Thaba Ntshu, sent by his brother to seek assistance for the families at Vegkop, left helpless by the loss of their cattle. The reverend Mr. Archbell, Wesleyan missionary at Thaba Ntshu, spared no exertions. Through his influence Moroko supplied some oxen; the missionary sent his own; the emigrants in the neighbourhood went with theirs; by these combined means the whole of Potgieter’s camp was brought back to Thaba Ntshu. Upon arrival Moroko treated them with great kindness: he gave them corn and even lent a few cows to supply their children with milk. In a letter from the mission station dated the 29th of July it had been stated that the farmers who had left the colony had passed those parts on their way north. 249 lions were killed by the emigrants in the neighbourhood of Thaba Ntshu alone. Maritz’s arrival mattered because Vegkop had left Potgieter without a hoof: without Archbell, Moroko, and the Graaff-Reinet waggons, the Tarka party would have been stranded between the Rhenoster and the Wilge. [3] [4]
Another massacre, from which a very different class of people suffered, took place about a day’s journey south-east of Thaba Ntshu. The Xhosa chief Jalusa, who professed to be a dependent of Hintsa, had after the peace of September 1835 collected a band of turbulent characters, many of them Imidange, and migrated to the country near Thaba Bosigo. There he commenced to plunder outlying Basotho kraals, and would not desist, though Moshesh made the most friendly overtures. For several months the Basotho submitted; their patience becoming exhausted, one night in September they surrounded Jalusa’s encampment, and when the sun rose between 1000 and 1200 corpses of all ages were lying on the ground. Tshunongwa, who was believed to be the actual murderer of the elder Stockenstrom, was among the number. Only 5 men and 3 women escaped, broke through the circle, and conveyed to Xhosa country tidings of the fate of their companions. As was expected, by the end of January Jalusa, with four petty Ndlambe chiefs, had collected that marauding band; the September night ended it. The destruction mattered because it cleared a robber power off Moshesh’s flank in the same season the emigrant waggons were coming onto the Caledon, and because the man named as the elder Stockenstrom’s killer died in that circle. [3] [4]
On the 2nd of December a general assembly of the emigrants was held for the purpose of deciding upon the form of their future government. They resolved to elect a body of 7 members which should have supreme legislative power. The choice fell upon Gerrit Marthinus Maritz, Andries Hendrik Potgieter, Jan Gerrit Bronkhorst, Christiaan Jacobus Liebenberg, Pieter Greyling, Daniel Kruger, and Stephanus Janse van Vuuren, who constituted the first volksraad. It was decided also that the same persons should form a court of justice, in which Maritz should sit as landdrost and the others as heemraden. The question where they were to settle was not discussed. The country to the north as far as Mosega was almost without inhabitants, but it was evident that Moselekatse was determined to keep it in that condition. While his power lasted it was therefore useless to think of establishing themselves anywhere in that direction in peace. At Thaba Ntshu they were in the territory occupied by the Barolong, of whom Moroko was by far the most important chief. All of them were delighted to find the white people involved in difficulties with the Matabele, those destroyers of the Tswana tribes. To the eastward the little communities under Moshesh at Thaba Bosigo, Sikonyela at Imparani, Gert Taaibosch at Merumetsu, Carolus Baatje at Platberg, and Peter Davids at Lishuane stood as they had stood. Close to the Caledon, at Zevenfontein, a French station had been founded in the preceding year; the reverend Mr. Rolland had moved there with a horde of refugees, Bahurutsi who had once lived at Mosega and the remnant of a Barolong clan under a petty chief named Moi, and had changed the name to Beersheba. The 2nd of December mattered because men who had left the colony rather than live under Glenelg’s lieutenant-governor now elected their own landdrost and heemraden, in the same week Stockenstrom took the flag down at King William’s Town, and because the seat they chose was not a republic on the Vet but a camp on Barolong ground, still waiting on Moselekatse. [3] [7]