Boer History1846 in South Africa: Maitland, the War of the Axe, Burnshill, and Gwanga
Kleintje, the Axe of the 16th of March, and Sandile — January–March 1846
Sir Peregrine Maitland still sat the Cape. The Fish remained the colonial line of 1819, and the Rarabe captains held the ceded ground west of it only as a loan under the treaties marked at Fort Peddie in 1845. Sandile was the man those papers had to hold. On the 13th of January he took the keys of a trader’s store at the Chumie, struck the man in charge in the mouth, and helped himself to a blanket, a bridle, chain, and tobacco. Charles Lennox Stretch reminded him of the treaty. The answer that came back through a police corporal named Jack was that the traders were under Sandile’s foot, that Stretch and the governor were rascals, and that the tent at Blockdrift must be gone the next day. The insult mattered because the Peddie paper of 1845 had treated Sandile as a captain who would keep the peace for nothing, while the coast captains were paid, and because a chief who could loot a store in daylight was no longer pretending the line would hold. [4]
On the 20th of January a surveying party began to mark a fort on Sandile’s side of the river at Blockdrift — the work that would later be Fort Hare. On the 24th Sandile rode in with followers and treated the camp as a trespass. Lieutenant Stokes sent to Fort Beaufort. 50 of the 91st from that post and 50 from Post Victoria kept the surveyors at work until the 30th. Colonel John Hare reached Fort Beaufort on the 26th and called Sandile to Blockdrift on the 29th under a guarantee of safety. Sandile sent a written apology, blaming violent young men; his mother Sutu pleaded for an inexperienced child. He did not appear until after 2 in the afternoon, mounted and armed, with a concourse behind him. The survey mattered because a fort on his bank, without a rent he had named in November 1845, looked to him like occupation, and because Hare, who had little real power as lieutenant-governor and was already ill, now had to answer a chief who arrived late and armed. [4]
Warnings ran through February and March. Toyise told Captain John Maclean on the 29th of January that Sandile was seeking an Ndlambe alliance. Stretch heard on the 16th of February that Sandile had sent to Mapasa and other Tembu captains. On the 23rd of February Makoma asked Major Smith for a location inside the colony if war came. On the 14th of March Umkayi asked Maclean, for the second time, to let him retire into the colony. The warnings mattered because they named the coming war before an axe was stolen, and because Hare still hoped the Peddie marks would hold without a column in the Amatola. [3]
On the 16th of March a Xhosa known by the Dutch name Kleintje was caught stealing an axe at Fort Beaufort. Meent Borcherds sent him to the magistrate at Grahamstown with 2 Hottentot offenders and a dragoon, handcuffed in pairs, and 4 armed Hottentots as a guard. Just after they left, Tola asked the agent-general to have Kleintje brought back and released. The request was refused. Tola sent to the nearest kraal to have his man cut out. About 7 miles along the Kat the party sat down to eat. Some 40 Xhosa rushed from a thicket, seized 2 guns, and killed the Hottentot to whom Kleintje was manacled. They cut off the dead man’s hand to free their friend and rode off with the 2 guns. The other prisoners were left unharmed. One of the attackers was shot by a guard; the 4 guards reached a wayside inn. The Xhosa later called the war that followed the War of the Axe. The name stuck because a theft inside the colony, a rescue on colonial ground, and the murder of a British subject could not be treated as a cattle case under the Peddie paper. [3] [3]
Hare demanded the rescued prisoner and the murderer. Tola refused, though he sent the 2 guns to Stretch. Botumane refused as well: the dead Hottentot, he said, was paid for by the Xhosa who had been shot, so the matter should drop. Sandile, with whose people the criminals were known to be, did the same. Hare distributed arms on the border, strengthened Peddie and Beaufort, and prepared to occupy Sandile’s kraal at Burnshill. Traders and some missionaries left Xhosa country; others stayed until Hare ordered them out. On the 31st of March Hare called the eastern burghers to arms, meaning to post a line while the troops sat Sandile’s kraal. In Capetown Maitland saw that the frontier could not be left as it was. On the 27th of March he sent the war-steamer Thunderbolt to Algoa Bay with 80 of the 27th under Lieutenant-colonel Montague Johnstone and 2 field-pieces under Captain Eardley Wilmot. On the 31st he published a manifesto. On the 1st of April he embarked at Simon’s Bay in the ship-of-war President. The force on the border then was 994 effective rank and file of 2 battalions of the 91st and one of the 27th, 337 of the 7th dragoon guards, 400 Cape mounted riflemen, and a few artillerymen and engineers. What hung on March was not an axe. It was whether Hare would wait for burghers, or march on Burnshill with less than a month’s provisions while the Fish posts stood like the piers of a bridge in a flood. [3]
Burnshill of April, the Raid, and Maitland’s Command
Hare was an upright and amiable man, in ill health, hoping to leave for England in a few days when the Kat murder forced his hand. The lieutenant-governorship irritated him because it carried no real power, and on many points he differed from Maitland. He underrated the Xhosa and believed that occupying Sandile’s kraal would bring the clans in. He did not wait for the burghers. He moved with less than a month’s food. From Post Victoria to Burnshill was a good ride. Wagons were not needed for a lager. Yet 125 wagons, each drawn by 14 oxen, went with the column — a line of at least 3 miles in broken bush without bridges. The collection of that train at Post Victoria was notice to all Xhosa country of what was coming. The blunder mattered because a dash from Victoria might have sat the kraal; a baggage train invited an ambush in a gorge, and left the colony open behind the troops. [3]
3 divisions were to unite at Burnshill, then pass under Colonel Henry Somerset. On the 11th of April Somerset marched from Post Victoria with his own regiment and 4 companies of the 91st; Lieutenant-colonel Robert Richardson from Fort Peddie with the dragoons; and Captain William Sutton from Eland’s post with the Hottentot levies of Stockenstrom — the Kat river settlement so named by notice on the 15th of August 1844. On the 15th they united at Burnshill. The country and Sandile’s kraal were deserted. The Gaika and Imidange had gone into the Amatola forests. On the 16th Somerset moved against Sandile, leaving Major John Hope Gibsone with the camp. In the bushy defiles the Xhosa appeared in numbers. One division took 1800 head of cattle. The camp was attacked and beaten off. [3]
At daybreak on the 17th Somerset, thinking the hostile Xhosa were all in his front, ordered Gibsone to break up the camp and join him. The first wagons moved at half past 10. The train was so long that only an advance and rear guard could be found, and those mostly dragoons, almost useless in that country. In a narrow gorge a central wagon stuck. A horde of Gaikas cut the oxen loose. Between 800 and 900 oxen and 61 wagons of baggage and stores fell to them. The ammunition wagons were last; drivers of the lost vehicles hurried back and saved them. Gibsone got the ammunition back to Burnshill and was joined by a company of the 91st under Major Campbell, sent too late. Somerset resolved to retreat. The column reached Blockdrift on the Tyumie the next day. A large stone building of the Lovedale mission became a temporary barrack and fort — the only white post left in Xhosa country. Dead: Captain Bambrick of the 7th dragoons, a young colonist named M’Cormick, 10 of the 91st, 1 Hottentot from the Kat river, and 4 Cape mounted riflemen; 14 soldiers severely wounded. The 1800 cattle came out. Their value was a trifle beside the train. Burnshill mattered because it taught the clans that a British column could be stripped in a gorge, and because it opened the colony behind a force that had gone in to sit one kraal. [3]
The Gaikas and their allies then rushed the colony, driving cattle and burning buildings and cornstacks. The country people had gathered in small parties and were not surprised as in 1835, so few were murdered. Nearly all the camps were attacked; none were overpowered, though several, including Riebeek East, were later abandoned. Raiders took commissariat cattle from pastures beside the posts and taunted the soldiers to come out. 12 colonists died in the raid: Joshua Norden — captain of the Grahamstown yeomanry, a leading member of the Jewish congregation, killed on patrol — Christiaan Nel, Elias Nel, J. Murray, R. Webb, C. Brass, P. van der Westhuizen, Towell, Clark, Kromhout, Middleton, and Skirrow. A young man named Pike, in charge of transport wagons, was murdered near Botha’s Hill on the 11th of April, before the main body entered. Captain Sandes of the Cape mounted riflemen and 5 or 6 soldiers were also killed. Bodies that fell to the Xhosa were mutilated. The government, besides a war, now had several thousand destitute people on its hands. The country was parched. The Fish posts, Maitland wrote, were of no more use against an invasion than the piers of a bridge against a swollen torrent. [3]
At first only the Imidange and Gaika seemed hostile. Very shortly nearly the whole Xhosa tribe was in arms. On the 1st of April the old Amambala captain Eno died, after telling his sons Stokwe and Sonto not to go to war. They pledged their word to Maclean and within 6 weeks sent their people in to plunder. Umhala, Pato, Kobe, Siwani, Siyolo, and Nonibe gave the same kind of promise. Kreli professed neutrality and aided the Rarabe to the full of his power. The Xhosa who took no part were a few mission families, the small clan of Kama, Umkayi and his family of 31 who claimed protection at Peddie and in July were sent to Grahamstown, and the followers of Hermanus near Fort Brown. A youth who left with William Govan after the Tyumie station was destroyed later came back as Tiyo Soga. The Fingos fought with the Europeans. A few old men, women, and children who fell into Pato’s hands at the start were burned; thereafter neither side showed mercy. Maitland reached Post Victoria on the 16th of April and heard of Burnshill 2 days later. On the 22nd he proclaimed martial law and called out the whole burgher force. He did not take field command from Hare until the 1st of May, when a rumour of Peddie reached him. On the 3rd of April the transport Mariner, Colombo to Portsmouth, put into Simon’s Bay with 9 officers and 283 rank and file of the 90th, who were sent forward. Every effective soldier left Capetown; a volunteer guard sat the castle. On the 2nd of May, at the request of colonists, Maitland named Sir Andries Stockenstrom commandant-general of the eastern burgher forces, with the rank of colonel on the staff. The east wanted the whole burgher force under him. Maitland limited him to the eastern province, then excluded Lower Albany and Uitenhage. Stockenstrom now said the Xhosa should be expelled from the Amatola and British authority extended to the Kei — words his opponents of 1837 and 1838 took as a recantation of the Glenelg settlement he had carried out. The raid and the command mattered because the war was no longer a police case at Burnshill. It was an invasion, and the man who had made the 1836 treaties was now to lead burghers against the clans those treaties had treated as independent. [3]
Fort Peddie, Trompetter’s Drift, and the Gwanga of the 8th of June
The strongest garrison on the frontier was Fort Peddie, under Lieutenant-colonel Martin Lindsay of the 91st. Great herds driven from the colony passed almost in sight of the fort toward Kreli’s country without an effort to save them. On the 30th of April about 1000 warriors attacked the Fingos at the Beka mission, some 4 miles from Peddie. The Fingo request reached Lindsay at noon. 2 hours later Richardson went out with a squadron of dragoons, some Cape mounted riflemen, 50 of the 91st, and 2 guns. The Fingos were still holding. After a few shots from the field-pieces Richardson returned. The station was set on fire under his eyes. He later said it was late, the horses were jaded, the ground was not for a dragoon charge, and the retreat was a feint. The Fingos beat the enemy back. The bad effect was greater even than Burnshill: it gave the wavering clans confidence in their strength. Beka mattered because Peddie was the hinge between Grahamstown and the Keiskama, and because a garrison that would not cover Fingos 4 miles off taught every captain watching that the soldiers might not come out. [3]
Somerset, with the Cape corps, followed the Xhosa in Albany and Uitenhage, relieving small lagers. Theopolis was saved by his exertions. Early in May he routed bodies in the Kowie valley and scoured Olifant’s Hoek. By the close of the month nearly all the invaders had left the colony. Post Victoria was abandoned. Lovedale at Blockdrift remained the only white position in Xhosa country, with a strong camp under canvas. Every other mission and trading post was destroyed. From Galeka country the diplomatic agent and the missionary fled first to Clarkebury, then to Buntingville in Pondoland, arriving on the 19th of May. On the 8th of May Maitland appointed a board of relief in Grahamstown, on D’Urban’s plan, with corresponding branches: the reverend John Heavyside, William Shaw, and John Locke, with A. B. Morgan, T. Nelson, C. Lucas, and H. B. Rutherfoord. It could draw on the commissariat. Private subscriptions came to 1928 pounds. By the 1st of August nearly 8000 people were drawing rations, over 4000 of them Hottentots and other coloured people of Stockenstrom. The Kat river settlement, once imagined as a defence, was in some respects the weakest point on the line. The board mattered because war had made a second government: feeding the destitute while the Fish still had to be held. [3]
Supplies were needed at Peddie. On the 18th of May a train of 43 wagons left Grahamstown with a small escort of soldiers and burghers. A post sat Trompetter’s drift on the right bank of the Fish. Troops from Peddie were to meet the train for the jungle. On the 21st the wagons moved from a stream about 3 miles beyond the post, with an advance under Lieutenant E. J. Dickson of the 91st and a rear under Captain Colin Campbell of the same regiment — 40 burghers and 80 soldiers in all. In the thickest jungle the foremost oxen were shot down. The whole train fell. The escort retreated to the post, leaving 2 colonists named Davis and Bower, a Hottentot, and a Fingo dead. The Xhosa plundered the stores, drove the oxen, and burned the wagons. Elated, they aspired to Peddie itself: an earthen bank and a dry ditch on an open height, with strong loop-holed barracks. On the 27th of May a large body appeared and skirmished — a feint. A Fingo overheard a leader and told Maclean. At half past 10 on the 28th a force tried to draw the garrison out. The troops were kept in. At noon some 8000 warriors were in sight. They pillaged a trader’s store. Frightened cattle broke loose; 4000 or 5000 head were driven off though the Fingos fought to save them. For 2 hours the Xhosa remained in sight and did not storm. They lost some 20 to 30 killed. 2 Fingos were killed and 3 wounded. Of the garrison none were hurt. Jan Tshatshu took part. After England he had grown proud and fond of drink. For 10 or 12 days after the war began he stayed with Stretch as a friend and was in fact a spy. His clan was small; the discouragement to those who wanted his people civilised was large. Peddie of the 28th mattered because the fort held, and because the cattle that walked away under the guns showed that holding a bank was not the same as holding the country. [3]
On the 26th of May Lindsay had a wagon driver named John Smith tied up and flogged without trial for refusing to collect fuel. Burghers and soldiers were already taunting each other; that flogging made it worse. To get supplies in, a train of 82 wagons was laden and more than 1200 regulars and irregulars put under Somerset. On the 31st of May the train passed the Fish at Committee’s drift. In the jungle beyond, 3 drivers were killed and 6 wounded. The enemy was beaten back. The train reached Peddie. During the night of the 7th of June a strong party left Peddie to attack Stokwe’s kraal near the Gwanga, so that empty wagons with 250 men might pass Trompetter’s jungle toward Grahamstown: 300 Hottentots under Captain Size, 100 Fingos under Captain Symons, and more Fingos under one of their own chiefs. At 6 on the morning of the 8th Somerset followed with 100 Cape mounted riflemen under Captain Napier, a troop of dragoons under Captain Sir Harry Darrell, volunteer cavalry under Captain Lucas, 100 George burghers under Commandant Muller, and 2 guns under Captain Brown of the royal artillery. At half past 7 the divisions united, defeated a body of Xhosa, and burned Stokwe’s kraal. After midday, with the horses tired, Somerset took the cavalry toward the Gwanga to rest. Lieutenant Bisset, on an unruly horse, galloped back: 500 or 600 Xhosa just beyond, in open country where cavalry could act. The whole body rushed in. The Xhosa tried for a jungle 5 or 6 miles off. Over 200 bodies were counted the next morning, and almost as many more died of wounds. One Cape mounted rifleman and one Fingo were killed; 16 men were wounded. 100 guns and over 1000 assegais were picked up. 2 prisoners said the men were of Umhala and Siyolo, on the way to sit Trompetter’s jungle and cut Peddie from Grahamstown. It was against Xhosa custom for a large body to cross open ground in daylight. Success had made them careless. They did not do it again. The Gwanga mattered because it was the one open fight of the year in which cavalry could close, and because it kept the Peddie road from becoming a second Burnshill. [3] [3]
By the end of June a force larger than any previously assembled on the frontier was in the field. Regulars in South Africa numbered 3849 officers and men: 526 in Natal, 68 in Capetown, 48 in Port Elizabeth, the rest on the border — among them 325 of the 7th dragoons, 114 artillery, 155 engineers, 983 of 2 battalions of the 91st, 416 of the 27th, 151 of the first battalion of the 45th, 439 of the 90th (the remainder of that regiment reached Port Elizabeth in the Maria Somes on the 8th of July), and 624 of the Cape corps with 2 provisional companies. Irregulars: 5564 burghers and volunteers on the frontier, plus 2944 in Uitenhage and Lower Albany as a second line under Major-General Cuyler, withdrawn from Stockenstrom; 800 mixed-race and Hottentot men serving without pay under Sutton and Commandant Groepe; and 264 European officers with 4049 paid Malays, Fingos, Hottentots, and liberated slaves. The government had to feed 13884 fighting men on the frontier, besides wagon drivers and some 8000 destitute. Those numbers mattered because drought made land transport nearly impossible, and because a force that size still could not sit the Amatola if it could not eat away from the coast. [3]
Waterloo Bay, the Amatola, Kreli of August, and Mapasa
An indentation about a mile east of the Fish mouth would take stores. The holding ground was poor and a swell often set on the shore, but Peddie was only 22 miles off on an easy road. Early in July the schooner Waterloo, 158 tons, belonging to Captain Salmond, landed the first cargo, and the indentation took that name. On the western side of the Fish mouth a fort named Dacres, after the admiral on the station, was first occupied by marines and sailors from the President. A raft on the river opened communication with Peddie and the Waterloo camp from Grahamstown without the jungle at the higher fords. On the 13th of June Maitland left Grahamstown and set headquarters at Waterloo Bay. Exclusive of Stockenstrom’s burghers, the army of operations was in 2 divisions: the first or left under Hare at Blockdrift, the second or right under Somerset, with the commander-in-chief. Waterloo mattered because food, not a pitched battle, would decide whether the Amatola could be scoured at all. [3]
The second division moved from Waterloo Bay and camped on the site of the abandoned Fort Beresford in the upper Buffalo valley. Maitland remained there while Somerset, with 880 cavalry and 760 infantry, went after Pato, who had gone east with colonial cattle. The grass had been burned. Many horses of the Cape corps and of the Swellendam and George burghers under Commandants Linde and Muller had to be shot. The infantry — Hottentots under Size and Fingos under William Shepstone — could move faster than cavalry. On the 21st of July the infantry crossed the Kei and that evening and the next morning brought back about 5000 head recovered from Pato. Somerset hurried back to save his horses, left most of the patrol at Beresford, and camped the rest on the Gwanga. Loss: one Fingo killed; a European and a Fingo wounded. The plan for the Amatola was that the second division, centre at Beresford, wings in a curve, should block every outlet east. The rest would press from the other sides. On the 29th of July 2 strong divisions began to scour. Stockenstrom led burghers of Somerset, Cradock, Graaff-Reinet, Colesberg, and Beaufort, and the Kat river Hottentots, from the upper Tyumie: cavalry onto the Bontebok flats, infantry over the Hogsback ridge into the ravines. He shared the comfort of the humblest follower. Hare moved from Blockdrift along the lower margin with regulars, Fingos, and Hottentot levies. The Xhosa were not a European army. They scouted every movement, hid grain in pits, drove a temporary food supply with them, and declined a fight they knew they would lose. They walked out through an open space left, by Hare’s neglect, between his right and Somerset’s left. Small bodies in strong ground made a feeble resistance and were dislodged. From prisoners and women it was learned that the main body and the cattle had gone. The horses were too weak to pursue. European loss: 10 killed, 7 wounded. No cattle recovered. Fort Cox, near the Glasgow mission at Burnshill on the Keiskama, was occupied, which gave some hold on the outskirts of the central forest, but a post there, even with Fingos, could not control ravines more than 4 or 5 hours away. The Amatola of July mattered because it showed that surrounding a forest did not surround a people who would not stand, and because Fort Cox was the first lasting stake inside the fastness after Burnshill. [3]
Maitland then sent a flying column against Kreli: 2500 men, mostly burghers, in 2 divisions under Stockenstrom and Johnstone. Johnstone’s part included men of the Cape, Worcester, and Swellendam under commandants Eksteen, Du Toit, and Linde. Hare remained at Fort Cox, Somerset on the Gwanga, the governor at Beresford. On the 14th of August a messenger from Kreli asked the object of the march and protested that he was at peace and that Rarabe cattle were with the Tembus, not in his country. The answer was that Stockenstrom would speak at the kraal. Horses broke down from want of food. Kreli abandoned the kraal and hid on a mountain, leaving counsellors with a white flag. The conference was on the 21st of August. Stockenstrom and his interpreter Charles Brownlee were taken to the retreat; later 10 more were allowed: Johnstone; commandants Gideon Joubert of Colesberg, Andries du Toit of Worcester, John C. Molteno of Beaufort West, W. Dodds Pringle of Somerset East, and Christiaan Groepe of the Kat river; Captain Vereker of the 27th; and Messrs Richard Paver, Henry Hutton, and Joseph Read. Stockenstrom demanded satisfaction on 4 points: that Kreli had let border clans under him as paramount make war; that he had imprisoned the resident agent Henry Fynn and frightened missionaries by burning their houses; that his warriors had fought British troops; that he had admitted colonial cattle. Kreli answered that the government had made treaties with the border chiefs, so how could he be responsible; that he had told Fynn to keep close, and Fynn and the missionaries had fled; that he had punished a captain who took part against the colony; that he denied colonial cattle in his territory. Stockenstrom offered to accept the explanations if Kreli would be responsible for the Gaikas and border clans as paramount, provided the whites acknowledged him; compensate Fynn and the other British subjects; restore colonial cattle found or proved in his territory; and acknowledge British right to all land west of the Kei. Kreli agreed at once. The army retired with promises. Thousands of colonial cattle were then on the Bashee in his retainers’ charge, and wool still stuck in the mimosas. On the way back the column attacked Mapasa on the Zwart Kei and took between 6000 and 7000 head. On the 16th of August, shortly after the column left Beresford, Captain William Hogg was sent from Fort Cox with western Hottentots and Fingos, 1000 in all, against Mapasa, and took 4000 head, many with colonial brands. Kreli of August mattered because a column had walked to a paramount’s hiding place and come back with words, while Mapasa paid in branded cattle, and because those 2 results would split Maitland from Stockenstrom. [3]
Stockenstrom took Hogg’s expedition as a slight. He regarded the Tembu border as his field, had asked for some of those Hottentots, and had been refused without being told they were going against Mapasa. He also quarrelled with Johnstone over what had been said at Kreli’s retreat. Maitland held with Johnstone that Kreli was insincere, and would not ratify the convention: colonial cattle in Galeka country must be restored before any peace. He described the march as bringing back barren words from a crafty chief. Stockenstrom said the object had been a moral effect — to prove a colonial force could enter under the worst conditions — and that the terms gave a just cause if Kreli broke them. On the 16th of September Maitland, unable to keep a large force in the field because horses were dying and men were short of food, retired with the second division to Waterloo Bay, thanked the burghers, and let them go home. They dispersed on foot or as they could. Hare was broken down. He was allowed to leave for England. Johnstone took part of the first division and was to occupy Lovedale and Fort Cox and patrol between Fort Cox and Fort Beaufort. A despatch promoting Hare to major-general was on the way. He never saw it. He died at sea 4 days after leaving South Africa. His body was taken to St Helena and buried there. On the 29th of June Sir Robert Peel’s ministry resigned. Lord John Russell formed a cabinet. Earl Grey succeeded Gladstone at the colonial office on the 7th of July. On the 3rd of August Grey wrote that more troops would be sent, and a number of half-pay officers — lieutenant-colonels George Henry Mackinnon, George Green Nicholls, Edward H. D. E. Napier, and Auchmuty Montresor, and 3 majors — to organise irregulars. They were an embarrassment. Maitland got rid of them with supernumerary appointments. Reinforcements already at sea from Monte Video, meant to relieve regiments in South Africa, were hurried on. On the 30th of July the Resistance reached Simon’s Bay with the second battalion of the 45th, 525 officers and men; on the 11th of August the Apollo brought the 73rd, 538; on the 26th the Cornwall from Cork brought 97 recruits — over 1100 men added. The frontier force then sat paralysed for want of food away from Waterloo Bay. The government had pressed wagons and oxen; people were afraid to take provisions to Grahamstown or Fort Beaufort. Drought held until September. Only by keeping the mass of troops on the coast was starvation averted. On the 5th of October the barque Catherine wrecked at Waterloo Bay and lost a full cargo of provisions just arrived. In October grass sprang. Deputy-commissary-general Palmer took the transport. Light mule wagons came by sea from Capetown to Port Elizabeth. Impressment stopped. 2 pounds a day was offered for every bullock wagon and span of 14 oxen fit for service. August and September mattered because the burghers went home, Hare died, a new secretary of state took the colonies, and the war paused on hunger until grass and Palmer’s 2 pounds a day put wheels under it again. [3]
Grey, Stockenstrom’s Resignation, Sandile’s Truce, and Fort Hare
After the first great raid, small bands still entered Albany and Somerset, hid in thickets, and murdered. On the 9th of August a patrol of 19 Stellenbosch burghers was surrounded in an Albany kloof. 5 were killed: Pieter and Hermanus de Villiers, Jan Basson, Pieter Haushamer, and Daniel Russouw. One of the De Villiers could have escaped and would not leave his wounded brother. The bodies were taken to Grahamstown. There was no Dutch church there; Dr Roux had taken shelter when Riebeek East was abandoned. Heavyside offered the English church; he and Roux conducted the funeral together. Between July and October there were murdered, in different frontier places, Gordon Nourse, Barend Vosloo, William Cumming, Carel van Heerden, Jabez Aldum, James Pankhurst, Williams, Shields, Wiggins, Mildenhall, Feckery, Gamble, and Smith, and almost as many Hottentot and other coloured servants. Several circumstances then made most captains profess a desire for peace. They had little hope of more cattle. The drought of the previous year had left them almost without corn. In September heavy rain fell, and they wanted their gardens. On the 21st of August Stokwe abandoned the contest and surrendered to Somerset. Most of his clan stayed in the field. He promised colonial cattle beyond the Buffalo and did not keep the word. 50 muskets were given up with him. Makoma, ill with dysentery, sent in the name of the Gaika and Imidange asking whether hostilities might cease. [3]
Johnstone carried the governor’s reply. On the 30th of September, with Major Smith, the reverend Henry Calderwood, and the reverend Frederick Kayser as interpreter, he met Sandile, Makoma, Botumane, Tola, and others of less note, with several thousand followers, nearly half armed with muskets, on the slope of a hill later called Sandile’s Kop, about a mile from the present Alice. The terms: give up guns, restore booty, accept locations wherever the governor chose. He took the country as far as the Kei for the queen; they would sit in it as British subjects. They rejected the terms without hesitation. Maitland had in view a settlement like D’Urban’s: take the Amatola from the hostile clans, leave them land east of the Tyumie and Keiskama under British officers, give the vacant land between the Fish and Kat on one side and the Tyumie and Keiskama on the other to Hottentots, freed slaves, and other coloured people under a magistrate, and allot the Amatola to Fingos. William Shaw was already trying, under the governor, to draw coloured people from the colony for villages between the Tyumie and the Kat. The Tembu chief Umtirara asked to be received as a British subject and to have the land between the colonial boundary and the Indwe declared British. He was too weak to keep order or stop Mapasa. Galekas, Bacas, and Pondos were his enemies. In the last days of August his people around Clarkebury were plundered by Pondos and driven over the Indwe. He was secreting colonial cattle. Early in November Joseph Read with the Stockenstrom Hottentots attacked Mapasa and took 1500 head. Umtirara then seized the rest and ruined Mapasa for the time. On the 3rd of December Umtirara, with 2 counsellors, met the governor at Blockdrift. The reverend J. C. Warner interpreted. He presented 300 of the colonial oxen taken from Mapasa. Maitland could not promise protection without London. He recommended the application. His plan was 3 British magistrates between the colonial line and the Indwe and Kei: one north of the Amatola with the Tembus, one south with the Gaikas, one near the sea with the remaining Rarabe. Umtirara would keep much authority; emigrant Tembu and Rarabe captains were to be deposed. Sandile’s Kop mattered because the Gaika house would not give up guns or the Amatola, and because Umtirara was offering a Tembu door into the same settlement while still sitting on stolen cattle. [3]
On the 16th of September Somerset began to scour between the Keiskama and the Gonubie. The weather was inclement. By the 4th of October from 4000 to 5000 head were secured, mostly from Umhala. Rain let the governor put a strong force out again. The Xhosa then sat down in front of approaching troops, knowing they would not be fired on unresisting, and that a whole tribe could not be held as prisoners. Women made gardens and thronged patrols with children begging for food. Cattle had been driven far east. Sickness from bad food, fatigue, and wet after the rains filled canvas hospitals with rheumatism and low fever. Wherever men were sheltered and fed there was little illness. On the 24th of October the Swellendam Hottentot levies at Fort Beaufort mutinied: 350 of them, muskets in hand, set off toward Grahamstown. Artillery fired blank shots without effect. Calderwood and the reverend Mr Beaver rode after them and induced most to return. They came back sullen. Desertions were so frequent that the coloured levies, needed for work regulars could not do, threatened to dwindle away. Maitland was anxious to conclude peace on terms he would not have accepted with stronger hands. Calderwood became his chief adviser and persuaded him to leave the Gaikas in the Amatola — a measure Calderwood later regretted. The clans were deprived of the upper Tyumie west of that river. The Tyumie and Keiskama were declared the western boundary of Xhosa country. From that line to the Kei the territory was taken as British. Makoma and his family were given an outbuilding at Lovedale, more as guests than as prisoners, though his violence toward wives and attendants led to his being disarmed and once confined. Calderwood was appointed commissioner for the Gaika, Imidange, and Tinde, to receive those who surrendered arms. Brownlee was his clerk. Stretch’s Gaika agency, Fynn’s emigrant Tembu agency, and Major Smith’s office as agent-general were abolished. Calderwood sat Blockdrift in Stretch’s old residency. The mutiny and that new British line mattered because the governor was settling a country he did not yet hold, and because the Amatola, which Stockenstrom had said must be cleared, was being left to Sandile in order to keep levies from walking home. [3]
On the 3rd of November Maitland granted Sandile a truce of 14 days and offered permanent peace if he restored 20000 head and gave up his arms. Sandile professed to agree. The day after the truce expired he appeared at Blockdrift with 200 to 300 horses and about as many horned cattle. He also brought Kleintje and a man he said was the murderer of the 16th of March, who died in prison before an examination could be held. Calderwood pointed out a residence. Thereafter any Xhosa who surrendered a musket or 6 assegais was registered as a British subject and allowed to settle. 200 to 300 muskets were given up; the best were hidden. An announcement that guns and colonial cattle would be seized wherever found did not alarm people whose object was time. Maclean was appointed commissioner for the clans near the sea. They were slower. In November Somerset attacked them on the Tshalumna and took 1600 to 1700 head, after which registration ran faster. By the beginning of December only Pato, Kobe, and Toyise were left west of the Kei in open war. Their following was swollen by warriors from clans at truce, so the Rarabe had what they wanted: a pause to plant, and a party still at war to occupy the troops. On the 25th of November Stockenstrom tendered his resignation as commandant-general, citing want of confidence on both sides. On the 27th Maitland relieved him. Further troops arrived: on the 28th of October 9 officers and 285 rank and file of the first battalion of the rifle brigade in the Fairlie from Gibraltar; on the 29th the Stebronheath from Cork with 13 officers and 400 of the 6th; on the 5th of November the Westminster from Cork with the rest of the 6th, 9 officers and 202, and the Equestrian from Gibraltar with the rest of the rifle brigade, 10 officers and 328. On the 1st of December Maitland ordered that the post he had directed to be fortified at Blockdrift be called Fort Hare, after the late lieutenant-governor. It stood on the left bank of the Tyumie, just outside the later town of Alice. Maitland wanted a fortified village on the right bank as well; war prevented it. On the 27th of December a strong force of burghers under Sutton, levies under Hogg, and regulars under Somerset, with the governor, assembled at the site of Fort Warden, hoping to surround Pato, demand 15000 head from Kreli, and rescue about 3000 Fingos at Butterworth. Van der Meulen of the 73rd with 600 feinted toward the nearest Kei ford. That night Captain George Napier of the Cape mounted rifles crossed 9 miles lower. The year closed with that column still east of the Tyumie, and with registration filling kraals that should have held 50 men with 400 or 500. November and December mattered because Kleintje came in and the murderer named for March died untried, because Fort Hare took Hare’s name on the ground Sandile had treated as his in January, and because a truce that left Pato in the field was not a peace. [3] [4] [4] [3]
West, the Location Commission, Lindley, and the Natal Witness — Natal 1846
Martin Thomas West had taken up the Natal government on the 4th of December 1845. Natal was a Cape dependency under Stanley’s letters patent of the 31st of May 1844, separate for judicial, financial, and executive work, with legislation through the Cape governor. West received 800 pounds a year and 100 for house rent, the recorder 600, the secretary to government 500, the others in proportion. Local revenue did not meet the spend; the Cape treasury lent the rest, to be repaid later. There was no police but a 100 of those blacks long subject to English chiefs. Earl Grey, who took the colonies in July, would have favoured hauling down the flag if it had not been certain that the blacks in the territory would then have been exterminated. The first question was how to seat the Bantu. They fell into 3 classes: inhabitants from before Tshaka’s wars who had never been driven out, then put at between 5000 and 11000, whose claim to ground no one disputed; those driven out by Tshaka who had returned after the Europeans, over whom opinion split; and refugees from tribes that had never occupied Natal, come in since 1838 for white protection, believed to be fully half, with no claim beyond what government chose to give. In practice the distinctions could not be enforced. The government had no power to do anything against the inclination of the blacks. The salaries mattered because a lieutenant-governor on 800 pounds could not police a district the imperial government would not pay to hold, and because land had to be allotted without a force that could move anyone. [3]
In 1846 a land commission was named to select tracts on which the Bantu, without that classification, should be located: Theophilus Shepstone, Dr William Stanger, Lieutenant C. J. Gibb, the reverend Daniel Lindley, and Dr Newton Adams. After a rough inspection north of the Umkomanzi they recommended 7 locations for exclusive black use: the Umzinyati, Impafana, Umvoti, Inanda, and Zwartkops, with defined boundaries, and the Umlazi and Kathlamba, whose boundaries were left open. The 7 comprised fully 2 million acres — one-sixth of Natal — and included many farms claimed by white men as occupied before Commissioner Cloete in 1843. Locations elsewhere would still have taken farms, so the government adopted the recommendations provisionally and directed the Bantu onto that ground. Most complied. Some refused to leave land outside the locations, and there was no means of compelling them. South of the Umkomanzi they had practically all the usable ground. Lindley resigned the Maritzburg pulpit on the 31st of December and went back to mission work. The reverend Mr Stucki succeeded him. The commission mattered because it fixed a map the colony did not have troops to enforce, and because a sixth of Natal set aside in 1846 was the shape of native policy there for the rest of West’s time. [3]
In the locations the Bantu were of necessity left to themselves. A large share had no chiefs — ruling families exterminated — so they could not combine. Feuds among those who still had clans, and dread of Panda, made a common rising unlikely unless government gave them a common grievance. Missionaries were encouraged. The field was soon occupied by 14 Americans, 3 of the Berlin society, and 2 Wesleyans. The press in that small European community was active. The Natal Witness was first issued at Maritzburg in March 1846. Natal’s total revenue in 1846 was 3095 pounds 9 shillings 11 pence; in 1847 it had risen to 6557 pounds 18 shillings 2 pence. The paper and the revenue mattered because a district that still borrowed from the Cape to pay West’s 800 pounds now had a public print at the volksraad town, while the locations of the commission had no magistrate of their own. [3]
Postage of January, Robben Island, Warden at Bloemfontein, and the Year’s Close
From the 1st of January there was a post twice a week between the principal seats of magistracy. By an ordinance of the 7th of January inland postage on letters was fixed at 4 pence the half-ounce, irrespective of distance, and the same charge was made for ocean transit. Newspapers remained a penny inland and a penny for ocean transit, as under the ordinances of 1834 and 1837. Until the 5th of October a retail licence to sell wines and spirits cost from 112 pounds 10 shillings a year in the principal towns to 3 pounds in country places; an ordinance of that date substituted a uniform 20 pounds. The bi-weekly post was why Maitland had told Stanley in October 1845 that Hare’s establishment might be done away with. Gladstone, in a despatch of the 13th of January, authorised Maitland to accept Hare’s resignation, often tendered, and intimated that the situation would remain vacant at least for a time. War kept Hare in the field until his health broke. On the 1st of October the senior military officer in the Capetown garrison was added to the legislative council, making 6 official members against 5 unofficial. The postage and the empty chair mattered because a letter from Capetown to Grahamstown no longer waited on a lieutenant-governor’s pack, and because when Hare died the east still had no separate government of the kind the December 1845 petition had asked. [3]
Early in the year the leper asylum at Hemel en Aarde was broken up and the patients were moved to Robben Island, where the convict quarters were free because those occupants had gone to the road stations. It was believed they could be better provided for on the island and that removing them from the mainland would cut intercourse with healthy people. The reverend Mr Lehman went with them. Shortly afterwards the English episcopal church took their spiritual care. The hard road over the Cape flats, exclusive of convict labour, cost about 50000 pounds. The last sand section toward Klapmuts had opened on the 24th of December 1845; the branch to Stellenbosch opened on the 1st of September 1846. In 1846 the grants were 27422 pounds and the tolls 2755. Capetown was now partly lit at night by gas; a company built works and laid mains this year. At eleven at night on the 29th of April the American ship Gentoo, Calcutta to Boston, wrecked at Struys Bay; 7 lives were lost. The Agulhas light, voted for in 1845, was still delayed by correspondence with the secretary of state; it would not be shown until 1849. Robben Island and the Stellenbosch branch mattered because the mainland asylum of the Moravians closed in a war year, and because a hard road that had been a Montagu work now reached Stellenbosch while the east burned. [3]
On the Stormberg spruit, still the north-eastern colonial boundary, about 300 farming families wanted a church even though Downing Street had refused annexation in 1845. On the 22nd and 23rd of January a meeting on Jan Steenkamp’s farm, with the reverend Messrs Murray of Graaff-Reinet, Reid of Colesberg, and Taylor of Cradock, resolved to buy a farm, lay out a village, and build church and parsonage from plot sales and subscriptions. A committee of J. C. Greyling, P. van der Walt, M. Kruger, P. H. Henning, Jan Steenkamp, A. J. Coetsee, J. P. Smit, and John Montgomery inspected and on the 9th of February bought Klipfontein, 3607 morgen, from Gerrit Buytendag. They asked to call the village Maitland; he refused, as he had refused the Stormberg the year before. They named it Burghersdorp. Burghersdorp mattered because a church place went up on a border London would not take, while the governor who would not lend his name was in the field on the Fish. [3]
North of the Orange the Touwfontein arrangement with Adam Kok was acted on from June 1845 and signed as a formal treaty in February 1846. Captain Sutton had taken the British residency on the 8th of December 1845 and resigned in January 1846 because it blocked army promotion. He was succeeded by Captain Henry Douglas Warden. Warden chose as the seat of his court a farm between the Kaal Spruit and the Modder that had been occupied by an emigrant named Brits, taking a formal cession from Kok, who was recognised as sovereign of that territory. The place was Bloemfontein. It dates from 1846. In March Warden called the disputants to Platberg: Moshesh with Letsie and Molapo; Sikonyela with Mota; Molitsane with Moiketsi and Mokhele; Moroko; captains Adam Kok, Peter Davids, and Carolus Baatje; a representative of Gert Taaibosch; missionaries and councillors. After nearly 2 days he proposed a governor’s commission on claims, peace until the governor’s pleasure. All marked the paper. The commission was not appointed. Maitland favoured it; the War of the Axe occupied him and then Pottinger. In June some farmers expelled from Griqua-claimed ground placed themselves under Jan Kock at Winburg and threatened Kok. Warden called on Moroko, Gert Taaibosch, Carolus Baatje, and Peter Davids. On the 16th of June he left Bloemfontein with the Cape mounted riflemen and a six-pounder, was joined at the Modder by a 100 of Moroko’s men, and, after a letter from Kock on the 24th, marched by night to a farm on the Vet. Fire was exchanged for about half an hour. Casualties: one Griqua and one Koranna killed; 1 Boer killed and 3 wounded; 20 prisoners by patrol. The expedition lasted 20 days and cost 140 pounds. Warden disarmed farmers he could reach, including some who had taken no part and lived by game. The Winburg court of landdrost and heemraden, which had sat since the village was founded and had acted as orphan chamber and marriage court, ceased to meet in June because of that attack. Toward the close of the year Maitland offered Carolus Baatje and Peter Davids land in the Buffalo valley, in the later King William’s Town division, if they would leave Platberg and Lishuane. The negotiation fell through. In the winter Hendrik Potgieter, with 150 burghers, Matlabe’s Barolong, and blacks under a half-breed son of Coenraad du Buis, attacked the Bapedi under Sekwati in the Lulu mountains and took 8000 head of cattle and 6000 goats, shared equally. Peace followed on the Bapedi chief’s submission to the emigrant government. Bloemfontein and the Vet mattered because a British residency now sat on a spring north of the Orange while the Fish burned, and because the land commission the chiefs had marked at Platberg in March was postponed to a year that still had Pato in the field. [3] [4] [4]