Colonization and Christianity/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE ENGLISH IN SOUTH AFRICA.
Having now quitted North America, let us sail southward. There we may direct our course east or west, we may pass Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, and enter the Pacific or the Indian Ocean, secure that on whatever shore we may touch, whether on continent or island, we shall find the Europeans oppressing the natives on their own soil, or having exterminated them, occupying their place. We shall find our own countrymen more than all others widely diffused and actively employed in the work of expulsion, moral corruption, and destruction of the aboriginal tribes. We talk of the atrocities of the Spaniards, of the deeds of Cortez and Pizarro, as though they were things of an ancient date, things gone by, things of the dark old days; and seem never for a moment to suspect that these dark old days were not a whit more shocking than our own, or that our countrymen, protestant Englishmen of 1838, can be compared for a moment to the Red-Cross Knights of Mexican and Peruvian butcheries. If they cannot be compared, I blush to say that it is because our infamy and crimes are even more wholesale and inhuman than theirs. Do the good people of England, who "sit at home at ease," who build so many churches and chapels, and flock to them in such numbers,—who spend about 170,000l. annually on Bibles, and more than half a million annually in missions and other modes of civilizing and christianizing the heathen, and therefore naturally flatter themselves that they are rapidly bringing all the world to the true faith; do they or can they know that at this very moment, wherever their Bibles go, and wherever their missionaries are labouring, their own government and their own countrymen are as industriously labouring also, to scatter the most awful corruption of morals and principles amongst the simple natives of all, to us, new countries? that they are introducing diseases more pestilent than the plague, more loathsome than the charnel-house itself, and more deadly than the simoom of the tropical deserts, that levels all before it? Do they know, that even where their missionaries, like the prophets of old, have gone before the armies of God, putting the terrors of heathenism to flight, making a safe path through the heart of the most dreadful deserts; dividing the very waters, and levelling the old mountains of separation and of difficulty—
By Faith supported and by Freedom led,
A fruitful field amid the desert making,
And dwell secure where kings and priests were quaking,
And taught the waste to yield them wine and bread.—Pringle.
The limits which I have devoted to a brief history of the treatment of these tribes by the European nations have been heavily pressed upon by the immense mass of our crimes and cruelties, and I must now necessarily make a hasty march across the scenes here alluded to; but enough will be seen to arouse astonishment, and indicate the necessity of counter-agencies of the most impulsive kind.
The Dutch have been applauded by various historians for the justice and mildness which they manifested towards the natives of their Cape colony. This may have been the case at their first entrance in 1652, and until they had purchased a certain quantity of land for their new settlement with a few bottles of brandy and some toys. It was their commercial policy, in the language of the old school of traders, to "first creep and then go." It was in the same assumed mildness that they insinuated themselves into the spice islands of India. Nothing, however, is more certain than that in about a century they had possessed themselves of all the Hottentot territories, and reduced the Hottentots themselves to a state of the most abject servitude. The Parliamentary Report just alluded to, describes the first governor, Van Riebeck, in the very first year of the settlement, looking over the mud-walls of his fortress on "the cattle of the natives, and wondering at the ways of Providence that could bestow such very fine gifts on heathens." It also presents us with two very characteristic extracts from his journal at this moment.
"December 13th, 1652.—To-day the Hottentots came with thousands of cattle and sheep close to our fort, so that their cattle nearly mixed with ours. We feel vexed to see so many fine head of cattle, and not to be able to buy to any considerable extent. If it had been indeed allowed, we had opportunity to-day to deprive them of 10,000 head, which, however, if we obtain orders to that effect, can be done at any time, and even more conveniently, because they will have greater confidence in us. With 150 men, 10,000 or 11,000 head of black cattle might be obtained without danger of losing one man; and many savages might be taken without resistance, in order to be sent as slaves to India, as they still always come to us unarmed.
"December 18.—To-day the Hottentots came again with thousands of cattle close to the fort. If no further trade is to be expected with them, what would it matter much to take at once 6,000 or 8,000 beasts from them? There is opportunity enough for it, as they are not strong in number, and very timid; and since not more than two or three men often graze a thousand cattle close to our cannon, who might be easily cut off, and as we perceive they place very great confidence in us, we allure them still with show of friendship to make them the more confident. It is vexatious to see so much cattle, so necessary for the refreshment of the Honourable Company's ships, of which it is not every day that any can be obtained by friendly trade."
It is sufficiently clear that no nice scruples of conscience withheld Governor Van Riebeck from laying hand on 10 or 11,000 cattle, or blowing a few of the keepers away with his cannons.
The system of oppression, adds the Report, thus began, never slackened till the Hottentot nation were cut off, and the small remnant left were reduced to abject bondage. From all the accounts we have seen respecting the Hottentot population, it could not have been less than 200,000, but at present they are said to be only 32,000 in number.
In 1702 the Governor and Council stated their inability to restrain the plunderings and outrages of the colonists upon the natives, on the plea that such an act would implicate and ruin half the colony; and in 1798, Barrow, in his Travels in Southern Africa, thus describes their condition:—"Some of their villages might have been expected to remain in this remote and not very populous part of the colony. Not one, however, was to be found. There is not, in fact, in the whole district of Graaff Reynet, a single horde of independent Hottentots, and perhaps not a score of individuals who are not actually in the service of the Dutch. These weak people—the most helpless, and, in their present condition, perhaps the most wretched of the human race,—duped out of their possessions, their country, and their liberty, have entailed upon their miserable offspring a state of existence to which that of slavery might bear the comparison of happiness. It is a condition, however, not likely to continue to a very remote posterity. Their numbers, of late years, have been rapidly on the decline. It has generally been observed, that where Europeans have colonized, the less civilized nations have always dwindled away, and at length totally disappeared. … There is scarcely an instance of cruelty said to have been committed against the slaves in the West Indian islands, that could not find a parallel from the Dutch farmers towards the Hottentots in their service. Beating and cutting with thongs of the sea-cow (hippopotamus), or rhinoceros, are only gentle punishments; though those sort of whips, which they call sjamboes, are most horrid instruments, being tough, pliant, and heavy almost as lead. Firing small shot into the legs and thighs of a Hottentot is a punishment not unknown to some of the monsters who inhabit the neighbourhood of Camtoos. By a resolution of the old government, a boor was allowed to claim as his property, till the age of twenty-five, all the children of the Hottentots to whom he had given in their infancy a morsel of meat. At the expiration of this period, the odds are two to one that the slave is not emancipated; but should he be fortunate enough to escape at this period, the best part of his life has been spent in a profitless servitude, and he is turned adrift without any thing he can call his own, except the sheep-skin on his back."
These poor people were fed on the flesh of old ewes, or any animal that the boor expected to die of age; or, in default of that, a few quaggas or such game were killed for them. They were tied to a wagon-wheel and flogged dreadfully for slight offences; and when a master wanted to get rid of one, he was sometimes sent on an errand, followed on the road, and shot.[1] The cruelties, in fact, practised on the Hottentots by the Dutch boors were too shocking to be related. Maiming, murder, pursuing them like wild beasts, and shooting at them in the most wanton manner, were amongst them. Mr. Pringle stated that he had in his possession a journal of such deeds, kept by a resident at so late a period as from 1806 to 1811, which consisted of forty-four pages of such crimes and cruelties, which were too horrible to describe. Such as we found them when the Cape finally became our possession, such they remained till 1828, when Dr. Philip published his "Researches in South Africa," which laying open this scene of barbarities, Mr. Fowell Buxton gave notice of a motion on the subject in Parliament. Sir George Murray, then Colonial Secretary, however, most honourably acceded to Mr. Buxton's proposition before such motion was submitted, and an Order in Council was accordingly issued, directing that the Hottentots should be admitted to all the rights, and placed on the same footing as the rest of his Majesty's free subjects in the colony. This transaction is highly honourable to the English government, and the result has been such as to shew the wisdom of such liberal measures. But before proceeding to notice the effect of this change upon the Hottentots, let us select as a specimen of the treatment they were subject to, even under our rule, the destruction of the last independent Hottentot kraal, as related by Pringle.
"Among the principal leaders of the Hottentot insurgents in their wars with the boors, were three brothers of the name of Stuurman. The manly bearing of Klaas, one of these brothers, is commemorated by Mr. Barrow, who was with the English General Vandeleur, near Algoa Bay, when this Hottentot chief came, with a large body of his countrymen, to claim the protection of the British." "We had little doubt," says Mr. Barrow, "that the greater number of the Hottentot men who were assembled at the bay, after receiving favourable accounts from their comrades of the treatment they experienced in the British service, would enter as volunteers into this corps; but what was to be done with the old people, the women and children? Klaas Stuurman found no difficulty in making provision for them. 'Restore,' said he, 'the country of which our fathers have been despoiled by the Dutch, and we have nothing more to ask.' I endeavoured to convince him," continues Mr. Barrow, "how little advantage they were likely to obtain from the possession of a country, without any other property, or the means of deriving a subsistence from it. But he had the better of the argument. 'We lived very contentedly,' said he, 'before these Dutch plunderers molested us; and why should we not do so again if left to ourselves? Has not the Groot Baas (the Great Master) given plenty of grass-roots, and berries, and grashoppers for our use? and, till the Dutch destroyed them, abundance of wild animals to hunt? and will they not turn and multiply when these destroyers are gone?'"
How uniform is the language of the uncivilized man wherever he has been driven from his ancient habits by the white invaders,—trust in the goodness of Providence, and regret for the plenty which he knew before they came. These words of Klaas Stuurman are almost the same as those of the American Indian Canassateego to the English at Lancaster in 1744.
But we are breaking our narrative. Klaas was killed in a buffalo hunt, and his brother David became the chief of the kraal. "The existence of this independent kraal gave great offence to the neighbouring boors. The most malignant calumnies were propagated against David Stuurman. The kraal was watched most jealously, and every possible occasion embraced of preferring complaints against the people, with a view of getting them rooted out, and reduced to the same state of servitude as the rest of their nation. For seven years no opportunity presented itself; but in 1810, when the colony was once more under the government of England, David Stuurman became outlawed in the following manner:—
"Two Hottentots belonging to this kraal, had engaged themselves for a certain period in the service of a neighbouring boor; who, when the term of their agreement expired, refused them permission to depart—a practice at that time very common, and much connived at by the local functionaries. The Hottentots, upon this, went off without permission, and returned to their village. The boor followed them thither, and demanded them back; but their chief, Stuurman, refused to surrender them. Stuurman was, in consequence, summoned by the landdrost Cuyler, to appear before him; but, apprehensive probably for his personal safety, he refused or delayed compliance. His arrest and the destruction of his kraal were detemined upon. But as he was known to be a resolute man, and much beloved by his countrymen, it was considered hazardous to seize him by open force, and the following stratagem was resorted to:—
"A boor, named Cornelius Routenbach, a heemraad (one of the landdrost's council), had by some means gained Stuurman's confidence, and this man engaged to entrap him. On a certain day, accordingly, he sent an express to his friend Stuurman, stating that the Caffres had carried off a number of his cattle, and requested him to hasten with the most trusty of his followers to aid him in pursuit of the robbers. The Hottentot chief and his party instantly equipped themselves and set out. When they reached Routenbach's residence, Stuurraan was welcomed with every demonstration of cordiality, and, with four of his principal followers, was invited into the house. On a signal given, the door was shut, and at the same moment the landdrost (Major Cuyler), the field-commandant Stoltz, and a crowd of boors, rushed upon them from an inner apartment, and made them all prisoners. The rest of the Hottentot party, who had remained outside, perceiving that their captain and comrade had been betrayed, immediately dispersed themselves. The majority, returning to their kraal, were, together with their families, distributed by the landdrost into servitude to the neighbouring boors. Some fled into Caffreland; and a few were, at the earnest request of Dr. Vanderkemp, permitted to join the missionary institution at Bethelsdorp. The chief and his brother Boschman, with two other leaders of the kraal, were sent off prisoners to Cape Town, where, after undergoing their trial before the court of justice, upon an accusation of resistance to the civil authorities of the district, they were condemned to work in irons for life, and sent to Robben Island to be confined among other colonial convicts.
"Stuurman's kraal was eventually broken up, the landdrost Cuyler asked and obtained, as a grant for himself—(Naboth's vineyard again!)—the lands the Hottentots had occupied. Moreover this functionary kept in his own service, without any legal agreement, some of the children of the Stuurmans, until after the arrival of the Commissioners of Inquiry in 1823.
"Stuurman and two of his comrades, after remaining some years prisoners in Robben Island, contrived to escape, and effected their retreat through the whole extent of the colony into Caffreland, a distance of more than six hundred miles! Impatient, however, to return to his family, Stuurman, in the year 1816, sent out a messenger to the missionary, Mr. Read, from whom he had formerly experienced kindness, entreating him to endeavour to procure permission for him to return in peace. Mr. Read, as he himself informed me, made application on his behalf to the landdrost Cuyler,—but without avail. That magistrate recommended that he should remain where he was. Three years afterwards, the unhappy exile ventured to return into the colony without permission. But he was not long in being discovered and apprehended, and once more sent a prisoner to Cape Town, where he was kept in close confinement till the year 1823, when he was finally transported as a convict to New South Wales. What became of Boschman, the third brother, I never learned. Such was the fate of the last Hottentot chief who attempted to stand up for the rights of his country."
Mr. Pringle adds, that this statement, having been published by him in England in 1826, the benevolent General Bourke, then Lieutenant-Governor at the Cape, wrote to the Governor of New South Wales, and obtained some alleviation of the hardships of his lot for Stuurman; that, in 1829, the children of Stuurman, through the aid of Mr. Bannister, presented a memorial to Sir Lowry Cole, then governor at the Cape, for their father's recall, but in vain; but that, in 1831, General Bourke, being himself Governor of New South Wales, obtained an order for his liberation; but, ere it arrived, 'the last chief of the Hottentots' had been released by death."
Such was the treatment of the Hottentots under the Dutch and under the English; such were the barbarities and ruthless oppressions exercised on them till the passing of the 50th Ordinance by Acting-Governor Bourke in 1828, and its confirmation by the Order in Council in 1829, for their liberation. This act, so honourable to the British government, became equally honourable to the Hottentots, by their conduct on their freedom, and presents another most important proof that political justice is political wisdom. After the clamour of the interested had subsided, and after a vain attempt to reverse this ordinance, a grand experiment in legislation was made. A tract of country was granted to the Hottentots; they were placed on the frontiers with arms in their hands, to defend themselves, if necessary, from the Caffres; and they were told that they must now show whether they were capable of maintaining themselves as a people, in peace, civil order, and independence. Most nobly did they vindicate their national character from all the calumnies of indolence and imbecility that had been cast upon them,—most amply justify the confidence reposed in them! "The spot selected," says Pringle, "for the experiment, was a tract of wild country, from which the Caffre chief, Makomo, had been expelled a short time before. It is a sort of irregular basin, surrounded on all sides by lofty and majestic mountains, from the numerous kloofs of which six or seven fine streams are poured down the subsidiary dells into the central valley. These rivulets, bearing the euphonic Caffre names of Camalu, Zebenzi, Umtóka, Mankazána, Umtúava, and Quonci, unite to form the Kat River, which finds its way through the mountain barrier by a stupendous poort, or pass, a little above Fort Beaufort. Within this mountain-basin, which from its great command of the means of irrigation is peculiarly well adapted for a dense population, it was resolved to fix the Hottentot settlement."
It was in the middle of the winter when the settlement was located. Numbers flocked in from all quarters; some possessing a few cattle, but far the greater numbers possessing nothing but their hands to work with. They asked Captain Stockenstrom, their great friend, the lieutenant-governor of the frontier, and at whose suggestion this experiment was made, what they were to do, and how they were to subsist. He told them, "if they were not able to cultivate the ground with their fingers, they need not have come there." Government, even under such rigorous circumstances, gave them no aid whatever except the gift of fire-arms, and some very small portion of seed-corn to the most destitute, to keep them from thieving. Yet, even thus tried, the Hottentots, who had been termed the fag-end of mankind, did not quail or despair. In the words of Mr. Fairbairn, the friend of Pringle, "The Hottentot, escaped from bonds, stood erect on his new territory; and the feeling of being restored to the level of humanity and the simple rights of nature, softened and enlarged his heart, and diffused vigour through every limb!" They dug up roots and wild bulbs for food, and persisted without a murmur, labouring surprisingly, with the most wretched implements, and those who had cattle assisting those who had nothing, to the utmost of their ability. All winter the Caffres, from whom this location had been unjustly wrested by the English, attacked them with a fury only exceeded by their hope of now regaining their territory from mere Hottentots, thus newly armed, and in so wretched a condition. But, though harassed night and day, and never, for a moment, safe in their sleep, they not only repelled the assailants, but continued to cultivate their grounds with prodigious energy. They had to form dams across the river, as stated by Mr. Read, before the Parliamentary committee, and water-courses, sometimes to the depth of ten, twelve, and fourteen feet, and that sometimes through solid rocks, and with very sorry pickaxes, iron crows, and spades; and few of them. These works, says Mr. Read, have excited the admiration of visitors, as well as the roads, which they had to cut to a considerable height on the sides of the mountains.
At first, from the doubts of colonists as to the propriety of entrusting fire-arms, and so much self-government to these newly liberated men, it was proposed that a certain portion of the Dutch and English should be mixed with them. The Hottentots, who felt this want of confidence keenly, begged and prayed that they might be trusted for two years; and Captain Stockenstrom said to them, "Then show to the world that you can work as well as others, and that without the whip." Such indeed was their diligence, that the very next summer they had abundance of vegetables, and a plentiful harvest. In the second year they net only supported themselves, but disposed of 30,000 lbs. of barley for the troops, besides carrying other produce to market at Graham's Town. Their enemies the Caffres made peace with them, and those of their own race flocked in so rapidly that they were soon 4,000 in number, seven hundred of whom were armed with muskets. The settlement was left without any magistrate, or officers, except the native field-cornets, and heads of parties appointed by Captain Stockenstrom, yet they continued perfectly orderly. Nay, they were not satisfied without possessing the means of both religious and other instruction. Within a few months after their establishment, they sent for Mr. Read, the missionary, and Mr. Thompson was also appointed Dutch minister amongst them. They established temperance societies, and schools. Mr. Read says, that during the four years and a half that he was there, they had established seven schools for the larger children, and one school of industry, besides five infant schools. And Captain Stockenstrom, writing to Mr. Pringle in 1833, says, "So eager are they for instruction, that when better teachers cannot be obtained, if they find any person that can merely spell, they get him to teach the rest the little he knows. They travel considerable distances to attend divine service regularly, and their spiritual guides speak with delight of the fruits of their labours." "Nowhere have temperance societies been half so much encouraged as among this people, formerly so prone to intemperance; and they have of their own account petitioned the government that their grants of land may contain a prohibition against the establishment of canteens, or brandy-houses. They have repulsed the Caffres on every side on which they have been attacked, and are now upon the best terms with that people. They pay every tax like the rest of the inhabitants. They have cost the government nothing except a little ammunition for their defence, about fifty bushels of maize, and a similar quantity of oats for seed-corn, and the annual stipend for their minister. They have rendered the Kat river by far the safest part of the frontier; and the same plan followed up on a more extensive scale would soon enable government to withdraw the troops altogether." In 1834, Captain Bradford found that they had subscribed 499l. to build a new church, and had also proposed to lay the foundation of another. In 1833 they paid in taxes 2,300 rix-dollars, and their settlement was in a most flourishing condition. Dr. Philip, before the Parliamentary Committee of 1837, stated that their schools were in admirable order; their infant schools quite equal to anything to be seen in England; and the Committee closed its evidence on this remarkable settlement with this striking opinion: "Had it, indeed, depended on the Hottentots, we believe the frontier would have been spared the outrages from which they as well as others have suffered."
Of two things in this very interesting relation, we hardly know which is the most surprising—the avidity with which a people long held in the basest thraldom grasp at knowledge and civil life, or the blind selfishness of Englishmen, who, in the face of such splendid scenes as these, persist in oppression and violence. How easy does it seem to do good! How beautiful are the results of justice and liberality! How glorious and how profitable too, beyond all use of whips, and chains, and muskets, are treating our fellow men with gentleness and kindness—and yet after this came the Caffre commandoes and the Caffre war!
Of the same, or a kindred race with the Hottentots, are the Bosjesmen, or Bushmen, and the Griquas; their treatment, except that they could not be made slaves of, has been the same. The same injustice, the same lawlessness, the same hostile irritation, have been practised towards them by the Dutch and English as towards the Hottentots. The bushmen, in fact, were Hottentots, who, disdaining slavery and resenting the usurpations of the Europeans on their lands, took arms, endeavoured to repel their aggressors, and finding that impracticable, fled to the woods and the mountains; others, from time to time escaping from intolerable thraldom, joined them. These bushmen carried on a predatory warfare from their fastnesses with the oppressors of their race, and were in return hunted as wild beasts. Commandoes, a sort of military battu, were set on foot against them. Every one knows what a battu for game is. The inhabitants of a district assemble at the command of an officer, civil or military, to clear the country of wild beasts. They take in a vast circle, beating up the bushes and thickets, while they gradually contract the circle, till the whole multitude find themselves inclosing a small area filled with the whole bestial population of the neighbourhood, on which they make a simultaneous attack, and slaughter them in one promiscuous mass. A commando is a very similar thing, except that in it not only the bestial population of the country, but the human too, are slaughtered by the inhuman. These commandoes, though they have only acquired at the Cape a modern notoriety, have been used from the first day of discovery. They were common in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and under the same name, as may be seen in almost any of the Spanish and Portuguese historians of the West Indies and South America.
The manner in which these commandoes were conducted at the Cape was described, before the Parliamentary Committee of 1837,[2] to be a joint assemblage of burghers and military force for the purpose of enforcing restitution of cattle. Sir Lowry Cole authorized in 1833 any field-cornet, or deputy field-cornet, to whom a boor may complain, to send a party of soldiers on the track and recover the cattle. These persons are often of the most indifferent class of society. It is the interest of these men, as much as that of the boors, to make inroads into the country of the Griquas, Bushmen, or Caffres, and sweep off droves of cattle. These people can call on everybody to aid and assist, and away goes the troop. The moment the Caffres perceive these licensed marauders approaching their kraal, they collect their cattle as fast as they can, and drive them off towards the woods. The English pursue—they surround them if possible—they fall on them; the Caffres, or whoever they are, defend their property—their only subsistence, indeed; then ensues bloodshed and devastation. The cattle are driven off; the calves left behind to perish; the women and children, the whole tribe, are thrown into a state of absolute famine. Besides these "joint assemblages of burghers and military force," there are parties entirely military sent on the same errand; and to such a pitch of vengeance have the parties arrived that whole districts have been laid in flames and reduced to utter deserts. Such has been our system—the system of us humane and virtuous English, till 1837! To these dreadful and wicked expeditions there was no end, and but little cessation, for the boors were continually going over the boundaries into the countries of Bushmen, Caffres, or Guiquas, just as they pleased. They went over with vast herds and eat them up. "In 1834 there were said to be," says the Report, "about 1,500 boors on the other side of the Orange River, and for the most part in the Griqua country. Of these there were 700 boors for several months during that year in the district of Philipolis alone, with at least 700,000 sheep, cattle, and horses. Besides destroying the pastures of the people, in many instances their corn-fields were destroyed by them, and in some instances they took possession of their houses. It was contended that the evil could not be remedied; that the state of the country was such that the boors could not be stopped; and yet an enormous body of military was kept up on the frontiers at a ruinous expense to this country. The last Caffre war, brought on entirely by this system of aggression, by these commandoes, and the reprisals generated by them, cost this country 500,000l., and put a stop to trade and the sale of produce to the value of 300,000l. more!" Yet the success of a different policy was before the colony, in the case of the Kat River Hottentots, and that so splendid a one, that the Report says, had it been attended to and followed out, all these outrages might have been spared.
Such are commandoes.—So far as they related to the Bushmen, the following facts are sufficiently indicative. In 1774 an order was issued for the extirpation of the Bushmen, and three commandoes were sent to execute it. In 1795, the Earl of Macartney, by proclamation, authorized the landdrosts and magistrates to take the field against the Bushmen, in such expeditions; and Mr. Maynier gave in evidence, that in consequence, when he was landdrost of Graaf Reynet, parties of from 200 to 300 boors were sent out, who killed many hundreds of Bushmen, chiefly women and children, the men escaping; and the children too young to carry off for slaves had their brains knocked out against the rocks.[3] Col. Collins, in his tour to the north-eastern boundary in 1809, says one man told him that within a period of six years parties under his orders had killed or taken 3,200 of these unfortunate creatures; and another, that the actions in which he had been engaged had destroyed 2,700. That the total extinction of the Bushmen race was confidently hoped for, but sufficient force for the purpose could not be raised. But Dr. Philips' evidence, presented in a memorial to government in 1834, may well conclude these horrible details of the deeds of our countrymen and colonists.
"A few years ago, we had 1,800 Boschmen belonging to two missionary institutions, among that people in the country between the Snewbergen and the Orange River, a country comprehending 42,000 square miles; and had we been able to treble the number of our missionary stations over that district, we might have had 5,000 of that people under instruction. In 1832 I spent seventeen days in that country, travelling over it in different directions. I then found the country occupied by the boors, and the Boschmen population had disappeared, with the exception of those that had been brought up from infancy in the service of the boors. In the whole of my journey, during the seventeen days I was in the country, I met with two men and one woman only of the free inhabitants, who had escaped the effects of the commando system, and they were travelling by night, and concealing themselves by day, to escape being shot like wild beasts. Their tale was a lamentable one: their children had been taken from them by the boors, and they were wandering about in this manner from place to place, in the hope of finding out where they were, and of getting a sight of them."
I have glanced at the treatment of the Griquas in the last page but one. Those people were the offspring of colonists by Hottentot women, who finding themselves treated as an inferior race by their kinsmen of European blood, and prevented from acquiring property in land, or any fixed property, fled from contumely and oppression to the native tribes.
Amongst the vast mass of colonial crime, that of the treatment of the half-breed race by their European fathers constitutes no small portion. Everywhere this unfortunate race has been treated alike; in every quarter of the globe, and by every European people. In Spanish America it was the civil disqualification and social degradation of this race that brought on the revolution, and the loss of those vast regions to the mother country. In our East Indies, what thousands upon thousands of coloured children their white fathers have coolly abandoned; and while they have themselves returned to England with enormous fortunes, and to establish new families to enjoy them, have left there their coloured offspring to a situation the most painful and degrading—a position of perpetual contempt and political degradation. In our West Indies how many thousands of their own children have been sold by their white fathers, in the slave-market, or been made to swelter under the lash on their own plantations. Here, in South Africa, this class of descendents were driven from civilization to the woods and the savages, and a miserable and savage race they became. It was not till 1800 that any attempts were made to reclaim them, and then it was no parental or kindred feeling on the part of the colonists that urged it; it was attempted by the missionaries, who, as in every distant scene of our crimes, have stepped in between us and the just vengeance of heaven, between us and the political punishment of our own absurd and wicked policy, between us and the miserable natives. Mr. Anderson, their first missionary, found them "a herd of wandering and naked savages, subsisting by plunder and the chase. Their bodies were daubed with red paint, their heads loaded with grease and shining powder, with no covering but the filthy caross over their shoulders. Without knowledge, without morals, or any traces of civilization, they were wholly abandoned to witchcraft, drunkenness, licentiousness, and all the consequences which arise from the unchecked growth of such vices. With his fellow-labourer, Mr. Kramer, Mr. Anderson wandered about with them five years and a half, exposed to all the dangers and privations inseparable from such a state of society, before they could induce them to locate where they are now settled."
With one exception, they had not one thread of European clothing amongst them. They were in the habit of plundering one another, and saw no manner of evil in this, or any of their actions. Violent deaths were common. Their usual manner of living was truly disgusting, and they were void of shame. They were at the most violent enmity with the Bushmen, and treated them on all occasions where they could, with the utmost barbarity. So might these people, wretched victims of European vice and contempt of all laws, human or divine, have remained, had not the missionaries, by incredible labours and patience, won their good will. They have now reduced them to settled and agricultural life; brought them to live in the most perfect harmony with the Bushmen; and. in 1819 such was their altered condition that a fair was established at Beaufort for the mutual benefit of them and the colonists, at which business was done to the amount of 27,000 rix dollars; and on the goods sold to the Griquas, the colonists realized a profit of from 200 to 300 per cent!
Let our profound statesmen, who go on from generation to generation fighting and maintaining armies, and issuing commandoes, look at this, and see how infinitely simple men, with but one principle of action to guide them—Christianity—outdo them in their own profession. They are your missionaries, after all the boast and pride of statesmanship, who have ever yet hit upon the only true and sound policy even in a worldly point of view;[4] who, when the profound statesmen have turned men into miserable and exasperated savages, are obliged to go and again turn them from savages to men,—who, when these wise statesmen have spent their country's money by millions and shed blood by oceans, and find troubles and frontier wars, and frightful and fire-blackened deserts only growing around—go, and by a smile and a shake of the hand, restore peace, replace these deserts by gardens and green fields, and hamlets of cheerful people; and instead of involving you in debt, find you a market with 200 to 500 per cent, profit!
"It was apparent," says Captain Stockenstrom, "to every man, that if it had not been for the influence which the missionaries had gained over the Griquas we should have had the whole nation down upon us." What a humiliation to the pride of political science, to the pride of so many soi-disant statesmen, that with so many ages of experience to refer to, and with such stupendous powers as European statesmen have now in their hands, a few simple preachers should still have to shew them the real philosophy of government, and to rescue them from the blundering and ruinous positions in which they have continually placed themselves with uneducated nations! "If these Griquas had come down upon us," continues Captain Stockenstrom, "we had no force to arrest them; and I have been informed, that since I left the colony, the government has been able to enter into a sort of treaty with the chief Waterboer, of a most beneficial nature to the Corannas and Griqueis themselves, as well as to the safety of the northern frontier."
If noble statesmen wish to hear the true secret of good and prosperous government, they have only to listen to this chief, "who boasts," to use the words of the Parliamentary Report, "no higher ancestry than that of the Hottentot and the Bushman."—"I feel that I am bound to govern my people by Christian principles. The world knows by experience, and I know in my small way, and I know also from my Bible, that the government which is not founded on the principles of the Bible must come to nothing. When governments lose sight of the principles of the Bible, partiality, injustice, oppression and cruelty prevail, and then suspicion, want of confidence, jealousy, hatred, revolt, and destruction succeed. Therefore I hope it will ever be my study, that the Bible should form the foundation of every principle of my government; then I and my people will have a standard to which we can appeal, which is clear, and comprehensive, and satisfactory, and by which we shall all be tried, and have our condition determined in the day of judgment. The relation in which I stand to my people as their chief, as their leader, binds me, by all that is sacred and dear, to seek their welfare and promote their happiness; and by what means shall I be able to do this? This I shall best be able to do by alluding to the principles of the Bible. Would governors and governments act upon the simple principle by which we are bound to act as individuals, that is, to do as we would be done by, all would be well. I hope, by the principles of the gospel, the morals of my people will continue to improve; and it shall be my endeavour, in humble dependence on the Divine blessing, that those principles shall lose none of their force by my example. Sound education I know will civilize them, make them wise, useful, powerful, and secure amongst their neighbours; and the better they are educated, the more clearly will they see that the principles of the Bible are the best principles for the government of individuals, of families, of tribes, and of nations."
Not only governors but philosophers may listen to this African chief with advantage. Some splendid reputations have been made in Europe by merely taking up some one great principle of the Christian code and vaunting it as a wonderful discovery. A thousand such principles are scattered through the Bible, and the greatest philosophers of all, as well as the profoundest statesmen, are they who are contented to look for them there, and in simple sincerity to adopt them.