CHAPTER XIV.

The Caffers: Their Name, Appearance, Mode of Life, &c. -Their First Intercourse with the Colonists-Conflicts with them in Bruintjes-hoogtè and the Zureveld-Settlement of the Eastern Boundary in 1798-Caffer War of 1811Invasion of Cafferland in 1818-The Prophet Makanna -Attack on Graham's Town-Speech of Makanna's Pagati, and Fate of that Chief-Lord Charles Somerset's Frontier Policy, and Distribution of the Ceded Territory -The Commando System-Slaughter of Caffer Envoys in 1824, and of the Chief Seko and his Followers in 1830Recent State of affairs both on the Northern and Eastern Frontiers-Treatment of the Chief Makomo-Change of System proposed.

A RESIDENCE of nearly three years on the eastern frontier, naturally led me to pay considerable attention to the character of our colonial relations with the Caffer tribes; and my intimacy with several intelligent officers who had had much intercourse with those tribes, both in peace and war, as well as with missionaries long resident among them, having enabled me to acquire information on many points which my own limited opportunities of observation did not embrace, I shall endeavour to throw together, in the present chapter, a brief summary of my researches on this topic.

For ample details relative to the manners, customs, and internal polity of the Caffer tribes, I must refer to other writers -Barrow, Lichtenstein, Thompson, Kay. I offer the following few prefatory remarks for the sake merely of readers hitherto unacquainted with this subject.

The term Caffer, like that of Hottentot, is entirely unknown in the language of the people to whom it is applied. It was originally a term of contumely (being the Arabic word Cafir

or Kafir, signifying Infidel) employed by the Moorish or Arabian inhabitants of the north-eastern coast to designate the nations of South-eastern Africa who had not embraced the Mohammedan faith; and from them the term was adopted by the early European navigators. The appellation, though sometimes still applied in a more extensive sense, is generally used in the Cape Colony, to denote the three contiguous tribes of Amakosa, Amatembu, and Amaponda; of whom the last may be considered identical with the Mambo, or what used to be called the Mambookie, nation. These three tribes, though governed by several independent chiefs, are decidedly one people; their language, manners, customs, and polity being essentially the same. The Amakosa, whose territory borders with the colony from the Winterberg to the coast, is the tribe with whom our intercourse, both in peace and war, has been far the most frequent.

The Caffers are a tall, athletic, and handsome race of men, with features often approaching to the European or Asiatic model; and, excepting their woolly hair, exhibiting few of the peculiarities of the negro race. Their colour is a clear dark brown. Their address is frank, cheerful, and manly. Their government is patriarchal; and the privileges of rank are cȧrefully maintained by the chieftains. Their principal wealth and means of subsistence consist in their numerous herds of cattle. The females also cultivate pretty extensively maize, millet, water-melons, and a few other esculents; but they are decidedly a nation of herdsmen-war, hunting, barter, and agriculture being only occasional occupations.

In their customs and traditions, there seem to be indications of their having sprung, at some remote period, from a people of much higher civilisation than is now exhibited by any of the tribes of Southern Africa; whilst the rite of circumcision, universally practised among them without any vestige of Islamism, and several other traditionary customs greatly resembling the Levitical rules of purification, would seem to indicate some former connection with a people of Arabian, Hebrew, or per

THEIR FIRST INTERCOURSE WITH THE COLONISTS. 283

haps, Abyssinian lineage. Nothing like a regular system of idolatry exists among them; but we find some traces of belief in a Supreme Being, as well as in inferior spirits, and sundry superstitious usages that look like the shattered wrecks of ancient religious institutions. Of their superstitions, the belief in sorcery is far the most mischievous, leading, in the same way as among the negroes on the west coast, to many acts of revolting oppression and cruelty.

The clothing of both sexes consists entirely of the skins of animals, rendered soft and pliable by a sort of currying. Their arms are the assagai or javelin, a short club, and a large shield of bullock's or buffalo's hide. The wars between the contiguous tribes above-mentioned, or the several clans with each other, are seldom very bloody, generally arising from quarrels relating to their respective pasture-grounds or the stealing of cattle, and bearing little resemblance to the ferocious mode of warfare recently pursued with such destructive effect by the Zoola nations. The females are seldom slain in their internal wars; and in their conflicts with the colonists, there are many wellknown examples of their humanity towards females who had fallen into their hands. They are barbarians, but not savages, in the strict and proper sense of the term.

It is a curious and characteristic circumstance that the earliest notice upon record, of intercourse between the Cape colonists and the Caffers, is an account of a maurauding expedition by a party of the former against the latter. In 1701, a band of Cape-Dutch freebooters, under the name of traders or barterers, marched to the eastward, and after an absence of seven months returned with a large quantity of cattle and sheep, which they had obtained by plundering a nation called Cabuquas, or Great Caffers, (probably Tambuquas, i. e. Amatembu,) together with two kraals of Hottentots. In the attacks made upon these then remote tribes, numbers of the natives had been slaughtered. The facts are stated in a despatch sent to Holland in 1702 by the Governor and Council of the Cape of Good Hope, who, while they deplore "the intolerable and con

tinued excesses of some of the free inhabitants, in committing acts of violence, with robberies and murders, and by these abominable means depriving those poor people of their subsistence," declare at the same time their inability to punish the delinquents *.

The impunity thus enjoyed by the colonial freebooters (who consisted for the most part of the very refuse of Europe, disbanded soldiers from mercenary regiments in the Dutch service, and the like), led, as was to be expected, to the frequent renewal of similar marauding excursions. By this means, and by the gradual occupation of all the best parts of the country, the Hottentot race were, as we have seen, at length either extirpated, reduced to thraldom, or driven to the northern deserts. The Caffers, a more numerous and warlike people, and acting together in large masses, were not so easily overwhelmed. They appear to have successfully resisted on many occasions the attacks of the colonists; but, having only their slender missiles to oppose to the musket, they also often suffered dreadfully from their aggressions †.

The Caffers had been for several generations gradually pressing upon the Hottentot race from the eastward. This is not only known from traditionary memorials, but is manifest from most of the names of the rivers west of the Kei being of Hottentot etymology. The Hottentot hordes do not appear to have been extirpated by them, but to have been partly pushed farther westward, and partly incorporated with their frontier clans. The Ghonaqua tribe, once numerous and powerful, consisted of a people of mixed Caffer and Hottentot lineage; and the dialect now spoken by the frontier Caffers partakes to a certain extent of the Hottentot cluck, a peculiarity not to be found among the tribes farther back.

The country between the Camtoos and Great Fish rivers was, up to 1778, partly occupied by the Ghonaqua tribes

Vaillant, vol. i. pp. 337, 352.-See also Capt. Stout's account of the Wreck of the Hercules, (English Abridgment,) p. 80.

DISPUTES RESPECTING BOUNDARY.

285

and other hordes of Hottentots still enjoying a precarious independence, partly by Caffer clans, intermingled with the Ghonaquas, and partly by European colonists, who, in defiance of the colonial regulations, had taken possession of the choicest spots they could find beyond the nominal boundary-then Camtoos river. In 1778, the Governor, Van Plettenberg, having, in the course of an extensive tour which he made into the interior, visited Bruintjes-hoogtè, and finding a considerable number of colonists occupying tracts beyond the frontier, instead of recalling them within the legal limits, he extended the boundary (according to the ordinary practice of Cape Governors, before and since), adding, by a stroke of his pen, about 30,000 square miles to the colonial territory. It was at this period that the Great Fish River was first declared to be the colonial boundary on the east. The rights of the Ghonaquas and other independent Hottentot tribes within the extensive region thus acquired, do not appear to have occupied a single thought; the boors were left to deal with them has they had dealt with their brethren already extinct: but with the more formidable Caffers, the form of an agreement was observed. Colonel Collins relates that Colonel Gordon was sent in search of Caffers as far as the Keiskamma, and that he conducted a few' to the Governor, who obtained their consent that the Great Fish River should thenceforth be considered the boundary between the two countries *.

Who were the few' that concurred in this agreement, it would be vain to inquire; but it is certain that the principal Caffer chiefs who had an interest in the affair refused to recognize it. Jalumba, then chief of the Amandanka clan of the Amakosa, endeavoured to maintain his ground in Bruintjeshoogte. "The inhabitants," says Colonel Collins, "reminded Jalumba (in 1781) of the recent treaty, and required his immediate departure. Their remonstrance having been disre

Supplement to the Relations of a Journey into the Countries of the Bosjesman and Caffer People.' By Lieutenant-Colonel Collins. 1809. MS.