Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
“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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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