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
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.[66] 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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