Another and larger division was formed by the union of several smaller parties at a rocky peak called Thaba ’Ntshu, situated near the eastern border of what is now the Orange Free State, and visible from Bloemfontein. This division soon became involved in hostilities with a branch of the fierce Zulu race, known in later history as the Matabele. The chief of this tribe, Moselekatse, was a general of much talent and energy as well as a brave warrior. The Matabele, regarding the Africanders as trespassers upon their territory, immediately provoked war by attacking and massacring a small detached body of emigrants. Doubtless the whites were intruders; but they knew that the Matabele had lately slaughtered or driven out of that region the weaker Kaffir tribes, and therefore had no conscientious scruples about meting to them the same treatment they had measured to others. Indeed, the Africanders seem to have regarded their relation to all the natives as being similar to that of the Israelites under Joshua to the tribes of Canaan—they were there to possess the land, and to reduce the heathen inhabitants to submission and servitude by whatever means it might be necessary to use. They now had an unprovoked and murderous attack to avenge, which they proceeded to do with great promptitude and courage. Hurling their whole strength against Moselekatse with the utmost fury, they routed his greatly superior force with terrific slaughter, so that he fled before them, far and fast, toward the northwest, not halting in his flight until he had crossed the Limpopo River. There he, in turn, made havoc of the natives dwelling between that stream and the Zambesi River, and established in that region the Matabele kingdom in such strength that it continued a scourge to all neighboring peoples until its overthrow in 1893. By the defeat and expulsion of the Matabele the Africanders obtained possession of the immense territories lying between the Orange River on the south and the Limpopo on the north. The small communities with which they were able to people the country at first grew in numbers until they became in course of time, the population of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.