1Although inhospitable, the Cedarberg is far from uninhabitable or innavigable. For at least the last 10,000 years, people lived from foraging and hunting. They responded to environmental change and either adapted to the arrival of pastoralists or selectively adopted herding practices.1 Specific histories of these communities remain irretrievable, but the general contours of settlement are clear.

2Hunters and herders used the Olifants River area extensively, and in some places intensively, long before the arrival of colonial explorers and settlers.2 The relative paucity of references to Khoikhoi and San in contemporary colonial documents may well reveal more about European reporting priorities than about actual indigenous land and resource use.3 Although the colonial records are imperfect, read critically and in conjunction with archaeological evidence they provide a basis for understanding the tendentious and uneven encounters between settlers and Khoisan.4

3Early colonial relations ranged from awkward coexistence to armed conflict. From the beginning of permanent VOC settlement in 1652, interaction between the groups was ambivalent; both Khoisan and colonists had reason to be wary of the other. Thus European exploration was cautious and the settler frontier advanced in fits and starts during the eighteenth century. Whether it was the result of selective viewing, edited reporting, or the cyclical, seasonal use of territory by the Khoisan, the first things Jan Danckaert saw when he arrived in the Olifants River Valley were elephants. The earliest official, documented European expedition to breach the Piekeniers Kloof Pass and travel in the river valley was Danckaert's party in 1660.5 Other expeditions followed Danckaert's trail at irregular intervals until sustained colonial occupation began in 1725.6

^top

Khoisan Land Use

4Colonization, however, was not the first catalyst for shifting human settlement patterns in the region. Environmental changes influenced population distribution over the preceding 15,000 years. In general terms, people altered the size of the groups they lived in, moved their territorial range, and shifted to plant-oriented food strategies from game-oriented organization in response to changing climatic conditions.7 Between 8000 and 4000 BP, lower rainfall and higher sea levels caused people to move into the mountains, adapting to available plant and animal life.8 Then, as the climate approached present conditions, people were able to establish links between the mountains and the coast.

5Around 2000 BP, the advent of pastoralism in the Western Cape caused a new series of changes. "The very large number of sites dated to the last two millennia at the coast and in the more isolated parts of the mountains may reflect a reorganization of hunter-gatherer subsistence in the face of this incursion."9 Under this most recent pattern, it is likely that groups gathered in the mountains on either side of the Olifants River during the late summer months, the driest part of the year.10 From early winter through the spring, winter rainfall would make the Karoo and the Sandveld more attractive, causing people to spread out from the mountains. Seasonal population dispersal in these areas is consistent with archaeological data and early travelers' accounts.11

6In much of the Southwestern Cape, herders and hunters shared the environment, but not without struggle. In mountainous areas and dry reaches of the interior, however, hunters were not challenged for the use of land until the arrival of European settlers in the eighteenth century. In areas where hunters were confronted by herders, the two groups were not always easy to distinguish, either to contemporary observers or in their archaeological signature. ". . . [B]road continuities in stone artifact traditions and in hunting-gathering patterns before and after the introduction of stock and pottery to the Cape suggest that acculturation (diffusion) was at least as important as population movement in promoting the spread of pastoralism."12

7 Large game animals such as eland are no longer wild in the Cedarberg, but their presence in rock art suggests they once grazed in the region. Fig. 3.1. Eland Torsos, Kridouw Krans When herders began arriving at the Cape 2000 years ago, they displaced hunters and put pressure on San society.13 The archaeological evidence is suggestive of conflict during the process. For example, an increase in the creation of rock art and a change in the art itself indicates a society under stress.14 On the coastal plain and in the better-watered areas of the interior, hunters and herders would have been in direct competition for occupancy of land and access to water. Domestic herds gradually displaced wild game, so hunters who did not merge with pastoralists either entered into the client relationships reported in colonial records or they retreated higher into the mountains and resorted to smaller prey.15 "The idea of hunting peoples being forced into less productive areas is . . . implied in both the historical and archaeological data."16

8The Khoikhoi's main domestic animals were cattle and sheep, the ratio of which varied in space and time. Goats were extremely rare. They kept dogs for both hunting and herding. Khoikhoi used cattle for dairy products as well as transportation of goods and people, but rarely for meat. Like San, Khoikhoi also hunted, trapped small game, and fished. Groups near the coast exploited marine resources, eating shellfish, seals, and whatever else they could catch or gather.

9Although Khoikhoi could not smelt metal, they did incorporate metal pieces into tools and weapons when it was available. For the most part, however, their technology was limited to the bone, stone, and wooden implements associated with Late Stone Age assemblages. Khoikhoi made distinctive pottery, which San did not, though they appear to have used Khoikhoi pots and shards when they were available. Khoikhoi lived in small, nomadic groups, housed in huts of woven mats that were easy to take apart, move, and rebuild.17

10Both Khoikhoi and San groups were mobile and probably aggregated at certain times of the year. For most of the time, however, indigenous groups were small, dispersed, and—with the exception of San rock painting—left little permanent trace on the landscape. Thus it is possible that land either looked or was empty of human habitation when first encountered by Europeans.

11 Rock Art Sites Fig. 3.2. Rock Art Sites The illusion of an empty interior was not sustainable, however. An expanding colonial frontier brought pastoralist-pastoralist competition.18 Trekboere (migrant farmers) moving just ahead of the colonial frontier with their herds, flocks, and households brought with them unprecedented competition for limited grazing land and access to water. Their arrival increased the pressure on game and was the harbinger of permanent settlement with permanent structures in the landscape. They brought with them new ideas and technology, most importantly the notions of exclusive access to land and the concept of fixed boundaries, as well as ironmongery and guns.

12Both within and beyond colonial territories, the imposition of European notions of land tenure brought colonists into direct conflict with indigenous hunting and herding populations.19 Colonial expansion produced competition for territory and resources that was unprecedented in Khoisan experience.20 There may well have been tension between hunting and herding groups that resulted in hunters inhabiting the rockier mountain regions while herders stuck to the coastal plains, but this debate among archaeologists is not resolved.21 There is rock art in the Cedarberg suggestive of combat, but it is impossible to situate in specific temporal or geographical context.22 There is also evidence that trade goods such as ostrich eggshell beads—and probably people as well—circulated with regularity between the coast and the mountains.23

^top

Loan Farms and the Colonial Frontier

13The earliest settler land claims in the Olifants River region were hunting and grazing permits granted by the Dutch East India Company to free burghers who requested them.24 This land tenure system was an outgrowth of the early mineral exploration and hunting permits that the VOC used to regulate travel to the interior from the 1650s. By the eighteenth century, most of the permits were for grazing land, rather than hunting or mineral extraction. As outlying areas were settled, land first used for seasonal grazing gradually became used more intensively. Crops, buildings, wells, dams, and other permanent improvements were introduced and loan farms became an integral part of the Cape's agricultural economy.

14The annual rent for a loan farm of 24 rixdollars was standard throughout the colony for most of the VOC period, though the consistency with which it was paid and the level of arrears tolerated by the Company varied greatly according to region and to the individual farmers. A loan farm permit had to be renewed each year, but this practice was followed rather loosely, with an extension being taken for granted unless transfer or termination was requested specifically. Rent, which could be paid in specie or livestock, was payable either at the landdrost or the Castle at the Cape.25 Farmers in outlying areas often paid several years at once, presumably due in part to the long journey from their farms to the seats of colonial authority. Even when combined payments of up to ten years at once did not completely eliminate arrears on a loan farm's rent, in most cases occupancy continued unchallenged. Despite directives from the Heren XVII that local authorities should be diligent in collecting payments to make the administration of the Cape less of a drain on the Company's coffers, cases of farmers in the Olifants River region being unable to renew their loan permits for nonpayment of arrears were rare.26

15A loan farm agreement did not grant title to the land—only permission to use the land—so loan farms could not actually be sold or bequeathed. However, a remnant of Dutch feudal land tenure practice stipulated that a tenant be compensated for physical improvements made to the land.27 Thus the value of buildings, crops, and any other nonmovable assets belonged to the tenant, not the landlord. At the Cape, this practice meant that although a loan farm holder could not transfer the land directly, he could dispose of the opstal (farm house and outbuildings). Since it was not possible to separate buildings and other improvements from the land they stood on, the value of the land—accessibility, fertility, and water sources—was embedded in the price of the opstal. Settlers and the Company understood any transfer to include the loan farm permit with its annual 24 rixdollars obligation, although technically the land itself was not sold and did not appreciate in monetary terms beyond the value of the rent to the Company.

16A loan farm was legally a limited land claim, but in practice it was de facto land ownership. This notion of ownership was conceived of in specific terms with roots in European practice. Settlers brought with them the idea of land as a partible, bounded commodity, owned by an individual (or self-selected partnership), transferable, and exclusive in perpetuity. This view of land ownership transcended the formal boundaries of the colonial frontier as the trekboere staked out territory for themselves beyond the claimed and administered districts of the VOC colony.28

^top

Sites of Struggle in the Landscape

17Settler expansion into the Olifants River Valley pushed indigenous populations onto increasingly marginal land. San who had been able to accommodate the pressure of encroaching pastoralists for nearly two millennia were virtually eliminated from the Southwestern Cape in less than two centuries of interaction with European colonists. The pastoralist Khoikhoi whose migration to the Cape changed the distribution of both human and animal populations were unable to retain an independent means of subsistence in the face of challenges from another pastoralist society, particularly once that society claimed land for permanent settlement. Khoisan reaction to colonial expansion included peaceful interaction, violent resistance, and complete withdrawal. The irrefutable material evidence of widespread and long-standing Khoisan presence in the Cedarberg adds resonance to the colonial documentary accounts of brutal and desperate battles for that land.

A site of contest: Now called Warmhoek Shelter, this site along the Jan Dissels River is between the 1725 Klein Valleij and 1726 Zeekoe Valleij loan farm claims. Fig. 3.3a. Warmhoek A site of contest: Now called Warmhoek Shelter, this site along the Jan Dissels River is between the 1725 Klein Valleij and 1726 Zeekoe Valleij loan farm claims. Fig. 3.3b. Warmhoek detail

18 It is possible that this and other eighteenth-century confrontations were more than generalized struggles over water sources and hunting or grazing terrain.29 Given the extent to which settlers established loan farms on land that harbors evidence of intensive Khoisan activity,30 they may have incited particular ire—knowingly or not—by exercising exclusive claims over places of material, strategic, and ritual significance to displaced Khoisan.31 Being denied access to sites of ritual importance was a devastating blow delivered to Khoisan at the same time they were being forced onto more marginal land or into colonial service.

^top

A Permanent Settler Presence

19 Early Cedarberg Settler Farms Fig. 3.4. Early Cedarberg Settler Farms The earliest settler occupation of land in the Olifants River Valley quickly became permanent. One advantage of the loan farm system from the tenant's perspective was that a farming family was not bound to a given piece of land and so could easily relocate if springs dried up or the land proved to be less productive than anticipated. By far the majority of the first loan farms registered in the region were renewed, however, and many were maintained throughout the VOC period. A good number of those farms were then converted to the quitrent system under British administration of the Cape.32 Several of the original farm names still exist today, though the boundaries have changed numerous times in the interval. Figure 3.5 is a chronological list of the permits issued in the first five years of settlement in the area and gives an indication of the extent to which the first land claims were quickly renewed.

20 Five Years of Cedarberg Loan farm Claims Fig. 3.5. First Five Years of Cedarberg Loan Farm Claims The surviving loan farm records are incomplete and the indexing system in the Cape Archives is only partial. Nevertheless there is abundant—though imperfect—information upon which to base firm conclusions about the nature of early colonial land tenure.33 The loan farm system provided long-term stability in conjunction with ease of transfer, despite the fact that leases needed to be renewed each year. The practical functionality of loan farms enabled colonial settlement in the Cedarberg, since tenure was secure enough to encourage farmers to make permanent improvements to their land. Moreover, those improvements were readily transferable, which allowed a farmer options for the future: either to sell and move on, or to bequeath and build family wealth.

21 Cedarberg Loan Farm Tenure Patterns Fig. 3.6. Cedarberg Loan Farm Tenure Patterns Lange Valleij, the first loan farm granted in the region, is typical of settler land tenure patterns in the Cedarberg (see Figure 3.6). Johannes Ras held the first permit from 1725 to 1728.34 He subsequently transferred the farm to Andries Kruger, who held a series of consecutive permits from 1728 until 1734.35 Then Cornelis Heufke took the farm and kept the title for 25 years.36 In 1759, Heufke transferred Lange Valleij to Lucas and Class Visagie, who stayed on the land another twenty years.37

22 Increasing Number of Loan Farm Claims Fig. 3.7. Increasing Number of Loan Farm Claims in the Eighteenth Century Whether an individual chose to transfer a loan farm away or to keep the land within a kin network made little difference in the use of the land. Except for the years of particularly violent conflict between Khoisan and settlers leading up to the frontier war of 1739, few of the Olifants River loan farms remained unclaimed or unoccupied by Europeans during the eighteenth century. Once land formally came within the realm of colonial occupation it was not readily given up, despite armed Khoisan resistance. Initially, claimants used outlying loan farms as seasonal livestock stations, providing grazing areas for sheep and cattle that could not be accommodated at the owner's principal farm. Within the first three years of permits being granted for the Olifants River Valley, settlers began to establish a permanent presence. More affluent colonists with access to productive arable land elsewhere tended to keep living at their principal farm, using the Cedarberg only for grazing. Those with fewer means took advantage of the access to land, in spite of its remote location, to establish farmsteads.

23 Daniel Pfeil, for example, was a prominent and wealthy burgher. His Cedarberg farms Zeekoe Valleij (1726) and Brakkefontein (1727) were undoubtedly grazing land and not residential locations. According to the opgaaf, or census, in 1725 his primary residence was in the Cape district, where he lived with his wife, three daughters, a knecht (in this case, an overseer), 36 slaves, 16 horses, 100 head of cattle, 400 sheep, and 40 pigs. His farm produced wine, wheat, and barley. On a Stellenbosch district farm he kept an additional 100 cattle and 400 sheep.38 Two years later his primary farm was still in the Cape district, and he was blessed now with another daughter, three more knechten, fewer horses, more pigs, and no other livestock. He claimed 100 cattle and 200 sheep at a secondary farm in Voor Stellenbosch.39 He pastured more cattle at Brakkefontein.40 Pfeil had other loan farms during the 1720s in Tulbagh and Elsenberg, suggesting that he acquired grazing land when and where it was convenient. Alewijn Smit, in contrast, did not claim a loan farm outside the Olifants River area in the 1720s, so he must have been counted for the opgaaf while living on Thein Rivieren.41

24The census was taken geographically and reported according to wyk, administrative subdivisions within districts, so it gives a rough indication of who people's neighbors were.42 Since farms were not laid out in any systematic way, no serial list can be completely representative of spatial relationships, but lists organized according to wyk are strongly suggestive.43

25 Having title to more than one farm was relatively common, and not just among men of substance like Daniel Pfeil. Farmers of more moderate means like Putter also had multiple farms, typically more regionally concentrated. Within a given area, multiple farm ownership provided one basis for the tight social network that connected people, land, and labor across relatively long distances. Regular movement of people and livestock from one farm to another permitted the exploitation of seasonally available water and vegetation. This movement, driven by economic and environmental imperatives, provided an opportunity for people to form and strengthen social relationships. This process was true for farmers—who often worked in partnership with extended family members—as well as for slaves, who moved among the properties of their masters, as well as to farms belonging to others.44

Cross Reference:
The van der Merwe family offers an example of this social network.
Cross Reference:
The Burger family offers an example of family economic partnerships.
Cross Reference:
The Lubbe family offers an example of family economic partnerships.

26Settlers and slaves moved through the region along a network of farms linked by family ties and reciprocal obligations, which must have disrupted Khoisan society to an even greater extent than the mere presence of competing pastoralists. The movement of people and livestock strengthened settler society because it facilitated the flow of information and enhanced people's knowledge of the local terrain, thereby more firmly entrenching settler presence in the Olifants River Valley. The relationships formed among farms, farming families, and their slaves linked the valley to the surrounding mountains, the coastal plains, and the interior. The settler network thus spanned topographical and climatic divisions with a frequency and intensity unprecedented before the eighteenth century.

27Putter, for example, had one farm in the mountains and another in the valley. Though the properties were less than twenty kilometers apart, the variation in surface water would have permitted advantageous seasonal exploitation. Putter would graze his small herd of 14 cattle and 60 sheep in the Piekeniers Kloof during the rainy winter months and move to the farm Halve Dorschvloer along the river for the hot, dry summer.45

28Dissel and his wife Maria Vosloo were more prosperous in terms of agricultural production and land title than Putter; they exploited environmental differentiation across their farms. They grew wine grapes and wheat on their principal farm, while their livestock moved among three locations: Drakenstein, the coastal plain between the Cedarberg and the Atlantic, and over a ridge near the Olifants River. 46 This arrangement permitted Jan and Maria to spread out a relatively large flock to avoid overgrazing, and also provided access to water during the driest months of the year.

29 Genealogy Chart: Fig. 3.8. The Vosloo Family The fact that the Dissel household slaves moved regularly among these farms, as well as to neighboring farms, comes through in the trial of four of Dissel's slaves who ran away in the company of seven others.47 Testimony from other cases against deserters suggests there must have been regular contact among slaves of different households and that the movement of slaves and Khoisan servants among farms was a regular, unremarkable occurrence.48

30 The evidence for reconstructing the bonds that forged colonial society across great distances and linked settlers to the land tends to be androcentric, though not exclusive of women. Loan farm permits, rent payment registers, freehold titles, auction records, the opgaaf, and even court documents obscure the extent to which women participated in the economic life of this agricultural society. Although Roman-Dutch law stipulates community property within marriage, only men were listed as titleholders, unless the woman was a widow. There are instances of unmarried women having property, but they are unusual. Women do, however, make it into the official records of the eighteenth century Cape, though in a subordinated way that masks the extent of their influence.

Cross Reference:
The van der Merwe family offers many examples of the underreported role of women forging family networks

31Links to extended families, intricate property networks, marriage patterns intended to optimize inheritance, and local alliances turned on women's participation. Maria Vosloo's case, for example, shows that she brought more to her third marriage than livestock, slaves, and access to land. When some of the Dissel household slaves ran away, they fled with some of Jan Botma's slaves. From the court documents, their flight together might seem coincidental. The fact that Botma was Maria's son-in-law is not included in the trial record, obscuring the family link between him and Dissel. The relationships among their slaves, the proximity of their farms, and the fact that Dissel and Botma must have shared more than discontent among their slaves is implied in the evidence presented to the Council of Justice, but Maria and her role in linking the two men is absent altogether.49

^top

Changing Khoisan Land Tenure Options

32Despite the deep division between Khoisan and colonial land use in the Cedarberg, land tenure patterns were not racially-based in the eighteenth century. There were no statutes limiting land title to whites or Europeans, although in practice those people with formal property rights under VOC administration were predominantly colonists. Predominantly is not exclusively, however, and the few exceptions to the prevailing pattern of colonial land tenure are important to note. Although not numerically significant, the fact that twenty loan farm permits in the Cedarberg area were held by individuals identified as being Bastaard or Bastaard-Hottentot indicates that the barriers to indigenous people claiming land under colonial authority were likely economic and social rather than racial.

33 Khoisan and Mixed-Race Loan Farm ClaimantsFig. 3.9. Khoisan and Mixed-Race Loan Farm Claimants The list of Khoisan and mixed race farmers in Figure 3.9 is not exhaustive. Unlike later nineteenth- and twentieth-century land registration practices, eighteenth-century titles were not categorized according to race, so the racial identity of landholders features only incidentally. In most cases, loan farm records identify claimants as being either a burgher or a widow, Bastaard or Hottentot. Further research in other regions is likely to uncover more examples of Khoisan land tenure in colonial terms. This initial sampling from the Cedarberg, however, is sufficient to show that settled farming and formal title to land were not restricted to colonists of European origin. The Dutch "legal hegemony over the landscape" was not as complete as Guelke and Shell assert.50

34Granted, if Khoisan wanted to claim land in areas where European settlement had begun in earnest, then they needed to make that claim in colonial terms, thereby participating in the orthodox society. The fact that Khoisan could pursue formal land title implies that they were not excluded from participation, as previous scholarship suggests.51 According to Guelke and Shell, "There is only one example in the Dutch period of a Khoikhoi laying claim to property, namely Adam Kok, described in the source as a 'Hottentot' . . . "52 This new evidence makes it clear that people other than Adam Kok chose to make claims to land and a place in colonial society. Although these individuals were not numerous, we should not overlook them.

35 Loan Farms Claimed by Khoisan and Mixed-Race Individuals Fig. 3.10. Loan Farms Claimed by Khoisan and Mixed-Race Individuals Their presence as property holders in colonial documents further indicates that people of mixed or indigenous descent did not have to appear European or be identified as European in order to participate in colonial society. These few loan farm holders suggest that at least in terms of land tenure, Khoisan did not have to "pass unobtrusively" in Cape society.53 Assuming they could pay the rent, they could participate as property owners.

36Khoisan landholders in the Cedarberg were clustered in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Perhaps it took a generation of sustained contact until individual Khoisan perceived there might be a benefit to claiming land according to VOC tenure practice. Perhaps it took that long until the land on which those individuals were living fell under an acquisitive colonial gaze, prompting an individual to preempt claim by another. Perhaps it was not until the 1770s that participating as a colonial landholder was a preferable option to further retreat from an advancing settler frontier.

37Did people like Cornelis Koopman, Frederik Diederiksz, and Jan Swart Jansz use their land as household farmsteads, like frontier colonists? Or were their permits rather to secure access to grazing ground before all the better lands were claimed by settlers? Did they hold the land in the name of a group who lived communally, as their forebears did? If so, where did these people go when they were not in residence on the loan farm? The Oud Wildschutte Boeke do not specify land use on loan farms. The volumes record permits for hunting, grazing, and wood collecting, but do not otherwise define the terms of occupation. Consequently, we can only continue to speculate about what actually happened when colonial land tenure and Khoisan land use met on the same terrain.

^top

Contested Land, Enduring Landscape

38 Sites of Contest Fig. 3.11. Sites of Contest The locations of the earliest loan farms granted in the Olifants River Valley coincide with points of intensive previous use as suggested by the frequency of Late Stone Age evidence, both rock paintings and stone tool assemblages. Based on the loan farms granted between 1725 and the 1740s, it is clear that farmers were competing with hunters and herders for use of the same places. This argument is intuitive: the land is unequally endowed, so people and animals gravitate toward areas with the best quality or highest concentration of natural resources.

39Jan van Riebeeck understood that conflict between colonists and the indigenous population had to do with contested resources—cattle, pasturage, water. The archaeological record read in conjunction with documentary evidence gives specific, tangible substance to struggles in the Cedarberg. In the face of expanding colonial settlement, the indigenous inhabitants of the Western Cape fought not only for access to the means of economic subsistence independent from colonial service, but also to maintain the integrity of their social structures and belief system.

Evidence of gender differentiation emerges in Cedarberg rock art, a sign of social structures that left few other traces. Fig. 3.12a. Woman, Salman's Laagter Evidence of gender differentiation emerges in Cedarberg rock art, a sign of social structures that left few other traces. Fig. 3.12b. Men, Warmhoek

40 From the 1740s, the colonial presence became more entrenched in the Cedarberg. Earlier farms were maintained and permits in the region continued to be granted at a steady rate, once the region recovered from the frontier war of 1739, as shown in Figure 3.6. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, some Khoisan began to claim land under colonial authority, indicating the extent to which the loan farm system determined land tenure. Despite long distances and rugged terrain, the settlers established a tightly woven social network that that was instrumental in maintaining colonial land claims, since it facilitated transportation, communication, and seasonal land use. This network also linked the region to the wider colony.

At elevation and with limited perennial water, landscapes such as this were used regularly by Khoisan, then subsequently claimed as loan farms by settlers and Khoisan or mixed-race individuals. In this region, Cornelis Koopman claimed Doornbosch in 1754 while the nearby Onrust was claimed by Barend Lubbe and then by his son Frans (1750�1791). Fig. 3.13. Landscape Near Doornbosch 41Increasing colonial presence disrupted the seasonal mobility of indigenous hunters and herders. However, the introduction of fixed boundaries, exclusive access to land, and permanent settlement did not alter the landscape fundamentally. The arid climate and low carrying capacity of the land meant that colonial settlers, like Khoikhoi, relied on pastoralism for sustenance, supplemented by hunting. Although arable agriculture did not begin to figure prominently until the introduction of citrus at the end of the eighteenth century, from the 1730s the permanent nature of European settlement challenged both hunting and herding lifestyles to the point that Khoisan either retreated further from colonial presence or entered into the service of frontier farmers. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, however, a few Khoisan managed an alternative to retreat or subservience and established an independent presence on the land in colonial terms.

Notes

Note 1: Tony Manhire, Later Stone Age Settlement Patterns in the Sandveld of the South-Western Cape Province, South Africa (Oxford: BAR, 1987); John Parkington, "Time and Place: Some Observations on Spatial and Temporal patterning in the Later Stone Age Sequence in Southern Africa," South African Archaeological Bulletin 35 (1980), 73–83. back

Note 2: Andrew Smith, Karim Sadr, John Gribble and Royden Yates, "Excavations in the South-Western Cape, South Africa and the Archaeological Identity of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Within the Last 2000 Years," South African Archaeological Bulletin 46 (1991), 71–91; Richard G. Klein, "The Prehistory of Stone Age Herders in the Cape Province, South Africa," Prehistoric Pastoralism in South Africa (South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 5, June 1986), 5–12. back

Note 3: Mary Louise Pratt, "Narrating the Anti-Conquest," in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. (London: Routledge, 1992), 38–68; J.M. Coetzee, "The Picturesque, the Sublime, and the South African Landscape," in White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 49–54. back

Note 4: Gyan Prakash, "Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism," American Historical Review 99:5 (1994), 1475–90; Laura J. Mitchell, "Material Culture and Cadastral Data: Documenting the Cedarberg Frontier, South Africa 1725–1795," in Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed, Toyin Falola and Christian Jennings, eds. (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2003), 16–32. back

Note 5: CA: VC 3 Dagregister. Anteyckenning gehouden by Jan Danckaert, Journael van een tocht na Monomotapa, 12 Nov. 1660–20 Jan. 1661. back

Note 6: For example, Pieter Cruijthoff in 1661, Pieter van Meerhoff in 1661, Cruijthoff again in 1662–63, Jonas de la Guerre in 1663–64, and Olof Bergh in 1682–83. For an account of the major seventeenth- and eighteenth-century expeditions that traveled to the Olifants River, see P.S. Scholtz, "Die historiese ontwikkeling van die Onder-Olifantsrivier, 1660–1902," Archives Yearbook for South African History (Cape Town: Staatsdrukker, 1966), 7–28. back

Note 7: Manhire et al., "A Distributional Approach," 29–30. back

Note 8: Parkington, "Late Pleistocene and Holocene Climates as Viewed from Verlore Vlei," Palaeontology Africa 23 (1980), 71. back

Note 9: Manhire et al, "A Distributional Approach," 29. back

Note 10: Parkington, "Soaqua: Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers of the Olifants River, Western Cape," South African Archaeological Bulletin 32 (1977), 150–57. back

Note 11: Manhire, et al, "A Distributional Approach," 30. back

Note 12: Klein, "The Prehistory of Stone Age Herders," 9; J. Deacon, "Later Stone Age People and Their Descendants in Southern Africa," in Southern African History and Paleoenvironments, ed. R. Klein (Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1984), 221–38. back

Note 13: J.E. Parkington, R.J. Yates, A.H. Manhire and D.J. Halkett, "The Social Impact of Pastoralism in the South-Western Cape," Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 5 (1986), 313–329. back

Note 14: J.D. Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Painting (London: Academic Press, 1981); Royden Yates and Anthony Manhire, "Shamanism and Rock Paintings: Aspects of the Use of Rock Art in the South-Western Cape, South Africa," South African Archaeological Bulletin 46 (1991), 3–11; Royden Yates, Jo Golson, and Martin Hall, "Trance Performance: The Rock Art of Boontjieskloof and Sevilla," South African Archaeological Bulletin 40 (1985), 70–80. back

Note 15: Smith, "Competition, Conflict and Clientship," 39; A.H. Manhire, J.E. Parkington, and T.S. Robey, "Stone Tools and Sandveld Settlement," in Frontiers: Southern African Archaeology Today, eds. D. Avery et al. (Oxford: BAR, 1984), 111–20. back

Note 16: Smith, "Competition, Conflict and Clientship," 39. back

Note 17: Klein, "The Prehistory of Stone Age Herders," 5. back

Note 18: Nigel Penn, "Pastoralists and Pastoralism in the Northern Cape Frontier Zone During the Eighteenth Century," Prehistoric Pastoralism in South Africa (South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 5, June 1986), 62–68. back

Note 19: Martin Legassick, "The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana, and the Missionaries, 1780–1840: The Politics of a Frontier Zone." (PhD diss., UCLA, 1970); Nigel Penn, The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the Eighteenth Century (Cape Town: Double Storey Books, 2005). back

Note 20: Elphick, Kraal and Castle. back

Note 21: Parkington, "Follow the San," (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1977). back

Note 22: For example, the well-known rock painting Veg en vlugte in the Cedarberg. See also Tony Manhire, John Parkington, and W. J. van Rijssen, "A Distributional Approach to the Interpretation of Rock Art in the South-Western Cape," in New Approaches to Southern African Rock Art (The South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, June 1983), 30–32 and figure 2. back

Note 23: Manhire, "Late Stone Age Settlement Patterns." back

Note 24: CA: RLR 6:58, Oude Wildschutte Boeke, 18 Oct. 1725. Lange Fontein granted to Johannes Ras. I am extremely grateful to Leonard Guelke for sharing his computerized Receiver of Land Revenue records with me. The Cape Archives has renumbered the RLR series since he cataloged the loan farm data. Unless noted otherwise, my references are also to the old numbering system. back

Note 25: The Castle of Good Hope was the home of the VOC government at the Cape. Local authority was represented by landdrosts, or magistrates. Throughout the eighteenth century the Olifants River was under the jurisdiction of the landdrost in Stellenbosch. back

Note 26: CA: 1/STB 11/18 and 1/STB 11/19, Register Grootboek van Leningsplase, 1793 and 1794. back

Note 27: Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 15001815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 160–62. back

Note 28: P.J. van der Merwe, Trek: Studies oor die Mobiliteit van die Pioniersbevolking aan die Kaap (Cape Town: Nasionale Pers Beperk, 1945). back

Note 29: Leonard Guelke and Robert Shell, "Landscape of Conquest: Frontier Water Alienation and Khoikhoi Strategies of Survival, 1652–1780," JSAS 18:4 (1992), 803–24. back

Note 30: Manhire, et al, "A Distributional Approach," 29–33. back

Note 31: Mitchell, "Material Culture"; Megan Biesele, "Interpretation in Rock Art and Folklore," New Approaches to Southern African Rock Art (South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 4, 1983), 54–55; Lewis-Williams, Believing and Seeing. back

Note 32: The quitrent system initiated after 1813 entailed an annual rent based on a valuation of the property, limited mineral rights, and a stronger sense of perpetuity of ownership than the previous loan farm system. Botha, Early Cape Land Tenure, 15–17. back

Note 33: From the Receiver of Land Revenue series (Oude Wildschutte Boeke), I identified 353 permits for 136 farms that lie in the Olifants River valley and the surrounding mountains. Several farms from the flats behind the Piketberg are also incorporated because they had clear links to farms and farmers in the initial sample. Because they are a part of the narrative, they are included in the numbers. back

Note 34: CA: RLR 6:58, 18 Oct. 1725. back

Note 35: CA: RLR 7:45, 8 Mar. 1728; 8:223, 1 Mar. 1729; 9:153, 1731. back

Note 36: CA: RLR 38:134, 22 June 1734. back

Note 37: CA: RLR 15:136, 9 Mar. 1759. back

Note 38: ARA: VOC 4096 OBP, 1725 opgaaf; Cape district; Stellenbosch district f. 6. back

Note 39: ARA: VOC 4103 OBP, 1727 opgaaf, Cape district f. 14; Voor Stellenbosch. back

Note 40: In the 1731 opgaaf, Daniel Pfeil reported 16 cattle and 300 sheep in the Cape district, and another 40 cattle and 150 sheep in the Drakenstein district, which encompassed Brakkefontein. back

Note 41: ARA: VOC 4103 OBP, 1727 opgaaf, Drakenstein district f. 7 back

Note 42: Robert Shell, personal communication, Jan. 1998; Ad Biewinga, personal communication, July 1998. back

Note 43: Ross, Beyond the Pale 145–47, esp. n34, which points out that Newton-King disagrees with the opgaaf's utility for household analyses. back

Note 44: The practice of loaning or hiring out slaves is well documented for the Cape district, see Robert C.-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 16521838 (Hanover and London: University Press of New England for Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 13–14. Anecdotal information from the Cedarberg fits this pattern, though more work remains to be done to confirm the extent of short-term slave transfers and temporal variations in outlying districts. back

Note 45: ARA: VOC 4130 OBP, 1727 opgaaf, Drakenstein district f. 10. back

Note 46: ARA: VOC 4130 OBP, 1727 opgaaf, Drakenstein district f. 9. CA: RLR 6:85, permit for Renoster Hoek, 15 July 1726. CA: RLR 7:54, permit for Groote Zeekoe Valleij, 14 Apr. 1728. back

Note 47: CA: CJ 785.28, Crimineel Sententie, 10 Jan. 1732. back

Note 48: Nigel Penn, "Fugitives on the Cape Frontier" and "Droster Gangs of the Bokkeveld and Roggeveld," both in Rogues, Rebels and Runaways: Eighteenth-Century Cape Characters (Cape Town: David Philip, 1999), 73–100, 147–66. back

Note 49: CA: CJ 785.28, Crimineel Sententie, 10 Jan. 1732. back

Note 50: Guelke and Shell, "Frontier Water Alienation," 811. back

Note 51: Malherbe, "Diversification and Mobility"; Russel Viljoen, "Khoisan Labor Relations in the Overberg Districts During the Later Half of the Eighteenth Century, c. 1755–1795," (MA thesis, University of the Western Cape, 1995). back

Note 52: Guelke and Shell, "Frontier Water Alienation," 811. back

Note 53: Penn, "Fugitives on the Cape Frontier," 94. back