Griqua people

“ GRIQUALAND EAST and GRIQUALAND WEST, territorial divisions of the Cape Province of the Union of South Africa. Griqualand East, which lies south of Basutoland and west of Natal, is so named from the settlement there in 1862 of Griquas under Adam Kok. It forms part of the Transkeian Territories of the Cape, and is described under Kaffraria. Griqualand West, formerly Griqualand simply, also named after its Griqua inhabitants, is part of the great tableland of South Africa. ”

“ It is questionable whether they ever return, as they have never been seen as a returning body. Many perish from want of food, the country to which they have migrated being unable to support them; the rest become scattered over the colony; and in such a wide country there is no lack of room for all. It is probable that, notwithstanding the continued destruction by fire-arms, they will continue long to hold their place.
On crossing the Orange River we come into independent territory inhabited by Griquas and Bechuanas. By Griquas is meant any mixed race sprung from natives and Europeans. ”

“ The more peaceful tribes had heard of the value of the white man, and of the weapons by which a mere handful of whites had repulsed hordes of marauders. They were therefore disposed to welcome the stranger, although this state of feeling could not be relied on as sure to continue, for Griqua hunters and individuals from tribes hostile to the gospel were moving northward, and not only circulating rumors unfavorable to missionaries, but by their wicked lives introducing diseases previously unknown. ”

“ While this intermingling was impairing the vital force of our race and exterminating it, it was having no such effect on the white race for the following reason. Every half-breed, or for that, every person having a tinge of Negro blood, the white people cast off. We receive the cast off with open arms and he comes to us with his devitalizing power. Thus, the white man was slowly exterminating us and our total extinction was but a short period of time distant. ”

“ They were a party of sixteen—all stout fellows, and armed with the long guns used by the Dutch boors. They said that they had been two months from Griqua-town, and were thinking of returning very soon, as their waggon was loaded to the extent that it would bear. The Major stating that it was their intention to hunt the giraffe, the Griquas informed them that they would not find the animal to the southward of the Vaal River, and they would have to cross over into the territories of the king Moselekatsee, who ruled over the Bechuana country, to the northward of the river ”

“ Kimberley is also the seat of government. The latter (153, 4 whites) , situated in No-Man's-Land, between the Kaffir country and S. Natal, is chiefly inhabited by Griquas and Basutos. The first has been part of Cape Colony since 1881, and the second was annexed to that colony in 1871, though it is controlled by a chief-magistrate. Griqua is a name given to half-bloods of Dutch fathers and Hottentot mothers.
Griselda or Griseldis, a famous heroine of mediæval tradition; figures in Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer, and in later dramatists of England, Germany, and Spain ”

“ Ridicule, villification, ostracism, violence, arson, murder were all employed to hinder the progress of the work. Outsiders looked on and thought it strange that they should do this. But, just as a snake, though a venomous animal, by instinct knows its enemy and fights for its life with desperation, just so the Old South instinctively foresaw danger to its social fabric as then constituted, and therefore despised and fought the agencies that were training and inspiring the future leaders of the Negro race in such a manner as to render a conflict inevitable and of doubtful termination. ”

“ In order that the example should be of any value, it is requisite that the Griquas should present an intermediate type between the Europeans and the natives. Neither Dr. Prichard nor any travellers say so. There is another consideration. The origin of the Griqua nation dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Dr. Prichard last speaks of them in 1843. Two generations had not yet elapsed. There is another point. In 1800 the tribe of Kok was a horde but little numerous ”

“ If there is any one thing, more than another, that will push the Negro forth to build enterprises of his own, it will be this refusal of the whites to employ the higher order of labor that the race from time to time produces. This refusal will prove a blessing if we accept the lesson that it teaches. And, too, in considering this subject let us not feel that we are the only people who have a labor problem on hand to be solved. The Anglo-Saxon race is divided into two hostile camps—labor and capital. ”

“ For here is Grif (unquestionably depraved and debased in the eyes of that civilisation which does nothing for him, which absolutely turns its back upon him) , a piece of raw material out of which much good might be wrought, suffering much unmerited suffering, and surrounded by an atmosphere of actively-conscious vice. The law looks unkindly upon him; policemen push him aside as if he were an interloper in the world; and well-dressed people shrink from contact with him as he slouches by. Civilisation presses upon him unkindly. He does not deserve it. ”

“ I have decided to expose them and see every one of them hung,"
"Pray tell me, Belton, what is the motive that prompts you to be so zealous in the work of ferreting out conspirators among your people to be hanged by the whites?"
"It is this," said Belton: "you know as it is, the Negro has a hard time in this country. If we begin to develop traitors and conspirators we shall fare even worse. It is necessary, therefore, that we kill these vipers that come, lest we all be slain as vipers."
"That may be true, but I don't like to see you in that kind of business," said Bernard. ”

“ It is the fashion nowadays for every one with a stone in his hand to take a shy at the poor Negro on account of his sins of commission and omission. It is enough that some member of the race is caught flagrante delicto or merely on suspicion of evil doing to get himself into the public pillory and the rest of the colored people into our national rogues’ gallery, where they evoke instantly the loud lamentation of white saints and sinners alike, and the statistical and sophistical conclusions of a lot of fools and hypocrites. ”

“ Then they gazed at each other.
"Of course," said Brand. "Of course! Greca, you're marvelous! Wish we had a tank? Why, we've got one! A four-legged mountain of meat that ought to be able to plow through the side of that dome like a battering ram through cardboard!"
"But it's not possible," replied Greca, her head dropping dejectedly. "My people, as driven slaves, till the fields with great animals that were trapped in the surrounding jungles. ”

“ His story awoke my soul again, for I did little thinking while I lived in the monastery. I was so worn out by my labors, that my rebellious thought slumbered. Suddenly his words woke me. I asked Grisha:
"Where, then, is our God? There is nothing around us but the arbitrary and mad foolishness of man; nothing but the petty deceptions from which misfortunes arise. Where, then, is God?"
But here Misha appeared and drove us out. From that day Grisha came to me often, and I told him my thoughts, which horrified him, and he counseled humility:
"But why do people suffer so?" ”

“ The merest tyro of a sociologist knows that these are the essential facts which account for the backwardness of the African people, and yet Mr. Dixon would fasten upon Negroes the charge of inherent inferiority because of the showing made under circumstances most adverse to the development of civilization. ”

“ Fellow citizens, our condition is indeed past enduring and we must find a remedy. I have spent the major portion of my life in close study of this subject, searching for a solution. My impression is that the negro will never leave this country. The day for the wholesale exodus of nations is past. We must, then, remain here. As long as we remain here as a separate and distinct race we shall continue to be oppressed. We must lose our identity. I, therefore, urge that we abandon the idea of becoming anything noteworthy as a separate and distinct race and send the word forth that we amalgamate. ”

“ Strewn over the metal paving like wheat stalks crushed flat by a hurricane, were thousands of Rogans. Not a muscle of their pipe-like arms or legs could they move. But the gravity that crushed them rigidly to the ground did not quite hold motionless the shorter and more sturdily built slaves.
Among the thousands of squealing, panting Rogans that lay as though paralyzed on the metal paving, crawled equal thousands of Greca's enslaved people. Their eyes flamed with fanatic hate. ”

“ The teachers decided that they had been visited by a Negro, hunting for chickens; laughed heartily at their fright and resumed deliberations. Thus again a patriot was mistaken for a chicken thief; and in the South to-day a race that dreams of freedom, equality, and empire, far more than is imagined, is put down as a race of chicken thieves. As in Belton's case, this conception diverts attention from places where startling things would otherwise be discovered. ”

“ Just now the American people seem much engrossed with the training of the hand of the Negro, confessedly a work of tremendous moment. But be it known unto you, oh Americans, that it is through his mind, his spirit, the exhalations of his soul, his dreams or lack of dreams, that the Negro is to leave his most marked influence on American life. Let the use to which Mr. Dixon is putting his borrowed emotional power recall the nation to the slumbering Negro mind that must ere long awake to power. ”

“ Is not the South sowing into the souls of both races the seeds of sin and violence, and shall it not then reap its full crop of crime and misery, the wild and anarchic harvest of the whirlwind?
Hard indeed is the lot of the Negro whether in the country or the city of the South, and in those of the North too for that matter. For wherever he goes he carries the marks of his race with him, and that is the essence of his offense in America. ”

“ Your state may disfranchise you with or without law, may mob you; but my hands are so tied that I can't help you at all, although I shall force you to defend my sovereignty with your lives. If you are beset by Klu Klux, White Cappers, Bulldozers, Lynchers, do not turn your dying eyes on me for I am unable to help you.' Such is what the Federal Government has to say to the Negro. The Negro must therefore fight to keep afloat a flag that can afford him no more protection than could a helpless baby. ”

“ But it must be borne in mind that as a part of the propaganda in favor of retaining the Negro in slavery, the white people of the South thoroughly committed themselves to the doctrine of the ineffaceable, inherent inferiority of the Negro, and had no largeness of faith in his possibilities along lines of higher culture. It is evident, then, that if salvation was to come at all, it was to come from a source that deemed such an outcome possible. ”

“ In the meantime they hold those Greeks in captivity, and also our wives and children, and they have threatened us and them with dreadful punishment if we do not bring back the maidens; and we thought at first to purchase slaves, but we fear detection, for how can slaves make fitting queens? But now the plague which has struck down your people seems to offer us some hope of safety. For, perhaps, some of your maidens, being without protectors in this calamity, will themselves be willing to go with us, or their guardians, fearing the worst, will send them. ”

“ Griqualand West, whose capital is the salubrious Kimberley, was settled in 1833 by the Griquas or Baastards, a tribe of Dutch Hottentot half-breeds. As we have seen, the territory was claimed by the chief, Waterboer, and his claim was allowed by the Governor of Natal. When he subsequently ceded his rights, the province was annexed to Cape Colony, but with independent jurisdiction. In 1881 it became an integral part of Cape Colony. Griqualand East comprises No-Man's-Land, the Gatberg and St. ”

“ The Griquas, commanded by a celebrated chief, of the name of Berend, made several attempts, and in consequence a cruel war was carried on between Berend and Africaner, in which neither party gained the advantage. Africaner, discovering that the colonists had bribed Berend to make war against him, now turned his wrath against them. A Dutch boor fell a victim to his fury, and he carried off large quantities of their cattle, and eventually Africaner became the terror of the colony. ”

“ The moving of whites from the South to the North, where, in social circles from which Negroes are debarred, they mould sentiment against the Negro. There are more than one million five hundred thousand Southern white people in the North.
"Third: Among the Negroes going North there is a shiftless, criminal element, whose tendency downward is aided by the prejudice against Negroes in labor circles of the North. This class of Negroes in some parts of the North almost monopolizes the attention of the criminal courts and the result is an erroneous opinion with regard to the race as a whole. ”

“ She felt that the mixed bloods who could pass for whites ought to organize and cultivate 230unswerving devotion to the Negro race. According to her plan the mixed bloods thus taught should be sent into the life of the white people to work quietly year after year to break down the Southern white man's idea of the Negro's rights. She felt that the mixed bloods should lay hold of every center of power that could be reached. She set for herself the task of controlling the pulpit, the social circle and the politics of Almaville and eventually of the whole South and the nation. ”