Griqualand West

“ It almost appeared, as the first moon of 1878 rose upon that portion of the Colony, that the guerilla warfare would be interminable, and a cry for help was raised through the Colony, which reached the province of Griqualand West. One hundred and twenty of our young bloods volunteered for service five hundred miles away, and with that military ardor which characterizes all colonists, they slung their guns across their shoulders, sprang into the saddle, and were at once ready for the toilsome, dusty, wearisome journey by road to King William’s Town, for those were the days of no railways. ”

“ Griqualand West, taken in the belief that Waterboer had a good title to it, was retained after this belief had been dispelled, partly perhaps because a population had crowded into it which consisted mainly of British subjects, and was not easily controllable by a small state, but mainly because colonial feeling refused to part with a region of such exceptional mineral wealth. ”

“ Now, the region has become peopled "in spots." Many of the settlements have assumed the importance of towns of considerable size. It is estimated that not only some thirteen thousand whites, but upwards of thirty-three thousand blacks, from all sections of South Africa, have flocked to found such settlements as Kimberley, Bult-fontein, and Du Toit's Pan.
Griqualand West is about one-half as large as Scotland. The country has nothing attractive in its physical features. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive of a dryer, uglier, drearier, more depressing region than the Diamond Fields. ”

“ Annexation of Griqualand west to Cape Colony. See GRIQUAS. SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1877-1879. The Zulu War. "At this time [1877] besides the three English Colonies of Cape Town, Natal, and the lately formed Griqualand, there were two independent Dutch Republics,—the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal. Much of the white population even of the English Provinces was Dutch, and a still larger proportion consisted of reclaimed or half-reclaimed natives. Thus ... there lay behind all disputes the question which invariably attends frontier settlements—the treatment of the native population. ”

“ The Griqualand West province of Cape Colony belongs also geographically to Bechuanaland, and except in the Kimberley diamond mines region is still largely inhabited by Bechuana. (See Griqualand.)
Physical Features.—The average height of the tableland of which Bechuanaland consists is nearly 4000 ft. The surface is hilly and undulating with a general slope to the west, where the level falls in considerable areas to little over 2000 ft. A large part of the country is covered with grass or shrub, chiefly acacia. There is very little forest land. ”

“ The Griquas cultivate the ground, and keep large herds of cattle and sheep, and trade largely with the Cape Colony. Hottentots, Korannas, Bushmen, Kaffirs, Namaquas, and small communities of other tribes live on the banks of the Orange and along the streams, with their cattle-posts, which of late years has greatly added to their wealth and enabled the people to trade largely with the colony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Southern propaganda against the Negro is advancing apace in the North by many dark and devious ways and by many subtle and potent means. Northern capital and enterprise, which are exploiting the South industrially, assimilate very readily the Southern view of the Negro, who must be kept at the bottom of the white man’s labor system and civilization. Intermarriage of Northern men and women with Southern men and women helps tremendously the propagation of the Southern view and solution of the race problem. ”

“ If there was panic in the South, there was none in the office of the Liberator. Unterrified by the commotion which his composing-stick was producing near and far, he laughed to scorn the abuse and threats of his enemies. When the news of the reward of the State of Georgia "for the abduction of his person" reached him, he did not quail, great as was his peril, but boldly replied:
"Of one thing we are sure: all Southern threats and rewards will be insufficient to deter us from pursuing the work of emancipation. As citizens of the United States we know our rights and dare maintain them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those who see in this problem only a conflict of races in the South see but a little way into its depths, for underlying this conflict of races is a conflict of opposing ideas and interests which have for a century vexed the peace of the nation. The existence of a system of labor in the South distinct from that of the North separated the two halves of the Union industrially, as far as the East is from the West, made of them in truth two hostile nations, although united under one general government. ”

“ Their humane and intelligent biographer, Grellmann, styles them a “singular phenomenon in Europe;” and it may justly be observed of such of them as inhabit countries accounted the most enlightened, that the contrast which their destitute state presents to the numerous advantages of civilized life, and to the refinements of polished society, is truly astonishing. If there possibly can be a single Briton who is a skeptic to the benefits of education, let him only take a view of the intellectual degradation and disgusting condition of the Gypsies. ”

“ During this period white settlers acquired farms in the country, and the loss of their independence by the Griquas became inevitable. The discovery of diamonds along the banks of the Vaal in 1867 entirely altered the fortunes of the country, and by the end of 1869 the rush to the alluvial diggings had begun. At the diggers’ camps the Griquas exercised no authority, but over part of the district the South African Republic and the Orange Free State claimed sovereignty. ”

“ Before one reaches the firing-line he must pass villages of men, camps of men, bivouacs of men, who are feeding, mending, repairing, and burying the men at the “front.” It is these latter that make the mob of gypsies, which is apparently without head or order or organization. They stretched across the great basin of the Tugela, like the children of Israel, their camp-fires rising to the sky at night like the reflection of great search-lights; by day they swarmed across the plain, like hundreds of moving circus-vans in every direction, with as little obvious intention as herds of buffalo. ”

“ With isolation and lack of contact the Negroes have been compelled to rely upon their own narrow set of ideas, while the progress of315 other peoples has been the result of the union of what they begot with what strangers brought them.
The soil of Africa fed the Negroes so bountifully that they did not acquire the habit of industry, and with a plenty of time on their hands they warred incessantly. The hot, humid atmosphere made them black and sapped their energies. ”

“ May the lesson of his sufferings become the shield of his race! Those who impute guilt to this colony, forget that its worst members are not stationary, and that many have borne away their guilt with their persons. That Being, who makes requisition for blood, will find it in the skirts of the murderer, and not on the land he disdained.
No man can witness the triumph of colonisation, when cities rise in the desert, and the wilderness blossoms as the rose, without being gladdened by the change ”

“ Another feature of the landscape are the clusters of mimosas scattered over the grazing-grounds. The Griquas (Gri-kwa) , from whom the province takes its name, are genendly spoken of by the Dutch Boers under the designation of " Bastaurds." The great majority are, in fact, half-caste descendants of the wl) ite settlers and Hottentots of various tribes, who came from the regions south of the Orange about the begin- ning of the present century. In this extremely mixed population are met every variety of type, from the stuntcBushman and yellow Hottentot to the tall Kafir and fair European. ”

“ Asia has untold thousands of these wanderers, in Anatolia, Syria, Armenia, Persia, Turkestan, and Siberia, perhaps also India and China; so, too, has Africa, in Egypt, Algeria, Darfûr, and Kordofan. We find them in both the Americas, from Pictou in Canada to Rio in Brazil; nor are New Zealand and Australia without at least their isolated bands.
To-day at any rate the sedentary Gypsies must greatly outnumber the nomadic: in Hungary only 9000, or less than one-thirtieth of the entire number, are returned as ‘constantly on the move.’ Still the race has always been largely a migratory race ”

“ May Britons in their conduct towards the Gypsies, be actuated by a policy so liberal, as to induce the rising generation among this neglected class, to attach themselves to civil society, and to enter into situations designed to inculcate habits of industry, and prepare them to become useful members of the community. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A number of Southern men in sympathy with the higher aspirations of the Negro race, hopeless of seeing those aspirations realized in the Southland, had placed at his disposal a large sum of money with which to draw off the Negro population from unfriendly points in the South and establish them in Africa. ”

“ Dixon that he is in the grasp of a power not Anglo-Saxon that causes him to rant and cry for a freedom that his own Southern brethren less affected do not understand.
THE REAL PROBLEM.
Ah, good people of America, here is your real problem! Southern self-interest may be relied upon to keep the Negro here; being here, no human power can prevent him from contributing his quota to the atmosphere of the group in which all the sons of the South must find their environing inheritance. ”

“ They are the descendants of Dutch fathers and Hottentot mothers.
A mixture of Griquas and Hottentots occurs also on the Kat River, a feeder of the Great Fish River, in the district of Somerset, and on the Kaffre frontier. Here they are distributed in a series of district locations, amid the dales and fastnesses of the eastern frontier. A great proportion of them are discharged soldiers—so that in reality, like the borderers of old, they form a sort of military colony. ”

“ That is all, or practically all, we know of the coming of the Gypsies to North America, where, at New York, there were house-dwelling Gypsies as far back as 1850, and where to-day there must be hundreds or thousands of the race from England, Scotland, Hungary, Spain, one knows not whence else besides. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ensal thought of the odds against the Negro in this literary battle: how that Southern white people, being more extensive purchasers of books than the Negroes, would have the natural bias of great publishing agencies on their side; how that Northern white people, resident in the South, for social and business reasons, might hesitate to father books not in keeping with the prevailing sentiment of Southern white people; how that residents of the North, who essayed to write in defense of the Negro, were laughed out of school as mere theorists ignorant of actual conditions ”