The early Cape Hottentots

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Foreword.

Olfert Dapper, the son of Gerrit Gerritsz. Dapper and his wife Trijntje Heeres, was born in Amsterdam in 1636. Of his private life very little appears to be known.^* The available records show that he registered as a medical student at the University of Utrecht in 1658, but there can be little doubt that he soon abandoned his studies and took to writing. The degree of M.D. which adorns the title pages of his books seems to have been conferred upon himself by his own authority; there is at any rate no record of his graduation, nor of his having ever practised medicine. All his energies must have been devoted to reading and writing, for in his comparatively short lifetime (he died in 1689) he produced a number of large and important works. His first book, an historical description of Amsterdam (1663), said to be far superior to anything previously done on the same subject, was followed by a Dutch translation of Herodotus (1665). From now on he seems to have applied himself with indefatigable zeal to learning all that he could about foreign lands. As a result of his studies he composed the great series of geographical works upon which rests his fame. The first to appear was a description of Africa (1668), which met with so favourable a reception that henceforth he devoted himself entirely to geographical writing. In 1670 appeared an account of the Dutch East India Company's activities in the Far East, followed by an exhaustive study of Asia (three parts, 1677-1680), and finally by several works on the Near East.

Dapper's Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten, dealing as it does at considerable length with the topography, botany, zoology and ethnography of the whole continent and its adjacent islands, was long regarded as one of the most authoritative early accounts of Africa. For many years after its first publication it was freely quoted, translated and plagiarized. Even so well known an authority on early Cape affairs as Abraham Bogaert, who visited the settlement six times, has in the chapter he devotes to the Hottentots in his Historische Reizen door d' oostersche Deelen van Asia (1711) drawn practically all his information and many of his actual sentences from the pages of Dapper. And yet, like all Dapper's other geographical works, the account of Africa was essentially a compilation.

* The biographical details here given are based upon the short sketches of Dapper in the Nieuw Nederlandsch Biographische Woordenboek, vol. 7, and Michaud's Biographie Universelle.

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He does not appear to have ever left Holland to see with his own eyes any of the countries he describes. For his material he relied solely on printed sources and on memoranda specially prepared for him. That this circumstance does not guarantee the accuracy of his work is obvious. His great merit, however, lies in the fact that he ranged very widely in search of information, and that he had a shrewd eye for relevant detail. His work was comprehensive and painstaking, and as the first great compendium of modern knowledge about Africa it became deservedly famous.

The pages dealing with the Cape and the Hottentots are based to some extent upon the anonymous Klare ende Korte Besgryvinge van het land aan Cabo de Bona Esperanca (Amsterdam, 1652), itself a compilation, which he pillages freely enough when it suits his purpose. He also used very sparingly the records of the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies (1595). The bulk of his information, however, is not to be found in any contemporary published account. He says himself in the foreword to his book that most of what he relates, especially about the tribal divisions, manners and customs of the Hottentots, is derived from manuscript accounts sent to Holland by a certain ‘diligent observer’ at the Cape, and that he has added only a little from printed sources. In his text, too, he refers several times to information sent over by men on the spot.

Theal, in a brief notice of Dapper's book,^* points out with justice that the pages dealing with the Cape seem to have been prepared by someone who was not there at the commencement of the occupation, but who had been in the settlement long enough to know all about it, and who was obviously studying the customs, manners and language of the Hottentots. He goes on to suggest that Dapper's unnamed correspondent was probably George Frederick Wreede. There is much to be said in favour of this attribution.

Wreede was a runaway German student who enlisted in the service of the Dutch East India Company, and came to the Cape in 1659.^** Here he devoted himself to a study of the Hottentots. In a few years he had acquired a thorough knowledge of their language, and was often employed as an official interpreter and messenger to the Hottentot chiefs. By November, 1663, he had compiled a vocabulary of Hottentot words with their Dutch equivalents, which the commander of the Cape forwarded to the

* History and Ethnography of S. Africa before 1795, iii, 376.

** On his life and career cf. Theal, op. cit, ii, 139-141, 176-177; Godée-Molsbergen, Reizen in Zuid-Afrika, i, 215-6.

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Directors of the Company in Holland, with the request that it might be printed and some copies sent back to the settlement, where it would be useful. The Directors, though more anxious that the Hottentots should learn Dutch than that the settlers should become familiar with the native language, promised to have the work printed; but the promise never seems to have been carried out.^* The manuscripts of the vocabulary are no longer preserved in the Archives of either Holland or the Cape. It is generally believed that they were lent to the historian Ludolf and never recovered, for in a biography written of him by Christian Junker and published in 1710 there is a long Dutch-Hottentot-Latin vocabulary whose source is not mentioned, but which is now universally attributed to Wreede.^** The latter was rewarded for his studies with a small grant of money, and offered promotion by the Directors to any branch of the Cape service that he wished to select. He was ultimately appointed commander of Mauritius, where, after some vicissitudes of fortune, he met his death by drowning in 1672.

Wreede therefore seems to have been the most likely person at the Cape to supply Dapper with information about the Hottentots. There is also a certain amount of internal evidence to suggest that the account upon which Dapper drew was written about the time that Wreede's vocabulary was compiled, i.e. 1662-1663. Thus of the old chief Gogosoa he says, ‘In 1662 he was, according to the accounts of men already there, quite a hundred years old’; he speaks in the present tense of Herry, who died in 1663, and of the Chainouqua chief Soeswa, who died in 1664; he says (erroneously) that the Kochoqua chief Oedasoa died in 1661, but does not name his successor; he gives the exact dates of several events occurring between 1659 and 1662, but not later; and so on. Whether Dapper was in direct communication with Wreede cannot be ascertained; it is equally probable that he may have obtained the latter's account of the Hottentots through the famous Amsterdam burgomaster Nicolas Witsen, to whom many of his books are dedicated, and from whom, incidentally, Ludolf is supposed to have received the loan of Wreede's Hottentot vocabulary.

Dapper's informant certainly managed to ascertain a good deal more about the Hottentots than had previously been known. His long list of tribes, with the careful description of their known habitations and rulers, is the

* The relevant official correspondence is reprinted in Moodie, The Record, pp. 271-79.

** This vocabulary is reprinted by Godée-Molsbergen, op. cit., 215-24.

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first ever printed, the more authoritative list compiled by van Riebeeck being of course preserved as manuscript in the Archives and not published for more than two hundred years. The discrepancies between the two lists seem to show clearly enough that neither Dapper himself nor his informant had access to the official records. His general account of Hottentot life is far more comprehensive than any of its predecessors, and reveals an intimate first-hand acquaintance with the people; while much of the information, especially in connexion with religion, legal procedure and märriage customs, is completely new. It deserves special praise for the way in which, passing lightly over customs simply quaint and curious, it discusses in detail the ordinary, daily life of the people, a feature which modern ethnographers too are now beginning to emphasize as of outstanding importance. With all its inaccuracies (and these are most marked in references to historical occurrences), Dapper's work may justly be regarded as containing the first really serviceable account of the Hottentots.

The passages here reprinted from his pages on the Cape are those referring directly to the Hottentots; his description of the country, its climate, botanical and zoological resources have been omitted as irrelevant to the scope of this volume. The text followed is that of the second edition (1676, Tweede Deel, pp. 251-260, 263, 268-278), which, except that misprints have been corrected and several other slight errors rectified, is substantially the same as that of the first edition (1668, pp. 626-636, 643-653). The translation is the first complete one ever made into English. John Ogilby's Africa (London, 1670) was based largely upon Dapper's work, and its information relating to the Hottentots (pp. 576-583, 589-595) was all taken from the latter; but a good deal had been omitted, and much of what remains had been paraphrased. I have made no attempt to reproduce Dapper's rather laborious style or employ any corresponding archaisms. Mr I.W. van der Merwe, M.A., Lecturer in Nederlands and Afrikaans at the University of Cape Town, was kind enough to read through my translation and help me over some puzzling passages, but for the final version here printed I must assume all responsibility. I have occasionally taken the liberty of modernizing Dapper's punctuation, which in the original is apt to be confusing; and have used most (but not all) of his marginal notes as paragraph headings.