Observations on the Origin of the Bushmen. 17^ 



and the Butchuana country*, and observing there a similar 

 line of conduct towards the Hottentots, Damaras, and 

 Caffres, in their vicinity,, that those within reach of the 

 colony do towards its inhabitants. All such have cer- 

 tainly any thing but a tendency to support the opinion en- 

 tertained by not a few, that the tribes in question were 

 originally called into existence through the outrages of the 

 colonists ; and though I am ready to admit, that very great 

 oppressions have been extended to the natives by the white 

 population, yet it is impossible to allow with such facts 

 before us, that the latter were in any way instrumental in 

 giving origin to a peculiar community of individuals, which 

 there is every reason to believe existed long before European 

 influence approached even the confines of their country. 



Though justice induces me thus to object to such a cause as 

 that assigned, yet at the same time I am quite prepared to 

 admit, that the malpractices referred to by the advocates of 

 that opinion, have had doubtless considerable share in aug- 

 menting the number, — believing, that whatever tends to create 

 poverty, is calculated for producing and likely to produce 

 Bushmen, wherever Hottentots occur. Instead then of 

 ascribing the origin of such to an individual, a recent and 

 a limited cause, I would rather venture to attribute it to 

 influences which operated of old, as well as still continue to 

 operate, — namely, poverty and crime. The former I would 

 regard as having been, and as still being, the moat productive ; 

 the latter as the most odious and dangerous ; the first as having 

 been, as well as being, the consequence of misfortune, but 

 more frequently of imprudence ; the last as now and then the 

 result of accident, but more generally of mental depravity ; 

 and both as having operated and as still operating in mam- 

 parts of South Africa, in producing and increasing the num- 

 bers of the tribes under consideration. 



The majority of the Bushmen population, according to the 

 restricted sense in which the term is here to be understood, 

 consists of pure Hottentots ; and the remainder of blacks 

 either the offspring of an intercourse with the former and 

 other coloured persons, or else the actual outcasts of other 

 races themselves. The number of inhabitants is small, com- 

 pared with the great extent of country over which they are 

 scattered, and which consists of the whole of that extensive 

 plain lying between the northern boundary of the colony — 

 the Kamiesberg range of mountains, and the confines of the 



* Mr. Anderson, who was some time a Missionary amongst the Coranuas, 

 when speaking 1 of a spot near the Orange River, says— "The Coronnas 

 occupied tlii-. place ; they are by no means so numerous as the Boschesman, 

 who are every where to be found from east to west in the Briqualaiid."— 

 Transactions oftlu Missionary Society, vol.3, p. 54. 



