36 TREATMENT OF NATIVES BY BOERS. 



Zulu or Caffre chief, named Mosilikatze, had been expelled "by 

 the well-known Caffre Dingaan ; and a glad welcome was given 

 them by the Bechuana tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway 

 of that cruel chieftain. They came with the prestige of white 

 men and deliverers ; but the Bechuanas soon found, as they ex- 

 pressed it, " that Mosilikatze was cruel to his enemies, and kind 

 to those he conquered ; but that the Boers destroyed their ene- 

 mies, and made slaves of their friends." The tribes who still 

 retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the 

 labor of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, 

 building, making dams and canals, and at the same time to sup- 

 port themselves. I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers 

 coming to a village, and, according to their usual custom, demand- 

 ing twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens, and have seen 

 these women proceed to the scene of unrequited toil, carrying their 

 own food on their heads, their children on their backs, and instru- 

 ments of labor on their shoulders. Nor have the Boers any wish 

 to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid labor ; on the 

 contrary, every one of them, from Mr. Potgeiter and Mr. Gert 

 Krieger, the commandants, downward, lauded his own humanity 

 and justice in making such an equitable regulation. "We make 

 the people work for us, in consideration of allowing them to live 

 in our country." 



I can appeal to the Commandant Krieger if the foregoing is not 

 a fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his 

 people. I am sensible of no mental bias toward or against these 

 Boers ; and during the several journeys I made to the poor en- 

 slaved tribes, I never avoided the whites, but tried to cure and did 

 administer remedies to their sick, without money and without price. 

 It is due to them to state that I was invariably treated with re- 

 spect ; but it is most unfortunate that they should have been left 

 by their own Church for so many years to deteriorate and become 

 as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid prejudice against color 

 leads them to detest. 



This new species of slavery which they have adopted serves 

 to supply the lack of field-labor only. The demand for domes- 

 tic servants must be met by forays on tribes which have good 

 supplies of cattle. The Portuguese can quote instances in which 

 blacks become so degraded by the love of strong drink as actually 



