71 INTRODUCTION*. 



missionaries V inquired the Boers. ' You may do as you 

 please with tliemj is said to have been the answer of the 

 4 Commissioner. 1 This remark, if uttered at all, was pro- 

 bably made in joke : designing men, however, circulated 

 it, and caused the general belief in its accuracy which 

 now prevails all over the country, and doubtless led to 

 the destruction of three mission stations immediately 

 after. The Boers, four hundred in number, were sent by 

 the late Mr Pretorius to attack the Bakwains in 1852. 

 Boasting that the English had given up all the blacks 

 into their power, and had agreed to aid them in their 

 subjugation by preventing all supplies of ammunition 

 from coming into the Bechuana country, they assaulted 

 the Bakwains, and, besides killing a considerable number 

 of adults, carried off two hundred of our school-children 

 into slavery. The natives under Sechele defended them- 

 selves till the approach of night enabled them to flee to 

 the mountains; and having in that defence killed a num- 

 ber of the enemy, the very first ever slain in this country, 

 by Bechuanas, I received the credit of having taught the 

 tribe to kill Boers ! My house, which had stood perfectly 

 secure for years under the protection of the natives, was 

 plundered in revenge. English gentlemen, who had come 

 in the footsteps of Mr Gumming to hunt in the country 

 beyond, and had deposited large quantities of stores in 

 the same keeping, and upwards of eighty head of cattle 

 as relays for the return journeys, were robbed of all; 

 and when they came back to Kolobeng found the skele- 



