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The Late Great Plot: The Official Delusion Concerning the Xhosa Cattle Killing 1856-1857

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

J.B. Peires
J.B. Peires*
Affiliation:
Rhodes University
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Extract

The very idea that the Xhosa chiefs and their allies engineered the great cattle-killing which finally broke their power seems so absurd that most people who hear of it dismiss it instinctively. And indeed, they are perfectly correct to do so. Yet the sheer mass of documentary evidence in support of the proposition is such that all historians who have come into contact with it have been forced to be more circumspect with regard to the “chiefs' plot.” We have to look very carefully at this evidence before we reject its conclusions, and once we have done so, we have to answer a further and even more significant question: If the “chiefs' plot” did not exist, why did the Colonial authorities maintain that it did? Paradoxically, we will discover that an investigation of the “chiefs' plot” can tell us nothing about the Xhosa or the cattle-killing, but it can tell us a great deal about the mind and methods of Sir George Grey, that colossus of early Victorian imperialism.

After nearly seventy years of epic struggle, the catastrophic defeats of the Seventh (1846-47) and Eighth (1850-53) Frontier Wars finally broke the military capacity of the Xhosa people to resist the Colonial advance from the Cape of Good Hope. Their political structures fragmented by partial incorporation into the Crown Colony of British Kaffraria; their belief structures fractured by the victories of missionary teaching and European technology; the slender remnants of their economic resources decimated by the onslaught of the lung-sickness epizootic in their cattle from 1855, the Xhosa turned, as other peoples have done in like situations, to millennarian hopes.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 12 , 1985 , pp. 253 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1895

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References

NOTES

1. For instance, Walker, Eric, A History of Southern Africa (3rd ed., London, 1957), 289Google Scholar; Wilson, Monica and Thompson, Leonard M., eds., The Oxford History of South Africa, Vol. 1, (Oxford, 1968), 259Google Scholar; Davenport, T.R.H., South Africa: A Modern History (London, 1977), 101Google Scholar; Toit, A.E. Du, “The Cape Frontier: A Study of Native Policy with Special Reference to the Years 1847-1856,” Archives Year Book for South African History (1954), 100.Google Scholar

2. W.W.G., in Rubusana, W.B., Zemk' linkomo Magwalandini. (abr. ed., Lovedale, , 1966), 73.Google Scholar

3. Cape Archives, BK 373. The dispatch of 20 March, implicating Moshoeshoe, was published in Blue Book 2352 of 1857, pp. 72, 84. The second dispatch, which is much less plausible, was not, to my knowledge, ever forwarded to London.

4. BK 81, Gawler to Maclean, 21 December 1856.

5. Peires, J., The House of Phalo (Johannesburg, 1981), 152–54.Google Scholar

6. Cape Archives, GH 28/71, Brownlee to Maclean, 2 August 1856.

7. BK 373, Maclean to Grey, 25 March 1857.

8. For instance, the battles of Grahamstown (1819), Gwangqa (1846), and Imvani (1851).

9. GH 8/49, Maclean to Grey, 25 August 1856.

10. BK 14, Barrington to Maclean, 20 June 1857.

11. BK 81, Gawler to Maclean, 14 October 1856, describing Mhala at his most confident.

12. BK 70, Brownlee to Maclean, 19 December 1856.

13. GH 8/49, Maclean to Grey, 3 November 1856.

14. BK 140, H. Vigne to Maclean, 10 November 1856; BK 81, Gawler to Maclean, 23 December 1856.

15. BK 71, Brownlee to Maclean, 1 May 1857.

16. BK 373, Maclean to Grey, 20 and 25 March 1857.

17. BK 373, Maclean to Grey, 25 March 1857.

18. For Mhlakaza, BK 14, Examination before the Chief Commissioner of Nombanda the prophetess, 28 February 1858; for Sarhili, GH 8/33, Crouch to Maclean, 9 November 1857.

19. BK 373, Maclean to Grey, 20 March 1957.

20. Office of the Justice of the Peace, Wittebergen, 28 October 1856, Annexure in 2352 of 1857, p. 80.

21. GH 20/2/1, H. Rivers, 1 April 1857; W. Field, 31 March 1857.

22. Cory, George E., The Rise of South Africa, (6 vols.: Cape Town, 1910–1940), 6:12.Google Scholar

23. 139 speculators held 2,500,000 acres. Ibid., 114.

24. My interpretation here reverses that traditionally held, namely, that Moshoeshoe's plotting drove Grey to seek greater powers for the High Commissionership. See, for example, De Kiewiet, C.W., British Colonial Policy and the South African Republics (London, 1929), chapters 7 and 8.Google Scholar

25. GH 8/49, J. Warner to Maclean, 29 Nov. 1856. Warner was not himelf averse on other occasions to spreading false rumors about Sarhili. See GH 8/48, W.G.B. Shepstone to Maclean, 15 June 1860.

26. Both versions enclosed in 2352 of 1857, p. 82.

27. GH 8/30, “Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner,” 8 Dec. 1856.

28. GH 8/36, Memorandum by William Porter, 6 November 1858, enclosed in Schedule 129, 5 October 1858.

29. Brownlee loc cit 142. W.R.D. Fynn, Gawler's interpreter, however reaffirmed his belief in the “chiefs' plot” many years later; see Cape Parliamentary Paper G4 of 1883, 269-70.

30. For example, the private correspondence of Sir Benjamin D'Urban and Colonel Harry Smith. MS 2033, Cory Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.

31. BK 2, F. Travers to Maclean, 27 November 1858.

32. BK 90, G. Dacres to Maclean, 22 September 1854.

33. GH 20/2/1, W. Currle to Grey, 12 March 1858.

34. GH 8/50, R. Hawkes to Maclean, 14 March 1857.

35. Wards, Ian, The Shadow of the Land (Wellington, 1968), 391.Google Scholar

36. Dalton, B.J., War and Politics in New Zealand, 1855-1870. (Sydney, 1967), 259.Google Scholar

37. Rutherford, James, Sir George Grey K.C.B. (London, 1961), 141.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., 425.

39. Dalton, , War and Politics, 212-17, 258.Google Scholar

40. Quoted in Rutherford, , George Grey, 399.Google Scholar

41. Quoted in Dalton, , War and Politics, 160.Google Scholar

42. Wards, , Shadow, 276–81Google Scholar; Rutherford, , George Grey, 110–14.Google Scholar

43. Rutherford, , George Grey, 489Google Scholar; Dalton, , War and Society, 176-79.Google Scholar I would like to thank Professor Dalton for his helpful comments on Grey's career in New Zealand.

44. G. Cathcart to Maclean, 19 January 1854, #1969 of 1855, 17-18.

45. Cape Archives, Acc 611/7 Maclean to J. Bissett, 19 March, 4 June 1860.

46. Report of Special Commissioner appointed in inquire into the present state of the Fingoe Locations, 22 January 1855, #1969 of 1855, 42-51.

47. For example, in BK 373, Maclean to Grey, 20 March 1857.

48. GH 8/35, “Native information received,” 7 June 1858.

49. BK 81, J. Gawler to Maclean, 7 November 1856.

50. The first report on Nonkosi is BK 81, Gawler to Maclean, 26 January 1857. She continued to prophesy after the Great Disappointment of 18 February almost up to the day she was captured.

51. Acc 793, Gawler letterbook. Gawler to Maclean, 22 September 1857.

52. GH 8/50, Maclean to Grey, 24 September 1857.

53. GH 8/33, Maclean to J. Fitzgerald, 10 October 1857.

54. BK 81, Gawler to Maclean, 15 October 1857.

55. This is the examination which was printed in Cape Parliamentary Paper G 5 of 1858. Maclean's success astonished Gawler, who wrote to Maclean congratulating him. BK 81, Gawler to Maclean, 24 October 1857.

56. G 5 of 1858, p. 2.

57. GH 8/50, Maclean to G. Grey, 26 October 1857.

58. G 5 of 1858, p. 4.

59. BK 81, Examination of Kwitshi, enclosed in Gawler to Maclean, 24 October 1857, reprinted in G 5 of 1858, p. 5.

60. BK 81, Gawler to Maclean, 12 December 1857; GH 8/50, Maclean to Grey, 14 December 1857.

61. GH 8/50, Barrington to Maclean, 19 January 1858. Examination of Kwitshi by Barrington is to be found in BK 14, 14 January 1858.

62. Acc 793, Gawler letterbook.

63. BK 83 Vigne to Maclean, 21 January 1858.

64. Hook, David B., With Sword and Statute (Cape Town, [1907]), 139.Google Scholar

65. GH 8/34, Schedule 9, 26 January 1858.

66. All references to the trial of Mhala are from the very full details in GH 8/36, Schedule 129, 5 October 1858. Porter's memorandum and Grey's response to it, though of later date, have also been filed in this schedule.

67. BK 14, Examination of Nonkosi the Umpongo Prophetess, before the Honourable Henry Barrington. Gawler was present throughout.

68. BK 2, F. Travers to Maclean, 25 July 1858.

69. BK 89, Memoranda, 25 April 1857.

70. GH 20/2/1, Maclean to Grey, 28 June 1857; GH 8/32, Brownlee to Maclean, 29 June 1857.

71. GH 20/2/1, Rev. H. Waters to Grey, 4 September 1857.

72. GH 8/33, Crouch to Maclean, 9 November 1857.

73. GH 20/2/1, Maclean to Grey, 5 November 1857.

74. GH 23/27, Grey to H. Labouchere, 13 February 1858.

75. Speech to Cape Parliament, quoted in Toit, Du, “Cape Frontier,” 119.Google Scholar

76. GH 8/33, Crouch to Maclean, 9 November 1857.

77. GH 20-2/1, undated. This was sent to William Porter on the occasion of Saul Solomon's attack on Grey in the Cape House of Assembly.

78. GH 8/34, Statement of Possi, a Gcaleka, before Commissioner Maclean, 2 February 1858.

79. GH 23/27, Grey to Labouchere, 11 February 1858.

80. T.F. Elliot on the Colonial Office, quoted in Rutherford, , George Grey, 390.Google Scholar See also ibid., 484, and Dalton, War and Society, 203.

81. BK 82, Voluntary statement made before Commandant Currie this day (24 September 1857) by Fadana.

82. GH 23/26, Grey to Labouchere, 20 September 1856. Grey went on to say that he had personally visited the leading chiefs and was absolutely sure that “no disturbances will take place.”

83. GH 8/30, Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner, 8 December 1856.

84. GH 20/2/1, Waters to Grey, 5 November 1857.

85. Speech to Cape Parliament 1855, enclosed in Grey to Grey, 17 March 1855, #1969 of 1855, p. 57.

86. Speech to Cape Parliament 1857, quoted Du Toit, “Cape Frontier,” 119.

87. GH 8/33, Schedule 532 contains the trial of Maqoma. The clean sweep was Gawler's idea. GH 8/50, Maclean to Grey, 31 December 1857.

88 See Rutherford, George Grey, chapters 26-28.

89 See Grey's letters to the Colonial Secretary in GH 23/27.

90. Grey to J. Jackson, 3 November 1857, quoted in Rutherford, , George Grey, 392.Google Scholar

91. GH 23/27, Grey to E. Lytton, 25 July 1858.

92. GH 28/73, Grey to Lytton, 25 September 1858.

93. GH 28/73, Grey to Lytton, 22 October 1858.