Sir H. B. Frere.—Laws affecting Civilized and Savage Life. 313
the last year or two, are the following: “ On the Men of the Long
Barrow Period,” “ On Excavations at Sigwell,” and " On Human
Remains at Cissbnry,” besides the part which he frequently took in
our discussions, record of which has been published in our
Journal, not to mention the assistance which he freely rendered to
brother anthropologists whenever it was asked.
To him we are indebted for the only scientific description which
exists of crania of the stone age in this country, those of Cissbury
and of the Long Barrows. Although his early training made physical
anthropology his chief study, Professor Rolles ton was an anthro-
pologist all round ; in archaeology and ethnology he took a deep
interest and an active part. Archaeologists were in the habit of
submitting to him for identification animal remains found in
excavations, where the date or place in sequence could be
fixed, and from these he was gradually accumulating a store
of information about the changes and distribution of breeds
in pre-historic times, which, had he lived, would have led to
important results.
But apart from the great services which he rendered to science,
and anthropology in particular, those who knew him will re-
member him chiefly for his fine chivalrous character, his ready
wit, his earnest love of truth, and his straightforward method of
dealing with the affairs of life. Nor was there ever a man more
ready at all times to do justice to others. A proper notice of him
will doubtless appear in our Journal, but, in the meantime, I think
I may safely say that in no Society has he left behind him a larger
number of friends than in the Anthropological Institute.
The Right Hon. Sir H. Bartle Frere then read the following
paper:—
On the Laws affecting the Relations between Civilized and
Savage Life, as bearing on the dealings of Colonists with
Aborigines. By the Right Hon. Sir H. Bartle Frere,
Bart., G.C.B., G.C.S.L, F.R.S., &c.
In inquiring what are the permanent laws affecting the
relations between civilized and savage life as bearing on the
dealings of colonists with aborigines, the first question is that
of continued existence of the uncivilized race. Is it possible for
an uncivilized race to continue to exist as uncivilized, in the
presence or immediate neighbourhood of a civilized race, equal
or superior in numbers ?
If they can, under what conditions and with what modifica-
tions is such continued existence possible or probable ?
The possibility of such continued existence has been denied,
314
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
and with very practical results, as arguments for slavery and
slave trade in the Southern States of the American Union—in
East and South Africa and Brazil; and the examples of the
Carib inhabitants of the West Indies—the North American
Indians—and the Maories, have been adduced as recent proofs
of the impossibility.
Let us look at the historical evidence on the subject.
In India it is clear that from the earliest immigrations of the
Aryan races up to the present time, the civilized immigrants
have always been in contact with uncivilized and more abori-
ginal races.
We find clear evidence of such contact, and of the warfare
to which it led, in the earliest poetical legends of the contests
between the gods and demi-gods of Hindu mythology and the
demons and spirits of mountain and forest—whom it was the
office of the heaven-born race to conquer or destroy. We see
the battles and other events of the contests depicted in the
earliest efforts of Hindu sculpture and paintings, and we find
the contest still going on under the native dynasties which
immediately preceded the British dominion in India.
And what has been the result ?
The civilized Aryan immigrants have everywhere dispossessed
their more aboriginal and less civilized predecessors of the lord-
ship of the soil in the open and plain country, not always of the
ownership and right of occupation as cultivators of the soil, but
almost invariably of something more than the highest rights of
sovereignty.
It is very rare to find in the plain open country of India any
petty chief of any aboriginal race (I know but of one in the
Deccan, the Berud chief of Serapoor), and there are no great
chiefs or sovereigns of such races, though the oldest and most
powerful of Rajput sovereigns cannot be formally and securely
seated on his ancestral throne till the Bhil Headman has marked
the Maharaja’s forehead with blood drawn from the Bhil’s own
arm. Nor in old times could a Rajput or Maharatta fortress be
built with any certainty in popular estimation, of permanence or
safety, till the Headman of the Bhil or other aboriginal race—or
his child, or some equivalent victim—had been buried under the
foundation of a keep or corner tower.
These are intelligible indications of the popular belief that
without the aboriginal agency the safety of the dynasty or of the
edifice set up by the intruder cannot be assured.
As a general rule, in the open country the uncivilized
aborigines, when subdued, were incorporated into the community
organised by the intruding race, and were settled on the land,
sometimes as cultivating serfs—sometimes and more frequently as
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life. 315
village servants—hewers of wood, and drawers of water—as
Helots charged to clear away refuse and dead carcasses, to skin
animals, and to undertake, with all its defilements, the prepara-
tion and manufacture of leather and of leathern articles of dress
or use; and to perform other services which would defile their
Aryan superiors. They are found in almost every village of the
open country, as an essential part of the village organisation—-
but always as outcasts—living apart from the other villagers
and generally outside the village area, forbidden to touch the
purer races, who could not, however, live without their help,
in their present condition of civilization.
There are often clear traces of successive conquests of separate
races more aboriginal than the Aryan. In large village com-
munities in the Deccan, for instance, the outcast races are never
on one uniform level of inferiority. There are grades of outcasts
as well as of the " twice born,” and one grade may not live, or
eat with, still less intermarry with the others—the caste which
removes and skins and buries the dead ox, may not intermarry
with that which twists the skin into well-ropes, or makes the
skin into leather, or the leather into shoes. There is much to
justify the conjecture that each caste marks a separate conquest
of some aboriginal tribe, each tribe having had its separate work
assigned to it in the organisation of the village community.
This description applies only to the plain and open country.
In the mountain ranges and forests we still find aboriginal races
in sole occupation of large tracts from which the immigrant
Aryans have never been able to drive them : Gonds, Holes, and
Sonthals, Warlis, Bhils, and Naikras, Katkurris, Kulis,
Dublas, and Ramoosis (Baruds) are examples of tribes apparently
more aboriginal than Aryans, who have succeeded in maintain-
ing a tribal, and almost a national existence in the presence of
the Hindu invaders, and who still retain in their customs, beliefs,
and language, and often in their physical characteristics, unmis-
takeable traces of non-Aryan and probably pre-Aryan origin.
How did the Aryan contact, either in the way of incorporation
in a village community, or by confining these aboriginal races
to mountains, forests, &c., affe’ct the social life and physical
characteristics of the aborigines ?
In the village communities it imparted a certain tinge of
Aryan civilization to the aboriginal Helots. They generally
lost their own language and acquired that of their conquerors.
They gave up their nomadic habits, and settled down to live
continuously in the same locality, and to cultivate the same
fields. They acquired proficiency in some distinctive industries
which were necessary to the village community, e.g., as tanners,
leather workers, shoemakers, &c.
316
Sir H. B. Frere —On the Laws affecting the
They accommodated their own religious beliefs, more or less
to fit into the dominant religion of their Aryan conquerors. The
Tiger God, Wagya, became an incarnation of the orthodox Siva.
Murri, the goddess of small pox, or cholera, was localised as a
manifestation of the Brahminical Bowani or Kali, and generally
the fetishism and demon worship of the aborigines was fitted
into the nomenclature of the more philosophical Brahminical
pantheon.
Physically some change took place, partly owing to changes in
the conditions of life, such as the use of clothing, however
scanty, and the habit of living in houses. All the Helot races,
in the Deccan, for instance, are darker than the Aryan Hindus,
but seldom so dark as the unchanged aboriginal races, and some-
times clear traces are to be seen among the Helots of crisped
hair, rarely if ever seen in a pure Aryan race.
But there was little if any visible change from admixture of
races, owing to the strictness of rules of caste. Intermarriage
between a pure Aryan and a Helot was peremptorily and effectually
forbidden. Concubinage was restricted within the narrowest
limits, and as a domestic institution was rendered, by severe
caste penalties, nearly impossible to any but men of high rank
and great influence, and thus it happens that when all the Helot
castes and sub-divisions of a large Deccan village are assembled,
it is easy to recognise a general difference in colour and physical
characteristics from one another, as well as from the various
Aryan castes living within the same village.
In some cases, from various reasons, the changes caused in
aboriginal tribes by contact with the Aryan races are less marked
than in others. Thus the village Bhils and Ramoosis, and
Mangs of the Deccan are less fixed to settled habitations than
other Helot castes or races living side by side with them in the
same villages. They more readily revert to nomadic life; and
if it is reported in the Deccan that the Mangs or Ramoosis
have left their houses in the little hamlets of Helots outside the
village walls, and are living in temporary booths in the distant
fields and jungle, the experienced Brahmin Administrator will look
out for disturbances, organised gang robberies, preluding insur-
rection. Fie will say, " It is always the way with these wild
people ! They are but evil spirits half tamed, or wild beasts, and
will return to their lawless ways whenever the hand of Govern-
ment is slackened.”
There are scattered among the Aryan populations of the open
plain country a few aboriginal tribes who have never been
settled down in fixed habitations, and have not lost all traces of
their aboriginal tongue. Such, for instance, are the Wuddars,
who under various names are found as nomad quarrymen and
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.	317
stonemasons throughout Central India, Rajputana, and the
Deccan.
They are great proficients in their own crafts, but retain
their own dialect, apparently of Dravidian origin, and a very
curious communistic organisation, settling all matter of private
as well as public import, from the movements of the tribe down
to the marriages of the young men and maidens, and the
division of wages, in full assembly of all adult males, where all
except the parties directly interested may speak and vote, and
from whose decisions no appeal is allowed to any other authority
or tribunal.
They rarely and unwillingly accept wages as day labourers,
and prefer taking task work or contracts to dig out a tank of a
given acre and depth, to hew and carry stones of a given size
and number, to build given lengths of wall of stone or earth,
and they never fail to execute fairly a bargain so made. The
proceeds are then divided, in full assembly, the weak and sick,
the widows and orphans, all receiving their fair share of the
gross earnings, the share being apportioned according to the
opinion entertained by the general assembly of the deserts of the
recipients or of their former bread-winners as contributors in
times past to the general earnings of the community.
Such are a few of the effects on the aboriginal races of contact
with Aryan civilization in the open country, where the aborigines
have been effectually subdued and incorporated with their con-
querors. In the hills and forests and elsewhere, wherever the abori-
gines have maintained a separate national existence, the effects of
Aryan contact are less visible. Sometimes, as in Assam, the Hindu -
izing process has gone on gradually among the aboriginal tribes
for generations past, and up to our own time; but in many
cases there has been little visible change or improvement in
civilization for centuries past, till the European Aryan with his
roads and railroads, his uniform codes, and his centralised
administration broke into the aboriginal reserve of Warlis and
Bhils, of Sonthals, or Gonds, or Roles—and in half a generation
effected more change than Hindu Rajas or Moslem Nawabs had
effected for centuries before him. But space does not admit of
more than a passing notice of such results.
It is clear from the written records, and still clearer from the
sculptures and paintings of ancient Assyria and Egypt, that the
highly civilized people of those countries were from the earliest
ages in contact, and generally in conflict, with their uncivilized
neighbours. That extermination of the uncivilized race, or at
least of the whole adult male population, and the absorption of
the women and children by the conquering race, so as practi-
cally to extinguish the conquered tribe, was a common result, is
318
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
also clear. But this result did not invariably follow. It appears
to have been a usual policy of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, and
Babylonians, as well as the Medes and Persians, to transplant
whole colonies of one conquered race and settle them in the
territory of another subject people—sometimes probably the
colonies thus introduced were superior in civilization to those
people amongst whom they were settled, and acted as civilizing
military colonies—but the main purpose of the transfer was
apparently simply to break up national ties—and to fuse the
whole population of the empire into one submissive whole.
Occasionally, on the other hand, the less civilized race got the
better of the civilized—and effected something more than a
change of dynasty though they were sometimes absorbed into
the conquered race. This seems more than once to have
happened in Assyria and Babylonia, and the Medes and Persians
were apparently far less civilized than the people they conquered.
In Egypt the Hyksos would appear to have been an un-
civilized race as compared with the Egyptians—but in all these
cases we know too little of the details of history to judge of
the precise action of the one race upon the other.
Nor is much to be learned from the earlier history of Greece.
That the Hellenic races, which achieved so rapidly a civiliza-
tion in some respects unsurpassed as yet by any human
family, were from the earliest times of authentic history always
in contact with less civilized races, is clear, and also that the Hel-
lenes were themselves inferior in civilization to the Phoenicians and
Egyptians, the Assyrians, and other neighbours to the south-east
and south of the Mediterranean—and drew from them much
which was essential to Greek culture in its best time. But here,
again, of the definite mode of action we know little.
Much more is to be learnt from the Roman history of every
age. The tribes which formed the original constituent parts
of the early Roman State were apparently in a state of civiliza-
tion, much less advanced than their older neighbours, the
Etruscans, who were gradually absorbed into the Roman com-
monwealth, and probably contributed more than any other single
race to mould the Roman civilization of later days.
It is clear that, from the first, absorption and assimilation, and
not extermination, was the usual, and apparently the chosen
result of Roman conquest. The aim was extension of empire
—not mere triumph over a national rival. Whether the people
conquered were Jews or Egyptians or other possessors of an
ancient civilization—or Gauls and Britons in a state of extreme
barbarism—the object was always the same, though it might
require very different and even opposite treatment to attain it.
In the former case, when a civilized kingdom was subdued, steps
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life
319
might be taken to bring to Rome somewhat of the arts, the
literature, and refinement of the conquered people, but these
were secondary objects, and were often aimed at no further than
was needed to adorn the triumphal procession of the conqueror.
The essential object was always dominion. The conquered
country was to be bodily absorbed into the Imperial Republic
or Empire with as little change as was consistent with safety
—and apart from what personal vanity or avarice might
demand, little need be taken from the conquered people,
as long as the mler bowed to the majesty of Rome, and was
content to retain his crown as a vassal of Rome. Sufficient
garrisons were placed in all posts, of great strategic importance,
but the form of government, and the framework and all details
of internal administration remained unchanged, few additions or
alterations were made, save those which were essential to the
Empire. Regarding these the roughest Roman soldier seems to
have had an instinct almost as intuitive and discriminating as
Caesar himself: as long as the people were content to act on the
principle “We have no king but Caesar ” all might go on as under
their own rulers, great causes and capital cases being alone
reserved for decision by Imperial authority. Our own Empire in
India, and that of the Manchus in China, are modern examples
of the working of a policy akin to that of Rome.
An entirely different course was followed (though it was to secure
the same object) when a rude and barbarous people were subdued.
We could hardly have a better example than is afforded by the
history of our own island. The Romans found Britain in a
condition of civilization little if at all superior to that of the
Zulus in our own day. In each province of the island, after the
preliminary work of conquest by victory in the field, secure
communication by means of military roads between carefully
selected strategical points was the first care of the conquerors.
Wherever the military detachments rested even for a single day,
the post was appropriately fortified according to the best known
rules of military art, and the fortifications of all points of per-
manent strategical importance were of a character to indicate
that permanent undisputed possession of the country was the
dominant idea of the conqueror. So wisely, with reference to the
natural features of the country, were the lines of communica-
tions and fortified posts chosen by the Roman invaders, that the
general direction of the trunk lines of Roman road will usually
be found identical with those of our modern great lines of
railway, the deviations being in most cases due either to natural
obstacles which the modern locomotive finds more difficult
to surmount than did the Roman Legion ; whilst there are few
natural ports, or natural centres of commercial transit, which are
320
Sir H. B. Freer.—On the Laws affecting the
not marked by the remains of Boman stations, so placed as
effectually to command the communications and trade.
Of the results of Roman occupation on civil administration
and on social and political life in Britain we have fewer
remains, but they are sufficient to show how wise, with a view
to permanent empire, was the policy adopted. The native
chiefs and rulers were subsidised, and as far as possible
Romanised—and apparently the details of local administration
were conducted through them with the result of gradually
settling and civilizing the barbarian British tribes who remained in
the open country. The fiercer and more untameable tribes were
pushed back into the mountainous regions of Wales and
North Britain, and there shut in by good military frontier
roads, communicating between strong fortified posts, the fortifi-
cations being sometimes continuous for long distances.
In the open country, administered under Imperial authority,
great progress seems to have been made during two or three
centuries in assimilating the social and municipal life of the
people to that of the older provinces of the Empire. The
remains of fortified towns with their baths and temples, of country
villas which had evidently been the abode of leisurely and even
luxurious civilized occupants—and other remains of the Roman
period—concur with the somewhat meagre written historical
records in showing that before the Romans left the island, life
in Roman Britain had become at least as much assimilated to
life in the older provinces of the Empire, as life in our colonies
is to the English life of the present day.
(Let me note in passing that a system of securing military
possession of the country precisely similar in principle to that
adopted by the Romans in Great Britain was inculcated on Sir
Harry Smith by the Duke of Wellington, when discussing the
Kaffir War in which Sir Harry Smith was engaged; and the
system so inculcated was practically carried out by Sir George
Cathcart, whose volume of despatches from South Africa lays
down a complete system for securing military possession of
British Kaffraria, including the Amatola mountains, such as
might have been dictated by Julius Ciesar or Agricola.)
The question, What was the result on the bulk of the native
British population ? has next to be considered.
There is much evidence to prove that the total population of
the southern part of the island must have greatly increased
during the Roman occupation. The greater part of whatever
population existed was probably of aboriginal races, for except
to retired soldiers or traders who had lived here previously, there
was little to tempt emigrants from southern Europe or Greece
to settle here, and till late in the period of Roman sway, we
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
321
hear little of any considerable immigrations or invasions from
the eastward, from Germany or Scandinavia.
The Roman language had evidently been from the first the
language of officialism and of the educated classes.
How far it had superseded the mother tongue of the aborigines
in daily and domestic use it is difficult now to guess, owing to
the numerous successive waves of large immigrations of
northern races after the Romans left. The same may be said
of the physical stock. Cornwall is evidently not the only
English province which may claim a large amount of aboriginal
element in its population. But to what extent the population
of other provinces has undergone changes and additions similar
to those known to have occurred in Cornwall during the period
of recent history, it would be difficult accurately to estimate.
It is, however, clear that before the Romans left, so many of
the aborigines had been civilized and educated as Romans, that
men and women of British birth and Roman education were
sufficiently numerous to be a recognisable element among the
upper classes in Rome.
Space does not admit of more than a glance at the interaction of
civilized on uncivilized races during the long period which elapsed
between the time when the tide of Roman conquest began to
recede, and the recommencement of a career of Eastern conquest
by the Western nations about the time of the crusades. Western
Europe had in the interim been overwhelmed by invading bar-
barians from the north and east. Occupying one province
after another of the Roman Empire, immigrant conquerors became
themselves gradually more or less settled, civilized, and Roman-
ised, changed in religion and often in language, till they took
the form of the modern nationalities of Europe, nearly as we see
them at present.
The process seems in most cases to have been very uniform.
Sometimes as successful invaders and conquerors, sometimes as
allies or hired auxiliaries of the Christian ruler, the heathen
uncivilized immigrants acquired the substantial power of the
sword in a Roman province, learned many of the arts, adopted
much of the civilization, and finally the religion of the conquered
people, intermarried with, and settled amongst them without
losing the uncivilized energy they had brought with them from
the distant regions of the north-east. After a century or two
they were a new people, with settled habits and national aspira-
tions, wedded to the land of their adoption, determined to
defend it and its institutions to the death, and as firmly rooted
in the soil as if for the preceding centuries they had lived on it,
and not been ceaselessly journeying westward from the original
cradle of their race.
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Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
How, after many generations of rest, after the fermentation of
new ideas in religion, in politics, in commerce, and in all the arts
of life, the inspiration of foreign adventure again pervaded the
people of Wes tern Europe, and directed the swarms of emigration
to distant lands, would take long to tell. We must pass over the
many valuable lessons to be gathered from the painful but in-
structive history of the contact between civilized and uncivilized
races in America,—Spanish, French, Dutch, and English,—as well
as in Polynesia and Africa, Australia and Australasia, up to our
own time, and come at once to the more recent lessons afforded
by our experience in our own day, and especially in Southern
Africa, to which I would at present mainly confine my remarks.
South African experience is, for many reasons, especially valu-
able in examining the present question, owing to the variety of
races to which our experience relates. Of all these races I would
remark that they seem to me to have been, when they first met
with Europeans, descending and not ascending in the scale of
civilization. None of them have any recorded history which could
place the fact beyond the reach of doubt; such evidence as
exists must be sought in language and legend, and scanty traces
of migration, but all races bear some traces of descent from
ancestors in a higher state of civilization than their modern
representatives were when we first heard of them. This is
especially the case with regard to their language and to such
differences as exist between early and late immigrations of the
same race.
1. There are the races which have apparently most claim to
be considered aboriginal. The "Bed," or “Yellow skinned
men,”—the tawny complexioned races: Hottentots, Bushmen,
Namaquas, remarkable for their generally short stature, broad
and prominent cheek-bones, and for their peculiar languages,
which have given rise to a controversy, as yet unsettled
whether their affinities are with the Coptic, Berber, Galla,
Ethiopia languages of Northern Africa, with the Finnish of
Northern Europe, or whether they form a class apart, distinct
from any yet known modern tongues.
Time does not admit of our entering into the discussion, but
all who could wish to pursue the subject further would do well
to consult the excellent article on " Hottentots ” by Mr. Noble,
Clerk of the Legislative Council in Cape Town, which will be
found in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica now in
course of publication, where the argument will be found sum-
marised with reference to the authorities Wallman—the Doctors
Hahn, three in number—Tindall, Bleek, Kronlein, and others
who have written at length on the subject.
Mr. Noble notes that the early Dutch travellers Kolben, &c.,
represent the Hottentots as mild, placable, ingenuous, affectionate,
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
323
hospitable, indolent, unenergetic. Their description of the
personal appearance of the Hottentots is : body slender, well
proportioned, small hands and feet, skin leathery brown, faces
oval, projecting cheekbones ; eyes dark, wide apart, deep set; nose
broad, thick, flat; chin pointed, month large, thick upturned lips;
hair in woolly tufts ; beard scanty.
The women are described as held in high esteem among all the
tribes of Hottentots, but they were made to do the hard work of
the family—an oath by mother or sister was considered the most
binding of any.
Polygamy was sometimes allowed, but was not common.
The early travellers could discover no traces of religion. The
Hottentots were great believers in witchcraft, had a superstitious
reverence for some insects and animals, for the moon and other
heavenly bodies, and for the spirits of their ancestors, but their
notions of a supreme being were very vague and contradictory,
and they had no fixed belief in existence after death.
The Berg Damaras are apparently of Bantu origin, and in their
physique hardly to be distinguished from the Damaras proper,
But they have been conquered and enslaved by tribes of Ha-
maqua origin and now speak a dialect of Namaqua, a very
interesting instance of a change of language of which I know no
other instance in South Africa.
The first question in this, as in other cases, relates to the
continued existence of these races in the presence of civilization,
I have been frequently assured by educated men in South
Africa who had paid some attention to such subjects “ that it
was impossible nowadays to meet with a single man of pure
Hottentot race.” But I soon found on enquiring further that
this . was true only if it were meant that the man must be, notz
only of pure Hottentot race, but that he was unbaptized, and
able to speak his own Hottentot language. I found that where -
ever there were many of the class popularly known as " Hotten-
tots ” or " Bastards,” it was not difficult to find many individuals
who, as far as could be learnt by personal examination, were of
pure Hottentot parentage; but all who were baptized, and many
who were not, had adopted Christian names, and generally Dutch
surnames also, apd were known as “ off coloured boys" or
“ Darkies,” regarding the name of Hottentot as a term of
reproach ; this is especially apt to be the case where a man
has prospered, and acquired money, as many have; the language,
moreover, rapidly falling into disuse, and now useful only among
the Hottentots themselves, who almost always understand Cape
Dutch,
The conclusion I came to at last was—that it was doubtful
whether there were not, at this moment, more people of pure or
vol. xil	z
324
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
nearly pure Hottentot blood within 300 miles of Cape Town
than there were when Van Riebeek first founded the Dutch
Colony. I was struck with the very small numbers of natives
in each tribe as estimated by the early voyagers, and summing
up the numbers of those tribes whose territorial limits could be
defined, it seemed to me that there were now, within those
limits, as many, if not more, people of apparently genuine and
unmixed Hottentot descent, than there were when the traveller
wrote. This will not appear surprising if, setting aside for the
moment the theory that the race must be dying out, we consider
the great area of country required to support a nomad popula-
tion subsisting mainly by the chase, as compared with the area
required to support the same numbers living as labourers on
farms or vineyards.
The official returns as far as they go confirm this view.
The early Dutch travellers speak of the Hottentots as
numbering about 6,000 souls.
Sir J. Barrow in 1798 estimated them at 1,500.
An official return in 1806 gave male Hottentots, 9,784 ;
females, 10,642 ; total, 20,426.
In 1824	________________________ 31,000
In 1865	_______________________ 81,589
In 1875	________________________ 98,561
But in the earlier returns slaves of other races were apparently
included, and many of mixed races included in the later official
census, as Hottentots. Dr. Theophilus Hahn estimated the
Namaquas at 17,000 in Great Ham aqualand and Damaraland.
The point, however, as to whether the Hottentots of pure race
in the Cape Colony are or are not dying out admits, I think, of
being more clearly ascertained than by simple observation
uncorrected by carefully collected statistics. It is useless to
attempt any test by means of ordinary census returns, for few
will register themselves as Hottentots who can possibly class
themselves under any more respectable heading. But there are
more than one of the large Moravian settlements specially
devoted to the maintenance of Hottentots, and where the
missionaries possess an unusual amount of knowledge of the
personal history of their flock. Such are, Mamre, Gnadendhal,
and others, at either of which it would be possible to obtain a
fairly accurate history of the descent and other particulars of
ethnological import—regarding probably two thousand of the
people in and around the station. The enquiry should be made
personally, in house to house visitation, by a competent scientific
reporter, who is acquainted with some of the leading points to
be investigated in dealing with the problems of Anthropology,
with an eye for variations of physical features, and an ear
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life. 325
for language. Dr. Halm, the zealous Professor of Chemistry-
in the South African College, Cape Town, has, I know, made
such matters his study at Mamre, in the Malmesbury district,
and with the aid of other members of the South African
Philosophical Society would be able, I have no doubt, to throw
much light on the subject. It would be desirable to enquire, in
the same manner, regarding the births and deaths, and duration
of life in each family selected, and to collect as much information
as possible bearing on the vital statistics of the race.
I fear it will be found that, even if I am right in believing
that the aggregate numbers of the race have not decreased since
they came in close contact with Europeans, the rate of mortality
among them will be found to be very high as compared with
either the European, or with other African races. Measles and
small-pox create terrible havoc among them, whenever they
break out. Venereal diseases are abnormally frequent and fatal,
and the destruction caused by spirit drinking is frightful, the
race appearing to be unable to resist either the temptation to
drink, or the ill effects of drinking, to a degree unusual even
among savage races.
It is difficult to draw any very distinct line between Hama-
quas and Hottentots. But whereas the Hottentots are generally
considered as confined to the old Cape Colony proper, the
Hamaquas form distinct tribes, more or less independent of
Colonial control, and in Great Hamaqualand beyond Colonial
jurisdiction. Hence they afford a better field for ethnological
study by the Anthropologist and Philologist. But they throw
less light on the immediate subject of our inquiry, the laws
affecting the relations between civilized and savage life. They
have been sensibly receding northwards before the advancing
colonists; and have come in hostile contact with the Damaras,
a Bantu race, moving southwards and westwards, with whom
they raged war, with varying success, till peace was restored,
mainly through the intervention of the German missionaries.
Damaras and Hamaquas alike agreed to a modified English
Protectorate, which led to the annexation of the port of Walwich
Bay, and might have led to the settlement and partial civilization
of the whole region between the lower Orange River, and the
Portuguese frontier on the western coast, and from the sea to
the Kalahari desert. But a change in the policy of the English
Government has led to the withdrawal of the promised pro-
tectorate, and according to the latest advices, to the renewal of
war between Damaras and Hamaquas.
Between the Hamaquas and the Bechuana tribes along the
banks of the Orange River and its northern tributaries as far
east as Basutoland, were found the Korannas, apparently an
z 2
326
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
offshoot from the Great Namaqua family, and mixed up with
them, Griquas and Bastards, and other mixed races, whose chief
interest to our present enquiry consists in the evidence their
history during the past eighty years affords, that such mixed
races, moving in front of the advancing wave of European coloni-
sation, form tribes with a novel organisation of their own, partly
European, especially in its official aspects, but claiming tribal
rights and a national existence, on the same grounds and to the
same extent as if they belonged to an ancient dynasty ruling
over a tribe of historical importance.
Thus the Griquas, both of Eastern and Western Griqualand,
are clearly of very modern origin, having grown up within this
century from mixed and broken tribes, chiefly Namaqua,
Hottentot, and Koranna, but with a considerable mixture of
Bechuana and other Kaffir and negro blood, and some Dutch
blood ; with much Dutch and English training from missionaries
and frontier farmers, traders, and Europeans of various kinds.
Their principal chiefs generally trace back their pedigree to a
grandfather, or great grandfather at furthest, who is known to
have been in the service of some Dutch colonial family as
slave, or hired servant. The possession of a few horses or
guns by a man of energy and intelligence superior to his
fellows was sufficient to found a chiefship, and to form the
nucleus of a tribe which gathered round from waifs and strays
of the Colony and broken border tribes. Sooner or later
European adventurers appeared, and attached themselves to
the chief, sometimes as traders, or as secretaries and advisers.
If the chief was prudent and successful, he generally invited a
missionary to settle with, or near him, and he seems always
to have felt that his power was not firmly established unless
he persuaded some European with less interested motives than
the itinerant trader, or loafing adventurer, to throw in his lot
with the new dynasty.
In a few years the new-fledged chief would have, besides his
missionary and private secretary, his “Staats Secretary,” who often
were all Europeans, and in addition to his councillors, the
indispensible appendages to any native chiefs, he had his " Raad,”
or legislature, and surveyors, and land registrars, and, in two
instances, an elaborately written constitution, on the European
model.
It may be owing to the incongruous materials employed, and
perhaps to untoward circumstances, but none of these constitu-
tional experiments have survived the original projectors, and in
more than one instance, when the chief grew old, he recognised
the instability of the edifice he had attempted to rear, and
surrendered his power during his own lifetime into other hands.
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
327
Bushmen.—The following is the usual, and, as far as I was
able to judge, accurate description of the Bushman race:—
Small stature, 4| feet being rarely exceeded; dirty yellow-
coloured complexion; Mongolian type of face; cheek-bones
prominent, eyes deeply set; nose small and depressed; hair in
woolly tufts; hollow back, protruding stomach; thick hinder
parts; small limbs, and very small hands and feet.
Habitations—rocks, rarely huts; no cattle, and few dogs; arms :
bows and poisoned arrows. No tribal unity. No chiefs. Language,
monosyllabic, abounding in clicks, and having no numerals
beyond two.
That the Bushmen proper are rapidly disappearing admits, I
fear, of no doubt; but even in their case I have found generally
much error in the popular estimates of their numbers, or even
their continued existence.
In their wild state, every man’s hand is against them, and up
to the present time we hear hideous tales of their sufferings, and
their being shot like wild beasts, and being reduced by want of
food to cannibalism, in the difficult border-country where they
still continue to live at large, in rocky and barren places, and
in the thick bush which fills the ravines in the lower part of the
Orange River and its tributaries.
As the large game disappears they are more often reduced to
feed on the smaller wild animals, and even on reptiles and
insects, the larger grasshoppers, and locusts, and ants affording
them a frequent meal, and they are charged with occasional
cannibalism in seasons of great scarcity. They are naturally
unable to resist the temptation of stealing the sheep and cattle
of the frontier colonists, and this propensity, joined to their
reputation for using poisoned arrows, has so steeled the hearts of
many border farmers, that to shoot a wild Bushman is hardly
regarded as a crime in any but a strict legal sense.
Time does not admit of more than a passing allusion to their
most interesting, and, in a philological sense, most important
language; their marvellously spirited and accurate cave paintings
and rock sculptures, and their utensils and weapons which have
frequently a special interest as illustrating the use of stone
concurrently with metal. Thus to pick up the surface of the
soil, and prepare it for sowing, they still occasionally use a
sharpened stick loaded with a round ball of stone at the thicker
end, to give it weight and impetus; they still sometimes use
arrows armed with neatly formed flint splinters; and I was told
by a Damaraland trader, that he found in one place the Bushmen
were frequent purchasers at the trader’s wagon or store of
bottles of cheap German scent. He enquired the object of such
an unexpected taste, and found that the Bushmen had discovered
328
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
that the little bottles, thickened towards the lower part so as to
hold the less fluid, could by a blow in a particular direction, be
splintered so as to furnish excellent arrow-heads. He could not
learn that the scent was valued except as a dram of strong spirit.
When captured or domesticated the Bushmen make excellent
herdsmen, and often settle down as valued servants of the Euro-
pean farmer ; but as they learn to speak Dutch, and lose the
habit of using their own language, intermarry with other races,
and improve in physique by regular and abundant food, they
gradually lose some of the most characteristic features of their
people, and merge into other races or denominations, becoming
classed as Hottentots or Bastards, among whom an unusually
irascible or violent temper, short stature, extraordinary aptitude
for music, and for delineation of animals or human figures is
often accounted for by attributing a Bushman origin to the
possessor of these Bushman characteristics.
It is unnecessary to remind you of the invaluable labours of
the late Dr. Bleek, and of his sister-in-law, Miss Lloyd, in noting
and preserving record of all that concerns this most interesting
race—their language, physical characteristics, arts, legends, and
habits. I do not know that a more valuable contribution could
be made to South African anthropolgoy than by enabling
Miss Lloyd to complete her researches by visiting the frontier
districts where alone the Bushman is still to be found in his
primitive state, and by giving to the world, by printing and
publishing, the unpublished collections of Dr. Bleek, and the
large additions to ,his “Papers on native African Races,” which
she has herself collected.
Mr. Stowe, the Geological Surveyor of the Orange Free State,
is another most zealous and trustworthy labourer in the same
field. His geological researches have frequently led him into
the wild inaccessible country to which the Bushmen habitually
retreat, and he has taken every advantage of his opportunities to
record the results of his observations which will, I hope, be
speedily published, and will be sure to form a most valuable
contribution to South African philology and anthropology.
I may remark that we frequently hear of Bushmen in Dama-
raland, and in the country north and east of the Limpopo, and
they are sometimes spoken of, in Damaraland especially, as
living in larger and more settled communities than the Bushmen
of the Drakensberg, as being of stature as large as the Hamaquas,
and able to smelt ore, and work it into ornaments and utensils,
which they sell to their Damara neighbours. Whether or not
they are true Bushmen, or fugitives and outcasts from other
broken tribes called " Bushmen ” from their wandering and wild
habits, I could not ascertain, but it would be interesting to learn
Relations between' Civilized and Savage Life.
329
more about them, as they are obviously a less scattered and wild
race than the Bushmen of the Drakensberg.
Some of the people known as “ Bushmen" in the Northern
Transvaal are obviously Korannas, or other remnants of mixed
races or broken tribes, but there may still be others of genuine
Bushman race, as known to us further south.
The Bantu races, whether of the Bechuana, Kaffir, or Zulu
families, are so well known that I need attempt no more than a
very brief general description of the distinctive points in which
they differ from the races nearest them in Africa. All are of a
type clearly different from either the Hottentot or genuine
Negro race. They are generally large of stature and well formed ;
of a dark brown bronze colour, very rarely black complexion,
and by no means assimilated in any way to a negro type, good
straight legs, with moderately large but well formed feet, fairly
high in the instep, and rarely “ lark-heeled ” like the negro. The
skull is generally more of the European than of the Negro or
Malay type, with a broad and moderately high forehead. The
lips and nose are thick but not negroid; the hair crisped and
closely curled, but not woolly.
The skin is peculiarly free from hair or even down, and this
especially when the skin is healthy and well nourished, , and yet
more when lubricated with fat and ochre, gives it a glossy
appearance like that of bronze.
These are generally the characteristics of all families and
sub-divisions of the Bantu races, but they differ much inter se
in the degree in which such characteristics are marked.
There is much controversy as to which is the superior race
in the great Bantu family, and I generally found that those who
had lived longest among them were inclined to give the palm to
that race with which they had been most associated. To my
own eye the Gaikas, and Galekas, and some of the Zulus, afforded
some of the finest specimens of the race I saw, but I would
advise more accurate test by measurement and weighing before
coming to any conclusion, and it would be well that the observer
should note the pedigree of the examples he selects, for the
national practice of " eating up ” a conquered tribe, i.e., slaugh-
tering the older folk, especially the males, and all capable of
fighting, but incapable of work, and absorbing all the younger
women, and all the children into the tribe of the conqueror,
leads to great confusion of race—and even a superficial observer
may frequently note obvious differences among the inhabitants
of the same kraal, and learn that the exceptional form or com-
plexion may be accounted for by the presence of captives of
other races who had been absorbed into the tribe, after their own
had been “ eaten up.”
330
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
The chiefs are in general notably superior to their followers
in physique.
There are very great differences in culture and civilization
among the different tribes. The Bechuana tribes, including
the Batlapins, Basutos, &c., seem by common consent of all
observers to be placed at the head of the list; and from the
observations of the earlier travellers, and of Burchell especially, it
is clear that they were greatly in advance of the Kaffirs and
Zulus in civilization when they first met the European travellers
and colonists in South Africa; though, in their case, as well as
in that of all other South African races, there is much to show
that they have degenerated from a higher grade of civilization,
rather than risen from a lower state.
Their language is one of the reasons adduced to prove that
the Bechuana tribes belong to a later wave of immigration than
others of the Bantu family. It has fewer “ clicks ” and Hotten-
tot words, and other Hottentot elements, than the Zulu or
Amakosa Kaffir. They have also among them a nomadic race
of serfs (Balala), who are sometimes supposed to belong to an
older wave of Bantu immigration, which was followed and con-
quered by later arrivals of Bechuanas.
In the arts of life—in smelting and working iron and copper,
in agriculture, in building houses with many rooms, upright
walls, and a sloping roof, the Bechuanas are far in advance of
all the Kaffir tribes. They are most industrious, and more
willing to adopt new habits and the improvements of civilized
life.
The rule of the chiefs is less despotic, and the habit of con-
gregating in large towns of from 5,000 to 40,000 inhabitants
favours improvement and gives a better opening for the labours
of the missionaries who have made so much progress in civiliz-
ing and converting some of the Bechuana tribes.
In religious belief the Bechuanas, when the missionaries first
came among them, differed little from the other Bantu tribes,
as we now find those who have not had much intercourse with
Europeans. Except in the case of witchcraft, in some vague
influences of ancestral spirits, and in omens, they had little
definite belief. Of any thing approaching our conception of a
Divine or creative power, of a soul as distinct from life and
intellects of spiritual existences—they were sceptical. They
were, in fact, materialistic Sadducees.
It would take long to tell of the changes effected by the
teaching and influence of the missionaries, especially those of
the London Missionary Society, who have laboured among the
Bechuana tribes.
I doubt; whether five centuries of Roman dominion, and of the
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life. 331
preaching of early Christian missionaries, did much more to
civilize and elevate the savage inhabitants of our own island,
than has been effected by seventy years of the labour of
men like Moffat, Livingstone, Thompson, John Mackenzie, and
Hepburn, among the Bechuana tribes. Let any one contrast
the accounts given by humane and observant travellers like
Burchell, with what may now be seen in the country between
the Vaal and the Molappo, or north of that to the northern
confines of the Christian king Kama, of Kamangwato, and he
will be able to appreciate the difference.
Unfortunately, as in Ancient Britain and everywhere else, so
in Bechuanaland, the progress of civilization has inevitably
sapped the authority of the barbarian tribal chief, and the absence
of any temporal substitute threatens to produce the same anarchi-
cal condition which followed the withdrawal of the Bomans
from Britain. Threatened from the north by the Matabele
Zulus, and from the east by the advancing Trek Boers, the
Bechuanas, both chiefs and people, have in vain prayed to be
taken under the protection of the British Government.
' The British Government has repeatedly declined to accept
the allegiance, and time alone can show whether some chief or
adopted foreigner will arise with the genius and energy needed
to repel foreign invasion, and to preserve order in the country,
or whether the Bechuanas will be subdued, and absorbed or
annexed to some other Power, or be driven on to resume the
ceaseless slow migrations in front of more powerful tribes press-
ing on them, which seems to have been their dreary lot for ages
before they fell in with the white men advancing northward
from the Cape of Good Hope.
In the other and less advanced branches of the great Bantu
family there is much difference in the civilization of various
clans, as they have been more or less Under the influence of
their European neighbours.
In almost every case the impression given by the earliest
European observers is that of the extreme savagery of the race as
first known to European visitors. Making every allowance for
prejudice, and for other circumstances affecting the judgment
or competence of observers, it is impossible to read the accounts
given by Sir William Harris, Captain Alan Gardiner, Isaacs,
and many other competent and by no means unfavourably
biassed travellers, without being convinced that the normal state
of most of the Bantu tribes who did not belong to the Bechuana
family, as apparent to the early European observers, was one of
extreme barbarism.
It is often stated, but, as far as I know, entirely on the
evidence of unsupported oral tradition, that there was a time not
332 Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
much anterior to the appearance of Chaka, as founder of the
Zulu power, say seventy years ago, when the regions now known as
Zululand and Natal were the abode of a simple, peaceful,
primitive people, living a pastoral life, in small tribes, under
independant chiefs, seldom going to war, and when they did
quarrel, settling their disputes by a formal fight in battle array,
which decided the question of relative supremacy, without lead-
ing to prolonged hostilities or disturbing the generally neigh-
bourly relations of the clans engaged. The picture is a pleasing
one, but not consistent with known and undoubted facts, and I
fear must to a great extent be classed with the poetical histories
of a golden age in other parts of the world. There can - be no
doubt that, eighty years ago, the country in question was very
sparsely inhabited by small tribes, which were slowly moving
southward and eastward, along the coast regions, between the
sea and the great ranges of which the Drakensberg is the best
known, and that the country was full of elephants and other large
game to an extent incompatible with the presence of numerous
or strong tribes.
There seems no reason to doubt the story of the origin of the
Zulu power—that a petty chief and fugitive from his own
country, passed some years in the frontier provinces of the Cape
Colony, and there learnt something of European discipline,
which he carried back with him to his own country, and used
to subdue neighbouring tribes, establishing something like a
kingdom. He left, however, each tribe as it was subjected,
under the rule of its own chiefs and headmen, a humane mistake,
as it seemed to his successors, leading to a conspiracy against
him, and to his own assassination. His favourite lieutenant,
Chaka, resolved to correct this mistake, and introduced the
custom of assimilating each conquered clan, and absorbing it into
the conqueror’s own tribe of Zulus. This was effected by
slaying or putting to flight all adult males who were likely to be
incorrigible upholders of their own tribal rights, and the absorp-
tion of the younger males and females into the ranks of the
victors. This policy was consistently followed, with some
variations of energy and success, by Chaka and his successors,
Dingaan, Panda, and Cetywayo. It was effectual in welding all
the conquered people into one nation, though the assimilation
and extinction of separate rights was more perfect in the case
of some tribes than of others. As a rule the centralization of
authority, the destruction of separate tribal influence and of
the power of the tribal chiefs, was very complete. The fighting
men were organised in regiments instead of tribes. Each
regiment was made to consist of a mixture of various tribes, the
warriors being chosen rather for equality of age than for
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
333
similarity of origin, and commanded by a chief, chosen by the
king for his valour and devotion to his sovereign rather than for
his descent or tribal connection. The system was of course not
always carried out with unvarying exactness and completeness,
and occasional concessions were made to local and family
influence, so that the regiments became more like a local militia
under command of the local chief, than a royal battalion under
the centralised authority of a commander selected by the king.
But the general result was effectually to substitute centralised
royal authority for tribal allegiance.
When and by whom the important change was made, which
substituted the short stabbing Zulu pike for the assegai or light
javelin, whether by Chaka or his predecessor, is not agreed. It
was probably Chaka, who certainly carried to perfection the
stern discipline, which, with the use of the short pike, made
it the invariable duty of the Zulu " impi" to come to close
quarters as speedily as possible, after their enemy was aware of
their proximity, and to overwhelm him with a mob of warriors
who showed no quarter, and were determined to conquer or
die.
There are many Zulus yet living, and in active possession of
all their faculties, who were warriors in Chaka’s impis before
they had learnt what defeat meant. They are within reach of
Sir Theophilus Shepstone, of the Hon. Chas. Brownlee, and of
surviving members of the brave band of Trek Boers and English-
men, who remember the days when under Dingaan the Zulus
suffered their first repulse. If some of these gentlemen could
be induced (and no men are more competent than those I have
named) to take pen in hand and note down their recollections of
wbat they have seen and heard of the half century between 1830
and 1880, they would furnish a record of great historical and
military^value. How Chaka organised, armed, and dressed his
battalion for parade and for the field, how he mustered and
exercised them in peace, and fed and marched them in war;—
how they were trained to irresistible attack, regardless of wounds
or certain destruction ;—how their conduct in action was scruti-
nised and conspicuous bravery was rewarded ;—how at the grim
assize of the “ coward’s tree ” cases of misconduct and failure in
duty were heard and punished with instant death ;—how Chaka’s
system was modified by his successors, especially by the intro-
duction of firearms,—these and all cognate topics are matters of
great military importance, and an accurate record of them would
furnish many a useful hint to the military reformer or organiser
of the present day.
Not less valuable would be the record of the experience of
the Trek Boers. The history of the Bloody Sunday, of the
334
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
massacres of Weenen, Bushman’s river, and of Blaauwkrantz,
when hundreds of men, women, and children were surprised and
slain by Dingaan’s impis, all these afford something more than
material for a tragedy or thrilling romance. The history is full
of instruction how to defend and protect peaceful agriculturists
within reach of savage neighbours.
Again, how the Trek Boers, never mustering a thousand
guns, finally defeated Dingaan’s tens of thousands of unconquered
warriors;—how the Boers never moved camp till they had
scouted the country for ten or twelve miles on their purposed line
of march ;—how they moved with their mounted fighting men in
pairs (the Boer and his " Achter Ryter ” with his spare firelock),
thrown out in advance and on each flank for a distance of four or
five miles in every direction how at the slightest alarm of a
body of the enemy in sight, the wagons were closed up or moved
into " laager ; ”—-how the wagon " laager,” with more women
and children than men inside it, was rendered as impregnable as
a British infantry square at Waterloo or Ulundi;—how the
wagons, parked so as to protect the oxen as well as the people,
were fenced with brushwood and skins, so as to be impervious to
a rush of pike men how the women and children helped to
load the cumbrous “ roer ” or elephant gun, and, if need were,
sometimes with hatchet or knife, defended the wagon from
Kaffirs creeping in through unguarded loopholes, these and
many other details have a romantic interest for all readers, but
they contain many valuable lessons for the military student,
even when he has to imagine earthworks in place of wagon
“ laagers ” and firearms with a range of 2,000 yards in place of
“ Brown Bess,” good for a hundred yards, or the assegai of little
effect above thirty.
It would take some time fully to describe the effects of the
growth of the Zulu power on their neighbours, but there are three
or four movements of the population which must not pass
without some notice, however brief.
1.	The first is the emigration of Moselekatze, an account of
which, by a nearly contemporary observer, will be found in
Harris’ “ Wild Sports in South Africa.”
It is, I have been informed on the authority of Cetywayo, the
modern Zulu belief that Moselekatze was despatched by the
Zulu king to “ eat up ” a Bechuana tribe beyond the Drackens-
berg—that he succeeded in his enterprise, but, instead of returning,
as ordered, to the Zulu capital with his plunder and captives he
marched on northward and westward, through what is now the
Orange Free State and Transvaal, destroying and " eating up ”
tribe after tribe of comparatively peaceful and civilized Bechu-
anas, by whom that part of the Transvaal was then densely
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
335
occupied, annexing their cattle and younger captives, and
slaughtering their warriors, whose bones were still visible in
heaps when Harris visited the country.
Harris found Moselekatze not far from where Rustenberg is
now, fully established as an independent sovereign, having earned
the surname of the “Attila of South Africa,” the scourge of Bechu-
anas and of the advanced guard of the great emigration of Trek
Boers, who have since occupied the country Moselekatze had
passed through on his move from Zululand. He seems to have
felt that between the advancing Trek Boers and the Bechuanas
who had come under some sort of European influence through
the missionaries at Humman and in the Griqua country, he was
likely to find more than his match, and moving northwards and
eastwards he finally settled with his followers, as the " Matabele,”
in a rich tract of country which was very sparsely inhabited,
on the highland which separates the basin of the Limpopo from
that of the Zambesi.
2.	A very different emigration was that of the people now
known as Lingoes, who appear to be the remnants of various
tribes which in Chaka’s time occupied what is now the western
part of Natal and Zululand. I have seen men now living who
remembered their old homes, but it is difficult now to identify
either the original locality or the exact tribes to which they
belonged, and which seem to have been “ eaten up ” in the early
wars of Chaka, probably even before his time. We first hear of
the Lingoes as a miscellaneous collection of fugitives from Zulu
conquest—broken men and fragments of clans moving slowly
westward and southward, continually harassed by the unbroken
tribes through whose country they passed, till they found a
comparatively safe refuge as Helots of the Gaikas and Galaekas,
and other tribes of the Great Amakosa family.
From an early period of their wanderings they seem to have
cherished hopes of protection by the Government of the White-
men, whom they found moving in the opposite direction towards
Natal, but it is less than thirty years since they were formally
received as British subjects, and settled, some on the Eish River
and its tributaries, and others in various parts of the country
taken from Gaikas and Galaekas between the Kei and Umtata.
They were at the time in a state of the utmost destitution, often
obliged to content themselves with husks of maize and large
leaves sown together to cover them, and reduced for want of
regular food to support themselves on roots and wild berries.
Since that time they have prospered wonderfully, and are now
rivalling the Bechuana, as an industrious, improving race.
If any one doubts the capacity of the Kaffir races for improve-
ment and civilization, such doubts would I feel sure be removed
336
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
by a visit to the Fingo settlements. The visitor would hear from
the people themselves th£ state of utter barbarism to which they
had been reduced when they were first met by the missionaries,
Messrs Ayliff, Warner, and others, and taken under British
protection. He would see in the villages of headmen, like
Veldtman, farmhouses and orchards which would do no discredit
to an English yeoman, and he would find in their tales of how
Captain Bly th ruled and advised them, and in the schools they
have erected in Captain Blyth’s name, at Blytheswood and else-
where, the evidence of how the improvement—material, intellec-
tual, and moral—has been effected.
3.	There was another emigration of Zulus into what is now
known as Umsilar country. Less is known of it than of
Moselekatze’s, or of the Fingo emigration, but Umsila’s people
say they were Zulus driven from Zululand, early in Chaka’s
time, and after many wanderings settled on the coast some
hundred miles north of Delagoa Bay.
4.	There is yet a fourth emigration consequent on the forma-
tion of the Zulu kingdom, which is probably as numerous as
either of the others, I. mean the emigration from Zululand
into Natal.
When the territory which now forms the Colony of Natal
was first visited by the Trek Boers, the country away from
the coast was nearly void of inhabitants, a few broken tribes
occupied, with the elephant and buffalo, the clearer portions
of forests in the warmer and more fertile sea coast; but there
were vast tracts nearly uninhabited, and hideous stories are
still told of men who, within living memory, were reduced to
cannibalism from want of other food.
The country had been laid waste by Zulu “ impis some of the
people who escaped massacre had been carried off to Zululand
to swell the numbers of the Zulu tribes to which their con-
querors belonged; others had fled and joined the retreating
hordes of Fingoes ; the country from the immediate low-lying
sea coast to the Drakensberg, and often beyond, was practically
without any settled inhabitants.
No sooner was the boundary of the British territory fixed,
and the English flag hoisted in Natal, than the Zulus, as well as
the races they had subjected and incorporated, discovered that
the rule of the white man was infinitely easier than that of
the Zulu king, and a steady tide of migration across the border
set in from Zululand into Natal, which has never since stopped.
Sometimes after a contest for the succession or other cause for
internal war, the influx into Natal would be by thousands at a
time, but more frequently it was by single individuals or
families at a time.
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
337
So far from the movement being encouraged by the English
authorities, every effort was made to check it. At first,
before the Colony was formally declared British territory, the
threatening remonstrances of the Zulu ruler were met by the
promises of extradition. But the shocking fate which was found
tc await returned fugitives speedily led to a refusal by the
British officials to give them up, and had it been otherwise the
vast extent of open waste and forest would have made it
practically impossible to follow up fugitives.
But up to a very recent period no man was allowed to bring
over any property : he could only be received as he stood, and if
he brought cattle with him, they were sent back by the British
officials to the Zulu king whenever demanded. The new comer
was required at once to find some older resident in Natal to
answer for him, as not being an habitual vagabond, and within
a very short period he must find the means of paying an annual
hut-tax.
That under such discouragements the migration should have
assumed very large proportions, shows how great must have
been the desire of the Zulu population to escape from the
military service and arbitrary rule of their own king. If I may
judge from the cases in which I was able to examine the Zulu
immigrant personally, there was no temptation to move other
than the greater security of life and property. Such wages as the
immigrants might earn in Natal would have been equally paid
had they remained Zulu subjects with a home in Zululand, and
other temptation there was none. In one case an old headman
who had been contrasting the charms of his old life in Zululand
with the humdrum laborious life he led in Natal, in reply to my
question, " Why did he remain in Natal, when he was free to go
back, and had acquired ample cattle wherewith to propitiate the
king?” answered, “ Here in Natal I sleep in peace with my
wives, children, cattle, fowls, and mealie store about me, and
when I have paid my hut-tax, no one asks me for more. I
don’t awake if the dogs bark. In Zululand, if the dogs barked
at night, I ran and hid myself in the bush, for I did not know
whether it was not a message from the capital to take an ox, or
a girl, or to kill me because I had been smelt out by the witch-
loctors.” The extent of these emigrations from Zululand is a
sufficient proof of the extraordinary vitality of the races which
form the population.
There has been little foreign conquest or absorption of outside
tribes since Moselekatze left Zululand to form with his followers
the nation of Matabele Zulus. The Fingoes are now numbered
by tens of thousands, and the native population of Natal has
increased, mainly by immigration, to probably close on 400,000.
338
Sir H. B. Frere.-—On the Laws affecting the
We can but cursorily glance at the changes which have taken
place in the other great branch of the Bantu family, the
Amakosa Kaffirs, since they came in contact with Europeans.
We first hear of them at the end of the last and beginning of
the present century as encroaching on the Colony, and pressing
back the Hottentot tribes in the neighbourhood of Algoa Bay.
They do not, however, seem to have settled much permanently
south of the Bushman’s river. From that time to this the
history of our intercourse with them is a history of continued
collision between the frontier farmers and the native tribes.
Cattle thefts and reprisals leading to a savage and generally
little expected outburst of hostility—a tedious war, and a truce
or peace of exhaustion is the usual history—the Kaffir tribes
being invariably forced back, and a hollow settlement effected,
sometimes with an attempt at improved border arrangements,
or at the establishment of a neutral zone, but never with the
result of doing more than delay a renewal of hostilities, as soon
as the memory of what the frontier tribes had suffered in war
began to grow dim.
The Colonial frontier has steadily advanced from the Liesbeck
brook, or Salt river in sight of Cape Town, which was its
boundary when the Dutch first established themselves; it
gradually advanced step by step to the Zwartkop river beyond
Fort Elizabeth, and then by successive but rapid steps to the
Bushman river, the Fish river, the Buffalo, the Kei, the
Bashee, the Umtata, till now it has practically reached the
frontier of Natal, and the most independent of Amakosa Kaffir
chiefs has no really sovereign authority, except what he
exercises through the permission, or by the insouciance of the
British Government. I am not now speaking of rights or con-
stitutional claims, but of practical results.
What has been the result of the proximity of European
Colonists as regards the native tribes ? And first as to numbers.
In the absence of reliable statistics we are left more or less
at the mercy of fallacious personal observation and memory,
and I found great differences of opinion among experienced and
observant men, as to whether the natives in the aggregate had
increased or decreased in numbers. Some opinions were very
decided that within living memory there had been great
decrease in the aggregate of Kaffir population; but the result of
the most careful inquiry I could make satisfied me that any
aggregate decrease was certainly not proved. In particular
localities, it is true, it was often possible to prove a decided
decrease. There had often been a dispersion of large well-known
and populous kraals. There had been wholesale removals of
all members of particular tribes to other distant parts, and
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life. 339
sometimes over a whole district which we are assured formerly
“ swarmed with Kaffirs,” few are to be found. Such facts, of
course, are in favour of a theory of aggregate decrease of
population. On the other hand, the number of Kaffirs settled,
two or three families together, on separate farms, in various
parts of the country, is probably much larger than it was; there
is a considerable population in native locations of large towns,
and living as labourers in kraals around them, where formerly
a Kaffir labourer was seldom seen; extensive districts which
formerly were almost uninhabited now contain a large native
population. This is notably the case in Pondoland, in much
of the old Galaeka country, and in Griqualand East or Adam
Kok’s country, till lately known as Noman’s land, and almost
tenantless.
In no part of the country is there apparent any evidence of a
decaying population. When a whole family is mustered, there
is generally seen an ample proportion of healthy children of all
ages around the parents, and there is every apparent evidence
of a population increasing rather than dying out.
But we may hope that at no distant period a fairly accurate
estimate of actual numbers of the native races may be obtained
by census, and place this question of numbers beyond a doubt.
As regards other effects of European proximity on the Ama-
kosa Kaffir, in other respects than as regards numbers, opinions
are much divided. It is not uncommon to meet men of great
experience and extensive observation who are very positive that
the race is deteriorating. It is not easy to obtain direct and
conclusive evidence on such points, but I am bound to say that
I have never been satisfied with the reasons I have heard
adduced for the belief. The assertion that “ one never sees the
magnificent savages one used to see with Hintza or Macomo in
former days when I was a young volunteer in the Kaffir war,”
may be accounted for by other reasons than deterioration of
race. The henchmen of the great Kaffir chief of forty years ago,
ready to support their leader in the field, or amuse him in a
war dance, were doubtless more striking figures than the old men
who adhere to his shrunken fortunes and degraded state in these
days, and something may be due to the enthusiasm of a youthful
observer, as compared with satiated observation of the grave
and reverend senior—laudator temporis acti. Other reasons of
the supposed change will be intelligible to any one who has
noted the difference between a diminutive Oriental in the un-
becoming dress of an European, and the same slight figure clad
in the flowing and becoming garments of Moslem or Hindu.
Nothing can be more picturesque than the bronze complexioned
limbs of a young Kaffir warrior with his red blanket thrown
VOL. XII. '	2 A
340
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
around him. Few figures have less of the picturesque about
them than the same warrior bent with the weight of three
score years and ten, and clad in the costume of an English rat-
catcher.
Certainly any one who sees the ordinary Kaffir labourer of
modern days, divested of his usual European dress, either at
work on the beach of Port Elizabeth or driving game on a hill
side, or basking in the sun outside his kraal, will find it difficult
to credit any serious deterioration of race.
This question is, however, one of those which admit of more
accurate test than vague recollections, and casual observation of
years gone by. If a few competent observers would carefully
record the measurements and weights, as well as photographic
portraits of typical specimens of the Kaffir population in well
selected localities—such, for instance, as a tribe entirely removed
from European habits and influences—^a tribe in whose territory
the trader, the missionary, and the European Colonist have been
long established, and the communities of native workpeople at
towns like Port Elizabeth, Durban, or Kimberley, they might
establish a basis of sound facts for future comparison.
Regarding the physical effects of European clothing on the
natives who had been used to little clothing of any kind, and
that worn loose like a blanket or kaross, there has been much
controversy, and the leading theories and the few facts sup-
porting them will be found recorded in some useful papers by
Lovedale and other students and teachers, and in the religious
periodicals to which they are in the habit of contributing.
There can be no doubt that in South Africa, as in other countries
where an uncivilized people used to scanty clothing have
adopted close-fitting European garments, as a part and an
evidence of civilization, there is a very general belief that the
change often leads to an increase of pulmonary and other
diseases. There can be little doubt of the fact that such
increase of disease is observable and is easily accounted for,
when, as often happens, the garments of European fashion are
worn with little attention to European customs, and still less
to European notions and rules of health in matters of clothing.
The native wearer has been used to little, if any, tight
fitting clothing. He buys a suit of close fitting woollen clothes
such as are worn by European workmen, and wears them
partly as a matter of fashion, and partly because the police
regulations require him to be decently clothed whenever he
goes to work in town. He wears them all day, perhaps whilst
hard at work, and during possibly a long hot fatiguing walk
out to his own kraal; arrived there he throws them off, and of
course is exposed to the effects of a sudden chill; or it some-
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
341
times happens with probably even worse results he gets wet
through, and lets his thick woollen clothes dry on him.
The subject of a pattern of decent clothing which shall be
better suited to native customs than our close fitting garments
has engaged the serious attention of more than one energetic
missionary in South Africa as a matter closely connected with
the health of his flock; and on every ground, eesthetic as well
as sanitary, we may wish success to the efforts of those who
would devise for the Christianized or civilized natives of Africa
a decent African costume, instead of a travesty of our most
unbecoming and generally unsuitable European garments.
The effects of a regular and sufficient supply of good food, and
of a diet less exclusively of animal food, than the best-fed people
were accustomed to in their own kraals, are manifested in various
ways in different parts of South Africa, but nowhere in more
marked a degree than in the labourers who resort to the diamond
fields.
They come from great distances, often more than 600 or 700
miles from Kimberley, and in such great numbers, that on any
of the great roads leading to Kimberley, as, for instance, that
from Pretoria, the stream of labourers going or returning is so
constant and so great that a group of “ diamond-field darkies ”
is seldom out of sight as the traveller watches his road, which
is generally visible for some miles in advance.
The wages they get at the diamond fields are very liberal,
and the food far more regular and ample than any but rich
people receive in their native kraals. The result is a very
marked improvement in physique during their stay at “the
fields "—so great and so marked that the two lines of men, the
one going, the other returning, are, practically, the one lean and
ill-favoured, the other fat and well-looking ; and it is generally
easy as one passes a group of them sitting by the wayside to tell
from their condition whether they are going to or from the
diamond fields. There is probably no place in South Africa
where the advantages to the native population of contact with
Europeans are more evident than on the roads, especially those
leading northwards and eastwards from the diamond fields to
the distant regions whence the supply of labour at the Kim-
berley mine is chiefly drawn.
Would that the results of such contact were always equally
beneficial to the native population ! But a very serious in-
crease of syphilitic disease, and its introduction into districts
where it was previously unknown, are also results clearly trace-
able to the resort of native labourers to the diamond fields; and
on the evil consequences to the population generally there is no
occasion now to dwell.
2 a 2
342
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
Still worse are the effects of habits of spirit-drinking, too
often contracted by the native labourers at the diamond fields
and wherever their labour is in demand for European employers.
The subject is one of primary importance in any scheme for
improving the condition of the natives, either physically or
in any other direction, and it deserves a more than passing
notice.
I did not hear of any tribe in South Africa in which the
habit of drinking some kind of fermented and exhilarating
beverage was not universal before the advent of the white men.
There are various kinds of mead in use among some tribes,
especially the Bushmen, but the usual Kaffir beverage is a kind of
beer, varying much in the mode of manufacture and in strength,
but generally made from a mixture of corn meal, either millet or
maize, and water, fermented. It it usually thick and pasty,
requiring to be stirred up before drinking, slightly acid, and only
slightly intoxicating, so that gallons may he drunk at a sitting
without producing helpless intoxication. It muddles the drinkers
brain and makes him stupid—affectionate or quarrelsome accord-
ing to his temper. To be a great drinker is accounted everywhere
among the heathen Kaffirs a sign of manhood, and I have heard
of incredible quantities being consumed at one bout, e.g., of chiefs
who prided themselves on being able to drink nine gallons at a
sitting without being incapacitated for talking or locomotion.
Such bouts, of course, are not of every day occurrence, they are
subjects of much previous talk and preparation, and guests are
invited from a distance, and often in great numbers, to partake
of a great man’s hospitality—but beer of some kind is generally
to be found at all times in the kraal of a prosperous Kaffir, and
in moderation it is clearly wholesome food.
This, however, can only be said of Kaffir beer unmixed with
spirits or other intoxicating drugs, a fashion consequent on inter-
course with European traders, and much, I fear, on the increase.
But no adulteration of Kaffir beer can make it as pernicious
in its effects as the drinking of spirits—a habit entirely attribu-
table to intercourse with Europeans, and so pernicious as to be
deservedly regarded as the monster evil of native association
with Europeans. The spirits consumed by the natives are
usually bad in quality, partly from bad manufacture, and also
from artificial adulteration with various kinds of poisonous
intoxicating materials.
It is impossible to over-estimate the mischief thus done to
all classes of natives, and the evil is more deplorable because
intelligent natives are fully sensible of the evil, and of the ease
with which, by various measures which they are not slow to
point out, it might be checked.
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
343
The evil effects of spirit-drinking are certainly greater and
more marked among the Hottentots and their cognate races
than among the Kaffirs. But even the Kaffirs suffer more than
Europeans, and if the mischief done were no greater than follows
the conversion of a sober English workman and his children into
a family of gin-drinkers, the evil would clearly be one deserving
the most serious attention of statesmen. At present, unhampered
by the existence of any enormous excise revenue, the South
African Colonies have an easy mode of checking the mischief,
by forbidding the indiscriminate sale of spirits to natives not
specially authorised by the magistrate. The use of unadul-
terated Kaffir beer might be left untaxed.
The use of hemp, by smoking or drinking the juice of the
macerated leaves or stalks, is the only other form of ordinary
Kaffir intoxication, and it is not apparently of European origin.
After making every deduction for the evil results to the
native races from contact with Europeans, I have myself no
doubt that the balance is greatly in favour of the natives
generally, but especially the Kaffir races, having increased in
numbers as well as having improved in physique by such
contact.
We have hitherto considered chiefly the physical results of
European contact. Let us now briefly consider how such contact
has affected the general intellectual and moral standard of the
native races.
As regards intellectual change, there can, of course, be no
doubt of the enormous extent of the change as well of the
advantages to the natives, which result from communicating
such arts as writing, reading, and printing, and from opening to
untutored and unlettered races the vast stores of accumulated
knowledge which but for those arts could not be collected or
preserved. One hears, occasionally, doubts on such points
expressed by those who have known uninstructed and uncivi-
lized persons of more than average natural quickness of appre-
hension and sagacity ; but no one can seriously weigh the mental
powers of the ablest savage ever known, against those of a man
of the same race who has received an European education,
without feeling that there is no comparison between the intellec-
tual powers of the two men, and that, however great the natural
force of intellect may be in the one, it is impossible to resist the
conviction that his intellectual power would have been infinitely
increased could he have enjoyed the advantages of education
accorded to the other.
The question of the moral improvement of natives through
contact with European civilization is, I will not say less clear,
but it is certainly more controverted. We constantly hear it said
344
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
that “an educated or christianized native is a native spoiled, and
that natives who have been most influenced by civilized contact
and teaching have lost most in truthfulness, docility, and other
moral qualities for which, as untutored savages, they were most
remarkable?’
To what extent is this very common sort of assertion justified
by experience ? It could hardly be so common in the mouths
of people not immoral nor inhumane, without some element of
truth or half truth.
Let us consider, in the first place, that it is chiefly as servants,
or in some sort of servile capacity, that the natives are judged
of by such critics, and that as servants it is not only possible,
but certain, that whatever changes, educational or otherwise,
follow on contact with Europeans, they would necessarily dero-
gate from the value of the recipient as a servant. We do not
require the authority of tradition to assure us that education had
not improved Alfred’s capacity as a drudge in the neatherd’s
cottage, and the goodwife would have found the cow-boy apter
and more attentive at turning her cakes than the scholar and
hero-king.
The doglike fidelity—the unreasoning personal attachment to
the hand that feeds and can punish—the habits of implicit
obedience, of observance of trusts, under every form of tempta-
tion, are natural characteristics of the untutored man, and make
a valuable servant when the purely animal instincts are once
subdued. Such useful qualities, however, are not necessarily
nor often improved by opening the mind through education,
direct or indirect. It is a great thing if they are not impaired
or destroyed. They are like the speed or agility developed by
savage life—useful natural qualities, rarely improved, and some-
times much impaired by civilization.
We may note that similar complaints are made of the same
class in every part of the world. Nowhere in Europe, Asia,
Africa, America, or Australia do we hear that servants as a
class are improving in the estimation of employers who need
their services. The fact is, the tendency of all modern teaching
is to make those who formerly worked for others now work for
themselves. The two objects are not incompatible, and it is the
duty of modern education to reconcile them. The process is not
always easy, but it is not, I think, more difficult in the case
of South African natives than of other races emerging from
barbarism and slavery, and I can testify that such reconciliation
is habitually effected by those who set about the task with an
equal regard for the wants and wishes of the employed, as well
as the employers of labour.
In every other respect than as docile drudges, agrarian or
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
345
domestic, there can be no doubt of the great moral as well as
intellectual and physical improvement effected by the contact of
natives with Europeans. Let any one contrast any account of
any native community in South Africa as it was before European
colonists arrived, with what it is now, as he may find it by
personal inspection and experience.
Let us take, for instance, the Hottentots, as described by
travellers, from Van Riebeek and Kolben, down to Barrow and
Burchell, and contrast them with such communities as he will
now find at Mamre and Gnadendhal. He will hear now, no
doubt, lamentations of humane and benevolent neighbours over
the idleness, untruthfulness, and depravity of many of the
coloured people. “The settlements are not what they might be.
The people prefer working for themselves in their own garden
patches, to working for wages for farmers, who sorely need their
labour, and who are justly entitled to have it. The labour, when
given, is often uncertain and dishonest—not always a fair day’s
work for a fair day’s wage. The people are often idle, and fonder
of drink than of honest hard work," &c.
That much of the same kind might be said of labourers in
almost any part of Europe is obvious ; but contrast the least
favourable account which can now be given with the most
favourable accounts of earlier travellers. In the style of their
habitations and dress the change has been from barbarism to
civilization, from the almost indiscriminate herding of naked or
half-naked savages to decent houses, habits, and dress. Life and
property are as secure as in Europe, and if untruthful or dis-
honest persons are frequently found, how great is the change
from the time when truth and honesty were so rare as to enable
many harsh judges to say they were unknown!
Let me here quote the testimony I received from a railway
engineer, who had many years experience as an employer of
unskilled labour out of England,—in Europe, Asia, and America,
as well as in Africa. Giving the first place to the English
navvy, with no other reservation than that he must be habitually
sober, he said he could generally, in a few weeks, train " raw ”
or fresh Kaffirs to do as much work for the same amount of
money as the English workman-—not that any one Kaffir would
do as much work, or as well as an English navvy, but that
receiving lower wages, the Kaffir could be taught to do as much
for the money as an Englishman would. But the best of all his
African workmen, he said, were the men from Mamre or
Gnadendhal Moravian Mission stations, " off-coloured boys," of
Hottentot stock; they were well-trained, sober, steady, and
intelligent, quite as able to understand, and as trustworthy to
execute work as any but good English navvys.
346
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laics affecting the
In many parts of the old Colony this class of natives has
acquired property in lands and houses, and their conduct would
often be a credit to any class of yeomanry or peasant proprietors
in our own country.
Mixed up with the Hottentots, are often the descendants of
slaves of African origin. The liberty given to them half a
century ago was doubtless a fatal gift to many of the less
provident and civilized of this class. But as a body they have
prospered and improved.
I may here draw attention to the great and manifest improve-
ment apparent outside the Colony in emancipated slaves, after a
few years of freedom and civilized training. I have had several
opportunities of inspecting a batch of slaves in India and
Eastern Africa soon after their capture, and of witnessing the
gradual improvement which has taken place during subsequent
years of freedom, and of exposure to various civilizing influences.
There is far more than mere improvement in physical condition.
The type of man is visibly changed, and assimilated to that of
superior races in the grade of civilization.
I have never seen any limit to the improvement of which the
Kaffir race is capable, nor any reason to suppose that there is any
limit beyond which improvement is impossible or even doubtful.
The touching biography of Tyo Soga depicts, perhaps, an
extreme case; but I saw and heard enough in the country of his
birth to feel assured that the picture is not overcharged nor
incorrect, and that this was not an exceptional instance.
To raise a people requires something more than a multiplica-
tion of individual cases of improvement, but there are no
impossibilities to the race to which he belonged, and in which
men of natural capacity equal to his are not uncommon.
What, then, is required to give to such men a fair chance of
improving themselves, and of helping to raise and improve their
fellows ?
1.	First there is a need of a strong and stable Imperial
Government able to protect life and property, and to enforce law
and ensure a reasonable certainty of peace, not depending on the
life or the will of a single chief.
Such a Government was unknown to South African history
before the advent of Europeans. It has always existed more or
less in every English Colony.
Such rule as the Romans always aimed at, and the English
have been wont hitherto to secure to their subjects, is the first
requisite to preserve the numbers and improve the conditions of
the native races.
2.	Freedom from slavery, and equality in civil rights before
the law is essential to any permanent improvement of native races.
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
347
3.	It is nearly self evident that neither of these requisites can
be secured unless it be first settled whether the moral and social
as well as the political standard is to be that of the European
Colonist or of the native tribe. Not only have the essential
pre-requisites as above defined never existed anywhere under any
native rule, but they are clearly incompatible with it.
This question has been practically determined wherever the
rule of England prevails, and hence follow the consequent
conditions of—
4.	Education according to English standards, a condition
which has been supplied in various degrees both by the various
Governments of the different British Colonies, and yet more
extensively and completely by the various missionary bodies at
work in South Africa.
There are two most important branches of the conditions I
have specified of which we must not lose sight—
(a.) The first belongs to the necessity for a Government able
to protect person and property. Such a Government cannot
exist unless it has the exclusive power of making war and peace.
Nor can such exclusive power be effectively exercised unless the
Government is able to prohibit private warfare being carried
on, either by individuals or by small sections of the community,
without the permission or authority from the general Govern-
ment.
Hence sooner or later arises the necessity for measures of
disarmament, or for the prohibition of carrying arms in public
without license from the Government.
Much unnecessary controversy has arisen about what is called
" the policy of disarmament,”—a controversy which would never
have arisen had it been borne in mind that the habitual
carrying of arms ad libitum in public, naturally and inevitably
carries with it the power to use such arms at will; and that if
the individual will is directed by any authority save that of the
Government, effective protection by the Government of the
person or property of its subjects becomes difficult and ulti-
mately impossible; an essential prerogative, necessary to the
existence of any civilized Government, has, in such case, been
transferred to the possession of individual subjects.
The other condition to which I would refer may be regarded
either as a question of police—a branch of the essential condition
of protection to person and property—or as a question of educa-
tion. It is equally important in both aspects, and relates to
the unrestricted use of intoxicating substances.
The importance of the subject will be self-evident if it is
considered that in no civilized country is the manufacture and
sale of intoxicating substances left absolutely free; whilst in
348
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
many countries possessing a high degree of very ancient civi-
lization such manufacture and sale, except for medicinal
purposes, is absolutely prohibited.
The question is of extraordinary importance in South Africa,
where the Government is not always strong enough to do what
is, in the abstract, best, if its action would conflict with powerful
interests ; and where no doubt the evil of unrestrained use of
intoxicating liquors is more pernicious to the native races than
to Europeans, and is by itself, in the opinion of many, sufficient
to destroy a whole race, as it has done in other countries.
I have given reasons for doubting whether this is the case as
regards the Kaffir races, but there can be no doubt that of all
the evils we can inflict on the native races, none can well be
greater than the introduction of European means and habits of
intoxication; and that our action in introducing them is
sufficient to counterbalance all the benefits of civilization which
we can confer on them.
The question is one of great difficulty as well as of great
importance, and I cannot do better than refer those who take an
interest in it to a masterly speech of Mr. Sprigg, the late
Premier of the Cape Colony, which they will find printed in
one of the late South African blue books.
In securing the conditions necessary to improve the condition
of natives in contact with Europeans, by such measures as I
have described, it is essential that the superior Government
should possess an adequate revenue to meet the inevitable
expenses of protecting person and property, and enforcing law.
The native community must itself supply the means, and it is
to be regretted that any doubt should ever have been raised as
to the ease with which this may be effected, without causing
any of the popular discontent apt to follow the imposition of
new taxes.
Time does not admit of my doing more than allude to the
example set by the Native administration of Natal in this
matter.
It used to be said in Natal that every hut had among
the fowls one which was known as “ Somtsu’s hen” (Sir T.
Shepstone), whose eggs sufficed to pay the hut-tax; whatever
foundation there may be for this story, there can be no doubt
that the Natal hut-tax was an extremely light contribution to
the expenses of protection, as compared with the contributions
in cattle, grain, and labour exacted by the most moderate of
native chiefs. But light as the taxation was, it sufficed to
cover the .expenses of government. I have never heard an
objection to this form of taxation, which was not traceable to the
desire of the chiefs to retain their power of unlimited taxation.
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
349
The headmen of the kraals, as far as I could learn, were less
apt to object to the Government impost.
Let me note in passing that direct taxation for the benefit of
Government has a very considerable influence in superseding
that authority of the great tribal chiefs, which it was the object
of rulers like Chaka to destroy, and which is, in fact, in its
unchecked exercise incompatible with the authority of any
centralized Government. Indeed, it would not be difficult, did
time admit, to show that in the great work of civilizing a South
African Native community, taxation by Government exercises as
great an influence as the security of individual rights in separate
property and the enjoyment of good wages, which are among
the most effectual practical means of promoting civilization in
such communities.
Before quitting this part of the subject, referring to the
extent to which the European races have checked the advance,
and are more or less Europeanizing the native races, we ought to
consider whether there is anywhere evidence of a reflex action
on the European Colonists; whether the natives are anywhere
pressing back the Europeans, or denationalizing them, or forcing
them to conform to native authority and native ideas. "Whether
there is in South Africa any apparent possibility of the native
races acting on the invading Europeans, as the northern
barbarians of Europe acted on the Roman invaders in the
decline of their empire, absorbing their civilization as well as
their imperial power. Such a danger was apprehended by
many acute observers from the Zulus before their power was
broken, and it is clear that on the northern and north-eastern
border of the Transvaal the European immigrants have not
maintained the positions first taken up by the Trek Boers. They
have been expelled from many districts they then occupied, and
in others have been allowed to remain only on payment of
tribute or black mail.
Again, in Damaraland, though a considerable influx of Trek
Boers took place about nine years ago, and at various periods
since, it has been doubted whether they can maintain their own
complete independence, or the degree of civilization which their
fathers had preserved.
It is not safe to predict results in such cases, but my
impression is that the question is one of the comparative
inherent vigour of the two races whose advanced guards are
thus meeting. The Trek Boers, like the rest of the white
colonists in South Africa, belong to the swarming European
nations of northern Europe. They derive their impulse not
merely from inherent love of independence or of change, but
from the pressure outwards always felt by nations in the
350
Sir H. B. Frere.—On the Laws affecting the
swarming or emigrant stage of existence. Emigration to South
Africa may be checked or diverted to Australia or America; but
it will not cease. The advanced guard of Trek Boers may
advance too fast, and be repulsed or absorbed in the vast native
populations on whose territories they have intruded ; but there
is an impulse behind which will impel others onwards to support
them, and to fill their places; and as long as their parent race
retains its inherent vigour, and the civilization which gives it
the superiority over other equally vigorous but uncivilized races,
and as long as it continues in the swarming stage, so long the
ultimate result will always be that the European invader will
prevail over the native occupants, and expel, subdue, or
assimilate the weaker race.
It may seem strange that I should hitherto have said but
little directly on the influence of missions in altering the physical
intellectual, or moral condition of the native races.
This has not arisen from any doubt whether a discussion
regarding the effects of missions would be appropriate in a lecture
delivered before this Institute, but simply from the fact that, in
South Africa, at all events, the missions of the various Christian
churches embody, in the most concentrated and active form, all
the most efficient European influences at work to change the
character of native existence.
It is otherwise in India, where the existence of powerful, active,
and ancient forms of religious belief greatly restrict the dominant
European race in the use of any but secular influence and
teaching, and render the teaching of the missionary something
apart and distinct from the teaching of the secular ruler. No
such restriction exists in South Africa.. The European govern-
ment there, as elsewhere, refers for its code of principles of action
to the same documents which contain the moral precept as well
as the religious beliefs of European nations ; and the European
missionary is not only in general the person best able to instruct
his native pupils in the contents of those documents, but he is
in most cases the only European to be found whose direct
business it is to impart such instruction.
The Government official in Africa or in India may expound
and apply the law when malefactors or litigants appear before
him, but it is no part of his direct duty to train those subjects
to his authority to understand or obey the law, and this function
necessarily falls almost exclusively on the missionary, whose
teaching may be taken as the only practical embodiment of
European law and principle which is accessible to the natives.
Of other results of religious teaching further than they affect
the physical condition and moral and intellectual status of the
pupil, this is not the place to speak ; I need only say that no
Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.
351
educated Englishman who has seen much of educated Kaffirs is
likely to doubt that the race possesses at least as much aptitude
for receiving and analysing such truths and as good a chance of
moral and intellectual growth under such teaching, as the
captives at Rome who are said to have moved the compassion of
St. Augustine.
What then—to sum up—are the laws or invariable facts
affecting the relations between civilized and savage life, as
bearing on the dealings of Colonists with Aborigines, as we may
gather them from our experience in South Africa ?
1.	That it is possible for the civilized to overcome and destroy
by war the uncivilized and savage race—to expel or drive them
back—or to turn them aside in their migrations, admits, I think,
of no doubt. In such contests the civilized power, if vital and
growing, must in the long run prevail.
2.	That simple proximity of the civilized to the uncivilized
race has led, or is leading, to the extinction of the savage race,
seems probable in the case of the Bushmen—is very doubtful in
the case of the other Hottentot or tawny-skinned races, and
clearly has not occurred and is not likely to occur in the case of
the Bantu family—the Bechuana, the Zulu, and the Kaffir races.
3.	That the changes which have occurred in the native races,
consequent on the proximity of European colonists, are an
advance in civilization and approximation to the types of
European civilization—marked in the case of the Hottentot, but
yet more marked and rapid in the case of the Bantu races, and
that there seems to be no practical limit to the changes which
may thus take place.
4.	That the essentials necessary to such development are—
(a.) Such a peace as the Romans and the English elsewhere
have ensured to subject races, as a consequence of civilized
sovereignty—a peace bringing with it—
(5.) Protection for life and property, and practical equality
before the law, leading to a substitution of individual property
for tribal commonage, and involving logically the abolition of
slavery and of all sale of man or womankind; also of private
rights of making war, and consequently of carrying arms, except
under authority of the supreme ruler.
(c.) Power of local legislation for the purpose of securing the
objects enumerated, such legislation to be directed on the
principles recognised in civilized European countries with a view
to secure education in the arts of civilized life, and in such
knowledge as forms the strength, and furnishes the rewards of
civilization.
(d.) Legislation should also be directed to place such restrictions
on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating substances as are
Mr. F. Galton would refer first to the purely ethnological part of
the memoir, which dwelt upon the difficulty of defining the Bantu
race. He thought that ethnologists were apt to look upon race
as something more definite than it really was. He presumed it
meant no more than the average of the characteristics of all the
persons who were supposed to belong to the race, and this
average was continually varying. The popular notion seemed
based upon some idea like that of a common descent of the
different races, from a parent Noachian stock, whence the
aborigines of each county were derived, and where they lived in
unchanged conditions till the white man came. Nothing can be
further from the truth. We know how in South Africa the
Bantu population has been in constant seethe and change; how,
in much less than a single century, Chaka and his tribe,
Mosilekatse and his tribe, and others, have in turn become
prominent nations, and the average of the whole Bantu popula-
tion must thereby have differed at different times. This same
fluctuation of the average qualities of the population must, for
anything we can see to the contrary, have gone on for many
thousands of years. He therefore thought the phrase of Bantu
race, as signifying some invariable and definite type, to be a
mere chimera. In the earlier part of his memoir, Sir Bartie
Frere had compared our mode of treating uncivilized races to
that of the Romans. He heartily wished that the resemblance
held in certain essential points. Our military hold was as firm, our
tolerance of local customs was as great, our dealings were as just,
and more just than theirs. But we did not amalgamate with
them as the Romans did, we did not intermarry; by means of our
missionaries we pressed upon them a form of religion which was
not the most congenial. Our civilization was stiff. This, and
much more, was pointed out in a very able and most pathetic
memoir by Mr. Blyden, the present Minister of Liberia to
England, who is a full-blooded negro. The article appeared
in " Frazer’s Magazine ” some years ago, and it showed the
repressive effect of White civilization upon the Negroes, as
contrasted with that of the Mohammedans. It was a shame to us
as an Imperial nation, that representatives of the many people
whom we governed, did not find themselves more at home among
us. They seldom appeared in such meetings as the present one ;
they did not come to England. We did not see them in the streets.
It was very different in ancient Rome, where the presence of
foreigners from all parts of the then known world was a charac-
teristic feature of every crowd. He did not now suggest any action,
but merely wished to lay stress on this serious drawback to our
national character as rulers of a great Empire. He thought they
were greatly indebted to Sir Bartie Frere for introducing to public
notice so important a subject as the best form of conduct of
civilized races towards their less civilized neighbours, and he
trusted that it would meet with that full and many-sided dis-
cussion which so important a question deserved.
354
Discussion.
relationship between the different races spoken of must also be
taken into consideration. The ancient Britons and the Romans,
though in a different condition of culture, were closely related,
and there was no difficulty for the one to adopt the civilization of
the other, but with the English and Zulus, and still more with the
English and Australians and Tasmanians, the relationship is far
more remote. Such considerations should give greater importance
to the study of anthropology by statesmen and colonists than has
hitherto been accorded to it.
Sir Richard Temple and the President also joined in the dis-
cussion, and Sir Bartle Frere briefly replied.
On the motion of Professor Flower, seconded by Mr. Richard
Biddulph Martin, M.P., a vote of thanks was unanimously
carried to the President and to Mrs Pitt Rivers for their
kindness in inviting the members of the Institute to hold the
meeting at their private residence.