THE EARLY CAPE HOTTENTOTS

The original texts with translations into English by I. Schapera and E. Farrington.

Frontispiece of an old Cape Hottentot male. 309 pages. Volume 14 of the first series of the Van Riebeeck Society. A tear and 1 cm paper loss to bottom of page 31, not affecting the text.

When Van Riebeeck arrived in the Cape in 1652 all that was known about the indigenous people were narratives from early voyagers about the appearance and habits of the strange people they encountered in the Cape called Hottentoos. When he left the Cape in 1662 he embodied in a memorandum for his successor all that was then known to him of the indigenous tribes, either directly or through hearsay. It is clear that much had already been learned concerning their political divisions and distributions.

The three accounts reproduced in this publication are among the most celebrated of these early descriptions of the local Khoisan societies. The writers were not trained anthropologists and were inspired by curiosity rather by scientific motives. The authors represented in this publication, Dapper, Ten Rhyne and Grevenbroek between them give us a fairly useful and full account of the Khoikhoin (as they called themselves, meaning “men of men” ) tribal divisions, bodily appearance, clothing, weapons and mode of life.

Most early travellers to the Cape included some account of the local Khoisan societies. The three works published here are more comprehensive than most, giving a reasonable idea of the state of knowledge about indigenous peoples in the Western Cape by the end of the 17th century. These are the accounts of travellers rather than scientists but the more readily observable features of material culture are treated quite fully. (Van Riebeeck Society / HIPSA)