A forgotten frontier zone : settlements and reactions in the Stormberg area between 1820-1860

• Main Author: Wagenaar, E J C
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Rhodes University 1974
• Subjects: Eastern Cape (South Africa) > History; South Africa > History > 1836-1909; Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) > History
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007262

From Preface: In 1778 Joachim van Plettenberg declared the Fish River as boundary between the Trekboer and the Xhosa. The area between the lower reaches of the Fish and Kei Rivers was to become the main centre of conflict in nine frontier wars. It was here, too, that successive governors carried out experiments to stabilize land and people in the area. But after 1820, while official attention was focused on this trouble spot, a new and related zone of conflict was gradually and almost unnoticed opening up. This was in the north-east where the first encounters between Trekboer and Thembu were beginning to take place. By 1825 the spearhead of the Thembu, harassed by the amaNgwane raids, had migrated across the Kei River to settle south of the Stormberg in what is now the district of Queenstown. By this time the first Trekboers in their perennial search for water and pasturage had crossed the Stormberg Spruit to settle on the waste land north of the Stormberg. The history of the Stormberg area is predominantly an account of the interaction between these two peoples.