Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

The Boer Hunters

, by

Samuel Daniel painted many scenes of backcountry Boer life in the early 19th Century.

Frederick Courteney Selous is widely regarded as the greatest African hunter of all time. Could you query his shade in Valhalla, he would not agree. Selous, who wrote numerous book as about his hunting adventures, making him world-famous and the boon companion of such luminaries as Theodore Roosevelt, knew  the truly magnificent hunters of 19th Southern Africa: The Boers. That hardy tribe of frontiersmen of Dutch and French Huguenot descent roamed the back country from the moment the first Dutch settlement was made at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th Century. Pragmatic in the extreme, their lack of interest in recording their exploits means that most of them are largely lost to history.

“The majority of them simply came and went, some not leaving even their names, others creating a sufficient a stir to be just remembered in Ndebele traditions, even if they have been forgotten by their fellows.”

— T.V. Bulpin, To The Banks Of The Zambezi

Sports Afield magazine ran a nice tribute to the Boer Hunters in the March/April issue, and it seemed a worthy endeavor to offer a similar tip of the broad-brimmed hat. The early Boer hunters — like Christiaen Janssen, who was cited in 1659 as being the best elephant hunter in the Cape — had balls like church bell clappers. They were hunting elephants and lions and other dangerous game from horseback with single-shot flintlock smoothbore muskets.

Holy blackpowder smoke!

Through the 18th Century, the hunters wandered the backcountry, pushing further and further into the Xhosa lands of the Eastern Cape, and north into territory that would eventually become the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

In the early 18th Century, Jacobus Botha travelled with his family in ox carts, and would set up a substantial camp in a district and hunt elephants there as long as the population held out. He grew rich on shot ivory. Some hunting expeditions were huge, involving whole communities of hunters. The operations resembled the Long Hunting enterprises of the Appalachian backcountry — individual and family or kin-group expeditions, not corporate endeavors like the trapping expeditions of the North American Fur Trade.

Coenraad de Buys.

Some of the hunters, like the North American Mountain Men, went native, marrying into local chiefdoms. None of them more spectacularly than Coenraad de Buys. Everything about de Buys was larger than life. He was nearly seven feet tall, charismatic, rebellious, difficult — fond of cattle raiding, elephant hunting, and Xhosa women.

Buys had mixed relations with the Xhosa. In 1793, his cattle rustling and concubine-stealing sparked a war in which highly-provoked Xhosa raiders burned him out and stole all of his cattle. He turned to gun-running to make a living.

But with some Xhosa he had excellent relations. He married the mother of one young and powerful Xhosa chieftain named Ngqika, and lived in Ngqika’s royal homestead beyond the Fish River, which was the frontier line of the Eastern Cape in the late 18th Century. There he served as an advisor and translator — and gun-runner.

British officials put a price on his head because he was a threat to bring the Xhosa in on the side of various Boer rebels on the turbulent turn-of -the-century frontier.

When Ngqika’s fortunes plummeted and he lost a major battle with a Xhosa rival, de Buys decamped with multiple wives, concubines and mixed-blood children to the Limpopo River to the north, where he continued to hunt elephant. It is said that he sired 315 children and a community known as Buys Basters (Bastaards, Bastards) grew in the far northern Transvaal. The Buysvolk, living in the area of Buysdorp, are a recognized ethnic group in South Africa today.

Ngqika became a major Xhosa chieftain at 17 years of age. Conraed de Buys was an advisor to the king.

Believe me, we’ll see more of Coenraad de Buys on Frontier Partisans…

The Boers were early adopters of the percussion ignition system in the first decades of the 19th Century. The new technology made their horseback hunting “easier” because it is less cumbersome to cap a gun than to prime the pan of a flintlock and the cap is less prone to being dislodged than loose priming. With the percussion lock came the development massive “Roer” elephant gun — a 16-pound 4-bore behemoth that fired a quarter-pound lead ball with awesome punch. Most Roers were smoothbores — again for ease of loading — though some had two-groove rifling to stabilize the ball.

A pair of Roers from jeremiahjohnsontrading.com. Note the resemblance to the plains rifles of the same era in North America.

The Roer wasn’t a long-range gun — it was big medicine for elephant up close and personal in the brush.

In 1838, Boer frontiersmen bolted the Cape in the Great Trek, seeking to get as far away as possible from British rule. They established themselves north of the Orange River and in the Transvaal, where families farmed and men hunted and raised (and raided for) cattle. There were many severe conflicts with the Zulu and with the Matabele (Ndbele).

The Trekboers continued to hunt avidly through the middle of the 19th Century and some of the greatest hunters also became military and political leaders of the young republics. The hunting could be dangerous — not merely the inherent risks of hunting large, dangerous game in rough country, but because of tensions with the native peoples.

Stephanus Erasmus returned to his hunting camp in the Transvaal to find two of his sons and all the rest of his hunting companions slaughtered by the assegais of raiding Matabele. he would seek his revenge in battles with that warrior people, who were eventually pushed north of the Limpopo into what is now Zimbabwe.

Despite bloodshed between the peoples, the Boer hunters and the great Ndbele conqueror Mzilikazi came to an understanding. In the 1860s, Mzilikazi began granting permission for hunters to enter his domains. One of these was the fiddle-footed eccentric Johannes Lodewikus Lee, son of a Royal Navy Captain who had settled in the Cape Colony and married into the prominent Boer family of Paul Kruger.

Johannes Lodewikus Lee. In his day, he was a remarkable character, indeed. Across his lap is his old Roer.

After serving in several of the multitude of Cape Frontier Wars, Lee wandered northward in 1862 and entered Mzilikazi’s domain. The Ndbele emperor took a shine to Lee and offered him a farmstead to be staked off based on the distance Lee could ride in four directions for an hour-and-a-quarter each way. Lee sent away to the Cape for the finest horse he could buy and galloped off a massive chunk of land — much to the chagrin of the Ndbele headmen who supervised the land grant.

He built a strange, rambling fortified house of stone, which became known as Lee’s Castle and was a wayfarer’s station in the wild country of the north. Lee spent most of his time hunting and left his wife to raise their eight children. She died giving birth to her ninth, alone, and Lee took up with a much younger woman, with whom he had still more children. Then he ran off for a while with still another woman. When he returned to Wife No. 2, she ran off with another man. Sexual mores on the frontier were as rough-and-ready as everything else.

Lee eventually returned to the Transvaal and settled down, wealthy from the proceeds of his ivory hunting, and redeemed himself by giving lots of money to the local church.

Jan Viljoen — one of the greatest of the Boer hunters.

Jan Viljoen was probably the most famous Boer hunter of his day. He was the first to get permission from Mzilikazi to hunt in Mashonaland. He frequently hunted with another legend of the veld, Petrus Jacobs, whom Selous considered the most widely experienced and successful hunter of them all. Both men shot and traded their way to fortunes in ivory.

Wealth doesn’t really seem to have been the main object for the Boer hunters of the era, though. They were addicted to the way of life — wandering the wild country, with families often in tow, and many times finding sexual release and companionship with native or mixed-race women. They were jealous of their freedom and brooked little regulation, even though some of them at least understood that their own profligacy was threatening the game upon which their cherished way of life depended.

“The lives these wanderers lived… engrossed them as though they were participating in an endless sport whose hazards, excitement, vigorous actions, successes and failures, could often become an obsession fatal to themselves as well as to the countless thousands of wild animals which they destroyed with such wanton abandon.”

— T.V. Bulpin, To The Banks Of The Zambezi

 

Comments

  1. Matthew says

    Great article. One thing had me confused. When you said, “The operations resembled the Long Hunting enterprises of the Appalachian backcountry — individual and family or kin-group expeditions, not corporate endeavors like the trapping expeditions of the North American Fur Trade” are you saying the Appalachian long hunts were family affairs or are you contrasting the Boer hunting with the Appalachians? Or are the Appalachian long hunts different from the North American Fur Trade?

    Reply

    • JimC says

      The Long Hunts were family/clan/neighbor affairs; the early Boer hunters operated along the same lines.
      The Fur Trade was always dominated by companies who employed or contracted trappers. Even the Free Trappers were dealing with the Company — they just had a broader choice of which company to deal with and could at least theoretically negotiate a better price for their peltries.

      Reply

  2. Breaker Morant says

    Great post. As ususal, I have to go back and read it a few times to get it all.

    A little ambience for you guys. I am using some downtime in Kauai to work on “Smoke of Africa” and here are some fresh pictures.

    A teaser–“As Frederick Selous hunted throughout this area, it is likely that he saw this lake.”

    https://thesmokeofafrica.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-hunting-camp-at-breakfast-farm.html

    Next up-“The Zebra Hunt”-then “Bringing Meat to the Village”-that was a special couple of hours.

    https://thesmokeofafrica.blogspot.com/

    Reply

      • Breaker Morant says

        Paul M>>>”African safari *and* Kauai in one reply.

        Killin’ us, indeed.”<<<<

        LOL, In my defense I did try to find somebody to take me pig hunting with dogs and a knife, but my search started too late.

        One highlight was visiting a local bookstore and buying some Hawaiiana. In addition to the ones below, I bought (and shipped home) an outsize book on the initial surveying of property lines in Hawaii.

        1)1)"Solomon Time"-Englishman does some odd stuff in the Solomons-circa 2000. Noted that he is roughly the same age as Jim and I (and maybe others here)

        2) "Kauai: The Separate Kingdom"

        3) "Hawaiian Biogeography"-I am most pleased with this find.

        4) "From Land and Sea: The Story of Castle and Cooke of Hawaii"-the owner made the comment that not many people have that book.

        5) "Loyal to the Land"-on the Parker Ranch.

        We had a wonderful afternoon boat cruise of the NaPali Coast today. I didn't take pictures. Some things shouldn't be spoiled with picture taking, they should just be enjoyed (Like a first kiss-"Lips taste like sangria") -Plus I figure there are 18 million photos of it out there already.

        Or as a teaser of things (not) to come in Smoke of Africa-feeling shit get real when the giant Kudu you are after uses a herd of breeding elephants for cover to get away from you. Of course, it would be nice if Camera Girl had taken pictures, but it was pretty clear that we were not to move right then.

        Reply

        • Paul McNamee says

          Hey Breaker,

          If you find any ancient Hawaii books (pre-Cook, pre-Kamehameha) when the islands were often at war with each other, I’d be interested in titles.

          Sounds like ‘Kauai: The Separate Kingdom’ might touch on that a little (from the blurb on Amazon) ?

          Reply

  3. Breaker Morant says

    I really enjoyed writing this morning for a few hours while we waited for boat time and with thoughts of James Michener dancing in my head (Hawaii, South Pacific etc) I felt a little more encouraged when I realized that he didn’t write South Pacific until he was 40.

    I realized that moving forward on any minor writing aspirations at 51 isn’t too late. There is time, and if there isn’t-well?

    I encourage you Jim, to keep Michener at 40 in mind as you balance FP, RIR, and work etc.

    He wasn’t a smart-ass kid writing a memoir of nothingness that gets praised one week and forgotten the next.

    Michener had to serve in the Navy in the South Pacific in his 30’s to earn “South Pacific” and “Hawaii” and …

    You and Craig had to earn your writing chops.

    I am obviously not equating myself to Michener, but trains of thought go where trains of thought go, I had to come through my fires (and they burned very hot) to earn Africa. I could not have done “The Smoke of Africa” at 31.

    I guess my point is that I am very glad that I have reached a place in life where a pleasant memory will be writing for a few hours in Kauai one morning while waiting for a boat excursion. Even if it goes nowhere, I am glad that I have found out while there is still time that I absolutely love to write.

    However, it would be nice to figure out how to get comments on “The Smoke of the Sioux.” I should migrate that to wherever before it gets much bigger.

    Reply

    • JimC says

      That is a fine, fine thing, Breaker. Storytelling is how we weave our reality and it is a noble endeavor. I couldn’t do without it and I love it that so many of us are doing it. Maybe it’ll save the world. Or us. A little bit.

      Reply

    • lane batot says

      Heck yeah, B. Morant–I’duv commented a LOT already on both “Smokes”, if’n I could’ve figgerd out HOW–I did ask for help from computer savvy folks at work, and was told “You cain’t git thar frum here…..”

      Reply

    • Paul McNamee says

      I have at least one friend who didn’t start writing until he retired. Now he cranks out a novel or two per year. He’s loving it. His output makes me look like complete slacker.

      Reply

  4. lane batot says

    …..and because I can’t resist(and harking back to a coupla posts previous), the Boers developed their own breed of all-’round hunting/guarding/bush dogs–very similar to the development of our American “Cur” breeds–the Rhodesian Ridgeback! I’ve known quite a few–admired them all–and hope to acquire one some day before too long. Absolutely something of Frontier South Africa, and the Boer culture lives on in these dogs!

    Reply

    • JimC says

      According to Sports Afield, Cornelis van Rooyen was the Boer hunter who developed the Ridgeback for hunting lions. Selous spoke highly of the man.

      Reply

      • lane batot says

        Yup–the whole fascinating history regarding van Rooyen is DETAILED in that usually stupidly exorbitantly expensive, and terribly cheapo-made, but chock full of great info paperback “The Definitive Rhodesian Ridgeback” by David Helgesen. I got my copy many years ago–it was expensive even then, but has become even moreso now. But you never know–it pays to keep an eye out. A reasonably priced copy might pop up somewhere. This volume is one of those examples of a TERRIBLY cheaply put-together/published book(cheapo typing, cheapo reproduced photos) that is still invaluable if only for it’s CONTENT!

        Reply

      • lane batot says

        …and HOLD YER HORSES! “CORNELIUS van Rooyen”? Jim CORNELIUS? Some kinda prophetic connection THERE, for sure! Sounds like somebody is fated to git a Ridgeback pup. But better start saving yer Krugerands(sigh….)

        Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *