The Migration Story - Part 2 (Khwe and /Xam ancestry)

Continuing on from where I left off about the migration story in Migration Story-Part 1, that story is part historical as well as all the …ologicals or …logists scientific methods to research human evolution. It is from that story that I need to bring my own genealogical research and records into the narrative.

It is with a blistering shout at the top of my voice that I claim, I am the descendant of immigrants and therefore I am an immigrant. It is reported at https://camissamuseum.co.za/index.php that indicates that there are 7 tributaries to the so called “coloured” identity. The Camissa Museum elects to call this group of South Africans Camissa. In this article I will focus only on one tributary,

Cape Indigenous Africans (42 roots of origin)

A direct and verbatim quotation from the Camissa Museum website regarding the meaning of the name Camissa, states: “Camissa is the creolised form of ǁkhamis sa, meaning “sweet water for all” in Kora the Khoe-language of the Cape. It refers to the river that flows from the !areb (mountain) Huriǁammaǂkx’oa (rising from the sea – Table Mountain) down to huriǁamma (the sea) (ǁamma also means water). This river system has over 40 tributaries and springs. Today the river runs beneath the city of Cape Town. Symbolically, Camissa represents life because without water, life cannot be sustained. More generally, ǁkhamis sa is the Kora name used for fresh-water rivers across Africa”. Like the river that runs underneath the city of Cape Town, the utterances of the late Marike de Klerk, wife of President FW de Klerk, who said following off-the-record remarks in 1983 during a campaign rally of her husband, “coloureds are the leftovers”, are non-entities.

To continue telling the story of migration and in an effort to understand my personal connection to the history of South Africa, it took me to submit a biological sample to three DNA genealogical research companies, i.e. one South African and two USA based companies, to confirm what is no longer available or accessible in the oral records.

Long before the first LMS missionaries arrived at Tulbagh in 1799, my /Xam 5x great-grandmother, Catarina Dorothea and her ancestors lived along the Olifants River and later trekked to the Greater Karoo. How she arrived at Tulbagh, I can only assume is through one of the many commandos and is certainly written in blood. More about this statement a bit later.

The start of my personal journey to unearth the records that an author cannot fudge to suit his/her paradigm, genetic data tells no lies. I submitted various biological samples to three companies that specialises in DNA genealogical research and voila!

I cannot help but marvel at the accomplishments of the Human Genome Project (HGP). Like so many great scientific innovations brought on by the Industrial Revolution, development of the motor vehicle and its internal combustion engine, Trans-Atlantic telephony using morse code, gun powder in form of dynamite that allowed humanity to shape the landscape to construct roads and dams, etc. the Human Genome Project is also one of the greatest scientific feats of history. The results of the project, as a voyage of biological discovery, made it possible for me to connect with my ancestors through the genetic material all my antecedants transmitted. The sequencing of the human genome provided fundamental genetic information about my ancestors whose voices can no longer be heard, but whose biological markers are still prevalent in my DNA.

A by-product of the Human Genome Project, created new businesses, moving the hard sciences out of the laboratory to the public. It was through this scientific migration that I am able connect the ancestral genetic material into the modern day. Alas, I discovered my L0 DNA haplogroup. A South African DNA Genealogical research company was the first of three research companies I use, who returned a result indicating my now deceased mother and I have L0a haplogroup DNA.

The L0 haplogroup is considered by geneticist as the oldest genes. The geneticist, Eva K.F. Chan et al, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, in their research titled “Revised Timeline and Distribution of the Earliest Diverged Human Maternal Lineages in Southern Africa (2015), indicates that the “although the exact origins of the southern African Khoesan people are not fully defined, several consensuses have emerged. In brief, Ju-‡Hoan and Tuu speaking San people are thought to be the indigenous hunter-gatherers occupying most of southern Africa prior to the arrival of current day Khoe-Kwadi-speaking Khoe-people”. Chan, et al continue to argue that “the deepest rooting clade of the human mtDNA phylogeny is the L0 macro-haplogroup, estimated to date to between 154 thousand years ago (kya) to 142 kya. Within this clade, L0d and L0k are thought to be the earliest extant offshoots of the phylogeny and are largely restricted to the click-speaking forager peoples of southern Africa, the Khoesan. Khoesan is a compound word and blanket term covering two groups of peoples: the ‘Khoe’ (Khoekhoe or Khoikhoi) herder-gatherers and the ‘San’ (Saan or Bushmen) hunter-gatherers. Sharing many physical and linguistic characteristics, the Khoe and San are, arguably, culturally distinct with independent prehistories”.

The significance of the aforementioned research by the esteemed researchers and my own DNA genealogical results shows that not only are my ancestors indigenous to South Africa, but have migrated across the plains, grasslands and across rivers to reach the southern tip of Africa. How these early hunter-gathers knew to migrate south is not known, or if they came into contact with other groups of known peoples. It is claimed that Neanderthals who primarily lived in Europe and Western Asia, while Denisovans populated Eastern and Central Asia. Denisovans are now an extinct species of archaic human that lived across Asia during the Middle to Late Pleistocene, approximately 200,000–32,000 years ago. Both groups separated from a common ancestor roughly 400,000 years ago and interbred with migrating Homo sapiens.

It is likely that the early San migrants may have crossed paths with a group of humans living around this southern tip of Africa, who may have become extinct like both the Neanderthal and Denisovan hominins.

The discovery at Blombos Cave in 1991 that is located approximately 300km’s from Cape Town, a few meters from the Indian Ocean. The results of the archaeologists excavations that comprised numerous human-made objects, that they estimated to be about 100,000 years old and tells a story of human residing at the location. A reading of the treatise titled “Human remains from Blombos Cave, South Africa: (1997–1998 excavations) by Frederick E. Grine, et al (1999, p.756-759) in which they analysed and compared the human teeth found inside the Blombos Cave. They found that some of the teeth diameters found at the Blombos Cave teeth to be below the lower observed limits of a Neanderthal sample.

Grine et al (1999, p.760) indicates that “large tooth size is plesiomorphic and is expected of Homo Sapiens”. Plesiomorphic refers to an ancestral or “primitive” evolutionary trait shared by different biological groups that inherited it from a distant common ancestor.

“Some of the Blombos teeth tend to be larger than those of the majority of recent sub-Saharan Africans, these crown diameters are certainly observable within modern populations”.This suggests that the Blombos Cave inhabitants were not Neanderthal but very likely not yet modern Khwe or San. “The Blombos teeth tend to be smaller than the majority of penecontemporaneous Neanderthal homologues” (Grine et al 1999, p.760). Whilst the author is not an expert anthropologist or zoologist, the dating of the Blombos Cave and the teeth size suggests a group of people potentially dissimilar to the Khwe or San. If this proves true, the window of 154 to 142 kya—which Eva K.F. Chan et al. (2015, p. 2) estimate as the period when the L0 macro-haplogroup split from the phylogeny—falls neatly within the broader context of the Blombos Cave date range.

Considering the aforementioned arguments, it therefore very likely that the early San migrants from the Central African region could have found a people already resident within the Southern African region.

Like the Denisovans or Denisova hominins genetics that fused with Neaderthal genetics, a similar genetic process possibly unfolded in the southern tip of Africa. We will never know if there was indeed early humans living in Southern Africa before the big San/Khwe migration 154 thousand years ago.

Allow me to return to the narrative of the migration of the |xam. On my journey to reconstruct my genealogical tree, I had to dig into the archival church records of the Church of Latter Day Saints, reading countless history books and consulting professional genealogical researchers to assist in obtaining the historical records to support the genealogical evidence. In the dusty historical records I uncovered the secrets of my ancestors and came to realise the sacrifices these migrant ancestors paid and also how closely I am connected to the early mission churches and the communities it spawned. To get an understanding of how the mission churches were established, a part of the church historiography is based on the violence inflicted on the body of the San/Khwe and counter-violence between them and the trekboers, settlers.

In the doctoral thesis of Phillippus Scholtz, titled “Die historiese ontwikkeling van die Onder-Olifants River 1660-1902”, 1964 at UNISA, in which he indicates that the conflict between the trekboer and San communities started as a result of cattle thefts in the Bokkeveld and along the Onder-Olifants River. Two burghers, Albert van Zyl and Barend Lubbe, initially received instructions from the Landrost of Stellenbosch to raise a commando against the “thieves and murders and recover the stolen cattle (Scholtz 1964, p.59). The VOC Political Council by Resolution 28.4.1739 decided that burgher commando, comprising the inhabitants of Stellenbosch, Drakenstein, illegal cattle traders and the followers of Estienne Barbier should avail themselves for the commando under the leadership of Johannes Kruywaagen (Scholtz 1964, p.60). For more than a month the commando patrolled the Onder-Bokkeveld and Onder-Olifants Rivier, and during this time more than 300 cattle and 2000 sheep were lost and reported missing. The Kruywaagen commando ceased operations in May 1739, but not long thereafter Governor Swellengrebel gave new instructions to raise another commando with burghers from the Cape, Stellenbosch and Drakenstein to recover stolen guns. Several commandos were launched against the San/Khwe and became known as the Bushman War of 1739-1740.

It is presumed that the fear inflicted on the personhood of the San/Khwe of the Olifants River, a relative calm befell the Onder-Olifants River. The resulting truce from the armed conflict between free burghers and indigenes led to the recognition of four Bushmen and/or Khoe captains: Waterboer, Anthony, Dragonder, and Klein-Jantjie, who received a staff of office —a wooden cane with a brass knob —acknowledging their captaincies (Scholtz 1964, 66).

Although Scholtz (1964, pp. 58-66) and other historians refer to this conflict as the San Wars, implying it was driven by San aggression and white free burgher resistance, it should properly be called the San War of Resistance, similar to how the Anglo-Boer War is termed the Anglo-South African War to recognise the involvement of black South Africans. This conflict arose through Dutch colonial expansion and the demand for grazing land for livestock into regions inhabited by the |xam and Khoe, who resisted the encroachment of free burghers onto their ancestral lands. Since individual |xam and Khwe kraals were dispersed across the area, contact between white settlers and indigenes often resulted in retaliatory attacks with commandos aiming to recover “stolen livestock”.

The Great Commando of 1774, led by Rudolph Opperman not only killed thousands of Khwe and Bushmen; commando members also took many women and children who became servants in the trekboer households.

It is possible that Catarina Dorothea, as recorded in the 1803 DRC baptismal records of Tulbagh, was one of the many San children confiscated during a commando raid on their kraal. McDonald (2007, pp. 5-6) states that “child confiscation was one of the crucial ways in which genocide was perpetrated against Cape San,” which was not solely through military means but also involved civilian perpetrators adopting a quasi-militaristic approach.

The exact date when the practice of commandos abducted children and women is unknown, but it is known that she married (possibly through traditional marriage customs) Willem Petrus Fortuin I. Given that they both lived at Roodezand, it is likely that Catarina Dorothea was a servant to one of the earliest colonial families settled at Roodezand. Since Catarina Dorothea was part of the Roodezand community, she must have been acculturated to the proto-Afrikaans/Dutch-speaking community. Although her children were baptised on 03 October 1802, when as Karel Schoeman in his book “JJ Kicherer en die vroeë sending, 1799-1806, Suid Afrikaanse Biblioteek, Kaapstad, 1996 (p.136) states, all were under 7 years old, this was before Rev JJ Kicherer’s departure for Europe a few months later. This suggests that the relationship between Willem Petrus and Catarina Dorothea was well developed before the arrival of the LMS missionaries in 1799. Schoeman (1996, p.43) mentioned that two of her children were under 4 years old in 1799, indicating a conception date around 1795. Since their relationship involved a Bastard-Khwe – Willem Petrus Fortuin whose father is an enslaved named Fortuin of Bengale and mother, Elizabeth was a Khwe person, Catarina Dorothea is |xam individual, it is possible they worked on different farms or household units in Roodezand (Tulbagh), making their meeting and forming a relationship nearly impossible. But alas, they did!

The fact that Rev. Remmerus Harders and Rev. Johannes Kuys had been catechising and baptising the San and Khwe residents of Roodezand from 1774 indicates that, as an inhabitant of the town, they must have been aware of the social changes taking place and could have attracted my Slave/Khwe great-grandfather Willem Petrus’s attention. The dates of these baptisms at Roodezand appear to align with the period when the Great Commando was forming. However, they indeed suggest that my 5x great-grandmother Catarina Dorothea have resided at Roodezand well before the start of the Great Commando of 1774. Her arrival there can be traced back to the conclusion of the San War of 1740, given that the Roodezand settlement had been developing since 1714. Jared McDonald in an article he authrored “Debating San provenance and disappearance: Frontier violence and the assimilationist impulse of humanitarian imperialism. Historia 67, 1, May 2022 (p.9) argues that indigenous children, especially those caught up in the violence of the north-eastern frontier, alongside settlers, missionaries, and colonial officials, would endeavour to teach acceptable conduct as colonial subjects. This approach, according to McDonald (2022, 7), evokes sentiments of protection and socialisation, and the San had to change their way of life, which was a hindrance to productive settler colonialism. This explains why Catarina Dorothea no longer led her traditional |xam lifestyle and elected to adopt a more colonist-like manner and embraced her Dutch names, as the settlers expected her to do.

This article is a spotlight on the migration of my |xam maternal ancestor and a reveal of their, as well as my genealogical record that must shine brightly on their individual and collective roles in establishing the Congregational Church in 1799 at Blyvooruitzicht on the Sak River.