Trials of Slavery

Since Achilles van de West Cust, 36 years old at a guess, slave of the late boekhouderboekhouderThe administrative or civil sector of the VOC was divided into six categories of rank, with the governor-general at the head of the first one. Most of the titles used for these ranks were derived from the merchant origins of the VOC, but in practice a rank did not equate with a person’s function. A boekhouder (literally ‘bookkeeper’) was a rank in the fifth category, just above that of ‘assistant’, and below that of an onderkoopman (‘junior merchant’). Michiel Smuts, Januarij van Boegies, age 40, bondsman of the burgher Abraham Kraaijwinkel, September van Boegies, age 50, Januarij van Maccasser, age 33, Isaac van Boegies, age 44, Adam van Sambouwa, age 40, Manus van Mandhaar, age 40, Matthijs van Mallebaar, age 30, Jacob van Madagascar, age 45, and Gedult van de Caab, 17 years old, all eight slaves of the widow of the late burgher Adriaan Heuning, besides Februarij van Boegies, age 30, November van Boegies, 25 years old, both bondsmen of the burgher Jan le Roux, junior, and Cupido van Bengalen, slave of the burgher councillor, sieursieurThe form sieur is derived from sinjeur, but it is uncertain whether the latter came into colonial Dutch from French seigneur or Creole Portuguese sinjoor (both from Latin, senior, ‘older’). The word was commonly used by slaves at the Cape to address European males, but it was also the official title for lower-ranking VOC officials. The word lived on in Afrikaans in the form of seur until the early twentieth century but is now extinct. Jan Meijndertsz Cruijwagen, 40 years old at a guess, all currently their honours’ prisoners, have voluntarily confessed, without torture or force of bonds, of irons, or even the least threat of suchlike, and since it has also appeared evident to the honourable Council of Justice of this government:

That since some time ago, certain of the bondsmen of both the inhabitants of this place and those of the rural areas ran away from their owners and, some earlier, some later, congregated with one another at Table Mountain until they reached the number of fifteen men. That this gang was then, as soon as their hiding place became known, attacked in a cavern of the Windberg¹ by some burghers who used every means possible to overpower and capture them, without, however, being successful at this time on account of their vehement resistance – both through shooting with a pistol and by throwing down heavy stones on the aforesaid burghers – and because this gang of runaway slaves escaped by fleeing after one of theirs, by the name of Cardoes, belonging to the soldier Hendrik Thomas, was shot dead by the said burghers, and who then retreated to the back of Table Mountain to a different cavern. From where one of these scoundrels, by the name of Jacob van Boegies, bondsman of the burgher Jan Smid, proceeded to the farm of the burgher cornet Jacob van Rheenen, in order to steel sheep from the corral for their subsistence, which is when, while he was executing his intended theft, he was shot and wounded in such a way that he died shortly thereafter in the mountain from the wounds he received, after which there remained in that gang still thirteen men.

That one of the men who belonged to this gang was a slave jongenjongenLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour. of the farmer Cornelis Verweij, by the name of Fortuijn van Boegies, who, fully a year ago, had dangerously wounded his said owner and then escaped by fleeing, and since then had been appointed by this gang as their captain. The said Fortuijn suggested to his gang of scoundrels the necessity of looking for and obtaining guns, whereupon the slave jongenjongenLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour. of the late boekhouderboekhouderThe administrative or civil sector of the VOC was divided into six categories of rank, with the governor-general at the head of the first one. Most of the titles used for these ranks were derived from the merchant origins of the VOC, but in practice a rank did not equate with a person’s function. A boekhouder (literally ‘bookkeeper’) was a rank in the fifth category, just above that of ‘assistant’, and below that of an onderkoopman (‘junior merchant’). Michiel Smuts, by the name of Cupido van Bougies, then suggested to them that, in order to obtain these, they should go and murder his said owner who lives on his garden-plot; which proposal was approved by the whole gang. On the 14^th of the recently passed month July they set out by evening from their cavern and took their course to the aforementioned garden-plot and arrived at seven o’clock in a ditch situated not far from it. Here they kept themselves hidden for some time while the aforementioned Cupido van Boegies proceeded to the garden-plot of his aforementioned owner and returned, not long after that, to the corral, whither the whole gang had in the meantime drawn closer in the darkness, bringing with him another slave jongenjongenLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour., by the name of Achilles, being the first prisoner, with whom the gang then arranged to murder the aforementioned Smuts, to which murder the first prisoner not only agreed and also added in substance to it: “Yes! I have long wanted to kill my baasbaasIn seventeenth-century Dutch this was used both in the sense of ‘head’ (e.g. ‘head carpenter’) and ‘master’. In South Africa the second meaning developed further, and thus baas came to be a synonym for meester (‘master’). It was the form that slaves (and Khoikhoi) would use to address male Europeans., and now he will die!”,² but also returned ahead to the house in order to put everything in place which would help to facilitate this murder, seeing that he not only prevented an old slave jongenjongenLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour., by the name of Baatjoe van Balij, who at the moment when the first prisoner came into the kitchen wanted to go out to give fodder to his master’s horse, from doing so, saying to him: “You must not go out, because there are so many volkvolkIn seventeenth-century Dutch this was used to refer either to a group of people in the sense of ‘nation,’ or more commonly a group of people acting or working together. It was thus often used as a short-hand term for common labourers. Although the word was used in this latter meaning at the Cape to refer to European labourers, it eventually – due to the racial divide in the labour situation – came to refer to both slaves and Khoikhoi in the sense of manual labourers. This usage lived on in modern Afrikaans plaasvolk, ‘farm labourers.’ out there!”, but also immediately put out the lamp burning in the kitchen, so that, at about eight o’clock, the slave jongensjongensLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour. Cupido van Boegies and his comrades, the aforementioned Fortuijn van Boegies and one Baloc, whom the aforementioned Cupido was holding fast as if being trussed, who meanwhile had been advancing up to the kitchen door, could go through the dark kitchen into the voorhuijsvoorhuijsLiterally the ‘front house’, this referred to the first area entered from the main door or stoep (porch). In most houses this was a room, although in the later design of some Cape houses it referred to a narrower passage (like a hall or vestibule) flanked by one or more front rooms., where these three scoundrels not only took, in the most gruesome fashion, the lives of the aforementioned Smuts, who had been sitting there writing peacefully, as well as of his wife, who had been sitting next to him on a chair, but also that of their little son, who had been lying asleep on a chair close by and who woke up during the abominable murder of his father and mother and started to scream. Thereafter they called inside from their gang, who had surrounded the house from the outside during the execution of these cruel murders, two more [slaves] by the names of Julij and Adonis, plundered the house and stole, apart from three muskets, lead and powder, from a cabinet: linen, silver spoons, as well as some other silverware and so on. With all of these goods this whole gang of murderers – amongst whom was also to be found the second prisoner, Januarij, who had run away from his aforesaid master about a year ago now, after only having been here in this country for a short period – set out, without returning to the mountain, to the dunes at Blaauwberg, where they kept hidden for some days and maintained themselves with mussels, which they went to search on the beach, and with some sheep, which some of these murderers had stolen from Jan Biesjeskraal,³ as also with such food as they went to fetch from some slaves of the widow Heuning, which slaves had been, since a considerable time theretofore, providing this gang with food and tobacco, which was collected by some of them, usually on Fridays, from the bushes in the vicinity of the Platte Cloof.

That a few days after this, the gang of murderers was discovered there by a commando of both militia from the honourable Company and burghers, and when they were, as far as possible, besieged in a large dune or shrub by this commando, they not only defended themselves against them, but also shot dead one of the grenadiers, although two of these scoundrels, named Baloc of the burgher Jochem Daniel Hubenaar and Jamil, belonging to the widow Dorse, were likewise shot dead by the commando, while the remaining eleven grasped the opportunity the darkness of night afforded to escape by fleeing, and proceeded the following night close to the farm of the widow Heuning, where they spoke to the third prisoner September who, seeing that he is an old jongenjongenLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour., is called “Father” by the other slaves of the widow Heuning and is considered as such, and who had gone out on the pretext of going to fetch wood. This September, when he had returned to his fellow slaves, said in essence to them: “There are deserters in the veld who must get food”, when the fourth prisoner, Januarij, according to what he says, then went with two of his fellow slaves, by the names of Matthij and Jacob, to that place with the food, and found there three of these deserters, by the names of Fortuijn, Julij and Adonis, and handed over to them the food that they had brought, without having seen the other deserters since they kept themselves hidden somewhere further down. Shortly thereafter, there came into the slave house on the farm Plattecloof the slave jongenjongenLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour. Baatjoe van Boegies, who also formed part of this gang of murderers and had been shot through his hand during their resistance of the commando, whose wound was bandaged by the third prisoner, September, after he had first purified it in the Bugis fashion, and was then put up that night by the aforementioned September above the baking oven to sleep in the bed of the slave Jacob.

That of the whole gang there were still alive eleven scoundrels, who afterwards, when they again got to the other runaways on Table Mountain, after staying there for two nights, departed from there to the Cape dunes, where they asked for and received food from certain slave jongensjongensLiterally ‘boy.’ In Dutch it was common to use this word also to refer to male servants, irrespective of age. At the Cape, however, this usage was extended to slaves and then became exclusive, so that jongen (also in the deflected form jong) came to mean ‘male slave’, such that Afrikaans lost the use of the word to mean ‘boy’ and instead uses seun (from Dutch zoon) for both ‘boy’ and ‘son.’ In this primary meaning, the word has become obsolete in modern Afrikaans, except for the archaic terms tuinjong (‘garden boy’) and plaasjong (‘farm boy’), in the sense of male workers of colour. who were busy in a corral gauging wood.⁴ As soon as the gang had departed, one of these slaves went to the Cape and told of the route they had taken, which enabled a commando to be sent out again for these murderers, which reached them in the dunes around the so-called Swarte Klip⁵ and attacked them, and although they did not hesitate to violently resist this commando again, seven of them, by the names of Fortuijn, belonging to the farmer Cornelis Verweij, Patientie of the burgher Willem Engels, April of the fellow burgher Jan Smid, Cupido of the aforementioned Smuts, Julij of the soldier Bergman, Adonis of the widow Rotenburg and Christiaan of the honourable Company, were shot dead, or otherwise lost their lives, while the remaining four, named April van Bima of Adam Ceijse, September van Balij of Hendrik Ridder, Baatjoe of Jan Smid and Januarij of Abraham Craaijwinkel, were taken prisoner wounded, but since with the first two of these latter ones there was periculum in mora⁶ on account of their heavy wounds, they received their well-deserved punishment on the spot; while the corpses of the killed, as also that of Baatjoe van Boegies who suddenly died of an illness which came over him, were executed as a spectacle to other malefactors and also considering the situation; so that of this whole gang of murderers only the second prisoner, Januarij van Boegies, remained alive.

That the third prisoner, September van Boegies, who was assigned as a shepherd of his mistress on her aforesaid farm situated at Plattecloof, and who was the first to have met the aforesaid gang of deserters and murderers in the veld, not only informed his fellow slaves, by the names of Januarij van Maccasser, Matthijs van Mallebaar, Adam van Sambouwa, Jacob van Madagascar, Manus van Mandhaar, Isaac van Boegies and Gedult van de Caab, or the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth prisoners, of this, but moreover also ensured, both for a considerable time and even after the cruel murders of the late boekhouderboekhouderThe administrative or civil sector of the VOC was divided into six categories of rank, with the governor-general at the head of the first one. Most of the titles used for these ranks were derived from the merchant origins of the VOC, but in practice a rank did not equate with a person’s function. A boekhouder (literally ‘bookkeeper’) was a rank in the fifth category, just above that of ‘assistant’, and below that of an onderkoopman (‘junior merchant’). Michiel Smuts, his wife and child were perpetrated, that they were provided with food by him and his aforementioned fellow slaves, as well as two slaves of the burgher Jan le Roex junior, named Februarij and November, or the eleventh and twelfth prisoners, who had been requested and persuaded to do so by the third and fourth prisoners, September and Januarij, which food they stole in all kinds of ways from their mistress and master, so that the aforesaid could hand it over to that gang.

That instead of maintaining this gang, the last-named ten prisoners were far from informing on them to the appropriate place, in accordance with their duty, in which case they could have been discovered and captured in time and thus all of the further trouble could have been prevented. That they not only often allowed some of this aforementioned gang and on one occasion all of them, every one of which was armed with various weapons, at night and other unseasonable hours into the slave house on the farm of the widow Heuning, but in addition to this, when the third and fourth prisoners, September and Januarij, were informed by two of this gang that they were of the intention to plunder the garden-plot of the aforementioned Smuts, De Windmoolen, and the farm of Claas Jonasz in order to obtain guns, lead and powder; they all agreed – but as regards most of the aforementioned slaves of the widow Heuning, principally through the doing and on the suggestion of the said September – in that slave house with this gang of deserters that as soon as the warm season comes, or as some of the prisoners say: when the barley would have ripened, they would all run away with the aforementioned gang of deserters and murderers on a long journey to the land of the Caffers. Next, the aforementioned September and Januarij likewise suggested this to the eleventh and twelfth prisoners, Februarij and November of Jan le Roex, and the said September also the thirteenth prisoner, named Cupido van Bengalen, belonging to the burgher councillor, Sieur Jan Meijdertsz Cruijwagen, to which the said Cupido – in spite of the fact that in the year 1738 he was already sentenced by this honourable Council of Justice for a similar crime and was scourged at the place of justice here⁷ – as well as the aforementioned prisoners, willingly agreed, with only the seventh and tenth prisoners trying to excuse themselves from it by profanely pretending that they were forced to it by the threats of September and Januarij; so that the twelve last prisoners were all of the intention to undertake this journey, for which journey the said September took it upon him to ensure that by that time there would not only be more slaves of his nation to go along thither, but also that they would then take along all such gunpowder as might be found on the farm of his mistress, the widow Heuning. However, the prisoners do not want to admit that they intended violence in case they were unable to obtain this [powder] secretly, but the third prisoner, September, did confess that he had asked the cook on the farm of his mistress, by the name of Slammat, for gunpowder, without however getting any.

And since he, September, acted as a doctor amongst the slaves of the Bugis nation in this country, and moreover would provide any slave of this nation, who had come to him to request this, with letters written in the Bugis language which would serve to that end [i.e. of healing], it would therefore have been very easy for him, under this pretext, to incite a good number of his people to increase his gang, and moreover, through committing all kinds of cruelties later, to have made their way towards the fulfilment of their mutually planned dangerous and depraved designs, had it not been discovered in time and fortunately prevented through proper means, and the prisoners got into the hands of justice.

All of which are atrocious deeds through which the general peace of these lands are greatly disturbed, and the good inhabitants are put in a state of fear and anxiety, consequently it cannot be left unpunished, but should, on the contrary, be punished most rigorously as an example and deterrent to other scoundrels and malefactors.

Thus it is, that the honourable Council of Justice of this government, serving today, having seen and read with attention the written crimineelen eijsch ende conclusiecrimineelen eijsch ende conclusieLiterally ‘criminal demand and conclusion.’ The document drawn up by the prosecutor based on the evidence he collected and delivered in court against an accused. The conclusie is the final part of the document in which the prosecutor suggested an appropriate punishment for the crime., drawn up and delivered for and against the prisoners by the honourable independent fiscal, Pieter Reede van Oudshoorn, in his official capacity, further having noted everything that served the case and could have moved their honours, practising justice in the name and on behalf of the high and mighty States General of the United Netherlands, having judged all the prisoners, is sentencing them with this: to be taken to the place where criminal sentences are usually executed here, and there to be handed over to the executioner, the first prisoner, Achilles van de West Cust, to be tied to a cross and to be pinched with red-hot pincers on eight different places, then to be broken alive from the bottom up without the coup de grâce; further the second, third and fourth prisoners, each also to be tied onto a cross, the second and third prisoners, Januarij and September van Boegies, to be broken alive from the bottom up without, and the fourth prisoner, Januarij van Macasser, with the coup de grâce, as well as to remain lying on these crosses until they have given up the ghost; further the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth prisoners, Isaac van Boegies, Adam van Sambouwa, Manus van Mandhaar, Matthijs van Mallebaar, Jacob van Madagascar, Gedult van de Caab, Februarij van Boegies and November van Boegies, to be punished with the rope on the gallows in such a fashion that death will follow; thereafter the dead bodies of all the prisoners to be dragged to the outer place of execution, those of the first four prisoners to be put up on the wheels, and the bodies of the eight other prisoners again to be hanged on the gallows, to remain thus as prey for the air and birds of heaven.

Further, the thirteenth prisoner, Cupido van Bengalen, to stand exposed under the gallows with the rope around his neck, and then to be severely scourged with rods on his bare back, as also thereupon to be branded and thereafter to be riveted in chains for a period of ten consecutive years and sent back home to his owner; with sentencing all of the prisoners to the costs and expenditure of justice; the Council denying the otherwise drawn up eijscheijschLiterally ‘claim’ or ‘demand.’ This is strictly speaking the eijsch ende conclusie without the final part about sentencing, but the term is often used as a shorthand for the whole document. of the honourable Officer as regards the last prisoner.

Thus done and sentenced in the Castle of Good Hope on 4 September 1760, as also pronounced and executed on the 6^th thereupon.⁸

Let the execution be done, [signed] R. Tulbagh.

[signed] J. Meinertzhagen, R.S. Allemann, Cl. Brand, D. d’Aillij, Jn. Fr. Tiemmendorf, Pieter Coningh, P. Hacker, H.L. Bletterman, Jn. Haszingh, J.M. Cruijwagen.

In my presence, [signed] C.L. Neethling, secretary.