"Friend Of My Heart's Love, And Of All The Confidence Of My Heart,
I Am Sechele.
I am undone by the Boers, who attacked me, though I had
no guilt with them.
They demanded that I should be in their kingdom,
and I refused. They demanded that I should prevent the English and Griquas
from passing (northward). I replied, These are my friends,
and I can prevent no one (of them). They came on Saturday,
and I besought them not to fight on Sunday, and they assented.
They began on Monday morning at twilight, and fired with all their might,
and burned the town with fire, and scattered us. They killed
sixty of my people, and captured women, and children, and men.
And the mother of Baleriling (a former wife of Sechele) they also
took prisoner. They took all the cattle and all the goods of the Bakwains;
and the house of Livingstone they plundered, taking away all his goods.
The number of wagons they had was eighty-five, and a cannon; and after they
had stolen my own wagon and that of Macabe, then the number of their wagons
(counting the cannon as one) was eighty-eight. All the goods of the hunters
(certain English gentlemen hunting and exploring in the north)
were burned in the town; and of the Boers were killed twenty-eight.
Yes, my beloved friend, now my wife goes to see the children,
and Kobus Hae will convey her to you.
I am, SECHELE,
The Son of Mochoasele."
This statement is in exact accordance with the account given by
the native teacher Mebalwe, and also that sent by some of the Boers themselves
to the public colonial papers. The crime of cattle-stealing, of which
we hear so much near Caffreland, was never alleged against these people,
and, if a single case had occurred when I was in the country,
I must have heard of it, and would at once say so. But the only crime
imputed in the papers was that "Sechele was getting too saucy."
The demand made for his subjection and service in preventing
the English traders passing to the north was kept out of view.
Very soon after Pretorius had sent the marauding party against Kolobeng,
he was called away to the tribunal of infinite justice.
His policy is justified by the Boers generally from the instructions given
to the Jewish warriors in Deuteronomy 20:10-14. Hence, when he died,
the obituary notice ended with "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord."
I wish he had not "forbidden us to preach unto the Gentiles
that they may be saved."
The report of this outrage on the Bakwains, coupled with denunciations
against myself for having, as it was alleged, taught them to kill Boers,
produced such a panic in the country, that I could not engage
a single servant to accompany me to the north. I have already alluded
to their mode of warfare, and in all previous Boerish forays
the killing had all been on one side; now, however, that a tribe
where an Englishman had lived had begun to shed THEIR blood as well,
it was considered the strongest presumptive evidence against me.
Loud vows of vengeance were uttered against my head,
and threats of instant pursuit by a large party on horseback,
should I dare to go into or beyond their country; and as these were coupled
with the declaration that the English government had given over
the whole of the native tribes to their rule, and would assist
in their entire subjection by preventing fire-arms and ammunition
from entering the country, except for the use of the Boers,
it was not to be wondered at that I was detained for months at Kuruman
from sheer inability to get wagon-drivers.
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