• 1800 Nama and Oorlam in Great Namaqualand •
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From around 1000 AD in the south of present-day Namibia
According to archaeologists, Khoesan-speaking hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups migrated south from the centre of present-day Botswana around the time of Christ’s birth. They are considered the ancestors of the Nama and Oorlam.
Some groups moved as far as the south-west of present-day South Africa. Others turned north of the Gariep/Oranje River in an arc to the west and north. From around 1000 AD, they settled in the south of present-day Namibia.
Written reports by Europeans from the area north of the Gariep/Oranje River only exist from the 18th century onwards. According to these reports, ‘Greater Namaqualand’, the ‘land of the Nama’, stretched roughly from the Gariep/Oranje to a line from present-day Walvis Bay to Gobabis. The area south of the Gariep/Oranje River was considered ‘Little Namaqualand’.
The Kamiǂnûn (Bondelswarts) have probably been settled in the southeast since around 1600. The Kaiǁkhaun (Red Nation) lived in the Great Karas Mountains area around 1800. Their neighbours were the ǁKharakhoen (Fransman Nama). The ǁKhaulgôan (Swartboois) could be found in the area west of present-day Keetmanshoop on the Fish River.
Also mentioned are the !Gomen or ǁO-gain (Groot Doode) further north and the ǁHaboben (Veldschoendragers). Ships anchoring at Walvis Bay traded with the ǂAonin (Topnaar), who lived on the Kuiseb River (dry river).
Oorlam, the ‘experienced’ Nama
After the Dutch founded the Cape Colony in 1652, more and more settlers arrived. Descendants of European men and Nama women formed their own group, which later called themselves Baster (from Cape Dutch ‘bastaard’ = mixed race).
European settlers and Baster pushed the Nama groups further and further north. Through their contact with Europeans, these Nama became familiar with horses, guns and ammunition. They spoke Cape Dutch and called themselves Oorlam (‘experienced’). Many also got baptised. Some clans were accompanied by a missionary.
In 1796, Oorlam Kaptein (from ‘Captain’) Klaas Afrikaner shot and killed farmer Petrus Pienaar. To escape punitive expeditions by the Boers, he moved with his Afrikaner clan across the Gariep/Oranje.
Apparently with the consent of the Kaiǁkhaun, he settled in the Great Karas Mountains. On a hill on the Bak dry river, he and his sons Jager and Titus built the fortified settlement of ǁKhauxa!nas by 1798. The ruins are now considered evidence of the oldest known building structure in Namibia.
Sources:
Small section of the ruins of ǁKhauxa!nas, the fortified settlement of the Afrikaner Oorlam (Nama) clan under Kaptein (Chief) Klaas Afrikaner in the Great Karas Mountains in the south-east of Greater Namaqualand (now Namibia’s south). Photo (1987): Klaus Dierks, Wikipedia
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