 The general attitude of neighbouring agro-pastoralists towards the Hadza was prejudicial; they viewed them as backwards, not possessing a "real language", and made up of the dispossessed of neighbouring tribes that had fled into the forest out of poverty or because they committed a crime.Many of these misconceptions were transmitted to early colonial visitors to the region who wrote about the Hadza.In the late 19th century, European powers claimed much of the African continent as colonies, a period known as the Scramble for Africa.