religion, so that it was intolerable for any decent Christian to bow down
beneath such a yoke; wherefore we rather withdrew in order thus to pre-
serve our doctrines in purity."42
During
1836, the first large groups of emigrants spread out on the
grasslands on either side of the Vaal River, unaware of the power of Mzili-
kazi's Ndebele kingdom and its aggressive strategy from its headquarters
120 miles west of modern Pretoria. The Ndebele, who had been attacked
by Zulu impis and Griqua commandos
from the south, decided to elimi-
nate these new intruders
who approached
from the same direction.
In
October an Ndebele force of about 5,000 warriors launched an attack on
88