AFRICANWARSANDWHITEINVADERS
shall deal in sequence with each major community, starting with the
Xhosa, who were the first farming people to bear the brunt of invasion.
The Xhosa
Afrikaner trekboers moving eastward from the Cape began to overlap
with the westernmost Xhosa settlements in the land between the Bushmans
River and the Fish River in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. That
was the beginning of a century of interaction that culminated in the con-
quest of all the Xhosa (map 3).3The process was profoundly influenced by
cleavages among Xhosa political factions. During the seventeenth century,
a single lineage had dominated most ofthe Xhosa chiefdoms, but following
the death of its head in about 1750 the lineage split into two rival sections,
one of which split again in 1782. Thereafter, there were three major divi-
sions: the Gcaleka centered east of the Kei River; the Ngqika between the
Keiand the Fish; and the Ndlambe in the area known as the Zuurveld, west
of the Fish. The Ndlambes shared the Zuurveld with several other Xhosa-
speaking chiefdoms, including the Gqunukhwebe, who had incorporated
numerous people of Khoikhoi origin.
In the first three conflicts-I
779-8
I, 1793, and 1799-the
Zuurveld