THEWHITEINVADERS
and values that corresponded with material conditions that placed people
of European descent above others.V
For the subordinated peoples, life in the colony was nasty, brutish, and
short. The Cape slaves experienced a form of subjection that was in many
respects harsher than slavery as practiced in the Americas. Extracted from
diverse native cultures and dispersed in small, mixed lots among many
owners, most managed to create some space for human dignity while
accommodating to their lot, and a considerable minority bolted for free-
dom, risking starvation, capture, and fierce retribution. The indigenous
pastoralists fared no better. Deprived of their means of independent subsis-
tence, they were incorporated into a society where their masters adopted
methods of control they were accustomed to applying to slaves.
This stratified and violent society was a linguistic Babel. Some colonists
were holding to the Dutch of the Netherlands, the official language of the
colony. Some indigenous people were still speaking their native languages.
A few slaves were able to use their languages of origin, whereas Portuguese
Creole had become a common means of communication among the Asian
slaves. A simplified form of Dutch, which dropped certain inflections and