THEWHITEINVADERS
innkeepers, fishermen, and small-scale retail traders. They formed 16 per-
cent of the free burgher population of the Cape district in 175° and 13
percent in 1770.24
Throughout the company period, there were a few marriages between
European men and freed slave women. There was also a great deal of
extramarital sexual activity across the status and color lines, nearly all of it
between white men and slave women. Visiting sailors fathered numerous
children by Cape slaves',especially in the company's lodge. Burghers also
patronized the urban slaves and had sexual relations with slave and
Khoikhoi women on the farms, where men always exceeded women in the
burgher population. The children of free fathers and slave mothers were
slaves, but many of the female children became the mistresses and, in some
cases, the manumitted legal wives of burghers. As a result of these rela-
tionships, the "black" population ofthe colony became considerably light-
ened, and the "white" population became somewhat darkened. It has been
estimated that approximately 7 percent of the genes of the modern Af-
rikaner people originated outside Europe and that this occurred mostly
during the company period.P
The Dutch East India Company's colony at the Cape of Good Hope had