works. Company officialsand burghers who lived in Cape Town employed
their slaves as domestic servants, artisans, fishermen, market gardeners,
and fetchers of water and wood. Rural slaves were farm laborers and
domestic servants. They formed the backbone of the arable economy.
Meanwhile, the indigenous transhumant pastoralists of southwestern
Africa, who called themselves Khoikhoi and whom white settlers called
Hottentots, were bearing the brunt of the Dutch invasion." During the
century and a half following Vasco da Gama's first great voyage to India,
those living in the Cape peninsula, who probably numbered between four
and eight thousand, had grown accustomed to occasional visits by Euro-
pean seafarers. They had developed a taste for European trade goods-
iron, copper, brass, and body ornaments-and
become experienced and
skilled in bartering them forsheep and cattle.
For the first few years after the arrival of the van Riebeeck expedition,
relations were fairly cordial. Conscious of their dearth of available labor,
the Dutch were concerned to consolidate their bridgehead and secure their
needs peacefully. Like their predecessors, they acquired sheep and cattle in
exchange for Western goods. They also cultivated friendships with three