Baas Teunis kept the Dutch East India Company’s post at Soetemelksvlei, on the Sonderend River, when the Moravian mission at Baviaanskloof, now Genadendal, reopened in 1792 [MS]. The government in Cape Town put the three missionaries in his care, and he took them to Baviaanskloof and helped them build [MS]. For the next five years he was the government’s voice in the valley: he carried its orders to the missionaries and the Khoekhoe, and he reported on them to Cape Town [MS]. The missionaries first called him a friend, and later “one of our greatest and most dangerous enemies” [MS]. Only his first name is recorded, in the way colonists were then addressed: “Baas” (master) and a first name. He and his family appear in the diaries more often than anyone except the missionaries themselves.
What the letters in square brackets mean
Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.
- [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record.
- [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from Moravian records, here the missionaries’ diaries of 1792 to 1797. Everything known about Baas Teunis comes from them, and they describe him as he dealt with the missionaries.
- [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.
The diary passages
This page rests on new English translations in the Genadendal Diaries repository. They are machine translations that no person has checked yet. Each passage is cited by its Utrecht file number and line numbers. See The Genadendal Diaries.
At a glance
| Born | In Maastricht, in the Netherlands, at a date not recorded. He had been at the Cape for about 30 years by 1793 [MS]. |
| Died | Not known |
| Known for | Keeping the company’s post at Soetemelksvlei, and carrying the government’s orders to Baviaanskloof from 1792 to 1797 [MS] |
| Link to the valley | The official who settled the missionaries at Baviaanskloof in 1792, and later tried to move the Khoekhoe and their cattle away from it [MS] |
The company’s man at Soetemelksvlei
Soetemelksvlei was a company post on the Sonderend River, about five hours’ walk from Baviaanskloof [MS]. The company had a post between present-day Greyton and Riviersonderend from 1727, where it farmed timber and cattle [IC]. Baas Teunis was in the company’s service there [MS]. Services were sometimes held at his post for the colonists of the district [MS].
His authority over the Khoekhoe of the area was real. In December 1792 the missionaries wrote that no farmer might punish a Khoekhoe person, and that a farmer must report any offence to Baas Teunis [MS]. He told them that a few years earlier, when the Khoekhoe near the kloof had stopped working for the farmers and slaughtered their cattle, more than 50 farmers had come to him at night meaning to shoot them, and that he had sent them away. From then on, he said, the farmers called him “the Hottentots’ god” [MS]. The story may describe the movement of Jan Paerl in 1788, but the diary does not name Paerl [TBV]. In January 1795 he came to the mission for the first time in a sergeant’s uniform, with a sabre at his side [MS].
Diaries: A363595, lines 449 to 539; A363595, lines 3092 to 3125; A363349, lines 186 to 204
Settling the missionaries (1792 to 1793)
On 18 December 1792 the acting governor, Johan Isaac Rhenius, sent for the three missionaries and for Baas Teunis, who had come to Cape Town. He told Baas Teunis to take them to the Khoekhoe kraals, let them choose a place, and help them build a house [MS]. Baas Teunis told them most of the Khoekhoe still lived near Baviaanskloof, where Georg Schmidt had worked [MS].
On 24 December 1792, at Baviaanskloof, he spoke to the Khoekhoe. The government loved them, he said, and had sent them teachers, so that they would be “Christians as good as the farmers”. While the teachers stayed, no farmer could drive them away. If the teachers left, the farmers would come [MS].
In the first year he was a helper. He gave the missionaries building materials cheaply or for nothing [MS]. He took Hendrik Marsveld to Cape Town with his own wagons in March 1793 [MS]. When a farmer tried to stop a Khoekhoe man ploughing by the Sergeants River in July 1793, Baas Teunis gave the man a letter to the Landdrost, and the Khoekhoe won the right to plough there [MS]. At the first baptism of the reopened mission, on 19 July 1793, his wife chose the name Anna Maria, and he counted 78 people present [MS]. In December 1793 he had flour sent to the mission for the wives of Khoekhoe men serving at the Cape [MS].
Diaries: A363595, lines 172 to 202; A363595, lines 1623 to 1664; A363595, lines 4357 to 4394 and 4670 to 4737; A363595, lines 7282 to 7306
The cattle order (1794 to 1795)
By late 1794 the missionaries saw him differently. On 7 December 1794 he gathered the Khoekhoe who had moved to Baviaanskloof from other places and told them, in the name of the Commissioner, Abraham Josias Sluysken, that they must take their cattle back where they had come from [MS]. One man said he could not go back, because the farmer had driven him away. Baas Teunis called him a man who would not obey the authorities, and said he would report him [MS]. He also told the missionaries that they might no longer take in any Khoekhoe person who had served a farmer without a certificate from that farmer [MS].
The missionaries wrote that no one but Baas Teunis himself had brought this about, and that he was “one of our greatest and most dangerous enemies”, friendly to their faces [MS]. They added that he and his wife had shown them much love and help at first, “for which may God bless them” [MS]. In Cape Town in January 1795, the company’s cashier told Marsveld that the order was “the doing of Baas Teunis at the post” [MS]. The Khoekhoe learned that he had given a Khoekhoe captain, Stoffel, drink and two shillings to back his complaint to the Commissioner [MS]. Later that month he came to the mission in uniform with the Commissioner’s written order, which authorised him to arrest Khoekhoe who did not obey and take them to Cape Town [MS].
In February 1795 visitors to the mission, among them the field corporal Andreas Otto, said the Commissioner had not been told the truth, and the diary blames the whole affair on Baas Teunis’s spite (the Dutch copy says greed) [MS]. By April the order had been largely withdrawn, after a Mr Claude, probably Hendrik Cloete, took the Khoekhoe’s case to the government [MS]. In June Baas Teunis scolded a Khoekhoe man of the mission because the Khoekhoe had told Mr Claude that his son had impounded their cattle. Now, he said, he was in trouble with the authorities and must “leave the place” [MS].
Diaries: A363596, lines 863 to 899; A363595, lines 12549 to 12683; A363595, lines 13680 to 14071; A363595, lines 14621 to 14712; A363596, lines 1464 to 1481
The rebels and the British (1795)
When Commandant Bisani ordered the missionaries out on 29 July 1795, Kühnel rode to Baas Teunis that night for advice. He told them to obey, because “might goes before right”, and sent a wagon to keep their goods safe at his place: “where my things stay, yours shall stay too” [MS]. In September 1795 he carried the company’s last orders to the mission: food for 116 wives and children of Khoekhoe men serving at the Cape, and then the call-up of every Khoekhoe man who could be found [MS].
Diaries: A363596, lines 2050 to 2085; A363596, lines 2381 to 2482
Under British rule (1795 to 1797)
Baas Teunis kept his place at the post under the British [MS]. In October 1795, as more Khoekhoe moved to the mission, the missionaries wrote that he was angry again, and that he would not let the Khoekhoe living at his place move to Baviaanskloof [MS].
In February 1796 he warned the mission that a commando of farmers was coming. He told Marsveld and Kühnel that about 40 farmers meant no harm to the mission, but were coming to catch Khoekhoe who owed them debts and drive them back to work [MS]. The missionaries answered that this was violence, and he promised to try to stop it [MS]. They noted that the Khoekhoe’s debts had mostly built up while the men served as soldiers at the Cape and their wives had to borrow from farmers to live [MS]. When the British General heard of the Khoekhoe’s complaints, Baas Teunis wrote to him that they were “all lies”, and the missionaries doubted he would ever report the truth [MS]. A sharp letter from the Landdrost followed, warning that any violence against the Khoekhoe would be punished [MS].
Later in 1796 the General ordered him to report at once any farmers who took the law into their own hands against the Khoekhoe [MS]. He passed on the General’s order that nobody might fell wood without permission [MS]. In 1797 he tried to send the mission’s woodcutters to a place with only useless timber, and the Major at the post overruled him [MS]. The diaries do not mention him after 1797.
Diaries: A363349, lines 11154 to 11187; A363349, lines 11857 to 12079; A363349, lines 16378 to 16396; A363349, lines 16673 to 16680; A363349, lines 12459 to 12477
His family
- His wife, whom the diaries call Juffrouw Teunis or Mrs Teunis, visited the mission often in its first years, brought fruit trees for its garden, and was godmother at the first baptism in 1793 [MS]. In March 1795 she had Khoekhoe cattle that had got into her garden driven into her kraal, and made their owners pay 2 shillings a head to get their animals back [MS].
- His son, “young Teunis”, was the missionaries’ nearest neighbour, on a place about an hour away that the acting governor Rhenius had granted him on condition that he harmed no Khoekhoe [MS]. He was probably Marthinus Theunissen, and the place was probably Weltevreden, where Greyton now stands [TBV]. See his page for the evidence.
- A daughter visited the mission with her brother in 1793 [MS].
The name Theunissen means “son of Teunis”. Whether Baas Teunis’s own surname was Theunissen is not recorded [TBV].
How to read his story
Everything known about Baas Teunis comes from the missionaries, who depended on him and later struggled against him. Their judgement of him changed with his actions. His own words survive only as they reported them: his promise to the Khoekhoe in 1792, his advice in 1795, and his explanations in 1796. He stood between a government that had sent teachers to the Khoekhoe and farmers who wanted Khoekhoe labour, and the diaries show him siding more and more with the farmers.
Links to other figures
- Marthinus Theunissen. Probably his son, “young Teunis” [TBV].
- The Missionaries of 1792, Hendrik Marsveld, and Johann Christian Kühnel. He brought them to Baviaanskloof, helped them, and later opposed them [MS].
- Abraham Josias Sluysken. Baas Teunis carried the Commissioner’s cattle order to the mission, and was said to have brought it about [MS].
- Hendrik Cloete. Cloete took the Khoekhoe’s side against the cattle order in 1795, and bought the son’s place [MS].
- Bisani. Baas Teunis advised the missionaries to obey Bisani’s order, and kept their goods [MS].
- Gildenhuijs. In 1793 Baas Teunis helped a Khoekhoe man take his case against this farmer to the Landdrost [MS].
- Jan Paerl. Baas Teunis’s story of the cattle slaughter of “a couple of years” before 1792 may concern Paerl’s movement [TBV].
His legacy in the valley
Baas Teunis brought the missionaries to Baviaanskloof in 1792 and told the Khoekhoe that the teachers’ presence would protect them [MS]. His attempt in 1794 and 1795 to move the Khoekhoe and their cattle away from the mission failed, and in 1796 the British fixed the mission’s grazing with boundary stones [MS]. See Loan Farms and Quitrent and The Valley Through TIME.
What is still open
- His full name, his dates, and his post in the company’s service.
- Whether his surname was Theunissen, and whether his son was Marthinus Theunissen of Weltevreden.
- Where exactly the post at Soetemelksvlei stood, and whether it is the company post of 1727 between Greyton and Riviersonderend.
- What became of him after 1797.
- What the Khoekhoe who lived at his place, and who wanted to move to the mission, said of him.
Related
- Valley History
- Marthinus Theunissen
- The Missionaries of 1792
- Abraham Josias Sluysken
- Dutch East India Company
- The Genadendal Diaries
References
- Genadendal Diaries repository. Genadendal Diaries. English translations of the Utrecht copies of the missionaries’ diaries, cited here by file and line number. Unreviewed machine translations. Its
glossary.csvidentifies Baas Teunis as the neighbouring farmer at the post of Soetemelksvlei. - Dutch East India Company, and the sources listed there. The company’s post between Greyton and Riviersonderend from 1727.