Ward 2 Development Forum

Jan Paerl

Properties3
descriptionKhoekhoe prophet, called Onse Liewe Heer, who in 1788 led a movement in the Swellendam district that expected the world to end on 25 October. He told followers to kill their white livestock, and was tried in 1790. His later link to the Moravian mission is still open.
tagstheme/heritage, lang/en
aliasesJan Parel, Onse Liewe Heer, Onsen Liewen Heer, Captyn Jan

7 min read

Jan Paerl was a Khoekhoe man from the Swellendam district who, in 1788, told his followers that the world would end on 25 October that year [IC]. He called himself Onse Liewe Heer, “Our Dear Lord”, and told his followers to kill their white livestock and build new huts to prepare for what was coming [IC]. The colony tried him in 1790 [IC]. The historian Russel Viljoen calls it the Khoekhoe cattle-killing of 1788, and notes that it came almost seventy years before the better-known Xhosa cattle-killing of 1856 to 1857 [TBV]. It took place among the Overberg Khoekhoe four years before the Moravian missionaries returned to Baviaanskloof, and Viljoen writes that Paerl later turned to mission Christianity [TBV]. Where he did so, and whether he lived in this valley, has not yet been confirmed.

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 one side’s own records or statements. On this page that means what is said in the documentary series The Khoekhoe Saga.
  • [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet. On this page, most [TBV] facts come from a single historian’s published work and have not yet been checked against a second source.

Almost everything known about Paerl comes from colonial records: letters from the landdrost at Swellendam, statements taken from witnesses, and the papers of his trial [IC]. His own words survive only as officials and witnesses reported them.

At a glance

Born1761 [TBV]
Died1851 [TBV]
Also calledJan Parel, Onse Liewe Heer (“Our Dear Lord”) [IC], and Captyn Jan [TBV]
Known forLeading the Khoekhoe cattle-killing movement of 1788 in the Swellendam district [IC]
Link to the valleyAfter 1792 he turned to the Christianity of the Moravian missionaries, who had returned to Baviaanskloof that year [TBV]

His early life

Paerl was born on a colonial farm and grew up there [TBV]. His father may have been partly of Dutch descent, and he spoke Dutch fluently [TBV]. His years of birth and death, 1761 and 1851, come from the title of Viljoen’s biography of him [TBV].

By the end of the 1700s most Khoekhoe in the western Cape had lost their land and herds, and many worked on colonial farms [IC]. See Khoekhoe and Hessequa.

The prophecy of 1788

Word of Paerl’s prophecy reached colonial officials in Swellendam in August 1788 [TBV]. He said the world would be destroyed on 25 October 1788 [IC]. He called himself Onse Liewe Heer and claimed he could not die [IC]. One witness told officials that he had stabbed himself twice in the chest to show it [TBV].

He told his followers to kill their white livestock and to build new straw huts with two doors [IC]. Viljoen writes that he also told them to burn their European clothes and to attack the drostdy at Swellendam [TBV]. According to the historian Anne Marieke van der Wal, his followers expected to receive the goods and cattle of the colonists once the change came, and one witness said they meant to kill the landdrost and his family [TBV]. Viljoen puts the number of his followers at about 300, more than half of them women [TBV].

Both historians describe his teaching as a mixture of Khoekhoe hopes and Christian ideas [IC]. Viljoen calls the movement perhaps the first millenarian movement in colonial South Africa, meaning a movement that expected the present world to end and a better one to begin [TBV].

The colony’s response

The landdrost of Swellendam, Constant van Nuld Onkruijdt, reported the movement to Cape Town on 26 October 1788 [TBV]. Governor Cornelis Jacob van der Graaff treated it as superstition [TBV].

Paerl was later arrested, and the Court of Justice tried him in April 1790 [IC]. The two main accounts of his sentence differ:

  • Viljoen writes that he was sentenced to two years in prison and released in 1792 [TBV].
  • Van der Wal writes that he was sentenced to work for the Dutch East India Company at Stellenbosch, and ordered to stay more than three hours’ travel from Swellendam [TBV].

Both call the sentence light [IC]. Van der Wal argues that it was light because colonial officials did not believe Khoekhoe people could truly understand Christianity, and so did not take his claims seriously [TBV].

His later life

After his release, Paerl married a Khoekhoe woman named Catryn and worked on a farm belonging to Jan Albertyn [TBV].

In July 1796 a Stellenbosch burgher asked for permission to indenture four of Paerl’s children, saying that their dead mother had wanted this [TBV]. Paerl travelled to Cape Town and petitioned the fiscal, the colony’s public prosecutor, for custody of his children [TBV]. Viljoen uses the case to show how Khoekhoe parents could use the courts at a time when colonists feared any move towards equal rights [TBV].

Viljoen writes that many Overberg Khoekhoe, Paerl among them, “found solace in mission Christianity after Moravian missionaries returned in 1792” [TBV]. He writes that Khoekhoe who settled at Baviaanskloof were the exception to a life as landless workers on colonial farms [TBV]. His biography of Paerl covers this later link with the Moravian missionaries [TBV].

Paerl died in 1851 [TBV].

  • The Missionaries of 1792. Hendrik Marsveld, Daniel Schwinn, and Johann Christian Kühnel reopened the mission at Baviaanskloof on 24 December 1792 [IC]. By Viljoen’s account, that was the year Paerl came out of prison [TBV]. Whether he ever met them is not known.
  • Magdalena. She kept the congregation at Baviaanskloof together from 1744 until the missionaries returned, and died in 1800 [IC].
  • Dorha. The Chainoqua leader who worked with the company and was later imprisoned by it, a century before Paerl [IC]. The Khoekhoe Saga tells both men’s stories in the same episode [MS].

His legacy in the valley

No record of Paerl in the valley has yet been found for this page. In the documentary series The Khoekhoe Saga, Viljoen tells his story in the episode on the Hessequa [MS].

What is still open

  • Whether Paerl lived at Baviaanskloof (Genadendal), whether he was baptised there, and under what name. The Moravian missionaries’ diaries, held at the Utrecht Archives, may answer this.
  • Where in the Swellendam district he lived, and where his followers gathered.
  • Which of the two accounts of his sentence is right.
  • How the 1796 case over his children ended, and who their mother was.
  • Where he died, and how the dates 1761 and 1851 were established.
  • How his followers’ descendants remember him. Everything on this page comes from colonial records and the historians who have read them.

References

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