The Chainoqua were a Khoekhoe people of the Overberg [IC]. Their land stretched from the Hottentots Holland mountains towards Cape Agulhas and inland to the Riviersonderend mountains, some 12,000 square kilometres [IC]. It took in this valley. Some of their kraals stood near present-day Genadendal and Riviersonderend [IC]. The Breede River divided them from their eastern neighbours, the Hessequa [IC].
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 the records or statements of one side only. For the peoples of the early Cape, almost every written record was made by outsiders: Dutch East India Company officials, travellers, and missionaries. None of it was written by the people it describes.
- [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.
A living heritage
Descendants of the Khoekhoe and San live in the valley today, and many hold their own knowledge of this history. This page is written from outside sources, and it will be corrected and added to as descendants give their own accounts. See Have your say below.
At a glance
| Also called | Chainouqua; in Dutch records, often “Soeswa’s people” [IC] |
| Land | From the Hottentots Holland mountains to Cape Agulhas and the Riviersonderend mountains, west of the Breede River [IC] |
| Leaders | Soeswa (died 1663); later Dorha (called Klaas) [IC] |
| In the valley | Kraals near present-day Genadendal and Riviersonderend, still recorded as late as 1803 [IC] |
Their land and way of life
The Chainoqua lived in four main groups of kraals [IC]. Soeswa’s own group lived in the Villiersdorp valley and along the upper Riviersonderend [IC]. Another group lived between the Riviersonderend and the mountains, with smaller kraals near present-day Genadendal and Riviersonderend [IC]. Each kraal had a headman, and camps held from 20 to more than 100 matjieshuise [IC]. Cattle were the measure of wealth, and land was held by the group as a whole [IC].
The Chainoqua and the Dutch
The Dutch first met the Chainoqua on 14 November 1657 [IC]. In 1661 Soeswa visited the company’s commander, Jan van Riebeeck, and agreed to trade cattle [IC]. Within twenty years the Dutch often called the Chainoqua by their chief’s name [IC]. From 1662 to 1713, the Chainoqua and the Hessequa were the colony’s largest suppliers of cattle and sheep [IC].
In the war of 1673 to 1677, the Chainoqua sided with the Dutch against the Cochoqua, another Khoekhoe people [IC]. From 1679 to 1693, the Chainoqua leader Dorha acted as the company’s go-between with the Overberg Khoekhoe [IC]. The company kept cattle posts in the Overberg to hold the animals it bartered [IC].
Trade and alliance did not protect their land. Dutch travellers found rich grazing at the Huis River, where Greyton now stands, in 1669 [IC]. By 1727 the company was farming timber and cattle between present-day Greyton and Riviersonderend [IC]. Smallpox killed many Khoekhoe in 1713 [IC]. Over the 1700s most Chainoqua land was divided into farms for colonists [IC]. Some Chainoqua leaders, among them Soeswa and later Dorha, tried to hold back the colony’s spread [IC].
In the story of Genadendal
When Georg Schmidt arrived in 1737, the people he taught were living on what had been Chainoqua land [IC]. The Moravian Church in South Africa says that Janneke Tikkuie, the husband of Magdalena, was Chainoqua [MS]. Whether Africo’s clan was Chainoqua is not recorded [TBV]. Independent Chainoqua kraals were still recorded near Genadendal as late as 1803 [IC].
What is still open
- What “Chainoqua” means.
- How many Chainoqua families joined the mission at Baviaanskloof, and how many families in the valley descend from them.
- Whether the Khoekhoe that Greyton’s histories call Hessequa were in fact Chainoqua. See Stoffel Koekson.
Have your say
If you are of Chainoqua descent, or hold knowledge of this history, contact the moderators via How to Submit.
Related
References
- The Digging Stick, volume 6, number 3 (November 1989). Archaeological Society of South Africa. Chainoqua land and its boundary with the Hessequa, first contact, the name “Soeswa’s people”, and the cattle trade.
- CapeNature. Riviersonderend Complex Protected Area Management Plan 2021 to 2031, section 2.5, citing Le Roux (1984), Humphreys (1989), and Clift (2001). The four kraal groups, Soeswa, Dorha, the cattle posts, and the kraals near Genadendal.
- Wikipedia. Khoikhoi–Dutch Wars. The Chainoqua alliance with the Dutch in 1673 to 1677.
- Wikipedia. Groenland mountains. Chainoqua resistance and loss of land.
- Moravian Church in South Africa. Women’s Month and Pilgrimage of Grace. Janneke Tikkuie as Chainoqua.