First Fifty Years - a project collating Cape of Good Hope records

Hamcumquas¹

?, #18904

Copyright / Terms of Use Notice

The material on this website is subject to copyright.
Facts (names, dates, and places) are not copyright. You are free to transcribe them but not cut and paste into your data provided you use the correct attribution and citation.
I have created the narratives, sentences, and citations; they are copyright and may not be used.
You may not add them to your genealogy, your personal documents, your tree on Ancestry, nor in the data or profile sections on Geni, nor anywhere else.
Many of the images are also copyright. You may not copy them without the consent of the copyright holders.
You must use the correct attribution and citation, viz.: Robertson, Delia. The First Fifty Years Project. Here you add the page URL.

Last Edited

21/10/2017

PeopleGroup*

On 5 May 1662 Choebaha was the leader of the group named as Hamcumquas, whom Van Riebeeck believed to be the greatest and most powerful of all the Hottentoo tribes. Choebaha or Khoebaka, was his title and he appears only this way without further identification throughout the record. The title meant Emperor or Chief King or Supreme Lord and he was not only the ruler of the Hancumquas, but of all Khoe. The Hancumquas lived in huts made of matting but much larger than those of other groups in the region, and they remained in one place. Van Riebeeck wrote that they planted and dried a plant called dacha which they bruised and ate and which made them very silly.¹

Citations

[S647] Precis of the archives of the Cape of Good Hope, Letters Despatched 1652-1662 to which are added land grants, attestations, Journal of voyage to Tristan da Cunha, names of freemen, &c. Vol III, H.C.V. Leibrandt; (Cape Town, South Africa: W.A. Richards & Sons, Government Printers, 1900), p.239-242. Hereinafter cited as Precis of the archives of the Cape of Good Hope.