Resolution of the Council of Policy, 27 September 1793: the reports on the alarm of 4-5 September in the mountains between Namaqualand and the Olifants River, and the killing of La Buscagne, Johannes van Wijk and the wife of a man named Oosthuizen
Council of Policy resolution · consulted 2026-08-12
- Type
- Council of Policy resolution
- Repository
- Nationaal Archief, Den Haag / Western Cape Archives, Council of Policy (C series); TANAP transcription, CC0, published by the National Archives of the Netherlands and Leiden University; read through eGGSA's VOC Archive web application
- Reference
- C218, pp. 319-360, entry C218.p0319-0360, dated 1793-09-27
- Consulted
- 2026-08-12
The citation as it was given
READ IN THE DUTCH, 12 Aug 2026, AND IT IS NOT THIS PROJECT'S GROUND. The row below was written from the English summary an hour earlier and placed the killing in the Swellendam district. The transcription says otherwise and the transcription governs. WHAT THE ORIGINAL SAYS: 'Dat den Hottentot Capitein Kees met zijn Crijgsmacht IN HET GEBERGTE TUSSCHEN NAMAQUALAND EN DE OLIPHANTSRIVIER een Gevangene had gemaakt van 't Veld Corporaal La Buscagne benevens sijn Zoons en een Commando Ruijter genaamd Van Wijk Johannes en 4 andere gevangenen, dat La Buscagne met Johannes Van Wijk en een HUISVROUW VAN JEMAND GENAAMD OOSTHUIZEN des avonds van den 4:e deezer vermooord zyn'. The mountains between Namaqualand and the Olifants River are the north-west Cape. Picqueniersklooff, named next in the same passage, is Piekenierskloof above Citrusdal and confirms it. That is the far side of the colony from the Koup. SWELLENDAM IS THE REPORTING ROUTE, NOT THE PLACE. Van Hardenbergh, Secretary of Swellendam, wrote to the Council on 17 September about killings of the 4th and 5th; Bletterman, Landdrost of Stellenbosch, forwarded the Stellenbosch Second Oath Council resolutions and the Graaff-Reinet Landdrost's reports. Three districts corresponding about one alarm is what put 'Swellendam' in the summary. SHE IS NOT NAMED AND NEVER WAS. The record has 'een Huisvrouw van Jemand genaamd Oosthuizen' - the wife of someone called Oosthuizen. Not her forename, not her husband's. The index entry 'OOSTHUIZEN, (Mev., Vermoorde)' is the indexer's compression of that phrase, and reading the index as though it named a person is what made this look like a find. THE KOUP PLACE NAMES WERE AN INDEX ARTEFACT. Coupasberg, Couga and Zwartenberg appear in this entry's locations array and DO NOT APPEAR IN THE TRANSCRIPTION AT ALL - checked by search. The array is not a reliable statement about what an entry contains. Anyone using this archive should treat locations as a search aid and the transcription as the evidence. WHAT IS STILL TRUE AND WHY THE ROW STAYS: the killings are dated the evening of 4 September 1793; the depositions were taken on 16 September from Cupido Dikkop, Kees Oorlam, Klaas the horse-watcher and Louis, an enslaved man; La Buscagne was taken with his sons. It is a real, precisely dated record of the frontier in this decade, and it names people. It is simply not about this district, and nothing in this project should cite it as though it were. The archive's own words for the people involved - 'Hottentot Capitein', 'het Alarm' - are quoted here as the record's language, not adopted. See 10.
Kept verbatim. This project contradicts published genealogies and corrects a family's own oral tradition, so every claim has to be checkable by someone who was not in the room.
Nothing in the model cites this source yet.