ABSTRACT
The earliest references to the Cape as a suitable refreshment station for the Dutch en route to the East Indies were made in 1649 by Janssen and Proot, who were aboard the Haarlem, which was shipwrecked at the Cape in 1647. Striking in their report was the fact that they refuted the charges of savagery and cannibalism generally imputed to the original inhabitants of South Africa. In a letter to the Dutch East Indies Company, these two gentlemen stated the following:
Others will say that the natives are brutish and cannibals, from whom nothing good is to be expected, and that we shall have to be on our guard continually; but this is only a sailor’s yarn (een Jan Hagel’s praetjen) as shall be more closely shown and denied. It is not to be denied that they are without laws or government, like many Indians, and it is indeed true, that also sailors and soldiers have been killed by them but the reason for this is always left unspoken by our folk, to excuse themselves for having been the cause of it, since we firmly believe that the peasants of this country (Holland), if their cattle were to be shot down or taken off without payment, would not show themselves a whit better than these natives, had they not to fear the law.2
