PygmyPlaidGiraffe
2nd November 2003, 04:08 PM
I came across this information about the Xhosa and how a great many of the Xhosa came to believe
that their salvation lay through further sacrifice. They had to kill all their cattle, destroy their grain stores and await the approaching day of reckoning when two suns would rise, the British would be driven into the sea, and new herds of cattle would emerge from under the earth. The approach of the expected millennium divided Xhosa society into believers and non-believers.
S.A. Study (http://www.historytoday.com/index.cfm?articleid=16912)
"You are to tell the people that the whole community is about to rise again from the dead. Then go on to say to them all the cattle living now must be slaughtered, for they are reared with defiled hands, as the people handle witchcraft.
Say to them there must be no ploughing of lands, rather must the people dig deep pits, erect new huts, set up wide, strongly built cattlefold, make milksacks, and weave doors from buka roots…"
The words of the spirits, talking to 16-year-old Nongqawuse, as recorded by W.W. Qqoba in his narrative of the Cattle killing, based on oral sources. Dead will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7
by Jeffrey Brian Peires
ISBN: 0253343380
In February 1856, the Xhosa began killing their cattle. A total of 400,000 were culled. 40,000 Xhosa died of starvation as a result of this.
that their salvation lay through further sacrifice. They had to kill all their cattle, destroy their grain stores and await the approaching day of reckoning when two suns would rise, the British would be driven into the sea, and new herds of cattle would emerge from under the earth. The approach of the expected millennium divided Xhosa society into believers and non-believers.
S.A. Study (http://www.historytoday.com/index.cfm?articleid=16912)
"You are to tell the people that the whole community is about to rise again from the dead. Then go on to say to them all the cattle living now must be slaughtered, for they are reared with defiled hands, as the people handle witchcraft.
Say to them there must be no ploughing of lands, rather must the people dig deep pits, erect new huts, set up wide, strongly built cattlefold, make milksacks, and weave doors from buka roots…"
The words of the spirits, talking to 16-year-old Nongqawuse, as recorded by W.W. Qqoba in his narrative of the Cattle killing, based on oral sources. Dead will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7
by Jeffrey Brian Peires
ISBN: 0253343380
In February 1856, the Xhosa began killing their cattle. A total of 400,000 were culled. 40,000 Xhosa died of starvation as a result of this.