History
The country north of the Orange river was first visited by Europeans towards the close of the 18th century. At that time, the population was sparse. The majority of the inhabitants appear to have been members of the Tswana people (also spelled Bechuana), but in the valleys of the Orange and Vaal were Koranbas and other Khoekhoes, and in the Drakensberg and on the western border lived numbers of Bushmen. Early in the 19th century Griquas established themselves north of the Orange. Between 1817 and 1831, the country was devastated by the chief Mzilikazi and his Matabele, and large areas were depopulated. Up to this time the few Europeans who had crossed the Orange had been mainly hunters or missionaries.
Read more about this topic: Orange Free State
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)