Oorlam people

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Oorlam
Orlaam, Oorlammers, Oerlams, Orlamse Hottentots
Coloureds, Griqua
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The Oorlam or Orlam people (also known as Orlaam, Oorlammers, Oerlams, or Orlamse Hottentots) are a subtribe of the Nama people, largely assimilated after their migration from the Cape Colony (today, part of South Africa) to Namaqualand and Damaraland (now in Namibia).

Oorlam clans were originally formed from

Khoikhoi
, Europeans and slaves from Mozambique, Madagascar, India and Indonesia. Similar to the other
commandos of mounted gunmen. Also, like the Boers, they migrated inland from the Cape, and established several states in what are now South Africa and Namibia. The Oorlam migration in South Africa also produced the related Griqua people.[1]

History

Trekboer
nomads in the Cape Colony, ancestral people to the Oorlam and Griqua migrations.

Beginning in the late 18th century, Oorlam communities migrated from the

Boer expansion and then large-scale Boer migrations, such as the Dorsland Trek, away from British rule in the Cape, Jonker Afrikaner brought his people into Namaqualand by the mid-19th century, becoming a formidable force for Oorlam domination over the Nama and against the Bantu-speaking Hereros for a period.[3]

Emerging from populations of Khoikhoi servants raised on Boer farms, many of them having been orphaned and captured in Dutch commando raids, Oorlams primarily spoke a

version of Dutch or proto-Afrikaans and were much influenced by Cape Dutch colonial ways of life, including adoption of horses and guns, European clothing, and Christianity.[4]

However, after two centuries of assimilation into the Nama culture, many Oorlams today regard Khoekhoe (Damara/Nama) as their mother tongue. The distinction between Namas and Oorlams has gradually disappeared, such that they are regarded as a single ethnic group, despite their differing origins.[5]

Clans

The Orlam people comprise various subtribes, clans and families. In South Africa, the Griqua are an influential Oorlam group.

The clans that migrated across the Oranje into South West Africa are, in order of their time of arrival:

Notable Oorlam people

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Slavery in the Cape". Institute for the Study of Slavery and its Legacy – South Africa. Archived from the original on 27 August 2011. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
  2. ^ J. D. Omer-Cooper, History of Southern Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1987), 263; Nigel Penn, "Drosters of the Bokkeveld and the Roggeveld, 1770–1800," in Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labor on the Dutch Frontier, ed. Elizabeth A. Eldredge and Fred Morton (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), 42; Martin Legassick, "The Northern Frontier to ca. 1840: The rise and decline of the Griqua people," in The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840, ed. Richard Elphick & Hermann Giliomee (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan U. Press, 1988), 373–74.
  3. ^ Omer-Cooper, 263-64.
  4. ^ Legassick, 368-69; Penn, 42.
  5. ^ Malan, Johan S (1998). Die Völker Namibias [The Tribes of Namibia] (in German). Windhoek, Göttingen: Klaus Hess. pp. 120–121.
  6. ^ Dierks, Klaus. "Biographies of Namibian Personalities, A". Retrieved 24 June 2010.
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-3-515-06872-7
    .
  8. ^ Dierks, Klaus. "Biographies of Namibian Personalities, L". Retrieved 14 January 2011.
  9. ^ Shiremo, Shampapi (14 January 2011). "Captain Andreas Lambert: A brave warrior and a martyr of the Namibian anti-colonial resistance". New Era. Archived from the original on 8 December 2012. Retrieved 7 February 2011.

Further reading

  • Kienetz, Alvin (1977). "The Key Role of the Orlam Migrations in the Early Europeanization of South West Africa (Namibia)". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 10 (4). Boston University African Studies Center: 553–572.
    JSTOR 216929
    .
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