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 Mixed race descendants of indigenous Khoikhoi, Europeans and slaves from Mozambique, Madagascar, India and Indonesia.
Similar to the other Afrikaans-speaking group at the time, the Trekboers, Oorlam originally populated the frontiers of the infant Cape Colony, later living as semi-nomadic Boer Commando 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.
History
Beginning in the late 18th century, Oorlam communities migrated from the
Cape Colony north to
Namaqualand. They settled places earlier occupied by the Nama. They came partly to escape the colonial Dutch East India Company conscription, partly to raid and trade, and partly to obtain herding lands.
[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.] Some of these emigrant Oorlams (including the band led by the outlaw
Jager Afrikaner and his son
Jonker Afrikaner in the
Transgariep) retained links to Oorlam communities in or close to the borders of the Cape Colony. In the face of gradual
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 languages Herero people for a period.
[Omer-Cooper, 263-64.]
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 Oorlams or proto-Afrikaans and were much influenced by Cape Dutch colonial ways of life, including adoption of horses and guns, European clothing, and Christianity.[Legassick, 368-69; Penn, 42.]
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.
Clans
The Orlam people comprise various subtribes, clans and families. In South Africa, the
Griqua people are an influential Oorlam group.
The clans that migrated across the Oranje into South West Africa are, in order of their time of arrival:
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The ǀAixaǀaen (Orlam Afrikaners), the first group to enter and permanently settle in Namibia. Their leader Klaas Afrikaner left the Cape Colony around 1770. The clan first built the fortress of ǁKhauxaǃnas, then moved to Blydeverwacht, and finally settled at Windhoek.
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The ǃAman (Bethanie Orlam) subtribe settled at Bethanie at the turn of the eighteenth century.
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The Kaiǀkhauan (Khauas Nama) subtribe formed in the 1830s, when the Vlermuis clan merged with the Amraal family.
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The ǀHaiǀkhauan (Berseba Orlam) subtribe formed in 1850, when the Tibot and Goliath families split from the ǃAman to found Berseba.
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The ǀKhowesin (Witbooi Orlam) subtribe was the last to take up settlement in Namibia. They originated at Pella, south of the Orange River. Their home town became Gibeon.
Notable Oorlam people
See also
Notes
Further reading
