Resolution of the Council of Policy, 17 May 1774: the appointment of veldkorporaals for the Camdebo, the Sneeuberg, the Bokkeveld and the Nuweveld behind the Koup
Council of Policy resolution · consulted 2026-08-12
- Type
- Council of Policy resolution
- Repository
- Nationaal Archief, Den Haag / Western Cape Archives, Council of Policy (C series); TANAP transcription, CC0, published by the National Archives of the Netherlands and Leiden University; read through eGGSA's VOC Archive web application
- Reference
- C152, pp. 207-243, entry C152.p0207-0243, dated 1774-05-17
- Consulted
- 2026-08-12
The citation as it was given
THE KOUP NAMED IN THE COMPANY'S RECORDS, AND THE EARLIEST GEOGRAPHIC USE FOUND. The Council lists the veldkorporaals commanding in the outlying districts, verbatim: 'David Schalk van der Merwe, in 't CAMDEBO'S VELD. Adriaan van Jaarsveld Albertsz, OP DEN SNEEUWBERG. Charl Marais, ONDER LANGS DEN SNEEUWBERG. JACOB DE CLERCQ, IN 'T NIEUWE VELD AGTER DE COUP. Nicolaas van der Merwe, in 't BOCKEVELD agter den Wits[enberg]'. So by May 1774 the Koup was a place the Company named and posted an officer behind - three years before this ground begins to be taken up as loan farms about 1777, and it sits in a list whose other entries are the Camdebo, the Sneeuberg and the Bokkeveld. The same resolution concerns measures for the inhabitants of 'de Camdebos, Nieuwe velds, hantams, groote, middel, kleijne Roggevelds en Bockeveld Districten'. The spelling is COUP. That matters: it is why a search on Koup, Gouph and Gouf returned nothing and this project nearly recorded the Koup as absent from the entire archive. WHERE THE SNEEUWBERG ACTUALLY IS, established 12 Aug 2026 and it matters for scope. The Sneeuberge are the Great Escarpment range running roughly 200 km from Nxuba in the east to MURRAYSBURG in the west, north of Graaff-Reinet, with Compassberg 55 km due north of that town; most of the range is in what is now the Eastern Cape. Murraysburg, its western end, is 189 km from Klaarstroom by this project's own cadastre measurement. SO THE PEOPLE ON THIS ROLL ARE NOT ON THIS GROUND, and the record is migration-layer context rather than local history. That is not a weakness of the source; it is what the source says, and reading 'Oosthuijsen' as 'here' would be the error 9a exists to prevent.
Kept verbatim. This project contradicts published genealogies and corrects a family's own oral tradition, so every claim has to be checkable by someone who was not in the room.
Nothing in the model cites this source yet.