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 indigenousKhoikhoi, 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 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
Mixed-race "Afrikander" 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 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.[2] 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-speakingHereros 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:
The ǃAman (Bethanie Orlam) subtribe settled at Bethanie at the turn of the eighteenth century.[7]
The Kaiǀkhauan (Khauas Nama) subtribe formed in the 1830s, when the Vlermuis clan merged with the Amraal family.[7] Their home settlement became Naosanabis (now Leonardville), which they occupied from 1840 onward.[8] This clan ceased to exist after military defeat by Imperial GermanSchutztruppe in 1894 and 1896.[9]
The ǀHaiǀkhauan (Berseba Orlam) subtribe formed in 1850, when the Tibot and Goliath families split from the ǃAman to found Berseba.[7]
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.[7]
↑ "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.
↑ 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.
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. Boston University African Studies Center. 10 (4): 553–572. doi:10.2307/216929. ISSN0361-7882. JSTOR216929.
Khoekhoen are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of southwestern Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San peoples. The designation "Khoekhoe" is actually a kare or praise address, not an ethnic endonym, but it has been used in the literature as an ethnic term for Khoe-speaking peoples of Southern Africa, particularly pastoralist groups, such as the !Ora, !Gona, Nama, Xiri and ǂNūkhoe nations.
The Griquas are a subgroup of mixed race heterogeneous former Khoe-speaking nations in Southern Africa with a unique origin in the early history of the Dutch Cape Colony. Under apartheid, they were given a special racial classification under the broader category of "Coloured". They are Cape Coloureds who participated in the Great Trek, forming "Griqua States".
Nama are an African ethnic group of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They traditionally speak the Nama language of the Khoe-Kwadi language family, although many Nama also speak Afrikaans. The Nama People are the largest group of the Khoikhoi people, most of whom have disappeared as a group, except for the Namas. Many of the Nama clans live in Central Namibia and the other smaller groups live in Namaqualand, which today straddles the Namibian border with South Africa.
Hendrik Witbooi was a chief of the ǀKhowesin people, a sub-tribe of the Khoikhoi. He led the Nama people during their revolts against the German colonial empire in present-day Namibia, in connection with the events surrounding the Herero and Namaqua Genocide. He was killed in action on 29 October 1905. Witbooi is regarded as one of the national heroes of Namibia, and his face is portrayed on the obverse of all N$50, N$100 and N$200 Namibian dollar banknotes.
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Maharero kaTjamuaha was one of the most powerful paramount chiefs of the Herero people in South-West Africa, today's Namibia.
Jager Afrikaner was the third Captain of the Orlam in South West Africa, succeeding his father Klaas Afrikaner at around 1800. He was one of the founders of Namibia's first systematic settlement in an engineering sense, ǁKhauxaǃnas. After his death in 1823 his son Jonker Afrikaner succeeded him as Captain of the Afrikaner Orlams.
Klaas Afrikaner was the second Captain of the Orlam Afrikaners, first in the Cape Colony, then in South-West Africa. Klaas became leader of his tribe after his father Oude Ram died in Cape Town at around 1760.
Oude Ram Afrikaner was the leader of a clan that later became known as the Orlam Afrikaners, a sub-group of the Orlam. The clan consisted of mixed-race descendants from indigenous Khoikhoi and slaves from Madagascar, India, and Indonesia. Members of this mixed race are today sometimes called African Creole people or Creole Africans, as well as Coloureds.
ǁKhauxaǃnas is an uninhabited village with a ruined fortress in south-eastern Namibia, east of the Great Karas Mountains. It is the oldest systematically designed and built structure in Namibia, pre-dating all buildings erected by Europeans. Built at the end of the 18th century, most likely between 1796 and 1798 by Klaas Afrikaner and his two sons Jager and Titus, ǁKhauxaǃnas served as a hidden retreat and a fortress to fend off possible pursuits by Cape authorities. The Orlam Afrikaner tribe left the place in the 1820s but it continued to be inhabited by the Veldschoendragers (ǁHawoben) tribe until the mid-19th century.
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Leonardville is a village in eastern Namibia, situated on the Nossob River in the south-western corner of the Omaheke Region. It belongs to the Aminuis electoral constituency.
Amraal Lambert, Nama name: ǂGaiǀnub, was the first Captain of the Kaiǀkhauan, a subtribe of the Orlam, in the eastern area of Namaland, today's Namibia.
Hermanus van Wyk (1835–1905) was the first Kaptein of the Baster community at Rehoboth in South-West Africa, today Namibia. Under his leadership, the mixed-race Basters moved from the Northern Cape to leave white racial discrimination, and migrated into the interior of what is now central Namibia; the first 30 families settled about 1870. They acquired land from local natives and were joined by additional Baster families over the following years. The Baster people developed their own constitution, called the Paternal Laws. They relied on the herding of sheep, goats and cattle as the basis of their economy.
Simon Kooper, Nama name: ǃGomxab, was the Captain of the ǃKharakhoen, a subtribe of the Nama people in Namibia from 1863 to 1909. He became famous for leading the Nama in the Herero and Nama War of 1904–1907.
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Moses Witbooi was the second chief of the Witbooi Nama or ǀKhowesin, a ruling clan of the Oorlam branch of the Nama people. He was the son of Kido Witbooi, founder of the clan. He became the de facto leader in 1870, but official chief only at his father's death on 31 December 1875. In the 1880s, he allied with Jan Jonker Afrikaner against the Herero people. Late in 1887 he was deposed by his son-in-law Paul Visser, who had him executed early the next year. His son Hendrik Witbooi soon after killed Visser and reunited the Oorlam under his rule.
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Namibia , 
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