178 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
the
ground north and west of the river, as before noted, but the miners at
Klip-drift had continued to maintain their rude Republic or independent
camp, drifting into a condition verging on anarchy, under the doubtful
control of a factious " Executive Committee," until December 13, 1871,
when the camp gladly submitted to the authority of a provisional
magistrate, appointed by Lieutenant General Hay, her Majesty's High
Commissioner.1 This energetic official had his eyes widely
open to the possible value and extent of the new diamond-bearing field,
and was not only disposed to sustain the appeal of the river diggers
against the monopoly grant of the Transvaal Republic, but wrote to
President Brand, the head of the Orange Free State, in September, 1870,
questioning the title of the Free State to the Dutoitspan fields and
the river diggings at Pniel.2
At
the time of the creation of the Orange Free State out of the domain
included in the Orange River Sovereignty, there had been explicit
recognition of reservations set apart for the Basutos, Koranas, and
Griquas, — native tribes dwelling within the limits of the Sovereignty.
But there was an apparent lack of precision in the reservations or
claims of the Koranas and Griquas especially, which was accounted of
little consequence at the time, until the discovery of diamonds, on a
tract otherwise not worth contesting, aroused rival claimants. The
Berlin Mission Society claimed the diggings at Pniel on the strength of
a deed of sale of part of the Korana reserve. Nicholas Waterboer and
other Griqua chiefs, doubtless prompted by speculative agents, set up
their claim to a considerable stretch of ground, covering Klip-drift
and Pniel as well as the upper angle between the Orange and the Vaal,
containing the diamond fields of Dutoitspan and the surrounding farms.
The Orange Free State did not dispute the right of the natives to hold
such reservations as had been assigned to them by the British
Government, but contended that the stretch of the native tribal claims
was wholly unjustified, and that Pniel and Dutoitspan were clearly
within the bounds of its domain.3
1 "The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Payton, 1872.
2 "South Africa," Theal. 3 Ibid,
