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Pella is an oasis in Namakwa (Bushmanland) in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Earlier known as Cammas Fonteyn, the spring was used by a nearby stronghold of San people. In 1776 a South African Dutch farmer called Coenraad Feijt settled there and lived in harmony with the San despite their fondness for raiding the cattle of the Dutch farmers in the Hantam. A nearby farm called Aggeneys later became the site of the modern mining town of that name. ==Establishing the Mission Station== In 1814 a missionary called Christian Albrecht moved with his assistants and converts to Cammas Fonteyn, having left Namibia where the Orlam Chief, Jager Afrikaner, had been persecuting them.〔Dedering, Tilman. Hate the Old and Follow the New. Khoekhoe and Missionaries in Early Nineteenth-Century Namibia. Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag 1997. ISBN 978-3515068727〕 He founded a mission station and renamed it Pella after the ancient town in that became a refuge for persecuted Christians from the Romans. Other famous missionaries that visited Pella during the early years were John Campbell, Heinrich Schmelen and Robert Moffat.〔Moffat, Robert. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa. 1842. Download from: http://archive.org/details/missionarylabou04moffgoog〕 The tenure of the London Missionary Society (LMS) at Pella was intermittent and the mission station was abandoned on numerous occasions. This was largely because of the extremely harsh desert conditions, but on one occasion the LMS abandoned the mission station after one of the priests had been murdered by the San. During these periods of abandonment, the Basters and San continued to use the oasis. George Thompson, the traveller, arrived in a distressed state at Pella in 1824. He had come from Cape Town and found the mission deserted. His party had sufficient water but no food whatsoever. Luckily he discovered that Mr Bartlett, the resident missionary, had moved the mission station to t’Kams which was 32 kilometres to the west. Thompson travelled to t’Kams and was hospitably received.,〔Thompson George, Travels and adventures in southern Africa. 1827. Download from ()〕 Thompson reported that ''when the full congregation was collected at Pella, they amount to about 400 souls; but the severe droughts, and consequent failure of pasturage, force them occasionally to disperse themselves in divisions over the country wherever a spring of water exists with grass in the vicinity for their flocks. As soon as rain falls, the pastures at Pella will instantly spring up and the scattered divisions of the people will again be re-assembled.''〔 In 1855 a surveyor named Moffat (not to be confused with various Missionaries named Moffat) reported having found one Francois Gabriel living in the abandoned mission buildings; Gabriel was a Frenchman married to a Baster; he subsequently left and moved to Namaqualand towards the west. Edward John Dunn, the geologist, found Pella abandoned again in September 1871. He reported the charred remains of fires and the bleaching bones around the oasis – these were from the cattle raided by the San from the Hantam. The San, who were hunter gatherers, used to raid the pastoralists’ cattle and consequently were hunted like wild animals by the Dutch farmers, the Basters and the Khoikhoi alike. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pella, Northern Cape」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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