Since the inception of our monthly newsletter we have been exploring the history of elephants within South Africa, including where they were to be found and of course the reasons for their not being found in certain places any longer.

The question was asked a short while ago as to where the Knysna elephants had come from originally, as it has long been proven that they are not a different sub-species of elephant but also belong to the class Loxodonta Africana – the African Elephant. What led them to choose the forest as their home? Where did they come from? We shall be exploring their occurrence in the Cape in the next few newsletters and follow their occurrence throughout the Western and Southern Cape.

The earliest recorded evidence of elephants in the Cape was on 1 December 1497 at Mossel Bay by Vasco de Gama as it appears in his log: “…it appears that elephants are plentiful in this country. We actually found some of their droppings near the watering place where they had gone to drink”. It has been thought that Bartolomeu Dias might have found evidence prior to De Gama, but the luxury of this bit of information is not available to us.

Van Riebeek’s journal covering ten years makes no mention of elephants on the Cape Peninsula even though the conditions there were favourable to them. That elephants existed in the Cape during Van Riebeek’s time was first proved when his men started exploring beyond the immediate settlement – one must realize that Van Riebeek, like all who settled new colonies, was very keen on finding ways to make a lot of money and the trade in ivory was lucrative even at that time. The first record of ivory being used in barter comes six months after his arrival, on 29 October 1652 and his journal reads: “…bartered from the people of Saldania (i.e. the Hottentots, or Cape men, who lived near the Peninsula, or Saldanha Bay as Table Bay was still called) one sheep and two small elephants’ tusks for a little tobacco and thin copper wire.” The elephants themselves weren’t seen.

The next elephant entry appears on 20 April 1653, “Meanwhile a tusk of an elephant or hippopotamus is also bartered now and then for small pieces of tobacco and copper wire.” It appears that elephant tusks came to have a value for the Hottentots and they would acquire these by picking them up in the veld wherever an elephant had died of natural causes. They wouldn’t have hunted them as they did not have the necessary equipment. This fact is noted on 21 September 1658, “the Hottentots…did not know how to manage in regard to antelope and elephant tusks. These we had been urging them, from the beginning, to bring to us, but they said that the antelopes were too fast and the elephants too formidable to attack.” We can only speculate that elephant tusks had lain around in the veld entirely valueless to the Hottentots, except for their ornamental value, until the Europeans came and started asking for them.

In October 1653 (18 months after Van Riebeek’s arrival) Corporal Verburgh en route to Saldanha Bay ran into some elephants. As the log says: “Had met many elephants… once a herd of seven and another time a herd of eight elephants of which our men were rather afraid as they, like the rhinoceros, remained standing firm so that our men had to get out of their way.” It is also suggested that elephants entered cornfields in the colonies and did a lot of damage, although the exact locations are not given.

Elephants were definitely within a short distance of Saldanha Bay as a man was killed by an elephant near there in 1708. La Caille also records the sighting of an elephant near the Berg River in 1750, but no further details are given and by the 1780’s Mentzel remarked that, “The lion and the elephant are not seen in close vicinity to the Cape, but they are to be found deeper inland.”

It would seem from historical evidence that elephants did not frequent the Peninsula but there are places that bear the name Olifantsbosch, Olifantsbaai and Olifantspunt that seem to suggest that they did traverse the region – albeit inconclusive. Judging by the records – it seems that elephants did visit the Cape Flats as Roland Trimen of the South African Museum in Cape Town wrote in 1893: “The early settlers met with troops of elephants in the southwest extremity of the Cape Colony, and the teeth of the animal are often exhumed from superficial deposits in that quarter. The latest of these, a small molar, was found the other day (July 1892) quite close to Cape Town under an accumulation of blown sand on the flats.”

A very likely reason why elephants were not to be seen in the Cape in the late 1700’s may be that they were simply driven out by those fattening cattle in the Colony, as those at the Groene Kloof fattening farm in the Malmesbury District did. They attempted to drive a herd of about 40 young elephant who frequented the pasture out little by little as the elephants ate up much of the fodder to the detriment of the pasture. As more labourers and cattle herds were brought into the area, the elephants withdrew to the further side of the Berg River.

As the human-elephant conflict for land and pasture grew, so the elephants retreated further away from the early settlers’ influence and frequented the Cape Peninsula and its immediate surrounds far less.

Acknowledgements: Skead, C.J. 1980. Historical Mammal Incidence in the Cape Province, Volume 1 (Pages195-204). The Department of Nature and Environmental Conservation of the Provincial Administration of the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town.

PS We apologise if the pictures relating to history are often repeated! Historical photos are very hard to come by, and when they are found, permission is not always granted to use them. Repetions of photographs will still at least enhance and add value to the story told. If you know of anyone who has any historical photographs of elephants anywhere in the country, please let us know!