Episode 2 of 3
Mass Destruction of Cattle
- When
- 1856-1857
- Where
- Xhosa territory
Xhosa destroyed crops and cattle believing ancestors would rise from the dead.
The Xhosa took part in a mass destruction of their own crops and cattle, in the belief that this would cause their ancestors to wake from the dead. This broke their resistance to colonial expansion.
Sources
- Cape Colony Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-01
- History of the Cape Colony from 1806 to 1870 Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-09
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.