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The Xhosa chiefs were quite circumspect in their initial dealings with the missionaries. By this time the Xhosa were well aware of the results of European contact and understandably chary of the missionaries. Ostensibly the various mission societies needed the permission of local chiefs to establish stations in Xhosaland, but with the knowledge that the missionaries were nominally supported by the British colonial government the chiefs had little option but to comply.

When Scottish missionaries moved into Xhosaland in the early 1820s, they found that they had chosen to establish their stations on one of the most troubled sections of the Cape colonial frontier. This disruption was the result of clashes between two expanding groups, the Western (Rharabe) Xhosa and the Europeans who were attempting to move into one another's territory. Xhosa-speaking people had been settled in this area for centuries. 4 Population pressure, secessional disputes left: 560.4px; top: 585.97px; font-size: 15.6px; font-family: sans-serif;

Acceptance of missionaries and mission stations, however, did not mean that the chiefs were prepared to accept Christianity or to acknowledge missionary authority in any way.

No one will be rash enough, I presume, to say that God created these wretched creatures in order to punish them hereafter ; ancl I have already shown that Christian missions do not tend to elevate them in the moral scale.

Mr. Dibley remarked, that it was generally agreed that the differ? ences of belief among Christian missionaries was a great cause of their failure

sulting in manufacturing the male converts into thieves and liars, and the female into prostitutes; secondly, that the Christian missionaries had entirely failed in making any real converts; leaving us the inference that the negro, owing to some hitherto unknown peculiarity, i

We are also told the negroes have become industrious, and skilled so far in various trades, as masons, carpenters, tailors, blacksmiths, etc, that upwards of six hundred maintain themselves, "relieving the government from all expense on their personal account." Many of their heathenish customs have been forsaken ; " not an oath had been heard in the town for a twelvemonth, nor had any been seen drunk; attend? ance on public worship is regular and l

The Report of the year 1822 is equally favourable. The Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, at the September quarter sessions, observed " That ten years ago, when the population was only 4000, forty cases were in the calendar for trial, now the population is upwards of 16,000, there are only six. It is remarkable that not a single case for trial is from any of the villages under the superintendence of a missionary or schoolmaster."|| At these quarter sessions some of the liberated Africans sat as jurors, "to the entire satisfaction of those concerned."^" The reports of the African Institution for 1821, 1822, and 18213, and other public documents, all speak favourably of the progress commercially and moral