In ages past southern Africa was home to the Khoi people. Hottentots, the white settlers called them, probably because of the many clicks in their language. There were numerous tribes, of which the Korana was but one. On the world stage they might be compared to clans of the Native Americans of the Americas, the Aborigines of Australia, the Maoris of New Zealand - except that those were just a tad more fortunate. Some of them, at least, survived the colonisation of their homelands. The Korana are now extinct.
To verify how the Korana came to be at the Orange River towards the middle of the nineteenth century, requires delving into ancient manuscripts of people like Wikar, Stow, Maingard, Theal, Elphick and others - and then coming up with more questions than answers.
According to Wikar (Journal of Hendrik Jacob Wikar), who travelled along the Great River at the same time it was named Orange after the Prince of Orange, in 1779, some Korana clans were living on the banks between the ford O’Mame (later Olijvenhoutsdrift, present-day Upington) and a place called Prieska (which roughly translates as “Lost Goat”). Wikar did not have any theories as to how these clans had come to be there, nor did other travellers like Burchell and Lichtenstein.
Stow, in his Native Races of South Africa, postulated the belief that the Khoi who became the Korana tribe once lived in the northeastern interior, but were driven southwards by a strong Bechuana tribe. Migrating down the west coast, they finally settled at the Cape for some generations and were mentioned in van Riebeeck’s Dagverhaal as Gorachoqua. Their chief was Choro, from whom a later chief Kora and the tribe took their name. Kora died young and was succeeded by his son Eikomo, who, Stow claimed, led the tribe via the southern coast lands north to the Great River. Crossing it, they settled at the spring where later Griqua Town was founded.
The Reverend Carl Wuras (Account of the Korana, Bantu Studies III), however, who lived among the Korana at Bethany for more than twenty years, maintained that all the Khoi once lived along the banks of the Vaal and the Orange Rivers, but internecine warfare caused some to go south while the richest and biggest tribe, the Korana, stayed and never lived at or near the Cape.
Elphick, now, in Kraal and Castle, found some sense in both Stow’s and Wuras’ theories. His problem with Stow’s, however, was the west coast migration. The terrain the Khoi would have had to traverse from northern Bechuanaland (now Botswana) to the west coast is frequently drought-stricken, making it difficult to travel with herds of stock. More logical would be, he claimed, for the migrants to move due south until they reached the Orange. There, the several groups which had formed along the way would have parted, some going west following the river while others stayed on course to the south coast. Those who ventured westward split up again and became the Namaqua, Einiqua and Korana tribes, Elphick maintained.
Because of the total absence of documentation by the Korana themselves, none of these theories can be proven or refuted. However, the Outeniqua Mountains feature in many migration theories, and I have for the purpose of my book started Kora’s story there. In doing so, I may have added yet another theory. Who knows, maybe it is the true one.