Griqua people

In 1826 a group of emigrants from Griquatown under Adam Kok II was allowed to settle at the mission station of Philippolis in the Transgariep. This became the capital of a new Griqua Captaincy, which for several decades was an important factor in the politics of the Northern frontier and the cause of the British Government first becoming involved in the affairs of the area (Schoeman, K, 2002). The Griquas are a subgroup of mixed-race heterogeneous former Khoe-speaking nations in South Africa with a unique origin in the early history of the Dutch Cape Colony. These predominantly Khoi indigenous people were reclassified as coloured in the 1950s by the apartheid government Coloured". They undertook a migration away from the Cape colony, forming two "Griqua States" formerly known as Griqualand West and later Griqualand East.

Similar to the Trekboers (another Afrikaans-speaking group of the time), they originally populated the frontiers of the nascent Cape Colony (founded in 1652). The men of their semi-nomadic society formed commando units of mounted gunmen. Like the Boers they migrated inland from the Cape and in the 19th century established several states in what is now South Africa and Namibia.