acquired their wives through the exchange of cattle with a woman's father. With the settlers trading and acquiring cattle from the Khoi they slowly took away from the Khoi their main livelihood. As Omer-Cooper wrote, "When they were persuaded to do so and sales outstripped the rate of natural increase, the society collapsed fairly quickly. (Pg. 24)" The Khoi were forced to labor for the Company and the freemen and began to dissolve into their society. The intermixing of the two races through marriage and laboring paved the way for the Europeans to absorb the Khoi into their settlements and homes.
             In the beginning of the European presence in Africa, the Khoi's invited the foreign settlers into their towns and households. Europeans were encouraged to settle in the Khoi towns and trade with the locals and even marry their women. The fact that the white men far outnumbered the white women in the settlements further gave way to the necessity of white men marrying Khoi women. According to Omer-Cooper, "Three-quarters of the children born to the slave women at the Cape up to 1671 were of mixed descent. (Pg. 30)" This set the stage for the creation of political policies not only concerning white/black relations but also those of white/nonwhite or mixed relations.
             At first, this new mixed race had no problem fitting in to life in the settlements. There had not been many conflicts yet between races. The mixed and black class was led to believe that it was on a somewhat equal level with the whites. Omer-Cooper wrote, "In 1685 Commissioner van Rheede decreed that slaves of mixed descent should automatically acquire their freedom when they became adults (Pg. 30)." Unfortunately for the mixed and the blacks a way of life had been developing where the whites didn't have to labor. There had been so many slaves and Khoi tribesmen available at cheap to no cost. The preexisting notion of superiority in the white society, especially the women...