Cxam

The Cxam are the ǀXam, the San people of the dry Karoo and Bushmanland in South Africa's Northern Cape. Their language belonged to the ǃUi branch of the Tuu click family and was closely related to Nǁng. Like other San they had no chiefs, moved seasonally between springs and pans, and painted hunting scenes and trance visions on rock shelters.

After the Dutch founded their Cape station in 1652, trekboer pastoralists pushed into the Karoo from 1714, occupying waterholes and shooting game. Resistance and stock-raiding brought punitive commandos, whose raids became general along the frontier from the 1770s.

In 1777 the Dutch East India Company formally endorsed the extermination of the San. By the end of the century thousands had been killed or bound to frontier farmers, and the independent ǀXam bands of the Karoo had been broken.