Among the atrocities he witnessed during the expedition was a Boer commando attack on the relatively prosperous Bakwena bagaMoletse, who had broken away from the Bakwena bagaKgabo of Botswana about a century earlier.
The pretext for the attack was an incident when some Boers had killed an elephant in the BagaMoletse territory. A crowd had surrounded the hunting party to demand a tusk and half of the meat as sehuba for their Kgosi, resulting in the Boers running off unharmed.