Andries Hendrik Potgieter, known as Hendrik Potgieter was a Voortrekker leader. He served as the first head of state of Potchefstroom from 1840 and 1845 and also as the first head of state of Zoutpansberg from 1845 to 1852.
Potgieter at Delagoa Bay in 1852
A frieze in the Voortrekker Monument depicting a wounded voortrekker in Potgieter's Vegkop laager
A plaque on the 1890 Paardekraal Monument that records Potgieter's arrival in Transvaal
The Great Trek was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British Empire. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town. Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers", "pathfinders" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
Trekboers making camp (1804) by Samuel Daniell.
A romanticised depiction of the Great Trek
A stone relief at the Voortrekker Monument, depicting the exodus of farmers from the Cape Colony
Hendrik Potgieter at Delagoa Bay, c. 1851–52