response telling Nels that he will not listen to him. He made it known to Nels that he (Witbooi) is a chief of his tribe who is free and an autonomous man who answers only to God. The German officials did not respond to Witbooi's diplomatic reproach. With the limits of German on full display, imperial officials were at a loss about how to end the violence in GSWA. In June 1888, Göring wrote Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck and described the overall situation as "not very encouraging". April 1889 Göring went so far as to threaten open war against Witbooi and his tribe if he did not halt his attacks against groups allied with Germany. Witbooi's resistance prompted policy makers to seek immediate solutions to the instability in GSWA. The Namaqua resistance provoked the German authorities to act decisively, after 1889 Germany's military presence in the colony began to grow exponentially. In March 1893 Chancellor Von Caprivi proclaimed GSWA a German settlement colony. November same year Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm ɪɪ appointed Curt von François as Landeshauptmann. A fanatic, François looked at Witbooi with disdain and called him a mere "tribesman" whom he could defeat easily. He had a notion that his predecessors acted weakly in dealing with the Nama chief and they made too many concessions. François strongly believed that nothing but relentless severity would end Witbooi's resistance decisively. Initially the German official tried to entice with an annual payment of five thousand marks if he would submit, however the Nama chief maintained his stand. François was pressured by the Colonial Society to take action against Witbooi, subsequently on April 12 1893 he launched a surprise attack on Witbooi and his tribe at Hoornkrans. 214 soldiers had been sent with an ultimate objective to "destroy the Witbooi Nama tribe". Though Witbooi and majority of his male soldiers escaped the encirclement, German troops killed nearly one hundred Namaqua women and children in their sleep. The Namaqua were unprepared for the raid believing François was still committed to neutrality. Previously Hendrik had scrupulously avoided harming Germans, but now was compelled to join the colonizers in war. In a series of running skirmishes that lasted for more than a year the Namaqua had great success, stealing horses and livestock from the German headquarters in Windhoek. At the end of 1893 Theodor Leutwein replaced Von François, he was appointed to the colony to investigate