Most convicts sent from the Cape Colony were indigenous Khoi who had been ruthlessly pushed off their lands in the eighteenth century and forced into debt peonage and near-slavery in which they were obliged to indenture their children up to 25 years of age. Most of the Khoi transported to the Australian penal colonies were impressed soldiers from the Cape Rifles who had been tried by court martial in the Cape, mostly for desertion (Malherbe, 1985, pp. 19-50). Other Khoi were among a group of offenders emptied out of Robben Island in the early 1830s, who were convicted of banditry and cattle stealing, which was colonial code for Khoi resistance. David Stuurman led a quixotic attempt to re-establish an independent self-sustaining Khoi community, for which he was dubbed 'the last chief of the Hottentots'. He and his followers were hunted down and imprisoned on Robben Island and it was from here that Stuurman was transported to New South Wales in 1823 (Malherbe, 1980, pp. 60-64). Several of his compatriots escaped from Robben Island and were recaptured a decade later and transported to Van Diemen's Land. Peter Haley was a transported Khoi man who became one of Australia's notorious outlaw bushrangers, until his flamboyant career was cut short by the hangman in 1836.