This article examines three incidents in the history of early colonial Natal in which colonial forces under Secretary for Native Affairs Theophilus Shepstone attacked subject chiefs, deposed them and seized their herds. These incidents, which presaged the later conflict with Langalibalele, constituted in local African terms ‘eating up’, a practice whereby a chief confiscated the property of a subject convicted of conspiring against him through witchcraft. Close examination of these incidents shows how the early colonial state's rule over African subjects was inevitably imbued with African understandings of power and authority.