[1][2] Nothing definite is known of Richard Miles's origins, except that he was born a Motswana (Tswana), and as a youth was in the employ of the apothecary John Harfield Tredgold in Cape Town.
[4] It is presumed that Richard Miles, the Motswana, had been one of the many individuals displaced by turbulence in the frontier in the 1820s - when, indeed, through the so-called inboekseling system, many women and children in particular were "apprenticed" into a life of virtual slavery on colonial farms.
[3] In 1834, Richard Miles travelled, as interpreter, with the Berlin Missionaries to establish a station amongst the Tswana in the interior (they joined Andrew Smith's "Expedition into Central Africa" at Graaff-Reinet).
[6] In 1848 Carl Wuras obtained permission to employ "the Bechuana Richard Miles" - formerly interpreter - as "school assistant" - "the same man who came with our first missionaries from Cape Town to Bethanie".
[6] In March 1850, when the government of the Orange River Colony sought to appoint a headman or Kaptyn for Bethanie, it was Richard Miles whom Wuras recommended to Maj Warden: "a Bechuana by birth and assistant at the school, who could understand and speak English, Nederlands, Setswana and Korana".