Life on Board
Soon after arrival, every visitor to Dawera and Dawelor will be aware that the boat signifies more to the islanders than a means of transport. As a model of ordering it plays an important role in the local culture. This is above all apparent from the symbolism relating to the village.
The settlements have been built according to an age old pattern, in which nautical concepts such as pilot and helmsman function as spatial categories. The basic structure has undergone many adaptations in the course of the years, but can still be clearly recognised.
From the stories of "olden times" it appears that the present-day location of the villages—they are almost all of them located at the beach—is the consequence of a relatively recent development. Traditionally each settlement lay on an elevated cone of rock which was difficult to reach, in many cases only accessible via one or more series of wooden steps which could be pulled up if necessary. The reason for this isolated location was the continuous threat of war. Out of fear of enemy attacks most of the villages were also surrounded by walls.
Within each of these "eyries" lived merely one large descent group, in and around an impressive house which was called the "sacred" or "great house." The structure resembled a "roof on poles." On poles measuring about two metres in height a bamboo floor was applied, on which a roof of coconut palm leaves rested without any form of walls. In this house or in one of the outbuildings one was born, entered into marriage with a member of the group, had children and died. The village, or better said the "great house," was a completely self-sustaining community.
The members of such house communities saw themselves as the crew of a boat, a fact that was elaborated on in many ways. This was most strikingly evident in the architecture. On either side of the ridge beam of the "great house" gable ends were applied, providing the ridge line with the basic shape of a ship. The gable ends (called sorsorlol) were shaped in a "forked" fashion, a characteristic motif of both the prows of sailing vessels and the tree-trunk canoes on the islands (see Photographs 3.6. and 3.14).
Less visible was the elaboration of the notion of a ship in spatial orientation. The "great house" was associated with a boat, "sailing" following the orbit of the sun, from east to west. Inside the house this symbolic course was reflected in the names of the living spaces. The interior was divided into two halves, separated by a relatively narrow, central space (see Figure 3.1). In accordance with the "sailing direction" the eastern living-half was called the helmsman's part, whereas the western half of the house was called the pilot's part.
Both halves of the house were, in turn, divided into two "rooms," separated from each other by a fireplace. The names of the four compartments thus created also reflected the symbolic course. Standing with one's back to the east, looking westward, the "right helmsman's room" and the "right pilot's room" could be found on the right side of the "great house," and on the left side the "left helmsman's room" and the "left pilot's room" (see Figure 3.1).
The symbolic crew of the ship was led by a symbolic helmsman, the head of the descent group. He was a man who was traditionally connected with a specific room of the "great house." Each of the four rooms represented a descent line which went back as far as the founder of the house. The mutual relationship was compared to that between older and younger brothers, denoting the "right helmsman's room" as the oldest descent line. Of old this line supplied the leader of the house community, the man who represented all members of the descent group to the outside world and officiated at rituals in the name of the group. The symbolic helmsman was addressed in the local language with the word orletol "lord of the village"; in the Moluccan Malay he was called tuan tanah, "lord of the land."
Figure 3.1.
Traditional house on Dawera/Dawelor
A Doors
B Main post
C Right pilot's room
D Fireplaces
E Left pilot's room
F Right helmsman's room
G left helmsman's room
The superiority of the right helmsman's room was symbolically expressed in the construction of the house. The main pole, the post which is erected the first during the building of a house, was situated in this room and was called mekamulol, "the one who holds the helm" (see Figure 3.1). Furthermore, the sacred heirlooms of the house community were kept in the right helmsman's room. These goods, called pusaka in Moluccan Malay, mainly consisted of gold ornaments and so-called basta, imported cloths, decorated with motifs obtained by means of block-printing (see also Chapters VII and VIII).
New Villages, an Old Course
Until what time the cones of rock served as a place of settlement for the small "republics," cast in. a nautical mould, is not known. For reasons that can only be guessed at, the continuity of the descent groups must, however, have been exposed to danger in a distant past (probably centuries ago). A majority of the groups broke away from their isolated existence and began to live together on larger mountain plateaus. Here villages arose consisting of three or four originally isolated house communities, societies that again shaped themselves into a symbolic boat, once more sailing westwards.
Instead of the four living rooms a number of "great houses" situated together now formed the boat, so that the placing of each descent group's "great house" showed the symbolic role within the larger whole. The groups living to the east functioned as helmsmen, those to the west as pilots and in addition the function of "bailer boy" was created for the benefit of the descent groups living at the centre of the village (see Figure 3.2).
These new settlements were also acquainted with the function of "lord of the village." The ritual leader was supplied by the descent group who had settled first on the plateau and could be considered as founder of the new settlement. The leader of this group therefore came to have a double role: he was the symbolic helmsman of both his group and the newly formed community.
The symbolic role of the "lord of the (new) village" was reflected in the layout of the village. The "great house" of his descent group was usually located at the eastern edge: his group functioned within the larger whole as a symbolic helmsman. By this means, the traditional pattern of ordering of the house community remained: at the level of the larger villages there was a symbolic ship's crew led by a symbolic helmsman.
To the Coast
Today, however, this situation also belongs to the past. Despite the fact that the "eyries" had been abandoned, waging war remained part of the normal way of life and for that reason the villages on the mountain plateaus were also supplied with impressive fortifications. In 1890 the Dutch Government official Van Hoëvell wrote about this: "The native villages on the various islands forming the Babar group, have all, with the exception of the principal village of Tepa and a few native villages on Wetang, been constructed on steep heights and provided with heavy walls, which is a necessity in view of the incessant state of war. Nowhere, however, did I see such thick and high walls as on the islands of Dawera and Dawelor. The native village of Angkoeki, among others, has walls three metres thick and six metres high, entirely built of stacked blocks of sandstone and fitted out with doors."1
Photograph 3.2. Shutter of the "great house" depicted in Photograph 3.6, decorated with the motif of the hunter and his prey. Height/width 26 cm (RJM).
The situation was a thorn in the flesh of the Dutch colonial government and around the turn of the century the islands were pacified. All settlements located on the mountain plateaus were evacuated and the present-day villages arose along the coast at places that could be controlled well (see Chapter II). The commonly used boat model served as a guideline for the layout: the hilltop settlements were simply copied on the beach. In some cases during the forced removals, a few villages were merged. However, also in the larger existing communities thus formed, the familiar boat figuration was retained: the villages were then constructed as two or three "ships sailing together."
During