We know a great deal about the situation on the Kei and Tanimbar islands during the first three decades of this century through the monographs, articles and collections of the Catholic missionaries Henri Geurtjens and Petrus Drabbe who were active in the area as priests of the MSC. Geurtjens worked from 1903 to 1922, mainly on Kei but also on Tanimbar, while Drabbe carried out his duties on Tanimbar from 1915 to 1935.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Numerous people and various institutions have assisted us in the preparation of this book. We are only able to mention a few of them here. First and foremost, we owe our thanks to the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) in Tilburg, particularly to A.P.C. Sol, former bishop of Amboina, who was the stimulator of this project. We also wish to offer our heartfelt thanks for practical assistance and help regarding the contents of this book to the following missionaries of the Congregation: father A. Egging of Merauke, who was a missionary in the Aru islands from 1979 until 1984; father A. Vriens, father A. van de Wouw and father N. Akerboom of Tilburg; and the late father K. Sträter, who worked in the Moluccas from 1946 to 1988.
We would further like to express our special thanks for the assistance given to us by our informants in Ambon and in the Southeast Moluccas, in particular by the people of the Babar islands. Space permits us only to mention the Eipepa, Talle, Lekawael and Lurey families and the local administrators Bp. S. Puimera, Bp. J. Inona and the late Bp. Th. Marer.
Museums in the Netherlands and abroad were most hospitable and helped us to select the objects portrayed. Pieter ter Keurs, curator of the Insular Southeast Asia department of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden, rendered us numerous services for which we would like to thank him. We also thank staff members of the following museums for their assistance: Koos van Brakel, Itie van Hout and David van Duuren of the Tropen-museum in Amsterdam; Fer Hoekstra of the Museum voor Volkenkunde in Nijmegen; Anneke Veldhuizen-Djajasoebrata and Sietske Kenti of the Museum voor Land- en Volkenkunde in Rotterdam; and Pim Westerkamp of the Museum Nusantara in Delft.
Gisela Volger, Jutta Engelhard and Brigitte Khan Majlis, of the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum fur Volkerkunde in Cologne, supported us enthusiastically. We thank Clara Wilpert of the Hamburgisches Museum fur Volkerkunde for her help concerning W. Müller-Wismar's material.
We are grateful to Herman de Vries for his helpfulness, in particular for allowing us to photograph objects from his collection. In this respect we also thank Frank Wiggers, Bruce Carpenter, Cherry P. Brown and Alfred C. Glassell of the USA. The splendid photographs were delivered in good time, thanks to the marvellous cooperation of photographer, Ben Grishaaver, and his assistant, Cees van de Wilk.
A special word of thanks goes to designer Allard de Rooi. His enormous efforts and enthusiasm have played a great part in the preparation of this book. We thank Peter Homan for drawing the figures, Martijn de Rooi for editing the Dutch text and Jacqueline Meijer and Tony Burrett for translating the text into English. We are grateful to Fenny Hoekstra, Jacqueline Leyen, Wim van Dijk, Marianne van Vuuren, Maggie de Moor and Klaas de Jonge for their comments on an earlier version of the text.
Finally, we owe thanks to our families, in particular to Mary Vink and Wim Wolters, for their whole-hearted support, understanding and practical assistance during the long and often difficult journey which has led to the realization of this book.
Detail of the tympanum of a bronze kettle drum. The complete drum is depicted in Photograph 1.2.
Detail of a basta, a long cotton textile originating from India, labelled with a VOC-stamp (PC).
Photograph 1.1. Dongson bronze drum on the island of Luang, weathered by the tooth of time. The maximum diameter is 105 cm; the height is 50 cm.
The roots of the cultures of Maluku Tenggara, as well as those of the rest of the Indonesian peoples, lie hidden in a distant and misty past. Although much research has been done during the last few years to understand these origins more clearly, the available knowledge is still mainly speculative.
Nevertheless some general developments in the prehistory of Southeast Asia which influenced the life and culture of Maluku Tenggara can be indicated with a reasonable amount of certainty. This chapter takes a look at those "traces of prehistoric times" still visible.
The First Inhabitants
Little is known about the very first inhabitants of Maluku Tenggara. It is possible that early inhabitants arrived on foot from the Asiatic mainland during the late Pleistocene era (the so-called “Ice Age”), more than 250,000 years ago. During most of the glacial periods the bed of the China Sea was above sea level, and the Indonesian archipelago was joined by a land bridge to the Asian continent, the "Sunda Shelf.” On Java, remains of anthropoids ("Java Man" or the so-called Homo erectus) dating from this period have been found. We assume that they mainly lived from hunting and gathering products from the woods and sea. We hardly know anything more about the predecessors of the present human inhabitants of the region, and it is a point of debate among scientists as to whether they became extinct, at least in the Indonesian archipelago.
Recent archeologic research makes it likely that the first human beings set foot on the Indonesian archipelago in a migratory wave around 50,000 years ago. (This is approximately the same time that migration began from Asia to the American continents, through another land bridge across the Bearing Strait.) At the time, the Moluccan islands formed part of a land bridge through which Melanesia and Australia were subsequently populated.1
The early Moluccans were frizzy-haired and had a dark skin colour. They were representatives of what is called the Australoid race. From excavations elsewhere in Indonesia it appears that they fed on shellfish, among other foods. It is highly probable that besides the gathering of food, hunting and fishing played an important role. Based on physiological evidence, the present-day inhabitants are thought to be descendants of both these early Austroloids and the Austronesians.
The Austronesians
A process that began circa 10,000 years ago seems to have been decisive for the current picture in many respects. Migrants speaking Austronesian languages set out from a region of origin which must have been located in present-day southern China. These Austronesians, belonging to the so-called Mongoloid race, travelled southwards and gradually started to populate an extending region over a period of centuries. Using rafts, the Austronesians first crossed the China Sea, which had filled again since the last glacial period. They reached, among other places, the island of Taiwan, becoming the ancestors of the present-day aboriginal inhabitants. Research of physical anthropology and linguistics shows that the migrants then sailed to the Philippines, and consequently on towards the western and eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago. It is assumed that they were present on the Moluccas about 4,500 years ago— during the Neolithic or late Stone Age.
The arrival of the Austronesians caused a complex situation in different parts of the Moluccas. Racially, for example, the inhabitants of many Moluccan islands can not be classified in a simple way. They resemble both the Australoid and the Mongoloid types; hybrids appear in differing degrees per group of islands. The linguistic situation also shows traces of a distant past. Both on the northern and southeastern Moluccas not only Austronesian, but also older, non-Austronesian languages, are spoken (see the Introduction).
The complex situation on the Moluccas can largely be explained by their location: they may be considered a transitional region constituting the periphery of the Austronesian wona, because, in general, the Austronesians did not migrate to New Guinea and nearby Australia, already populated by the earlier Austroloids. Nevertheless, there are indications from eastern Indonesia that Austronesians