Eastern Toraja

ETHNONYMS: Bare'e, Oost-Toradja, Poso-Todjo, Re'e speakers, To Lage, Toradja Timur

Orientation

Identification and Location. The name Toraja is derived from a term meaning "people of the mountains" or "highlanders" that is applied by lowland populations to indigenous inhabitants of the high mountain ranges and interior valleys of central Celebes (Sulawesi). The Eastern Toraja live primarily around Lake Poso and the valleys of the Poso, Laa, and Kalaena rivers. They are bounded by the Western Toraja to the west, the Mori and Loinang tribes to the east, the Gulf of Tomini to the north, and the Buginese (Makassar) kingdom of Luwu to the south, at approximately latitude 1.5 to 2° S to longitude 120 to 122° E. Customarily, they are divided into three major branches: the Western, Eastern, and Southern Toraja. These divisions reflect different degrees of exposure to the old Hindu-Javanese states of Southwestern Celebes and nearby Borneo.

The Eastern Toraja are composed of numerous local groups that share a relatively homogeneous language and culture. These groups form several regional clusters: the Poso-Todjo groups along the Gulf of Tomini and the neck of the eastern peninsula, the Poso Lake groups, those of the upper valley of the Laa east of Lake Poso, and the groups of the upper Kaleana south of Lake Poso. The (To) Wana and the (To) Ampana people living to the east of Lake Poso probably should be considered separate groups because of certain linguistic (they speak the Taa or Tae' language rather than Bare'e), physical, and cultural characteristics.

Demography. The 1961 population estimate for the Eastern Toraja was 100,000, compared with a 1935 estimate of 60,000 and a 1930 census figure of 30,000. If these estimates are accurate, they indicate a steady increase in population. The 1995 population figure for all Torajaland was 367,371.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Bare'e language, which is spoken by all the Eastern Toraja with only dialectical differences, belongs to the Toraja language group. Voegelin and Vogelin (1977) place the Toraja languages in the Central and Southern Celebes (Sulawesi) cluster, which is defined as a geographic rather than a linguistic unit. They suggest that all these languages form a Celebes subgroup of Hesperonesian languages within the Austronesian language family.

History and Cultural Relations

It is believed that the Toraja migrated to Celebes from Southeast Asia four thousand years ago. There is evidence of relations with the coastal Buginese and Luwunese as early as the sixteenth century. Trade relations between the Toraja and the Muslim lowlanders intensified in the late nineteenth century, with coffee and slaves being exchanged for guns, salt, and textiles. It was not until the arrival of the Dutch in 1905-1906 that the Toraja were united under a single political authority. Calvinist Reformed Church missionaries arrived in the area around 1913, precipitating dramatic sociocultural changes in Toraja society. It has been suggested that the activities of these Protestant missionaries were major factors in stimulating a unifying sense of Toraja identity. During World War II the area was occupied by Japanese forces. In 1949 the region was declared part of the new nation of Indonesia.

Settlements

Precontact settlements were found near lakes and rivers but were sited on well-fortified hilltops and mountain ridges because of the danger of headhunting raids. The villages were unoccupied except during raids. Generally, the people lived on their farms. There were forty to two hundred inhabitants per village living in two to ten houses. Each house usually contained four to six nuclear families, although houses with sixteen families have been mentioned. Some groups, including the Onda'e and Lage, built single-family dwellings. Each village consisted of dwellings laid out in a random pattern as well as rice barns and a temple. The water supply was usually at the bottom of the hill; this meant that a siege could not be withstood for very long. Under Dutch control the Eastern Toraja were forced to move their settlements to the valley floors along the roads.

Economy

Subsistence. The Eastern Toraja are primarily dry rice cultivators. Wet rice was introduced by the Dutch after 1905 but did not become a significant crop. Maize is the second most important crop, but it is eaten only when the rice supply is low. Millet and a variety of fruits and vegetables also are cultivated. All these crops are produced by means of swidden agriculture. Hunting and fishing, especially around Lake Poso, are also of economic importance.

Industrial Arts. Although the art of weaving is not very well developed among the Bare'e-speaking Toraja, those people are highly skilled at making cloth (foeja or fuya) from tree bark. Other crafts include basketry and mat making, pottery manufacture, dugout canoe construction, and the working of copper and brass. Ironworking is a well-developed craft among the Eastern Toraja, with every village having at least one forge and a blacksmith. The Toraja attribute great magical force to iron, and so annual ceremonies are necessary to neutralize the force and prevent the spirit of the forge from causing illness in the village.

Trade. Although there are no professional traders among the Eastern Toraja, there is much intertribal trade. Traveling for the purpose of trade occurs mostly in the period between the harvesting of the rice crops and the time when the new rice begins to sprout. The main products exchanged are rattan, beeswax, and damar. Under Dutch influence, the growing of coconut trees increased, along with the exportation of copra.

Division of Labor. Generally, women make tree-bark clothes (foeja), manufacture pottery, and raise pigs and men work metal, hunt, do the heavy work in the fields, and prepare salt from seawater. Both sexes are involved in basket and mat making.

Land Tenure. Land has clearly defined boundaries among the Eastern Toraja; each "tribe" (a group of neighboring villages) has its own land to allocate. Each village uses as much land as it needs to feed itself, moving to another part of the tribal territory when that land becomes exhausted. Annually, the villages distribute land to individual families for cultivation, although the families retain certain rights over any virgin land outside the tribal territory that they have cleared. The virgin forest, called pongale, is open to everyone for hunting, collecting, and tilling, but it is considered advisable to ensure the cooperation and friendship of the nearest tribe by giving of small presents. Land also can be acquired by a tribe through purchase or the presentation of a gift.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. All the families in a village form a localized corporate kin group, with all the members being related by blood or marriage. Descent among the Eastern Toraja is bilateral. One can affiliate with one's mother's, father's, or spouse's village. This principle also seems to apply to extended families—corporate kin groups headed by a chief or headman who looks after family property. This extended family traditionally acted as a ceremonial unit as well as a source of the bride-price, although in the case of the bride-price nonlocalized personal kindred also played a significant role.

Kinship Terminology. Kinship terminology is mainly generational, with no distinction made between matrilateral and patrilateral kin (Hawaiian type).

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Premarital sex is permitted among the Eastern Toraja. Marriage is generally endogamous, being contracted with someone within the village or no farther than a neighboring village. The boy informs his parents about the girl of his choice, but generally both the boy and the girl accept their parents' decision if there is a difference of opinion. Marriage arrangements are undertaken by a "go-between." The marriage ceremony consists of a festive procession of the groom to the bride's house, the deliverance of the aoepapitoe —consisting of seven objects that form the nucleus of the bride-price—and a joint meal. The bride-price is paid by the groom's family to the relatives of the girl but may not exceed the amount paid for the girl's mother. Until the bride-price is paid, any children produced by the couple belong to their mother. Polygyny was traditionally rare, but in areas influenced by Islam it became more common. Each wife had a separate house. Divorce is uncommon, and the party that initiates it has to pay a fine; the families of both individuals work hard to prevent the separation. First-cousin marriages once were forbidden but now are fairly common, especially when accompanied by a ritual offering. Postmarital residence is primarily matrilocal.

Domestic Unit. The basic domestic unit is the extended family, which usually is headed by the senior male member of the household. This extended family usually consists of four to six nuclear families.

Inheritance. Property among the Eastern Toraja is owned primarily by the kin group and distributed to its members according to need. This would also include the use of land for agricultural purposes. Personal property, such as domestic animals and cotton goods, may be inherited by family members. The inherited distribution of goods is rarely equal; those individuals who are the most aggressive and demanding generally get the bigger share of the inherited property than those who are more passive.

Socialization. Children are pampered to an extreme degree. There is no conscious guidance of the child because parents are unable to impose their will on their children. A child raises itself by listening to adult conversations and imitating adult behavior, learning the things that it must know and be able to do to fill its place in society.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Villages consist of closely related families, and the "tribes" are essentially groups of neighboring villages whose members are aware of descent from a common mother village. Affiliation with a village can be through a person's mother's, father's, or spouse's side of the family. Traditionally, there were two classes: freemen and slaves (debtors and war captives). Near the Buginese (Makassar) kingdoms the slave class was hereditary. On the whole slaves were not treated badly; that institution, along with headhunting, was abolished by the Dutch in 1905.

Political Organization. Traditionally, village chiefs were elected from among the headmen of extended families. Selection was based on personal characteristics and wealth in water buffalo. Chiefs were not powerful except in the areas near the Buginese kingdoms (Luwu and Mori), where the Buginese kings (datus) gave them tax-collecting authority. This allowed the chiefs to increase their wealth and power through trading opportunities and association with the powerful Islamic sultanates. In most areas villages were autonomous and tended to be hostile to almost everyone who was not closely related. There was rarely any political organization above the village level. Tribes were not organized into formal political units. Although the outside kingdoms often received tribute from the villages, they had no control over their internal affairs.

Social Control. Ridicule, shame, supernatural sanctions, black magic, and the fear of banishment are all means of informally enforcing conformity within Toraja society. Ridicule and the fear of banishment seem to be the strongest measures, making even the most independent and contrary person bow before the will of the community and the force of the adat (customary law). If a person did not wish to submit to the will of the community despite the imposition of these measures, the only alternative was to move to another village to which that person was related. In a community in which individuals are mutually dependent on one another for successful existence, failure to aid a fellow tribesperson in need was remembered; when that individual needed assistance, no help was provided.

Conflict. Until European contact Eastern Toraja villages lived in a state of semiperpetual hostility with each other. Respect and tribute occasionally were paid to neighboring kingdoms, but in their internal affairs the Eastern Toraja were independent. Intervillage headhunting provided the heads necessary for many rituals and to pacify spirits (anitu) that otherwise would feed on the Eastern Toraja. The heads were considered essential to the general welfare and were required after the death of a chief or the erection of a new village temple. Under the Dutch administration this type of warfare ended.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Traditional Eastern Toraja religion was concerned principally with agriculture, with a secondary but important emphasis on ancestor worship. There were gods of the upper world and the underworld (above and below earth), and a great variety of spirits were found throughout the earth in rocks, trees, water, and the like. There were many gods and spirits associated exclusively with agriculture, and each family had its own agricultural spirits. The Eastern Toraja also engaged in secondary death rites during which the bones of the deceased were cleaned and rededicated before burial in caves. These rites were costly, requiring the accumulation of food and other wealth, including sacrificial buffalo. As a result they were held infrequently. After the Dutch obtained control of the area, secondary burial rites were prohibited on sanitary grounds. The traditional religion has been replaced or fragmented in many areas as a result of the spread of Islam from the south and later by that of Christianity, which was widely propagated by the Dutch.

Religious Practitioners. Knowledge of and contact with the gods and spirits is confined mainly to shamans, who are women or men who dress and act like women. The ancestors are important to everyone. Shamans (tadu) are principally curers. They have guardian spirits who they can send to the other worlds to retrieve people's souls and cure illness. Soul loss is believed to be a widespread cause of illness. There are other religious practitioners with particular skills, such as curing smallpox and rainmaking. These people are called sando and can be men or women. Divination and soothsayers (montogoe) are important for understanding the will and guidance of gods and spirits. Another person with a religious function is the headhunting leader (tadulako). In earlier times witches and sorcerers were also significant figures.

Ceremonies. A major part of the religious life of the Eastern Toraja involves rituals. The major ones are related to headhunting, initiations, funerals, and agriculture (particularly the growing of rice). Other ceremonies include special offerings in case of normally prohibited marriages, curing ceremonies, ceremonies connected with the consecration of a house, and those involved in conducting ordeals or divining.

Arts. The Toraja have a great variety of dances, among which one of the favorites is the raego, which is performed by a double ring of dancers, women on the inside and men on the outside, circling slowly to the accompaniment of songs with alternating solo and chorus parts. War dances consist of mock dueling, often interspersed with grotesque clowning and obscene gesturing. Poetry is a popular pastime among a people who are very sensitive to its rhythm and rhyme and delight in metaphors. Various metrical patterns are used for different types of subject matter. Prose literature encompasses a wide variety of themes, such as tales of animals, spirits, and journeys to the land of souls. Toraja literature also includes proverbs, riddles, and short anecdotes. Many of the themes in Toraja literature can be traced to Indonesian folklore, such as the spectral tarsier who experiences the same sort of adventures as those of the kantil or plandok,, the dwarfdeer of Javanese and Malay stories. Music is not very well developed. The most popular musical instruments are the nose flute and the Jew's harp, probably because of the soft quality of their music. Other instruments include single- and double-headed drums, bamboo and rice-stalk flutes, coconut shell viols with rattan strings and bows, bamboo "harps," and bamboo "buzzers." Among the many games played by the Toraja, top-spinning contests are especially popular, although they are restricted by taboos during certain times of the year.

Medicine. According to Toraja beliefs, illness results from punishment by supernatural beings for the transgression of customs or the omission of offerings and rituals or is the out-come of action by evil forces such as sorcerers, witches, and spirits. When sorcery is involved, disease is believed to result from the seizing of someone's tanoana (life force) or the introduction of an object into the body. In addition, all kinds of actions, happenings, and situations can cause illness; these causative factors are called measa. One of the chief methods of curing is to retrieve the tanoana of the sick person from the supernatural beings who have taken it away through the actions of the tadu or shaman, who, with the assistance of guardian spirits (wurake), journeys to the spirit world for this purpose. Another therapeutic method employed by the sando is to spit chewed medicinal leaves over the patient and squeeze out the object believed to be the cause of the disease. The Eastern Toraja are highly knowledgeable about a wide variety of plants, animals and animal products, and minerals (such as salt) that are found in the natural environment and are used in everyday medicine.

Death and Afterlife. The tanaona can leave or return to the body at will, chiefly through the top of the head or by way of the nose and joints. The tanaona is thought to reside in many parts of the body, particularly the blood, hair, and nails. Death occurs when the tanaona is permanently separated from the body. With the exception of certain tribes in the Palu River valley that have adopted Islamic burial customs, all the Eastern Toraja groups observe two separate funerals: one soon after death and the other, generally a communal affair, a year or two later. Final disposal of the body occurs after the second ceremony. After death the corpse lies in state under a canopy for one or two days and is then placed in a coffin made of a hollowed-out log split lengthwise into two halves. Bearers carry the coffin away and then bury it in the ground or place it on a raised platform constructed for this purpose outside the village. At the second or communal funeral ceremony held a year or two later the corpse is prepared for final disposal. The coffin is removed from the platform or dug up, and the bones are cleaned, wrapped in bundles of bark cloth, and carried to the village in baskets. The ceremony that follows is called mompemate or tengke; the souls of the deceased—the Toraja believe that there are multiple tanaona—are "led" by the litanies of the tadu priestesses to the land of the departed. Traditionally it was believed that souls wander restlessly between the earth and what was called wayu wune, the "anteroom" to the land of the spirits. After the mompemate rites the bones are transferred to small coffins called sosoronga and buried in the earth or placed in a cave. Common slaves, children born dead, and people who die from smallpox or leprosy are not put in coffins but are wrapped in tree bark and buried.

For other cultures in Indonesia, see List of Cultures by Country in Volume 10 and under specific culture names in Volume 5, East and Souteast Asia.

Bibliography

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—— (1951). De Bare'e sprekende Toradjas van Midden-Celebes (de Oost-toradjas). Tweede deel [The Bare'e-speaking Toradja of Central Celebes (the East Toradja)], 2nd ed., volume 2. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij.

—— (1951). De Bare'e sprekende Toradjas van Midden-Celebes (de Oost-toradjas). Derd e deel [The Bare'e-speaking Toradja of Central Celebes (the East Toradja)], 2nd ed., volume 3. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij.

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JOHN BEIERLE