Stranded people; Mythical narratives about the first inhabitants of Mentawai Islands

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the stories about the origins of the first inhabitants of the Mentawai Islands. My aim is to understand the perspective of the local community in seeing themselves in the particular place and space where they live in the Mentawai Islands. In my opinion, a set of narrative as a story about the origin of a group of people has a significant value for the development of local communities and their culture. A collection of narratives is an important source of information to understand the ideas of local communities in perceiving their past, especially people who do not have a written tradition. Many of these stories have not been studied thoroughly and on this occasion, I explore it in more depth.

Full text

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© 2012 Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia
JUNIATOR TULIUS is a social and cultural anthropologist and obtained his PhD from Leiden
University. His scholarly interests are oral tradition, memories of the past, land conicts and
cultural objects. Juniator Tulius may be reached at: juniator.tulius@yahoo.com.
Wacana Vol. 14 No. 2 (October 2012): 215–240
Stranded people
Mythical narratives about the rst inhabitants of
Mentawai Islands
JUNIATOR TULIUS
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the stories about the origins of the rst inhabitants of
the Mentawai Islands. My aim is to understand the perspective of the local
community in seeing themselves in the particular place and space where they
live in the Mentawai Islands. In my opinion, a set of narrative as a story about
the origin of a group of people has a signicant value for the development of
local communities and their culture. A collection of narratives is an important
source of information to understand the ideas of local communities in perceiving
their past, especially people who do not have a written tradition. Many of these
stories have not been studied thoroughly and on this occasion, I explore it in
more depth.
Keywords: Mentawai, oral tradition, mythical narratives, stories of origins.
Introduction1
Different scholars had wanted to nd out the origins of Mentawaians but
they failed to get reliable sources of information. Accounts of the inhabitants
of Mentawai Islands were rst documented in 1799 by John Crisp who wrote
a report about the inhabitants of Poggy (Pagai) island of Mentawai. Since
then, information of different events of Mentawai has been found in written
accounts as listed by Suzuki (1958), Roth (1985) and Persoon, Schefold, De
Roos, and Marschall (2002). However, those accounts have not provided clear
information of the origins of Mentawaians.
These written accounts show that European scholars have examined
the physical appearance of Mentawaians (Duyvendak 1940; Van Beukering
1 I would like to thank Prof. B. Arps, Prof. R. Schefold, Prof. G.A. Persoon, and Prof. J.J.
Fox for their valuable comments on major information presented in this article. It was mostly
derived from Chapter IV of my PhD thesis.

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1947). European anthropologists, linguists and historians have focused on
cultural characteristics of Mentawaians and their language features (Morris
1900; Nooy-Palm 1968; Schefold 1989a; Pampus 1989a, b). These scholars
speculate that Mentawaians might have been descended from an initial family
connected with a group of people in Sumatra, or else from inhabitants of the
neighbouring island of Nias who had initially migrated from Sumatra. From
Sumatra, the ancestors of today’s Mentawaians had come thus either directly
or indirectly, via Nias (see Schefold 1989a). Based on cultural characteristics
and language features, scholars have assumed that Mentawaians are part of
Austronesian societies whose ancestors had migrated from Formosa (Taiwan)
to Sumatra, arriving in Mentawai about 2000 years ago (Schefold 1989a; see
also Bellwood 1995).
Scholarly approaches and perspectives enable us to understand the context
of the origins of a community. In order to understand certain particular
issues – for instance how members of a small community differentiate one
another while sharing similarities – we need such a scholarly perspective.
The perspective that is going to be employed in this paper is by focusing on
the local communities’ stories. Scholars have collected stories of origins of
Mentawaians; however, these stories of origins have not been thoroughly
examined.
These stories will probably not solve the question of the origins of the
early inhabitants of the Mentawai Islands. They do not contain a history,
strictly speaking, of the Mentawaians. However, stories of origins may provide
historical elements that can be used to understand important aspects of the
origins of Mentawaians living in different places in the Mentawai Islands.
Some kin groups relate to one another genealogically and some do not have
any relationship at all but they live together in the same islands. This is because
the ancestors of these groups of people have migrated from different places
or islands to the Mentawai Islands. This situation resembles that of the Cook
Island population as described by Siikala: “The origin narratives which at the
same time tell about the migration of the original ancestors from the mythical
homeland to the present day islands and give their genealogies, create the
qualitatively separate island populations” (Siikala 1996: 45).
In dealing with the Mentawaian stories of origins, I do not aim to nd
the true origins of Mentawaians. Instead, I follow some ideas suggested by
James J. Fox (1996) in identifying the origins of groups of people. A study
on Austronesian societies edited by James J. Fox and Clifford Sather (1996)
provides extensive comparative perspectives for understanding origin
structures and systems of precedence. Fox (1996: 5) points at crucial elements
in identifying the origins of persons or groups, “Conceptions of ancestry are
invariably important but rarely is ancestry alone a sufcient and exclusive
criterion for dening origin. Recourse to notions of place is also critical in
identifying persons and groups, and thus tracing origins”.
Furthermore, Fox argues that alliance, dened in the broad sense of
relations of persons and groups to one another, is also an important element

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in dening origins. Together, these notions imply an attitude towards the past:
the past is knowable, and knowledge of the past is valuable, what happened
in the past set a pattern for the present, and it is essential to have access to
the past in order to make sense of the present (Fox 1996: 5).
In the case of Mentawaians, their stories of origins may contain their ideas
and perspectives regarding their past. I am therefore taking the opportunity to
examine their stories of origins extensively by comparing one with another in
this article. Before closely looking at some of these stories, I will briey present
the Mentawai Archipelago, its inhabitants and their traditional culture with
a particular focus on their oral tradition.
Mentawai Archipelago
Mentawai, the ofcial Indonesian name for the archipelago, consists of four
large islands – Siberut, Sipora, North Pagai, and South Pagai – along with
about 40 smaller adjacent islands, is situated about 100 kilometres off the
western coast of Sumatra (see Picture 1). It comprises 6,011 square kilometres.
In 1945, the islands and people of Mentawai became part of Indonesia, under
the jurisdiction of the West Sumatra province. On a lower administrative level,
the Mentawai Islands until 1999 were part of the Padang Pariaman district,
on the mainland of Sumatra.
2
2 Created with GMT from SRTM data: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
commons/5/5a/Mentawai_Islands_Topography.png.
Picture 1. Topographic map of Mentawai Islands, Indonesia.2

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According to a research report by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature
(WWF), during the Pleistocene Epoch (roughly the period from one million
years to 10,000 years ago), the sea level of Southeast Asia was some 200 metres
lower than what it is today, and Sumatra was connected with the islands of Java
and Borneo and mainland Southeast Asia. This situation allowed for relatively
free migrations of animal species. It also accounts for the general similarity in
the fauna of the three major Sunda Shelf islands (Sumatra, Java, and Borneo)
(WWF 1980: 3). During the early Pleistocene, the Mentawai archipelago was
part of the mainland of Sumatra. However, the Mentawai Islands appear to
have been separated from Sumatra at least since the mid-Pleistocene and to
have been essentially an oceanic archipelago for about 500,000 years, such that
their ora and fauna have evolved in isolation from the dynamic evolutionary
events on Sumatra and the rest of the Sunda Shelf (WWF 1980: 3).
Mentawai inhabitants
The total population of the Archipelago was 76,421 people in 2010.3
Mentawaians constitute about eighty percent of the total population and they
are the majority ethnic group in the Archipelago. The rest are recent migrants
from Sumatra and Java. A small number have come from other islands of
Indonesia. A few foreign missionaries also dwell in Mentawai. Most of the
migrants from Sumatra and Java live in the four sub-district capitals (ibu kota
kecamatan) of the Mentawai Islands. Most Mentawaians prefer to live in the
traditional settlements and villages far from the capital.
Mentawaians are egalitarian and patrilineal. No one is deemed higher
in rank than others and one belongs to one’s father’s lineage. Traditional
Mentawaians live in communal houses called uma. According to Schefold
(2001: 361), the word uma in Mentawai refers to a building as well as
to a genealogically related group of people (see also Kruyt 1923: 10). A
nuclear family is called lalep and may consist of several individuals (father,
mother, sons, daughters, and sometimes one or more widows). An uma as
a genealogical group, or more precisely ‘a local patrilineal group’ (Schefold
2002), has expanded from an initial nuclear family of ancestors.
This initial nuclear family of ancestors may refer either to the first
inhabitants of a particular place or to the ancestors that had formed the initial
kin group when the group lived in the place of origin. Sometimes an uma
in a particular place has a genealogical bond with a few other uma in other
places. The genealogical bond of kin groups living in separate places is called
muntogat and exists because the kin groups share the same initial ancestors
and ancestral land from which those initial ancestors had come to spread out.
During my eldwork, I noticed that an uma is the basic term for kin group
commonly used in Siberut (see also Schefold 1988). However, in Sipora and
Pagai the word uma is rarely mentioned. On these islands, muntogat is the
most popular term used to refer to a kin group (see also Nooy-Palm 1968).
3 From www.bps.go.id/hasilSP2010/sumbar/1300.pdf, accessed on 20 August 2011.

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In Siberut, on the contrary, the term muntogat is not really used to signify a
kin group, although the term is used when people discuss relationships with
other kin groups sharing the same ancestral family (Persoon 1994).
Besides uma and muntogat, most contemporary Mentawaians have started
to identify their kin groups using the term suku, hence suku Samongilailai. Suku
is an Indonesian word, short for suku bangsa. It can be translated into English
as “ethnic group”. This term is used by the Indonesian government to refer to
any one of the more than three hundred ethnic groups in the country, hence
suku bangsa Jawa (Javanese), suku bangsa Dayak (Dayak), suku bangsa Mentawai
(Mentawaian), and so on.
In Mentawai suku is dened slightly differently. Mentawaians use the term
suku for a kin group instead of an ethnic group. Apparently, this tendency
was initiated by the arrival of migrants, especially Minangkabaus from the
Sumatra mainland. Minangkabaus traditionally use the term suku to refer to
their kin groups, for example suku Caniago, suku Tanjung suku Sikumbang, and
so on. Minangkabau kinship system is matrilineal in which descent is traced
through the mother and maternal ancestors, the word suku is used to refer to
the matrilineal descent group.
This term has similar meaning to the term marga used by Bataks of
North Sumatra. Bataks are patrilineal and use the term marga to refer to their
patrilineal descent groups. Mentawaians are patrilineal like Bataks; however,
Mentawaians currently use the word suku as a synonym for the words uma
and muntogat. Since the 1950s government ofcials of Minangkabau origin
have inuenced the administrative grouping of Mentawaians in Mentawai
using the term suku. In fact, the Mentawai Islands are part of West Sumatra
province.
Mentawaians’ tendency to use suku to identify their kin groups has
obviously been encouraged by the current developments in Mentawai. In the
last ve decades, uma as a symbol of the unity of a kin group and a centre of
rituals has been replaced by small houses built in the government villages,
and churches and mosques have replaced the ritual functions of uma. The
government forces the Mentawaians to leave their traditional settlements
and move to government villages. Uma as the central unit of Mentawaian kin
groups has slowly but surely been diminishing in number and decreasing in
function in Mentawaian society. Different kin groups identify themselves in
different suku rather than in uma or muntogat.
What, then, does the term suku mean to the Mentawai people? For one
thing, they use the word to refer to kin group with several families living in
the nuclear family houses of a government village. They also use it to refer a
genealogical network of several kin groups living in different places using the
same kin group’s name. They also use the term to refer to differently named
but related kin groups dwelling in separate places. However, the term suku
does not replace the essential meaning of the term uma as the communal house
of Mentawaians (see Uma Mentawai in Picture 2).

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Mentawai oral narratives
All cultural information is preserved in narratives, and older generations used
these narratives to convey such information to younger generations. These
narratives in Mentawai are of different types. They will be explained one by
one in this section. Most of the Mentawai oral tradition consists of stories
generally called titiboat. However, the stories do not always fall neatly into
one category.
Stories telling about the origins and workings of plants, animals, human
beings, and natural phenomena are called pumumuan. The word pumumuan
is formed from the root word mumu, which literally means ‘ripe’ or ‘mature’
and guratively means ‘old’. Stories in pumumuan explain how things began.
These stories are narratives of things that occurred in the old time. Stories
about the origins of the rst human beings in Mentawai can be classied into
this category; however, stories of the origins of different kin groups of the
Mentawaians do not belong to this category. So, pumumuan can be understood
as a category of mythical stories. Other examples of pumumuan can be found
in Morris (1900), Hansen (1915), Kruyt (1923), Loeb (1929a), Sihombing (1979),
Spina (1981), and Schefold (1988).
Another category is pungunguan, formed from the root word ngungu,
literally ‘mouth’ and guratively it simply means oral narrative. These
stories resemble legends, fairytales, and fables. Pungunguan stories may be
hilarious, heroic or educational. Examples of such stories can be found in Karl
Simanjuntak’s unpublished manuscript4 (1914), titled Pungunguanda Sakalagan5
(Sakalagan’s stories). Most of the stories in this manuscript tell about courage,
4 I thank Panulis Saguntung for the copy of manuscript.
5 Sakalagan is a group of people, residing in Pagai islands.
Picture 2. Uma Mentawai in Siberut Island (Photograph by the
author, 2004).

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and include stories about the legendary gure Pagetasabbau (see also Spina
1981: 193-194). Stories about Pagetasabbau describe the close relationship
between an uncle (Pagetasabbau) and his two nephews who wanted to be
handsome and accomplished. Such pungunguan stories convey cultural and
traditional moral values, about what people are supposed to learn and how
to live in society.
Mentawaians also have stories telling about apes, crocodiles, turtles, birds,
snakes, pigs, deer, and lizards, describing what they are and how they live.
Such stories also belong to the category pungunguan. Mentawaians make
use of the characteristics of animals to teach people about these animals’
behaviour, and to use them as examples for humans. Young people do not
always positively respond to instructions given by their parents; by using
stories about animal behaviour, parents give young people something to think
about, and hope that their children will eventually realize the importance of
behaving properly. A father who wants to encourage his son to be diligent and
work fast will tell him a story about a crab on the beach or a spider spinning
its web. The crab quickly runs and digs a hole for its shelter. A spider does not
stop spinning before completing its web. Taking these animals as examples,
the father gently encourages the son to accomplish his work as soon as he
possibly can and not to stop working before nishing it.
The story of sibatebate sabba sitoulutoulu or ‘lizard and turtle’ (a short version
is in Loeb (1929a), a long version in Spina (1981: 112-115)) tells about two
contrasting human characteristics: cunning and guilelessness. The ‘cunning’
turtle smartly fools the ‘guileless’ lizard on a banana tree growing near the
riverbank. The fruits of the banana are reected on the river water. The cunning
turtle asks the guileless lizard to dive into the river in order to get banana
fruits. While the lizard is in the water, the turtle climbs the banana trunk and
gets the fruits for himself. The moral of the story is that one should not be
guileless if one does not want to be taken advantage of by cunning people.
In his book Die Mentawai-Sprache, Max Morris (1900: 132-141) presents a
lot of riddles collected from Mentawaians residing in Sipora where they are
called patura, which literally means ‘quiz’. In other places of Mentawai they
are called pasailukat, which literally means ‘puzzle’. Such riddles were and
still are popular among Mentawaians, especially during social gatherings.
When people work together, building a house for instance, many riddles are
told, to cheer people up so that they do not nd the work too heavy and long.
Someone will tell a riddle to which others will respond, and if the right answer
is given, everyone shouts their happiness, excitement and encouragement.
When people work together and one person begins to lose interest in the
work, wanting to stop while others are still working, and starts to leave for
home, the rest of the group will address the person with a riddle like this one:
itco lee koat; lakka ienung (if ‘something’ begins to look at the sea, ‘something’
moves faster toward it). The answer to this riddle is ‘sea turtle’. If the person
realizes that he has been ridiculed, he usually stays to carry on with the work
until all decide to stop. Another example is: gilik, bela ilu (twist something off,

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tears drop), which simply means a riddle. The answer is sakoile (papaya fruit).
When you pick a papaya fruit, you twist it and drops of sap will fall off the
broken stem. The message is that every action has a consequence.
Another category of Mentawai oral tradition is sukat or bujai, which is
a set of sacred words or mantras used in ritual language. Some of these are
used in prayers in ceremonies and others are sung. Schefold (1988: 327) in
Lia; Das grosse Ritual auf den Mentawai-Inseln, especially in chapter four of the
book, discusses a many examples of ritual language in Mentawai. On some
occasions, ritual words are used in prayers and then sung. On other occasions,
ritual words are only enunciated in prayers and not sung. In order to avoid
confusion, Mentawaians give names to the songs. The name of a song tells
what kind of song it is. These songs are distinguished into two main categories:
ritual and ordinary. Ritual songs, called urai kerei (shamanic songs), are usually
sung by shamans (tai kerei) (see a Mentawai shaman in Picture 3).
A shaman (si kerei, sometimes written sikerei) often uses songs in rituals
as a way to communicate with spirits. Urai kerei can be further subdivided
according to function. There is a group of songs for persuading spirits (naknak
simagre) to join families in a ritual. There is a group of songs for re-harmonizing
the relationship between body and spirit (urai pameru), and so on. Most
shamanic songs are transmitted from a senior shaman to junior shamans and
this transmission is called panguli.
Picture 3. Aman Maom, a Mentawai
shaman in Taileleu (Photograph by
the author, 2004).

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Ordinary (non-ritual) songs are called urai simata or leleiyo (ordinary
people’s songs). Mentawaians commonly express their experiences and
feelings by singing them privately. For instance, a mother whose son has just
died will sing and cry at the same time to express her sorrow. According to
the state of feelings, meanings, and purposes expressed, ordinary songs may
be divided into several types, such as urai soubaga (sorrowful songs), urai
belet baga (sad songs), urai goat baga (lonesome songs), urai angkat baga (happy
songs), and urai nuntut baga (love songs). Some examples of Mentawai songs
that have been recorded are on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings titled Music
of Indonesia 7; Music from the Forest of Riau and Mentawai (Yampolsky 1995) and
Songs from the uma; Music from Siberut Island (Mentawai Archipelago), Indonesia
(Persoon and Schefold 2009).
A type of stories in Mentawai important for this study is family stories,
called gobbui (or tiboi in other dialects). These stories are about ancestral
affairs and historical accounts. Gobbui or tiboi may be literally translated as
‘talk’, with a gurative meaning ‘story’. However, the word gobbui or tiboi is
not used alone, but accompanied by another word in order to be understood.
Examples are gobbui porak (story of land), gobbui leleu (story of hill or forest),
gobbui mone (story of gardens and vegetation), and gobbui teteu (story of kin
groups’ ancestors), which in other places in Mentawai are called tiboi tubu
(story of oneself). Such stories cannot be separated from each other. Stories of
the origins of a kin group, for instance, are closely related to stories of lands
and gardens and those of relatives. Each kin group has a collection of these
stories. These are family stories.
A family story is an oral historical narrative that can be used to distinguish
one kin group from another. It functions as one of a kin group’s identity
markers. Family stories contain information about the group. Stories in the
category of gobbui or tiboi are not seen as mythical narratives by Mentawaians
although they may contain mythical elements in the form of events that
occurred long ago. Nonetheless, information like locations of places, names
of places, personal names, and chronology of events, which are important
elements of the family stories, is recognized as true by the Mentawaians. So,
the content of the family story is about past occurrences when the Mentawai
ancestors were still alive. Family stories, however, are not like pumumuan
which tell about things that happened in the mythical context. The family
stories are oral historical narratives. Kin groups tell their family stories (gobbui
teteu or tiboi tubu) in order to explain how they exist in different kin groups
and who their ancestors were (Tulius 2012).
Mentawaians tell mythical narratives (pumumuan) in order to explain
how the rst human beings came to exist in Mentawai. However, there are
no stories explaining how the current kin groups relate genealogically to
these rst humans in Mentawai. In fact, the rst human being in pumumuan
is not necessarily the ancestor of the current kin groups. In the next sections,
I evaluate stories of origins of Mentawaians, some from the collections by
early scholars and some I gathered myself during my eldwork. I divide

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the stories into several periods. Some were collected between 1842 and 1930.
Others were collected between 1960 and 1991, and I recorded a number of
additional stories myself, after 2000. I examine the stories in order to identify
their place of origin as well as to compare them to one another to see what
common features they share.
Stories of origin gathered between 1842 and 1930
In this section, I examine stories collected in the period 1842–1930. These
stories were collected by Morris (1900), Neumann (1909), Hansen (1915),
Kruyt (1923, 1924), Loeb (1929b), and Wirz (1929-30). Some of the stories have
been re-edited and republished by Bruno Spina (1981). I start this section by
looking at Neumann’s report published in 1909. Neumann did not collect the
story himself, but discovered a report dated 1842 which recorded a legend
about Muko-muko people arriving at the Pagai islands by means of a raft.
Neumann’s report
The report6 that Neumann discovered was written by the assistant resident of
Bengkulu on 17 November 1842. The report contains information about the
origins of the Mentawaians residing on the Pagai islands. The report intrigued
Neumann because it recorded a myth or legend that sheds light on the origins
of the contemporary Mentawaians residing on the Pagai islands. Neumann
quotes the legend in his report titled De Mentawei-eilanden (1909). The text
originally presented in Dutch can be translated as follows:
A long time ago, it happened that two persons, a man and a woman of Kataun,
were punished by the sultan of Moko Moko [spelled today Muko-muko] because
they had had an unlawful sexual relationship. The sultan required them to pay
a certain amount of money as a ne for their misbehaviour. They did not have
enough money to pay the sultan, so the sultan and his followers condemned them
to be put on a bamboo raft in the ocean. This was done, and they began to drift
on the waves. After seven days on sea without food or drink, they arrived on
the Poggie [Pagai] islands and became the ancestors of the following generations
(Neumann 1909: 196).7
Neumann does not mention whether the assistant resident of Bengkulu
recorded the story from Mentawaians who dwelled on the Pagai islands
or from Malays who lived in Bengkulu. Nonetheless, the legend as quoted
by Neumann tells of the existence of an ancestral connection between two
different groups of people: those residing in Pagai in Mentawai and those
residing in Muko-muko in Bengkulu, Sumatra.
Regarding the connection between these two different groups,
Mentawaians on the Pagai islands in recent times have also been telling a
legend about Minuang, which is a local name for a huge tree, and Manyang,
6 Neumann gives the archival number 795/535 without mentioning the name of the
archive it was found in.
7 The original text was in Dutch and translated to English by the author in 2005.

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a local name for a giant eagle (see Spina 1981: 17-18). The legend in Spina’s
book says that the giant eagle stayed on top of a tree that was standing in Pagai
and fed himself by eating people in Sumatra. The legend does not mention
the exact place in Sumatra from where the people had come in order to kill
the giant eagle.
During my eldwork, the same legend was told to me by some people who
proclaimed themselves to be descendants of ancestors from Muko-muko in
Bengkulu. In their stories, the huge tree shaded Bengkulu in the afternoons,
as the sun began to sink towards the horizon. Pagai is located to the west of
Sumatra off the coast. People in Bengkulu were curious about the shadow and
wanted to nd out where the tree was located. They also wanted to nd out
where the eagle lived. When people from Muko-muko arrived at the Pagai
islands, other groups of people from Siberut had already occupied the Pagai
islands, with the same curiosity. As recounted in the legend of Minuang and
Manyang, people from Siberut and Muko-muko worked together to cut down
the tree where the eagle was sitting. After the huge tree fell, the giant eagle
ew away towards Sumatra, where it died. One group of Muko-muko people
returned to Bengkulu, while another group stayed in Pagai.
In fact, I came across many Mentawaians in Pagai, Sipora, and the southern
part of Siberut who claimed to have been descended from a group of people
who were originally from Muko-muko. The majority of them used this story
to explain their arrival on Pagai. Their ancestors began a life in Pagai, and
afterwards some families moved to Sipora and Siberut.
Morris’s collection
Max Morris had the opportunity to visit the island called si Kobo (currently
known as Sipora) in 1897 in order to study the Mentawai language under the
supervision of Alfred Maass. He also wanted to study the dialects spoken in
Siberut and Pagai. He gathered a lot of stories in Sioban in the island of Sipora.
Transcriptions of his ndings include his book entitled Die Mentawai-Sprache
(1900). Examining his transcriptions, I observe that the dialect resembles the
one spoken today in the southern part of Siberut, not the one spoken today
in Sipora. When I was in Sipora in 2004, I noted another dialect spoken in
there. It was not the same dialect as the one found in the stories gathered by
Morris. I therefore conclude that Morris had recorded stories of a Mentawai
community that had a linguistic connection with the Mentawaians living in
the southern part of Siberut, in Katurei Bay and Taileleu.
Morris’s ndings include a number of stories. Two of his transcriptions
contain stories of origin of people living in Siberut and Sipora. The rst story,
translated into English, is as follows:
A group of people lived in the sky. They created this earth, trees, houses, sh,
grass, and everything [on earth]. Afterwards, they created human beings: a man
and a woman. Then the people [in the sky] came down to earth and brought two
dogs: a male and a female. The sky people saw the two persons. ‘If you remain
just as you are now, both of you will not expand.’ The dogs mated. ‘You have to

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see how dogs mate; you have to do like that in order to expand your numbers.’
That was what the people of the sky said to the two persons. After that, the two
people on earth began to bring life to a son, afterwards to a daughter. The children
grew up and they married each other. Then the new couple had children as well.
Thereafter, there were many people on this earth. Crocodiles taught people how
to make a canoe. The canoe was given a sail. Many people got into the canoe and
sailed. When the canoe arrived at various places, some remained there. They
arrived rst at Taileleu [in Siberut], afterwards they arrived at Sabirut [Muara
Siberut]. Then our families expanded on this island (Morris 1900: 54-55).8
The second story is about the migration of the people in Siberut to Sipora.
This group of people is regarded as the rst group in Sipora to have lived in,
as they arrived there without meeting other people. The story goes like this:
From Sabirut we moved here [to Sioban on the island of Sipora]. We opened
a settlement and had gardens so that we could grow bananas, coconuts, and
fruits. Thereafter many people died because they had been shot by demons:
female and male demons. Shamans killed the demons. Then people went to get
drinking water. Demons attacked them. Many people died; two people stayed
alive: a woman and a man. When the Barau people sailed to Sabirut, the two
people joined the Barau. Afterwards, people returned to this place [Sioban in
Sipora] and populated it. Our ancestors lived in this place. One of our ancestors
was called si Obat [sic] [Ubat = white-haired man, meaning an old man]. The
name of our ancestor was si Obat, the name which our ancestors [later] used to
identify the place. The place-name means ‘the old white-haired man’s place’
(Morris 1900: 55-56).
In Morris’s collection of stories, it is not really clear where the rst human
beings had lived before sailing to Mentawai. Nonetheless, the stories say that
the rst sailors arrived at a place called Taileleu (in the southern part of Siberut
Island) and settled in the valley of Sabirut. These people, after expanding their
numbers in Siberut, moved to Sioban on Sipora Island.
These stories are similar to what Hansen had gathered in Pagai. In his
opinion, it was the Malay people from Sumatra who had told the stories. It
seems that, after occupying Siberut and Sipora, these people moved to the
Pagai islands. Current descendants of these people told the same stories to
Hansen
Hansen’s account
Hansen was a Dutch marine commander in Pagai for ten months in 1911 and
1912. During his stay, he gained knowledge of Mentawaians and their culture
and recorded his observations in a book titled De groep Noord en Zuid Pageh
van de Mentawei-Eilanden (1915). Hansen’s book presents several stories, and
one of these stories is similar to that of Morris. I will not quote the entire story
here, but note some points that indicate that Hansen’s story is dissimilar to
8 This story in Morris 1900 is given in Mentawai and German. The English version is
translated by the author, 2005.

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that of Morris.
In Hansen’s collection, there were sky spirits that had created an island
called Sumatra. So, Sumatra was the rst place created where the rst people
lived. Crocodiles taught them to make canoes. They used the canoes with sails
to reach Siberoet (Siberut). A number of these people remained in Siberut
while others returned to Sumatra. Then, the story tells about the journey of
some people in Siberut to Pageh (Pagai islands) who went to nd a large bird
called Manyang, which had eaten many people in Siberut. In order to get rid
of the bird, people made smoke under the tree where the bird stayed. This,
however, did not work to get rid of the bird.
Hansen’s story subsequently tells that a group of people stayed in Pageh
while another group returned to Siberut. Afterwards, the people in Pageh
went to Sumatra, to ask for help. Some people from Sumatra came to Pageh
to help kill the bird. They found the bird in a nest on the top of a tree, and put
themselves to work to cut down the tree. However, after they cut down the
tree during the day, it grew again at night. Therefore, they cut down the tree
day and night. Eventually the tree fell; the bird ew away towards Sumatra,
where it died.
Hansen (1915: 193) notes several points about this narrative: 1) the rst
people to have lived in Sumatra did not initially know how to make canoes.
They also did not know about the existence of the Mentawai Islands; 2) after
they learned how to make canoes, they began their journey to Mentawai; 3) at
the time no other people inhabited the island of Siberut, nor were the islands
of Pagai inhabited. Thus it was only these people from Sumatra populated
the islands; 4) after this rst people arrived on the islands, they frequently
travelled back and forth between Sumatra and Mentawai; 5) at that time they
knew and were familiar with metals and clothes, but as the supply of these
materials decreased, their skills in using them also declined. These people
then made use of loincloths and bows and arrows; 6) afterwards, they became
accustomed to travelling frequently between Sumatra, Siberut, and Pagai.
Kruyt’s report
Another scholar who had paid attention to stories of origin is Albert C. Kruyt.
He was a teacher and a missionary. Kruyt visited the Pagai islands only for
two months (February and March 1921), but he gathered a lot of information
at the places where the majority of people had been converted to Christianity,
and he included information provided by O. Werkmann, who was also a
missionary. Mentawaians who had converted to Christianity were willing to
tell him a lot of stories. In his report titled Een bezoek aan de Mentawei-eilanden
(1924), Kruyt presents a story. The detailed story is as follows:
According to a story already well known long ago among people on the islands of
Sakalagan [Pagai islands], there were two big canoes (kinapat), fully occupied by
men; they sailed (mulajo) leaving Padang for elsewhere in a westward direction.
Prior to departure, they prepared two things to be used as tools that would be
recognizable whenever they would meet elsewhere someday. For this purpose,

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they took with them giant clam9 shells (pelebu) and a whetstone (asaan). Each
canoe had to bring one-half of the tridacna shells and one-half of an equally split
whetstone. Afterwards, they left according to the initial plan, going westward
from Sumatra.
They went apart and it was a long time before they met again; they did not
recognize each other anymore when they met again near the islands of Mentawai.
All of the men in each canoe prepared their guns for shooting. They red from
one canoe to another, but none of the people were injured or killed. They began
wondering why no one had been injured. They then took their tools, and their
parts of the giant clam shell. Both parties shouted to each other, ‘Do you have the
other part of this shell?’ They answered, ‘Yes!’ And again, ‘Do you have a part
of this whetstone?’ People on both canoes all together said, ‘Yes!’ ‘Come closer
and let us match up the shells and the whetstone in order to ensure that we are
the same.’
Thus, they came closer and join together the shells and the whetstone. The
two parts tted perfectly. They then realized why they could not shoot each
other: because they were members of one family. Thereafter, one canoe returned
to Padang and the other attempted to move towards the island of Siberut. Before
the separation between them occurred, the people who wanted to go to Siberut
Island requested rice seeds and clothes from their relatives who wanted to return
to Padang. But the group who wanted to go to Padang said, ‘If we give you the
rice seeds and clothes, we are afraid that you all will never return to us.’ The
people from Padang who went to Siberut indeed never returned to Padang. This
is the reason why on the Mentawai Islands no rice and clothes were available.
On the island of Sakalagan (Pagai islands), people still remember that rice and
clothes have had to be imported from Padang for the past three generations. That
[importing of rice and clothes] would thus have started in about 1850 (Kruyt 1924:
33).10
This story shares many features with the stories gathered by Morris and
Hansen. The story tells that the rst inhabitants of the Mentawai Islands
departed from their initial home in Padang (the capital city of West Sumatra).
They arrived at Siberut on canoes. However, the story does not describe the
course of migration from Siberut to Sipora and further to Pagai, although
Kruyt had gathered the story among Mentawaians residing in Pagai. This
story was recorded in 1921 and the storyteller had made a little variation
in the story, by mentioning guns instead of bows and arrows. It is possible
that the Dutch who came with guns to Mentawai in the early 1900s had
inuenced this story. What is important about the story is the information
about where the rst Mentawaians came from and where they arrived. It is
clearly mentioned that the inhabitants departed from Sumatra and arrived
in Siberut. Current inhabitants in Pagai from whom the story was recorded
might have an ancestral link to those Sumatran sailors.
9 Sometimes it is called tridacna.
10 The original text was in Dutch and translated to English by the author in 2005.

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Loeb’s and Wirz’s descriptions
Edwin M. Loeb published Mentawei myths (1929b), an article containing
a number of stories. Loeb collected the stories together with a German
missionary known as Minister Börger. A few Batak people from North Sumatra
who were sent to teach the Mentawaians on the Pagai islands helped Loeb
and Börger to collect the stories. Eight of the stories in Loeb’s Mentawei myths
are similar to Karl Simanjuntak’s handwritten stories collected in 1914. He
was one of several Batak teachers who worked for a Protestant missionary at
that time. Unfortunately, none of the stories in Loeb’s publication tells about
the origins of the rst Mentawaians. But there are several stories narrating the
transformation of animals into humans or the reverse, signifying the origins
of something (see Loeb 1929b). This shows that Mentawaians also have a
sort of mythical stories of origin, which, unlike what I call family stories, do
not indicate links with people living today. Schefold (1989b) has extensively
discussed this issue in his article on myths and the gender perspective.
The last group of early collected stories of Mentawai origins I examine is
by Paul Wirz. Wirz studied the work of Maass (1898) and Kruyt (1924). He
visited Siberut in 1926 and stayed there for a short time. Wirz wrote a report
of his visit, Het eiland Sabiroet en zijn bewoners (1929-30). In the report, he
wrote about the origins of the rst settlers in the place called Simatalu in the
northwestern part of Siberut. Based on the stories collected from Mentawaians,
Wirz concluded that the rst settlers had arrived at a coastal area of Siberut
by means of canoes, but the stories do not indicate where those settlers had
come from. The arrival of the rst settlers was followed by several waves
of migration. The migratory movements at that time were of people who
lived on the Batu islands, situated among the southern islands of Nias (see
Wirz 1929-30: 135). However, Wirz did not present stories of the origins of
Mentawaians. He just described how people had arrived at Siberut and how
they had expanded in number. The rst settlers became the forebears of the
majority of the current Mentawai population residing in the northern part
of Siberut, and some of these people moved further south in the Mentawai
archipelago.
Stories of origin gathered between 1960 and 1991
In this section, I discuss stories gathered by Herman Sihombing, Hetty Nooy-
Palm, Reimar Schefold, and Stefano Coronese. They briey talked about the
origins of Mentawaians in their research.
Sihombing’s collection of narratives
Herman Sihombing, a legal scholar at Andalas University in Padang, carried
out a eldwork in Sipora and Pagai in 1960. He was interested in the social
life and cultural values of Mentawaians. He also gathered stories from
Mentawaians, one of which tells about the origins of a man called Aman Tawe
(meaning the father of Tawe, in the Mentawaian language). Several groups
of Mentawaians in Sipora and Pagai regard Aman Tawe as their forefather.

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Sihombing’s research ndings were published in 1979 under the title Mentawai,
from which I quote, in my own translation, the following story of Mentawai
origins.
1. Long ago, a Nias man called Ama [Sihombing`s spelling] Tawe went to the
southern part of Nias Islandto sh. Unfortunately, Ama Tawe’s canoe was hit
by rough waves; therefore he arrived at Matalu [in the west-central part of
Siberut], at the river mouth of Simatalu. He found many sago palms and taros
ourishing. Sago palms and taros grew there naturally. Near those sago palms
and taros, he made a hut. His living conditions in Simatalu were much better
than in Nias because of the convenient availability of natural resources like
sago palms and taros. He made a big canoe in order to fetch his wife and their
only child in Nias. The child was called Tawe. When Ama Tawe returned to
Simatalu together with his wife and child, several other people came along with
the family in the same canoe. This small group of people created a Mentawai
community. In order to identify the community, they called themselves and
the islands where they lived by using Ama Tawe’s name. Because of this, part
of the current Mentawaians believes that they came from Simatalu and are
descendants of those people from Nias.
2. The generations of Nias migrants in Simatalu expanded. Then, two siblings
(a brother and a sister) had sexual relations so that the sister got pregnant.
Consequently, the father of the two siblings and other villagers decided to exile
them. After years oating on a raft, the two siblings arrived at Sipora Island.
Several families went after the siblings because they missed them. The families
thus searched for the siblings. The families wanted to live together with the
siblings. The families [that wanted to look for the siblings] split up into two
groups. One group by means of a raft followed the eastern coastline, while
another group followed the western coastline of the islands in a southerly
direction. In order to be able to recognize one another later, these two groups
were requested to bring half of a whetstone with them to Simatalu as a sign
to identify each other. They thus departed [from Simatalu] going southwards.
After years passed, they did not nd the two siblings in Sipora. Therefore, they
went beyond Sipora and nally arrived at the Pagai islands. The two groups
came across each other at a place called Talu Pulai. They [the two groups]
did not recognize each other anymore. They began to shoot at each other. But
nobody was injured or killed. They then remembered that they had brought
half of a whetstone. They joined each other’s whetstones and saw that the two
pieces t together. Afterwards, they built a settlement in Talu Pulai. There
they planted coconut trees as a kelapa peringatan, or symbol of making peace
with each other (Sihombing 1979: 17-19).11
The above story tells of the arrival of Aman Tawe in Simatalu on Siberut
Island. He departed from Nias. The natural surroundings and natural
resources in Simatalu were better than those in Nias, and for this reason Aman
Tawe and his family decided to live in Simatalu. The rst families were created
11 The original story text was in Indonesian and translated to English by the author in
2005.

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and they identied themselves as descendants of Aman Tawe. The storyteller
believed that the people carrying Aman Tawe’s name became the original
inhabitants of Mentawai, the name of the majority of the current population in
the archipelago. The next passage is about the course of migratory movements
by Aman Tawe’s offspring from Simatalu to the southern islands of Sipora
and Pagai. This part of the story tells of the connection between the people’s
place of origin in Simatalu on Siberut and a current settlement called Talu
Pulai on the Pagai islands.
Hetty Nooy-Palm, a Dutch anthropologist, was interested in the story
of Aman Tawe and discussed it as well. She did eldwork in Sipora and the
Pagai islands in the early 1960s and collected a version of the story that is very
similar to Sihombing’s transcription. When Nooy-Palm asked her Mentawaian
informants where they came from, they told her the story of Aman Tawe in
order to explain their origins. The same story was referred to when explaining
the origin of the islands and the origin of the name Mentawai. The name
belonged to a man called Aman Tawe who came from Nias (Nooy-Palm 1968:
165-166). This man was thus seen as their forefather.
Schefold encountered a similar case when visiting Sipora in 1969, where
he met Jonas Samongilailai and recorded a story of Aman Tawe Samongilailai
told him. Schefold and I together listened to the tape of the story in his place
in Amsterdam. In general, the story is similar in content to the story (the rst
part) collected by Herman Sihombing. Stefano Coronese (1986: 12-13) collected
a story similar to the stories studied by Sihombing, Nooy-Palm, and Schefold,
when he did eldwork in Mentawai in the 1980s. I also heard stories telling
that Aman Tawe was from Nias and lived in Simatalu when I was gathering
stories of origin of Mentawaians in Siberut in 2002.
The Mentawaians who told me the story of Aman Tawe did not claim to
be descendants of Aman Tawe. But they did claim that their ancestors came
from Simatalu; however, they were not descendants of Aman Tawe. They
mentioned other names and another story of origin whenever they referred
to their ancestors, who had come from Nias prior to inhabiting Simatalu or
adjacent places on Siberut.
Another story is about a pregnant woman who drifted on a raft and later
married her own son. Reimar Schefold is the rst scholar to have gathered
and published this story. The woman’s name is unknown. Perhaps the
Mentawai storyteller did not mention her name when Schefold rst collected
the story. The woman was just identied by her pregnant status. Nonetheless,
several Mentawai kin groups believe that she is their rst ancestor. I examine
Schefold’s story of the pregnant woman in order to gure out the location
where the woman began her life in Siberut. I also note some similarities in
the story to others that I gathered during my eldwork, as some of the stories
indicate other places where the woman had arrived.
Schefold’s narrative collection
Reimar Schefold was the rst anthropologist to have taken the story of a

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pregnant woman drifting on a raft into account when he began his research
in Mentawai in 1967. He also considered other stories of origin of the
Mentawaian people, like the story of Aman Tawe. Schefold examined the
story of the pregnant woman drifting on a raft in order to identify where the
rst Mentawaians had came from. Schefold discussed it in his books, Speelgoed
voor de zielen; Kunst en cultuur van de Mentawai-eilanden (Schefold 1979: 19),
Lia; Das grosse Ritual auf den Mentawai-Inseln (Schefold 1988: 79), and Mainan
bagi roh; Kebudayaan Mentawai (Schefold 1991: 22) and an article, “The origins
of the woman on the raft: on the prehistory of the Mentawaians”, (Schefold
1989a: 2). In his books, Schefold does not present the full story. Instead, he
gives a synopsis of it, as follows:
The rst humans on Siberut lived in Simatalu in the west part of the island. There
was an unknown time [when] a girl and a dog together on a raft landed, nobody
knew from where [they had come]. The girl had been expelled by her brother out
of shame, because she had had sexual relations with the dog, and out of it she
got pregnant. In Simatalu, she gave birth to a son. When he grew up, he wanted
to search for a woman; the mother gave him a ring from her nger and ordered
him to nd a girl that this ring would t. The son roved about the whole island
and met nobody, until after a long time wandering he met his mother again. They
did not recognize each other anymore, and the ring tted. From this couple, the
rst Mentawaian was born (Schefold 1988: 79).12
In order to become familiar with the full version, Schefold and I listened
together to the whole story recorded in 1969 as told by Nikodemus Siritoitet.
Schefold allowed me to transcribe the story and use it to nd out about the
origins of the Mentawaian people. Nikodemus’s story is as follows:
Story 1
This is a story about the rst woman. The narrative goes like this. At the time
she arrived on this island of Siberut, there were no people yet; no people were
living on the island of Siberut. According to this story, a woman arrived here
because other people sent her away drifting on a raft. We do not know where she
came from. According to this narrative told by the older people (sikebbukat) in
Mentawai, she had been drifting on a raft. People did that to her because she made
a mistake. Her mistake was that she broke a custom of her community. A lot of
people [of her community] like her brothers, parents, relatives and everybody got
angry with her and decided to expel her from the community. They put her on a
raft, thus they sent her away. She began to drift, drift, drift, drift, drift, and drift.
Her actual mistake was that she had sexual relation with someone. No
one knew who the man was. Because of the sexual relation, she got pregnant.
Therefore, the other family members felt ashamed. They thus decided to send
her away. They actually wanted to send her to death at that moment. However,
the mercy her brothers gave her saved her life. They [her brothers] set her adrift
by means of a raft. Thus she drifted, drifted, drifted away until she arrived at
12 Translated from German by the author in 2005 (see Schefold 1979: 17, 1989a: 2, 1991:
22 for a similar version of the story).

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the area called Simatalu. The precise place where she lived was unknown, and
the only place that was heard by most people was Simatalu.
She stayed in Simatalu through the course of time until she gave birth to a son.
Then she took care of him, raised him; the son grew, grew, grew until he turned
into an adult. Thereafter, the time came for the mother to ask her son to search
for a wife. ‘Ta’ina [poor child], go and search for my taliku [daughter-in-law]’.
The son replied, ‘Who is she, the daughter-in-law I should nd?’ The mother
said, ‘Here is my ring and you must look for her around this place, around this
island; when you nd one you have to t this ring to her nger, but if the ring
does not t, you must not stop seeking for her yet’.
Thus, the son took the ring from his mother and his adventures began. He
wandered around the island; he wandered, wandered, wandered around many
places. This continued for days and nights, months, and maybe years until
he had wandered over the whole island. We could say here that it was many
years, because after that when he stumbled upon his mother again he did not
recognize her anymore. When they met again, the mother greeted him. ‘Where
do you want to go?’ The son replied, ‘I am looking for a woman to be my wife’.
And the mother asked another question, ‘What does she look like, the woman
you are searching for to be your wife?’ The son answered her, ‘Here is the ring
once given by my mother to me. If this ring ts her nger she will become my
wife. So, if you are willing, you can try to t this ring. If it ts your nger, you
can become my wife’. Thus, she tted the ring on her nger and it indeed tted.
He was surprised. ‘Tikai! [a word expressing amazement] It ts on your nger.
Now you must become my wife’. So they became husband and wife.
But the woman knew who the man was. He was her own son, but she did not
speak up about it. She kept the secret in order to full the message. After that,
they lived together for an unknown time and they had children, but we [current
Mentawaians] do not know how many people they produced and who they are
now.
We do not know the origins of this woman. Maybe she came from Nias, or
Batak [the predominant ethnic group of North Sumatra]. Her origins remain
unclear to me up to this very moment. So this story ends here. [Nikodemus
Siritoitet narrated this story in Mentawaian to Schefold in Muara Siberut in 1969.]13
The story told by Nikodemus has several features that we can indeed
nd in Schefold’s synopsis. What is important is the identication of the
place where the woman rst arrived on the Mentawai Islands, which was at
Simatalu on Siberut. However, her origins before arriving in Mentawai were
unknown to this storyteller. However, Simatalu, where the woman arrived,
was uncertain as well, because during my eldwork I gathered the same story
from several Mentawaian storytellers in which other places are mentioned.
We look at these other versions of the story in the next section.
Stories of origin collected between 2002 and 2006
In 2002, I visited Simatalu, hoping to meet someone who could tell me the story
of the pregnant woman and the story of Aman Tawe. It appeared that nobody
13 The story text was translated to English by the author in 2005.

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was familiar with these stories. I then decided to visit a neighbouring village
called Sirisura’, where I met Tengatiti Siribetug, a 60-year-old man who once
provided Schefold with great hospitality and socio-cultural information and
was Schefold’s best friend during his eldwork in Mentawai (Schefold 1988:
50). Tengatiti narrated the story of the pregnant woman to me:
Story 2
So … long ago, on the island of Siberut, there were no inhabitants. Other people
have told me that one person arrived rst. That person rst lived in Nias, more
precisely in the island of Tello. The person was a woman. She got pregnant without
anyone knowing who her husband was. Her family members felt ashamed of
her pregnancy. They became angry and nearly killed her.
She felt humiliated by the fact that she had become pregnant from an unknown
husband. Hence, she made a raft on which she could go away from her family.
She made it out of bamboo and wood. She sailed the raft from the island of Tello
where she was able to see the island of Siberut. She thought she would leave Tello
and go to the island of Siberut. She sailed, sailed, sailed … sailed on top of the
waves … sailed, sailed, and nally arrived at the beach of Simalegi [northwestern
Siberut].
She walked onto the land after she had pushed the raft out to sea. She stayed
in Simalegi. She stayed, stayed, stayed until she gave birth to a son. She took
care of her son. The son grew up; then the mother thought about how to expand
their numbers. ‘You are my son, we should search around these places, and we
should search for other people and for land’. The mother went on to say, ‘Take
this ring, my ring. When you meet a woman, t this ring to her nger and if it
ts, you should take the woman as my daughter-in-law (taliku-ku)’.
Following what his mother said, the son then left to search for a wife. He
brought the ring along. He walked around the island. He walked and walked,
around the beaches, around the rivers and the hills, and after an unknown number
of years of wandering, he again met his mother. The son did not recognize his
mother anymore because a long time had passed between them.
He took the ring and asked her to try it on. ‘Fit the ring on your nger’, he said
to her. When she did as he asked, the ring tted properly. ‘Because the ring ts
your nger, you are my wife’, he said to the woman. The woman was his mother.
The mother did not remember what she had once said to him. Or perhaps she
did not want to tell her son; thus they got married. Afterwards, people in Siberut
began to expand. (Narrated by Tengatiti Siribetug, 60 years old, in Sirisura’, in
2002)14
This story is indeed slightly different from the previous versions.
According to Tengatiti, the woman drifted from the Tello Island near Nias
and arrived at Simalegi instead of Simatalu. In this story, the place of origin
of the woman is mentioned. However, the name of this place is seldom heard
from other storytellers. During my eldwork in Mentawai, I came across
other storytellers who told stories similar to the one told by Nikodemus. They
14 The story text was transcribed from the tape recording in Mentawaian and translated
to English by the author in 2005.

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referred to Simatalu as the place where the woman arrived. I do not repeat
these stories here due to their similarity. I am, however, going to present
another two stories in order to note some specic places where the woman
may have come from.
Another storyteller said that the woman arrived elsewhere, near Simatalu.
The storyteller was Eugenius Nangi Satoko, a 59-year-old man, who lived
in Saibi Muara on Siberut. He had heard the story from people residing in
Simalegi. In his youth in the 1970s, this man had frequently visited three
areas on the west coast and northern parts of Siberut – Paipajet, Simatalu and
Simalegi. He spent a few months in Paipajet, travelling around Simatalu, and
eventually settled in Simalegi. The Simalegi people told him the story of a
pregnant woman.
Story 3
Somewhere in Nias a woman got pregnant, but most people did not know the
man who made her pregnant. According to the customary law [Indonesian adat]
of the community [in which the woman lived], a woman who got pregnant from
an unknown husband had to be sentenced to death. Because of her father’s mercy,
the woman was set adrift on a raft, a raft made out of two sago palms.
She arrived at a place called Lebbekeu, a place people in Simalegi called
Lebbeseu, located on the west coast of Simatalu. While staying there she gave
birth to a son. When her son grew to be a young man, the mother gave him a
ring. The mother asked him to walk around the area. If he met a man, he should
consider the man as his own brother; however, if he met a woman, he should
take the woman as his wife.
So the son walked around the area. From the coast in Lebbekeu he took a
shortcut over the hills and arrived at the river Simatalu. Then he followed the
river downstream to the mouth of the river. In the meantime, his mother walked
along the beach to the mouth of the river Simatalu as well. She followed the same
river upstream on which her son was travelling downriver. Time passed, we do
not know how many years, the son grew into a man. Later, he met his mother
again in Bat Matalu [the main river basin of Simatalu]. When they met, the son
remembered what his mother had told him to do if he met a woman.
The mother knew who the man was because of the ring on his nger. Shortly
thereafter, they got married and lived in Simatalu. Since then, the number of
people on the island had been expanding. Currently, [here Eujenius gives his own
interpretation of the story] every kin group anywhere in the Mentawai islands
always refers to Simatalu as their place of origin. When asked about the beginnings
of their inhabitation of Mentawai, Mentawaians always mention Simatalu, because
the rst ancestral family inhabited a place in Simatalu. Simatalu [as the place of
origin] is mentioned in a lot of stories telling about initial dispersals, such as the
stories of sipeu (mango fruit) or sibela siberi (wild boars). People who have these
stories always mention Simatalu as the place from where they initially came.
(Narrated by Eujenius Nangi Satoko, 59 years old, in Saibi Muara, in 2002).15
15 The story text was transcribed from the tape recording in Mentawaian and translated
to English by the author in 2005.

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Like other narrators of the story of the pregnant woman, Eujenius Nangi
Satoko also states that the woman departed from Nias. Her community
sentenced her to death for her sin of getting pregnant without knowing who
the man was. However, her life was saved by her father’s mercy. He decided
to set her adrift on a raft instead of killing her. This storyteller states that
the woman arrived on the west coast of Siberut, at a place called Lebbekeu,
near Simatalu. She gave birth to a son who grew up. She sent her son to nd
someone in the area. He did not nd a man to be his brother, nor did he nd
another woman to be his ideal wife. He met his own mother in the upriver
place of Simatalu. This place became the settlement of the rst family in Siberut.
Concluding remarks
Detailed analysis in this article shows that the stories collected between 1960
and 1991 do not have connections with the stories collected between 1842 and
1930. During my eldworks in 2002, 2004, and 2006, I did not meet storytellers
who could tell me stories of origin similar to the stories collected in 1842–1930.
Instead, the stories of origin I gathered were similar to the stories collected
between 1960 and 1991. What I have tried to focus on here is where the rst
settlers on Mentawai had come from, how they had come, and what had been
the rst place in Mentawai they are said to have lived.
Most stories collected between 1842 and 1930 are about the arrival of the
Sumatran people in Siberut and Pagai. However, Sipora is not mentioned in
the stories as the destination of the rst inhabitants of the Mentawai Islands.
According to Kruyt’s report (1924), the stories of origins of the inhabitants of
the Mentawai Islands collected by scholars between 1842 and 1930 tell how
groups of Malay people came to live in Mentawai. These Malay people came
directly from Sumatra, more precisely from Padang. Another group also
embarked from Sumatra but from another place: Muko-muko in Bengkulu.
In the literature between 1930 and 1960, I did not nd any stories of origin
of the Mentawaians. It seems that scholars did not gather any stories of the
Mentawai origins during this period.
The stories of origin collected between 1960 and 1991 contain information
about the arrival of individuals from Nias Island. They were a man and a
pregnant woman. In the story of Aman Tawe, the rst settler is called Aman
Tawe. In some versions, a man was washed away from Nias and stranded
in Siberut alone. In other versions, he arrived with his son or his family and
neighbours, but the neighbours returned to Nias. One story tells that the man
fetched his family in his homeland before he began a new life on Siberut.
Sometimes I came across Mentawaians who told me that Aman Tawe and his
family rst settled on the island and their neighbours later came to look for
them. The neighbours unfortunately did not arrive at the place where Aman
Tawe had arrived. It appears that Aman Tawe’s new life on Siberut was the
beginning of the current Mentawai population.
A different narrative of the origins of the Mentawai people is the story of
the pregnant woman. Her miserable life of getting pregnant without a husband

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had forced her to leave her homeland in Nias. She was safely stranded in one
of several places mentioned, Simatalu or Lebbekeu or Simalegi, where her
new life began. She gave birth to a son to whom she later got married. They
became the ancestors of several kin groups of current Mentawai inhabitants.
Like the stories collected between 1842 and 1930, the stories gathered
between 1960 and 1990 do not mention Sipora as the rst place where the
rst migrants had lived. Sipora appears to have been populated by groups
of people living in Siberut, who originated from people who had come from
Sumatra or Nias. Moreover, Sipora was also inhabited by groups of people
whose ancestors had once come from Muko-muko. These groups merged with
other groups who also lived in Mentawai. Collectively they have created the
current ethnic groups of Mentawaians.
These stories of origin tell us that the current Mentawaians may have
originated from different ancestors who came from various places, like
Sumatra and Nias. These ancestors did not arrive at the same place on Siberut.
As described by Wirz (1929-30), after the arrival of the rst settlers, there
were several more waves of migration by other groups of people, with the
new migrants arriving at different places on Siberut. After examining the
stories, I agree with Wirz. The stories mention different places of origin, that
is, different places of rst settlement, such as Simatalu, Lebbekeu, Simalegi,
and Berisigep in the northern part of Siberut, and Muara Siberut and Taileleu
in southern Siberut, as well as the Pagai islands.
Regarding the content of those stories of origins I agree with Schefold (1988,
1989a) when he says that the rst inhabitants of the Mentawai Islands came
“directly or indirectly (via Nias)” from Sumatra. Nevertheless, I am aware of
the probability of a situation where several groups of early settlers did not
arrive at and occupy one and the same place on Siberut, because they moved
to Mentawai in different waves of migration and arrived at several separate
places on Siberut (and possibly the Pagai islands). If one group arrived at an
unpopulated place, they might see themselves as the rst inhabitants of the
islands, not realizing that there were already settlements elsewhere in the
islands. In fact, we do not know precisely when, where, and who came rst
to Mentawai.
The stories of origin of the early inhabitants of Mentawai Islands do not
indicate any time of arrival of the early inhabitants. The stories are not reliable
as historical sources. However, a lot of information in them can be used to
understand the past of the early inhabitants of Mentawai Islands. By analysing
family stories of origin, we may conclude that the current Mentawaians are
descendants of diverse groups who came to live in the Mentawai Islands from
various places of origin.
My main concern in this article is with the current Mentawaians’ ideas
about their ancestors and ancestral places in order to understand their
genealogical link to ancestral land and the ties existing among related families
residing in separate places in the Mentawai Islands. This may help explain the
fact that not all kin groups claim the same ancestral domain and ancestral land:

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it may be because the way they perceive their stories of origin leads them to
believe they have not been descended from the same ancestors as other groups
although they are frequently perceived as one ethnic group called Mentawai.
What I conclude after looking through all the stories of origin discussed in
this article is that the roles of spoken language are very important in preserving
the Mentawaian culture. Mentawaians do not have a specic orthography or
written language; they do not have any writing tradition. Mentawaians always
remember important events that occurred in their past. They keep narrating
the stories of their past from one generation to another because they want the
current generation to also know and remember their past.
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