100
FIG. 8 (left): Detail of a
shield, koraibi, showing
two shamans in discussion.
Wood, paint, rattan, coconut shell.
H: 92.7 cm.
Ex Groeneveldt Collection, Utrecht,
the Netherlands.
Collection of Stephen Binder and Kris
Estes, Lincoln, Massachusetts.
FIG. 9 (below): Decorated
panel. Katoerei, east
Siberut. C. 1900.
Wood, black pigment.
Museum der Kulturen, Basel,
inv. IIc 2636.
A scene of confrontation. Several
monkeys and dogs (right) and two
humans armed with swords attack
from right and left. A third fi gure
in the center, although carrying a
dagger at his waist, brandishes no
arms. According to notes by Paul
Wirz, who collected this panel in
1926 in an uma, it depicts a hunting
or headhunting scene.
FIG. 10 (left): Food platter,
lulak. 1968, Sakuddei.
Made by Koraibikerei, as a
gift for Schefold.
Wood, black pigment. 83 cm.
Private collection.
This platter is in the shape of a
turtle and has decorative paintings
around the rim of monkeys, turtles,
monitor lizards, and various other
ornamental motifs.
living at a German mission on Nias near
Sumatra, told me about neighboring islands
where the people still hunted with bows and
arrows and rejected outside infl uence. This was
Mentawai and it was precisely what I’d been
looking for.
T. A. M.: And so you set off into the unknown?
Tell us about that.
R. S.: Exactly. I just packed up. I got eighteen
boxes from Basel, packed full of all sorts
of provisions, like the nineteenth-century
expeditions had done. They arrived on the east
coast of Siberut, where there was a mission. My
contact, a very nice man named Buchholz, told
me about a tribe living in self-imposed seclusion
in the interior who had reportedly shot arrows
at people from the Indonesian government
who wanted to approach them. Eventually,
we sailed around to the west coast and were
able to lay anchor at a tiny village, where we
made enquiries about the possibility of going
inland. They said that it would be diffi cult
because the people there didn’t want to have
visitors. Everyone was afraid to go there, but
someone in the village had married a woman
from this group and perhaps he could be sent
ahead to announce my arrival. Using this plan,
I eventually reached the village, which was
dominated by an enormous longhouse where
many families lived together.
The younger people had never seen a
European and I was regarded with suspicion by
all. You have to remember that at this time it
was the period of nation-building for President
Sukarno, who felt that all these tribal traditions
were things of the past. He had ordered that
all peoples living traditional lifeways should
be concentrated in newly built villages and
be given three months to choose between
Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam in order
to be “civilized.”