It Is Fair, However, To Presume That
Sumatra Was The Ancient Seat Of The Race, And The Wonderful Valley Of
Menangkabau, Surrounded By Mountains Ten Thousand Feet In Height, That
Of Its Earliest Civilization.
The only Malay "colonial" kingdoms on the
Peninsula which ever attained any importance were those of Malacca and
Johore, and even their reliable history begins with the arrival of the
Portuguese.
The conversion of the Sumatra Malays to Mohammedanism arose
mainly out of their commercial intercourse with Arabia; it was slow,
not violent, and is supposed to have begun in the thirteenth century.
A population of "Wild Tribes," variously estimated at from eight
thousand to eleven thousand souls, is still found in the Peninsula, and
even if research should eventually prove them not to be its Aborigines,
they are, without doubt, the same races which were found inhabiting it
by the earliest Malay colonists.
These are frequently called by the Malays "Orang Benua," or "men of the
country," but they are likewise called "Orang-outang," the name which
we apply to the big ape of Borneo. The accompanying engraving
represents very faithfully the "Orang-outang" of the interior. The few
accounts given of the wild tribes vary considerably, but apparently
they may be divided into two classes, the Samangs, or Oriental Negroes
or Negritos and the Orang Benua, frequently called Jakuns, and in Perak
Sakei. By the Malays they are called indiscriminately Kafirs or
infidels, and are interesting to them only in so far as they can use
them for bearing burdens, clearing jungle, procuring gutta, and in
child-stealing, an abominable Malay custom, which, it is hoped, has
received its death-blow in Perak at least.
The Samangs are about the same height as the Malays, but their hair,
instead of being lank and straight like theirs, is short and curly,
though not woolly like that of the African negro, and their
complexions, or rather skins, are of a dark brown, nearly black. Their
noses, it is said, incline to be flat, their foreheads recede, and
their lips are thick. They live in rude and easily removable huts made
of leaves and branches, subsist on jungle birds, beasts, roots, and
fruits, and wear a scanty covering made from the inner bark of a
species of Artocarpus. They are expert hunters, and have most ingenious
methods of capturing both the elephant and the "recluse rhinoceros."
They are divided into tribes, which are ruled by chiefs on the
patriarchal system. Of their customs and beliefs, if they have any,
almost nothing is known. They are singularly shy, and shun intercourse
with men of other races. It has been supposed that they worship the
sun.
The Orang Benua or Orang-outang, frequently called Sakeis or Jakuns,
consist of various tribes with different names, thinly scattered among
the forests of the chain of mountains which runs down the middle of the
Peninsula from Kedah to Point Romania.* In appearance and color they
greatly resemble the Malays, and there is a very strong general
resemblance between their dialects and pure Malayan.
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