Tobelo

Ian Skoggard and Teferi Abate Adem

Tugutil, Tobelorese

The Tobelo are formerly nomadic hunting and gathering people inhabiting the largely forested island of Halmahera in eastern Indonesia. They are often referred to as the Tugutil, a derogatory term. The word “tobelo” means “stake,” and how it became a name for the group remains a conjecture. It could refer to the prows of their canoes. The name “Tobelo” appears on a seventeenth-century sea chart.

When studied by Christopher Duncan in 1995, the Forest Tobelo of the interior considered themselves a distinct ethnic group, as opposed to a subgroup of the more numerous Coastal or “beach” Tobelo. However, both Tobelo communities lacked clear ethnic boundary markers. While both Tobelo groups spoke different dialects, they maintained numerous kinship and affinal relationships, and shared a number of other cultural practices.

In the early 1980s, the Forest Tobelo were estimated at 3,000 individuals. There were approximately 27,700 Tobelo speakers in the year 2000.

Tobelo is a North Halmahera language belonging to the larger West Papuan family. Hueting noticed that language varied from village to village. Six Tobelo dialects have been recognized—Heleworuru (the dominant Tobelo district dialect), Boëng, Dodinga, Lake Paca, Kukumutuk, and Sasur (named for villages where spoken). The last three of are Forest Tobelo dialects.

In the fifteenth century, Tobelo was a large, self-governing community dependent on the Sangadji of Gamkonora. The Sangadji were in turn a vassal of the Ternate. In 1544, the Portuguese supported the Sangadji of Gamkonora in their conquest of nearby Galela. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Tobelo remained part of the Ternate kingdom. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Tobelo were drawn into conflicts between the rival kingdoms of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan and Jailolo. One story has the kings of Ternate and Tidore attacking Jailolo, forcing its inhabitants to flee inland and to the island of Seram. In a subsequent period, the Tidoran Prince Noekoe fought against the Ternatans and their allies, the Royal Dutch East India Company. He appointed a new king of Jailolo, to whom the Tobelo tied their fate. Attempts to expand the Jailolo Empire against the towns of Dodinga, Galela, and Kau failed. In 1811, the English took the Jailolo prince prisoner and exiled him to Java. His brother assumed the throne and struggled to maintain control until he was defeated in 1824. During much of this period the Tobelo lived a peripatetic life of piracy that continued until the rise of steamships in the late 1800s and the establishment of a government presence that helped pacified the region.

Christianization began at the turn of the twentieth century. The nomadic Forest Tobelo converted only after American missionaries from the New Tribes Mission arrived in 1982.

Legends have ancestors of the Tobelo coming from overseas, perhaps driven by a storm. One story identifies the land of Makassar in the northern Celebes as a place of origin. Another identifies the country of Sékel, of the Manilarese, as another place of origin. From the point of view of language it is now believed that all people of the northern peninsula have a common origin. The newcomers settled in the interior, which was more fertile than the coast and better protected from marauders. Volcanic eruptions of Mt. Dukono in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, including a notable one in 1551, prompted relocation to the coast. Some legends also tell of a drought that forced people to migrate. Hueting noted artifacts such as baskets and arrow heads that the Tobelo claimed were brought by their ancestors from the interior.

As recently as in the early 1980s, many Forest Tobelo were still nomadic foragers. By the mid-1990s most of the former nomadic hunter-gatherer Forest Tobelo had settled into villages along rivers as part of a national program of incorporating “isolated tribes,” spearheaded by the Indonesian government's Department of Social Affairs.

The traditional Tobelo house was octagonal or hexagonal in shape, some large enough for several families. Posts supported a frame, with walls made of planks and mats of sago-leaf stems, and roofs were of sago leaves sewn into strips. Well-built houses could last up to forty years. Located in shade, homes stayed relatively cool year-round. Surrounding gardens had small dwellings made of bamboo that were preferred places to sleep. Beliefs and practices regarding house construction included avoiding sites near graves where evil spirits lurked, pouring sugar syrup and coconut oil into the postholes to ensure that housemates did not quarrel, and adding healing herbs to protect occupants from headaches.

Forest Tobelo communities long relied on resources they could collect from forests, rivers, and lakes. They hunted large mammals like pig and deer, using traps or spears. Birds were hunted using snares, slingshots, and a speargun with bamboo darts, usually when roosting at night. Sago and rice were the main sources of carbohydrates. The traditional Forest Tobelo diet also included a variety of wild fruits and vegetables, including mushrooms and bamboo shoots.

Coastal Tobelo villagers were a dedicated fishing people. They collected shellfish at low tide, or fished off reefs using nets and lances. Collective fishing expeditions involved sailing out a coral reef and encircling it with a rope of floating vines; entering the water they used their bodies and the rope strung between them to drive the fish into the shallows as the tide ebbed. Torches and poison were also used. They also practiced swidden agriculture. A staple food, rice nevertheless was used primarily for feasting or to barter for other goods in the coastal trade. Palm fruit was another staple food. Other major crops included cassava, sweet potatoes, and bananas. Peanuts, pineapples, maize, tomatoes, sugar cane, taro and spices also were grown. Non-food crops included tobacco and betel nuts. More recently, the Tobelo have started raising livestock.

Clothing made from tree bark was brightly decorated. The Tobelo wove baskets, sieves and mats, the latter used for floor coverings, room dividers and roofing, and also to make storage boxes. The Tobelo were great seafarers and builders of long, slender proas made of hollowed logs with plank hull sides fastened together using pegs and caulking; a bamboo tripod mast supported a durable, square sail made of rushes and ratan, since replaced by cotton fabric. Boats were steered with an oar. The principal tools for building boats and houses were the machete and chisel.

European archival sources recognize the island of Halmahera as one of the most important sources of cloves and nutmeg. Prior to the advent of Europeans, the spice trade was dominated by Chinese and Arab traders. Following the arrival of European explorers in the 1520s, control shifted successively to Portguese then Dutch colonial agents. There was an active coastal trade. In the nineteenth century, rice was one commodity the Tobelo used to exchange for Tidoran ironwork, including machetes, axes, and fishing tackle. When Chinese rice began to displace Tobelorese rice as a preferred commodity, the Tobelo switched to copra.

Women processed sago (which, along with rice, was a staple of the Forest Tobelo diet), and produced syrup from sugar cane. Women did all the basketry and wickerwork. Hunting was an exclusively male task. In the pre-resettlement period, hunting was the main means by which men improved their status in the community. Both men and women gathered seasonal wild fruits and vegetables, often opportunistically while traveling through the forest. In preparing land for gardens, men felled trees and women cleared the undergrowth.

During Duncan’s fieldwork in 1995-1996, the Indonesian government considered much of Halmahera Island as uninhabited and underexploited. This perception led to a high-profile program of rapidly transforming the regional economy by attracting private investors and landless settlers from crowded islands like Java. Accommodating the land demands of commercial enterprises and land-hungry settlers significantly reduced access by Tobelo communities, including the blocking of seasonal migration routes to highly-valued resources on coastlines and along rivers in the forests.

Traditionally, clearing a piece of land for cultivation or a patch around a palm or fruit tree established ownership. Ownership also was indicated by a property sign (bobugo), usually a fetishized object that represented some kind of calamity or disease that would befall trespassers and thieves, such as a disintegrating tree root to symbolize deteriorating health, or a sharp piece of bamboo to represent pleurisy. A bobugo could also be a doll on which a spell was cast and placed at an entrance to a garden. In the twenty-first century, this concept extends in the modern ecological context to matakau, both the cursed marker (usually including a glass bottle) and the practice of protecting socioeconomically and ecologically important land, including forests.

According to Hueting, traditional Tobelo marriage was not a tightly-controlled or formal system. People could marry full cousins and within and outside the hoana (socioterritorial group). However, for close kin to marry a fee to sever the blood bond had to be paid. Young adults were permitted to pick and choose whom they wanted, but the choice had to be approved by parents, who would take into consideration the prospective spouse’s parents and families. To propose, the young man sent a gift of finely carved betelnuts as a form of proposal to the prospective bride. If accepted, the parents then sent a return gift to the prospective groom’s parents. The families then entered into negotiations over the brideprice. If none could be made the groom had to perform bride service. When parents agreed on the terms, they exchanged gifts and a marriage ceremony took place at the home of the bride. The wedding involved eating, drinking, dancing, and singing. The couple then went to the bridegroom’s house for additional ceremonies and feasting. Thereafter, in-laws avoided using each other’s’ proper names, substituting other words in their place.

Residence is patrilocal. Newly married couples start their own household and garden. Polygamy was rare but practiced by the wealthiest.

At childbirth, a sign was placed outside a home to announce the birth and indicate the baby’s gender: a wooden machete for a boy and wooden chisel for a girl. Mothers were very protective of their children, keeping them close at all times. Punishing a child too severely or letting a child cry for too long was considered hazardous to their health. Children went naked until they felt ashamed to do so. Girls started earlier than boys to help with household chores. Filing teeth was practiced by boys and girls at puberty. Nocturnal trysts between unmarried couples were permissible.

The hoana was both a social group and territorial division. What may have started out as a kin group changed over time as groups migrated and resettled. Heads of hoana and villages were considered “first among equals,” with limited authority.

The Forest Tobelo appeared very apprehensive about their incorporation as citizens of a larger entity called “Indonesia.” In large part, this fear was due to a history of unfavorable interactions with the police and other representatives of the state.

Hueting writes that mutual interests kept everyone united and more-or-less restrained in their behavior. Certainly, fears of retribution from the spirit world—believed to be the source of many illnesses and bad fortune—made people adhere to custom and cultural norms.

The history of the Tobelo reveals what one would expect in the Spice Islands, a region highly contested for centuries by European and Asian powers. Various sultans, kings and princes in the region vied, often violently, to be the primary local agent in the global trade. This era of exploration, exploitation, and expansion inspired a bellicose culture in which war dances were part of funerals, weapons were household decorations, and an assortment of protective magic was in demand. Some Tobelo communities experienced a cycle of revenge killings and violent conflicts among themselves and with members of other ethnic groups. Piracy was a way of life for many. Hueting reports that in the nineteenth century the Tobelo were rough in character and could be quarrelsome, especially when drinking, but overall were honest and trustworthy.

Traditionally, the Tobelo believed in a “spirit above” (Gikiri Moi) or supreme being who is not involved in human affairs. The most compelling religious belief was in a supernatural force called gurumini, which Hueting interprets as a “vital force” that comes from the spirit above, infusing all inanimate objects and living things. In the human body, the vital force forms the soul (gikiri). In addition, the Tobelo believed in a tribal spirit (wongemi) that was worshiped at a village temple (halu). Spirits (tokata) lurking in forests or the sea could cause illness and were used for black magic. Some fetishes provided protection in war and travel; other were used for healing and killing.

Shamans or mediums (gomatere) have a guardian spirit (djini), used to foretell events and to heal the sick. Shamans also lead life-cycle and sacrificial rites.

Feasting was a major part of Tobelo culture, marking life-cycle events and the construction of boats and homes. The ceremonies involved music, singing, dancing and drinking. Weddings were very colorful affairs, accompanied by music.

Orchestras included bamboo flutes, violin-like stringed instruments, cymbals, drums, guitars, shells, harmonicas, and copper trumpets. Men danced a war dance, assuming postures of hand-to-hand combat. Women danced at the Feast of the Dead. Singing consisted of long, drawn-out tones. Some songs told past legends, others had erotic themes.

Early in the twentieth century, Hueting, a physician, documented a long list of diseases suffered by the Tobelo, including ulcers, yaws, skin rashes and other skin conditions, smallpox, chickenpox, leprosy, scurvy, asthma, beriberi, diarrhea, dysentery, syphilis, dropsy, malaria, and other diseases he could not identify. Many were treated using medicinal herbs and roots. Some of cures were effective for dropsy and dysentery, whereas others just had a mimetic function, such as using a fast-sprouting plant to treat an unusual spasmodic retraction of the anus and genitals. More serious illnesses required divination to determine the cause, most often an offended spirit. Cursing was considered an offense against the tribal spirit, who would then have to be appeased. Trespassing on another person’s fields or a community’s important forest resource zones might invoke the bobugo or matakau, protective property markers holding a curse capable of causing illness. Not taking proper care of an ancestral spirit, failure to follow custom, violation of a taboo, or sorcery could also be sources of illness. If it a possessing spirit (tokata) was involved, then a shaman was summoned. In each case, specific kinds of sacrifices and incantations had to be made to the vengeful spirit. Feasts were held to appease neglected ancestors. Malevolent spirits were exorcised by a shaman. Amulets were widely used as prophylactics.

Death for the most part is attributed to sorcery and other evil causes. Announcement of a death is accompanied by wailing and weeping. The corpse is kept in the house for four days; in some villages for up to ten days. Only close kin stayed by the corpse. Everyone else was fearful of the deceased’s ghost and the evil spirits attracted to the corpse. The corpse was dressed in the deceased’s best clothes and put in an artfully carved coffin. A war dance was performed at the time of burial. Fourteen days after the funeral there was another ceremony, hahoko, in which the soul of the deceased was handed over to the ancestors (dilikinis). Every five years, the remains of people who died in the interim period were cleaned and their bones reburied in a feast for the dead (hukara).

The culture summary was written by Ian Skoggard and Teferi Abate Adem in March, 2021.

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