Laughing at Leviathan by Danilyn Rutherford

Author:Danilyn Rutherford [Rutherford, Danilyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, Southeast Asia, Social Science, General, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9780226731971
Google: DDLwVU8zOncC
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2012-04-15T03:59:48+00:00

On the maps we can read the name of our land, New Guinea, or “New Guinea” [Noefoorsch: Guinea Babo]. The Portuguese and Spanish were the first white people to come to the land of Papua, and when they saw the people in the land, they said, “They look just like the people of Guinea, Africa!” So they called the land New Guinea. (1900, 4)

Because “not all of New Guinea obeys the Young Queen of Holland (Nonna Radja Wolanda),” the narrator will just treat the western half.

The Papuan people don’t have just one tradition or set of customs (adat). In one place things are a bit good, in another place they are more evil, in one place they plunder a lot, in another place they do not fight with one another. . . . I won’t tell you about the customs or houses of the Noefoor, because you already know much more about that than I do. (Ibid., 5)

Instead, the narrator takes his readers to Humboldt Bay, named “out of respect (hormat) for Mr. (Toean) van Humboldt, a German gentleman who saw many lands and peoples” (ibid., 5). Humboldt Bay’s inhabitants “walk around totally naked” and worship idols (korwaar). “Alas! They don’t yet know what we read in Psalms 127:1: ‘If the Lord doesn’t guard (djaga) a house, men guard it in vain. They ask wooden [Gods/figures] to guard their houses, but wood doesn’t see, doesn’t hear; safe (slamat) are we who know to pray to the Lord God” (ibid., 6). The narrator proceeds to the west coast of New Guinea, then Ternate and Tidore, whose inhabitants, we learn, rejected the Spanish and Portuguese, but welcomed the Dutch people’s offer to help (betoelong) their rulers in wars. The tour continues in a similar vein through the eastern part of the colony, before finally reaching Java, “a really nice island,” where the text dwells for a disproportionate amount of time.

The ship drops anchor at the port of Tandjoeng Priok, in Batavia, the Indies’ capital. The narrator describes Batavia’s “many villages” (mennoe naboor) (ibid., 49). There is much to see in Batavia: the Governor General’s house, “a big person made of copper” (a statue of Jan Pieterzoon Coen, Batavia’s seventeenth-century founder), “men and women wearing all sorts of clothing (bepaké sansoen roepa-roepa) (ibid., 49). “If we are tired and the road is long, we call for a carriage, many of which we’ve seen in Batavia, and we pay some money and it takes us where we want to go’” (ibid., 49–50).

The tour next takes us to Depok, the school founded by a minister who “thought it would be good if black people were taught by black men helping the Dutch missionaries” (ibid., 50). We witness a geography lesson and watch the students playing their musical instruments—“soon we are deafened by the great noise” (ibid., 51). Leaving Depok, we pass through tea plantations, visit the “very nice” village of Bandung (a major city in West Java), and take a trip up the famous volcano, Tankoban Prahoe.

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