The Mountains, The Coast, And Regional Exchange

The Mandar homeland stretches along the coast between Polewali and Mamuju. Devoutly Muslim, the Mandar are known as Sulawesi's finest sailors and fishermen, and for turning out some strikingly fine silk fabrics. The Mandar devotion to the pursuit of status runs deep. In my experience, siri ', the keeping of dignity and face so often ascribed to the Bugis (Andi Zainal Abidin 1983a, 1983b; Errington 1989), reaches more radical expression among rivalrous and status-conscious Mandar men.^[15] In any event, the Mandar cultural emphasis on a righteous defense of personal or family honor has impressed mountainfolk as a tripcord for violence.

According to oral and written histories, the mountain and coastal communities established regional polities in their respective areas during the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, the period of Makassan expansion (Abd. Razak Daeng Patunru 1983; Reid 1983c; Samar and Mandadung 1979). As discussed in the preceding chapter, the upstream or "headwater" territories of Tabulahan, Aralle, Mambi, Bambang, Matangnga, Rantebulahan, and Tu'bi formed Pitu Ulunna Salu, while the downstream or "rivermouth" principalities of Balanipa, Binuang, Banggae, Pamboang, Sendana, Tapalang, and Mamuju took the name Pitu Ba'bana Binanga (see Map 4). Trade, armed

incursions by the Bugis, and other regional concerns sometimes led these twin politics to act in concert. But more often than not the uplands and lowlands looked upon one another with suspicion. Above all, these polities were consumed with their own internal rivalries and power struggles (Sutherland 1983a; Yayasan n.d.). By 1872, both the upland league and the lowland federation had collapsed (see: Smit 1937; Sutherland 1983a).

Local and regional interests notwithstanding, the Mandar were very caught up in the political and mercantile dynamics of Sulawesi and the archipelago as a whole, helping Sultan Hasanuddin, for example, resist the Dutch and Arung Palakka at Makassar, and failing subject to the trade restrictions of the Bungaya Treaty of 1667 (Amin 1963; Andi Zainal Abidin 1982; ENI 1918; Abd. Razak Daeng Patunru 1983). Although a common ancestry linked the elite houses of the lowlands and the mountain region, the former were far more interested in gaining and consolidating prestige and power through marriage to Bugis, Makassan, and off-island nobility (see DepDikBud n.d. [a-d], 1981; Abd. Razak Daeng Patunru 1983; Sinrang n.d.; Sutherland 1983a; and Yayasan n.d.). Social networks of this kind not only bolstered the prestige and authority of the Mandar rulers, but also enmeshed them in the political and commercial intrigues of the island. The same networks also promoted social stratification, the proliferation of political offices, and the Islamization of the elite in the early seventeenth century.^[16]

The Mandar economy hinged on the slave trade and on the export of upland or marine commodities. From the uplands came rattan, resin, corn, and fragrant woods, while the coast produced tortoise shell, tripang, dried and salted fish, copra, coconut, kapok, sago, oils, hides, and silk (Galestin 1936; Hoorweg 1911; Rijsdijk 1935; van Goor 1922; Veen 1933; Zeemansgijd, n.d.). Key imports were rice, salt, fabrics, weapons, opium, and ceramic goods. Although bound together as a political family under the leadership of Balanipa, the Mandar principalities were undoubtedly commercial rivals, each of which had access by rivers or mountain passes to hinterland areas that provided a flow of exportable goods.

When the Dutch patrols first entered the highlands in 1906, the communities of Pitu Ulunna Salu were economically interdependent With the Mandar coast (cf. Maurenbrecher 1947).^[17] Although the uplands remained politically autonomous, the coast held far more power and prestige in regional relations. The Mandar states probably had little interest in placing Pitu Ulunna Salu under direct rule, especially if lowland politics and maritime trade were drawing most of their attention. Furthermore, in the latter half of the eighteenth century several communities in the upstream territories of

Tu'bi, Aralle, and Mambi had begun converting to Islam. The conversion of these communities strengthened their social ties to the coast and substantially weakened the mountain league. So long as the flow of upland goods and slaves passed into their ports, and so long as Pitu Ulunna Salu remained a fragmented political body unallied to other powers, the Mandar had little reason to exhaust material and human resources in subjugating the highlands.

For all the uplanders, salt, dried fish, weapons, ceramics, and cloth (which figured as a favorite article in the transfer of somba at marriage) were the key items to be brought back in return for the rattan, corn, and resin taken downstream. Oral accounts by uplanders indicate that the mountain communities kept up a long-standing trade in forest goods and labor with partner coastal settlements. Elders from the northern mountain districts, for example, say that their ancestors traded with partner communities along the northern Mandar coast: older men at Mambi, Aralle, and Tabulahan mention that their fathers made trade journeys to Mamuju, Tapalang, and Sendana. Similarly, settlements from southern mountain districts claim ties to Balanipa and Binuang on the southern Mandar coast.

Taken altogether, the reported pattern of historic trade is enough to suggest that pairings may have existed between the seven coastal polities and the seven upland territories, such that each Mandar realm had a reliable hinterland partner with whom to exchange goods. In reality, trade patterns were probably not always so neat: seasonality in the availability of goods, competition, and feuds, to name but a few factors, could have encouraged uplanders to switch partners on occasion. Still, to take one example, it was hardly a matter of accident that Rantebulahan, the nominal leader of the upland league, should act as hinterland to Balanipa, the dominant polity of the coastal federation. In fact, the elites of the two territories had convergent genealogies.

Slavery played a critical role in exchange throughout the upstream and downstream regions. For example, it is clear that the Mandar ports had a significant role in the export of slaves to Makassar, Pare-Pare, Kalimantan, and Batavia (see: Abeyasekere 1983; Bigalke 1981; Reid 1983a, 1983b; Sutherland 1983b). In addition, the Mandar were interested in obtaining slaves (and other dependents) in order to build substantial retinues of workers (cf. Macknight 1983). The mountain communities, meanwhile, had a different interest in the slave trade. Reciprocal labor exchanges between kin and limited opportunities for agricultural expansion meant that slaves could contribute little to the upland subsistence economy, but slaves were nonetheless of value, because of the price they could fetch on the coast. Captives,

debtors, and even junior relatives were traded to the Mandar for weapons, cloth, or cash. The Mandar, like their Bugis neighbors, did raid their hinterlands for slaves, but Hoorweg (1911) and Goslings (1933 [1924]) indicate that sustained raiding rarely struck deeper than the mountain swidden communities lying just beyond the periphery of Mandar lands.

Nothing is known about the beginnings of migratory labor in the region, but by the late nineteenth century it had become an important factor in the economic interchange between uplands and coast. For example, Hoorweg (1911:103-105) reports large numbers of mountain folk making the trip to Mamuju in order to work as coolies, to assist coastal partners in "vandalism" (i.e. piracy), and to work dry-rice fields. The trek was annual and routine, and enough to provoke Hoorweg to complain that it resulted in the underdevelopment of agriculture in the mountain region (1911:104).^[18] As he described it, these migrant laborers exchanged their labor for cloth, household effects, and small amounts of money. Yet given the food shortages and sociopolitical turmoil that troubled the mountain communities from time to time, migrant labor probably allowed uplanders to get supplies of food as well as prestige goods.^[19]

Hoorweg does not indicate when the migrants usually arrived. The traditional upland agricultural calendar finds men at work on rice terraces from July through September, and October is devoted to clearing and planting gardens. Corn, another of the principal upland crops, usually goes into the ground in January, by which time the rice crop is almost ready for harvest. It would be unlikely, then, for men to journey down to the coast before late February, for to do so would run counter to their most effective subsistence strategy. (According to locals, women did not become migrant workers.) An exception, of course, would be the landless, but the local need for labor probably would be sufficient to keep them home in any case. Coastal fields, according to Hoorweg (1911:103), are planted in November. The next period in the cultivation of crops requiring intensive labor would be during harvest—about five months later, during March. It is in March, too, that the monsoon begins to swing to a westward direction and give favorable winds to Mandar sailors. In my reckoning, it seems likely that upland men would travel to the coast to find work at this time: the upland harvest would have been over, and the agricultural cycle required few labor inputs from males until July. At the same time, the coast could absorb the influx of manpower. March would also be a suitable time to carry forest products to the coast, especially if boats that had brought imported goods were readying to sail away with regional exports.