The Dutch and Indonesian Periods

Dutch patrols passed through Bambang for the first time during the 1906-7 mountain campaigns, and by 1912 civil administration was in place, the Dutch having set up small posts at Mambi and Aralle. The next twenty years brought many changes: the abrupt cessation of slavery, the introduction of taxes, the arrival of Bugis traders and the opening of the first upland marketplaces (at Mambi and Aralle, c. 1925), the considerable loss of life to famine in 1913 and to the epidemic of 1918, and the arrival of Christianity. Resistance to the Dutch was sporadic and of little consequence, showing none of the anti-colonial millenarianism noted in Central Sulawesi

(Adriani & Kruyt 1950 [1912]; Atkinson 1989; van der Kroef 1970). Indeed, Bambang remained something of an administrative backwater, never subject to the prolonged and intense colonial intrusion that occurred in Sa'dan or Bugis territory. After administrative reorganization of the region in 1924, the nearest civil and military posts of any importance were at Mamasa and Mamuju (40 and 60 kilometers distant, respectively), and colonial officers seldom interfered with the tomatuatonda' (village head) and indona lira' (territory leader) who were already in place, except to enforce collection of taxes and to make sure villagers adhered to Dutch policy and directives (cf. Smit 1937).

When the Dutch arrived in the highlands, the social and ideological enclave at Bambang was intact but still recovering from the ToSalu raids 30 years earlier. The upstream district was a hearth of mappurondo activity, whereas Mambi was fully Muslim, if nominally so.^[9] It was no accident, then, that the Dutch missions ignored Mambi and devoted their efforts to converting the tomalillin ("people of the dark") in Bambang. In contrast to the social and historical forces that brought Islam to the mountains, Christianity arrived in the person of colonial and mission figures who were interested in direct administrative rule. There probably was little the mappurondo community could do to keep Christianity out of Bambang. A story is told about the Indona Bambang in the first years of Dutch rule. Faced with the dilemma of either forsaking local tradition or defying Dutch authority, he decided to subject Christianity to trial and curse:

They say he said, "lf the adat of the ToSarani [Christians] is good, Bambang will prosper. If it brings ruin, it will be gored on the horns of this water buffalo:"

The water buffalo—by tradition the grandest sacrificial animal—is an emblem of ada' mappurondo. Resonating within the declaration, then, was the threat that Christianity risked being gored on the horns of ada' mappurondo. Things did not turn out well. Before a year had passed, the Indona Bambang was dead—gored, it is said, by the very water buffalo to which he had pointed when making his declaration about Christianity.

The message was not lost on the mappurondo community. Yet there remained enormous flux and ambiguity in the reception of Christianity at Bambang. Impressive baptismal figures (Atlas 1925) and glowing reports about the conversion of the entire district (Veen 1933) at best reflect a transient and misunderstood engagement with the church. For example, initial mission work commenced in 1912 under the aegis of the Indische Protestantsche Kerk (the Indies Protestant Church) but amounted to little

more than mass baptisms by an itinerant missionary (Krüger 1966; Rauws 1930; Veen 1933).^[10] Schools were built with government assistance at Karakean and Rantelemo, and the Ambonese teachers installed there baptized nearly 2,500 persons (Atlas 1925:129; Krüger 1966:127). Yet elders today still remember these zealous Ambonese and insist that baptism was misconstrued at the time as a directive from the colonial administration. Indeed, a report on Bambang's local leadership written in the mid-1930s suggests that the church was yet to gain wide and lasting influence (Smit 1937).

The Protestantsche Kerk was unable to sustain its mission in the uplands, and so, in 1927, surrendered the evangelical field to the more conservative and pietistic Christliche Gereformeerd Kerk (Christian Reformed Church), the church that was to oversee the area until 1942 (Krüger 1966). The missionaries Bikker and Geleynse surveyed Bambang, and responsibility for Christian life there passed to Geleynse, who took brief residence at Lasodehata (Rantepalado) in 1930. His impact was comparatively modest, for later that year Geleynse opted to oversee this district from Mela'bo, a Mamasa Toraja village 30 kilometers from the settlements at Bambang. Few conversions took place, and many of those baptized earlier simply continued mappurondo practices without any pretense of being Christian. Locals mention that those who did convert often did so with the idea of winning Dutch support for their political ambitions; in other cases, sons or daughters of the elite were encouraged to convert in order to advance through the schools.

Missionary activity ceased with the Japanese occupation, and by 1950, the year Sulawesi joined the Republic of Indonesia, Christianity had only a limited foothold in Bambang, claiming but a few households in any village, save at Rantelemo and Karakean, where Christian missions and schools had succeeded in forming stable communities and a cadre of leaders. The fledgling Gereja Toraja Mamasa (the Mamasa Toraja Church) had by this time assumed control of the churches in Bambang and began to intensify its efforts in converting the district. Yet it was not until the early 1970s that large numbers abandoned ada' mappurondo for the GTM, a time when those supposedly lacking religion became suspect in the eyes of an Indonesian bureaucracy prone to associating lack of faith in God with subversive, procommunist leanings.

Mission figures were not without influence in cultural and ethnic politics. Throughout the colonial and early independence periods there were efforts to incorporate Bambang (and all of Pitu Ulunna Salu, for that matter) politically and ethnically within the Toraja sphere. Several civil officers who oversaw Pitu Ulunna Salu acknowledged the area's cultural and economic ties to

the Mandar coast (e.g. Hoorweg 1911; Maurenbrecher 1947), however, and consistently argued against incorporation. The people of Bambang, for their part, viewed the Mamasa Toraja as political and cultural subordinates, and protested the political realignment of the mountain region, to little avail. Although Bambang and the rest of Pitu Ulunna Salu remained within Afdeeling Mandar , they were merged with the Mamasa Toraja to form a single administrative subdivision, or onderafdeeling , called Boven Binoeang en Pitoe Oeloenna Saloe —Upper Binuang and Pitu Ulunna Salu (1924, Staatsblad No. 467). Thereafter, Mamasa acted as a political, cultural, and economic center for the onderafdeeling, with the consequence of bringing about the political and cultural marginalization of Bambang and Pitu Ulunna Salu in the hinterland region.

From 1950 through 1965, banditry and rebellion troubled the area. The devoutly Muslim rebels led by Kahar Muzakkar took control of Mambi in 1958 and seemed poised to assault Bambang. Bambang organized rapidly under the ToIssilita' leaders of OPR , or Organisasi Pertahanan Rakyat (Ind. People's Defense Organization), who operated secretly from Saludengen. With aid from nationalist Battalion 710, Bambang attacked Mambi, driving the rebels and most of Mambi's townsfolk back to the coast near Mamuju. Not long after, treachery and rapacity on the part of the Bugis-led 710 caused the OPR to break off the alliance. OPR forced 710 to retreat to Mamasa, and then sealed off all trails into Bambang until civil order was restored fully in 1964.