Even at this late date, the Moluccas’ largest island is shrouded in mystery. With a forbidding interior marked by a chain of huge peaks, Seram is as much a place in the imagination as a physical island of rock, jungle and sand. The Seramese are reported to possess strange faculties, allowing them to disappear at will, or transport their bodies hundreds of kilometers away. And these are not prior games—the indigenous peoples, generically called Alfur, have a history of settling scores with enemy heads.
The Amboynese refer to their large, mountainous neighbor with a mixture of respect and awe. They call Seram the Nusa Ina, or “Mother Island”. To the Amboynese, Seram is the source of adapt customary practice, which is central to village life, particularly the pela system of village alliances. Legend even places the beginnings of agriculture on Seram. A beautiful princess, it is told, after being spurned in a love affair, ordered herself killed, cut into pieces and buried. The different limbs of the poor girl then grew into the various root crops (yams, taro, manioc) that now provide the region’s staple diet.
Seram is the largest island in Molucca, and covers 18410 square kilometers, about half the size of the Netherlands. The island stretches 340 kilometers east to west. The tallest peak in the chain of high mountains is Mount Binaija, which reaches 3055 meters. Much of the island is densely wooded, mountainous, but not volcanic. Seram’s eastern point is less mountainous, and is dominated by spreading lowlands and swamps. There are three great bays evenly spaced along the island’s south coast, and one in the middle of the north shore.
In colonial times, the dark-skinned peoples of Seram and other Moluccan islands were called Alfur, from the Portuguese alifuro. The unflattering appellation was synonymous with “savage,” as the members of these tribes were head-hunters and warriors, and generally conducted themselves in a way of which the Europeans did not approve. Today, the term Alfur has taken on al almost honorific connotation, perhaps because the Seramese people are known as being the source of much of Amboyna’s adat.
The Alfur are ethnically distinct form the Austronesian (Malay) people who make up most of Indonesia’s population today. Ethnically they are of Papuan stock, the aboriginal inhabitants of the region. The west and east Seramese are racially somewhat different, with the people from West Seram belonging to the same race as the ethnic Amboynese and other Lease Islanders.
According to colonial accounts, the peoples of Seram varied form fierce head-hunters to peaceful farmers. The most trouble for the Europeans came from the warlike Patasiwa Hitam, who lived in the mountainous interior. A 19th century report notes that, like the Dayaks of Borneo, the Alfurs require a head be chopped off to consecrate a marriage. A pre-World War II account calls the Patasiwa Hitam “among the most feared head-hunters in the Indies…giving the Dutch much trouble.” The same account says the “central districts are inhabited by mixed Alfur tribes, of a more peaceable disposition: the Patasiwa Putih, Patalima and Seti.” The hills and marshes of eastern Seram shelter a Papuan people, the Bonfia, who are shy, unwarlike and culturally distinct from the Alfurs.
Even today, the inhabitants of Seram’s interior are credited with a plethora of magical powers, including the ability to kill an adversary with magic, to render themselves invisible, and to “fly” on sago palm leaves, this last apparently requiring that someone first must be murdered with a metal object. Well-educated Christian Amboynese recount these abilities with curious precision. For instance, one informant said, these gifted Seramese men can hop from Seram to Amboyna, pick up a cold beer, and be back in less than a minute.
The most feared of these are the Bati shaman-warriors, who not only can fly through the air and render themselves invisible, but also possess notorious homicidal tendencies. With the Bati, these powers will be turned against perpetrators (breaking a taboo, failing an adat obligation, even slighting a warrior) to bring swift and supernatural justice. Some of the Bati tribe send their children to school. But the kids have learned enough magic before leaving home. When they need money, it is said, a rice-winnowing tray, offerings of tobacco and mantras are all that is needed to produce the cash.
Few outsiders—and no anthropologists so far—have had contact with the Seram supermen. One account does mention a Seramese group called the Kakehan as harboring the only secret men’s society in Indonesia. Even though many people from the interior have now moved to the coast, according to one recent account they still maintain the suane, the village ritual house where sacred valuables are stored, in their old mountain villages near the spirits.
(PeriPlus)