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Updated: June 26, 2025
This was written on' what looked like the very thin bark of a tree; it was glossy, slightly green, several feet long, and somewhat broader than one inch; the characters in which it was written were small, and had to be read horizontally. In all these particulars the letter resembled the books of magic which are still written by the Battas of inland Sumatra.
And truly it is not to be wondered at, that the very reverend Anthony strove after the conversion of fish. For, whoso shall Christianize, and by so doing, humanize the sharks, will do a greater good, by the saving of human life in all time to come, than though he made catechumens of the head-hunting Dyaks of Borneo, or the blood-bibbing Battas of Sumatra.
The town is situated about a league from the coast, and two leagues farther inland are eight small villages inhabited by Battas, the inhabitants of which purchase the camphor and benzoin from the people of the Diri mountains, extending from the southward of Singkel to the hill of Lasa, behind Barus, where the Tobat district commences.
Polygamy is not allowed among them; no man has more than one wife; they burn their dead. They are said to shoot poisoned balls or arrows through hollow tubes; and whenever they kill a man, they preserve the skull to exhibit as a trophy to commemorate the achievement of their arms. They are said to have no mode of communicating their ideas by characters or writing, like the Battas.
He has made a book of travels, and will make a hundred, unless somebody finds him a place at home where he will have an indefinite number of labors-of-Hercules to keep him busy, or unless some African prince cuts his head off, or he happens to call upon the Battas about their Thanksgiving-time.
I am assured that the Battas are more attached to these laws than the Mahomedans are to the Koran, and that the number of the punishments is very considerable.
Gunpowder is manufactured in various parts of the island, but less in the southern provinces than amongst the people of Menangkabau, the Battas, and Achinese, whose frequent wars demand large supplies.
About Pontiana and Sambas they are called Dayers; at Benjarmasing, Biajus; at Borneo Proper, Moruts; farther northward, Orang Idan. Their original history is as much enveloped in obscurity as that of the Monocaboes of Malaya, the Rejangs and Battas of Sumatra, or the Togals of the Philippines.
The following occurrence was related by Missionary von Asselt, a Rhenish missionary in Sumatra from 1856-76, when on a visit to Lubeck: "When I first went to Sumatra, in the year 1856 I was the first European missionary to go among the wild Battas, although twenty years prior, two American missionaries had come to them with the gospel; but they had been killed and eaten.
The Battas, inhabitants of the northern end of Sumatra, whom I shall describe hereafter, use the word daibattah or daivattah; the Chingalese of Ceylon dewiju, the Telingas of India dai-wundu, the Biajus of Borneo dewattah, the Papuas of New Guinea 'wat, and the Pampangos of the Philippines diuata.
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