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Updated: June 2, 2025
As the steamer rounds the savage promontories, and threads the blue straits formed by two rocky islets at the northern extremity, the weird and desolate landscape conveys a strange sense of separation even from the alien humanity which peoples the far-reaching peninsula of the Minahasa, and this northern extremity appears a limitless waste.
The latticed screens pushed back from open verandahs, show Japanese-looking rooms, furnished with the European lamps, chairs, and tables, exported by thousands to the Minahasa, but the same atmosphere of stagnation broods over these quiet villages, and even the children, returning from a bamboo schoolhouse on the edge of the forest, show the staid and solemn demeanour of their elders.
We reach the white Dutch town of Tondano as the clock strikes ten, but everyone is in bed at this dissipated hour, and difficulty is experienced even in getting admission to the little Hotel, though the delight of finding an English-speaking landlord atones for a somewhat ungracious reception after a long and painful pilgrimage, which should serve as a solemn warning against the rash attempt to penetrate the wilds of the Minahasa under native guidance.
The people of the Minahasa, Christianised after the Calvinistic methods of Dutch and German missionaries a century ago, have always been specially favoured by the Government of Holland, and large sums are annually expended in improving the status of this distant colony.
Tribal insurrections continually recur in the great Archipelago, where a storm in a teacup often swells into dangerous proportions, and the peaceful adherence of the Minahasa to the powers that be becomes an important factor in turbulent Celebes.
The people, in aspect and feature, also convey suggestions of the Japanese origin ascribed to them, for ancient traditions assert that the Minahasa was colonised by an Asiatic tribe, driven out of Formosa by native savages, in one of those wild raids upon the peaceful maritime population which drove them to face the perils of an unknown sea, rather than fall into the ruthless hands of the bloodthirsty aborigines who inhabited the forests and mountains of the interior.
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