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The religion of these people, if it deserves the name, resembles much what has been described of the Battas; but their mode of disposing of their dead is different, and analogous rather to the practice of the Southsea islanders, the corpse, being deposited on a sort of stage in a place appropriated for the purpose, and with a few leaves strewed over it, is left to decay.
The Battas are in their persons rather below the stature of the Malays, and their complexions are fairer; which may perhaps be owing to their distance, for the most part, from the sea, an element they do not at all frequent.
I could give you many more details, but the above may be sufficient to show that our friends the Battas are even worse than you have represented them, and that those who are still sceptical have yet more to learn. I have also a great deal to say on the other side of the character, for the Battas have many virtues. I prize them highly.
Mention is made of the Battas and their peculiar customs by the following early writers: NICOLO DI CONTI, 1449. They are continually at war with their neighbours, preserve the skulls of their enemies as treasure, dispose of them as money, and he is accounted the richest man who has most of them in his house."
The interior inhabitants from Achin to Singkel are distinguished into those of Allas, Riah, and Karrau. The Achinese manners prevail among the two former; but the last resemble the Battas, from whom they are divided by a range of mountains.
Proceeded on our journey to Batang Onan, the kampong where the Malays used to purchase the cassia from the Battas. After about three hours walk over an open hilly country we again came into thick woods, in which we were obliged to pass the night. The next morning we crossed another ridge of very high hills, covered entirely with woods. In these we saw the wild benzoin-tree.
So memorable an event as the elevation of a Xerif to the throne would have been long preserved by annals or tradition, and the sultan in the list of his titles would not fail to boast of this sacred extraction from the prophet, to which however he does not at all allude; and to this we may add that the superstitious veneration attached to the family extends itself not only where Mahometanism has made a progress, but also among the Battas and other people still unconverted to that faith, with whom it would not be the case if the claim to such respect was grounded on the introduction of a foreign religion which they have refused to accept.
The Battas eat it as a species of ceremony; as a mode of showing their detestation of certain crimes by an ignominious punishment; and as a savage display of revenge and insult to their unfortunate enemies.
"In the month of July 1805 an expedition consisting of Sepoys, Malays, and Battas was sent from Tapanuli against a chief named Punei Manungum, residing at Negatimbul, about thirty miles inland from Old Tapanuli, in consequence of his having attacked a kampong under the protection of the company, murdered several of the inhabitants, and carried others into captivity.
Notwithstanding the independent spirit of the Battas, and their contempt of all power that would affect a superiority over their little societies, they have a superstitious veneration for the sultan of Menangkabau, and show blind submission to his relations and emissaries, real or pretended, when such appear among them for the purpose of levying contributions: even when insulted and put in fear of their lives they make no attempt at resistance: they think that their affairs would never prosper; that their padi would be blighted, and their buffaloes die; that they would remain under a kind of spell for offending those sacred messengers.
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