ABSTRACT

Body culture consists of body cultures, and body cultures meet in history. An introductory case shows such an encounter – and its problems. In the beginning of

the 20th century, people of the Mentawai islands at the west coast of Sumatra (Indonesia) entered for first time into contact with the Dutch colonial power, which was dominating Indonesia at that time. Living in longhouses and clans along the rivers in the equatorial rain forest, the Mentawaians had kept to their so-called ‘Stone-Age’ culture. The ‘mild savages’, as they were also called by Westerners, lived in an ‘original affluent society’, without villages, without chieftains, but rich in festivities and shamanic rituals. When the Mentawaians met with colonial authorities, this isolation was broken and led to processes of cultural learning and astonishment. An old Mentawaian told about an episode with a Dutch military officer:

But once we were not content with him. He said that we should come down to the coast and take bow and arrows with us. There they had prepared all very beautiful and waited for us on a large place. We got meal and drinking, and then they took a coconut and asked us to shoot after it. We did so, and when one of us hit the nut they cheered and screamed, as if we had hit an ape and not a coconut. At the end we received our reward and could go home again. But what was not correct after our opinion was that we did not receive equally. Some received a lot, and others did not receive anything at all. We all became a little bit angry in our hearts. But what should we do? They are as they are …

When asked who those had been who received more, he answered:

Yes, this is exactly what we did not understand. It was purely coincidental. It was quite independent from which clan they came.1