Formation of the Topasses in the shadow / informal Portuguese empire

The survival of a Portuguese enclave in eastern Timor after every surrounding island area was absorbed into the newly founded Indonesian Republic in 1950 has remained a source of curiosity and even grudging admiration. A few indulged in the tenuous claims that this success was a result of liberal Portuguese attitudes toward partnership and intermarriage with their colonised populations. In such speculations the emphasis has usually been on the strength of the Portuguese cultural heritage that enabled Portuguese mestiço communities to champion the cause of the Portuguese empire. While there is some truth in such claims, the reality is far more complex. The success of the Portuguese in maintaining themselves in eastern Timor was due to a distinctive group of people termed by early Europeans ‘Topasses’ or the ‘black Portuguese’. They led a social, cultural and political existence midway between the indigenous and Portuguese communities, and they enjoyed as well as suffered the consequences of such a status. The Topasses were very much a creation of the Portuguese colonial experience and were typical of other similar groups that emerged after the gradual decline of the formal Portuguese colonial empire and the emergence of a worldwide informal Portuguese empire in the Atlantic and the Pacific.Footnote ¹⁴

It was in the seventeenth and primarily in the eighteenth century that the Portuguese were finally able to ensure their continuing presence on Timor, despite their difficult relations with the Dutch. This story, however, is not a clear-cut Portuguese versus Dutch rivalry with the aid of their respective Timorese allies, though this is how it is often depicted in historical accounts. By closely examining the contemporary records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the occasional travellers' accounts, and Timorese oral traditions that have been collected and published since the previous century, the complexity of the role of the Topasses comes more into focus. Previous scholarship has highlighted the role of the Topasses in the preservation of Portuguese rule in Timor, but this outcome was secondary to the group's real concern to adapt and survive in the Timorese world. Their story is similar to other ‘black Portuguese’ communities that arose elsewhere in the extensive Portuguese overseas world.Footnote ¹⁵

The official empire of the Estado da India gradually began to be dismantled in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Mainly responsible for its demise was the VOC, founded in 1602 by the union of competing Dutch trading companies operating in the East Indies. It began with enormous capital resources from the various member companies, and it enjoyed the patronage of the Dutch States-General. Though it was principally an economic enterprise, its links to the States-General added a political thrust to its activities. The directors of the Company were instructed to inflict as much damage on the enemy whenever they were encountered. When the Iberian Crowns were united in 1580, Portugal became an enemy of the Dutch provinces which were in a midst of a war for independence from Spain. In Asia, where the Portuguese were especially vulnerable, the VOC seized a string of Portuguese posts that were established to facilitate the shipment of the profitable trade in cloves, nutmeg and mace from Maluku to Europe. The Dutch took the Portuguese fort settlement in Ambon in 1605 and established a post in Ternate in 1609. Melaka resisted initial attempts at conquest but eventually also fell to the VOC, with the aid of Malay allies, in 1641.Footnote ¹⁶

The fall of Melaka had a demoralising effect on the Portuguese because Melaka was essentially the second capital of the Estado da India. Footnote ¹⁷ Moreover, it was a key node in the lucrative intra-Asian network that extended from Goa in the west coast of India to the Spice Islands in eastern Indonesia and to Macau. It housed a bishopric and was a major centre for the major religious orders seeking to extend the mission throughout Asia. After the defeat of Melaka, there was a large outflow of Portuguese and their extensive following to the port of Makassar in the kingdom of Gowa in South Sulawesi. Makassar had been an important collecting centre for cloves, nutmeg and mace from northern Maluku, and of sandalwood from the Solor archipelago and Timor. The enlightened rulers of the twin kingdom of Gowa and Tallo welcomed the refugees from Melaka to their kingdom, as they had others in the past.Footnote ¹⁸

Building on the goodwill that had developed over the years between the Portuguese and the local rulers and inhabitants, the displaced Portuguese were able to resuscitate part of their former trade.Footnote ¹⁹ But even this state of affairs proved short-lived, as the VOC sought to undermine and control the kingdom of Gowa-Tallo in order to maintain its aim of monopolising the spices of eastern Indonesia. In 1660 it forced Gowa-Tallo to sign a treaty to expel the Portuguese and other Europeans from Makassar. The Portuguese entrepreneur and trader Francisco Vieira de Figueiredo offered to take the common people to Solor and Larantuka, but most preferred to go to Batavia and were thus brought there on Dutch ships. The exodus of Portuguese from Makassar continued for the next few years to Flores, Solor, Timor, Macao, Batavia and Siam. Vieira and several of the more important members of the community, however, remained longer under one or another pretext.Footnote ²⁰

Solor Archipelago and Timor

Many of the Portuguese moved to the Solor archipelago and Timor, which proved to be the last bastions of Portuguese control in eastern Indonesia. The Estado was never interested in this area, and so the Dominicans came to exercise considerable influence in the Portuguese administration, even nominating the Portuguese Captain of Solor and Timor up to the mid-1580s.Footnote ²¹ Only at the beginning of the eighteenth century did the Estado begin demonstrating an active interest in the region by appointing a Portuguese Governor and Captain-General for the area and by seriously considering new measures of control, such as the Regimento do governador capitão-geral das ilhas de Solor e Timor (Regulation of the Governor and Captain-General of the Islands of Solor and Timor).Footnote ²²

Portuguese overseas settlements usually consisted of the European Portuguese officials, soldiers, merchants and priests; the Portuguese mestiço; and foreign Asian (mainly Indian) Christians, and the native Christians. While inevitably there was a hierarchy of social and political status among them, they shared a common adherence to Catholicism, allegiance to the Portuguese Crown, a working knowledge of the Portuguese language and a ‘Portuguese’ identity. To distinguish the different kinds of ‘Portuguese’ operating in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, the Dutch began to distinguish between the ‘white’, meaning European, and the ‘black’, non-European, Portuguese. In Melaka, Makassar and the Solor archipelago in the first half of the sixteenth century, the non-European Portuguese had a lower position than the European within the social and political hierarchy. While there would have been obvious disgruntlement and even the occasional violent reaction to the unfairness of the system, the shared culture and religion did alleviate much of the tension that would have arisen in these Portuguese colonial settlements. These were differences within a shared cultural world, which distinguished all Portuguese from the foreign lands and societies in which they lived. Confronted by a competing and increasingly hostile world, the formal and informal sector of the Portuguese colonial world usually relied upon one another for support and even survival. Yet as the authority of the formal Portuguese empire declined, the informal empire came to be dominated by the non-European Portuguese, as was the case in eastern Indonesia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

With the weakening of the position of the Estado, the black Portuguese came to represent the ‘Portuguese’ in the Solor archipelago and Timor and its surrounding islands. In the Malay-Indonesian archipelago the black Portuguese included the Portuguese mestiço (offspring of a Portuguese father with indigenous mother), many of the Mardijkers (freed slaves of mainly Indian origins who had become Christian), the Pampangans (Philippine mercenaries who had once served under the Spaniards) and native Christians.Footnote ²³ They shared an adherence to Catholicism, varying degrees of facility in the Portuguese language, Asian blood and close association with an Asian culture. In time the quantum of Portuguese blood in the veins of these ‘mestiços’ would have been diluted, but this was only of importance to the ‘white’, not the ‘black’, Portuguese. For the latter the idea of ‘Portuguese’ was a holistic notion of a transcendent identity manifest in Catholic religious rites, in the possession or wearing of any Portuguese (i.e. European) garment, no matter how tattered or incomplete, the mastery of some words of the Portuguese language and a genealogy demonstrating the longevity of a Portuguese family name. For the black Portuguese, these were meaningful signs to distinguish them from the local population.

The Topasses of the Solor archipelago and Timor were one such black Portuguese group. The name ‘Topasses’ can be traced to the Hindustani word ‘topi’ meaning ‘hat’. This appears to be the most acceptable explanation since the Portuguese called this group ‘gente dos chapeos’, or the ‘hat people’, because of their practice of wearing European hats whenever they appeared in public.Footnote ²⁴ Two families are particularly important in the history of the Topasses: the Hornay and the da Costa. The former trace their origins to an Amsterdammer, Jan de Hornay, who arrived in the East Indies in 1617 as an employee of the VOC.Footnote ²⁵ In 1624 he was appointed as the Chief Factor (Opperkoopman) at the Dutch post on the island of Solor and became commander of Ft. Henricus from 1626 to 1629. Hornay incurred the wrath of VOC Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen for agreeing without Batavia's permission to an armed truce with the Portuguese at Larantuka. Fearful of punishment for this and perhaps of some trade deals from which he benefited personally, Hornay fled with his Solorese wife to Larantuka. Under Portuguese protection, Hornay led a successful life trading between Makassar, the Solor archipelago and Timor until 1638. He became the progenitor of the famous Hornay clan, which was better known in Timor as ‘Ornai’.Footnote ²⁶

The other important family in the history of the Topasses in the Solor archipelago and Timor was da Costa, known also in Timor as Kosta or Kosat. The ancestor of this family is shrouded in legend. Pieter Middelkoop, who interviewed members of the da Costa family in Kupang sometime in the last century, was told that their founding ancestor originated from Ambon. Middelkoop then speculated that he was probably part of a group of Portuguese Jews who had been deported to Sao Thomé in India. He was converted to Catholicism, joined the Portuguese military, and on his way to Ambon was shipwrecked at Oekussi in Timor.Footnote ²⁷ The ‘shipwreck’ theme is also recorded in a Timorese tradition collected by G. Heijmering in the mid-nineteenth century. According to this story, da Costa was descended from a Johor Malay who had embraced Christianity. While on a ship from Melaka bound for Timor, he was shipwrecked but managed to reach his destination. He remained in Timor and married a woman from the Ambenu royal family.Footnote ²⁸ Another version of the tale mentions that da Costa was a Portuguese merchant from Melaka.Footnote ²⁹ A less dramatic and more prosaic suggestion is that ‘Costa’, meaning ‘coast’, is a reference to the Coromandel Coast where many of the members of the black Portuguese originated.Footnote ³⁰ The mysterious background of the progenitor of this major black Portuguese family contributes to the family's status and is very much part of a well-known tradition of stranger kings in the region, as explained below.

The first major settlement of the Topasses was at Larantuka at the eastern end of the island of Flores. After the Dutch seized the Portuguese fort and settlement on Solor in 1613, there were some 450 ‘blacks’ and mestiço among the 100 soldiers and 1,000 civilians who left the island. Most went to Melaka but seven priests and a number of mestiço went to Larantuka.Footnote ³¹ Although it was the main Portuguese post for the Solor archipelago and Timor, it was described by the Dutch as a place without any trade items. The small quantities of food available in Larantuka were said to be of such poor quality that the people were forced to import food from neighbouring islands. For these reasons it was rumoured that the Portuguese were considering moving from Larantuka to Mena in eastern Timor.Footnote ³² Yet the black and white Portuguese thrived because they operated successfully within the vibrant trading world of eastern Indonesia. By 1623 the Topasses (then also called ‘Larantuqueiros’ because of their principal settlement at Larantuka) had become prominent on the northern coast of Timor, and then in 1659 the Dutch reported that they were planning to move to Timor.Footnote ³³ They were even willing to employ force in order to gain trade advantage. In 1650 some 2,000 men from the Catholic community of Konga in eastern Flores, including Portuguese mestiço and local Christians, joined the Sonba'i ruler in Timor against his enemies with the promise of gaining an advantage in the sandalwood trade and the future profits of a gold mine.Footnote ³⁴

The Topasses gradually created the conditions for their acceptance as a separate ethnic community and as a Timorese kingdom with a legitimate native ruler. A large number had ancestors who had joined the exodus from Melaka in 1641 and from Makassar between 1660 and 1667 to come to the Solor archipelago and Timor. By the late seventeenth century, many were offspring of marriages between the refugees and local women. Steeped in indigenous culture, fluent in a local language, and increasingly related by blood or marriage to local families, the Topasses came to be accepted as part of the Solor–Timorese political and social landscape. At the same time they were distinguished from the others by their strong adherence to Catholicism and Portuguese culture, their fondness of sprinkling their own native language with Portuguese terms if unable to speak Portuguese itself, and their insistence on wearing ‘Portuguese’ clothing at solemn occasions. These were meaningful and precious markers of ‘Portuguese’ identity, which they jealously guarded as their birthright. It would not have been lost on the other local communities that the Topasses possessed not only access to two separate cultural traditions but also to two different sources of spiritual power.

Timorese and Portuguese elements in the identity of the Topasses

The merging of indigenous Timorese and Christian traditions was at the heart of Topasses identity, and the combining of these sources of power made the Topasses appear particularly invincible in the minds of the local populations. As products of both European and local cultures, the black Portuguese would have been aware of the importance of the concept of le'u among the Timorese community.Footnote ³⁵ The term le'u has been defined as ‘life principle’ or more commonly as ‘sacred’. This quality is not simply in the possession of the individual, but also of the family and the clan. It is this idea of a collective le'u, whose sacramental power is only known to the elders, that was so important to the missionaries. The revelation that the individual is not separate but an intimate, indivisible part of the community convinced at least one missionary that mass conversion was a real possibility.Footnote ³⁶Le'u can be lost temporarily or permanently if it falls into improper hands or if it is unexpectedly (onverhoeds) revealed in public. For this reason le'u objects are carefully guarded and maintained. The life principle or sacredness was said to reside in a variety of objects representing both the male (gunpowder horns, astrology stones in hunting and warfare, etc) and the female (cooking pots, pots for dyes, and other fertility attributes) elements. The le'u objects were obviously regarded by the missionaries as too powerful to leave untouched. For this reason they made it a requirement that, before they agreed to administer baptism to the newly converted, the le'u had to be brought to the church and formally burned or destroyed.Footnote ³⁷

While le'u objects forming the sacred regalia of the community were the most treasured and protected, there were other aspects of the le'u concept that had precise meaning for individuals. For those in Amanuban and Amanatun, and most likely for most Timorese, le'u also had the meaning of ‘medicine’ in the sense of ‘healing power’.Footnote ³⁸ The link between le'u as ‘life principle’/‘sacred’ and ‘curative power’ is one that is found in other societies and most often manifested in curing rites employing trance. In the trance the spiritual medium undertakes a journey to the beginning of time, to the period of the great Creation. Here s/he restores the original life-giving properties that have been lost or destroyed, thereby enabling the sick to be healed.Footnote ³⁹Le'u was said to reside also in stones or high rocky places, including mountain peaks. There are many places in Timor that contain ‘le'u’ in their names (Tua Le'u, Kua Le'u, Oè Le'u, etc), indicating the special awe and reverence with which they were regarded by the local population. Middelkoop lists five different forms of le'u: le'u nono (fertility magic), le'u fenu (medicine from candlenut, fenu, applied at pregnancy and childbirth), le'u abanat (leaves of a tree to tame wild buffaloes and sacrifices after harvest to make buffaloes healthy and fertile), le'u kinat (magic for the preparation of the proper dyes for cloth) and le'u musu (literally, ‘enmity magic’). All of these, except for the last, are related to the idea of fertility and wholeness. Middelkoop regarded le'u musu as somewhat special, which incorporated ‘a vast complex of ideas and feelings … connected with a strong belief in transcendental justice’.Footnote ⁴⁰

Middelkoop devotes an entire chapter to the Timorese idea of ‘enmity as a sphere in the cosmos’. He argues that the Timorese regard strangers from overseas ‘as enemies from the sphere of the spirits of the war-waging ancestors’. Such a perception of the unseen world mirrored the actual human condition in Timor, where frequent intertribal conflict and headhunting were a way of life into the colonial period. The le'u musu is therefore a real and ever-present fate that hangs over the lives of the Timorese.Footnote ⁴¹ Andrew McWilliam glossed the term as ‘mystical power over warfare’, which describes best the spiritual aspect of warfare that prevailed in these times. But as he explains, le'u musu was just one aspect of the indigenous belief in the world of the ancestors, spirits and the supreme being.Footnote ⁴² As in the other aspects of le'u described above, there is with le'u musu a positive side in which ancestral power can also be harnessed for the good of the community. A major objective of such enmity, for example the taking of heads, fulfils a fertility function and the demands of ancestral retribution. When the Portuguese first penetrated Timor in the sixteenth century, they were also greeted with fear and suspicion as enemies from the sphere of the spirits. Yet their subsequent activities also demonstrated their possession of strong spiritual powers that were attractive to any ambitious Timorese ruler. It was this attitude among the Timorese leaders, combined with the appreciation of the role of the le'u musu by the leaders of the Topasses, which resulted in their forging such a strong alliance against the Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

There is, however, another aspect of the tale of the stranger from overseas that is well known as the ‘stranger-king’ complex. It is the belief found in many societies, including those of Timor, of the coming of a stranger from abroad who marries the daughter of the local lord and becomes ruler of the land. The cosmic dualisms represented by the stranger (sky, land, male, rule) and the indigenous princess (earth, sea, female, fecundity) are legitimised in the union, bringing wholeness to the society. Though violence may be involved in the process, the foreign is culturally domesticated and socially integrated into the indigenous society.Footnote ⁴³ Timorese culture thus prepared the people to accept the black Portuguese as stranger kings in their midst. In the activities of the Topasses, the stranger-king myth was obviously a factor in their ability to marry into the households of many of the important centralised chiefdoms on Timor. In this way they were culturally domesticated and socially integrated, though retaining their Portuguese identity as a crucial reminder and legitimation of their stranger-king status.

The other part of Topasses identity consisted of elements associated with the Portuguese, of which the most important was Catholicism. A Portuguese priest, António Taveira, was the first to conduct successful missionary activities in Solor and Timor sometime after 1522. Then in 1561 the first Bishop of Melaka, a Dominican, sent four members of his Order to establish a permanent mission, and in 1566 a fort was constructed at Lohayong on Solor that was large enough to house four churches.Footnote ⁴⁴ Under the fort's shadows arose a large European, mestiço and native Christian community. The fort itself was built from alms collected in Macau, and the garrison was paid by the Dominicans who then had the right to select its commander with confirmation from Melaka. Another fort was built on the island of Ende off the south coast of Flores. Its primary purpose was to protect the ever-expanding mission, which by 1577 had claimed some 50,000 converts in the Solor archipelago and Timor.Footnote ⁴⁵ In 1596 a seminary with an initial intake of 50 students was built in Larantuka, and it became the centre of Catholicism when the Dutch seized the Portuguese fort at Lohayong in 1613. Though the Portuguese regained Lohayong in 1630, they abandoned it some six years later to return to Larantuka. In the meantime the Portuguese fort at Ende was also abandoned, thus making Larantuka the pre-eminent mission post for the Portuguese.Footnote ⁴⁶

After Portuguese Melaka fell to the Dutch in 1641, many of the Catholics, both European and native, accompanied the Episcopal Vicar and the Chapter of the Cathedral of Melaka in moving eastward to Makassar. They brought with them many of the priceless religious objects from the abandoned Catholic mission in Melaka. Makassar was a logical site for the refugees because it was the port city under the control of the enlightened rulers of Gowa-Tallo, who had demonstrated an openness to Christianity and had an excellent relationship with the Portuguese. Karaeng Patinggaloang of Tallo and the chief minister for the Gowa ruler was renowned for his fluency in Portuguese and his knowledge of Western sciences and languages.Footnote ⁴⁷ A frequent visitor to the Gowa-Tallo court was Francisco Vieiera de Figueiredo, with whom Karaeng Patinggaloang had frequent conversations.Footnote ⁴⁸

By 1651 there was a thriving Catholic population of 3,000 in Makassar, which could call upon the services of resident Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans. But after 1660 many of the local and European Catholics abandoned Makassar and took their religious objects to their new homes in Siam, Cambodia, Macau and Larantuka. The Portuguese Vicar General in Makassar, Father da Costa, fled with some of the Catholics to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, while another group under a Jesuit Father Roche brought with them a statue of the Virgin Mary and settled at Ponhea Lu in the same country.Footnote ⁴⁹ There were also those who established themselves in Konga in eastern Flores and in Wureh on the coast of the island of Adonara. Many carried with them Catholic objects to adorn their altars in their new environment. It is believed that the Dominicans who arrived in Larantuka brought their precious religious statuaries and images and most likely built the church of San Domingu.Footnote ⁵⁰ It was these sacred objects which came to be kept by influential local Catholic families in specially built sanctuaries and only exhibited to the public during the Easter celebrations.

Much of the aura and prestige associated with Catholicism in eastern Indonesia derived from the activities of the friars and priests. They were men of God and defenders of the faith. In that capacity they not only organised the building of fortifications but also often led their followers in actual combat. They were always small in number, and one friar or priest was often forced to administer to many separate and widely dispersed Christian communities at irregular intervals. Because there were so few priests for such a large religious community, they were highly valued. A sergeant was often dispatched as a bodyguard for the priest, a fact known from genealogies of some of the local families that list a Portuguese sergeant as one of their ancestors. In the strongly Catholic community of Sikka in eastern Flores, an old informant reflected on the times when four prominent individuals from the community were sent to Timor to study and to serve as hostages to guarantee the safety of the priest.Footnote ⁵¹

To the local people these priests represented a powerful spiritual force, whose symbols were ever present in the community. Among the Timorese the priests could have also been regarded as dato-lulik, a spiritual guardian able to cause misfortune to one's enemies.Footnote ⁵² Thus when the Dominicans were forced to abandon the area in the seventeenth century due to increasing pressure from the Dutch, they confidently created the confraternities (confreria) of leading men from the community, who were entrusted with the tasks of the priests. The confraternities have been described as ‘the most efficient religious institutions at the local level’, which organised processions, built and maintained religious buildings and equipment, guaranteed payment to priests, and provided social status to their members.Footnote ⁵³ Both in Larantuka and in Sikka, the Confraternity of the Queen of the Rosary became a well-respected and influential organisation led by a master and assisted by a ‘procurado’, whose duties were generally to comfort the ill and the dying, invite the congregation to attend to their Christian duties and seek the forgiveness of the Lord. More practically, they were responsible for teaching the catechism, administering baptism, maintaining the chapels, guarding the objects of worship and organising religious processions.Footnote ⁵⁴ These confraternities have continued to perform this function and are now a complementary (and at times, competing) part of the practice of Catholicism in these parts.

Local Catholics, particularly in Larantuka, continue to preserve their religious objects and images in special family chapels. This was not something peculiar to the black Portuguese but appeared to have been a way in which many of the societies in eastern Indonesia sought to tap into the source of spiritual power of ‘stranger-kings’ arriving from another world/sphere. The possession of actual objects, or even representations of such objects, associated with these strangers was deemed auspicious and power-laden. When the Dutch naval commander D.H. Kolff attended a gathering of the elders of the island of Damar in the early nineteenth century, he was struck by the sight of some 20 men wearing old felt hats with wide brims ‘not unlike those of the Westphalian workers’. He was told that the hats originated from the first Europeans who came to the island and constructed a fort. Others at the gathering had on old-fashioned tailed dress coats that were already well worn and thread-bare. ‘These antiquities’, observed Kolff wryly, ‘were hung like Westphalian ham in the smoke over the hearth in small chests to protect them from rot and insects’.Footnote ⁵⁵ The people of Damar, like the black Portuguese, regarded these objects with reverence, and they were only shown in public on very special occasions. The arrival of Kolff and his fleet was a mimetic event recalling the first Europeans/stranger kings on the island, thus providing an unprecedented opportunity to display and hence renew the potency of their regalia through proximity with the representatives of the original stranger kings.

A similar process can be seen in the special care taken by the black Portuguese to preserve their Catholic images, statuary and other religious objects in special chapels. As with any powerful regalia, and in keeping with local ideas of sacredness, these objects remained unseen and removed from the community until Easter. During Easter the original source of strength and identity for the black Portuguese community in the form of the statues and images of Mary and of the Christ child are brought out of their respective chapels for the special religious procession. In 1665 the Raja Larantuka was converted to Christianity and baptised with the name of Don Fransisco Ola Ado Bala Diaz Vieyra de Godinho or D.V.G. It was he who conducted a ceremony transferring the sovereignty and the golden-knobbed staff of the kingdom to the Virgin. From that day forward to the present, she is referred to by the black Portuguese communities as ‘Bunda Maria Reinha Rosari’, or ‘Mother Mary, Queen of the Rosary’.Footnote ⁵⁶

In the Easter procession of these images and statues, the people are provided an opportunity to renew their association with these protective figures and thus assure a year of prosperity. In the contemporary version, there is a long and emotional evening procession on Good Friday with candlelight and singing of thousands of faithful that accompany the images and statues that circumambulate the city (Larantuka) or villages (Wure and Konga). The sacred regalia sequestered in family chapels, often erected on sites formerly dedicated to indigenous deities (korke), are brought out for the encounter with the statues and images of Mary (Tuan Ma or Lord Mother) and the baby Jesus (Tuan Ana or Lord Child). The major nodes of the procession are the eight chapels, which the Larantukans equate with the 14 stations of the cross. These chapels contain sacred objects belonging to a particular family, and the procession provides the occasion for the meeting of these objects with the statues of the Tuan Ma and Tuan Ana. Through proximity with the renewing spiritual powers of Mary and the Baby Jesus, the religious objects from these chapels are revitalised and resacralised. This annual procession with its ritual function fulfils both a protective function for the community as well as a reinforcement of the Catholic identity of the black Portuguese in the Solor archipelago and Timor.

The merging of indigenous and Portuguese traditions has been fundamental to the culture of the Topasses both in eastern Flores and in Timor. In the latter island similar processions are held, and the holy Christian objects are preserved in the traditional sacred houses (ume). One striking example of this is the ceremony held before a battle to gain invulnerability and acquire special powers associated with the le'u musu. The Timorese conducted such ceremonies in the sacred house (ume le'u), while the Topasses underwent a similar ceremony in the church.Footnote ⁵⁷ The performance of an indigenous rite in a Christian church was typical of the blending of Portuguese and indigenous elements in the culture of the Topasses. While the acculturation of the black Portuguese to local Timorese customs and beliefs facilitated their acceptance by the local people, it increased the gulf and the tensions between the Topasses and the white Portuguese.

Tensions and conflicts in the ‘Portuguese’ community

For much of the seventeenth century the drama was not between the Dutch and the ‘Portuguese’, but between the white and the black Portuguese. The Dutch noted in 1660 that there were only few white Portuguese in the Solor archipelago and Timor region but many of their ‘creatures and followers’ (hare creaturen ende adherenten) in their service.Footnote ⁵⁸ By this last remark the Dutch were referring to the Topasses, who comprised the mestiço, Mardijkers, native Christians, and perhaps even some Africans who had been in the service of the Portuguese. In Larantuka and Lifau there were no more than 30 white Portuguese merchants, who were casado (white Portuguese men married to local women), but a large number of Macau, Goa, Melaka and other mestiço. Among those who were regarded by the Dutch as being associated if not part of the ‘Portuguese’ community were the numerous Timorese rulers and subjects who regarded themselves as Christians and ‘proudly wear their prayer beads around their necks’.Footnote ⁵⁹ The Christian rosary would again have been appreciated both on a Christian level and an indigenous one since beads had long been an essential part of Southeast Asian trade and associated with an external sacred source of power.Footnote ⁶⁰ This large black Portuguese community was viewed as a single entity by both the white Portuguese and the Dutch.

In the mid-seventeenth century, the Topasses had two separate bases of power: one at Lifau in the northern coast of Timor under the leadership of Mateus da Costa, and the other at Larantuka at the eastern end of Flores under Antonio Hornay. Both were well-respected and feared leaders, who had proved their bravery and prowess in the battlefield by personally killing Dutch commanders in combat. Though they were serious rivals, they had set their differences aside and had led the Topasses and their native allies to victory over the large, well-armed Dutch forces under Arnoldus de Vlamingh van Oudtshoorn in 1656.Footnote ⁶¹ While both camps appeared willing to cooperate against a common enemy, their tense rivalry at times broke into open warfare as in 1667. In 1669 Goa appointed the white Portuguese Fernão Martins da Ponte as Captain-General (Capitão Geral) of Lifau. Though he was accepted by da Costa, Hornay voiced his opposition. Martins decided to punish Hornay and his followers by dispatching a fleet with 600 men to Larantuka. They arrived with great fanfare with drums and trumpets but were unable to land their forces because of the fierce resistance they encountered from the Topasses. He and the fleet were forced to retreat to Lifau in humiliation.Footnote ⁶²

Martins proved to be a cruel and ineffective leader, and he abandoned his post in 1670 for fear of assassination and eventually returned to Goa in 1672. Mateus da Costa then became the official head of Lifau, but his death in 1673 enabled Antonio Hornay to become the sole leader of the Topasses. He came with his followers from Larantuka to Lifau with a fleet of well-armed boats and claimed for himself the title of Capitão Mor or Captain-Major, which was a position that the Dutch understood to be ‘the general head of the Portuguese nation’ in the area.Footnote ⁶³ Although he was formally presented with his rank by the Viceroy of Goa, the head of the Estado da India, he was already the de facto Captain-Major and the acknowledged leader of the Topasses.

The lands of the Topasses and the native kingdoms acknowledging the Captain-Major's authority were divided into jurisdictions under the command of Tenentes, or Lieutenants, who governed on behalf of the Captain-Major and maintained close communication with him. Captains were appointed in some areas and were held mainly by native Christians, while many Adjutants were created in order to roam the lands to observe the state of affairs and were likened to ministers. Finally, there were some 80–10,000 native Christians, who formed a special corps with the title of honour, ‘The Captain-Major's Soldiers’. They were scathingly called ‘rice Christians’ by the Dutch and were not paid a wage but given the spoils of war. Since there were so many petty rulers divided into various types of chieftainships and kingdoms in Timor, the Topasses were always able to find local rulers as allies when needed. In this way they were able to maintain control over Timor with little cost and without the aid of the white Portuguese.Footnote ⁶⁴ By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Topasses succeeded in creating at Oekussi in Timor a local kingdom under its own ‘raja’ with the Portuguese title of Captain-Major. It came to rival the well-established Topasses centre at Larantuka.

Mateus da Costa (1653–72)Footnote ⁶⁵ and Antonio Hornay (1673–93) had very different relationships with the white Portuguese. The white Portuguese (and especially the Dominicans) were willing to participate in campaigns alongside da Costa and the Topasses from the Lifau area, but did not afford the same cooperation to Hornay, the leader of the Topasses in Larantuka.Footnote ⁶⁶ When Hornay led a large expedition of about 2,000 men against Ade on the northeast coast of Timor, his force consisted of men from Larantuka, Konga, Sikka and Ugi in the eastern part of the island of Flores (whom he brought every March to Timor), as well as those from the island of Rote, non-Christian groups, Timorese Christians and slaves. When Antonio Hornay assumed the post of Captain-Major after the death of Mateus da Costa, the white Portuguese remained in Lifau but did not participate in any of Hornay's campaigns, unlike their previous open support of da Costa.Footnote ⁶⁷ This was the beginning of considerable strains in the relationship between the white and black Portuguese. In 1677 João Antunes Portugal was sent to Lifau with a commission from the king of Portugal and the Viceroy of Goa as the new Captain-Major. Hornay not only forbade him from disembarking, but also refused to reprovision the fleet. Antunes was thus forced to return to Goa without having occupied his official post.Footnote ⁶⁸

Hornay's ability to defy orders from the white Portuguese authorities, representatives of the formal Portuguese empire, revealed the strength of the Topasses by the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In addition to their large numbers, the Topasses were fiercely loyal to Hornay and were as proficient in the use of firearms as the Europeans. The other major reason for Hornay's confidence was his success in operating very much like one of the local rulers in the region. He had made alliances with many of the native raja, and he had courted the VOC through his willingness to deliver sandalwood to the Dutch at Kupang. With his forces spread out throughout the island, particularly along the coasts, he was one of the most powerful local kings in the area.Footnote ⁶⁹ As a native ruler Hornay shrewdly used existing international ties to strengthen his own position. He agreed to comply with the ‘orders’ of the ruler of Butun to take charge of the Solor islands, and he requested armed ships from another purported overlord, the Bugis ruler of Bone in South Sulawesi, to protect the coasts of Flores from raids by the ruler of Bima on the island of Sumbawa.Footnote ⁷⁰ It was quickly apparent that Hornay exercised unchallenged leadership of the Topasses and of the natives who acknowledged his authority over central and eastern Flores, parts of the islands of Adonara, Solor and Lembata, and in much of east and west Timor. He was far more powerful and influential in the region than the white Portuguese government at Lifau, and any opposition to his rule was quickly and harshly quelled. When two of the Timorese chiefdoms opposed his wishes, he sent a force of Topasses and native allies that left only 10 survivors of 1,000 who resisted.Footnote ⁷¹

The Topasses were indisputably the strongest group in the Solor archipelago and Timor when Antonio Hornay passed away in 1693 and was succeeded by his brother Francisco. Goa appointed Antonio de Mesquita Pimental to the post of Governor and Captain-General in Lifau, but he quickly gained the anger of the Topasses by killing Antonio Hornay's son and by his cruelty toward the inhabitants. The Portuguese subjects finally rebelled and overthrew him, which prepared the way for the appointment of Antonio Coelho Guerreiro as his replacement in Lifau.Footnote ⁷² But the antagonistic relationship between the white and black Portuguese communities did not end with the new appointment. A memorial written by one of the Portuguese officials from Lifau in August 1697 accused Antonio and his brother Francisco of practically bringing a halt to the profitable trade in wax through fraudulent practices and favouring Batavia at the expense of Macau in the sale of sandalwood.Footnote ⁷³

For almost half a century from 1653 to 1693, the Topasses were led by two remarkable individuals: Mateus da Costa and Antonio Hornay. Through their leadership the Topasses had developed a distinct local identity based on both Portuguese and Timorese values. They were able to amass a considerable following among both the black Portuguese and the native kingdoms, unlike the white Portuguese governors who generally spent a very short time in Timor. The white Portuguese saw the death of Antonio Hornay as an ideal opportunity to replace him with one of their own, but the Topasses defiantly raised first his brother Francisco briefly to that position till his mysterious death in 1697,Footnote ⁷⁴ and then Domingos da Costa, the son of Mateus, as their new Captain-Major.Footnote ⁷⁵ The latter's elevation to the office, however, was not without challenge from other Topasses leaders. In 1699 Gaspar Clase at Konga, southwest of Larantuka, sought to be recognised as Captain-Major, but when confronted by a force sent by da Costa he fled to Lifau after a loss of only a few men. Another challenge came from Antonio Akimar, who claimed the title of Captain-Major at Lifau. On this occasion da Costa went with several armed boats from Larantuka to Lifau and ousted the pretender, who later took his life by poison.Footnote ⁷⁶

Though the black Portuguese were dominant in the region and far outnumbered the white Portuguese, none of their kind was ever considered by the official empire at Goa for the post of governor of Lifau. Goa appointed instead the white Portuguese Antonio Coelho Guerreiro to that post in 1702. Before assuming his post, Coelho Guerreiro stopped first in Macau to enlist support for the Crown policy of restricting Batavia-based Chinese merchants from trading in the Timorese market, a measure that would benefit Macau.Footnote ⁷⁷ Cooperation was short-lived as Macau came to resent Coelho Guerreiro's own involvement in Timor's trade, presumably because he was not receiving any assistance from Goa.Footnote ⁷⁸ The appointment was resented by the old black Portuguese Captain Major, Domingos da Costa. When Coelho Guerreiro stopped at Larantuka on his way to Lifau, da Costa refused to recognise him and the attempt to land resulted in fighting and the death of some of Coelho Guerreiro's men. He was thus forced to continue his journey to Lifau, where this inauspicious beginning introduced a pattern of rivalry and conflict between the white Portuguese and the Topasses in Timor.Footnote ⁷⁹

When Coelho Guerreiro reached Lifau, he expelled the Topasses from the city and began constructing fortifications in anticipation of an attack. He mustered some 800 men from the white Portuguese and those from Macau. The Topasses force from Larantuka led by Domingos da Costa assembled to the west of the river on a round hill. Though da Costa had initially only some 600 black Portuguese and men from Larantuka, his forces were augmented daily from men arriving from the various Timorese rulers. But the initial attempt to seize Lifau was thwarted by the accurate use of the cannons by Coelho Guerreiro's troops, causing large number of casualties among da Costa's forces.Footnote ⁸⁰ Lifau was then besieged and suffered severely from a shortage of food. Coelho Guerreiro himself described the starvation in Lifau in 1703 as ‘the most extreme and terrible hunger that the Portuguese nation has ever experienced in the East, in which there were no dog, cat, rat, horse, worms, roots, dried bones ground to powder, rawhide, and soles of shoes … that we did not value as food’.Footnote ⁸¹

The Catholic ruler of Sikka in eastern Flores sent 200 reinforcements to Lifau,Footnote ⁸² but even this help was only temporary solace. Those who tried to leave the city were immediately cut down by the besieging forces of the black Portuguese. Chinese traders in Lifau's roadstead reported that some inhabitants had even offered themselves as slaves to the Chinese in order to get food for their families. With no help arriving from Goa, even money to purchase supplies was scarce, and people were forced to seek food from the forests. There was a temporary reprieve when aid came from a certain Matthaeus da Costa, who had broken away from the black Portuguese. But the old Captain-Major, Domingos da Costa, attacked Matthaeus and, according to some Chinese eye-witnesses, killed some 1,000 of Matthaeus' men, whose heads were brought with great shouting and presented to the victorious Domingos.Footnote ⁸³ Finally, in late 1705 Coelho Guerreiro was discharged from his office and replaced as Governor by Lourenço Lopes.Footnote ⁸⁴

Hostilities continued, and the new Governor seized the black Portuguese stronghold of Oekussi for a short while before being forced to withdraw by Domingos da Costa.Footnote ⁸⁵ Oekussi was divided into two sections: Ika-oeïf (contemporary Dutch sources call it by its Malay equivalent, ‘Tulang Ikan’, or ‘fish bones’), which is the part along the coast; and Ani [Angin] Mata (‘Eye of the Wind’), which refers to the mountainous interior. To the east of Oekussi were its dependent districts of Insana and Noemuti, the latter once belonging to the neighbouring kingdom of Amakono and located between it and the Belu lands.Footnote ⁸⁶ This was the heartland of the Topasses, which resisted attempts by the white Portuguese to destroy it. In 1707 two Portuguese warships from Macau brought a militia to launch a fresh attack against Domingos da Costa. Once again the Topasses proved superior and forced the militia to retreat to Lifau. This setback led to a change of white Portuguese tactics. Instead of further hostilities, they sought instead to incorporate da Costa as second-in command in the administration. Thus sometime in May 1708, Domingos da Costa was made Lieutenant-General (Tenente Geral) or Vice-Governor at Lifau.Footnote ⁸⁷

It was a noteworthy gesture since it was a major concession by the white Portuguese to the political reality of the situation in Timor. For the Topasses the acceptance of the offer represented an acknowledgement of their subordinate position and deference to the well-entrenched Portuguese social and political hierarchy of the formal empire, despite their obvious military superiority in the region. Centuries of Portuguese precedence and history made it difficult for the Topasses to transform the system. When they finally assumed control of Timorese affairs later in the eighteenth century, they were motivated by and operated within the framework not of the Portuguese overseas empire but of Timorese political culture. In essence, it was the Timorese side of their mestiço identity which was responsible for their success and, coincidentally, that of the white Portuguese, in Timor.

Lasting peace between the two groups proved elusive and ongoing tensions occasionally erupted in violence. The arrangement whereby the top post was held by a white Portuguese and the second-in-command by the leader of the Topasses proved tenuous because of the ongoing rivalry between the da Costa and the Hornay families. For most of the first half of the eighteenth century the white Portuguese avoided conquest by the Topasses only because the latter also had to contend with hostile native rulers and the Dutch. Dutch reports at the time are peppered with comments of native rulers occasionally taking up arms against the Topasses and then being suppressed as a result of timely aid from the other Topasses stronghold at Larantuka. The victory of the Topasses led some of the Timorese raja and their followers to seek safety in the Dutch settlement of Kupang. They arrived with a letter and a box with earth, some wax and a piece of gold to symbolise their surrender of land, resources and wealth to the Dutch in return for their protection. The refugees settled around Kupang and came to form the principal native allies of the Dutch in the conflict with the Topasses.Footnote ⁸⁸ Lifau was spared further threats from the Topasses when their leader Gaspar da Costa decided to attack the Dutch and their allies in Kupang in 1749.

Battle of Penfui and its consequences

Gaspar da Costa's decision to attack Kupang was purportedly intended to force the fugitive Timorese raja and their followers to return under the control of the Topasses. Its success, however, could never be assured as long as the Dutch enclave remained on Timor. The Dutch authorities in Kupang were always circumspect in their dealings with the Portuguese, avoiding as much as possible to be seen as choosing one side over the other. Despite the professed enmity between the Dutch and the Portuguese, much of the period from the mid-seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries can be characterised by a pragmatic peaceful economic relationship between the two. This state of affairs was characteristic of the informal Portuguese empire, where private individuals relied on the unimpeded flow of trade to guarantee their survival and prosperity. The presence of sandalwood, wax and slaves in the Timor region attracted traders from all parts of the world, with Macau playing an essential role in assuring that these commodities reached the major market of China. Both the Portuguese and the Dutch profited from this trade. When the Dutch complained in 1689 to Antonio Hornay about the lack of sandalwood brought from Lifau to Kupang, Hornay took pains to explain that this was due to dwindling supplies.Footnote ⁸⁹

A Dutch official sent to Lifau in 1684 noted that lying in the roadstead were a Portuguese ship from Macau owned by a certain Francisco d'Silva; a sloop from Batavia belonging to a Larantukan called Manuel d'Abreu; a ship (gonting) from Siam owned by the Portuguese Manuel Simonis; a boat coming from Batavia belonging to the Makassarese Encik Mama; and a sloop owned by the Frenchman M. Cumbal. This was not unusual, and Lifau continued to be a major exchange centre for sandalwood, wax and slaves from Timor for cloth and other goods from the outside world, including guns and gunpowder.Footnote ⁹⁰ In the contemporary Dutch accounts are numerous examples of Dutch and mestiço burgers, Mardijkers and Chinese traders all based in Kupang regularly going to Lifau to participate in this lucrative exchange.

The Dutch were rarely involved directly in the simmering conflict between the white and black Portuguese. It was therefore with some surprise that the Dutch were informed in 1749 that a large force of Topasses, supported by a strong contingent of Timorese allies, was on its way to attack Kupang. There was panic among the Kupang population, not only because of rumours of the size of the enemy forces, but also because of the fear that the Dutch musu le'u would be found wanting. Timorese assessment of the relative strengths – both physical and spiritual – of the two antagonists would have been influenced by earlier confrontations. The first major confrontation between the Dutch and the Topasses occurred in 1655, when a very large, well-armed Dutch expedition led by one of their leading military officers, Admiral Arnold de Vlaming van Outshoorn, the conqueror of Maluku, was foiled by the Topasses. In June with a large European force of 450 men divided into nine companies, supported by an equally large native auxiliary, the Dutch expedition marched confidently toward Amarassi in the interior of Timor. The troops were hampered by incessant rain that thoroughly soaked the gunpowder and supplies. In the march to and from the interior, the Dutch forces were fired upon by an unseen enemy causing many dead and wounded. Seeing little hope of continuing the expedition in such weather, the Dutch commander withdrew his forces and left the island.Footnote ⁹¹ The sudden and unexpected withdrawal of the Dutch forces was regarded as a major victory for the Topasses and considerably enhanced their musu le'u in the eyes of the Timorese.

Adding to the perception of Dutch weakness or lack of le'u was an even more spectacular failure in 1657 in the battle of Mollo. In September of that year the white Portuguese Captain Major, Simon Luis, led a primarily black Portuguese force consisting of eight companies of 100 guns supported by native allies in an attack in the land of the Sonba'i, one of the major Timorese rulers. The ruler of Amabi and his men came to the Sonba'i's support, to be later joined by a small Dutch force. Although the Dutch and the Amabi forces fought valiantly in the first few days, they were later forced to retreat and eventually made a final stand on Mt. Mollo. In the final battle a few Dutchmen saved themselves by fleeing, while the ruler of Amabi, his brother, and some 4–5,000 of the Amabi force were all killed. It was a spectacular defeat, with the ruler and his brother's bodies being hacked to pieces and ‘pulverized’, while the remaining defenders were forced over the cliffs to their death. In the battle the Dutch did not acquit themselves well, and the ruler of Sonba'i saved himself by changing sides and joining the Portuguese.Footnote ⁹²

Within a space of just a little more than two years the Dutch suffered two major setbacks at the hands of the Portuguese, which in essence and in the minds of the Timorese meant the ‘black’ Portuguese. These victories reaffirmed local perception that the Topasses possessed a le'u musu that was superior to that of the Dutch. The Dutch enclave of Kupang was always regarded as a small Dutch haven surrounded by hostile forces. With only a limited relationship with the Timorese kingdoms, the Dutch suffered from a Timorese perception of their inadequacy compared to the Topasses. These two major losses to the Portuguese in Timor in the mid-seventeenth century gave Batavia some pause. It acknowledged that the number of white Portuguese was few, but that the Topasses and their allies were many. It would take, so estimated the Dutch Chief Factor in Kupang, Daniel van der Burgh, 1,000 European musketeers supported by 450 native troops to remove the Portuguese and their ‘creatures’ from Timor.Footnote ⁹³ But the Dutch never assembled such a large force nor came close to removing Portuguese presence from Timor. Instead, it was the Topasses who took the initiative to try to remove the Dutch from Timor almost a century later in 1749.

Van der Burgh described the principal events of this fateful attack in 1749.Footnote ⁹⁴ The detail presented offers an excellent picture of the relative strengths of the Dutch and the Topasses in the mid-eighteenth century, the nature of warfare in Timor, and the role of le'u musu in the battle and its aftermath. On 18 October the ruler of Amabi came to the Dutch greatly disturbed. He reported that his subjects in the mountains had seen a large number of armed men and had heard the beating of many drums. This, he concluded, could only have been the Topasses on the march. The Dutch immediately dispatched some Mardijkers to investigate while asking the Raja Kupang to send one of his most trusted men in secret to Amarassi to learn what he could. On the way the person entrusted with the task met an envoy from the Raja Amarassi bearing gifts for the Raja Kupang and for the Dutch Chief Factor. He was to encourage them to remain neutral by convincing them that the attack was neither directed at the Raja Kupang nor the Company. From three Sonba'i subjects taken prisoner, the Dutch were told that the Topasses were coming to force the Timorese allies of the Dutch as well as the recently arrived Keser [Keizer = Emperor] Amacono and the Raja Amanubang to pay obeisance to da Costa.

According to Dutch reckoning, the Topasses army was already at Amarassi with a large fighting force, including some 2,800 men armed with guns, not counting those from Amarassi. The army was led by the Tenente-Geral himself, Gaspar da Costa, assisted by some of the most important black Portuguese leaders in the region: Pasqual da Costa (Tenente de Provincia = Provincial Deputy), Siko Bras (Tenente Coronel = Lieutenant Colonel), Domingos de Feria (Capitão Mor de Povoação = Captain-Major of the Towns), Simon Luis (Capitão Mor de Campo = Captain-Major of the Countryside), Amara da Costa (Sargento Mor de Provincia = Sergeant-Major of the Provinces) and Januario Tenente Varella, head of Larantuka.Footnote ⁹⁵ They were also accompanied by a number of Timorese raja and their men. The Dutch decided to go and meet the invading force outside Kupang's territories in order to give courage to the weak allies and impress them with the seriousness of sending their forces immediately. At the same time they sent a message to the leaders of the Topasses to say that if they dared set foot in Kupang territory that the Company and its allies were prepared to meet force with force. The Dutch then sent most of their Timorese allies to occupy the area along the borders of Kupang and along the major roads, while organising the burgers, the Chinese, and the people from Rote, Sabu and Solor in their respective positions. The Dutch commander even succeeded in convincing the new Keser Amacono to come and live within Kupang for his own protection. It was a move prompted by suspicion among the Timorese allies that the Keser could not be trusted since the Topasses had already tried by promises and various means to cajole him to return to their side.

On 4 November a large number of Topasses beating drums and waving banners marched to Kupang, causing such terror among the Timorese that they fled with all their belongings to the shore. The people from Sabu and Solor were preparing to flee with their boats when the Dutch sought first to reassure them, and when that failed, to threaten to have the fortress guns shoot holes in their boats. The beginning of actual fighting was reported to the Dutch commander by the Raja Amabi ‘arriving completely out of breath and as if with death on his lips’ (gansch buyten adem gelopen, en als met de dood op de lippen) to report that the Timorese allies had been attacked and two of the districts put to the torch. He and his people and other Timorese had fled, and that the Topasses arrival before the walls of the Dutch fortress was imminent. The news was confirmed, and so it was decided to send Ensign Lipp with a sergeant, two corporals and 14 men, accompanied by most of the Mardijkers and the men from Sabu and Rote, to link up with the Timorese allies to assess the situation or prevent further progress of the Topasses.

That evening gunpowder and bullets were distributed, and the next day the motley army left Kupang, encountering the enemy on the outskirts of the city at Penfui busy erecting bulwarks. Already seven or eight consecutive rows of stone fences had been constructed. The very large numbers of the enemy so unsettled the Dutch Timorese allies that they started to flee, which encouraged the Topasses to sally forth and attack the Dutch, Mardijkers and the men from Sabu. So bravely did they resist that the Topasses were finally forced to retreat in confusion to their entrenchment. According to Ensign Lipp, if only half of their Timorese allies had stood their ground they could have forced the enemy to abandon their fortifications. The Dutch then learned that during the day many of the Timorese (including Raja Amabi, ‘the strongest of the allies’) and others had fled with all their belongings to the shore to prepare to leave by boat, while some had sought to hide in caves along the cliffs. More than three-fourths of the Kupang people had already fled to the island of Semau. The general fear was not helped by the mutual suspicion and accusations that were spread without any foundation.

Under these deteriorating conditions, the Dutch commander finally summoned the leaders of the Timorese allies saying that by their foolish behaviour they were choosing a miserable death rather than certain victory. If they wanted victory they had to follow his orders strictly, which they promised to do. They were to inform their people that all able-bodied men should assemble at Ledemata, not far from the Topasses' encampment. Patrols would be sent around at about eight in the morning, and any able-bodied person found would be cut down with the sword without exception since everyone should have already assembled at Ledemata. That evening each was given gunpowder and bullets. Ensign Lipp was to command a force consisting of a sergeant, two corporals, 20 European soldiers, 130 Mardijkers, 240 Sabunese, 60 Solorese, 30 Rotenese, and some burgers and Company officials who had volunteered to fight. Meanwhile, the Dutch Chief Factor was to retain some soldiers and burgers to defend the fortress and settlement of Kupang. And so on a Sunday morning, 9 November 1749, the Dutch forces left early in the morning to engage the enemy at their fortifications. The words of the Chief Factor had the desired effect on the Timorese, and so everyone was at his post ready for the battle. The Timorese raja were told to take care that their men did not flee the battlefield, but if they did, the raja had permission to shoot them down.

At midday the Dutch received word that the enemy had initially offered strong resistance but had then begun to yield. The battle was hard fought but one by one the Topasses fortifications fell to the Dutch until only the fifth and last one remained. The Timorese allies of the Dutch, who until then had been watching the fighting, realised that the Dutch were winning the battle and therefore for the first time entered the fray. There then followed a massive blood bath as the Timorese began the slaughter of the Topasses whose bodies were strewn on the battlefield. Stiff resistance was encountered in the fifth and last Topasses fortification, which contained the Tenente Geral Gaspar da Costa and most of the main leaders of the Topasses. Seeing their men falling all around them, the Topasses defenders fought desperately but were overwhelmed by the combined attack of the Europeans, Mardijkers and the Sabunese. Those who sought to escape were closely pursued and killed. Gaspar da Costa tried to flee on horseback and had gone no more than a 1,000 paces when he was brought down by a Timorese spear and then beheaded. That evening more than 2,000 Topasses were killed, and over two days as many heads were taken in triumph. On the Dutch side, only 19 Timorese, one Mardijker and two volunteers were killed, although many more were wounded. Among the booty were the prized 10 banners and drums belonging to the Topasses.Footnote ⁹⁶ When the Portuguese governor at Lifau, Manuel Correia de Lacerda, was told of the outcome of the battle, his only comment was that da Costa deserved that fate. He explained that he had tried in person and by letters to dissuade da Costa from such a mad enterprise, but the latter had not even deigned to reply.Footnote ⁹⁷

Even before the fateful battle, the Dutch received reports that there had been an unusual movement of local raja and their followers. Three of the raja had decided to abandon the side of the Topasses and seek to link up with the Dutch. Others who had been suspected of doing the same had been killed by Gaspar da Costa. Many of the raja were therefore forced to join the Topasses in the attack against the Dutch.Footnote ⁹⁸ Just prior to the battle, one of the principal leaders (temukung) of Amarassi came out of one of the fortifications nearest the Dutch camp and rode toward the Dutch side calling out through a hail of bullets that the Amarassi people should be regarded as friends not enemies and that they would prove it. With the beginning of the fighting, the entire Amarassi army moved behind the Topasses and fled back to their land. After the battle one of the chief ministers of Amarassi came to Kupang and threw himself at the feet of the Chief Factor and on behalf of his king sought forgiveness and offered submission of his people and land. Other Timorese raja were quick to seek both physical and spiritual protection under the Dutch, with all professing to have been forced to join the Topasses.Footnote ⁹⁹

The Dutch accounts attribute the victory at Penfui to Ensign Lipp and his troops, and particularly to the bravery of the Mardijkers. But in the oral traditions of the people of Amarassi, the decisive moment occurred when the VOC's native krankenbezoeker Footnote ¹⁰⁰ in Kupang (Jan Pieter de Hond, who served in Kupang from 1749–53) prophesied the victory of the Dutch against their numerically superior enemy. This prophecy had been reported back to the people of Amarassi by spies, and it is this manifestation of the spiritual power of the Dutch that impressed the Amarassi people and explained the Dutch victory.Footnote ¹⁰¹

The Dutch were aware that the battle of Penfui was a portentous event in the power relationships on Timor. Until then the Dutch were very much on the defensive, and they admitted that their authority did not extend very far beyond Kupang and its immediate environs. But with the spectacular victory over a far larger enemy, the Dutch grew in estimation in the eyes of the Timorese. Their musu le'u had finally proved to be greater than that of the Topasses. Especially auspicious was the taking of the head of the grand leader of the Topasses, Gaspar da Costa, and many of the other principal leaders. Almost as important was the seizure of 10 banners and drums of the Topasses, which would have been considered as part of the spiritual regalia of the Topasses. It is not difficult to believe that for the Timorese the battle of Penfui was confirmation of the spent spiritual force of the Topasses and the rise of the new powerful Dutch musu le'u. Some may already have interpreted the drunken activity and the cruel behaviour of Gaspar da Costa as signs of the weakening le'u among the black Portuguese. Penfui then would have been conclusive evidence of the abandonment of the musu le'u from the Topasses. In a mid-nineteenth-century black Portuguese oral rendering of the Penfui campaign, the people cannot believe that their defeat was the work of humans and therefore assume that this was the work of spirits. Only ‘witchcraft’ could have been responsible for the confusion which forced them to kill each other in the fighting and to scatter to all corners of the land.Footnote ¹⁰²

Among the Timorese there is a strong emphasis placed on the possession of spiritual prowess by both the leaders and the warriors (meo). The defeat and beheading of an enemy leader or meo was attended with great celebrations by the victors as vindication of their superior le'u. In indigenous accounts there is a strong interest in the fate of leaders and the principal warriors in battle, which was a measure of the efficacy of one's musu le'u. An indication that the Dutch may have understood this interest is the manner in which battles and their outcome are described in the contemporary VOC records. In the battle of Mollo, the crowning moment for the victors was not only the killing of the ruler of Amabi but the ‘pulverizing’ of his body and presumably any spiritual powers that he possessed. The taking of the heads of Gaspar da Costa and his chief lieutenants at Penfui forms the culmination of the Dutch Chief Factor's report of the battle of Penfui. For the Timorese themselves, the defeat of the Topasses and the beheading of their leaders were clear evidence of the superiority of the Dutch le'u musu, and they quickly came to acknowledge this shift in power. Very soon after the battle almost all the kingdoms that had once supported the Topasses sought to become allies of the Dutch.Footnote ¹⁰³ It was estimated that a total of 50,000 Timorese became subjects of the Dutch. Even the people of Amarassi, strong allies of the Portuguese, temporarily submitted to Dutch overlordship in 1750. The crowning touch was the decision by Don Luis, Catholic ruler of Amanubang, to have his son and crown prince baptised in 1751 by the preacher Sylsma van Banda and made a member of the Dutch Hervormde Kerk (Reformed Church).Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Despite their decisive defeat, the Topasses still retained strongholds at Tulang Ikan in Oekussi, and at Noemuti and Sitrana located to the east of Oekussi. Many of the leading families had strong ties with local Timorese royal families through marriage. Even with the understandable rush of Timorese rulers seeking to become attached to the Dutch, the Topasses continued to have family links to Timorese raja. The vacuum left by the decimation of the Topasses leadership was quickly filled with the selection of Jan Hornay as the new Tenente Geral of the Topasses. With the restoration of Topasses power, the situation reverted to the pre-Penfui days but now with the Dutch considerably strengthened.

Lines are drawn

After the battle of Penfui, the white Portuguese continued to govern from their precarious hold at Lifau; the Topasses suffered a setback but quickly resumed their influence in Timorese affairs from their strongholds in Tulang Ikan and Noemuti; and the Dutch were strongly ensconced at Kupang. The relationship between the white and the black Portuguese remained estranged, despite a shift in Portuguese policy in 1761 which acknowledged that all Christian vassals born in Portuguese Asia would have the same rights as those born in Portugal and equal access to all honours and positions.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

What had changed, however, was the greater confidence now shown by the Dutch in their dealings with the Topasses. The Dutch Chief Factor in Kupang assured Batavia that ‘he had taken every opportunity and whatever ways and means available to bring all possible damage to the black Portuguese’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ But attempts to destroy the power of the Topasses by attacking their homeland proved fruitless. Dutch failure to seize the stronghold of Noemuti on various occasions in the 1750s brought a stalemate in the struggle and helped to restore the belief among Timorese of the efficacy of the Topasses' musu le'u. Footnote ¹⁰⁷

In an oral Timorese account of these campaigns, the various Dutch expeditions are telescoped into one major battle called the ‘Perang Om Mabun (The War of Om Mabun)’. Noemuti at the time was dominated by four clans (suku): da Costa, de Ornai (de Hornay), de Melo and da Crus. According to the story in addition to their weapons, they also employed spiritual forces (ilmu-ilmu gaib) in the form of two types of bees (om and mabun) and two types of supernatural dogs (anjing tikar and anjing liar). Before the conflict, a special ceremony was held in propitiation of the ancestors. When the Dutch attacked Noemuti, the bullets fired from the guns of the Topasses were transformed into hornets and wild dogs, which bit the enemy and forced them to retreat.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ This oral tradition clearly captures the Timorese belief in the musu le'u, the spiritual forces that determined the victor in the battlefield.

The perception of the return of the musu le'u to the Topasses would have been enhanced by the new leadership arrangement between the two major Topasses families: the Ornais and the da Costas. On the death in 1757 of the Tenente Geral of Tulang Ikan, João Ornai, the leadership of the Topasses in Timor passed not to Ornai's son but to Domingos da Costa, brother of Gaspar da Costa, the Tenente Geral who was killed at the battle of Penfui in 1749. Serious concern was expressed by the Topasses at Larantuka in eastern Flores, the other major Topasses' stronghold, which was governed by the late João's sister, Dona Maria. But a few days later an amicable solution was reached when it was agreed that João's son was to marry Domingos' sister, thereby uniting the two rival families.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ This was the beginning of an arrangement of alternating leadership between the Ornai and da Costa families, which greatly helped to unite the Topasses in their attempts to maintain themselves in light of challenges both from the Dutch and the white Portuguese at Lifau.

The Dutch, too, were well aware of the consequences of their setbacks. When yet another expedition failed to take Noemuti in 1763, the Dutch Chief Factor in Kupang writing on behalf of the Timor Council acknowledged that ‘as a result of the failed undertakings of the Company, its lustre has been not a little tarnished, and so the natives have become much bolder and the irresolute allies increasingly strengthened in their view that the Company cannot succeed in uprooting them [the Topasses]’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ While the words were different, the sentiment was similar to that expressed by the Timorese. The Dutch in their own way were also acknowledging their weakened musu le'u. A stalemate had been reached, and the lines drawn between the Dutch and the Portuguese (both white and black) at Penfui in 1749 remained the effective boundary until well into the twentieth century.