Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective

360 Pages·2008·12.16 MB·English

by  Gregory Forth

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Images of the Wildman in
Southeast Asia
The book examines ‘wildmen’, images of hairy humanlike creatures known
to rural villagers and other local people in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
Sometimes described in considerable detail, the creatures are reported as still
living or as having survived until recent times. The aim of the book is to dis-
cover the source of these representations and their status in local systems of
knowledge, partly in relation to distinct categories of spiritual beings, known
animals and other human groups. Although largely focused on Indonesia,
it explores images of the wildman from various parts of Southeast Asia and
beyond, including the Asian mainland, Africa, North America, Australia and
Oceania.
Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia reveals how, in Southeast Asia
and elsewhere, ‘wildmen’ cannot readily be explained as imaginary constructs
rooted in cultural values and social institutions, nor as simply another
kind of ‘spirit’. Also critically examined is a view of such figures as funda-
mentally similar expressions of a pan-human ‘archetype’. Forth concludes
that many Asian and African figures are grounded in experience or memo-
ries of anthropoid apes supplemented by encounters with ethnic others.
Representations developed among European immigrants (including the
North American ‘sasquatch’) are, in part, similarly traceable to an indirect
knowledge of primates, informed by long-standing European representations
of hairy humans that have coloured Western views of non-Western peoples
and which may themselves originate in ancient experience of apes. At the
same time, the book demonstrates how Indonesian and other Malayo-
Polynesian images cannot be explained in the same way and explores the
possibility of these reflecting an ancient experience of non-sapiens hominins.
Gregory Forth is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Alberta, Canada.
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Images of the Wildman in
Southeast Asia
An anthropological perspective
Gregory Forth
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First published 2008 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2008 Gregory Forth
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Forth, Gregory L.
Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: social values,
archetypes and existing creatures / Gregory Forth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Wild men—Southeast Asia. 2. Fossil hominids—Southeast
Asia. 3. Legends—Southeast Asia. 4. Southeast Asia—Folklore.
I. Title.
GR308.F67 2008
398.20959—dc22
2008024912
ISBN 0-203-88624-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-7103-1354-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-88624-0 (ebk)
ISBN10: 0-7103-1354-3 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-88624-0 (ebk)
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Contents
List of illustrations viii
Preface x
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Introduction 2
Organization and sources 8
2 The story of ebu gogo 12
What the ebu gogo looked like 14
How the ebu gogo behaved 16
Nage wildmen in space and time 19
Fantastic elements 24
Knowledge and categorization: survival of the image or survival
of ebu gogo? 27
Names, masks and bogeys 32
Classification: human, animal, spirit (or something else)? 36
Internal comparisons and summary considerations 39
3 Other Florenese hominoids 50
The ‘ana ula’ of Poma and Rawe 50
‘Toro gogo’ in So’a 55
Ngadha variants 57
Manggarai (western Flores): ‘ine weu’, ‘poti wolo’ and hairy
ancestors 60
The ‘lae ho’a’ of Lio 65
A note on East Flores 75
Wildmen, bogeys and ‘pontianak’ 75
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vi Contents
4 Other eastern islands 91
Sumba and the ‘mili mongga’ 91
Stories from Sumbawa 101
Timor and the Moluccas: a bogey from Buru 104
Sulawesi: historical reports and local legends 106
Tales of capture, some provisional conclusions and a Flores
retrospect 110
5 The ‘short man’ (orang pendek) of Sumatra 117
Local and colonial representations 118
European sightings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries 127
Orang pendek at the end of the millennium 134
More fantastic aspects 139
Stories of capture, mating and abduction 142
Comparison and conclusions 146
6 Wildmen of western Indonesia and Mainland Southeast Asia 159
Hominoids in northern Sumatra 159
Wildmen in Borneo? 164
Peninsular figures and the ape-men of Trolak 165
More reports from the Southeast Asian mainland 168
Back to the islands: Java and Bali 171
‘Forest people’ (orang utan) reconsidered 173
7 Other Asian hominoids 182
The ‘nittaewo’ of Sri Lanka 182
Varieties of ‘yeti’ 188
Wildmen of China 194
Central Asian exemplars 198
An Asian summary 201
8 Outside Asia 204
The wildman of Europe 204
Apes in North America 207
The Australian ‘yahoo’ or ‘yowie’ 215
East Africa and the ‘little furry men’ 217
Ape-men of Central Africa 220
Southern and West African variants 227
Madagascar: a bridge back to Southeast Asia 230
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Contents vii
9 Pacific images 242
Melanesian figures 242
Polynesia: wildmen, dwarfs and fairies 248
Micronesian variants 250
The extinct dwarfs of Taiwan 251
Views from the Philippines 254
Local differences and Asian origins 255
10 Conclusion: What were the ebu gogo? 260
Wildmen and spirits 263
The wildman as ‘archetype’ 265
Bases in experience: non-human animals 273
Other humans, or human others 275
Or something not quite human? 280
Notes 287
References 315
Index 338
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List of illustrations
Maps
1. Southeast Asia 1
2. Central Flores 11
3. Flores and Sumba 49
4. Eastern Indonesia 90
5. Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula 116
Plates
1.1 Hendrikus Lako (deceased 2004), a Nage man who in 1984
first provided the author with detailed information on the
ebu gogo 10
2.1 Julius Poi, an ‘Ua elder 43
2.2 The volcano Ebu Lobo as seen from the higher reaches of
‘Ua territory 44
2.3 Men of ‘Ua and a man of the Nage village of Tolo Pa
(on the left) 44
2.4 Lia Ula, the cave reputedly inhabited by the ebu gogo 45
2.5 A man in an ‘ebu gogo’ costume, as worn in the ‘ebu
gogo dance’. The costume was specially created for
the author 46
2.6 A wooden bogey mask from Nage, ‘gogo meo’ or
‘ebu gogo’ 47
2.7 Man playing a bogey with an improvised mask of
areca spathe 48
3.1 The ana ula cave in Poma 85
3.2 Stoneworks in Poma reputedly built by ‘ana ula’ 86
3.3 Peter Schouten’s reconstruction of Homo floresiensis 87
3.4 Lio man and boy reckoned to be about the same height
as a lae ho’a 88
3.5 Pendant and knife hilt depicting a lae ho’a and a bottle
reputedly containing the creature’s urine 89
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List of Illustrations ix
4.1 The ‘mili mongga’ (wildman) motif on a Sumbanese
textile 114
4.2 The ‘wild cat’ grave (Reti Meu Rumba) in Rindi,
eastern Sumba 115
5.1 Sunbear print 153
5.2 The ‘kubu’ reputedly seen by Walter Gibson in the
mid-nineteenth century 154
5.3 A sketch of ‘Orang Pendek’, probably based on
Van Herwaarden’s (1924) description 155
5.4 A Kubu woman (Nor) with skin disease and deformed feet 156
5.5 Cast of a footprint discovered by Deborah Martyr and
attributed to the orang pendek 157
5.6 Deformed feet of an Igorot highlander, the Philippines 157
5.7 An Igorot highlander with misshapen feet 158
6.1 The ‘wildman of Johore’ 179
6.2 Nineteenth-century Burmese afflicted with hypertrichosis 180
6.3 Nineteenth-century Burmese family afflicted with
hypertrichosis 181
7.1 Hands of a ‘man-bear’ 203
8.1 Illustration of an orang-utan in Beeckman 236
8.2 Illustration of a creature seen by Bontius in Western Java
in the seventeenth century 237
8.3 Niska ‘monkey’ mask collected by Lt. G.T. Emmons
about 1914 238
8.4 A nineteenth-century painting of an orang-utan holding
a staff 239
8.5 Head of a ‘kooloo-kamba’ by Paul Du Chaillu 240
8.6 Central African pygmies with Paul Schebesta 241
Tables
3.1 Florenese-named categories including populations of small
hairy hominoids 76
5.1 Other names for the ‘orang pendek’ 120