Hadji Soliman was the kampong head of Lampagar in the VI Moekims, regarded by the Dutch in 1876 as a friendly (bevriende) chief. His conduct around the night attack on Lampagar of 2–3 May 1876 — warning the officers obliquely, asking them not to fire on population patrols, caught almost certainly in the middle of a plot he had not dared openly to reveal — was put under investigation and acquitted, in the end, by the colonial inquiry.
The eve of the attack
On 1 May an Atjeher at Olehleh told Lieutenant Van de Roemer of a hostile band near the pass of Blang Kala. On the evening of 2 May Hadji Soliman and Toekoe Amat visited the camp as usual and talked with Lieutenants Van de Roemer and Schnelle. They said they suspected that the enemy had evil designs on the VI Moekims, naming — in the conversation Meijer reproduces — Hadji Aboe, whose house had been burned in April, as gathering the refugees of his kampong, perhaps to molest the friendly people or to disturb the post of Lampagar itself; if that happened, they added, they feared greatly that their kampong would suffer from the post’s fire. Because their people would make population patrols near the camp that night, they asked that the Dutch sentries on the north side should not be too quick in firing.
The investigation
After the attack — in which soldiers recognised among the enemy dead a daily fruit-seller and one of the very hunters who had been with the heads — controleur Michielsen’s first conviction was that the heads had known and perhaps shared in the enemy’s plan; all the summoned heads, Hadji Soliman among them, were arrested. But the further statement of the wounded prisoner of 4 May, which fixed the plot on Panglima Moeda of Piëng of Rēdeb, convinced him instead that the heads had, in fact, sufficiently warned the officers — who held the enemy too cheap or the warning too lightly. The arrested heads were released with the message that flight would be followed by the burning of their houses.
His turn to the camp at first light was characteristic. Hadji Soliman appeared with some followers, asked admission, and — in Lieutenant Schnelle’s interrogation — roundly maintained that none of the enemy dead belonged to his kampong, though two were identified.
In August 1876 he was named again, with Hadji Laoet, as one of the two heads of Lampagar denounced in reports that a 600-man band under Hadji Aboe intended another attack on the post.
Significance
Hadji Soliman’s story shows the position of a “friendly” kampong head between two fires: if he warned openly, the resistance would call him a traitor; if he did not warn, the Dutch arrested him when the blow fell. From his fellow-countrymen, as H. F. Meijer explains in Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876 (1883), the friend of the Dutch could expect to be as severely punished as by the Dutch for defection.
See Also
- Night attack on Lampagar (2-3 May 1876)
- Lampagar
- Toekoe Amat
- Schnelle
- Hadji Aboe of Lambaroe
- Guerilla warfare in Groot-Atjeh
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), chapter VII, pp. 167–179, 252.