Potjoet Meurah — modern Cut Meurah — was a prominent Acehnese woman of Pidië, not to be confused with the old Sultans-widow of the same name still living at Koetaradja in Zentgraff’s day. She is one of the supreme examples Zentgraff gives of the Atjehsche woman’s doodsverachting — contempt of death — in the guerrilla war.
The rentjong and the brigade
During a patrol in Pidië a prominent Acehnese woman, Potjoet Meurah, was detained on suspicion of having a klewang hidden under her kain. Suddenly she drew a rentjong and, with the cry “Dan ben ik liever dood” — “Then I’d rather be dead” — stormed the brigade. The brigade had no choice against a woman who stabbed around her like a madwoman, and a moment later she lay severely wounded on the ground. She had been fearfully battered: she had two houwen (cuts) in the skull, two in the shoulder, and on one of her feet the Achilles-heel had been cut through. So she lay, full of blood and mud, a miserable heap of flesh; and a sergeant who pitied her asked the commander: “Shall I give her the mercy-shot?” — which Veltman forbade with a “ben je bedonderd?”
So they marched on; one wanted to let her die among her own countrymen. Some days passed when Veltman, on the keudé Biheuë (between Sigli and Padang Tidji), heard that Potjoet Meurah was not only still alive, but was even planning to have the whole moekim slaughtered! It seemed a bit foolish that a soul so firmly riveted to a body so badly battered should hold such a plan; but for certainty Veltman had the kampong cordoned and searched house by house. After literally rummaging in every corner, she was discovered, well hidden behind all sorts of cloths. She looked terrible; on her wounds a paste of cooling dung had been laid, and weak from blood-loss and fever, she groaned with pain.
Veltman’s treatment
Still she refused a doctor; rather dead than a kaphé at her body. Veltman, who had a good command of the Atjehsche language, spoke long with her with the courtesy due to a woman of her standing, and at last she accepted from this soldier what she had refused the doctor. Atjehers are sporting, and soldiers of all lands and sexes can appreciate each other. She let herself be treated by him; he washed the wounds in which the maggots writhed, and bound them. It took long, but she recovered — though she remained lame for life.
The salute of kolonel Scheur
When the military commander, kolonel Scheur (Scheurer) — the man of “alles kost een dubbeltje”, who had stormed the poeri of Tjakra Negara on Lombok — read in the journal how bravely she alone, with her rentjong, had thrown herself upon a whole brigade of eighteen carbines and sharp klewangs, he expressed the wish to see her. So this famous fighter of Lombok came to Potjoet Meurah, still not healed, and standing before her, took the attitude and brought her the salute: the fingers at the rim of the kepi. “Zeg haar,” he said to Veltman, “that I am all admiration for her.” This Veltman did, and a smile passed over her emaciated face. Those kaphé’s, she thought, weren’t so bad after all; and the Kompeuni never had any more trouble from this lady after her recovery.
Significance
Zentgraff cites Potjoet Meurah as the supreme instance of the Atjehsche woman’s solitary valour — single-handedly charging a brigade of eighteen carbines and sharp klewangs with her rentjong. The salute of kolonel Scheur, the Lombok fighter, marks the sporting admiration that soldiers of all nations can have for one another, even across the lines of religion and race.
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
Pòtjoet Meurah was an Atjehnese noblewoman — wife of Toeankoe Machmoed — whom General Swart, Governor of Atjeh from 1908 to 1918, named among the descendants of sultans and Atjehnese chiefs whose trust in the European government he cited as proof that no ineradicable hereditary hatred of the Dutch lived among the kampong population.
Swart’s testimony
Receiving the journalist Joh. Langhout as old Vice-President of the Council of the Indies, General Swart rejected the newspaper talk of an inextinguishable hatred which the women in the kampongs would keep alive against the Dutch: “Er is geen sprake van een onuitroeibaren haat, die hereditair is! Wie dat zegt, kent het volk niet!” (“There is no question of an ineradicable hatred that is hereditary! Whoever says that, does not know the people!”). He could cite an uncountable number of examples proving the contrary, and told among others of Teukoe Tjhi Peusangan, of Panglima Polem and his sister, of Polem’s brother-in-law Toeankoe Radja Keumala, and of Pòtjoet Meurah and her husband Toeankoe Machmoed — chiefs and sultans’ kin who “found the kaphé (infidel) not so bad after all” and entrusted to the grey-haired administrator in the service of Atjeh all their “dearest and most secret thoughts”.
See Also
- Veltman
- Pidië
- Sigli
- Padang Tidji
- Scheur
- Rentjong
- Klewang
- Kaphé
- Aceh War
- 20th-century
- H. N. A. Swart
- Panglima Polem
- Pacification of Atjeh
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 96–97.