T. Radja Tampo’ was the Acehnese irreconcilable of the Meulaboh country who, in the bottomless marshes of Seuneu’am and Tripa, remained the one man never found during the whole governorship of H. N. A. Swart, and who — du Croo recorded — was still wandering in 1939 as a legendary figure held holy in the eyes of the population, “who undoubtedly had and kept contact with the chiefs and the population, but who was never and by no one betrayed.”
The unfindable man
At Swart’s retirement in 1918 only one onvindbare had remained unfound, and that was T. Radja Tampo’. He was listed in the survey of 1913 among the last resistance leaders who refused to submit — “in Meulaboh: T. Radja Tampo’, the wanderer of the Seuneu’am swamps” — and by 1914, with Tgk. di Mata Ië, he was one of only two of the great resistance men still at large.
In March 1914 he “provided a change” by levying tribute on some inhabitants of Tadoe and Tripa in the Meulaboh district; he set fire to a couple of padi barns and then disappeared without trace into his haystack.
The testimony of Teukoe Keumangan, 1926
In 1926 the great Teukoe Keumangan of Seunagan acknowledged to du Croo that T. Radja Tampo’ had indeed been present on the pasar at Djeuram, and that this had come to his ears — but that it could not be required of him, the oelèëbalang, that he betray so holy and at that time harmless a figure: “the oelèëbalang who did so could not remain a territorial chief in Seunagan.”
Significance
T. Radja Tampo’ is du Croo’s standing illustration of the limits of the pacification. His survival did not disturb the political situation — he was, as Teukoe Keumangan put it, harmless — but the refusal of chiefs and population to give him up, thirty years after the height of the resistance, showed how far the sanctity attaching to the last irreconcilables outlasted the war itself.
See Also
- Tgk. di Mata Ië
- Teukoe Keumangan
- Seunagan
- Meulaboh
- Tripa
- Djeuram
- Maurice Henri du Croo
- H. N. A. Swart
- 1913
- 1914
Source
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XII, pp. 116–118.