Teukoe Bentara Keureuto — the chief bearing the title Bentara of the landschap Keureuto in the onderafdeeling Lho Soekon — was the oeléebalang whom Broersma met at Blang Djeroeën. He rules a large landschap and receives accordingly f 600 a month from the landschapskas, in addition to f 125 for his car. He maintains a small lorry for the transport of persons and goods and fetches, for example, fish daily from the coast.
Character and Family
Broersma describes him as ‘een krachtig en kundig hoofd’ — a powerful and capable chief. ‘In vriendelijkheid put hij zich niet uit, doch hij verstaat het antwoorden te geven op vragen over het volksbestaan, die hout snijden’ — In friendliness he does not exhaust himself, but he knows how to answer questions about the life of the people that are solidly true. His son attends the Mulo-school at Kota Radja and in his holidays helps his father in the work of government. The choice of a Dutch-speaking Mulo for the son of an oeléebalang of the interior is, in Broersma’s view, a sign of the same modernising tendency visible in the houses of Peureula and Peusangan.
The Landschap
The landschap of Keureuto lies in the western part of the onderafdeeling Lho Soekon, in the hill-country where the memory of Christoffel’s expedition — the apitan rimoeeng, or tiger-captain — is still fresh. The eastern half of the onderafdeeling is the great swamp of Paja Tjitjem, but the western half is a fertile rice-plain watered by the Keureuto river, and the chief draws an income from the hacil on the pepper and pinang of the hills as well as from the padi of the plain.
Significance
Teukoe Bentara is the type of the krachtig en kundig hoofd of the interior — a chief not effusively friendly but solidly competent, who manages his landschap with a lorry and a Mulo-school son. Broersma’s portrait of him is the counterweight to his portrait of the ‘verlichte hoofden’ of Peureula and Peusangan: the same modernising tendency is visible, but in a harder, less showy form.
See Also
- Keureuto
- Lho Soekon
- Blang Djeroeën
- Oeléebalang
- Bentara (title)
- Kota Radja
- Christoffel’s expedition to Keureuto (c. 1908)
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- Mulo-school
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter VIII, ‘Lho Soekon, licht en donker’, p. 56.