Toekoe Lampasei was the lawful head (hoofd) of the IV Moekims of Groot-Atjeh and the most consistent Atjehnese ally of the Dutch during the first years of the Aceh War. Living at Olehleh under Dutch protection from 1873, he was the only chief of the subjected district of the IV Moekims who clung to the Dutch throughout the years when his own people almost wholly rejected them.
The head without moekims
H. F. Meijer, in Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876 (1883), describes his position during the consolidation period as that of a chief in exile in his own district: very well disposed to the Dutch and living at Olehleh, he had for two years struggled with the ill-will of his subordinate heads and people, who were continually kept in agitation against the Dutch by the enemy and by the panglimas and toekoes of the war party. His authority meant little; he did not dare, at first, to show himself among his own people in the IV Moekims, and Dutch force had to restore him. He moved his residence to the Dutch post at Boekit Seboen to come into closer contact with his moekims; there, supported by Dutch authority and by the assistance of the same self-interest of the settled population that everywhere counselled order, his influence slowly returned. Under the strict orders of the rulers he dared not submit his people to harm: even the coconut trees of the population of his district could only be bought, not taken.
The restoration at Lepong, July 1876
Lepong, the landscape on the west coast of Atjeh, formed part of his domain but had, since the beginning of the war, only nominally belonged to him. The Dutch settlement of Kroeëng Raba and the march of 25 July 1876, in which the Lepongers came to meet the troops with young coconuts, restored head and people of Lepong under his government. To him, Meijer remarks, the Dutch owed that district: “we owed it to the faithful Toekoe Lampasei, the lawful head of that whole landscape.”
Significance
Toekoe Lampasei’s fidelity was, in the official record, the only counterweight to the general hostility of the chiefs of Groot-Atjeh in these years; and the Dutch arrangement of markets, licences and passes in the IV Moekims was designed in large part to strengthen precisely his slowly returning authority.
See Also
- IV Moekims
- Boekit Seboen
- Reconnaissance to Lepong (25 July 1876)
- Toekoe Tjoet Bantah
- Guerilla warfare in Groot-Atjeh
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), introduction and chapters I and VII.