The Batak Karo — called by the Achehnese Bata’ Kar’ee (i.e. k’arau’) — are one of the four Batak sub-groups named in Vol. I of The Achehnese in the course of C. Snouck Hurgronje’s account of the slaves held in Acheh. The Karo are, in the Achehnese estimation, “the wildest and most vicious” of all the Batak sub-groups.
The Achehnese, Snouck notes, apply the nickname Bata’ Kar’ee as a term of evil import to all Bataks, “including the Bata’ Pakpak, the Bata’ Tuba and the Bata’ Maloyeng (Mandailing).” The Karo thus supply the contemptuous generic name by which all Bataks are known in Achehnese conversation: a stock figure of dangerous dishonesty and ungovernable temper.
Male Bataks, but very seldom females, were imported into Acheh as slaves, chiefly “from Singkel and Trumon” — that is, from the Batak country on the west coast — and they bore, in Achehnese opinion, a character quite as bad as that of the Niasese was good. Snouck records that the Bataks were spoken of as “unwilling, lazy and revengeful,” and that every Achehnese could furnish plentiful examples, either from his own experience or from hearsay, “how one Batak has treacherously murdered his master through anger at a trifling chastisement, and another after having been treated with the utmost kindness has made himself scarce after putting his master’s children to death, and so on.”
The Karo country proper — the high plateau south-east of the Batak heartland — is not described in Vol. I, which concerns itself only with the figure cut by the Karo and other Batak sub-groups in Achehnese society. The stereotypical appraisal is, however, characteristic: where the Nias slave was trusted and well-regarded, the Batak, and above all the Karo Batak, was feared and disliked, and his reputed treachery formed part of the common stock of Achehnese household tales.
The Translator’s footnote adds the supplementary observation that very few Bataks reached the Straits Settlements, but those who did confirmed the bad Achehnese character — two very bad cases of amok by Bataks in Penang being cited from apparently trivial motives.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.