Kepaja Doewa — written by Cool and Hooijer also as Kepaya Doewa, Kepeya Doewa and Kepaija Doewa — was an Achehnese mountain kampong high in the range between the valley of Lamtoba and the valley of the Atjeh-rivier, beyond the border-river of the Lamtoba district, burnt by the Dutch in the punitive expedition of early August 1879 and passed again, amid renewed fighting, on the march to Selimoen of 13 August 1879. The kampong is described in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).
Geography and the punitive expedition
The kampong lay high in the mountains, about six palen from the Dutch bivak in the Lamtoba valley, beyond three steep-walled ravines and after a march without water; it consisted, when the troops reached it at one o’clock, of a fairly large main kampong with two smaller ones lying before it, together about thirty houses. Since the chiefs Toekoe Moeda Baij, Toekoe Nja Hoessin and Toekoe Paya of the XXVI Moekims, with their following, had withdrawn hither from the Lamtoba valley, and a wakil sent to summon them to submission had returned empty-handed, the column-commandant resolved to march against the kampong. It was burnt, with the fruit trees partly cut down, in punishment both of the resistance offered — the enemy having opened a fairly regular fire from the hills behind, from which he was driven by eight shrapnel shells — and of the hospitality shown to the chiefs of the XXVI Moekims. “Groote schrik was door de tuchtiging van Kepaja Doewa verspreid” — great terror was spread by the punishment: among the fugitives was the Rijksbestierder of Lamtoba himself, who returned on 6 August.
The ridge position of 13 August 1879
It was at and beyond the destroyed kampong that the Achehnese, on 13 August 1879, awaited the march of the Gerlach column to Selimoen. At the height of the demolished kampong, shots falling thicker as the advance guard pushed on, the enemy was found to have taken a very strong position astride the route: an earthen trench more than a hundred paces long, fronted by a heavy abatis and flanked by a tamboer — a palisaded blockhouse near the footpath — lying half-way up a rising hollow road. The position was carried by storm by the 2nd Company of the 6e Bataljon Infanterie under Captain Clerkson, with the loss of three wounded; against the same ridge beneath which the artillery then stood the guns of Luitenant Van Heutz had been in battery during the punitive expedition.
See Also
- Punitive expedition against Kepaja Doewa (August 1879)
- Lamtoba
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Toekoe Paya
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 24-29, 38-41. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.