Lamtoba — also written Lamtobah — was a small Achehnese landschap or district in the interior behind the north coast of Groot-Atjeh, consisting of a single secluded valley of eight kampongs at the foot of the Goudberg (Selawa Djanten), famous as the first objective of the Dutch expedition of 1879 and as the place to which the chiefs and population of the XXVI Moekims had fled after the conquest of July 1879. The valley is fully described — as a country practically unknown before, whose population stood in evil repute even among the Achehnese — in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).
Geography
From the open plateau where the advancing column first overlooked it, on 29 July 1879, the valley of Lamtoba was seen entire: two broad outrunners of the Goudberg embraced it on either side, uniting again to the north-west in a sharply incised kloof through which the collected waters of the small rivers rushed in wild haste. Between the mountain ridges — clothed with alang-alang or short grass, their flanks overgrown with coppice and standing wood — lay enclosed the plain, more than 6,000 metres long and almost as broad, sloping gently to the north-west. Along the two rivulets that ran at the steep foot of the mountain walls, and the four smaller brooks that meandered between them through the unplanted rice-fields, stood the pile-built wooden houses of the little kampongs under heavy palms, hidden in dense undergrowth and thorny tree-ferns. Against the broad flank of the Selawa Djanten at the upper end, and running up its steep slopes, great strips were cut out of the heavy forest and planted with rice. A fouled white flag stuck out above the foliage at every kampong, while a few Achehnese moved quietly over the narrow paths between the fields. The authors reckoned it, from the air, the one oasis in the unfruitful stony hill country between the coast and the Atjeh-valley.
Government and people
The government of the district, as the interrogations of August 1879 disclosed, stood with an Imam at the head beside a Rijksbestierder (administrator), Panglima Banten, assisted by four wakils, each governing two kampongs, every kampong having besides its own head. The eight kampongs counted together some 180 large and 50 smaller houses — poor-looking dwellings in comparison with those of the Padangsche Bovenlanden and even of Groot-Atjeh. The runderpest then raging in many places, which exacted such great sacrifices on West Java, had heavily afflicted these districts also: of the numerous herds of karbouwen (buffaloes) the population had once owned, few remained, and the carcasses of perished cattle lay rotting at points of the valleys. Smallpox, the Dutch discovered during their stay, was also present in the district.
History
It was the flight hither of Toekoe Moeda Baij, Toekoe Nja Hoessin, Toekoe Paya and other chiefs of the XXVI Moekims with some two hundred persons of rank — who settled in small encampments outside the kampongs, the population not daring to oppose them — that caused Generaal van der Heijden to send the column to punish the district for the hospitality shown, and to compel the refugees’ return. The valley was entered on 29 July 1879, the Imam and chiefs submitted, arms and ammunition were delivered, and the district was held by the Dutch for a fortnight; in punishment of the chiefs’ evasion the mountain kampong of Kepaja Doewa was burnt in the punitive expedition of early August. From the Dutch bivak at the kampong Lambada, by the brook Aloever Lam Ping, marched on 13 August the expedition to Selimoen. On 20 August the column returned, and on 22 August the valley was abandoned — because of the smallpox — with the Imam, the Rijksbestierder and half the wakils and kampong-heads as hostages, under a waarborgsom of ten dollars for every wooden and three for every bamboo house. Patrolling patrols found in the houses of the adjoining kampong the half-decomposed bodies of aged or smallpox-stricken Achehnese, left behind by their people, dead of hunger and misery.
Significance
Lamtoba was the deepest point of the first Dutch penetration of the highland behind Groot-Atjeh’s north coast, and the valley’s occupation furnished Van der Heijden with the observation points from which the geography of the upper Atjeh-rivier was fixed for the first time — recorded in the book’s schetskaart. Together with Selimoen it formed the closing theatre of the operations of 1879.
See Also
- Occupation of the Lamtoba valley (July–August 1879)
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Imam of Lamtoba
- Panglima Banten
- Kepaja Doewa
- Lambada
- Goudberg
- Lampanas
- Selimoen
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 3-4, 20-25, 63-64. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.