Goitre and the Kenubè
Snouck Hurgronje introduces Woyla in the course of his discussion of the kenubè — spirits whose influence is most clearly seen in regard to the water of mountain streams. “The influence of the kenubè is most clearly to be seen in regard to the water of the mountain streams on which they exert their spell. Most of those who drink such water get goitre (chuguëg). This disease is very common in some parts of Pidie, especially in the neighbourhood of Keumala; and also in part of the highlands of the auriferous district of Woyla on the West Coast. Most of the sufferers are women. The malady is ascribed with absolute conviction by the Achehnese to the drinking of the water of certain definite streamlets in those districts, and it is the influence of the kenubè which is believed to render their waters so dangerous.”
The Gold-Bearing Highlands
Snouck’s description of Woyla as “auriferous” marks the district as one of the gold-producing regions of the West Coast of Acheh. The gold of the West Coast was an important resource of the sultanate from the earliest times, and the fact that the disease of goitre should have been observed particularly in the highlands of the gold districts suggests that the miners and their families were especially exposed to the water-borne causes of the malady.
The auriferous character of Woyla is also of comparative interest. In a footnote Snouck cites the treatise of Wilken on Struma en Cretinisme in den Indischen Archipel (Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut for 1890, p. 420), showing that goitre was known to be endemic in many mountain districts of the archipelago and that the Achehnese explanation of it — by reference to the kenubè — was a local form of a wider Indonesian belief.
Significance
Woyla appears in Vol. I chiefly as a geographical name attached to a sociological observation: the highland gold district on the West Coast where goitre was particularly common, and where the Achehnese belief in the kenubè was correspondingly strong. The mention of Woyla thus ties together two of Snouck’s recurring interests — the economic geography of the Achehnese sultanate and the popular demonology by which the Achehnese explained the natural world.
Account from The Geology of Indonesia (1949) — Krueng Woyla
The coal deposits along the Krueng Woyla
Van Bemmelen’s reference to the Krueng Woyla occurs in the North Sumatra section of the coal chapter, in the context of the West-Atjeh Neogene coal occurrences:
“The deposits of the second group are located along the Krueng Wojla and the Krueng Meureubo in the district of West Atjeh.”
The “second group” here refers to the Neogene coals of Atjeh (the first group being the Paleogene coals of East Atjeh, Langkat and the East Coast of Sumatra). The West-Atjeh Neogene coals, as Van Bemmelen observes more generally, “to the present, seem to be of no or little economical importance” — a summary judgment that places the Krueng Woyla deposits, together with the other West-Atjeh coal occurrences, in the category of coal localities that were explored by the colonial geological service but never developed into productive mines.
Significance
The Krueng Woyla is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is one of the two principal fluvial reference-points for the West-Atjeh Neogene coal zone — the river along which, with the Krueng Meureubo, the Neogene coal deposits of the West-Atjeh coast are located. The Krueng Woyla’s inclusion in Van Bemmelen’s summary of the West-Atjeh coal occurrences is itself the historical fact that matters: the river was sufficiently well-known in the colonial geological literature to be named as one of the two principal coal-bearing rivers of the West-Atjeh coast, even though its coal deposits were assessed as being “of no or little economical importance”.
See Also
- Acheh
- West Coast
- Pidie
- G. A. Wilken
- Keumala
- Atjeh’s Westkust
- Coal in Atjeh
- J. Zwierzycki
- Krueng Meureubo
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1949
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Place where Teukoe Oemar settled after his flight (from Lageuën).
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 402.
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.
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 56 (coal in North Sumatra, West-Atjeh Neogene deposits along the Krueng Woyla and Krueng Meureubo).
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 402.