The Mandailings in Peninsular Malaysia

The History of Papan & The Mandailing People
by Abdur-Razzaq Lubis

ORIGINS

Papan has always been associated with tin, and tin is associated with clearing land and forests, malaria, brothels, opium dens, the Inspector of Mines, taxes and timber. (Not necessarily in that order). Timber especially hard wood was used for the production of good charcoal, the wooden chain pump called chia-chia, the water wheels, the kongsi houses and as fuel to work the steam pump.

From Papan's name we can deduce that its beginning probably has more to do with timber, literally plank. Oral tradition has it that Pekan Papan (Papan Town) or Plank Town was the place where chengal was sawn in the 1840's. The chengal was extracted from the jungles in Ulu Johan (Upper Johan), upstream from Papan Town. The sawn timbers was transported to Pengkalan Pegoh, a river port, which drains into the Kinta river.

This story about the origin of Papan came down to us from the late Haji Abdullah H.M. Salleh. He was a the first local headmaster to the Government English School in Gopeng.

The chengal woodcutters were said to be Malays while the people who sawed the timber into planks in Papan Town were Chinese. This is further corroborated by the presence of the ruins of the Kwan Yin Temple, dedicated to the Godess of Mercy, which was reportedly built originally of timber in 1847, and rebuilt of bricks in 1898.

Even in the Chinese oral tradition, Papan's name originated from wood. In Cantonese Papan is "Ka Pan", which means "first wood" after the wooden water-wheel. The Chinese characters and the Cantonese and Hokkien pronouncation of the place name is derived from the Malay. It is therefore quite conclusive that the former lumber town turned mining town of Papan acquired its name from the Malay word meaning "sawn timber" or "plank" as a result of logging activities.

THE PERAK WAR 1875

The cowardly murder of J.W.W. Birch, the first British Resident to Perak, on Hari Raya day, November 2nd, 1875, at Pasir Salak in Lower Perak, gave rise to the Perak War of 1875.

Papan saw some action during the war, and was the foothold of the invading forces whose mission was to capture Ex-Sultan Ismail and secure Kinta, the Sultan's capital. Ismail had a residence at Blanja. It was an important village as it was from here that he shipped his tin to Bruas from his mines at Papan. Further east, beyond Papan was his usual village residence, Pengkalan Pegu. Papan was half-way between Kinta and Blanja.

In "this small war" as Lieut. H.B. Rich, called the Perak War, "a little force marched to a place called Pappan." This little force left Blanja for Kinta on December 13th, 1875. The area around Papan was then dense jungle.Papan was taken on December 14th, by Raja Mahmud and Raja Uteh, who was accompanied by Swettenham, on having driven the enemy from the mines at Papan.

Raja Uteh (variously spelt as Raja Utoh or Outih) was a Mandailing from Kota Pinang, Sumatra. He was one of several adventurers who Swettenham recruited to help capture Perak Malays thought to have been linked with Birch's murder. Raja Uteh, together with Raja Asal, Raja Mahmud of Selangor, Syed Mashor and Raja Indut, was later recommeded by Swettenham for an award for their "gallant and faithful services." According to Swettenham, Raja Asal, Raja Mahmud and Syed Mashor "fought entirely for friendship's sake, and have received no pecuniary reward, only their provisions, whilst acting with us."

Raja Uteh is potrayed as a fearless character by Sir Hugh Charles Clifford in In The Days That Are Dead and in In Court And Kampong. Clifford apparently knew Raja Asal as well. When he gave an autographed copy of his The Further Side of Silence to Haji Abdullah, he signed with a note: "to the great-grandson of my friend Raja Asal."
Haji Abdullah was actually the great-grandnephew of Raja Asal.

Kinta was taken on the December 17th, 1875, and from "a military point of view", the British "got possession of the whole of Perak" as Kinta "commanded the rivers Perak and Kinta, and (they) were in possession of all the chief towns."

PAPAN MINES

Ex-Sultan Ismail who was ousted by the Brtish through the disastrous Pangkor Treaty 1874, was known to have owned at least four mines, the most valuable being at Papan.
Ex-Sultan Ismail's mines were given to Raja Asal by Swettenham as a reward for his military services in the Perak War. The Papan mines were described as "the most productive in the State" as well as "probably the richest tin mines in the Malay Peninsula."

Raja Asal had migrated from Mandailing in West Sumatra to Malaya in the 1840s in the wake of the Padri War (1816-1833). He was implicated in the Pahang War (1857-1863) and played a leading role in the Selangor War (1867-1873), better know to the Mandailing as Porang Kolang. He was the head of the Mandailings in Ulu Klang, Selangor before he was driven out of the Selangor with Syed Mashor in 1873. When Birch met Raja Asal, the later was already an old man.

He has been described as "the redoutable Raja Asal" and as "the renegade Mandailing chief" by historians."

Sir Hugh Low, the British Resident who took over from Birch in his letter to the Colonial Secretary, dated July 26, 1877, stated that: "Raja Asal would seem to have been already sufficiently rewarded, as he says Mr. Swettenham gave him the sole right of mining from the Papan Mines to the mouth of the Kinta River, an immense concession and, as far as I have seen, containing the most productive tin mines in the State."

J. Douglas in a letter dated September 14th, 1877, to the Colonial Secretary, wrote that: "Raja Asal has been most handsomely rewarded by the gift of the Papan mines by Mr. Swettenham to him - they are probably the richest mines in the Malay Peninsula."

There is some confusion about who actually gave the mines to Raja Asal. In Tarikh Raja Asal dan Keluarganya, the family chronicle, a letter from Swettenham dated March 16th, 1876, to Raja Asal is reproduced stating that: "Raja Asal and Che Ismail are allowed to work tin mines (Except at Pappan) between Kinta and Blanja."

In Govenor Sir F. Weld's despatch dated August 13th, 1881 to Lord Kimberly, over the original recommendation of Sir W. Jervois for the Queen to present swords to Raja Asal and his comrades as a recognition for their services in the Perak War, Weld revealed that it was Jervois instead of Swettenham, who gave the mines to Raja Asal.

"Raja Asal, was permitted by Sir W. Jervois to work some mines abandoned by those who had opposed the British troops in Perak. Raja Asal was ruined by the venture and is stated to have committed suicide in consequence." Of course, the family denied this as an outrageous allegation and said that Raja Asal died of old age.

Raja Asal passed away on November 14th, 1877, and was buried at Changkat Piatu (Solitary Hillock) previously known as Pangkalan Kaca, near Pangkalan Peguh, on the banks of the Kinta River. He is reverred and has become a legendary figure amongst modern day Mandailings.

In 1879, H.W.C. Leech, the first British Magistrate to Kinta described Papan as being "the most important mining settlement" in Kinta. Papan remained one of the most historic as well as one of the leading tin producing areas in Kinta and indeed the whole of Perak well into the early 20th century.

MANDAILINGS MINERS

The early Mandailing mining areas were clustered around the two Kinta tributaries, Sungai Johan and Sungai Raya. The Mandailing miners were involved in mining, smelting and trading in tin in the Kinta Valley.

The leading Mandailing miner in Papan was Raja Bilah, who took over the Papan mines from Raja Asal. Raja Bilah, the son of Raja Tedong Berani, migrated to Malaya around 1860's following the footsteps of his uncle, Raja Asal. He was made the penghulu of Papan from 1882 to 1909.

Studies on Malay mining in Kinta in the 1880s have substantially relied on several European accounts on the subject, namely by Leech, de la Croix, de Morgan and Hale. Judging from the areas documented, the miners encountered by these Europeans were largely, if not exclusively, Mandailing miners and their co-workers.

Leech was perhaps the first to comment on the fairly intensive "Malay mining" methods used in the Kinta Valley after the Perak War, during a period when Chinese miners and "Malay" miners could be observed working side by side, and the methods could be compared. By that time, tin-mining in Larut was virtually the exclusive domain of the Chinese.

The tin boom also brought the French engineer J. Errington de la Croix to Kinta, as part of his "scientific mission to the Peninsula". He reported in early 1881 that at Papan, "Thirteen mines are at present in full swing, and occupy five hundred men, Chinese and Malays". De la Croix noted a Chinese population of 234, which implied that the rest of the miners were "Malays".

"Klian Johan, worked by Chinamen, is the most important of all and is probably the deepest mine in the whole State, attaining a depth of fifty feet. On each side of that mine, Malays are also carrying on works to the same depth, but unable themselves to put up a proper draining apparatus, they have made with their more industrious neighbours a contract by which they are allowed to let their water flow into the Chinese mine on condition of paying one-tenth of their whole produce."

Among various accounts of mining in Kinta in the 1880s, such a symbiotic working relationship between "Malay" miners and Chinese miners was observed only in Papan. In fact, the Chinese miners working with Raja Bilah's mine were the same Chinese who fled Selangor together with Raja Asal. Their leaders were Hew Ah Ang, Wong Koon and Jin See, Chin Ah Yong, Lee Ah Yoke, and others. Hew Ah Ang was a Hakka Chinese from Kar Yin Chew. He opened a mining operation in Papan which employed a wooden chain pump to drain the water.

De la Croix's scientific report on the potential of the Kinta valley soon attracted European mining intrerests. Raja Bilah as Penghulu of Papan was the one who guided de la Croix on the tour of Papan valley, and it was he who first showed de la Croix the mining deposits at Lahat, near Papan. The French eventually opened the Lahat French Tin Mines in 1882, which became the first European company to break the Chinese monopoly on tin production. Raja Bilah also showed a mining site in Papan to J.H. Hampton of the Shanghai Tin Mines, which was set up by a few enterprising merchants from Shanghai.

THE "MALAY MINERS" OF KINTA

Following in the footsteps of de la Croix, another Frenchman Jacques de Morgan also explored the Kinta in 1884 and studied "Malay" mining methods. De Morgan was a civil mining engineer and member of the geographical, geological and zoological societies of France commissioned by the Perak government to undertake a geological and topographical survey.

Among the mines de Morgan studied were Klian Tronong (Tronoh), Klian Monile (near Lahat), Klian Tasik (Pusing) and Klian Lalang (near Gopeng), which were mainly Sumatran areas. Tronoh, at that time a new mining area, was to sustain a high level of tin production well into the 20th century. In the early years, Tronoh was chiefly a Minangkabau settlement, whereas the "Malay mines" around Gopeng were mainly Mandailings and Rawa.

The Tarikh Raja Asal gives us an insight into the mining methods practised by the Mandailingss and their co-workers, naming four methods of "Malay mining" in use at the time. They are meludang, melereh, mencabik, menabok.

At the height of Raja Bilah's mining career, he was possibly the largest "Malay" miner in the Kinta. "There was a place in Papan which they called One Hundred Pits (Tabuk Seratus) and Raja Bilah's mine was called the Great Mine (Lombong Besar) as it was the biggest Malay mine at the time with hundreds of coolies all Malays."

It is interesting to note that Raja Yacob talked about the Mandailings and Malays as two mutually exclusive groups in, say the Lambor episode, but includes the Mandailings among the Malays in matters of mining, apparently to distinguished the Muslim miners from the Chinese and European miners. However, he qualified this statement elsewhere by saying that the miners who worked for Raja Bilah were his followers (anak buah), who were Mandailings, Minangkabau and Rawa while his coolies were Javanese. This mixture seems to reflect the composition of "Malay miners" in most other parts of Kinta as well.

Among Raja Bilah's followers "there were some who also worked small sluice mines (lereh, lampan) and the womenfolk panned for tin, each one earning his or her own income and some made enough to go to on Hajj to Makkah and some returned to their country."

While de la Croix and de Morgan tended to generalise about "Malay miners" in their reports, Hale as Inspector of Mines had direct dealings with the Mandailings, and therefore could easily distinguish between them and the Perak Malays. He commented for example that washing stream in the river beds was "a very favourite employment with Mandheling women; Kinta natives do not affect it much, although there is more than one stream where a good worker can earn a dollar per day..." Panning for tin with a wooden tray (dulang) was called melanda.

In Papan, a dam was built by the Mandailingss, possibly with the help of the Chinese, to supply hydraulic power to the mines in case of draught. The Mandailings themselves are skilled in dam construction, and to this day, we can see their water engineering skills in Mandailing, their ancestral homeland as well as in Papan and Gopeng.

In 1886, Raja Bilah signed an agreement written in both Jawi and Chinese with one Hew Ng Hap (presumably the same as "Hew Ah Ang") and two others. It is possible that the contract was made during a time when there was a fresh influx of Chinese miners to Papan, and the old miners wished to secure their claim to the water reservoir from contending Chinese miners.

The leading Chinese miner of Papan Hew Ah Ang, who was previously doing well with a wooden chain pump, saw the advantages of a steam pump. "Hew Ah Ang came to confer with Raja Bilah, he asked for help to apply to the government to buy an engine, so Raja Bilah presented the matter to the Government. So the government helped to buy the first engine which was used in the Chinese mines in Papan".

Raja Bilah bought his first machine, a horse-powered engine imported from England but found out that it could not be used. One can picture the poor Mandailings, not understanding that the figurative meaning of horse-power, spending days and weeks trying to figure out how to harness the machine to their Deli ponies! He lost good money on the first engine.

He then bought his second machine, which according to family tradition was imported from Uganda. The second machine worked well enough, but still Raja Bilah's mining operations did not turn a profit. He had to take loans and mortgages to keep his mines going.

The family history do not say when these machines were purchased, but of the 16 steam pumping engines in Kinta in 1886, 10 belonged to Chinese, and 5 to the French Company mines, and one belong to "Raja BIELA a foreign Malay."

THE RELAU SEMUT

The Relau Semut (furnace) used by the Mandailing smelters in particular required charcoal made from hardwoods, and large tracts of forests were cleared merely to extract these timbers. In 1888, the Perak Government banned the use of all Chinese furnaces except the Relau Tongka which employed only ordinary firewood.

The ban was accepted in Larut, where most of the Chinese smelters had already switched to the Relau Tongka due to the scarcity of hard timber for charcoal. However, in Kinta, a high proportion of smelters, both Chinese and Mandailings, were still using the Relau Semut. These smelters were not compensated for the lost investment in existing furnaces, nor for the capital outlay that would be required for the Relau Tongka, which cost about two and a half times as much as the Relau Semut. The Chinese miners in the Kinta disregarded the regulation and attempts to impose the ban led to riots and attacks on the police.

Previously the Western company had difficulty cutting into the smelting business, but after the ban, it began to establish its agency in Kinta, beginning with a branch at Gopeng in 1889, followed by a new branch each year, successively at Batu Gajah, Lahat and Ipoh. The manager who was stationed at Ipoh came to control the purchasing and freighting agencies in Gopeng, Pusing, Lahat, Teluk Anson, Tekka and Kampar.

The losses to the Chinese smelters was partly cushioned by the booming tin prices of 1888 and 1889 which threw the rest of the Chinese mining community in euphoria. In the mean time, the European monopoly had dealt the death blow to the Mandailing tin traders and smelters.

PAPAN RIOTS

The secret society alliances of Larut followed the migration of miners. The Kinta authorities were not sufficiently alerted to the presence of secret societies until 1887, when a number of disturbances took place between the Ghee Hins and the Hai Sans, who had brought their feud over from Larut.

Groups of Ghee Hin and Hai San members could be found side by side in most of the mining settlements in Kinta. Raja Bilah's allies, the Kar Yin Hakkas, belonged to the Ghee Hin faction. The Ghee Hin headman was based in Papan while the Hai San headman was based in Gopeng, although the leaders of both settlements were Mandailings.

In November 1887, a brothel skirmish in Papan escalated into a secret society riot. In the official report of the Protector of the Chinese, the disturbances in Kinta was said to have started "from quarrels between a brothel bully (belonging to the Hai San Society) and between some Ghee Hin men."

According to family tradition, the culling took place in Papan on November 29th, 1887. Some of the Chinese women and children in Papan took refuge with Raja Bilah's wife, Ungku Na'imas, whom people called "the warrior woman". Ungku Na'imas, was an expert shooter brandishing a sporting rifle with an eight-sided cartridge.

The Papan Riots became an inspiration for a whole chapter in A Ruler Of Ind by F. Thorold Dickson and Mary L. Pechell.

Although Raja Bilah prospered as a revenue-collector, he was not as successful as a miner. Raja Bilah decided to sell off his mining operations in 1890, which were incurring more losses than profit.

In 1891, Sir George Maxwell visited Papan. "At Papan, which had become a village long before Ipoh, and was then a much bigger place, I met the penghulu, Raja Bila, a grand old man, who had raised a levy of foreign Malays to help the British in the Perak war, and had served with them under my father." His father was William Maxwell, who had recruited Mandailings and Rawas to pursue Dato' Maharaja Lela up to Kota Tampan and the Patani frontier.

The scenery from Papan to Batu Gajah, as described by George Maxwell in 1891, was inspiring. "From Papan onwards, the bridle path was a pure joy. It was still untouched by the contractor's men, and the great forest trees closed in so closely that they.