Building Missionary Stations in Southeast Asia: Nias Islanders Deploy Adzes

Abstract

In their determination to proselytize, Christian missionaries from Europe and North America built outposts in many parts of the world. Based on sources from the islands of Nias and Sumatra in today’s Indonesia, Chap. 2 demonstrates that the construction of missionary stations in the decades around 1900 relied on locally available expertise, labor, and building materials, just as daily life at the stations relied on a locally available labor force and locally produced foodstuff. Although missionaries brought with them to the islands drawing and tools (e.g., saws), indigenous carpenters often preferred their own tools (e.g., adzes); they used architectural solutions indigenous to the islands and incorporated local style elements in their structures. During construction, missionaries and local artisans exchanged technical knowledge and skills, turning the missionary station into a low-tech “trading zone.”

Early at 10 am. I arrived from Sifaoroasi with 6 pupils, tied up Hektor [to a tree] and gave him some grass, and began to work. We cleared the undergrowth and prepared a place to sleep, i.e., an outback hut. This building was also meant to house the two carpenters from Sifaoroasi. Something like this is only possible in the tropics, where you find everything you need close at hand. You turn a couple of trees into poles, and vines are much easier to handle than expensive European cords or nails. Bamboo shrubs from the area serve as roof laths, and leaves from sago-palm trees are used as thatching. Wood from the forest makes a primitive floor. At 5 pm. everything was finished. The horse was eating its bundle of grass, water was boiling in the pot above the fire, and the hammock was already hung. We had rice with salt and onion. Served on a banana leaf, it tasted better than any delicacies imaginable. The boys worked with joy. To accomplish something in the fresh air made them just as happy as me. All of us had honestly earned our supper.¹

This quotation is taken from the published diary of Eduard Fries, German missionary to the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia). In the entry from 1907, Fries goes on to describe how, after supper, the party enjoyed the black silhouette of the distant mountains. When the fog began to cover the valley, the group gathered inside the simple shack to sing “Christian songs.” Fries speculates that the party’s loud voices could be heard throughout the nearby village of Siwalubanua.²

This rhapsodic narrative contains many of the hallmarks of romantic Western travel accounts: the landscape replete with natural resources, the naturalness of indigenous techniques, the almost mythically flavorful local cuisine, the afterglow of a hard day’s work. Read in a contemporary context, the quote may remind us of, say, a blog post by a writer describing a trendy adventure-vacation or a survival-training course. According to this kind of narrative, the Western adventurer journeys to an “exotic” place; does manual labor in the unfamiliar environment; completes a task using only on-site materials; and, when the experience is over, takes pride in the accomplishments and returns home, “safe and sound.”

Fries was neither a tourist nor a recreational survivalist; he was a Protestant missionary to Nias, a small island off the western coast of Sumatra. Like other Christian missionaries of his time, Fries’ task was to proselytize and to convert the local population and bring what he and his colleagues called “cultural progress” to “semi-barbaric” peoples.³

When Fries embarked on his trip to Siwalubanua, he was thirty years old. The purpose was to establish a branch office to Sifaoroasi, where he was stationed. After months of negotiations with local chiefs, Fries had been granted permission to build a school and a teacher’s home in Siwalubanua. More precisely, Fries was authorized to hire a group of local craftspeople to erect these buildings. The Nias carpenters, who were meant to stay in the simple hut during construction, did not disappoint Fries: they quickly completed the first building. Soon after, the teacher, a Nias convert, began to gather pupils from Siwalubanua and the surrounding villages and homesteads in the southeast corner of the island.⁴

Toward the end of 1903, the Rhenish Missionary Society, headquartered in Barmen, Prussia, had dispatched Fries to the Dutch East Indies. Fries’ journey via the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean took place without incident, and his ship docked in the region he called “India,” a couple of days ahead of schedule. After a brief stay on Sumatra, Fries arrived on Nias in January, 1904. He would remain on the island for a decade-and-a-half. From the time of his arrival until the outbreak of the First World War, Fries communicated with the Rhenish Missionary Society, back home, on a regular basis. More than two-hundred members of the Society subscribed to Fries’ so-called circulars (Rundbriefe), a mix of diary entries, observations, and personal reflections. Eduard’s brother, Wilhelm Fries, edited the circulars and made sure they were printed and collected in annual volumes. During Fries’ first ten years on Nias, he submitted a total of sixty-five circulars.

Fries and his cohort used circulars as a communications tool. The elevated Rundbriefe elaborated on the “civilizing missions” in order to mobilize financial support for the Society. More than a century later, historians can use the information in the Rundbriefe to glean insights into the daily lives of people—as well as to discover the microhistory of life at missionary stations.⁵

Fries was not the first Rhenish missionary in the area. Eight years after its founding in 1828, the Rhenish Missionary Society had established its first station in the Dutch East Indies on the island of Borneo.⁶ One of the pioneers, Ludwig Nommensen, had lived on Sumatra and Nias for more than forty years before Fries arrived. One of Nommensen’s colleagues, Ernst Ludwig Denninger, had traveled from Sumatra to Nias in 1865, to set up the first station there. Accordingly, when Fries arrived on Nias, he benefited from an existing network of missionary stations. This network included a series of global infrastructures and the support of the Dutch colonial administration.

When Fries made landfall in Gunungsitoli—originally a military station, and a small settlement as of 1900—on the east coast of Nias, he was welcomed by other members of the Rhenish Mission. A small pile of letters from home awaited him in his temporary dwelling at the Ombolata missionary station, south of Gunungsitoli. Anyone who wished to contact Fries needed no zip code; “Missionar Fries, NIAS, Sumatras Westkust, via Genua, Ombolata. Nederlandsck Indie,” was enough.⁷

Fries’ journey from Genoa to the Dutch East Indies had filled him with excitement. In his diary he explains that he could watch the “infinite, eternal sea” for hours and days on end; distant shorelines fueled his imagination. During a visit to the lower deck of the ship, Fries marveled at the colors and smells of the “mosaic” in the third- and fourth-class decks: “Chinese with long pigtails … Arab pilgrims to Mekka … beautiful Indians, sweet Malays”. Fries watched “the hundreds of coolies and Chinese … the slaves of the whites” who were “dragging coal” in the harbors. While he wrote glowingly, if naïvely, of the human “mosaic” aboard the Dutch steamer, Fries was apparently relieved to be able to maintain some distance from servants and “tricksters” who allegedly tried to steal the first-class travelers’ money.⁸

A romantic, exotic tone permeates Fries’ account. His description of himself as both involved and distanced reminds us of what sociologist John Urry calls “the tourist gaze.”⁹ Indeed, despite having embarked on the trip to Indonesia for the purposes of carrying out a religious mission, Fries viewed his surroundings with eyes similar to those of a tourist. It was only when Fries began to live near—and work with—the Niasans that he began to interact directly with people of other backgrounds.

The operative question I explore in this chapter is: What happened when Fries and other missionaries took up residence in distant lands for longer periods? What daily routines did they develop in their new environments, and how did the indigenous people on Nias and Sumatra respond to the missionaries’ presence? What practical skills did the missionaries bring with them, and what knowledge did they acquire from the locals?

In exploring this question of cultural interaction, I analyze direct encounters between Europeans and members of the indigenous population. The physical sites where different groups met and interacted are of equal interest. Missionary stations were iconic places where Europeans and locals observed and influenced each other. Like the local marketplace, where the Protestant male Rhenish missionaries, their wives, and servants would have purchased produce from local farmers, the missionary station can be called a “trading zone.”¹⁰

This figurative interpretation of a trading zone acknowledges implicitly that missionaries and locals did not trade in material goods alone; they also bartered technical knowledge and skill. When building the small hut in Siwalubanua, the Nias carpenters—as well as Fries—used materials from their immediate surroundings and applied regional techniques. Fries did not merely watch the local craftspeople; he worked alongside them, using skills and knowledge he had acquired when his main missionary station had been built in Sifaoroasi, two years earlier. The idea of using palm leaves to cover a roof was, by then, no longer new to him.

In describing the “trading” of objects and knowledge between groups on Nias in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I borrow the trading zone concept from Peter Galison’s work in the history and philosophy of modern science.¹¹ Galison repurposed “trading zone,” applying the term to a microphysics lab in the late twentieth century. In analyzing the social and cognitive relations in the science lab, Galison overturns the idea that scientists necessarily take the lead—and that engineers merely apply the ideas of science. No such hierarchy exists in practice, according to Galison. On the contrary, to be able to carry out viable lab experiments, scientists, engineers, and technicians must “trade” information and learn to collaborate—despite their inevitably differing epistemologies and perceptions of the world.

The missionary station, as a workplace, may seem far afield from the microphysics laboratory of Galison’s research. However, both sites host interactions between individuals with different education, experience, and socialization. Similarly, the construction and management of missionary stations required some form of exchange between Westerners and locals. To characterize the encounters between Christian missionaries and the people they tried to convert, historian Jürgen Osterhammel uses the apt term “symmetrical interaction.” Although missionaries and colonial powers tried to impose their worldview on indigenous peoples, day-to-day life at missionary stations was to a large extent formed by “local conditions.”¹²

Indeed, what distinguishes the missionary station as a trading zone is the fact that information traveled both ways. Although communication between Europeans and Asians was imperfect, that information—as well as material goods—was often exchanged successfully. For example, to build houses that appealed to European taste, local carpenters “received” information about—and adopted—technologies that were new to them. Carpenters learned to use tools and materials that Fries had brought with him from Germany. Some builders were so eager to adopt Western tools that Fries felt compelled to end his short account of constructing the Siwalubanua hut with the following coda:

It is, by the way, interesting to observe how the indigenous long to adopt our cultural achievements. Unfortunately, they do not realize that we tend to prefer the freely available and often more durable indigenous products. And, as a result, they forget their own, often more practical techniques.¹³

By twenty-first-century standards, the tone of Fries’ reflections can be considered paternalistic and Orientalist. Nevertheless, his reportage shows that some indigenous craftspeople on Nias readily appropriated foreign technologies to serve their own needs and interests. In the house-building “trading zone” of Nias, the Batak people learned to join wood with iron nails as surely as Fries learned to thatch a roof with local palm leaves.

Pioneers and “Martyrs”

British and U.S. missionary societies had long been active in the area before Fries arrived on the scene. Even Nommensen had predecessors: in 1820, the Baptist Missionary Society of Britain had dispatched to Sumatra Richard Burton and Nathaniel Ward.¹⁴ In an account of that trip, the two missionaries express deep admiration for the Toba Batak—a people living in the western parts and the highlands of northern Sumatra—and their building accomplishments:

We were scarcely less interested by the internal appearance of the villages, than we had previously been by that of the surrounding country. The one subordinate to our host consisted of twenty-four houses, in a straight line, with the gable ends uniformly facing the street … The houses were constructed generally of excellent materials, exhibiting marks of superior workmanship, and in many instances ornamented with carving and paint. The villages were clean; and the females occupied in the manufacture of cloth, and surrounded by numbers of playful children, afforded a pleasing idea of industry, health, and domesticity.¹⁵

Unsurprisingly, Burton and Ward’s interpretation of Batak society is shot through with Western ideals of uniformity, cleanliness, and industriousness. Despite its Western bias, their observations are important, however. The earliest missionaries were impressed by how the local people built their houses, a sentiment echoed by Fries some eighty years later.

Apparently, the fascination was mutual. Burton and Ward reference the Toba Batak people’s interest in the White men and their belongings. During an expedition to the Sumatran highlands in 1824, Burton and Ward were encircled by villagers, who had seldom or never seen Europeans. Equally intriguing were the British missionaries’ objects: a “double-barrelled gun, … a telescope, a mariner’s compass, a pair of spectacles, a case of mathematical instruments, some printed books.”¹⁶ No mention is made of whether or not the locals were allowed to handle any of the objects.

A decade later, the young Baptists Henry Lyman and Samuel Munson, from the United States, undertook a journey to Sumatra and Nias to explore the possibility of setting up a missionary station in the area. In his diary, Lyman offered advice for future missionaries. Settlers had to make meticulous preparations:

If a missionary wishes to reside in the island, he would do well … to bring with him his household furniture, iron work for building, and stores, such as sugar, coffee, tea, etc., etc., and goods for purchasing the necessaries of life, and making some few presents. Goods should consist of tobacco, iron and steel, and coarse cloths particularly. When arrived here, he should pay his respects immediately to all the chiefs in the district … He should ask them for a piece of land, or, rather, select a piece and tell them he wishes to build upon it. His timber he will purchase cheap. Laborers he will obtain, who will make his house after a fashion, if he can have patience to give them an exact plan, and show them all the parts. … He would do well to raise his own vegetables, fruits, fowls, hogs, sheep, and to keep a horse, with a saddle and bridle. Rice and potatoes he could always purchase cheap, with goods.¹⁷

This excerpt highlights several important realities. Perhaps predictably, Lyman recommends that missionaries import materials to create a decent home; he also advises missionaries to bring ceremonial gifts for chiefs and neighbors. Less predictable is Lyman’s statement that the missionaries could rely on local craftspeople to construct the necessary buildings. Batak carpenters had the skills to build houses that were in line with missionaries’ wishes. While indigenous people may not have worked previously with iron building materials, Lyman was certain they would understand how to do so.

The excerpt also establishes that missionaries could expect more than a subsistence way of life, given that some produce was locally available. Passages from Lyman’s other records and letters show that people on Sumatra and Nias traded coconut oil, sago starch, and edible sea slugs, “so much prized by the Chinese.” People also manufactured textiles from cotton and silk, and some islanders were trained blacksmiths and goldsmiths.¹⁸

Before Lyman and Munson could establish themselves as missionaries, they—together with one of their servants—were killed by a group of Batak warriors who objected to White men entering their country. This tragic ending later motivated Lyman’s anonymous biographer and editor of his diary to give him the epithet “the martyr of Sumatra.”¹⁹ It would take another half-century until missionaries could establish safe outposts in remote areas of Sumatra and Nias. Only after two bloody wars around 1880 did Dutch military forces seize authority in the region—although pockets of resistance remained into the early-twentieth century. This so-called pacification of the local population enabled missionary organizations in Europe and North America to establish new stations. Decisions about where to expand their activities were made in consultation with the missionaries already on the ground, and they required permission from the local Dutch authorities. Governors usually allowed missions to expand their activities into “independent districts” only when the missionaries’ safety could be guaranteed.²⁰

The missionaries’ period of residence in faraway countries was characterized by a certain degree of ambivalence. On the one hand, they were eager to learn the local language, and they went out of their way to establish close contacts with the indigenous population. Before the Rhenish Society sent their missionaries overseas, it offered language courses to make sure the missionaries were able to communicate with potential converts. On the other hand, once missionaries found themselves on-site, they made an effort to maintain relative physical distance from the local population and their ways of life.

After being assigned a region, the missionary initially had no choice but to rent a dwelling from one of the locals. This was the case for Nommensen, as a young missionary. In 1863, when he first arrived in Baros, “a destitute place” on the Sumatran coast, he moved into a house owned by a Chinese villager. According to Nommensen’s account, the dwelling “was in such a bad state that it kept neither wind nor rain out.” After some negotiation, the Chinese landlord agreed to reduce the rent if Nommensen agreed to renovate the house at his own expense.²¹

Daily life in simple houses proved to be distinctly unromantic. Indeed, complaints about the limited space and unsanitary conditions in ordinary homes is a common trope in missionary narratives. Women missionaries to China—who were allowed to proselytize despite not being ordained priests—routinely reported on their dark, uncomfortable houses, as well as the armies of bedbugs they battled at night.²²

The Rhenish emissaries to the Dutch East Indies recounted similar experiences. “Brother” Schrey, stationed in Sibolga, on Sumatra’s west coast, vented his displeasure:

A whole house had been prepared and cleaned for us. Still, it was so dirty that we got covered in black, and the ceiling was so low that we were constantly bumping our heads. But the worst were the countless bugs that visited us during the night.…²³

One of Schrey’s colleagues was equally unhappy about having to live in a dwelling that looked like “a mediocre hen or duck house.”²⁴

Often, concerns centered on soot from indoor fireplaces. Given that the houses lacked chimneys, missionaries had difficulty breathing. However, they soon realized the fireplace’s key advantage: it kept mosquitos out of the buildings. One missionary claimed he would rather be “smoked” inside his own house than devoured by aggressive insects.²⁵ Missionaries also objected to the fact that walls and floors were not entirely solid. Made of wooden planks or bamboo branches, houses featured narrow slits between the wood and the twigs. These openings provided ventilation as well as vulnerability to the elements. It also meant that noise and odors found their way into missionaries’ living spaces. Historical sources are rife with the laments of Europeans, who cite the stench of animals and unwashed people and the lack of privacy. Some of the grievances are plausible: traditional houses on Sumatra were elevated on stilts; the space beneath was used as a garbage dump, privy, and pigpen.

When missionary Jonas Klammer and his wife arrived in Sipirok, North Sumatra, in 1861, they were more content. In the Sumatran highlands they were able to buy a new house that served their needs. In a letter to her family back in Germany, “Sister Klammer,” as she is called in the Society’s reports, describes the layout and the construction technique. The walls were made of tree bark, and the roof was covered with “alang-alang, a kind of grass.” The living room and four other rooms were separated by bamboo walls, approximately two-and-a-half meters high. Only the living room was covered by a ceiling per se; hewing to the local building style, the other living spaces were covered only by the steep, grass-thatched roof. This design allowed the air to circulate effectively, though it carried the disadvantage “that you do not only hear every word being said in the neighboring room; you can even hear people breathing.” An adjacent building, with “kitchen, horse stable, and a study,” was yet to be erected on the premises. Since the main building still lacked doors and window shutters, Jonas Klammer himself was obliged to install them.²⁶

To survive, missionaries had to take part in both local and global commodity markets. In contrast to what people at home apparently believed, Sister Klammer claims that, on average, living expenses on Sumatra were higher than in Germany. In Sipirok—approximately 1,000 meters above sea level and several days’ walk from the coast—traders at the local market (passer) were able to demand four times more for their produce than for the fruits and vegetables sold in the larger coastal villages. Considering the butter Sister Klammer bought for her family had been shipped to Sumatra from the Netherlands, her cost-of-living comparison may well have been correct.

The further inland they resided, the higher the missionaries’ cost of living climbed. Living far away from ports and population centers also meant enduring what the emissaries considered to be primitive ways of life. After the turn of the century, for example, the Rhenish missionary Brother Guillaume had arranged to have a house built for himself close to Lake Toba, in the middle of Northern Sumatra. The house did not, however, fully please him: the floors were made of bamboo, the walls of plaited reed (arong), and the roof was covered with “long, dry grass.” Guillaume grumbled, “…everything is woven together by means of rattan; the floor moves after each step, and the mountain wind blows through the whole house at liberty.”²⁷

Once they were established in their assigned villages, missionaries could exercise more influence on the design of their homes and yards. For example, Wilhelm Thomas, who moved into his newly built house in Ombolata, on Nias, in 1874 (thirty years before Fries), writes proudly of his “soothing oasis in the wilderness.” Thomas had built a relatively small (thirteen-by-six meter) house, which nonetheless boasted a “large drawing room,” a bedroom, a storage cabin, a study, and a “room for visitors with two camp beds.” In line with local building practices, the house was set on stilts and featured a large porch. In contrast with local practices, however, the rooms were painted white, and the structure’s outer walls were whitewashed. The choice of white (achieved by using lime) likely reflects Thomas’ wish to differentiate his own estate from the darkness and dirt that he and his cohort associated with indigenous dwellings. The fruit trees and flowers in Thomas’ garden were meant to underscore the difference between Western perceptions of hominess and the surrounding tropical rain forest.²⁸

Building Styles Intersect

These descriptions illustrate the hybrid nature of the missionaries’ homes.²⁹ On the one hand, the goal was to design these stations according to European ideals of hygiene and spatial order. Instead of following the local Niasan and Batak tradition of allocating the interior to one large, multifunctional room, missionaries usually requested that their quarters be divided into several single-function spaces. Larger stations typically featured a bedroom, living room, nursery, dining room, study, and pantry, as well as guest rooms and even a storage cabin for medicine. Next to these quarters was a privy and a separate building with facilities for cooking, washing clothes, bathing, housing domestic animals, and storing equipment.³⁰ Missionary-station yards often included flowers and fruit trees, as well as a garden with various vegetables, most of which were European.

On the other hand, when it came to structural solutions, missionaries usually adopted local customs, materials, and techniques. Most dwellings were raised on stilts. Roofs were high and steeply pitched. This design allowed tropical rains to run off quickly, and it helped interiors to remain reasonably cool. Buildings in the area featured an intricate timber framework, designed to combine sturdiness with flexibility—in part to prevent serious earthquake damage. To help residents contend with the region’s tropical climate, the prototypic house had a large porch (ember), where much of daily life took place.³¹ Bamboo was favored for building Niasan and Batak homes; the use of bamboo was clearly not a European tradition.

The hybrid nature of the stations reflected intense collaboration, during the construction phase, between indigenous craftspeople and missionaries. The missionary drew floor plans, determined the layout of the station, and oversaw construction. Often, they took an active role in the building activities. In preparation, missionaries brought with them European tools and construction materials: saws, hammers, nails, and other items made of iron. The religious emissaries sought to teach local carpenters how to use these imported tools and materials.

Despite the application of certain Western tools, missionaries remained dependent on local technologies. Successfully completing a missionary outpost required access to two categories of resources: construction materials and building expertise. Missionaries needed raw materials from the immediate environment: timber, reed, bamboo. Building large stations could take place only with the knowledge and skill that indigenous carpenters and blacksmiths contributed. During the construction phase, the missionary station became a trading zone, where Europeans and Asians bartered tools and other goods—as well as knowledge and skills.

Once the missionary had acquired a site for a new station and received permission from the Dutch authorities, the local chief, and the Rhenish Society, construction could commence. Securing enough building material and engaging experienced craftspeople was not always easy. One might assume that being situated in the rain forest would ensure an abundant wood supply, but this was not always the case. The widespread use of slash-and-burn cultivation tended to limit access to timber. In the mid-1880s, one missionary reported home that it had been “particularly difficult to get ahold of wood. In addition, people hardly understand how to make planks.” It becomes clear from this and other reports from Sumatra that missionaries could not rely on untrained villagers; it was essential to employ skilled workers:

The people in Si Gumpar … have brought together considerable amounts of wood for the building. Unfortunately, it cannot really be used, since they do not know how to handle it. Construction will thus require substantial amounts of money for carpenters’ wages.³²

The Rhenish Society provided its emissaries with funds for materials and labor. These funds were not always sufficient, and missionaries were sometimes forced to dig deep into their own pockets. In 1908, the administrative policies at the society’s headquarters in Barmen changed. From that point on, missionaries were allowed to submit applications for building funds that reflected the projected building costs. Indirectly, the new policy yielded an advantage for historians: the ability to reconstruct building plans in greater detail.

A trove of building detail can be found in Arnold Momeyer’s 1919 funding application to the Rhenish Society’s Building Committee for a residential house and annex in Gunungsitoli, Nias. Intended to contain twelve rooms, the house was an elaborate undertaking. Momeyer’s calculations underscore this: the wooden frame alone required 340 meters of square beams, twelve-to-fourteen centimeters thick. An unspecified number of wooden planks were needed for the walls and floors, along with 200 stilts on which the house would sit. The purpose was to design the building according to standard Niasan methods, including a sturdy truss construction. Rather than using alang-alang grass, reed, or corrugated iron (“not recommended for G. Sitoli”), Momeyer suggested covering the roof with “somewhat expensive” shingles. He also calculated the costs of bricks and cement, as well as “locks, latches, pendants, ironworks, etc.” Momeyer estimated labor costs for carpentry, cement casting, and the digging of a well.³³

In his application, Momeyer went out of his way to justify the cost estimates, apparently to ensure that the committee would approve his request for the 5,000 guilders. Sources indicate that Momeyer was not alone in making an expansive request for funds: the new policies of 1908 fostered a certain covetousness on the part of some missionaries. In a letter to the director of the building committee, a missionary named Ed. Wagner complains about this lax attitude toward building costs on part of his colleagues:

Earlier, a Brother received 2,000 guilders; with this sum he had to get by. Usually, the Brother spent 5-6-900 guilders on top of the 2,000. And now, each station costs 5,000-6,000 guilders.… In my view you have two choices: either you decide on a fixed sum again or you ask an experienced Batak carpenter for an offer. I am convinced that we would then build for 1,000 guilders, if not less. We have enough Bataks who have the skill to do this. However, we have to oversee construction, in order for the house to be correctly built. Even in the worst case, there would only be minor construction mistakes, but we would never have to cope with costs higher than 1,000 guilders. When a Batak decides to take on piecework, he is capable of acquiring much better, and cheaper, wood than we can.³⁴

This quote makes clear that some missionaries either did not know how to contain building costs, or that they had no interest in doing so. More important, the quote indicates an abundance of local craftspeople who were knowledgeable and skillful enough to procure suitable materials at reasonable costs, and to construct buildings of reasonable quality. To ensure that houses were built to appeal to European tastes, however, missionaries were required to install themselves as site managers.

Preparing the Site, Beginning to Build

Fries’ circulars provide us with stories that illustrate the points made in the previous section. These stories support the interpretation that missionary stations served as trading zones where Europeans and Asians exchanged information and negotiated successfully—despite their contrasting identities and worldviews.

Two years before Fries and the local carpenters built the small hut in Siwalubanua, Fries had laid the foundation for his own missionary station in Sifaoroasi. The station was situated in the Niasan highlands, several days’ walk from Gunungsitoli, home to the harbor, the region’s main settlement, and the trading hub. In early 1905, after several negotiations with the local chief, Fries managed to acquire a suitable piece of land in Sifaoroasi. Without further ado, he set out to look for carpenters and assistants. Within a couple of days, Fries had managed to “hire 30–40 Niasan wood workers, headed by a skilled Ober-‘toeka’”—an innovative conjunction of the German word for “master” or “superior” and the Batak word for “carpenter” or “craftsman.” The workers’ first task was to prepare “the necessary wood (planks, beams, etc.),” a task they carried out without supervision from Fries. In the interest of troubleshooting, Fries and the carpenters had embarked on “long negotiations,” in which they decided on the various sizes of the wood elements needed, and their exact price.³⁵

The master carpenter’s name was Ama Mbolitae. Fries was very happy to have been able to engage Mbolitae, a “nice and reliable” person, who had grown up in Ombolata:

He has already overseen the construction of several stations, and he will now oversee the felling of the trees in the jungle (as well as the dressing of the timber on a piecework basis). Later, he will direct the construction work—for a little less than one guilder per day. I am really looking forward to working together with him, when we in due course build the house in accordance with the layout.

Before construction could start, however, the designated plot had to be readied. By offering tobacco to anyone who was willing to help to remove shrubs and dig a well, Fries managed to get “everyone in the kampong [village]” to work for him.³⁶

The next step was to mark the boundaries of the planned buildings: one residential dwelling and a number of outbuildings. Once the wood had been delivered and prepared, construction could begin. Less than three months after he acquired his plot, Fries documents the intense activity on the site:

Yesterday, on Saturday, more than 50 people were working under my supervision. To the right, 10 prepared the ditch for the bathroom; to the left 25 were clearing the ground; at the back 4 toeka working on the horse stable; at front 10 leveling off the road.³⁷

Six weeks later, between 50 and 100 people were involved in constructing the roof, and the toeka could begin to lay the floor.³⁸ As time went by, Fries found himself more and more involved, both as a supervisor and a manual worker: “If necessary, I also become a carpenter.”³⁹ Although he relied on the master carpenter, Fries was willing to get his hands dirty. During the construction of a school building in Siwalubanua a few years later, one visitor found Fries “carefully clambering up the roof framing … to fix the ridge.”⁴⁰

It had proven comparatively easy to attract workers to the remote village of Sifaoroasi. More problematic was ensuring the regular supply of food and materials. The village was poor and could not provide “15 to 20 carpenters with rice twice a day.” Fries had no choice but to have “rice sent from G. Sitoli 70 km away at enormous costs.”⁴¹ Fries also ordered from Gunungsitoli “tar to paint the piles and sand from the sea to cement the bath basin,” along with various “iron items for house construction.”⁴² Despite these problems, the first buildings were ready by June of 1905. A drawing published in one of Fries’ circulars displays the building’s signature Niasan elements, including stilts; a high, grass-thatched roof; and a generous porch.⁴³ (Fries was not alone in hewing to local building traditions. Hendrik Kruyt, a Dutch missionary to Sumatra, dreamt of a house that featured a huge, boat-like roof, rendered in the Batak style.⁴⁴)

When the time came, Fries was happy to leave the “small hut” where he had lived while his new home was under construction. In the fall of 1905, after he had married Elfriede, the young couple moved into the new house. In line with traditional roles for European women, Elfriede Fries’ tasks were to keep the home clean and orderly, to cultivate flowers, plant “Sumatran seeds,” and to try her hand at growing “European potatoes.”⁴⁵

Working Together

Fries and Nommensen’s experience of actively building the mission station was shared by others in their cohort. Missionary Ewald Krumm “had to work intensely at the construction site from morning to evening.”⁴⁶ And, in a report home, Wilhelm Steinsiek in 1890 describes the demanding building activities in the Lake Toba area of Sumatra: “… the missionary always has to be around. Not only do we supply all iron items, nails, locks, etc. We also have to act as carpenters.” Unlike their compatriots in the Niasan jungle who could outsource the task of acquiring timber, missionaries in the Sumatran highlands had no choice but to purchase wood personally, from local traders.

Each Monday, the day of the great Onan, (we’d say market day), people bring timber from the mountains to sell. Half of the day, and sometimes longer, you have to measure and buy planks and beams for construction. Of course, the Society pays everything, but it is still exhausting.⁴⁷

When they first set out, European missionaries brought with them nails and locks, tools, and cash for wages and materials. When necessary, they later imported these items. For example, to facilitate building schools in his district, Dutch emissary Jan Wijngaarden ordered sets of carpenters’ tools from Europe.

Constructing schools was a central element in missionary societies’ proselytizing strategy. The majority of teachers who ran the missionary schools were men from the local population, converts to Christianity whom the missionary societies then hired. Before teaching could commence, however, the men were required to organize building materials and make sure the schoolhouse was properly constructed. According to Wijngaarden, most of the teachers easily adopted European building tools. In many cases, local chiefs did their part to help by compelling villagers to gather building materials from the forest and assisting teachers during the construction process. Wijngaarden reports that even the chief of the Karo Batak village of Tanjong Beringin lent a hand when the local school was under construction. After all, no missionary society could erect a building or open a school without the consent of the local chief.⁴⁸

The missionaries’ standard narrative about the local population reflected the contemporaneous, morally repugnant view of non-European peoples: missionaries typically characterized locals as filthy, lazy, and thievish. In service to carrying out their so-called civilizing mission, clergymen saw it as their task to convert heathens to Christianity as well as to teach them European values and customs.⁴⁹ Given that missionaries and their wives depended on the indigenous population to serve as maids, cooks, stable boys, craftsmen, and other laborers in their daily life, missionaries also had considerable self-interest at stake when it came to inculcating locals with European ideas and practices. For example, Nommensen’s sense of satisfaction is evident in his account of local boys in Sumatra learning to work with European tools:

The heathens need concrete role models. To illustrate: I started to labor heavily at my workbench, and several boys sat there and watched me; I didn’t ask anyone to help me, but it didn’t take long until they asked me to hand over the axe and wood plane. Now I only need to show them how it works.⁵⁰

Historical sources also include examples of local chiefs taking the initiative to learn European techniques—or sending others to acquire that knowledge. For example, Brother Hanstein reports home that he had recently “talked with the man [a chief’s son] for a long time; he had several questions, especially concerning house construction. He was accompanied by a joiner who was supposed to make chairs for him.”⁵¹ Displaying the standard, demeaning manner of the era, Brother Krumm mentions another chief, whose “greediness knew no limits” after he spotted the missionary’s toolbox.⁵²

Despite the locals’ interest in European tools, the missionaries continued to rely on the knowledge and expertise of indigenous carpenters. Even Nommensen, a somewhat skilled craftsman, acknowledged that he knew very little when it came to “joinery, blacksmithing, roof construction.”⁵³

It is important to contextualize the locals’ openness to learning how to operate European tools and to incorporate European building materials, such as iron nails. This openness and even enthusiasm did not impel indigenous craftspeople to give up their centuries-old building techniques. For example, some missionaries imported handsaws to help expedite the work of building, but this particular tool held little appeal: “People here still use adzes [an axe-like tool] to make planks. Since they consider sawing a tiresome procedure, they prefer to cleave the trunks.”⁵⁴

Research from the second half of the twentieth century shows that local carpenters upheld their traditional methods, for the most part. Anthropologist Wolfgang Marschall spent nine months in Hilizolagötanö, a village in the southernmost part of Nias. During this field trip, Marschall observed various aspects of the local material culture, including carpentry. By the 1970s, the locals had warmed to the idea of using saws, but they continued to shun metal items when constructing a house: “no peg, no screw, and no nail.” Beams were held together by joints, and other parts of the structure were tied together with ropes or twigs. The advantage was that a house could be taken apart within half a day—and rebuilt at another site within three days. Marschall found hammers, chisels, and knives among the carpenters’ tools—as well as, indeed, saws.⁵⁵

Information Exchange

Historical sources support the proposition that missionary stations developed into “trading zones.” One the one hand, the floor plan of the missionary dwelling mirrored European ideas of how to organize family life. On the other hand, practically the rest of the home reflected the materials and the construction methods embedded in the cultures of Nias and Sumatra. And, while local carpenters learned how to use a wood plane, they would continue to cut and finish planks in the same way as their fathers had done. During the planning and construction phases, missionaries and craftspeople collaborated, creating buildings that were neither European nor Asian. These hybrid designs were the outcome of communication and negotiation between “foreigners” and locals.

It would be inaccurate to conclude that indigenous craftspeople merely carried out the orders issued by the missionaries. Europeans and locals did far more than negotiate wages and discuss the size of beams; they also worked design solutions together. Such negotiations did not always follow expected patterns: in Pangaloan, Sumatra, for example, Missionary P. Bonn noted that his congregation convinced him to use wooden shingles instead of reed and grass for the roof of the renovated church.⁵⁶ Some missionaries may have initially envisioned their homes as projecting a German style; soon, however, they realized the advantages of covered porches and steeply pitched roofs. Both design solutions were adjusted optimally to the regional climate: these adaptations allowed air to circulate and protected both the structure and its inhabitants from the ravages of tropical rains.

I consider it important to emphasize that the missionaries to Sumatra and Nias depended on locals for their labor and their knowledge. In many cases, villagers devised technical solutions that European missionaries could not have imagined:

In one of the wards a couple of buildings had to be built. Since the site is underneath the level of a river, a high dam had been constructed. The idea was to erect the building on an elevated place. First of all, such a place had to be readied, but it proved impossible to find suitable stones, soil, and sand in the vicinity. However, the people knew how to find a way. They put a hollow trunk in the dam and diverted the river to a rice field, which had been bought for 50 guilders. There, the water was held back until sand and soil had settled. Then the water was led off, and the procedure continued until the plot was high enough. Then, a teacher’s house―and later the school―was built on the elevated site that had been designed in this manner.⁵⁷

Five years later, in the same area on Western Sumatra, ordinary people “willingly hauled sand, lime, and stones” for the construction of a water conduit.⁵⁸ The advantage: residents of the missionary station—as well as the rest of the village—now had access to fresh water. Both the school and the water pipeline served the locals and their chief; apparently, this was reason enough to easily organize for collective labor.

Interestingly, the people reputed to have carried construction material “willingly” were women. Batak and Niasan women’s work was not limited to the household. Women labored in the fields, prepared food in front of their homes, and traded goods at markets. Tasks linked to conventionally understood vocations―like carpentry or blacksmithing―were considered male domains, however.

Elfriede Fries and other missionaries’ wives seldom carried stones and sand. Their task was to manage a European-style household and, once a station had been established, to adopt the role of teacher of practical subjects such as needlework. Daily chores kept the housewife fully occupied, and she had to be prepared to carry out many tasks herself.

Given that missionary women’s voices rarely made their way into the Rhenish Missionary Society reports, historians have turned to other sources for these insights. Diaries, letters, and autobiographical sketches articulate the difficulties these (mostly young) women experienced in their foreign environments. While expectations remained almost the same as at home in Europe, preconditions posed serious challenges. For example, when other missionaries visited a station, they expected food and drink—preferably European refreshments. So, servants from the local population had to be taught to cook German-style food. And given that water was not always available directly on the premises, someone was obliged to haul it to the house. All meals had to be meticulously planned, and there was a garden to tend. Whereas fruits, vegetables, and chickens could be bought locally, lamp oil, canned foods, and so-called colonial goods had to be procured from stores that were often many miles—and several-days’ journey—away.

To contend with these circumstances, European women communicated and traded goods and information with the locals. One missionary’s wife, who lived at a station in India, describes how she had to “negotiate for long stretches of time” with hawkers who offered “fabrics, buttons, ribbons, shells, pearls, gems, curiosities or oranges, hens, etc.”⁵⁹ Insofar as their language abilities allowed them to, European women instructed maids and other employees on how to use European household items and how to deal with the manually driven (nonelectric) washing machine.

Missionary wives endeavored to learn various techniques from local women: how to dehull and pound rice, how to process yams, how to grind coconuts and treat chilis, and how to grow indigenous vegetables. Just as missionaries’ houses acquired a hybrid character, so did their households. For example, when white potatoes were in short supply, the missionary wife might have had no choice but to serve the roasted ham with sweet potatoes instead of “European potatoes.” Johanna von Erlen, stationed on the west coast of Nias, had learned how to be pragmatic: “here, everything does not have to fit together perfectly.”⁶⁰

Despite the challenges, missionaries’ wives strove to prepare dishes that matched European menus as closely as possible. Johanna Diehl’s diary from her life in German New Guinea (the northern part of today’s Papua New Guinea) yields detailed information about menus and cuisine. In 1907, Diehl had joined her husband-to-be, who, five years earlier, had been dispatched by the Rhenish Missionary Society to Bogadjim (a settlement in the Astrolabe Bay). A typical meal included “bean soup, then canned meat with beans and at the end a sweet pudding.” On their wedding day, the couple offered guests a cold buffet which was just as lavish as if they had married in Germany. After “chicken broth in cups,” there was “roast goose, boiled ham, potato salad, cheese, bread, white wine, and cake, (apple pie, sheet cake, and raisin cake) and cookies, various fruits (cherries, apricots, cucumbers), along with cider and wine and beer.” On a more typical day, the Diehl family enjoyed either boiled hen, ragout, or jellied meat, served with potato salad, for example. Common desserts were apple pie, and pancakes with lingonberries. A typical pantry would contain canned “Frankfurt sausages.” Johanna Diehl owned Weck jars, which allowed her to can vegetables, fruits, and meat. She churned her own butter and ground her own mustard. She made her own liverwurst and meatballs. She baked currant bread and macaroons, and made her own marzipan.⁶¹ As much as possible, Diehl maintained German culinary traditions.

Johanna Diehl benefitted from living close to a harbor, where the German New Guinea Company regularly delivered goods from Europe and other parts of the world. Still, the Diehl family had to make compromises: given the absence of grapes on New Guinea, Diehl made wine from pineapples, instead. After some experimentation, she discovered that it was possible to make flavorful soups and fritters out of “Sambi, a kind of potato.”⁶² Although Diehl had a stove in her kitchen, she allowed her maid to cook over an open fire, in front of the house.

A closer look at cooking and cleaning practices supports the notion of missionary stations as figurative trading zones that merged East and West. Elise Eisfelder, who had married a missionary dispatched by the Swiss Basler Missionary Society, provides glimpses of life at a station in Sumaddi in western India in 1895. Pupils at the mission boarding school followed a strict daily routine. At six in the morning, they were hustled out of bed, and the older students prepared “rice porridge,” which was served at six-thirty. At noon, the same children had to grind “grain for the bread.”⁶³ In accordance with a widespread practice in rural Indian, the pupils once a week applied cow dung to plaster the mud floor. This scenario exemplifies how European ideas of temporal discipline and hygienic practices were combined with local customs.

As long as they were convinced of a domestic technology’s usefulness, European women who lived at missionary stations readily appropriated that “new” technology. This was the case for Deborah Hoch, a German émigré and missionary wife. In the 1890s, Hoch lived on the southwestern coast of India. Confronted with the problem of how to dry the family’s laundry during the monsoon season, Hoch adopted—

… an appliance that nobody knows in Europe. In a tin cabinet a cord is stretched, on which the wet clothes are hung. Below the clothes, you make a fire, in one or two earthen bowls filled with coal. You close the cabinet door and after two or three hours all the clothes in the box are nice and dry. Such a box is particularly helpful when you have small children and need to wash many diapers every day.⁶⁴

From Sumatra, we learn that missionaries put the legs of their larders in bowls on the floor. To prevent ants making their way to the provisions, the bowls were kept filled with water.⁶⁵ The willingness on part of the Europeans to adopt local solutions is apparent.

Appropriating Local Foods

Just as they rapidly adopted particular local building materials and technologies, most European missionary families seem to have quickly learned to appreciate domestic vegetables, fruits, and culinary specialties. Author Luise Emilie Winkler-Metzler documented the home life—including the foodways—at a missionary station in an unpublished autobiography titled, “My Experiences and Memories of My Time in Sumatra from 1905 to 1921.” The book describes how indigenous spices “gave the sauce a wonderful taste,” as well as how “European vegetables” in the family garden grew alongside “‘gadong hau’ [manioc], a green, somewhat bitter leafy vegetable, the dick and white roots of which one could also fry.” The property also boasted antadjau [a type of guava] trees, the fruits of which tasted “delightful.”⁶⁶

Winkler-Metzler’s autobiography is a cornucopia of information about everyday life at and around missionary stations on Sumatra. The author was a thoughtful, reflective observer of daily practices. While we cannot rule out the occasional misremembered name or date, we can largely rely on the accuracy of her detailed descriptions of foodstuffs, food-preparation techniques, and individual dishes.

As with every archival document, however, Winkler-Metzler’s manuscript requires a critical reading. Luise Emilie Metzler was born in the Dutch East Indies. At the age of five, she was sent “home,” to attend school in Germany, while her parents remained on Sumatra. In 1905—merely one-and-a-half years after Eduard Fries arrived on Nias—at age twenty-two, Luise Emilie reluctantly returned to the missionary station in the Batak village of Pearadja; as an “obedient daughter,” the young Luise Emilie had little choice but to join her parents.⁶⁷ Three years after her return, she married Johannes Winkler, a German medical doctor, also stationed in Pearadja. (Johannes Winkler would go on to publish extensively on Batak ways of healing.)

Winkler-Metzler sees missionary life through the lens of sentimental memory. More important, the author is relatively unaware of the cultural appropriation—and the cultural oppression—of the “civilizing mission” in which she was engaged. After all, Winkler-Metzler wrote the memoir from the safety of her home in the university town of Tübingen, Germany; she likely saw herself as recounting the story of her life in “exotic” Southeast Asia.

For Europeans, life in Pearadja held at least one advantage over life at Lake Toba in the highlands. The station lay fairly close to Sibolga—a larger settlement and harbor—which was well connected to the wider world. Once a week, mail arrived from other parts of the globe. The village boasted a well-stocked “department store,” which belonged to a Dutch company, Toko Hennemann.⁶⁸ For those who could afford it, the shop made it possible for missionaries to access almost everything they could have dreamed of. In this way, Pearadja was directly connected to the wider world.

Local products also abounded on Sumatra, and daily life could have scarcely functioned without these domestic goods. The main source of foodstuffs for Europeans and Asians alike was indeed the weekly market. In this physical, commercial trading zone, people of many ethnicities and nationalities negotiated and transacted business. In her signature romantic tone, Winkler-Metzler describes the “shouts and screams and bargaining” at the market in Tarutung, where everyone—including Dutch and German, Chinese and Japanese, as well as Batak people—tried to make themselves understood:

In the burning heat, rows of women were sitting on the ground, selling fruit, beans, or cucumbers that they had planted in their own gardens, in addition to chili peppers, sweet potatoes, tiung [eggplant], a Batak kind of vegetable. The men dealt with tobacco and hens.

In addition, sellers offered rice, coffee, bananas, coconuts, and dried fish, as well as freshly slaughtered pigs and buffaloes. In the years immediately preceding the First World War, the Tarutung market grew considerably, as more and more East Asians opened stores on the site. Their inventories included bakery products, canned goods, and even artisanal craftwork.⁶⁹

In addition to markets, gardens and kitchens developed into sites where people gathered to communicate and exchange information. The Metzler family kitchen was a figurative trading zone where culinary traditions and practices merged in a way that is reminiscent of today’s “fusion cuisine,” further discussed in Chap. 6. Luise Emilie’s mother planned meals and discussed preparation techniques with her local cook, much as Fries and Nommensen negotiated with local carpenters to find design solutions. In the family garden, “European” and Asian vegetables coexisted. Given that neither indigenous people nor resident Europeans cross-bred plants, it would be inaccurate to call the garden a “hybrid” one. The presence of potatoes and tomatoes—plants of American origin—could, however, qualify the Metzler family garden as a global site.

The Metzler family developed a taste for tropical fruits, as they are called today. Some of these were ready-to-eat; others required preparation. For example, the family ate eggplant and papaya (botik) with sugar only, but found it necessary to boil the guava fruits. Luise Emilie explains that the fruit of the djambu (myrtle) tree required cooking with “water, sugar, and a small amount of vinegar.”

“Zuurzak” [soursop] was one of the most wonderful fruits. It was … the size of a baby’s head and had a firm, prickly skin. In the middle, it had white pulp with brown pits the size of beans. We pressed the interior [flesh of the fruit] through a sieve and added a bit of sugar. It made a gorgeous cream with such a pleasant taste that I cannot describe it to you.

The preparation of arrowroot as a thickening agent was more “cumbersome work.” “The white roots had to be thoroughly cleaned and pounded. The same instrument [a large wooden mortar (losung) and pestle] was used to mash the arrowroot as to pound rice.” Next, the mashed arrowroot was washed several times and pressed through a sieve. Using a piece of cloth, the arrowroot mash was then wrung out. Finally, it was set to dry. Given that wheat was not cultivated on Sumatra, arrowroot was especially useful as a thickener “for puddings, baby pap, or soups.”⁷⁰

The fruits that Winkler-Metzler mentions were often served after the family and guests had indulged in “Reistafel.” Rijsttafel, an elaborate meal with Dutch colonial roots, is comprised of many small dishes. This grouping of dishes, which has erroneously been identified as “Indian,” was (and still is) served with rice and “exotic” spices. The resulting food combinations of, for example, rice, chicken, and curry sauce, symbolize, if not epitomize, the Dutch appropriation of Indonesian culinary elements.⁷¹

Thereby, we return to a topic which has been hovering above the narrative in this chapter: the asymmetric power relationship between the local population on the one hand and the Dutch colonial administration and the missionary societies on the other hand. The fact that the trading zones which I have been discussing were based on mutual information exchange may not obscure the fact that construction sites and kitchens were based on strict divisions of power—as well as on strict divisions of labor.