Honbola wordlist represents the Saluan language of people who only recently migrated here from the interior village now uninhabited of Tambunan. The responsibility for this lack is entirely ours.
1.3 Saluan and Batui in the literature
Up until the twentieth century, the Saluan people remained barely a footnote to the more important Banggai kingdom located on the archipelago to the southeast of the eastern peninsula of Sulawesi. In
writings of the Dutch colonial period, the Saluan people were known by four names: Mondono, Loinang, Saluan and Madi. We discuss each of these terms in turn, and conclude with a discussion of the so-called
Baha language, but more properly known as Batui, which is closely related to Saluan.
1.3.1 Mondono also Mandona, Mandano, Mandana, Mandono, Mondonu, Mondone, Modone,
Mendono One of the oldest names by which the Saluan language is known in Dutch writings is that of Mondono.
This name derives from the Mendono River, which also lent its name to the village located where this river empties into the Gulf of Tolo. Valentijn, writing in 1724, mentioned two regions on the coast
opposite Banggai: Balante or Balantak, which produced a lot of rice, and Modone, Mondone or Mandano, which he said was fairly fertile Valentijn 1724:80, 1856:221. Bosscher and Matthijssen 1853:90–94
described Mondono as a prosperous, second capital of the Banggai kingdom, with a population of 575 people. De Clercq noted that only in Mandono was there an utusan representative of the Sultan of
Ternate on the mainland, but considered the town to be run-down 1890:133. J. G. F. Riedel, who published much about the Sulawesi region but unfortunately was not known for his linguistic acumen,
distinguished Loinan spoken on the north coast of the eastern peninsula from Mondonu and Balanta spoken on the south of the peninsula opposite Banggai Riedel 1868:44, footnote 8; 1889:13. He was
thus the first to use Mondonu—later revised to Mondono—as a language name. Brandes, following “better data,” concluded that the Mondono and Balantak languages “can very well nevertheless be
considered merely dialects of Loinan” 1894:xix–xx our translation.
5
To anyone passing through the village of Mendono today, there is little to distinguish it from any other coastal hamlet, and only a keramat holy place on top of a hill suggests its former importance.
6
Certain families who trace their origin to this village, however, remain important in regional politics.
1.3.2 Loinang also La-Inang, Loindang, Lojnang, Loinan, Luinan, Loenan, Toloina
The term ‘Loinang’ has both narrow and broad uses. As far as we have been able to trace things, the term Loinang first appeared in the literature in Bosscher and Matthijssen’s list of negorijen native villages of
the Mondono district 1853:94, where a side note indicated that “east and west La-Inang” were mountain villages. Riedel used the spelling Loinan on his 1868 map and in the accompanying prose
description.
In its traditional and narrow use, Loinang referred to certain peoples and their language who formerly inhabited interior portions on the northern divide of the peninsula, in particular areas drained
by the Lobu, Toimaa, Bunta, Bohotokong and Kalumbanga rivers all of these rivers empty into the Tomini Bay to the west of Pagimana. Kruyt 1930 divided the Loinang into two groups, the Lingketeng
clan and the Baloa clan. In the conclusions to this paper, we also use Loinang in this narrow sense, that is, as a cover term for the formerly ‘interior’ dialects of Lingketeng, Baloa and Kahumamaon this last
5
It is unclear where Brandes’s ‘better data’ came from. Whilst combining Loinang and Mondono was justified, Balantak is rightfully a separate language. This error was corrected on the language map in Adriani and Kruyt
1914, with correctly-placed language locations finally appearing in Esser 1938.
6
Kruyt reports that upon his visit in 1928, the district head of Mendono was in fact living in Lambangan, on the north coast a few kilometers east of Pagimana Kruyt 1930:331.
was subsumed by Kruyt under his ‘Baloa’. According to Kruyt’s respondents, in origin the name ‘Loinang’ was an exonym.
7
Riedel used this term in a broader way, noting that “following information of the natives, Loinan is also used in the regions of Hata, Saluan, Pati-pati and Boalemo or Aaulimo” Riedel 1868:44, footnote 8
our translation. Whilst Riedel himself did not specify where these regions were located, the last three are all found on Van Musschenbroek’s contemporaneous map Van Musschenbroek 1878, 1879.
8
A relevant portion of this map is reproduced in map 3. From this, it is clear that Riedel intended his term
‘Loinan’ to include all of the language area on the northern coast up to the Balantak language area, and opposed this to his ‘Mondono’ language spoken on the southern coast.
Map 3. Extract from Van Musschenbroek’s 1878 map
Van Musschenbroek 1878. Public domain. As noted above, Brandes 1894 further extended the term Loinang his Loeinansch to include the
language spoken on the southern coast as well, effectively doing away with Riedel’s Mondono language. Whilst we believe this to have been the right move—recognizing the linguistic unity of the northern and
southern halves of the peninsula—it is moot whether ‘Loinang’ was the correct cover term to use. In our own investigations, we encountered people who used the term narrowly and others who used
it broadly. On the south coast, for example, one lady was definite that she was not Loinang; Loinang people lived on the north coast, she said, and she singled out the people of Asaan village as an example
on what basis we do not know, but several times this village in the Lingketeng area was mentioned to us to be relatively free from outside influences. Others, however, when asked about Loinang, told us there
are three suku Lo Lo divisions or ‘tribes’: the Loinang people who speak Saluan, the Lo’on people who speak Balantak, and the Lowo people who speak Banggai.
9
For them, Loinang appears to be a term of cultural unity by which they distinguish themselves from other people groups living in the area,
including not only the Balantak and the Banggai, but also others such as the Pamona and Gorontalo. At
7
Kruyt 1930:328 writes, “Concerning the name Loinang, I have been able to gain no insight. As it often goes with such names, the people do not name themselves so. ‘We know that outsiders call us To Loinang,’ they say, ‘but we do
not know the word’ ” our translation. Barr and Barr 1979:36 suggest that Loinang is a Banggai term meaning ‘primitive people’, but we were unable to confirm this.
8
Hata correctly: hata ː with long vowel simply means ‘level area, plain’ in the Saluan language, and its precise
reference is unclear to us. Perhaps by it Riedel intended the extensive coastal plain around the present-day city of Bunta.
9
No meaning is attached to ‘Lo’; it simply happens by chance, or forgotten historical origin to be the onset syllable of the names Loinang, Lo’on and Lowo. These are thus the three principal people groups of the Saluan-Banggai
group. Sometimes people we talked to also acknowledged the smaller Andio people group as an afterthought, but the Bobongko and Batui people were never brought into this scheme.
the same time, however, the term ‘Loinang’ often also brought to mind a period when people lived more primitively than today and life was punctuated by intra-ethnic warfare.
Maps 4. Four views of the language situation on Sulawesi’s eastern peninsula
In summary, we can state: a ‘Loinang’ originally referred to certain groups living in the interior of the northern half of the peninsula, and by extension to their language; b even as an appellation for just
these people, it appears that Loinang was originally an exonym; c the further extension of the term Loinang to the entire area was a Dutch invention, which has been partly assimilated by the people
themselves; d even when people refer to themselves as being ethnically ‘Loinang’ in the broader sense, they refer to their language as Saluan; and e the term Loinang, perhaps in keeping with its
