History
Local history holds that ancestors of contemporary Kei islanders came from Bali, part of the expanding Majapahit kingdom from the western archipelago. The village of Ohoi-Ewur ( first Raja Ewab : Raja Ohoi-Ewur = Raja Tabtut) on Kei Kecil or Nuhuroa island was the first place that the Balinese royal family and the army arrived, where they stayed with the local residents. As a result, Ohoi-ewur became a seat of government, where the local law (Larvul Ngabal) – Red Blood and Balinese Spear – is developed by the initiative of the royal princess Dit Sakmas. Evidence of these ties on Kei Kecil and especially in Letvuan include an inheritance and a harbour named Bal Sorbay (Bali Surabaya) that is the place where the royals arrived. It is recognized by kai islanders that some of their ancestors also came from another places such as Sumbawa island (Sumbau), Buton (Vutun)in Sulawesi, Seram (Seran) and Gorom (Ngoran) islands in Central Moluccas, and Sultanates of Jailolo (Dalo) and Ternate (Ternat) as well.
The tiny island of Tanimbarkei is not part of Tanimbar, but of the Kei Islands and inhabited by less than 1000 very traditional people. Half of the population calls themselves Hindus, but in fact are more or less practising ancestor worship.
After the 1999 clashes between the Muslim and Christian population in Ambon, they also swept through Kei, but calmed quick down again with fewer victims. This islands archipelagoes depends on 22 ratshcaap or traditional local leader call Rat or Raja as king of customary law.
Read more about this topic: Kai Islands
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)