Sikka and the House of da Silva

The thatched dwelling stands worn and empty on the shore of the Savu Sea. Children play football inside its walls, peering out from the shade of the verandah as Bama and I walk past. Across the street three simple graves clad in pink tiles lie sheltered beneath timber rafters and sheets of corrugated iron. One is furnished with a prominent wooden cross, its arms bearing a proud name in white: “Dona M. Felixia Ika da Silva”.

The da Silvas were the royal family of Sikka, and from Lepo Geté, the ‘Great House’ by the sea, the rajas controlled a sizeable portion of eastern Flores. The last king, Don Thomas da Silva, died only in 1954, but by that time the local capital had shifted to Maumere.

Through a modern lens, Sikka Natar seems a strange choice for a centre of political power. The village does not have a harbour, and nor does it lie on an overland trade route, but down a narrow road improbably wedged between steep slopes and the foaming waters of the Indian Ocean. But such is its historical significance that Sikka gives its name to the local tongue and its surrounding regency – where the Portuguese first came ashore in 1559. Today the Iberian influence is still easily discernible in the names of the Florenese and the dominant religion of the island.

In the first half of the 20th century, Sikka’s oral histories were separately recorded by Dominicus Dionitius Pareira Kondi and Alexius Boer Pareira, two schoolteachers who became government officials under the last raja. Together with about 100 handwritten documents, their manuscripts now make up the Hikayat Kerajaan Sikka, the ‘Chronicles of the Kingdom of Sikka’.

Weathered curves

Lepo Geté, the ‘Great House’, reconstructed

Growing cotton for ikat textiles

Softening the cotton after removing its seeds

Spinning yarns by hand and foot

Ikat literally means “to tie”, as motifs are tied onto the threads with dried sugar palm leaf

Making natural dye by mixing lime powder (from coral) in water with the indigo plant

Ikat making is a long process – one sarung alone can take 3-4 months from start to finish

Weaving – one of the final stages in the process

Sikka is known for its rich ikat motifs

The Hikayat holds that the Ata Sikka, or the Sikkanese people, are descendants of a tribe of immigrants from the distant west – most likely a location in mainland Southeast Asia. According to legend, two ships arrived in Flores; the first carried the forebearers of the indigenous Ata Sikka, and the second the ancestors of its rulers. Bama and I are told the da Silvas were of Portuguese origin from Malacca, but we later learn that this is only part of the story.

Across the Portuguese holdings of maritime South and Southeast Asia, intermarriage between European settlers and local women created a new group known as the Topasses. The Dutch and the indigenous peoples of Indonesia called them the ‘Black Portuguese’, and like the Eurasians of Macau, they acted as a bridge between colonial rulers and the native inhabitants. Throughout eastern Flores and Timor the Topasses controlled the sandalwood trade, holding a degree of self-rule within the colonial system and raising up strong military forces of their own.

In his book written after three decades of meticulous study, anthropologist E. Douglas Lewis dubs the rulers of Sikka “stranger-kings”. For Lewis, this trait is best embodied in the first Catholic raja Don Alésu, born of a Topass mother from Portuguese Timor and the first Sikkanese ruler to adopt the surname ‘da Silva’.

At a young age Don Alésu left Flores for Malacca, where he was sponsored in his education by a Portuguese ruler described in the Hikayat as ‘Raja Worilla’. For several years the prince was schooled in the art of governance and the Catholic faith, and prior to his return, Don Alésu sent Raja Worilla’s own son, Augustinyu da Gama, to serve as Sikka’s first teacher of religion.

1607 is the date given for the formal creation of a Sikkanese kingdom loyal to the Portuguese under Don Alésu. He is credited with uniting a loose confederation of tiny states into a single political entity, creating and sealing alliances with gifts of elephant tusks procured in Malacca, known as bala mangung (‘ivory masts’) in the Sikkanese language. Once the bala mangung was presented to a local leader, his people would recite the following verses:

According to the chronicles, Augustinyu da Gama played a major role in these affairs, accompanying the raja as he forged alliances throughout east-central Flores. And so it was that as Don Alésu consolidated control over the rajadom, the people of his domain embraced Christianity. Today Sikka Natar has a grand wooden church which opened on Christmas Eve 1899 – 45 years after the Portuguese relinquished their claims on Flores and handed them to the Dutch.

In its very fabric the church is an expression of European Catholicism married with local tradition: it possesses stained glass at both ends and walls decorated with native ikat patterns. Through the open windows the sound of waves murmurs above the silence, propelled by the winds that carried Sikka’s ancestors to their new home. ◊

Sikka’s wooden church

Before the cross

A magnificent house of prayer

Stained glass above the altar

Ikat patterns and a gong

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