BINTULU town has always been attractive to many outsiders seeking various economic opportunities, since way back in the past.

That said, historical records also show that the same attraction exposed the area to pirate attacks, though these were overcome, twice, by the native people of Bintulu, the Vaie.

Recently, The Borneo Post met up with some members of the Anaq Vaie Bintulu Association (PAVB) to seek understanding about the events and history of Bintulu, including the roles played by native Vaie-Bintulu group.

‘Vaie versus Illanun’

It was local historian Mahmud Yussop, also a PAVB member, who spoke about the attractions found in Bintulu being the cause of it getting attacked by pirates in the past.

He said the ‘Kerajaan Bintulu’ (Kingdom of Bintulu) was determined by the physical boundaries of the mountains, hills, rivers, beaches and seas.

He said by 1850, according to the documentation from Brunei sources, this ‘Kerajaan Bintulu’ had already covered Bintulu, Belingian and Bayan (offshore areas), with the government based in Labang, at the middle of Sungai Bintulu.

Mahmud said it was a feudalistic government, with ‘a clear demarcation between the ruler and those being ruled’.

“The Vaie people participated in the local trade using small boats as well as larger Malay ships when dealing with Chinese traders, or with the Sultanate of Sulu,” he said, adding that during that time, the slave trade was ‘a big business’.

Some pirates from the Sulu Sea had dared to come to Sarawak’s coastal areas, especially the naturalresources rich Bintulu, where there was bustling barter trade involving exotic commodities from the interior areas and imported goods from China and Brunei.

“Furthermore, Bintulu provided a safe passage due to its halfway location and the large bay at Kidurong for traders making their way to Brunei, the Sulu Sea or Labuan from Southern Sarawak (Santubong and Kuching), and vice versa,” said Mahmud.

It was documented that the Sulu pirates would frequently attack the coast of Sarawak due to the shrinking power of the Brunei Sultanate over its empire, especially after the arrival of the British.

The situation then and all of these complex factors gave way for Illanun, the most feared band of pirates from the Sulu Sea at the time, to come to Bintulu.

The name struck fear into the people’s hearts – many times, the Illanun gang had kidnapped the local folks, including the Vaie, to be traded off as slaves.

Nonetheless, the Vaie people rose and fought against the pirates. The first uprising took place on May 23, 1862, gradually followed by another attack on April 12, 1869 – both dates are clearly documented in the Sarawak Almanac.

In both attacks, the Vaie defeated the Illanun without any help from the Brookes or the British Navy.

The uprising had also branded the Vaie as ‘a brave group of people, with a strong spirit to win and overcome all challenges’.

Origin of Bintulu — Tracking its history

Once upon a time, Bintulu was a quaint fishing village with fishing, agriculture and collecting jungle produce as its primary economic activities.

It has undergone various changes throughout the journey of modernisation.

Mahmud said Bintulu’s history could be traced to the Niah Cave.

“Much of the pre-history involved human migration, and the mixing of indigenous groups that moved along the river system around Bintulu’s hinterlands.

“Bintulu’s riches of the past could be seen from the archaeological discoveries in Niah.

“It can be concluded that the Bintulu people of today are descendants of the early humans moving in and out of Niah Cave. This is important in understanding the origin of the Vaie people,” he said.

Based on the discovery of artefacts and anthropological evidence, it could be safely deduced that the Vaie people came from ‘a group of hunters, gatherers, people of the rivers and coasts, with a maritime and trading culture as they progressed through the prehistoric timeline to more recent times’.

This cultural background had been developing for thousands of years before the emergence of the Sultanate of Brunei, throughout the sultanate period (500 years) and the era of Rajah Brooke (100 years).

The Vaie people came from a variety of ethnic patterns and cultures, with biological inheritance from the ancestors who had settled along the river, the coastal and the inland areas of Bintulu for hundreds of years.

Still, this is based on oral history – stories passed down from one generation to the next.

They formed the theory, which has not been completed and verified through empirical studies by the scholars.

For now, one accepted theory among a large number of the Vaie peope is the name Bintulu, said to have derived from ‘Sungai Metuk Ulow’.

In the Vaie language, Sungai Metuk Ulow means ‘picking up the head’. It is said that a long time ago, Sungai Metuk Ulow was the place to collect the heads of people who were beheaded during battles.

The phrase ‘metuk ulow’ were used by the Vaie folks in the old days, and much later it was pronounced ‘Mentulow’, before it finally became the present-day name, ‘Bintulu’.

Language — Identity of community

The Vaie community is clearly native to Bintulu, but they almost did not exist as an ethnic group in Sarawak.

This community is still more known as the Melanau Bintulu or even the Bintulu Malays, as the majority of Vaie people are Muslims.

For centuries, the Vaie people have been living in Bintulu, Tatau, Kuala Tatau, Sebauh, Pandan, Labang, Tubau, Suai and Niah, but many have also migrated to other places including to Brunei.

They speak the Vaie language, which has different dialects according to the place where each sub-group is from.

Based on the lexical and phonological comparisons, the range of difference between the Melanau language in Mukah and the Vaie-Bintulu stands at 88 per cent.

The difference is very noticeable when referring to the Swedish List, reaching 207 basic vocabularies.

A lecturer at the Department of Malay Language in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Associate Prof Dr Mohd Sharifudin Yusop once raised a more questionable narrative – could the Vaie people actually came from the descendants of Antonio Pigafetta, or the crew of the Italian ship that sailed with the Portuguese explorer,

Ferdinand Magellan, and circumnavigated the globe in the 16th century?

It is known that Magellan was not successful in the mission when he was killed on the Sulu Island on April 27, 1521, because of his attempt of interfering in the local political affairs.

Back on Prof Mohd Sharifudin’s argument – some of the early findings indicating the Vaie as descendants of Italian voyagers discussed the consonants ‘Q’, ‘V’ and ‘Z’.

The significance is not only that these three are very widely used in the Vaie language, but such usage is contrary to most of the Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken in the Malay Archipelago.

The ‘Q’, ‘V’ and ‘Z’ consonants are unusual as far as the Malayo-Polynesian tongue group is concerned, but they are common in the European language structures.

Among the many examples of the Vaie words with the letter Q are ‘qalak’ (to get), ‘pureq’ (return/come back), ‘qipak’ (armpits) and ‘saq’ (shallow); those with the letter V are ‘vak’ (swell), ‘tevaw’ (rotten), ‘tevivu’ (run), ‘uvi’ (surgery) and ‘vala’ (spicy); while those with the consonant Z include ‘gegezen’ (angry), ‘uzow’ (chase), ‘begazaw’ (scratching), ‘gegezep’ (trembling) and ‘mezak’ (shy).

According to Prof Mohd Sharifudin, such academic and scientific linguistic discovery further strengthens the theory that the Vaie lineage may have derived from Italy.

“This hypothesis recalls that Pigafetta was a scholar of the country, who also acted as Magellan’s assistant by making notes along the voyage. If it could be proven that the Vaie people in Bintulu came from Italian ancestry, it would certainly be an interesting discovery for the tribal language landscape in Sarawak, and would open the doors for more studies on the history of Vaie people.”

However, there is another oral narrative that speaks about the Vaie people originating from the Segaan Hill, located somewhere in the Belaga District.

This theory has a series of interconnected ancient stories about the origin of the community.

*This article is based on The Borneo Post’s interview with key members of the Anaq Vaie Bintulu Association, which is always open for discussions and encourages academic research works on the Vaie community in Bintulu. Don’t miss the conclusion of this special report tomorrow.