The Orang Laut of Singapore
This short note by W. W. Skeat and H. N. Ridley records a field visit to Kampong Roko on the Kallang River, Singapore, in November 1899, during which they attempted to collect linguistic and ethnographic data from the last identifiable remnants of the Orang Kallang, a pre-British native group of the island (p. 247).
The authors document the oral testimony of the village’s oldest inhabitants, who identified themselves as Orang Daik from Lingga and enumerated eight visiting sea-tribes (Orang Tambus, Sekanak, Mantang, Barok, Galang, Moro, Pusek/Persik, and Sugi), noting their chief titles (Batin and Jenang) and their piratical or non-piratical character (p. 248). A small vocabulary of non-Malay words was recorded, alongside observations of a distinctive pronunciation pattern in which s is rendered as soft z, r as h, and k as kh (pp. 248–249). Skeat and Ridley propose that the Orang Laut of Singapore derive largely from Sakai hill-tribes of the Riau-Lingga Archipelago who took to the sea, citing the correspondence of chief titles with Sakai usage and the Besisi “terumba” racial records of Selangor, which explicitly state that ancestors “descended to the sea and became sea-folk” and that “the sea-folk became pirates” (p. 250).