Tenggerese

▪ people

      second smallest of the ethnic groups indigenous to the island of Java in Indonesia, living mainly on the high slopes of a large volcanic crater in the Tengger Mountains and numbering about 50,000 in the early 1970s. They are believed to be the only surviving remnants of the Majapahit Empire in its later period (c. 1500). Because of the high altitude and climate, the Tenggerese cannot grow the Indonesian staple crop of rice. They sow corn (maize), potatoes, onions, and cabbage in a two-season year and keep a small number of buffalo. Lacking the economic base for large-scale political integration, the Tenggerese community unit (with an elected headman) is the village, consisting of large, thatched wooden houses sheltering several families and surrounded by a bamboo palisade. The Tenggerese are largely isolated from external influences and the cultural interaction typical of coastal Java. Although some have converted to Islām, most observe a religious animism influenced by Hinduism. A priest, the dukun, performs sacrifices on the sacred crater.

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