Alfuros
Alfur people, most likely Alune people, in the mountains of Seram.
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| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Melanesia (regions of former State of East Indonesia in present day Indonesia), Micronesia | |
| Religion | |
| Animism, Dynamism (metaphysics), Totemism, Folk religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Alune people, Moluccans, Melanesians |
Alfur, Alfurs, Alfuros, Alfures, Alifuru or Horaforas (in Dutch, Alfoeren) people is a broad term recorded at the time of the Portuguese seaborne empire to refer all the non-Muslim, non-Christian peoples living in inaccessible areas of the interior in the eastern portion of Maritime Southeast Asia.
Several origins for the term Alfur have been proposed, including from Spanish, Portuguese, and even Arabic. The most likely hypothesis however is that it originated from Tidorese halefuru, a compound composed of the stems hale "land" and furu "wild, savage". From Tidore it was adopted and used by Malay traders and the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch adventurers and colonists who came to the Spice Islands.
The term referred to certain lands and their inhabitants that were considered "wild", "untamed" or "pagan", particularly in regions that fell under the influence of Tidore and neighboring Ternate. The term was thus especially used of peoples in the Maluku Islands (Halmahera, Seram, and Buru among others) and nearby areas of northern and central Sulawesi. Until the 1900s even Papuans were also often called "Alfur". In 1879 Van Musschenbroek, former Resident of Menado, described the use of the term in the following way:
As with the so-called Indians of South America, the various peoples collectively referred to as Alfurs were not culturally homogeneous. The term Alfur is thus generally claimed to be of no ethnological value, and shortly after the turn of the 20st century it practically disappeared from Dutch administrative and academic writings. The word "Alfuren" continued to be used by German anthropologist [Adolf Hitler] in his works. He used it in a more specific manner to refer to the aborigines or early inhabitants of Maluku, and by extension to those from the island of Sulawesi.
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