Alfur people

Alfuren, also Halifuren, Alifura; is an outdated collective name for a large number of ethnic groups that live in the Moluccas and other islands of eastern Indonesia. The term referred to the local altmalaiische, Melanesian or Papuan traditional culture in the broader sense. With " Alfuren " so no ethnological mapping is connected. Restrictive manner which settled at a low stage of civilization as hunters and gatherers in the areas of retreat native inhabitants of the region were so called.

A native of the Portuguese colonial era term meant pejoratively as " forest people ". Alfred Russel Wallace interpreted in the 1860s a "mixed population " between the western and the eastern Papuan Malay peoples who settled east of the eponymous biogeographic separation line, tentatively called " Alfuren ".

The origin of the word is not clear. It was derived from the Portuguese forro ( forrar ) and Spanish horro ( horrar ), both of which can be translated as "free" and dates back to the Arab tarried with the same meaning. The forro have added al - Arab particular item Arabs. Another proposal brought the article al - with the Portuguese fora ( "outside" ) along the lines of ' the living out in the woods. " The word furu, fefuru or fufuru but also occurs in some regional languages ​​where it can be " wild" mean. Furthermore, it can Alfuren of the self-designation of the Papuan people ARFU in northwest New Guinea derived. Perhaps the name of a wild and fearsome strain was transferred to all other unknown mountain peoples in colonial times.

Early colonial time reports describe the " Alfuren " as more than superficially Islamized, not or only slightly Christianized and generally with their own religion, which knows a regional variations mentioned Creator God. The companies were divided into stages and applied moral categories on the " state of nature " living locals, so were those as " wild " and " rebellious ", which the initially resisted coming from outside civilization processes in the form of proselytizing.