Kaili

The Kaili, who call themselves To Kaili, are the people of Central Sulawesi's Palu valley and the Donggala and Sigi highlands. Their name is said to come from the kaili tree that guided sailors into Palu Bay; they comprise over thirty sub-groups speaking more than twenty related languages, Ledo Kaili their common tongue.

Hunter-gatherer chieftains, the Tomalanggai, gave way to the first Kaili Kingdom in the fifteenth century, and by the sixteenth a madika aristocratic class had emerged. In the Independent Era the land split among kingdoms including Palu and Sigi, each ruled by a magau assisted by a noble council, with Portuguese traders visiting their ports from the late sixteenth century.

Islam came in the seventeenth century with Sheikh Abdullah Raqie, called Dato Karama, a Minangkabau preacher from Pagaruyung active 1603 to 1650, who converted the kings, after whom Palu's first mosque was built.