Sikka

The Sikka, or Sikkanese, are an Austronesian people of east-central Flores, holding the coast between the Bloh and Napung rivers around Maumere and the mountainous Sikka hinterland. Their language belongs to the Bima–Sumba branch.

Local tradition recalls rulers at Sikka Natar before the first raja, who is said to have introduced Roman Catholicism when he began his reign in 1607, giving rise to the Catholic Kingdom of Sikka under Portuguese influence. Missionaries were active in the western villages from the 1600s, while inland highlanders kept circular mountain villages with megalithic shrines and ancestor rites long after the coast adopted Catholicism and European-style clothing.