Tolaki

The Tolaki are the principal people of the southeastern arm of Sulawesi, concentrated around Kendari Bay and the Konawe and Kolaka regions, and their Tolaki language belongs to the Austronesian family. Cave sites in northern Konawe show that their ancestors inhabited the peninsula thousands of years before the small local realms merged into the Konawe confederacy, whose rulers bore the title mokole.

Tradition places the first king, Mokole Roro, in the fifth century with his seat at Rahambuu, the present-day Unaaha. Konawe society was divided into noble, commoner and slave classes bound together by the Kalo Sara, a rattan bracelet symbol of customary law.

Bugis merchants from Makassar brought Islam to the coast from the early fifteenth century, and the kingdom officially converted under King Lakidende, who ruled from 1724 to 1786 after studying the faith in Bone.