Torajan

The Torajans are an Austronesian people of the rugged highlands of South Sulawesi, in the region later called Tana Toraja, the land of Toraja; their name derives from the Buginese to riaja, people of the uplands. For centuries they lived in autonomous, largely self-sufficient villages beyond the reach of the lowland states, though the kingdom of Luwu to the north laid claim to their lands.

Their indigenous religion, aluk, governed ancestor cults, farming and social order. Torajan society became famous for its grand multi-day funeral rites, cliff-side rock graves, and peaked-roof ancestral houses called tongkonan, and it was divided into nobles, commoners and slaves.

From the 1600s the Dutch East India Company built up trade and political control over Sulawesi's coasts, yet for two centuries it left the highland valleys alone while Islam spread among the neighbouring Bugis and Makassarese.