Pagai

North and South Pagai form the southern part of the Mentawai Islands, off the western coast of Sumatra. Their inhabitants, known locally as Sakalagan, cultivated taro in wet fields and kept pigs, supplementing their gardens with fish and forest resources. In the eighteenth century an English attempt to establish a pepper settlement on an island to the south failed. John Crisp visited the Mentawai in 1792 and later recorded one of the early European accounts of their communities.