The Boats of the Tawi-Tawi Bajau, Sulu Archipelago, Philippines

ISLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA has perhaps the greatest variety of watercraft of any culture area in the world. Through centuries of adaptation to tropical riverine and maritime environments, the people of this island world have created hundreds-indeed, probably thousands-of different kinds of boats. The primitive rafts that first transported the early inhabitants to offshore islands evolved into the sophisticated sailing vessels that allowed this population to become the most far-flung on earth before the expansion of European cultures. By the time Europeans began to venture beyond their shores, Austronesian speakers had spread throughout all of Island Southeast Asia, west to Madagascar, north to Taiwan, and east to Micronesia, parts of Melanesia, and the outposts of Polynesia. Perusal of a map of Island Southeast Asia explains the proliferation of watercraft in this area. Thousands of islands make up the modern nations of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and one can sail within sight of land throughout the entire area before reaching its outer limits. The lure of these islands to the always curious human mind as well as the abundant food resources in their surrounding waters were doubtless prime motivators for the first boat-builders-as indeed they continue to motivate contemporary boat-builders. Virtually all islands large enough to accommodate human populations are inhabited, and some have been so for millennia. The separation of human populations by expanses of water, as well as the diverse currents of history that have moved through the area, has resulted in a rich mosaic of distinctive cultures. All coastal cultures of Southeast Asia are oriented to the sea, one of the prime shapers of their world view and history. Of all these peoples, however, no other is so totally committed to the sea as the boat-dwelling populations, the so-called sea nomads. These nomadic boat-dwellers were reported by the early Chinese chroniclers who visited the waters as well as by the first European voyagers to Southeast Asia. At one time they were found in the Mergui Islands of southern Burma, near the coasts and islands of southern Malaya, along the coasts of Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi in Indonesia, in the coastal regions of eastern Borneo, and throughout the Sulu Islands as far north as the Zamboanga Peninsula in the Philippines (Sopher