CONQUEST OF SOUTH BALI

Two of the women who survived the Den Pasar puputan, sisters of the Radja, were aunts of Gusti Oka, the young prince in whose house we lived. They are now white-haired old ladies, but they remember every detail of the struggle and one showed me two bullet wounds in her side.

Gusti was only two years old at the time and he was rushed to another village with his little cousin, the present Regent of Badung, but Gusti's father was killed and his house destroyed. Another relative of the Radja who survived the massacre told us she fainted when she was cut in the face by the spear of a falling man. All she remembers was “the cool hissing of the bullets” in her ears; she added: “like tisic.”

The army remained in Bali until 1914, when it was considered that Balinese resistance was sufficiently controlled, and the army was replaced by a police force. The Dutch then reorganized the Government of the island along the lines it had under the Radjas; 0se who had been favourable to the Dutch, their allies in Gianyar and Karangasem, were allowed to retain their autocratic rights over the people of their districts and were given certain supremacy over other ruling princes, mostly the descendants of former Radjas.

They were made puppet regents, responsible to the Government for the behaviour of their subjects and for the payment of taxes, which they collect through relatives whom they appoint as chiefs, pungawa, of the districts under their control. :A regent is, however, supervised by a Dutch Controller, who is supposed to act as his “elder brother“ and whose orders are led recommendations.

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