A variety of local legends traces the original dispersal of the Bajau

to the loss or abduction of a princess, a mythic event variously

associated with the different early sultanates of the region: Johore,
Malacca, Brunei, Sulu, Luwu, or Bone. In more prosaic terms,
linguistic evidence suggests that the Proto-Sama-Bajau-speaking
ancestors of the present Bajau began to spread from an original
homeland located in the northeastern islands of Sulu, southwest of
Mindanao, sometime early in the first millennium A.D. The principal
movement was southwestward, through the Sulu Archipelago of
the Philippines, to the eastern Borneo coast. From Sulu and
eastern Borneo, subsequent migrations carried Bajau speakers
eastward through the Straits of Makassar to coastal Sulawesi and
from there southeastward into the Moluccas. By the early
seventeenth century, Dutch accounts of Sulawesi record the
presence of large numbers of Bajau around Makassar. Following
Makassar's defeat by Dutch and Bugis forces in 1669, many of
these communities are said to have dispersed to other islands in
eastern Indonesia. By the early eighteenth century, fleets of Bajau
were voyaging on fishing and trepang -collecting expeditions as far
south as Roti and Timor. Some of our fullest descriptions of the
Indonesian Bajau come from this period. Most are described as
strongly maritime people, sea-going dependents of either Bugis or
Makassarese patrons. The outward spread of the Bajau from
Sulawesi appears to have been closely linked to the development
of a maritime trade in trepang (sea slug or bêche-demer ), a
Chinese culinary delicacy, and to the associated expansion of
Bugis and Makassarese political and commercial influence. For
almost 200 years the Bajau acted as the principal gatherers of
trepang throughout the eastern islands of Indonesia. In northern
Borneo, the Bajau were already well established when Captain
Thomas Forrest first visited the western and northern coasts of
what is now Sabah in 1773. In western Sabah, the Bajau were
under the loose suzerainty of the Brunei sultanate and in some
areas, notably Tempasuk, maintained close ties with small Illanun
enclaves; some of them, during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, staged settlements for slave-raiding voyages into other
parts of Southeast Asia. On the southeastern coast of Sabah, the
Bajau were historically part of the Sulu zone, a maritime sphere of
political and commercial interests dominated by the Sulu sultanate
and its Tausug rulers. Here the principal seat of power was at Jolo,
in the central islands of the Sulu Archipelago. In 1878 the territory
now comprising Sabah was ceded by the sultans of Sulu and
Brunei to the British North Borneo Chartered Company, while in
1915 the Sultan of Sulu relinquished all secular power over his
former territories to American colonial authorities in Manila. The
subsequent colonial period saw the breakdown of traditional
patterns of administered trade and formal hierarchy, the abolition of
slavery, the emergence of Chinese and European commercial
interests, and the partial suppression of traditional forms of piracy
and raiding. In Sabah, the Mat Salleh Revolt (1894-1900), which
was the first major uprising against European rule, was led by a
leader of Bajau-Sulu ancestry. Since 1963, when Sabah gained
independence within Malaysia, and throughout most of the
postcolonial period, the Bajau, as the largest Muslim minority, have
played a decisive role in state politics, disproportionate to their
numbers. In Indonesia change has been equally rapid since
independence. Here Bajau communities have been under official
pressure to abandon boat-nomadism and nearly all are now shore-
based, living in coastal villages, characteristically dependent on
fishing, trade, and other maritime pursuits for their livelihood.

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