Roque, Ricardo2019-10-102019-10-102019Roque, R. (2019). The death of the Arbiru: mythic praxis and the apotheosis of officer Duarte. In Ricardo Roque and Elizabeth Traube, ed., Crossing Histories and Ethnographies: Following Colonial Historicities in Timor-Leste, pp. 93-130. New York and Oxford: Berghahn978-1-78920-271-7http://hdl.handle.net/10451/39789This chapter explores colonial historicity at the juncture of Portuguese and Timorese understandings of the pasto At the core of my inquiry is a tragic incident during the so-called "pacification campaigns" promoted by Governor Celestino da Silva in the late nineteenth century: the death of Portuguese alferes (sublieutenant) Francisco Duarte, lmown also by his Tetum name Arbiru, on 17 July 1899. ln July that year, Duarte and his army were laying siege to the people of the Atabai kingdom, who refused to pay vassalage to Portugal and submit to the governor's authority. The Atabai people sought refuge inside the caves of Bui Kari, a rocky hill in the hinterland of Atabai, off the north coast of East Timor. From Bui Kari, men, women, children, and elderly fought fiercely against the invaders without giving up. On 17 July, in the course of this siege, Atabai warriors killed the Portuguese commander, Sublieutenant Duarte. His body was then retrieved by the Portuguese and taken to Dili to be buried in the Santa Cruz cemetery. What happened at the moment of his death; how, where, by whom, Duarte was killed; what happened afterward; and how the Timorese and, particularly, the Atabai people behaved after the officer fell dead became the stuff of legend.engTimor-LesteColonial historybook part