A Keystone Cock Fight

At the markets and elsewhere you'll see them being shown off. Their fine plumage, plus their aggressiveness to other birds, is what is being evaluated. I think it is thus all over Indonesia.

The actual cock fights take place a little more secretively. They are illegal, or at least gambling is, and that's what it's all about.


So I was somewhat curious when my guide, my driver, and I stumbled onto one during one of our day tours out of Rantepao, in Southern Sulawesi's Toraja region. The boys weren't curious. They were almost ecstatic. What a bonus for them! Like most Torajan men, I imagine, they were wild about cock fighting and the gambling that went with it. Even if I'd had no interest in the event myself, I  couldn't deprive my companions of this thrill!

They knew immediately what was happening, by the big collection of parked motorbikes outside the small village we were passing. So we parked the car and wandered up the path to join the throng.

I don't have any pictures of the actual fights, or of the aggressive warming up sessions between the participants, or of the attaching of the sharp knife blade spur extensions that were to deliver the fatal blows, sometimes only two or three seconds into the match. Or of the furious placements of the bets and payouts to the successful punters. I was told it wasn't OK to photograph most of this. Some photography would have been OK, but my companions were so consumed by the action that they weren't answering my questions at all. I did photograph one of the little sideshow gambling games that was also going on.

Then there was an announcement by an authoritative man with a loudspeaker. The police were on their way, he said. But don't worry. He and his fellow organisers would head off down the road to meet them. It would all be OK. And they had to come from Makale, 30km away.

How the situation got resolved I didn't hear. I can make a good guess though. And also, as guide John pointed out, the police and the villagers are all friends. How would they decide who to arrest and who would do the arresting?

Later in the day, on the way back to Rantepao, the motorbikes were gone. But we passed another very similar collection in another village nearby. Looks like they had relocated.