Creature record / 1917
Late June 1917. The forest at the eastern foot of Bukit Kaba, in the Residency of Benkoelen on Sumatra. A coffee planter named Oostingh had been lost for hours. He was alone. He was unarmed. At about 2:30 in the afternoon he saw what he took to be a man sitting on the ground, apparently making a fire. Short hair. A neck oddly leathery and extremely filthy. Thick square shoulders. Then it stood up, quite as tall as he was, and he understood it was not a man. It took several paces without the least haste, grasped a sapling with one ludicrously long arm, and sprang into the trees.
In 1917 Benkoelen, on the southwest coast of Sumatra, was a Dutch residency. Its Resident from 1915 to 1920 was L. C. Westenenk, a colonial administrator with a naturalist's curiosity. He gathered reports of the orang pendek from Dutch residents and from Rejang villagers in the highlands. One came from a man he called trustworthy.