Although the Minahasan pre-Christian creation myth entails some form of ethnic unification,[2] before the nineteenth century the Minahasa region was in no way unified.

Only during 'Pax Neerlandica' of the formal colonisation of the Dutch East Indies did the state of permanent internal warfare and the practice of headhunting subside.

[19] The province of North Sulawesi was the location of one of the first southward Austronesian migrations patterns in the late third and second millennia BC.

[23] A common misconception is that the unity among different ethnic groups arose as a result of a historical alliance to fight the Bolaang-Mongondow kingdom.

The colonial administration and Dutch missionaries undertook various policies which resulted in ethnic unification and the increased use of the Manado Malay language.

Half-way through the 17th century, there was a rapprochement between the Minahasan chiefs and the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which was given concrete form in the treaty of 1679 (which can be found in the Corpus Diplomaticus Neerlando-Indicum 1934, vol.

The abundance of natural resources in Minahasa made Manado a strategic port for European traders sailing to and from the spice island of Maluku.

[28] Minahasan rulers sent Supit, Pa'at and Lontoh (their statues are located in Kauditan, about 30 km to Bitung) where they made an alliance treaty with the Dutch.

Out of this visit came a treaty with the local Minahasan chiefs, which led to domination by the Dutch for the next 300 years although indirect government only commenced in 1870.

Missionary schools in Manado in 1881 were among the first attempts at mass education in Indonesia, giving their graduates a considerable edge in gaining civil service, military and other positions of influence.

A Manado – based political movement called Twaalfde Provincie even campaigned for Minahasa's integration into the Dutch state in 1947.

Portuguese activity apart, Christianity became a force in the early 1820s when a Calvinist group, the Netherlands Missionary Society, turned from an almost exclusive interest in Maluku to the Minahasa area.

With the missionaries came mission schools, which meant that, as in Ambon and Roti, Western education in Minahasa started much earlier than in other parts of Indonesia.

Because the schools taught in Dutch, the Minahasans had an early advantage in the competition for government jobs and places in the colonial army.

As KNIL soldiers the Minahasans fought alongside the Dutch to subdue rebellions in other parts of the archipelago, such as for instance the Java War of 1825–1830.

The appointment of a Manadonese Christian, Sam Ratulangi, as the first republican governor of eastern Indonesia, was decisive in winning Minahasan support for the republic.

Jakarta responded by bombing Menado city in February 1958, and then invading the Minahasa in June 1958, but were only able to end the Permesta revolt in 1961.

In March 1957, the military leaders of both southern and northern Sulawesi launched a confrontation with the central government, with demands for greater regional autonomy.

They demanded more local development, a fairer share of revenue, help in suppressing the Kahar Muzakar rebellion in Southern Sulawesi, and a cabinet of the central government led jointly by Sukarno and Hatta.

Inspired, perhaps, by fears of domination by the south, the Minahasan leaders declared their own autonomous state of North Sulawesi in June 1957.

By this time the central government had the situation in southern Sulawesi pretty much under control but in the north they had no strong local figure to rely upon and there were rumors that the United States, suspected of supplying arms to rebels in Sumatra, was also in contact with the Minahasan leaders.

The possibility of foreign intervention finally drove the central government to seek military support from southern Sulawesi.

Permesta forces were driven out of central Sulawesi, Gorontalo, Sangir island and from Morotai in Maluku (from whose airfield the rebels had hoped to fly bombing raids on Jakarta).

[35] Headhunting helped the warrior gain a religious concept called keter, which is similar to the Malay term semangat and means 'soul/spirit substance'.

Even without the actual practice of headhunting and other old traditions and customs these core elements of original Minahasa culture are still held in high regard.

To this day the deployment of wealth, bravery, obstinacy and the eloquence of verbal resistance are important to social mobility in the Minahasa.

Rica-rica is dishes usually fish or meat, cooked in spicy red chili, shallots, garlic, and tomato, while dabu-dabu is a type of condiment similar to sambal, made of chopped chilli, shallots, and green tomato mixed with a little vinegar or lime juice.

Minahasa music is highly influenced by that of the European colonials; their festivals feature large marching bands made up of clarinets, saxophones (source), trumpets, trombones, and tubas, all constructed out of local bamboo, which form the basis of a song genre known as musik bambu.

In 1996, the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas, United States published the North Sulawesi Language Survey by Scott Merrifield and Martinus Salea.

While there is not much known about the origin of ideogramatical Minahasa writing system, currently the orthography used for indigenous Minahasan languages closely matches that used for Indonesian.