When military agents “discovered” jungle encampments on the plantation peripheries, they found refuges that were not limited to ex-Chinese coolies in one place and Gayo resistance fighters in another. Instead they came upon encampments with material traces (utensils, clothing, letters) of hundreds of Gayos, Malays, Chinese, and Javanese hiding out together in makeshift shelters. … This “vagabond” population refused to work for the estates, but instead lived off them, carrying out night raids in search of food, weapons, clothing, and cash. “Vagabondage” was an administrative misnomer for an unrecogniz- able social space—one occupied by a diverse underclass made up of those rejected from the estates, who fled the estates, or who chose to maintain equivocal, temporary, or predatory ties to them.

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ E…, loc. 1095