In addition of the community who has been the resident of the island of Halmahera and surrounding islands, generaly the name of Togutil tribe still sounds strangely and new for Indonesian''s people. This is due to a lack of information, from both print and electronic media in Indonesia. Meanwhile, for the residents of the island of Halmahera, when they hear the word "Togutil" that what they have in their mind is a tribe that live in the jungle, nomad, sleeping in the huts are made of potluck and wearing only a loincloth to cover the vital parts of their bodies. Moreover, the meaning of the word "Togutil" for the people of Ternate is "ignorance", "backwardness" and "primitive".
Many stories arising about the origin of the existence of this tribe. There is a story which states that the tribe was originally the citizen who had fled to avoid the tax set of the colonial government of Dutch at that time. There is also a story which states that the Togutil tribe was once a Portuguese soldiers who had fled into the jungle due to losing battle with Kora-kora, the army of the Sultan of Ternate . However, the stories of the origin of the existence of the isolated tribe Togutil are stories circulating in the midst of society so there needs to be a further research on this subject.
The areas inhabited by the tribe are spread across several regions in the interior of Halmahera island. In the North is in the interior of Tobelo and the middle part are in Dodaga, in the interior of Kao and in the interior of Wasilei. While in the South are in the interior of Maba and Buli. There is an interesting of this tribe, that is each community feel different to each other and sometimes a community fight against another when they meet. Distinguish one tribal community with other tribal community of Togutil based on a region or an area as the place of their wandering, like Togutil Tobelo, Togutil Kao, Togutil Dodaga, Togutil Wasilei and Togutil Maba.
The Togutil tribal life is so simple that they are very depending on the natural surroundings. Their food is derived from sago palm trees, wild boar or deer hunting dan fishing in the rivers. In addition, they also plant bananas, cassava, sweet potato, papaya and sugar cane. As they are a nomads tribe that the gardens they planted not to do intensively that the forests in the region show no significant interference. The government ever attempted to give them a settlement. Due to they have been accustomed to live in the jungle then overtime the settlements have been granted to them had left and back to live as a nomadic tribe. There are many valuable things shown by this tribe to us that is keeping the jungle, preserve the jungle and do not ever hurt it.