_This Edition, with Heliotype plates, is limited to Five Hundred
Copies._
THE
HOME-LIFE
OF
BORNEO HEAD-HUNTERS
ITS FESTIVALS AND FOLK-LORE
BY
WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS, 3RD, M. D.; F. R. G. S.
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; OF THE AMERICAN
ORIENTAL SOCIETY; DE LA SOCIÉTÉ DE GÉOGRAPHIE; FELLOW OF THE
ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1902
Copyright, 1902, by W. H. FURNESS, 3RD
WESTCOTT & THOMSON,
_Electrotypers, Phila._
PRESS OF J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
_Phila._
PREFACE
While to scenery, it is distance,—and photography,—which lends
enchantment, it is, on the contrary, propinquity which, in my experience,
lends to the Borneo Head-Hunters and to their Home-life, a charm which
cannot be wholly dispelled even by the skulls hanging from the rafters of
their houses. After living among them, for months at a time, an insight
is gained into their individualities and peculiarities which a casual
sojourn can never disclose. Some, of course, are ill-tempered, crotchety,
selfish; others, again, are mild, gentle, generous. The youths have their
languishing loves, which they are eager to confide to sympathetic ears.
The maidens are coy, or demure, or bashful, when their lovers are near,
and delight in teasing and tormenting. The Bornean mothers and fathers
think their babies the prettiest that ever were born; and the young boys
are as boyish as school-boys here at home, and are quite as up to all
mischief.
It is so much easier to descend than it is to rise in what we call
civilization, that, before a month is passed in a Kayan or a Kenyah
house, the host and hostess, who, on first sight, seemed to be uncouth
savages, frightfully mutilated as to eyes, ears, and teeth, are regarded
as kind-hearted, devoted friends. It becomes well-nigh impossible to
realise that they cannot add the simplest of sums without the aid of
fingers and toes; and that Cæsar, Shakespeare, and Washington are to them
meaningless, unpronounceable words.
Their honesty, (in a twelve months’ residence the only thing stolen
from me was a tooth-powder bottle,) their simple, child-like nature,
their keen interest in the pursuit of the moment, and their vivacious
excitability, place them in advance of any ‘savages’ with whom I have
ever, in my many wanderings, come in contact.
The greater part of my time in Borneo was spent among the Kayans
and Kenyahs of the Baram district of Sarawak; consequently, in the
following pages I have barely mentioned the Dayaks, (or Ibans, as they
call themselves,) or any of the coast tribes, of whose home-life I saw
comparatively little; so much has been already written about these tribes
that I am jealous for my friends of the far interior.
I have refrained from giving dates, or details, as to the height of
the thermometer, or as to my personal comfort or health, or as to the
number of men who carried my luggage, or what I had for breakfast, or
dinner,—items extremely important at the time, but of no permanent or
public interest whatsoever.
I have attempted to portray the impressions made on a mind which I
endeavoured to keep wholly unprejudiced, and even free from all tendency
to despise as gross superstition that which by the natives is deemed holy
and religious. I do not wish to forget that I was received as an honoured
guest in Kayan Long-houses; it is a sorry payment to vilify my hosts.
Rather let me throw what charm I may over the daily round of the natives’
dateless life.
To His Highness Rajah BROOKE, I owe sincere thanks, not alone for his
kind hospitality, but for facilities in freely visiting all parts of his
admirably governed territory, and for his liberal permission to collect
Ethnological and Natural History material.
It is with pleasure that I acknowledge my indebtedness to the Rajah’s
Resident, Dr. CHARLES HOSE, for valuable information on innumerable
points, for a genial hospitality of many weeks, and for the opportunities
to visit the people of his District, ‘my people,’ as he likes to call
them, whose manners and customs he knows so thoroughly, and whose
interests he guards with so much vigilance and efficiency.
W. H. F. 3rd.
July, 1902.
CONTENTS
PAGE
HOME-LIFE 1
CEREMONIES AT THE NAMING OF A CHIEF’S SON 16
EARLY TRAINING OF A HEAD-HUNTER 54
A WAR EXPEDITION 67
‘JAWA’ OR PEACE-MAKING 97
PERSONAL EMBELLISHMENT 146
PERMANTONG, OR LALI, A BORNEAN SPECIES OF TABOO 160
THE PUNANS 170
TUBA FISHING 185
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
TATTOOED KAYAN MARRIED WOMAN _Frontispiece._
ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE ON THE TINJAR 1
POSTS ERECTED IN FRONT OF A HOUSE AFTER A HEAD-HUNT 2
VERANDA OF ABUN’S HOUSE AT LONG-LAMA ON THE BARAM 4
JUNGLE IN THE LOW-COUNTRY, NEAR THE BARAM FORT 6
KALURI, MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 8
FAMILY-ROOM, OR LAMIN, IN ABUN’S HOUSE ON THE BARAM 10
VERANDA OF A NEWLY BUILT IBAN HOUSE ON THE BAKONG RIVER 12
TAMA BULAN 16
HANDLE OF A PARANG 20
CHINESE BAZAAR AT CLAUDETOWN—BARAM FORT 22
SCENE ON THE BARAM 24
GROUP OF KENYAH YOUTHS 26
BULAN, DAUGHTER OF TAMA BULAN 28
GROUP OF BOYS 30
KENYAH WOMEN IN ORDINARY COSTUME 34
MAKING FIRE WITH A ‘FIRE-DRILL’ 38
MUJAN, ONE OF THE BELLES OF TAMA BULAN’S HOUSEHOLD 46
SARA, ANOTHER BELLE OF TAMA BULAN’S HOUSEHOLD 48
ABAN AVIT, A BERAWAN CHIEF OF THE TINJAR 54
A KAYAN YOUTH, WITH THE RAISED SCAR, CALLED BY THE NATIVES ‘GUM
TOH,’ A GHOST’S CLUTCH 56
VERANDA OF ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE 58
SKULL OF A CHIEF OF THE KELABIT TRIBE 60
ONE OF THE BELLES OF ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE 62
THE DRUDGE OF A KAYAN HOUSEHOLD 64
VERANDA OF ABAN DENG’S HOUSE ON THE APOH 66
BORNEAN WAR-COSTUME 68
COUNCIL OF WAR, DURING A MARCH TO THE HOUSE OF AN ENEMY 70
CHIEF AND TWO SLAVES IN WAR-COSTUME 72
INSTRUMENTS USED IN PREPARING POISONED DARTS 74
KAYAN WAR-COAT OF GOAT’S SKIN 74
WAR-CANOE, OR RACING-CANOE 76
FIGURE-HEAD OF A LONG WAR-CANOE 78
KELAVIT BOK, A HAIRY SHIELD 80
POLING CANOES OVER SHALLOW RAPIDS 82
THE WAR-PARTY HALTED ON A ‘KARANGAN’ TO COOK BREAKFAST 84
ARMED WARRIORS ON A NARROW TRAIL IN THE JUNGLE 86
A STEALTHY APPROACH TO THE HOUSE OF AN ENEMY 88
THE RETURN FROM A HEAD-HUNT 90
WAR-CAPS OF RATTAN AND SPLIT BAMBOO 92
GRAVE OF OYONG LUHAT 94
WAR-COAT AND CAP MADE OF THE SKIN OF A MANIS 96
A CHARM AGAINST FEVER 98
DECORATED STORE-HOUSE FOR RICE 100
RIVER BANK IN FRONT OF A LONG-HOUSE 104
CANOES OF THE PEACE-PARTY IN A QUIET REACH BETWEEN RAPIDS 106
RIVER SCENE IN THE HEART OF BORNEO 108
LAKI JOK ORONG, A REJANG RIVER CHIEF 110
DOOR-FRAME FROM THE HOUSE OF TAMA APING PANG 114
ABAN LIAH 116
A CONTINGENT OF THE PEACE-PARTY 118
LIAN AVIT, A LEPPU ANNAN, WITH TIPANG, HIS WIFE 122
IBANS BARGAINING FOR VALUABLE CHINESE JARS 126
TAMA APING BULING’S HOUSE ON THE TINJAR 128
WOMEN OF THE HOUSEHOLD OF TAMA BALAN DENG 136
GRAVE OF THE WIFE OF ORANG KAYA TEMANGANG LAWI 142
MOSS-COVERED JUNGLE ON THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT DULIT 144
BATU, YOUNGEST SON OF THE KAYAN CHIEF OYONG LUHAT 146
TATTOO DESIGNS ON THE FOREARMS OF KAYAN AND KENYAH WOMEN 148
TATTOO DESIGNS OF IBANS OF THE REJANG AND KENYAHS OF THE BARAM 148
TATTOOING ON THE FOREARMS AND FEET OF A KENYAH WOMAN 150
TATTOOING A KAYAN GIRL 152
KENYAH WOMAN WITH ELONGATED EAR-LOBES 154
BATU, A KAYAN YOUTH OF THE BARAM DISTRICT 156
IBAN ORNAMENTATION OF THE TEETH 156
MALANAU HEAD-COMPRESSION 158
IBANS FELLING A BUTTRESS TREE 160
FIELD OF HILL RICE 162
IBAN CAMPHOR COLLECTORS SPLITTING A CAMPHOR TREE 164
PUNAN CAMPHOR COLLECTORS 166
KAYAN CAMPHOR COLLECTORS SELLING THE CRYSTALS TO CHINESE TRADERS 168
TAMA BALAN DENG, A SIBOP 170
PIPES AND OTHER REQUISITES TO TOBACCO-SMOKING 170
PUNAN HUTS 172
PUNAN GIRL STRAINING GRATED TAPIOCA 172
HUNTING SMALL GAME WITH THE SUMPIT 174
WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF THE PUNAN ENCAMPMENT NEAR THE HEAD-WATERS
OF THE DAPOI 174
GIRLS IN THE HOUSE OF TAMA BALAN DENG, GRATING TAPIOCA 176
PUNAN WOMEN STRAINING GRATED TAPIOCA 176
PUNAN WOMAN CARRYING HER BABY IN A SLING MADE OF RATTAN 178
ORANG-KAYA PERKASSA 180
HOUSEHOLD GODS OF ORANG-KAYA PERKASSA 180
BIRDS’-NEST CAVES AT NIAH 182
PUNAN HUTS WITHIN THE BIRDS’-NEST CAVES 182
PUNANS CAMPED FOR THE NIGHT 184
SCENE ON A LEVEL STRETCH OF RIVER IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS 186
FLAT PALM-LEAF HAT WORN BY WOMEN 188
A KENYAH GRAVE 190
[Illustration: THE TATTOOING OF A KAYAN MARRIED WOMAN]
[Illustration: ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE, ON THE TINJAR
THE CLUSTER OF STAKES AND POLES IN THE FOREGROUND IS A CHARM TO DRIVE
AWAY THE EVIL SPIRITS OF ILLNESS. IN THE LEFT CORNER OF THE PICTURE, THE
TALLER POLE, DECORATED WITH STRIPS OF PALM LEAVES, IS THE RECORD OF A
SUCCESSFUL HEAD-HUNT. THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS ABOUT TWO-THIRDS OF THE LENGTH
OF THE HOUSE.]
THE HOME-LIFE OF BORNEO HEAD-HUNTERS
ITS FESTIVALS AND FOLK-LORE
_HOME-LIFE_
The houses in which the Borneo people live are the outcome of a life of
constant apprehension of attacks from head-hunters. In union alone is
strength. Surrounded by a dense jungle which affords, night and day, up
to the very steps to their homes, a protecting cover for enemies, the
Borneans live, as it were, in fighting trim, with their backs to a hollow
square. A village of scattered houses would mean the utmost danger to
those on the outskirts; consequently, houses which would ordinarily form
a village have been crowded together until one roof covers them all. The
rivers and streams are the only thoroughfares in the island, and village
houses are always built close to the river-banks, so that boats can be
quickly reached; this entails another necessity in the construction of
the houses. The torrents during the rainy season, which, on the western
half of the island, lasts from October till February, swell the rivers
with such suddenness and to such an extent that in a single night the
water will overflow banks thirty feet high, and convert the jungle
round about into a soggy swamp; unless the houses were built of stone
they would be inevitably swept away by the rush of water; wherefore the
natives build on high piles and live above the moisture and decay of the
steaming ground.
Beneath the houses is the storage-place for canoes that are leaky and
old, or only half finished and in process of being sprung and spread
out into proper shape before being fitted up with gunwales and thwarts.
It is generally a very disorderly and noisome place, where all the
refuse from the house is thrown, and where pigs wallow, and chickens
scratch for grains of rice that fall from the husking mortars in the
veranda overhead. Between the houses and the river’s bank,—a distance
of a hundred yards, more or less,—the jungle is cleared away, and in
its place are clumps of cocoanut, or Areca palms, and, here and there,
small storehouses, built on piles, for rice. In front of the houses of
the Kayans there are sure to be one or two forges, where the village
blacksmiths, makers of spear-heads, swords, hoes, and axes, hold an
honorable position. In the shade of the palms the boat-builders’ sheds
protect from the scorching heat of the sun the great logs that are being
scooped out to form canoes; the ground is covered with chips, from which
arises a sour, sappy odor that is almost pungent and is suggestive of all
varieties of fever, but is really quite harmless. In the open spaces tall
reedy grass grows, and after hard rains a misstep, from the logs forming
a pathway, means to sink into black, oozy mud up to the knees.
Just on the bank of the river there are usually four or five posts, about
eight feet high, roughly carved at the top to represent a man’s head;
these have been put up after successful head-hunting raids, and on them
are tied various fragments of the enemy,—a rib, or an arm, or a leg bone;
these offerings drive away the evil Spirits who might wish to harass the
inmates of the house, and they also serve as a warning to enemies who may
be planning an attack. Such remnants of the enemy are held by no means
in the same veneration with which the heads, hung up in the house, are
regarded; after the bits of flesh and bone are tied to the posts they are
left to the wind and rain, the pigs and chickens.
[Illustration: POSTS ERECTED IN FRONT OF A HOUSE AFTER A HEAD-HUNT
ON THESE POSTS ARE HUNG SMALL FRAGMENTS OF THE ENEMY. THE CARVED FACES
RECORD THE NUMBER OF HEADS TAKEN.]
Not a few of the Kayan and Kenyah houses have been enlarged and built
out at both ends until they shelter from six hundred to a thousand
persons, and are possibly a quarter of a mile long; this statement seems
to verge on a ‘traveller’s tale,’ but it must be remembered that these
houses are really villages of a single street, the veranda being a public
thoroughfare, unobstructed throughout its whole length, in front of
the private family rooms. From the ground to the veranda a notched log
serves as steps, and it takes no little practice to enable a clumsy,
leather-shod foreigner to make a dignified entrance into a Borneo house.
The notches in the log are worn very smooth by the constant tread of
bare feet, and, as there is no door-mat below for muddy feet, the
shallow notches are often coated with a thin and treacherous layer of
slime; foreigners generally enter a Kayan house on all fours, giving to
the natives an astounding idea of occidental manners. To the natives,
however, these steps present no difficulties,—no matter how steep or
slimy the log, they seem to get a firm hold on the edge of the notches
with their prehensile toes, and, even with heavy loads on their backs,
walk up as freely as if on level ground. The piles on which the large
houses rest are fifteen or twenty feet high, and often two and a half
feet in diameter at the base; in some few cases they are carved with
grotesque figures of human heads, or conventionalised representations of
monkeys, crocodiles, and snakes.
In the days before the humanising influence of Rajah Brooke’s government
had spread to the Kayans, and Kenyahs, and tribes living in the central
highlands, it was a preliminary custom, in building a house, to thrust
into the first excavation wherein the heavy, up-river, corner post was to
rest, a young slave girl alive, and the mighty post was then planted on
her body, crushing out her life as a propitiatory offering to the demons
that they should not molest the dwelling. Happily, this custom has been
abolished, and in houses now built, instead of a girl, a pig or a fowl
has been substituted. I regret to add that in the house of Tama Bulan,
wherein we lived for some time, the earlier custom had been followed.
The roofs of the houses are partly thatched and partly shingled. The
shingles are hewn out of ‘Billian,’ a species of iron-wood which stands
for years, without decay, the alternate change from damp to dry heat;
each one has a square hole at its upper end, through which passes the
strip of rattan wherewith it is tied to the frame of the roof. The
thatching is of palm leaves doubled over a stick five feet long and then
bound on the roof, overlapping like shingles; several layers of these
palm-leaf tiles make a perfectly tight roof, and one that may be quickly
repaired. In building a Borneo house not a nail is used and but very few
pegs; all beams and cross-ties are either roughly mortised and bound
together, or else merely tied one on top of the other with rattan or with
long strips of fibrous bark; even the planks of the floor or walls are
not pegged, but are tied to one another and laced to the joists.
In selecting the site for a house, before so much as a twig of the jungle
is cleared away, there are always extreme and prolonged pains taken to
discover, through ‘Omen birds,’ the temper of the evil Spirits of that
locality,—to a Kayan there are no such things as beneficent Spirits.
Until this temper is definitely discovered the whole household is under
a ‘permantong,’ or taboo, and may not leave its quarters, whatever these
quarters may be, be they the old house or a temporary shelter.
This taboo lasts many days,—ten days perhaps,—during which certain old
men who know the habits of omen birds and omen animals make frequent
trips into the surrounding jungle to observe whether the red hawk fly,
or whether the little honey-sucker bird, (called the ‘Isit,’) chirp to
them, on the right or on the left of their path. Finally, they must
catch a glimpse of the barking deer, and then the welfare of the house
is assured. As soon as one of these favorable omens is seen the hunters
build a fire,—a signal to the birds and animals, conveying thanks for
favors received. When the last of these omens has been seen, then, and
not until then, is the permantong over and the clearing for the house
begun, and all hands turn in to help.
The veranda, or main street, of these houses is where all public life
goes on; here, in the smoky atmosphere that pervades the place, councils
of war and peace are held, feasts spread, and a large part of the daily
work performed. It is seldom a very bright or cheery place; the eaves
come down so low that the sunlight penetrates only at sunrise and sunset,
and the sooty smoke from the fires turns all the woodwork to a sombre,
mahogany hue. The floor is usually of broad, hewn planks, loosely laid
upon the joists, with little care whether they fit close or warp and
bend up out of shape, leaving wide cracks through which a small child
might fall; they show plainly the cuts of the adze, but they soon become
polished by the leathery soles of bare feet shuffling over them from dawn
till dark. At intervals of perhaps fifty feet are fireplaces,—merely
shallow boxes about five feet square by six inches deep, filled with flat
stones imbedded in clay; herein are built the fires that give light at
night and add to sociability at all times; no council or friendly talk
is complete without the crackle of a fire to enliven it and to keep away
evil Spirits. Of course, no chimney carries off the smoke, which must
disperse as best it can among the cob-webby beams overhead, after giving
a fresh coat of soot to the row or bunch of trophy-skulls that hangs in
the place of honor opposite to the door of the chief’s room. The odor
of burning resinous wood, mingled with other ingredients, saturates the
veranda, and in after-life the smell of musty garret, cedar-wood chests,
and brush-wood burning in the autumn instantly recalls the veranda of a
Borneo long-house. It must be confessed that occasionally there mingles
with this aromatic odor a tang of wet dog, wallowing pig, and ancient
fish, but then, after all, these are not peculiar to Borneo.
[Illustration: THE VERANDA OF ABUN’S HOUSE AT LONG-LAMA ON THE BARAM.
THE ROW OF SKULLS HANGS FROM A BEAM SUSPENDED OPPOSITE TO THE DOOR INTO
THE CHIEF’S ROOM; BENEATH THE SKULLS IS A CLAY AND STONE HEARTH WHEREON
A FIRE IS LIGHTED EVERY EVENING, NOT ONLY TO GIVE LIGHT, BUT ALSO
“TO DIFFUSE A PLEASANT WARMTH ABOUT THE SKULLS.” THE WALL OF PLANKS,
EXTENDING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH DIVIDES THE FAMILY ROOMS
FROM THE PUBLIC VERANDA. THE BOYS ON THE RIGHT ARE SEATED UPON ONE OF THE
LARGE MORTARS WHEREIN THE RICE IS HUSKED. ON THE LEFT IS THE USUAL CROWD
OF LOUNGERS SEATED UPON THE LOW PLATFORM WHICH EXTENDS ALMOST THE WHOLE
LENGTH OF THE HOUSE BELOW THE EAVES.]
There is no ceiling to a Borneo long-house; above the plank walls
that divide the private rooms from the veranda, and from one another,
the space is open to the ridge-pole. Across the rafters are placed,
higgledy-piggledy, spare boards, supplies of dried rattan, and long rolls
of bamboo matting; here and there, hang rice baskets, hampers, wicker
fish-traps of all sizes; and sometimes every available space is hung
with bunches of bananas, which must be gathered green and ripened in the
house, to keep them from the depredations of monkeys and fruit-bats. At
intervals along the roof are trap-doors of palm-leaf thatch, which can
be lifted and supported on a pole to admit more light and air. [For the
accompanying photograph as many of these trap-doors as possible had been
raised in order to get enough light, and just over the row of skulls
several shingles had been taken off. In the photograph this row of forty
or fifty skulls hanging from a beam begins with one that looks like a
gourd, on the left.]
Along the whole length of the veranda at its outer edge, under the eaves,
is a railing, or fence, of poles and boards tied to the upright supports
of the roof; when parents in the household are unusually careful of their
children, this fence extends from the floor to the eaves, which are
here only about four feet above the floor, but usually this safeguard
is only two poles about six inches apart, and serves as a rest for the
backs of men when they sit on the wide platforms, which are raised about
a foot above the floor and extend nearly all along this lightest and
airiest part of the house. These platforms are of much smoother planks
than the floor, and are often of single huge slabs of wood from the
buttress-like roots of the ‘Tapang’ tree. To make these lounging-places
still more luxurious, mats of fine rattan or bamboo strips are spread
upon them, and then a Bornean desires no more comfortable place whereon
to sit by day or to recline by night, unless, perchance, it be a dry
sandy river-bank, above the rapids, where are no crocodiles, mosquitoes,
nor pestiferous black-flies, and where grow gigantic Caladiums, whereof
a single leaf is large enough to cover his entire body and afford him
a protection from the rain, as impervious as a rubber blanket. These
low platforms, especially in front of the chief’s door, [which in the
photograph is directly opposite the row of skulls just mentioned,] are
the places where men congregate after nightfall to gossip and smoke
round the fire, which is here needed to dispel darkness, dampness, and
evil Spirits. Diversion is often created by one of their number, who,
more self-sacrificing than the rest, goes through the violent antics of
a war-dance, or sings long, rambling songs about the valorous deeds of
Tokong, who originated head-hunting, or of some other warrior who gained
the blissful regions of ‘Apo Legan’ by the slaughter of his enemies.
Whatever the theme,—and the themes are generally legends or familiar
stories,—the details are supplied by the imagination of the singer, who
composes them on the spur of the moment, while the chorus is singing the
last two or three words of the verse, followed by ‘Ara Wi Wi, Ará!’ a
meaningless refrain, like our own ‘Tooral, looral,’ although I am afraid
that in a former publication I unwittingly gave the impression that its
translation was ‘Sleep dear little one, sleep.’[1]
To these songs an accompaniment is often played upon an instrument, known
among certain Kayans and Kenyahs as a _Kaluri_ or _Kaleeri_ or _Kaludi_.
It is probably of Chinese origin; substantially the same instrument is
used in China and in the countries bordering thereon to the northward
and westward. I saw almost an exact counterpart of the Borneo Kaluri
played by the Naga tribes inhabiting the hills near the Burmese border.
It consists of a bottle-shaped gourd with six hollow reed pipes set
into the body of it; a finger-hole is cut in each pipe at such a place
that the fingers of both hands while holding the instrument can cover
all the holes. The middle reed is the longest, and is therefore the
bass; it has no finger-hole, but its tone is subdued by a movable cap
at the end; the neck of the gourd forms the mouth-piece. The music of
a Kaluri somewhat resembles that of organ pipes, perhaps slightly nasal
in timbre, but having an impressive charm withal when heard amid native
surroundings, in the dim, smoky atmosphere of a Borneo long-house at
night, when light from the flickering fire accentuates the harsh lines
in the faces of the natives grouped about the performer, and where eyes,
robbed of the softening effect of lashes and eyebrows, glitter fiercely,
and where brass studs glisten in pointed and blackened teeth, and where
carnivorous ferocity and alertness is imparted to the men’s faces by the
upturned tiger-cat’s teeth in their ears,—all these so intensify the
relentless, recurring, savagely persistent minor key of the Kaluri that
dim questionings are stirred whether or not, after all, bloodshed be not
the noblest aim in life and the blackened and battered skulls overhead be
not glory’s highest prize. Music hath charms to soothe,—Kaluri music hath
charms to _make_,—a savage breast.
[Illustration: JUNGLE IN THE LOW COUNTRY NEAR THE BARAM FORT
THE LARGE LOG IN THE FOREGROUND HAD BEEN ROUGHLY HEWN FOR MAKING A CANOE,
BUT ON ACCOUNT OF A WARNING FROM AN OMEN-BIRD WAS ABANDONED.]
In the verandas of the Kayan houses there are always large wooden mortars
wherein rice is hulled; from morning until night there is always to be
heard, somewhere in the length of the house, the rhythmical thumping that
betokens that young girls are at their everlasting task of threshing,
hulling, and winnowing the rice for the daily repast. The rice mortars
are cut from large logs of wood, and are somewhat prismatic in shape,
usually five or six feet in length by two or three feet wide on the
upper surface; they rest upon a base not more than a foot wide, [as
in the photograph, where, on the right, some boys are sitting on the
edge of a mortar,] but are made firm by stout poles that are set into
them and extend through the flooring to the ground below, and also by
strong braces that are pegged to the house beams above. The upper, broad
surface of these mortars is slightly concave, and is divided into two
or more sections, each with a round pit six inches deep in the centre.
In husking the rice, these pits are filled with the grains, and then
two, or sometimes four, girls, standing upon the broad top, pound the
rice in the pit with wooden pestles five or six feet long, which they
hold at the middle with both hands. The motion that they adopt is
exceedingly graceful; they stand with the heels together, and lift the
pole or pestle perpendicularly above their heads as high as they can
reach, then, bending the body at the hips and swinging the arms down,
they jam the pestle into the rice pit; as they raise the pestle again
for another stroke they put one foot forward to push back into the pit
the grains that may have jumped out on the flat surface of the mortar.
When thus pounding, the young girls keep perfect time with one another,
the poles never clash, and each girl brushes back, first with one foot,
then with the other, the grains she jostles out, so that when they pound
fast the motion becomes almost a dance. Not infrequently the pestles are
ornamented at their upper end with several sliding rings or a sliding
block that jingles when the pestle strikes; this rhythm and this jingle
impart some alleviation to the tedious task. When the husks are all
beaten off, the chaff is winnowed out by tossing the grains and catching
them again and again upon a flat basket. The task of hulling rice falls
exclusively to the women and girls; they begin it when they are so small
that they can barely lift the pestle, and, once started in proficiency,
the task becomes an element of their life, and their winnowing-baskets
are hung as symbols of industry on their graves.
In the accompanying photograph of a veranda, the coffin-shaped box
hanging on the wall on the right is a case wherein war-coats are kept,
so that the goat-skin and feathers whereof they are made cannot be eaten
by hungry dogs. The photograph does not give an absolutely correct
idea of the daily appearance of a veranda; there is only one dog to be
seen,—there should be at least a dozen. The exposure had to last so long
that, lest the dogs should jar the camera, we had them all driven down
the notched log to the ground, and then the log was turned wrong side
up, so that they could not return. (We tried this method of getting rid
of the dogs once at night when they were particularly troublesome and
quarrelsome, and seemed to prefer our bodies to any other couch, but the
crafty curs knew an adequate revenge; as soon as they found themselves
locked out they made night hideous with concerted and disconcerting
baying at the moon, until we were glad to readmit them. Our leather shoes
we always had to tie high up on the rafters at night, or they would have
been eaten up, all but the soles and heels.)
This photograph was taken from a point just opposite the chief’s door,
about half way down the length of the veranda.
[Illustration: KALURI—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.]
The family rooms, even those of the chief, are often dark and disordered
little compartments, and in them it is usual for anything but quiet to
reign; the smallest of the infants sprawl on the floor, the fowls, that
have flown up to steal the rice drying on the platforms at the back
of the house, squawk and cackle, and the old women who are relegated
to culinary sinecures, such as rice-boiling, add a mild confusion by
whacking the dogs that wander in and prowl about the cooking-pots. The
space under the eaves, unlike that of the veranda, is boarded up from
floor to roof with rough hewn planks; the only light is admitted through
small windows in the planks or through trap-doors in the roof. Of course,
there is never a pane of glass in the windows, and I doubt that the
natives of the interior, or even of the coast towns, ever saw a glazed
window.
In spite of the darkness of these rooms, there is, nevertheless, more
industry in them than is ever found in the veranda; the women are really
the workers of the community, and seem never to sit absolutely idle
gossiping, as do the men; when the harvesting is finished and there is no
more work out of doors, they employ their time in making mats and baskets
of rattan strips, in stringing beads into ornaments for war-coats, in
weaving cloth for feast-day garments, and in fashioning large, round,
flat hats for the next season’s work in the rice-fields. During the rainy
season, the husbands and lovers seem to have little to do but sit in
the veranda, lounging against the railing at the open space under the
eaves, whence they can observe the river and its incidents, and watch the
smoke from their long cigarettes curl and drift among the fronds of tall
cocoanut palms that sway and rustle on a level with their faces. These
are the days when war expeditions are planned and resolutions made to
add fresh heads to the row already hanging in front of the chief’s door,
and thereby remove any taboo enforced by the death of relatives. The men
seldom linger in the family rooms during the day, and the women, except
when busy hulling the rice in the big wooden mortars, spend no time in
the veranda.
The doorway from the veranda into the family room opens into a very dark
and narrow passage, with the partition wall of the next room on one side
and a rack for fire-wood and long bamboo water-bottles on the other.
Possibly it is to announce the coming of a guest that the flooring of
these little entries is always laid down in such a wobbly fashion, and of
logs and billets of wood so rickety, that it is impossible to walk upon
it without stumbling or an unseemly clatter; whatever be the reason, such
is the fact, and I never stepped over the high threshold into the dark of
one of these passages without expecting to trample on babies or to fall
through on the wallowing pigs below.
The end of the passage opens directly into the middle of the room, where
the floor is better laid and made more comfortable by the addition of
mats. The whole room is perhaps twenty-five feet square, but this space
is diminished by two or three little sleeping-closets for the parents or
for the grown daughters. In the right-hand corner, near an opening under
the eaves, the floor is raised a few inches, where the sons or the male
slaves sleep at night, and where the women work at their bead-stringing
or mat-making during the day; it is the lightest and pleasantest place in
the room. Against the partition that divides the veranda from the room is
the fireplace, which is merely a hearth of clay and large flat stones, as
in the veranda, except that in the centre are three stones whereon the
cooking pots rest; above is a rack, just beyond the reach of the flames,
where firewood is kept dry, ready for immediate use, and where scraps
of pork may be preserved by the smoke. Here and there, on the walls, on
hooks made of deer horn or of the twisted branch of a tree, hang all
sorts of implements for farming, fishing, and hunting, little hoes for
weeding the rice-fields, home-made axes called ‘biliong,’ scoop-nets for
catching fish when the streams are poisoned with Tuba root, paddles,
spears, large round sun-hats, basket-like holders for the few but
valuable china plates used only on feast-days, and sometimes, as a mural
decoration, the warrior’s coat and shield are displayed; these personal
adornments, however, are usually kept in the little sleeping-closets, or
else in a wooden case attached to the wall of the veranda just outside
the room.
[Illustration: A FAMILY-ROOM, OR LAMIN, IN ABUN’S HOUSE ON THE BARAM.
BEYOND THE MAN SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR, IS THE FIRE-PLACE; ABOVE IT, A RACK
WHEREON WOOD IS KEPT DRY, READY FOR USE. ON THE LEFT OF THE FIRE-PLACE
IS A DOORWAY OPENING INTO ONE OF THE SMALL SLEEPING-CLOSETS FOR THE
MARRIED PEOPLE OR FOR THE UNMARRIED GIRLS. LEANING AGAINST THE WALL IS
A BAMBOO WATER PITCHER WITH A COVER OF PALM-LEAF MATTING; ABOVE, HANGS
A BASKETWORK CASE FOR HOLDING CHINA PLATES. ON THE WALLS OF THE ALCOVE
ARE HANGING SEVERAL LARGE, FLAT, PALM-LEAF HATS, A SCOOP-NET, AND A FLAT
SIEVE OF SPLIT RATTAN. THIS ALCOVE, WITH ITS SLIGHTLY RAISED FLOOR, IS
THE SLEEPING-PLACE FOR THE UNMARRIED MEN OF THE FAMILY, OR FOR THE MALE
SLAVES.]
These sleeping-closets, partitioned off for married couples or for
unmarried girls and widows to sleep in, are as dark and stuffy as closely
fitting planks can make them, and the bed is merely two or three broad
and smooth planks whereon a fine rattan matting is spread; sometimes a
roll of matting or a bundle of old cloth serves as a pillow, but more
often there is nothing but the flat boards. On one occasion, I was
ushered into the bedroom of a Chief’s daughter who was ill with the
grippe and had asked for medicine; it was almost pathetic to note the
attempt that this poor ‘first lady’ had made to adorn her little boudoir.
By the light of a sputtering lump of damar gum, burning in an earthen
dish and disseminating mainly an aromatic smell and dense smoke, and only
incidentally a flickering light, I could see that there had been fastened
on the walls bright pieces of gay-colored cloth, and over in one corner,
in a sort of pyramid, were her ‘ladyship’s’ best bead-work baskets;
even ill as she was she called my attention to them. She was tossing in
fever on the most uncomfortable bundles of coarse cotton calico, (sadly
in need of washing,) which she had crumpled in folds to counteract the
unevennesses of her bed of planks. Grippe is intolerable enough when
the patient is surrounded with every comfort, on a soft clean bed and
in an airy room, but the lowest depth of discomfort is reached when to
the fever are added a sweltering tropical heat in a dark closet, the air
dense with damar smoke and soot, a bed of hard boards, and never a drop
of ice-water. Yet in the midst of all these, the girl, fortunate in her
ignorance, was dignified and uncomplaining.
On all ordinary occasions, the family eat together, usually only twice
a day, morning and evening, in the family room. In the centre of the
room is placed a large wooden dish piled high with boiled rice, and
then, as a plate for each member of the family, is set a piece of fresh
banana leaf, whereon are a little salt and a small quantity of powdered
dried fish, highly odorous; this is the usual bill of fare, but it may
be supplemented with a sort of mush or stew of fern-frond sprouts and
rice, or with boiled Caladium roots and roasted wild yams. When there is
a feast and guests from neighboring houses come to dine, the meals are
spread in the veranda and the menu is enlarged with pork and chicken,
cooked in joints of bamboo, which have been stoppered at both ends with
green leaves, and put in the fire until they are burnt through, when the
cooking is done to a turn.
All hands are plunged into the common dish of plain boiled rice, and it
is ‘excellent form’ to cram and jam the mouth as full as it will hold. It
is, however, remarkable how deftly even little children can so manipulate
the boiled rice before conveying it to their mouths, that hardly a grain
is spilt; it always filled me with shame when dining _en famille_ with
the Kayans or Kenyahs to note what a mess of scattered rice I left on the
mat at my place, while their places were clean as when they sat down; to
be sure, I did not follow my hosts’ example in carefully gathering up and
devouring all that had fallen on the unswept floor. Whenever I apologized
for my clumsiness, their courtesy was always perfect; the fault was never
attributed to me, but rather to their poor food and the manner in which
it was served.
The long intervals between their meals and the unsubstantial quality
of their food give them such an appetite and force them to eat so
voraciously that the usual welcome by a Kayan host to his guests is, ‘Eat
slowly,’ and this admonition is unfailingly given. They seem to regard
their family meals as strictly private, and would always announce to us
that they were going to eat,—possibly to give us warning not to visit
them at that time, and they were also quite as punctilious to leave us
the moment that our food was served.
When any member of a family is ill and calls in the services of an
exorciser, or, as they call it, a ‘Dayong,’ the room is placed under
a taboo, or permantong, and only members of the family may enter, and
even they are under certain restrictions, for instance, to refrain from
singing or playing musical instruments, and they are debarred from
eating meat. The sign of a taboo is a bunch of green leaves or a flat
basket used in winnowing rice tied to the door-post. If, by accident, a
man should violate this taboo, he must pay a fine to the owners of the
tabooed room; this fine is usually a few cheap beads or a china plate.
They seem to regard this custom with such reverence that we availed
ourselves of its privileges whenever we wished for privacy, and although
the natives laughed at our adoption of their customs, they left us
nevertheless strictly alone when we tied a basket or a bunch of leaves in
front of our little apartment in the veranda.
[Illustration: VERANDA OF A NEWLY BUILT IBAN HOUSE ON THE BAKONG RIVER, A
TRIBUTARY OF THE BARAM.
THE SKULLS ARE HANGING NEAR THE VERY END OF THE VERANDA IN A CLOSE
CLUSTER, AND NOT SUSPENDED ALONG A BEAM. THE FLOORING IS OF STRIPS OF
THE STALK OF THE NIBONG PALM, INTERLACED AND TIED TO THE BEAMS. THE
LOW, SQUARE BOX IN THE FOREGROUND IS A HEARTH, LINED WITH CLAY AND FLAT
STONES. BESIDE IT ON THE FLOOR, AND ALSO HANGING FROM A RAFTER IN THE
UPPER LEFT-HAND CORNER, ARE WATER GOURDS. IN FRONT OF THE DOOR, LEADING
INTO ONE OF THE FAMILY-ROOMS, A WOODEN RICE MORTAR IS TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.
ON THE DOOR IS HUNG A FLAT BASKET, TO INDICATE THAT THE ROOM IS TABOOED
ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS. BEYOND THE RANGE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH ON THE LEFT,
AND EXTENDING OUT INTO THE OPEN AIR IS A WIDE PLATFORM OF SPLIT BAMBOO,
WHEREON THE RICE BEFORE IT IS HUSKED IS SPREAD OUT ON MATS TO DRY.]
Possibly, this description of Home-Life in a Borneo household would be
incomplete without a detailed account of its ordinary daily routine,
which, as I saw it during several weeks in Tama Bulan’s house, is
somewhat as follows:—[2]
The crow of a cock breaks the silence of the night; then a dog rouses
up, yawns and stretches, and shakes off the ashes of the fireplace where
it has been sleeping, and begins the daily round of quarrels with its
companions. Then daylight gradually creeps in and a door slams with a
bang at the far end of the house, where the poorer and hard-working
people live; a woman with a bundle of bamboo water-vessels slung on her
back hurries along to the stairway down to the river. She looks just the
same as when she went to sleep. Her dress is the same and her hair is
in a disordered tangle, and as she walks her feet come down heavily on
the warped planks and make them rattle, no doubt to wake the lazy men,
who sleep on and let the women make the fire and get the water while
they snooze. Soon she comes back, her hair dripping and glossy, and
little drops of water still clinging to her skin. By this time there
is quite a procession of women going down to bathe and get the cooking
water from the river, and there is a slamming of doors and a few wails
from the children. Then the men who have been sleeping on the raised
platform along the open space below the eaves, unroll themselves from
their shroud-like coverings of cotton cloth, once white, and a little
hum of conversation springs up, possibly a comparison of dreams, the
interpretation of which, as in all uneducated classes, has a great
bearing on their daily life. The mother who comes out with her babies in
her arms, or sitting astride of her hips, knows nothing of our custom of
caressing with a kiss, but in her maternal bursts of affection she buries
her face in the neck of the child and draws in a long breath through her
nostrils; in fact, she smells it. In their language the verbs _to smell_
and _to kiss_ are the same. Then down she goes to the river and takes
the morning bath with her child in her arms, sometimes holding it by the
hands and letting it kick out its legs like a frog,—the first lessons
in swimming. One by one the men straggle off to bathe in the river,
and never missed the opportunity of telling us that they were going to
bathe, and when they returned they were also most punctilious in telling
us that they _had_ bathed. With all this bathing, however, they are not
a clean people. Soap is unknown to them, and they never use hot water,
consequently their skins have not the soft, velvety appearance that
constant bathing usually produces. (We once gave some of the girls cakes
of Pears’ soap, but they ate them.)
After bathing there is a lull in the activity of the house, while the
married women and young girls cook the morning meal of boiled rice and
dried salted fish.
Breakfast over there are always parties of men and women setting out for
the clearings where the rice is planted, and armed with a billiong (an
adze-like axe, which they use) and their parang, and their spear, the
men go down and get the boats ready, and the women follow after with the
paddles, and hampers to bring back bananas or bunches of tender, young
fern-fronds, which they make into a stew. Then the house settles down to
the ordinary tasks of making large flat hats of palm leaves, drying and
flattening banana leaves for cigarette wrappers, or of pounding the husks
off the rice by the women, and sharpening spears or decorating parangs
by the men industriously inclined; but the latter are rare. They usually
spend their time in gossip with their companions or merely sit and blink,
soothed by long draughts of smoke drawn deep into their lungs from the
strong Java tobacco cigarettes, which they roll for themselves. Men,
women, and children all smoke.
Morning wears into afternoon, and then the hours are given up to
recreation by those who had not gone in the forenoon to the rice-fields.
Occasionally, we sat on the river-bank and watched from a high bluff the
young boys or the young girls playing in the water. Here let me say that
we never saw the faintest conscious immodesty in either the one or the
other. We used to sit lost in admiration at the skill of the girls in
swimming. It was a sort of game of tag that they were always playing,
only, instead of one chasing all, all chased one, and this one would get
off some little distance from the rest and then suddenly disappear under
water. Then the chase begins. All swim as fast as they can to the spot
where she had vanished, some swimming with a rapid overhand stroke, while
others swam entirely under the water. Then, possibly still in front of
them, possibly far behind, up bobbed the girl who was ‘_it_,’ shaking
the water from her eyes and giving a shout of derision at her pursuers.
Down she went again and the chase was renewed, all under water, so long,
sometimes, that the surface of the river became perfectly smooth, and no
one would have imagined that in another moment it would be again bubbling
up and dashed into spray by a crowd of laughing, shouting, black-haired,
merry girls. Back and forth, up and down, they splashed from one side
of the river to the other, until one of the men called to them from the
house to stop their sport lest they rouse a sleeping crocodile. This put
an end to the fun. Another thing, which was quite new to us, was the
way in which they could play a sort of tune by splashing their hands
in the water and flapping their arms to their sides. They stood in a
group, and by sinking their hands, the back downward, in the water and
then clapping them above the water and slapping their elbows to their
sides, they produced a series of different sounds, like that of a large
stone dropping into a deep pool, with a rhythm that was perfect and very
pleasing.
Afternoon deepens into dusk, and the workers from the fields come home
and trudge wearily up the bank and disappear through the little doorways.
Small flickering lamps are lit here and there, and the fire on the hearth
disseminates a cheery glow and warms up the row of human skulls hanging
in front of the Chief’s door. The veranda gradually becomes deserted,
even by the dogs, while the families are eating their evening meals in
their private rooms. The noisy flapping of wings and cackling of chickens
seeking their roosts for the night and the low, contented grunts of pigs
beneath the house betoken that the day’s foraging is over.
After the evening meal the men once more lounge out in the veranda and,
grouped about the low, smouldering fires, smoke their long cigarettes
and gossip, or listen to the drone of the Kaluri played by one of the
youths. By eight or nine o’clock they are all once more wrapped in their
coverings of cotton cloth, and, stretched in a row beneath the eaves,
lulled by ‘lisp of leaves or ripple of rain.’
_CEREMONIES AT THE NAMING OF A CHIEF’S SON_