washed off in the river the abhorred grease from our faces, the women had
doffed their uncomfortable burdens of finery and were squatting among
the men, in a close group round Tama Bulan, who was cutting the rattan
bindings of several more large jars of arrack. The Chief was the first
to quaff the beverage, and as he lifted the cup to his lips the whole
assemblage began to intone a continuous ‘oo-oo-oo-oo,’ in harmony but
with a deep bass predominant, and kept up this resonant accompaniment
until the last drop was drained. After Tama Bulan, the guests were
served in turn, and as each one lifted the cup to his lips (and it must
be drained to the last drop at one draught) this ‘oo-oo’-ing rose and
fell like a bewildering, deafening humming in the ears; it was to me a
noteworthy experience; unquestionably it marvellously accelerates the
action of the alcohol in the arrack. When the cup had been passed round
several times to each man and woman, and the oo-oo-ing was becoming
somewhat discordant and boisterous, the door of one of the rooms was
flung open and the genuine feast was brought in, piled high in three
small canoes borne on the shoulders of men staggering under the weight.
One-half of each canoe was heaped with little packages of boiled rice
wrapped in green banana leaves and tied with pieces of grass; the other
half fairly bristled, like a fretful porcupine, with bamboo skewers
whereon were several bits of boiled pork. (It will, perhaps, be noted
that a feast does not consist in variety or quality, but in quantity.)
Here and there among the guests were placed bowls of salted fish
pulverised, and to each guest were given a packet of rice and a stickful
of meat, while Tama Bulan shouted the hospitable injunction, ‘Kuman
plahei plahei’—_Eat slowly, slowly!_ There was no stint; everyone was
freely at liberty to have as many portions of rice and of meat as he
could eat, and was welcome to help himself to all he wished of the dried
fish.
In my packet of rice there was a little discoloration at one end, that
looked like iron rust, but Ma Obat, a one-eyed and villainous-looking
old fellow, who sat beside me, seeing that I scrutinized the spot rather
carefully, politely took the lump of rice out of my hand, and with a
thumb-nail that looked, I must say, like a coal-heaver’s shovel, scraped
away the dubious portion and then handed the lump back to me. The
discolored grains were gone, but, woe’s me, they were replaced by several
grimy finger-marks. For the sake of his triumphant and kindly beaming
smile I could not refuse to eat it, and so with eyes fixed on the rafters
overhead,—it was bolted!
This feast marked the conclusion of the ceremonies, and we stuffed and
smoked, and then as darkness was beginning to fall, Dr. Hiller and
I, with several of the young men, strolled down the veranda to pay
respectful visits in the family rooms. In Mujan’s room, I am sorry
to say, we found both Mujan and her elder sister in a state of—well,
intoxication; the arrack and the oo-oo-ing had been too much for them.
Ordinarily, they were quiet, demure girls, the belles of the veranda,
and industrious workers at rice-pounding. But such lapses are, according
to Kenyah morality, by no means unpardonable, nay, at such a high tide
and festival as the present, were to be rather applauded as a great and
ladylike compliment to the host. Mujan and her sister were sitting with
their backs against the partition; the head of the elder reclined on the
shoulder of the younger, and, though awake, she gave, from time to time,
a sighing snore. Mujan, the younger, was trying to entertain a group of
visitors, and her fingers were crumpling cigarette wrappers and tobacco
in a futile attempt to make some cigarettes for her friends. All she
could murmur to us was,’Aku mabok, Tuan, Aku mabok’—_I’m drunk, sirs, I’m
drunk_. We stayed only a few minutes, joking with her about her state,
and then went with the others to visit Sara, another fashionable belle,
who, however, in our eyes, was far from personally attractive; she had
lost four of her upper front teeth; their loss made her conversation
anything but easy to understand. When we arrived, Sara had retired to her
modicum of a sleeping-room, but she was persuaded to emerge, and then she
announced that the arrack had given her a severe headache. Deng’s elder
brother,—I forget his name,—at once volunteered to apply cups to her
temple, and she acquiesced. She provided the cupping instrument, which
consisted of a small cylinder of bamboo, sealed at one end with a lump
of wax. The operator, with a small knife, scratched four or five little
wounds on her temple, and then making a small hole through the lump of
wax on the bamboo cylinder he applied the open end to the wound and
proceeded to suck the air out of the cylinder with his lips. When the air
was sufficiently exhausted he closed the hole in the wax with his teeth,
and the bamboo remained adhering to her temple, like a horn. She smiled,
chatted, and never once winced throughout the whole operation, and after
about half an ounce of blood had been drawn pronounced herself much
better.
[Illustration: SARA, ANOTHER BELLE OF TAMA BULAN’S HOUSEHOLD.
SHE WAS UNATTRACTIVE IN APPEARANCE, BUT HER VIVACIOUS CONVERSATION
RENDERED HER VERY POPULAR
(From a photograph taken, and kindly loaned, by Professor A. C. Haddon,
F. R. S.)]
Just at this minute, Tama Bulan hurried into the room, and, asking us to
come out, excitedly told us that a woman, named Lueng, whose child had
been one of those to receive a name that day, was very ill and had fallen
down in her room suddenly, and could not be wakened; had we ever heard of
such a thing, he asked, in our country, or had we by chance any medicine
for her. We went at once with him and found the woman in a state of
profound collapse; she had been suffering from a severe attack of grippe,
and the excitement of the day had been too great for her; we could get no
further history than this, and from the cackling old women who were busy
about her and from her husband and her brother we could get no coherent
answers to our questions. We did the best we could with our limited
resources; we stimulated her heart with hypodermics of strychnia; we had
her laid flat instead of propped up, as she had been by the old women; at
length she revived sufficiently to ask for water. When we bade them to
give it to her they positively refused, saying we wanted to poison her;
by administering a hypodermic injection we had indiscreetly overstepped
the bounds of Kenyah submission to the white man’s medicine. Instead
of water, the old women insisted on pouring down the patient’s throat
a thick, warm paste of rice and water, at which, of course, she gagged
and choked. We saw that our efforts were of no avail, and were therefore
compelled to resign her to her friends and the Dayongs. One very
officious old woman seemed to think that the sovereign remedy for such
ills was to reach and scratch the patient’s back-bone by kneading the
finger-tips deep down into the abdomen. Indeed, at one time, I thought
she would actually push her fingers through the skin and tear the vitals
from the unconscious woman. We told Tama Bulan that we could do nothing
further, and that the woman would probably die; whereupon, knowing the
temper of his people, he urged us to leave her to the Dayongs and to come
away. Shortly after, as we were sitting in the fading twilight in the
little apartment which Tama Bulan had caused to be put up for us, we saw
them bring the limp body out of the room and place it on a mat in the
veranda, only a few feet away from our door. The husband and the brother
were frantic with grief and anxiety, and continually bent over her and
shouted her name; then they took a blow-pipe and, putting one end close
to her ear, they shouted her name again, hoping to call back her soul
that was wandering off. They told her that her little child was crying
for her and wanted to be fed. I crept into the group, once, and listened
for her heart-beats, but they had stopped for ever. Tama Bulan asked
me, aside, ‘Is she alive, Tuan?’ and when I told him she was dead, he
whispered, ‘Don’t tell them; let them discover it themselves.’
A female Dayong was then summoned to find out whither the soul had gone,
and to lure it back to the body; to this end she made several successive
demands of valuable beads from the husband, as a fee, and the agonised,
headlong haste with which he ran to get them from time to time, was truly
pathetic.
I have said elsewhere that I could detect among this people no signs of
genuine, unselfish affection. Perhaps this should be qualified by saying
that at the solemn hour of death, or of its threatened approach, they
manifest an emotion in which there certainly seems to be an element of
affection, but even then alarm or terror seems to predominate.
A flickering damar lamp was placed on the floor near the body, and within
the circle of its light the old hag of a Dayong, chanting in a monotonous
minor key, strutted backward and forward with a shield in one hand and a
parang in the other, and many strings of beads about her neck and waist.
Twice she paused to ask for a young chicken, and when it was handed to
her, she seized its head in her mouth and bit it off, sucked a mouthful
of blood from the neck and spat it on the floor, closely scrutinising
how it had splattered. Throughout this scene the grief-stricken, wailing
reiteration of the dead woman’s name echoed through the veranda, now but
dimly lit with damar lamps; every sound of mirth and gaiety was hushed;
the only noise, except the wailings and the Dayong, came from the dogs
and the pigs beneath the house, where they snarled and fought over the
remnants of the feast that had fallen through the floor.
When the female Dayong had done her utmost to recall the soul, and had
failed, our good, faithful friend, Tama Talun, volunteered to try his
power. He demanded no costly beads, merely a parang, and in the same
manner as his predecessor he walked backward and forward in the circle
of light. We could not understand a word of what he was saying, but
every now and then he threw down his parang so that its point stuck in
the floor, where it remained swaying from side to side. As it swayed he
walked slowly, about ten paces from it, and then gave a hop in the air
and a shrill shout. Then slowly he walked back to the parang, pulled it
up, and continued his chanting and walking.
While this was going on, the group suddenly realised that the woman
was veritably dead, beyond all hope. With a scream the husband and the
brother snatched up the body and rushed into the family room with it;
some of the group followed, and some crept silently away into the dark
corners of the veranda.
Before long, Tama Bulan came to tell us that the people were in a highly
excited state, and, most unfortunately, they held us responsible for the
woman’s tragic and sudden death, and that we had better remain in our
little room and not venture out into the veranda.
It was not the most pleasant situation imaginable. We were well aware of
the excitable nature and the undisciplined minds of the people among whom
we were; we knew that they passed in an instant from extreme friendliness
to a Berserker rage; and we were but two against three hundred; our means
of defence consisted of only two revolvers. Grave as we knew the danger
must be, we very fortunately did not know until some time afterward, from
Tama Bulan, how extreme it was, and how difficult it had been for him to
save our lives.
After Tama Bulan had left us, we heard a pounding and chopping against
the partition wall of the room to which the body had been carried;
several boards were removed, and an opening made from it into the
veranda; through this opening the corpse was borne; it must not pass
through a doorway used by the living. The poor, inanimate body was decked
out in all the gay garments so recently worn at the feast, and, with a
cigarette between the fingers, it was laid partly recumbent on a bier
that had been quickly constructed, and draped with white cloth. On the
bier beside the corpse an old woman seated herself (all this we could
observe through the crevices of our room) and at once began a wail for
the dead. This lugubrious wailing was kept up, to my certain knowledge,
without intermission for two nights and a day. Of course, there were
constant relief parties.
During these two nights and a day we remained close prisoners in our
little room. Throughout the first long night Tama Bulan proved himself
inflexibly our staunch friend; he insisted over and over again on our
innocence, and pleaded for us with the adherents of Lueng’s husband and
brother, who were clamouring for our heads as offerings to the dead woman
and as decorations for their homes. This thirst for our blood lasted
during our imprisonment, and was throughout restricted to the husband and
brother of Lueng and to their immediate friends. They were all guests,
who had come to the Naming.
When the wailing had been adequately performed the corpse was placed in
a coffin hewn from a large log and the cover sealed down with raw gutta
percha.
Our most friendly relations with Tama Bulan’s household had not for a
moment been broken. Nevertheless, the next day Tama Bulan came to us and
said that, in view of all the circumstances, he thought it best that our
visit should come to an end; and, inasmuch as Laki La and his followers
were going down the river, we had better take advantage of the chance
and accompany them. Of course, we acquiesced. The object for which we
had come was accomplished. We had seen that which no white man had ever
before reported, namely, the noteworthy ceremonies of a Naming, and
we had passed six delightful weeks in the far interior of Borneo, in
intimate, friendly intercourse with men, whom _nous autres_ are pleased
to term savages. So we fell to work, packed up our things, distributed
among our especial friends all that was left of our stores of cloth and
tobacco, made Tama Bulan’s eyes sparkle with delight over our present of
silver dollars, bade good-bye to his daughter Bulan, and his two wives,
not forgetting a chuck under the chin to little Lijow, and hastened
down to the boat. Our final parting with dear old Tama Bulan was almost
watery; and, as we swept out into the current, with our pith helmets we
waved a prolonged farewell to the row of flapping palm-leaf hats which
lined the long veranda.
Old Laki La was as affable as possible while he sat in our canoe, and
we even volunteered to draw for him the solitary tooth remaining in his
lower jaw. He waggled it with his tongue pensively for a moment, and then
remarked that as he should not live much longer anyhow, he thought that
it had better die with him. We considered him a most pleasant old fellow,
until we reached his very large house on the Pata, not far below Tama
Bulan’s; but as soon as we touched his landing-place we were undeceived;
he disembarked without so much as turning round to say good-bye, and
behind him trooped all our paddlers, whom we had expected to take us down
at least as far as Tama Lohong’s house on the Baram.
Here was a serious difficulty, and Laki La would pay absolutely no
attention to any appeal to him for men.
It was on this occasion that the man I mentioned in the first paragraph
of this chapter came forward most kindly, and offered to get together
some men to take us as far as Tama Lohong’s, and all the way down to the
Fort, if necessary; and so it fell out. It made me blush to think of the
ingratitude I showed in forgetting his name, and I am still blushing; for
even now, cudgel my brains as I will, I cannot recall it.
_EARLY TRAINING OF A HEAD-HUNTER_
One evening, an hour before sunset, at the time when in every direction,
the angular outlines of the huge fruit-bats, with bodies as large as a
cat, are silhouetted against the sky, as they make an unswerving and
majestic flight toward their nocturnal feeding-grounds, we halted our
dug-out canoes at the muddy sloping bank in front of the house of Aban
Avit, an influential Chief on the Tinjar River.
We were uninvited, and, as far as we knew, unexpected, but the host, upon
whom we were thus unceremoniously forcing ourselves, advanced to meet
us, as we ascended the unsteady, plank walk, raised on piles, leading to
his house, and, with a warmth unusual among an undemonstrative people,
welcomed us with a smile that revealed every one of his thirty-two
coal-black teeth. We were, to be sure, old friends, having stopped at
his house on our way up-river; but, as he had afterward heard that we
were going to make the ascent of Mount Dulit, where all varieties of
evil Spirits and dragons have their haunts, he said he had really never
expected to see us again; and had we not returned just when we did, he,
good soul, had planned to go with a party of his bravest men in search
of us; but here we were again safe and sound, none the worse for the
dreadful journey, and not one of us marked with the scar of ‘Gum Toh,’ _a
ghost’s-clutch_,—a cutaneous tumor, to which these dark-skinned people
are subject, well known to us as a _Keloid of Addison_, but which the
Borneans aver is due to the clutch of a ghost’s hand. As soon as we were
within the veranda of the house, Aban Avit insisted that his own private
room should be resigned to us; accordingly, his manifold possessions
were moved to one side, and clean rattan mats spread upon the floor; his
fireplace, heaped with dry wood, was put at the disposal of our Chinese
cook, and several long bamboo water-jars were brought from the river so
that there should be no delay in the preparation of our evening meal.
Ah, the hospitality of a head-hunter!
[Illustration: ABAN AVIT, A BERAWAN CHIEF OF THE TINJAR RIVER.]
When all our numerous boxes and bundles had been brought up from the
boats, we wandered inquisitively about the long-house, asking endless
questions of our host and of his brother; and, as they both spoke Malay
fluently, our conversation drifted into all sorts of channels. Aban Avit
is a widower, as the _Aban_ in his name declares, and Avit was the name
of his wife. The Kayans, and allied tribes, adopt names to suit the
varying events of their lives. Thus, a widower always takes his dead
wife’s name prefixed by Aban; a father bears the name of his first-born
child prefixed by Tama, or Ma, meaning _father_, as long as the child
lives; should the child die, Tama is changed to _Oyang_. For instance,
Tama Bulan means the _father of Bulan_. Oyang Batu means he who is
_bereft of his son Batu_. Bulan is a girl’s name, meaning _Moon_; Batu
is a boy’s name, and means _Stone_, equivalent to our _Peter_. If Bulan,
the daughter of Tama Bulan, should have a son named Madang, Tama Bulan,
whose original name was Wang, would then adopt the grandfather’s title of
_Laki_, and be known as Laki Madang.
Our host [whose photograph is given on the opposite page] was one of the
best types of the inland tribes.
Throughout his house, on partition walls and on rafters, there was
scroll-work in black and white paint, the black lines evidently made with
a finger and the dots of white with a thumb. On the wall of his private
room, just above his sleeping-place, were two much conventionalised and
interlaced figures with arms and legs like long tendrils. These figures,
Aban Avit explained, represented ‘Wawa’ monkeys (the _Gibbon Ape_),
animals held sacred by his family for certainly three generations, and
never killed by any member of the household; he regarded them as his best
of friends, and that day was sure to be lucky when they crossed his path
in the jungle, or when their musical, almost bird-like, call was heard
near the house.
This hereditary veneration of an animal suggests a trace of totemism,
otherwise rare in Borneo. Aban Avit, in telling us about his veneration
for the Wawa, cast down his eyes and spoke in a voice so low we could
hardly hear him, as if the very breathing of a name so sacred were
profanation. He told us the painting was the work of his own hands.
From this private apartment, which even at high noon was dark, but as
soon as the sun had set was verily as dark as the proverbial pocket, we
made our way to the veranda, where daylight still lingered; here again
we noticed our host’s love of decoration; the rack whereon visitors as
soon as they enter the veranda, hang their parangs, instead of being a
customary row of pegs or merely crotched sticks, was a board, whereof the
lower edge, as it hung horizontally from the rafters, about half way up
the slant of the roof, had been carved by the Chief himself into graceful
double-headed hooks and loops, so that the belts attached to the parangs
could be easily hung on them and the weapons would be out of the way, yet
conveniently at hand. It is an unequivocal insult for a guest to enter
a friendly veranda with his parang about his waist; etiquette demands
that it be unfastened before stepping into the house; it should be then
laid aside or hung on the rack while the owner is engaged in friendly
gossip. The house was new at the time of our visit, in fact, it was not
yet wholly finished; at the up-river end, five or six huge piles had been
planted for its further extension; these posts, about fifteen feet out
of the ground and eighteen inches in diameter, were likewise carved, but
with grotesque devil-faces, from whose grinning mouths tusks like the
wild boar’s protruded, below them snakes, and spiral curves representing
the recurved protuberance on the beak and head of the Horn-bill,—the
war-bird of all the Kayan and Kenyah tribes. Here and there, of course,
conventionalised figures of the Wawa were to be detected. It seems an
inviolable rule with all Bornean decoration that the representation of
any living thing must be hinted at so grotesquely, that it takes a subtle
imagination to discern what it really represents; possibly, this is due
to the idea, so widely scattered throughout the far East, that to make a
life-like image of any animal involves a risk of danger to the maker,—a
danger which may be vague or otherwise as chance may interpret it,—and of
which we see an intimation, possibly, in the second commandment of the
Decalogue.
When twilight suddenly deepened into night and blazing brands were
brought to replenish the fire on the hearth opposite the Chief’s door,
we squatted round about it, not for warmth, but for the cheer of its
flicker, and because,—well, does a pipe ever taste as good as when lit by
an ember?
[Illustration: A KAYAN YOUTH, SHOWING THE RAISED SCAR, CALLED BY THE
NATIVES ‘GUM TOH’ OR GHOST’S CLUTCH.
IT IS BELIEVED BY THE KAYANS THAT SUCH A SCAR OR WELT IS CAUSED BY THE
FINGERS OF AN EVIL SPIRIT; SHOULD THE VICTIM BE SEIZED ROUND THE NECK HE
NEVER CHOKES TO DEATH, BUT AWAKES. THEY MAINTAIN THAT THESE SCARS FORM IN
A SINGLE NIGHT; BUT THIS IS EXTREMELY DOUBTFUL. RAISED SCARS OVER ALL OLD
WOUNDS ARE EXCEEDINGLY COMMON AMONG THESE DARK-SKINNED RACES.]
Aban Avit sat beside us, and while we were filling our pipes he produced
from the bamboo box, hanging at his side, some tobacco and some of that
beautifully delicate dried leaf of the wild banana cut from the heart of
the plant, before the leaf is unfurled; in unskilled hands it tears like
wet tissue-paper, but in Aban Avit’s a tapering, symmetrical cigarette,
eight inches long, was skilfully rolled on his thigh. A circle of small
boys squatted around us, their bright, little eyes watching our every
movement as intently as we stare at the actions of some strange animal
in a Zoölogical Garden. If we struck a match, or sneezed, or buttoned
our coats, or wiped our faces with a handkerchief, dilated eyes and open
mouths attended the action with wrapt interest. A few men sat near their
Chief, and now and then murmured comments to one another in their native
tongue, which we did not fully understand, but could guess from the
direction of their eyes, that we were the subject of their conversation.
The evening duties of the household were not, however, interrupted on our
account; men with bundles of dried fire-wood on their shoulders, women
staggering under a load of bamboo joints filled with water, and stacked
in hampers on their backs, were constantly passing by us, treading
heavily, and making the loose boards of the floor clatter and rattle
as they plodded their weary way to their apartments. For a time there
was almost a constant succession of canoes coming to the landing-place,
bringing back the workers from the rice-clearings. The women all bending
under full hampers, some with fresh, uncurled fern-fronds, and the
sprouts of a variety of large Canna, which they stew with rice to add
variety to their diet; some with bundles of the young banana leaf,
whereof to make cigarette-wrappers, and others with wild tapioca and wild
yams. Each one carried her own light paddle in one hand, and a large
round and flat sun-hat in the other. None of them glanced to right or
left, but made her way direct to her family room, and like a ghost faded
into the darkness through the small doorway. After them followed the
men, dangling their parangs in one hand and trailing their blow-pipes
and spears in the other. They, too, looked fixedly ahead, until they
had hung up their parang and stuck their spear perpendicularly into a
rafter so that the shaft should be kept straight; this done, they joined
the group round the fire, or went down to the river to bathe. At the
far end of the house some young fellows were playing mournful tunes on
a Kaluri, and its organ-like notes were wafted fitfully down to us; now
and then a baby’s wail chimed in, and then was quieted by the mother’s
crooning lullaby. Beneath the house, the contented grunting of pigs and
the clucking of chickens denoted that these omen-givers had returned from
their foraging in the jungle, and had sought the shelter of home for the
night.
[Illustration: VERANDA OF ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE.