The missionaries to the Dyaks of Borneo, in making their calls
not infrequently are seated in a position of honor in a native
hut underneath a huge cluster of skulls, the war trophy of the
head-hunting Dyaks. Rev. H. L. E. Luering writes in the London
_Christian_ that the natives believe that the courage of
the slain enemy enters his victor’s soul if the head of the
dead man is in his possession. So the heads are cut off and
placed in loose rattan receptacles and smoked over a slow fire,
and polished and strung up like great bunches of grapes, and
guarded with a jealousy greater than is accorded any other
possession. They represent just so much of the owner’s self--his
own soul--and to lose a head would deprive him of just so much
strength and courage.
(187)
* * * * *
The late Bishop Taylor, of Africa, narrated the following in the
_Missionary Review of the World_:
I saw a woman who had been accused of witchcraft and condemned
to death by exposure to ferocious ants. She was bound to a big
ant-hill ten or fifteen feet high. The victim usually dies in
two days, but this woman endured it for five days and was then
driven away because “she was too hard to kill.” She crawled in
a terrible condition to the mission station--the most pitiful
sight the missionary had ever beheld. After months of careful
nursing she recovered, and this woman, so terribly scarred and
disfigured, was converted at one of my meetings.
(188)
See CRUEL GREED.