Chapter I: Part 1

_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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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_

One day, during my second visit to Borneo, I was sitting in the veranda of a native’s house on the Tinjar River, chatting and gossiping with my host and his household, when I noticed in the group a man whose face was very familiar to me and closely associated with some incident or other in the year before; I looked at him for a minute, and then asked if he were not the man who had so effectively helped us when we were unable to find men to paddle our canoe down the river from the house of deceitful old Laki La. He modestly replied that he was one of the men; whereupon I reiterated my gratitude to him; but, unfortunately, his name, once so familiar to me, had quite escaped my memory, and, apologizing for my forgetfulness, I asked him what it was. His countenance fell; he looked much embarrassed for a moment, and then nudging the man sitting next to him looked from him to me. His neighbor took the hint, and at once told me the name, which was one I had never before heard; I concluded, therefore, that either he or I had mistaken the incident. A little while afterward I happened to meet the man again when he was alone, and being so sure in my recollection of his face, asked him if that were really his name which had been told to me; he assured me that it was, but even then I doubted, and insisted that it was not the name by which I had known him a year ago. ‘You are quite right, Tuan,’ he replied, ‘but since you were here I have been exceedingly sick—so sick that the evil Spirits were trying to make my soul wander away from my body [and here his voice dropped to a whisper]; so I changed my name; now they will not know where to find me.’ He looked furtively on all sides, as if afraid that the trick would be overheard by the Spirits; it was only after much persuasion and repeated assurances that the Spirits could never harm him through a white man that I induced him to tell me his former name, which he did in a timid whisper close to my ear. This incident, trifling in itself, is valuable, I think, in that it adds another to the list of instances recorded in Dr. J. G. Frazer’s valuable _The Golden Bough_ (vol. i., pp. 404-420), where the utterance of a personal name is fraught with an unknown and deadly peril. To speculate on the source of this mysterious dread is tempting enough,—especially since in theorizing about the beliefs prevalent in the youth of the world there is no one who can contradict. As to its antiquity there can be no doubt; and that it is well nigh universal, the records of folk-lore are full of proof. It is sufficient here and now to note its existence among the Kayans and Kenyahs in the interior of Borneo, where, moreover, this unwillingness to utter the name of a person extends to inanimate objects. When they have planned a Tuba fishing, nothing will induce them to utter the word for fish. A Kayan, Kenyah, or Punan never thinks of saying that he is going to search for camphor, but that he is going to look for the ‘thing that smells,’ and even this he says in a whisper, for fear the camphor crystals deep in their secret, native home might hear and elude him after he had all the trouble of chopping down the tree.

HE IS OF THE KENYAH TRIBE, AND LIVES ON THE PATA RIVER, ABOUT TWO HUNDRED MILES FROM THE COAST. THE NAME TAMA BULAN MEANS ‘FATHER OF MOON,’ AND WAS ASSUMED AFTER THE BIRTH OF HIS FIRST CHILD, A DAUGHTER, NAMED ‘BULAN.’ HIS PREVIOUS NAME WAS WANG.]