Books: The Pagan Tribes of Borneo

C >> Charles Hose and William McDougall >> The Pagan Tribes of Borneo

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We were afterwards informed that, on the arrival of these symbolic
gifts, TAMA KULING called together the chiefs of all the surrounding
villages to receive their share, and to discuss the advisability
of accepting the implied invitation to migrate into the Baram. The
proposition was favourably received, and a large proportion of
the population of that region have since acted upon the resolution
then taken.

To the disjointed collection of remarks which make up this chapter
we venture to add the following observations. It has often been
attempted to exhibit the mental life of savage peoples as profoundly
different from our own; to assert that they act from motives, and
reach conclusions by means of mental processes, so utterly different
from our own motives and processes that we cannot hope to interpret
or understand their behaviour unless we can first, by some impossible
or at least by some hitherto undiscovered method, learn the nature of
these mysterious motives and processes. These attempts have recently
been renewed in influential quarters. If these views were applied to
the savage peoples of the interior of Borneo, we should characterise
them as fanciful delusions natural to the anthropologist who has spent
all the days of his life in a stiff collar and a black coat upon the
well-paved ways of civilised society.

We have no hesitation in saying that, the more intimately one becomes
acquainted with these pagan tribes, the more fully one realises the
close similarity of their mental processes to one's own. Their primary
impulses and emotions seem to be in all respects like our own. It is
true that they are very unlike the typical civilised man of some of
the older philosophers, whose every action proceeded from a nice and
logical calculation of the algebraic sum of pleasures and pains to
be derived from alternative lines of conduct; but we ourselves are
equally unlike that purely mythical personage. The Kayan or the Iban
often acts impulsively in ways which by no means conduce to further
his best interests or deeper purposes; but so do we also. He often
reaches conclusions by processes that cannot be logically justified;
but so do we also. He often holds, and upon successive occasions
acts upon, beliefs that are logically inconsistent with one another;
but so do we also.

CHAPTER 21

Ethnology of Borneo

In the foregoing chapters it has been shown that the six groups which
we have distinguished by the names Kayans, Kenyahs, Klemantans, Muruts,
Nomads or Punans, and Ibans or Sea Dayaks, differ considerably from
one another in respect of material and moral culture as well as of
mental and physical characters. We have used these names as though the
groups denoted by them were well defined and easily to be distinguished
from one another. But this is by no means the case. Our foregoing
descriptions are intended to depict the typical communities of each
group, those which present the largest number of group-marks. Besides
these more typical communities, which constitute the main bulk of the
population, there are many communities or sub-tribes which combine
in some measure the characteristics of two or more of the principal
groups. It is this fact that renders so extremely difficult the
attempt to classify the tribes and sub-tribes in any consistent and
significant fashion, and to which is largely due the confusion that
reigns in most of the accounts hitherto given of the inhabitants of
Borneo. We believe, however, that the divisions marked by the six
names we have used, namely, Kayan, Kenyah, Klemantan, Murut, Punan,
and Iban, are true or natural divisions; and that the intermediate
forms are due, on the one hand, to crossing through intermarriage,
which takes place continually in some degree, and, on the other hand,
to the adoption of the customs and beliefs and traditions and to the
imitation of the arts and crafts of one natural group by communities
properly belonging to a different group. The main groups seem to
us to be separated from one another by differences of two kinds:
some by racial or ethnic differences, which involve differences of
physical and mental constitution, as well as by cultural differences;
others by differences of culture only, the racial characters being
hardly or not at all differentiated.

We propose in this chapter to attempt to justify these main
distinctions, and to define more nearly their essential nature and
grounds. This attempt must involve the statement of our opinion as
to the ethnic affinities of all the principal tribes. We are fully
aware that this statement can be only of a provisional nature, and
must be liable to modification and refinement in the light of further
observation and discussion. But we think that such a statement may
serve a useful purpose; namely, that it may serve as a basis upon
which such corrections and refinements may later be made.

The most speculative part of this statement must necessarily be
that which deals with the affinities of the tribes of Borneo with
the populations of other areas; but even here we think it better to
set down our opinion for what it may be worth, not concealing from
the reader its slight basis. We state in the following paragraph the
main features of the history of the tribes of Borneo as we conceive it.

The wide distribution of remnants of the Negrito race in the islands
round about Borneo and in the adjacent parts of the mainland of Asia
renders it highly probable that at a remote period Negritos lived in
Borneo; but at the present time there exist no Negrito community and
no distinct traces of the race, whether in the form of fossil remains
or of physical characters of the present population, unless the curly
hair and coarse features of a few individuals to be met with in almost
all the tribes may be regarded as such traces. These negroid features
of a small number of the present inhabitants are perhaps sufficiently
accounted for by the fact that slaves have been imported into Borneo
from time to time throughout many centuries by Arabs and Malays and by
the Illanum pirates; and some of these slaves were no doubt Negritos,
and some, possibly, Africans or Papuans.[190]

We leave open the question of an ancient Negrito population, and
go on to the statement that the present population is derived from
four principal sources. From a very early period the island has
been inhabited in all parts by a people of a common origin whose
surviving descendants are the tribes we have classed as Klemantans,
Kenyahs, and Punans. This people probably inhabited Borneo at a
time when it was still connected with the mainland. Their cultural
status was probably very similar to that of the existing Punans. It
seems not improbable that at this early period, perhaps one preceding
the separation of Borneo, Sumatra, and Java from the mainland, this
people was scattered over a large part of this area. For in several
of the wilder parts, where the great forest areas remain untouched,
bands of nomads closely resembling the Punans of Borneo are still
to be found, notably the Orang Kubu of Sumatra, and perhaps the
Bantiks of northern Celebes. The principal characteristics of this
primitive culture are the absence of houses or any fixed abode;
the ignorance of agriculture, of metal-working, and of boat-making;
and the nomadic hunting life, of which the blow-pipe is the principal
instrument. The chief and only important improvement effected in the
condition of the Punans since that early period would seem to be the
introduction of the superior form of blow-pipe of hard wood. This
cannot be made without the use of a metal rod for boring, and, since
none of the Bornean tribes which still lead the nomad life know how
to work metals, it may be inferred that they have learnt the craft
of making the SUMPITAN from more cultured neighbours, procuring from
them by barter the iron tools required -- as they still do.

It is impossible to make any confident assertion as to the affinities
of this widely diffused people from which we believe the Punans,
Kenyahs, and Klemantans to be descended. But the physical characters
of these tribes, in respect of which they differ but slightly from
one another, lead us to suppose that it was formed by a blending
of Caucasic and Mongoloid elements, the features of the former
predominating in the race thus formed. The fairness of the skin, the
wavy and even, in some individuals, the curly character of the hair;
the regular and comparatively refined features of many individuals; the
frequent occurrence of straight and aquiline noses; the comparatively
large, horizontal, or only slightly oblique, palpebral aperture;
the not infrequent absence of all trace of the Mongolian fold of the
eyelid and its slightness when present -- all these characters point
to the predominance of the Caucasic element in the ethnic blend.

On the other hand, the smooth yellowish skin, the long dark thick
hair of the scalp, and the scantiness of the hair on the cheeks,
chin, and lips; the rather broad cheek-bones, the prevailing slight
obliquity of the eyes, the rather narrow palpebral aperture, and
the presence of a slight Mongolian fold -- these characters (all
of which are found in a considerable proportion of these peoples)
are features that point to Mongol ancestry.[191]

It was said above that the skin of these tribes is of very pale yellow
colour. In this respect there is little to choose between them, but
on the whole the Punans are of rather lighter colour than the others,
and, as was said before, of a faintly green tinge. This difference
is, we think, sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the Punan
seldom or never exposes himself to full sunlight, whereas the others
are habitually sun-browned in some degree. But the lighter colour of
this whole group of tribes (as compared especially with the Kayans and
Ibans) cannot be explained in this way; for the habits and conditions
of life of Kenyahs and Klemantans are very closely similar to those of
the Kayans; and it must, we think, be regarded as a racial character.

The name Indonesian is perhaps most properly applied to this people
which we suppose to have resulted from the contact and blending
of the Caucasic and Mongoloid stocks in this corner of Asia. The
systematic ethnographers use this term in a vague and uncertain
manner. Deniker defines the Indonesians by saying that they comprise
"the little intermixed inland populations of the large islands (Dyaks
of Borneo, Battas of Sumatra, various "Alfurus" of Celebes, and certain
Moluccas)."[192] He seems doubtful whether the name Indonesian should
be applied to the eight groups of aborigines of Indo-China which
he distinguishes.[193] He recognises that the Indonesians and the
Malayans are of very similar physical characters, but distinguishes
them as two of four races which have given rise to the population of
the Malay Archipelago -- namely, Malayans, Indonesians, Negritos, and
Papuans. He regards the Indonesians (used in a wide sense to include
Malays) as most closely akin to the Polynesians; but he expresses no
opinion as to their relations to the Mongol and Caucasic stocks.

Keane describes the Indonesians as a Proto-Caucasic race which must
have occupied Malaysia and the Philippines in the New Stone Age. He
separates them widely from the Malays and Proto-Malays, whom he
describes as belonging to the Oceanic branch of the Mongol stock;[194]
and the "Dyaks" of Borneo are classed by him with strict impartiality
sometimes with the Proto-Malays, sometimes with the Proto-Caucasians.

If these oldest inhabitants of Borneo may be regarded as typical
Indonesians (and we think that they have a strong claim to be so
regarded), then we think that the usage of the term by both Keane and
Deniker errs in accentuating unduly the affinity of the Indonesians
with the Polynesians, and that Keane's errs also in ignoring the
Mongol affinities of the Indonesians.

The most plausible view of the relations of these stocks seems to us
to be the following. Polynesians and Indonesians are the product of an
ancient blend of southern Mongols with a fair Caucasic stock. In both
the Caucasic element predominates, but more so in the Polynesian than
in the Indonesian. We imagine this blending to have been effected at a
remote period in the south-eastern corner of Asia, probably before the
date at which Borneo became separated from the mainland. If, as seems
probable, this blending was effected by the infusion of successive
doses of Mongol blood from the north into a Caucasic population
that had previously diffused itself over this corner of Asia from
the west,[195] the smaller proportion of the Mongol element in the
Polynesians may be due to their having passed into the islands,
while the Indonesians remained on the continent receiving further
infusions of Mongol blood.

The separation of Borneo from the mainland then isolated part of the
Indonesian stock within it, at a period when their culture was still
in a very primitive condition, presumably similar to that of the
Punans. The Proto-Malays, on the other hand, represent a blending of
the Mongol stock (or of a part of the Indonesian race) with darker
stock allied to the Dravidians of India, which is perhaps properly
called Proto-Dravidian, and of which the Sakai of the Malay peninsula
(and, perhaps, the Toala of central Celebes) seem to be the surviving
representatives in Malaysia. In this blend, which presumably was
effected in an area south of that in which the Indonesian blend was
formed, the Mongol element seems to predominate.

After the separation of Borneo from the mainland, there came a long
period throughout which it remained an isolated area, the population
of which received no important accessions from other areas. It is
probable that during this period the Indonesian population of the
mainland continued to receive further infusions of Mongol blood;
for there is abundant evidence that for a long time past there has
been a drifting of Mongol peoples, such as the Shans, southwards from
China into the Indo-Chinese area.

We may suppose that during this period the knowledge and practice of
working iron, of building long houses and boats, and of cultivating
PADI, became diffused through the greater part of the population of
this corner of the Asiatic continent. This advance of culture would
have rendered possible the passage of these peoples to the islands
in boats. But it seems probable that no considerable incursion of
people from this area was effected until a comparatively recent date.

In Chapter II. we have mentioned the evidences of Hindu-Javan influence
on Borneo, to which must be ascribed the existence of the Buddhist
court at Bruni before the coming of the Malays, as well as traces of
Hindu culture in south Borneo, including the practice of cremation
by the Land Dayaks, the burning of the bones by other tribes, stone
carvings,[196] and articles of gold and fragments of pottery of Hindu
character. There must have been a certain infusion of Javanese and
perhaps Hindu blood at this time; but both in physical type and in
culture the surviving traces seem to be insignificant.

We have mentioned also in Chapter II. the early intercourse between
China and the Buddhist rulers of Bruni and other parts of north and
northwest Borneo, and the legend of an early settlement of Chinese
in the extreme north.

But these civilised or semi-civilised visitors and settlers were
separated from the indigenous Borneans by a great culture gap,
and they probably had but little friendly intercourse with them
and affected their culture but little, if at all; and though it is
possible that they bartered salt, metal, tools, and weapons, for
camphor and other jungle produce, their influence, like that of the
Malays, probably extended but a little way from the coasts in most
parts of the island. The higher culture of the indigenous tribes of
the interior has been introduced, we believe, by invasions of peoples
less widely separated from them in cultural level, who have penetrated
far into the interior and have mingled intimately with them. Three
such invasions may be distinguished as of principal importance:
that of the Kayans in the south and perhaps in the south-east, of the
Muruts in the north, and of the Ibans in the south-west. Each of these
three invading populations has spread up the course of the rivers to
the interior and has established its communities over large areas,
until in the course of the nineteenth century they have encountered
one another for the first time. Besides these three most numerous
and important invasions, there have been many smaller settlements
from the surrounding islands, especially from Java, Celebes, and the
Philippines, whose blood and culture have still further diversified
the population and culture of the tribes of Borneo and complicated
the ethnographical problems of the island.

Of the three principal invasions, that of the Kayans has been of most
effect in spreading a higher culture among the indigenous population.

There is good reason to believe that the Kayans have spread across
Borneo from the south and south-eastern parts, following up the
course of the large rivers until they reached USUN APO, the central
highlands, in which (see vol. i. p. 2) all the large rivers have their
sources. The tradition of such north-westward migration is preserved
among the Kayans of the Baram, who, according to their own account,
crossed the watershed into the basins of the western rivers only a few
generations ago. This tradition is in accordance with the fact that,
within the memory of men still living, they have spread their villages
farther westward along the banks of the Baram and the Rejang rivers,
driving back the Muruts northwards from the Baram. It is borne out
by the accounts of the Bruni Malays to the effect that the Brunis
first became acquainted with the Kayans some few generations ago,
and had known the Muruts long before the advent of the Kayans; and
further, by the fact that the Kayans have left their name attached to
many rivers both in the south and east, where the name Batang Kayan
(or Kayan River) is the common appellation of several rivers on which
Kayan villages are now very few.

The Kayans seem to have entered Borneo by way of the rivers opening
on the south coast, and gradually to have penetrated to the central
highlands by following up these rivers, pushing out communities every
few years to build new villages higher up the river in the course
of their unceasing search for new areas adapted to their wasteful
farming operations.

There can, we think, be little doubt that the Kayans are the
descendants of emigrants from the mainland, and that they brought
with them thence all or most of the characteristic culture that we
have described. But from what part exactly of the mainland, and by
what route, they have come, and how long a time was occupied by the
migration, are questions in answer to which we cannot do more than
throw out some vague suggestions.

We believe that the Kayans migrated to Borneo from the basin of the
Irrawadi by way of Tenasserim, the Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra; and
that they represent a part of the Indonesian stock which had remained
in the basin of the Irrawadi and adjacent rivers from the time of the
separation of Borneo, there, through contact with the southward drift
of peoples from China, receiving fresh infusions of Mongol blood;
a part, therefore, of the Indonesians which is more Mongoloid in
character than that part which at a remote period was shut up in
Borneo by its separation from the mainland. During this long period
the Kayans acquired or developed the type of culture characterised by
the cultivation of PADI on land newly cleared of jungle by burning,
the building of long houses on the banks of rivers, the use of boats,
and the working of iron.

The way in which in Borneo the Kayans hang together and keep touch
with one another, even though scattered through districts in which
numerous communities of other tribes are settled, preserving their
characteristic culture with extreme faithfulness, lends colour to the
supposition that the whole tribe may thus have been displaced step by
step, passing on from one region and from one island to another without
leaving behind any part of the tribe. The passage of the straits
between the Peninsula and Sumatra, and between Sumatra and Borneo,
are the parts of this tribal migration that are the most difficult
to imagine. But we know that Kayans do not fear to put out to sea in
their long war-boats. We have known Kayan boats to descend the Baram
River and to follow the coast up to Bruni; and we have trustworthy
accounts of such expeditions having been made in former days by
large war parties in order to fight in the service of the Sultan of
Bruni. The distance from the Baram mouth to Bruni (about 100 miles)
is nearly equal to the width of the broadest stretch of water they
must have crossed in order to have reached Borneo from the mainland
by way of Sumatra. This hypothetical history of the immigration of
the Kayans receives some support from the fact that a vague tradition
of having crossed the sea still persists among them. We attach some
importance to this Kayan tradition of their having come over the sea,
as evidence that they are comparatively recent immigrants to Borneo;
but the principal grounds on which we venture to suggest this history
of the Kayans and of their invasion of Borneo are three: first,
the affinities of the Kayans in respect of physical character and
culture to certain tribes still existing in the area from which we
believe them to have come; secondly, historical facts which go far
to explain such a migration; thirdly, their relations to other tribes
of Borneo. We add a few words under each of these heads.

I. As long ago as the year 1850, J. R. Logan, writing of highland
tribes of the basins of the Koladan and Irrawadi and the south-eastern
part of the Brahmaputra, asserted that "the habits of these tribes
have a wonderful resemblance to those of the inland lank-haired races
of Indonesia... . There is hardly a minute trait in the legends,
superstitions, customs, habits, and arts of these tribes, and the
adjacent highlanders of the remainder of the Brahmaputra basin,
that is not also characteristic of some of the ruder lank-haired
tribes of Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, Celebes, Ceram, and the
trans-Javan islands."[197]

This assertion, though, no doubt, rather too sweeping, seems to have
a large basis in fact, so far as it concerns the tribes of Borneo.

We have not been able to find that any one tribe of this part of
the mainland agrees closely with the Kayans in respect of physical
characters and all important cultural features. Nevertheless, very
many of the features of the Kayan culture are described as occurring
amongst one or another tribe, though commonly with some considerable
differences in detail. In attempting to identify the nearest relatives
of the Kayans among the mainland tribes, it has to be remembered that
all these have been subjected to much disturbance, in some cases,
no doubt, involving changes of habitat, since the date at which,
as we suppose, the Kayans left the continent. And since the Kayans,
from the time of their arrival in Borneo, have played the part of a
dominating and conquering people among tribes of lower culture, and
have imposed their customs upon these other tribes, without blending
with them or accepting from them any important cultural elements,
it follows that we must regard the Kayans as having preserved, more
faithfully than their relatives of the mainland, the culture which
presumably they had in common with them a thousand years or more ago.

Of all the peoples of the south-eastern corner of the continent,
the one which seems to us most closely akin to the Kayans is that
which comprises the several tribes of the Karens.[198] These have been
regarded by many authors (3) as the indigenous people of Burma. Their
own traditions tell of their coming from the north across a great river
of sand and of having been driven out of the basin of the Irrawadi at
a later date (1). At present the Karens are found chiefly in the Karen
hills of Lower Burma between the Irrawadi and the Salween and in the
basin of the Sittang River, which runs southwards midway between those
two greater rivers to open into the head of the Gulf of Martaban. But
they have been much oppressed by their more civilised neighbours, the
Burmese and the Shans, and their communities are widely scattered in
the remoter parts of the country and are said to extend into Tenasserim
far down the Malay Peninsula. By the Burmese they are called also
KAYENS or KYENS, the Y and R sounds being interchangeable in Burmese
(1 and 3).

Peoples generally recognised as closely akin to the KARENS are the
CHINS (who are also known as Khyens) (14) of the basin of the Chindwin,
the large western tributary of the Irrawadi; and the KAKHYENS (also
called KACHINGS and SINGPHO), who occupy the hills east of Bhamo and
the basin of the river Tapang in the borderlands of Burma and Yunnan
(7). The Nagas of Manipur and of the Naga Hills of Assam also seem
to belong to the same group of peoples, though less closely akin to
the Karens than the Chins and the Kakhyens.