Books: The Pagan Tribes of Borneo

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

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It seems highly probable that all these, together with the Kayans,
are surviving branches of a people which occupied a large area of
south-eastern Asia, more especially the basin of the Irrawadi, for a
considerable period before the first of the successive invasions which
have given rise to the existing Burmese and Shan nations. The physical
characters of all of them are consistent with the view taken above,
namely, that they represent the original Indonesian population of which
the Klemantans of Borneo are the pure type, modified by later infusions
of Mongol blood. In all these occur individuals who are described as
being of almost purely Caucasic type and very light in colour.

Three principal tribes of Karens are distinguished, the Sgan, Pwo,
and Bwe. Of these the Bwe are also known as the Hill-Karens and seem
to have preserved their own culture more completely than the others,
though the Sgan are said to be the purest in blood, the lightest in
colour, and more distinctive in type than any other of the tribes
of south-eastern Asia (4). Of the Hill-Karens, Mason said, "Some
would be pronounced European. Indeed, if not exposed to the sun,
some of them would be as fair, I think, as many of the inhabitants
of northern Europe." Yet the commoner type of Karen is said to show
distinctly Mongoloid facial characters. Of those Karens who have
been least affected by their more cultured neighbours, we are told
that they live in small communities, each of which is governed by
a patriarch who is at once high priest and judge, and who punishes
chiefly by the infliction of fines. He raises no regular tax, but
receives contributions in kind towards the expenses of entertainment
(3). Several communities join together, sometimes under a leading
chief, in order to meet a common foe (3). They build long houses
in which a whole community of as many as 400 persons dwell together
(4). These houses are described as of Himalayic type. "It (the house)
is made by sinking posts of large size firmly in the ground and
inserting beams or joists through the posts eight feet from the ground,
and on these laying the floor with slats of bamboo." The walls and
partitions are mats of woven bamboo, and the roof is thatched with palm
leaves (4). This very incomplete description leaves it open to suppose
that the Karen house is very similar to that built by the Kayans when
for any reason the latter build in hasty and temporary fashion. But the
still more scanty description of another writer (3) implies that the
arrangement of the interior of the house is unlike that characteristic
of the Kayans. They frequently migrate to new sites.

The Karens cultivate PADI and prepare the jungle land for cultivation
by burning down the forest. They prepare from rice a spirit to which
they are much addicted. The hill tribes are truculent warriors and
head-hunters. Captives are made slaves. They use and make spears
and axes, and a cross-bow[199] with poisoned arrows. They rear pigs
and poultry, and train dogs to the chase. The men eradicate their
beards. They wear many small rings on the forearms and legs. The
lobes of the ear are perforated and often enormously distended (3).

They address prayers and supplications for protection and prosperity to
a Supreme Being whom they address as "Lord of the heavens and earth"
(5). They believe also in a multitude of nature spirits, most of whom
are harmful. The fear of them occasions many ceremonial acts. The
taking of heads is said to be a means of propitiating these spirits
(3). They believe that during sickness the soul departs from the
body; and the medicine-man attempts to arrest it and to bring it
back to the body of the patient. In this and other rites the blood
of fowls (which they are said to venerate) (2) is smeared on the
participants. Divination by means of the bones of fowls and the
viscera, especially the liver of the pig, is in common use (5). The
souls of the dead go to a place in which they live much as in this
world. It is called ABU LAGAN[200] (3). In this abode of shades
everything is upside down and all directions are inverted (5). There
are no rewards and punishments after death (3). Parents take the names
of father and mother of So-and-so -- the name of their first child. The
knife with which the navel cord is cut at birth is carefully preserved
(5). Finally, the Karens are said to be distinguished by a lack of
humour, a trait which is well marked also in the Kayans.

In respect of all the characters and culture elements mentioned above,
the Karens resemble the Kayans very closely. Against these we have
to set off a few customs mentioned by our authorities in which they
differ from the Kayans.

The Karens eat everything except members of the cat tribe. They bury
the bodies of the dead after they have lain in state some three or
four days; and they hold an annual feast for the dead at the August
new moon. They ascribe two souls to man, one of a kind which is
possessed also by animals, tools, weapons, the rice, and one which
is the responsible soul peculiar to man.[201]

The bride is taken to the house of the bridegroom's father. Only
one tribe, namely, the Red Karens, practises tatu, and among them a
figure which seems to represent the rising sun is tatued on the back
of the men only (5). They weave a coarse cloth.

These differences are not very great, and their significance is
diminished by the following considerations. The Kayans may have
acquired their aversion to killing the dog through contact with
Malays. They bury the dead in the ground in the case of poor persons
or those dead of epidemic disease. And they have a tradition that they
formerly practised the weaving of cloth. They may also have acquired
the art of making and using the solid wooden blow-pipe from Malays;
and this would account for their having given up the use of the bow
and arrow as a serious weapon. On the other hand, the inferior houses
of the Karens, the lack of restrictions among them upon animal foods,
their earth burial -- all these may well be due to decay of custom
among an oppressed people; and the fact that they seem to make but
little use of boats may well be due to their having been driven
away from the main rivers and pushed into the hills. We have little
doubt that many more points of resemblance would be discoverable,
if we had any full account of the Karens as they were before their
culture was largely affected by contact with Burmese and Shans and
by the influence of the missionaries who have taught so successfully
among them for more than sixty years.

Among the elements of Kayan culture which are lacking or but feebly
represented among the Karens, some are reported among the tribes most
nearly allied to the Karens, and others among other peoples of the
same area.

Thus the peculiar Kayan custom of tatuing the thighs of women has a
close parallel in the tatuing of the thighs of men among all Burmese
and Shans; and the Kayans may well have adopted the practice from
them. Among the Shans there obtains the custom of placing the coffin on
upright timbers at some height above the ground (9). Among the Nagas,
and especially the Kuki Nagas,[202] who are said to be most nearly
allied to the Karens, beside a number of the culture elements which we
have noticed above as common to Karens and Kayans, other noteworthy
points of resemblance to the Kayans are the following: A system of
tabu or GENNA which may affect individuals or whole villages, and is
very similar to the MALAN of the Kayans; the practice of ornamenting
houses with heads of enemies, the motive of taking the head being to
provide a slave in Hades for a deceased chief; the use of human and
other hair in decorating weapons.[203]

Their method of attacking a village is like that of the Kayans,
namely, to surround it in the night and to rush it at dawn; they
obstruct the approach of an enemy to their village by planting in the
ground short pieces of bamboo sharpened and fire-hardened at both ends;
they use an oblong wooden shield or a rounded shield of plaited cane;
their blacksmiths use a bellows very like that of the Kayan smiths;
they husk their PADI in a solid wooden mortar with a big pestle
A LA Kayan; they floor their houses with similar massive planks;
they catch fish in nets and traps, and by poisoning the water; men
pierce the shell of the ear in various ways; omens are read from the
viscera of pigs, and the cries of some birds are unlucky; they worship
a Supreme Deity and a number of minor gods, E.G. gods of rain and of
harvest; they often sacrifice pigs and fowls to the gods, and omens
are always read from the slaughtered animals; those who die in battle
and in childbirth are assigned to special regions of the other world;
the women are tatued (on chest) to facilitate recognition in Hades;
in felling the jungle preparatory to burning it to make a PADI farm,
they always leave at least one tree standing for the accommodation
of the spirits of the place.

Other of the instruments, arts, and customs of the Kayans are found
widely spread in south-eastern Asia. Such are the small axe or adze
with lashed head; the musical instrument of gourd and bamboo pipes
with reeds; the bamboo guitar; the use of old beads and of hornbill
feathers for personal adornment; the making of fire by friction of
a strip of rattan across a block of wood.

II. Whether this people, of whom the Kayans, Karens, Chins, Kakhyens,
and Nagas, seem to be the principal surviving branches, came into
the Irrawadi basin and adjacent areas by migration from Central Asia
by way of the Brahmaputra valley, as Cross and McMahon (accepting
the tradition of the Karens) believe, or came, as Logan suggested,
eastward from Bengal, it seems certain that it has been divided into
fragments, driven away from the main rivers, and in the main pushed
southwards by successive swarms of migration from the north. This
pressure from the north seems to have driven some of the Karens down
into the Malay Peninsula, where they are still found; and it may
well be that, before the rise of the Malays as an aggressive people
under Arab leadership, the ancestors of the Kayans occupied parts of
the peninsula farther south than the Karens now extend, and possibly
also parts of Sumatra. If this was the case, it was inevitable that,
with the rise to dominance of the Mohammedan Malays in this region,
the Kayans must have been either driven out, exterminated, or converted
to Islam and absorbed. It seems probable that different communities
of them suffered these three different fates.

The supposition that the Kayans represent a part of such a population,
which was driven on by the pressure of Malays to seek a new country
in which to practise its extravagant system of PADI culture, is in
harmony with the probability as to the date of their immigration
to the southern rivers of Borneo; for the rise and expansion of the
Menangkabau Malays began in the middle of the twelfth century A.D.;
and the Kayans may well have entered Borneo some 700 years ago.

III. We have now to summarise the evidence in favour of the view that
the Kayans have imparted to the Kenyahs and many of the Klemantan
tribes the principal elements of the peculiar culture which they now
have in common.

We have shown that the culture of the Kenyah and Klemantan tribes
is in the main very similar to that of the Kayans, and that it
differs chiefly in lacking some of its more advanced features, in
having less sharply defined outlines, in its greater variability
from one community to another, and in the less strict observance of
custom. Thus the Kayans in general live in larger communities, each of
their villages generally consisting of several long houses; whereas
a single long house generally constitutes the whole of a Kenyah or
Klemantan village. The Kayans excel in iron-working, in PADI culture,
in boat-making, and in house-building. Their customs and beliefs
are more elaborated, more definite, more uniform, and more strictly
observed. Their social grades are more clearly marked. They hang
together more strongly, with a stronger tribal sentiment, and, while
the distinction between them and other tribes is everywhere clearly
marked and recognised both by themselves and others, the Klemantans
and Kenyahs everywhere shade off into one another and into Punans.

The process of conversion of Punans into settled communities that
assimilate more or less fully the Kayan culture is still going on. We
are acquainted with settled communities which still admit their
Punan origin; and these exhibit very various grades of assimilation
of the Kayan culture. Some, which in the lives of the older men were
still nomadic, still build very poor houses and boats, cultivate PADI
very imperfectly, and generally exhibit the Kayan culture in a very
imperfect state.

On the other hand, the Kenyahs have assimilated the Kayan culture more
perfectly than any other of the aborigines, and in some respects, such
as the building of houses, they perhaps equal the Kayans; but even they
have not learnt to cultivate PADI in so thorough a manner as to keep
themselves supplied with rice all through the year, as the Kayans do;
and, like the various Klemantan tribes,[204] they suffer almost every
year periods of scarcity during which they rely chiefly on cultivated
and wild sago and on tapioca. The Kayans, on the other hand, grow
sufficient PADI to last through the year, except in very bad seasons,
and they never collect or cultivate sago. The view that this relative
imperfection of the agriculture of the Kenyahs and Klemantans is due to
the recency of their adoption of the practice, is confirmed by the fact
that many of them still preserve the tradition of the time when they
cultivated no PADI. It seems that most of the present Kenyahs first
began to plant PADI not more than two, or at most three, centuries
ago. Some of the Kenyahs also preserve the tradition of a time when
they constructed their houses mainly of bamboo; this was probably
their practice for some few generations after they began to acquire
the Kayan culture. At the present day those Punans who have only
recently taken to the settled mode of life generally make large use
of the bamboo in building their small and relatively fragile houses.

The view that the Kayans have played this large civilising role is
supported by the fact that Kayan is the language most widely understood
in the interior, and that it is largely used for intercommunication,
even between members of widely separated Kenyah communities whose
dialects have diverged so widely that their own language no longer
forms a medium of communication between them; whereas the Kayans
themselves do not trouble to acquire familiarity with the Kenyah or
Klemantan languages.

If both Kenyahs and Klemantans represent sections of the aboriginal
population of nomadic hunters who have absorbed Kayan culture, it
remains to account for the existence of those peculiarities of the
Kenyahs that have led us to separate them from the tribes which we
have classed together as Klemantans. The peculiarities that distinguish
Kenyahs from Klemantans are chiefly personal characteristics, notably
the bodily build (relatively short limbs and massive trunks), the more
lively and energetic temperament, the more generous and expansive
and pugnacious disposition. These peculiarities may, we think, be
accounted for by the supposition that the aborigines from whom the
Kenyahs descend had long occupied the central highlands where most
of the Kenyah communities still dwell and which they all regard as
the homeland and headquarters of their race.

Of the Klemantan tribes some, E.G. the Aki, the Long Patas, and the
Long Akars, resemble more nearly the Kayans; others, E.G. the Muriks,
the Sebops, the Lirongs, the Uma Longs, the Pengs or Pinihings,
show more affinity with the Kenyahs. It seems probable that these
diversities have resulted from the assimilation of culture directly
from the Kayans by the one group and from the Kenyahs by the other. A
third group of Klemantan tribes such as the Long Kiputs, the Batu
Blah, and the Trings, scattered through the northern part of the
island, resemble more nearly the Muruts; and among these are found
communities whose culture marks them as descendants of nomads who
have assimilated the Murut culture in various degrees.

The Muruts

The Muruts differ somewhat as regards physical features from all the
other tribes, especially in having coarser but less Mongoloid features,
a longer skull, and a more lanky build of body and limbs. Their
intonation is nasal, and the colour of the skin slightly darker and
ruddier than that of the Klemantans.

Their culture differs so much as to lead us to suppose that it had
a somewhat different origin from that of the Kayans. They build long
houses; but these are comparatively flimsy structures, and they are
often situated at a distance from any navigable stream. Even those
Muruts who live on the river-banks make much less use of boats than
the other tribes, and all of them are great walkers. They have very
little skill in boat-making. Their most distinctive peculiarity is
their system of agriculture (see vol. i. p. 97), which involves
irrigation, the use of buffalo, the raising of two crops a year,
and the repeated use in successive years of the same land. Other
distinctive features are their peculiar long sword and short spear;
the absence of any axe and blow-pipe; the custom according to which
the women propose marriage to the men (Kalabits).

In the Philippine Islands a system of agriculture similar to that
of the Muruts is widely practised; and some of the tribes, though
their culture has been largely influenced by Spanish civilisation,
seem to be of the same stock as the Muruts; thus the Tagals of Borneo
are not improbably a section of the people known as Tagalas in the
Philippines, and the Bisayas of Borneo probably bear the same relation
to the Visayas of the Philippines.

It seems probable, therefore, that this type of culture has been
carried into the north of Borneo by immigrants from the Philippines,
whither it was introduced at a remote period, possibly from Annam, the
nearest part of the mainland; or possibly it came to Borneo directly
from Annam.[205] It is probable that many of the tribes which we have
classed with the Muruts, on account of their possession of the Murut
culture, are, like the Klemantans and Kenyahs, descendants of the
ancient Indonesian population who have adopted the culture of more
advanced immigrants. The descendants of the immigrants who introduced
this type of culture are, we think, the Muruts proper, who claim that
name and dwell chiefly in the Trusan, the Padas, the Sembakong, the
Kerayan rivers, and in the head of the Kinabatangan; also the Kalabits
in the northern part of the upper basin of the Baram. It is these
which display most decidedly the physical peculiarities noted above.

As examples of Klemantan tribes that have partially adopted the Murut
culture we would mention the LONG KIPUTS, the BATU BLAHS, the TRINGS,
and the ADANGS in the head of the Limbang River; to the same group
belong the KADAYANS in the neighbourhood of Bruni, who, from contact
with their Malay neighbours, have become in large part Mohammedans
of Malay culture.

The Ibans (Sea Dayaks)

The Ibans stand distinctly apart from all the other tribes, both by
reason of their physical and mental peculiarities and of the many
differences of their culture; we have little doubt that they are the
descendants of immigrants who came into the south-western corner of
Borneo at no distant date. We regard them as Proto-Malays, that is
to say, as of the stock from which the true Malays of Sumatra and the
Peninsula were differentiated by the influence of Arab culture. A large
number of the ancestors of the present Ibans were probably brought to
Borneo from Sumatra less than two hundred years ago. Some two centuries
ago, a number of Malay nobles were authorised by the Sultan of Bruni
to govern the five rivers of Sarawak proper, namely, the Samarahan,
the Sadong, the Batang Lupar, the Saribas, and the Klaka rivers. These
Malays were pirate leaders, and they were glad to enrol large numbers
of pagan fighting men among their followers; for the latter were glad
to do most of the hard work, claiming the heads of the pirates' victims
as their principal remuneration, while the Malays retained that part
of the booty which had a marketable value. These Malay leaders found,
no doubt, that their pagan relatives of Sumatra lent themselves
more readily to this service than the less warlike Klemantans of
Borneo, and therefore, as we suppose, they brought over considerable
numbers of them and settled them about the mouths of these rivers. The
co-operation between the piratical Malay Tuankus and the descendants of
their imported PROTEGES continued up to the time of the suppression of
piracy by the British and Dutch half a century ago. It was from this
association with the sea and with coast-pirates that the Ibans became
known as the Sea Dayaks by Sir James Brooke; and to this encouragement
of their head-hunting proclivity by the Malays is no doubt due their
peculiarly ruthless and bloodthirsty devotion to it as to a pastime,
rather than (as with the Kayans and other tribes) as to a ceremonial
duty occasionally imposed upon them by the death of a chief.

It seems to us probable that the greater part of the ancestors of
the Ibans entered Borneo in this way. But there is reason to think
that some of them had settled at an earlier date in this part of
Borneo and rather farther southward on the Kapuas River. The BUGAUS,
KANTUS, and DAUS, who dwell along the southern border of Sarawak,
and some other Iban tribes in the northern basin of the Kapuas River,
are probably descendants of these earlier immigrants of Proto-Malay
stock. In most respects they closely resemble the other Iban tribes,
but they are distinguished by some peculiarities of language and
accent; their manners are gentler, their bearing less swaggering;
they are less given to wandering, and they have little skill in the
making and handling of boats. These are recognised by themselves and
by other Ibans as belonging to the same people; but they are a little
looked down upon by Ibans of the other tribes as any home-staying
rural population is looked down upon by travelled cosmopolitans.

This conjectural history of the immigration of the Ibans explains the
peculiar fact that, although all the Ibans of all parts are easily
distinguishable from all the other peoples, and although they all
recognise one another as belonging to the same people, they have no
common name for the whole group. They commonly speak of KAMI MENOA
(I.E. "we of this country") when they refer to their people as a whole;
and the Kayan designation of them as IVAN (immigrant or wanderer) has
been adopted by large numbers of them in recent years and modified into
Iban, so that the expression KAMI IBAN is now frequently used by them.

The identification of the Iban with a Proto-Malay stock is justified
by their language and physical characteristics. The former seems to be
the language from which Malay has been formed under Arab influence and
culture. It employs many words which are no longer current in Malay,
but which, as is shown by Marsden's MALAY DICTIONARY, were in use
among Sumatran Malays in the eighteenth century.

Since the Mohammedan populations which now are called Malay are of
mixed origin, they present no very well-defined or uniform physical
type. But of all Malays those of Sumatra and of the Peninsula are
generally recognised as presenting the type in its greatest purity;
and it is this type which the Ibans most closely reproduce. The
near resemblance of facial type between the Malays and the Ibans is
apt to be obscured for the casual visitor by the fact that the Iban
puts little or no restraint upon his expressions and is constantly
chattering, laughing, and smiling; whereas the Malay is taught from
childhood to restrain his expressions and to preserve a severe and
grave demeanour in the presence of strangers. But in private the
Malay relaxes, and then the resemblance appears more clearly.

The principal features of the Iban's culture which distinguish it from
that of the other tribes may be enumerated here. The Iban closely
resembles the Kayan in his method of cultivating PADI, but he is
even more careful and skilful, and generally secures a surplus. His
house differs characteristically from those of the Kayan type, and
resembles the long houses still inhabited by some Sumatran Malays,
in being comparatively small, and in having a framework of many
light poles rather than of heavy hardwood timbers, and a floor of
split bamboo in place of huge planks. In methods of weaving and dyeing
cloth and in the character of the cloths produced;[206] in the wearing
of ornamental head-cloths; in the weaving of mats and baskets with
the PANDANUS leaf and a large rush known as BUMBAN rather than with
strips of split rattan; in their methods of trapping and netting fish;
in the character of the sword and axe and shield as formerly used;[207]
in the use of the fire-piston;[208] in musical instruments and methods;
in the custom of earth burial; in the visiting and making of offerings
at the graves of noted men in the hope of supernatural aid, -- in
all these respects the Iban culture differs from that of the Kayans,
and closely resembles that of the Malays.