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. MBMBER OP THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; OP THE AMEHICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY; DK LA SOCIETE DE GEOGRAPHIE ; PELLOW OP THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1902 Copyright, 1902, by W. H. FuRNESS, 3RD Westcott & Thomson, Press op J. B. Lippincott Company, EUctrotypers, Phila. Phila. ; T.JvtrfAfiY SAN'J' < :' • -T^ . p^ 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 Caesar, Shakespeare, and Washington are to them meaningless, unpro- nounceable 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 ' sav- ages ' 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 ; con- vi PREFA CE sequently, 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 for- get 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 informa- tion 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 FAGB HOME-LIFE I 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 vii THE TATTOOING OF A KAYAN MARRIED WOMAN .V. ~ -1. -^ •^s*(a ABAN AVIT'S HOUSE, ON THE TINJAR 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 V\^ITH 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 HO ME- LIFE The Houses in which the Borneo people Hve 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 Februar>% swell the rivers with such suddenness and to such an extent that in a single night the water will over- flow 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; where- fore 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 1 2 HOME-LIFE OF BORNEO HEAD-HUNTERS that fall from the husking mortars in the veranda overhead. Between the houses and the river's bank,—a distance of a hun- dred 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 repre- sent 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. 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, unob- structed 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.