The Pagan Tribes of Borneo / A Description of Their Physical Moral and Intellectual Condition, with Some Discussion of Their Ethnic Relations

by Charles Hose; William McDougall

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).