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

On taking our departure from the Madang country, most of the women presented us with a small quantity of rice for food on our homeward journey, but as each little lot was emptied into a large basket, the giver took back a few grains so as not to offend the omen-birds, who had bestowed on them a bounteous harvest, by giving the whole away to strangers. Presents of considerable value were given on both sides, and all parted the best of friends. The two principal Madang chiefs accompanied us for a day's journey, their followers carrying the whole of our baggage. On parting I promised to arrange a similar peace-making at Claudetown, at which most of the Baram chiefs would be present.

We add an account of the peace-making previously published by one of us.[216]

The peace-making that I am going to describe was organised in order to bring together on neutral ground, and in presence of an overwhelming force of the tribes loyal to the government, all those tribes whose allegiance was still doubtful, and all those that were still actively hostile to one another, and to induce them to swear to support the government in keeping the peace, and to go through the formalities necessary to put an end to old blood-feuds. At the same time the Resident had suggested to the tribes that they should all compete in a grand race of war canoes, as well as in other races on land and water. For he wisely held that in order to suppress fighting and head-hunting, hitherto the natural avenues to fame for restless tribes and ambitious young men, it is necessary to replace them by some other form of violent competition that may in some degree serve as a vent for high spirits and superfluous energy; and he hoped to establish an annual gathering for boat racing and other sports, in which all the tribes should take part, a gathering on the lines of the Olympic games in fact. The idea Was taken up eagerly by the people, and months before the appointed day they were felling the giants of the forest and carving out from them the great war canoes that were to be put to this novel use, and reports were passing from village to village of the many fathoms length of this or that canoe, and the fineness of the timber and workmanship of another.

In order to make clear the course of events, I must explain that two large rivers, the Baram and the Tinjar, meet about one hundred miles from the sea to form the main Baram river. Between the peoples living on the banks of these two rivers and their tributaries there is a traditional hostility which just at this time had been raised to a high pitch by the occurrence of a blood-feud between the Kenyahs, a leading tribe of the Baram, and the Lirongs, an equally powerful tribe of the Tinjar. In addition to these two groups we expected a large party of Madangs, a famous tribe of fighting men of the central highlands whose hand had hitherto been against every other tribe, and a large number of Sea Dayaks, who, more than all the rest, are always spoiling for a fight, and who are so passionately devoted to head-hunting that often they do not scruple to pursue it in an unsportsmanlike fashion. So it will be understood that the bringing together in one place of large parties of fully armed warriors of all these different groups was a distinctly interesting and speculative experiment in peace-making.

The place of meeting was Marudi (Claudetown), the headquarters of the government of the district. There the river, still nearly a hundred miles from the sea, winds round the foot of a low flat-topped hill, on which stand the small wooden fort and court-house and the Resident's bungalow. Some days before that fixed for the great meeting by the tokens we had sent out, parties of men began to arrive, floating down in the long war canoes roofed with palm leaves for the journey. On the appointed day some five thousand of the Baram people and the Madangs were encamped very comfortably in leaf and mat shelters on the open ground between our bungalow and the fort, while the Sea Dayaks had taken up their quarters in the long row of Chinamen's shops that form the Marudi bazaar, the commercial centre of the district. But as yet no Tinjar folk had put in an appearance, and men began to wonder what had kept them — Were the tokens sent them at fault? Or had they received friendly warnings of danger from some of the many sacred birds, without whose favourable omens no journey can be undertaken? Or had they, perhaps, taken the opportunity to ascend the Baram and sack and burn the Kenyah houses now well nigh empty of defenders? We spent the time in foot-racing, preliminary boat-racing, and in seeing the wonders of the white man. For many of these people had not travelled so far downriver before, and their delight in the piano was only equalled by their admiration for that most wonderful of all things, the big boat that goes up stream without paddles, the Resident's fast steam-launch.

At last one evening, while we were all looking on at a most exciting practice-race between three of the canoes, the Lirongs, with the main mass of the Tinjar people, came down the broad straight reach. It was that most beautiful half-hour of the tropical day, between the setting of the sun and the fall of darkness — the great forest stood black and formless, while the sky and the smooth river were luminous with delicate green and golden light. The Lirongs were in full war dress, with feathered coats of leopard skin and plumed caps plaited of tough rattan, and very effective they were as they came swiftly on over the shining water, sixty to seventy warriors in each canoe raising their tremendous battle-cry, a deep-chested chorus of rising and falling cadences. The mass of men on the bank and on the hill took up the cry, answering shout for shout; and the forest across the river echoed it, until the whole place was filled with a hoarse roar. The Kenyahs ran hastily to their huts for their weapons, and by the time they had grouped themselves on the crest of the hill, armed with sword and shield and spear and deadly blowpipe, the Lirongs had landed on the bank below and were rushing up the hill to the attack. A few seconds more and they met with clash of sword and shield and a great shouting, and in the semi-darkness a noisy battle raged. After some minutes the Lirongs drew off and rushed back to their boats as wildly as they had come; and, strange to say, no blood was flowing, no heads were rolling on the ground, no ghastly wounds were gaping, in fact no one seemed any the worse. For it seems that this attack was merely a well understood formality, a put-up job, so to say. When two tribes, between whom there is a blood-feud not formally settled, meet together to make peace, it is the custom for the injured party, that is the tribe which has last suffered a loss of heads, to make an attack on the other party but using only the butt ends of their spears and the blunt edges of their swords. This achieves two useful ends-it lets off superabundant high spirits, which, if too much bottled up, would be dangerous; and it "saves the face" of the injured party by showing how properly wrathful and bellicose its feelings are. So when this formality had been duly observed everybody seemed to feel that matters were going on well; they all settled down quietly enough for the night, the Resident taking the precaution to send the Lirongs to camp below the fort; and the great peace-conference was announced to be held the following morning.

Soon after daybreak the people began to assemble beneath the great roof of palm-leaf mats that we had built for a conference hall. The Baram chiefs sat on a low platform along one side of the hall, and in their midst was Tama Bulan, the most famous of them all, a really great man who has made his name and influence felt throughout a very large part of Borneo. When all except the Tinjar men were assembled, of course without arms, the latter, also unarmed, came up the hill in a compact mass, to take their places in the hall. As they entered, the sight of their old enemies, the chiefs of the Baram, all sitting quietly together, was too much for their self-control; with one accord they made a mad rush at them and attempted to drag them from the platform. Fortunately we white men had placed ourselves with a few of the more reliable Dayak fortmen between the two parties, and partly by force and partly by eloquence we succeeded in beating off the attack, which seemed to be made in the spirit of a school "rag" rather than with bloody intent. But just as peace seemed restored, a great shout went up from the Baram men, "Tama Bulan is wounded"; and sure enough there he stood with blood flowing freely over his face. The sight of blood seemed to send them all mad together; the Tinjar people turned as one man and tore furiously down the hill to seize their weapons, while the Baram men ran to their huts and in a few seconds were prancing madly to and fro on the crest of the hill, thirsting for the onset of the bloody battle that now seemed a matter of a few seconds only. At the same time the Dayaks were swarming out of the bazaar seeking something to kill, like the typical Englishman, though not knowing which side to take. The Resident hastened after the Tinjars, threw himself before them, and appealed and threatened, pointing to the two guns at the fort now trained upon them; and Tama Bulan showed his true greatness by haranguing his people, saying his wound was purely accidental and unintended, that it was a mere scratch, and commanding them to stand their ground. Several of the older and steadier chiefs followed his example and ran to and fro holding back their men, exhorting them to be quiet.

The crisis passed, the sudden gust of passion slowly died away, and peace was patched up with interchange of messages and presents between the two camps. The great boat race was announced to take place on the morrow, and the rest of the day was spent in making ready the war canoes, stripping them of their leaf roofs and all other superfluous gear.

At daybreak the racing-boats set off for the startingpost four miles up river. The Resident had given strict orders that no spears or other weapons were to be carried in the racing-boats, and as they started up river we inspected the boats in turn, and in one or two cases relieved them of a full complement of spears; and then we followed them to the post in the steam-launch. There was a score of entries, and since each boat carried from sixty to seventy men sitting two abreast, more than a thousand men were taking part in the race. The getting the boats into line across the broad river was a noisy and exciting piece of work. We carried on the launch a large party of elderly chiefs, most. of whom were obviously suffering from "the needle," and during the working of the boats into line they hurled commands at them in language that was terrific in both quality and volume. At last something like a line was assumed, and on the sound of the gun the twenty boats leaped through the water, almost lost to sight in a cloud of spray as every one of those twelve hundred men struck the water for all he was worth. There was no saving of themselves; the rate of striking was about ninety to the minute, and tended constantly to increase. Very soon two boats drew out in front, and the rest of them, drawing together as they neared the first bend, followed hotly after like a pack of hounds. This order was kept all over the course. During the first burst our fast launch could not keep up with the boats, but we drew up in time to see the finish. It was a grand neck-and-neck race all through between the two leading boats, and all of them rowed it out to the end. The winners were a crew of the peaceful down-river folk, who have learnt the art of boat-making from the Malays of the coast; and they owed their victory to their superior skill in fashioning their boat, rather than to superior strength. When they passed the post we had an anxious moment — How would the losers take their beating? Would the winners play the fool, openly exulting and swaggering? If so, they would probably get their heads broken, or perhaps lose them. But they behaved with modesty and discretion, and we diverted attention from them by swinging the steamer round and driving her through the main mass of the boats. Allowing as accurately as possible for the rate of the current as compared with the rate of the tide at Putney, we reckoned the pace of the winning boat to be a little better than that of the 'Varsity eights in racing over the full course.

The excitement of the crowds on the bank was great, but it was entirely good-humoured — they seemed to have forgotten their feuds in the interest of the racing. So the Resident seized the opportunity to summon every one to the conference hall once more. This time we settled down comfortably enough and with great decorum, the chiefs all in one group at one side of a central space, and the common people in serried ranks all round about it. In the centre was a huge, gaily painted effigy of a hornbill, one of the birds sacred to all the tribes, and on it were hung thousands of cigarettes of home-grown tobacco wrapped in dried banana leaf. Three enormous pigs were now brought in and laid, bound as to their feet, before the chiefs, one for each of the main divisions of the people, the Barams, the Tinjars, and the hill-country folk. The greatest chiefs of each of these parties then approached the pigs, and each in turn, standing beside the pig assigned to his party, addressed the attentive multitude with great flow of words and much violent and expressive action; for many of these people are great orators. The purport of their speeches was their desire for peace, their devotion to the Resident ("If harm come to him, then may I fall too," said Tama Bulan), and their appreciation of the trade and general intercourse and safety of life and property brought them by the Rajah's government; and they hurled threats and exhortations against unlicensed warfare and bloodshed.