The Kenyah women of the Baram district exhibit a very primitive style of tatu on the arms and hands (Pl. 141, Fig. 4); a broad band encircles the middle of the forearm, and a narrow band an inch or so distant of this also surrounds the arm; from this narrow band there run over the metacarpals to the base of the fingers eight narrow lines, the outermost on the radial side bifurcating; the design is known as BETIK ALLE or line tatu. No other part of the body is tatued.
Nieuwenhuis figures [9, Pl. 95] a somewhat similar design employed by the Lepu Tau women of the Batang Kayan; but in this case, instead of eight longitudinal lines stopping short at the knuckles, there are five broad bands running to the finger nails, interrupted at the knuckles by a 2 cm.-broad strip of untatued skin. Moreover, with these people the front and sides of the thigh and the shin are tatued with primitive-looking designs made up of series of short transverse lines, curved lines, and broad bands; the names of the designs are not given; these designs are said to be characteristic of the slave-class, the higher-class women copying the more elaborate designs of the Uma Lekan.
Amongst the Batang Kayan Kenyahs tatuing cannot be executed in the communal house, but only in a hut built for the purpose. The males of the family, to which the girl undergoing the operation belongs, must dress in bark-cloth, and are confined to the house until the tatu is completed; should any of the male members be travelling in other parts of the island tatu cannot be commenced until they return. Amongst the Uma Tow (or Lepu Tau) the daughter of a chief must be tatued before any of the other females of the house; should the chiefs daughter (or daughters) die before she has been tatued, all the other women of the house are debarred from this embellishment (Nieuwenhuis [9, pp. 453, 454]).
Nieuwenhuis, in his great work on Borneo, which we have cited so often, gives a good account of the tatu of the Long Glat. According to this authority, girls when only eight years old have the backs of the fingers tatued, at the commencement of menstruation the tatu of the fingers is completed, and in the course of the following year the tatu is carried over the backs of the hand to the wrist; the feet are tatued synchronously with the hands. At the age of eighteen to twenty the front of the thigh is tatued, and later on in life the back of the thigh; unlike the Kayans it is not necessary that the tatu of the thighs should be finished before child-bearing. A Long Glat woman on each day that she is tatued must kill a black fowl as food for the artist. They believe that after death the completely tatued women will be allowed to bathe in the mythical river Telang Julan, and that consequently they will be able to pick up the pearls that are found in its bed; incompletely tatued women can only stand on the river bank, whilst the untatued will not be allowed to approach its shores at all. This belief appears to be universal amongst the Kenyah-Klemantan of the Upper Mahakam and Batang Kayan. On Pl. 86 of Nieuwenhuis' book [9] is figured the thigh tatu of a Long Glat woman; the front of the thigh is occupied with two rows of the hornbill MOTIF to which reference has already been made. The sides of the thigh are tatued with a beautiful design of circles and scrolls termed KERIP KWE, flight feathers of the Argus pheasant, and on the back of the thigh is a scroll design borrowed from the decoration of a grave and known as KALANG SONG SEPIT.[83] The knee is left untatued. Some other examples of the KERIP KWE design are given on Pl. 90, and of the SONG SEPIT on Pl. 91; some of the SONG SEPIT designs recall the KALANG KOWIT designs of the Baloi Kayans. Instead of a hornbill MOTIF, a dog's head MOTIF is sometimes tatued on the thigh, an example of which is figured on Pl. 87, Fig. A; it appears to be a composition of four heads, and in appearance is not unlike SILONG LEJAU of the Uma Lekan, figured by us. In the Long Glat thigh-tatu the bands of pattern are not separated by lines of IKOR, as with the Kayans. Round the ankles the Long Glat tatu sixteen lines, 3 mm. broad, known as TEDAK AKING; the foot is tatued much after the manner shown in our Fig. 6, Pl. 143. The supinator surface of the forearm and the backs of the hands are also tatued, but the design does not extend so far up the arm as with the Kayans [9, Pl. 92]; the forearm design is made up of a hornbill MOTIF, but that shown in Fig. A of the plate is termed BETIK KULE, leopard pattern, and is supposed to be a representation of the spots on the leopard's skin; it is stated to be taken from a Long Tepai tatu-block; the knuckles are tatued with a double row of wedges, the finger joints with quadrangles.
The Uma Luhat seem to have borrowed their tatu and designs very largely if not entirely from the Long Glat; with them the back of the thigh is tatued before the front, which is exceptional. Half of the knee is tatued. Their designs are modifications of the hornbill and dog's head designs of the Long Glat. Nieuwenhuis figures several examples [9, Pl. 87, Fig. B, Plate 88, Pl. 89, Pl. 93, Fig. A, Pl. 94], which should be consulted, as they are of the greatest interest.
The Long Wai seem to tatu in much the same way as the Uma Luhat [2,
Pl., p. 189 and 7, p. 91].
Tatu of Muruts and Klemantans.
A number of tribes have adopted more or less the tatu of the Kayans. Thus the men of the following Sarawak tribes, Sibops, Lirongs, Tanjongs, Long Kiputs, Barawans, and Kanowits, are often, though not universally, tatued like Kayans. The shoulder pattern of the Barawans is distinctive, in that the rosette nearly always bears a scroll attached to it, a relic of the dog MOTIF, from which the design is derived (Pl. 138, Fig. 6). E. B. Haddon [4, Fig. 17] figures another form of the dog MOTIF, which is tatued on the thigh or forearm, and Ling Roth [7, p. 86] figures three rosette designs for the breast; we figure two modifications of the dog design on Pl. 137, Figs. 7 and 8. The women of these tribes very rarely tatu; we have seen a Tanjong woman with a circle of star-shaped figures round her wrist and one on the thumb. The Tring women of Dutch Borneo are tatued on the hands and thighs like Kayans; Carl Bock [2, Pl., p. 187] gives some figures of them. In our opinion all of these tribes owe their tatu entirely to foreign influences; for we have failed to find a single example of an original design; the practice is by no means universal, and great catholicity of taste is shown by those who do tatu. The men, moreover, do not tatu as a sign of bravery in battle or adventure, but merely from a desire to copy the more warlike Kayan.
We shall now treat of those tribes that have a distinctive and original tatu, but it is well to bear in mind, that amongst many of these people also the Kayan designs are coming into vogue more and more, ousting the old designs. No tatu-blocks are employed for the indigenous patterns, all the work being done free-hand.
(A) UMA LONG. — The Uma Long women of the Batang Kayan exhibit the most primitive form of tatu known in Borneo. It differs from every other form in that the tatued surface of the skin is not covered uniformly with the ink, but the design, such as it is, is merely stippled into the skin, producing an appearance of close-set irregular dots. Two aspects of the forearm of an Uma Long woman are shown on Pl. 142, Fig. 5. No other part of the body is tatued, and the practice is confined to the female sex.