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

Another ceremony in which the fowl plays a prominent part is that by which the wandering soul of a sick person is found and led back to his body by the medicine-man. This is described in Chapter XIV.

It seems clear that the fowl, like the pig, is used on these occasions as a messenger sent by man to the Supreme Spirit. In most cases when a fowl is slaughtered in the course of a ceremony, it is first waved over the heads of the people taking part in it, and its blood is afterwards sprinkled upon them.

In the blood-brotherhood ceremony, when each of the two men drinks or smokes in a cigarette a drop of the other's blood drawn with a bambooknife, a fowl is in many cases waved over them and then killed, and occasionally a pig also is killed. In such a case the man who has killed the fowl will carry its carcase to the door of the house, and there he will wave towards the heavens a frayed stick moistened with its blood, while he announces the facts of the ceremony to Bali Penyalong. So that here again the fowl seems to play the part of a messenger. The carcase and the bloody stick are afterwards put up together on a tall pole before the house. After going through this ceremony a man is safe from all the members of the household to which his blood-brother belongs; and in the case of two chiefs all the members of either household are bound to those of the other by a sacred tie.

Fowls' eggs are sometimes put on the cleft poles as sacrifices. In one instance, when we were engaged in fishing a lake with a large party in boats, we came upon a row of eight poles stuck upright at the edge of the lake, each holding a fowl's egg in its cleft upper end. These had just been put there by the crew of one of the canoes as an offering to the crocodiles, which were regarded as the most influential of the powers of the lake and able to ensure us good sport.

In such cases the eggs are probably economical substitutes for fowls, as seems to be indicated by the following facts: When Kenyah boys enter a strange branch of the river for the first time, they go, each one taking a fowl's egg in his hand, into the jungle with some old man, who takes the eggs, puts them into the cleft ends of poles fixed upright in the earth, and thus addresses all the omen-birds collectively, "Don't let any harm happen to these children who are coming for the first time to this river; they give you these eggs." Sometimes instead of eggs the feathers of a fowl are used; and both the eggs and feathers would seem to be substituted for fowls, as being good enough in the case of mere children performing a minor rite.

When the belly of a fowl is opened there are prominent two curved portions of the gut. The state of these is examined in some cases before the planting of PADI, and sometimes before attempting to catch the soul of a sick man. If the parts are much curved, it is a good omen; if straight or but slightly curved, it is a bad omen.

The Crocodile

Like all other races of Sarawak, the Kenyahs regard the crocodiles that infest their rivers as more or less friendly creatures. They fear the crocodile and do not like to mention it by name, especially if one be in sight, and refer to it as "old grandfather." But the fear is rather a superstitious fear than the fear of being seized by the beast. They regard those of their own neighbourhood as more especially friendly, in spite of the fact that members of their households are occasionally taken by crocodiles, either while standing incautiously on the bank of the river or while floating quietly at evening time in a small canoe. When this happens, it is believed either that the person taken has in some way offended or injured one or all of the crocodiles, or that he has been taken by a stranger crocodile that has come from a distant part of the river, and therefore did not share in the friendly understanding usually subsisting between the people and the local crocodiles. But in any case it is considered that the crocodiles have committed an unjustifiable aggression and have set up a blood-feud which can only be abolished by the slaying of one or more of the aggressors. Now it is the habit of the crocodile to hold the body of his victim for several days before devouring it, and to drag it for this purpose into some muddy creek opening into the main river. A party is therefore organised to search all the neighbouring creeks, and the first measure taken is to prevent the guilty crocodile escaping to some other part of the river. To achieve this they take long poles, frayed with many cuts, and set them up on the river-bank at some distance above and below the scene of the crime and at the mouths of all the neighbouring creeks and streamlets; and they kill fowls and pray that the guilty crocodile may be prevented from passing the spots thus marked. They then search the creeks, and if they find the criminal with the body of his victim they kill him, and the feud is at an end. But, if they fail to find him thus, they go out on the part of the river included between their charmed poles, and, with their spears tied to long poles, prod all the bed of this part of the river, and thus generally succeed in killing one or more crocodiles. They then usually search its entrails for the bones and hair of the victim so as to make sure that they have caught the offending beast. But, even if they do not obtain conclusive evidence of this kind, they seem to feel that justice is satisfied, and that the beast killed is probably the guilty one.

Except in the meting out of a just vengeance in this way, no Kenyah will kill a crocodile, and they will not eat its flesh under any circumstances. But there is no evidence to show that they regard themselves as related by blood or descent to the crocodiles or that their ancestors ever did so.

When Kenyahs go on a journey into strange rivers or to the lower part of the main river, they fear the crocodiles of these strange waters, because they are unknown to them, and any one of them might easily be mistaken by the crocodiles for some one who has done them an injury. Some Kenyahs tie the red leaves of the DRACAENA below the prow of their boat whenever they go far from home, believing that this protects them from all danger of attack by crocodiles.