He has a fringed headkerchief, in which are fixed feathers of the rhinoceros hornbill, and other birds. His ears are decorated with lead pendants. Round his neck are necklaces of beads, and brass or silver buttons. He has shell bracelets and brass and cane rings on his arms, and a large number of palm fibre rings on his wrists. Round his waist is a belt of silver coins, and his sword is fastened to his side. He is wearing the Dyak waistcloth and has a sarong on his right shoulder. This is the usual dress worn by a Dyak at a feast.
Below the class of industrious workers whom I have tried to depict, there is a lower stratum consisting of the failures. These are the lazy Dyaks, the poor workers, who have never by any possible chance enough paddy at the harvest to last them through the year; who live perpetually in an atmosphere of debt; who eke out their livelihood by selling wild-ferns and bamboo-shoots for the trifling payment in paddy that people will give for such things; who live a hugger-mugger life, depending a good deal on the charity of their neighbours. Of this class I say nothing. It is not numerous, and does not come within the scope of this chapter. Another class which I pass over consists of the few rich men, whose wealth is continually increasing, who sell paddy year after year, and, when there is more work than they can conveniently do, can always afford to get extra labour by paying for it. The class I am dealing with is neither rich nor poor, and is to be met with in large numbers in any Dyak community.
The Dyak is cheerful and contented with his life. If his lot is a hard and uneventful one, he is ignorant of any other, and is quite satisfied with it. He knows little of the outside world. He reads no books or newspapers. The scope of his conversation is limited to matters of farming or of boat-building, varied perhaps by some local Dyak scandal, or some experience he may have gone through when, in his younger days, before he settled down as a sober married man, he went out gutta-hunting in distant lands. He has no wish to improve himself. His father and grandfather lived in long Dyak houses, and what was good enough for them is good enough for him. Why should he worry himself about building better houses, or farming in some new and improved way? He will not meddle with matters that are too high for him; and yet, notwithstanding this calm and even existence that he leads from childhood to the grave, those who are most interested in the Sea Dyak must feel that his life is not what it ought to be, that it shows few signs of progress, and is too stagnant to be healthy.
They do not suppose him to be a “fortuitous aggregation of atoms that will shortly be dispersed throughout space.” They believe that there is something Divine in him holding those fleeting atoms together, and making them one, and that he is journeying through a world of tragic meaning to the significance of which he seems to be for ever blind. They long to see him brought under the elevating and purifying influence of Christianity.
It may be asked: What are the Missions, Church of England and Roman Catholic, doing to elevate the Sea Dyak? I believe they are doing the best they can, but there are many things to contend against. First, there is the natural inability of the Dyak to keep his attention fixed upon one subject for any length of time, and so it is difficult to prevent the conversation from drifting into some commonplace topic when one is talking about serious matters. Then, again, when are they to be taught? They usually come home from their work late in the evening, and then they are tired, and take no interest in anything, being greatly in need of rest. It is at all times difficult to have a quiet conversation in a Dyak house. The common veranda is suitable for many things, but it is far too noisy to be convenient for teaching. They are often away from their homes for months, and the Missionary, who generally has a large field to cover, finds he cannot visit many villages in his parish more than once in three months. How much of such teaching is likely to be remembered? Of course, things are better where the Church and Mission House are. There regular services are held, and these the Sea Dyak has the opportunity of attending. He can also come up to the Mission House and talk over matters with the Missionary in charge, or the Schoolmaster, or the Catechist. But the number of Mission Houses with resident Missionaries among the large and scattered population of Sea Dyaks in Sarawak is but small.
The up-country Mission Schools, which the Government liberally support, admit boys at an early age, when they are most susceptible to the reception of new ideas. Here they are away from Dyak surroundings, and live with the Missionary and Schoolmaster. One naturally hopes that each of these boys returning to his family will be an example to them, leading them into the right way, and no doubt the old schoolboys have an influence for good, in more ways than one, on the homes to which they return. There are, indeed, among the Christian Sea Dyaks of Sarawak some striking examples of an intelligent reception of the truth, and of a faith which is a living personal force governing their lives. But, unhappily, these cases are few as compared with the bulk of the population, and the people live such an unsettled life that missionary effort, as it exists in Sarawak at the present time, can but touch a small proportion of them, and, unless greatly reinforced, cannot affect, to any very considerable extent, the future of the Sea Dyak.
The Government, by maintaining discipline in the different districts, by punishing crime and regulating trade, is no doubt instilling into the mind of the people important principles of law and order, and it has suppressed the atrocious crimes of piracy and head-hunting. The importation of Hakka Chinese to show the Dyaks how paddy ought to be planted is an important move in the right direction, and will conduce to their prosperity if only they can be persuaded to submit to instruction. But the future of the Sea Dyak even as regards material well-being is somewhat doubtful. There are those who say that he is slowly, but none the less surely, improving, and that he will at no very distant time reach the stage of progress to which most of the Malays in the country have attained; that his means of earning a livelihood then will not be confined to paddy-planting and occasionally working jungle produce, but that he will work sago, and also engage in fishing and boat-building on a large scale. Others, however, mutter dark things concerning the Sea Dyak’s primitive methods of farming and his unwillingness to give them up, and they paint a dismal picture of villages crowded in the distant future by half-starved men and women, living on worn-out land which will not bear abundant crops, as in the old days, a weakly and sickly race, debilitated by insufficiency of food.
Whatever may be the ultimate fate of the Sea Dyak, that events will move on certain lines in the immediate future seems to be fairly probable. The Sea Dyak will go on living in the same kind of house as his ancestors had—much the same kind of life year after year. He will go on farming in his present primitive way till the soil around is worn out; then he will ask leave of the Government, as has been done in many cases lately, to remove to some new and uncultivated country, and to be allowed to cut down the jungle on the hills there. Enormous tracts of lowland jungle exist in the lower reaches of the rivers on whose banks the Sea Dyaks live; but though they are industrious enough to plant their paddy on swampy soil which was cleared of jungle generations ago, they do not seem to care to cut down lowland jungle and prepare such land for planting. No doubt the reason is that it is harder work, and that after the trees are felled, it is six or seven years before the roots have rotted, and the soil has settled, and the land is fit for planting paddy on. What the Sea Dyaks like is to be allowed to remove to some country with plenty of wooded hills. They prefer planting paddy on the hills to clearing the lowland jungle, and waiting till the swampy land is fit for planting. The old sequence of events will repeat itself. The new land, rich virgin soil at first, will, under his devastating hand, soon become exhausted and worn out. It does not take long to impoverish land if no attempt is made to enrich it.
That these melancholy forebodings may never be fulfilled must be the earnest wish of all who have in some way or other come into contact with the Sea Dyak—a warm-hearted, hospitable, cheery figure, satisfied with little, living in the present, with no thought of the future, quite content if he have food to eat and tobacco to smoke, and yet, for this very reason, because he is so satisfied with his lot, most unwilling to admit new ideas, seemingly for ever unconscious of the significance of his life, and ignorant of the infinite possibilities for good or evil which exist in him.