While so many Dyak Christians are most unwilling to give up their old heathen customs, these two Christian Dyak Chiefs happily took up the right attitude in such an important matter in the eyes of the Dyaks as head-taking.
CHAPTER VI
SOCIAL LIFE
Social position of the women—Dyak food—Meals—Cooking food in bamboo—Law with regard to leaving a Dyak house—Rule of the headman—A Dyak trial—Power of the headman in old days—Dyak wealth—Valuable jars—Gusi—Naga—Rusa—A convenient dream—Trading incident at Sebetan—Land tenure—Laws about fruit-trees—Slavery—Captives in war—Slaves for debt.
The Dyak woman does not hold, as in most Eastern countries, an inferior and humiliating position. As has already been stated, the women do no more than a fair share of the work: they cook, make garments and mats, help in the lighter part of farm work, and husk and pound the grain. The men do the timber-felling, wood-cutting, clearing of the land, house and boat building, and all the heavier work.
When the Dyaks meet together to discuss any matter such as the advisability of migrating to a new house, the women are allowed to take part in the discussion. Generally the men sit round in a circle, and behind them are the women and children. And it is no unusual thing to hear a woman express an opinion, and her remarks are listened to with deference by the men.
The Dyak women have no reason to complain of their lot. Their wants are few and easily satisfied. They may have sometimes a little more than their fair share of work, but this is always the case where the men spend much time on the war-path, and as the women keep the men up to the mark in this respect, and often will not marry a man who has not been successful in war, they are scarcely to be pitied if extra work fall to their lot during the time the men are away fighting.
The women are earlier risers than the men, and retire to bed earlier. They generally go to the river as soon as they wake, carrying their water-gourds with them. They have a bath, fill their gourds with water, and return to the house to cook the morning meal.
The principal article of food is rice, which is cooked in brass or iron pots. When the rice is ready, it is put out on plates. They eat with their rice either vegetables or fish. Sometimes they have the flesh of wild pig or venison, but that is not usual. A favourite method of cooking is to put the proper quantity of fish or vegetables or meat with sufficient water and a little salt into a newly-cut bamboo. The mouth is then stopped up with leaves, and the bamboo is placed over the fire, resting on a stone at an angle of 45 degrees or more. By the time the bamboo is thoroughly charred the contents are sufficiently cooked, and it is taken from the fire and emptied out into a plate. Sometimes rice is cooked in bamboos, and when it is ready to be eaten, the bamboo is split and torn off in strips, when the rice is found well cooked inside—a stiff mass moulded in the form of the bamboo.