(4.) SPEAR.
(See [page 1132].)
(5.) DYAK SHIELD
(See [page 1128].)
I insert also on page 1129, a [figure] of a shield in my collection, which I believe to be of Bornean make, the materials and mode of employing them being evidently Bornean. In shape it exactly resembles the small shields used by horsemen in the early age of English history, and, small as it is, it forms a very efficient defence. It is twenty inches in length, and thirteen inches in width, and it is wielded by means of a separate handle, firmly lashed to the body of the shield by strips of rattan. The characteristic feature of the shield is the manner in which it is built up of a number of pieces, the whole, though merely bound together by rattan, being as firm as if it were cut out of one piece of wood.
If the reader will look at [figure 2], which shows the back of the shield, he will see that it is made of four flat pieces of wood, which are laid side by side. These pieces are of a lightish colored wood, and are but slightly smoothed. The handle is cut from a separate piece of wood, which runs the whole length of the shield. As is usual with Bornean weapons, the handle is much too small for the grasp of an European.
The front of the shield is made of a single flat piece of wood, to which the others are lashed, or rather sewed, by means of rattan passing through holes. In order to hold all these cross-pieces more firmly together, a deep groove has been cut in a thick rattan, which has been bound round the shield so as to receive the edges of the wood in the groove, and has been sewed to them by rattan at regular intervals.
The shield is further strengthened by an upright piece of wood, which runs along the front, and to which the handle at the back is lashed by rattan, so that the handle and the corresponding piece in front actually strengthen the shield instead of being a strain upon it. The materials have been chosen with the eye for color which the Dyak usually possesses. The thin flat wooden plate which forms the front of the shield is nearly black, the central piece is yellowish white, and the rattans with which it is edged and sewed are of a bright yellow. The weight of the shield is exactly a pound and a half. Besides the centre ornament on the front, a [section] of the shield is also given, so as to show the form of the handle, and the slight curvature of the whole implement.
The perpetual feuds that rage among the Dyak tribes are mostly caused by the practice of “head hunting,” which is exactly analogous to the scalp hunting propensities of the North American tribes. Mr. Boyle has sketched the outlines of this horrid custom in a few nervous words, which will afterward be examined in detail. “The great tribes of Sakarrang and Saribas have never been more than nominally subject to the Malays of Kuching or Bruni, and Sir James Brooke is the first master whom they have really obeyed. Every year a cloud of murderous pirates issued from their rivers and swept the adjacent coasts. No man was safe by reason of his poverty or insignificance, for human heads were the booty sought by these rovers, and not wealth alone. Villages were attacked in the dead of the night, and every adult cut off; the women and grown girls were frequently slaughtered with the men, and children alone were preserved to be the slaves of the conquerors.
“Never was warfare so terrible as this. Head hunting, a fashion of comparatively modern growth, became a mania, which spread like a horrible disease over the whole land. No longer were the trophies regarded as proofs of individual valor; they became the indiscriminate property of the clan, and were valued for their number alone. Murder lurked in the jungle and on the river; the aged of the people were no longer safe among their own kindred, and corpses were secretly disinterred to increase the grisly store.