A WAR EXPEDITION
About a year and a half before my first visit to Borneo, a Chinese trader, in the upper Tinjar River, had been killed solely for the sake of his head. Killing is by no means uncommon in Borneo; but this was a murder so cold-blooded, and the victim, moreover, a Chinaman, so unprepared for the game of head-hunting, that an unusual effort was made to find and punish the murderer. Although the head, just after it was cut off, had been hung up in the veranda of a house, and although the river-bank in front had been enlivened with a ‘Death-post,’ whereto portions of the victim had been attached, by way of public notice that a head had just been taken, the perpetrator of the deed showed, however, a guilty reluctance in claiming any glory, or even in making himself known; furthermore, not a member of that household, nor of any household on the Tinjar River, would give the slightest clue to the identity of the murderer. All the Chiefs, hitherto trusted, told endless lies about the crime, and with such success that they believed that they had at last baffled and befooled the ‘Prenta,’ the Government.
One day, about two years after the murder, a Malay trader, who had been up among the Tinjar people for many months, and was perhaps feeling a little sore over his poor bargains, let fall to Dr. Hose, the English Resident of the Baram district, some hints that again set in motion the wheels of justice and soon fastened the guilt of that murder on Tinggi, a dweller in the house of Tama Talip. The culprit was at once summoned to appear for trial at the Baram Fort, but his people hid him and resolutely defied the Government; consequently, a reward was offered for his capture alive, or for his head, if dead. Nevertheless, the Tinjar people continued to conceal and protect Tinggi, even after an influential Chief had been deposed by the Government for his duplicity in the matter, and, possibly, for the transparent quality of the lies he manufactured. There remained, therefore, nothing to be done but to appoint an entire stranger, a native from another river, to lead an expedition against the Lerons, the tribe that was protecting Tinggi. The man thus appointed was Tama Bulan, a Kenyah, and the most influential Chief in the Baram district, who accepted the appointment and gathered a force to ascend the Tinjar. Among his followers was Juman, a Kayan Chief and the lucky and sole possessor of a gun. Tama Bulan had been strictly commanded to take Tinggi, and no one else but Tinggi; on no account was he to suffer his Kayan or Kenyah followers to kill innocent people. Juman, with a small party ascended the Tinjar, to a point opposite the house of the Lerons. Tinggi, the murderer, emerged unattended from the house, entered a light canoe, and was crossing the river, apparently to surrender himself, when, at the last moment, he seemed to change his mind, and resolved to attempt an escape. In an instant, taking advantage of the swift current, he was dashing past Juman’s camp. The details of his death I had, as follows, from Juman himself: ‘Tinggi came down the river, Tuan, lying flat in his canoe until he was just opposite to me and my men; then he stood up, straight, brandishing his spear and his parang, and shouting defiance to us all. But,’ continued Juman, his eyes glowing with excitement, ‘I was all ready, Tuan; I raised this “snappang”[8] of mine, that the Government gave me; it was loaded full of nails; and I shot that insect, Tinggi, right here,—through the breast. Over he fell backward in his boat; he kept on waving his arms; I paddled fast after him in a canoe; I got along side of him; I caught hold of his head; I pulled it over to the edge of the boat; with two chops of my parang, like that and like that, off it came.’
This head was the first Juman had ever taken, and measureless was his pride in displaying the tattooing, to which he was thereby entitled, on the back of one of his hands; the other hand was to be similarly decorated as soon as the harvesting was over. Tinggi’s head he was allowed to hang from the roof of his veranda, opposite his door, in his house at Bowang Takun. Although this slaying of Tinggi was retributive justice, yet according to Borneo sentiment, it was a causa belli, and when I arrived at the Baram River, on a second visit to Borneo, about three months after these events, there were already reports of retaliating expeditions led by Tinggi’s brother, Kilup, in which the Tinjar people generally joined, against the peaceful dwellers on the Baram; women had been frightened from the rice-clearings by the traces of recent camp-fires, and of fresh footprints in the adjacent jungle, and doubtless would have been attacked, and killed, and decapitated, had not their husbands mounted guard each day, clad in war-coat and war-cap, and fully armed with spear, parang, and shield. Reports of new disturbances and threatened outrage came by every canoe from up the river that halted at the Baram Bazaar, until finally Dr. Hose determined to crush out this portentous feud betimes before it reached greater and, possibly, unmanageable proportions.
BORNEAN WAR COSTUME.
THE FEATHERS OF THE HORN-BILL ON THE WAR-CLOAK, AND THE TUFTS OF HUMAN HAIR ON THE SHIELD, WHICH THE WARRIOR HOLDS, ARE THE BADGES OF A SUCCESSFUL HEAD-HUNTER.
The whole Kayan population of the river was, moreover, somewhat in a commotion, owing to the accidental death of Oyang Luhat, one of its influential Chiefs. The control of three or four hundred people had thus fallen to his eldest son, Abun, and the large household were beginning to fret under the tedious restraints of the prolonged mourning; these restraints could be removed only by adding to the household collection a beneficent fresh head or two; consequently, under a new and vigorous young leader there was imminent danger of an extensive and formidable raid upon all the Tinjar people. Furthermore, it happened to be just at the beginning of the rainy season, when there was nothing to be done but to wait for the rice, already planted, to sprout and grow. Even in highly civilized communities, Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, so, too, in Borneo what can be more natural than that days of idleness should prompt a mischievous use of spear and parang?
His Excellency, Rajah Brooke, (this wise and beneficent ruler,) has, of course, made every possible effort to eradicate the custom of head-hunting in Sarawak, but in a country without roads, and where news travels no faster than the river’s sluggish current, swift retribution for any outrage is impossible; and, with the small force of Englishmen who act as his Residents, it is almost inconceivably difficult, in districts isolated by well-nigh impenetrable jungle, to follow up and arrest any offender, much more a head-hunter, whom the natives themselves, holding head-hunting to be a most praiseworthy virtue, screen to the best of their ability.