The home-life of Borneo head-hunters

by William Henry Furness

Of course, it is quite unbefitting for women to go through the rite of slashing at the head; they never go on war expeditions. Therefore, they are freed from their mourning by being sprinkled with water dipped from the river in the palm leaves wherewith the head has been wrapped. Thereafter they resume their ornaments of bead-work, their ponderous brass ear-rings, and don fillets of gaily coloured cloth.

When every member of the household has been freed from the taboo by these rites, a fragment of the skull, wrapped in palm leaves, is attached to a long rope of bamboo twigs, and solemnly carried to the grave of the Chief, which, in the present case, was about half a mile down-stream. In the path which the sons and near relatives have to take to reach the grave, a living chicken, with its legs tied, is placed, and on it each one, in passing, must tread, (the poor fowl does not survive more than two or three footfalls.) The fragment of skull, lifted on the tip of a long bamboo pole, is hung to the edge of the ornamentation on top of the grave. When this is finished, all that can be possibly done to honour a dead Bornean Chief has been performed.

Wooden effigies of Dr. Hose and Tama Bulan, which were left to decay in the jungle, and thereby accomplish the death of the originals. One-half natural size.

I think the one on the left is Dr. Hose.

At night, the men who were away in the rice-fields, when the war-party returned, attain their freedom by smearing with the blood of fowls a little piece of wood cut into a brush of fine strips at one end; this brush they fasten on the side of one of their large basket-work fish-traps, placed on the floor of the veranda, and against this ensanguined brush they rub their knees, before uttering their prayer and giving the shout and the leap which the warriors gave outside the house. The fish-trap, on this occasion, they call their Father; ‘it catches everything it sees, and is afraid of nothing.’

GRAVE OF OYONG LUHAT, THE FORMER CHIEF AT LONG LAMA.

A PIECE OF THE SKULL BORROWED TO TAKE THE PLACE OF A FRESHLY TAKEN HEAD HAS BEEN PLACED ON THE FLAT ROOF ABOVE THE COFFIN, AND THE LONG STREAMER OF SHREDDED PALM LEAVES ATTACHED TO THIS HALLOWED FRAGMENT OF SKULL STILL HANGS FROM THE TOP OF THE GRAVE. THE BODY OF THE CHIEF RESTS IN A COFFIN HEWN OUT OF A LOG AND PLACED HORIZONTALLY ACROSS THE TOP OF THE HIGH COLUMN. OVER THE COFFIN IS FASTENED A LARGE, SQUARE SLAB OF WOOD, CUT FROM A FLAT BUTTRESS ROOT OF A TAPANG TREE. THE STICKS PROJECTING FROM THE SQUARE TOP OF THE GRAVE ARE STRUNG WITH CIGARETTES, WHICH CARRY MESSAGES FROM THOSE WHO MADE THEM TO FRIENDS AND RELATIVES IN THE NEXT WORLD.

All hours of the next day are devoted to a promiscuous slaughter of pigs and chickens, and to the preparation of a great feast; every one contributes a pig or a fowl, according to his means; and on every pig’s liver the fateful omens must be deciphered. At intervals, along the whole length of the interminable veranda, are little enclosures wherein sit the shrewd old Dayongs, whose exhortations, before the slaughter, are potent with the pigs to have nice, lucky livers. As each pig, with its legs tied, is brought and laid before the Dayong to be exhorted and then killed, the owner pays the Dayong a small fee of a few beads, a strip of cloth, or the blade of a parang; after this preliminary fee-giving (a custom, not unknown elsewhere), the owner enters the little enclosure, and, seating himself beside a large gong, proceeds to bang it with a stick, and make as much din as possible; all the while the Dayong lectures and exhorts the wretched pig. The owner while beating the gong pays absolutely no attention to the Dayong’s words, which may be possibly etiquette, but is certainly not surprising,—not a syllable could be audible above the deafening squealing, clattering, banging resounding on all sides. Very likely the Dayong desires to have his platitudes overheard by no one except by the pig, whose attention to duty is every now and then enforced by a vigorous thump in the side from the fist, or a dig in the ribs from the thumb of his ghostly exhorter. When the Dayong thinks the auspicious moment has arrived, and that the swine has caught the drift of the exhortation, and has obligingly modified the streakings of his liver, he plunges a knife in the animal’s throat, catches the spouting blood in a bowl, and, before life is extinct, rips open the paunch, and extracts the dripping liver, whereon, in characters legible only to the Dayong, the pig had inscribed an assured knowledge of the future. Now and then, an avaricious Dayong will persist in reading dreadful portents on the liver; of course, a second pig must be brought, and a second fee paid; and so on until the Dayong is satisfied, then at once the signs become good. On the present occasion eighty-five pigs and sixty fowls were sacrificed. The young boys who have been on the expedition are made to feel that they are to be numbered among the warriors, by being compelled, on that first evening after their return from the head-hunt, to cook their own supper of pork and rice, and to sleep in the veranda among the grown-up men.