The home-life of Borneo head-hunters

by William Henry Furness

Kayan Tattooing Instrument. Two-thirds of the natural size.

The pattern to be tattooed is marked out on the skin by means of wooden stamps whereon the raised patterns have been carved out, leaving the designs in high relief; these stamps are inked and pressed on the skin, leaving a print which sufficiently guides the operator. For tattooing, three needles are bound tightly together, and inasmuch as it is considered advisable to force them obliquely into the skin, they are inserted slightly slantwise in the head of the wooden holder (shaped somewhat like a hammer), and enveloped in gutta-percha to about an eighth of an inch from their points, which holds them firmly in place and regulates the depth to which they may penetrate the skin. Not infrequently the handle and the head of the needle-holder are ornamented with carving.

The ink is made of the juice of sugar-cane, thickened with the soot of damar gum; it is kept in a bowl of soft wood, wherein the needles can be dipped without dulling the points; and finally the operator provides several pieces of soft bark-cloth for wiping away the blood, which flows profusely. All these instruments are usually kept in a cob-webby, sooty, blood-smeared box; but as heirlooms and tools they are of almost priceless value.

During the operation the girl sits or lies upon the floor; beside her squats the operator, with her toes pressing upon the skin to be tattooed; an assistant on the opposite side keeps the skin stretched. At the edge of the design marked out by the wooden stamp is placed a roll of soft bark-cloth, so thick that when the handle of the needle-holder rests upon it the needles exactly touch the skin. The needles, well dipped in the ink, carry enough fluid to tattoo lines several inches in length. Using the roll of cloth as a rest, the operator follows out the design and punctures the skin to a proper and uniform depth by means of quick taps with a small iron rod on that portion of the handle which rests on the roll. The assistant, following the track of the needles, wipes away superfluous ink and blood. (Experto crede, when I say that the pain of the Kayan operation, even for small designs, is very considerable; when endured for more than an hour, it becomes torture. Having also experienced for many consecutive hours the Japanese method, I can affirm that in comparison the Kayan verges on the inhuman.) A roll of bark-cloth or a stick is held by the victim, and, as an anæsthetic during the operation, clutched with desperate strength. (The photograph herewith given necessarily had to be taken in a very dark room. A magnifying glass will greatly assist an examination of the details.)

TATTOOING A KAYAN GIRL.

WHILE THE SKIN IS KEPT TENSE BY THE HANDS OF AN ASSISTANT AND BY THE FEET OF THE TATTOOER, THE DESIGN, WHICH HAS BEEN MARKED ON THE SKIN WITH INK-SMEARED WOODEN STAMPS, IS PRICKED IN BY TAPPING ON THE BACK OF THE NEEDLE-HOLDER WITH AN IRON OR A WOODEN BEATER.

Of course, the complete pattern on women is never finished at one sitting; it would involve more suffering than can be borne without, perhaps, serious shock; but the martyrdom is often endured for a couple of hours, and then, to fill in chance gaps and weak places, that which has been already pricked in, and is become an exquisitely tender welt, is mercilessly jabbed and hammered over again, not only once but even twice. The instant that the poor wretch of a girl is released from the hands, and toes, of her tormentor, she runs with the swiftness of agony to the river, there to soothe with the cool flowing water the frightful, burning ache. The absorption of so much foreign matter by the lymphatics often induces high fever; suppuration also not infrequently results from the septic manner in which the operation is performed; this naturally injures the sharpness of the lines. After one session, the tattooing is not resumed until the skin is entirely healed, unless an approaching marriage necessitates the utmost speed; should a woman have a child before her tattooing is completed, she is lastingly disgraced. The Kenyah women are tattooed only on the forearms and hands and on the dorsum of the foot, not on the legs or thighs.

Woe worth the behests of Bornean fashion! Tattooing is not the only torture that the Kayan or Kenyah damsel must endure who would fain be a belle; her ear-lobes must be pierced and stretched with weights until they hang down to her very bosom in long, slim loops of skin. One evening, in Tama Bulan’s house, I was entertaining his daughter, Bulan, with the pictures in some illustrated papers that I had brought with me, and was trying my best (my fluency in Malay, at that time, was limited) to make them intelligible to her. As I have mentioned above, she was filled with boundless amazement at the slim and wasp-like waists of the women, and utterly failed to understand how any woman could endure the hourly suffering entailed by being horribly squeezed in by steel bands, which, I managed to tell her, were the secret of the extraordinary and unnatural shape. But while in the very act of gazing and marvelling at these pictures of what rational human beings will suffer in order to appear more beautiful, she was herself constantly relieving her poor, elongated ear-lobes of the several pounds weight of copper rings dangling and clinking on her shoulders, by sustaining in her hands, if only for a brief moment, these monstrous demands of Bornean fashion.