This Edition, with Heliotype plates, is
limited to Five Hundred Copies.
THE
HOME-LIFE
OF
BORNEO HEAD-HUNTERS
ITS FESTIVALS AND FOLK-LORE
BY
WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS, 3rd, M. D.; F. R. G. S.
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; OF THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY;
DE LA SOCIÉTÉ DE GÉOGRAPHIE; FELLOW OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
INSTITUTE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1902
Copyright, 1902, by W. H. Furness, 3rd
Westcott & Thomson,
Electrotypers, Phila.
Press of J. B. Lippincott Company,
Phila.
While to scenery, it is distance,—and photography,—whichlends enchantment, it is, on the contrary, propinquity which, inmy experience, lends to the Borneo Head-Hunters and to theirHome-life, a charm which cannot be wholly dispelled even by theskulls hanging from the rafters of their houses. After livingamong them, for months at a time, an insight is gained into theirindividualities and peculiarities which a casual sojourn can neverdisclose. Some, of course, are ill-tempered, crotchety, selfish;others, again, are mild, gentle, generous. The youths have theirlanguishing loves, which they are eager to confide to sympatheticears. The maidens are coy, or demure, or bashful, when theirlovers are near, and delight in teasing and tormenting. TheBornean mothers and fathers think their babies the prettiest thatever were born; and the young boys are as boyish as school-boyshere at home, and are quite as up to all mischief.
It is so much easier to descend than it is to rise in what wecall civilization, that, before a month is passed in a Kayan or aKenyah house, the host and hostess, who, on first sight, seemedto be uncouth savages, frightfully mutilated as to eyes, ears, andteeth, are regarded as kind-hearted, devoted friends. It becomeswell-nigh impossible to realise that they cannot add the simplestof sums without the aid of fingers and toes; and that Cæsar,Shakespeare, and Washington are to them meaningless, unpronounceablewords.
Their honesty, (in a twelve months’ residence the only thingstolen from me was a tooth-powder bottle,) their simple, child-likenature, their keen interest in the pursuit of the moment, andtheir vivacious excitability, place them in advance of any ‘savages’with whom I have ever, in my many wanderings, come incontact.
The greater part of my time in Borneo was spent among theKayans and Kenyahs of the Baram district of Sarawak; consequently,[vi]in the following pages I have barely mentioned theDayaks, (or Ibans, as they call themselves,) or any of the coasttribes, of whose home-life I saw comparatively little; so muchhas been already written about these tribes that I am jealous formy friends of the far interior.
I have refrained from giving dates, or details, as to t