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If a head-hunt is to be attempted, the gall sack is removed, and is carefully examined, for if it is large and full, and the liquor in it is bitter, the enemy will be powerless; but if the sack is small, and only partially filled with a weak liquor, it will fare ill with the warriors who go into battle. For all other events, the liver itself gives the signs.
Tattooing as an evidence of a successful head-hunt is not found in this region, nor are there other marks or garments to identify the warriors. The hair is worn long, and is parted straight down the middle; the two strands are twisted, crossed in the back, then carried to the forehead, where they are again crossed, and the ends are fastened by intertwining on each side of the head.
"If no heads are brought in there will be much illness, poor harvest, little fruit, fish will not come up the river as far as our kampong, and the dogs will not care to pursue pigs," I was told by a Penihing who had taken part in a head-hunt and served his sentence in Soerabaia. "But are not people angry at losing their heads?" I asked him.
The Saloko ceremony and the diam, which accompanies it, seem to indicate that this pole originated in connection with head-hunting; and its presence in the fields gives a hint that in former times a head-hunt may have been a necessary preliminary to the rice-planting. Sogáyob: A covered porch, which is built along one side of the house during the Sayang ceremony.
He seemed reluctant at first and there was much discussion with his braves. Evidently they were more anxious to go on a head-hunt than to act the part of hosts. However, after a great deal of chatter, they consented, and the chief and his son with thirty men separated themselves from the rest of the band and led the way out of the valley up the mountainside.
They always consulted the birds when starting out on a head-hunt, he further explained. If the birds gave a certain kind of chirp and flew in a certain direction, then all was well, and the hunters would go happily forward. But if the birds acted in the opposite way, nothing in the world could persuade the chief to go on.
Failure to obey these rules is followed by swift punishment, generally meted out by the spirit of the dead. According to many informants among the older men, it was formerly necessary, following the death of an adult, for the men to put on white head-bands and go out on a head-hunt. Until their return it was impossible to hold the ceremony which released the relatives from the taboo.
The incongruity of a Christian missionary being invited on a head-hunt struck Captain Bax as rather funny in spite of its gruesomeness. This was a delicate situation to handle, but Mackay put a bold front on it. He answered indignantly that he and his friend had come in peace to visit the chief, and that he was neither kind nor honorable in trying to get his visitors to fight his battles.
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