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And since the Kayans and Kenyahs were already in possession of the upper river and considered themselves the dominant tribes and lords of the land, it was inevitable that there should grow up a keen rivalry which could hardly fail to lead occasionally to armed conflict.
He was enthusiastic over the superb muscles of the Kenyahs who had just arrived and were camping in a house built for such occasions on top of a small hill a short distance away. Cows, brown in colour, were grazing in a large field near by, and I enjoyed the unusual luxury of fresh milk five small bottles a day.
Of these we distinguish six principal groups: Sea Dayaks or Ibans, the Kayans, Kenyahs, Klemantans, Muruts, Punans. A census of the population has been made in most of the principal districts of Sarawak and of Dutch Borneo; but as no census of the whole country has hitherto been made, it is impossible to state with any pretence to accuracy the number of the inhabitants of the island.
Its words are of a language called Bungkok. The Kenyahs have the same song, and when I sang it to the Penihings on the Upper Mahakam they also understood it. At times as they paddled along, the men would sing without words, but more impressively, a song which until recently was used when the Kayan returned to a kampong from a successful head-hunting expedition.
An officer of the Dutch army in Borneo told me that from military reports and the testimony of Kenyahs he estimated that the Brem-Brem is a continuous stretch of kihams for thirty kilometres. The Kenyahs had told him that they walked two days and he thought that for four kilometres the river ran underground.
The remedy, which had been taught them by the Saputans, consists of two kinds of bark and the large leaves of a jungle plant with red flowers, one of which was growing near my tent. All the tribes visited by me suffer more or less from various kinds of skin diseases caused by micro-parasitic animals, the Kenyahs and Oma-Sulings in a much less degree.
Such a chief was Laki Avit, a Kenyah, who, some twenty years before the Rajah's officers first entered upon the task of administering the Baram, was recognised throughout all the interior of the district as the leading chief, a position which could only have been achieved by the consistent pursuit of a wise policy of conciliation and just dealing between. Kenyahs and Kayans.
The Kayans avoid the skin of the tiger even more strictly than the Kenyahs or any other tribe; even a great chief will not touch a tiger-skin, and we have known one refuse to enter a house because he knew that it contained a tiger-skin war-coat. It is very common in their district, but they will kill it only when it is stealing their rice-crop; and they will never eat it as other peoples do.
Kenyahs when on the warpath frequently tie a band of plaited palm fibre round the wrist for the same object. The tatu of the backs of the hands is avowedly copied from the Kayans, but has a different name applied to it KUKUM. The metatarsus is tatued with broad bars, IWA, very like the foot tatu of Kayan women of the slave or of the middle class; lines known as JANGO encircle the ankle.
The Punans make use of all the omen-birds that are used by the Kenyahs, and they regard them as in some degree sacred, and not to be killed or eaten. They seem to read the omens in much the same way as the Kenyahs do; but they are not so constant in their cult of the omen-birds, and Punans of different districts differ a good deal from one another in this respect.
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