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Updated: June 2, 2025
L.F.J. Rijckmans, was kind enough to order the government's good river steamer Otto to take us up the Barito River to Puruk Tjahu, a distant township, where boats and men might be secured and where the garrison would supply me with a small escort. Toward the end of August we departed. On account of the shallow water the Otto has a flat bottom and is propelled by a large wheel at the stern.
If any one with the hope of possibly finding a new species of mammal should care to follow the matter up, Kelasin on the Upper Barito would not be an extremely difficult place to reach, with good men.
The usual payment appears to be twelve ringits or twelve sarongs, which the blian at the wedding places on top of his head, while with his right hand he shakes two metal rings provided with rattles. On the Barito I noted the same kind of rattles used on a similar occasion. He asks Dewa not to make them ill, and a hen as well as boiled rice is sacrificed to this antobu.
There appeared to be more Siangs than Murungs here, the former, who are neighbours and evidently allied to the latter, occupying the inland to the north of the great rivers on which the Murungs are chiefly settled, part of the Barito and the Laong. They were shy, friendly natives, and distinguished by well-grown mustaches, an appendage I also later noted among the Upper Katingans.
Under this very elastic heading he would include the Ot-Danum, Siang, and Ulu Ajar of Nieuwenhuis, but we treat of these in the next section. The ethnology of the Barito, Kahayan, and Katingan river-basins sadly needs further investigation; nothing of importance has been published on this region since the appearance of Schwaner's book on Borneo more than fifty years ago.
The men of the lower left-hand branch of the Barito and of the midcourse of that river are often not tatued at all, but such tatu as was extant in 1850 was highly significant according to Schwaner's account; thus, a figure composed of two spiral lines interlacing each other and with stars at the extremities tatued on the shoulder signified that the man had taken several heads; two lines meeting each other at an acute angle behind the finger nails signified dexterity in wood-carving; a star on the temple was a sign of happiness in love.
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