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Updated: June 18, 2025
Their beautiful carrying-baskets and other articles were standing in a continuous row around the walls. These Kenyahs did not seem to have been here before and were agreeable people with whom to deal. I have not, before nor since, seen such a tempting collection of the short sword of the Dayak which has grown to be almost a part of himself.
Allatala, the rendering of the Mahommedan Tuan Allah, is accepted as an antoh also by certain Dayak tribes in Southern Borneo. Steel trunks, as sold by Chinese or Malays, are much in favour with the Dayaks, and were observed wherever I travelled. It is one of the first articles that those who have taken part in an expedition to New Guinea will buy to take home.
In many cases they are carried with small china pots of oil, which are used to rub on the body as a universal remedy. A curious object to be occasionally seen in some Sea Dayak houses is the empugau. It is a blackened bundle hung in a basket among the heads above the hearth.
Another plan sometimes adopted is to build a small house for the newcomers closely adjoining the main house, but joined to it only by an open platform. We have made out tables showing the kinship of the inhabitants of several Kenyah long houses and of one Sea Dayak house, following the example and method of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers.
Just as darkness was setting in we arrived at a Dayak village, consisting of one very long house, which I afterwards found to exceed two hundred feet in length. It was situated about one hundred yards from the stream. No sooner had we sighted it than the air resounded with the loud beating of large gongs and plenty of shouting. There was a great commotion among the Dayaks.
With the Bukats, rusa must not be eaten unless one has a child, but with the Punans it is permissible in any case. The meat of pig is often eaten when ten days old, and is preferred to that which is fresh. In this they share the taste of the Dayak tribes I have met, with the exception of the Long-Glats.
The bath over he takes the child into his arms, ascends the ladder of the river bank and carries it home as silent as when it went forth. Sometimes one may hear children cry from being cross, but as a rule they are charming. Monkeys, including the orang-utan, are eaten, but not the crocodile nor the tiger-cat. In accordance with the prevailing Dayak custom men and women eat at the same time.
For the latter reason the Dayak will not allude by name to the small pox, but will call it "the chief" or "jungle-leaves"; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the "old man with the fur coat"; in Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or "Lord"; while in more civilized communities such sayings are current as "talk of the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also compare such expressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious ones" for the Furies, and other like euphemisms.
He spoke several Dayak dialects, but not Dutch, still less English, for Malay is the lingua franca of the Dutch Indies as well as of the Malay Peninsula. As we anchored for the night I heard for the first time, from the hills that rose near by, the loud defiant cry of the argus pheasant. How wildly weird it sounds on a quiet evening!
This description of the house I resided in for some time, applies more or less to all the Dayak houses I saw in Borneo. This house or village was called Menus, and the old chief's name was Usit. In spelling these names one has to be entirely guided by the sounds and write them after the fashion of the English method of spelling Malay.
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