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Updated: June 6, 2025
The Ibans use a rather greater variety of weapons than the Kayans, in that they have spears whose blades bear barbs which prevent the withdrawal of the blade from the body of the enemy without great violence. The Klemantan tribes are on the whole far less warlike than Kayans, Kenyahs, and Ibans. Their offensive warfare is usually on a small scale, and is undertaken primarily for revenge.
The Ibans being great wanderers, small parties of them, engaged perhaps in working jungle produce, will settle for some weeks in a household of Klemantans, and, after being received hospitably, and sometimes even after contracting marriages with members of the household, will seize an opportunity, when most of the men of the house are from home, to take the heads of all the men, women, and children who remain, and to flee with them to their own distant homes.
Before bringing this chapter to an end, we would point out that among the facts we have described there are some which seem to suggest a possible and, indeed, as it seems to us, a very natural and probable mode of origin of totem-worship. We refer to the varieties of the NGARONG of the Ibans and sporadic analogous cases among the other tribes.
Last year some relatives of these Ibans moved to this village, and for three months the knowledge of the part played by the porcupines was hidden from them as a mysterious secret.
It seems probable that the taking of heads was introduced to Borneo by Kayans when they entered the island, probably some few centuries ago, and that the Klemantans and other tribes, like the Ibans, have adopted the custom from their example.
It was through their association with the Malays in these piratical expeditions that the Ibans became known to Europeans as the Sea Dayaks. It seems not impossible that the practice of taking the heads of fallen enemies arose by extension of the custom of taking the hair for the ornamentation of the shield and sword-hilt.
My visits did not extend to the Muruts in the north of Borneo, who are known to indulge excessively in native rice brandy. Nor was I present at any harvest feast, but according to reliable report, "strong drink is seldom or never abused" by the tribes of Borneo. The Muruts and the Ibans are the exceptions.
On the last occasion on which Bukit Batu was used in this way, two Iban chiefs established themselves on the hill and defied the government of Sarawak for a period of four years, during which the hill became a place of refuge for all evil-doers and outlaws among the Ibans of the Rejang and neighbouring districts, who built their houses on ledges of the mountain some four hundred feet above the level of the river.
The hornbill must be included among the sacred birds of the Iban, although it does not give omens. On the occasion of making peace between hostile tribes, the Ibans sometimes make a large wooden image of the hornbill and hang great numbers of cigarettes upon it; and these are taken from it during the ceremony and smoked by all the men taking part in it.
The Kenyahs suspend the heads in the same way as the Kayans, but most of the Klemantans and Ibans use in place of the long beam a strong basket-work in the shape of a cone, the apex being attached to the roof beams, and the heads tied in two or three tiers in the wall of the cone. In either case the heads hang some five or six feet above the floor, where they are out of reach of the dogs. Defence
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