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Updated: May 23, 2025
As with a person, so with a kapatong; nobody is permitted to step over it lest the good antoh which resides in it should become frightened and flee. Kapatongs are made from ironwood; they are of various kinds and serve many purposes. The smaller kapatongs are used for the protection of the living and all their earthly belongings or pursuits.
One has the head of a good antoh, showing big corner teeth and out-hanging tongue, as he watches that no bad antohs come to injure the dead man's soul. A woman carrying a betel box is believed to watch well because when chewing betel one does not sleep; but in her case there must always be a male kapatong near by, for a woman alone is not sufficient protection.
Some of them are very curious; a favourite one represents a pregnant woman, the idea being that a woman with a child is a good watcher, as the infant cries and keeps her awake. That the child is not yet born is of no consequence. In my possession is a kapatong of the head-hunters which represents a woman in the act of bearing a child.
A kapatong of one particular omen bird is thus capable of allaying any fear if real omen birds or snakes should pass in front of the boat. On head-hunting expeditions kapatongs were of prime importance. Smeared with blood, they were taken along for protection and guidance, and afterward were returned to the room.
It took place in front of the house where the kapala resided, and here a sacred pillar stood, by the Katingans and others called kapatong, erected on the occasion of a death. A striking feature in Dayak kampongs, especially in remote regions, is the presence of such upright pillars, carved more or less completely into human form and standing before the houses.
One man held an upright stick between the legs of the animal, while another opened the artery of the neck with one thrust of his knife. The pig was next lifted up by the carrying-pole so that the blood might run into a vessel, which was handed to a man who climbed the kapatong and smeared blood on the image of a human being at the top.
The jaws of pigs or other animals, hanging by scores in the houses, together with heads of fish and legs of birds, are similar accounts for the same purpose, and all close with the tiwah feast. A kapatong must be made, or, if the deceased were rich, perhaps two or three, which are inaugurated by the blian in the usual way, to be the ghost's attendants and guardians.
They passed in a circuit among brothers, remaining three to five years with each, and were the cause of much strife, brother having been known to kill brother if deprived of his kapatong. Many of those which came into my possession showed distinct traces of the application of blood. Some had necklaces around the necks as a sign that they had received human blood.
When a death occurs many duties are incumbent on the surviving relatives, one of the first being to make the kapatong, the soul of which waits on and guards the soul of the departed one. A good-sized domestic pig had been brought in dependent from a long pole about which its feet had been tied, and it was deposited at the base of the kapatong.
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