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Updated: June 20, 2025
In the calm evening after a light shower, with the moon almost full, their tall stems and beautiful crowns were reflected in the placid water. The Katingans guard and protect these trees because they are the abode of bees, and when the Malays cut them down the Dayaks are indignant. Both honey and wax are gathered, the latter to be sold.
With the Katingans it is the custom for the blian to deposit in a cup containing uncooked rice the objects withdrawn from a patient. Having danced and spoken to the cereal he throws it away and with it the articles, the rice advising the antoh that the small stones, or whatever was eliminated, which he placed in the patient, are now returned to him.
While all Katingans eat snakes and large lizards, the upper ones do not eat rusa but the lower ones do. Their total number is estimated to be about 6,000. In 1911-1912 this river was visited by cholera and smallpox, which reduced the population by 600 and caused the abandonment of some kampongs.
In the great rivers, like the Barito and the Katingan, are many of huge size, larger than those in the mountains. Trees, animals, and even all lifeless objects, are possessed by antohs good or bad. According to the Katingans the sun is a benevolent masculine antoh which sleeps at night. The moon is a feminine antoh, also beneficent. Stars are the children of the sun and moon some good, some bad.
These Dayaks, who are shy but very friendly, are said to have immigrated here over thirty years ago. They are mostly of medium size, the women stocky, with thick ankles, though otherwise their figures are quite good. The Ot-Danum men, like the Murungs, Siangs, and Katingans, place conspicuously on the calf of the leg a large tatu mark representing the full moon.
The killing of a fowl is not sufficient to accomplish this; that of a pig helps a little, a water-buffalo more, but to kill a man and bring the head makes the kampong completely clean. With the Katingans a head hanging in the house is considered a far better guardian than the wooden figures called kapatongs, which play an important part in the life of that tribe.
The Katingans are shy, kind-hearted natives, the great majority of them being unusually free from skin disease. No illness was apparent. With some of the Lower Katingans the calf of the leg was below normal size. This was the case with three women in Pendahara, and also with a blian who otherwise was a stout man.
As these birds are called by the same names in the tribes of the Katingans, Ot-Danums, Kahayans, and others, it may be presumed that their worship is widely prevalent in Borneo. Among most if not all native races certain persons occupy themselves with religious services and at the same time cure disease.
If the person is very ill, a gong and a handful of rice is the fee, but should the patient die the gong is returned. With the Katingans a good antoh is believed to reside in the saliva applied by the blian for healing purposes to that part of a body which is in pain. The saliva drives out the malevolent antoh, or, in other words, cures the pain.
The Duhoi and the Katingans use the contrivance for curing disease, though not in the way we should expect, by carrying away the disorder, but by making a present of the prahu to a good antoh to facilitate his journey. The name of the flying prahu is menama, in. Katingan, melambong. The more or less wavy carvings of the edge represent the beach.
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