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Updated: May 26, 2025
Under this name we group together a number of tribes which, though in our opinion closely allied, are widely scattered in all parts of Borneo, and present considerable diversities of language and custom. In physical and mental characters they show affinities to the Kenyahs on the one hand and to the Muruts on the other.
The Ibans are by nature a less serious-minded and less religious people than the Kenyahs and Kayans, and they have a greater variety of myths and extravagant superstitions; nevertheless, they use the fowl and the pig as sacrificial animals in much the same way as the other tribes.
It seems to us probable that in this case the Kenyahs have carried further the tendency we noted in the Kayans to allow the omen birds to figure so prominently in their rites and prayers as to obscure the gods whose messengers they are; and that BALI FLAKI has in this way driven into the background, and more or less completely taken the place of, a god of war whose name even has been forgotten by many of the Kenyahs, if not by all of them.
It is supposed to be the spirit of some ancestor renowned for bravery, or some other virtue, who at death has taken an animal form ... it is revealed in a dream what animal form the honoured dead has taken." Magic, Spells, and Charms Magic is in a comparatively neglected and backward condition among the Kayans and Kenyahs, Punans, Ibans, and the more warlike up-country Klemantans.
Although Kenyahs will not kill a hawk, they would-not prevent us from shooting one if it stole their chickens; for they say that a hawk who will do that is a low-class fellow, a cad, in fact, for there are social grades among the hawks just as there are among themselves.
Below them we halted and threw explosive Favier into the water in the hope of getting fish, and as soon as the upheaval of the water began the Kenyahs, as if by a given signal, hurried all the prahus out to the scene. With other natives than Dayaks this would have given me some anxiety, as the boats were heavily laden and contained valuable cameras and instruments.
They hold the view that the Kayans have imparted to the Kenyahs and other tribes the "principal elements of the peculiar culture which they now have in common." The Malays undoubtedly were the first to employ the word Dayak as a designation for the native tribes except the nomadic, and in this they have been followed by both the Dutch and the British.
Although the expedition failed to secure the submission of any large number of the Kayans and Kenyahs, it established the Rajah's authority as far as it had penetrated; for a number of Klemantan villages settled in the middle reaches of the Rejang accepted the offer of peace, and a number of their chiefs brought the Sarawak flag down river and celebrated the traditional peace-making rites with the Rajah's representative.
Like the Ibans, the Kenyahs make peace more readily than the Kayans, who nurse their grievances and seek redress after long intervals of time. The Ibans conduct their warfare less systematically, and with far less discipline than the Kayans and Kenyahs.
The methods of argument of the Kayans are characteristic and worthy of a short description. As we have said, they are great talkers and orators. They are by no means an impulsive people; far less so than the Kenyahs or the Sea Dayaks.
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