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Updated: June 26, 2025
The state of these is examined in some cases before the planting of PADI, and sometimes before attempting to catch the soul of a sick man. If the parts are much curved, it is a good omen; if straight or but slightly curved, it is a bad omen. The Crocodile Like all other races of Sarawak, the Kenyahs regard the crocodiles that infest their rivers as more or less friendly creatures.
They seek above all things to take heads, to which they attach an extravagant value, unlike the Kayans and Kenyahs who seek heads primarily for the service of their funeral rites; and they not infrequently attack a house and kill a large number of its inmates in a perfectly wanton manner, and for no other motive that the desire to obtain heads.
Secondly, we have in the total absence of totemism among the Punans very strong ground for rejecting the suggestion of its previous existence among the Kenyahs.
But thirty years ago nearly all the iron worked by the tribes of the interior was from ore found in the river-beds, and possibly from masses of meteoric iron; and even at the present day the native ore is still smelted in the far interior, and swords made from it by the Kenyahs are still valued above all others. Smelting and forging demand a specialised skill which is attained by relatively few.
We leave open the question of an ancient Negrito population, and go on to the statement that the present population is derived from four principal sources. From a very early period the island has been inhabited in all parts by a people of a common origin whose surviving descendants are the tribes we have classed as Klemantans, Kenyahs, and Punans.
When Kenyahs go on a journey into strange rivers or to the lower part of the main river, they fear the crocodiles of these strange waters, because they are unknown to them, and any one of them might easily be mistaken by the crocodiles for some one who has done them an injury.
When travelling on the river, the Kenyahs hope to see "Isit" fly across from left to right as they sit facing the bow of the canoe. When this happens they call out loudly, saying, "O, Isit on the left hand! Give us long life, help us in our undertaking, help us to find what we are seeking, make our enemies feeble."
While Kayans never attack communities of their own tribe, such "civil war" is not unknown among the Kenyahs, whose tribal cohesion is less intimate in many respects. From these two differences it results that the Kenyah war-parties are generally smaller than those of the Kayans, more quick-moving, and more prone to attack groups of the enemy encountered on farms or on the river.
For the women of all the peoples, except the Punans, the husking of the PADI is a principal feature of the day's work, and is performed in much the same fashion by all. The Kenyahs alone do their work out of doors beside the PADI barns, sometimes under rude lean-to shelters.
At one side of it four bamboos of different sizes were hanging horizontally over each other, which produced different notes when struck, and probably had been placed there for the purpose of frightening birds away. The Kenyahs "take turns" helping each other to harvest, and on this occasion they were assisting their chief.
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