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Updated: June 21, 2025
The Kayans, Kenyahs, and most of the Klemantans weave no cloth; but the Kayans claim, probably with truth, that they formerly wove a coarse cloth. In recent years the Ibans, Muruts, and a few of the Klemantan tribes have been the only weavers. It may be said, we think, without fear of contradiction, that this is the only craft in which the Ibans excel all the other peoples.
We owe our knowledge of their tatu to an aged Klemantan, who was well acquainted with the tribe before their disappearance; at our behest he carved on some wooden models of arms and legs the tatu designs of these people, but he was unable to supply any information of the names or significance of the designs.
Of the Klemantan tribes some, E.G. the Aki, the Long Patas, and the Long Akars, resemble more nearly the Kayans; others, E.G. the Muriks, the Sebops, the Lirongs, the Uma Longs, the Pengs or Pinihings, show more affinity with the Kenyahs.
Their language is distinctive, but is apparently allied to the Kenyah and Klemantan tongues. We propose to deal with the topics of each of our descriptive chapters by giving as full as possible an account of the Kayans, and adding to this some observations as to the principal diversities of custom and culture presented by the other peoples.
The hornbill plays an important part in the decorative art of the Long Glat, a Klemantan tribe of the Mahakkam river, and we suspect that, if these Blu-u Kayans are of true Kayan stock, they have borrowed the hornbill design from their neighbours.
Why do you question me, why do you stare at me? Your limbs are shapely, smooth is your skin and slender your body. My eyes are dazzled by your bodily perfections. Some of the Malanaus, one of the many branches of the Klemantan people, hold peculiar views about the soul. Each man is credited with two souls.
On the other hand, the Kenyahs have assimilated the Kayan culture more perfectly than any other of the aborigines, and in some respects, such as the building of houses, they perhaps equal the Kayans; but even they have not learnt to cultivate PADI in so thorough a manner as to keep themselves supplied with rice all through the year, as the Kayans do; and, like the various Klemantan tribes, they suffer almost every year periods of scarcity during which they rely chiefly on cultivated and wild sago and on tapioca.
As examples of Klemantan tribes that have partially adopted the Murut culture we would mention the LONG KIPUTS, the BATU BLAHS, the TRINGS, and the ADANGS in the head of the Limbang River; to the same group belong the KADAYANS in the neighbourhood of Bruni, who, from contact with their Malay neighbours, have become in large part Mohammedans of Malay culture.
This is not strictly correct because the racial problems of the island are much more complicated. Doctor A.C. Haddon recognises five principal groups of people in Sarawak, Punan, Kenyah-Kayan, Iban or Sea Dayak, Malay, and the remaining tribes he comprehends under the noncommittal name Klemantan.
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.
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