Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
Hence the processes by which the annual crop of PADI is obtained demand the best efforts and care of all the people of each village. The plough is unknown save to the Dusuns, a branch of the Murut people in North Borneo, who have learnt its use from Chinese immigrants.
The Murut shields closely resemble those of the Kayans, though the Dusuns, who have the domesticated buffalo, use a shield of buffalo-hide attached to the forearm by a strap a feature unknown in all the other types, which are borne by the handle only. The Sea Dayaks nowadays make a greater variety of shields, copying those of the other tribes with variations of their own.
The Kayan has a rather darker skin of a redder tone. His legs are not so disproportionately short, but in all other respects his body is less well proportioned, graceful, and active than the Kenyah's. His features are less regular and rather coarser and heavier; his expression is serious, reserved, and cautious. The Murut is nearly as fair skinned as the Kenyah, perhaps a little ruddier in tone.
The Klemantans present a greater variety of physical types, being a less homogeneous group. Roughly they may be said to present all transitions from the Kenyah to the Murut type. In the main they are less muscular and active than the Kenyah. It is amongst them that the upward and forward direction of the plane of the nostrils is most marked. The Punan presents, again, a well-marked type.
We know also of one instance in which a Murut slave, having treacherously murdered the only son of a great Kayan chief in the Baram, at the instigation of Bruni Malays, was killed by a multitude of small stabs by the infuriated Kayan women, on being brought captive to the house.
A third group of Klemantan tribes such as the Long Kiputs, the Batu Blah, and the Trings, scattered through the northern part of the island, resemble more nearly the Muruts; and among these are found communities whose culture marks them as descendants of nomads who have assimilated the Murut culture in various degrees. The Muruts
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.
On the east coast are many communities of Bugis, who are mostly Mohammedans and seem to have come from Celebes, where they are a numerous people. In the north and extreme north-west the Dusuns seem to be of Murut stock with an infusion of Chinese blood and culture. They use a plough drawn by buffalo in the PADI fields, which they irrigate systematically.
The following incident, which occurred some years ago at the Colony of Labuan, serves to shew how immaterial it was whether a friend, or foe, or utter stranger was the victim. A Murut chief of the Trusan, a river on the mainland over against Labuan, was desirous of obtaining some fresh heads on the occasion of a marriage feast, and put to sea to a district inhabited by a hostile tribe.
YESSE, who concluded the pepper monopoly agreement with the Brunai Government, referring to the Murut predilection for head-hunting says: "With respect to the Idaan, or Muruts, as they are called here, I cannot give any account of their disposition; but from what I have heard from the Borneyans, they are a set of abandoned idolaters; one of their tenets, so strangely inhuman, I cannot pass unnoticed, which is, that their future interest depends upon the number of their fellow creatures they have killed in any engagement, or common disputes, and count their degrees of happiness to depend on the number of human skulls in their possession; from which, and the wild, disorderly life they lead, unrestrained by any bond of civil society, we ought not to be surprised if they are of a cruel and vindictive disposition."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking