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The husband of an erring wife must kill her by cutting off her head, and it is incumbent on her brother to take the head of the husband. At present the Punans and Bukats are relinquishing these customs through fear of the Company. The Bukats told me that they originally came from the river Blatei in Sarawak, and that Iban raids had had much to do with their movements.
The separation of Borneo from the mainland then isolated part of the Indonesian stock within it, at a period when their culture was still in a very primitive condition, presumably similar to that of the Punans. In this blend, which presumably was effected in an area south of that in which the Indonesian blend was formed, the Mongol element seems to predominate.
In case of fractured bones a crude bandage is made from bamboo sticks with leaves from a certain tree. For curing disease the Punans use strokes of the hand. Neither of these nomadic tribes allow a man present when a woman bears a child. After child-birth women abstain from work four days. When anybody dies the people flee, leaving the corpse to its fate.
It seems probable that the Punans in each region have absorbed some of their religious and superstitious notions from the settled tribes of the same region; for in each region the Punan beliefs are different, showing more or less affinity to those of the settled tribes.
To one of the tributaries of this river the tribe owes the name by which they are known among Punans, Saputans, and Bukats, who call the Penyahbongs simply Kreho. They are not numerous and so far as my information goes they are limited to a few hundred.
It was said above that the skin of these tribes is of very pale yellow colour. In this respect there is little to choose between them, but on the whole the Punans are of rather lighter colour than the others, and, as was said before, of a faintly green tinge.
Many, probably all, Klemantans put up wooden images of the crocodile before their houses, and many of them carve the prow of their war-canoes into the form of a crocodile's head with gaping jaw. Some of the Muruts make an effigy of the crocodile from clay for use on the celebration of a successful expedition. The Punans
Just above this loop a small hole through the shell is usually made, and from this a small skein of beads depends. Similar ear ornaments are worn by Kenyahs and some of the Klemantans, but not by Muruts, and by few individuals only among Punans and Sea Dayaks. Many of the men wear also bracelets of shell or hard wood.
The Pokuns wished to take vengeance on the Punans, and they would undoubtedly have turned out in force to hunt down and kill all the Punan men they could find, but that the Resident forbade them to take action, and enforced his command by threatening to burn down their houses in their absence.
The Punans carefully sow the seed they have swallowed, and transplant the young seedlings to the most suitable positions. The milky juice of the creeper is gathered and treated in much the same way as the gutta. It is rolled up while hot into spherical lumps, each of which is pierced with a hole for convenient transportation.
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