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Updated: May 4, 2025
The Sakais are nomadic for two reasons: first, because when they have exhausted, by their prodigality, the edible treasures that the forest soil produces for them without need of toil, in the tract of land within reach of their settlement, they change their residence to a fresh quarter where this uncultivated product is for a long time in superabundance; secondly, because when somebody of their number dies they believe that an evil spirit has entered their village and that to free themselves from its malignant influence it is necessary to fly to another part.
The only thing in connection with this custom I have succeeded in ascertaining is that the Sakais have no particular cult for the Sacred Fire like the priests of Baal the Brahmins in India and the Vestals of Rome but appreciate it as a means of cooking their food, preparing their poisons, of warming them during the night and of keeping wild beasts far from their huts.
Like the old philosopher I found in the forest, the other Sakais have never thought, or rather let themselves think, what a boon it would be for them to grow the things they like best, around their huts, instead of feeling obliged to get it from others, and they evidently shared his dislike to torturing the earth with iron, for before my advent and sojourn amongst them they simply burnt the pith of the trees and plants they felled and into the bed formed by the ashes they cast indiscriminately bulb and grain, covering up both with their feet or with a piece of wood, and afterwards they took no more care of it.
Whether I am prejudiced by the sympathy I feel for this people amongst whom I live, and who have granted me hospitality without any limit, I will leave you to judge, kind reader, you who have the patience to peruse these modest pages written, not from an impulse of personal vanity, but in all sincerity, and whose only aim is to do good to the poor Sakais, unknown to the world in general and slandered by those who know them and who are interested in preventing any sort of intercourse with other outsiders besides themselves.
At the top of the hut are hung the blow-pipes, and well-filled quivers. They are kept there for a little heat to reach them, this being considered essential to the efficacy of the poisons. Above these, twined amongst the green, are preserved strips of bark for a change of... dress when required, together with the Sakais' musical instruments which are never forgotten.
Before playing it the performer carefully stops up one of his nostrils with leaves and then applies the other to the first hole into which he gently blows with his nose. From the instrument issues a sweet, melancholy note. Some of the Sakais are quite masters of this instrument and the women too prefer it to the krob.
Polygamy is never thought of by the Sakais but bigamy is not an absolute exclusion although it very rarely takes place because as soon as a woman sees that her husband is enamoured of another she is the first to propose a divorce and no recriminations follow her suggestion. "Your heart" she says "suffers with me, when with her it would be glad.
It seems to me that the only difference passing between these creepers is in the intensity of virulence, but not in the nature of the venomous substances, and it is just for this that the Sakais favour the legop and make it the centre of their primitive chemical studies because it furnishes them with the strongest and most fatal of poisons.
There were extensive woods of rattan, and other magnificent reeds which are called in England Indian and Malacca cane; there was resin oozing copiously from the trunks of the trees. What more could be desired? I began gently to make my Sakais comprehend how much I should like to gather these products and transport them to where I might exchange them for other articles that we were without.
Counting them upon my fingers I would tell the parent or parents that they were six, to which they agreed with: "If you say they are six, they are six". It is more difficult still for the Sakais to count time.
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