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Updated: May 27, 2025
Now, among the Saputans the custom long ago was that the woman who had a child should do no work during forty days. She must not bring water, nor husk paddi, nor cook. She remained in the house and took her bath in the river daily. She slept much and ate pork cooked in bamboo, and rice, if there was any, and she was free to eat anything else that she liked.
Owing to my recent distressing experience I was not sorry to say farewell to Data Laong, where the women and children were afraid of me to the last, on account of my desire to have them photographed. The Saputans are kind, but their intellect is of a low order, and the unusual prevalence of skin disease renders them unattractive though always interesting subjects. A glorious morning!
The dead person is given new garments and the body is placed in a wooden box made of boards tied together, which is carried to a cave in the mountains, three days' travel from Data Laong. There are many caves on the steep mountain-side and each kampong has its own. The Saputans were shy about being photographed, but their objections could be overcome by payments of coin.
Usually the head-hunting raids were, and are still to a limited extent, carried far away into distant regions and may occupy several months. The Saputans, who were devotees to the custom, would go as far as the river Melawi in the southwest to Sarawak in the north, as well as to the Murung or Upper Barito River in the east.
The remedy, which had been taught them by the Saputans, consists of two kinds of bark and the large leaves of a jungle plant with red flowers, one of which was growing near my tent. All the tribes visited by me suffer more or less from various kinds of skin diseases caused by micro-parasitic animals, the Kenyahs and Oma-Sulings in a much less degree.
The Penihings, Kayans, Oma-Sulings, and Long-Glats speak of themselves as Orang Bahau, as also do the Saputans, though probably they did not originally come from Apo Kayan. The Bukats are said to know a cure which they share with the Penihings; the bark is scraped from a certain tree and the juice is applied to the wound. Death from lightning is unknown to any of these three tribes.
Three chiefs were famous for being very tall. Fishing with tuba is known to them, also to the nomadic Punans and Bukats, Saputans, and Penihings. The Penyahbongs believe they were placed in this world by an antoh. Omens are taken from nine birds and from dreams. The child is born outside of the house.
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.
In husking rice the Penyahbongs, Saputans, and Penihings have the same method of gathering the grains back again under the pestle with the hands instead of with the feet, as is the custom of the Kenyahs and Kayans. All day there were brought for sale objects of ethnography, also beetles, animals, and birds.
Excrements are left on the ground and not in the water. They don't like the colour red, but prefer black. Fire was made by flint and iron, which they procured from the Saputans. The hair is not cut nor their teeth. The women wear around the head a ring of cloth inside of which are various odoriferous leaves and flowers of doubtful appreciation by civilised olfactory senses.
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