Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: A Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean JunglesGomes, Edwin Herbert
History
Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: A Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean Jungles
Gomes, Edwin Herbert
Iban (Bornean people); Sarawak (Malaysia) -- Description and travel
The Dyaks are industrious and hard-working, and in the busy times of
paddy-planting they work from early in the morning till dusk, only
stopping for a meal at midday. The division of labour between the men and
the women is a very reasonable one, and the women have no more than their
fair share of work. The men do the timber-felling, wood-cutting, clearing
the land, house and boat building, carrying burdens, and the heavier work
generally. The women help in the lighter part of the farm work, husk
and pound the rice they eat, cook, weave, make mats and baskets, fetch
the water for their daily use from the well or river, and attend to the
children.
The Dyak is frugal. He does not as a rule seek to accumulate wealth,
but he is careful of whatever he may earn. He plants each year what he
supposes will produce sufficient rice to supply his own needs—a portion
of this is for family consumption, a portion for barter for such simple
luxuries as tobacco, salt fish, cloth, etc., and a third portion for
hospitality. If he happen to have an exceptionally good harvest, he may
sell some paddy, and the money thus obtained is not lavishly squandered,
but saved with the object of investing in gongs or other brassware, old
jars, etc., which do not decrease in value with age. On such occasions
as feasts nearly all the food and drink used are home products or begged
from friends. A Dyak drinks water as a rule, but if he takes alcohol
in any form, it is a home-brewed rice spirit (_tuak_). To spend money
upon anything which he can make for himself, or for which he can make a
substitute, is, in his opinion, needless waste.
The Dyak in his jungle home is remarkably honest. Families are often
away from their homes for weeks at a time, living in little huts on
their farms, and though no one is left in charge of their rooms, things
are seldom stolen. Sometimes Dyaks become demoralized by associating
with other races in the towns, but a case of theft among the Dyaks in
their native wilds is indeed rare. I have not been able to discover any
enactment of traditional law which fixes the punishment for theft. It
has not been necessary to deal with the subject at all. In my missionary
travels in Borneo I have often left by mistake in a Dyak house some small
thing like a soap-box, or a handkerchief, or a knife—things I know the
Dyaks love—but it has always been returned to me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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