Through Central Borneo; an Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917Lumholtz, Carl
History
Through Central Borneo; an Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917
Lumholtz, Carl
Borneo -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Borneo; Natural history -- Borneo
On the following day they go to the ladang to cut paddi, but barely half
the number that took part in the feast assist in the work. The first rice
spear that is cut is preserved to be taken home and tied underneath the
roof outside the door. This is done in order to prevent birds, monkeys,
rusa, or babi from eating the paddi. At the ladang rice is boiled, and on
this occasion the family and their guests eat at the same time. When the
first baskets of new paddi arrive at the storehouse and the grain is
poured out on the floor, a little blood from a fowl sacrificed is smeared
on it after the necessary offering to antoh has been thrown up into the
air.
Upon the death of a man who was well-to-do, the body is kept for a period
of seven days in the coffin, within the family dwelling-house, but for a
poor man one day and night is long enough. Many people gather for the
funeral. There is little activity in the day time, but at night the work,
as the natives call it, is performed, some weeping, others dancing. When
the room is large the feast is held in the house, otherwise, outside. Fire
is kept burning constantly during the night, but not in the daytime. Many
antohs are supposed to arrive to feast on the dead man. People are afraid
of these supernatural associations but not of the departed soul. Formerly,
when erecting a funeral house for an important man, an attendant in the
next life was provided for him by placing a slave, alive, in the hole dug
for one of the upright posts, the end of the post being set directly over
him.
On the Samba I found myself in close proximity to regions widely spoken of
elsewhere in Borneo as being inhabited by particularly wild people, called
Ulu-Ots: (ulu = men; ot = at the headwaters). Their habitats are the
mountainous regions in which originate the greatest rivers of Borneo, the
Barito, the Kapuas (western), and the Mahakam, and the mountains farther
west, from whence flow the Katingan, the Sampit, and the Pembuang, are
also persistently assigned to these ferocious natives. They are usually
believed to have short tails and to sleep in trees. Old Malays may still
be found who tell of fights they had forty or more years ago with these
wild men. The Kahayans say that the Ulu-Ots are cannibals, and have been
known to force old men and women to climb trees and hang by their hands to
the branches until sufficiently exhausted to be shaken down and killed.
The flesh is roasted before being eaten. They know nothing of agriculture
and to them salt and lombok are non-existent. Few of them survive. On the
authority of missionaries there are some three hundred such savages at the
headwaters of the Kahayan, who are described as very Mongolian in
appearance, with oblique eyes and prominent cheekbones, and who sleep in
trees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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