Part 2

Along the whole length of the veranda at its outer edge, under the eaves, is a railing, or fence, of poles and boards tied to the upright supports of the roof; when parents in the household are unusually careful of their children, this fence extends from the floor to the eaves, which are here only about four feet above the floor, but usually this safeguard is only two poles about six inches apart, and serves as a rest for the backs of men when they sit on the wide platforms, which are raised about a foot above the floor and extend nearly all along this lightest and airiest part of the house. These platforms are of much smoother planks than the floor, and are often of single huge slabs of wood from the buttress-like roots of the ‘Tapang’ tree. To make these lounging-places still more luxurious, mats of fine rattan or bamboo strips are spread upon them, and then a Bornean desires no more comfortable place whereon to sit by day or to recline by night, unless, perchance, it be a dry sandy river-bank, above the rapids, where are no crocodiles, mosquitoes, nor pestiferous black-flies, and where grow gigantic Caladiums, whereof a single leaf is large enough to cover his entire body and afford him a protection from the rain, as impervious as a rubber blanket. These low platforms, especially in front of the chief’s door, [which in the photograph is directly opposite the row of skulls just mentioned,] are the places where men congregate after nightfall to gossip and smoke round the fire, which is here needed to dispel darkness, dampness, and evil Spirits. Diversion is often created by one of their number, who, more self-sacrificing than the rest, goes through the violent antics of a war-dance, or sings long, rambling songs about the valorous deeds of Tokong, who originated head-hunting, or of some other warrior who gained the blissful regions of ‘Apo Legan’ by the slaughter of his enemies. Whatever the theme,—and the themes are generally legends or familiar stories,—the details are supplied by the imagination of the singer, who composes them on the spur of the moment, while the chorus is singing the last two or three words of the verse, followed by ‘Ara Wi Wi, Ará!’ a meaningless refrain, like our own ‘Tooral, looral,’ although I am afraid that in a former publication I unwittingly gave the impression that its translation was ‘Sleep dear little one, sleep.’[1]

To these songs an accompaniment is often played upon an instrument, known among certain Kayans and Kenyahs as a _Kaluri_ or _Kaleeri_ or _Kaludi_. It is probably of Chinese origin; substantially the same instrument is used in China and in the countries bordering thereon to the northward and westward. I saw almost an exact counterpart of the Borneo Kaluri played by the Naga tribes inhabiting the hills near the Burmese border. It consists of a bottle-shaped gourd with six hollow reed pipes set into the body of it; a finger-hole is cut in each pipe at such a place that the fingers of both hands while holding the instrument can cover all the holes. The middle reed is the longest, and is therefore the bass; it has no finger-hole, but its tone is subdued by a movable cap at the end; the neck of the gourd forms the mouth-piece. The music of a Kaluri somewhat resembles that of organ pipes, perhaps slightly nasal in timbre, but having an impressive charm withal when heard amid native surroundings, in the dim, smoky atmosphere of a Borneo long-house at night, when light from the flickering fire accentuates the harsh lines in the faces of the natives grouped about the performer, and where eyes, robbed of the softening effect of lashes and eyebrows, glitter fiercely, and where brass studs glisten in pointed and blackened teeth, and where carnivorous ferocity and alertness is imparted to the men’s faces by the upturned tiger-cat’s teeth in their ears,—all these so intensify the relentless, recurring, savagely persistent minor key of the Kaluri that dim questionings are stirred whether or not, after all, bloodshed be not the noblest aim in life and the blackened and battered skulls overhead be not glory’s highest prize. Music hath charms to soothe,—Kaluri music hath charms to _make_,—a savage breast.

In the verandas of the Kayan houses there are always large wooden mortars wherein rice is hulled; from morning until night there is always to be heard, somewhere in the length of the house, the rhythmical thumping that betokens that young girls are at their everlasting task of threshing, hulling, and winnowing the rice for the daily repast. The rice mortars are cut from large logs of wood, and are somewhat prismatic in shape, usually five or six feet in length by two or three feet wide on the upper surface; they rest upon a base not more than a foot wide, [as in the photograph, where, on the right, some boys are sitting on the edge of a mortar,] but are made firm by stout poles that are set into them and extend through the flooring to the ground below, and also by strong braces that are pegged to the house beams above. The upper, broad surface of these mortars is slightly concave, and is divided into two or more sections, each with a round pit six inches deep in the centre. In husking the rice, these pits are filled with the grains, and then two, or sometimes four, girls, standing upon the broad top, pound the rice in the pit with wooden pestles five or six feet long, which they hold at the middle with both hands. The motion that they adopt is exceedingly graceful; they stand with the heels together, and lift the pole or pestle perpendicularly above their heads as high as they can reach, then, bending the body at the hips and swinging the arms down, they jam the pestle into the rice pit; as they raise the pestle again for another stroke they put one foot forward to push back into the pit the grains that may have jumped out on the flat surface of the mortar. When thus pounding, the young girls keep perfect time with one another, the poles never clash, and each girl brushes back, first with one foot, then with the other, the grains she jostles out, so that when they pound fast the motion becomes almost a dance. Not infrequently the pestles are ornamented at their upper end with several sliding rings or a sliding block that jingles when the pestle strikes; this rhythm and this jingle impart some alleviation to the tedious task. When the husks are all beaten off, the chaff is winnowed out by tossing the grains and catching them again and again upon a flat basket. The task of hulling rice falls exclusively to the women and girls; they begin it when they are so small that they can barely lift the pestle, and, once started in proficiency, the task becomes an element of their life, and their winnowing-baskets are hung as symbols of industry on their graves.

In the accompanying photograph of a veranda, the coffin-shaped box hanging on the wall on the right is a case wherein war-coats are kept, so that the goat-skin and feathers whereof they are made cannot be eaten by hungry dogs. The photograph does not give an absolutely correct idea of the daily appearance of a veranda; there is only one dog to be seen,—there should be at least a dozen. The exposure had to last so long that, lest the dogs should jar the camera, we had them all driven down the notched log to the ground, and then the log was turned wrong side up, so that they could not return. (We tried this method of getting rid of the dogs once at night when they were particularly troublesome and quarrelsome, and seemed to prefer our bodies to any other couch, but the crafty curs knew an adequate revenge; as soon as they found themselves locked out they made night hideous with concerted and disconcerting baying at the moon, until we were glad to readmit them. Our leather shoes we always had to tie high up on the rafters at night, or they would have been eaten up, all but the soles and heels.)

This photograph was taken from a point just opposite the chief’s door, about half way down the length of the veranda.

The family rooms, even those of the chief, are often dark and disordered little compartments, and in them it is usual for anything but quiet to reign; the smallest of the infants sprawl on the floor, the fowls, that have flown up to steal the rice drying on the platforms at the back of the house, squawk and cackle, and the old women who are relegated to culinary sinecures, such as rice-boiling, add a mild confusion by whacking the dogs that wander in and prowl about the cooking-pots. The space under the eaves, unlike that of the veranda, is boarded up from floor to roof with rough hewn planks; the only light is admitted through small windows in the planks or through trap-doors in the roof. Of course, there is never a pane of glass in the windows, and I doubt that the natives of the interior, or even of the coast towns, ever saw a glazed window.

In spite of the darkness of these rooms, there is, nevertheless, more industry in them than is ever found in the veranda; the women are really the workers of the community, and seem never to sit absolutely idle gossiping, as do the men; when the harvesting is finished and there is no more work out of doors, they employ their time in making mats and baskets of rattan strips, in stringing beads into ornaments for war-coats, in weaving cloth for feast-day garments, and in fashioning large, round, flat hats for the next season’s work in the rice-fields. During the rainy season, the husbands and lovers seem to have little to do but sit in the veranda, lounging against the railing at the open space under the eaves, whence they can observe the river and its incidents, and watch the smoke from their long cigarettes curl and drift among the fronds of tall cocoanut palms that sway and rustle on a level with their faces. These are the days when war expeditions are planned and resolutions made to add fresh heads to the row already hanging in front of the chief’s door, and thereby remove any taboo enforced by the death of relatives. The men seldom linger in the family rooms during the day, and the women, except when busy hulling the rice in the big wooden mortars, spend no time in the veranda.

The doorway from the veranda into the family room opens into a very dark and narrow passage, with the partition wall of the next room on one side and a rack for fire-wood and long bamboo water-bottles on the other. Possibly it is to announce the coming of a guest that the flooring of these little entries is always laid down in such a wobbly fashion, and of logs and billets of wood so rickety, that it is impossible to walk upon it without stumbling or an unseemly clatter; whatever be the reason, such is the fact, and I never stepped over the high threshold into the dark of one of these passages without expecting to trample on babies or to fall through on the wallowing pigs below.

The end of the passage opens directly into the middle of the room, where the floor is better laid and made more comfortable by the addition of mats. The whole room is perhaps twenty-five feet square, but this space is diminished by two or three little sleeping-closets for the parents or for the grown daughters. In the right-hand corner, near an opening under the eaves, the floor is raised a few inches, where the sons or the male slaves sleep at night, and where the women work at their bead-stringing or mat-making during the day; it is the lightest and pleasantest place in the room. Against the partition that divides the veranda from the room is the fireplace, which is merely a hearth of clay and large flat stones, as in the veranda, except that in the centre are three stones whereon the cooking pots rest; above is a rack, just beyond the reach of the flames, where firewood is kept dry, ready for immediate use, and where scraps of pork may be preserved by the smoke. Here and there, on the walls, on hooks made of deer horn or of the twisted branch of a tree, hang all sorts of implements for farming, fishing, and hunting, little hoes for weeding the rice-fields, home-made axes called ‘biliong,’ scoop-nets for catching fish when the streams are poisoned with Tuba root, paddles, spears, large round sun-hats, basket-like holders for the few but valuable china plates used only on feast-days, and sometimes, as a mural decoration, the warrior’s coat and shield are displayed; these personal adornments, however, are usually kept in the little sleeping-closets, or else in a wooden case attached to the wall of the veranda just outside the room.

These sleeping-closets, partitioned off for married couples or for unmarried girls and widows to sleep in, are as dark and stuffy as closely fitting planks can make them, and the bed is merely two or three broad and smooth planks whereon a fine rattan matting is spread; sometimes a roll of matting or a bundle of old cloth serves as a pillow, but more often there is nothing but the flat boards. On one occasion, I was ushered into the bedroom of a Chief’s daughter who was ill with the grippe and had asked for medicine; it was almost pathetic to note the attempt that this poor ‘first lady’ had made to adorn her little boudoir. By the light of a sputtering lump of damar gum, burning in an earthen dish and disseminating mainly an aromatic smell and dense smoke, and only incidentally a flickering light, I could see that there had been fastened on the walls bright pieces of gay-colored cloth, and over in one corner, in a sort of pyramid, were her ‘ladyship’s’ best bead-work baskets; even ill as she was she called my attention to them. She was tossing in fever on the most uncomfortable bundles of coarse cotton calico, (sadly in need of washing,) which she had crumpled in folds to counteract the unevennesses of her bed of planks. Grippe is intolerable enough when the patient is surrounded with every comfort, on a soft clean bed and in an airy room, but the lowest depth of discomfort is reached when to the fever are added a sweltering tropical heat in a dark closet, the air dense with damar smoke and soot, a bed of hard boards, and never a drop of ice-water. Yet in the midst of all these, the girl, fortunate in her ignorance, was dignified and uncomplaining.

On all ordinary occasions, the family eat together, usually only twice a day, morning and evening, in the family room. In the centre of the room is placed a large wooden dish piled high with boiled rice, and then, as a plate for each member of the family, is set a piece of fresh banana leaf, whereon are a little salt and a small quantity of powdered dried fish, highly odorous; this is the usual bill of fare, but it may be supplemented with a sort of mush or stew of fern-frond sprouts and rice, or with boiled Caladium roots and roasted wild yams. When there is a feast and guests from neighboring houses come to dine, the meals are spread in the veranda and the menu is enlarged with pork and chicken, cooked in joints of bamboo, which have been stoppered at both ends with green leaves, and put in the fire until they are burnt through, when the cooking is done to a turn.

All hands are plunged into the common dish of plain boiled rice, and it is ‘excellent form’ to cram and jam the mouth as full as it will hold. It is, however, remarkable how deftly even little children can so manipulate the boiled rice before conveying it to their mouths, that hardly a grain is spilt; it always filled me with shame when dining _en famille_ with the Kayans or Kenyahs to note what a mess of scattered rice I left on the mat at my place, while their places were clean as when they sat down; to be sure, I did not follow my hosts’ example in carefully gathering up and devouring all that had fallen on the unswept floor. Whenever I apologized for my clumsiness, their courtesy was always perfect; the fault was never attributed to me, but rather to their poor food and the manner in which it was served.

The long intervals between their meals and the unsubstantial quality of their food give them such an appetite and force them to eat so voraciously that the usual welcome by a Kayan host to his guests is, ‘Eat slowly,’ and this admonition is unfailingly given. They seem to regard their family meals as strictly private, and would always announce to us that they were going to eat,—possibly to give us warning not to visit them at that time, and they were also quite as punctilious to leave us the moment that our food was served.

When any member of a family is ill and calls in the services of an exorciser, or, as they call it, a ‘Dayong,’ the room is placed under a taboo, or permantong, and only members of the family may enter, and even they are under certain restrictions, for instance, to refrain from singing or playing musical instruments, and they are debarred from eating meat. The sign of a taboo is a bunch of green leaves or a flat basket used in winnowing rice tied to the door-post. If, by accident, a man should violate this taboo, he must pay a fine to the owners of the tabooed room; this fine is usually a few cheap beads or a china plate. They seem to regard this custom with such reverence that we availed ourselves of its privileges whenever we wished for privacy, and although the natives laughed at our adoption of their customs, they left us nevertheless strictly alone when we tied a basket or a bunch of leaves in front of our little apartment in the veranda.

Possibly, this description of Home-Life in a Borneo household would be incomplete without a detailed account of its ordinary daily routine, which, as I saw it during several weeks in Tama Bulan’s house, is somewhat as follows:—[2]

The crow of a cock breaks the silence of the night; then a dog rouses up, yawns and stretches, and shakes off the ashes of the fireplace where it has been sleeping, and begins the daily round of quarrels with its companions. Then daylight gradually creeps in and a door slams with a bang at the far end of the house, where the poorer and hard-working people live; a woman with a bundle of bamboo water-vessels slung on her back hurries along to the stairway down to the river. She looks just the same as when she went to sleep. Her dress is the same and her hair is in a disordered tangle, and as she walks her feet come down heavily on the warped planks and make them rattle, no doubt to wake the lazy men, who sleep on and let the women make the fire and get the water while they snooze. Soon she comes back, her hair dripping and glossy, and little drops of water still clinging to her skin. By this time there is quite a procession of women going down to bathe and get the cooking water from the river, and there is a slamming of doors and a few wails from the children. Then the men who have been sleeping on the raised platform along the open space below the eaves, unroll themselves from their shroud-like coverings of cotton cloth, once white, and a little hum of conversation springs up, possibly a comparison of dreams, the interpretation of which, as in all uneducated classes, has a great bearing on their daily life. The mother who comes out with her babies in her arms, or sitting astride of her hips, knows nothing of our custom of caressing with a kiss, but in her maternal bursts of affection she buries her face in the neck of the child and draws in a long breath through her nostrils; in fact, she smells it. In their language the verbs _to smell_ and _to kiss_ are the same. Then down she goes to the river and takes the morning bath with her child in her arms, sometimes holding it by the hands and letting it kick out its legs like a frog,—the first lessons in swimming. One by one the men straggle off to bathe in the river, and never missed the opportunity of telling us that they were going to bathe, and when they returned they were also most punctilious in telling us that they _had_ bathed. With all this bathing, however, they are not a clean people. Soap is unknown to them, and they never use hot water, consequently their skins have not the soft, velvety appearance that constant bathing usually produces. (We once gave some of the girls cakes of Pears’ soap, but they ate them.)

After bathing there is a lull in the activity of the house, while the married women and young girls cook the morning meal of boiled rice and dried salted fish.

Breakfast over there are always parties of men and women setting out for the clearings where the rice is planted, and armed with a billiong (an adze-like axe, which they use) and their parang, and their spear, the men go down and get the boats ready, and the women follow after with the paddles, and hampers to bring back bananas or bunches of tender, young fern-fronds, which they make into a stew. Then the house settles down to the ordinary tasks of making large flat hats of palm leaves, drying and flattening banana leaves for cigarette wrappers, or of pounding the husks off the rice by the women, and sharpening spears or decorating parangs by the men industriously inclined; but the latter are rare. They usually spend their time in gossip with their companions or merely sit and blink, soothed by long draughts of smoke drawn deep into their lungs from the strong Java tobacco cigarettes, which they roll for themselves. Men, women, and children all smoke.