Dyak

“ The Dyaks were constantly at war, tribe against tribe, and no Dyak village was safe from sudden attack. Many human lives were sacrificed because the Dyaks wished, not only to obtain booty, but to satisfy their lust for blood, and indulge in their favourite pursuit of head-hunting, and gain glory for themselves by bringing home human heads to decorate their houses with. ”

“ They are taller than the Land Dyaks, who seldom exceed five feet six inches in height, and much fairer in complexion. The skin of the Land Dyak is brown, whereas that of the Sea Dyak is many shades lighter, and has been compared to the color of a new saddle—a hue which admirably suits the well-developed forms of these people. They are very proud of their complexion, and the women are fond of an excuse for throwing off the jackets which they wear, in order to exhibit their smooth satiny skins, polished and shining as if of new bronze. ”

“ Dyaks and Malays both muttered awesomely, as they crowded back from the platform.
"Who shall be the first to make blood-brother of this white man?" Koyala cried. The hill Dyak chieftain who had counseled peace came forward.
"Jahi of the Jahi Dyaks will," he said. Peter Gross looked at him keenly, for Jahi was reputed to be the boldest raider and head-hunter in the hills. The Dyak chief opened a vein in his arm with a dagger and gave the weapon to Peter Gross. Without hesitating, the resident did the same with his arm. ”

“ The Dyak pays heed to these omen creatures, not only in his farming, but in all his journeyings, and in any kind of work he may be engaged in. If he be going to visit a friend, the cry of a bird of ill omen will send him back. If he be engaged in carrying beams from the jungle to his house, and hear a Kutok, or a Bejampong or an Embuas, he will at once throw down the piece of timber. So great is the Dyak belief in omens, that a man will sometimes abandon a nearly-finished boat simply because a bird of ill omen flies across its bows. ”

“ Physically the Dyaks differ little from the Malays except in their slimmer figure, lighter colour, more prominent nose and higher forehead. In disposition they are as cheerful as the Malay is morose. The typical Dyak is rather slightly built, but is active and capable of enduring great fatigue. His features are distinctly marked and often well formed. The forehead is generally high, and the eyes are dark; the cheek-bones are broad ”

“ But in spite of their lucky escape they would have given back at once, and have plunged in mad flight into the forest, had it not been for Tyler. With a shout to encourage them, he fired at the nearest Malay and brought him staggering upon the ground. Then Li Sung's voice joined in and helped to maintain the courage of the Dyaks.
"Fear them not!" he cried in the Dyak language. "We are as yet unseen, and can punish them. Think of the women and children taken into captivity by these men! Keep your places and shoot straight!" ”

“ The custom of head-hunting at one time prevailed to a great extent among the Dyaks. In the old days no Dyak chief of any standing could be married unless he had been successful in obtaining the head of an enemy. For this reason it was usual to make an expedition into the enemy's country before the marriage feast of any great chief. The head brought [33] home need not be that of a man; the head of a woman or child would serve the purpose quite as well.
There were certain ancient customs which necessitated the possession of a human head. When any person died, the relatives went into mourning. ”

“ Every passer-by contributes to it, and at the same time curses the man in memory of whom it is. The Dyaks consider the adding to any tugong bula they may pass a sacred duty, the omission of which will meet with supernatural punishment, and so, however pressed for time a Dyak may be, he stops to throw on the pile some small branch or twig. ”

“ In general terms, a Dyak may be described as a Bornean semi-savage, of Malay extraction, with straight black hair, a yellowish brown complexion, and smooth face of the Malay type. He is rather below medium stature, but athletic, and of active and warlike disposition. ”

“ The years they have passed in oppression may account for this, as also the continual state of poverty and sickness in which they exist, their villages being seldom entirely free from dysentery or small-pox, while nearly all are more or less afflicted with korrip, a loathsome skin disease peculiar to the Dyak. The religion of the land Dyaks consists solely in superstitious observances, and they are given up to the fear of ghosts. ”

“ He told what he had learned about the Dyaks, and described the long-house they had visited, and the head-house, and gave the story in full of Rajah Brooke, and their visits to his nephew and successor, the present rajah. He might have gone on with his narrative till lunch-time if he had not known that General Noury was waiting for him to finish his account.
"Did you see the Dyak women, Louis?" asked his mother.
"Plenty of them. The older ones reminded me of the French women; for when they begin to grow old, they wrinkle and dry up. ”

“ The interior is decorated with heads piled up in [82] pyramids to the roof: of course the greater the number of heads the more celebrated they are as warriors.
DYAK VILLAGE.
The women of the north-east coast are by no means bad-looking, but very inferior to the mountain Dyaks before described. I have seen one or two faces which might be considered as pretty. With the exception of a cloth, which is secured above the hips with a hoop of rattan, and descends down to the knees, they expose every other portion of their bodies. Their hair, which is fine and black, generally [83] falls down behind. ”

“ It is the native name of the far-famed ourang-outang, the principal wild inhabitants of this region. We were proceeding through the forest, with our guns, when one of our Dyak companions came running up to tell us that he had seen a mias, and that if we made haste we might be in time to shoot it.
We hurried on, the Dyak leading the way, until we entered a thick jungle. He pointed to a tree far above our heads. Upon looking up we saw a great hairy body and a huge black face gazing down upon us, as if wondering what strange creatures we could be. Mr Blyth and our friend fired ”

“ When the Dyak uses the sumpitan, he holds the mouthpiece to his lips between the two first fingers of his left hand, while with his right he supports and aims the heavy weapon, which requires a strong as well as a practised man to direct it steadily. ”

“ Comparatively slight and feeble as the Dyaks look by the side of the stalwart and muscular European, their strength is really wonderful, and enables them to perform tasks which the powerful white man could not by any possibility achieve. On a journey, when an European has fallen from sheer fatigue, a Dyak has taken the burden with which the fallen man was laden, and added it to his own, without seeming to display any particular sense of having increased his own labor ”

“ The strictest rules govern head-hunting; a period of fasting and confession, of isolation in a taboo hut, precedes the expedition, for which the Dyak clothes himself in the skins of wild beasts and puts on an animal mask. The Dyak curiously enough prefers the head of a fellow-tribesman, and the hunt is usually one of ambush rather than of open combat. Among some tribes it was not sufficient to kill the victim. ”

“ If I were old enough to get married, I should not look for a wife among the Dyak girls," said Louis, laughing and shaking his head.
"The Dyak women are generally well treated; but they have to work very hard, and much that you would think the men ought to do is done by them. The lords of creation here are inclined to be lazy, while their wives and daughters are engaged in the rice-fields, though their husbands and brothers are driven to labor. ”

“ But some men, it is believed, do obtain gifts from the spirits. If a Dyak gets a good harvest, it is attributed to some magic charm he has received from some kindly spirit. Also, if he be successful on the war-path, he is credited with the succour of some mysterious being from the spirit-world.
The spirits, according to the Dyaks, rove about the jungle and hunt for wild beasts, as the Dyaks do themselves. Girgasi, already mentioned, is specially addicted to the chase, and the Dyaks say he is often to be met hunting in the forest. There are certain animals who roam about in packs in the jungle. ”

“ To each board was fastened a looped string for the purpose of tethering the vagrant spirits, and through the loop each baby was made to pass a chubby finger to make sure that its tiny soul would not wander away.160 When a Dyak is dangerously ill, the medicine-men may say that his soul has escaped far away, perhaps to the river; then they will wave a garment or cloth about to imitate the casting of a net, signifying thereby that they are catching the soul like a fish in a net. Or they may give out that the soul has escaped into the jungle ”

“ The men also are fond of earrings and similar ornaments, but a real Dyak swell does not consider himself properly in style until his front teeth are filed away so that they are notched and shut together like the teeth of a steel trap. Moreover, he cannot hope to obtain a wife unless he has at least one head as a trophy. ”

“ No conjuncture, however critical, found her without resources; and we hesitate not to say that in the whole history of discovery and geographical enterprise there is no more wonderful or exciting chapter than that which records Madame Ida Pfeiffer's travels in the interior of Borneo.
We owe to her enterprise an interesting account of the character and usages of the Dyaks. Their ferocity of disposition is proverbial in the East. It is said that when a Dyak has promised a head—a human head—to the woman he loves, he will obtain it at any cost. ”

“ In fact, if we substitute punch and port for tuak, and an open veranda for a closed dining-room, there is little difference between the hospitality of the present Dyak chief and that of the average English squire of the last century.
A chief, for example, who prides himself on his strong head, will sit before a huge jar of tuak, and pledge every one around. For every one whom he serves he drinks one cup himself, and it is his ambition to keep his seat after all his companions are insensible. ”

“ For several years the Dyaks could not understand the prohibition, and the English rajah and his officers were continually pestered with requests from Dyaks to be allowed to go and take heads. An old man, for example, had lost his wife, and begged piteously to be allowed to take just one head, so that she might rest quietly in her grave. Then a young man would come, who had been rejected by a Dyak damsel, lay his case before the authorities, and beseech them to permit him to take a head, and so to win the hand of the disdainful lady. ”

“ No harm can possibly result, while the practice cannot fail to do good, and steady the men for our approaching fight with the Sarebus pirates. Li Sung, you will call the chiefs together and tell them what I say, and also that we will commence practising to-morrow evening."
On the following day it was evident that the spirits of the warriors of the Dyak tribe of which Tyler was the leader were considerably raised at the prospect before them, while their whole demeanour was changed. ”

“ In thought the Dyaks identify themselves with Kling, and the resultant signification is that the recitation of this story is an invocation to Singalang Burong, who is supposed to come not to Kling's house only, but to the actual Dyak house where the feast is celebrated; and he is received by a particular ceremony, and is offered food or sacrifice.
The performer begins by describing how the people in Kling's house contemplate the heavens in their various characters:
"They see to the end of heaven like a well-joined box." ”

“ Nor does head-hunting end with marriage, for the standing of both the man and his wife in the community depends upon the number of grinning skulls which swing from the ridgepole of their hut. Heads are to a Dyak what money is to a man in civilized countries—the more he has, the greater his importance. [120] The Controleur at Tenggaroeng assured me very earnestly that his Dyak charges were by no means ferocious or bloodthirsty by nature and that they practised head-hunting less from pleasure than from force of custom. ”

“ The reader may remember that the Dyaks are in the habit of purchasing water that has been poured into the sacred jars, and sprinkling it over their fields by way of ensuring fertility. They believe that water which has touched the person of a white man will have the same effect, especially if he be a man of some rank. So as soon as English officers arrive at a Dyak village, the natives have a custom of seizing them, pulling off their shoes and stockings, and washing their feet, the water being preserved as an infallible charm for promoting the growth of their crops. ”

“ In order to show me what could be done with the sumpitan, the Regent stuck in the earth a bamboo no larger than a woman's little finger, and a Dyak, taking up his position at a distance of thirty paces which I stepped off myself, hit the almost indistinguishable mark with his darts twelve times running. That, as the late Colonel Cody would have put it, "is some shooting."
In Borneo the use of the blow-gun is not confined to the Dyaks. They are also used by fish! ”