The Home-life of Borneo Head-hunters: Its Festivals And Folk-lore
9781465682642
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The houses in which the Borneo people live are the outcome of a life of constant apprehension of attacks from head-hunters. In union alone is strength. Surrounded by a dense jungle which affords, night and day, up to the very steps to their homes, a protecting cover for enemies, the Borneans live, as it were, in fighting trim, with their backs to a hollow square. A village of scattered houses would mean the utmost danger to those on the outskirts; consequently, houses which would ordinarily form a village have been crowded together until one roof covers them all. The rivers and streams are the only thoroughfares in the island, and village houses are always built close to the river-banks, so that boats can be quickly reached; this entails another necessity in the construction of the houses. The torrents during the rainy season, which, on the western half of the island, lasts from October till February, swell the rivers with such suddenness and to such an extent that in a single night the water will overflow banks thirty feet high, and convert the jungle round about into a soggy swamp; unless the houses were built of stone they would be inevitably swept away by the rush of water; wherefore the natives build on high piles and live above the moisture and decay of the steaming ground. Beneath the houses is the storage-place for canoes that are leaky and old, or only half finished and in process of being sprung and spread out into proper shape before being fitted up with gunwales and thwarts. It is generally a very disorderly and noisome place, where all the refuse from the house is thrown, and where pigs wallow, and chickens scratch for grains of rice that fall from the husking mortars in the veranda overhead. Between the houses and the river’s bank,—a distance of a hundred yards, more or less,—the jungle is cleared away, and in its place are clumps of cocoanut, or Areca palms, and, here and there, small storehouses, built on piles, for rice. In front of the houses of the Kayans there are sure to be one or two forges, where the village blacksmiths, makers of spear-heads, swords, hoes, and axes, hold an honorable position. In the shade of the palms the boat-builders’ sheds protect from the scorching heat of the sun the great logs that are being scooped out to form canoes; the ground is covered with chips, from which arises a sour, sappy odor that is almost pungent and is suggestive of all varieties of fever, but is really quite harmless. In the open spaces tall reedy grass grows, and after hard rains a misstep, from the logs forming a pathway, means to sink into black, oozy mud up to the knees.
