This Etext Created by Jeroen Hellingman <jehe@kabelfoon.nl>
The Pagan Tribes of Borneo
A Description of Their Physical Moral and Intellectual Condition
With Some Discussion of their Ethnic Relations
by Charles Hose and William McDougall
With an Appendix on the Physical Characters of the Races of Borneo
by A. C. Haddon
In Two Volumes
Preface
In writing this book we have aimed at presenting a clear picture of thepagan tribes of Borneo as they existed at the close of the nineteenthcentury. We have not attempted to embody in it the observationsrecorded by other writers, although we have profited by them and havebeen guided and aided by them in making our own observations. We haverather been content to put on record as much information as we havebeen able to obtain at first hand, both by direct observation of thepeople and of their possessions, customs, and manners, and by meansof innumerable conversations with men and women of many tribes.
The reader has a right to be informed as to the nature of theopportunities we have enjoyed for collecting our material, and wetherefore make the following personal statement. One of us (C. H.) hasspent twenty-four years as a Civil Officer in the service of the Rajahof Sarawak; and of this time twenty-one years were spent actually inSarawak, while periods of some months were spent from time to timein visiting neighbouring lands — Celebes, Sulu Islands, Ternate,Malay Peninsula, British North Borneo, and Dutch Borneo. Of thetwenty-one years spent in Sarawak, about eighteen were passed in theBaram district, and the remainder mostly in the Rejang district. Inboth these districts, but especially in the Baram, settlements andrepresentatives of nearly all the principal peoples are to be found;and the nature of his duties as Resident Magistrate necessitated aconstant and intimate intercourse with all the tribes of the districts,and many long and leisurely journeys into the far interior, ofteninto regions which had not previously been explored. Such journeys,during which the tribesmen are the magistrate's only companionsfor many weeks or months, and during which his nights and many ofhis days are spent in the houses of the people, afford unequalledopportunities for obtaining intimate knowledge of them and theirways. These opportunities have not been neglected; notes have beenwritten, special questions followed up, photographs taken, and sketchesmade, throughout all this period.
In the years 1898 — 9 the second collaborator (W. McD.) spent thegreater part of a year in the Baram district as a member of theCambridge Anthropological Expedition, which, under the leadershipof Dr. A. C. Haddon, went out to the Torres Straits in the year1897. During this visit we co-operated in collecting material for ajoint paper on the animal cults of Sarawak;[1] and this co-operation,having proved itself profitable, suggested to us an extension ofour joint program to the form of a book embodying all the informationalready to hand and whatever additional information might be obtainableduring the years that one of us was still to spend in Borneo. Thebook therefore may be said to have been begun in the year 1898 andto have been in progress since that time; but it has been put intoshape only during the last few years, when we have been able to cometogether for the actual writing of it.
During the year 1899 Dr. A. C. Haddon spent some months in the Baramdistrict, together with other members of the Cambridge Expedition(Drs. C. G. Seligmann, C.