. The pagan tribes of Borneo; a description of their physical, moral and intellectual condition, with some discussion of their ethnic relations. small parties of them, engaged perhapsin working jungle produce, will settle for someweeks in a household of Klemantans, and, afterbeing received hospitably, and sometimes even aftercontracting marriages with members of the house-hold, will seize an opportunity, when most of themen of the house are from home, to take the headsof all the men, women, and children who remain,and to flee with them to their own distant homes. So strong is this morbid desir
. The pagan tribes of Borneo; a description of their physical, moral and intellectual condition, with some discussion of their ethnic relations. small parties of them, engaged perhapsin working jungle produce, will settle for someweeks in a household of Klemantans, and, afterbeing received hospitably, and sometimes even aftercontracting marriages with members of the house-hold, will seize an opportunity, when most of themen of the house are from home, to take the headsof all the men, women, and children who remain,and to flee with them to their own distant homes. So strong is this morbid desire of the Ibans toobtain human heads, that a war-party will sometimesrob the tombs of the villages of other tribes and,after smoking the stolen heads of the corpses, willbring them home in triumph with glowing accountsof the stout resistance offered by the attitude in this matter is well expressed by asaying current among them, namely, ** Why shouldwe eat the hard caked rice from the edge of the i86 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. pot when theres plenty of soft rice in the centre? The I ban women urge on the men to the taking of. Fig. 30.—Iban war-coat and war-cap covered with fish scales ;mail of this kind is becoming rare. heads; they make much of those who bring themhome, and sometimes a girl will taunt her suitor bysaying that he has not been brave enough to take
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectethnolo, bookyear1912
