Murder By One Of The Same Tribe Is Unknown And A Lonely Stranger Is Quite Safe In The Kampong, Where They Do Not Like To Kill Anybody.

Among the Kenyahs and Kayans and many other tribes are found distinct social strata, upper, middle, and low.

The first class ranks as a sort of nobility and until recent times had slaves, who were kindly treated. The members of the second class have less property, but they are active in blacksmithing, making prahus, determining the seasons by astronomical observations, etc. These well-bred Dayaks are truthful and do not steal. In their conception a thief will have to carry around the stolen goods on his head or back in the next life, forever exposed to scorn and ridicule. Third-class people are descendants of slaves and, according to the posthouder at Long Pangian, himself a Dayak, they are the more numerous on the Kayan River. These may tell lies, and ten per cent of them are apt to appropriate small articles, but they never steal money.

The Kenyah woman is most independent, and may travel unaccompanied by another woman with a party of men for days, sleeping aside, separate from the men. She and her husband both bring wood to the house and she does the cooking. No man has ever been known to beat or kill his wife. If dissatisfied, either may leave the other. The daughter of the chief at Long Mahan had had three husbands. Abortive plants are used, but the men do not know what they are.

Every day I went to the kampong, and it was a pleasure to visit these still primitive natives. Women, as usual, were timid about being photographed, for it is a universal belief that such an operation prevents women from bearing children. However, by giving money, cloth, sugar, or the like, which would enable them to offer some little sacrifice to protecting spirits, I usually succeeded. But if a woman is pregnant or has care of a small child, no inducements are of any avail, as an exposure to the camera would give the child bad luck or a disease that might kill it.

The women here had the teeth of the upper jaw in front filed off, but not the men, who make plugs from yellow metal wire, procured in Tandjong Selor, with which they adorn their front teeth, drilling holes in them for the purpose. The plug is made with a round flat head, which is the ornamental part of it, and without apparent rule appears in one, two, or three incisors, usually in the upper jaw, sometimes in both. One of my men took his out to show to me.

The women are cleanly, combing their hair frequently and bathing three times daily. The men bathe even oftener; still all of them have more or less parasites in their hair and frequently apply lime juice in order to kill them. A young woman, whom I remembered as one of two who had danced for the kinematograph, had considerable charm of manner and personal attraction; it was a trifle disconcerting to find my belle a little later hunting the fauna of her lover's head.

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