house of thirty or forty families.
Before building on the chosen site the omen birds are consulted. If the omens be favourable, all the men and lads turn out immediately with axes and choppers to cut down the trees of the jungle, which are then left to dry. Another meeting is then held to decide who is to be the tuai, or headman, of the new house, and to settle the size and the sequence of the rooms. The next move is to appoint a time for all the people to meet at the site of the new village. The ground is then cleared. All the timber is carried off, as it is considered unfortunate to burn it. The ground is measured out for the different rooms belonging to the different families, and pegs are put in where the posts have to stand. A piece of bamboo is then stuck in the ground, filled with water and covered with leaves. A spear and a shield are placed beside it, and the whole is surrounded by a wooden rail. The rail is to prevent the bamboo from being upset by wild animals, and the weapons are to warn strangers not to touch it. A few people remain to keep watch, and to make a great deal of noise with brass gongs and drums to frighten away the evil spirits. If in the early morning they find there is much evaporation, the place is considered unhealthy, and is abandoned. If all be well, the building of the house is begun. Each family must kill a fowl or a pig before the holes for the posts can be dug, and the blood must be smeared on the sharpened ends and sprinkled on the posts to propitiate Pulang Gana, the tutelary deity of the earth. They begin by making the holes for the headman’s quarters, and then work simultaneously to left and right of it. The posts, of which there are a great number, are about twelve inches or less in diameter, and are of bilian or other hard wood so as not to rot in the earth. A hole four feet deep is made to receive each post. They must be planted carefully and firmly, for if one were to give way subsequently it would be regarded as foreboding evil, and the house would have to be abandoned and a new house built.
All the men combine to labour collectively until the skeleton of the house is complete, and then every family turns its attention to its own apartments. During the building of the house, there is a great deal of striking of gongs and other noisy instruments to prevent any birds of ill omen being heard. I have sometimes argued with the Dyaks that if the warnings of the birds are to be trusted, then why make so much noise to prevent hearing them? The Dyak’s reply to this was that as long as they did not hear the warning, the spirits would not be displeased at their not regarding it; so to spare themselves the trouble of choosing another site and building another house, they make so much noise as to drown the cries of any birds.
When the building is sufficiently advanced to receive the inmates, they pack up their possessions and convey them to the house, halting on the way till they have heard some favourable omen, after which they proceed joyfully. Their belongings must not be moved into the house before themselves, but must be taken with them when they move into the new house.
House-building is considered the work of the men, and another important work the men have to do is the making of boats. These are of all sizes, from the dug-out canoe twelve feet long to the long war-boat eighty to ninety feet in length.
The ordinary boats of the Dyaks are cut out of a single log. Some of my schoolboys, under the guidance of the native schoolmaster, once made a small canoe for their own use, so I saw the whole process. A tree having a round straight stem was felled, and the desired length of trunk cut off. The outside was then shaped with the adze to take the desired form of a canoe. Then the inside was hollowed out. The next thing to do was to widen the inside of this canoe. This was done by filling the boat with water and making a fire under it, and by fastening weights to each side. When the shell had been sufficiently opened out, thwarts were placed inside, about two feet from each other, to prevent the wood shrinking when the wood dried. The stem and stern of the canoe are alike, both being pointed and curved, and rising out of the water. The only tool used for the making of a boat of this kind is the Dyak axe or adze (bliong).
This is the usual type of Dyak boat, and the method of making a smaller or larger canoe is exactly the same. Even a war-boat, ninety feet long, is made from the trunk of one tree. In the longer boats planks or gunwales are stitched on the sides, and the seams are caulked so as to render the boat watertight. These boats are covered with awnings called kadjangs, which make a very good covering, as they are at once watertight, very light, easily adjusted, and so flexible that if necessary each section can be rolled up and stored in the bottom of the boat. These kadjangs are made of the young leaves of the nipa palm. The leaves are sewn together with split cane, each alternate leaf overlapping its neighbour on either side, until a piece about six and a half feet square is made. This section is made to bend in the middle crosswise, so that it can be doubled and rolled up, or partly opened, and made to serve as a roof. Sometimes kadjangs are made from the leaves of the Pandanus palm.
Sea Dyaks making a Canoe
Sea Dyaks at work on a small dug-out. The tree has been felled, and the trunk is being cut into shape and hollowed out. The Dyaks are using the native axe or bliong, and the picture shows their method of handling it.
To propel these boats the Dyaks use paddles about three feet or more in length. The paddle used by the steersman is larger than those used by the others, and the women use much smaller paddles than the men. These dug-out boats draw very little water, and are easily handled, and may be propelled at a good pace.
In shallow streams and in the rapids up-river, the Dyaks use small canoes, which they propel with poles, standing up in the boat to do so.
The principal tools the Dyaks have for their work are the duku and bliong. The duku is a short, thick sword, or, rather, chopping-knife, about two feet in length. The blade is either curved like a Turkish scimitar, or else quite straight. The handle is beautifully carved, and is made of hard wood or of horn. The duku is used in war as well as for more peaceful purposes. In the jungle it is indispensable, as without it the Dyak would not be able to go through the thick undergrowth which he is often obliged to penetrate. It is, moreover, used for all purposes where a knife or chisel is used, and is a warrior’s blade as well as a woodman’s hatchet.
The bliong is the axe the Dyaks use, and is a most excellent tool. They forge it of European steel, which they procure in bars. In shape it is like a small spade, about two and a half inches wide, with a square shank. This is set in a thin handle of hard wood, at the end of which there is a woven pocket of cane to receive it. The lower end of this handle has a piece of light wood fixed to it to form a firm grip for the hand. The bliong can be fixed in the handle at any angle, and is therefore used as an axe or adze. With it the natives make their boats, and cut planks and do much of their carpentering work. The Dyak can cut down a great forest tree with a bliong in a very short time.
While the work of the men is to build houses and to make boats, the work of the women is to weave cloth and make mats.
The cloth which the women weave is of two kinds, striped and figured. The former is made by employing successively threads of different colours in stretching the web. This is simple enough. The other pattern is produced by a more elaborate process. Undyed white thread is used, and the web stretched. The woman sketches on this the pattern which she wishes to appear on the cloth, and carefully notes the different colours for the different parts. If, for example, she wishes the pattern to be of three colours—blue, red, and white—she takes up the threads of the web in little rolls of about twenty threads, and carefully wraps a quantity of vegetable fibre tightly round those parts which are intended to be red or white, leaving exposed those parts which are intended to be blue. After she has in this manner treated the whole web, she immerses it in a blue dye made from indigo, which the Dyaks plant themselves. The dye takes hold of the exposed portions of the threads, but is prevented by the vegetable fibre from colouring the other parts. Thus the blue portion of the pattern is dyed. After it has been dried, the vegetable
