Its Name In Katungan Is Bakan Runi; (Bakan = Form, Exterior; Runi = Dead Person)

To see such an artistic production was worth a great deal of trouble. Usually this and similar work is made by several working in unison, who co-operate to obtain the best result in the shortest time.

I was gratified when they agreed to make an exact copy for me, to be ready on my return from up country. When one of the men consented to pose before the camera his wife fled with ludicrous precipitation. A dwarf was photographed, forty years old and unmarried, whose height was 1.13 metres.

I was about to leave when the people began to behave in a boisterous manner. Men caught firebrands and beat with them about the feet of the others. Some cut mats in pieces, ignited them, and struck with those. A woman came running out of the house with a piece of burning mat and beat me about my feet and ankles (my trousers and shoes were supposed to be white) and then went after others, all in good humour and laughingly. She next exchanged firebrands with a man, and both struck at each other repeatedly. This same custom is used at funerals with the Ot-Danums on the Samba, and the explanation given in both tribes is that the mourners want to forget their grief.

After distributing pieces of chewing-tobacco to all present, which seemed to please them much, I left the entertaining scene. In the afternoon we arrived at a small kampong, Tevang Karangan, (tevang = inlet; karangan = a bank of coarse sand or pebbles) where Upper Katingans appeared for the first time. No Malays live here, but there is much intermixture with Ot-Danums. The people were without rice, and edible roots from the jungle were lying in the sun to dry. The cemetery was close at hand in the outskirts of the jungle, where little houses could be seen consisting simply of platforms on four poles with roofs of palm-leaf mats, each containing one, two, or three coffins. It is impossible to buy skulls from the Dayaks on account of their fear that the insult may be avenged by the ghost of the original owner, through the infliction of misfortunes of various kinds - illness, loss of crops, etc. According to their belief, punishment would not descend upon the stranger who abstracted a human bone from a coffin, but upon the natives who permitted the theft. Moreover, they believe they have a right to kill the intruder; the bone must be returned and a pig killed as a sacrifice to the wandering liao of the corpse. But the case is somewhat different with slaves, who up to some thirty years ago were commonly kept in these districts, and whose bodies after death were disposed of separately from those of free people.

Kuala Samba is quite a large kampong situated at the junction of the Samba with the Katingan River, and inhabited chiefly by the Bakompai, a branch of the Malays.

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