Usually I had to pay one florin
to each, or fifty cents if the hair was not long. At other times nothing
would induce them to submit to the camera. A young woman recently married
had a row with her husband one night, and the affair became very
boisterous, when suddenly they came to terms. The trouble arose through
her desire to earn some pin-money by being photographed in the act of
climbing an areca palm, a proceeding which did not meet with his approval.
There were three female blians in the kampong whom I desired to photograph
as they performed the dances connected with their office, but the
compensation they demanded was so exorbitant (two hundred florins in cash
and nine tins of rice) that we did not reach an agreement. Later in the
day they reduced their demand to thirty florins for a pig to be used at
the dancing, which proposition I also declined, the amount named being at
least six times the value of the animal, but I was more fortunate in my
dealings with the two male blians of the place, one of them a Dusun, and
succeeded in inducing them to dance for me one forenoon.
The two men wore short sarongs around their loins, the women's dress,
though somewhat shorter; otherwise they were nude except for bands, to
which numerous small metal rattles were attached, running over either
shoulder and diagonally across chest and back. After a preliminary trial,
during which one of them danced with much elan, he said: "I felt a spirit
come down in my body. This will go well." The music was provided by two
men who sat upon long drums and beat them with fervour and abandon. The
dance was a spirited movement forward and backward with peculiar steps
accompanied by the swaying of the body. The evolutions of the two dancers
were slightly different.
In October a patrouille of seventeen native soldiers and nine native
convicts, under command of a lieutenant, passed through the kampong. In
the same month in 1907 a patrouille had been killed here by the Murungs.
It must be admitted that the Dayaks had reason to be aggrieved against the
lieutenant, who had sent two Malays from Tumbang Topu to bring to him the
kapala's attractive wife - an order which was obeyed with a tragic
sequence. The following night, which the military contingent passed at the
kampong of the outraged kapala, the lieutenant and thirteen soldiers were
killed. Of course the Dayaks had to be punished; the government, however,
took the provocation into account.
The kapala's wife and a female companion demanded two florins each for
telling folklore, whereupon I expressed a wish first to hear what they
were able to tell. The companion insisted on the money first, but the
kapala's wife, who was a very nice woman, began to sing, her friend
frequently joining in the song.
