The Baram River Peoples
In the early nineteenth century, warfare occurred regularly throughout the Baram watershed. (The Baram River flows from the Kelabit highlands westward to the South China Sea) People from the far interior, Kayan and Kenyah, were pushing down the Baram River towards the centres of trade on the coast. From there came many goods such as ceramics, beads and metal carvings.
Some of these groups were numerous and powerful and they defeated or displaced less powerful tribes. In 1857, a Kayan war party said to number 5000 warriors, arrived before the gates of Brunei itself. The ancient Sultanate, fabulous in its power and wealth, was obliged to pay them off to get rid of them.
Potential victims hid in safer locations. Some small groups fled almost to the coast and placed themselves under the protection of the Brunei Sultan. Others, such as the Tring, were virtually annihilated by warfare, enslavement, and headhunting. The Berawan neither fled nor perished. Instead, they formed themselves into alliances larger than any that had previously existed, and strong enough that Kayan war parties would paddle on bypassing the Berawan people.
One of these alliances was headquartered near the Lubok Bendera(lubok is the channel in a river) in the lower Tutoh river. It consisted of two longhouses of two groups of Berawan, the Bitokala and Kapita. The houses were surrounded by a stockade and a group of Malay traders. The Sultan of Brunei maintained a “fort” nearby, and the town was in touch with Brunei via a walking trail. A similar structure at Long Batan together with some Kenyans at Tinjar.
Fighting soon broke out among members of the alliance, however, the leaders were only able to hold the alliance together because of the external threat.
The new leaders felt they had to have some kind of new death ritual. Most cemeteries were located away from the longhouses usually across the river. The new order called for the massive, elaborately carved tomb posts of important leaders to be erected directly outside their longhouses as if to diffuse the authority of the past.
At Long Batan, the Berawan practised secondary reburials with a great feast while the Sebop expressed disgust at this ritual. A Malay trader laughed at a Berwan corpse which was in a seated position on the longhouse veranda. The Malay was beheaded and his compatriots fled which led to the influence of the Brunei Sultan being damaged beyond repair.
As a compromise rituals for the dead was worked out. The Berawan people modified their practices to eliminate burial practices that most offended the Sebop. These included the opening of the container used for primary storage of the corpse and the cleaning of the bones. For their part, the Long Taballau Sebop lengthened their funerals much beyond the normal ten-day limit. Meanwhile, the construction of statues was elaborated. We cannot know what part Aban Jau, the assertive leader of the alliance, played in these modifications but certainly, they tended to support his power.
However, Aban Jau’s popularity waned when he began to take too many wives and other people’s property. Aban Jau’s Berawan followers began to melt away. While agents of Rajah Brooke of Sarawak were establishing themselves in the lower Baram River, a Berwan sub-chief offered to cooperate with the new English rulers. He and his followers moved further downriver far from Aban Jau. Another group left, moving onto their farmlands downriver. And finally the last of the Berawan left.
The other splinter groups were less settled, both geographically and politically. During this time, each of the communities made further small ritual changes to the funeral arrangements, that can still be detected. But the process was reversed in the second decade of the twentieth century when a new leader emerged who was able to reassemble resources for the construction of lofty hardwood tombs.
The process was reversed in the second decade of the twentieth century, when a new leader emerged who was able to reassemble, in three longhouses, all of the Berwan of Tinjar. The Kapita Bawan and Lakipo at Lubok Bendera became so intermarried as to be absorbed. The Bitkola Bawan joined the Lelak people.
The essay ends here without further information.
Metcalf, Peter Warfare and Community Size in 19th Century Borneo by Peter Metcalf Borneo Research Bulletin April 1981