Newspaper Articles

Thanks to Veronica Chang Schmid for finding and posting these articles.

When did Headhunting begin?

Mr. Alan Coates, in his “Letter to the Editor” in the Sarawak Gazette of 16th December 1957, states that headhunting did not begin in Borneo until after 1431. He makes it clear that his observations are from the Land Dayak/Bidayuh people.

In his first point, Mr Coates states Hinduism influenced the Bidayuh and that headhunting was the result of Buddhist influence. He then goes through a long series dating to 6 AD of Chinese fables, where there is no mention of headhunting. He also states the Chinese temples do not depict any headhunting. Therefore, can we infer there was no headhunting before 1431?

Coates continues, that Buddhism was not the Indian form but a combination of Southeast Asia and Hindu Buddhist forms. These ideas blended to form a unique form of the Buddhist Hindu society. One of the aspects was the Southeast Asian belief of semangat or soul substance, by which the head is the repository of strong soul substance.” By hunting human heads, the soul substance in a certain family or community could be increased, and that Borneo was one of the rare places in which this perversion was affected”.

When did this happen?  By 1431 the Buddhist-Hindu states had disintegrated and Islam was in the process of replacing them. However, the Islamic concepts did not penetrate the Bidayuh psychic, leaving a void. Headhunting began to replace the lost semangat /soul substance.

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The Hapless Slaves of Old Borneo

The Straits Times 3 November 1950

Across Borneo, slaves were sacrificed on special occasions. Among the coastal Melanaus, they were sacrificed at the building of a new longhouse or at the erection of a burial pole dedicated to a very important person. The slave was first flung into a hole, and this was believed that he was helping to raise it. Among the Kayans, Sekapans and Berwans slaves were often tied to the tops or sides of burial poles. The slave was then left exposed to die a natural death.

The cementing of peace also included a slave ritual. One side had taken a head, but the other did not. The one side would pay a slave and he/she would be killed to even up the score. The exchange happened last in 1913.

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The Poison Darts of Borneo

Pall Mall Gazette 1896

 Cap’t Mundy tells how several of his men were struck by darts at the capture of Brunei. Their “messmates” immediately sucked the wound and nothing happened.  

The present Rajah of Sarawak once lost thirty men in one day. The bodies had no marks save the puncture of a wound with a drop of blood. “One man was struck near him. He had the arrow removed and immediately sucked out the poison and given a glass of brandy, and he was sent off to the boats about five miles distant. Two companions supported him with strict orders not to let him sleep. They made him stay awake and he recovered.

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How the Germans lost North Borneo

The St Louis Republic, 1900

The old Sultan owned practically all of North Borneo, from Sandakan to most of the land leased to the North Borneo Company. Being in a friendly mood one day, he made a deed of all this land to Mr. Schuck telling him he could sell it to the German. There was an understanding that the Sultan would receive a portion of the profits. Mr Schuck wrote to Prince Bismark, offering the land to him as a German colony. Prince Bismark told him he was not ready to enter into a colonial policy.

Mr. Schuck told the Sultan, who replied with a remark Schuck did not like. It may have been an insulting reference to the Prince Bismark.  At any rate, he took the deed granting him most of North Borneo, ripped it in half and threw it at the feet of the Sultan, telling him he could keep his old land and that neither he nor Prince Bismark wanted it.

The Sultan, to appease him, gave him some land outside Jolo. He kept the land and then rented it out to the North Borneo Company for $5,000. The lands have been quite developed and become a harbour of Sandakan.

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The Coffee Plantation and Pulping Coffee with Human Teeth, a continuation of Mr. Schuck’s accounts

In starting the coffee plantation in Sulu, Mr. Schuck stated his father started with a few trees. They were not well cared for, but now were twenty feet high, with trunks the thickness of your wrist and waist. They were full-bearing but impossible to pick because of their height. When their father died, Mr. Schuck went to Borneo, Singapore and elsewhere to earn enough to develop the property. In Borneo, they obtained the seeds and went back to Sulu to start the coffee plantation. First, they cleared the jungle. The seeds were sown in seedbeds and when they became eight inches tall they were set out. Each plant was grown in a tube of bamboo and as the tube rotted away the roots came through on all sides.

Our labour was made up of natives, some of whom were slaves. At first, I slept with 50 Moros. I paid for their work, even the slaves. I have many women who I pay 25–40 cents of silver a day. After the Americans came, I had to let much of my work go.(I am not sure what the Americans were doing in Sulu)

One of the problems was removing the pulp from the berries and leaving only the seeds, to be ground later into coffee. There were about two dozen women with about 10 children. Each woman had a basket of coffee berries and a large can like a kerosene can in front of her. They were working their jaws making a crunching sound, dissolving the pulp and leaving a pulpy combination of seeds and pulp. They received one and a half cents per gallon of the mixture. The mixture was then washed in a creek and then sent to be laid out in the sun for five or six days.

Every coffee bean still has two skins on it. There is an outer skin about as thick as your fingernail, while the inner one is the thickness of tissue paper. The beans are then placed in a mortar made by gouging out the end of a log. A native then pounds on them, breaking the skins. The combination is then winnowed away in the air, leaving the beans ready for the market. Such is the way coffee is produced in Jolo now.

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Secret Society

Kenosha, Wisconsin 1889

The secret society, Ghae Sin, ruled in China and later in Sarawak. It took vengeance on those Chinese who refused to bow to their authority. Rajah Charles Brooke learned of a conspiracy fomented by the Ghae Sin. In a sudden attack on its quarters, documents secured led to the arrest of 50 of its members. Six were condemned to death, eleven were flogged, and after imprisonment were permanently exiled.

On August 12, the six condemned were taken out on a small steamer. They were blindfolded, bound and shot. Their bodies were sunk in the river. Others were flogged and then branded for revealing secrets of society. Several hundreds were then hanged and shot(I am not so sure about this fact…Tom) and the society was wiped out. A branch of the society exists in San Francisco.

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War in Borneo

Sarawak Gazette June 27, 1870

An inland expedition consisting of 11,000 Malays and Dyaks commanded by His Royal Highness The Rajah of Sarawak attacked a large party of Dyaks who were living along a small stream named Katibas a tributary of the Rejang River.

The Dyaks for the last year have rejected the authority of the Sarawak government and have continued to take heads of Malays and Chinese. After days of poling up the stream, the 300 boats and their men burned houses and destroyed the upriver villages. It is expected the expedition will bring an end to the Dayak practice of decapitating the people.

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