THE NORTH
BORNEO HERALD AND THE OFFICIAL GAZETTE
EDUCATIONAL
SERIES BY BORNEO HISTORY
No. 7 -
VOL.XL. JESSELTON, SATURDAY, 1ST APRIL 1922.
The North
Borneo Herald.
SATURDAY, 1ST APRIL 1922.
AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES IN BORNEO
One may be abused or
irritated, entertained and enlightened or misled and bored by books on little
known countries. It is usual for some people who have bad personal-experience
of a certain place to condemn off-hand the impressionist sketches of tourists,
who generally write with the confidence of ignorance on things they can know
little about beyond what they have been told. Such descriptions and impressions
may have their use up to a point; and if the circumstances and condition under
which a book has been written are borne in mind, certain defects and
deficiencies can be ignored if only it provides bright and interesting reading.
It is the fault of many portentous volumes written by authors with a long and
profound knowledge of the peoples and places on the happy knack of
selecting and presenting salient fact and apt comments in a way which provides
both instruction and pleasure to the reader. Such a charge cannot be laid
against Mr. Ivor H. N. Evans, B. A., a
copy of whose book, entitled “Among primitive peoples in Borneo” published by
Seeley Service and Co., Ltd., at 21/s net, has just been received. A sub-title
states it to be “a description of lives, habits and customs of the piratical
head hunters of North Borneo, with an account of interesting objects of
prehistoric antiquity discovered in the island.” The book is illustrated with
half tones from photographs taken by the author and contains a map of Borneo,
the second largest island in the world. It deals with the territory of the
British North Borneo Co., and in particular of the adjacent districts of the
Tuaran and Tempasuk where Mr. Evans served in an official capacity. We gather
from the tone of candid criticism which he adopts in reference to the Chartered
Company that he now occupies a position of more freedom and lesser
responsibility. There are incidental references to his being in Taiping in 1914
and in Borneo itself in 1915 which go to show that his book is thoroughly up to
date and that early notes and impressions have been modified and corrected by
Inter experiences.
While Borneo has a
total are of about 290,000 square miles with a population of about 1,820,000
British North Borneo has an area of 31,000 square miles and a population
208,000. In his opening chapter Mr.
Evans gives a brief history of how the Chartered Company obtained concessions
from the Sultans of Sulu and Brunei in consideration of stipulated annual
payments. The negotiations with these Sultans for the transfer of territories
to a Provisional Company were concluded by the late Sir Alfred Dent and Baron
Overbeck in 1877. The latter had taken over some concessions granted to an
American Trading Coy. Despite Dutch and Spanish opposition, a Royal Charter was
granted to the Provisional Coy in 1881 which had been formed to acquire the
rights over territory that had been transferred by the Sultans. The actual cash
with which the coy started its existence was only about £384,000. The
beginnings of the new Coy consisted of “a few European officers holding
insecure positions with the aid of small companies of police, a certain amount
of cash and absolute rights over a large territory leased to the Coy by two
Sultans who were practically without power to enforce their will in the
portions of it claimed respectively by each.” Luckily for the Coy., Mr.
Evans says, the natives of British North Borneo are neither so warlike nor so
well organised as those of Sarawak consequently there have been fewer wars.
There have been difficulties with the troublesome tribes of Bajaus and Illanuns
on the West Coast, by nature and education undisciplined robbers, sea rovers
and freebooters; and from the latter tribes arose one leader to withstand the
rising power of the Chartered Company, Mat Salleh, who for a number of years
gave the Directors many uneasy moments.
Mr. Evans draws a pen
picture of the rebel leader who well represented, he says, prevailing Bajau
feeling in both disliking and fearing the new government, since it threatened
to put bounds to the Bajaus’ immemorial right of doing exactly as they choose
and to their equally venerable custom of oppressing and cheating the natives of
the interior. On the other hand, he asserts that it cannot be said that the
Chartered Company had morally-even supposing that its legal rights were above
suspicion-any right to possess itself of its present territories. Mr. Evans
points out that the Sultans’ claims to be most of the territory were of a very
shadowy description and that they were only too glad to transfer their doubtful
claims in exchange for what was to them a liberal yearly payment. On the other
hand the Directors of the Company were anxious to have some sort of a legal
document “to flourish in the faces of those who were rude enough to say they
were little better than the pirates and freebooters who excesses they
professed themselves so wishful to stop.”
How the Coy put down the
rebellion and brought about the death on the 31st
January, 1900, of Mat Salleh is recorded and Mr. Evans passes on to deal with
various aspects of the country and its peoples. Of the latter he says, that
those of the littoral and on the more navigable rivers are generally speaking lax Mohammedans, those of the
interior and the intermediate regions pagans. The author takes little pains to
hide the fact that his sympathies lie on the side of the pagans. The coastal
natives are described as being “usually boastful, lazy, tyrannical, over those
weaker than themselves, lawless, gamblers, borrowers and spendthrifts, their
only merit being their fondness for sport in all its-forms.” On the other hand
the “ the up-country man is hard working, thrifty and usually honest. He has
moreover a manner which appeals singularly to most Englishmen since he has no
trace of the bringing and fawning style of many of the people of India, which,
should there be any opportunity, quickly develops into very slightly veiled
insolence. He meets the white man with a kind of man-to-man manner, which at
the same time is perfectly respectful. The best type of native both respects
himself and respects you, and if you are a friendly disposition, the respect
will rapidly develop into liking on both sides.” Mr. Evans is careful to inform
his readers that he does not want them to think his pagan native faultless. “He
has his little failings as most of us have and among them must be mentioned, a
weakness for ‘lifting’ human heads from their owners’ shoulders ̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶
purely as a matter of sport and prowess, partly of religion ̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶
and a penchant for stealing buffaloes which also is considered almost a
sport. On these matters Mr. Evans enlarges in a separate chapter. He admits his
inability to settle quite definitely in his own mind whether such difference in
character is due to fundamental difference in race, between the coastal tribes
and those of the interior, or whether the reason for the essential badness of
the natives of the seaboard must be sought in some obscure influence of the
teachings of Islam on the peculiar Malayan temperament.
He does not profess any
great admiration for Mohammedanism in general since it suffers from all the
defects of an exclusive religion. But he is inclined to think that we must not
ascribe all the shortcomings to their religion “one reason being that, except
for a very firm belief that its tenets are true, they pay but little attention
to them in matters concerning everyday life.” This is a charge which can be
brought against those who profess to belong to other religious. Mr. Evans has
many trite and suggestive things to say of the natives. He makes a point of the
saving sense of humor and keen sportsmanship of the Malays of Borneo. He says,
“They will, I think, certainly manage to keep their place in the modern
struggle for existence, just beginning to be felt in Borneo; they may not be highly
successful, but they will continue to exist thanks chiefly to their
rascality.” The pagan tribes he fears will suffer both in numbers and
vitality from the encroachments of civilization. “This to many primitive people
is a deadly poison and destroys them body and soul, bringing, as it does, in
its train new diseases, intoxicating liquors, clothes unsuited to the savage
and which he does not change when they are soaked with rain, new food, new
restrictions, new customs and the destructions of old habits.” After a period
of decrease Mr. Evans has hopes that the tribesmen will become inured to the
new destructive agencies and will be then be able to hold their own and
increase fairly rapidly. We find we have little space left for allusion to the
bulk of Mr. Evans’ book which contain
chapters of dress and adornment, agriculture, fishing, hunting and trapping,
courtship, marriage and divorce, burial and puberty customs, religion and
superstitions, legends, warfare, head-hunting and weapons, dress, domestic affairs
and Government, cock fighting, gambling and other amusements, antiquities, the
Chinese in Borneo &o. The mere recapitulation of these titles indicate what
a wealth of interesting information Mr. Ivor Evans has collected and we have
not the least doubt that the book will find a wide and appreciative circle of
readers. ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶ The Pinang
Gazette
-/ss
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