Manchesler Memoirs, Vol. Ixi. (1917), t^o. 0. 5 



method of gcttinj^ heads is similar among many of the head- 

 hunting tribes. Small parties of warriors set oiit and either 

 ambush people, men and women indiscriminately, or rush a 

 village just before dawn. Little open fighting takes place, for 

 directly a few heads are taken the party at once sets off for 

 home. The Kay an of Borneo go out to seek heads on the 

 occasion of the death of a chief, and sometimes they take 

 revenge at the same time for some injury or insult. But they 

 generally leave an injury unavenged for years, and wait 

 until it IS necessary to procure heads for ceremonial purposes. 



The Kayan differ from the Punan m that they need heads 

 for the funeral ceremonies of their chiefs., and formerly they 

 sacrificed slaves on these occasions. The Punan have no here- 

 ditary chiefs, they do not keep slaves, neither do they hunt 

 for heads. A profound difference therefore exists between the 

 social organisation of the Punan and that of the Kayan, and 

 it is a striking fact that only the chiefly class of the Kayan 

 should need heads and human sacrifices for their funerals. 

 Some of the Kayan chiefs differ from the commoners in that 

 they claim to be descended from people from the sky. Not 

 only are Kayan chiefs distinguished from the commoners, but 

 warriors who die fighting, and women who die in childbirth, go 

 to live in the more desirable parts of the land of the dead, and 

 become rich there without working. 



One Borneo tribe says that a frog told them first to get 

 heads. ^"^ Many may consider this a frivolous reason, but it 

 would not be so to some Indonesian peoples. Men have, 

 according to them, been petrified for laughing at frogs.^^ 



The Borneo people therefore claim to have been taught their 

 head-hunting, in which case it would not necessarily be due to 

 innate pugnacity. This claim is not fanciful; the Bontoc of 

 Luzon in the Philippines also say that they were taught war- 

 fare by a being, Lumawig, who came from the sky and taught 

 them many things in addition to warfare. The Bontoc say 

 that the ghost of a warrior whose head has been taken goes up 

 to the sky, and there has a head of flames; the ghosts of all 

 others go tO' the mountains. In a tale concerning the first 

 Bontoc man whose head was taken, the "children of the sun" 

 are the authors of the deed. 



The Bontoc are therefore quite definite about the matter; 

 they once had no warfare, and someone came who taught them 

 to get heads. The two cases, Bontoc and Kayan, are similar 

 in that a warrior is considered to go to a special home of the 

 dead. Since Kayan chiefs are descended from the sky, and 

 since the Bontoc got their knowledge of warfare from the sky, 

 it would seem that the existence of a sky-born chieftainship 



14. The Seboij, a Klemantan tribe. Hose and MrDougall. Op. 

 cit.^ II., pp. 138-Q. 



15. The story of the frog as an element of comparative religion has 

 yet to be told, arid the telling w'\\\ reveal many curious things. 



