40 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



1500 or even more in a few of the largest; while 

 the average village comprises about 30 families 

 which, with a few slaves and dependants, make a 

 community of some 200 to 300 persons. Each 

 such community is presided over by a chief A 

 number of villages of one people are commonly 

 grouped within easy reach of one another on the 

 banks of a river. But no people exclusively occupies 

 or claims exclusive possession of any one territory or 

 waterway. With the exception of the Sea Dayaks, 

 all these different peoples may here and there be 

 found in closely adjoining villages ; and in some 

 rivers the villages of the different peoples are freely 

 intermingled over considerable areas. The segrega- 

 tion of the Sea Dayak villages seems to be due to 

 the truculent treacherous nature of the Sea Dayak, 

 which renders him obnoxious as a neighbour to 

 the other peoples, and leads him to feel the need 

 of the support of his own people in large numbers. 

 All find their principal support and occupation 

 in the cultivation of padi (rice), and all supplement 

 this with the breeding of a few pigs and fowls and, 

 in the north of the island, buffalo, with hunting and 

 fishing, and with the collection of jungle produce — 

 gutta-percha, rubber, rattan canes, camphor, sago. 

 These jungle products they barter or sell for cash 

 to the Malay and Chinese traders. 



They have no written records, and but vague 

 traditions of their past history and migrations. 

 There is no political organisation beyond a loose 

 coherence and alliance for defence and offence of the 

 village communities of any one people in neighbour- 

 ing parts of the country — a coherence which at 

 times is greatly strengthened by the personal 

 ascendency of the chief of some one village over 

 neighbouring chiefs. One of the most notable 

 examples of such personal ascendency exercised in 

 recent times was that of Tama Bulan (PL 27), a 



