WAR 185 



moving, and more prone to attack groups of the 

 enemy encountered on farms or on the river. Like 

 the I bans, the Kenyahs make peace more readily 

 than the Kayans, who nurse their grievances and 

 seek redress after long intervals of time. 



The I bans conduct their warfare less systematic- 

 ally, and with far less discipline than the Kayans 

 and Kenyahs. An attack upon a house or village by 

 Ibans is usually made in very large force ; the party 

 is more of the nature of a rabble than of an army ; 

 each man acts independently. They seek above 

 all things to take heads, to which they attach an 

 extravagant value, unlike the Kayans and Kenyahs 

 who seek heads primarily for the service of their 

 funeral rites ; and they not infrequently attack a 

 house and kill a large number of its inmates in a 

 perfectly wanton manner, and for no other motive 

 that the desire to obtain heads. This passion for 

 heads leads them sometimes into acts of gross 

 treachery and brutality. The Ibans being great 

 wanderers, small parties of them, engaged perhaps 

 in working jungle produce, will settle for some 

 weeks in a household of Klemantans, and, after 

 being received hospitably, and sometimes even after 

 contracting marriages with members of the house- 

 hold, will seize an opportunity, when most of the 

 men of the house are from home, to take the heads 

 of all the men, women, and children who remain, 

 and to flee with them to their own distant homes. 



So strong is this morbid desire of the Ibans to 

 obtain human heads, that a war-party will sometimes 

 rob the tombs of the villages of other tribes and, 

 after smoking the stolen heads of the corpses, will 

 bring them home in triumph with glowing accounts 

 of the stout resistance offered by the victims. 

 Their attitude in this matter is well expressed by a 

 saying current among them, namely, ** Why should 

 we eat the hard caked rice from the edge of the 



