262 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



The Kenyah women of the Baram district exhibit a 

 very primitive style of tatu on the arms and hands (PI. 

 141, Fig. 4); a broad band encircles the middle of the 

 forearm, and a narrow band an inch or so distant of this 

 also surrounds the arm ; from this narrow band there run 

 over the metacarpals to the base of the fingers eight narrow 

 lines, the outermost on the radial side bifurcating ; the 

 design is known as betik alle or line tatu. No other part 

 of the body is tatued. 



Nieuwenhuis figures [9, PI. 95] a somewhat similar 

 design employed by the Lepu Tau women of the Batang 

 Kayan ; but in this case, instead of eight longitudinal lines 

 stopping short at the knuckles, there are five broad bands 

 running to the finger nails, interrupted at the knuckles by 

 a 2 cm. -broad strip of untatued skin. Moreover, with these 

 people the front and sides of the thigh and the shin are 

 tatued with primitive-looking designs made up of series 

 of short transverse lines, curved lines, and broad bands ; 

 the names of the designs are not given ; these designs are 

 said to be characteristic of the slave-class, the higher-class 

 women copying the more elaborate designs of the Uma 

 Lekan. 



Amongst the Batang Kayan Kenyahs tatuing cannot 

 be executed in the communal house, but only in a hut 

 built for the purpose. The males of the family, to which 

 the girl undergoing the operation belongs, must dress in 

 bark-cloth, and are confined to the house until the tatu is 

 completed ; should any of the male members be travelling 

 in other parts of the island tatu cannot be commenced 

 until they return. Amongst the Uma Tow (or Lepu 

 Tau) the daughter of a chief must be tatued before any 

 of the other females of the house ; should the chiefs 

 daughter (or daughters) die before she has been tatued, all 

 the other women of the house are debarred from this em- 

 bellishment (Nieuwenhuis [9, pp. 453, 454]). 



Nieuwenhuis, in his great work on Borneo, which we 

 have cited so often, gives a good account of the tatu of the ' 

 Long Glat. According to this authority, girls when only 

 eight years old have the backs of the fingers tatued, at the 

 commencement of menstruation the tatu of the fingers is 

 completed, and in the course of the following year the tatu 

 is carried over the backs of the hand to the wrist ; the feet 

 are tatued synchronously with the hands. At the age of 

 eighteen to twenty the front of the thigh is tatued, and 



