The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies Part 21

The mission partly succeeded, and partly failed.

Now, if in addition to this partial success of the Anglo-Saxon mission, there had been a partial Anglo-Saxon colonization as well, and if, side by side with this, fragments of the old unmodified Paganism had survived amongst the fens and forests up to the present time, we should have had, in the relations of England and Germany, precisely what I imagine to have been the case with the Malayan peninsula and the island of Sumatra.

Like Germany, the peninsula would have supplied the original stock to the island; but, in the island, that stock would have undergone certain modifications. With these modifications it would--so to say--have been _reflected_ back upon the continent--_re_-colonizing the old mother-country. Now just what the Old Saxons of Westphalia were to the Anglo-Saxons of the eighth century, are the Jakun to the true Malays.

They differ from them in being something other than Mahometan; _i.e._, in being nearly what the Mahometan Malays were before their conversion.

The Jakun are Malays, _minus_ those points of Malay civilization which are referable to the religion of the Koran.

But the Jakun are only a few out of many; a single branch of a great stem.

The most convenient term for the members in general of this cla.s.s is _Orang Binua_--a term already explained.

_The Biduanda Kallang._--The next, then, of the _Orang Binua_ that comes in contact with a British dependency--many others _not_ thus politically connected with us being pa.s.sed over--are the _Biduanda Kallang_ of the parts about Sincapore. Their present locality is the banks of the most southern of the rivers of the peninsula, the Pulai. Thither they were removed when the British took possession of the island of Sincapore; of which they were previously the joint occupants--joint occupants, because they shared it with the tribe which will be next mentioned. They were an _Orang Laut_ in one sense of the word, but not in another. _Orang_ means _men_ or _people_, and _laut_ means _sea_ in Malay; and the Biduanda Kallang were boatmen rather than agriculturists. But they were only freshwater sailors; since, though they lived on the water, they avoided the open sea. They formerly consisted of one hundred families; but have been reduced by small-pox to eight.

Their priest or physician is called _bomo_, and he invokes the _hantu_, or deities, the _anito_ of the Philippine Islanders, the _tii_ of the Tahitians; and, probably, the _Wandong_ and _Vintana_ of Australia and Madagascar respectively.

They bury their dead after wrapping the corpse in a mat; and placing on the grave one cup of woman's milk, one of water, and one of rice; when they entreat the deceased to seek nothing more from them.

Persons of even the remotest degree of relationship are forbidden to intermarry.

The accounts of their physical appearance is taken from too few individuals to justify any generalization. Two, however, of them had the forehead broader than the cheek-bones, so that the head was pear-shaped.

In a third, it was lozenge-shaped. The head was small, and the face flat. The lower jaw projected; but not the upper--so that "when viewed in profile, the features seem to be placed on a straight line, from which the prominent parts rise very slightly."[65]

_The Orang Sletar._--The original joint-occupants of Sincapore with the Biduanda Kallang, were the _Orang Sletar_, or _men of the river Sletar_; differing but little from the former. Of the two families they are the shyer, and the more squalid; numbering about two hundred individuals and forty boats. Their dialect is Malay, spoken with a guttural p.r.o.nunciation, and with a clipping of the words.

At the birth of a child they have no ceremonies; at marriage a present of tobacco and rice to the bride's mother confirms the match; at death the deceased is wrapped in his garments and interred.

Skin diseases and deformities are common; nevertheless, many of their women are given in marriage to both the Malays and Chinese; but I know of no account of the mixed progeny.

A low retreating forehead throws the face of the _Orang Sletar_ forwards, though the jaw is rather perpendicular than projecting.[66]

Such are the _Orang Binua_ originally, or at present, in contact with the small and isolated possessions of the British in the Malayan peninsula.

Of the proper Malays I have said next to nothing. Excellent works give full accounts of them;[67] whilst it is not through _them_ that the true ethnological problems are to be worked.

I believe that when we reach Borneo, the equivalents to the _Orang Binua_, or the original populations in opposition to the Mahometan Malays, become referable to a fresh type, and that instead of being _darker_ than the true Malays they are often _lighter_. At any rate, one thing is certain, _viz._, that, whether the skin be brown, blackish, or fair, the language belongs to the same stock.

Again--although in one area the darker tribes may preponderate, it is not to the absolute exclusion of the fairer. The Dyaks of Borneo are, generally speaking, light-complexioned; yet, there is special evidence to the existence of dark tribes in that island. On the other hand there is equal evidence to the existence of families lighter-skinned than the true Malays in the peninsula. Nevertheless, as a general rule, the departure from the type of that population is towards darkness of colour on the continent, and towards lightness in Borneo.

With what physical conditions these differences coincide is not always easy to be discerned. In the South Sea Islands, where in one and the same Archipelago, we find some tribes tall and fair, whereas others are dark and ill-featured, it has been remarked by Captain Beechy that this contrast of complexion coincides with the geological structure of the soil. The lower and more coralline the island, the blacker the islanders; the more elevated and volcanic, the lighter. In Africa, it is the low alluvia of rivers that favour the Negro configuration.

Mountains or table-lands, on the other hand, give us red or yellow skins, rather than sable.

The Dyaks, then, are light-coloured Pagans, speaking languages allied to the Malay; little touched by Arabic, and less by Hindu influences; with manners and customs that, more or less, re-appear amongst the Battas (or ruder tribes of Sumatra), and the so-called Harafuras of Celebes--and not only here but elsewhere. In other words, in all the islands, where Indian and Arabic civilization have not succeeded in wholly changing the primitive character, a.n.a.logues of the _Orang Binua_ are to be found; their greatest differences being those of stature and complexion--differences upon which good judges have laid great stress; but differences which will probably be found to coincide with certain geological conditions in the way of physical, and with a lower level of civilization in the way of moral causes--these moral causes having indirectly a physical action.

The Dyaks, in general, use the _sumpitan_, or blow-pipe, about five feet long; out of which some tribes shoot simple, others poisoned arrows. The utmost distance that the sumpitan carries is about one hundred yards. At twenty it is sure in its aim. The differences between the Dyak weapon, and one in use with the Arawaks of Guiana is but trifling--perhaps it amounts to nothing at all.

Some Dyak tribes tattoo their bodies; others do not.

Before a Dyak youth marries he must lay at the feet of the bride-elect the head of an enemy. This makes _head-hunting_ a normal item of Dyak courtship.

Traces of the Indian mythology--measures of the Indian influence in other respects--just exist amongst the Dyaks--_e.g._, _Battara_ is a name in their Pantheon, and this is an alteration of the Brahminic _Avatar_.

The pirates who hara.s.s the coasts of Borneo and the Chinese Seas--destined, at some future time to be, like the Kaffres, but too well-known to the English tax-payers--are Malays rather than _Orang Binua_, or their equivalents; the navigation of the Dyaks being chiefly confined to rivers.

The particular tribes of Sarawak are the following--the Lundu, the Sarambo, the Singe, the Suntah, the Sow, and the Sibnow. It is almost unnecessary to name the great fountain-head for all our recent knowledge of Borneo--Sir James Brooke.

The Dyak type predominates amongst the _Orang Binua_ of Borneo. In the Philippines the Semang complexion re-appears. But the prolongation of the eastward line of migration takes us through the Mariannes and Ladrones to Polynesia; and here the magnitude of the islands decreases; in other words, the influences of the sea-air become greater. The aliment becomes almost wholly vegetable. The separation from the civilizational influences of Asia amounts to absolute isolation. Of the general ethnology of the South Sea Islanders I say nothing. The reasons which took me over China, Arabia, and the Malayan peninsula, _sicco pede_, spare the necessity of details here.

In the Sandwich Islands there is a const.i.tution. In Tahiti, a school of native Christian Missionaries.

New Zealand exhibits the contrast between the darker and lighter-coloured Oceanic populations in so remarkable a manner as to have engendered the notion that two stocks occupy the island. If it were so, the fact would be remarkable and mysterious. How _one_ population found its way to a locality so distant is by no means an easy question; whilst the a.s.sumption of a second family of immigrants just doubles its difficulty.[68]

In Java the proper Malay influences have been so great as to leave but few traces of the _Orang Binua_; and, earlier even than these, those of India were actively at work.

East of Bali, however, the _Orang Binua_ re-appear, and here the type is that of the Semangs. From Ombay, parts of Ende, and parts of Sumbawa, we have short vocabularies--short, but not too scanty to set aside the hasty, but accredited, a.s.sertion of the Australian language, having nothing in common with those of the Indian Archipelago.[69]

I feel as satisfied that Australia was peopled from either Timor or Rotti, as I do about the Gallic origin of the ancient Britons.

I believe this because the geographical positions of the countries suggest it.

I believe it, because the older and more aboriginal populations of Timor and Rotti approach, in physical character, the Australian.

I believe it, because the proportion of words in the vocabularies alluded to is greater than can be attributed to accident; whilst the words themselves are not of that kind which is introduced by intercourse. Besides which, no such intercourse either occurs at the present moment, or can be shown to have ever existed.

Australia agrees with parts of Africa, South America, and Polynesia, in being partially intertropical and wholly south of the equator--no part of continental Asia or Europe coming under these conditions. But it differs from Polynesia in being continental rather than insular in climate; from South America in the absence of great rivers and vast alluvial tracts; and from Africa in being wholly isolated from the Northern Hemisphere. It is with South Africa, however, that its closest a.n.a.logies exist. Both have but small water-systems; both vast tracts of elevated barren country; and both a distinctive vegetation. The animal kingdoms, however, of the two areas have next to nothing in common. The comparative non-existence of Australian mammalia, higher in rank than the marsupials, is a subject for the zoologist. Ethnology only indicates its bearing upon the sustenance of man. Poor in the vegetable elements of food, and beggarly in respect to the animal, the vast continental expanse of Australia supports the scantiest aboriginal population of the world, and nourishes it worst. The steppes of Asia feed the horse; the _tundras_, the reindeer; the circ.u.mpolar icebergs, the seal; and each of these comparatively inhospitable tracts is more kindly towards its Mongolian, its Samoeid, and its Eskimo occupant, than Australia with its intertropical climate, but wide and isolated deserts.

Except that his hair (which is often either straight, or only crisp or wavy) has not attained its _maximum_ of frizziness, and has seldom or never been called _woolly_, the Australian is a Semang under a South African climate, on a South African soil, and with more than a South African isolation.

Few Australians count as far as five, and fewer still beyond it. This paucity of numerals is South American as well--the Brazilian and Carib, and other systems of numeration being equally limited.

The sound of _s_ is wanting in the majority of Australian languages. So it is in many of the Polynesian.

The social const.i.tution is of extreme simplicity. Many degrees removed from the industrial, almost as far from the agricultural state, the Australian is hardly even a hunter--except so far as the kangaroo or wombat are beasts of chase. Families--scarcely large enough to be called tribes or clans--wander over wide but allotted areas. Nowhere is the approach to an organized polity so imperfect.

This makes the differences between section and section of the Australian population, both broad and numerous. Nevertheless, the fundamental unity of the whole is not only generally admitted, but--what is better--it has been well ill.u.s.trated. The researches of Captain Grey, Teichelmann, Schurrmann, and others, have chiefly contributed to this.

The appreciation of certain apparent characteristic peculiarities has been less satisfactory; differences having been over-rated and points of similarity wondered at rather than investigated.

The well-known instrument called the _boomerang_ is Australian, and it is, perhaps, exclusively so.

Circ.u.mcision is an Australian practice--a practice common to certain Polynesians and Negroes, besides--to say nothing of the Jews and Mahometans.

The recognition of the _maternal_ rather than the _paternal_ descent is Australian. Children take the name of their mother. What other points it has in common with the Malabar polyandria has yet to be ascertained.

When an Australian dies, those words which are identical with his name, or (in case of compounds) with any part of it, cease to be used; and some synonym is adopted instead; just as if, in England, whenever a Mr.

_Smith_ departed this life, the parish to which he belonged should cease to talk of _blacksmiths_, and say _forgemen_, _forgers_, or something equally respectful to the deceased, instead. This custom re-appears in Polynesia, and in South America; Dobrizhoffer's account of the Abiponian custom being as follows:--The "Abiponian language is involved in new difficulties by a ridiculous custom which the savages have of continually abolishing words common to the whole nation, and subst.i.tuting new ones in their stead. Funeral rites are the origin of this custom. The Abipones do not like that anything should remain to remind them of the dead. Hence appellative words bearing any affinity with the names of the deceased are presently abolished. During the first years that I spent amongst the Abipones, it was usual to say _Hegmalkam kahamatek_, when will there be a slaughtering of oxen? On account of the death of some Abipon, the word _Kahamatek_ was interdicted, and, in its stead, they were all commanded by the voice of a crier to say, _Hegmalkam negerkata?_ The word _nihirenak_, a tiger, was exchanged for _apanigehak_; _peu_, a crocodile, for _Kaeprhak_, and _Kaama_, Spaniards, for _Rikil_, because these words bore some resemblance to the names of Abipones lately deceased. Hence it is that our vocabularies are so full of blots occasioned by our having such frequent occasions to obliterate interdicted words, and insert new ones."

The following custom is Australian, and it belongs to a cla.s.s which should always be noticed when found. This is because it appears and re-appears in numerous parts of the world, in different forms, and, apparently, independent of ethnological affinities.