The women had fewer adornments; they wore no earrings, nor bears' teeth collars; a few displayed some glass beads; but more were satisfied with an incalculable number of brass or leaden rings.
Madame Pfeiffer, while among the Dyaks, witnessed a sword-dance, which was executed in the most skilful and elegant manner.
This travelled lady also visited another tribe located higher up the river, where she observed the same things, and in addition saw two human heads lately cut off. When showing them to Madame Pfeiffer, the Dyaks spat in their faces, and the children cuffed them, and spat on the ground.
The shocking custom of decapitation owes its origin to superstition. If a rajah falls ill, or sets out on a journey among another tribe, he and his subjects undertake to sacrifice a human head in case of his recovery or safe return; and should he die, they chop off a skull or two. The heads which they have sworn to immolate must be obtained at any cost. The Dyaks hide themselves in the long jungle grass, behind felled branches of trees, or under the dry leaves, and lie in wait for entire days. If anybody, man, woman, or child, comes in sight, they shoot a poisoned arrow at him, and rush like tigers on their prey. At one blow the head is severed from the body, and placed in a little basket reserved for this purpose, and ornamented with human hair.
These assassinations frequently give rise to bloody wars; for the tribe, a member of which has been thus sacrificed to the law of chance, takes up arms, and never lays them down until the most terrible reprisals have been exacted. Severed heads are borne back in triumph and solemnly hung up in the place of honour, the retaliation being celebrated by festivities which last for a month.
On one occasion, when Madame Pfeiffer had been received with profuse respect by a tribe, she found a freshly cut off head suspended over her bed, along with others already dried. She could not close her eyes. She felt in a perfect fever at being thus encompassed by frenzied men, at being smothered by the odour of these human remains, and at being lulled to rest by the sinister sound of skulls jangled together by the wind.
Yet in spite of chopped-off heads and festoons of human skulls, this lady considers the Dyaks to be honest, prudent, and endowed with some good qualities. She places them higher in the scale than the other tribes with which she had an opportunity of coming in contact. Their domestic life, which is truly patriarchal in its nature, is alluded to by her with pleasure, as are also their morality, the love they bear their offspring, and the respect evinced by the children towards their parents.