He would sometimes send a bar of iron to a headman of a tribe, whether the latter wanted it or not, and require him to purchase it at an exorbitant price fixed by the sender. The man dared not refuse; then another bar was sent, and again another, till the Dayak chief was reduced to poverty.
If a Malay met a Dayak in his boat, and the boat pleased him, he would cut a notch in the gunwale in token that he appropriated it to his own use. Possibly enough some other Bornean Malay might fancy the same boat and cut another notch. This might occur several times. Then the Dayak was required to hand over his boat to the first who had marked it, and to indemnify the other claimants to the value of the vessel.
Any injury done, or pretended to have been done, however accidentally, by a Dayak to a Malay, had to be paid for by a ruinous fine. There was no court of appeal, no possibility of redress. A Malay could always, and at any time, enter the house of a Dayak, and live there in free quarters as long as he pleased, insult or maltreat the wife and children of his unwilling host with impunity, and on leaving carry away with him any of the Dayak's property to which he had taken a fancy; and, when the novelty of the possession wore off, force his late host to buy it back again at an extravagant price. But this was not all. When antimony was found, the unfortunate Land-Dayaks were driven to mine it at no wage at all, and their hard taskmasters did not even trouble themselves to provide them with food.74 The consequence was that many of them died, and others fled to the jungle. As one of them pathetically said, "We do not live like men; we are like monkeys; we are hunted from place to place. We have no houses, and when we light a fire we are in fear lest the smoke should betray to our enemies where we are."
Of Dayaks there are, as already stated, two sorts, the Land-Dayak and the Sea-Dayak, the first of Indonesian, the second of proto-Malay stock. The former are a quiet, timid, industrious people, honest, and by no means lacking in intelligence, living on hill-tops to which they have fled from their oppressors; the latter throve on piracy, having been brought to this by the Muhammadan Malays and the half-bred Arabs. But even among the Sea-Dayaks a few tribes had not been thus vitiated, and upon these the late Rajah could always rely for support.
Their Malay masters furnished the Sea-Dayaks, whom they had converted into predatory savages, with ammunition and guns, and sent them either to sea to attack merchant vessels, or up the rivers to fall upon villages of peaceful tribes; then the men were slaughtered, the women and children carried off into slavery. The villages were burnt, and by a refinement of cruelty the fruit trees cut down and standing crops destroyed, from which the principal provision of the natives was gathered, so as to reduce to starvation those who had escaped into the jungle. Land-Dayak tribes that formerly had been numerous and prosperous were reduced to small numbers and to poverty. One that reckoned 230 families dwindled to 50. Three whole tribes were completely exterminated. One of 120 families was brought down to two, that is to say, of 960 persons only 16 were left. The population that had consisted of 1795 families, or, reckoning eight persons to each family, 14,360 souls, in ten years was reduced to 6792 souls showing a decrease in these ten years of 946 families, or of 7568 persons. On Sir James (then Mr.) Brooke's visit to the country in 1840, in converse with the chief of one of the native tribes, the man told him, "The Rajah takes from us whatever he wants, at whatever price he pleases, and the pangirans take whatever they can get for no price at all." "At first," says Mr. Brooke, "the Dayak paid a small stated sum as an acknowledgment of vassalage, by degrees this became an arbitrary and unlimited taxation, and now, to consummate the iniquity, the entire tribes are pronounced slaves and liable to be disposed of."
The natural result of such treatment was that those natives who escaped spoilation and slaughter fled up the country beyond reach of their persecutors. The depopulation from the same cause went on in the neighbourhood of Bruni as well as in Sarawak. Mr. Spenser St. John says in 1858: "It is melancholy to see this fine district (Limbang), once well cultivated, now returning to jungle; formerly where the population extended a hundred miles beyond the last village at present inhabited, the supply of provisions was ample at Bruni. Now that the natives are decreasing, while Bruni is perhaps as numerous as ever, the demands made by the nobles are too great even for the natives' forbearance, and in disgust they are gradually abandoning all garden cultivation. Already brushwood is taking the place of bananas and yams, so that few of either are to be had. The people say it is useless for them to plant for others to eat the whole produce. Then as the natives cannot furnish the supplies exacted of them by the pangirans, these latter take from them their children; the lads are circumcised and made Mahomedans and slaves, and the girls are drafted into the already crowded harems of the rajahs." The same writer gives an instance or two of the manner in which the subject natives were treated. In 1855, the warlike Kayans of the interior descended the Limbang river and threatened a tribe of Muruts. The Pangiran Makota,75 virtual governor of Bruni, met them and arranged with the chiefs that for the sum of £700 they should spare these Muruts. Then he set those who were menaced to collect the money. When they had done this and placed the sum in his hands, he pocketed it and returned to Bruni, leaving the Kayans to deal with the tribe after their own sweet will.
Again, in 1857, the same head-hunters threatened another Murut village. Makota had a secret interview with the Kayan chiefs, and then gave out that peace had been concluded. What he had actually done was to deliver over to them to pillage and exterminate the Murut village of Balal Ikan, against which he bore a grudge for having resisted his exactions.
The whole of the north and west of Borneo was in a condition of indescribable wretchedness and hopelessness when Mr. James Brooke appeared on the scene. Oppression the most cruel and grinding, encouragement of piracy and head-hunting by the selfish, unscrupulous pangirans sent from Bruni, were depopulating the fair land. Sarawak, then a very small province, was, as we shall see, in insurrection. Single-handed, with but a comparatively small capital, the whole of which he sank in the country, with no support from the British Government, with no Chartered Company at his back, he devoted his life to transform what had become a hell into what it has become, a peaceful and happy country.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II
LIST OF THE MAHOMEDAN SULTANS OF BRUNI
Taken from the Selesilah (Book of the Descent), preserved in Bruni, by the late Sir Hugh Low, G.C.M.G. Published in the Journal No. 5 of the Straits Branch R.A.S.
1. Sultan Mahomed, who introduced the religion of Islam.
2. Sultan Akhmed, brother of above, married to the daughter of Ong Sum Ping, Chinese Raja of Kina-batangan. No sons, but one daughter married to —
3. Sultan Berkat, from Taif in Arabia. A descendant of the prophet through his grandson Husin. Berkat, the blessed. His real name was Sherif Ali.
4. Sultan Suleiman, son of above, who was succeeded by his son —
5. Sultan Bulkeiah;76 towards the end of his reign Pigafetta's first visit to Bruni in 1521 probably took place.
6. Sultan Abdul Kahar, son of above. Had forty-two sons, of whom —
7. Saif-ul-Rejal succeeded him. During his reign the Spaniards attacked Bruni in 1576 and 1580, taking it on the second occasion.
8. Sultan Shah Bruni, son of above. Having no children he abdicated in favour of his brother —
9. Sultan Hasan, succeeded by his son.
10. Sultan Abdul-Jalil-ul-Akbar, succeeded by his son.
11. Sultan Abdul-Jalil-ul-Jehar, who was succeeded by his uncle —
12. Sultan Mahomet Ali, son of Sultan Hasan.
13. Sultan Abdul Mubin. Son of Sultan Mahomet Ali's sister. He murdered his uncle and usurped the throne. He was worsted in a revolution that lasted twelve years, and was executed.
14. Sultan Muaddim, fourth son of Sultan Jalil-ul-Akbar, nephew and son-in-law of Sultan Mahomet Ali. Succeeded by