The pagan tribes of Borneo - Get a Free Blog Here

X WAR 165
shields elaborately. The two surfaces of almost all
Kenyah shields (Fig. 27) are covered with elaborate
designs picked out in colours, chiefly red and black.
The designs are sketched out on the wood with the
point of a knife, and the pigment is applied with the
finger and a chisel-edged stick. The principal feature
of the designs on the outer surface is in all cases a
large conventionalised outline of a face with large
eyes, indicated by concentric circles in red and black,
and a double row of teeth with two pairs of canines
projecting like huge tusks. This face seems to be
human, for, although in some shields there is nothing
to indicate this interpretation, in others the large
face surmounts the highly conventionalised outline
of a diminutive human body, the limbs of which
are distorted and woven into a more or less intri-
cate design. Each extremity of the outer surface is
covered by a similarly conventionalised face-pattern
on a smaller scale. On the inner side each longitudinal
half is covered with an elaborate scroll-
pattern, generally symmetrical in the two halves ;
the centre of this pattern is generally a human
figure more or less easily recognisable ; the two
halves sometimes bear male and female figures
respectively.
The shields most prized by the Kenyahs are
further decorated with tufts of human hair taken
from the heads of slain enemies. It is put on in
many rows which roughly frame the large face with
locks three or four inches in length on scalp, cheeks,
chin, and upper lip ; and the smaller faces at the
ends are similarly surrounded with shorter hair.
The hair is attached by forcing the ends of the tufts
into narrow slits in the soft wood and securing it
with fresh resin.
The Klemantan shields are, in the main, variations
on the Kenyah patterns. The Murut shields
closely resemble those of the Kayans, though the