The pagan tribes of Borneo - Get a Free Blog Here

CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF BORNEO
The Pagan tribes of Borneo have no written records
of their history and only very vague traditions concerning
events in the Hves of their ancestors of
more than five or six generations ago. But the
written records of more cultured peoples of the Far
East contain references to Borneo which throw
some small rays of light upon the past history and
present condition of its population. It has seemed
to us worth while to bring together in these pages
these few historical notes. The later history of
Borneo, which is in the main the story of its occupation
by and division between the Dutch and English,
and especially the romantic history of the acquisition
of the raj of Sarawak by its first English rajah,
Sir James Brooke, has often been told,^ and for this
reason may be dismissed by us in a very few words.
The coasts of Borneo have long been occupied
by a Mohammedan population of Malay culture ;
this population is partly descended from Malay
and Arab immigrants, and partly from indigenous
individuals and communities that have adopted the
Malay faith and culture in recent centuries. When
Europeans first visited the island, this population,
dwelling for the most part, as it still does, in villages
and small towns upon the coast and in or near the
1 See especially the recently published History of Sa7-awak under its Two
White Rajahs, by S. Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde, London, 1910.