The pagan tribes of Borneo - Get a Free Blog Here

262 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap.
The Kenyah women of the Baram district exhibit a
very primitive style of tatu on the arms and hands (PI.
141, Fig. 4); a broad band encircles the middle of the
forearm, and a narrow band an inch or so distant of this
also surrounds the arm ; from this narrow band there run
over the metacarpals to the base of the fingers eight narrow
lines, the outermost on the radial side bifurcating ; the
design is known as betik alle or line tatu. No other part
of the body is tatued.
Nieuwenhuis figures [9, PI. 95] a somewhat similar
design employed by the Lepu Tau women of the Batang
Kayan ; but in this case, instead of eight longitudinal lines
stopping short at the knuckles, there are five broad bands
running to the finger nails, interrupted at the knuckles by
a 2 cm. -broad strip of untatued skin. Moreover, with these
people the front and sides of the thigh and the shin are
tatued with primitive-looking designs made up of series
of short transverse lines, curved lines, and broad bands
the names of the designs are not given ; these designs are
said to be characteristic of the slave-class, the higher-class
women copying the more elaborate designs of the Uma
Lekan.
Amongst the Batang Kayan Kenyahs tatuing cannot
be executed in the communal house, but only in a hut
built for the purpose. The males of the family, to which
the girl undergoing the operation belongs, must dress in
bark-cloth, and are confined to the house until the tatu is
completed ; should any of the male members be travelling
in other parts of the island tatu cannot be commenced
until they return. Amongst the Uma Tow (or Lepu
Tau) the daughter of a chief must be tatued before any
of the other females of the house ; should the chiefs
daughter (or daughters) die before she has been tatued, all
the other women of the house are debarred from this embellishment
(Nieuwenhuis [9, pp. 453, 454]).
Nieuwenhuis, in his great work on Borneo, which we
have cited so often, gives a good account of the tatu of the
Long Glat. According to this authority, girls when only
eight years old have the backs of the fingers tatued, at the
commencement of menstruation the tatu of the fingers is
completed, and in the course of the following year the tatu
is carried over the backs of the hand to the wrist ; the feet
are tatued synchronously with the hands. At the age of
eighteen to twenty the front of the thigh is tatued, and
;
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