Journal of the Federated Malay States museums - Sabrizain.org

24 Journal of the F.M.S. Museums. [Vol. VII,
extent in contact witli Malays and Chinese, they were much
less civilized than the Sakai living closer to Gopeng. Si Busu
the headman of the settlement, which consisted only of one
small house, gave me a good deal of interesting information
about customs and beliefs, and I also had with me a
Sumatran Malay named Dana; he had a Sakai wife who told
me a good deal about aboriginal affairs, though I did not
accept his statements before verifying them by questioning
the Sakai themselves.
Si Busu's settlement consisted of a rather small house,
roofed and walled with palm leaves, which stood in a considerable
clearing planted with tapioca. Access to the dwelling was
gained by a bamboo ladder. The doorway could be closed
with a sliding door of sheet bamboo, and on the left of this
there was built ^out a small room, occupied by an old man;
this had a window to the outside and another and a door
opening into the house. A single large room occupied the
rest of the space below, but above this, built out towards the
back of the house and supported on high poles, was an upper
room which was entered from below by means of a bamboo
ladder. The co >king place, with its earthen floor, was built
rather to one side of the large room and over it was a
framework with shelves for storing firewood, cooking utensils,
etc. The dart quivers belonging to the men of the house were
hung against the uprights supporting the shelves. One or
two store-bins for padi, made of tree-bark, were placed
near the walls, while a space in one corner of the room, walled
in to a height of about two and a half feet with tree-bark, but
empty at the time of my visit, had also been used for holding
padi grain. I spent a good deal of time in the house and was
interested to notice that, unless asleep, the Sakai were never
without occupation of some sort. Their appetites were
insatiable, and shortly after a hearty meal of rice, gourd, and
frogs or some other such delicacy, they would start roasting
Indian corn or tapioca in the ashes of the fire. The consumption
of Indian corn and tapioca, if the Sakai were at home,
went on -
intermittently all day long. Apart from eating, the
men occupied themselves in making stocks of blow-pipe darts
and snares for small game, or in repairing their casting nets;
the women devoted themselves to the manufacture of mats
and carrying baskets or the cutting and drying of tobacco,
previously rolled leaves of the plant being shredded with a
sharp sliver of bamboo on a billet of wood. This was placed
on the slant, one end resting on the floor, the other against a
wall of the house.
The clearing in which the house was situated had been
planted in the previous year, the Sakai's custom being first to
sow a new clearing with rice and then to plant tapioca, a
much slower growing crop, among the rice. Thus, after the
rice harvest is over, and most of the crop consumed, they are
able to fall back on their tapioca, which by that time is
sufficiently far advanced to be dug up.