PART 6

War and Head-Hunting

En-fa-lok’-net is the Bontoc word for war, but the expression “na-ma’-ka” —­ take heads —­ is used interchangeably with it.

For unknown generations these people have been fierce head-hunters.  Nine-tenths of the men in the pueblos of Bontoc and Samoki wear on the breast the indelible tattoo emblem which proclaims them takers of human heads.  The fawi of each ato in Bontoc has its basket containing skulls of human heads taken by members of the ato.

There are several different classes of head-hunters among primitive Malayan peoples, but the continuation of the entire practice is believed to be due to the so-called “debt of life” —­ that is, each group of people losing a head is in duty and honor bound to cancel the score by securing a head from the offenders.  In this way the score is never ended or canceled, since one or the other group is always in debt.

It seems not improbable that the heads may have been cut off first as the best way of making sure that a fallen enemy was certainly slain.  The head was at all events the best proof to a man’s tribesmen of the discharge of the debt of life; it was the trophy of success in defeating the foe.  Whatever the cause of taking the head may have been with the first people, it would surely spread to others of a similar culture who warred with a head-taking tribe, as they would wish to appear as cruel, fierce, and courageous as the enemy.

Henry Ling Roth[33] quotes Sir Spencer St. John as follows concerning the Seribas Dyaks of Borneo (p. 142): 

A certain influential man denied that head-hunting is a religious ceremony among them.  It is merely to show their bravery and manliness, that it may be said that so-and-so has obtained heads.  When they quarrel it is a constant phrase, “How many heads did your father or grandfather get?” If less than his own number, “Well, then, you have no occasion to be proud!” Thus the possession of heads gives them great considerations as warriors and men of wealth, the skulls being prized as the most valuable of goods.

Again he quotes St. John (p. 143): 

Feasts in general are:  To make their rice grow well, to cause the forest to abound with wild animals, to enable their dogs and snares to be successful in securing game, to have the streams swarm with fish, to give health and activity to the people themselves, and to insure fertility to their women.  All these blessings the possessing and feasting of a fresh head are supposed to be the most efficient means of securing.

He quotes Axel.  Dalrymple as follows (p. 141)

The Uru Ais believe that the persons whose heads they take will become their slaves in the next world.

On the same page he quotes others to the same point regarding other tribes of Borneo.

Roth states (p. 163): 

From all accounts there can be little doubt that one of the chief incentives to getting heads is the desire to please the women.  It may not always have been so and there may be and probably is the natural blood-thirstiness of the animal in man to account for a great deal of the head-taking.