“If you speak, your voice will be venomous”
Conflicts of meaning and the cultural politics of zoology in the Dutch East-Indies.
Because of the European dependence on indigenous guides, hunters, preparators and porters, the expeditions of the colonial field sciences were multi-ethnic in nature. This meant that the various participant groups had widely differing ideas about the natural world and their place within it. Especially when the violation of this natural world was the explicit aim of such expeditions, as was the case for zoology, these conceptualizations were bound to clash. How did such conflicts of meaning surface in concrete cases, and how were they resolved? What does the form of these conflicts reveal about the cultural politics underlying colonial zoology? Here, we focus on the Kayan-communities participating in expeditions in Kalimantan and New Guinea at the turn of the twentieth century. More specifically, we highlight their ideas about snakes.
Kayan-villages in the upriver areas of Kalimantan were often called upon during large expeditions in both their homeland and Dutch New Guinea. As described by the anthropologist Bernard Sellato, their “river and jungle expertise” allowed for quick navigation of rivers and bush traversal. The environmental outlook of these communities was informed by what is now known as adat Dipuy, the old Kayan religion (based on Jérôme Rousseau’s Kayan Religion, see note). It was the spirit Dipuy who first introduced Kayan communities to food taboos, elaborate rituals and importantly, auguries:
Dipuy summoned the animals to a feast: ‘I am about to tell you to become auguries. If you speak when people leave the house or go on a trip, your voice will be venomous; it will make them ill, it will kill them, it will cause them to get hurt.’ […] Belahabong, in the same way you are red, people will become red because of you, they will die by the sword, they will die fighting.
Like the muntjac and a variety of birds, snakes were considered omen animals; flight patterns and sightings formed a mode of communication with the supernatural. An especially bad omen was belahabong, a snake with a red tail and head (Rousseau suggests Simotes octolineatus). Importantly, the sight of a snake did not leave one helpless, as the Kayan could try to curb or mitigate imminent misfortune through offerings and rituals. As we shall see, in some cases the killing of snakes could even bring fortune, based on “the strength of one’s soul and the power of one’s spirit helpers”.
The Third South New Guinea Expedition: A worried look…
For the first snake-sighting, we turn to the Third South New Guinea Expedition of 1912–1913. Two of its Dutch members left accounts of the same event, the botanist Adriaan Pulle in his published travelogue, and the medic and zoologist Gerard Versteeg in his diary. In one of the early riverside outposts (Bivak-island), one of the present Kayan noticed a dark mass sitting in a tree; a sleeping snake. In his eyes, it could well have been a shapeshifting spirit, lengunan, which takes the form of a python and prefers to live in trees and rivers. Pulle writes how it took great effort to convince the “worried” Kayan to use his blowpipe (soempit). Unphazed by three poisonous darts, a barrage of wooden stumps by the Dutch eventually got the animal down, where it succumbed to the poison. It was a specimen of no less than 2.70 meters, possibly a Dendrelaphis lorentzii still in the collection of the Naturalis Museum in the Netherlands (see note 2). Pulle writes how the Kayan kept their distance during the whole ordeal, remaining afraid of the animal once it was dead. Versteeg’s diary-entry for the same day also mentions the Dayak fear of snakes, even when they were dead. They feared not only the larger specimens, but also the smaller ones which he preserved in bottles of alcohol.
The conflict of meaning was hardly brought to the surface. The sources contain no evidence that either party tried to bridge the gap between their environmental outlooks. The Kayans did not voice their worries or explain their fear, the Europeans did not ask or alter their behavior. Pulle and Versteeg were only concerned with the inner life of their travel companions when it jeopardized the expedition, as was the case with a later strike. In a later diary-entry, Versteeg does mention how the Dayaks often planted sticks in the riverbanks, sometimes forty at a time, the bark frayed out (fig. 1–2). In adat Dipuy, these sticks (tapo) are used for offerings, in this case aimed at spirits passing in the river. The Kayans likely resolved the sighting in a similar way, choosing to mitigate misfortune instead of preventing it.
The Borneo Expedition: Theft and snake-like schemes
The second snake figures in the travelogue of the Borneo-expeditions of Anton Nieuwenhuis in 1894, 1896–97 and 1898–1900. Luckily, the ethnographic interests of Nieuwenhuis led him to reflect on the place of auguries during the expedition, more so than Pulle and Versteeg. Both his depictions of bird- and snake omens are informative. When Doris Tengsi, a Javanese hunter and preparator, shot two hisit (Anthreptes malaccensis) and two te̥lăndjăng (Platylophus coronatus), the Kayans uttered their disapproval. When a similar haul was brought in later, one of the omen birds was stolen by Kenyah-Dayaks when it was left out to dry. Nieuwenhuis decided not to address the theft and forbade the hunters to target these specific birds in the future. He chose differently when he killed a snake in his hut, a snake remarkably similar to the description of belahabong (red head, belly and tail). As with Versteeg, the Kayans did not dare to touch it, “dead or alive”. Since no one wanted to carry the formol-bottle which contained the specimen, Nieuwenhuis decided to hide it in one of his chests without anyone seeing. Instead of mere mitigation of misfortune, the Dayaks tried to actively prevent it by uttering their disapproval of the killings (and by stealing a specimen).
Interestingly, Nieuwenhuis writes that the sentiment among the Dayaks shifted dramatically when the expedition ended, and the snake resurfaced. According to the Dutchman, they attributed the success of their journey to the dead snake. In fact, Nieuwenhuis now had to show it so many times that he started to refuse. As previously established, adat Dipuy leaves room for such a turn of events. Whose spirit helpers and soul were deemed strong enough to curb the misfortune remains unknown.
Conclusion: Mitigation or prevention?
What explains the different degrees of conflict created by the snake-killings, as well as the different ways in which these conflicts were resolved? It seems unwarranted to attribute this to different grades of cultural sensitivity and goodwill of the European expedition-members. Although Nieuwenhuis was better able to interpret the environmental outlook of the Kayans, like Pulle and Versteeg, he only seemed to care for their inner experiences when they jeopardized his expedition. Although he forbade the hunters to shoot bird-auguries, he was willing to deceive his co-travelers by hiding the snake. A more plausible explanation for the differing terms of cultural engagement might be the fact that the locations of the two expeditions resulted in different interdependencies. The Europeans were dependent on the expertise of the Dayaks in both Kalimantan and New Guinea. In New Guinea, the Kayans themselves depended on a Dutch steamer to reach their home again. Here, they kept their concerns to themselves, likely resolving the conflict through tapo offerings. However, on their home turf in Kalimantan the Kayans only depended on Europeans for their pay, which might have lowered the bar for active prevention of misfortune in the form of protest and theft. These relations of dependency led Nieuwenhuis to actively resolve the conflict.
By Sjoerd Kompier
Note: The interpretation of the European source material is based on Jérôme Rousseau’s Kayan Religion, which he compiled on the basis of fieldwork in the village of Uma Bawang in Sarawak in the 1970s. Dipuy’s myth as represented here was a rendition by Baling Avun. Although the Kayan communities participating in the expeditions came from East-Kalimantan, Rousseau argues that Kayan religious ideas “show remarkable homogeneity throughout central Borneo”.
Note 2: Specimens in the collection of the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands: Anthreptes malacensis, Platylophus coronatus, Dendrelaphis lorentzii
Further reading
Primary sources used:
· A. Pulle, Naar het sneeuwgebergte van Nieuw-Guinea met de Derde Nederlandsche Expeditie (Amsterdam, 1915).
· A.W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer Durch Borneo: Ergebnisse seiner Reisen in den Jahren 1894, 1896–97 und 1898–1900 (Leiden, 1904).
· G.M. Versteeg, Dagboek van de Derde Zuid Nieuw Guinea Expeditie, 1912–1913 (unpublished). Wereldmuseum: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11840/515710
Secondary sources on Kayan religion:
· J. Rousseau, Kayan Religion, Ritual life and religious reform in Central Borneo (Leiden, 1998).
· L. Baling, The Old Kayan Religion and the Bungan Religious Reform (Translated and annotated by Jérôme Rousseau) (Kota Samarahan, 2002).
Datasets:
Dondorp E, Creuwels J (2024). Naturalis Biodiversity Center (NL) — Amphibia and Reptilia. Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/ythnjq accessed via GBIF.org on 2024–01–30. https://gbif.org/occurrence/2434488186
Kamminga P, Creuwels J (2024). Naturalis Biodiversity Center (NL) — Aves. Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/dxmzbz accessed via GBIF.org on 2024–01–30. https://gbif.org/occurrence/2433903121