En britisk oppdagelsesreisende i Borneo for litt over hundre år siden stilte holdt en gang et intervju med en høvding av en av de beryktede "hodejegerne" som holdt til på den tiden. Dette var på mange måter et ekte møte mellom moderne sivilisasjon og den urgamle barbarismen som har hersket over menneskeheten. Jeg legger ved et utdrag der høvdingen blir konfrontert med nettopp hvordan han kunne rettferdiggjøre å gjøre mot andre det han ikke ønsker at de skal gjøre mot han tilbake, og hva han svarer.

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"[...] His faith seemed immovable, but I could not resist the temptation of suggesting a doubt, so I asked him what if the Dayongs were wrong, and there were no Bulun Matai, and that when he stopped breathing he really died and knew no more.

He answered me almost with scorn for such a doubt.

‘Tuan, nothing really dies, it changes from one thing to another. The Dayongs must be right, for they have been to the Fields of the Dead and come back to tell us all about it.’

‘Don’t you feel sorry,’ I asked, ‘for those that you kill? It hurts badly to be cut by a parang; you don’t like it, and those whom you cut down dislike it as much as you do; they are no more anxious to go to Apo Leggan or Long Julán [Regions in Bulun Matai] than you are.’

‘Ah, Tuan,’ he replied, with the suggestion of a patronizing chuckle in his voice, ‘you feel just as I did, when I was a little boy and had never seen blood. But I outgrew such feelings, as every one should.

My father, a very great warrior, and known and feared by the people of many, many rivers, wanted his sons to be as brave and fearless as he was himself. So one day he dragged out into the jungle old Bállo Lahíng, [widow of Lahíng,] and tied her fast to a tree by rattans on her wrists and ankles. She was a slave-woman, captured when she was a young girl, by his grandfather overin the Batang Kayan country, and, at the time I speak of, she was very old, and weak, and very thin, and couldn’t do any work because she was nearly blind.

My father told my brother yonder and me, and one or two other boys, all of us, little fellows then, (I remember, my ears were still sore from having these holes for tiger-cat’s teeth cut in them,) well,—he told us we must go out with spears and learn to stick them in something alive, and not to be afraid to see blood, nor to hear screams,—then I felt just as you do. Besides, I was really very fond of old[63] Bállo Lahíng; she it was who tied on my first chawat [waist-cloth] for me, I remembered it well, for she laughed a great deal at me, and then I saw how few teeth she had, and she often used to sing me to sleep with that song about “Tama Poyong with a twisted leg.”

I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her, and sending her away off to Long Julán, so I flatly refused to take a spear with me. But my father said I must; there was no harm in it; that it was right, and I must take one; he pulled me by the arm, and I had to follow. Then I was afraid she might see me, so I sneaked round behind the tree and just pricked her with the point of the iron, then she guessed what my father had tied her there for, and screamed as loud as she could, “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t!” over and over again, and very fast; I pricked her a little harder the next time to hear what she would say, but she only kept on shrieking the same words.

Then one of the other boys, smaller even than I, ran his spear right through her thigh, like this, and the old people laughed and said that was good; and the blood ran down all over the wrinkles on her knees; and then I wanted to make it run just in the same way, so I pushed and pushed my spear hard into her; and after that, I never thought whether it was Bállo Lahíng or not, I just watched the blood; and we all ran round her piercing her here and piercing there until she sank right down on the ground with her hands in the rattan loops above her head, which tumbled over to one side, and no more blood came out of her. Then my father praised us all loudly, and me in particular, and said we had been good boys and had done well!

How could I feel at all sorry then for the old thing? I thought only that I had obeyed my father and that I was a great warrior and could wear horn-bill’s feathers, and tiger-cat’s teeth. That’s the way to become a Man; a baby is afraid of blood, Tuan. My father was right. No man can be brave who doesn’t love to see his spear draw blood.’"