Like
the Ibans, the Kenyahs make peace more readily than the Kayans, who
nurse their grievances and seek redress after long intervals of time.
The Ibans conduct their warfare less systematically, and with far
less discipline than the Kayans and Kenyahs. An attack upon a house
or village by Bans is usually made in very large force; the party
is more of the nature of a rabble than of an army; each man acts
independently. They seek above all things to take heads, to which they
attach an extravagant value, unlike the Kayans and Kenyahs who seek
heads primarily for the service of their funeral rites; and they not
infrequently attack a house and kill a large number of its inmates in
a perfectly wanton manner, and for no other motive that the desire to
obtain heads. This passion for heads leads them sometimes into acts
of gross treachery and brutality. The Ibans being great wanderers,
small parties of them, engaged perhaps in working jungle produce, will
settle for some weeks in a household of Klemantans, and, after being
received hospitably, and sometimes even after contracting marriages
with members of the household, will seize an opportunity, when most
of the men of the house are from home, to take the heads of all the
men, women, and children who remain, and to flee with them to their
own distant homes.
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