Race and Custom in the Malay Archipelago.-By MISS MARGARETTA MORRIS, Philadelphia, Pa.

FIFTY years ago the intrepid world-traveller Ida Pfeiffer commented on the similarity between the Dyaks of Central Borneo and the mountain Alforas of Ceram, saying of the latter that their customs "agreed so much with what I had observed among the Dyaks that I feel convinced that the Alforas may be classed as their descendants or collateral relatives." It was a ready, rapid, and undoubted conviction on her part. The theory implied in it, that all people whose customs agree are of the same ancestry, seems to have been at that time an axiomatic assumption on which explorers built up the history of the great ethnic migrations. As a result of this method of classifying the relationships of mankind according to likeness of manners, various origins have been suggested for the inhabitants of Borneo. Sir Stamford Raffles declared that the uncivilized tribes of all the islands of the Malay Archipelago approach so nearly in appearance certain inhabitants of Asia, and "exhibit so striking an affinity in their customs and usages, as to warrant the hypothesis" that the population of the Archipelago came from the region between Siam and China. But the same argument works the other way. If custom proved, according to some writers, that the Borneo people came out of the west, it equally assured Brooke and Keppel that they came from the east, so close was the resemblance of their way of living to that of the mountain tribes of Celebes and the more eastern islands, as far as New Guinea. One readily sees to what a tangle this sort of reasoning leads us. I have even heard it rather timidly hinted that all the uncivilized inhabitants of Malaysia came from South America, on account of the likeness of the Dyak usages to those of some tribes of the Amazon. And what, then, are we to think of the Iroquois of North America who live in longhouses like the Dyaks and have many of their habits?'

1 Ida Pfeiffer, Second Journey Around the World, English translation. N. Y. 1856, p. 227; Raffles, History of Java, i. p, 63; Sir James Brooke, quoted by Keppel, Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido, American

The assumption of the identity of custom and race seems to be typical of the thought of the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The explorers of that time, whose writings are authority for much of our knowledge of the Borneo tribes, were accurate observers, keen thinkers, as a rule not professedly ethnologists, nor strictly scientific. Their whole position is a forcible illustration of the truth of Darmsteter's plaint of the over-use of the idea of race, formed in the first quarter of the century. He speaks of the word race as having been "snatched from the hands of science by the would-be men of affairs and thrown out to the masses. From the complete absorption of the race theory by oriental travellers of the period, one must judge that this idea was more than commonly rapid in percolating through the products of scholarship to the public consciousness.'

It was not dead in 1880, when the well-known sociologist, Letourneau, wrote that "there is a hierarchy in human races . . . race has a larger influence than the ways and means upon sociological development;' " and when Sir Charles Brooke (to return to the Borneo explorers) reiterated from the test of manner of life the earlier statement of a "strong affinity" between the Jakoons of the Malay Peninsula and the forest dwellers of Borneo. Writers of the latter part of the nineteenth century,

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edition of 1846, p. 333. Reasoning from the same likeness of the natives of Borneo and Celebes, Keane came to the opposite conclusion from Brooke and Keppel, viz., that the wild tribes of Celebes were probably descended from those of Borneo, Eastern Geography, p. 166. Sir Hugh Low hovered cautiously around the edge of a hinted possible connection with South America, Sarawak, Its Inhabitants and Productions, p. 277. Some years later F. A. Allen took hold of the hypothesis more boldly, The Original Range of the Papuan and Negritto Races, p. 10.

1 James Darmsteter, Race and Tradition, in Essays, translated by Helen B. Jastrow, p. 172.

Ch. Letourneau, Sociology based on Ethnography, translation by Henry M. Trollope, p. 31; Sir Charles Brooke, Ten Years in Sarawak, ii, p. 251. Cf. also Col. H. Yule in Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1870, p. 178. Col. Yule here gives an argument for the Asiatic origin of the Malay race, based chiefly on incidental customs collected at random from numerous insular tribes, each of which has some counterpart somewhere between China and India.

Writing at the same time as Brooke, Bock maintained that the Nias Islanders and the Dyaks were evidently descended from the same stock, judging from their religious customs, dress, ornament, etc. Head Hun

however, usually reinforce their arguments by physical tests and other considerations. But that custom still holds a foremost place we may fairly judge by the following sentence from Spencer and Gillen's scholarly work on the tribes of Central Australia: "Over the whole continent, so far as is known, we can detect a community of customs and social organization sufficient to show that all the tribes inhabiting various parts are the offspring of ancestors who, prior to migrating in various directions, . . . already practiced certain customs and had the germs of an organization which has been developed along different lines in different localities.""

In view of the modern tendency to subordinate the culture test of race, and also of the evident lingering desire to hold on to it, it may be worth while to drag it out of the realm of things ignored or instinctively taken for granted and try to make some suggestions toward a clearer analysis of its validity, especially in the light of certain salient facts observable in the Malay Archipelago.

Following in the footsteps of Darmsteter, we must recognize in this region the power of tradition to modify race characteristics. He exemplified it by what are called the Aryan and Semitic races, groups which he showed to be made up of heterogeneous peoples who by conquest or contact came to speak Aryan and Semitic languages. As he urged, one must constantly be on the lookout for adoption of ready-made ideals from abroad.

ters of Borneo, Eng. Trans. of 1881, p. 260. It is true, he reinforced the test of custom by noting similarity of physique, complexion, and features. And in this his position is typical of contemporary theories. Likeness of manners seems still to be considered as a strong evidence of relationship, but arguments of origin are no longer based solely upon this, but take into consideration more carefully than the earlier statements the corroboration of physical appearance, language, probable effects upon migration of formation of the land and currents of wind and water, and, among a certain school of investigators, the character of skullformation as determined by elaborate measurements. Dr. A. W. Nieuwenhuis argues the common origin of two Borneo tribes from their similarity of language, dress, morals, and customs. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, March 28, 1903.

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Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 117.