HOW TO MAKE A SUMPITAN

[Royston]

In case anyone has the inclination, ability and a couple of spare weeks, these photos may be useful.

Scanned from " Peoples of all Nations " volume 2. I cannot find a date in this book, but I would guess at 1920's.

Roy

[Lee]

Thank you for sharing these; they do make me look at my sumpitan with a little more fascination and respect. (I enjoyed the mandau in the photo sequence as well.)

[Maurice]

Hello Roy,

I have the little booklet and there is no date on it.
But with pencil is written the date 20 june 1922, so you were very close with the date.

[Royston]

Lee,

It puts a whole different perspective on the use of a mandau, does it not ?
The other thing that strikes me is the endless patience people had in the past compared with the " I want it know " attitude of today.

Roy

[Maurice]

Originally Posted by Royston

It puts a whole different perspective on the use of a mandau, does it not ?

This is written in the book of Nieuwenhuis very clearly (In Centraal Borneo
Reis van Pontianak naar Samarinda.)
Maybe a bit of topic, cause this thread is about the sumpitan.
But I guess some additional info could be in place sometimes.

I tried to make a translation good enough to show what it is saying:

"The malat wasn't only used for war, but also in daily live of the Bahau's.
The little knife (Njoe), which is the sideknife in the little sideknifepocket at the backside of the mandauscabbard, is always carried with them along.
Every work in daily life which is that heavy that it can't be done with the Njoe, to finish with an ax, the Kayan does it with their malat, which never leaves him because of this.
As field work they use the malat to clear branches and brushwood, and for this they took their simple swords (made for this work) with them.
At distant trips through the forest, the Malat is protecting the kayan against enemies, but they use the same malat to chop and slash boards and firewood.
Every kayan thus has 1 malat with him on his trip, which serves for both: warfare and tool.
Because of this, at the Kapoeas and the upper Mahakam, they prefered to take with them simple, but solid tooled blades.
The more special ones, with copper and silver inlay, where used to show off.
Only a few warlike headmans (like the headman of the Pnihings), alerted Nieuwenhuis to their beautifull inlaid blades taken for warfare, but also with these swords, once in a while a little tree will be chopped with when necessary."

[fearn]

Interesting thing is that this is similar to the way they made musket barrels, at least following Wallace's Malay Archipelago.

It's interesting to me, because in the Amazon (at least according to a video I saw years ago), they split a palm stalk, carve the central barrel, smooth the two halves flat, then glue the whole thing back together very carefully. Then again, they didn't have nice long rods for boring, either. They also didn't mount spearheads on their blowpipes.

Great pics. Thanks for posting them!

F

[asomotif]

Nice pictures !
They turned them into as sort of drawing like print, and by the looks of this warrior the retouched most of his tattoos

I have seen a Penan man working on a full size blowpipe in 1998 and in remote areas they will probably still use it.

[Nathaniel]

Fascinating! Love seeing how the native crafts where/ are made! Thanks for sharing!