Visiting the Veddahs, 1899
By Richard Boyle
“The most impressive thing about them was their unhuman apathy and utter lack of interest, a peculiarity of the lowest types of man” – Hiller & Furness,
(1902). Between the early research on the Veddahs by the Swiss naturalists Fritz Sarasin and his second cousin Paul Sarasin from 1883 to 1907, and the more scholarly achievements of the British husband and wife team, Charles and Brenda Seligmann, evident in The Veddas (1911), there was a visit to the tribe by another, but this time unrelated, pair - the Americans H. M. Hiller and W. H. Furness.
Their account was published as Notes of a Trip to the Veddahs of Ceylon (1902). Hardly a substantial piece, as indicated by the title, it nevertheless contains some informative descriptive passages that provide an interesting sketch of life of the Veddahs (colloquially the Wanniyala-Aetto or “forest people”) at a time when many of the tribe had never met a white man.
The lead author, Dr Hiram Milliken Hiller Jr. (1867-1921), an American physician, medical missionary, explorer and ethnographer, travelled widely in Asia and Oceania collecting cultural, zoological and botanical samples for museums; and for his lectures and publications.
But it was Hiller’s friend, fellow physician and co-author, Dr William Henry Furness III (18681920), a member of a socially prominent Philadelphia family, who inspired the four expeditions on which they jointly embarked. They were sometimes accompanied by another mutual friend, photographer Alfred Craven Harrison Jr. (1869– 1925), who provided some valuable shots of the Veddahs for Notes of a Trip.
In 1893 Furness accompanied a patient to Japan and returned tattooed to the waist with nineteen large cases of “curios” and the desire for future travel to the East. So he proposed an expedition to collect artifacts, whose ultimate destination was Borneo to search for Dayak headhunters.
So in October 1895, Furness and Hiller left America, sailed to Japan, then on to Borneo. They explained to a newspaper reporter en route that their expedition was a private one, financed by Furness’s father, and their aim was to collect specimens for the University of Pennsylvania. It was reported that they wished “to secure the most perfect collection possible”.
“They intend making a journey across Borneo and as much of the country that has not been visited by a white man. The trip is fraught with considerable danger,” the reporter advised his readers.
After spending four months in Borneo, during which they visited the Dayaks despite the perils posed, they travelled to Singapore, Saigon and China before returning to their homeland in December 1896 via Japan and Hawaii.
In May 1897 they travelled to Borneo once more to study the Dayaks employing another complex itinerary (Kalimantan, Sarawak, Malaya), before their return in September 1898. Their research on the tribe was published as The Home-Life of Borneo Head-Hunters: its festivals and folklore (1902), authored by Furness.
Their third expedition was on an eastwards rather than westwards track. They set off from America for England in June 1899, travelled from London to Marseilles, before boarding a ship bound for Asia. The voyage took them through the Suez Canal and on to Colombo.
They had learnt that the Veddahs “are classed in three groups, according somewhat to the localities in which they live. Those living near the coast are by far the most civilized; they associate freely with their Singhalese neighbors, devote themselves to fishing, and, in appearance only, differ from the primitive Singhalese living in the same region. These are known as the Coast Veddahs.
“Next in point of development are the Village Veddahs, living in the Bintenne, whose distinguishing feature is that they make an attempt at building huts, and collect together in family groups: they are nomadic, and live in one place only as long as the natural products of the surrounding jungle are sufficiently plentiful to support their lazy existence.
“In the third group are the Rock Veddahs, on account of their inability, or disinclination, to build houses and hence their mode of life in caves. They are the most exclusive of the groups, and almost never come into contact with the Singhalese, and do not associate with each other in tribal life but band together only in small family groups.”
The Americans took the train to Kandy, marvelling at the way the railway line “winds in and out and through and over the hill-tops, where at times one seems verily to overhang precipices or to glide bird-like over the sunny valleys”.
After several days in the Hill Capital they left “in a sort of wagonette drawn by two Australian horses. Our first stage was the rest-house in the village of Teldenia over a hard, well-built road running through a fairly populous country, cultivated with groves of cocoanut, cacao, and coffee. At the Mahaweli River we were ferried across on two dugouts, fastened together with a bridge of planks.”
From Teldeniya they travelled to ‘Madagoda’ (?), the end of the cart track, where they acquired porters and set out next morning on foot to a village “with the large name of Waragantotta”(?). The head-man, who had interacted with Westerners before, “came to greet us with such exuberant welcome that he did not take time to adjust under his Singhalese skirt the shirt he had donned in our honour. While we were talking, however, he was correcting this trifling detail, and a coat, a deerstalker cap, and a large pair of blue goggles [bluetinted spectacles/goggles were popular in the 19th century], were hastily brought from his house, to complete his toilette.”