Message sticks used by the Murut and Dusun people in Sabah
P.A. Burrough’s 1975 article documents the message-stick communication systems (locally called tatanda or tatanduk) used by forest-dwelling Murut and Dusun groups in Sabah, based on fieldwork conducted between 1970 and 1972 across southern and central Sabah. The article argues that these signs constitute a versatile, widely distributed non-literal communication system whose remarkable uniformity across linguistically distinct groups scattered over approximately 10,000 km² of forest suggests a very long history of continuous use.
Summary
Burrough’s central contribution is systematic ethnographic documentation of a communication system that earlier Borneo ethnographers had largely overlooked. Nineteenth-century travellers such as St. John (1863) noted only a single bamboo warning sign, Rutter (1929) dismissed the pagans of Sabah as having no form of writing, and Hose and McDougall (1912) described Kayan message sticks exclusively in the context of spiritual communications. It was not until the mid-1950s that detailed accounts appeared, beginning with Arnold’s (1958) work on Punan signs in Sarawak. Burrough positions his own fieldwork—conducted over many months of travel through remote areas—as a necessary extension of this emerging literature, covering six groups: Labau Dusun, Baukan Murut, Paluan Murut, Tagal Murut (Rundum), Tagal Murut (Pensiangan), and Timogun Murut.
The article demonstrates that the system is far more complex than earlier accounts suggested. Signs convey information about hunting successes (species, method of kill, size, sex, fat content), land claims and boundary rights, warnings of traps and disease, wedding announcements with detailed bride-price inventories, and communications to the spirit world at graves and altars. Burrough documents both the shared structural logic across groups (a vertical stick with clefts holding recognisable symbols) and the group-specific variations in symbol design. He notes that the Baukan, Paluan, Timogun, and Rundum Murut possess an individual “signature” system in which each man places his family’s leaf or stick symbol near the base of the support stick, a feature absent among the Labau Dusun.
In his discussion, Burrough explicitly rejects Harrisson’s (1965) proposal that Bornean nomad signs fit into a fixed “octet” framework, arguing instead that signs are made according to need. He attributes the cross-group uniformity not to a single originating culture but to the uniformity of forest-dwelling life and available materials across the region.
Key Findings
- All groups studied call the signs tatanda or tatanduk; the support stick is a vertical pole one to three metres long, stuck in the ground beside forest tracks, with clefts cut to hold carved twigs, leaves, or bark symbols (p. 120).
- Hunting signs are the most common type, typically one to 1½ metres high, and serve three simultaneous functions: marking a hunter’s presence in an area, reporting the kind and quantity of game killed, and displaying the hunter’s prowess (p. 120).
- The Baukan, Paluan, Timogun, and Rundum (Tagal) Murut each possess a personal family-name symbol placed near the base of the stick as a “signature”; the Labau Dusun do not use family signs (pp. 120, 121).
- Elaborate wedding signs are used only by the Baukan, Paluan, and Tagal Murut and the Labau Dusun; no other Murut or Dusun group employs them. Among the Tagal Murut of Kampong Pangaraan, the sign is constructed in two stages: the groom erects the first part (bride-price details) on his way to the wedding, and the couple adds a second stick on the return journey (pp. 121–122).
- The system’s geographic and social reach is sharply stratified: the forest-dwelling Baukan, Paluan, and Tagal Murut and Labau Dusun use it widely; the more settled Timogun and Nabai (Keningau) Murut use it only for hunting; the Lun Dayah people of Sipitang know of the signs but no longer use them; and the Ranau, Tambunan, and coastal Kadazan Dusun do not know of them at all (p. 122).
- The Baukan Murut erect an elaborate disease-warning sign at kampong entrances during epidemics, consisting of an “H”-shaped frame with a fence of interlocking split bamboos between the uprights, decorated with food offerings and ornaments to appease evil spirits (p. 121).
Conclusion
Burrough concludes that message sticks represent a form of primitive writing whose cross-group uniformity—despite the linguistic diversity of the peoples who use them—points to a very long period of continuous development. The system is constrained by the need for crude pictographic representation, making abstract concepts like elapsed time or personal names difficult to encode, yet within those constraints it achieves a remarkable range of communicative function spanning the everyday and the spiritual.
Context
- Primary data derive from Burrough’s own fieldwork (1970–72) in southern and central Sabah, supplemented by D. J. Prentice’s (1972) private notes on Timogun Murut signs and Burrough’s earlier publication on Baukan Murut signs (1970).
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in correcting the near-total absence of systematic documentation of Sabahan message sticks in the colonial-era ethnographic literature and in providing the first comparative account spanning six distinct linguistic groups within a single region.