Article

Notes on the Bajaus and other coastal tribes of North Borneo

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Notes on the Bajaus and other coastal tribes of North Borneo

I.H.N. Evans, a colonial administrator in British North Borneo, published this ethnographic note in 1952 to examine the origins and internal divisions of the Bajau people of the west coast, arguing that the settled Bajaus are descendants of Sea Gypsy (Samah) groups who migrated from the southern Philippines rather than the Johore origin they themselves claim.

Summary

The article addresses the historical and ethnographic question of Bajau origins in North Borneo. Evans challenges the Bajau self-narrative of descent from Johore and dynastic connection to the royal houses of Brunei and Sulu, arguing instead that they were originally a group of Sea Gypsies who settled on the coast and pushed back the older Dusun inhabitants. His evidence rests on oral traditions collected from three informants in Labuan village—Dato Tari, Dallah, and Ali Basah—whose pedigrees agree on the direct line of descent but span only seven generations, a brevity Evans finds inconsistent with the grandeur of the founding myth. He supplements this with a Dusun folk-tale (collected from Native Chief Gimbad, whose manuscript was destroyed by the Japanese) depicting the Bajaus’ arrival and their unfamiliarity with agriculture, which Evans reads as a distorted memory of a genuinely non-agricultural, maritime way of life.

Evans then extends his survey to the roving Sea Gypsy groups that visit Borneo’s coasts, drawing on the testimony of Durahman, a Bajau from Mengkabong who had travelled widely in the southern Philippines. He identifies four sub-groups—Samah-Samah, Samar Laiyum, Ubian, and Banadan—and notes their linguistic and behavioural relationships to the settled Bajaus. He cross-references this with Beyer’s 1916 census data on the Samal population and a 1914 letter from Governor Carpenter of Mindanao and Sulu, which had asserted that Samals and Bajaos were distinct peoples—a claim Evans disputes on the basis of his own fieldwork.

Key Findings

  • The two independent pedigrees (from Ali Basah and Dallah) agree absolutely on the direct line of descent: Amiril Mukminin → Tunggal → Awang → Ugih → Husin → Tari, spanning only seven generations including the informants themselves (pp. 49, 52–53).
  • The ancestral cannon Bujang Paling is a bronze or brass breech-loading swivel-gun approximately five feet in length, of Malayan manufacture, with cast foliate patterns and a corona of isosceles triangles; it was lashed to a house-post at Labuan village (pp. 53–54).
  • Beyer (1916) estimated the Samal population at 78,700 and described them as “a Malay blend composed of practically every racial type to be found in South Eastern Asia and Oceania” (p. 55).
  • The Ubian group, commonly called Banadan, were formerly classed as Bolonginik in old records of piracy on the Bornean coast and remained inclined to piracy when met far from their Tawi-Tawi stronghold (p. 54).
  • Governor Frank W. Carpenter’s letter of 14 March 1914 stated that “Samals and Bajaos are not the same people,” a distinction Evans rejects on the ground that Bajao is simply the Malay exonym for the self-designation Samah/Samal (p. 55).

Conclusion

Evans concludes that the settled Bajaus of North Borneo are most plausibly a group of Sea Gypsies who established themselves on the west coast, and that their claimed origin from Johore and dynastic links to Brunei and Sulu are legendary embellishments layered over a more modest maritime migration. The brevity of the genealogies, the Dusun folk-tale’s depiction of agricultural ignorance, and the linguistic and behavioural affinities with the roving Samah groups all converge on this interpretation.

Context

  • Evans first encountered the Bajaus in 1910 and conducted his fieldwork in the 1940s–50s; his earlier manuscripts, including the full text of the Gimbad folk-tale, were destroyed by the Japanese during the occupation.
  • The article draws on oral testimony collected in the field and cross-references Beyer’s Population of the Philippine Islands (1916) and official correspondence from the U.S. colonial administration in Mindanao and Sulu.

References