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Report on a journey from Tuaran to Kiau and ascent of Kinabalu Mountain

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Report on a journey from Tuaran to Kiau and ascent of Kinabalu Mountain

R.M. Little’s 1887 report, published in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol. 19, pp. 1–25), documents a February–March expedition from the Tuaran Government Station into the interior of British North Borneo to formalize the submission of Dusun headmen around Kinabalu Mountain and to attempt the mountain’s ascent. The overarching thesis is twofold: the journey served as an administrative instrument of colonial consolidation—securing oaths of allegiance, settling blood feuds, and establishing poll-tax obligations—while simultaneously producing the first revised Western measurement of Kinabalu’s height and the first detailed account of its summit geology.

Summary

Little departed Tuaran on 28 February 1887 with a party of sixteen Dusun coolies, two Dyaks, one Brunei Malay, Pangeran Sahbudin (Chief of Tuaran-Sulaman), the Dusun Sub-Chief Gawang, Clerk Usman, and two Armed Constabulary privates, armed with six Snider carbines, a smooth-bore, and a Spencer repeater (p. 3). The route followed the Tuaran River upstream, crossed the watershed via the Bawang stream, and traversed a series of named hills—Nilau (2,226 ft), Manjok Sirong (2,411 ft), Kampin (2,363 ft)—before reaching the villages of Sinilau, Kalawat, Bungol, Kahong, Labong Labong, and finally Kiau, situated at 2,635 feet on Hangkong Hill (pp. 3–9). At each settlement Little conducted administrative business: hearing cases, settling a Rungus Maragang blood feud rooted in the 1884 Rambatuan massacre, arranging poll-tax payments, and performing the friendship ceremony involving a buffalo sacrifice, the planting of a treaty stone, and the hoisting of the British North Borneo flag (pp. 7–8).

The ascent of Kinabalu was undertaken on 9–11 March by a reduced party of twelve, including Little, Pangeran Sahbudin, Gawang, two guides, two police constables, and five coolies (p. 16). The route followed the Kadamayan (Tampasuk) River source up the southern face of the mountain, passing Paka-Paka cave at 10,262 feet and Dilana Hill at 9,700 feet, before reaching the summit area at 11,312 feet by aneroid (p. 17). Little’s party found themselves in the gap between Victoria Peak (the highest, most easterly summit) and the adjacent peak that St. John had climbed in 1858; the guides had already ascended the latter and deposited Little’s bottle and brass offerings on its summit (p. 17). The descent was arduous, with Little suffering a severe knee injury and near-fatal falls on the wet granite (pp. 18–19).

Of particular significance, the guide Limbawan produced at Kiau both Sir H. Low’s 1851 bottle (containing fragments of The Agricultural Gazette and The Gardener’s Chronicle) and St. John’s 1858 tin (containing a page from the Overland Mail dated 9 January 1858 and a pencil diary entry reading “the peak here with the bottle SPENSER ST. JOHN. April 30th, 1858”) (pp. 20–21). These artifacts confirmed the mountain’s prior ascents and provided a tangible link to the earlier colonial-era exploration of the region.

Key Findings

  • Revised height of Kinabalu: Little’s aneroid reading at the summit gap was 11,312 feet; adding his estimated 250 feet for Victoria Peak gave a total of 11,562 feet, over 2,000 feet lower than the previously accepted 13,698 feet (p. 17). This represented a significant correction to the mountain’s known dimensions.
  • Volcanic evidence: Little observed a “gulf of unfathomable depth” whose rim was visible through a momentary clearing of mist, and proposed a two-eruption model: the first bursting through the southern rim (leaving the present peaks as fragments) and the second breaking away the northern rim. He cited lava specimens collected by Resident Davies and his own 1886 find on Mallawalli Island, examined by Mr. A.H. Everett, as evidence that Borneo had been volcanic (pp. 17–18).
  • Recovery of historical artifacts: The 1851 Low bottle and 1858 St. John tin, both over thirty-six years old, were recovered from the summit area, confirming the dates and circumstances of the two prior ascents and demonstrating the durability of paper and glass in the mountain environment (pp. 20–21).
  • Friendship ceremony protocol: At Labong Labong, a young buffalo was sacrificed, a rectangular stone planted upright, the British North Borneo flag hoisted, and a local Tuaran flag (white ground, red triangle with “Tuaran” in red) presented to the headman; Coast and Hill Dusuns laid hands on the stone swearing eternal friendship. Gawang reported that sixty-four villages had requested a similar ceremony (p. 8).
  • Ethnographic observations: Little recorded the Inggano singing tradition (performed lying on the back for greater lung capacity), the custom of earth-eating among Hill Dusun infants, the naming convention whereby fathers of married sons assume the prefix Mah (from Tamah), and the use of tuba (an intoxicating weed) to stupefy fish or as a means of suicide by despairing lovers (pp. 4, 8–10, 21–22).
  • Administrative consolidation: The journey resulted in the formal submission of the Kiau and surrounding villages, the settlement of the Rungus Maragang blood feud (a retaliation for the 1884 Rambatuan massacre in which Nakoda Radin, a Sarawak Dyak acting under Pangeran Kamandra, had killed 18 women and children), and the establishment of poll-tax obligations including two buffaloes from Labong Labong for the current year (pp. 6–7, 23).

Conclusion

Little’s report stands as a definitive colonial-era document that simultaneously advances three distinct projects: the political integration of the Kinabalu hinterland into the British North Borneo administrative apparatus, the scientific correction of the mountain’s height and the formulation of a volcanic origin theory, and the ethnographic recording of Dusun social customs at a moment when they were being actively reshaped by colonial contact. His definitive historical takeaway is that the interior communities around Kinabalu, while nominally submitting to Government authority, retained their own social structures, dispute-resolution mechanisms, and economic practices, and that the colonial presence was experienced by them as a series of ceremonial transactions—buffalo sacrifices, flag presentations, and treaty stones—rather than as a wholesale transformation of their world.

Context

  • The report was published in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, the principal scholarly outlet for colonial-era natural history and ethnography in the Straits Settlements and British North Borneo, and forms part of the MBRAS archival collection of primary source travel accounts.
  • Little’s journey connects to the earlier ascents by Sir Hugh Low (1851) and Spencer St. John (1858), both of whom had also documented the mountain; the recovery of their artifacts at the summit in 1887 provides a material thread linking three decades of Western engagement with Kinabalu.

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