Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1898 — VANITY FED BY CRIME. [ARTICLE]

VANITY FED BY CRIME.

SaTßgr* and Cultured Women Wear Ornaments Obtained by Murder. There are, it is said, certain savages —just barely human beings—called Dyaks. They have become famous to the world as “head-hunters.” These Dyaks creep through miles of forest paths and kill as many as they can of another lot of people, and then cut off the heads.of the slain and dry them, and hang them up, arranged on lines more or less artistically festooned about the place in which they live. This exhibition of dried and dead human heads seems to make these swart and murderous savages vain and glad. These people are, as we understand, or think we understand, but undeveloped, cruel, bloody-minded human creatures. They prefer the dry human heads to delicate ferns showing wonderful outlines, or to brilliant leavesand fragrant flowers. They have their own ideas concerning decoration. Upon a dozen or two of the islands in the southern Pacific, where the waves lap the sloping sands lazily, and life should be calm and ipeaceful, there are, or were until lately, certain people who occasion killed certain other people for reasons sufficiently good, no doulbt, to them, and who thus coming into possessionally killed certain other people for reasons sufficiently good, no doubt, to fingers of thtee dead, when dried, would make most artistic, not to say suggestive lecklaces. So they strung these dried fingers upon something strong and pliant, and wore them with much pride. When 1 see the bright feathers of birds, slain that hats may be garnished for the thoughtless females of a higher grade of beings, I am reminded somehow of the Dyaks and of the wearers of the necklaces made of fingers.—Woman’s Home Companion.