Meshech Weare (1713–1786) was a New Hampshire farmer, lawyer, and a revolutionary politician who represented the Seabrook and Hampton Falls area. Weare served as the first President of New Hampshire from 1776 to 1785. Weare's papers reside in the NH State Archives, and were selected for inclusion in the NH Citizen Archivists' Initiative.
Robert K. Dentan received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University in American Studies in 1958 followed by a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Yale in 1965. He is currently a Full Professor of Anthropology (and formerly of American Studies) at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB). His fieldwork in Malaysia spans a thirty-year period, beginning in 1961 and continuing through 1993 and has principally involved work with the Semai along with the Btsisi. His specializations include ethnography, cultural ecology, hierarchical and egalitarian forms of social organization, ideology, cognition and worldview, deviance and labeling, ethnicity, nonviolence, altered states of consciousness and economic development. Between 1970 and 2000 he has presented over seventy lectures, conference papers and presentations, including many with an Orang Asli subject matter. His most recent conference paper was a March 2000 lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies and was titled "Modernization, Spiritual Development and the Systematic Elimination of Orang Asli from Malaysian Life: Islamicization as Political Ethnocide". Dentan is the author of numerous reviews, journal articles, book chapters, and several books and monographs including The Semai: a Nonviolent People of Malaysia that was first published in 1968. He is the recipient of a number of awards, honors and research grants and has been active as a reviewer, faculty advisor and committee member on the UB campus. He also has served in several administrative positions at UB: as Director of Graduate Studies in American Studies in 1970 and from 1977-1981; as Chair of American Studies between 1981-1984 and as Director of U.S. Studies between 1986-1987; and as Acting Chair of American Studies in the summer of 1987. He has also been a faculty member of the Anthropology Department at Ohio State University and has taught in China. He was the founder of the Orang Asli Fund and is a Trustee of the Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research.The Robert K Dentan (RKD) papers document an anthropologist's work with the Orang Asli peoples of Malaysia. The current archive holdings are a fraction of RKD's entire collection and at this date are comprised of his field notes, manuscripts, and catalogs along with published materials; some that are by other authors.The field records include an early manuscript on the Semai language titled Preliminary Field Notes on the Semai Language (series 1, folder 1), edited in 2003 and now available online (Series 2, digital file). Series 1 also includes several digital files containing compilations of field notes on different subjects (series 1, digital files).Medical Ideas and Practices Among the Jah Hut of Malaya, by Ivan Polunin, (series 2, folder 1) is based on Polunin's work in Malaysia in the late 1950's. Materia Medica of the Jah Hut by Robert K. Dentan.
This husband and wife wear similar headdresses of flowers and plant stems through their nasal septa. The woman alone has flowers in her pierced ears and white and red lines across her forehead.
Children learn very young to make fire with smoldering logs, matches, lighters, flint and steel, and rattan and dry wood. Here some young children are starting a fire by sawing a strip of rattan back and forth on a dry stump.
Batek of all ages bathe at least once a day, usually in a river or stream. Here a woman bathes her baby in front of her shelter by pouring water from a tin over his head.
When flowers are abundant in the forest, Batek often make them into elaborate body decorations. Here a man and six women and girls wear headdresses of flowers on bark and rattan frames and plant stems through their nasal septa. The women also wear lines of white lime paste across their foreheads and flowers in their pierced ears.
Climbing trees in or near camp is a favorite recreation for children of both sexes and all ages. Most people become proficient tree-climbers by the time they reach adolescence. Here three young boys climb some small trees.
Swidden farmers first cut down the brush and trees on their field, then let the vegetation dry, and then burn it to clear the soil and convert the wood into ash, which acts as fertilizer. Here some men and children burn dried vegetation for a garden.
Sweet manioc (also called cassava; Manihot utilissima) is a plant originally from South America that produces large edible tubers. It grows abundantly even in poor soil and therefore is often included in the swiddens of Malayan Aboriginal farmers. Here a woman digs shallow holes, while two youngsters cut foot-long sections of manioc stems, which they will place at an angle in the holes and partially cover with earth. New plants will sprout from the stem cuttings and produce edible tubers in as little as six months.
Children also learn to cook at an early age. Here a group of children have built a fire and are roasting some frogs. Because food is normally shared, each child will probably get a tiny bite.
Batek are clever at reusing such scarce and valuable materials as iron. Here a woman is making a chisel-shaped digging stick blade from a broken piece of a bushknife blade. She has inserted the blade in a wooden handle, heated it in a fire, and is now pounding the end to thin it, using a ball-peen hammer and an ax butt for an anvil. She will later sharpen the newly-formed cutting edge with a file.
People usually go on foraging expeditions looking for tubers, but they take the opportunity to harvest any other food they might find along the way. Here a woman set out with her digging stick, but came back with some turtle egg fruits (species unknown), instead of tubers.
A readily-available snack food in the rainforest is palm hearts, the soft pith at the center of the stem where new leaves develop. Palm hearts are similar in texture and taste to young celery shoots. Here some boys are snacking on hearts of the common thatch palm (Calamus castaneus), which grows throughout the lowland forest.
The characteristic long belt (nem) worn by women is plaited from fine fibers of a certain species of rattan. When one fiber ends, a new one is braided in, so the finished belt can go many times around a womans waist. Here a woman plaits a nem. When it is finished, she will dye it red by boiling it with berries from a rattan bush. A finished nem can be seen around her waist. She is also wearing a cloth sarong, a necklace and bracelet made of black fungus rhizomes, and flowers in her ears. Some thin strips of pandanus leaf dry on the right; she will later make them into baskets like the one on the left.
The main meal of the day is in the late afternoon or early evening, and usually families eat that meal together. During the rest of the day people eat left-overs and newly obtained food whenever they get hungry. Here a baby is eating honey out of a metal cooking pot.
People of both sexes and all ages fish with hook and line, the most frequent method used for catching fish. The metal hooks and monofilament lines are obtained by trade; the rods are made from the midribs of palm fronds; and the bait is worms or insects dug out of the riverbank. Here a boy and girl fish while some other children look on.
People seeking wild yams scan the treetops looking for the characteristic heart-shaped leaves. Then they trace the vine to the ground and dig down the stem until they reach the tubers. Takop (Dioscorea orbiculata), the most commonly found species, may have several tubers on each stem. Diggers follow each tuber as it winds its way underground, bringing up pieces of tuber with each thrust of the digging stick. Some tubers are several feet long. Here a woman digs while carrying her baby in a cloth sling on her back. She uses a digging stick with a small shovel blade, which is obtained in trade. A pile of tuber pieces lies beside the hole (foreground).
Both boys and girls practice blowpipe hunting from an early age. These girls have borrowed blowpipes from relatives (without asking) and are shooting at birds near camp. They were unsuccessful, but they had fun.
The woman has now put her baby down on the cloth and is scooping dirt out of the hole by hand. Sometimes holes become so deep, diggers go underground to continue following a tuber. These children are smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and one girl is blowing on the wings of her pet bat (center).
The woman has stopped to rest and is searching for some tobacco in her pandanus pouch. (Her pandanus back-basket lies on the ground at the lower left.) Her daughter is pressing her bat against the digging stick, while her son plays with the plastic bag that held the dried leaves used to roll cigarettes.
Hunters often spend leisure time making new blowpipe darts. Here two girls (on left) and one boy are making darts. Another boy holds a blowpipe with clay packed around the end. Youngsters like to make balls of clay and shoot them through blowpipes at small animals. Their bamboo tube of dart poison leans against a stick in the center.
Once tubers have been dug up, they can rot or ferment and become bitter. This man is threading some takop tubers on a strand of rattan, so he can suspend them over the fire and dry them to inhibit spoilage
Batek typically sleep on mats woven from pandanus leaves, using a cotton sarong for a blanket. This woman is weaving a sleeping mat while her baby clings to her.
